Look, Morgan Freeman only bailed because he couldn't track down Keanu Reeves. Without Keanu the thing just wont work. He's the only one who knows the magical frequencies or whatever.

That article reeks of "it's still real to me, dammit!"

Well-balanced article, if poorly written.

Unfortunately, E-Cat has blown all of its credibility by failing to produce the promised output during this "successful" test, compounded by the inventor's public declarations regarding his future marketing/manufacturing plans. Sketchy science aside, this was his one and only chance to prove himself, and he played the "scam" tune perfectly by describing an obvious failure to meet the goal as a "success", then declaring that no further tests will be conducted.

If energy-producing CF is possible through some mechanism that we have yet to discover, then people like this are actively sabotaging the future of humanity for their own personal financial gain. They should be summarily executed in a most gruesome manner, and their heads left on pikes as warnings to anyone else who thinks they can profit at the expense of the entire world.

TFA: Even so, to be completely dismissive of Rossi's claims would seem to be foolish as it is one thing to *believe* something is false based on your assumptions and quite another to be able to *prove* beyond a reasonable doubt that it is false.

Wrong there, chief. Rossi has made an incredible claim. The onus is on him to prove that it does work, not on his deniers to prove it doesn't.

IrateShadow: TFA: Even so, to be completely dismissive of Rossi's claims would seem to be foolish as it is one thing to *believe* something is false based on your assumptions and quite another to be able to *prove* beyond a reasonable doubt that it is false.

Wrong there, chief. Rossi has made an incredible claim. The onus is on him to prove that it does work, not on his deniers to prove it doesn't.

I'm with IrateShadow: it's up to him to provide verifiable evidence that this works, and if so I'll be happy to be convinced.

Hannibal222: That article reeks of "it's still real to me, dammit!"

Actually, he goes out of his way to discredit people like that.

IrateShadow: Wrong there, chief. Rossi has made an incredible claim. The onus is on him to prove that it does work, not on his deniers to prove it doesn't.

Oh, absolutely: the default position should be one of skepticism -- raw and bleeding skepticism, given the history of this particular subject. Nevertheless, labeling him a kook without any evidence is a bit extreme; though, I would say we have that evidence, now.

theorellior: And pay no attention to the sound of the large generator with the same power rating as the 470 KWh supposedly being produced by the E-Cat.

Indeed. I can't believe he came away without bullet holes after that comment, considering the kind of money we're probably talking about.

So they had a 500 watt generator hooked up to the E Cat, which then produced 470 watts?

IrateShadow: TFA: Even so, to be completely dismissive of Rossi's claims would seem to be foolish as it is one thing to *believe* something is false based on your assumptions and quite another to be able to *prove* beyond a reasonable doubt that it is false.

Wrong there, chief. Rossi has made an incredible claim. The onus is on him to prove that it does work, not on his deniers to prove it doesn't.

The point was not that Rossi shouldn't be taken with a grain of salt, but rather that Rossi shouldn't be completely dismissed out of hand simply because they're in a field full of scam artists and shenanigans while making an incredible claim. Basically, wait for them to trip on their dick before throwing the eggs.

P.T. Barnum would love this writer.

/I want to believe!

doglover: Pfft! Try reading some academic books sometime. You want unreadable? Try 400 pages of wall of text in a font so old I don't even know the name in CHICAGO FORMAT! That's unreadable.

I read a ton of it just the same.

I hear you. Rambling, archaic language used to express a concept that should take 20 words with 200 words instead. Drives me up the wall trying to read it, I find myself wanting to grab a pen and go nuts with editing marks and then send it back to the authors tell them to do it over!

Of course, a lot of them are dead now, but a man can dream, can't he?

Well, looks like he just single-handedly set back any research on low-temperature fusion back about 20 years. It's going to suck if someone does make a valid discovery because people are going to point to this, and Fleischmann-Pons and laugh him out of the room.

The secret catalyst to turn nickel into copper while giving off a great deal of heat is very, very hot copper.

IrateShadow: TFA: Even so, to be completely dismissive of Rossi's claims would seem to be foolish as it is one thing to *believe* something is false based on your assumptions and quite another to be able to *prove* beyond a reasonable doubt that it is false.

Wrong there, chief. Rossi has made an incredible claim. The onus is on him to prove that it does work, not on his deniers to prove it doesn't.

The point was not that Rossi shouldn't be taken with a grain of salt, but rather that Rossi shouldn't be completely dismissed out of hand simply because they're in a field full of scam artists and shenanigans while making an incredible claim. Basically, wait for them to trip on their dick before throwing the eggs.

With respect, I disagree.

People making claims like this SHOULD be completely dismissed out of hand. If they are NOT crackpots or crooks, it will become unavoidably obvious very quickly.

They really shouldn't be paid attention to (at least by large numbers of people memed on the internet) until they have as much success as, say, the "Bloom Box".

palelizard: The secret catalyst to turn nickel into copper while giving off a great deal of heat is very, very hot copper.

You can turn nickels into copper and silver pretty easily.

Wow, I totally forgot that the world was ending on Oct. 21. Wait, is this hell?

treesloth: Wow, I totally forgot that the world was ending on Oct. 21. Wait, is this hell?

Hell is two tabs over.

theorellior: doglover: Try 400 pages of wall of text in a font so old I don't even know the name in CHICAGO FORMAT!

Yeah, those old fonts like Garamond or Jansen or Caslon, completely obsolete and unreadable.

What I genuinely wonder is why every new fiction book I pick up seems to mention that it was typeset in some new hot super-readable font, I would think this would have been a solved problem 50+ years ago...

I'm going to stick this here, in case anyone with a better background in chemistry than I comes along and wants to explain/debunk it.

There was some nut claiming to know how Rossi is (legitimately) doing this posting a malformed equation (Ni+H+KaCO3(heated above 70C at 22 bar)=Cu+lots of heat) on a lot of sites. Even I can see that's bogus, but I fiddled with the components until I came up with one (Ni+H+K2CO3...) that had some people talking. Obviously, the paper doesn't mention creating copper, and deals with higher temps, but, do you think this is the bandwagon Rossi is trying to lead? What do you think they're observing here, if anything?

I'm going to go break down some proteins and generate some energy of my own...

wmoonfox: If energy-producing CF is possible through some mechanism that we have yet to discover, then people like this are actively sabotaging the future of humanity for their own personal financial gain. They should be summarily executed in a most gruesome manner, and their heads left on pikes as warnings to anyone else who thinks they can profit at the expense of the entire world.

This HAS to be the single most stupid statement ever made on Fark. Wow!

wmoonfox: What do you think they're observing here, if anything?

From the look of it, a 500 kW generator producing less than 500 kW.

The thread is this far along and there's no real substance. Reminds me of the article.

mr lawson: wmoonfox: If energy-producing CF is possible through some mechanism that we have yet to discover, then people like this are actively sabotaging the future of humanity for their own personal financial gain. They should be summarily executed in a most gruesome manner, and their heads left on pikes as warnings to anyone else who thinks they can profit at the expense of the entire world.

This HAS to be the single most stupid statement ever made on Fark. Wow!

Ever seen the Politics tab, Billy?

wmoonfox: I'm going to stick this here, in case anyone with a better background in chemistry than I comes along and wants to explain/debunk it.

There was some nut claiming to know how Rossi is (legitimately) doing this posting a malformed equation (Ni+H+KaCO3(heated above 70C at 22 bar)=Cu+lots of heat) on a lot of sites. Even I can see that's bogus, but I fiddled with the components until I came up with one (Ni+H+K2CO3...) that had some people talking. Obviously, the paper doesn't mention creating copper, and deals with higher temps, but, do you think this is the bandwagon Rossi is trying to lead? What do you think they're observing here, if anything?

I'm going to go break down some proteins and generate some energy of my own...

The whole idea is BS.

Nickel and Copper are nuclear non-starters. Like Iron, they are too heavy to release any energy under fusion (adding a Hydrogen or Helium atom) and too light to release any energy under fission (breaking the atom into two or more smaller atoms). It just isn't theoretically possible to turn nickel+hydrogen into copper and actually gain energy under ANY conditions.

My suspicion is that the pipes moving the water are being ionized and deposited in the capsule - replacing nickel. They are also finding iron in the capsule as well, which suggest both Fe and Cu are being ionized into solution elsewhere and deposited in the sample capsule. The heat is coming from an outside power source or some other exothermic chemical reaction. This would be easy to test by just leaving the thing on for a few days (beyond any potential fuel source) and controlling the input voltage to a minimal amount. The experiment did NEITHER of those things. So it is BS.

mr lawson: This HAS to be the single most stupid statement ever made on Fark. Wow!

Well, fark you too, asshole.

madgonad: The whole idea is BS.

Well, yeah, that goes without saying. I'd just like to know, for the sake of curiosity, whether there is some chemical reaction going on there.

madgonad:
Nickel and Copper are nuclear non-starters. Like Iron, they are too heavy to release any energy under fusion (adding a Hydrogen or Helium atom) and too light to release any energy under fission (breaking the atom into two or more smaller atoms). It just isn't theoretically possible to turn nickel+hydrogen into copper and actually gain energy under ANY conditions..

Not exactly. Anything heavier than iron-56 is too big to yield energy by turning just itself into heavier nuclei, but getting a proton bound up into some nucleus, any nucleus, yields far more energy than the cost of turning iron into nickel, or nickel into copper, or anything else in that general range. (For example, turning Ni-62 into Cu-63 costs a bit less than 1 MeV, but binding the proton gains you about 7 MeV.) The problem with this guy's claim is the same as the problem with any other cold fusion claim, only more so -- i.e. the Coulomb barrier is about 8 orders of magnitude larger than the energy of the protons.

Professor Science: madgonad:
Nickel and Copper are nuclear non-starters. Like Iron, they are too heavy to release any energy under fusion (adding a Hydrogen or Helium atom) and too light to release any energy under fission (breaking the atom into two or more smaller atoms). It just isn't theoretically possible to turn nickel+hydrogen into copper and actually gain energy under ANY conditions..

Not exactly. Anything heavier than iron-56 is too big to yield energy by turning just itself into heavier nuclei, but getting a proton bound up into some nucleus, any nucleus, yields far more energy than the cost of turning iron into nickel, or nickel into copper, or anything else in that general range. (For example, turning Ni-62 into Cu-63 costs a bit less than 1 MeV, but binding the proton gains you about 7 MeV.) The problem with this guy's claim is the same as the problem with any other cold fusion claim, only more so -- i.e. the Coulomb barrier is about 8 orders of magnitude larger than the energy of the protons.

But but, super secret catalyst!

/Still waiting for evidence

wmoonfox: Well-balanced article, if poorly written.

Unfortunately, E-Cat has blown all of its credibility by failing to produce the promised output during this "successful" test, compounded by the inventor's public declarations regarding his future marketing/manufacturing plans. Sketchy science aside, this was his one and only chance to prove himself, and he played the "scam" tune perfectly by describing an obvious failure to meet the goal as a "success", then declaring that no further tests will be conducted.

If energy-producing CF is possible through some mechanism that we have yet to discover, then people like this are actively sabotaging the future of humanity for their own personal financial gain. They should be summarily executed in a most gruesome manner, and their heads left on pikes as warnings to anyone else who thinks they can profit at the expense of the entire world.

However, these folks are just profiting at the expense of some greedy, scientifically-ignorant money marks, so have at 'er.

Zumaki: The thread is this far along and there's no real substance. Reminds me of the article.

Ha! I made it about half way down the first page of TFA and had to quit. I was hoping the thread would be better. Boy was I wrong. Rossi and his believers should be mercilessly mocked. That is all.

Tofino: However, these folks are just profiting at the expense of some greedy, scientifically-ignorant money marks, so have at 'er.

In the short term, yes. My point, though, was that, if this is indeed a valid field of study, then devices like the E-Cat, and the people who promote them, only serve to damage the legitimacy of researchers and projects which might yield real results, potentially setting back human progress untold decades. By that measure, they are profiting at the expense of the entire world.

Of course, if any process of this nature is entirely impossible, this is all just piss in the wind anyway. That's the wondrous nature of the word "if" for you...

I think the author was far too kind to Rossi by giving any benefit of doubt.

Every step of the way, every E-Cat thing he's done or said publicly appears to follow the path of every other over-unity kook or quack who ever tried to sell a perpetual motion machine (or its "energy producing" equivalent) in the past. If he's deluded, as some free-energy, water-burners appear to be, I'm sorry for him. I kinda, sorta held out one last tiny speck of hope leading into his latest "test", but now I can't avoid the elephant, ahem, 500 kW generator in the room. The test probably stopped at 5.5 hours because, hey, diesel is expensive.

Did it look something like this?

This article > Tebow

kingoomieiii: This article is unreadable.

This

I think you're all missing the point: It's not about the energy or any of that crap. Once we turn the nickle into copper, we can forge magnetic copper (tm) bracelets that cure arthritis forever! Check SkyMall and the Sharper Image catalogs for more information. Products anticipated to ship next Summer.

TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!

Until it can power this, I'm totally uninterested.