FP's experiments discussion

It is interesting to still see other / new explanations why now an entire team (not individuals) is probably wrong? ... should give an interview...should re-analyse their results....
some of the "co-moderators" in this forum don't seem to get the message, that there is really something in this "N" in the LENR that does not require 100 Mrd$, 100 Mio Kelvin and another couple of decades to materialize in nuclear power plants that deliver energy at comparable costs...
Looking forward to the coming replications but also to a theory that covers these results and findings.

Quote from joshua cude

Anyway, don't they say x/beta emissions thermalized in lead? The lead would produce most of the bremsstrahlung, but would have characteristic peaks at 73, 75, and 84 keV

What?

Another "skeptic" who chooses to pontificate before he has properly read what he is talking about.

.

Quote

What?Another "skeptic" who chooses to pontificate before he has properly read what he is talking about.

Well, it was kind of rhetorical. They do say that on their web site. But it's point form and cryptic, so it's not completely obvious they actually did it, or are just prescribing it...

Dr Storms

Quote from Storms

No such incentive to learn is present on the internet. Consequently, very little learning takes place.

Please don't loose heart, we need you. Yes the internet is a very different place to the classroom, more like a battlefield where powerful argumentum ad hominem, political, strategic and tactical arguments compete with the science of progressive discovery and where the victors account prevails. We may loose a battle or two but this is a war science must win, please don't desert us.

Very best regards
Frank

Thomas

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Because I will be better informed, and it will be interesting

In past posts your motivation was 'for fun'. There appears to be progress on many fronts although in fairness to you, having a healthy interest in becoming better informed may well be fun.

Best regards
Frank

@kirkshanahan
"Paradigmnoia wrote: "As far as the camera can see, the spectrum for alumina looks very much Planckian." etc...

What you are struggling with confused me for a long time, although I now understand it.

The camera is looking at a slice of the spectrum, 7 to 13.5 microns. At that spectral section, the alumina is emitting almost 100% of the possible heat energy it can. So the camera thinks it is a blackbody, more or less, and calculates at temperature. Matching the camera epsilon setting to the "percent" of that small slice of the spectrum vs a blackbody in that slice gets you close to 0.95, which is where the camera should be set in that condition (i.e. the not-quite blackbody slice is about 95% of what a perfect blackbody would look like in the 7 to 13.5 micron "view port"). This is not a precise description, but the idea I hope is conveyed.

Considering the camera view to be viewed through a band pass filter makes the idea make more sense (for some people).

The camera can calculate the temperature, even using this small IR band window, just like the report you mentioned earlier suggests that the precise Christiansen wavelength is ideal for temperature measurement (i.e. ignoring all other wavelengths).

Radiant power calculation, on the other hand, requires knowing the full radiance spectrum of the hot alumina, which the camera cannot see. So the temperature decided upon by the camera (if done correctly, with high epsilon, due to its limited spectral viewpoint) must be used with the Planck curve modified to a grey body approximation that incorporates (integrates) the consideration of the poor radiance of hot alumina in the shortwave IR band, and the rest of the radiant spectrum. This works out, through experiment, to be a much lower epsilon than what the camera sees in its band pass-limited spectrum. I.e.The grey body approximation for radiant power is a mathematical equivalent of the entire bumpy hot alumina spectral pattern. It is very dependent on temperature. (An epsilon of about 0.4 is close for around 1400°C for radiant power from the hot alumina, but the camera still sees that something like 0.95 is correct for T).

The epsilon to arrive at the greybody approximation for radiant power is not what gets put into the camera, because it cannot consider the bandwidth outside of it's view, and it is only determining temperature. The camera greybody epsilon is only applicable to the bandwidth it can see.

I hope that makes sense.

Edit: To illustrate, have a look at this image: http://imagebank.osa.org/getImage.xqy?img=LmZ1bGwsb2UtMjEtMjYtMzIyMDctZzAwOQ&article=oe-21-26-32207-g009
Ignore the wavelengths for now.
The blackbody line gets an ε of 1.0
A greybody approximation of the blue selective emitter would be somewhere under the black body curve, but with the classic Planckian shape. Probably way below the blackbody line, from the looks of this image. Lets say this is a ε of 0.4

Now imagine that the IR camera can only see a small fragment of the spectrum, right where that selective emitter peak (blue) is.
The temperature at the blue selective emitter peak will conform to the blackbody temperature. ε of 0.99 in that spot (Christiansen wavelength).

Widen that camera view a just bit, centered at the peak, and it will not quite be the equivalent of the blackbody peak in the same new width when integrated, but will be close. ε of 0.95

For T, the blue line with 0.95 will be OK. For Power, we need the whole greybody line.

Quote from Frank

In past posts your motivation was 'for fun'. There appears to be progress on many fronts although in fairness to you, having a healthy interest in becoming better informed may well be fun.

Yes, becoming better informed, and being interested, for me, is fun

Quote from oystla

This CCS is nothing more than a hypothesis and should be stated as such (CCSH).

It looks like the goal posts have shifted once again with MFMP 'excessive heat with x-ray radiation.

See
https://animpossibleinvention.…plicated-hers-the-recipe/

Extract:

The main evidence for the effect in MFMP’s experiment is a combination of ‘excess heat’—i.e. thermal energy released from the reaction, beyond the input energy—and x-ray radiation—i.e. the same kind of low energy radiation used in medical radiography. Important is that the x-ray emissions were observed only together with excess heat.

The character of the x-ray signal is, according to MFMP, the best way to detect that the replication is successful. The energy of the x-ray photons are between 0 and 300 keV (medical radiography typically uses x-rays between 5 and 150 keV), and there’s a brief but massive burst of x-rays when the reaction starts. This was observed also at the first semi-public demonstration
of the E-Cat by Rossi in January 2011.

Does this now mean Calibration Constant Shift errors are far less problematic if the MFMP experiment can be replicated?

Quote from BobHiggins

This is unmistakable proof that Ni-H LENR is happening.

Best regards
Frank

oystla,

I think you've lost the plot here. If LENR is proven (as you say Bob claims) then why would it matter that early experiments did not prove LENR?

But then, CCS is not proven by what MFMP have done. They have found an x-ray anomaly while doing an experiment that had marginal (not clear) excess heat indications.

If that stands and proves reproducible it can be investigated, and will have a cause. If the cause is not equipment or external artifact then there is something looking like positive evidence for LENR.

Two very big ifs. Which in LENR-world tend to be ignored. Luckily however, MFMP will investigate this. The claims they make now may even get them enough money to do this a bit more quickly.

Tom

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/l…ctromagneticRadiation.pdf

Evidence of electromagnetic radiation from Ni-H Systems

This MFMP radiation observation is nothing new. It is just a first step that each generation must take on a long journey of rediscovery.

@Paradigmnoia

I believe I am following what your saying, and I agree. What i was really getting at in my question I see Alan Fletcher has already done...http://lenr.qumbu.com/blackbody_141027A.php I was actually doing qualitatively more or less what he does.

He calculates the power using a greybody equation and then does so using the measured alumina emissivity and finds they are different. Now the question of course is what is the actual emissivity curve of the ecat...

Should have Googled it before bothering you...thanks for the help (you too Thomas).

@kirkshanahan

I am glad to be of some help.

I still have trouble putting into words a good explanation of what happens when the wrong lower value for emissivity is used for the camera. The result is a higher temperature, but that is an answer, not a process. Essentially the camera greybody approximation becomes super-real greybody to super-blackbody in extreme cases. The latter case should be a red alert for a serious error in thermometry.

I had quite a bit of personal opposition to Thomas's paper initially. It did not make sense to me.

Now, after much study, I find that his paper is quite good in regards to his temperature analysis.
I was eventually able to almost duplicate his results using a different, but qualitatively similar approach. I cheated and used the NASA radiance calculator to arrive at some answers. Eventually, after some practice, I can eyeball match two equivalent radiant power spectral sections at different emissivities and their corresponding temperatures, within often a few Watts (by integrating for confirmation), disposing of a bunch of the worst math involved in qualitative, Monte Carlo-like tests to see if I am getting close to an acceptable solution.
(Simple re-normalizing by ratios does not work due to T^4 working at different relative rates, depending heavily on the starting points for each temperature).

The problem of the real total normal emissivity of the Lugano tube is probably impossible to solve without having the exact item in hand.

Even the estimates of the appropriate camera epsilon to be used are suspect, especially in the lower end of the temperature range.

@frankwtu

"oystla wrote:This CCS is nothing more than a hypothesis and should be stated as such (CCSH).

It looks like the goal posts have shifted once again with MFMP 'excessive heat with x-ray
radiation."

Oystia's quote is wrong. I don't follow your comment.

I see axil claims the Focardi-Piantelli work is essentially the same. I looked at the paper
he referred to briefly. Then I went back to their prior paper on calorimetry (IL NUOVO CIMENTO
VOL. 111 A, N. 11 Novembre 1998, p. 1233). They essentially are doing isoperibolic calorimetry, i.e.
the cal equation is Pout = k * (T - Tref). Tref is a stable reference temp (they use room temp), T is the measured sample temp (at various locations), and k is the calibration constant. Note that k = m from
y = mx +b, and b is set to 0 by this method.

They report "cal constants" for two cells with (Yahoo!) error measures: 1.3 +/-.05 and
2.71 +/- .06 W/K. This should gives us a quick way to estimate if random calibration
variation would be relevant...but it actually turns out to be useless, as they don't relate
what thermocouple the constants involve...sigh. So we have to estimate the k's from Figure 2.

Figure 2 gives the temp diff for various input poweres for 4 thermocouples placed in 4
different positions in 'cell B'. T1 and T4 are way low and high compared to T2 and T2, which are close but
not identical. I also noticed the data profile is the same for T2, T3, and T1, but T4 points were
taken at a different time (power).

In any case we can estimate the cal curves as straight lines (even though they have some curvature)
and use two points to derive the change in temp diff. for a change in power. I used:

Loc Low P set High P set slope
T1 2,10 40,260 0.1520 ( location Pin, delT Pin, delT (change in pin / change in deltaT)
T2 2,10 40,170 0.2375
T3 2,10 40,180 0.2235

Now I can measure the deltaT from figure 4 for the pre-change and post-change conditions
(they get the system stable, then cut the heat for awhile, then turn it back on at the same
level). I measure:

dT1 dT2 dT3 P1(W) P2 P3 P's in watts
before 395 265 280 60.04 62.94 62.58
after 485 385 370 73.72 91.44 82.60

Powerdiff = excess heat = 13.68, 28.5, 20.12

So...looks pretty good at the start (Before). Numbers agree pretty well. But look at after...not very
uniform: ~14, ~28, and ~20 W excess depending on where you are.

Now, back in the F&P case, the issue boiled down to the fact that the CFers wanted to treat
the cell/calorimeter as a homogeneous lump, which means heat moving around in the cell would
have no effect, and I showed that wasn't the best method. So, are we getting nervous yet? I
am...

The variation in computed excess based on location shows that the simple calibration technique,
which I believe was used, has the potential to misdirect because once again reality seems to be
heterogeneous and needs a better calorimetric treatment.

Of course, you could ALSO just claim EXCESS HEAT! - in the range of 25-50% of input. But...
remember our ranges in the F&P case? Right there again aren't we. This experiment is NOT the
F&P cell, so what we see may have a simple explanation that still allows them to claim excess
heat production, but I worry about bad models of how the cell functions again.

One of the major criticisms of isoperibolic calorimettry is that it is a single-point method, and
is thus susceptible to hot spot issues. This is what we see above. If there is an excess it
seems to be localized and impacts the different TCs differently. The usual solution to this is
to use an integrating calorimetric method like mass-flow or Seebeck. Or you could build a complex
model that explains the observed differences between the locations based on heat transfer
considerations (but that's not easy...).

In either case, we need more data (and it needs to be better than what we have here)!

What kind of data like this do we have from the MFMP case?

MFMP are not in fact claiming reliable calorimetric data. They base their rather florid announcement on one trace from an NaI scintillation gamma spectrometer that shows a 1 OOM higher than background (with the spectrometer fairly well shielded) burst in gammas.

This is a very low level signal, a real anomaly but one that could have any number of explanations. MFMP appear to have conflated this with various comments made by Rossi and so obtained a positive.

It is as I said. If you look at preponderance of evidence and are half-convinced by claims like those of Rossi, suddenly every anomaly in attempted replications looks likely to be LENR to you because you have lost the necessary "extraordinary phenomena" level of caution.

There is so much (contradictory) that Rossi has said that almost any data can be made to fit, in some way, something. Humans tend to suffer apophenia. When there is a real underlying pattern this can be very creative. But it leads inevitably to many false positives. (LENR data, above all, considered as a whole does not do "underlying patterns").

And systematic errors here are possible too. For example many of the low level radiation claims correlated with switching on experiments can be explained by effects of heat - for example changing convection currents that alter air currents and hence air-borne dust. But the phenomena here are at so low a level that guessing at the real reason could never safely be determined without a lot more investigation, and likely never then unless replicable.

The LENR meme is that unless you can prove some artifact applies, it must therefore prove LENR. This is logically all wrong, but seems to underlie many arguments here.

Quote from joshua cude

But I completely disagree that advocacy against cold fusion is more plausible. Arguments in obscure internet forums would be completely ineffective against real evidence for cold fusion, and in fact are completely ineffective against existing evidence. Companies like Shell, Amoco, Airbus, NASA, Toyota, Mitsi, etc have looked in to the subject. If they found something, no polemic in lenr-forum is gonna keep it down if it's real.

Wrong. Amoco (now part of Exxon if I recall correctly) for one DID find excess energy, or excess power in their reprise of their understanding of an F&P cell. You can see that "not for public release document" in one or another CF / LENR archive. Toyota researchers have published extensively.... perhaps not the results or in the venues of general nuclear physics discourse. Shell has been close to the vest with their findings, as could be expected, and unlike Amoco, no one to my knowledge "leaked" their findings. What would "Mitsi" be? MITI, I don't know how much they have funded, or continue to fund such research, but certainly it is possible. Mitsubishi has been reputed to have some interest there, and by implication their extensive efforts to find an LENR path to accelerating radionuclide decay is well attested by patents. NASA has long had a modest funding for such research. Whether Dennis Bushnell's efforts of the last two years have ramped NASA's work, I don't know-- and we won't know perhaps because of the "reputation trap", which is likely to be actively initiated and now maintained to control information and widespread interest in LENR.

The implications of strong LENR for military efforts are immense and have been subject to classification. For those seeking to imagine LENR military / intelligence applications: long range, nearly autonomous surveillance drones operating for days or months without concern for fuel; satellite power systems capable of fueling orbital platform laser weapons without reliance on vulnerable solar arrays or dangerous to launch or return onboard nuclear fission reactors. LENR powered submarine system deployments... an as yet unmentioned possibility.... but possibly an explanation for the NRL's long interest and funding in this area.

So, suppression of interest can benefit the profit-motivated medium-term interests of conventional fossil fuel concerns. And such suppression would clearly benefit at least the short term "conventional" hot fusion program and its billion(s?) per year worldwide budget. Further, there is the tendency for those making early errors in judging or mis-judging work of F&P and others and to then "own" and defend their error until death.... a not uncommon situation in physics and elsewhere in science. While along the way they may well induce their students to perpetuate and propagate their erroneous commitment to premature adverse judgment. Those students may continue to police and troll public venues such as Wikipedia in the interests of their advisors long after it is appropriate. The result there being corruption of public confidence the whole Wikipedia enterprise (I made my last contribution with a specific request that new mechanisms be developed to correct the issues arising in "controversial" subjects). Perhaps some progress there on Wikipedia, but not enough to right the wrongs, and certainly not enough with regards to CF / LENR... last I looked, long having developed "Wiki-fatigue".

Longview wrote:

Quote

me:

Wrong. [list of activities by the groups I mentioned]

The various activities by these groups was the point. Whether the results they produced represent good evidence for cold fusion or not requires consideration of the details, which was not my intention. I don't agree that they do, but it was the activity itself that I was citing.

In spite of advocacy against cold fusion, many companies and organizations got busy anyway. So, if arguments on blogs did not (or does not) prevent this kind of activity, surely if they found something that would be much to their benefit, these arguments on blogs would not dissuade them from taking advantage of those benefits. If Toyota found a way to make the first cold fusion car, joshua cude's polemic on lenr-forum would not inhibit them in any way from making money on the discovery.

In general, there is simply no way that polemic anywhere could keep a discovery like this down if it were real.

Quote

[list of potential beneficiaries of the suppression of cold fusion]

I did not say that there were no beneficiaries of the suppression of cold fusion. I said that argument in on-line forums would be completely ineffective against real evidence for cold fusion, making investment in such negative advocacy completely implausible. But let's take some of them in turn.

Military

The military may want to keep their progress secret, but paying advocates to badmouth Rossi, if he really had a cold fusion product, would be futile.

Fossil fuels

Fossil fuels would obviously be hurt if cold fusion were successful, but if they really wanted to suppress the field, hired blog advocates seems like the last thing they would use. I don't know .. maybe bribery, sabotage, kidnapping... would all be more effective, but really, I don't think there's any way, but least of all blogging, that could keep such a good thing down. Which of course is why fossil fuel interests did *not* try to suppress nuclear power (fission or fusion), or wind or solar, for that matter. Now, fission and fusion have not lived up to their promise, but that was certainly not obvious in the 50s and 60s, when fission plants were sprouting up everywhere. Moreover, some of the organizations investigating cold fusion *are* fossil fuel companies.

Hot fusion

You do realize that hot fusion doesn't work yet, right? Which makes it a sink of money, not a source. The decision makers -- the DOE in the US, or the government, by extension -- would like nothing better than to save the money they *spend* on hot fusion. And the same goes for everyone in the scientific community other than the hot fusion workers, because it would leave all the more money for other fields. Sure, the actual hot fusion researchers get their salaries from the research, but they are trained scientists and engineers. They could get the same salary just about anywhere else. No one is making a killing here. None of the people involved now are likely to be living by the time hot fusion turns a profit, if it ever does.

If you're invoking greed here, it works the other way. It would be for greed that scientists all over the planet, and consumers paying for fuel, would fight to *reveal* cold fusion, not to suppress it. And that's completely obvious from the way the world reacted to the announcement in 1989. It was when the evidence failed to stand up to scrutiny that the wheels fell off the cart.

Pride

Sure, scientists are proud, but they're also too proud to pay advocates to go on-line to preserve their pride against the truth. The ones with the most at stake, like Nathan Lewis and Steve Koonin, who were the most adamant, have moved on. They simply ignore the field now. And scientists would know better than anyone that if cold fusion were real, it would eventually be vindicated, and then continued advocacy against it would only make them look even worse when the eventual vindication came. The only way they would continue to advocate against cold fusion would be if they were all but certain it is bogus, and if that's the case, then it's the responsible thing to do.

There have been more than a dozen companies started, based on LENR, but not a single product. If such companies can form in the face of withering criticism from the likes of me, surely the criticism will not prevent them from selling something, if they can make it.

So, I don't think we can resolve this, but nothing you said makes me any less certain that I am *right* -- not wrong -- that paid advocacy against cold fusion in internet forums would be completely futile if it were real, and is therefore totally implausible. On the other hand, paid advocacy *for* cold fusion, even in obscure forums, can produce just the sort of buzz that confidence men are looking for.

Quote from joshua cude

Hot fusion

You do realize that hot fusion doesn't work yet, right? Which makes it a sink of money, not a source. The decision makers -- the DOE in the US, or the government, by extension -- would like nothing better than to save the money they *spend* on hot fusion. And the same goes for everyone in the scientific community other than the hot fusion workers, because it would leave all the more money for other fields. Sure, the actual hot fusion researchers get their salaries from the research, but they are trained scientists and engineers. They could get the same salary just about anywhere else. No one is making a killing here. None of the people involved now are likely to be living by the time hot fusion turns a profit, if it ever does.

In peace time, research funding is directly related to and quite proportionate to public perception (simple mechanism involving media and Congress). In war time a similar relationship prevails, except that the public is largely excluded from the decision making.

Do you have some fundamental misunderstanding of economics and research? A "sink' of money from the standpoint of the taxpayer is a "source" of money from the standpoint of a researcher. Not too difficult, but perhaps such a fundamental misunderstanding is clouding your thinking in this area?

I assume from other's descriptions of your actual persona that you are aware of the inertia that can accompany a career in science today. That is a life of work in an area of NSF, NIH, DOE etc funding come with many perqs such as journal editorships, book authorships / editorships, national meeting keynote presentations, grant committee membership and so on. Sure a newly minted Ph.D. or successful post doc is ready to "move on" to other areas within the larger discipline (if there are not reputation traps laid). But that does not apply as easily the more successful and entrenched one becomes in their particular sub discipline. Exceptions: the very top folks, the National Academicians, the Nobel Laureates. They can move around on reputation alone, due in part to a possibly dubious notion of "brilliance'. But regardless of the notion, it is a system and it has worked, for example say in the Manhattan Project. But it is not perfect, take for example the Human Genome Project which stumbled along for a decade or so, and only gained momentum under the threat of a private and competing initiative by J. Craig Venter.