Robert E Godes: why Cold Fusion is so opposed by physicists

Quote from frankwtu

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

But you are listening and engaging, should we read anything into that? Would you categorise yourself as a pseudoskeptic?

OMG, got me there!

Of course, I meant something else, and pseudoskeptics and inhabitants of Planet Rossi (same coin, flip sides) focus on fluff, ignoring substance.

I do listen to Shanahan and have, for years, attempted to understand his arguments. Some of them are pretty wild! Kirk got stuck in anti-cold fusion rhetoric on the internet, back in the 1990s, and later was able even to get some funding from his employer to investigate the possibility of cold fusion causing accidents in that huge facility for enriching uranium (Forget about it! Not going to happen! We could have told him that!), and he later was published in several journal articles. He is thus way ahead of the general pseudoskeptical field, pushing into genuine skeptical territory. He is the last published scientific skeptic. But he has mostly lost it, he's been reduced to complaining that nobody is listening to him, journals are rejecting his work, and here we can see how he insists on his own errors.

I have invited Kirk to participate in improving the cold fusion resource on Wikiversity. Declined. I have criticized his work on newvortex and he was invited to respond (in fact, I warned him before I wrote all that, and he rejected it with an accusation that I was simply a stubborn believer.) Declined. Here, he says he "doesn't do newvortex." Does that mean he doesn't read it (in context, that seems to be the meaning) or he doesn't write (which is declining to have a direct conversation, his privilege, but ... nobody else is engaging).

His position is a dead end, as it stands.

Oh, by the way. Am I a pseudoskeptic? Sure. Sometimes. It is relatively easy to recognize if one looks. What was amazing to me was on moletrap, where a community almost entirely composed of pseudoskeptics -- but organized around an obvious scam, Steorn -- denied that pseudoskepticism exists. Pseudoskepticism always hides behind genuine skepticism, but the difference is obvious. Ah, the stories I could tell!

Quote from Zephir_AWT

/* but organized around an obvious scam, Steorn */

I don't think, that Steorn is scam, it's just a consequence of attempt for premature monetization of breakthrough findings

Pucky. however, I should be clear. I am not claiming that Steorn defrauded anyone, in the legal sense. Have you ever seen these "Free Energy" ads? "Your electric utility will hate you." So you send in money to get a set of plans. "Money back guarantee"? How can you lose?

Let's assume the company honors the guarantee, and they actually do give your money back, though it usually isn't immediate. Sometimes these companies disappear and maybe you can complain to your credit card company and still get your money back, if you did not wait too long. But they know that many people just forget about it, if it isn't a lot of money. So they make money, and can make a *lot* of money, even if they have *absolutely nothing.*

With Steorn, they were claiming, indeed, a "breakthrough," something that, on the face, was a perpetual motion machine, defying the laws of physics. They were straightforward about that. It is not illegal to sell perpetual motion machines, if they are not misrepresented.

"Does this machine defy the laws of physics? Find out for yourself! A unique opportunity, only $99.95 while supplies last!" Oh, and money back guarantee if all materials are returned in as-received condition. "$8.95 shipping and handling not included in guarantee."

If a company like Steorn is clever, they can make quite a lot of money based on complete fluff, and legally. What are they actually selling? It could be marketing skill. They made a world-class splash. And they were selling some real products.

The tip off that they are scammers, if you followed Steorn, was that the president and CEO lied repeatedly. For example:

- it always works all the time (yet all demos failed... MISERABLY and were laughable)

- it self runs (the demo at Waterways used a huge battery to run it)

- multiple universities proved the concept (never named in six years)

- we made a 550W motor we keep under the stairwell (never seen)

- we can get 0.5W/cc power density (never shown)

- the world's two largest heater companies bought Hephaheat rights and will market the product (never happened)

... and then there was the renown jury that Steorn put together which was never given any evidence or device that showed it works.

Everything the man said was a lie. Basically, just like Defkalion's Hadjichristos (7 of the world largest companies tested Hyperion) and of course Rossi (we all know all his lies).

Quote from JedRothwell

Hermes wrote:
but I suspect that any attempt to do so without contamination by ambient helium would be exceedingly difficult.

You are wrong. It is not difficult with modern instruments at places like the NRL or the ENEA. Nor is it difficult to capture the helium after dissolving the cathode in acid, which has also been done. Since melting or dissolving shows no significant helium in some samples before the experiment, and significant helium in samples from after tests that produce excess heat, I do not see how you can claim it is "difficult" or unreliable.

Helium work is difficult. It's inappropriate to deny that. However, "exceedingly difficult" is an exaggeration. Key to this work is control experiments. It is impossible to do helium work without "contamination," because helium is present in very pure nitrogen gas, as used by Miles to flush his cells. His background -- from that nitrogen contamination -- was very roughly half of his measurements, so then we would look at the precision of his measurements, was it adequate to distinguish de novo helium from background (Yes.) Did he do control experiments? (Yes.)

Most of all, when studies attempted to confirm his work with increased precision, did the effect disappear? (No. It became stronger.)

Violante made no attempt to exclude atmospheric helium, so he measured elevation above ambient. Ambient is quite high and his heat measurements were not high, though quite significant (two of them), and still significant, but weak (one of them). How did he pull this off? I have not questioned Violante in detail, but it appears that he must have had a small headspace, so that a little helium released could make a large impact on helium levels.

Jed, here, overstates the case, my opinion. It's easy to do. Hermes responds (later) with incredulity, I'll examine that.

Quote

No, the measured ratios show that the helium is close to the expected ratio for D+D => He4, as shown on p. 8 here:

lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinnewphysica.pdf

"Close" is not a precise term. The skeptic Huizenga (1993) thought that being within an order of magnitude of that ratio was amazing. Later, the measurements became more precise, tightening it up. It should be understood that most helium measurements did not attempt to measure retaining helium, only helium in the outgas, so it would be expected, if there is retained helium, that the ratio found for energy/4He woud be higher than the actual value. Two experiments, though, as part of a process used, among other things, to stimulate loading, used reverse electrolysis, which will strip the surface layer, and these two experiments both found the expected value within experimental error, 10% as stated by McKubre and 20% as my rough estimate of the Violante value.

Quote

It is even closer when you account for helium left in the metal, which you do by melting or dissolving the metal, as I said.

That is correct. There is little data on this, but what there is confirms that there is retained helium that is released if metal is melted (Morrey et al, 1990) or dissolved (SRI M4, 1990s, Apicella et al (2005). I suggested dissolving with acid, some years back, not realizing at that point that anodic erosion did the trick, easily and simply.

Quote

Bloggers do not "see an astonishing coincidence." The scientists who performed the experiments, Mile, McKubre, Gozzi and others, all claim that the ratio is 23.8 MeV per D+D reaction.

Miles. No. McKubre, in particular, claims that the ratio found is "consistent with" that ratio. His measurement -- a single measurement -- is the most precise to date (10% is his estimate). Krivit has heavily attacked that work, hammer and tongs. There are problems, and this is another reason why the project to confirm this again is so important. Not only will the release ratio be measured, but also retained helium will be released with anodic erosion (and I do suspect that they will do at least a few whole-cathode analyses, to look for any remainder.)

Because *no other ash has been measured and confirmed" the default understanding in the field, with few exceptions, is that the FP reaction produces helium and releases energy at the ratio expected from deuterium conversion to helium. This is often stated as "d-d fusion," but, in fact, simple d-d fusion would not produce that ratio, far from it (that reaction is well understood and generates very little helium, and then the energy when helium is formed is dumped as a hot gamma, which is not observed. Much less heat would end up in the cell.

To come up with the theoretical value requires that there be no other significant products at levels high enough to affect the ratio, and no energy leakage through radiation, such as neutrinos or exotics.

Jed exaggerated the situation, then. Jed is not a scientist, he is a technical writer (like me, by the way, though I have a stronger science focus, perhaps), and Jed often writes polemic that is not conservative. Then a skeptic comes along and skewers what he writes, even though what he writes is, in substance, not misleading, just a bit outside what has been nailed. Then there is Hermes' response to Jed:

[quote='Hermes','https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Thread/3501-Robert-E-Godes-why-Cold-Fusion-is-so-opposed-by-physicists/?postID=30154#post30154'] (Answered below)

Quote from Hermes

JedRothwell wrote:

Because Hermes appears to be motivated to shoot down the claims, he doesn't notice or correct the error. He is literally correct in this:

Those who have done this work and who report it don't claim such accuracy, at all. Generally, neither the heat data nor the helium data have been measured precisely enough to allow this. I do not expect the new work to reach to the 0.5% accuracy that Hermes is pointing to. All these people, if they mention "23.8 MeV" are referring to the theoretical value, with which they are, in their reports, comparing with the actual measurements. With only two exceptions, what was measured was outgas helium, which appears to miss roughly 40% of the helium, but there are signs that this can vary substantially. The exceptions are SRI M4 and Apicella Laser-3, which both came up with a value within experimental error of the theoretical value, i.e., +/- 10% with McKubre, and roughly +/- 20% with Violante (Apicella).

Appalling ad hominem argument, standard among pseudoskeptics. Results and conclusions are from wishful thinking.

That compatibility of the results is obvious. Those results, where the only application of anodic erosion occurred, both confirmed the value. It is also obvious that we will want further and more precise confirmation. Will Hermes agree to the value of this work? What results does he expect? Anything?

There is far stronger evidence of the correlation of heat and helium. It is essentially irrefutable at this point, though I suppose it is possible someone will pull a rabbit out of a hat and identify the artifact(s). That is not going to be easy, this is really quite a large body of work, all coming up with the same conclusion, with very, very little contrary evidence existing.

Remember retained helium. This was the Case work, which was never formally published. I have asked McKubre many times to put that together, he's agreed to do it, but hasn't gotten to it. That experiment is essentially obsolete, because it could not be replicated due to loss of the material and other issues. It was considered remarkable, though, enough to put it in the Appendix to the Hagelstein et al paper cited, presented to the DoE in 2004. That work, however, massively confused the reviewers, who did not notice that this was not electrochemical (they directly erred on that) and did not notice that there were control experiments showing no heat and no helium. That Appendix was then the subject of some drastic (and blatant) errors in the DoE report. What was a very strong correlation in the experiment was converted to an anticorrelation, used to dismiss all the heat/helium results.

McKubre only gave heat data for one of the experiments. This was work done for a government agency, and it may eventually be released.

In fact, this was a gas-loaded experiment with coconut carbon charcoal, with poorly-understood behavior, as we will see. Retention behavior with such a catalyst could be drastically different, and certainly appears so. In studying heat/helium I have generally avoided gas-loading because the experiments may not be commensurable. I did use that chart in my paper. I was getting pressure to include a chart as eye candy. I wanted to create one using PdD electrolytic work, but ... there are many problems that arise in doing this. Because different protocols were used, and results were reported in many different ways, generating such a chart was more work than I had time for, and I was up against a deadline. So I slapped that readily-usable chart in. I regret it, actually, though it doesn't seem to have done much harm. It is a real result, but possibly misleading, as we will see:

I've discussed this with McKubre. He regrets not having analyzed the cell contents after the experiment. Yes, there was

"Leakage" is a facile and obvious explanation that does not closely examine the behavior.

First of all, what is plotted in Figure 12.? This is 6/16 experiments. I think McKubre does not explicitly state this -- unfortunate! -- but these cells were the only ones showing anomalous heat and helium. The Case work is part of the corpus showing heat/helium correlation. No heat, no helium is an important result in that corpus. Obvious, though, this gives no information on the ratio!

With a very different catalyst, than ordinary Pd in an electrolytic cell, the reaction and results could be quite different. However, the obvious default here is that the fuel and ash were the same, but retention behavior varied. Hence instead of the common finding without special helium release of about 40 Mev/4He, SC2 showed a consistent time-related behavior of about 32 MeV/4He, over about 20 days. The helium measurements continued to be made after that time. The paper does not show heat data for anything other than the first period with SC2. I'm lucky that I have a peculiar form of paralysis that prevents me from banging my head against the wall, or I'd have dented walls. (This presentation was rushed, apparently. It was believed that the DoE review was a special opportunity that would not come again. In fact, my thinking, if they had stood for and insisted on better process, it might all have been over by 2004. Haste makes waste.)

Notice the behavior of the three most active cells in that 20 days: the helium levels rise above ambient, showing no sign of slowing down, as would be the case if it were due to leakage of helium from ambient. Then two cells show a decline. Why? I do not see adequate evidence to come to any definite conclusion. It doesn't look like leakage, though. It's worth quoting McKubre on this:

[quote]Another factor must also be considered in accounting for the 4He mass balance. In Figure 12 for experiments SC2 and SC4.2 (D2 on United Catalysts G75D and E, corresponding to 0.4% and 0.5% Pd on C, respectively), the final trajectories of 4He with time show essentially the same linear decreasing trend. It is apparent the 4He is either leaving the cell, in which case it may enter if the partial pressure of 4He is lower inside than the ambient 5.22 ppmV/V, or else 4He is being adsorbed or absorbed onto or into the stainless steel or catalyst solid components, in which case these must be considered as potential sources of the observed increase.

The first is unlikely since the cells were demonstrated repeatedly to be helium leak-tight. An experiment performed to test the second hypothesis demonstrated clearly that 4He adsorbs or absorbs into this class of catalyst material and also into or onto activated charcoal of similar geometry, with a rate consistent with the declining trend in Figure 12, at similarly elevated temperatures. There is reasonable confidence that the 4He source of the rising trends in Figures 12 and 13 is not a release of stored 4He from the catalyst for the following reasons:

(and then he gives reasons for thinking that the helium did not initially come from the catalyst.

Display More

This is like much cold fusion work. It cries out for confirmation. But nobody was able to confirm Case. There were issues with the original batch of catalyst being lost, accidentally discarded.

When I write about the heat/helium correlation being confirmed, there is a large body of work involved. Much of it can be criticized in one way or another. However, I find the preponderance of the evidence clear, and certainly clear enough to warrant redoing the work with increased precision. It is obvious to me that this is long overdue. The DoE in 1989 took a "not proven" stance that actually recommended further research and modest funding and interpreted it as "rejected, bogus, not worthy of funding" result, and that repeated to some degree in 2004, where the panel was far more favorable to cold fusion than in 1989.

In any case, it is happening, and it will be published, I'm confident. Where it is published will be up to the journals, but I do suspect that this might be submitted to Nature. If this work is done properly, it will be "extraordinary evidence." On the other hand, people in the field largely detest Nature for what they did (which is all well-known and documented) ... so I can't be sure.

What will the ratio be? Indications are that it will settle near 23.8 MeV, and I say that because there simply is no other candidate for the reaction product at levels that would make any difference. However, this is experimental work, and the results are the results, and my own efforts will encourage them to publish all results and not just select the "good ones." Publish the mistakes! Let it all hang out. (But a paper will not publish everything, that's usually impossible. Make all the data available, and that has become more common in some fields, with supplemental data available on-line for the curious and skeptical.