[FUBAR-BDHR]

Saw a piece on Discovery tonight about a chemical based cold fusion reaction that is supposedly reproducible.  Did a quick search and came up with this:  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510589,00.html

[BloodEagle]

Saw a piece on Discovery tonight about a chemical based cold fusion reaction that is supposedly reproducible.  Did a quick search and came up with this:  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510589,00.html

Ye-e-e-e-e-eah.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

It's on other sites as well. 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090323110450.htm
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/03/american-chemical-society-conference.html
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/03/navy-scientists.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090324/ts_alt_afp/usscienceenergynuclear

[Scotty]

Ummmm..... I'm gonna say not true.  If they managed to produce a cold fusion reaction (lol, I love that - cold energy), it sure as hell wasn't in just some flask.  Also, see this sentence:

It creates enormous amounts of energy, but it takes huge amounts of heat to happen at all.

Mostly the bolded part.

EDIT:  the other articles were posted while I was typing.  Reply as follows:

Lol, none of the articles are really all that consistent.  The Fox one even gets the basic materials used wrong.  The actual terminology of the experiment doesn't match up, mostly the Science Daily one where they call it an electrolytic cell (most definiately will NOT result in fusion).  That name actually means to break down into electricity.  I also have to wonder at the 'low-energy nuclear reaction' part.  How useful is it if it doesn't produce that much energy?

[Bobboau]

low energy refers to the temperature.

[castor]

Cold fusion.. I get this image of lifting a 5000 lb boulder barehandedly, just by finding the correct grip.

[Nuke]

**** cold fusion
i want hot fusion

[The E]

Cold Fusion....Not again....

Look, even if this does work (which I highly doubt), the complete lack of scientific (read: open source) documentation really makes this more a conspiracy theory than anything else.
I remember watching a documentation about research into anti-gravity once, where most of the "researchers" asked the camera team to be outside and watch readouts while they conducted the "experiments" that "proved" that they had a breakthrough.
Hmmm....time to sic the Mythbusters on this.

[Nuke]

* Nuke looks forward to watching the mythbusters try to invent a fusion reactor

* Nuke expects it to be much like john carmack's rocket experiments

[BloodEagle]

* Nuke looks forward to watching the mythbusters try to invent a fusion reactor

* Nuke expects it to be much like john carmack's rocket experiments

* BloodEagle looks forward to watching the Mythbusters use the scientific method, for a change.

Hell, the least that they could do would be to actually recreate the proper conditions, rather than use brand-new rope/aluminum/whatever.

[Mefustae]

Oh wah wah.

It's enter-****ing-tainment!!!

[karajorma]

* Nuke looks forward to watching the mythbusters try to invent a fusion reactor

* Nuke expects it to be much like john carmack's rocket experiments

* BloodEagle looks forward to watching the Mythbusters use the scientific method, for a change.

Hell, the least that they could do would be to actually recreate the proper conditions, rather than use brand-new rope/aluminum/whatever.

http://xkcd.com/397/

[redsniper]

Aaaah, yes. I was hoping someone would post that.

[watsisname]

lol string theory

[Janos]

i say 50 years from now cold fusion is still a ****ing joke it is now and has been for the last, what, 30 years or som

[TrashMan]

http://xkcd.com/397/

interesting, but flawed.
While teaching peopll to experiment is certanly useful, experiments have to be valid  and rigorous. Otherwise you might as well skip the experiment alltogether.

[DarkBasilisk]

I hope TrashMan is trolling. Always hard to tell with him.

[Bobboau]

supposedly they are getting neutrons out of what should otherwise be a chemical reaction, so, something odd is happening.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Yea even if it isn't cold fusion if what they say is happening is actually happening then it's something else new that we know nothing about. 

[castor]

Though, the simplest explanation is that their receptors are flawed. But we'll see, once other teams try to repeat this.