Well, the better for cold fusion.. Some of us knew about it before five years already, but the money must be spent and job places generated anyway...

Well, the better for cold fusion.. Some of us http://arxiv.org/...4229.pdf before five years already, but the money must be spent and job places generated anyway...


Uuuh, Zephyr,,,, the article is about yet another failure, not a success. I understand English isn't your first language, or 2nd or 3rd, but it would help help if ya read the entire article, not just the headlines.

Physicists I know have poo-pooed laser induced fusion for 25 years, and still do.

Polywell for the win.

the article is about yet another failure, not a success
I love how much pessimists and religionists have in common. What exactly do you mean by 'failure'?

Scientists know the value of research:

"But sometimes progress is about seeing what's not going to work, just as much as it is looking forward to the next big idea."

-Plasma physics is about learning everything possible about plasma. Future tech will be doing all sorts of things with plasma. The more we know about it, the better.

And if we need to use a possibly spurious excuse like domestic power generation to secure funding for these megaprojects, then so what? People thought all that money spent on the 1000s of tons of fissile material was to prevent nuclear war. And now we have ample quantities of the most useful material a civilization at our stage of development, can possess.

Future gens will applaud the foresight of Leaders who made this necessity happen in the only manner possible.

Simulation =/= discovery.

We know from countless examples that computer physics models rarely make the correct prediction compared to the real world experimental results.

"But sometimes progress is about seeing what's not going to work, just as much as it is looking forward to the next big idea."


Oops, sorry I was sort of unclear. My comment was on the poster of the post the post I was commenting on.

I agree with ya 100%. Often there is as much to be learned from a failure, as from a success. It's worthwhile research even if it isn't "paying" off as soon as it's done.

@ ValeriaT

"but the money must be spent and job places generated anyway..."

Indeed they all have to put their kids through college. I hope Andrea Rossi is successful with LENR and puts this boondogle into the grave.

ok....

Article: "...shrinking the pellet to dozens of times its original size..." Puzzling that.

the article is about yet another failure, not a success
Which is why I'm presenting it in context of article about another obstacle of laser fusion. Why do you have problem with it (together with many people who upvoted you)? I'm perfectly on topic here with it...


Yes ya are. And I am too. Maybe we are all confused. Maybe one of us are confused.

I hope Andrea Rossi is successful with LENR and puts this boondogle into the grave
I hope so too, but the boondogles are more vital, than you may think.


I hope so too, but now it's me that is confused.

Better would be multiple colliding-beams instead of lasers. Simple computer simulations performing few calculations per second would be enough to prove that multiple colliding-beams can result in much higher fusion rate than lasers.

@ ValeriaTI hope Andrea Rossi is successful with LENR and puts this boondogle into the grave.


He has been very successful; if you consider scamming millions of dollars from people without demonstrating any reproducible results success. Just like his trash-to-oil process in Italy: 12 million Euros to clean up the mess.

Right now, Mitsubishi and Toyota are the leaders in LENR.

Mitsubishi and Toyota are the leaders in LENR
You see, the Japanese did lost the WWW II instead and what? Does it change their credibility? So far we cannot buy /afford any cold fusion product, so I'd remain quiet in this matter. For me the technology itself is important, not the people behind it. I'm not blind proponent of A. Rossi, I simply would support everyone who will come first with something useful.

The huge win out of this research was clearly pointed out in the article, but I suppose most of you missed it by focusing on what was being shown would not work.

The point was that BEFORE the lab spent a ton of money and more work, the computers told them to try a new way, AND gained insight on how to make better and more detailed simulations that can help point exactly what that better way is. That is a big win for the good guys. This is the kind of lab results that pay for themselves many times over.

On the contrary: the physicists have built the NIF and Titan facilities first, they wasted billions of money into years of experiments and now they play smart before publics, when these money evaporated in futile research. Such a simulations should be done before twenty years, not by now.. You apparently missed the "detail", that this simulation models the experiments, which were done already - and which failed...;-)