Woodford Patient Capital

bowlhead99

iglad wrote: »

Wait and see it disappear more like

iglad wrote: »

The fund won't exist in 10-15 years

Very clever - I suppose it's easy to be witty when you take more than seven months after the posts were made to watch for market developments and then deliver your devastating comeback.



L'esprit d'escalier indeed.

masonic

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Blue sky? It's in rainbow with unicorns sky territory !

The same was said of quantum theory, relativity, the expanding universe, atomic theory, germ theory of disease, evolution, and most other scientific discoveries. Plus a huge number of other theories that were flawed, inadequate or a false description of reality

Theres a shed load of things that could have government research aimed at them before this junk science.

And they do. But unless you take a broad brush approach and assess each proposal on its merits and distribute funding as wide as is practicable, you will miss the areas that will have the biggest impact because it is impossible to predict all of the implications of research in advance.

Perhaps we should hook you up to a thermoelectric generator for your reaction to this, but there is government money currently being pumped into fields of enquiry such as laser fusion, heavy ion beam fusion, magneto-inertial fusion, several approaches based on Pinches and of course magnetic confinement. Have you heard of ITER? It receives the lion's share of government funding into fusion research.

At least I see where the Greater Fools are who are still buying WPCT are coming from.

I doubt people who are proponents of research money going into fusion research specifically, or advocate a broader distribution of such money beyond aspects of science with immediate practical application, are the ones who are buying into WPCT in recent weeks. Few if any of them are likely to believe Andrea Rossi created a device that was capable of sustained and energetically favourable cold fusion.

The fact that "if it worked it would be very valuable" is no more excuse for wasting money on it than on perpetual motion machines, if they worked they would be very valuable. That doesn't mean government should start a research process on it

Suggesting that fusion research is equivalent to research into perpetual motion points to a lack of understanding. Perpetual motion (by which I presume you are referring to an apparatus which creates energy rather than just conserves it) is both theoretically and experimentally impossible. While fusion is not only a naturally occurring phenomenon you can see the evidence of by looking up into the sky, it has been successfully recreated in the lab. The problem is not making fusion happen, it is maintaining the temperature in the case of hot fusion, and understanding the conditions required such that experimental results become more reliable in the case of cold fusion.

Although Industrial Heat's approach, using muon catalysed fusion, is closer to 'perpetual motion' than other approaches, because the energy required to create the muons needed to sustain the process is greater than the energy output that could be expected from such a device. That is the barrier to muon catalysed fusion becoming in any way practical.

AnotherJoe

Masonic, my comments are in so-called cold fusion. Not fusion as is commonly described, eg hot fusion,
As for

The same was said of quantum theory, relativity, the expanding universe, atomic theory, germ theory of disease, evolution, and most other scientific discoveries

Reminds me of the Tommy Cooper joke "they said Einstein was mad they said Newton was mad they said Fred was mad". "Who was Fred" "He was my uncle. He was mad"
The difference between all of those and CF is that they had evidence or were testable and displaced existing theory that had issues with known facts . There's no good evidence for CF, so there's no nothing to displace, heck there's not even much bad evidence for it, what so called results there have been are explainable in a variety of manners from chemistry through to fraud and non existent if it is replaceable because if it was there would be no discussion to have here we'd all have an Mr Fusion on the back of our DeLorean.

Brian65

atush wrote: »

Well someone needs to invest in it- governments maybe?

Based on his track record if Boris thought it was a good idea I'd be worried
Not just him either. I can recall when Britain led the world in Satellite technology.
Then the Government cut its funding at a stroke saying they could see 'no commercial future in satellites'
They put the money in Concorde instead :mad:

masonic

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Masonic, my comments are in so-called cold fusion. Not fusion as is commonly described, eg hot fusion,

As I have pointed out above, there are several different approaches to so-called cold fusion being researched, not just the muon catalysed fusion purported to have been successfully reduced to practice by Rossi.

Reminds me of the Tommy Cooper joke "they said Einstein was mad they said Newton was mad they said Fred was mad". "Who was Fred" "He was my uncle. He was mad"

Indeed, it is a fine line between madness and brilliance

The difference between all of those and CF is that they had evidence or were testable and displaced existing theory that had issues with known facts . There's no good evidence for CF, so there's no nothing to displace, heck there's not even much bad evidence for it, what so called results there have been are explainable in a variety of manners from chemistry through to fraud and non existent if it is replaceable because if it was there would be no discussion to have here we'd all have an Mr Fusion on the back of our DeLorean.

On the contrary, there is good evidence for cold fusion, particularly muon catalysed fusion. Muon catalysed fusion was predicted by accepted theory and has been successfully observed experimentally and reproduced in labs across the world. The problem is that producing a muon currently requires around 10 GeV of energy, but can only induce a sufficient number of fusion events to release about 2 GeV of energy. So Muon catalysed fusion would really depend on a less costly source of muons - that would be a valid avenue of research.

What we can agree on is nowhere near a solved problem. Rossi certainly did not solve it, and his work has done more to harm research in this area than advance it.

JohnRo

Rossi is an out and out convicted fraudster, it's an eternal mystery and really quite impressive in some ways that he ever managed to get his contraption to be taken so seriously.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/Andrea-Rossi-Energy-Catalyzer-Investigation-Index.shtml

LHW99

masonic wrote: »

As I have pointed out above, there are several different approaches to so-called cold fusion being researched, not just the muon catalysed fusion purported to have been successfully reduced to practice by Rossi.


Indeed, it is a fine line between madness and brilliance


On the contrary, there is good evidence for cold fusion, particularly muon catalysed fusion. Muon catalysed fusion was predicted by accepted theory and has been successfully observed experimentally and reproduced in labs across the world. The problem is that producing a muon currently requires around 10 GeV of energy, but can only induce a sufficient number of fusion events to release about 2 GeV of energy. So Muon catalysed fusion would really depend on a less costly source of muons - that would be a valid avenue of research.

What we can agree on is nowhere near a solved problem. Rossi certainly did not solve it, and his work has done more to harm research in this area than advance it.

There are aspects of the idea that are worth additional research, if funding could be found, not least that there may be valuable spin-offs.
As a parallel example, superconductors were originally discovered by studying materials at temperatures close to absolute zero. Little commercial use as such. Gradually research has uncovered materials that exhibit the behaviour at higher temperatures, such that "room temperature superconductors" are certainly a future possibility.
However, the state of research of any CF possibility (not including deliberately false results) is far too distant to make a company promising to commercially exploit it an obvious (to my mind) barge pole situation.

masonic

LHW99 wrote: »

However, the state of research of any CF possibility (not including deliberately false results) is far too distant to make a company promising to commercially exploit it an obvious (to my mind) barge pole situation.

Absolutely. there is a reason why this early stage research typically requires public funding.

Voyager2002

masonic wrote: »

The same was said of quantum theory, relativity, the expanding universe, atomic theory, germ theory of disease, evolution, and most other scientific discoveries. Plus a huge number of other theories that were flawed, inadequate or a false description of reality

No, actually. At least not of quantum theory, nor of relativity.


The reasons why "the establishment" objected to evolution are completely different from those that motivate people (such as me) who believe that investment in Industrial Heat is crazy.

masonic

Voyager2002 wrote: »

No, actually. At least not of quantum theory, nor of relativity.

There appears to be accounts of quantum theory being widely discredited within the scientific community when it was first put forward. Einstein took issue with some of the implications of quantum theory as he could not accept that there was no underlying mechanism to allow the outcome of experiments to be predicted. He also did not like the concept of "spooky action at a distance" at all. He postulated there should be a modification to the theory to overcome this and it was only some years after he died that Bell showed that such a modification could not reproduce the predictions of QM theory and the experiments that are in agreement with those predictions, essentially putting such criticisms of the theory to bed.

As for relativity, Einstein's theory of Special Relativity challenged the widely accepted concept of 'ether'. One can even find articles in the scientific literature trying to defend the latter: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27757305?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

It seems quite clear that these paradigm shifts went through the normal process of being dismissed and criticised for a time before becoming accepted. There is an interesting explanation of the typical process by which science makes such steps forward here if you are interested.

The reasons why "the establishment" objected to evolution are completely different from those that motivate people (such as me) who believe that investment in Industrial Heat is crazy.

Like many discussions, this one digressed a little off the topic of IH specifically (this thread is on Woodford, so consider it a double digression) onto the merits of funding speculative research. "The establishment" are quite right to reject the invention wrapped up in IH, because it is not reproducible - a good indication, when taken together with the reputation of its inventor, that it is fraudulent.