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At last, cold fusion

The successful exploitation of fusion reactions for the generation of energy to power our world has been the holy grail of physicists for decades.

All manner of different techniques are being explored including the use of magnetic containment in tokamaks to inertial confinement with ultra-powerful laser pulses used to initiate the reaction.

Unfortunately, we have yet to achieve sustained over-unity energy production using any of these techniques.

Some years ago, a couple of researchers by the names of Stanley Ponns and Martin Fleishman shook the halls of the scientific community by announcing that they had achieved fusion -- without the incredible heat normally required.

They called it "cold fusion" and next year, you'll be able to buy your own cold-fusion reactor for domestic use.

Honest... I kid you not!

According to this website, 10KW domestic units will be available next year.

Who would have thought that, despite the numerous failed attempts to actually duplicate P&F's experiments in a consistently repeatable way, this company would be rolling out commercially viable cold-fusion generators within a year or so of today.

Just look at how small and convenient your 10KW CF reactor will be. That'll fit under the sink in the kitchen with room to spare!

And the price? just $2,500.

Woohoo... that's less than a year's worth of power for most Kiwi households

How on earth will the government ever manage to flick off those state-owned energy companies now I wonder?

Of course there is the 6-monthly refill but that only costs $150 -- pretty cheap for such high quality snake oil I think.

Yes, that's right -- this is clearly a scam.

What surprises me is that hucksters like this are allowed to get away with publishing these claims and invitations to "pre-order". This is clearly an Aussie attempt so you'd think that the ACCC would be coming down on them like a tonne of bricks -- perhaps they will -- eventually.

If you're interested in a little more background on the claims made by this crowd, take a look at the "inventor's" track record and the response of the existing science community to his claims. Wikipedia has a lot of good information on that.

Now imagine if you put one of these in your car and used the energy generated to split water into a mythical gas such as HHO. You could then pass that HHO through a powerful magnet (so as to align its molecules), waft it through a mesh made of tin to increase its reactiveness and then over a turbulator in the intake of your car's engine.

The only downside to all this super snake-oil technology would be that you'd have to pull over ever 100kms or so because the petrol tank would be overflowing and need draining -- right?

PT Barnum was never more right than today.

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