Dear Doctor Science,
Is there any promise in answering the world's energy needs with perpetual motion machines, like the toy rooster that - despite not having a battery - will dip his beak in a vodka tonic for an infinite amount of time?
-- T.J. Murphy, Brooklyn from Brookyn, NY
Perpetual motion is a fact, but one hidden from the public by the big energy companies, who keep the working prototype in a vault in the basement of the Vatican. Currently, only Henry Kissinger, the Illuminati, certain high ranking Masons and Kathy Lee Gifford have access to this machine, which produces unlimited amounts of energy at the touch of a button. Don't waste your time looking for one at Wal-Mart. Even if one appears with the alluring "As Seen on TV" logo, it's not the real McCoy. Save your money and wait until Oprah demonstrates one on her show. Then you'll know it's legit.
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-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

Answers

Cold Fusion Times

Wired-- What if cold fusion is real?

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Ah yes, Cold Fusion, the Y2k of Real Science, "now you see it and now you don't but you will if you really, really, really believe". They get $500 mill./yr. in funding. CETI gets money. Anything that can advance the frontier usually gets funding. The problem with Cold Fusion is that the early proponents of it did not conduct their work and their publications in a manner that established their credibility. Someday, someone will break through and we will have some form of cold fusion but it will not be "cold fusion in a test tube". After that it will be a matter of sheer economics. Like the "car that can also fly" (which now can be built), market economics enters the picture. Are Minded Diamonds cheaper than Laboratory made ones? Is real leather better than ersatz?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion_pr.html
At Los Alamos, Tom Claytor likewise is thwarted by lack of money. He would like to see a massive trial-and-error program to test every possible palladium alloy, since tiny impurities seem to catalyze dramatic performance gains. "This is how ceramic superconductors were developed," he points out, "by testing 5,000 different compounds." But no laboratory wants to mount such an effort for cold fusion. Consequently the field is languishing, while its key scientists grow older, and few newcomers venture in. Jed Rothwell, a former software engineer turned journalist who has taken an active interest in cold fusion since 1991, sums up the sad situation: "Very little happens. People putter along doing pretty much the same thing year after year. They are old and work slowly, and they have no funding and no equipment - so jobs that ought to take weeks take years instead." And as Ed Storms has pointed out, even when significant discoveries are made - such as detection of helium from Les Case's apparatus - there's no easy way to publish them. According to an estimate by David Nagel at the Naval Research Laboratory, only four of approximately 5,000 academic journals worldwide will consider papers that mention low-temperature fusion. There's one obvious way to do an end run around this barrier: Manufacture a marketable product. If a maverick such as Les Case or a start-up such as CETI could put a cold fusion water heater in every home in America, then the phenomenon would be undeniable. But these are longshots. If they don't pan out, and the current situation persists, we may be left with the grim scenario described half a century ago by the famous physicist Max Planck: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Alas, by the time a new generation displaces the old, the graying community of cold fusion researchers will be long gone. Thus, in a worst-case scenario, the new generation may have to rediscover cold fusion for themselves. Meanwhile, the US Department of Energy spends more than $15 billion each year, of which hot fusionists receive almost $500 million, secure in their knowledge that they are following the only valid path. And, to be fair, they may be correct - if every one of the hundreds of successful cold fusion experiments turns out to be based on incompetence, experimental errors, self-delusion, or fraud. Even if major funding is obtained for cold fusion, conceivably the phenomenon could suffer from problems as intractable as those of hot fusion. It may never work reliably, or generate enough energy to be commercially viable. One thing, though, is certain: If it remains the poor stepchild of science, starved into obscurity, we'll never have a chance to learn what we may be missing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

BTW, in Physics, his own field, Planck was incorrect as quoted above though he was somewhat tardy in endorsing Quantum. 100 years ago, communications amoungst peers was not conducted by email to speed up the universal adoption or rejection of new ideas.

He did accept Einstein's 3 papers of 1906 even though Special and General Relativity would later be used to totally rattle then extend the Mechanistic World Newton and following generations had codified.

It does not take the death of the establishment to establish "scientific truth". Some things are so obvious that they are instantly adopted once identified. Cannon balls shot in the air eventually fall to earth and with the help of Calculus the impact and landing zone can be accurately calculated. When the equations of motion are adjusted for the stitches of a baseball, the fuzz of a tennis ball and the wind and moisture content of the air they traverse, it is clear that they also obey the same rules.

That is what Thomas Kuhn meant by "paradigm shifts". It was Kuhn who identified who had to die before such shifts were completed. They are the older members of the generation who themselves might have instigated their own paradigm shifts when younger.

In Planck's field, that would have been the older Professors in Academia who simply refused to accept the "nutty mathematics of the Quantum Proponents".

Curious, the public likes to grab onto "easy to understand" ideas. And in one most famous "paradigm clash" it was Einstein (the originator of the Special and General Theory of Relativity which opened the path for quantum thinking if not theory)......who stated "God does not play dice with the Universe". And it was Einstein who to his death marched almost alone outside the Quantum Community by insisting that there...just had to be one GUT (grand unifying theory). And that could be. But the GUT when ultimately worked out, will probably be just as complicated as the seemingly "simple" E=MC**2 (itself a collection then condensation of some rather complicated work).

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

LINK

Thursday June 28 11:29 PM ET

Greenspan Urges Energy Market Development

By Meredith Grossman Dubner

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites) said on Thursday he hoped current short- term energy supply problems in the United States can be settled without further damage to the economy, but said more attention must be paid to energy market developments.

In a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago in which he backed more use of nuclear power -- a shift advocated by the Bush administration -- the Fed chief said spikes in oil prices preceded the last three U.S. recessions in 1990-91, 1980-82 and 1974-75.

``As a consequence, we at the Federal Reserve are especially attentive to developments in energy markets and their effects on the behavior of households and businesses,'' he said. But the Fed chief noted some recent signs of improvement in energy prices, which he said were down from first-quarter levels.

Greenspan's remarks to the $125-a-plate dinner for 2,500 dealt strictly with energy prices and their impact on the economy. They did not directly address monetary policy.

During a question-and-answer period following the speech, which came a day after the central bank cut interest rates a quarter of a percentage point, Greenspan did say that the technological revolution has caused an acceleration in the pace of company decision-making. Monetary policy must speed up to accommodate this, he said.

He added that ``the actions that the Federal Open Market Committee (news - web sites) has taken since the beginning of the year essentially reflects that view.'' The Fed has cut rates six times this year, dropping them by a total of 2-3/4 percentage points.

CALIFORNIA A WORRY

Greenspan said California's highly publicized power crisis was unlikely to be settled quickly, since new supply will not come on line soon enough to prevent disruptions this summer.

``This is a worrisome situation for Californians, certainly, and because the state comprises one-eighth of our national GDP (news - web sites) (gross domestic product), it should be a concern for the U.S. economic outlook as well,'' he said in a speech which overall had a relatively optimistic tone.

``The short-term energy problems we are experiencing for gasoline, natural gas and electric power will be resolved, one hopes, without any further adverse impact on our economy,'' Greenspan added, saying that the problems have focused renewed attention on the long-term prospects for U.S. energy markets.

Higher energy prices have added significantly to corporations' costs over about the past year but only a small part of these have been passed on in prices, Greenspan said. He noted that overall energy prices softened in April and May from first-quarter levels and said this suggested ``some easing in pressures on profit margins from energy this quarter.''

Costlier energy has a ripple effect throughout the economy, including on profits of non-energy companies, Greenspan said. ''This effect is particularly important because a stabilization of profit margins and cash flow will be critical to an eventual firming of capital investment,'' he noted.

The Fed has cited weaker corporate profits and capital investment spending as key reasons behind its decision to reduce U.S. interest rates six times so far this year.

NUCLEAR POWER SAFER, CLEAN

Greenspan said more attention should be paid to using nuclear plants to generate electricity.

``Given the steps that have been taken over the years to make nuclear energy safer and the obvious environmental advantages it has in terms of reducing emissions, the time may have come to consider whether we can overcome the impediments to tapping its potential more fully,'' he said.

Greenspan's comments came hours after President Bush (news - web sites) sent his plan to boost energy output to Congress. The proposal outlines measures to increase coal, oil and nuclear power output while also offering conservation incentives. The plan is expected to be debated in July in the House of Representatives.

Bush's proposal was unveiled last month against the backdrop of soaring energy prices and electricity shortages in blackout-hit California. Since then, gasoline prices have fallen significantly.

In a lighter moment at the event the dedicated Fed chief, when asked how he blew off stress, said he did so by being a ''hard swinger'' on the golf course and tennis court. He said that in golf, he may ``swing a little harder'' than he perhaps should but he finds it a ``wonderful way'' to get rid of stress.

But Greenspan finds study refreshing as well. He said he finds it relaxing to research subjects that do not directly relate to monetary policy, including researching the energy speech he delivered to the dinner, which was attended by a veritable who's who of Chicago's business elite including the chief executives of McDonald's and Sears.

``It may seem crazy to a lot of people, but I find that relaxing,'' he said, eliciting a laugh from the audience.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Modern Nuclear Power Stations are safer than Chernobl or TMI but isn't waste-disposal still unresolved? Where do the French dump their radioctive by-products? In their own back yard?

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Don't know this for a fact, but hasn't Russia recently offered to take this stuff for $$$$$? I know that's "future"; I'd be interested to know what they do with it now, too.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001