How close are we to the discovery of cold fusion?
104254
Probably about the same distance we are from a perpetual motion machine. If cold fusion were an easily achievable phenomenon, we should find it all over the universe in environments other than the stellar furnaces of the stars.\n\nSadly, we don't.
701402
No - we've been doing fusion research for a long time. The ITAR test device JET has managed to crack most of the problems that needed be cracked before we ploughed big money into the project. There are also some side development that have helped, like improved computing power to control the field shape and strength needed to control the plasma  plus High Temperature superconductors.
1120766
close to absolute zero or -273.15 deg C\nst\nIn 1994 the NIST achieved a record cold temperature of 700 nK (billionths of a kelvin).  In 2003, researchers at MIT established a new record of 0.5 nK.
9879
Q:What would be the soonest fusion power could be operable in Europe if funding were increased, and energy funding diverted from fossil fuel energy research, and finally, if the fusion research projects of the USA, EU, and Japan were combined, what is the soonest fusion power could be efficiently operated?\nA: The next step from JET (and the other tokamak research being undertaken around the world) is a device called ITER, an international tokamak project, 2-3 times bigger than JET, costing several billion pounds and capable of producing significantly more fusion power for longer periods. This will demonstrate the feasibility of the plasma physics and fusion engineering of a potential power plant and, given the present funding, is planned to be built in the next 10-15 years - an eventual commercial power plant probably being 30-40 years away. However, if the present international funding for fusion were increased, ITER could definitely be built more quickly and fusion power could be a reality much more quickly - in possibly half the time if the present funding levels were increased significantly.\n\n \n \n \nQ: What developments in fusion technology are likely to take place in the future, say 10, 20 years from now? \nA: The next step device following on from JET (called ITER) is currently being designed and should be operational in 2020. This will demonstrate burning plasmas (with Q ~ 10 where Q is the ratio of the output fusion power and the input power required to keep the plasma going) whereas JET has achieved Q~0.6. It is then anticipated that a working, electricity producing reactor should be
909853
Fusion requires a lot of initial energy to overcome Coulomb forces on the atomic scale. This energy is found via heat and pressure.\n\nUnfortunately the heat required to reach this energy level are beyond anything we have achieved.\n\nCold fusion is achieving this goal without the great heat.
472835
Cold fusion is a nuclear fusion reaction which its proponents claim occurs well below the temperature required for thermonuclear reactions (millions of degrees Celsius) in a relatively small "table top" apparatus. A variety of experimental methods are used; originally electrolytic cells. The idea was first brought into popular consciousness by the Fleischmann-Pons experiment in March of 1989, which was front-page news for some time, and has been controversial ever since. Cold fusion is sometimes referred to as low energy nuclear reactions (LENR) or chemically-assisted nuclear reactions (CANR).\n\nThe subject has been of scientific interest since nuclear fusion was first understood. Hot nuclear fusion using deuterium has the potential to yield large amounts of energy, uses an abundant fuel source, and produces only small amounts of manageable waste; thus a cheap and simple process of nuclear fusion would have great economic impact. Cold fusion is especially attractive because proponents claim that it produces very little nuclear radiation, and can be scaled down to small devices such as vehicle engines.\n\nThe existence of cold fusion has been a controversial issue. It has been dismissed by some as an example of pathological science, and an idea that would not go away, long after the majority of scientists in the field dismissed it as wrong. Despite this opposition, researchers continue to report results. While there is little mainstream acceptance of the field today, over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals. Despite opposition and ridicule by mainstream journals, several peer-reviewed papers continue to be published every year.  Mainstream journals such as Scientific American and Nature have often attacked the subject, for example in March and October 2005 respectively, and most other journals reject papers on the subject without reviewing them. In January 2006, the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Guardian, and other major newspapers and magazines attacked cold fusion, claiming it was a "scientific misdeed" debunked in 1989. \n\nThe term "cold nuclear fusion" was first used in the scientific literature by Johann Rafelski and Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University in 1986 in an investigation of what is today referred to as muon-catalyzed fusion. This research was generally unrelated; however, the distinction was not immediately understood by the press in 1989. Consequently, the term "cold fusion" became associated with the Fleischmann-Pons experiment and with other experiments involving metallic catalysts (and particularly electrolysis).The idea that palladium or titanium might catalyze fusion stems from the special ability of these metals to absorb large quantities of hydrogen (including its deuterium isotope). The hydrogen or deuterium disassociate with the respective positive ions but remain in an anomalously mobile state inside the metal lattice, exhibiting rapid diffusion and high electrical conductivity. The special ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized in the nineteenth century. In the late nineteen-twenties, two German scientists, F. Paneth and K. Peters, reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen is absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. These authors later acknowledged that the helium they measured was due to background from the air.\n\nIn 1927, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg said that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes. On the basis of his work he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy". After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with heavy water. Due to Paneth and Peters' retraction, Tandberg's patent application was eventually denied.On March 23, 1989, the chemists
363951
theorically yes.   The problem is discovering and proving the right theory.   It maybe 500 years but we will eventually solve the cold fusion problem.
626251
nuclear fusion has occured on earth - fusion bombs have been around since the 50s and controlled fusion reaction have been achieved in lots of experimental fusion power plants. the energy put in is more than the energy gotten out, so it is not a power source\n\nwhen gas is really hot, some or even all of the electrons in the atoms have enough energy to escape the attraction\nof the nucleus, so a plasma is formed that has lots of free charge flying around.\n\nthe sun is mostly plasma, there might be some unionized gas, i doubt anything could be liquid or solid
1043264
The ideal catalyst would\n+Cluster the fuel atoms densely \n+hold the electrons of the atoms to overcome the negative repelling forces between the atoms\n+assist the nuclei of the atoms to join - neutralize the protons repelling each other\n\nA catalyst that can do any one of the above would lower the temperature requirements for fusion. The catalyst probably  would also have to function at a high temperature.\n\nYes - I think that something along these lines could be designed.\n \nYou would  just have to be really careful because after the Pons and Fleischmann cold fusion announcements any cold fusion invention would be under the microscope
621638
Four things I'm waiting for, and hope to see in my lifetime:\n\nAn inexpensively-made material that is superconducting at "normal" temperatures.\n\nPractical fusion power. (Though that would probably follow naturally from the first one.)\n\nSome cheap way to break down any substance into its elemental components.  Everything would then be recyclable.\n\nCheap manufacturing of carbon nanomaterials such as hyperfilament, "Bucky tubes" and the like.\n\nIf you can get any of these ideas to work, you're welcome to steal them.\n\n-- Oh, and an anti-microwave; something that freezes as fast as a microwave cooks.
903234
Cant rule out the possibility. \nBut..... based on currently available technology its very unlikely  within the next 50 to100 years. Definitely not in our life time.
1018555
Yes, and all our environmental problems.   At nuclear fusion temperatures you could make a fusion torch that would decompose waste into useful raw materials and transmute radioactive waste into stable elements.   A fusion reactor isn't likely to be small enough to power cars or aircraft, but the cheap energy it produces could be used to synthesise fuels for these vehicles.   We've been researching controlled nuclear fusion since the 1950s and we haven't made much progress.   But it will solve so many problems that it's worth spending vast amounts of money on this field.   Any technology that doesn't violate any fundamental laws of physics will one day work.
1069928
Antarctica--in particular, the Russian station Vostok, at which a record-      setting low temperature of one hundred and twenty-eight point six below zero      Fahrenheit was recorded in nineteen eighty-three. \n\n In nineteen-o-eight the university of Leiden      made history by producing the first super-cooled helium. Guess how cold liquid      helium is? \nFour hundred fifty-two degrees below zero Fahrenheit.\nhttp://amos.indiana.edu/library/scripts/coldworld.html
1082808
mathematical dilemma. there is no answer to the question. Well at least none that are known. Just like the elements we know there out there but we have to figure them out first.  just like Einstein theory of fusion. its passable just not proved.
911178
fusion \n\nIT CONVERTS HYDROGEN INTO HELIUM
619995
Cold fusion is a nuclear fusion reaction that takes place at or near room temperature and normal pressure instead of the millions of degrees and thousands of pounds of force required for plasma fusion reactions. The popular press sometimes use the term "cold fusion" incorrectly, to describe plasma fusion that occurs in table-top apparatus.\nCold fusion has two major lines of research: muon-catalyzed fusion and low energy nuclear reactions. "Cold fusion" is often used to refer to the latter. The former, initiated by Andrei Sakharov and F. C. Frank in the 1940s, and Luis Alvarez in 1956, is not controversial but it consumes more energy than it generates.\nLow energy nuclear reactions (LENR) — or chemically-assisted nuclear reactions (CANR) — were initially reported by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons at the University of Utah in March of 1989. Because it was presented as a new practical source of energy, this announcement was front-page news for some time, and generated a strong controversy, but the debate abated quickly and LENR was rejected by the mainstream scientific community. [1]\nLENR researchers say that they have been shunned by the scientific establishment. They publish papers in scientific journals specializing in related fields, but none have published in major scientific journals such as Nature or Science after the initial controversy.\nThe latest mainstream review of research in low energy nuclear reactions occurred in 2004 when the US Department of Energy set up a panel of eighteen scientists. The panelists were evenly split on the following issue: "Is there compelling evidence for power that cannot be attributed to ordinary chemical or solid states sources". Two thirds of the panel did not feel that there was any conclusive evidence for low energy nuclear reactions, five found the evidence "somewhat convincing" and one was entirely convinced. The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposal for experiments in this field
456100
How exactly are you splitting the H from the O?   Under high pressure and spraying?  I don't see how that could possibly work.  Cold fusion also has a huge potential for cheap, clean, renewable energy.  But much like what you are talking about, it simply isn't possible with the current technology.  If splitting H and O was so cheap and simple it would be done all of the time.  Electrolysis works, but the energy input makes it unrealistic for creating liquid hydrogen as an energy source.  If you truely have a way to spit the H20 molecule cheaply and efficiently you'd already be a multi-billionaire.