Cold Fusion (E-Cat)

[MachineGhost]

Oh crap, so I shouldn't have just ordered 20 E-Cat devices! Shit, I wonder what their return policy is? 

I'm glad you're so sure.  I on the other hand am not so quick to judge.  I think of it as a tabloid story for scientists and engineers.  You know its probably all made up, but you cannot help but think that there is some underlying truth.  Time will tell.

Real breakthroughs in technology do not have a dog and pony show like E-Cat, pump 'n dump stocks or pyramid schemes.  Real stuff starts relatively anonymously and go through the peer review process.  It is boring.

Do you see people going apeshit over those cool micro-nuclear reactor power plants?  Of course not, 'cuz they're real.

MG

[MachineGhost]

Today we think of him as this almost mythic figure, which would probably astonish all who knew him, and would probably surprise Lincoln himself the most.

I see Lincoln as the godfather of the NeoCons.  He was the embodiment of the "American Empire" political vision.  As far as I'm concerned, America starting going down the tubes once Lincoln got elected.  Imperialism, income taxes, federal intervention, welfare state, Jim Crow, etc. it all started in that era.  Freeing the slaves was just an afterthought to his vision and not something he even wanted to do.  In general, the more a politican is held up and idolized, the more immorality and corruption there is to hide through misdirection.  And no one is more venerated than Lincoln.

MG

[Gosso]

Real breakthroughs in technology do not have a dog and pony show like E-Cat, pump 'n dump stocks or pyramid schemes.  Real stuff starts relatively anonymously and go through the peer review process.  It is boring.

Do you see people going apeshit over those cool micro-nuclear reactor power plants?  Of course not, 'cuz they're real.

MG

Edit: I think I might have misunderstood you.

I agree that most scientific breakthroughs probably do follow a boring process.  But as you can see from Gumby's list above, it is possible for this process to take a different route.

[Gosso]

Real breakthroughs in technology do not have a dog and pony show like E-Cat, pump 'n dump stocks or pyramid schemes.  Real stuff starts relatively anonymously and go through the peer review process.  It is boring.

Do you see people going apeshit over those cool micro-nuclear reactor power plants?  Of course not, 'cuz they're real.

From the Wikipedia page on the E-Cat:

Dennis M. Bushnell, Chief Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, described LENR as a "promising" technology and praised the work of Rossi and Focardi.[21] Roland Pettersson, retired Associate Professor from Uppsala University, who witnessed the Oct 6 demonstration said "I'm convinced that this works, but there is still room for more measurements".[22] Skeptic James Randi, discussing the E-Cat in the context of previous cold fusion claims, predicts that it will eventually be revealed to not function as advertised.[23] Commenting on an assertion made by Rossi, who said he was not ready for a full academic investigation of his technology because he doesn’t yet have full patent protection, the Dean of Science at the UML Robert Tamarin stated: "That’s consistent with it not working, but it’s also consistent with it working very well".[24]

Hmmmm...how interesting...the plot thickens!

[alvinroast]

Today we think of him as this almost mythic figure, which would probably astonish all who knew him, and would probably surprise Lincoln himself the most.

I see Lincoln as the godfather of the NeoCons.  He was the embodiment of the "American Empire" political vision.  As far as I'm concerned, America starting going down the tubes once Lincoln got elected.  Imperialism, income taxes, federal intervention, welfare state, Jim Crow, etc. it all started in that era.  Freeing the slaves was just an afterthought to his vision and not something he even wanted to do.  In general, the more a politican is held up and idolized, the more immorality and corruption there is to hide through misdirection.  And no one is more venerated than Lincoln.

MG

I agree 100%. Don't forget the rise in power of corporations and handing control of money to the Rothschilds.

[Gosso]

Oh man, Edison and Tesla had a titanic rivalry!  Edison was completely overmatched by Tesla intellectually but was such a savvy, determined, resourceful guy that DC held on for a long while against the superior alternating current.

The vicious Edison-Tesla rivalry was used as a great backdrop to the main storyline of Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (a film that I enjoyed very much.)  One of the important themes that the movie explores is the almost total destruction that an escalating rivalry leaves in its wake.  David Bowie does a surprisingly good job as Tesla in that one.

I think I saw The Prestige on the plane when it came out on DVD, but I have almost no memory of it.  Plus at the time I had no idea who Tesla was, or that the plot was based on a true story.  I am for sure going to re-watch this soon.

Does anyone else mix up The Illusionist with The Prestige?  I'm pretty sure I watched them close to each other, and they seem to have merged together in my memory.

Edit: I watched The Prestige last night -- great movie!  But the main plot is not based on a true story, but rather replaced Tesla and Edison with magicians, and then added a small back story on Edison and Tesla.  Still good though.

[Lone Wolf]

Oh man, Edison and Tesla had a titanic rivalry!  Edison was completely overmatched by Tesla intellectually but was such a savvy, determined, resourceful guy that DC held on for a long while against the superior alternating current.

The vicious Edison-Tesla rivalry was used as a great backdrop to the main storyline of Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (a film that I enjoyed very much.)  One of the important themes that the movie explores is the almost total destruction that an escalating rivalry leaves in its wake.  David Bowie does a surprisingly good job as Tesla in that one.

I think I saw The Prestige on the plane when it came out on DVD, but I have almost no memory of it.  Plus at the time I had no idea who Tesla was, or that the plot was based on a true story.  I am for sure going to re-watch this soon.

Does anyone else mix up The Illusionist with The Prestige?  I'm pretty sure I watched them close to each other, and they seem to have merged together in my memory.

I think that everyone mixes up these two movies!  This is natural since they came out around the same time and both were period movies about magicians.  I enjoyed them both but liked The Prestige more.  It's by far the darker of the two but sports more interesting themes IMO.  And again... David Bowie.

Also, while Tesla is a very important character and the "War of Currents" gets waged in the background of the story, this movie is most definitely a work of fiction. 

[stone]

Gumby

Instead ask how many CRAZY FUNDING PROPOSALS from SUCCESSFUL SCIENTISTS have turned out to be genuinely crazy. I'm guessing that the number is quite low. Perhaps the number of vindicated crazy research projects is so high, that it's larger than the number of genuinely crazy research projects.
So, if you're going to dismiss or scoff at some crazy idea without bothering to first take an unbiased look ...at least make sure the idea is from a common crackpot. Make damn certain that "the crazy" isn't coming from a professional scientist who is trying to fund a research project to test that idea.

There is a bottomless pit of crazy funding proposals from successful scientists. I'm not sure what the author is wanting. Is he saying that all funding proposals from every "successful scientist" should be funded? That boils down to saying that other people should work to support those crackpot endevors. 

[Gumby]

Gumby

Instead ask how many CRAZY FUNDING PROPOSALS from SUCCESSFUL SCIENTISTS have turned out to be genuinely crazy. I'm guessing that the number is quite low. Perhaps the number of vindicated crazy research projects is so high, that it's larger than the number of genuinely crazy research projects.
So, if you're going to dismiss or scoff at some crazy idea without bothering to first take an unbiased look ...at least make sure the idea is from a common crackpot. Make damn certain that "the crazy" isn't coming from a professional scientist who is trying to fund a research project to test that idea.

There is a bottomless pit of crazy funding proposals from successful scientists. I'm not sure what the author is wanting. Is he saying that all funding proposals from every "successful scientist" should be funded? That boils down to saying that other people should work to support those crackpot endevors.  

I have no idea what the author was thinking. I've never read a scientific funding proposal, so I can't put it in perspective. But, I think the point of the list is to not call them "crackpot" endeavors — since we can't know in advance which ones are crazy or not until we experiment.

[stone]

Gumby, I think the massive difference is between proposals for funding projects that entail lots of other people being employed to carry out the work and simply letting individuals do themselves what they believe will work. I'm all for letting scientists work on what they personally consider will bear fruit. Scientists could be given some money for equipment and materials and left to decide what to do with it. That system can work very well. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) funds scientists in that way. HHMI funding does not look at any research proposals, they "fund people not projects". Things get much murkier when a project entails employing a very large team of other scientists and engineers; purchasing lots of equipment, materials and services from private companies. To my mind you can't expect such endevours to be funded willy nilly. You might argue that such endevours should only come about if that group of scientists choose themselves to pool their own personal resources BUT projects such as genome sequencing, CERN etc do provide much more than a sum of their parts and perhaps need top down direction.

[Gosso]

Gumby, I think the massive difference is between proposals for funding projects that entail lots of other people being employed to carry out the work and simply letting individuals do themselves what they believe will work. I'm all for letting scientists work on what they personally consider will bear fruit. Scientists could be given some money for equipment and materials and left to decide what to do with it. That system can work very well. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) funds scientists in that way. HHMI funding does not look at any research proposals, they "fund people not projects". Things get much murkier when a project entails employing a very large team of other scientists and engineers; purchasing lots of equipment, materials and services from private companies. To my mind you can't expect such endevours to be funded willy nilly. You might argue that such endevours should only come about if that group of scientists choose themselves to pool their own personal resources BUT projects such as genome sequencing, CERN etc do provide much more than a sum of their parts and perhaps need top down direction.

I have been watching the Carl Sagan documentary The Cosmos (which is friggin amazing), and he comments on the resistance, suppression, and persecution that many of the great minds faced when they tried to introduce new ideas/theories that fell outside of the accepted dogma.  Although I suppose it is easy for us to look back and cherry-pick the ideas that were correct and forget about the wrong hypotheses.  But it still shows how difficult it is to introduce new ideas once the old dogma is fully ingrained.

I love how Carl has such a questioning mind, and appears determined to help the human race advance its understanding of the Universe.  He knows that we don't have all the answers, and probably never will, but it is the pursuit of the unknown and unexplored that should drive us.

"We are all star stuff"

[MachineGhost]

Does anyone else mix up The Illusionist with The Prestige?  I'm pretty sure I watched them close to each other, and they seem to have merged together in my memory.

[align=center][/align]

[Gumby]

Speaking of crazy discoveries. Check this out...

MIT researchers produce miracle LED: puts out twice as much power as it takes in

Now, if some random guy came up with the same discovery, we'd all be less likely to believe it!

(The end result was actually predicted in 1957, but wasn't possible until now)

[Lone Wolf]

Speaking of crazy discoveries. Check this out...

MIT researchers produce miracle LED: puts out twice as much power as it takes in

That is completely insane.  Great stuff!

[Gosso]

Speaking of crazy discoveries. Check this out...

MIT researchers produce miracle LED: puts out twice as much power as it takes in

Now, if some random guy came up with the same discovery, we'd all be less likely to believe it!

(The end result was actually predicted in 1957, but wasn't possible until now)

Bull patties!  They're not measuring the input and output power properly...what a bunch of scammers.  Not only are they scammers but they are witches also...I'll start building the fire!

[Storm]

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1222 ... ssil-fuels

This looks promising.  I think eventually we will develop a Dyson Sphere, although that might be a few centuries off...    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

[Lone Wolf]

I mean the exact same thing happened to Nikola Tesla when he tried to introduce AC electricity.  Thomas Edison did everything in his power to discredit Tesla, simply because Edison held all the DC patents.  (note: I'm basing all of this on the Drunk History video ).  Tesla was IMO the greatest inventor of all time, yet barely anyone has heard of him because of the negative (or lack of) PR he received.  

I ran across an excellent comic strip that The Oatmeal did entitled "Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived":  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Very funny and enlightening stuff with a many choice Tesla and anti-Edison facts that I'd never heard before.

[Gosso]

I mean the exact same thing happened to Nikola Tesla when he tried to introduce AC electricity.  Thomas Edison did everything in his power to discredit Tesla, simply because Edison held all the DC patents.  (note: I'm basing all of this on the Drunk History video ).  Tesla was IMO the greatest inventor of all time, yet barely anyone has heard of him because of the negative (or lack of) PR he received.  

I ran across an excellent comic strip that The Oatmeal did entitled "Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived":  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Very funny and enlightening stuff with a many choice Tesla and anti-Edison facts that I'd never heard before.

Haha, awesome!  It's too bad we need Comics and Drunk History to educate us about Tesla.

Duncan Trussell wasn't far off when he called Tesla the "Electric Jesus" (6:00):

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ef668c ... pin-glover

[Tortoise]

I ran across an excellent comic strip that The Oatmeal did entitled "Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived":  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Very funny and enlightening stuff with a many choice Tesla and anti-Edison facts that I'd never heard before.

That's a good comic, but it parrots one of the most commonly encountered pieces of misinformation about Tesla:

You know how when you need electricity for your home it simply rains down from the earth's ionosphere and charges everything wirelessly?

Oh right, that was something Tesla invented but didn't share with the world probably because he was afraid of uninspired jackasses stealing his patents.

The implication seems to be that wireless power is equivalent to free power--i.e., virtually unlimited power. If only that were so. Wireless power is similar to any other type of power in that it requires one first to generate the power (using fossil fuel, nuclear fuel, etc.). Only after the power has been generated does it become available for wired or wireless transmission. And just as with wired power users, the more wireless power users you have, the more power you have to generate.

In other words, wireless power is not a free lunch. It is a method of power transmission, not a method of creating free power.

[Lone Wolf]

That's a good comic, but it parrots one of the most commonly encountered pieces of misinformation about Tesla:

You know how when you need electricity for your home it simply rains down from the earth's ionosphere and charges everything wirelessly?

Oh right, that was something Tesla invented but didn't share with the world probably because he was afraid of uninspired jackasses stealing his patents.

The implication seems to be that wireless power is equivalent to free power--i.e., virtually unlimited power. If only that were so. Wireless power is similar to any other type of power in that it requires one first to generate the power (using fossil fuel, nuclear fuel, etc.). Only after the power has been generated does it become available for wired or wireless transmission. And just as with wired power users, the more wireless power users you have, the more power you have to generate.

In other words, wireless power is not a free lunch. It is a method of power transmission, not a method of creating free power.

Thanks, Tortoise.  That's absolutely right and well worth pointing out.

As an example, you can create a crystal radio that powers itself with nothing but the energy contained in AM radio waves.  Radio stations pump out so much power that you can harvest tiny amounts of it in order to power little devices like an AM radio.  But there's a big difference between that and powering the modern American household!  In other words, wireless power is most certainly a real thing but the comic was getting a bit carried away in saying that it would "rain down". 

By the way, here's a little demonstration of a crystal set AM radio powering itself entirely with ambient radio waves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E99Ngw9Tck4

[MachineGhost]

I ran across an excellent comic strip that The Oatmeal did entitled "Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived":  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Very funny and enlightening stuff with a many choice Tesla and anti-Edison facts that I'd never heard before.

Wow, Telsa was THE man.

This guy needs a memorial or a museum, stat!

[Gosso]

I ran across an excellent comic strip that The Oatmeal did entitled "Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived":  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Very funny and enlightening stuff with a many choice Tesla and anti-Edison facts that I'd never heard before.

Wow, Telsa was THE man.

This guy needs a memorial or a museum, stat!

A statue of Tesla was built at Niagara Falls, ON.



My guess as to why he is not celebrated is because of the "Death Ray", and other general craziness of his later life.

I stumbled across this blog post which adds a little more history to the Tesla vs Edison story:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2 ... the-devil/

[MachineGhost]

The thing about Nikola Tesla is that those who know enough about him to care at all tend to care very, very much. Thanks to that devotion, and attempts to publicize the plight of Tesla’s Long Island laboratory, Wardenclyffe, real progress toward saving the site is finally being made.

http://tinyurl.com/9spu8v6

[stone]

Tesla does have museums in Serbia and in Croatia. I think he is a national hero there.

[MachineGhost]

The Physics of why the e-Cat’s Cold Fusion Claims Collapse

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang ... of-why-we/