WATCH: cold fusion, pathological science or suppressed miracle?
In this 1998 interview, MIT science writer Eugene Mallove discusses what he alleges was an intentional bid by vested interests to bury the genuine and revolutionary discovery of cold fusion. Far from being “pathological science”, as most mainstream physicists allege, Mallove claims cold fusion is a provable and reproducible reality that could potentially provide almost limitless and virtually free clean energy for the world.
Mallove was murdered during a house break-in in 2004.
Mallove’s 1999 book, Fire from Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor is available though Amazon and Amazon UK
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
I don’t know anything about the physics of anything. But buying technology to repress it and maintain dominant corporate and banking profitability is a standard trope of industrial capitalism. Perfectly good street cars in cities across the nations were bought up by the concrete and auto industries to facilitate highway construction and long-term concrete profits as well as to jumpstart the auto industry into long-term profitability as well. The “mass transit” that exists in the US outside of, say, nyc, dc, sf/oakland are just tinker toys — which nevertheless push profits to the high tech industrial tinker toy, banking and energy industries. Same thing happened with wire services like the AP owned by newspapers. Strict rules prevented use of wire copy on radio except for five minutes every two hours or something. Then the newspapers started getting radio livenses and then TV licenses to control the technology and profitability to… Read more »
From my friend, Prof. emeritus Colman Altman, Physics Dept, Technion, Israel: “We sent a paper on Cold Fusion to Physics when the issue [of cold fusion] was very warm. It was accepted pending our answer to some specific question from one of the referees.. We answered, but meanwhile the issue of cold fusion had fallen into such disrepute, that the editors didn’t even acknowledge receipt of our comments. Let me describe briefly what we wrote. We considered muon fusion. A muon is a heavy electron (mass 200 times that of the normal electron, but lifetime of about a microsecond) produced in cosmic radiation, and it sometimes comes to rest in the experimental bubble chamber, which is filled with deuterium (heavy hydrogen}, Now the 2 atoms of deuterium are normally bound by an electron. If a muon comes to rest in this gas then the 2 atoms of deuterium will be… Read more »
I can’t disagree with most of that regarding muon-catalyzed fusion. There’s only small signs that muons can be produced reliably enough and continuously enough to make it a viable process. But the fact we have proved fusion at low temp is amazingly significant. Cold fusion as demonstrated at BYU in the 1980s is a different method, and again there is the anomalous heat discovered by Pons and Fleischmann at the same time at the University of Utah. Both of these, especially the Utah discovery, hold the prospect of abundant, CLEAN and essentially renewable energy, though of course Dr Altman is correct about the dangers from established interests. The same ones who destroyed Tesla’s work, and indeed his life. I don’t know what Dr Altman means precisely by a phase of “no return” but it seems to me unless or until we destroy ourselves in an accidental (or intentional!) nuclear apocalypse… Read more »
@PSJ. I imagine Dr.Altman, having preached against Carbon fuel misuse for decades without avail, has grown pessimistic and now leans toward the opinion of the late Dr.Hawking — we ought to start building Noah’s Spacecraft because Human Life on Planet Earth is doomed. Personally I agree with you — we must be optimistic: hope that, while the present generation will reform somewhat, the next generation will breed competent Ecology Engineers.
Unlimited energy could only end up as unlimited heat in the atmosphere (conservation of energy) so it sounds like very bad news.
I don’t think that is how it works
Admin, I’d be interested to read why you think that. I’d say Mathias is right to fear some kind of environmental side-effect – all forms of energy extraction turn low entropy source into high entropy pollution, and when we say wind or solar is “clean” we just mean the form of pollution is not currently serious. But you’re right to think it’s a problem for the future – let’s find out whhether CF works or not first.
Admin: that is exactly how it works; there is always a loss of heat in conversion. In modern fuels the conversion rate is quite poor (around 40% for diesel; 60% for petrol – off the top of my head). The excess heat ends up as the ‘urban heat island effect’, for instance. The more usage, the greater the effect. The hypothetical ‘free’ fuel will generate waste heat loss: how much depends on the efficiency of conversion. This hypothetical ‘free’ fuel will also need development and scalability: which come with a hidden resource and energy cost. I’m no physiscist, but ‘freedom energy’ sounds like an exothermic reaction, which will need containment and conversion (to steam, for instance) – none of which is ‘free’. It could be used to create a hydrogen economy, but that would require a whole new infrastructure for 7.5bn people – none of which is free. I’m not… Read more »
I agree. The very word “free” is overdetermined: free as in “not a slave or in prison”, free as in in “not costing anything”, and free as in – the free market, or no freedom for real people at all. Freedom is sold to us on the promise of the first two meanings, but what we get is the third.
Rather like the light bulb that never goes out it will never see the light of day.
Perhaps the answer there is to let everybody know how to make it, forget patenting laws and copyright, and just let people make their own…? You know, an actual service to humanity, instead of a narcissistic craving for professional recognition…?
Fundamentally, we do not have an energy crisis; we do not have a resource crisis; we do not have a debt or economy crisis …what we have is a psycho-cognitive perceptual crisis. The pan-historic story of Civilisation is one of increasing surplus energy requirements. With surplus energy requirements met: civilisations rose and prospered (by trade and conquest). When civilisations exceeded their agrarian/biofuel/resource requirements: they collapsed (or were out-competed or conquered). [Hall; Tainter; Diamond; et al] Each of the three Industrial Revolutions (so far) have allowed humanity to exponentially increase our primary energy input: to the detriment of the rest of the planet’s inhabitants …and the planet itself.The worst of all was the most recent source: cheap oil. If we raise our attention above the hedonistic ‘pastime paradise’ we have created for but a few of us in the last 150 years: it should be apparent that an infinite energy resource… Read more »
Free, limitless and clean energy would do more than any other single thing to liberate human beings and end the prevailing power structure. Why else do you think it has been so ruthlessly suppressed, to the point of murdering its proponents?
Ergo: 150 years of “cheap” oil would have liberated us? It didn’t: the wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires and more and more of humanity was excluded from wealth acquisition and valorisation. This is the empirical observable conclusion of historic trends toward monopoly capitalism. The bottom half of humanity are not increasing their net value at all: it was all lies about the “rising tide that raises all boats” …as is every other economic fallacy we have been told. There is not a perpetual motion machine driving the global economy: there are bio-energetic limits and planetary boundaries to consider. For the most part: we are operating on or near the redzone …more energy won’t put us in the greenzone: nor will it be equitably distributed. That is a factual historicity, I’m afraid. If we want to change that, we will have to overturn the historical precedent… Read more »
Please note I said free energy, not cheap oil. Very, very different things.
But to answer your question “Will [free] energy encourage a radical re-envisioning of the future” – potentially, yes! LENR and, even more so the various over unity “freedom energy” studies currently being conducted (without funding) show that Tesla’s dream of wireless energy could be a reality. Such a resource would be very difficult to contain or control, which is why JP Morgan buried it (successfully). It’s mere existence would constitute a massive challenge to the current system of monopoly and control.
Try to understand this wouldn’t be just an additional energy source to power the turbines and send electricity down those copper wires it would be a profound revolution in supply and availability which has the potential to change the economic structure of the world.
OK, humour me …we are close to running out of everything: not just resources, but fresh air, clean water, fertile topsoil, biodiversity (particularly large fauna), fish, even sand, etc etc …having freedom energy changes none of this without a fundamental shift in consciousness away from the materialistic: toward the regenerative. With freedom energy, we are still restrained bio-energtically (on non-sustainable non-energy resources); and by planetary boundaries (land management usage, species extinction, collapsing water tables, ocean acidification and depletion, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, climate change, etc). There might still be demand: but how are you going to supply it without creating a resources deficit? My whole point is that with our pan-historic materialistic mindset, every chance we have had to increase our energy usage, we have not used it wisely, we have used it destructively. We have become a virtual monopoly monoculture that is destroying its own life support system. Your… Read more »
I’m not sure what you think “materialism” means in reference to this. We are living things that need “material” in order to survive. Short of an ascetic disapproval is there anything wrong with that? If we can provide “material” things with no cost to the planet, then why not? And Tesla-type free energy has that potential. I didn’t say, by the way, that it would cure all the other ills of the world. Of course we need to curb pollutants and sustain the biosphere, but the threats to these things aren’t “materialism”, they’re exploitation by the vested interests. It is possible to sustain a high grade “materialist” civilisation without exploitation, and free energy might at least give us a way of achieving that. My major point is – don’t regard science as an enemy, or energy as an enemy, on the contrary they are both essentials to our survival. The… Read more »
The problem with greed, as Aristotle noted, and I rather bet he wasn’t the first to see it, is that it is insatiable. Any ‘growth’ in the planetary human economy will be grabbed by the insatiably avaricious parasites. Removing them from power, and sending them off to some sanatorium for treatment is one unavoidable first priority.
Let’s define “materialism” then: as anything above the sustainable …the false wants, needs, and desires, created by the system to sustain the system. So I understand the demand side: what about the supply side? So is your hypothesis is that we can have iPads, iPhones, and Tesla cars for 7.5bn people …and this can all be achieved sustainably (and freely, presumably?)…and grow exponentially to accomodate the increased demands …because “materialism” does not have a word for “sufficient”? Materialism requires vast inputs of raw material resources: sustainable and unsustainable ones …OTHER than the freedom energy you are fixated on. Catering for the entire population materialistically will ensure environmental catastrophe: not least because the materialistic mindset carries with it the seeds of its own demise …as we can see pan-historically. Science and energy aren’t the problem: our mindset is. Freedom energy coupled with the pan-historic materialistic mindset equals destruction …to which you… Read more »
We can certainly have ipads, iphones etc for as many as need them, provided we focus on sustainable production. If we made phones to last fifty years (and we could if we wanted to), with easy and Green upgradability then we could provide technology to most of the world and be less destructive than we are now!
Being sustainable doesn’t mean turning our backs on technology per se, that’s simply Ludditism
BigB, usually I find myself riding a metaphoric surfboard on the wave of your thoughts. On this occasion though the half pipe collapsed on me and pushed me under. What cynicism! I cannot see how genuinely “free energy” would accelerate all the dismal consequences we see in the carbon economy. I feel you ignore, or at least underplay the pivotal role of geography in the chaos our reliance on fossil fuels has created. The exploitation of hydrocarbons has always proceded on the basis of developing the easiest to access and largest by volume sites first. It has been this more than any other factor that has led to the motivation behind all US hegemony around the middle east and beyond. Free energy would not solve the mindset of the psychopathic leaders of the erm, free world but it would go a long way to reversing the headlong destruction of the… Read more »
Candi: I’m not sure why everyone is getting their knickers in a twist about hypothetical ‘free’ energy? Or rounding on those, like me, who say it is not that simple? Energy, is a single parameter. How it would impact human ecology and economy would have to take in many other factors. In the absence of any input other than “freedom energy saves the world”; I assume that means pretty much carrying on with the global economy as it is? Currently, we are consuming renewable and non-renewable resources at exponential rates: thus even ‘renewable’ resources are being depleted, by being harvested faster than they can renew. Fisheries and forestry are two good examples. At exponential rates, resources pretty soon get decimated: accelerating demand leads to collapse, which is not an unreasonable assumption to make? Resources – other than the hypothetical ‘free’ (negentropic) energy resource – are subject to entropy, depletion, and… Read more »
B-do you know Norman Lindsay’s ‘The Magic Pudding’? One hundred years old this year, it tells the tale, for children, of a magic pudding that grows whole again whenever a segment is devoured. There’s your cornutopian mindset. Just how the growth fetishists still continue obeisance to their neoplastic cult when every day brings new reports of the rapidly accelerating ecological collapse on the planet, really bemuses me. The attitude of the psychopathic Right, what with their innate stupidity, ignorance, avarice and viciousness is no surprise, but all the Meanswells, with their tender concern for every panda, porpoise and potoroo, still voting for the psychopathic political stooges of the ruling, totalitarian, capitalist destructocrats, and otherwise closing their eyes to reality-that really pisses me off. Even today, when you mention our predicament, even to those who claim to be ‘concerned’, once you utter the dreaded word ‘extinction’, they shut up shop, mentally,… Read more »
MM: me too! The problem with “techno hopium” is that the problems of the world are happening in the here and now: and demand here and now applications and solutions. What use is hypothetical ‘freedom’ energy in twenty, thirty, or fifty years, if we have irrevocably corrupted the biosphere in the meantime? Humanities quest for greater and greater energy resources have been disastrous thus far. It’s axiomatic to me that we need to use less, now. That means being less materialistically inclined: particularly in the developed world. We need less energy: more equally redistributed between the Global North and South. That, in effect, means the developed world can develop no more: what energy we use needs to be redistributed justly. How about people campaign for less, not hold out for more? Not an easy sell! The problems with techno hopium and the transference and projection of the materialistic mindset into… Read more »
I got the dread today when I read the latest in the current rush of horror stories re. the extermination of insects. This, of course, is the death knell for much life on Earth, (the birds already)perhaps even ourselves, arriving so very suddenly, but unexpected only by fools. The answer, apart from utter disinterest by the plebs, was short and pithy from the omnicidists responsible-the chemical industry assassins of Life. Why, without their poisons, poisons that MUST be peddled in ever greater numbers and quantities according to the Death-cult of capitalism because profit maximisation and constant growth are ‘goods’, humanity would starve. Organic or permaculture food production do not exist-only industrial Life carnage can be allowed, and the chemical industry Moloch, like all the other capitalist life-destroyers, has a coterie of politicians bought by ‘contributions’, and lying propagandists and corrupted scientists to peddle their lies, while, ever more rapidly, we… Read more »
When the bees go: we follow. So simple: but too hard to understand! Would love to continue, but it’s time to go and work for the Man! Or is that the Moloch!!
@PSJ: “I said free energy”.
As the old song goes, “Nothing is for nothing, nothing is for free”.
First Law: Energy does not come free.
Second Law: We don’t even get all the energy that we pay for.
Third Law: The more energy we dissipate, the harder it becomes to extract the remainder.
The inevitable consequence of the deliberate process of neo-feudalistation that you describe, is a world where the 1% control all the wealth, more or less, and the 99% of ‘useless eaters’ represent only a threat to the ‘Gods Upon the Earth’. With computerisation, robotisation, automation, AI etc, the serfs are not even required for production, or their consumption any longer. The obvious next step is undoubtedly, in my opinion, being prepared in the archipelago of bio-warfare laboratories that the Pentagon has established world-wide, where they are furiously involved in collecting the DNA, blood and tissue, including neoplasms. of all identifiable human populations. With the progress in genetic engineering, the ‘final solution’ to the ‘useless eaters problem’ cannot be far off.
Basically I agree with BigB. Energy slaves are wealth (Alexander Findlay, Chemist). Love of wealth is the root of many evils (The Good Book). Therefore, Limitless energy would bear fruit as Limitless Evil.
“Nothing is Enough for the man to whom Enough is not Enough”. — Epikouros
Vexarb, I believe you are constrained by the existing model of supply and control. Of course that model could persist, but freedom energy has the potential to move the world into a new model in which energy monopolies, and therefore many other monopolies are broken.
And don’t forget that most people who want to dismiss ‘free energy’ assume that we live in a closed system when even our own ‘laws of physics’ (written by people no more knowledgeable than anyone else) allow for an open system where the energy may be tapped from a dimension we don’t inhabit (mathematically at least 11 in total) or from a fundamental law in our own set of dimensions that we have not fully understood yet. Examples of this being resonance, precession, Lenz’s Law, the hydrogen bond, Heisengerg’s uncertainty principle………… and so many more things yet to nail down.
Oops! Lapse of memory, it was not Findlay the chemist but Soddy the physicist. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt
Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt is a 1926 book by the Nobel prize-winning chemist Frederick Soddy on monetary policy and society and the role of energy in economic systems. Soddy criticized the focus on monetary flows in economics, arguing that real wealth was derived from the use of energy to transform materials into physical goods and services. Soddy’s economic writings were largely ignored in his time, but would be applied to the development of ecological economics in the late 20th century.
Yo, vexarb: “Nothing is bananas for someone to whom bananas are not bananas”. — Epicurious
I wonder who the five down-voters are? The Free Market capitalist system is not just neoplastic in action, unambiguously and almost parodically so, but also is human psychopathy in action. It guarantees, indeed is predicated on, the rule of the worst in society, that kakistocracy that you mentioned (although I now prefer ‘kakastocracy’-rule by shits). I’ve watched every sane, humane, even human, individual in Austfailian society, in the power structures of politics, business, the brainwashing systems etc, purged from public life or replaced by opportunists or raving psychopaths (the current Federal regime resembles those that the SA might have rejected in 1930 as too stupid and vicious)over the last forty years. The remnants of the ‘social democratic’ Labor Party are very nearly as vile, redeemed by something or other that escapes my recollection. The country is so totally dominated by the Right, hard or pretending not to be, that it… Read more »
I remember reading a chemistry book published in the 1950s in which a chapter was set aside describing a kind of cold fusion, but nothing was expanded on the subject as if it had been known for decades. I’m 61 now and read it about 30 years ago and have never been able to find that book again. PS I’m a conspiracy theorist.
Not so much of a conspiracy theorist, I hope, that you believe in the Mandela Effect…
But this is interesting… can you remember anything at all? Was thee book in English? American or British? Elementary or advanced? Academic or popular? Old books are the way in to “things we’ve forgotten to remember.”
The book was required reading for a degree course in Environmental Science in Kent. I knew someone on the course and they pointed me to it. I was a physicist at the time and obviously looked down on chemistry but every now and then we found common ground. The book was by British scientists and the research seemed to have been done pre WW2. Science research these days would not get funding for this as the profit margins are not large enough.
@Jim – that would be muon-catalyzed fusion, discovered by accident by Luis Alvarez in the 1950s. Muon-catalyzed fusion is now a proven reality, and it does produce some excess heat, but not currently enough for it to be viable, though there are some interesting new developments.
@PSJ. Thank you for that info; it ties in with Prof.Altman’s conclusion which I posted above.
Often ideas come before technology or material science can cope. With Nano technology, a lot of the material science can be designed to work but at huge cost at the moment. Eventually things will catch up with the original idea and make it profitable.
I remember this controversy well and remember being exited by the initial announcement that room temparature cold fusion had been achieved. The logic of the claims made by free energy enthusiasts is tempered in me by the reality that such cheap options would by now have been seized upon by natural resource poor nations like China that could easilly afford to develop such technologies. I am not a nuclear physicist so I must rely on such base logic and thus I remain sceptical.
Your logic is flawed.The Chinese have been researching and have been developing Lenr.
Evidence?
http://coldfusion3.com/blog/chinese-researchers-achieve-lenr-in-nickel-wire
No need to be rude. My logic can only be informed by that which I am aware. This obscure bit of research you link to has, unless we live in different dimensions, led to no revolution in power generation?
I read several science digests daily and there is regularly a paper published which hints that cold fusion may have been achieved. Nothing I have seen has panned out to a usable technology. While I agree with Mallove in his assertion that there are flaws in the status orthodoxy has over the novel I would assert there is sufficient competition for status and budgets within each orthodoxy, across the many institutions and nations investing in this area to insure that if a method to achieve it at low cost we would know about it.
Candide is using a practical, down-to-earth argument from ‘The Sceptical Chemist’ by Robert Boyle, against get-rich-quick schemes in science. “Those who published about using the Law of Mass Action to turn water into wine should by now be recognizable by limitless wealth, because…”
That is rather a sceptical (and cynical) POV. Whatever happened to research and the joy of discovery instead of ‘someone’s always trying to make buck’ ?
From the link which Dave Lawton supplied to sceptical Candide, it seems that Robert Boyle’s “Skeptical Chymist” argument is ripe for testing: “Chinese government researcher Songsheng Jiang reports achieving a Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) in a hydrogen-loaded nickel wire. In an email to Frank Acland Jiang reported that the reaction lasted for around 80 minutes and generated around 240 watts of heat. The Institute is China’s top atomic research organization the People’s Republic’s equivalent of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States. The Institute has close connections with the top levels of the Communist Party and the Chinese military.” I have long since lost touch with my friends in fusion research at Harwell, but I venture to guess that 240 watts of heat for 80 minutes was beyond their wildest dreams in the 60s. Jiang’s email is dated 2015. Generally it takes about 50 years for fundamental science… Read more »
The usage’…has connections with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese military’, is standard Sinophobic fear-mongering. The Chinese possess a military, like EVERY country, more or less, and they havn’t attacked anyone since the stupid war with Vietnam, forty years ago. They possess ONE overseas base in contrast with the USA which has one thousand or so, and the US military has attacked many countries, some quite illegally, and killed millions, since WW2. Similarly the Chinese Communist Party ruins China, along with a huge bureaucracy, and do not bother with sham ‘democracy’ behind which facade the rich make all the decisions. As for Lysenkism in China-are you kidding. Most Chinese leaders are highly educated, many in science and engineering, and few, if any, are reality TV stars. There is an awful lot of Sinophobic propaganda doing the rounds in the West, that the Chinese are, somehow, incapable of innovative thought,… Read more »
Mulga, I am not knocking the Chinese. Far from it; nobody has expressed more reverence than I have, for the constructive achievements of Mao and Stalin during WW2, the fruits of which we see today: Russia and China are literally all that protects the remains of the free world from the depredations of Anglo Zionazi Capitalism. Nevertheless, Lysenkoism is a fact — it destroyed Russian progress in genetics for a generation; and the stupidity of Political Parties voting on questions of science is a fact. It is dangerous to brush these facts aside: they serve as warning examples. If the experiments described are reproducible they will be reproduced anywhere in the real world; not only in a lab with “conneksia” at the top of a Party hierarchy.
Additionally it has to be noted that in 2016 Chinese scientists published 426,000 papers to the US’s 409,000 making it the worlds most prolific research nation. Indeed a scan of papers published everywhere in any given week would reveal that a large proportion of all papers published anywhere will involve some collabaration with Chinese scientists and there are many 1000s of them in respected universities the world over. Prudently they manage this on less than half the budget allocation of the US, though that gap is closing.
I would also note that there is no nation on Earth I respect as much as I respect China. I am not saying it has no faults by any means but it is an ancient culture thriving in the 21st century without an expansionist ideology.
If you have read Needham’s ‘Science and Civilization in China’, you must be old and rich, because it consists of, Googling frantically, seven ‘volumes’, many sub-divided into numerous sub-sections, and thousands of pages. The return of China to global scientific and technological dominance is sending the ‘Gods Upon the Earth’, in Thanatopolis DC, and their crawling, boot-licking, minions in failed states like Austfailure, into paroxysms of rage at the insubordination of it all. A bunch of ‘mere Asiatics’, the ‘Yellow Peril’ as once was the favourite usage in Austfailure, and is rapidly returning to favour, daring to create more science and technology than God’s Chosen Exceptional darlings-it is insufferable. They MUST be stealing it all from the superior minds of the West. Among the ludicrous demands that the Thanatopians have made of the Chinese in ‘trade negotiations’, are a couple that more or less insist that China abjure its drive… Read more »
Harwell was principally involved in researching “hot fusion”, as were all the major centers such as MIT and Los Alamos. Hot fusion is a very different entity from “cold fusion.” Don’t confuse them.
Hot fusion received billions of dollars from the DOE in the US, because of its potential in the weapons industry, but never produced any viable source of energy.
Cold fusion is a lonely orphan that received almost no funding, and after the Pons and Fleischmann debacle even that tiny trickle all but dried up. No weapons potential, you see, and considerable potential threat to energy monopolies if it were to become a viable source
PS The LENR result from a hydrogen-loaded nickel wire is potentially cold fusion or possible the same anomalous heat demonstrated by Pons and Fleischmann back in 89, which may be closer to Tesla’s unknown energy source.
There is nothing wrong with the logic. Obviously.
Ho Ho Ho……which way tae jump?