Are We at or Near the Tipping Point?

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"Physics will allways ask for theory first, then repeatabil experiements that confirms theory. Something that don't conform to theory can't be, since all physists knows theory rules over nature, not the other way around (haha)."

Oystla - such statements are dangerous - you know very well I can prove you wrong.(1) HTSC - definite experimental evidence, enthusiastically embraced by scientists, although there was at the time no theory for how it could exist. Discovered 1986, Nobel Prize 1987.(2) Dark energy. From observation, unexpected, generally agreed, still no theoryDo I need more?Cold Fusion/LENR is not accepected generally because:(1) the evidence is so weak(2) people have been collecting evidence for 25 years - if it were true you'd expect stronger evidence by now(3) when you look at the (weak) evidence it is incoherent. Returning to the same experiment with better instrumentation does not, as would be expected, lead to definite results.

Well Thomas, i think you missed my point and the whole point of the Cold Fusion history. It seems you never have read anyhing of the historic Events of CF...

And the point was discoveries which are hard to replicate and at the same time seems to contradict theory, not like HTSC or expansion of the Universe....

( by the way the latest finding on Dark Energy is consistent with Einstein's explanation for what dark energy is, Einstein's "cosmological constant" idea, which he called his biggest blunder and later rejected, turned out to be the same thing that scientist now see as the repulsive form of gravity called dark energy. )

A much better example of these hard-to-replicate and hard-to-explain phenomenons may be antimatter generated in out own atmosphere in thunderstorms ....or ball lightning.

Until the 1960s, most scientists argued that ball lightning was not a real phenomenon but an urban myth, despite numerous reports throughout the world. Laboratory experiments can produce effects that are visually similar to reports of ball lightning, but whether these are related to the natural phenomenon remains unclear.

Many scientific hypotheses about ball lightning have been proposed over the centuries. Scientific data on natural ball lightning are scarce, owing to its infrequency and unpredictability. The presumption of its existence is based on reported public sightings, and has therefore produced somewhat inconsistent findings. Given inconsistencies and lack of reliable data, the true nature of ball lightning is still unknown. The first ever optical spectrum of what appears to have been a ball lightning event was published in January 2014 and included a video at high frame rate.

So here you have a phenomen that have been described and observed in nature for centuries, but was considered by science a non believable UFO phenomenon until recently

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/03/20/2194630.htm?site=science&topic=latest

https://www.newscientist.com/a…probed-for-the-first-time

But physisists struggles with the phenomenon since they need a theory to be tested in Laboratory that replicates the phenomenon

Cold Fusion/LENR is not accepected generally because:
1. It is not considered part of science, since 1989. Therefore Mainstream physisists are unwilling to investigate the field, which is compared to being interested in UFO's
2. Mainstream physisists that may be interested in CF research would not get funding from their Institute, since it is discredited field, like hunting UFO's
3. No consensus on theory result in no guidance from theory and No clear protocol that secures repeatable success....
4. Lack of funding results in slow progress wrt indentifying the correct theory of cold fusion, and few researchers interested makes the rest loos interest. "Follow the pack"

The Tipping Point.

No, this is not the "Tipping Point". The ICCF-19 was "The Tipping Point", as per Darden, evidently impressed by Rossi bringing his...cat, tiger, X or something feline to the market, easily available thanks to his robotic factories.

It wasn't "The Turning Point", either. That was during ICCF-3 in Nagoya, Japan, 1992. ""either a turning point in which evidence was presented that will convince the skeptics that cold fusion exists or a religious revival where claims of miracles were lapped up by ardent believers."[11]" (From Wiki)

I am waiting with bated breath for "The Indictment Point", when the scammers go (back) to jail, unless they jump on a plane to Brazil.

Quote from oystla

Cold Fusion/LENR is not accepected generally because:
1. It is not considered part of science, since 1989. Therefore Mainstream physisists are unwilling to investigate the field, which is compared to being interested in UFO's
2. Mainstream physisists that may be interested in CF research would not get funding from their Institute, since it is discredited field, like hunting UFO's
3. No consensus on theory result in no guidance from theory and No clear protocol that secures repeatable success....
4. Lack of funding results in slow progress wrt indentifying the correct theory of cold fusion, and few researchers interested makes the rest loos interest. "Follow the pack"

Another interesting point to add to this list:

Suppose you're an associate professor at a university like Berkeley, and you'd like to discretely investigate something you think might be LENR. For the sake of practicality, you're willing to rigorously avoid the label "LENR" and just report what you find in a low-profile peer-reviewed journal. Let's say the phenomenon you're interested in is excess heat, or perhaps a correlation of excess heat with helium.

Even though you have been very discrete in your investigations and never mention the word "LENR," it will be immediately clear to any of your colleagues who learns of your research, or perhaps the department dean, where it might take you. In their minds you are flirting with UFO-ology or investigation of the paranormal. For this reason you will be less in a position to draw upon your network of collaborators to throw ideas around, discard bad ones, get critical responses to your methodology and delegate tasks that you're not trained in to people who are expert at them (e.g., measuring helium). Because your network is unavailable to you it will be that much harder to produce research that will withstand sustained scrutiny, which is something you intuitively know. Better for you, then, to sit at the sidelines and follow LENR from afar, perhaps hoping that the skeptics have been cavalier.

Maybe this will be just another ignored nail in the coffin of the myth that research in Cold Fusion stopped in 1989?

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/17/science/cold-fusion-derided-in-us-is-hot-in-japan.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Oystla:

If you don't wish me to reply - you could just say so instead of disliking my replies? I'm quite happy to leave this if you'd rather not have the contrary view argued.

You said "physicists will always ask for theory first". I gave you two obvious counterexamples. (And, yes, dark energy is problematic, no theory, Einstein's lambda is not generally accepted because it is arbitrary with no underlying rationale). Would you like more examples, because you seem not to accept this point?

Now, not to be argumentative, the point you clearly meant to make is weaker: "scientists will sometimes not accept experimental evidence without a theory first".

Even that does not quite fit the situation. UFOs are accepted by everyone as a collection of eyewitness, camera, etc experimental evidence. Just the interpretation of them as alien spacecraft is disputed by almost all sane people as not backed by the evidence, which has many diverse other explanations, and a very few cases where after investigation it is not clear what is the real explanation. Sane people could not rule out alien UFOs, just point to the unlikely nature of them existing, and the further unlikely nature of them not showing stronger evidence (say a crashed alien spacecraft for real) if they did exist.

That is a precise analogy for LENR. Scientists accept the evidence - for example anomalous heat from open cell calorimetry that goes away for closed cells. They reckon that "artifact + misinterpretation" is a much better fit interpretation of this evidence than "Extraordinary nuclear reactions without high energy products".bAnd that were LENR real there would likely be much better evidence than there is by now.

Generalisations like: "scientists are biassed", "the overall evidence is compelling" are not going to resolve this. No-one here has to agree with anyone else and I'm well aware what I say here is a minority viewpoint on this site, although a majority viewpoint almost everywhere else. Unless you want to stay in an unchallenged bubble of fantasy it is convincing those on the outside (like me) who are willing to look that should be your benchmark for having a robust argument.

What will help is taking individual items of evidence and looking honestly to see what they prove.

I think this needs some subtlety. Without being a skilled and neutral scientist with a flexible mind a definitive assessment of these experiments is difficult to be sure about. It is easy for me to say the results are unsafe, because of possible errors which I can list. Difficult for you to judge that, and impossible for you to prove they are safe. The matter then stays unsettled.

Instead, you can gain better specific information by looking at longitudinal data series. Thus, if a given setup delivers extraordinary results, then surely it will do so again when measured by the same group with better instrumentation.

So we have the following differentiating patterns:
(1) promising results in a paper are followed up within 12 months by the same results, better instrumented, with better controls, and less possibility of systematic or other error.
(2) promising results are followed up within 12 months by different results under different conditions which are also promising but incomparable with the original results due to different calorimetry.
(3) promising results are followed up within 12 months by a retraction because they become smaller when tested more accurately.

I can point to many instances of (2) and (3). Can you point to (1)? What about your historic examples? Surely the usual case is that the experimenter stays funded long enough to do a followup and control it better? And if the results are extraordinary and real, any experimenter would want to tighten up the experiment and earn themselves a Nobel? Any funding body would want to support this?

What would convince skeptics like me is the detail of such a followup series, where we both can see that every effort is made to find and eliminate possible artifacts within the same experiment and those efforts are successful. I doubt that exists, because the final experiment in such a series would presumably be better than the poor evidence posted here so far, but even the fact that an experimenter tried hard to eliminate errors would be positive. (MFMP have done this, which is why I like them).

What (should) convince you that your "best examples" are not that is when followups don't exist or show some completely different result with an unexplained disinclination to prove the first one more fully.

I take the opportunity to ask for clarification:

• Is it the case that in respect to Oystla's best examples there is no followup or there is a completely different result with an unexplained disinclination to prove the first one more fully? (While we're at it, what are Oystla's best examples?)
• What are the many instances of Tom's (2) and (3) that will give us a clear sense that LENR researchers are failing the longitudinal test? (Note that "many" is generally going to be greater than 3.)

I will venture a set of research that will hopefully meet the criteria for Tom's category (1), in reverse chronological order:

• http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CantwellRsearchforc.pdf (Self-published slides, 2009, failing to replicate the expiriment in the preceding article)
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MosierBosscharacteri.pdf (Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys., 2009)
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MosierBossreplytocom.pdf (Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys., 2008)
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MosierBossuseofcrinp.pdf (Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys., 2007)
• http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSfurtherevi.pdf (Naturwissenschaften, 2007)
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSspawarsyst.pdf (Summary of research published in peer-reviewed journals over the period 1991—2008, counting 21 articles in all. This list does not include the JCMNS articles and ICCF reports this team have also written.)

I do not exclude articles that were in JCMNS or ICCF proceedings because I think they are of no value; I only do so in order to keep them from being a distraction to the present discussion. I have included the first bullet point for the sake of completeness and not because I have an opinion on it.

If I were following the logic of that some have used here, I would argue that the slides at the start, because they have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, are not high-enough quality to bother with and can be summarily set aside without further consideration. (But I don't argue this.)

Very helpful Eric, let us look at this. This first post is only the start of this process (going in forward chronological order).

I'm not looking at the list of peer reviewed articles: if any one is relevant let me know. However your next reference makes that unnecessary I hope:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSfurtherevi.pdf

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Naturwissenschaften, DOI 10.1007/s001 14-007-0221-7 SHORT COMMUNICATION Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles Stanislaw Szpak. Pamela A. Mosier-Boss. Frank E. Gordon Received: 5 September 2006/Revised: 20 December 2006/Accepted: 2 January 2007 © Springer-Verlag 2007 Abstract Almost two decades ago, Fleischmann and Pons reported excess enthalpy generation in the negatively polarized Pd/D-D2O system, which they attributed to nuclear reactions. In the months and years that followed, other manifestations of nuclear activities in this system were observed, viz. tritium and helium production and transmutation of elements. In this report, we present additional evidence, namely, the emission of highly energetic charged particles emitted from the Pd/D electrode when this system is placed in either an external electrostatic or magnetostatic field. The density of tracks registered by a CR-39 detector was found to be of a magnitude that provides undisputable evidence of their nuclear origin. The experiments were reproducible. A model based upon electron capture is proposed to explain the reaction products observed in the Pd/D-D2O system.

This is a classic example of (2). The Further evidence reported here is completely different from the original evidence (F&P). You can't actually say is it tighter or less tight because the things measured are different. In order to be (1) these guys would need to repeat F&P's work, under tighter conditions, and measured the same things which would then be much more clearly anomalous.

Let me also comment on:

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The density of tracks registered by a CR-39 detector was found to be of a magnitude that provides undisputable evidence of their nuclear origin.

While that statement may be true (and I would not necessarily accept such a statement from an interested party - such judgements can often be disputed) it in no way proves anything extraordinary. You would have to rule out mundane mechanisms for this (very low level of)particles - from materials used, background, etc.

So, this new (CR-39) evidence is a candidate for future tightening. We shall see from subsequent refs how this goes.

I should point out, as background, that the evidence here is difficult to tighten. Radioactivity at these very low rates can have many causes (not least there used to be many deuterium sources contaminated with tritium). Obviously we can in principle rule all these things out but its going to be tough work unless the radioactive emmission is reasonably high - say at the level expected fro measurable excess power.

For reference - assuming deuterium fusion as a reference - the energy released per particle from any known reaction varies from 3MeV up to 14MeV. So an energy per particle of 10MeV is a decent upper bound average.

1W power excess corresponds to 1 / (1E7 * 1.6E-19) particles per second or 10^12 particles per second.

There will be a factor for particles absorbed, and another factor for the fraction of particles that hit the CR39. Even so we end up with a very high count of particles - millions of times higher than that observed on the CR39 which is maybe 1 particle per minute or less.

The way round that is to suppose that the LENR reactions hardly ever generate high energy particles. Reasonable. But then why is it that coincidentally are they generating enough particles to be noticed on CR-39 but not enough for any less sensitive method? This is a very specific range of emissions, and the chances of the 10^12 reactions per second needed for the 1W excess power generating just the right number of particles to be in the sweet spot detectable by these experiments but not more easily so is small.

If the rate was lower, there would be no evidence. If the rate was higher, the evidence would be indisputable and could be directly measured with non-integrating detectors, and obviously above any contamination levels.

I'm not sure if I've made this argument clear. it is not a death blow to the hypothesis that there are these low levels of radiation emitted via LENR. But it does show that if there are, we have a significant lucky coincidence that they are measurable on CR-39 and unlucky that they are never (repeatably) any higher. This is an example that surprises is because the evidence is so weak when there could just as easily be very strong evidence, or none, from this mechanism.

That makes looking at alternative explanations for the CR-39 tracks an obvious move even if we were not going to do that anyway because extraordinary results require extraordinary evidence.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

For reference - assuming deuterium fusion as a reference - the energy released per particle from any known reaction varies from 3MeV up to 14MeV. So an energy per particle of 10MeV is a decent upper bound average.

I make no such assumption. I don't think it's deuterium fusion, myself. I assume it's induced alpha decay (and possibly induced beta decay, although that would not be picked up by the experiment).

Quote from Thomas Clarke

I should point out, as background, that the evidence here is difficult to tighten. Radioactivity at these very low rates can have many causes (not least there used to be many deuterium sources contaminated with tritium).

If we are not arguing systematic error, this is determined entirely by the error and standard deviation above background levels. You could have low levels in the foreground that are fantastically above the background levels.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

1W power excess corresponds to 1 / (1E7 * 1.6E-19) particles per second or 10^12 particles per second.

There will be a factor for particles absorbed, and another factor for the fraction of particles that hit the CR39. Even so we end up with a very high count of particles - millions of times higher than that observed on the CR39 which is maybe 1 particle per minute or less.

In order to take this argument where you want to go, you need levels of excess heat to work against. I do not believe they're reporting excess heat in the Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. articles. For all we know there could be a piddling amount of excess heat and a corresponding number of tracks to go with it.

In addition, we would need some estimate of the efficiency of the integrated CR-39 counts in relation to those in the source, including at deeper layers. Many unknowns.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

This is an example that surprises is because the evidence is so weak when there could just as easily be very strong evidence, or none, from this mechanism.

That makes looking at alternative explanations for the CR-39 tracks an obvious move even if we were not going to do that anyway because extraordinary results require extraordinary evidence.

Forgive me for putting it this way, but this is the conclusion of a person on the Internet who knows little about CR-39 measurement (please correct me if I'm wrong!). If you and the team that did this set of research were on a panel, who would you expect me to take seriously?

Allow me to elaborate, using a hypothetical position that is not my own. I think the evidence for the discovery of the Higgs boson is paltry. All they did was smash a bunch of (goes to the Internet to find out what they smashed) large hadrons and then use deflection under an electromagnetic field to estimate the mass of a certain particle that was vaguely within range of what theory predicted. The number of data points was ginormous, and the signal so small. They clearly cherry-picked the evidence. There also need to be several replications. What would be convincing beyond all doubt would be an image in a very powerful microscope, which can zoom in far enough to see it.

The argument above will stand whatever (reasonable) average energy level you choose for your alphas. Choose.

In any case, if induced alpha decay, what is decaying? This is somewhat OT of course.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

The argument above will stand whatever (reasonable) average energy level you choose for your alphas. Choose.

In any case, if induced alpha decay, what is decaying? This is somewhat OT of course.

It won't stand, as I pointed out, because we don't have an amount of excess heat to work against.

I don't know exactly what is decaying; possibly trace impurities in one of these materials:

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Palladium chloride (Aldrich), lithium chloride (Mallinckrodt), deuterated water (Aldrich), HPLC grade light water (Aldrich), sodium hydroxide (Baker), potassium chloride (Aldrich), copper chloride (Aldrich), 0.25 mm diameter gold wire (Aldrich), 0.5 mm diameter silver wire (Aldrich), 0.25 mm diameter platinum wire (Aldrich), 0.25 mm diameter palladium wire (Johnson Matthey), nickel screen (Delker, 0.35 mm thick and eyelet dimensions of 3 mm × 1.9 mm), 0.025 mm thick gold foil (Aldrich), and copper screen (TWP, Inc., 0.27 mm thick and eyelet dimensions of 1.37 mm × 1.37 mm) were used as received. CR-39 detectors (Fukuvi), rectangular shape with dimensions of 1 cm × 2 cm × 1 mm, were obtained from Landauer and used as received.

Even better: platinum, one of whose trace isotopes is an alpha emitter.

It's all OT at this point. (Perhaps we should start another thread?)

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Forgive me for putting it this way, but this is the conclusion of a person on the Internet who knows little about CR-39 measurement (please correct me if I'm wrong!).

I know enough about it to substantiate my comments above which are of a general nature.

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If you and the team that did this set of research were on a panel, who would you expect me to take seriously?

Given that my point so far is general, accessible to anyone with Wikipedia and High School Physics, I'd expect you to take me seriously. You don't of course know what these other guys would say about it, but could validate it for yourself.

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Allow me to elaborate, using a hypothetical position that is not my own. I think the evidence for the discovery of the Higgs boson is paltry. All they did was smash a bunch of (goes to the Internet to find out what they smashed) large hadrons and then use deflection under an electromagnetic field to estimate the mass of a certain particle that was vaguely within range of what theory predicted. The number of data points was ginormous, and the signal so small. They clearly cherry-picked the evidence. There also need to be several replications. What would be convincing beyond all doubt would be an image in a very powerful microscope, which can zoom in far enough to see it.

Quite right Eric. The CERN people agree with this argument, which is why they have a very careful methodology for particle detection. They have different groups working on different instruments independently, and finding a signal peak. They also have a very careful and published analysis of exactly what is the noise (which they measure) and the signal (which they measure). But it is really only independent evidence from different detectors with no communication between them that rules out collusion (unconscious probably, but still possible) or some artifact.

As for your other argument, perhaps we should disengage from this [lexicon]conversation[/lexicon]?

You are saying, I think:
(1) You are not competent to judge these things for yourself. (But see later if this is not true).
(2) You are not prepared to trust me (entirely reasonable - I would not expect this)
(3) You are not prepared to trust the opinion of mainstream scientists who you think are either biassed or have not looked at the evidence.
(4) You are prepared to trust the views of a very few outlying scientists, and/or a number of non-scientists such as Jed who post on the internet, and/or a number of people with a clear financial interest in promoting LENR (Rossi, the otehr LENR companies, etc). this group all have strong motives for being biassed (unconsciously) because they have devoted their lives or finances to this stuff and for it to be nothing would be very upsetting.

Given these propositions then your opinion is pretty well fixed to align with the people in (4). Also, given (1), independently of (2) there is no point my addressing arguments to you.

OTOH, if you are competent to assess these matters yourself you can judge my arguments. They are not so very complex and can be checked from public info.

Perhaps I should not have made the remark about athe CR-39 radiation levels detected being so very low. It can be substantiated, but is not the nub of teh matter. Following this trail of what should be tightening the results will probably resolve the matter.

Do you agree, from the abstract of this paper, that they are viewing their work as an extension of F&P but the evidence they provide is very different from the F&P evidence, therefore this abstract (and the paper that goes with it) counts as (2) not (1)?

I'd expect you to competent to judge that.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

(3) You are not prepared to trust the opinion of mainstream scientists who you think are either biassed or have not looked at the evidence.
(4) You are prepared to trust the views of a very few outlying scientists, and/or a number of non-scientists such as Jed who post on the internet, and/or a number of people with a clear financial interest in promoting LENR (Rossi, the otehr LENR companies, etc). this group all have strong motives for being biassed (unconsciously) because they have devoted their lives or finances to this stuff and for it to be nothing would be very upsetting.

This is a strawman. I'm not inclined to address it.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Following this trail of what should be tightening the results will probably resolve the matter.

That was my point. Perhaps you'll take a look the series of papers. I think it does what you asked for.

Yes -- we can disengage.

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It won't stand, as I pointed out, because we don't have an amount of excess heat to work against.

That is true if there is no measurement of this. However, given that so many of these experiments claim excess heat of > 0.1w it is surely reasonable to suppose, if radiation is commensurate with heat, that high levels of radiation would sometimes be seen.

I hope that you realise the flip side of this lack of predictivity. While, by stretching things as needed, any single marginal observation can more easily be posited consistent with possible LENR by adding conditions such as "these experiments had excess power in the uW range or lower", every time you have to do this you are adding to the coincidence.

Since my argument here was designed to be highlighting a coincidence, rather than proving anything at all, I think the point stays made. Perhaps following this trail (I think not tonight) will elucidate matters.

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Perhaps you'll take a look the series of papers. I think it does what you asked for.

Yes -- we can disengage.

This leaves me rather unclear. I have as you can see started to look at these papers - in that I've checked the first link. Perhaps others will be more profitable.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

This leaves me rather unclear. I have as you can see started to look at these papers - in that I've checked the first link. Perhaps others will be more profitable.

The idea is that they take a clear signal, and then through several iterations, they refine their method, and the signal does not go away.

It does not matter that the signal is not as large as we would like. The point is that it's clear. The only room is for systematic error. And this is something they look into in different ways.