Nice use of ridiculous hyperbole to claim things I never said and simultaneously ignore my points about the paper's poor, and largely absent data. This is Slashdot though, so I'm sure scientific skepticism plays second fiddle to your desire to believe in the latest cold fusion/room temp superconductor/martian microbe/supercapacitor/infinite capacity data storage scheme claptrap that comes down the pike, so please carry on as I'm sure you will regardless. Judging from the way this thread is being moderated, you're apparently in good, like-minded company.

Actually, everything I said was relevant and it's called considering the source. Something Slashdot editors, and apparently yourself, care little for. Single author papers in the twenty-first century are the hundred decibel alarm bells of pseudoscience and there is NO WAY in a million years that a paper with a substantial result about something as earth-shattering as room temperature superconductivity is going to be single author (and it sure as hell isn't going to first appear on the freakin' ArXiv).

Your claim that the paper itself is somehow mischaracterized in this story's post is a joke. The title of the paper is "Indications of room-temperature superconductivity at a metal-PZT interface", it's practically identical to what the story here claims. I read the paper and the author is clearly claiming RTSC effects in a PZT transducer, an extraordinary claim if there ever was one. Furthermore, he pompously refers to himself as "we" throughout the paper, even though he's the only author. Credible physicists who are NOT CRACKPOTS, do not put the phrase "room temperature superconductivity" in the title of a paper without making sure the rest of that fucker is filled to the brim with the most spectacularly extraordinary evidence that anyone in the field has seen in years, in order to support such a wildly sensationalistic claim. This paper has exactly none of that kind of evidence and because of it, the author deserves to have his name now associated with a certain Pons and a certain Fleischmann. It doesn't even have a plot showing K vs. ohms at the Tc, the paper is a joke, it's not even fit for burning.

Lisi's E8 paper has been cited like 17 times. I'd say that's pretty good and hardly constitutes "no scientists commenting on it in 3 years". It's usually a good bet, but overhyped media publicity doesn't ALWAYS automatically mean someone's work is shit. Lisi's theory makes concrete falsifiable predictions for new particles that will either be confirmed or ruled out using the LHC's dataset.

Uhhhm no, you don't have to wait for replication. All you have to do is move on to the next story and ignore this stupidity. It's a SINGLE AUTHOR PAPER from some dude at the University of North Bengal, which was reported by a laughably sensationalistic pseudoscience mongering blog and regurgitated here by perhaps the dumbest, most credulous editor on /.'s staff: kdawson (who posts trumpet-blaring room temperature superconductivity stories with such regularity that you could probably set your watch by it). Hang your head in shame /.

I don't know why the post above responding to you is at +3 insightful. It is not. Because if you "multiply that by the number of all other people doing such experiments / fun and telling themselves that they don't have an impact" as Sznupi says, you still only end up with a trivial fraction of He use overall, since only 7% of all He production is used in "fill" applications for buoyancy etc. I'm pretty sure the majority of that 7% is going to fill weather balloons and blimps and the like as you note, and the overwhelming majority ISN'T being used as kid's party decoration.

So don't worry, go out, get your kid one of those small $40 tanks and have fun. Better still, use your imagination and take the opportunity to teach your kids about some physics / chemistry. Start with the phenomenon of buoyancy and how that works (look at how a He filled balloon weirdly behaves in a car), show how helium is non-flammable and explain where its inertness comes from (electron valency - It's already "happy" with the number of e- it has), pick up a cheapo $10 vacuum thermos from Wal-mart or wherever and have your local welding supply shop fill it with liquid nitrogen ($5) so you can demonstrate how gasses expand/contract with temperature changes (the air in a balloon that has been manually blown full will liquefy in LN2, but a He filled balloon won't - explain WHY!), show them some videos about liquid helium on youtube and how much colder it is than LN2, explain how breathing it shifts the speed of sound - thereby shifting the pitch of your voice, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Is some of this well beyond the level of your 8yr old? Hell yes, and that's why you should do it! It doesn't matter if kids "get it" 100% all the time as so many stultifying grammar school teachers stupidly seem to believe. It matters much more that they are exposed to new things that make them think about familiar phenomena in new ways. They'll remember how fun and interesting the experience was, and the curiosity bred from that will stick with them forever. [/tangent]

Ya still around, stopped editing wikipedia a while ago though. Seemed like a futile waste of time with all the vandals. Maybe I'll start again after ignition on NIF. Sad to see you have seemingly gone to the dark side of wind/solar advocacy though ;))

truly, you've shattered through the final boundaries of what humans have heretofore known as the limits of megadouche pedantry.

"Your response was to go to known anti-nuclear environmental web sites and show that, in fact, they are anti-nuclear. This is about as insightful as going to a vegetarian web site to show that some people are against eating meat."

Um no genius. I was providing links to show that anti-fusion environmentalist organizations do in fact, exist; you know, that thing you specifically asked to be proven to you to exist because you didn't believe there was such a thing!!? I've obviously wasted my time with you here though, as you're now simply moving the goalposts and incapable of logical reasoning.

Thank you both. My thoughts exactly. I consider MYSELF an environmentalist, just one with a clue about nuclear physics.

are you at pppl?

And there's another one. The issue of implosion symmetry in direct drive irradiation schemes was solved like, oh, a decade ago by using spectral smoothing by dispersion and distributive phase plate modulation of the drive beams. Get with the times honey, we're regularly down to 1-2% RMS drive inhomogenity these days. Going from indirect to direct drive alone gives you a TENFOLD irradiation intensity for capsule drive. The latest hydrocode simulations indicate 1MJ drive shots at the second harmonic (532nm green light) should be capable of producing up to 300MJ yields.

They weren't his words, they were mine. Anyway it's a perfectly cromulent term. Used all the time: http://euobserver.com/843/30103

For someone so worried about "irresponsible bullcrap" on this subject you sure have a pretty long laundry list of misconceptions about it that you're obviously suffering from. To note just ONE, you're clearly unaware of even the simplest distinctions in the field of ICF like the difference between direct and indirect drive fuel microcapsule design and gain profiles - which is PRETTY IMPORTANT.

"'Anti-fusion environmentalist organizations' I wonder who that is exactly? Care to name one?"

Well here ya go Einstein: http://www.stop-iter.org/
here's another: http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/nuclear-free/reactors/index.shtml
and oh look, another: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/ITERprojectFrance/

Pro tip: before launching into a wildly hyperbolic rants, maybe do a 2 second search first.

I find that virtually all anti-nuclear organizations (who, to a person, will consider themselves to be environmentalists) will, upon being asked of their opinion, gush forth an endless stream of FUD bullshit about fusion research so ridiculously stupid it would make a cat laugh. Notice how I qualified the word "environmentalist" in the story with the term "anti-nuclear" and never said anywhere that ALL environmentalists are thus inclined. I made this qualification because I CONSIDER MYSELF and environmentalist. By all means though, don't let any of this keep you from your fatuous ramblings about "pigheaded morons" though.

I dispute your assertion that my phrasing was ad-hominem. Greenpeace's current stance on the matter is thus: "Governments should not waste our money on a dangerous toy which will never deliver any useful energy" Sortir du nucleaire's stance is that ITER is a hazard "because scientists do not yet know how to control DT reactions", a statement so laughably stupid I don't even know where to begin with it. There's a whole website devoted to trying to use scare tactics to shut it down at http://www.stop-iter.org/ These people are dangerous and calling them out on their dogmatic bullshit ideology isn't ad-hominem, it's an urgent necessity.