Horace Heffner <[email protected]> wrote: What a beautifully ironic possibility! We could quickly go from assertions > from powerful experts that CF doesn't exist, CF is ludicrous, to assertions > it is dangerous! >
Well, in all seriousness: Mizuno's cell and at least 5 others exploded; Rossi said it is dangerous without power input; and he had trouble shutting it down when it was in self-sustaining mode. So, yes, cold fusion can be dangerous. At this stage we don't know how it works. My guess is that Rossi is using the kind of empirical methods of control that people used to control fire before they understood modern chemistry. He has not had enough experience with these methods to be sure they will work on all cells, at any scale. When x-rays were first discovered, people did not realize they were dangerous to living tissue. Some poor patient in a hospital had to have x-rays, as I recall because he was shot, and they could not find the bullet. They x-rayed him repeatedly, and killed him. Madam Curie inadvertently killed herself with radiation, and her lab notebooks are so contaminated they are stored in lead boxes and cannot be examined by people without protection. Radium salts were sold as medication for a while, and some of the old bottles are quite radioactive. With a brand-new discovery, you cannot anticipate every possible danger or failure mode. You have to do lots of tests -- thousands, in many different labs. You have to use every known means to detect harmful radiation, and also expose lab rats to the device, just in case there is some form of radiation or other effect we do not know how to detect. Yep, better stick with coal and oil, it's much safer. That's my story and > I'm sticking to it! 8^) > I am sure they will also say that! Even people in favor of cold fusion may feel this way. When new technology appears, people tend to hold it to a much higher standard than the old technology used for that purpose. Sometimes they demand unrealistically high standards of performance and safety. They go into a tizzy when they find out that influenza vaccines kill 5 or 10 people per year, overlooking the fact that the disease kills tens of thousands of people. They fear airplane accidents far more than they fear automobile accidents, and they will drive long distances to avoid the risk, even though the accident and fatality rate per passenger mile is much higher for cars. They oppose nuclear power even though that means there will be more coal generators, and burning coal releases orders of magnitude more radioactive garbage into the atmosphere than nuke plants do. Sooner or later autonomous automobiles will be introduced. Even not, I will bet that the Google self-driving car is safer than a car driven by an average driver, but sooner or later they will start selling lots of cars like that. One of them will get into an accident, which will probably be caused by the other car's driver. But people will shriek and carry on demanding that the self-driving cars be banned. When the Prius came out they claimed the electrical system would electrocute people or firemen in auto accidents. People always fear the new. They fear the future, and cling to the past and the Devil they know. I am sure the opponents of cold fusion will fan the flames of fear and ignorance. The Congressman representing Big Coal (D-WV) is trying to pass a law banning wind turbines ostensibly because they kill birds. He ignores the fact that burning coal kills far more birds than wind turbines do. > What a pie in the face of many true believer skeptics. > I can't wait! > Of course they'll start soon saying they knew it was real all the time. > That, they will. - Jed
