> Well, if you look at that aging disease that a few rare kids have, if
> that sort of disorder can be turned on and off in anyone, then you could
> do some sort of rapid development, but I would think that the product of
> such things would tend to be on the short side.
I don't think that works. Progeria makes aging faster, not development
(otherwise the victims would grow up into adults instead of becoming
"ancient dwarves"). While development can likely be speeded somewhat,
it is probably hard to do with the entire body since many of the
processes have to occur together but have very different timescales;
think of lengthening of muscles and lengthening of bones. But speeding
up individual tissues is probably quite easy.
> There is also an outfit in Dallas claiming to be producing hot water
> heaters using the same catalytic method as Pons & Fleischman, but
> they can't claim that it's cold fusion because the patent office has
> banned the use of the phrase (nice to see in our office of
> innovation, eh?). Their drawings include a reactor about the size of
> a shotgun shell, filled with pellets of the electrode materials,
> produced by a proprietary method.
Sounds like a fraud, since even if cold fusion does work it requires
deuterium or tritium to work, and the amounts in ordinary tap water
are likely far too small (~0.015%) to produce any noticeable heating.
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