FP's experiments discussion

Quote from joshua cude

Abd wrote:

Quote: “The phenomenon as described is quite simple, merely originally quite unexpected.”

Well, it's simple to say deuterons join to form helium and release heat. It's not simple to explain how that is possible, and it is not just "quite…

I have not said that 'deuterons join to form helium and heat. I have written that deuterium is being converted to helium. There is a crucial difference. The evidence supports "deuterium," not "deuterons." The joining of deuterons is extremely unlikely for all the reasons Cude would say and has said. But that's not what I claim. Storms does claim that deuterons fuse, and his claims are, shall we say, outside of known physics, and would require a major revolution in the understanding of the nucleus.

However, we don't know the mechanism. Storms is speculating, more or less out of desperation, he wanted to come up with something that fit the facts he knows, so he did that, designing his theory to predict what is known about cold fusion. He doesn't particularly give a fig what physicists think. Most of the elements of Storms' theory are probably correct, but I would be very, very surprised if his theory of mechanism is correct. Nevertheless, aspects of his theory are testable, and the investigation could generate valuable information anyway, so I hope his ideas are tested and results confirmed.

What I personally think is happening doesn't matter, but I do suspect that the reaction is along the lines of what Takahashi, a hot fusion physicist, is working on. An idea would be double-deuterium molecular fusion, occurring in sites that catalyze the formation of a Bose-Einstein or similar condensate. If Cude wants to do something useful with his physics, if he has enough to pull this off, he could study Takahashi's TSC theory and write a critique of it for publication. Nobody who knows the physics well enough is criticizing it. this is "molecular fusion" because the electrons are involved. This is obviously not possible in plasma! It seems terribly unlikely for four deuterons to fuse, but it would actually be two deuterium molecules in a particular physical configuration at low relative momentum. There are other problems with Takahashi's theory as applied to the real phenomenon, but the general idea might be sound, and it appears to require no new physics, just a damn difficult setup to analyze. A 4-body problem, 8 counting the electrons, which he probably simplifies by making it "symmetric." And the deuterons are not themselves symmetric. Shades of O-P process...

Quote from H-G Branzell

oystla, you wrote:
- Excess energy and 4He measured in SRI M4 experiment

Here you can find some interesting reading about the M4 experiment:
newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/34/341introduction.shtml

It is not much left of M4 when Steve is done with it.

(And don't miss "Next Article" at page bottom.)

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By late 2014, starting to work on an article on heat/helium, I realized that SRI M4 and Apicella et al, both of which found results very close to the theoretical value for energy from deuterium conversion to helium, had done something not done elsewhere: they both used "anodic stripping" or reverse electrolysis, which would remove palladium from the surface of the cathode, possibly releasing trapped helium. So that those two experiments come the closest to the theoretical value could simply reflect that they basically captured all the helium. SRI M4 actually ends up finding a little too much, as McKubre once pointed out to Krivit, that if he'd wanted to fake data, he wouldn't have found quite so much helium! But this is within experimental error.

Krivit's analysis of M4, and his analysis of Violante Laser-3, were corrupt, biased, motivated to find something wrong, and not careful. He failed to understand helium behavior in palladium, and made many other errors in this. I covered much of this in the series of posts linked above.

Quote from kirkshanahan

On another front, I believe it was Abd that claimed checking out the CCS idea was cost prohibitive. Not really. If you have an F&P cell, replace the electrodes with another Joule heater. Make sure 1 of the two you now have in the cell is in the gas space. Now you can run each independently and presumably simulate the split between ohmic and recombination heat. And all it costs you is another resistor and some time to hook it up (you can borrow a power supply to run the other resistor).

I don't think I would have said that checking CCS was "cost prohibitive." Rather there is a cost, in terms of money, perhaps, but even more, time, cold fusion experiments are not quick affairs, they often run for months. Adding and removing elements from a cell is not necessarily simple. If you disturb the cell arrangement, you may shift the calibration, just from that.

Shanahan has really two ideas, he seems to call both of them "CCS". One is a shift in cell calibration, the other is unexpected recombination heat. These could function together, and I think he is referring to that above. I.e., if heat is being generated in an unexpected location, then it might affect the temperature readings and thus the "calibration." However, where would recombination be occurring? Oxygen and hydrogen don't just combine at the temperatures involved. There are two places in the cell where the recombination would naturally occur: at the cathode, which is palladium and a fine recombination catalyst, and in a recombiner, usually set above the cell proper so that recombined heavy water can drip back into the cell. These are both expected locations for heat to arise. In addition, the bulk of the Joule heating will be in the interface layer, I think, not in the bulk electrolyte. None of these are unexpected locations.

If you are looking for XE generated at the cathode, then unexpected recombination at the cathode could look like that. However, this would, in closed cells, reduce the heat generated in the recombiner, and generally the calorimetry is designed to capture all that heat. In other words, heat generated at the recombiner is heat, as is heat generated at the cathode. In open cells, sometimes the gases are externally recombined and retained to measure the deuterium balance. Orphaned oxygen is sometimes measured.

There is no doubt that increasing calorimetric accuracy is a high value in most cold fusion experiments, particularly with small-scale PdD work where large amounts of heat are not expected. However, It is generally considered enough if results are well above noise. Adding additional instrumentation and additional calibration resistors is relatively cheap, if done ab initio. Not as add-on, I think. The entire experiment would need to be repeated, and if results differed, it would not be clear what the cause was.

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And finally you’ve all seen that Abd has missed it again. He thinks you can pull a ‘signal’ out of the ‘noise’ in the heat-helium correlation plot. That of course assumes the heat signals are real.

No, correlation is a tool for distinguishing signal from noise. All "signals" are real. The issue is what they represent. This was an area where Shanahan might show a little, ah, humility. He badly screwed up on this one, in his Letter in Journal of Environmental Monitoring. Shanahan here refers to a heat-helium correlation plot. He must be referring to what he analyzed in that paper. It was not a heat-helium correlation plot. It was a heat/helium - heat correlation plot. If the heat and helium are covariant, as they appear to be, and if that is a linear variation (i.e, double the heat, double the helium), then the plot he looked at would show very low correlation, because heat/helium apparently does not vary with heat, except there is more noise at lower levels of heat. That, in fact, is a consequence of the strong correlation between heat and helium.

Strong correlation normally shows causal connection. It does not prove that one signal causes the other (correlation is not causation). Strong correlations that are maintained in differing environments start to become conclusive evidence. The heat/helium evidence can be faulted for low precision, largely caused by the difficulties in collecting and measuring helium. However, that affects the error bars on the ratio, and the correlation found is quite strong.

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The working assumption in this discussion Abd is that NONE of the apparent excess energy signals is real. That’s what ‘fictitious’ means. The excess heat numbers are an artifact of a CCS. No real heat there, ergo, no LENR or anything else that might have introduced new heat sources to the cell.

This is a pseudoskeptical explanation. If the heat is a CCS effect, then the data shows a correlation between a CCS effect and helium. In attempting to explain how this might release helium, Shanahan has claimed one of two things: heat or possibly vibration. But the correlation stands. It's just a question of what is being correlated. I find a heat/CCS correlation truly astonishing, more astonishing than "unknown nuclear reaction." But I guess it is like the 2000 U.Sl Presidential election, it depends on whose Gore is getting axed.

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But for those of you who understand the futility of trying to correlate to an integrated error, there is one point to mention.

correlation is not something one "tries." It is something one measures. Integrated error or integrated heat, correlation is a characteristic of the data.

(to be continued)

(continued)

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When you have process data as a function of time, and two measures (A and B) seem to correlate, you need to keep in mind that it may be that ‘A’ is rationally time-dependent and so is ‘B’, thus time may be the key. In the heat-He correlation, time works in on heat because the heat ‘produced’ is just an integrated error (integrated over time).

This is what a pseudoskeptic does. Experimental results are shown that might indicate what the pseudoskep rejects. So the pseudoskep makes up explanations. That these explanations don't fit the data can be handled by making up more explanations. Pseudoskepticism becomes really obvious when the explanations become Rube Goldberg machines. In Miles work, what was measured was actually excess energy for short periods, the time to gather, from cell outgas, an aliquot of gas. I forget the time, it's fairly short. I'm not looking at the work again, here, but Miles has a value for XE for the period of collection. While this is technically "integrated," it is not what one might think, heat integrated over a long time, as in some cold fusion experiments. This was looking at heat generated in a period vs helium measured and collected for that period. In all these periods, electrolysis would be going on. If there was recombination, it would presumably be occurring whether or not there is a little XE, because the same power is going into splitting the heavy water and generating those gases. The same levels of gas generation would be happening, the same gas bubbles, etc.

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Likewise, with He levels well below background (NOT 5 ppm recall please) an increasing He signal with time is expected for a leak. The magnitude of the heat error and the leak rate will define the apparent correlation constant.

It would be expected to do the same without the XP. That this, with high consistency, runs even within an order of magnitude of the deuterium fusion Q remains an astonishing coincidence. Those leaks are conspiring to be "just so." And varying with the heat, when the collection times are the same.

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As a further speculation, the CCS mechanism is based on little mixed H2 and O2 bubbles exploding in the electrolyte.

Remember, they won't "explode in the electrolyte." They might mix and burn in contact with the cathode. Not floating around in the electrolyte. And an "explosion" of a tiny bubble, so small that it is not generating readily visible effects, underwater, is a bit of a misnomer. Shanahan has these things get very hot, so hot they melt some palladium, which, to use the technical term, is Damn Hot. How you can do this with tiny bubbles, under water, is ..., ah, we are starting to get into Rube Goldberg territory.

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They produce shock waves, and since you have a large number of them, the upshot is what looks like macroscopic vibrations.

Yeah, when you gotta have an explanation, you take what you can get. So, Shanahan knows that SPAWAR measured shock waves. These were so small that they were barely detectable with a piezoelectric sensor that was the cathode substrate.

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In the tritium business it is a well-known fact that vibrations can loosen connections and cause leaks. So, if they are strong enough in aggregate, the little exploding bubbles from the Fleischmann-Pons-Hawkins Effect can cause 4He to appear in the cell via an air leak.

So ... let me get this straight! All these little explosions which those who work with this kind of electrolysis don't expect are so numerous and so powerful that they affect the seals? Without being powerful enough to be, ah, noticed? "Hey, Mike, it seems M4 is vibrating!" "Nah, Fran, that's just my beating heart. Watching all this paint dry has gotten me soooo excited!"So, these connections are loosened and leak. Just the right amount. consistently across experiments, doesn't matter how well or poorly sealed the cells were to start. Look, this one is easy to test. I was planning on fastening a piezoelectric detector to my cells in that planned work that I might do when I get a Round Tuit. I have a suspicion that there might be shock waves. But my guess is also that they will not be externally detectable, since the SPAWAR pulses were so small.Now, this points to some simple experiments Shanahan could do. Run some electrolysis with palladium cathode, open cell so they are safe, make them rough mock-ups of the kinds of cells used in the heat/helium work. If he wants this to be cheap, he will use ordinary water. But remember, this effect disappears with ordinary water, hydrogen controls don't show helium. Period. Wouldn't they also have little bubbles floating around and recombining? So maybe it has to be heavy water. What do you think, Kirk? Light or heavy water? If only heavy water shows the effect, you have more 'splainin' to do, but hope springs eternal, eh? In any case, you could look for shock waves, that's easy. I have some piezoelectric sensors, responding well up to high frequencies, super cheap, and these signals could easily be displayed on a fairly cheap digital storage oscilloscope.

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One of the things the Clarkes did was to look for other atmospheric gases in the samples given to them, and they found lots. I wonder how much N2 one might find in those samples apparently containing 4He…

This was Arata DS cathodes, if I'm correct, a very different animal. That leak was gross.here is a fascinating paper on that: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ChubbTAmodelingth.pdf The findings of tritium and 3He are remarkable. The much higher expected hellium (based on other word) was not found, conflicting with what was reported by Arata. Chubb speculates, with substantial cause, that the Arata double-layer cathode did not maintain seal, and there is another problem there. One of the most significant of results there is the helium 3 profile, which reflects probable tritium flow through the cathode, as would be expected, I think. But I have not put a lot into study of tritium because it is at such low levels compared to helium. Whether or not it is easy to check for other gases depends on the particular sampling protocol and particular mass spectrometer being used. If it a mass spectrometer designed to distinguish between 4He+ and D2+, it might not be usable for heavier gases. I do understand that Violante (Apicella et al) looked for argon in their significant work. They had not excluded ambient helium, so they were measuring elevation above ambient, with three experiments, which kinda throws a monkey wrench in the leakage idea. The Case work also saw helium levels rising well above ambient, which work is problematic because this was palladium plated on coconut charcoal, and apparently could not be confirmed later. But that was a substantial series of experiments, with the controls 8 our of 16 cells were controls, hydrogen or some material not expected to show a heat effect, and no helium was found. Of the 8 experimental cells, 5 showed heat and some helium, and in the strong cells, helium rose above ambient, showing no effect from that, no slowing as would be expected from leakage. That data has never been well presented

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Abd wrote:[quote]
When I say that the preponderance of the evidence shows reality, I mean that researchers can walk into an agency and present evidence with a straight face that is not simply circumstantial, weak, close to noise, like Cude imagines, but that is statistically of high significance, that is direct, and that is already confirmed by multiple labs.

I've been asking people here to post such evidence, with no luck so far. Do you mean perhaps that you are privy to hidden evidence not generally available? that would seem unlikely.{/quote]I have very little private evidence, mostly not relevant here. I have posted links.
My paper from Current Science: http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/108/04/0574.pdf (with what I hope are thorough references).
Storms 2014 book probably has the most thorough presentation of experimental work on heat/helium.
His 2010 Naturwissenshaften review covers it: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEstatusofcoa.pdf
His 2007 book also has extensive material on it, mostly found later, but there is at least one error in the later work not found in the book, about SRI M4.
His recent Current Science paper has some coverage: http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/108/04/0535.pdf

The research program I have suggested, and which may be happening, is to begin with confirmation of the heat/helium ratio to increased precision. We now know how to do this with higher precision than was possible a decade ago. I am really only concerned with evidence being strong enough to show a need for and high value of such work. It's about time.

If LENR could be developed to create practical applications, the lost opportunity cost of delay I estimate as being as high as a trillion dollars per year. So you can devalue that by the odds of practical applications arising\ due to increased research in the field. The necessary research, at this point, is pocket change compared with what is going into hot fusion research, even though it is quite possible that hot fusion will never actually be practical. It's real, sure. But real <> practical.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

This is a classic case where if, like Abd (it seems from the above) you think there is just one hydra, you will take the fact that maybe CCS does not apply to Brillouin as an indication that is does not apply elsewhere. Of course that is not true, and equally it is not true that CCs is the only potential error mechanism not considered by excess heat experiments in CF research.

This is sooo offensive. Clarke is repeating his idea of what I supposedly think after I responded to the contrary. When I wrote about a single hydra with many tentacles, I was speaking about pseudoskepticism, which can endlessly generate alleged "possible" artifacts.

As to actual artifacts, whether or not CCS could apply to Brillouin is obviously of no relevance to possible artifacts in other experiments.

Possible calorimetric errors are legion. It's difficult work.

Jed Rothwell has expressed an opinion that the late Nate Hoffman was the "stupidest man he ever met," which might say more about Jed than about Hoffman, be that as it may. Hoffman mostly did not study the calorimetry in his book, A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects, published in 1995 by the American Nuclear Society with support from the Electric Power Research Institute (which was also funding McKubre). He did write about possible errors, p. 67 et seq.

1. mistaken identification of thermal storage processes as heat generation.
2. calibration errors.
3. localized phenomena interfering with correct global measurements
4. blocking of palladium surfaces by impurities
5. improper statistical handling of data.

After some discussion of these, the protagonist Old Metallurgist, likely a stand-in for Hoffman himself, says, "Well that's a quick rundown on possible heat artifacts. In general, these heat measurements are being done by very knowledgeable experimenters who know how to avoid artifacts."

I would say that he certainly was not talking about all work in the field! That, for example, the Lugano team, studying a Rossi device, did not calibrate their setup under operating conditions was an appalling oversight.

That book, written by a genuine scientific skeptic, got me started in cold fusion. He remained skeptical, but interested, and he skewers common pseuodoskeptical arguments while not falling for premature conclusions. The book does not talk about heat/helium correlation, which is a bit odd, but I suspect that by the time Hoffman may have realized the significance of Miles, the book was mostly done and he was getting ready to retire. "China Lake" results for helium are in an appendix, but there is no mention of correlated heat. Some things may never be explained.... such as why Pons and Fleischmann not only did not collaborate with the Morrey collaboration to measure helium, they grossly violated the agreement.

Quote from joshua cude

Abd wrote:

Wrong. I am interested in nothing but the truth.

That is complete nonsense. First of all, there is a fundamental dishonesty involved in hiding identity. From such a position, one who freely impugns the integrity of others is dishonest, as Joshua has done many times. Again and again, highly misleading arguments are presented, when they have, in fact, been answered long ago, but he repeats them in new fora as if those responses were never written. That's dishonest, though it is theoretically possible that it is a failure of memory. A genuine skeptic would present other points of view, would not always be arguing on one side. I just wrote a little about Nate Hoffman, a good example of a genuine skeptic.

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But based on the preponderance of evidence, I am nearly certain that the phenomenon or phenomena identified as cold fusion are due to artifacts, delusion, incompetence, and in some cases deception. But my judgement is not relevant. In my arguments, I cite the judgements of respected and credentialed scientists, the vast majority of whom, evidence shows, shares my view of this.

In spite of challenges, Joshua has not shown this with actual evidence. He cited the 2004 Doe review as being an example of 17 to 1 convince that the preponderance of the evidence was against cold fusion, when that simply wasn't true. And Cude never says, "Sorry, that was a mistake." He just goes on to new arguments. I've seen this behavior before, it is more common among religious fanatics than scientists.

It is not that he's not convinced. That is completely his province. It is that, in fact, he attacks others as deluded, incompetent, or frauds. He twists all available evidence toward supporting that idea. He wrote about my lack of a degree, but he has no credentials himself, nothing that could be verified, in any case. Just what he says. And the testimony of someone who, with no necessity, hides his identity, is how valuable?

It's not worth spit.

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it is to win a debate, and, under that, to be right.

And yet the difference between skeptics and advocates is that skeptics are happy to describe the sort of evidence that would change our minds. But advocates are unable to do the same.

And, as I just said, his goal is to wear the mantle of science and truth, whereas those stupid, deluded, cold fusioneers have no clue about Reality. I'll answer that challenged, it's not difficult at all, much less something I am "unable" to do.

If heat/helium is carefully studied and the study shows that the FP Heat Effect is not generating correlated helium, or if it is close to noise, not a clear correlation, then I don't reject cold fusion, as such, but would retreat drastically from the position I've been working to educate people about, because what I called the *only direct evidence that cold fusion is nuclear in nature" would have been badly damaged. I.e., this would "change my mind." I would not become a Richard Garwin, "There must be some mistake," but I would say, "There could be some mistake."

(I already say "there could be some mistake," because that position is, in fact, underneath all scientific skepticism. However, our estimate of probability of error can become low.)

That would still leave a pile of circumstantial evidence. If the most salient of this evidence is shown to be artifact, by controlled experiment, the matter would become like polywater and N-rays. There could still be some mysteries, but that's life. Not everything will be explained. This would be a further "change of mind."

Now, I have only seen Joshua ever accept massive, reliable heat as what would change his mind. To get to that point could take billions of dollars in research. So is there some possible evidence of reality of a chaotic, not-yet-controlled effect that would change his mind? I'm proposing and supporting confirmation of the heat/helium ratio with increased precision. Is there some way in which this would change his mind? Are there conditions he would place on this?

(Like, it must be done by someone who has never expressed a positive opinion that cold fusion is possible? It must be published in Nature? -- Cude knows we have seen that one.)

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to be careful, here, "dozen" means "many." I haven't sat down and counted them, but I had created a detailed response to a post here that contained many such. If Joshua asks for it, I would list them, that would be relatively easy.

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I pointed out many of the specific inaccuracies in your posts, fully referenced. You have often accused me of lying, but have not identified any lies, so that I can defend or concede. I am scrupulously honest by nature, and am deeply hurt by such accusations.

In prior discussion today, I identified a specific false statement, and referred to it again. I use lie usually to mean a deliberately false statement, said to mislead, but this can include what might be called culpable carelessness. Cude knows it's false, because, I'm quite sure, he knows the fact. And, again, if Cude asks, I'll give details.

Deeply hurt, my ***. One more lie. Stop hiding if you want to be treated with sensitivity. When one consistently takes one side in a dispute, insistently, for years, always presenting arguments one way, never the other, never admitting inconvenient fact, and even if one always "tells the truth," the sum of it is a lie.

Yes, one can lie with the truth, easily.