Stiffler Scientific wrote:
Okay it is proven that excess Heat can be obtained from one or more reactions, great!, but would this not be 20-30 years from any application of the result?
Probably not. Once the researchers learn how to control the heat, it should not be difficult to scale it up. It has already been accidentally scaled up to macroscopic, useful levels by Fleischmann and Pons, Mizuno and others, mainly in uncontrolled explosions.
There is no telling when (or even if) researchers will learn to control the effect, but it could happen next week as easily as 20 years from now, and after that breakthrough, I do not think it will take another 20 years to make it into a practical application. I think 2 or 3 years would suffice.
Heat is great, but only if you live where Heat is important, I doubt I would care if I lived Hawaii.
You are missing the point. Almost all of the energy we use starts off as heat. Heat is used in heat engines to produce mechanical energy. Some is used directly, such with automobiles. The mechanical energy from other heat engines is used to produce most of the world's electricity. A small fraction of electricity comes from the mechanical energy of falling water or wind turbines, and a very tiny fraction comes from photovoltaic cells, but most starts out as heat, and is converted with steam or gas turbines.
Heat used for space-heating is only a small fraction of the total, and in any case, almost all airconditioning is done with electricity generated from heat. In the future, I expect that most airconditioners will be directly powered by heat sources, such as thermally activated absorption chillers.
Is not the application of the confirmation of the discovery dependant on an additional technology that can make use of the result?
All machines use energy, by definition. (An object that does not consume energy is not a machine. Some machines, such as a needle pulling thread, are so small they can easily be powered by people, but they all consume energy.) Nearly all machines on earth are powered by heat energy, mainly heat from coal. Every one of them can use cold fusion heat instead.
The only thing that would be more useful than a heat-producing gadget would be one that produces electricity directly such as a "magic magnetic motor." If such a thing exists, it will trump cold fusion.
- Jed
