Judge ALTONAGA quotes ERV reports in her ‘background’ summary.

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Rossi is a master of unclear language, in fact. And he commonly states intention or possibility as if it were a realized fact. Lots of people do this, by the way.

Maybe politicians. In scientists or technologists, it's one of the hallmarks of scammers and con men. The defense by IH to Rossi's suit will be either failure to perform or fraud, depending on what their experts say and what documentation they have.

Quote from Shane D.

Resorting instead to verbosity to make their point.

when I have a point to make, I put in the work to make it succinct. When the writing is a conversation, I don't.

Quote from AlainCo

I have evolved in that I am more and more convinced that we need a theory.
As Edmund Storms says, a theory is required to make good experiments, to make interesting test, to measure important parameters, to control key factors, to decide what is a replication, what is a failure, a null, a success, a negative.
And as JF Geneste said in Milan, without a theory, even phenomenological, no engineer can improve a device, and thus make an industry emerge.

That is indeed Storms' view, but the problem is almost certainly that there is no truly useful theory of mechanism on the level that Storms is proposing. There are useful "partial theories."

Further, it is entirely possible that the correct theory, proposed in advance of evidence to confirm it, will simply attract knee-jerk skepticism. Yes, an operating theory is highly useful for experimentation, but Storms goes too far. He suggests an "explanation" that is, so far, divorced from what actually affects experimental results. And his explanation will appear, to any nuclear physicist, impossible. And my guess is that it is, in fact, impossible. He is putting the cart before the horse.

mmm... haven't we gotten far off topic? Forum discussions become inaccessible and far less useful because of our common habits of spinning off.

The horse is experimental evidence, and to get that evidence we must convince those with funding and access to resources.

So, back up. What do we know? I submitted my paper to Current Science last year to detail what we actually know, what is confirmed and solid. It is enough to establish that the effect is real.

So we have a real effect. First of all, how do we create the effect? Storms "Explanation" actually covers a great deal that is either not controversial or that is very reasonable inference.

For example, he suggests that the effect takes place at the surface of metal hydrides, not in the bulk. That can guide experiment.

He suggests that the high loading previously thought necessary for the reaction is actually the cause of surface cracking, through stress, and that this creates what he calls Nuclear Active Environment, and he specifies that as cracks.

This is controversial in the field, but is probably verifiable. Certainly "surface reaction" is reasonably well-established from where helium is found, and I expect the Texas Tech/ENEA collaboration to come up with improved evidence on that. They will certainly be testing it.

I suggested to Ed that he "black box" the reaction itself, because we know so little about it. The black box has known behavior. Heat/helium. No charged particle radiation above 20 KeV. With pure PdD, very little tritium, if at all. No neutrons except perhaps under some conditions and at very low levels.

Storms suggests that the ash depends on the H/D ratio. I find that the experimental evidence is weak, and at least partially contradicts his claim. But, again, this is something that can and should be tested, but it doesn't help with the primary necessity at this point: learning how to control the reaction, so that experimental collection of data on the reaction can accelerate.

Storms' theory suggests cracks, so methods of controlling cracking or what would be similar, the creation of similar structures through nanotechnology, can be employed. Storms has found in his own work, recently reported, that he can condition a cathode to generate excess heat, using the traditional method (repeated loading and deloading, and other steps and following certain material preconditions), he can remove the cathode and I think wash it with nitric acid, store it, and then load it and it starts generating heat immediately. This would be consistent with his crack theory, and it has major practical implications.

He also ran an experiment where he obtained excess heat in a cell maintained at higher than ordinary temperature by an internal and separate heater. He then turned off the electrolytic current, but maintained the cell temperature. In that experiment, the apparent XP continued for many hours without reduction, whereas loading would decline rapidly without electrolysis maintaining it.

If this is confirmed, it is revolutionary.

No theory of actual mechanism (i.e., what happens in those cracks, his hydroton theory and the idea of pre-fusion radiation of energy, which requires sustained below-ground nuclear states) is necessary to develop an understanding of how to create and control the reaction.

So the "Lomax theory" is that cold fusion is a fact but also a mystery. I expect to be proven wrong some day. Just not yet.

(This requires that "cold fusion" be understood as possibly not involving "fusion reactions" as normally understood. Yet it does appear likely that deuterium is being converted to helium, which is a fusion effect (result) regardless of specific mechanism. It does not mean "d-d fusion" though it could include that.)

Quote from frankwtu

Rossi may have made a phone call to the Fire Chief who could have decided not to pursue registration, we may never know.

The term in Florida is Fire Marshal, the state official responsible for registration. Yes, that is possible and is a version of what I wrote, that Rossi may have decided (or found) that registration was not necessary. There were aspects of the regulations that I found unclear, where research did not clear the matter up.

As I have pointed out many times, the issue largely moot. However, I am interesting in social process and information cascades and how they start. In order to defend against the idea that Rossi Did Something Wrong, it was asserted that the ECat was not a boiler. That' was preposterous, and no way would the Fire Marshal have ruled like that. There would be a record of some correspondence and that could be obtained, so, if it mattered, this could actually be investigated, but who is going to bother?

For all I know, Rossi may also have spat on the sidewalk and crossed the street illegally, and who cares? Rossi is not actually on trial here for "moral turpitude" though some are trying to make allegations like that; for example, a moderator here has claimed I acted unethically in publishing a file I had received without obtaining permission from the apparent author. But people do this all the time. New Energy Times does it routinely. I am interested in what actually happened.