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

Quote from Hermes

Because a couple of theories predict 14C (Fisher, Bazhutov) when natural carbon is present. Secondly betas without gammas are observed. Of course it might be something else too. Do you have suggestions?

I see. That makes sense. I take it your point about betas without gammas is that there are no excited levels that are populated after the beta decay? If the daughters are light elements, I suppose any excited levels might be very low-lying.

My own initial thought: short-lived unstable decay daughters from the breakup of small amounts of U, Th, Ag, Cd and Pb which might be present in the anthracite, and perhaps breakup of nuclides in the electrode material, whatever that is.

If we're all on to something and in 1000 years some historian is trying to make sense of it all, despite the historian's great interest in the subject he/she will not find the energy to flip through page after page of this forum software, which is a black hole for interesting information, both generally and as far as Google is concerned.

Quote from Eric Walker

short-lived unstable decay daughters from the breakup of small amounts of U, Th, Ag, Cd and Pb

It's not clear to me why "breakup" occurs, and why the short lived unstable decay daughters do not produce gammas.

Just to add a bit more flesh the 14C conjecture, natural carbon can maintain a chain reaction with Erzions or polyneutrons. So we would have something like this:-
X + 13C --> Xn + 12C
Xn + 13C --> X + 14C

Obviously the chain would be easier to sustain in pure carbon rather than just bicarbonate as the 13C density is so much higher. And as a larger volume tends to trap the X particles, size matters. This does NOT match the 10-15 minute half life that Alan estimates. Something else may be going on. Worth further investigation.

Quote from Hermes

It's not clear to me why "breakup" occurs, and why the short lived unstable decay daughters do not produce gammas.

Breakup: how about anisotropic electron screening at the surface, as (heavy? carbon?) ions from the anthracite are pressed onto the lead anode from electrolysis? No gammas: how about something akin to internal conversion, arising as a result of the aforementioned electron screening? Or a low overall activity, in which energetic levels are populated only very infrequently, causing them to be disguised in the background? Or an ad hoc assumption that for some reason daughters are born in the ground state?

Quote from Eric Walker

Breakup: how about electron screening at the surface, as (heavy? carbon?) ions from the anthracite are pressed onto the lead anode from electrolysis? No gammas: how about something akin to internal conversion, arising as a result of the aforementioned electron screening? Or a low overall activity, in which energetic levels are populated only very infrequently, causing them to be disguised in the background? Or an ad hoc assumption that for some reason daughters are born in the ground state?

http://physics.aps.org/articles/v9/83
Two Atoms Can Jointly Absorb One Photon

In the presence of a nanostructure, a Bose condensation state among N atoms can form that can divide a high energy photon into N numbers of lower energy photons. The key is confinement of the photon with the atoms for a long enough timeframe for the photons and atoms to mix so that vacuum energy based sharing and borrowing of energy can occur.

Quote from axil

Two Atoms Can Jointly Absorb One Photon

Interesting article, Axil.

Quote from Alan Smith

Worth mentioning (perhaps) that Coconut Carbon is mildly radioactive as purchased - but I have no way of analysing anything for C14.

I found a paper of C-C cold fusion (Japan of course..) for the curious.

www.geocities.jp/hjrfq930/Papers/paperr/paperr34.pdf

At first, Steorn did much of interesting research, not just McCarthy's inventions and it still owns quite remarkable patent portfolio. Once McCarthy leaved Steorn, nothing prohibits the investors to utilize the rest. At second, I don't think that all McCarthy technologies didn't really work - I already explained here, why I'm convinced about the opposite. The Heptaheat technology is unconventional, but scientifically quite feasible technology: instead of hot water it stores the heat in block of hot inductively heated iron with much higher energy density.

I also have watched Steorn since 2006.

Bloke in a small industiral unit in Ireland overnight invents a perpetual motion machine.

I started with an open mind, he was going to run a public demo in London and after all "You never know".

Guess what, it was a big fraud (I am going to put "allegedly" in here because lawyers are always looking for business).

But you cannot prove a negative so of course people are always free to believe that maybe Sean was nobbled by the CIA or space aliens.

All the classic fraud signs, lots of PR and rumours, lots of secrecy, lots of claims, criticism of established science.

When the story goes a bit flat just change the invention and unveil Orbo v2 etc. And of course money, allegedly 20 million euros.

Well surely all his supporters and investors cannot be mistaken. Yep.

Well surely if he was a conman he would not start a process to sell products. Yep.

So guess what, nothing. In fact there was a total absence of real science, data, facts, proof or any of that stuff.

Sean's real talent was the ability to tell stories.

I have to say McCarthy picked a difficult but well trodden area, perpetual motion. The scientific case against perpetual motion is very solid and anyone who claims otherwise needs to show some really strong, bullet proof evidence. But he managed to sell it to enough people.

At least in the cold fusion/lenr there is lots of uncertainty and complexity so plenty of wiggle room to run scam demos, scam theories etc.

Quote

No Steorn technology whatever EVER worked. Steorn was a COMPLETE, TOTAL, UNEQUIVOCAL scam and a fraud as is Hepashit. There are no inventions, no patents worth a dime, or anything else of value other than humor

I can perfectly understand your subversive modus vivendi here, the only purpose of which is to doubt all findings, which could threat the established status quo of mainstream physics.

What I cannot understand well is, why you're still tolerated here, because you're just increasing turbulence and hostility here without any value added. In my experience such a liberal attitude simply doesn't work, because the people who come to forum with their own agenda cannot be convinced for discussion about subject at all, as their very intention is the termination of all discussions about it instead, which is in direct contradiction of the sole purpose of this forum.

Quote from ZenoOfElea

At least in the cold fusion/lenr there is lots of uncertainty and complexity so plenty of wiggle room to run scam demos, scam theories etc.

To address the title of this thread: Why is Cold Fusion so opposed by Scientists?

I think there are two different negative arguments: experimental and theoretical.

The theoretical argument has to do with lack of coherent theory. The standard model and related theories are a large structure with high predictive power and while like any theory it is flaky at the edges, subject to revision, it does not seem easy to fit viable LENR theories into the core of the existing theory that is well backed by experiment. Look at Hagelstein's efforts. A lot of people who are not theoreticians will just give no weight to this, and there is an attractive argument about how theories can be wrong and constrain innovative thought etc. I don't see any useful debate about this; except by the LENR people like Hagelstein trying to find a viable theory and the critique of their efforts. The hundreds of fringe papers claiming this or that don't cut it, but need (scientists) to evaluate so on the internet can be seen as better than they are. If you also think that scientists are incapable of seeing new ideas because they are too attached to old ones that is difficult. Negative evaluations of these hundreds of (mostly, by law of averages, bad) papers don't convince. A proper evaluation needs people with skill set and knowledge that makes them biased against radical ideas. Personally, in theoretical physics, I see no such bias against radical ideas. In fact people with such (even though most turn out wrong) get rewarded. But many will disagree, and this is a matter where argument does not get us anywhere.

The experimental argument, to me, is more profitable because it can possibly be moved forward. On the one hand just one replicable experiment with secure unexplainable results would change things. That unexplainable result could be evidence of unexpected radiation, excess heat, transmutation. On the other hand, addressing the thread question, skeptics (not just pseudo-skeptics) see results that are always near the noise level, for LENR in particular, as being negative. That is because both radiation and excess heat are easy to detect and both would be expected to deliver results far away from the noise level given the exquisite sensitivity of radiation detection, and the high energies involved. So a long line of near noise level results, to skeptics, looks like a sign that this effect is not real.

Anyway, Abd believes that new IH-funded research will generate clear coherent results. I hope he is right: but I don't expect it.

Quote

The theoretical argument has to do with lack of coherent theory The experimental argument, to me, is more profitable because it can possibly be moved forward

Both arguments are fringe, because the mainstream physics has many other topics without coherent theory (like the HT superconductivity) or even perspective of fast success (experimental search quantum gravity, susy, stringy theories) - yet the research continues and it even gets publicity and promotion in mainstream media. So that the actual arguments must be somewhere else and they were already presented here. This is just the problem of discussion forums like this one: they cannot get into any conclusions, because the people will not browse history as it's more rewarding to simply develop and present their own opinion about it from scratch. So that forum can be only as intelligent, as intelligent is the last page of each tread.

THHuxley and Zephir; Some good and fair points.

Theory would be nice to have, and would speed up research and development.

Some say LENR can be explained within Standard Model, others say it requires exotic physics. It would certainly be easier to move forward with a theory that does not disrupt Standard Model, but less exciting.

But as Zephir says not all physics mechanisms have a solid theory. All those who claim LENR cannot be accepted till it has a working theory are wrong IMHO.

As THHuxley says the most fruitful approach at the moment seems to be the experimental approach but of course, without a deep understanding and no theory to provide a roadmap then progress is slow.

Additionally the secrecy of individuals and small groups who do not want to share their results slows progress further and leaves the field open to concerns of poor quality research and even fraud.

This is understandable considering the prize but is not ideal.

TTH,

I put it this way, CF works but so far input has been > or = to output. CMNS is still in its infancy and there is a lot to still learn. CoE still holds in the end so far.

Edit: But then I read the NASA report Old guy had "NiedraJMreplicatio.pdf" a Thermacore replication and the question remains open,"