So maybe scientists in Japan (or Italy or Russia, or ...) will in a few
years finally solve cold fusion . . .
Not a chance. In Japan they will all be retired or dead in a few years.
The science of cold fusion is a mess.
Sez who?
What started as D-D fusion in a metal lattice without radiation (just two
or three miracles) now has "transmutations" occurring everywhere, with
energy appearing and disappearing from apparently nowhere . . .
That is not a "mess" -- that is what the experiments reveal is happening. A natural phenomenon cannot be described as a mess.
Winning Randi's prize will do that.
The likelihood of that Pons of Fleischmann will win a Nobel prize is far greater than the likelihood that cold fusion will win Randi's prize. Randi made it clear that we are disqualified. He will not look at experiments or read about them and that he does not accept the kind of proof they produce. There is no other kind of proof. If you do not accept experiments such as Iwamura's or the data from BARC, then you do not believe cold fusion exists and nothing can persuade you.
Midway through our discussion, Randi suddenly changed the terms of his challenge from merely ridiculous to utterly impossible. Instead of demanding experimental proof that cold fusion exists (which could hypothetically be given if he understood anything about physics), he suddenly demanded a practical commercial device instead:
"Let's leave it here: the million-dollar prize of the James Randi Educational Foundation is available for the operation of a practical working version of the 'cold fusion' claim."
I explained to him that such a device would cost billions of dollars, and that this is completely different from experimental proof. I expect he has no clue what I am talking about. In any case, he would not recognize scientific proof if it bit him on the butt.
- Jed
