Self-Interest and LENR (Edmund Storms)

re F&P, heat bursts, I'm not commenting now because F&P deserve a long considered reply, I don't want to do a knee-jerk negative reaction to one part - but note that I disgaree with Oystla above.

Re Gozzi et al - shall we do one thing at a time?

I have, stacked:

F&P
S&H Nanor

unlike some guys here I am slow and do not understand this stuff till I have looked at it all through.

OK Thomas, to your questions:

But first I’m a little surprised, since you gave an impression of knowing everything on LENR experiments (Including MIT NANOR test), and that it’s all obvious bogus results.

LENR is much too important discovery to easily discard without investigation, so read the papers!.

(1)& (2): DT = delta-T = temperature rise = What kind of temperature increase will be the result of a certain electrical input energy?
They normalise the dT over Pin, which is fair enough and show clearly the relationship. As shown the Nanor give a much stronger signal. The control resistor lies next to the Nanor, so the two components should give the same signals if all heat is only caused by electrical resistance.

(3) The details around calorimetry is described in the two papers on the test, shown her (p.516 ++)http://www.iscmns.org/CMNS/JCMNS-Vol13.pdf

(4) HF = Heat Flow - described in above papers

(5) I believe this test reflects some 8 hrs run, but not sure. They ran several continous tests over the month at MIT.

(6) Don’t misunderstand. They represent calculated power gains from three different methods: dT/Pin, Heat flow (And heat flow is not shown in the graph, it a separate measurement) and calorimetry.

“…..heat signal" is not a sign of anything since small things like NANORs can get hot with not much energy, and further how hot they get depends on stuff that is very variable (thermal resistance to some heat sink).”

Again don’t misunderstand. The temperature here is not the temperature of the control resistor (And Nanor resistor, if we assume NANOR is just a resistor), but the temperature of the thermal mass, heated by the resistors.

So, there should not be a difference in signals produced by the two resistors, but still a strong one there are.

And it’s confirmed by Heat Flow and calorimeter.

Now then: Am I satisfied with the NANOR test. No, I would absolutely want a higher power test.“the set-up was designed to run at low power input levels to increase the safety at the educational institution for its multi month-long stay at MIT.”

But may be there are papers on higher input and output. I will have to investigate.

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But first I’m a little surprised, since you gave an impression of knowing everything on LENR experiments (Including MIT NANOR test), and that it’s all obvious bogus results.

I must apologise for giving such an unfortunate impression, I'm sure I've never said that I know everything...

I don't think the results are obviously bogus. Most are obviously not extraordinary evidence, and the others, on close examination which takes time, have always (so far, to my knowledge) been not extraordinary evidence. Of courses, there are 10s of thousands and while LENR as a psychosocial phenomena if not a physical one is fascinating, I have no motivation to read in the detail necessary more than a few of the "selected best".

Re my questions:

I know well that dT is a temperature difference. But precisely what, between what two sensors placed where, at what times, under what conditions. If you don't know the answers to these questions you cannot know what the headline data means and hence whether what is reported is within possible errors or not.

Thanks for HF = heat flow. But it does not get us very far. How is it measured? Is this different from calorimetry (which in the headline is equally obscure)?

You have still not answered my question about how we get a ratio from dT/Pin. I know what answer you need to give, the trouble is then to interpret this you need a whole load of extra info. I'm wondering whether you've thought about this?

I'll do this work for you, after F&P, if I'm not side-tracked here by other stuff, and if you don't do it (which
I'd really prefer).

Thomas,

Heat transfer by convection and conduction is proportional to dT.
Therefore in the figure The power gain by the NANOR using dT/Pin would be:
NANOR dT/Pin= average 200
Resistor control dT/Pin = average 20
Power gain = 100*(200-20)/20 (%)= 900%

"selected best"? You refer to my proposals? I have not read many papers, so the ones I have referred to may well be far from the "best". Actually I think there are better papers, and my search will contiue.

dT : "But precisely what, between what two sensors placed where......"

The real question is If we can trust If the 4 scientists that made these tests and pape where competent. Many Sensors where placed in the unit. Myself I would think the temperature rise used i the formula should be from the thermal mass surrounding the NANOR and resistor.

HF = "How is it measured? Is this different from calorimetry"

They refer to Omega HFS Thin film heat flow sensor, as additional to calorimetry.

But again to satisfy all your questions you would probably need all construction data and raw data from the logging.

I trust that the scientists understand how to do calorimetry and how to do heat flow measurements.

And now I will check for possibly improved NANOR tests.

Quote from Shane D.

Does it get any easier than that? So who is to hold these skeptical reviewers to account? Well, it seems no one.

I would not worry about it. The more intelligent skeptics often raise interesting points, which, as poorly as they may be communicated, are good to reflect upon. If LENR is the real thing, as I believe it to be, history will be the judge (and every last detail will be there for review since everything happens over the Internet now). If LENR is polywater on steroids, as these souls are inclined believe, history will be the judge of the deluded LENR people. It all works out.

Right. The claimed ratios are differences between temperature deltas in NANOR and control systems.

The issue then is whether the sensors are identically located and (more difficult) whether the thermal resistance is identical.

In a calorimeter between two roughly equi-temperature surfaces with a well defined filler this can be ensured, with enough care. If however the hot temperature is the chip itself this is not true.

That is why I asked, and without reading the papers I still don't know.

Best wishes, Tom

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Heat transfer by convection and conduction is proportional to dT

Well, conduction is linear, convection probably quadratic bit maybe a bit less, a linearised T^4 so effective power in this case could be anything from 1 to 4.

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The real question is If we can trust If the 4 scientists that made these tests and paper where competent.

No, for extraordinary evidence I would never trust this. Nor would any scientist. There is also, here, a clear financial incentive for biassed results.

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They refer to Omega HFS Thin film heat flow sensor, as additional to calorimetry.But again to satisfy all your questions you would probably need all construction data and raw data from the logging.I trust that the scientists understand how to do calorimetry and how to do heat flow measurements.

Correct. I'd need to understand how this was used. I'd also, as MY points out, need to see the data and how it was processed.

Bottom line - summary statements just don't cut it with this stuff.

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I would not worry about it. The more intelligent skeptics often raise interesting points, which, as poorly as they may be communicated, are good to reflect upon. If LENR is the real thing, as I believe it to be, history will be the judge (and every last detail will be there for review since everything happens over the Internet now). If LENR is polywater on steroids, as these souls are inclined believe, history will be the judge of the deluded LENR people. It all works out.

I agree. Science needs skepticism and when ideas are real they win.

In the LENR area, if it is real I'd expect good quality academic papers long before commercial product. But, then, none of these free energy companies seem likely to provide that within any feasible timescale, even from their own claims. (Nanospire and Brillouin make impressive claims but are very unbelievable).

Quote from Thomas Clarke

In the LENR area, if it is real I'd expect good quality academic papers long before commercial product. But, then, none of these free energy companies seem likely to provide that within any feasible timescale, even from their own claims. (Nanospire and Brillouin make impressive claims but are very unbelievable).

It might take more patience or suspension of disbelief than one can allow, but I think there are some subtleties that need to be teased out in this instance.

The first subtlety is that you can have a real, complex, difficult-to-understand phenomenon that has yet to attract a large number of capable people who are grounded in a systematic, effective approach. To a certain extent one could argue that this was the case with chemistry itself for many decades, when it was alchemy. The alchemists saw some interesting phenomena, but it took the Enlightenment and empiricism to really hone the methods that were needed to explore it effectively. In addition, a field may already have attracted a few effective researchers, but the world was not ready for what they were saying at the time. Galileo suffered house arrest when he promoted heliocentrism. It took many years for the early pioneers in radiation to prove to everyone's satisfaction that radioactivity was real, and a lot of what they thought was initially wrong, hopelessly mixed up with what they had gotten right. Becquerel is credited with having discovered radioactivity in 1896; in fact Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor reported to the French Academy a very similar finding in 1858, and it is clear that he understood the implications, but this piece of history is largely unknown.

In this regard, I think society is not as far along as is implied by the story we tell ourselves, where we imagine that we finally have an empirically grounded science after all these years, free from the difficulties described above. It takes a lot of willpower to write off the accumulated findings in LENR studies, even if one has yet to see a study one considers flawless or above reproach. In short, one might be in a mode of writing off evidence rather than trying to understand it, however imperfectly it's been packaged.

The second subtlety to note is that it can take many years for an emerging phenomenon to become commercializable, as was seen with semiconductors. We have yet to know what exactly to do with superconductivity outside of a scientific context. We think it might be useful for certain kinds of trains.

Thomas, convection quadratic?

No, it follows the basic relationship

P = dQ = hA (T − T0)dt

But heat transfer by radiation is quadratic.

Quote from oystla

Thomas, convection quadratic?

No, it follows the basic relationship

P = dQ = hA (T − T0)dt

But heat transfer by radiation is quadratic.

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That is the basic relationship, but h is also proportional to T − T0.

But convection is not quadratic; the exponent is much less than 'two'... It can be considered as linear if you are lazy, and the increase in T − T0 is less than 50C.

And, being pedantic, radiation is also an exponential function as well...

Haha,

h, the heat transfer coefficient, is normally considered a constant based upon what fluid is convecting the heat, gas,fluid,liquid metal, what conditions (laminary or turbulent flow) , forced convection etc.

Values of h have been measured and tabulated for the commonly encountered fluids and flow situations occurring during heat transfer by convection.

If we had very varying conditions and varying flow conditions (laminary / turbulent ) flow we may have had to consider varying the h (constant), but not in this test

and I think you would have to have much higher dT than 50 degrees to experience variations in the h constant...

Abd: very good summary!

Thomas,

"There is also, here, a clear financial incentive for biassed results."

Well, normally research scientists are more driven by fame (especially having their names in "real" science journals) than fortune. Actually proven by psychological tests......but I understand your point. a third party test should be performed on the NANOR.

Also for the 40 days after the 1989 press conference, there was a clear incentive for biased results from MIT , CALTECH and other institutes, since the US government was considdering redirecting 20 MUSD from the hot fusion programme to cold fusion research during the same period.

But the "Not very Scientific replication efforts" from MIT et. al effectively stopped all such redirections.....

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That is the basic relationship, but h is also proportional to T − T0.But convection is not quadratic; the exponent is much less than 'two'... It can be considered as linear if you are lazy, and the increase in T − T0 is less than 50C.And, being pedantic, radiation is also an exponential function as well...

I mostly agree with this. Radiation is not exponential, but described (assuming constant total emissivity) as:

(T+dT)^4 - T^4 ~ 4dT*T^3 + 6dT^2*T^2 + 4dT^3*T + dT^4

which thus varies from T to T^4, and over the range it is varying has something of an exponential character.

OK, I'll agree the convection coefficient is less than 2 - but not linear!

Abd,

BTW I use informal appellations on this forum, since none of us parade titles. Hence "Thomas" or "Tom" would be preferable to "Mr. Clarke". If you would prefer me to use some more formal address then perhaps you could indicate what is appropriate.

I'm replying to your comments on my comments. Where you have indulged in (minor) ad hom I've noted this but not argued, though I think you may have misunderstood me since the views you attribute to me elsewhere are contrary to my understanding.

The point here being that science is difficult to judge anyway. the scientific convention that matters be depersonalised and based on facts presented, not character or qualifications or other actions of the presenter, I find valuable.

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I've noticed in Mr. Clarke's comments on another site that he does not seem to be aware of the literature and the true history of the LENR field. Storms was talking about the early rejection, having nothing to do with the work that MFMP has been attempting to replicate. Nickel-hydrogen reactions were hardly in evidence then, at all. "LENR" is indeed an interpretation.

Ad Hom

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Clarke refers to "few mainstream scientists." In fact, in any specialized field, the opinions that count are those familiar with the evidence. Most important are those who function as peer-reviewers in mainstream journals.

I prefer to deal directly with the evidence, but if we are to argue indirectly, then I'd say this is true of mainstream science, but not true of fringe science. Where dealing with such "those familiar with the evidence' are self-selected to be mostly those who have a specific positive view on it. Similarly, peer reviewers are equally self-selected. What you would like would be mainstream reviews by parties objective but who have studied the evidence. The motivation for deeply studying fringe evidence tends to be an interest in belief, or, less often, an interest in debunking belief. Neither case gives objectivity.

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Storms' review of cold fusion was solicited by Naturwissenschaften in 2010, and passed review. Storms, among other evidences, covers the relationship of heat and helium; when both are measured in cold fusion experiments, it develops that they are correlated, at a value that is "consistent with" deuterium fusion. This does not prove fusion, by the way, because any reaction that starts with deuterium and ends with helium must show the same ratio of energy released to helium.

Any reaction that starts with D and ends with He4 must include fusion, since the nucleon number increases and therefore given any number of steps one at least must be fusion. Perhaps you would like to justify the statement here, because I'm not sure I understand it? Perhaps it means - "does not prove D+D -> He4 fusion"? Even then it is tendentious, because many people would view a pathway: 2D -> X1 -> X2 -> .... -> He4 (with possible other equal inputs and outputs) as catalysed D+D fusion.

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Further, the precision of the results, so far, is not adequate to nail down that ratio to rule out other possible fuel/ash relationships .... but no other candidates are available. Helium and heat are the only major produces from the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect.

This could be a definition of the F-P effect. But it is hardly a justified conclusion from the evidence. If there is some real reaction as claimed that changes nuclei it is extraordinary. Other accompanying nuclear changes might exist that have never been noted. In this case everything is on the table.

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The problematic behavior of Pons and Fleischmann is well-documented. But also the problematic response of the general scientific community is known. There was, indeed, a rush to judgment, and this is known to have been politically forced. Was there an actual conspiracy to protect hot fusion research? That is not clear to me, but there was clear hostility, and a peculular sense of joy in "finding" that Pons and Fleischmann were incompetent boobs., which they were not. Fleischmann was the world's foremost electrochemist. He didn't know the ins and outs of measuring neutrons, and

ad hom.

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his report of neutrons was based on artifact. But his heat results have never been impeached.It was not known until 1991 that the reaction product was actually helium.

This summary is surely too cavalier. When the reaction mechanism is unknown, whether measured He4, correlated or not, is a reaction product must have some uncertainty.

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There are other "nuclear" evidences: tritium is widely reported, by people with high experience in measuring tritium. However, it is roughly a million times down from helium.

Again this is cavalier. Reports of tritium are not nuclear evidences. reports of tritium not present in the reactants would be so, but at the levels claimed it is difficult to gain this surety. Abd would no more than me about precisely what was claimed - i'm just parsing Storms as reported here.

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The major reaction doesn't produce tritium, nor does it produce neutrons; the neutrons reported are, again, a million times down from tritium.Huizenga noticed the 1991 Miles work, and called it astounding. He then said that he expected that it would not be confirmed, "because no gammas."I.e., Huizenga was operating on a hypothesis that if fusion was taking place, copious neutrons would be produced, along with tritium and 3He, all easily detected. And in case the rare branch was somehow preferred that produced helium from d+d -> 4He + 23.8 MeV gamma, ... there were no such gammas; were there, as with neutrons at half the level, there would be the "dead graduate student effect."

For me, speculation about conventional, or unconventional, nuclear pathways here is unhelpful. The claimed phenomena are extraordinary, more so since not obeying normal branching ratios. In this case elaborating on what would or would not be normally possible or likely in nuclear reactions does not help until there is some real "LENR theory" that is coherent and makes new predictions shown true post hoc from experiment. I'm not yet aware of any such.

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Often in presenting the history, it's said that Pons and Fleischmann claimed "nuclear fusion." In fact, they only speculated on fusion as the underlying reaction; the actual claim in their first paper was "unknown nuclear reaction." Their evidence was anomalous heat, and they were experts at measuring that, contrary to what some shallow reports have claimed. Their calorimetry has never been rejected, it was confirmed by expert analysis.Once helium is know as a correlated reaction product, though, we have direct evidence that the reaction is nuclear. Contrary to Huizenga's expectation, Miles was confirmed, Storms lists a very large number of confirmations, and my paper covers a little of this, currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/108/04/0574.pdf ("Replicable cold fusion experiment: Heat/helium ratio").

I wonder whether historical analysis here is helpful. The matter here is one of scientific evidence that would (if LENR, almost however you define it, were true) lead to extraordinary new physics. In this case it is the reproducibility of results, or the coherence of disparate new phenomena, that matters. Both come in abundance from new experiments which can focus on the real anomalies. A historical crawl through initial experimental results is just not important.

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By defining replication as being consistent levels of heat with a consistent protocol, the real experimental evidence was overlooked.

I'm not quite sure who here does the overlooking, nor who made this definition of replication. Perhaps F&P (if it is their evidence) did this? Published data can be re-analysed any number of times, and often is when some other evidence casts new light on the matter at hand. In this case what is relevant is the re-analysis of the original raw data, and that can be assessed on its own, as new work. And in judging the correctness or otherwise of such re-analysis this type of historical background is irrelevant.

I guess what is meant here is that to have strong (let alone extraordinary) evidence a consistent He4 / heat relationship will provide insight even when the reaction rate, and hence the excess heat, is inconsistent. That is true - but it is equally true that nuclear transmutation is a definite and easy thing to detect when at levels beyond errors. further, given any type of reaction, the effects of transmutation are cumulative, so that obtaining undeniable nuclear transmutation evidence ought to be relatively straightforward in correctly designed experiments.

If it can be done, it is better evidence than He4 detected since the latter, even correlations in the latter, have a whole load of potential artifacts as perhaps we will discuss here later on.

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Control of the reaction rate has been elusive. However, helium is produced commensurate with the heat.This finding has not been impeached by anyone with any serious knowledge of the experimental evidence.

This finding has not been questioned by me, since it does not itself imply anything extraordinary.

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For example, Clarke elsewhere claimed that helium leakage could vary with temperature. This shows a lack of understanding of experimental conditions, typical of those who criticize without actually reading the literature carefully.

That is a non-sequitur and it is helpful to be precise when arguing these matters. My argument was explicitly conditional on experimental conditions. Now, you here are I think making a strong statement about experimental conditions - that no temperature-related change could be relevant. In a normal scientific case I would happily accept that. In this case, where the potential conclusion is extraordinary, every link in the argument must be examined with great care. Abd I'm sure is aware of this and will thus welcome additional scrutiny. every new person who looks at data and can find no loophole thereby strengthens the area. Or, if loopholes are found, they can be tested in subsequent experiments.

This attitude is what I would have were I working hoping to show LENR was real. I would cultivate skeptics, ask them to examine everything in detail and think of what could be wrong with my arguments. That is what the FTL neutrino people did.

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Some experiments are run at constant temperature. Even with isoperibolic calorimetry, where increase in temperature is a sign of anomalous heat, the temperature rise is very low, a few degrees C at most. Yet helium appears if anomalous heat appears, and does not appear if there is no heat. Hydrogen controls show no heat and no helium.

I'm aware of the next sentence below so will forgive this. But as rhetoric it is unfortunate. the collection of phenomena and relationships here have one obvious ordinary explanation, and likely many other less obvious ones.

The key issue is that correlation need not imply causation and so a complete search for other experimental parameters that cause both dT, He4 measurement, and are correlated with D not H, must be made.

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"Anomalous heat" is a complex calculation from many experimental variables, it is not necessarily at one particular temperature. Various experiments work at various temperatures. The protocol doesn't seem to matter much, as long as it allows decent heat and helium measurements, and the effect actually occurs. 0/0 results obviously don't measure the ratio, but do act to confirm the correlation and verify that there is no leakage or calorimetry error.

Abd will no doubt be glad that progress is made in controlling these variables. I would look to this as one of the indicators that what we have here is a phenomena of general interest rather than a set of experimental errors and methodology-determined anomalies. (The other indicator, when in specific cases such replicability was found, would come from the effect being extraordinary when isolated). I would see newer experiments as the place to look for such evidence which is why, although on this thread I'm contracted to look at the F&P paper, I find this being relevant now a bit surprising.