
Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments - okket
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01683-9
======
arxpoetica
One of the most iconic images of my childhood is when my scientist-inventor
dad attempted to reproduce in his own lab the Fleischmann–Pons experiments of
the late 80s. He'd built (I think to spec) an exact replica according to the
published designs. Of course, nothing ever came of it, but it still fascinates
me to this day thinking of him laboring over that. (The long beard and unkempt
hair lent well to my image of him as mad scientist.)

I asked him later about the results of those experiments, and his sort of
retort sounded like an embarrassing admission, something along the lines of
"nothing will ever come of that."

I still idol the awesomeness of those days though.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _the Fleischmann–Pons experiments of the late 80s_

I recall a talk given at an MIT club a few years ago in which a researcher
claimed loading was insufficiently controlled in follow-on experiments. I
think cold fusion and F-P is probably a fraud, but it sowed enough doubt in my
mind so as to make a follow-up, if not reasonable, also not unreasonable.

------
peterlk
The cynicism in this threads hurts.

> “This is not just a chase for cold fusion,” says Matthew Trevithick, a
> research programme manager at Google in Mountain View, California. “If it
> were, I don’t think we would have maintained an interest of this calibre of
> team for so long.”

Here's what I see: fusion power would be a step function in human
civilization. Such step functions are pathologically hard to achieve, because
new modes of thinking are hard for humans to do. Calling it cold fusion is a
calling card to scientists who are serious about researching novel approaches
to fusion instead of playing the politics of the research paper game. Will it
work? Probably not. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Also, from
Google's perspective, if they're the company that owns the IP for fusion
energy, that's a pretty massive win. Additionally, if they push just a few
other companies into funding fusion research, then the odds that we see viable
fusion energy production (not cold fusion) in our lifetimes probably
increases. I would love to see a private industry race for fusion research,
though, the financial requirements of such endeavors mean the game would only
be open to a very small number of global megacorps. Still it would be better
than not doing it.

~~~
olooney
The skepticism is not about fusion power, it's about cold fusion specifically,
as well role of proprietary IP and patents in scientific research.

Tokamak[1] (and other magnetic confinement) reactors seem much more promising
and have seen slow but non-zero improvements for decades[2]. Some reactors
like JT-60 have come close to being energy positive[3] but are not yet self
sustaining. Large ongoing projects like like ITER[4] have the potential to
break past limits and provide invaluable data. There are also advances in
plasma physics which improve our ability to run computer simulations[5] of
Tokamaks and suggest new hypotheses for how they can be improved[6].

If Google were serious about fusion, they would invest in this kind of
mainstream research. Unfortunately, that's too big for them to own end-to-end;
the most they could do would be to participate in the international process.
But that wouldn't result in proprietary, patent-able technology, so they
instead they put resources behind fringe science that they can control. This
is reminiscent of the Lockheed-Martin CFR[7], which also chose an approach
which was extremely unlikely to result in a scientific breakthrough but which
did yield a few patents for Lockheed-Martin.

Frankly, behavior which is only one step removed from straight-up patent
trolling justifies a certain degree of cynicism.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_fusion)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60)

[4]: [https://www.iter.org/](https://www.iter.org/)

[5]: [http://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/topics/plasma-fusion-
theory...](http://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/topics/plasma-fusion-theory-
simulation)

[6]: [https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-stabilizes-
fusion-p...](https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-stabilizes-fusion-
plasmas.html)

[7]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion_Reactor)

~~~
darawk
So, you must think one of two things, then:

1\. Google, with all of the subject matter expertise they can avail themselves
of, is completely wasting their money on this research that has no hope of
success.

2\. It'd be a bad thing for the world if we got cold fusion, but Google made
some money off of it.

Is that right?

~~~
danShumway
It would be a bad thing for the world if we got cold fusion and Google
controlled the entire stack, yes.

This is because in the long, long term, allowing a company to dictate how a
technology this important is used could hamper our ability to build on it or
improve it. Over a long enough timescale, it would be better if we delayed
getting cold fusion so that we could get the same technology later in a less
encumbered form.

If cold fusion is possible, and Google stops working on it, we can still get
it through other means. Other people can pick up Google's slack. If Google
manages to crack it, and as a result is able to put legally enforceable
restrictions on how it's used, then that's it. There's nowhere to go from
there.

~~~
natechols
Those legally enforceable restrictions last for less than two decades; it's
already been 30 years since the Pons and Fleischmann fiasco.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
It's also assuming they would do something untoward with the monopoly, rather
than just building a thousand new power plants and then making ten trillion
dollars by being the lowest cost provider of zero carbon power generation for
twenty years.

~~~
dTal
I don't know how the math works out exactly, but it seems not unlikely that
the optimal rollout for curbing carbon emissions as rapidly as possible is not
the same as the optimal rollout for maximizing value to shareholders.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Why not? If someone is buying power from coal instead of you when you have
lower costs, that's money you're leaving on the table.

~~~
dTal
I'm sure there's lots of ways it could happen. Off the top of my head - you
can't just snap your fingers and start selling power, you need to build the
reactors, scale out infrastructure, etc etc. There's huge expenditure
involved. If you have a giant pile of money in the bank, earning interest, it
might not be worth your while to spend it on that.

Another point - how much do you charge for the power? If your goal is to get
people to switch, the answer is "as little as you can". If your goal is to
make money, the answer is "as much as you can".

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> If you have a giant pile of money in the bank, earning interest, it might
> not be worth your while to spend it on that.

But that's the case either way. If the technology was public domain, somebody
would still have to pay to build the reactors, and then it's even harder to
raise capital because with more competition there is less profit.

> If your goal is to make money, the answer is "as much as you can".

But "as much as you can" really means "just under what existing alternatives
cost" \-- because getting people to switch is how you make money. You don't
make money by losing customers to competitors.

------
beders
While LENR and CANR research has seen a significant amount of charlatans,
there's a large body of papers available and there's yearly meetings. More
details here: [https://lenr-canr.org/](https://lenr-canr.org/)

I've yet to make up my mind about 'cold fusion' but since there are
interesting results and research is still being funded, there's clearly
something we don't understand yet.

~~~
singularity2001
I invested two weeks with in-depth analysis of the available papers and came
to the conclusion that there is no good evidence. Usually the produced
quantities where below the error margins of the background noise, or they put
in so much energy that the measured effects could have come from _any_
reaction, or it was not reproducible by others.

------
raverbashing
Fair play to them

It seems they really did their homework and tried pushing it as well as they
could, with new techniques and studies.

The chances of success were slim, but the chances of having missed something
30 years ago were also non-negligible

And even if your main experiment failed, if you could still take out some new
techniques and knowledge from it, the better it is

~~~
dalbasal
_Fair play to them_

Hello neighbor... I assume.

------
Tepix
I like it. I don't believe they will achieve cold fusion, but who knows? If
there's even a slim chance for it to work it's worth looking into by
respectable scientists that will enable other labs around the world to
replicate their results, unlike the dubious experiments we've seen in the
past.

~~~
mdorazio
And even if they don't find a way to achieve cold fusion, the electrochemistry
they're researching is still worthwhile to explore for other applications.

------
pfdietz
What amazes me about cold fusion is that anyone, even the cranks, think it's
plausible.

I mean, look at it from a conditional probability point of view. Initially,
before any of the furor, the chance of it being real would have been very low.
Then P&F have their fiasco. Their results were wrong. But somehow this was
taken as meaning Cold Fusion was more likely than it had been previously. But
how could that be? Their results, properly interpreted, were negative.
Negative results can only reduce the probability something is correct, not
increase it.

------
redmattred
I thought they meant the programming language for a moment

~~~
sixothree
That would be "controversial".

------
ridewinter
This kind of stuff makes me so happy to own Google stock. Even if it drives
the stock analysts crazy.

------
dmckeon
Back when Pons & Fleischmann made their claims, the best indicator of
widespread acceptance was the commodities futures market for platinum (and
perhaps palladium - don’t recall if there were Pd contracts then). It was
interesting to compare news coverage from various media - science, serious,
popular, and tabloid - with the markets.

------
sudoaza
This makes perfect sense: \- 10 millon usd to Google is close to nothing. \-
payout if success would be huge and there is place for unexpected derivative
technology. \- there is still lots of wiggle place in physics, think for
example superconductors or meta-materials.

------
dr_dshiv
They didn't look at sonofusion, though, did they? That involves room
temperature apparatus, but extremely high local temperatures -- due to
collapsing bubbles. (Similar to sonoluminescence)

I remember this from the late Robert Apfel's work at Yale -- because wouldn't
it just be swell if bubbles could be the basis for fusion and clean energy?
The problem was that bubbles need to be perfectly symmetrical for sufficient
collapse power and that is only possible in zero gravity.

Here is a paper from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002954930...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029549307002257)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The problem was that bubbles need to be perfectly symmetrical for sufficient
> collapse power and that is only possible in zero gravity.

Then wouldn't that work to power a spacecraft?

~~~
aeternus
Only if the spacecraft never accelerates.

------
dumbfoundded
I'd love to learn more about the actual methods they're pursuing. One I like
and related to cold fusion is muon-catalyzed fusion. Theoretically, it should
be possible and dramatically lower the temperatures required for fusion. Muons
are like electrons but much heavier and less stable. When a muon replaces an
electron, it allows nuclei to get much closer together, lowering the energy
requirement for fusion. The practical challenge is creating muons with less
energy than you get from fusion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-
catalyzed_fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion)

~~~
tim333
There are also fusors which you can make at home
[http://discovermagazine.com/2010/extreme-universe/18-do-
it-y...](http://discovermagazine.com/2010/extreme-universe/18-do-it-yourself-
basement-fusion)

------
ChuckMcM
Not exactly a "cold case" as there are regular conferences on work in "LENR"
(low energy nuclear reactions). Given the bulk of the work, and the results
AFAICT it is slowly shedding some of the 'snake oil' reputation and developing
a "definitely something here which is not explained by the current
understanding" sort of vibe. As it points out in the article, this is a group
effort to come up with a solid, reliably reproducible experiment, that
demonstrates the effect. In that way everyone can baseline to a common
phenomena and a common experimental setup for comparing notes.

------
tr33house
Looks like research has been going on from 2015. I wonder why Google decided
to keep this a secret... and I wonder how many such long-term projects exist.

Maybe it's the possible upside that motivated the secrecy

~~~
nostrademons
They often do early research in secrecy to keep the pressure off the team. If
you announce "We're going to ship cold fusion in 2020" or even "We're looking
into cold fusion approaches", then suddenly everybody's interested in the
research team, there's a huge amount of pressure on them, and they no longer
have the freedom to tinker with different approaches and critically look at
the data. If you keep it secret then it's just a bunch of really smart guys
being funded to look into some intriguing idea.

In this case they got a negative result, so the secrecy was probably warranted
- would they have had the courage to put out 9 peer-reviewed papers detailing
a negative result if everybody had been asking them "So, when are we gonna be
able to use cold fusion" since 2015? The cynic in me thinks that the project
was just canceled, which is why Google is going to the press now - they have
no more vested stake in the outcome, but it'd be beneficial if somebody else
tried it and _did_ manage to find an approach that works.

------
gnufx
I've only skimmed this thread, but I don't see this perspective, in case
people are still reading.

The common thread in practitioners of this stuff, and people attacking those
who call it out as rubbish, seems to be rejecting nuclear physics while
claiming to be observing (or supporting the possibility of) nuclear processes.
I don't mean just established nuclear theory and experiment. Convincing
evidence for reaction products is missing -- both nuclear and chemical ones --
and I'd expect detecting reaction products to be relatively easy compared with
accurate calorimetry. People qualified to do make such measurements doubtless
won't be considered sufficiently neutral, shall we say, about the physics.
Anyhow, rather than say "it doesn't happen" they would be able to put a decent
limit on the rate of such processes, whatever their a priori attitude.
"Science doesn't care what you believe", as I recently saw on a T-shirt.

I remember when the Fleischmann and Pons stuff first appeared. It was so
obviously pathological science that it didn't seem worth devoting resources
towards it. Did you know that palladium is a particularly useful target for
nuclear physics? Then I was doing spectroscopy on fusion reactions with it
(and we had probably the best gamma-ray, neutron, and recoil nuclei
detectors). There was no evidence of any anomalies associated with palladium.
Apropos possibly burying evidence against established physics: those
measurements demonstrated that the conventional wisdom about aspects of the
processes was wrong. In contrast, I studied fusion reactions for which actual
nuclear physicists presented evidence against the basic compound nucleus
model; better measurements and calculations supported the model. The work was
peer reviewed in the usual nuclear physics journals, of course.

------
maxxxxx
Fine with me. Maybe this will put an end to the conspiracy theories about
suppression of of cold fusion experiments.

~~~
lucozade
You may be underestimating the thought processes of conspiracy theorists.

Google have admitted to spending multiple millions over a number of years on a
cold fusion team yet the team are still only publishing negative results? No
one does that unless there are results they're not publishing...etc etc.

~~~
wtdata
In the article it points out that although the results are negative when it
comes to cold fusion, they had positive results about connected themes like
materials research.

------
dfilppi
Next on the docket: turning lead into gold at room temperature.

~~~
Asooka
Bah, that's trivial with modern science. You just bombard the lead atom's core
with a precise beam of electrons until you knock out two neutrons and a
proton. I have the schematics for a very elegant apparatus to do that, but
this text box is too small to contain them.

~~~
jschwartzi
I have been wondering what to do with the bucket of free electrons I've been
keeping from my other experiments.

------
ggggtez
Maybe it's a dead end, but the it sounds like they found some promising
avenues for improved battery tech along the way. Something about hydrogen
storage...

Like anyone else, I'd love to see fusion harnessed for electricity. One step
closer to post-scarcity, but I can settle for more compact phones.

------
mikejulietbravo
Is there an ELI5 of why cold fusion is so difficult to achieve?

~~~
ars
The simplest answer is: It's not real. There is no such thing as cold fusion.

It's not a matter of "so difficult", it's not actually possible.

Are you asking, why is there no such thing as cold fusion? If so then in the
simplest way I can explain it:

Atoms are like little magnets that repel each other.

To get fusion you need to get the atoms to touch - but you can't, they repel.
So you have to press them together really really hard, to force them.

The only way we know to do that involves lots of temperature and pressure.
Cold fusion simply doesn't press them together hard enough.

The idea of cold fusion was that certain metals would act like magnet-shields,
stopping the atoms from repelling. But all known science says that that is not
actually a real thing.

~~~
criddell
> Atoms are like little magnets that repel each other.

Is that a good analogy? I wonder because the first thought that popped in my
head is that magnets also attract each other.

~~~
ars
> is that magnets also attract each other.

Electrons attract atomic nuclei (which is the part of the atom that fuses),
normally they are too far away to matter, but if you replace them with muons
(which are basically heavy electrons) then you can actually help the atoms
come close enough because the muon attracts both.

Since the muon is heavier it orbits closer to the nucleus of the atom, which
helps it cancel out the repelling force.

It's too bad muons cost too much energy to be useful this way, or we'd already
have commercialized fusion.

~~~
criddell
> Since the muon is heavier it orbits closer to the nucleus of the atom, which
> helps it cancel out the repelling force.

Even this is hard for me to wrap my head around when I try to also remember
that these particles are really just quantum field phenomena.

~~~
ars
Heavier means a smaller (shorter) wavelength, bend that wavelength into a
circle around the nucleus, and it's smaller, since the circle is smaller, it's
closer.

------
JulianMorrison
They should do polywell fusors next.

------
microtherion
This seems to be in keeping with Google's "Moon Shot" philosophy — investing
in some projects with potentially high payoff, but low probability of success.

If Tesla were pursuing a project like this, they'd probably announce that they
were expecting all their cars to ship with cold fusion reactors by 2020 — and
then start hiring a team ;-)

~~~
usaphp
I know you are joking, but unlike Google, Tesla at least tries to finish
whatever they start and actually deliver stuff, while google quickly jumps the
ship if the thing does not work out and abandoned all their customers

~~~
drewg123
As a Tesla owner, I have to say that I'm really looking forward to them
delivering the Full Self Driving option that I paid for 18 months ago when I
bought my car.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
The worst part is, it doesn't seem like they'll be able to. I'm curious what
happens if they ultimate need additional / different sensors to make it
happen. Do they replace those parts for free?

~~~
microtherion
I also wonder whether the choice of sensor technology they already (pre-)SOLD
informs Tesla's opinion of what sensor technology is NEEDED for Full Self
Driving (Their view that LIDAR is not necessary seems to be an outlier in the
industry; are we sure that view is not influenced by the sizable outlay they'd
face for upgrading their previously sold FSD option cars if they changed their
mind?)

------
orbots
[https://brillouinenergy.com](https://brillouinenergy.com)

These guys seem to have figured it out.

Seems the problem with replicating cold fusion is that what most researchers
do degrades the "lattice" that enables the reaction. So even if you do manage
to get results, you won't be able to repeat it.

------
darkpuma
> _" The Google team explored three experimental set-ups that have been
> proposed to generate cold fusion — two involving palladium and hydrogen, and
> one involving metallic powders and hydrogen. None found evidence of fusion.
> The results have been published across 12 papers over the past 2 years: 9 in
> peer-reviewed journals and 3 on the arXiv preprint server."_

It seems obvious to me that you can't achieve fusion using a catalyst.
Catalysts are great if you're doing chemistry, but nuclear fusion is a lot
different. You've got to force two positively charged nuclei to merge and I
just don't see how a catalyst could accomplish that. That it didn't work for
them seems to vindicate my casual dismissal, but I'm left wondering why they
thought it worth trying in the first place. What were they thinking of that I
haven't?

> _" Trevithick recruited 30 researchers who had no strong opinions on cold
> fusion."_

Surely 'having an open mind' about cold fusion is itself a _" strong opinion"_
about cold fusion.

~~~
lostmyoldone
As far as I understand, most of the ideas concerning how fusion at low
temperatures, and their relationship with eg. Pd is not because of chemical
catalysis, but because it readily dissociates and dissolves hydrogen (and
isotopes) into it's crystal structure.

This process brings the hydrogen atoms ( at ntp ) at least as close as
hydrogen molecules at roughly 2000 atmospheres, and maybe much closer, if I
punched in the correct numbers.

I believe it was (when cold fusion was, ahem, hot) speculated that the process
of hydrogen solution/diffusion within the metallic matrix had somehow forced
the hydrogen much closer together, while possibly creating local heating
because of changes in the metallic structure at high hydrogen saturation, and
that this was somehow both hot enough and close enough to create fusion.

~~~
trhway
>at least as close as hydrogen molecules at roughly 2000 atmospheres, and
maybe much closer,

it is just a liquid hydrogen density. If any cold fusion is there i would bet
that it would be some play due to huge electron cloud of Pd.

Pressure/atom distance wise - the high pressure experiments using diamond
anvil compress hydrogen up to 1M+ atm . That is still well below the Jupiter
core though, and so naturally no fusion, yet one can make things interesting
say by zapping that pressurized hydrogen with laser. Should get NIF style
results with much less power or alternatively much better results with the NIF
power.

