Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Martin Fleischmann (1927 ─ 2012)

hissingnoise - 6-9-2012 at 07:34

Martin Fleischmann shuffled off this mortal coil on Monday!
He was 85, and died without seeing his cold-fusion anomaly resolved.

Dave Angel - 6-9-2012 at 09:55

Quote: Originally posted by hissingnoise  
Martin Fleischmann shuffled off this mortal coil on Monday!


You're a month out (guess you saw 03/09; twas 03/08) but the loss is felt no less.

It's a shame that the whole LENR topic is tainted in the scientific community by the mistakes made - imagine what might have been learnt by now in absence of the stigma...

unionised - 6-9-2012 at 10:16

Quote: Originally posted by hissingnoise  
Martin Fleischmann shuffled off this mortal coil on Monday!
He was 85, and died without seeing his cold-fusion anomaly resolved.


It's always sad when someone dies but there's no great loss to science here.
There are two points of view on that anomaly, one of which is that it was resolved. Cold fusion doesn't work. It wouldn't have mattered if he had lived to 185, nobody would have repeated his experiment.
Of course, he wouldn't have lived to that age, or even to 85 if his "nuclear reactor" had done what he said it did because the neutron flux would have killed him.

Dave Angel - 6-9-2012 at 10:53

I'd agree that his passing is not a 'great loss' to science as one might consider Feynmann and those of his ilk, but one can't measure so easily the small influences such figures have.

One of my formative amateur chemistry memories is reading about the cold fusion experiment, and going on to learn about and discuss calorimetry with my science teacher as a result. It brought palladium to my serious attention, and the fact that catalogues existed with prices for rods of the stuff - amongst other things...

Their approach of doing fusion experiments on the benchtop also made me wonder if, in a similar way, science beyond a chemistry set wasn't just the domain of huge labs with big budgets, and could in fact be done in the home...

Those who try truly novel things and push the boundaries of our scientific understanding, even if they are proven wrong, should not be forgotten for the inspiration they provide to others. I think of these guys as one of those 'gravitational nudges' that sent at least one particular mind on a collision course with chemistry, and for that I do thank them :)

RIP Marty.

unionised - 6-9-2012 at 11:19

Quote: Originally posted by Dave Angel  
I'd agree that his passing is not a 'great loss' to science as one might consider Feynmann and those of his ilk, but one can't measure so easily the small influences such figures have.

One of my formative amateur chemistry memories is reading about the cold fusion experiment, and going on to learn about and discuss calorimetry with my science teacher as a result. It brought palladium to my serious attention, and the fact that catalogues existed with prices for rods of the stuff - amongst other things...

Their approach of doing fusion experiments on the benchtop also made me wonder if, in a similar way, science beyond a chemistry set wasn't just the domain of huge labs with big budgets, and could in fact be done in the home...

Those who try truly novel things and push the boundaries of our scientific understanding, even if they are proven wrong, should not be forgotten for the inspiration they provide to others. I think of these guys as one of those 'gravitational nudges' that sent at least one particular mind on a collision course with chemistry, and for that I do thank them :)

RIP Marty.


All that from a failed experiment! Just imagine what proper science might have inspired you to do.

Dave Angel - 6-9-2012 at 11:33

Quote: Originally posted by unionised  
All that from a failed experiment! Just imagine what proper science might have inspired you to do.


Heh, perhaps. But then, looking back, it was less the science and more their spirit, and the wonder of the experiment, that was inspiring.

So anyway, who want's to be the first to post their cold fusion cell? :P

watson.fawkes - 6-9-2012 at 17:31

Quote: Originally posted by Dave Angel  
Heh, perhaps. But then, looking back, it was less the science and more their spirit, and the wonder of the experiment, that was inspiring.
If you want some more wonder, take a look at this paper.

Cold Fusion (LENR), One Perspective on the State of the Science
M.C.H. McKubre, SRI International, Menlo Park, California
This is the forward to Violante, V. and F. Sarto, eds. Proceedings 15th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (Part 1). 2009, ENEA: Rome, Italy.
Freely available here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf

This paper is a summary of work done that has indeed replicated the Fleischmann-Pons Effect, as of 2009. There's an extensive discussion about some of the necessary conditions for the effect to occur. The necessity of these were not known in the first few years afterwards. It's fascinating reading. The state of knowledge is such that they can get a replication of the effect, but they have not yet identified all the variables that can cause failure. Here's an interesting quotation from the paper, to whet interest:
Quote:
A final point arguing against the universal presence of systematic error
measurements is the sheer magnitude of the effect. At SRI we have seen an excess power
effect at 90σ, ninety times the measurement uncertainty, and have made over one hundred
observations of PXS > 3!. The effect is not fleeting and persists for hours, days, weeks, in one
case longer than 1 month, giving ample time to check the measurement systems. And the
output power is not small compared to the power input with power ratios POut / PIn > 2, 3, 5,
the highest sustained value measured being 25 averaged over 17 hours!

Dave Angel - 8-9-2012 at 01:59

Quote: Originally posted by watson.fawkes  
If you want some more wonder, take a look at this paper.

Cold Fusion (LENR), One Perspective on the State of the Science
M.C.H. McKubre, SRI International, Menlo Park, California
This is the forward to Violante, V. and F. Sarto, eds. Proceedings 15th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (Part 1). 2009, ENEA: Rome, Italy.
Freely available here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf


Thanks for posting that - has been a while since I've caught up on the status. Have just skimmed through and another excerpt caught my eye:
Quote:
Energetics experiment L64 using a 7 mm x 80 mm x 50 um Pd foil from ENEA (Frascati) and SuperWavesTM current stimulation demonstrated a maximum output power >34 W twice in the first 20 hours of the experiment, with an input electrical stimulus less than 1W. The energetic response was even more startling with 40 kJ of input energy in that first 20-hour period, 1.14 MJ of energy out, 1.1 MJ of excess energy. A factor of 25 times more energy coming out as heat than was input electrically. For this first heat burst alone the energy was 4.8 KeV/Pd atom, thousands of times more than can be accounted for by known chemistry. A second burst produced boiling in the electrolyte and at least4 3.5 MJ more energy, a total of more than 20 KeV/Pd atom. Similar but slightly less impressive results have been obtained on several other occasions by Energetics.


There really is more scientific understanding to be had here, and the unfortunate politics surrounding the field only serve to slow down progress, as the author summarises:
Quote:
...there has been a great deal of poor communication on both sides: an inability to broadcast real scientific progress uncoupled from emotion or ambition; an almost complete lack of willingness on the part of those outside the CMNS community to delve into the work and understand what has been done, and what has changed, in 21 years...


Finally, there's a sentiment here that has the wider application to science as a whole, as the author discusses experiments hastily performed in an attempt to replicate the work of Pons & Fleischmann; namely that we learn something even from negative results, rather than simply dismissing them as 'failures':
Quote:
What is important is that these experiments be recognized for what they are, not what they are not. They are important members of the experimental database that teaches us under what conditions one encounters the FPE. They are not any part of a proof of nonexistence; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.


This is still a very young field and it will be interesting to see what develops in our lifetimes.
I, for one, will be keeping an open mind.

platedish29 - 15-9-2012 at 14:52

When reporters declare scientists discoverd something everybody instantly admits it as fact. If somebody declares a discovery and many other plug it as scientifically false there's no standard to admit it as declared.
We really need put our step in the grounds here.
Laser physics deal with extraordinary random excitations in subatomic level mainly in the vicinity of the very dense and strong coulombic field near the atomic nucleus.
Whatever he was harsh with his publications its interesting indeed some people hadn't their minds open for this possibility at the time.

offset442 - 23-10-2012 at 17:49

Now someone needs to try ruthenium doped palladium, with no trace of copper or nickel, at 3100 f. In an a deturium atmosfhere .

SM2 - 12-11-2012 at 08:43

Pons&Fleishmans' hands were pushed, as university was about to go public/patent, and P%F had been working on this for years. They really didn't want to do that, and the last thing they wanted was any sort of fame. They had to come out very quickly. As for cold fusion, based on all the research, and quality of it I have seen, I'm not convinced it it cold-fusion, but more likely something masquerading as such, with just as great a potential.