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  • The case against cold fusion experiments

    March 13, 2019 by

    The Fleischmann-Pons press conference was 30 years ago this month! I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time—I was, after all, in preschool—and then I heard hardly a word about cold fusion in college, or in physics grad school, or as a professional physicist. Finally, a few years ago, I was surprised to… Read more

  • The dangerous dark side of cold fusion research

    July 24, 2018 by

    Maybe the previous post would have been a nice way to close out this blog, but I’ll do one last post, because I saw something that just really horrified me. In this otherwise nice and unremarkable article about the low proliferation risks of conventional (tokamak) nuclear fusion, a commenter bragged that cold fusion is awesome… Read more

  • Is there a plausible theory of cold fusion? NOPE.

    July 24, 2018 by

    Well, having spent a LOT of time looking into it, I feel comfortable saying: Nope! There is no plausible theory of how cold fusion could possibly work. Fitting cold fusion into the known laws of physics is like fitting a square peg into a round hole. Over the past 30 years, people have tried hammering that… Read more

  • Numerical spin-boson model, part 1

    July 9, 2017 by

    As I mentioned in the last post, I have some concerns about the spin-boson model of cold fusion that are probably most easily settled via computer calculations. But before I jump into calculating something new, I want to make sure I understand the basics. So, in this post I am simply reproducing the computer calculations in… Read more

  • Spin-boson model – quick update

    June 18, 2017 by

    This is a quick progress report on my studies of the “spin-boson” theory of cold fusion advocated by Peter Hagelstein at MIT. I happen to work 2 blocks away from Dr. Hagelstein’s office, so he’s been nice enough to meet with me a couple times over the years to discuss some of the technical details.… Read more

  • Hydrino (Deep Dirac) Levels

    May 1, 2016 by

    In high school chemistry and 1st-semester quantum mechanics we all learn that “1s” is the ground state of a hydrogen atom. Wake up sheeple! A few brave souls have argued that hydrogen has a lower-energy state than 1s. According to some, it’s a whopping 500keV lower! These alleged lower-energy states are called “deep Dirac levels” or… Read more

  • The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics

    April 25, 2016 by

    Randell L. Mills is the founder of Brilliant Light Power (previously called BlackLight Power), a company trying to generate useful energy by catalyzing transitions of hydrogen into the “hydrino state”, i.e. an alleged state of hydrogen with a lower energy than the 1s state. The existence of this state is justified by Mills early on in his 1800-page tome, The Grand Unified… Read more

  • Controlled Electron Capture Reaction Model

    March 15, 2016 by

    Let’s just be clear: It’s not impossible to do world-beating invention and technological development despite having a terrible understanding of how the technology works microscopically. Just look at the pharmaceutical industry. OK now that that’s out of the way: There’s a company from Berkeley, California called Brillouin Energy. Its CTO and founder, Robert Godes, has posted a theory of cold fusion… Read more

  • The swingset method of overcoming the Coulomb barrier

    October 25, 2015 by

    Hi again, sorry for the long break since the last post, life has been busy. 🙂 I came across this recent article which allegedly describes notes by “Louis F. DeChiaro, Ph.D, a physicist with the US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), Dahlgren Warfare Center”. (I say “allegedly” because the article is a third-hand account. It’s not Dr. DeChiaro’s own… Read more

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