Jed Rothwell wrote: > Walter Faxon wrote: > >> 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.
All the more important to get CF off its butt here in the West, then. > > >> 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. Not the phenomena, the "science"; our organized understanding of the phenomena. That's what's 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 Jed, I suspect that Randi was just tired of talking to you. Look at it from his point of view: It's his prize, he can decide what sorts of hoops claimants have to jump through in order to win it. You wanted him to change his rules to accommodate real science. Asking for a cold fusion engine gets you off his back with the added plus of annoying the heck out of you. You'll notice that he states that a "practical working version" of cold fusion can win. He doesn't actually say that a "non-practical" version can't. But please, Jed! Don't use my reasoning as an excuse to bother Randi again. I already warned you once about annoying him. (They've disqualified challengers just for being insulting -- imagine!) In particular I don't want you to screw up what seems to be an extremely simple and reproducible CF-related transmutation experiment that Vortexian Michael Foster may use to apply for the Challenge -- see the thread starting at http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg13665.html And they say cold fusion is hard! Regards, Walter
