Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Cold Snap

The US Navy lab says they might have a breakthrough in cold fusion. Nuclei have a lot of power waiting to be released, but they repel each other so it's hard to get them to fuse. This is why the process is generally believed to require high amounts of energy, and thus the excitement over the potential of "cold" fusion. We've needed a breakthrough in energy for quite a while, and this could be it.

However, not only is cold fusion hard to swallow theoretically, but we've been down this road before and nothing came of it. Until someone can replicate what the Navy lab is claiming, I see no reason to get excited.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What about the intrinsic rights of the nuclei involved- we should suspend all research until a panel of the ethically minded can weigh in of the complex moral and social questions raised

5:43 AM, March 25, 2009  

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