An alternative hypothesis would be something like, say, the tiny recombination explosions theorized by Shanahan cause vibrations that will cause leakage of atmospheric helium into the cell.
Never heard that bullshit. Did he also explain how He could get enriched by 105?? like in the sono-fusion experiments...
/* not theories of how helium could be correlated with heat absent a nuclear reaction */
This is also extensively discussed here, the correlation is thermodynamical.
/* that will cause leakage of atmospheric helium into the cell */
The concentration of helium in cold fusion is routinely higher than atmospheric, not to say about experiments like this one, which is essentially spewing helium into an outside.
It is not easy to follow these recipes. You have to be an expert electrochemist.
Jed, if you are using electrolysis then by definition there is input energy and therefore the device is NOT self sustaining. 
Where are the recipes for a self sustaining device?
Jed, if you are using electrolysis then by definition there is input energy and therefore the device is NOT self sustaining.
I did not say anything about self-sustaining reactions. You can confirm the reaction is real whether it sustains itself or not. However, it is easy to make an electrolytic devices self-sustaining. Just turn off the electrolysis. They usually continue working for anywhere from an hour to a few days. This is called "heat after death." You will find several papers about this at LENR-CANR.org. The term was invented by Fleischmann and Pons. See:
This morning I posted a bevy of likes and dislikes. I did this because a raft-load of dis- and mis-information suddenl appeared in this thread, as well as evidence of clique-voting that I felt needed to be countered. I actually think the like/dislike system is garbage and shouldn't be used to suppress opinions, but that's just my opinion...
Anyway, here is a compilation of why I voted as I did today in reverse order:
Jed: “You can confirm the reaction is real whether it sustains itself or not. ... usually continue working for anywhere from an hour to a few days. This is called "heat after death."” An effect that only lasts an hour to a few days is not self-sustaining. Also, the cell conditions in HAD events are radically different from those during active electrolysis, but the raw data is always interpreted with the same calibration equation…an extreme example of a likely CCS.
Zephir_AWT “The concentration of helium in cold fusion is routinely higher than atmospheric, ...outside.” To my knowledge, the He measurements have never exceeded the nominal air concentration level of ~5ppm, except in the case where Russ George measured it while at McKubre’s lab. But he only got up to 11 ppm before stopping the experiment. The problem is that all scientists know and some even report in the CF literature that the He conc. In lab air can be in the hundreds of ppm. If you have a case contrary to this please reference it.
Wyttenbach “Never heard that bullshit. Did he also explain ...” If you’ve never heard of it, how can you know whether it is BS or not??
Abd “If anyone wants to seriously argue that theory, we could look at it. In short, it is preposterous, ... coincidence.” ‘Maintained closeness’? You need to realize how to statistically test the validity of this claim. I outlined it in my post in the thread “Document: Isotopic Composition of Rossi Fuel Sample (Unverified)” on July 19th, which Abd hasn’t responded to yet. In fact, the data does not support Abd’s conclusion. ‘many failures’ – such as? (be specific please)
Abd “The heat/helium correlation has already ...dozen research groups,” Who ‘confirmed’ it? Note that to be noteworthy, the He conc. measured should exceed that measured in the lab air present during the time when the purported unknown process was producing He. Then of course, it should be reproducible in detail, preferably at other labs, meaning that the claimants have a method that varies the amount of He produced in proportion to the settings of a controlling variable(s) which they identify. “The heat is real, ... helium. This is not any longer in reasonable doubt.” I must have missed that defining report. Please cite a reference I can get and study. “The resolution of the Pons and Fleischmann work was in the milliwatt range, ... 50 mW resolution.” Again, baseline noise is not the controlling error component. “Where Shanahan goes off the rails is ... can be the same. The correlation shows common causation, and because "heat" is not "temperature," what would be the common cause?” You must have missed the rule on that – “Correlation is not causation.” You must have also missed the idea that if the excess heat is fictitious it is equivalent to claiming the relevant variable is the number of time a leprechaun ran through the lab that day. You would claim He production is related to that would you? No. Then why claim it is related to how much simple chemical recombination occurs at the electrode?
Jed “I have gone to a lot of trouble to bring you actual scientific information from distinguished scientists about this subject.” You mean “only carefully selected positive information”….“distinguished scientists” You realize that even ‘distinguished’ scientists can be trapped by a systematic error, right? In Langmuir’s talk on pathological science he mentions a guy named Latimer who promoted a particular idea for a while and then later was so embarrassed by that he refused to talk about it. One of the chemistry buildings at the UC-Berkeley campus is named ‘Latimer Hall’. You don’t get a building named after you if you’re not ‘distinguished’…this episode illustrates why Feynman said the scientist should bend over backward to prove himself wrong, since fooling ourselves is a very common problem.
Mary Yugo “So I guess I will see my next space heater powered by LENR and available in ... departments “ I ‘liked’ this because it is just a variation on the Pons claim that he would deliver a CF powered water heater in 6 months, and the Morrision criticism that he couldn’t get his CF-electricity-brewed cup of tea. Both of these are valid expressions of the simple idea that a real CF gizmo would most likely be proof positive of CF. MY didn’t deserve the ‘dislikes’ received on that.
Jed “Since you have not evaluated them, or even read them, how the hell would you know? Where...? I'll tell you where: you made it up. You pulled it out of . . . thin air.” This is a typical JR ad hominem attack. Jed has no idea where MY got her idea, so he makes one up, then rants about how bad MY is…not kosher. “I know what I am talking about, and you don't.” No Jed, you don’t. I clearly pointed out a systematic error with cold fusion calorimetry, and you can’t stand to incorporate that into your thinking. Thus, you don’t know all the relevant facts, and thus you don’t know what you are talking about.
Jed “One of the many odd things about cold fusion is ...ignorant crackpots.” ‘mainly’…so there are a few denouncers who *ARE* ‘mainstream respected scientists’. Why don’t you promote their ideas/concerns as much as you do the proponents? Answer: you want to promote the idea that it's all a done deal when it is far from that. Your bias is showing…
Mary Yugo “Ah I see. Electrochemist, noun, “ There is nothing bad about this post, yet it garnered 2 ‘dislikes’ (from the “usual suspects”) and was fading out. I disagree with those ratings.
Jed “That's because you have not looked. Around 1995, most of the world's top echelon of electrochemists had successfully replicated cold fusion.” First, we have Jed again implying he knows what MY did or didn’t do when he clearly doesn’t. Second, he overstates the case again by implying ‘replication’ has occurred to an extent that it is foolish to disagree. In fact ‘replication’ has many levels, and what was true then is also true today: the level of replication in CF experiments is primitive, meaning once can conclude (as I do) that there seems to be something going on, but as to knowing what that is…forget it.
Jed “Let me reiterate what is going on here. Imagine that for the past 20 years, Mary Yugo, Shanahan ... unreliable."” Interesting strawman I suppose, but irrelevant. I personally wouldn’t do that. The connection of my name to this irrelevant and inaccurate strawman is an indirect ad hominem attack. “What ...Yet this heat is measured the same way as chemical heat is.” If you actually look at the equipment design and experimental methods it is clear it isn’t. I mentioned (forcefully) elsewhere in this forum there are at least two distinct problems with the way F&P-type experiments are run that allow the CCS error I outline to occur.
Mary Yugo “Well, last I looked, most professional…”Again, nothing in this post that deserves ‘dislikes’. I ‘liked’ to counteract the improper use of ‘dislike’ to suppress.
Jed“You know that Fleischmann, ...wrong, and you are right,” This is known as a call to authority. It means that he has no better argument, otherwise he would have put it forth. And what Jed references is the expected outcome of a set of experiments that contain a common systematic error. The rest of the post just lambasts MY for having an opinion that JR *thinks* goes against authority. Again, call to authority, either direct or indirect, is a logical fallacy.
Jed “You fail to understand…”This whole post is spurious. Again Jed is telling us what MY thinks, feels, etc. Illegitimate… The same thing can be said about Jed, for him, someone claiming a femtowatt of excess heat is a legitimate claim. The real test is reproducibility – not the level of the effect measured. The level of effect is relevant when considering the noise level however, if it isn’t ‘out of the noise’ it has to be replicated many, many times to be significant, and Jed continues to not estimate the noise level on the proper basis. No one has done that to date that I know of (and yes, I’ve looked at Storms’ table…).
Mary Yugo ” I don't recall saying something DOES NOT EXIST. …” This post is a very reasonable response to the misinformation Jed posted in the prior post MY quotes. Clarifies many points. No ad hom attacks, etc.
Jed “People do have reproducible recipes. …” This post summarizes the current LENR mythology. As such it presented as fact, when it really is speculations of the so-called ‘true believers’. Doing that rates a ‘dislike’.
Jed “To put it in somewhat more technical terms: …” This post implicitly incorporates the idea that current excess heat measurements are accurate and precise. Jed routinely assumes baseline noise is the primary error component, but ignores the fact I showed that it is not. In fact the noise level was ~10X that in the Storms’ data that I reanalyzed. Smuggling in assumptions as if they we well-known facts rates a ‘dislike’.
Hermes “ @Mary Yugo. I believe in…” Very reasonable viewpoint.
Jed “You have no rational reason to say it does not exist.” As noted in the subsequent MY post, this is not what MY said. Typical JR misinformation…dislike. “As for credible entities, 180 laboratories …” Call to authority….not relevant….dislike.
Alan Smith “Back off a bit Mary.” Don’t see a problem … dislike.
Mary Yugo “Complete nonsense. All…” Good post. Dislikes not warranted. Like.
QuoteI did not say anything about self-sustaining reactions. You can confirm the reaction is real whether it sustains itself or not. However, it is easy to make an electrolytic devices self-sustaining. Just turn off the electrolysis. They usually continue working for anywhere from an hour to a few days. This is called "heat after death." You will find several papers about this at LENR-CANR.org. The term was invented by Fleischmann and Pons. See:lenr-canr.org/acrobat/PonsSheatafterd.pdf
So please explain why, if this reaction is nuclear/fission and generates large amounts of power and energy, explain why it would not be self-sustaining? Even thermal runaway without a really good cooling system? What causes it to peter out?
It seems much more likely that the heat measured is an artifact of some sort and it damps out when you remove the heat source which is probably chemical or electrical or both. And it takes a while because whatever drove it, it's still there, probably due to thermal inertia, for a while.
In other words, what causes the cell to stop self-sustaining operation, if you know?
I have trouble with the P&F paper-- the math is over my pay grade and from a quick glance at the curves presented, the units on the axes are very complex and, to me, their relevance is unclear. My bad, of course.
You would think a self-sustained fission reaction would at least continue as long as there was "fuel" and probably would increase in intensity as a function of time, not decrease. I am leery of analogies but consider a fire made of matches in which you keep providing fresh matches -- the supply of which doesn't run out.
Thanks. Of course, I agree with you. The same "usual suspects" originate the usual downmods.
@kirkshanahan /* If you have a case contrary to this please reference it. */
You already got a link above, so that I don't quite understand your requirement...
An effect that only lasts an hour to a few days is not self-sustaining.
If there is no input power, but only output, that is called "self sustaining" in cold fusion jargon. It resembles a burning match. When you strike the match, that's input power. Once it starts burning by itself, that's self sustaining.
Also, the cell conditions in HAD events are radically different from those during active electrolysis, but the raw data is always interpreted with the same calibration equation…an extreme example of a likely CCS.
Many calorimeter types measure heat outside of the cell, such as flow and Seebeck calorimeters. Conditions in the cell cannot affect the performance of these calorimeters. They have detected heat after death. So your hypothesis is wrong.
Zephir_AWT wrote:
" kirkshanahan /* If you have a case contrary to this please reference it. */
You already got a link above, so that I don't quite understand your requirement..."
If you are referring to the link that led to Sept. 2002 Bulletin, I don't see the relevance. Proton impingment on liquid Li is an interesting research area, but to establish a relationship to the CF people here are talking about a lot more has to be discovered. Right now that relationship is pure speculation, especially since I don't see any compelling evidence for CF.
You wrote:
"The concentration of helium in cold fusion is routinely higher than atmospheric" and I disagree with that. It is that assertion I was hoping you would document.
---
I see you added a big long list of papers. Perusing the list I see many standard CF papers that fit my description, several from the metal tritide world, which is my bailiwick, which don't support your thesis at all, and a few other papers that don't seem relevant.
Please choose 1 paper from that list that supports your contention that CF has produced greater than atmospheric levels of helium and let me know which one it is.
kirkshanahan wrote:
An effect that only lasts an hour to a few days is not self-sustaining.
If there is no input power, but only output, that is called "self sustaining" in cold fusion jargon. It resembles a burning match. When you strike the match, that's input power. Once it starts burning by itself, that's self sustaining.
That's not what the rest of us mean. Your match example is certainly incorrect. We call that a chemical reaction going to completion. As MY indicated 'self-sustaining' means it goes on by itself for a long (long, long) time. Redefining words away from a standard definition is not an advisable practice.
Merriam-Webster's on line dictionary says this as the second (and applicable) definition:
: maintaining or able to maintain itself once commenced <a self–sustaining nuclear reaction>
kirkshanahan wrote:
Also, the cell conditions in HAD events are radically different from those during active electrolysis, but the raw data is always interpreted with the same calibration equation…an extreme example of a likely CCS.
Many calorimeter types measure heat outside of the cell, such as flow and Seebeck calorimeters. Conditions in the cell cannot affect the performance of these calorimeters. They have detected heat after death. So your hypothesis is wrong
This is where you don't know what you are talking about because you fail to understand my publications. The CCS was determined in Storms' 98% efficient flow calorimeter. A 98% efficient Seebeck calorimeter would likely give the same result (there is no reason to expect it wouldn't). To be specific, the CCS occurs because some heat source moved from either the recombination catalyst or the outside (via a vent line) to a more efficient heat capture zone of the calorimeter/cell combination (envisioned as the wetted part of the cell). In the HAD case, the more efficient zone is reduced in size and the primary heat source of the cell (electrolysis power) is terminated. It seems impossible to me this wouldn't affect the calibration, since a less drastic change apparently does.
That's not what the rest of us mean. Your match example is certainly incorrect. We call that a chemical reaction going to completion. As MY indicated 'self-sustaining' means it goes on by itself for a long (long, long) time.
Nuclear reactions such as heat from radium go for thousands of years. They go to completion. Cold fusion reactions would also for many years if they went to completion, but most stop working before that because the deuterium comes out of solution and the reaction stops. In any case, heat after death often produces far more heat than a chemical reactants of equivalent mass could produce, and it produces no chemical changes or ash, so it is definitely nuclear. Or something unknown to science.
I am sure you know this. Your statements are only intended to confuse people who do not understand the issues. The part about "long (long, long) time" is pure bullshit. Nuclear reactions do not always go for a long, long time before completion. A nuclear bomb, for example, goes for a short, short time, before the reaction stops. I am sure you know that.
To be specific, the CCS occurs because some heat source moved from either the recombination catalyst or the outside (via a vent line) to a more efficient heat capture zone of the calorimeter/cell combination (envisioned as the wetted part of the cell).
To suggest that might affect a Seebeck calorimeter is ridiculous. In point of fact, it would not affect any calorimeter. If it did, calorimeters could not be used to measure chemical reactions in electrochemistry. The textbooks would all be wrong.
What kirkshanahan is describing above is EXACTLY why I personally only look at comparatively large claims. Those are not likely to be as subject to errors due to calibration changes. Of course, if calibration is deliberately crippled or omitted, as in Rossi's experiments and tests by the three Swedish scientists and Levi, then all bets are off, even with large effects.
QuoteA nuclear bomb, for example, goes for a short, short time, before the reaction stops. I am sure you know that.
Fine. As I have always asked, produce a nice fat bomb with LENR/cold fusion reactions. Claims have been made that Rossi could do that and that he and others had done it accidentally. I don't believe it. I want to see the yield from a runaway reaction with LENR. I think it is most probable that those instances were due to chemical reactions or turning up too far the huge heater some experiments seem to required.
What kirkshanahan is describing above is EXACTLY why I personally only look at comparatively large claims.
Oh, is that what you look for? How ducky! You go scouting around for nonsense that anyone who spends five minutes analyzing can see violates elementary laws and common sense? Assertions that have been addressed and shown wrong time after time by experts. Then you automatically believe whatever the anti-cold fusion paper says. Look at his redefinition of "heat after death" and his assertion that nuclear reactions go for a long, long time. Have you ever heard of a nuclear bomb? Or a reactor meltdown? I suggest you look at some of the responses to Shanahan's nonsense, instead of just assuming he is right. See:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MarwanJanewlookat.pdf
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEcommentonp.pdf
Try thinking for yourself. Just once, try reading the literature instead of attacking it from a position of proud, pure, willful ignorance.
I think it is most probable that those instances were due to chemical reactions
That's a classic quote! Straight from 1989. You think it is probable there are chemical reactions that produce 10,000 times more energy than any known chemical reaction, and that consume no chemical fuel, and produce no chemical changes or ash.
In other words, you are a crackpot who thinks that utterly impossible things are probably true. You have never read the literature or thought about it for five minutes, because if you had, and if you understand grade-school level science, you would see that this is impossible. Everything you claim was disproved by replicated experiments in 1990, but you keep saying it and saying it, and you never bother to look at the experiments. What you are doing is the opposite of science.
Fine. As I have always asked, produce a nice fat bomb with LENR/cold fusion reactions.
See:
http://lenr-canr.org/?page_id=187#PhotosAccidents
What makes you think that a large scale bomb is possible? Clearly you have not read the literature if you actually mean this. Cold fusion only works with an intact lattice loaded with hydrogen. It works slowly. It is not a chain reaction. So how do you think it could last long enough and scale up to a nuclear bomb type of explosion? The active material would vaporize long before the reaction ramps up.
Again and again, your statements show that you have not read the literature and you have no idea what you are talking about. As I said, if you are too lazy to learn anything, you should say nothing. You contribute nothing but confusion to the discussion. You make statements that anyone who has read the literature could have told you were wrong back in 1989. What is the point?
JR wrote:
"Nuclear reactions such as heat from radium go for thousands of years. They go to completion. Cold fusion reactions would also for many years if they went to completion, but most stop working before that because the deuterium comes out of solution and the reaction stops. In any case, heat after death often produces far more heat than a chemical reactants of equivalent mass could produce, and it produces no chemical changes or ash, so it is definitely nuclear. Or something unknown to science.I am sure you know this. Your statements are only intended to confuse people who do not understand the issues. The part about "long (long, long) time" is pure bullshit. Nuclear reactions do not always go for a long, long time before completion. A nuclear bomb, for example, goes for a short, short time, before the reaction stops. I am sure you know that."
As noted the definition of self-sustaining incorporates the idea of time. In common parlance that time is 'long' but the exact length is variable depending on what one is discussing. For example, a self-sustaining nuclear explosion is a frightening thing to contemplate. The typically short burst is bad enough. You are playing semantics games here...
Your HAD comment is correct except that you should put the word 'claim' in there somewhere. There are claims that HADs produce more energy than chemically available, but my response is that an error integrated for a long time becomes very big (maybe even self-sustaining?). Of course my whole point is that the data interpretation method used to reach this claim is wrong, ergo the claim of massive energy release is wrong.
JR also wrote:
"To suggest that might affect a Seebeck calorimeter is ridiculous. In point of fact, it would not affect any calorimeter. If it did, calorimeters could not be used to measure chemical reactions in electrochemistry. The textbooks would all be wrong."
The textbooks would be wrong only if a CCS occurred every single time, which of course we know is not the case. Normally, calorimetry works. It is the specifics of F&P cells that bring on the CCS after the 'special active state' is formed and at-the-electrode recombination begins (if my proposal is substantiated).
You still say it 'would not affect any calorimeter'. You realize that Storms proved you wrong, right? He found that changing the heat source for calibration from the electrolysis power to a joule (resistive) heater changed the value of the cal. constant slightly, illustrating that internal cell conditions can affect the calibration equation. He just didn't recognize the significance of that. I did and thus my reanalysis and 1st publication on this...
Ridiculous you say? Let's think this through. In the mass flow configuration we have an F&P cell inside a calorimeter that attempts to collect all released heat (in its most efficient configuration; one can work with less efficient calorimeters and some do). Now a Seebeck calorimeter also attempts to collect all the heat released from the cell. Same cell here in both cases. Now, the mass flow calorimeter normally uses a calibration equation for output power that looks like this: Pout = k * Cp * f* deltaT + b. Cp is the heat capacity at constant pressure, and it is a function of temperature. f is the mass flowrate. Delta T is the temperature difference between the water exiting the calorimeter and the water entering it. k and b are the calibration constants. We can simplify this to Pout = kX + b, where X is a shorthand for the 3 terms above. This is what Storms' did. He found that changing the heat source for calibration from the electrolysis power to a joule (resistive) heater changed the value of k slightly, illustrating that internal cell conditions can affect the calibration equation.
Now the Seebeck calorimeter typically uses a calibration equation like this: Pout = K * X, where K is the calibration constant and X is the voltage used as the calorimeter's signal. X is produced by wiring some several thermocouples (TCs) together in series and then placing those TCs in and/or around the cell, thereby forming the calorimeter surface. (Conceptually, of course something has to hold the TCs. Storms used to have a picture of his homebuilt one on his Webpage. He placed the TCs in holes in the wall of a PVC pipe which was capped at both ends once the cell was in place. The cell went inside the pipe and there was a fan to circulate air inside the calorimeter. McKubre has used a cube formed of Al sheet with 1 TC in each side as another example, i.e. only 6 TCs used.) So, what is the difference that supposedly makes the Seebeck calorimeter immune to the problem found in the mass flow type? Answer: there ain't none.
There is the usual assumption that the 'b' term from the mass flow version is zero in the Seebeck version, but this is actually not the best practice. Good use of statistics, which is what is usually used to get the constants' values, requires the use of an additive constant. Otherwise the math can get messed up. So let's put the b back in the Seebeck equation: Pout = K * X + b. Looks pretty darn similar to the mass flow case to me! If the cal const changes, using the previous one will give you the wrong Pout.
The CCS arises because heat loss changes. The same problem will arise in any type calorimeter as long as the cell is designed with all primary heat loss pathways going through the low efficiency zone (these are the penetrations and wires used to support and power the electrodes, joule heater, vent lines, etc.). Of course, the magnitude of the effect can vary, but the upshot is for all these methods you need to experimentally determine the variation of the cal constants and then evaluate that variation's impact on your conclusions. What I showed in 2000 in the manuscript on file at Jed's library is that that variation explained the excess heat peaks easily.
That means all calorimetric determinations of 'excess heat' need to be able to support that this effect is not the cause of the anomalous signal. To date, none do. Ergo, no excess heat claim is trustworthy. And it doesn't matter what type of calorimeter one uses, as it is just simple applied propagation of error theory. You must translate the cal constant variation through the computations to the final conclusion to determine the actual 'noise' present. In Ed's case he had at least 780 mW of 'noise' due to this problem (not 78, which is in the normal range claimed).
And remember folks, this all started with Ed Storms' reporting the presence of exactly this problem (cal constant shift). I just expanded on it in detail and proposed how it might happen.
Jed linked to pictures of blown-up apparati when MY suggested he demonstrate a nuclear explosion from a CF experiment. In fact the damage shown is easily encompassed by the chemical energy resulting from H2 + O2 explosions (and that includes the infamous F&P hole in the lab floor).
One of the odd conditions used in F&P cells that allows a CCS to occur is that the electrolysis gases are not kept separate. This allows explosions to happen and is a real, valid safety concern for CF experimentalists.
Oh...and again and again Jed's statements prove he hasn't read the literature...
Jed linked to pictures of blown-up apparati when MY suggested he demonstrate a nuclear explosion from a CF experiment. In fact the damage shown is easily encompassed by the chemical energy resulting from H2 + O2 explosions (and that includes the infamous F&P hole in the lab floor).
Nope. As described in the papers linked to these images, some of these explosions produced ~400 times more energy than all of the available chemical fuel could have. Most of these are open cells, so there is hardly any H2 and O2 in the cell. It is vented. It was confirmed that the vents were clear. Not plugged up.
There were several other explosions like this, which I did not list.
The thing is, you can't just declare "In fact the damage shown is easily encompassed by the chemical energy resulting from H2 + O2 explosions." Just saying this does not make it true. You have to take into account actual facts and measurements. You have to understand that when the gas is vented out of the cell through a 1 cm tube, it is not available to cause an explosion.
Shananhan invents endless impossible phenomena, such as explosions from gas that left the cell long ago, and noise that magically works in one direction only, always producing a positive effect, never a negative. (See p. 4: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MarwanJanewlookat.pdf).
I thought "cam" was to be the sacrificial lamb around which would congregate CF enthusiasts, and Rossi haters in need of renewed credibility, but it seems we have a runner-up!
