Talk:Cold fusion

This article was the subject of mediation during 2009 at User_talk:Cryptic C62/Cold fusion.

"closed" and "ongoing"

It is hard to know whether a particular research program is closed or ongoing. I propose to simply delete these section titles. Does anyone object? Olorinish (talk) 03:00, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Seen this?

Has anyone read this: [1] extra999 (talk) 04:52, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

"citation needed" and other tags

I plan to get rid of the "citation needed" and other tags in the next week or so. If you have strong opinions about any of them, please discuss them here. Here are some changes I propose:

In the introduction, change "A small community of researchers..." to "Some researchers..."

In the History section, remove "Claims to have produced ..."

remove the section title "Claims of commercial devices"

In the Publications section, remove [who?]"

In the Theoretical proposals section,

remove the first sentence

remove "[clarification needed]"

change the next-to-last sentence to "In 2006, Widom and Larsen proposed a mechanism for the production of nuclear reactions at low temperatures."

remove the last sentence

Olorinish (talk) 16:20, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Cold fusion/LERN: "The existence of the effect is no longer in doubt"

According to this paper from the European Commission, page 23:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/industrial_technologies/pdf/emerging-materials-report_en.pdf

3.4 Low Energy Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter

ENEA, SRI and NRL have been involved within review programs in the US and in Italy. The main task was to demonstrate, on the basis of signals well above the measurement uncertainties and with a cross check, the existence of the excess of heat production during electrochemical loading of deuterium in palladium cathodes. The target was achieved and the existence of the effect is no longer in doubt. The complete reproducibility of the effect and the amplitude of the signals are not yet under control since this target will require the definition of the phenomenon. Recent data, in open literature, shows that, into the condensed matter (i.e. Pd, Ti, PdO), the cross section of the deuteriumdeuterium fusion reaction, at low energy, is some orders of magnitude higher than the expected value. In this case the typical products of the reaction are observed but a new screening effect, in the order of several hundreds of eV, is observed.

ENEA = (Italian) National agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development
SRI = Stanford Research Institute
NRL = Naval Research Lab

This is quite remarkable, and it should be clearly stated in the article.--NUMB3RN7NE (talk) 05:22, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

The opinions of cold fusion researcher, and "LENR expert", Vittorio Violante (of the ENEA) are not a reliable source for such claims. —ArtifexMayhem (talk) 07:35, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Stated in a workshop: "Forward Looking Workshop on Materials for Emerging Energy Technologies".

Not an official statement: "The views expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission."

From the part of the article that is not written by the consulted experts and not by the workshop writer "This section contains the individual submissions from each of the attending experts", (the author is Vittorio Violante from ENEA)

--Enric Naval (talk) 07:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

So to be completely clear, you're saying that this statement comes from Vittorio Violante - it isn't backed by the European commission (even though they printed it) and isn't necessarily endorsed by the consulted experts or the workshop author? So it's basically non-peer-reviewed material? Then the existence of the effect is still in considerable doubt! SteveBaker (talk) 12:34, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I've been trying to convince editors that conference or workshop "proceedings", even if published by a normally reliable scientific organization, are solely the opinion of the authors of the respective articles, for years. It's nice to have that acknowledged in some small way here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:14, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

84.* pasted the entire subpage here: User:POVbrigand/list into this section, I've reverted it due to the BLP violations and the large amount of text that it is. I've nominated the subpage for deletion due to the BLP concerns. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:19, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

(So much research, and I still don't have my flying car my cold fusion-powered car.) --Enric Naval (talk) 14:18, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I wonder if this is simply an error in interpretation. Consider neutron generators, which use high voltage acceleration of tritium or deuterium. One gets some excess energy output, sort of kind of, but it's not equal or greater than the input effort. At lower acceleration levels, one could, at some at the upper end accelerations, get intermittent bursts of neutrons. But, this isn't the place for speculation.Wzrd1 (talk) 04:24, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

It takes a pretty generous interpretation to see 195 keV to 1 MeV input ions as being "cold", but your milage may vary.LeadSongDog come howl! 16:35, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Moved from top

Today, August 13, 2012, I posted the following in the "In Popular Culture" section:

"In the 2010 film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the Jake Moore character (played by Shia LaBeouf) attempts to find funding for an energy company that plans to utilize lasers focused on a small target, thereby releasing enormous amounts of energy, a process that bears similarity to the idea of Cold Fusion."

Twice, my editing was removed. Why? There is nothing wring with the edit. Everything I said there is accurate, the context is accurate and there is never any mention of support, one way or another, for or against Cold Fusion. So why was it deleted? And, ***No*** I am not engaging in an "editing war". I merely posted an intelligent, reasonable comment. So why was it deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pantothenic (talk • contribs) 15:50, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It's not sourced and looks like original research. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:55, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Aside from the fundamental problems identified by IRWolfie, it's also worth noting that the statement just isn't correct. I haven't seen the film, but the sentence you've provided describes inertial confinement fusion – an accepted and experimentally well-supported type of 'hot' fusion – not a cold fusion process. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:03, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with IRWolfie and TenOfAllTrades in that the proposed addition is wrong because it is not about cold fusion, and that it is apparently a violation of WP:NOR or WP:SYNTH; nothing cited to reliable sources. Binksternet (talk) 17:57, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

US News secondary news source on MIT, NASA, Boeing; lenrforum.eu

"LENR demonstration projects [were] recently initiated at respected places like MIT, the University of Missouri, and the University of Bologna; public presentations by executives at one of the world's largest instrument companies, National Instruments, apparently designed to attract the top LENR researchers into a project to test and quantify observed LENR effects; and a July report from the European Commission's research and development center that LENR at least has sustainable future energy technology potential. But near the top of the cold fusion research community's hit parade are musings from NASA, like the fact that the agency apparently filed two LENR-related patents last year and that a leading NASA scientist has indicated that LENR is real enough to pay attention to and study. Boeing and NASA may even be testing aircraft using LENR or other similar concepts." -- Nesbit, J. (August 8, 2012) "New Burst of Energy Could Bring Cold Fusion to Front Burner" US News

Also, it looks like many of the "Topics" listed on http://lenrforum.eu/viewforum.php?f=15 include reliable sources missing from the article, some of which are peer reviewed primary and some of which are secondary non-peer reviewed news items. There are also government sources, and things like this which was a presentation from National Instruments to the EU: http://www.22passi.it/downloads/eu_brussels_june_20_2012_concezzi.pdf 75.166.207.214 (talk) 22:56, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

We don't rely on blogs and forums etc. We don't rely on primary sources. Newspapers are unreliable for WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims, particularly so for anything within science. I've removed the link to the forum since you aren't actually linking to a list but to a forum, seems like advertising. IRWolfie- (talk) 23:26, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Official blogs run by established news sources with editorial oversight and reputations for fact checking and accuracy are reliable secondary sources per WP:NEWSBLOG. There is no indication in WP:EXCEPTIONAL that mainstream news sources are prohibited for exceptional claims, but it does say multiple mainstream sources. The US News article is specifically commenting on recent developments in the subject of the article. Please ask on WP:RSN if you disagree. Is editing others comments like that allowed per WP:TALK? As "seems like advertising" is clearly not within any of the categories listed in WP:TPO, I am replacing the link. I have no affiliation with or interest in lenrforum.eu, and only learned of it today. People often post links to e.g. vortex-l here. 75.166.207.214 (talk) 01:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)