Don't mean to start no flame war here or nothing but whatever became of "Cold Fusion?"

Was it real? Was it a scam? Whats the deal on this anyone know? I never hear about it any more. Seemed like 20 years ago it was all the rage.

Don

A few people think there may be something there somewhere, but no real evidence in favor of it has shown up.

Atoms are pretty covetous of their personal space. They don't just start combining without a lot of persuasion in the form of vast amounts of heat and pressure.

...and pseudoscience.

The researchers really thought they had produced more energy from their machine than they put into it.

They were sloppy with their data analysis, though, and neglected to do something called a Student t-test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student%27s_t-test

Basically, what they thought was "more power out" was really just a statistical anomaly.

They also went to the press with it before getting it peer-reviewed, and that sealed their doom.

Since then, cold fusion has been shown to be physically impossible, from a theoretical physics standpoint.

That hasn't stopped every fraud, quack, and crack-pot from trying to patent his cold fusion perpetual motion machine.

damn.

Couldn't hardly even talk to them about it. I used to avoid the conversation. Seriously.

Don

"Bush nearly caused a hydrogen powered car to explode by touching an electrical cord against the filler cap"

"The US detonated Neutron bombs at the Baghdad airport"

You'll find a lot of morons still bringing it up, along with stupid conspiracy theories about "the powers that be trying to repress it's use," though.

heh, heh!

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This weak attempt at geek humor refers to the Cold Fusion markup language that is still in use, albeit in a limited number of dynamic websites. Cold Fusion was used to create web pages on the fly usually from databases. Cold Fusion cost a fairly large (at the time) amount of money to purchase and run. I personally always thought Cold Fusion was entirely too memory intensive. Cold Fusion pages had the extension .cfm after the file name. A few years later came PHP which functioned similarly and used much less memory and was free. DU uses PHP (as in duboard.php?....)

I write PHP code all day long so I knew what you were talking about. But I pity anyone who doesn't know what the hell PHP means.

Hats off to Rasmus for the code and Zend for making it run fast.

It was cold and rainy which was all the better anyway. I started knowing CFML (Cold Fusion Markup Language) and from there the jump to PHP was easy.

,..to reinvigorate that 'alternative fuel'.

:shrug: I could be wrong. It's a recollection, though, that infuriated me. So, somewhere along the line, big bucks were most likely appropriated to 'cold fusion'.

Actually produces fusion neutrons..

Yep, I'm zippy the pinhead alright....

http://www.brian-mcdermott.com/fusion_is_easy.htm

Are you mad?!

People usually cringe when I mention the words "amateur" and "fusion" in the same sentence, so allow me to explain. As I mentioned in the "Fusion Methods" section, Inertial Electrostatic Confinement is a fairly simple method used to obtain fusion reactions. Invented in the late 50's by Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of the television as we know it today), the "fusor" (as it is sometimes called) uses ordinary vacuum-tube technologies to accelerate and collide nuclei of fusible atoms. Farnsworth's original fusors were rather complex, but the concept is very simple, and can be adapted to your heart's desire. THIS IS NOT COLD FUSION!!! It is very hot fusion, requiring temperatures of over 200 million degrees! To see why we can do this without destroying the machine, click here. Fusors are currently sold to qualified users as commercial neutron sources, and used for research in university labs. The idea is not based upon fringe science or new and untested theories. It, along with every other fusion reactor on earth, currently does not break even and produce power!


Here is a pic of fusor in operation:

Fusion power comes closer

World researchers are working on the benign source of nuclear power - fusion, which is based on fusing light nuclei such as hydrogen isotopes to release energy in a process similar to that which powers the sun.

The energy is released when gas from a combination of isotopes of hydrogen - deuterium and tritium - is heated to 100 million degrees centigrade and confined for at least one second in a magnetic field. Then, the atoms become separated as electrons are stripped from the ions of the atomic nuclei.

...

Current research uses two types of magnetic plasma confinement devices, tokamaks and stellarators. The HSX aims to merge the best properties of both by giving a more stable stellarator the confinement of a more energetically efficient tokamak, which creates a toroidal magnetic field for confining plasma.

Elsewhere, international research co-operation is strong with the focus on the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER), currently being built in France. This would be the first fusion device to produce thermal energy at the level of conventional power stations. It will be the most expensive joint scientific project after the International Space Station.

More :http://www.engineerlive.com/oil-and-gas-news/17425/fusion-power-comes-closer.thtml

My dad worked with him at the cyclotron lab. Freakin' brilliant--he is blind and had a student read their research and math to him, and he figured out where they'd made their errors.

In the end they released the formula for free to the whole world and everyone lived happily ever after.

They continued development of the entire Macromedia suite including ColdFusion. In 2005, Adobe announced plans to acquire Macromedia and has spend considerable time and effort integrating the Macromedia line with the Adobe line which culminates in the release of Adobe Creative Suite 3 sometime this month. Wait, you weren't talking about ColdFusion the programming language were you? ;) :rofl:

At least PHP 5 makes an attempt at being real OOP.

With the advent of CFCs or ColdFusion components, it's possible to develop in a more OOP manner than ever before. They've definitely made strides over the years. The one drawback is the same as it has always been. CF is so easy, it allows people to write shitty code, but still get results. Real programmers can make CFML do some really nice things. Shitty programmers can make CFML work, but they're still shitty programmers.

:rofl: Geez, I can't remember their names to save my soul. :shrug: Never mind, it was with Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue. Still can't remember the name of the movie. :silly:

Mark Russel: Some chemists claim that they've discovered cold fusion in Utah. You can't even get cold BEER in Utah.

It was disproved rather quickly by the scientific community. Despite that several people were able to convince varying governments and power companies to give millions to the research over the next ten years. The original two professors basically left the community in disgrace never able to come to terms with the fact it just doesn't happen. Although they apparently made some pretty god dough off of sucker investors.