Lawrence de Bivort wrote:
Suppressing CF? This requires that the 'bad guys' perceive CF as a serious threat. I have heard it argued that the 'energy companies' would wish to suppress CF, but much more likely is that they will if CF shows any promise commercially simply buy the intellectual property up.
Thanks to the U.S. Patent Office, there is no intellectual property in cold fusion. It is in the public domain. That is generally considered a problem that is holding back the field. I think that opposition from established energy companies will inevitably arise, once they realize the effect is real. When that happens, the fact that it is in the public domain may turn out to be more of a blessing than a curse.
A cautionary strategy would be simply to take an ownership position in any CF venture showing promise. Again, not expensive to do, given the underfunding of CF research.
To buy up one or two start-up that show promise would cost nothing by the standards of the energy industry. But it would not work. Once it becomes generally known how to produce and control a cold fusion reaction, there will thousands of start-up companies and established companies frantically pursuing the research. The energy industry cannot afford to buy them all, and even if they could, it would be a gigantic game of whack-a-mole, where if they miss even one, they lose.
Producing a controlled cold fusion reaction is impossible at present, as far as I know, unless Mills or Rossi have they think they have. It might remain impossible forever. Perhaps after the last cold fusion researcher dies, the field may be forgotten. However, if anyone does control it, and they communicate their methods to others, then making the second controlled cold fusion reaction will not be as difficult as the first. Making the third, fourth and fifth will easier still, and by the time we hit 1,000 (perhaps a few months later) there will be hundreds of thousands of people capable of doing it, all of them frantically trying to do it. The knowledge of how to do it will increase by leaps and bounds, daily, or hourly.
That is what happened with transistors in the months following the publication of Bell Labs' "Transistor Technology" (1952), (a.k.a. "Mother Bell's Cookbook.") It happened with personal computer clones in the year or two following the introduction of the IBM PC. It happened with aviation in the months following the August 1908 demonstration. Louis Bleriot, who could barely get off the ground before watching the demo, flew across the English channel 11 months later. There were hundreds more like him. They were talented and capable aviators and aircraft builders, but they did not understand how to make an airplane until they saw one. They should have read the patent carefully, and learned. But they did not do that until after the demonstration. Then they sure did! The airplane was much easier to replicate than it was to invent. Cold fusion will be somewhat more difficult to replicate, but not much.
The difficulties of this field seem larger than they are because researchers struggle under so many artificial handicaps, such as having to work with antiquated equipment, no assistance, and no funding.
- Jed
