The Playground

Quote from Wyttenbach

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

As a researcher I would ask the following two questions:

Which other particle can carry away the momentum (neutrino? other nucleus) ?
How is the energy dissipated?

This is all part of the mystery of cold fusion. The reaction is unknown, so knowing how it works is unknown on top of unknown. Looking at cold fusion must look first at experimental evidence, not at theory. Cold fusion papers were not uncommonly rejected because of "lack of explanatory theory," which completely misses the point. There is experimental evidence that is not explained by theory. Until and unless this evidence is examined, experiments are replicated -- which can involve the discovery of artifacts and their demonstration by controlled experiment -- theory is not going to be developed. It's outside what we can do, the environment in which the reaction is found is far too complex to predict using theory, and that is about the one thing I remember clearly from sitting with Feynman: predicting the solid state is beyond our capacity. Then and now, still.

So what is found experimentally? There is no substantial radiation above 20 KeV. Tritium is found, but at roughly a million times lower than helium. The tritium may be essentially irrelevant, a rare branch or secondary reaction. Neutrons are about a million time lower than neutrons, not very far above background.

There are no transmutation products close to helium in abundance. Basically, the ash is helium and nothing else, from PdD experiments. The heat generated is consistent with the conversion of deuterium to helium and heat, with no major energy leakage (as with neutrinos). The correlation between heat and helium was established, first, by Miles with a significant experimental series, announced in 1991. That work continued and the correlation has been confirmed by about a dozen independent groups. There were two experiments where measures were taken to capture all of the helium. Those found a ratio of the deuterium/helium conversion Q within experimental error. (Stated as 10% in one, and looking like about 20% in the other).

As to how the energy is dissipated, there are two basic ideas on the table. It is released as a series of low energy photons, and various mechanisms are asserted for this, and these photons would be absorbed by the experimental apparatus (they would generally be "soft X-rays" -- but technically these are gammas if emitted from the nucleus) or the energy is shared with the lattice through phonons. I find that pretty unlikely because of the magnitudes involved ... but I want to emphasize, we don't have much evidence at all. X-rays are reported (films fogged) but have never been precisely correlated with heat. There are many amazing gaps in the experimental record, obvious things that have never been tried, and the cause is obvious:

Funding was cut off and the supply of graduate students was cut off, by 1990 or so. This all happened, this is not "conspiracy theory." It's easy to understand, no "conspiracy" need be invovled. Sure you don't want scarce research funds wasted on Bad Science, and graduate students wasting their time pursuing what doesn't exist, do you?

So when a grad student's PhD thesis was rejected because he was working on cold fusion, ipso facto -- good work, apparently -- that was it. The word got around. He did another thesis, and it was approved, but it probably delayed him quite a while. This is all covered by the sociologists of science. This was a huge fiasco.

Quote from randombit0

Paradigmoia ANY camera has been calibrated using a Black Body and comes with it's own calibration files.
Each Optris camera come with specific calibration files associated to serial number of the camera sensor and optics. The system would not work without that.
This procedure guarantee that you can measure temperature and also radiated heat if the total emissivity is known.

Yes, but the word "guarantee" is misleading. Is one measuring a "black body"? Generally, no. However, "emissivity" is mentioned. The emissivity is the ratio between the total radiation of a "gray body" to that of a black body. (See the black body article linked). However, real objects have different emissivities at different wavelengths. "Total emissivity" cannot express this. Further, if I'm correct, emissivity can vary with temperature. If a body is translucent at the wavelength being examined, the camera may be measuring not the surface temperature, but the interior, or some bright object in the interior.

Bottom line, without calibration, an optical camera cannot be reliably used to measure dissipated power for a complex object. With calibration, yes. And that is why, with the Lugano report, the lack of a calibration at operating temperature, or at least at operating input power, was fatal to the reliability of that report. Extremely complex calculations were used, and when calculations are extremely complex, the risk of errors multiplies. This is why we would always, if possible, want to have independent measures when a result is important. And, here, if emissivity figures were incorrect, garbage in, garbage out.

In the Lugano report, the camera was calibrated at 500 W input. The actual operating input power was over 900 W. So why wasn't a calbration done, up to the operating limits of the heating elements? The report gives an excuse that this might burn out the elements, which could burn out if too much power is put into them when they are not hot. Yes. That's true, except that was completely misleading. Who invented that argument?

One doesn't simply turn on 900 watts to such an element. The power is slowly raised, and at each input power, calibration data would be collected. This would be done all the way up to maximum operating power, and we think that the Lugano researchers did not exceed the stated maximum. So, then we would have a comparison, between fuel and no-fuel. It still could be defective, because the fuel can affect heat distribution, but it would be much closer!

As well, at Lugano, there was an internal thermocouple. No data was released from this thermocouple, which was part of Rossi's control mechanism. Why not?

There are cheap ceramics, called pyrometric cones. Standard Cone 10 is 1330 C. Pyrometric devices like that go up to about 1500 C. Relying on a single complex measure as a critical part of an experiment is foolish.

In the Guaranteed Performance test, it appears that flow rate, water temperature in and water temperature out were measured. Now, there are potential problems with steam quality and, even worse, overflow water. One could also feed fuel in through the input water line! Or just hot water, and there would be ways to have a cool outer water jacket with live steam in an inner tube. (I have written that it is impossible to rule out fraud without having a fully independent test, independent in almost every way, because a fraudster can think of things that simply will not occur to observers. So an obvious second test at the GPT would be in the customer area. How is that megawatt being utilized? How is the water cooled, essentially? Where is that energy going?

Part of the whole idea of a megawatt test is that supposedly faking a megawatt would be impossible. However, if the usage of the megawatt is concealed, not at all difficult to fake!

There was not an arms-length relationship between the "customer" and Rossi. In effect, we might as well think of the customer as Rossi. And then Rossi could plead "customer trade secrets" as an excuse for avoiding inspection.

And, of course, that might all be true, but all these excuses, over and over, created inconclusive test after inconclusive test. Some years ago, I concluded that this was deliberate on Rossi's part, to mislead competition. I was hoping that he actually had a real effect. He still might, but the excuse has completely evaporated. IH was not competition, they were his licensee and customer.

Anyone who is confident in Rossi's work, by this time, five years in, is not paying attention. He has set up inconclusive test after inconclusive test, refusing assistance from experts, only allowing experts who would do it all his way, and that the excuse about the heating element is in the Lugano report demonstrates this. The "independent professors" signed off on that bit of patent nonsense, as if it was their idea.

If Rossi actually has something real, he has nevertheless set himself up for a fraud prosecution. Create an appearance often enough, it doesn't matter what the reality is. You can still go to jail. It's about time his friends start passing this on instead of "defending" the indefensible.

Quote from randombit0

BTW many groups in the world seems to have done successful experiments based on the Lugano paper.

We have been watching all that. None of it is conclusive, some of it is very, very shaky, and what appears to be the best and most careful work is negative. Basically, researchers are looking for anomalous heat with nickel and LiAlH4, plus, some of them, added hydrogen gas.

Possible artifacts abound, and the work has not become sophisticated enough to address them. There are none of what I'd call "engineering experiments," where conditions are carefully controlled and varied, one variable at at time, with experiments being repeated over an extensive series. Rather, there are scattered tests with single samples. And then something is seen, perhaps. File drawer effect? The full data needed to evaluate these experiments is often missing.

In the case of the first Parkhomov report, water evaporation calorimetry appeared to confirm substantial XP. However, the temperature record showed, that if the heat was appearing in the cooling water bath, it was not coming from the fuel cylinder! Because there was no dramatic rise in temperature there, as would be expected from the dramatic rise in COP. Much more likely, I suspected, as boiling increased in the water bath, from the very irregularly-shaped "boiler," water splashed out of the cooling bath, or the steam was very wet. Parkhomov attempted to calibrate, and reported a calibration, but the element burned out very quickly and the calibration was ... not solid, then. Later, he reported significant COP again, but he had insulated the cell and input power was, then, far lower, so COP was much lower heat generated. It was as if his results were disappearing, but he never mentioned the decline in power. On Planet Rossi, the chant is COP! COP!

Poor Dr. Parkhomov, faced with a data gap caused by using a laptop on battery power and the battery ran out, filled in the gap with fake data. I found this extremely sad, tragic. He simply had no idea what he was dealing with and probably though that would be harmless. However, why did he have that data gap? Why was he not just plugging the laptop in? He never explained this, and that is why he faked the data, I suspect, he was avoiding revealing a critical detail. The "importance" of this work is intoxicating and one becomes attached to having made a Big Discovery. He used battery power because he had a huge level of induced AC noise in his thermocouple inputs. It would make the data unreadable if the laptop wasn't floating. So he floated it, and never mind that this could be a safety hazard. He'd be careful.... That noise could still be affecting his readings.... He could have shielded against it. But this was all quick and dirty.

So we have this amazing GPT where the actual power output of a "megawatt" plant is not even part of the test. It's a "COP" measure, so, in theory, the test could be run at COP 50 with 10 watts in and 500 watts out. Pass! Who made that up? Who insisted, over and over, on raw COP as a measure, with no measure of steam quality and overflow water?

Yay! Kirk Shanahan! Hope springs eternal!

Quote from kirkshanahan

On 6/2/16 Abd wrote: “There are extremely few extremely skeptical articles on cold fusion appearing in journals over the last ten years, and, in fact, beyond the Letter of Kirk Shanahan to the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, which was a critique of a review, not a primary review, I don't know of any. Shanahan ended up sputtering that the journal editors did not let him respond to the author rebuttal. The tables have been turned. If there is difficulty accessing journals now, it is is more on the skeptical side.”

Is what I wrote true? Kirk does not actually negate it, rather, he then makes excuses. And ... ah ... misrepresents fact, obvious fact, easily established. He used to do better.

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Two points: Point 1. Abd believes the publishing experiences of one scientist signals a complete change in direction.

No, it's one example only. There are many signs of the shift.

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Hardly… The fact is that in general and for some time, all reputable scientific journals prefer to not publish *anything* about cold fusion or LENR. Some journals with a history of publishing papers in the field are a little more lenient than the rest, but they still would prefer to not have to consider LENR papers.

Notice the direct contradiction. Dr. Shanahan is not careful. First he says "all reputable journals." Then he makes an excuse for why that isn't actually so, there are "some journals with a history of publishing papers in the field? Great. When did Naturwissenschaften start publishing papers in the field? The 2011 Storms review there? Did someone hold a gun to their head? This was Springer-Verlags "flagship multidisciplinary journal." Why did they publish that? I can say this much, because I was involved with the original submitted paper, which was on heat/helium, and they came back requesting a full review.

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What has occurred in the meantime is that the cold fusion community has circled their wagons and begun publishing their own journals, which they claim to be peer-reviewed. I personally doubt the reviewer selection process is unbiased.

Perhaps. However, when I write about publication in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, I am not counting the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, the specialty journal. Nor am I counting Infinite Energy, a popular magazine. Nor am I counting the papers in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which deliberately covers fringe. In my analysis, I have generally only included papers covered by Dieter Britz, the skeptical electrochemist, in his cold fusion database.

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However, the difficulty cold fusioneers face is lessened if they consider these new journals adequate media for presenting their work, which they do.

Some do. Some don't, and some won't. The heat/helium correlation is currently being explored, and I expect that this will generate one or more journal articles. Because of the level of importance of this work and because, for the first time, a simple method of capturing all the helium will be used -- I found it! -- this will, I fully expect, be definitive. It is very likely that the ratio will tighten to closer to 23.8 MeV/4He, the magic number. But this is experimetnal work, and the results will be the results. If heat/helium is artifact, this will also be exposed. It's just, at this time, very, very unlikey, this is so widely confirmed. The ratio deviating from 23.8 MeV is more possible. What if, for example, there is some energy leakage through neutrino emission? No other major products are known, but neutrinos would escape notice.

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Point 2. The story of the refusal of the JEM editor to consider a response to the abortive rebuttal attempt of the group of 10 cold fusioneers was made public by me. Why did I do that and why did I want to reply to them again? Because of what Abd has done right here, which is echoed routinely I’m sure in other places that I don’t see, namely to claim that I was *successfully* rebutted. Let’s get this clear…I was NOT rebutted. In fact the 10 famous CF authors (in the CF universe) who wrote the reply simply proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are NOT doing ‘good’ science.

The point is missed, because Shanahan is obsessed with how he looks. He was rebutted, but that's not my point. My point is that he was left sputtering that he was shut out, which turns the tables from how it was over twenty years ago. In spite of what Shanahan claims as a smoke-screen, he is the only major skeptic published on PdD cold fusion in a very long time. Yet paper after paper is being published, not in JCMNS, but in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cold_fusion/Recent_sources is not up to date, but shows about 20 reviews of the field since 2005. No negative reviews, Shanahan's Letter is the closest. There are a couple of papers that question this or that conclusion, normal for science, such as Kowalski's claim that SPAWAR supposed alpha tracks in CR-39 probably weren't alphas. (And the reality is likely more complicated.)

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“How so?” you ask… Well, it is generally known that the use of what is known as a ‘strawman argument’ is a logical fallacy, yet that is exactly what they did. In all 4 of my CF-related publications (BTW, if Abd had chosen 15 instead of 10 years, he wouldn’t have been able to omit mentioning my other 3 pubs.),

I did not design that page around Kirk Shanahan. I designed it to show the state of the field after the 2004 DoE review, which was roughly the nadir of cold fusion publication in mainstream journals. I know that he had two more papers, but that is not relevant, here.

By the way, I will again congratulate Kirk for writing critical papers. At ICCF-18, I walked up to Steven Jones and shook his hand, congratulating him for being the only person to attempt a clear critique of Miles. That was part of the normal process of science, too much missing.

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I present the idea that there is a systematic effect producing apparent excess heat signals in F&P-type electrolysis cells. Yet the 10 authors talk about something they call the “Shanahan random CCSH” (CCSH=Calibration Constant Shift Hypothesis, they insisted on adding the H). However, I made no ‘random’ hypothesis. That is *their* strawman.

It is essentially irrelevant. Yes, it is a defect in their critique. However, it's missing the forest for the trees. So they used the wrong word. I've written extensively about this elsewhere.

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But somehow, they got it into print without reviewers noticing. Not unexpected since next to no one in the ‘mainstream’ follows CF anyway. A reviewer is anticipated to assume the 10 authors got it right instead of checking it out fully. The blatant use of a strawman argument as done here is unusual (yes, that is an opinion of how the review process works).

And, again, we see what I was pointing too. For years, cold fusion researchers complained about the review process. Now, the last published skeptic is complaining. Of course, it's only his experience. But what other experience is there? My suspicion: skeptical papers are being written, and they are of low quality and are not being published and we never hear about them, except occasionally, one appears because, maybe, it's a bit better than the others, and besides, the editors are taking some flak for publishing something about that disreputable field, "cold fusion," and they want to practice CYA. Naturwissenschaften also published a critique of Storms by Steve Krivit. That was after they made the change to being a biology journal, but ... this was a followup.

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Naturally, I expected the JEM editor to allow a clarification on that point, but he would not. Neither would he ask the 10 to submit an Erratum to correct that point. You need to look into JEM and wonder why they published the original Marwan and Krivit review to perhaps understand this. The topic is not in their normal purview.

I've had the same thought. However, they are more a mainstream chemistry journal than appears. I'm not at all sure about it. This was Marwan and Krivit. By the time of the response, Krivit had managed to alienate almost everyone, so the response was from Marwan and then all those others. I do not "need to" look at JEM to figure this out, because it makes almost no difference. That's just one review out of twenty. And what has happened since then is much more significant.

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So I was left with public forums to get the message out, and I am not “sputtering”.

I'm inspired to mangle a common story. If the right front leg of a dog is actually a nose, how many legs does a dog have? The answer, of course, is four, because calling a front leg a nose does not make it one. Krik is sputtering here. Q.E.D. From his point of view, of course, he's just "explaining," why he is shut out and why it is so unfair, which, on Planet Abd, is called "sputtering." It's not a terrible sin, just a minor sign of disempowerment that, when I do it, I'm encouraged to give up. Bad Idea, actually. Nobody cares. Do you think I have over two million page views on Quora.com, mostly in the last six months or so, and rising, by complaining about unfair downvoting? And those mean skeptics? Kirk! Get a life! You were invited long ago to contribute to Wikiversity, you could actually document all your arguments and findings there. You always dismissed it. There are other opportunities to use what you have learned about cold fusion.
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