ACS Endorses Quackery
by mitch on Aug 12 2008 (5090 Views)I'll be attending the ACS-Philadelphia conference next week. One of the sessions sponsored by the Environmental division is called "New Energy Technology" on Wednesday morning out at the DoubleTree-Maestro B. The title implies itself to wonderful talks discussing frontiers in applied energy chemistry. Unfortunately, the session is completely dominated by the left-field cold fusion people. A list of the talks are shown below
- Cold fusion in light of green chemistry (Jan Marwan)
- Low energy nuclear reactions research: 2008 update (Steven B. Krivit)
- Overview of LENR research: Critical steps on the pathway to technology(Michael Charles Harold McKubre)
- Macroscopic quantum dynamics and the problems of loading in Pd-H(D) systems (Antonella De Ninno, Emilio Del Giudice, Antonio Frattolillo)
- CR-39 studies of Pd/D codeposition (P. A. Mosier-Boss, Stanislaw Szpak, Frank E. Gordon, Lawrence Forsley)
- Study of the nanostructured palladium deuterium system (Jan Marwan)
- Sonofusion from deuterons to helium (Roger Stringham)
My feelings on cold fusion research have been stated previously here: The difference between cold fusion and cold fusion
It would be in good taste to attend the session, and let them have the opportunity to present their research, but I question whether I could sit through it. If you find yourself bored on Wednesday morning and ready for a lively debate, I'd recommend attending this session.
P.S. Expect dispatches from the conference. I'll be covering a wide slice of the sessions with my new ACS press-pass: ACS-2008 Philadelphia.
Mitch
[...] ACS Endorses Quackery [...]
Will Dr. Emma Russell be presenting her equation describing cold fusion?
Sorry, The Saint reference
maybe I could stick a vibrating spoon in a glass of water and use it as a heater? After all, 1 in every 6500 H-atoms is heavy, and all the gammas released from the fusion are absorbed by the neighboring nuclei. So...fusion heater! I am gonna be rich.
Psst ..I hate to tell a fully competent theoretician like yourself that your wrong ..but.
You might not have noticed, but this autoradiograph photo done by folks over at BARC in India circa 1990 (almost twenty years ago) was a pretty darned good photoshop fake huh? Even made with D2O gas too.
Too bad photoshop didn't even exist back then. Huh?
Can theorists take a hint? This stuff is 'REAL' and guess what ?? ..YOUR THEORIES CAN'T EXPLAIN IT. How's that for a wake up call to something going on at 'low energy'?
http://www.lenr-canr.org/Experiments.htm#AutoradiographsMSrinivasan
For the record, I'm an experimentalist.
Mitch
If I had all the requisite knowledge, I'd attend the lecture and take a few notes. Then I would use those notes as reminders for specific pointed questions that might redden a few faces.
Then again, I'm confrontational like that.
And also for the record, Photoshop came out in 1988, before 90. When you can understand how the Gregorian calender works, then you can talk about physics
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Mitch,
If the mind of Nobelist Julian Schwinger, obviously well versed in basic physical chemistry, was curious enough and convinced enough by the early evidence to suppose an alternate explanation for the Pons-Fleischmann Effect than the one you assume, do you suppose you might reconsider your reflexive response? The evidence has grown much stronger since Schwinger's comments.
http://www.newenergytimes.com/news/2008/CMNS-LENR-Update-20080818.htm
So you are an experimentalist who dismisses experimental evidence with apparently non-applicable theory. No one I've seen who argues theory in cold fusion is unaware of the obvious Coulomb barrier problem. This presupposes a plasma environment, which is not observed in these experiments. The proof is not in the theoretical explanation. It is in the evidence. If the evidence agrees with theory, great! If not, then the evidence or its interpretation might be wrong, but so might the theory! The lack of a viable theory does not invalidate a contradictory valid observation. It is characteristic of the pathological skeptic to avoid examining evidence and resort to ad hominem or worse. At least you admit that you do not know of what you write.
Do you want to find yourself in the position of the abandoned Japanese soldier left on some remote south sea island long after the war has ended, lurking in the jungle, unaware that your side has surrendered? You neglected to mention that ACS just published their 'Cold Fusion Sourcebook'. Were you unaware?
Do yourself a favor and examine the data.