ha ha cold fusion

January 30, 2011 1:26 PM

Cold fusion returns to the debate over itself. Rossi and Focardi say that, when the atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen are fused in their reactor, the reaction produces copper and a large amount of energy. The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000 W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes. Every minute, the reaction can convert 292 grams of 20°C water into dry steam at about 101°C. Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power, the experiment provides a power gain of 12,400/400 = 31. As for costs, the scientists estimate that electricity can be generated at a cost of less than 1 cent/kWh, which is significantly less than coal or natural gas plants.

Fantastic claims aside, it is worth noting that cold fusion (aka "low energy nuclear reaction") has been quietly under experimentation for years.

posted by Brian B. (52 comments total)

Rossi and Focardi’s paper on the nuclear reactor has been rejected by peer-reviewed journals, but the scientists aren’t discouraged. They published their paper in the Journal of Nuclear Physics, an online journal founded and run by themselves, which is obviously cause for a great deal of skepticism.

No shit, Sherlock.
posted by jcreigh at 1:46 PM on January 30, 2011 [14 favorites]

The thing that bothers me about that description is this clause:

Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power...

It doesn't require any particular power level. It requires a certain number of joules per gram of water, but if the insulation on the system is good, that power can be introduced at any rate (that is, any wattage) you want.

Which means that whoever wrote that sentence doesn't really know anything about physics. Was it a misinformed reporter, or is it handwaving by R&F?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:57 PM on January 30, 2011 [3 favorites]

Hey, you got your physics in my dream of free energy!
*cue crazy candybar music*
posted by From Bklyn at 1:59 PM on January 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

That they're talking about commercial release by the end of the year is another BS flag. All they have to do is get some schmucks to jump in on investing, and claim they're "almost there" for a year or two while bilking and the publicity stunt will have paid them well.
posted by yeloson at 2:01 PM on January 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

CP, if you read the immediately previous quoted sentence, it says it's boiling 292 grams per minute. Yes, there's a units fail there, but the math is correct: Wolfram Alpha says the energy for that 292 grams is 743 kJ, and 743 kJ per minute is 12400 W.
posted by hattifattener at 2:04 PM on January 30, 2011 [4 favorites]

I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a world-shaking breakthrough?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:13 PM on January 30, 2011

And don't miss the fact that these guys are being accused down the page of doing something exactly similar to someone else in Italy, which could explain a rush job straight for the money and be consistent with the negative character summaries. Their response: "We're making reactors, he isn't."
posted by Brian B. at 2:15 PM on January 30, 2011

CPB: I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a world-shaking breakthrough?

Like the Katie Couric interview from yesterday, when that happens, all the local university nerds will be out in full force trying to explain the breakthrough to an uncomprehending media. Here, the nerds are laughing and dismissing the news - not a good sign.
posted by Popular Ethics at 2:25 PM on January 30, 2011 [5 favorites]

I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a world-shaking breakthrough?

Probably a few dead scientists and a miltary-DoE project somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:29 PM on January 30, 2011 [4 favorites]

I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a world-shaking breakthrough?

Steve Ballmer will get up on a stage and yell PHYSICISTS a lot.
posted by Ritchie at 2:50 PM on January 30, 2011 [5 favorites]

They go on at length about how no mass is escaping without telling how much copper is being produced besides saying the reactors need to be refueled every six months. A serious oversight in my opinion because if they have a self sustaining reaction to produce copper from even heavy water the transmutation effects of their device will have just as great an impact as the energy production effects. Hell one could set up at any bauxite mine and simultaneously produce copper and aluminum while feeding power into the grid. Cheap copper and aluminum would be a huge engineering boon.
posted by Mitheral at 2:58 PM on January 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hmm, I dunno. This has the feel of a perpetual motion machine in some respects, especially the controlled demonstration part. But they're unusually specific about the exact power inputs and outputs, and it's rather interesting they've got a specific refueling schedule in mind; the perpetual motion machines are always 'free'.

I'm worried that they don't characterize the nature of the reaction better. One would assume that they could simply measure the exact radiation being emitted, and know precisely what fusion reaction was taking place. As far as I know, this stuff is very well understood, although I suppose it's possible that some or all of the data is classified.

Unlike the perpetual motion machines, this one isn't impossible on its face, so I don't think it can be ignored from a standpoint of simple logic and physics. Given the claimed inputs, I believe the claimed output energy is at least mathematically possible.

A steady 8:1 magnification of input energy could potentially be very appealing, depending on how much copper and nickel are consumed. Those aren't cheap to mine or smelt, and the overall process may still be energy-negative, when you consider all the inputs.

If it actually does work, and they can get the overall output level up to more like 25:1, it could be a big deal.
posted by Malor at 3:28 PM on January 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

It could also, of course, be a total scam. But I don't think we can be certain of being scammed just sitting in an armchair, the way we can with most machines of this type.
posted by Malor at 3:30 PM on January 30, 2011

Someone on Slashdot has proposed a chemical explanation for what's going on in that reactor. It's in this thread, one or two levels down; I can't work out how to link to the comment directly.

Quoting from that user's comment:
Reducing the layer of oxidized nickel in the presence of oxygen and hydrogen is an exothermic reaction that produces heat [slashdot.org] at about the levels shown in this experiment. This is chemistry they are doing. The hydrogen is combining with oxygen and producing steam. There are about 50ppm of copper in nickel and they are merely extracting it.

So there does seem to be the possibility that they're just seeing a chemical reaction. I'm neither a chemist nor a physicist, so don't take my word on any of this. Can anyone better informed comment?
posted by metaBugs at 3:30 PM on January 30, 2011 [3 favorites]

They go on at length about how no mass is escaping without telling how much copper is being produced besides saying the reactors need to be refueled every six months. A serious oversight in my opinion because if they have a self sustaining reaction to produce copper from even heavy water the transmutation effects of their device will have just as great an impact as the energy production effects.

That's not what it says at all is it? It says it generates copper from nickel and hydrogen nuclei - since nickel has 28 protons, hydrogen has 1, and copper has 29, I find this plausible. I guess they're using heavy water to get the right balance of neutrons? Anyway, transmuting nickel into copper is much less fun than water to copper.
posted by rkent at 3:36 PM on January 30, 2011

I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a world-shaking breakthrough?

I assume it would resemble the discussion over evolution theory, or global warming, or carbs versus fat. Anything less would get financed.
posted by Brian B. at 3:36 PM on January 30, 2011

Nickel + proton -> copper is an endothermic reaction. Iron is the most stable nuclear species -- that's when big stars die. PhysOrg should know better. (- sebastienbailard's wife)
posted by sebastienbailard at 4:04 PM on January 30, 2011 [3 favorites]

my main concern is: how much energy would it take to produce the nickel powder this thing supposedly requires?

@metabugs: there apparently is a guy in the video who has a gamma ray detector, and he says that he seeing activity during the experiment, at varying intesity levels. The same guy complains that the inventor would not let him close to the machine, and the answer that he is given kind of reinfornces malor's notion that they have an idea what is going on but do not want to talk about it.
posted by 3mendo at 4:10 PM on January 30, 2011

btw, http://www.youtube.com/user/batman40157 has the experiment video with english subs
posted by 3mendo at 4:18 PM on January 30, 2011

Wait - this is perpetual motion, too! Gahdamn, these boys clever!
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 4:21 PM on January 30, 2011

Nickel + proton -> copper is an endothermic reaction. Iron is the most stable nuclear species -- that's when big stars die. PhysOrg should know better. (- sebastienbailard's wife)

It's been a long time since I was familiar with physics, so please forgive me if I'm saying something incredibly stupid here, but:

Nickel 62 : 61.9283451     u
Proton    :  1.00727646677 u
------------------------------------
Sum       : 62.9356216     u
Copper 63 : 62.9295975     u
------------------------------------
Difference:  0.0060241     u

Those mass numbers are from Wikipedia, and both Ni62 and Cu63 are, according to Wikipedia, stable. Wouldn't such a reaction be exothermic, since it results in less mass than it started with?

And, more generally speaking, does the fact that large stars don't progress in fusion past a particular isotope of iron (iron 56, I think) due to Fe56 + proton being endothermic necessarily imply that "proton + any isotope of any element above iron" is endothermic?

Again, it's been a long time since I've known stuff like this to any significant depth; I am not contradicting your wife, I am basically asking whether I'm misunderstanding something or not.
posted by Flunkie at 5:00 PM on January 30, 2011

Wait a minute, upon further investigation even "Fe56 + proton" seems exothermic, based on my potentially flawed understanding as detailed above - i.e. the mass of Fe56 plus the mass of a proton is greater than the mass of Cobalt 57.

And upon further further investigation, the thing happening in stars is not "Fe56 + proton" anyway; it's "Fe56 + He4".

But upon further further further investigation, the mass of Fe56 plus the mass of He4 is larger than the mass of Nickel 60 anyway. So wouldn't that be exothermic too?

I'm clearly misunderstanding something here. What?
posted by Flunkie at 5:16 PM on January 30, 2011

No Flunkie, you're right, sebastienbailard's wife has got her sign wrong. What they're saying isn't laugh-out-loud implausible on its face; on the other hand I'd take pretty strong odds against them doing what they claim, their M.O. is classic crank.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 5:17 PM on January 30, 2011

Reducing the layer of oxidized nickel in the presence of oxygen and hydrogen is an exothermic reaction that produces heat [slashdot.org] at about the levels shown in this experiment. This is chemistry they are doing. The hydrogen is combining with oxygen and producing steam

Well, to this chemist, that comment is a totally confusing mush of things. For example, it could be talking about this reaction:

NiO + H2 --> Ni + H2O (energy out = 40 kJ/mol, but only if the water is liquid. It's slightly endothermic otherwise)

But then what's this talk about the hydrogen combining with oxygen to make steam? Are they referring to:

1/2H2 + 1/2O2 --> H2O (g) (energy out = 240 kJ/mol)

But then what does this have to do with the nickel? Also, it would need a lot more hydrogen than they're claiming.

Short version: maybe there's some chemical process going on that explains this, but that comment doesn't make a lick of sense at least without a better explanation of what they're trying to get at.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 5:19 PM on January 30, 2011

Basically if it comes before iron (in the periodic table) fusion releases energy and fission consumes it, after iron it's the other way around, roughly anyway.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 5:21 PM on January 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

OK, upon further further further further investigation, it seems that "Fe56 + He4 is exothermic" is true but not relevant, because the star never gets the chance to do that:

What really happens is not that Fe56 is produced via fusion; it's that Ni56 is produced via fusion, but Ni56 is unstable, eventually decaying to Fe56. If the star thereafter had a chance to combine Fe56 with He4, it would (it seems to me), because that's exothermic. But it doesn't get a chance to do that:

Ni56 takes months to decay to Fe56. And Ni56 + He4 is endothermic. So, very quickly after it's done producing Ni56, the fusion reaction stops, and the star goes boom. Before significant quantities of Fe56 ever got a chance to be produced via decay.

So I think I'm right.

Am I right?

I want to believe
posted by Flunkie at 5:25 PM on January 30, 2011

Basically if it comes before iron (in the periodic table) fusion releases energy and fission consumes it, after iron it's the other way around, roughly anyway.

I'm aware that this is the claim being made. Can you please explain it, in the face of the seemingly contradictory fact that the mass of Ni62 plus the mass of a proton is greater than the mass of Cu63?
posted by Flunkie at 5:27 PM on January 30, 2011

> I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a
> world-shaking breakthrough?

If it's the Wright Brothers, then newspapers would refuse to send reporters to view the flights, even local newspapers would ignore clamoring eyewitnesses, and the Scientific American would ridicule their efforts using this excuse:

"If such sensational and tremendously important experiments are being conducted in a not very remote part of the country, on a subject in which almost everybody feels the most profound interest, is it possible to believe that the enterprising American reporter, who, it is well known, comes down the chimney when the door is locked in his face--even if he has to scale a fifteen-story sky-scraper to do so-- would not have ascertained all about them and published them broadcast long ago?"

http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/inventors/i/Wrights/library/WrightSiAm1.html

One way to tell whether your breakthrough is really revolutionary is to see if everyone hates you and nobody will listen. Unfortunately that's also a feature of announcements from crackpots. Universal laughing disbelief means either that you're just another crackpot, or that you've made a really big discovery.

Rossi has it right: the only way to make an end run around widespread disbelief is to shut up and start selling cold fusion reactors. (That he DIDN'T shut up, and ISN'T selling any, that's not a very good sign.)
posted by billb at 5:30 PM on January 30, 2011 [4 favorites]

I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a world-shaking breakthrough?

We do know. It was the Woodstock of Physics in 1987. I remember it well. Fifty peer-reviewed papers on high temperature superconductors were presented. Over 2000 excited physicists tried to squeeze into the main event. It went on until dawn and people were quite giddy and high. It certainly didn't include a couple of quacks trying to hawk a non-peer reviewed paper -- nor did Jimi Hendrix play the nation anthem.
posted by JackFlash at 5:33 PM on January 30, 2011 [6 favorites]

"The reactors need to be refueled every 6 months, which the scientists say is done by their dealers."

I wish my dealer would refuel my fusion reactor.
posted by tom_r at 6:23 PM on January 30, 2011

tom_r: ""The reactors need to be refueled every 6 months, which the scientists say is done by their dealers."

I wish my dealer would refuel my fusion reactor"

Mr. Fusion.
posted by bwg at 6:29 PM on January 30, 2011

I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a world-shaking breakthrough?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:13 PM on January 30 [+] [!]

I'd say, most of the time it doesn't look like much anything. These scientists have no explanation for what they say is happening and nobody backing them up with reproductions of their experiment. Assuming that they have in fact discovered some breakthrough, an unheard of, unexplained physical reaction, they are at the beginning, not the end, of an experimental process.

I've been keenly observing alternative energy science - a topic I studied formally as a student of science and worked in research in, though long ago, for 20 years now. Lots of breakthroughs. What's happened in solar is amazing. Lots of hype. Efficient ethanol from cellulose - always 10-15 years away. What does happen tends to happen slowly, very slowly. You read about some promising line of research, some paper. Patents get filed. Someone leaves academia and launches a startup. Ten years later you read about a factory rolling out. It's not very exciting news by that point.

One way to tell whether your breakthrough is really revolutionary is to see if everyone hates you and nobody will listen.

This is romantic, billb, and fits a certain narrative of how paradigm shifts go, but it isn't really particularly representative of the conduct of science (and less so as time goes forward, and communications become more instant and continuous, and there are just basically less surprises in the conduct of science). Certainly breaches with orthodoxy create static but when they are conducted within the respected boundaries of the conduct of science (e.g. not reacting to the rejection of peer review with press events) the controversy is usually a low key thing, and even the heretics have their established centers and orthodoxies. Considering the unmitigated debacle it became, and its incredibly poor name in science, reproducing the "press first confirmation later" strategy of the Pons and Fleishmann experiments seems an unlikely tactic for anyone who really wanted to advance scientific understanding.
posted by nanojath at 6:40 PM on January 30, 2011 [4 favorites]

Universal laughing disbelief means either that you're just another crackpot, or that you've made a really big discovery.

"Crackpot" is the way to bet.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:24 PM on January 30, 2011

I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a world-shaking breakthrough?

The same as it has looked for every other world-shaking breakthrough--some people in the field will be really excited, some will want to see more data, and the mass media will be completely uninterested unless movie stars or missing white children are involved.

It never looks like someone starting their own journal in order to publish their non-peer-reviewed data.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:13 PM on January 30, 2011 [5 favorites]

If it's the Wright Brothers, then newspapers would refuse to send reporters to view the flights, even local newspapers would ignore clamoring eyewitnesses, and the Scientific American would ridicule their efforts using this excuse:

OK, I'm going to shoot this legend down right there. Wilbur Wright even presented a number of papers at the Western Society of Engineers before their first powered flight. A newspaper even reprinted one of these speeches without their permission.

The Wright Brothers got scant coverage during their first few years after 1903 because they became significantly cautious about disclosure around that time, after a shameless mountebanque named Augustus Herring tried to steal their work.
posted by Skeptic at 11:04 PM on January 30, 2011 [4 favorites]

Soooo... is anyone going to try to reproduce this experiment? As opposed to just shouting it down as BS?

Yeah, odds are it's crackpot/flimflammery, but it shouldn't be too difficult for "real scientists" to prove that, no?
posted by zoogleplex at 11:09 PM on January 30, 2011

I want to believe.
posted by -harlequin- at 11:37 PM on January 30, 2011

Flunkie: At a guess? The amount of energy you need to cram an extra proton into that nickel nucleus more than makes up the difference in mass. In other words whatever you gain from the proton capture you've more than lost getting the proton there against the charge of the nucleus in the first place.
posted by Grimgrin at 12:48 AM on January 31, 2011

Flunkie - I'm not a physicist or chemist either but here's a locked thread on the site Physics Forums, which has a standing policy forbidding discussion of cold fusion (because they got tired of fending off tenacious cranks.) Before the mod locked the thread he said,

As far as I can tell, this is yet another cold fusion hoax. These "researchers" claim a slew of reactions, all apparently exothermic: ⁵⁸Ni+¹H→⁵⁹Cu, which decays to ⁵⁹Ni, then ⁵⁹Ni+¹H→⁶⁰Cu, and so on, eventually stopping at ⁶²Cu. However, this appearance of a sequence of endothermic reactions is just that, an appearance. The simple mass number math ignores spin and parity. As is, each of these transitions is not allowed. At each stage, the nickel isotope will need to be excited to some other higher energy spin/parity before a transition can occur, and this excitation saps all of the apparent energy gain (and then some). Once spin and parity are taken into account each of the transitions in the chain from ⁵⁸Ni to ⁶²Cu is in fact endothermic.

The simple mass number calculations that make each reaction in the chain appear to be exothermic is analogous to computing the energy output from burning dry paper. All it takes is a little energy from a match to set the paper ablaze.

A better analogy would be using a match to light soaking wet paper. They are ignoring that the paper first has to be dried (requiring a huge energy input) before it will start to burn. Ignoring the energy input from drying the paper makes it appear that the energy output is positive. It isn't.

I'm assuming there's a typo in there? That it should be "all apparently exothermic:... ...However, this appearance of a sequence of endothermic exothermic reactions is just that, an appearance."

Note that he says "exothermic" again below, "The simple mass number calculations that make each reaction in the chain appear to be exothermic..."
posted by XMLicious at 12:51 AM on January 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

XMLicious: I'm unconvinced by that. Even if the reactions are forbidden, that doesn't seem to me to invalidate the mass number calculations to determine if, if it did occur, it would be endo- or exothermic. That 'sapped' energy has to either come out again, or be counted in the mass defect calculation.

I think Flunkie's problem is resolvable by noting that Ni-62 has the highest binding energy per nucleon. This means that adding a nucleon makes binding energy lower for all the others, and as binding energy is negative this costs energy - you have to put energy in to nucleus to allow that. However, you're adding a nucleon with no binding energy at all - its new binding energy could be enough to spread out amongst the rest and still have some left over.

To put it another way, if you take a large number of protons you get the most energy out by making lots of Ni-62. However, that's not to say that taking Ni-62 and adding a proton must be endothermic - you just don't get as much energy as if you'd used those protons to make other Ni-62 instead.

That said, I can't believe they've done what is claimed here.
posted by edd at 1:14 AM on January 31, 2011

Oh Lord, is it cold fusion time again? It'll be alien abductions next, you mark my words.

Cold fusion "researchers", you know the drill: peer review and reproducible evidence or GTFO.
posted by Decani at 7:23 AM on January 31, 2011

Cool Papa Bell: "I wonder what it would look like when someone really does make a world-shaking breakthrough"

My man James Burke has you covered, CPB.
posted by namewithoutwords at 7:30 AM on January 31, 2011

There is no place better to demonstrate your far-fetched technological breakthrough than in Bologna.
posted by milkfish at 9:27 AM on January 31, 2011

Soooo... is anyone going to try to reproduce this experiment? As opposed to just shouting it down as BS?

According to the article, the paper "lacks details on how the reactor works". That puts the experiment, at least temporarily, in the "impossible to reproduce" category.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 12:00 PM on January 31, 2011

There is a difference between 'how it works' and 'how it's made and operated'. The paper probably doesn't give enough information for the latter either. But if it is as cheap as they claim who cares how it works. There are researchers that could spend the time figuring out the how later.
posted by TheJoven at 1:17 PM on January 31, 2011

One of the slashdot posters, who I can't seem to find now posted links to a couple articles claiming that their statements were reasonable but not as cold fusion. Apparently there is a plain old nuclear reaction that can explain both the energy and the apparent outputs. They probably don't want to show anyone because they are duplicating other peoples 10 year old work and their reactor is dirty as hell. (producing not copper but a radioactive ion of the same weight as copper). The article also supposed that it might be technically be possible to make the reaction clean and actually produce copper through a type of breeder that no one has ever managed to make work.
posted by darkfred at 3:14 PM on January 31, 2011

Soooo... is anyone going to try to reproduce this experiment? As opposed to just shouting it down as BS?

You say this as though there aren't actual scientists all over the world constantly doing serious, peer-reviewed work on fusion. I don't know what you do for a living, but my guess is that if someone made a mostly-unsubstantiated claim of being able to do it 1000 times faster and cheaper, you'd be able to see where their claim was BS.
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:01 PM on January 31, 2011

I wonder where Fleischmann and Pons are nowadays. Are they still teaching? Are they still claiming "we was robbed", have they recanted? What's the update on those two?
posted by VikingSword at 4:05 PM on January 31, 2011

Skeptic: "OK, I'm going to shoot this legend down right there. ...The Wright Brothers got scant coverage during their first few years after 1903 because they became significantly cautious about disclosure around that time"

"Cautious?" You mean by constantly flying in an open field next to a rail line while inviting the Dayton press to their tests? I think the claim "the Wrights were secretive" is the real myth here. Secrecy doesn't involve putting on a show for reporters. Dayton newspaper staff did attend the first two tests at Huffman Prairie, both of which were called on account of weather and equipment problems. Reporters refused to attend any of the following successful public flights. They're also on record as ignoring all the eyewitnesses constantly calling the paper and asking why there was no coverage. They simply refused to believe it was happening. In an interview, the paper's owner excused their disbelief saying something to the effect of "The Wrights were secretive," and the interviewer responded "secretive, you mean by flying in public, and inviting the press?"

Thejoven: "According to the article, the paper "lacks details on how the reactor works". That puts the experiment, at least temporarily, in the "impossible to reproduce" category."

Rossi apparently is keeping some of the materials as a trade secret. The reaction supposedly depends on some unknown catalyst. If only one company can make a successful device, and if the "forumula" isn't easily back-engineered, it could be quite some time before the experts know how it works. I mean, assuming that they do end the scam accusations by putting working reactors in the hands of customers.
posted by billb at 6:41 PM on January 31, 2011

"You say this as though there aren't actual scientists all over the world constantly doing serious, peer-reviewed work on fusion."

My dad-in-law works at the same place as quite a number of them actually, Sidhedevil, so... well, I understand the snark, okay.

I simply meant this particular experiment. As I mentioned, yeah this is most likely utter BS for exactly the reasons you specify, and the burden of evidence is on the claimants. Even more obvious evidence that it's total crap is the "unknown catalyst" "trade secret" that billb mentions. If they were on the level, they'd publish in a way that would let other scientists reproduce the experiment more easily.
posted by zoogleplex at 8:07 PM on January 31, 2011

If they were on the level, they'd publish in a way that would let other scientists reproduce the experiment more easily.

Really? I think Edison would tell them otherwise; that they would be fools to go that route if they really had their money tree working. On the other hand, they would be sociopaths to consciously commit fraud in the wake of Pons and Fleischmann. So the possibility exists that they desperately need the patent to make any money but maybe don't want to tell all the truths/origins about it, perhaps under expert advice.
posted by Brian B. at 8:55 PM on January 31, 2011

Well I guess we'll know soon enough, eh? :)
posted by zoogleplex at 10:23 PM on January 31, 2011