I wonder what would have been measured with a 50% D:H ratio?
This quote is well made, as I always asked, how pure are your reactants? D20 99.9999? or even better? As long as they do not state it, we can't draw any auxiliary conclusion about the probability of the different reaction paths.
can't find Reifenschweiler's article. I know my own limits and I'll appreciate the help coming from anyone.
There are 3 papers by Reifenschweiler in the ISCMNS library (indexed by surname so easy to find) at http://www.iscmns.org/library.htm
QuoteSo you acknowledge low power LENR, but then I think you always have.
No, I don't. My position on low power LENR, if anyone cares, is that I doubt that it's real but I don't have any sort of handle on it. In contrast to high power LENR claims, there is too much literature on low power claims for me to keep up, read, and review. In low power work, it's important to rule out measurement errors and noise issues and I am not an expert in measurement at low levels of power. I do know I "instinctively" distrust isoperibolic calorimetry which is spot temperature measurement and not calorimetry at all. And that is the method used for a lot of the low level work. I am sure Jed will disagree and I can't prove my view thus I remain more or less agnostic (no firm position) about it. I suppose low level LENR may be possible but I doubt that it has been properly demonstrated through replicated studies published in major peer review journals. Most of the papers I have seen are badly written and badly illustrated using weird presentations of the data. I have trouble making sense out of any of it. But like I said, low level power measurements are not my field.
As for high power LENR, I can assess that and I find no studies that support it's existence. For example, if you look at Brillouin/Godes web site, it's all silly diagrams, big claims that sound like they already make boilers, and nothing tangible or testable whatsoever-- exactly like your garden variety free energy scam. And I don't have to tell you about Defkalion and Rossi any more. Time (Defkalion) and IH (Rossi) have said plenty.
Mary
No, I don't. My position on low power LENR, if anyone cares, is that I doubt that it's real but I don't have any sort of handle on it.
Sorry if I misunderstood your position, although I don't think I was that far off. Doubt is a good thing until verifiable evidence is available confirming or dismissing that doubt. You and I part company in the methods you use to exercise and publicise that doubt for the purpose of influence. You appear to consolidate your position of doubt beyond reason employing ad homs, FUD and accusations of fraud and other criminality (Rossi appealed and won his appeals except for some tax issues) which I think is not legitimate as a scientific tool and therefore devalues you credentials considerably IMHO.
Best regards
Frank
IH Fanboy wrote:
QuoteCommercially viable LENR systems is a relatively new possibility.
In 1989, when much of the world took P&F seriously, commercially viable cold fusion was on everyone's mind. As Storms said, ""many of us were lured into believing that the Pons-Fleischmann effect would solve the world's energy problems and make us all rich." That's why it was such a huge story, on the cover of every major journal, and cheered by thousands of scientists at the ACS meeting.
QuoteI'm pretty sure that you know that prior to the LENR+ development of the last few years, LENR was basically a lab curiosity with low reproducibility
The world does not go crazy about a lab curiosity with low reproducibility. Cold fusion was a huge event in 1989 *because* it appeared to offer commercially viable fusion energy. It subsequently became a lab curiosity when the evidence failed to stand up to scrutiny, and nothing in the last few years has changed that.
And by the way, if by LENR+ you mean nickel-hydrogen, that dates back to the 90s as well with Patterson's kW claims and Piantelli's experiments.
Quote(which, by the way, left it in a nice safe comfy place for the trillion dollar energy interests of the world, including the hot fusion academia folks). Now that evidence is emerging from multiple quarters in support of the viability of LENR+ systems, the sleeping dogs are beginning to awake, and foam at the mouth.
Cold fusion received far more attention in the 90s and even 00's than it is receiving now. In the 90s, the publication rate in refereed journals was 10 times higher than now, and attracted enough attention to warrant a DOE expert panel to examine the evidence in 2004. In 2009, 60 minutes did a story on it. Both ACS and APS ran LENR seminars at their annual meetings for several years around 2010, but have now abandoned them. SPAWAR LENR research was in full swing in the 00s, but has since been shut down.
What we have now is Rossi making claims that he has not proved, and mostly unqualified people getting excited about it.
What are you referring to with your sleeping dogs metaphor? I have not seen anything that fits. Surely you don't mean comments in internet forums!
QuoteThe present situation is not acceptable to these folks, because it threatens their financial interests. This is not conspiratorial. It is simply humans protecting turf, which happens all the time.
The vast majority of people, including scientists would benefit immeasurably from successful commercialization of cold fusion. That's why the initial response to P&F in 1989 was overwhelmingly positive. Most people did not expect that scientists like P&F could get something like fusion wrong, and so they assumed a solution to our energy problems was at hand. The accounts in any journal of the time show this, and the best summary of the excitement of the time can be found in Storms' 2004 book, in chapter 2.
This completely contradicts this popular narrative of self-interest and greed among scientists and others.
QuoteBecause financial interests are at stake, people are greedy, and academia don't want to come out of this affair with egg on their face.
What happened in the weeks after the P&F press conference was not that scientists suddenly remembered their financial interests, or that they suddenly remembered that they were supposed to hate clean and abundant and cheap energy. What happened was that they got a chance to examine the evidence, and it simply did not stand up.
And your example of hot fusion suggests you are not clear on the concept of greed. Hot fusion *costs* money. And the people who make the funding decisions (the DOE in the US) are the ones who have to *spend* the money. Cold fusion is in the interest of the DOE because it would save them billions of dollars, not to mention the environmental, strategic, and therefore political benefits for the government it represents.
Moreover, the most effective critics of cold fusion have not been beneficiaries of hot fusion (or fossil fuel) largesse.
QuoteBut in the end, nature does not lie, and truth always has a way of eventually being set free.
Yes, and scientists understand that as well as you, which destroys your argument that they are trying to avoid egg on their face. By opposing cold fusion, they would be *increasing* the amount of egg on their face if it were ever vindicated. That means they must be all but certain that it is not a real phenomenon, and if that is the case, they are well-justified in voicing their view.
@Eric Walker
QuoteQualifications are important and helpful, but there's no substitute for looking into the truth of the matter oneself.
I think Jed Rothwell would be helpful if nuclearists didn't have huge national and international data banks. You can find anything you need there.
By the way, I have found something for our reflexions.
Violante et al.
MASS SPECTROMETRY: CRITICAL ASPECTS RELATED TO THE PARTICLES DETECTION IN THE CONDENSED MATTER NUCLEAR SCIENCE (ICCF 15)
reaction D+D = 4 He + heat (24 MeV for event) in the palladium lattice.
Even if the palladium lattice promoted that rare reaction, 24 MeV gammas cannot become sensible heat. LET for gammas is too high to yield heat of high enthalpic value. In normal conditions such an article would have been screened.
Ascoli wrote:
QuoteThis is a quite surreal situation, similar to the one in USA, where the DoE deemed the CF/LENR not suitable to be funded, while the DoD has been its major funder throughout a quarter of century.
Do you have some evidence to support this? You do like to cite things.
I think most of the funding for cold fusion has come from outside the US, which is why P&F left the country, but in any case, from other than the DOD.
Toyota spent somewhere between 50 and 100 million on the IMRA labs in France and Japan. The Japanese government put about 25M into a New Hydrogen Energy (?) program. The EPRI funded McKubre to the tune of millions. Utah spent 5M on a cold fusion institute. Kimmel has given 5M to Mizzou, and unknown amounts (probably more) to Energetics before that. And presumably all the startups like Lattice Energy and Jet Energy and Brillouin and others had their angels as well. The ENEA has supported LENR as has the Indian government. And the closely related BLP has got 80M in investment.
There has been isolated activity sponsored by the DOD as well, but Miles complained he was demoted for his cold fusion work, SPAWAR complained that they had to do their work on their own time and on a shoestring budget. And the budget items for cold fusion I've seen on-line (that someone linked to) were rather small compared to the $500M that Storms estimates has been spent in cold fusion.
So, it would be hard to justify the DOD as "a major funder" of LENR, let alone "the major funder".
frankwtu wrote:
Quote'First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win.' - Mohandas Gandhi
"To be a persecuted genius, it is not enough to be persecuted." - Isaac Asimov
Or do you think that any idea, no matter how whacky, must be right if someone ridicules it?
Do you think that hot fusion will eventually win because of the frequent ridicule it receives from cold fusion advocates?
Wyttenbach wrote:
QuoteWhat about the sixty years of hard commitment to hot fusion??
This is the usual rejoinder. But it doesn't stand up. You have forgotten to take account of (1) the difference in *scale* and (2) the difference in what is claimed.
(1) The reason the world was so excited about cold fusion in 1989 is because it is orders of magnitude smaller in scale (temperature, size, cost, time, etc) than hot fusion, and so, if the phenomenon were real, exploitation would be realized quickly. Experimental iterations in cold fusion cost in the tens of thousands and take weeks, or months at most. In hot fusion, the cost is billions, and iterations are measured in decades. So, if you divide hot fusion's 60 years by the scale difference (at least 1000), it amounts to a matter of weeks of cold fusion research.
(2) Since the beginning, the claims in cold fusion have suggested useful products were imminent. The claimed COP has been high enough to support self-sustained operation, and there have been many claims of self-sustained operation. From that to a commercial product is a small step. Pons expected a product within a year back in 1989. In the mid 90s, Rothwell and Mallove predicted we'd be driving cold fusion cars before the end of the decade. Patterson's kW claims of the 90s suggested a viable product. There have been at least a dozen companies formed with the intention of commercializing cold fusion. Rossi claimed he heated a factory for 2 years almost a decade ago, and in 2011 he claimed he had a product ready for market.
In contrast, hot fusion has never claimed ignition (self-sustained reaction), or that hot fusion products were imminent or ready for market, or that factories have already been heated by hot fusion. The large-scale efforts (tokamak and ICF) have never claimed commercial viability in less than 2 decades, let alone in the present or past. Of course the early speculations have proven to optimistic by a factor of 5 or more, but not meeting a long-term optimistic speculation is different from not delivering something claimed to already exist.
Moreover, hot fusion has produced unequivocal evidence of nuclear reactions, consistent with well-established theory, and it is not questioned, even by its opponents. And quantifiable progress in increasing the triple product has been steady, if slower than hoped. Under these conditions, and considering the scale of the effort, some patience is not too much to expect. In the case of cold fusion, evidence for the claims is largely rejected, and is contrary to expectations based on consistent, reproducible, and robust experimental results.
QuoteLENR delivers COP's in the range of 1..600 by now, but yet nothing to buy, except 1MW......
These are claims with marginal, erratic, noisy evidence that has been examined and rejected by mainstream science. But the claims of high COP is really the point. If the COP were 600, self-sustained operation (infinite COP) would be easy, and that would lead quickly to a viable commercial product. And no, I don't think you or I could buy a working 1 MW cold fusion reactor at any price.
QuoteHot Fusion delivers COP's of -100000 to - 100'000'000'000.... [...]
- (negativ) COP means: You deliberately spoil energy....
This appears to be a new definition of COP. Using the definition used in cold fusion, the COP in hot fusion is larger than 1. All the input energy eventually ends up as heat, and the evidence for fusion is unequivocal and uncontested, so that means more *total* energy out than energy in.
Of course, it's not a useful figure of merit for hot fusion. The useful figure is Q, which is the fusion energy out divided by the energy absorbed by the fuel. When the fusion energy that remains in the fuel as heat (about 20% in DT fusion) exceeds the external energy absorbed, the fuel ignites, and the external energy can be turned off. Just like chemical combustion. So, for DT fusion, Q>5 is needed, and they are aiming for Q=10 with ITER. So far, Q=1 has been reached in ICF. They call it break-even, but it's just a psychological milestone, because it does not facilitate ignition.
Quoteand you will never buy anything.
I prefer to keep an open mind and not dismiss hot fusion dogmatically. People also claimed heavier than air flight was impossible, even while birds flew overhead. People like Kelvin thought they could refute its feasibility, but fortunately, there were brave scientists who ignored such naysayers, and forged ahead anyway. And now we should all be thankful for the brave hot fusion scientists who reject dogmatic statements of impossibility, even as the sun shines overhead, and forge ahead with their research. One thing the naysayers of flight didn't take into account was human ingenuity and perseverance.
But then, I'm an incurable optimist. Still, I don't actually expect hot fusion in my lifetime, but I hope future generations will benefit.
IH Fanboy wrote:
QuoteAnd I'm afraid Arthur C. Clarke was right when he said that this would go down as one of the greatest scandals in the history of science.
I'm afraid he was only half-right. LENR will go down.
QuoteSo, this would be an argument for demonstrating that the Italian political and research establishments reject Cold Fusion. Wouldn't it?
Yes, I think so; it is a good active argument against weird science. It matters much more than an ICCF.
In my opinion, MIUR is not interested in Realacci's claim, as they have been waiting since October 2013, even if Realacci is a member of the government. Nobody cares his claim and never will. He is severely humiliated.
I think that cold fusion in Italy is almost forgotten. Think of 1989 and you will catch the difference. You are too much interested in political events; researchers in Universities are much more realistic than politicians.
Joshua
To be a persecuted genius, it is not enough to be persecuted." - Isaac Asimov
Or do you think that any idea, no matter how whacky, must be right if someone ridicules it?
Do you think that hot fusion will eventually win because of the frequent ridicule it receives from cold fusion advocates?
I don't know the answers to your questions, to answered them I would need verifiable evidence which of course will not be available in most of your examples as they are 'subjective'. However, I don't believe it is honourable, dignified or justifiable to promote or degrade a scientific cause, theory or idea with ad homs, FUD and accusations of criminality. It just does not further the quality of discovery and knowledge. They are IMHO the chosen tools of desperate unscrupulous individuals who are not particularly interested in discovery, integrity or the truth.
I did like the quote from Asimov though: "To be a persecuted genius, it is not enough to be persecuted." - Isaac Asimov"
Best regards
Frank
Display Morefrankwtu wrote:
"To be a persecuted genius, it is not enough to be persecuted." - Isaac Asimov
Or do you think that any idea, no matter how whacky, must be right if someone ridicules it?
Do you think that hot fusion will eventually win because of the frequent ridicule it receives from cold fusion advocates?
Hot fusion will not work because the NRC will reject it.
What happened in the weeks after the P&F press conference was not that scientists suddenly remembered their financial interests, or that they suddenly remembered that they were supposed to hate clean and abundant and cheap energy. What happened was that they got a chance to examine the evidence, and it simply did not stand up.
What actually happened, is that they (at least some at MIT) got a chance to examine the evidence, and then alter the evidence, to protect the millions of dollars of annual funding of their hot fusion research efforts, as carefully documented here.
Jed Rothwell quotes this article by Reifenschweiler:
It wasn't me.
Some Experiments on the Decrease of the Radioactivity of Tritium Sorbed by Titanium
I can't find the article in IAEA and other national data bank, so I immediately reject the article as nuclear trash.
Okay, so whatever the authorities tell you, you automatically believe. I have met editors of Nature and Scientific American, and some leading people from the APS. Some of them are smart, but some of them are stupid. They are pretty much all closed-minded. If you let these people decide all technical issues for you, you will miss a lot of important stuff.
Do you think I am too demanding?
No, I think you not demanding enough, because you place unwarranted trust in authorities, and you let them push you around and do your thinking for you. You are ignorant of history, gullible and close minded.
Nobody would learn nuclear science mediated by an amateur scientist.
Reifenschweiller was a distinguished professional scientist. He probably knew a lot more than about tritium than you do. You are pretty foolish rejecting out of hand a report from someone you know nothing about, just because you know nothing about him. Do you also automatically reject out of hand a report about any subject you are unfamiliar with? "I have never heard of this so it must be nonsense." That makes about as much sense.
Even if the palladium lattice promoted that rare reaction, 24 MeV gammas cannot become sensible heat. LET for gammas is too high to yield heat of high enthalpic value. In normal conditions such an article would have been screened.
Which book did you read?? Guide for tech scam's or the Fuderator of Carl Hoax?
24MeV go mainly into Alphas the flying bombers of the dark universe ...
Rothwell wrote:
QuoteMY:
Not necessarily. Low powered LENR is real, and it may well lead to a high powered version, if it can be controlled. But it is not widely acclaimed or universally sought after.
For those of us who reject (or are highly skeptical of) your premise that LENR is real, this is meaningless.
When the world thought briefly that it was real in 1989, it was widely acclaimed and universally sought after. It lost its acclaim when the evidence failed to support it, and scientists became skeptical of its veracity.
QuoteHistory is full of example of useful technologies that were ignored for a long time, or even reviled.
None that are even close to cold fusion. As Storms has said, were cold fusion to be vindicated, it would be unprecedented.
I don't know of an example of a legitimate small-scale (bench top) physical phenomenon that was rejected with near unanimity for decades after the experimental evidence for the claim was fully disclosed and widely tested around the world. The closest I have seen is Semmelweis's hand-washing more than 150 years ago, at a time when science moved rather more slowly, before the days of internet publicity, and even in that case, Semmelweis was vindicated in about 20 years.
When you add the condition that the phenomenon was at first widely accepted with uncommon enthusiasm, indicating the inclination was *towards* acceptance, then rejected with near unanimity, and finally vindicated, I am not aware of *any* precedent
Jed
No, I think you not demanding enough, because you place unwarranted trust in authorities,
A bit like you putting all your trust in Rossi's data. Hmmmmmm! Is that trust unwarranted also?
Best regards
Frank
For those of us who reject (or are highly skeptical of) your premise that LENR is real, this is meaningless.
Just as globes are meaningless to members of the Flat Earth Society, and evolution does not exist as far as Creationists are concerned.
"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."― Neil deGrasse Tyson
IH Fanboy wrote:
QuoteWhat actually happened, is that they (at least some at MIT) got a chance to examine the evidence, and then alter the evidence, to protect the millions of dollars of annual funding of their hot fusion research efforts, as carefully documented here.
Even if this claim were true (and I don't believe it), many others examined the evidence -- in particular, two panels of experts enlisted by the DOE -- and found the evidence for nuclear reactions unpersuasive. It is inconceivable that the MIT scientists would risk scientific misconduct by suppressing positive results, because as you've argued, they would expect that the truth would come out, and their careers would be destroyed.
As for the MIT results, the raw data indicates some 35 mW of power, easily consistent with calorimetry artifacts, which they carefully outlined in an appendix. So, even without the data "adjustment" there was no smoking gun in those results. They're as marginal and noisy as the rest of the evidence for cold fusion.
BTW, the evidence of data manipulation in favor of LENR by McKubre, as documented by Krivit, is at least as compelling.
