Distinguishing non-belief and disbelief... on skepticism...

Thomas and Eric,

Just to clarify: I never used the Word "refuted" wrt the Focardi paper. That's a strong Word, that would not be used by serious scientists. I used the Word "criticism", which is the Word one would use when per reviewed papers are published that discusses other scientists papers and results..

this is what I said:

"
I have not found any criticism (Peer reviewed or not) of this paper. The authors also made a paper in 1994, which was critizied by physcists at CERN. CERN was not able to trigger any excess heat, they saw only excess heat during loading of hydrogen. I've read their paper and it's clear they did not try any trigger mechanism to "turn on" the Ni-H LENR, so they concluded no excess heat other than during Hydrogen absorption in lattice.
"

Oystla,

I feel that most of the above replies are "argumentative" in the sense that they are trying to make, or combat, a polemic view, rather than showing interest in details.

As far as the "interesting" paper I'm sorry for your lack of curiosity. Is it not interesting there is this chemical anomaly, not well understood but recognised, to do with H/D and transition metals? You seem to be filtering everything according to whether it is "for or against" LENR. But science (good science) is not like that. It is about interest in details.

You asked about the excess heat paper and I've explained why the headline figures that impress you are not impressive - they did not factor the effect of pressure difference into their calorimetry. I showed you from a followup paper that other people do this, and that pressure affects temperature in these setups. Anyway, I may be wrong - all I'm saying is that the paper does not give enough detail for anyone to know that so it is not surprising that what would otherwise be a Nobel prize headline has now sunk into obscurity. If these guys really had that excess heat they could redo the experiment with less problematic calorimetry: it would make waves.

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I do not understand calorimetry. If I pay $10,000.00 dollars over a set period of time for heating my factory and you demonstrate over an equivalent 12 month period that my fuel bills will drop to $2,000.00 dollars then I will buy your product. Okay there will be variables but my bills will be all the evidence I will need.

When such contracts are offered for real those taking part will find out:

(1) somone is offering 5X cheaper than normal energy
or
(2) it is a scam

However in the case of (1) it is still not proven LENR. For example, somone might have loss leader contracts of this sort to attract publicity and more funding. Rossi's 1MW output, assuming $0.05/kWh comparable gas heating cost, would have a conventional cost of $500,000 (very approximately). So you could view it as a an expensive advert, if the payment was as you state. Of course if such contracts continued, expanding, it would be obvious that a cheap energy source has been discovered, or else an eccentric billionaire was making a very weird joke...

Also remember that people saying they have such contracts, without proof, is not quite the same as people having them!

The issues here are more about people than science, and therefore more uncertain. Along with "caveat emptor" there should be "caveat spectator".

Thomas,

"a polemic view"? , "rather than showing interest in details" ??

So you don't think your lack of understanding the details of calorimetry and heat exchange are an interesting detail and rather clarifying for everyone?

Now then, to your interesting paper on transition metals;

Yes, interesting anomaly and a litle more of the paper here;

http://static-content.springer…s10450-012-9445-8/000.png

10 eV pr. Oxygen atom is some three times the energy of water formation from hydrogen and Oxygen.

And some relevant criticism from me;

This paper you say " really stands out" as criticism of Focardi have really nothing to do with the Focardi et. al experiment.

There are no oxygen in the Focardi cell that would add to the excess energy over the year the experiment lasted.

Focardi used a vacuum and turbomolecular pump to evacuate all air from the chamber before H2 where loaded into the Nickel rods and chamber several times.

So the paper is of no relevance.

And for the forth time:

What happens inside the chamber is of no relevance to the measurment of heat exchange.

A certain amount of energy generated inside the cell MUST escape through the outer border to the surroundings. Really !!!

So If you measure the border conditions, you don't needed to care about internals.

The energy transfer from a box of any shape and to the surroundings does NOT depend on what occurs inside the box or how many chambers and walls there are inside, OR If pressure is varying, yes!

It depends on the exterior surface geometry, outside wall parameters and surface temperature only. So your repetetive criticism of possible internal complications are of NO Value.

Again: It does not matter how the internals look like, number of walls, chambers, heaters , pressure etc.

An even outer wall temperature will therefore have a certain heat flow to the surroundings by conduction,convection and radiation. Therefore a calibration curve will work.

And therefore it does not matter If the heat arrives to outer wall from the electrical heater or from the inner core as LENR heat.

The evidence of this is the formulas for convection, conduction, radiation. It's the border conditions that matter in the formulas.

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So you don't think your lack of understanding the details of calorimetry and heat exchange are an interesting detail and rather clarifying for everyone?

You have not substantiated either claim. I don't claim to be an expert in calorimetry - but do claim to have a very good (by internet forum standards) knowledge and the basic physics and maths to analyse even quite complex second order effects.

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Now then, to your interesting paper on transition metals;Yes, interesting anomaly and a litle more of the paper here;static-content.springer.com/lo…s10450-012-9445-8/000.png10 eV pr. Oxygen atom is some three times the energy of water formation from hydrogen and Oxygen.And some relevant criticism from me;This paper you say " really stands out"

It does, it has interesting non-trivial content.

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as criticism of Focardi have really nothing to do with the Focardi et. al experiment.

I did not say it stood out as criticism. Indeed I agree it is not relevant to Focardi. I've told everyone in detail why the Focardi results appear to have an elementary calorimetry error. presumably you agree, because you have not replied to that central argument.

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Focardi used a vacuum and turbomolecular pump to evacuate all air from the chamber before H2 where loaded into the Nickel rods and chamber several times.

explain figure 5 caption?

We don't know under what pressure conditions the main calorimetry results were carried out, because the pressure data is not shown. I believe the chamber was sealed during the calorimetry (he says that somewhere) - in that case the pressure must be uncertain.

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So the paper is of no relevance.

No relevance to the Focardi paper, I agree, but highly interesting for the existence of heat anomalies in general.

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And for the forth time:What happens inside the chamber is of no relevance to the measurement of heat exchange. A certain amount of energy generated inside the cell MUST escape through the outer border to the surroundings. Really !!!So If you measure the border conditions, you don't needed to care about internals.

You don't care about internals inside the "inner, hotter" isothermal surface. You need to control all the conditions that affect thermal resistance from this inner measured temperature (used as a calibrated proxy for power) to whatever "edge" temperature is also measured.

You first argued this for a more complex system with three temperatures, and two thermal breaks, and incomplete isolation so that different heat flows between the two breaks due to an independent path. I did not want to go into details of this at the time.

In Focardi's case we have just two measured temperatures (ignoring for now possibly relevant issues of whether the boundaries of the thermal break cavity are isothermal). However you are making cavalier assumptions that the total thermal resistance between these two mostly isothermal surfaces is constant between calibration and active tests. In the case of a sealed vessel (as for Focardi) that cannot be assumed because pressure is unknown. Also it cannot be assumed because there can be state changes of the walls that alter radiation and hence thermal resistance (H is a very reactive material and could interpenetrate surface metal layers in a way that alters emissivity - such alteration could be "hysteretic" and give rise to spurious results).

These two artifact mechanisms are both possible in Focardi's paper - the pressure issue would appear - from the write-up - to be particularly relevant.

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It depends on the exterior surface geometry, outside wall parameters and surface temperature only. So your repetetive criticism of possible internal complications are of NO Value.Again: It does not matter how the internals look like, number of walls, chambers, heaters , pressure etc.

Just to reiterate again what you did not catch originally - in real setups you hardly ever have two thermal breaks between (three) isothermals where all the heat travelling through the inner break also travels through the outer break. That is a decent approximation, but there are corrections due to direct thermal flow from inner to outer where that break isothermality of the middle isothermal surface. Of course, if the isothermal surfaces were exact and complete you would have exactly equated heat, and given two thermal breaks one containing the other you can use either heat flow measurement. Good calorimetry will do this with outer measurements that have lower time resolution but more accuracy due to better control of of the thermal resistance and more constant temperatures over notionally isothermal surfaces. The given experiment (not Focardi, since he uses only two isothermals, and anyway has relatively much larger results) looked to me as though there might be significant errors from this, and the results were small (5%) so this mattered. But that was not my main issue with the setup - merely one that i could not rule out.

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The energy transfer from a box of any shape and to the surroundings does NOT depend on what occurs inside the box or how many chambers and walls there are inside, OR If pressure is varying, yes!It depends on the exterior surface geometry, outside wall parameters and surface temperature only. So your repetetive criticism of possible internal complications are of NO Value.

Most of the experiments that have been posted here use calorimeters in which the thermal break (gap) is between two concentric cylinders. The pressure in that thermal gap matters; it may be evacuated, or not, depending on how the experiment is setup. Again the inner vessel may be sealed (or not) from the gap. But, given we have long experiments and H, careful checking is needed to ensure you do not get leaks from inner to the gap unless the gap is permanently kept at vacuum as should be. This is especially true when the inner vessel temperatures are high.

Interestingly, there is another issue with such setups. Where the thermal gap temperature difference is high you cannot assume that calibration based only on the thermal gap temperature difference is accurate, because the actual equation for radiative transport (the main mechanism) is nonlinear and will give a different nonlinearity for different outer isothermal surface temperatures - which is why sometimes this is itself controlled. But that can often be neglected.

None of this stuff is very complex, and which variables need to be controlled depends on how accurate you want the results to be. Papers that do not consider all error mechanisms and eliminate them as much smaller than the claimed anomalous results are from my POV unsafe.

Quote from Mary Yugo

As for Nanospire and their story of radiation sickness, it is, as Thomas notes, completely WHACKO.

LeClaire certainly has a colorful description of what he thought he saw:

2013 - https://goo.gl/CbsUyM
2012 - https://goo.gl/a1AoSc
2012 - https://goo.gl/HyCQpl

(This forum software hates Vortex links, so I had to route them through a URL shortener.)

Quote from Mary Yugo

These people are completely nuts, yet, again as Thomas notes, they are not roundly repudiated by the LENR community as they should be.

What is the "LENR community"? LENR researchers? Hobbyists at all levels of education and insight taking it upon themselves to follow LENR? I don't recall having heard LENR researchers refer to Nanospire in support of anything; do you? Journalists have mentioned them in contexts in which I would not have myself.

Quote from Mary Yugo

And Frank, with due respect, if you don't comprehend and appreciate the above, you have no business making any judgements about the veracity of LENR claims.

You are quite right, I do not understand the science particularly issues regarding calorimetry. But, many investors do not understand the science behind their investment. As a potential investor I look to people like yourself, Thomas, Eric, Axil, AlainCo and others to highlight the pitfalls and advantages of what will inevitably be an investment opportunity for good or bad. The language you all use is what influences me, and yes that is subjective; as I have said before, attempts to discredit through character assassination influence me far less than say the Mossier Boss paper does, highlighted by Eric.

The more you describe ideas as:

Quote from Mary Yugo

completely WHACKO

I am less persuaded. Sorry!

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But, many investors do not understand the science behind their investment. As a potential investor I look to people like yourself, Thomas, Eric, Axil, AlainCo and others to highlight the pitfalls and advantages of what will inevitably be an investment opportunity for good or bad.

I have to say that is unwise. For scientific credibility you should find a credible scientific analysis. For investment credibility you should talk to a specialist who will have a view on whether a particular store is likely to be attractive, what events in the future would drive valuation up, etc. Some vapourware products can make a good medium-term investment.

In this case the Woodford trust would appear to have seen the Lugano test as a positive in its DD - which makes their scientific advice look superficially very bad.

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attempts to discredit through character assassination influence me far less than say the Mossier Boss paper does, highlighted by Eric

Eric has located the 4 OOM quote in this. But it is astonishingly (for something so apparently important) vague. And there is an obvious artifact if the D is even very slightly contaminated with tritium. The correct controls - not given - would confirm or deny that artifact.

It is only one sentence in the report, not in abstract or conclusions. The authors obviously don't think it very important.

The rest of the paper does not show evidence of LENR, merely of something consistent with LENR (and many other non-LENR explanations).

An experiment in which you make no observations is consistent with LENR, so this is rather weak.

Congratulations frankwtu!! You have now been mildly insulted by Mary 'notgeorgehody' Yugo. Think of it like a baptism, of sorts. Maybe you will find this post of his more persuasive:

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Shane, you will go down in history as an early member of the Rossi-Ass-Licking-Organization (RALO). The list of members is long and can be derived from an examination of Rossi’s idiotic and misnamed blog, “jonp”. But you are pretty far from the top of the list. For RALO number 1, the contest is between the likes of Sterling Alan and Frank Acland originally. Now, Darden and Vaughn have joined this group, along with Lewan, Essen, Levi (unless he is conspiring with Rossi) and anyone who has written a moronic book about why Rossi’s claims are real, the “New Fire” and other similar stupidity. And not to forget, Tom Whipple and the other interviewers, article writers, and silly acolytes who occasionally appear in some obscure internet location. And of course, there are the Swedish Blind Mice.

Finally, there are unfortunately dozens of people who ask completely content-less questions on Rossi’s blogs in the hope of a completely content-less answer from Rossi. Some of those have been hanging in there more than four years now. So no, Shane, your spot in the history of those duped and flummoxed by Rossi will be a tiny one.

I’ve thought about making a list with the vague intention of holding people accountable for their stupidity with Rossi and their unpleasantness with his critics but so far, I can’t justify the time to even collate much less document such a list. Rossi will either end up in jail again, be run out of the country, or if he’s lucky, will fade into oblivion like Defkalion. In that case, the difference is that Rossi will get to keep some of the money.

Can I be on your "enemies list" please?

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As a potential investor I look to people like yourself, Thomas, Eric, Axil, AlainCo and others to highlight the pitfalls and advantages of what will inevitably be an investment opportunity for good or bad.

If you are going to do due diligence in connection with a concrete investment opportunity, you should be aware that it's an extremely high risk investment, and you should find someone who is open-minded but expert in a field relevant to the technology that is being touted. He or she can offer critical feedback on what seems likely and what seems unlikely. All an observer without relevant expertise (such as myself -- I'm a software developer) can do is give a generic opinion, analogous to the opinion of a lawyer on a technical question.

If you are just considering investment at a general level, e.g., in the stocks of relevant companies in the stock market, and not in connection with a specific opportunity, I'd just do as much reading as I could, trying to get a broad spectrum of opinions. I would not worry about being tainted with one view or another too much, although I would seek to get a balance. Not everyone agrees with this approach, and that's fine, too.

None of this is investment advice -- it's investment meta-advice.

Eric
On distinguishing non-belief and disbelief... on skepticism... I am sure I am not alone in trying to weigh up the pros and cons. First I ask is there an anomaly, yes I think that has been proven. Second can that anomaly be harnessed to do useful work, maybe, I don't think that has been proven at all. Third, if the anomaly can be harnessed to do useful work, can it be commercialised. This is pure speculation.

But that is what the markets are good at 'speculation'. We shall see.

Slad

Enemies list? What enemies list? Mary et al has a right to express his opinion whatever that is!

Best regards
Frank

Frank... Mary mentions she wants to make a list of people who are apparently due some kind of reprisal / atavistic vengeance.

I called this an "enemies list", in an attempt to make it sound slightly less alarming.

Tsk tsk Shane! Mary is a "world class expert in calorimetry" don't you know.

http://bit.ly/1KlGxyM

Shane

I agree, poor choice of language. totally lacking in Bayesian logic and overflowing with ad homs, What can I say!

Have a look at this for a smattering of Bayesian logic by way of light relief:-

Quote from frankwtu

See lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf

Quite impressive I think!

Eric, you might want to make clear that the quote in your last post is not mine, as stated, but me quoting somone else?