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Did you know that our fascination with cold fusion — unlimited energy created at room temperature — all began with the holder of the first patent for the television? His name was Philo Farnsworth, and it seems his success at creating moving images convinced him he could manipulate neutrons at the atomic level. Alas, no such thing proved true then, or ever has since. We remain fascinated at the prospect of infinite energy created almost effortlessly, despite evidence from our own star about the challenging requirements.
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BILL NYE:
Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life.
In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live.” This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate.
While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children’s books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of Tiny Germs.”
Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries” airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye” airs on PBS stations across the country.
Bill’s latest project is hosting a show on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens.” It’s about environmentally responsible choices that consumers can make as they go about their day and their shopping. Also, you’ll see Nye in his good-natured rivalry with his neighbor Ed Begley. They compete to see who can save the most energy and produce the smallest carbon footprint. Nye has 4,000 watts of solar power and a solar-boosted hot water system. There’s also the low water use garden and underground watering system. It’s fun for him; he’s an engineer with an energy conservation hobby.
Nye is currently the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Loki: Good evening Mr. Nye. My name is Loki and I have Cerebral Palsy so I’m sorry if I sound weird or look weird, but my question to you is on cold fusion. Was it something that actually had merit or was it something that the scientific community legitimately had reasons for banning it. Your thoughts please.
Bill Nye: Loki, Loki, Loki, you don’t look that weird it to us sir. You look fine. About cold fusion, so here was the idea. There’s a guy who really had the first patent on television was the mythic, this is really his name, Philo Farnsworth. And it is said he told people that he had the idea for television by plowing his uncle’s potato field as a kid and he looked at the way the furloughs went across the field and inferred that would be a way to make a moving picture. That same guy got it in his head that he could make neutrons do whatever he wanted, like he had this one success and he got it in his head that he could influence neutrons and he created a device which he called a phaser and that word has later been used to describe rotating vectors in light waves and heat waves.
But this thing was going to enable neutrons to fuse together at room temperature. He was not able to do it. In order to do that, as far as we can tell right now, you need the gravity of a star, which we have at our nearby star, the sun, and people have speculated that you could also contain fusion, not speculated, I’m short changing us, people have shown that you can contain fusion in a magnetic field, a very, very strong magnetic field, but no one has been able to build a magnetic field powered that fusion reaction makes enough power to establish the magnetic field strong enough to hold it. So in my experience growing up it’s always 40 years from now when this will be done, but recently an aircraft company…
Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-on-cold-fusion