If this is true ......

[0007]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...l-cost-just-90p-GALLON-run-existing-cars.html

then the ramifications are potentially very far-reaching politically.

Or is it another Cold Fusion episode?

 

[montmorencyt2w]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...l-cost-just-90p-GALLON-run-existing-cars.html

then the ramifications are potentially very far-reaching politically.

Or is it another Cold Fusion episode?

They're no fools at RAL, so there could be something in it.
Trust the bloke from the AA to miss the point.
Yes, petrol is partly expensive because of tax, but the crude from which it is derived is an increasingly rare and therefore increasingly expensive product.

Hydrogen is virtually unlimited, although of course it costs money to isolate and store, so this is not a free lunch, but it might turn out to be cost effective.

Ha ha, I'm glad someone else remembers Cold Fusion. The book by Gary Taubes on the subject is a good unravelling of the story.

You have to be a bit older to remember another scientific non-event called "Polywater".

 

[0007]

You have to be a bit older to remember another scientific non-event called "Polywater".

and ZETA also

 

[arabianights]

lol @ dailymail getting anything true about science.

They once made up an interview with my dad AND a machine he'd invented... except he never made any such machine

It was going to be revolutionary...

 

[dcraig1]

As arabianights says, beware science reporting in the DailyMail.

The problem with hydrogen is that it is slippery stuff. It seeps through everything, causes embrittlement of steel, there is no proper distribution infrastructure etc etc. If they have solved some of these problems, it may be a significant development but these things take a long time and a lot of development to become viable on a large scale.

The article also says nothing about how hydrogen (or whatever the fuel is, as the article is a bit vague) is going to be produced at 19p per litre. High temperature nuclear reactors may be the best low C02 heat source for this but there is still a lot of R&D to be done there too.

 

[robster970]

It's not just the daily hate. I see really poor science regularly in 'reputable' sources too.

At the weekend I saw a quote from Einstein along the lines of "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Have you ever tried to explain special relativity to somebody who thinks it is brand of strong lager?

That's why the papers get it wrong. Lots of it is complicated and cannot be dumbed down without losing huge swathes of context.

 

[Atilla]

lol @ dailymail getting anything true about science.

They once made up an interview with my dad AND a machine he'd invented... except he never made any such machine

It was going to be revolutionary...

He didn't happen to sell it to an Egyptian at a boot sale did he?