Talk:Cold fusion

Interesting read and neutrality

While I personally don't believe cold fusion would work, I like that this article tries to be neutral on the subject instead of just being predatory like most other controversial articles. Its still not perfect but reading this article made me very angry at the mainstream scientific establishment for their behavior. I'm happy the article didn't accuse the field of being pseudoscience. I want more articles that try to be neutral like this one instead of editors vandalizing articles on here with their own political biases as a coping mechanism for their own personal life issues. Seriously, the fact that the rest of this site isn't as good as this article is proof that most of the top contributors to this site should've been permabanned years ago. And I have the right to say this as someone who's not an editor but has read thousands of articles on here.

One other point I should bring up: anything groundbreaking related to energy storage or generation would always be an issue of national security. Geopolitical instability, the formation of market bubbles and economic instability, and other side effects would make it logical to keep such technology secret and wait for intermediate technologies to soften the blow. For instance, you don't want the energy cells of science fiction to be dropped on society since every thief around would be sapping power from power lines using drones and wars would eventually start. So keep this in mind when you think about advanced technology. If something like cold fusion could work, it would be revealed after hot fusion became successful and more established. 50.81.18.120 (talk) 03:44, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

You fell for snake oil and you don't even realize it, shame! 2601:281:D881:7F10:8B4:48D0:3A87:9A95 (talk) 14:31, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

WP:NOTFORUM. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Topic of Article

I feel like this article is less about cold fusion and more about the Pons and Fleischmann Experiment. I know that experiment is essentially the most widely reported event relating to cold fusion, but shouldn't it get its own article that could focus on government involvement and backlash and important history stuff. However, the cold fusion article should probably be more about the science behind how cold fusion could work, maybe bringing up other possible ways to do cold fusions. You could even combine it with the muon-catalyzed fusion which I just realize has its own separate article. You could discuss why all the theoretical methods don't work or report on the state of research, which is mostly just people repeating the fact that the Fleischmann Pons Experiment doesn't work.

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the term cold-fusion, which I thought was just any fusion at temperatures significantly lower than how it happens now. The fact that there is a separate article for muon-catalyzed fusion indicates I could be wrong, but that might just be because this article, again, mostly just describes the events, reports, and criticisms of the Fleischmann-Pons Experiment.

I would attempt this stuff myself, but it would involve making a new article, combining others, and completely changing this one, that I don't have the Wikipedia skills for. I would also need to do a ton of research into other methods of cold-fusion, which are heavily diluted in the sea of Fleischmann-Pons reports. MrMasterGamer0 (talk) 20:16, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Is there any science behind how cold fusion could work? With reliable sources? If you want speculation, Wikipedia is the wrong place. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

This article is about "the Pons & Fleischmann Experiment and related follow-up work". That's a self-contained topic, and it's notable. So it's perfectly appropriate for there to be a Wikipedia article about "the Pons & Fleischmann Experiment and related follow-up work". And that's what this article is.

Separately, you can say that the title of this article (i.e., "cold fusion") does not reflect the content (i.e., "the Pons & Fleischmann Experiment and related follow-up work"). Now, my own opinion is that the current title is fine, but if you have other suggestions you can offer them! You can even propose to re-title this article literally "the Pons & Fleischmann Experiment and related follow-up work", although I would vote against that one, it's a bit clunky!

Separately, you can say that there ought to be a Wikipedia article on "approaches to nuclear fusion power that don't involve heating something up very much", I guess including scientifically-valid ideas like muon-catalyzed fusion and colliding beam fusion, and also things that don't actually exist like "the Pons & Fleischmann Experiment and related follow-up work". My opinion is that the current setup—where we have separate dedicated articles for those three things, but no overarching one—is the right setup. I think they don't just don't have much to do with each other in any detail. Let people interested in muon-catalyzed fusion read an article about muon-catalyzed fusion, without having to wade through a ton of other stuff thrown in that has nothing to do with muon-catalyzed fusion. There's plenty to say about muon-catalyzed fusion by itself—it's not a short article. And they're all findable as is—the legitimate approaches all have links from fusion power already. So I don't think merging them makes sense, nor making a new overarching article. See what I mean? --Steve (talk) 21:23, 23 November 2024 (UTC)