DailyDirt: Scientific Measurements
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Accurate scientific measurements are pretty important. It's actually hard to overstate how critical it is to science that measurements can be repeated. (Hello, Cold Fusion...) But it's not quite an easy task to get everyone to agree to the same metrics -- especially when different approaches might have different results. Still, we make do with what we've got -- and looking at the fine details of measuring stuff has lead to discoveries like buckyballs, the heliocentric model of our neck of the universe, and all sorts of cool stuff. So here are a few quick links on measuring things.- The official kilogram may be losing mass -- or its official copies are gaining mass? Either way, being able to maintain a mass standard that doesn't drift by 50 micrograms is probably something we should figure out. [url]
- Relativistic effects are at work in lead acid batteries -- and apparently account for about 1.7 volts in a standard 2.11 V lead acid battery. Relativistic effects in heavy atoms (like lead) have been known for a long time, but it's interesting to think that these effects are present every time you start your car (assuming your car has a lead acid battery, that is). [url]
- Chemists have made a "super-heavy hydrogen" from a helium atom, by replacing an electron with muon. Helium that acts like hydrogen is a pretty cool trick, letting chemists measure reactions rates in a new way. [url]
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Hello, Cold Fusion...
http://www.metafilter.com/100064/ha-ha-cold-fusion
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
buckeyballs?
http://thunderbolts.info/home.htm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: buckeyballs?
Um. WTF?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
buckeyballs?
http://thunderbolts.info/home.htm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Damn you Heisenberg!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Problem solved
It's obvious that the expansion of the universe is at play. I think the best answer is to put ...ish at the end of a mass measurement. Problem solved.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
But we could use your moniker and call it "TheBigH"ydrogen.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I'm really not a fan of something with two protons being called "hydrogen", ...
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: I'm really not a fan of something with two protons being called "hydrogen", ...
This is neither a isotope, nor a normal ion. It's something new, and should be given a new name accordingly. The fundamental Chemistry 101 rules of nomenclature shouldn't be violated though.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: I'm really not a fan of something with two protons being called "hydrogen", ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: I'm really not a fan of something with two protons being called "hydrogen", ...
You are correct that this "super heavy hydrogen" is something new, and if this sort of substitution of electrons by muons ever becomes more than a lab curiosity, inventing a new name for it would be appropriate. However, as long as all the descriptions qualify the name with some suggestive adjectives and use scare quotes to further alert the reader that this isn't your father's hydrogen under discussion, I think there is very little danger of confusion, and even some benefit in that we won't have to learn the correspondence between the current element names and the newly-invented names for their analogs.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Cheap shot at cold fusion ...
There is no doubt that Pons and Fleischmann screwed up by adopting their "publish via press release" approach, but people like, apparently, you, who tar anyone wanting to investigate that phenomenon with the same brush, possibly have held back progress in a potentially fruitful area.
P&F found something unusual. And, contrary to popular knowledge, other labs HAVE seen results similar to what P&F reported. Nobody understands what is going on in those experiments, which is probably the biggest reason why reliably reproducing the phenomenon is so hard. If you don't know what the reaction is, you are likely not to know what conditions it requires, and so only stumble onto creating them haphazardly. Blocking most funding for research into understanding what P&F reported by pointing, laughing, and saying "cold fusion" is grossly irresponsible.
Fortunately, there are a few funding sources with a properly open scientific attitude who have been funding a low level of research into the phenomenon over the past 25 years, but progress has been far slower than it should have been.
If it turns out that the phenomenon is something that, when thoroughly understood, can be exploited to provide a clean, inexpensive source of power, those who have blocked the studies by their ridicule ought to be tracked down and punished. If the phenomenon turns out to be an interesting curiosity, but not commercially useful, then there still has been harm done to accumulation of scientific knowledge. It is just as important to understand ways that won't work so they can be recognized easily and quickly when they crop up again.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Cheap shot at cold fusion ...
I think the true progress of Science benefits from a healthy dose of skepticism and verification.... if you can't verify your results, you're not doing Science. And in many of the cases involving "cold fusion" or "Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction" -- there don't seem to be repeatable experiments going on. If there were, then I think these "tabletop fusion" projects would actually get somewhere.
So it's not my ridicule that is holding back this line of research -- it's the lack of being able to verify that anything real is happening by an independent lab.
If these cheap energy experiments were really repeatable, I'm pretty sure my ridicule wouldn't stop people from building fusion generators in their basements......
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Cheap shot at cold fusion ...
You, personally, probably have not blocked funding for good research into the phenomenon that P&F brought to our attention, but you seem to have accepted that it is okay to point and laugh rather than support diligent research to see what actually is happening with it. That is very closed-minded and not how science should be done.
Certainly P&F screwed up, both in their poor technique and in premature publication by press release. But screw-ups by poor researchers should not shut off legitimate research in an area. Citing the inability to get repeatable results as justification for not investigating further is really off-base. The fact that the experiments are not repeatable is a strong signal that we, as yet, do not appreciate all the factors that influence what is going on there, and so we should investigate until we do understand. Remember the quote from Asimov about the most exciting thing to hear in science is not "Eureka!", but "That's funny."?
Maybe the uncontrolled factor(s) in the cold fusion experiments is something we know about and just are not realizing is relevant. Maybe the uncontrolled factor is something really new. Either case is a good reason for continuing research until we understand what is going on. In the end, it might turn out to be the case that when we finally do understand what is going on, it won't be useful for power generation, but until we understand the phenomenon, dismissing it as pointless is very closed-minded. And even if it isn't useful for power generation, it might turn out to be useful for something else.
Your profile says you are the head of research at Floor64. I don't know what research Floor64 does, but at a lot of tech companies, what they call the research group actually does development, or, at best, applied research. That is not bad. In fact, it probably is just what those companies should be doing, but it is not basic research. If that is what you understand as research, I imagine that would color your view a bit, and your apparent attitude on the question of supporting research into cold fusion would be a bit easier to understand. However, that would be applying criteria appropriate for one type of effort to a rather different type of effort, and so still does not justify ridiculing and blocking attempts to understand whatever P&F brought to light.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Cheap shot at cold fusion ...
Cold Fusion research may well prove to lead to some very interesting discoveries about how calorimetry should be done properly, how electrochemical cells might be improved -- even perhaps how nuclear reactions might take place at ambient conditions.
However, there also seems to be a significant amount of "snake oil science" going on under the guise of "cold fusion/low energy nuclear reaction" research. The practitioners of such awful experiments are not to be applauded for their stubbornness in keeping their experimental procedures secret or for hyping their results before they've been repeated by independent labs. Such "researchers" should be scolded appropriately and guided towards proper methods that would lead to reproducible results and improved understanding of any observed phenomena.
In any case... I'll keep an eye out for cold fusion research that is actually notable -- if you have any suggestions for finding cool LENR, I'd appreciate it greatly.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Cheap shot at cold fusion ...
You are right that a lot of people are taking advantage of the dearth of proper support for investigating the cold fusion (or whatever it is) phenomenon to push their odd physics theories, conspiracy theories, fake devices, etc. Looking back at what I posted, I see that I wasn't clear that I was not defending them. Perhaps I don't have to make the point, but the black balling of cold fusion in the official channels gives those people a lot more opportunities to get publicity and marginal credibility than they would otherwise. Unfortunately, the black balling of cold fusion has pushed some legitimate researchers in that direction.
I don't have many URLs to hand at the moment, but I will try to remember to alert you as I come across reports of proper research in the field. You may remember that there was some work done by the Navy in the first few years following the P&F announcement. They were able to reproduce some of the effects. In 2002, they published a report which includes a couple of the papers they produced as well as a bibliography showing where more of their work appeared in journals and conference proceedings. That report is at:
http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/publications/pubs/tr/1862/tr1862-vol1.pdf
I think it is fair to summarize the work as "something unusual is going on here, but we don't know what it is and we ought to figure it out".
You may have heard of the announcements and demonstration in the middle of January by some Italians who claim production of about 10 kilowatts of thermal power via a device they say fuses nickel and hydrogen. They haven't published anything, claiming they want to secure patents first. That's far more power production than I have seen reported by anyone else. Very interesting, if true.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Cheap shot at cold fusion ...
Thanks for the pdf link... It'd be great if the "cold fusion crackpots" could be completely separated from the legitimate researchers who are trying to track down anomalous energy generation. I'll admit I haven't followed the legitimate literature -- mainly because "crackpots" seem to have created their own "legitimate-sounding" research journals.
I think the Italian group you mention may fall into that "crackpot" category. They published in a journal that they themselves created -- and by claiming that they want to secure patents before releasing their full findings, they've lost a lot of credibility in my mind. Perhaps they've actually stumbled onto something, but if they have... I think they're killing off their own research by keeping it secret and not sharing their work with others.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The way to separate the crackpots from the legitimate researchers is to end the ridicule and black balling of the legitimate researchers, but I'm afraid that will happen only slowly. Most scientists are as subject to social pressures as any people are and quite rightly fear losing professional respect, and even their jobs, if they try to do proper research in a field that has such prejudice against it. Once you let the crackpots take over by stupidly blocking legitimate research, as the science establishment quickly did back around 1990, it is very hard to undo the mistake.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The way to separate the crackpots from the legitimate researchers is to end the ridicule and black balling of the legitimate researchers, but I'm afraid that will happen only slowly. Most scientists are as subject to social pressures as any people are and quite rightly fear losing professional respect, and even their jobs, if they try to do proper research in a field that has such prejudice against it. Once you let the crackpots take over by stupidly blocking legitimate research, as the science establishment quickly did back around 1990, it is very hard to undo the mistake.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]