Can we talk about Holmlid?

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

It would be useful if Jed would recognize how much his arguments resemble those of pseudoskeptics.

My arguments do not even being to resemble those of the pseudoskeptics. Not in 1 ppb. Taubes makes a claim. There are a billion counterexamples -- people who eat a lot of refined rice, that is -- proving that his claim is bullshit. And you have the effrontery to tell me that this is not valid disproof of his claim! Don't be ridiculous.

Biology and medical science are not like electrochemistry. They are statistical in nature. You can always find people who cannot eat white rice. You can find people who become morbidly obese eating it. However, when you find a billion people who are not adversely affected by it, that proves it has no serious, widespread adverse effects on most humans. There is no other way to test the Taubes hypothesis. You cannot point to a billion failed cold fusion experiments to show that the effect does not exist. If there is even a single positive experiment, that would overrule the others and prove it does exist. Biology does not work that way.

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

For neutral skepticism, I recommend A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects, by Nate Hoffman.

You recommend this, whereas I regarded it as the third largest collection of horseshit ever published about cold fusion, after Taubes and Huizenga. It is remarkable how different our opinions are. The people at SRI agree with me. They threatened to file suit against the ANS unless it corrected some of the character assassination. That is why the ANS inserted a small piece of paper into the book with one major correction. The ANS should have replaced 90% of the book, it is so distorted.

My review of the book begins:

Quote

This is a strange little book. It is well written in some parts, with knowledgeable, in-depth, analysis. Yet elsewhere the author makes factual errors that might easily have been avoided. Some of his mistakes are mind-boggling, like his suggestions that chemical supply companies sell used moderator heavy water from CANDU fission reactors, or that no researcher in any cold experiment has ever measured true rms power. The focus of the book is wrong. It covers a few backwater aspects of cold fusion. It describes a handful of unimportant, botched experiments while it ignores the real work. The most important fact about cold fusion is that it produces excess heat beyond the limits of chemistry. As Fleischmann says, “heat is the principal signature of the reaction.” In most experiments, heat is the easiest parameter to measure, giving the highest signal to noise ratio. Yet Hoffman does not discuss any experiments in which excess heat was observed. He censors them out, he pretends they do not exist. This eliminates most of the literature. In the second paragraph of the book, Hoffman says that Pons and Fleischmann claimed excess heat, but that is the last we hear about the subject until the closing remarks. He never says that hundreds of other scientists replicated their findings. He never mentions any particulars about heat. There is no discussion of power; net energy; energy versus mass (megajoules per mole of cathode material); power density; temperature; current density and other triggering mechanisms; or metallurgical conditions and surface treatments required to generate excess heat.

This censorship of anything relating to heat is carried to absurd extremes. A short chapter on calorimetry, titled “Possible Artifacts Associated with Heat Measurements in Palladium / Deuterium Systems” contains only speculation about hypothetical errors, and no actual calorimetric data from any experiment. Chapters that deal with things like neutrons, charged particles and helium contain references to the literature, samples of data from published experiments, and comments from researchers. But the chapter on calorimetry has no data from any cold fusion paper, even though the majority of papers deal with this subject. . . .

The book is a ham-handed attempt to make cold fusion look like failed science. It was ham-handed because Hoffman was stupid. Very stupid. In person he was the most stupid professional scientist I have ever encountered, and I have encountered many stupid people.

Morrison was pretty stupid too, as you see in this document:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

Taubes knows nothing about any technical subject. He understands nothing about biology or, as it turns out, Japanese society. He supposedly has an engineering background but he does not know anything about electricity, temperatures or thermometers. He thinks you can stir up a cup of coffee and have one side of the cup at 20°C while the other is at 70°C. (Abd will probably say I made that up, but I quoted him saying that in my paper on the Titanic.) Despite his profound ignorance of everyday science, and his utter lack of common sense, he has a sort of native intelligence when it comes to making money by destroying people's reputations, careers and lives. He is good at that. He is a psychopath, as I said. That is, someone who exhibits "persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits." Unfortunately, cold fusion attracts psychopaths, notably Andrea Rossi.

Quote from Mary Yugo

Instead of being critical of extravagant and poorly demonstrated claims like those of Rossi and Defkalion, the claimants are coddled and even adulated and praised by the believers.

I know most of the leading cold fusion researchers in the U.S., Italy and Japan. Just about all of them think Rossi is a kook. They pay no attention to him. The people you are talking about are at e-cat world on Planet Rossi. They are not researchers. Like you, they know nothing about cold fusion.

You seem to believe that Rossi somehow represents cold fusion. This is like saying that anti-vaccination doctors represent the medical profession.

Quote from Mary Yugo

ewan, Kullander, Essen, any of the Lugano investigators and of course Levi, could have stopped Rossi in 2011 simply by demanding proper testing, measurement, and calibration. But they wanted Rossi to be true so badly that they didn't.

The mistakes they made are on them. Not Rossi. I do not know whether their mistakes were prompted by wishful thinking as you say here, or because they had no experience in calorimetry. I recently reread the two Levi reports. The first one was pretty good. The second one went off into strange theory based never-never-land instead of relying on calibrations and conventional calorimetry. I do not know what happened but I suppose the new people in the second group are to blame. Rossi played a larger role in the first study, and that was better, so if anything he had a positive influence.

@JedRothwell

I have not read this book you so dislike. Indeed it seems to leave much data out. I'd just make one comment:

Quote

There is no discussion of power; net energy; energy versus mass (megajoules per mole of cathode material); power density;

I would say most LENR papers I've read note these quantities in the abstract as positive highlights in a way that is profoundly unhelpful?

Why? Because even eye-catchingly large headline figures do not by themselves mean anything. High net energy can come from a small artifact measured over a long time. High power can come from a variable chemical reaction measured over a short time. Both in the same experiment mean nothing, in this case. Viewing these quantities as dependent on cathode material is only relevant if the whole cathode, and only the cathode, generates this excess heat. For most artifacts the mechanisms can involve the whole device. For the favoured NAE LENR mechanisms what matters is surface area not total cathode mass.

Very great care is needed in interpreting any one of these figures, or any collection of them.

Regards, THH

Quote from THHuxley

Because even eye-catchingly large headline figures do not by themselves mean anything. High net energy can come from a small artifact measured over a long time. High power can come from a variable chemical reaction measured over a short time. Both in the same experiment mean nothing, in this case.

The researchers are all aware of these facts.

The thing about Hoffman is that the ANS commissioned him to write a book about cold fusion. They paid him over hundred thousand bucks as I recall. It took him a year to write 223 pages, including several pages cribbed from technical reports. Somehow he managed to cover the subject without discussing any heat results. This is like reviewing Romeo and Juliet without mentioning it is a love story. He did spend several pages wandering around a well-known artifact that could not possibly have caused a significant amount of heat.

He devoted 5 pages to this hypothesis: "There are strong indications that commercially sold heavy water may contain variable contents of used moderator water from either CANDU-type nuclear reactors or Savannah River-type weapons production reactors." That sounded extremely unlikely to me, so I contacted Ontario Hydro and asked them whether they sell used moderator water. They were aghast at the suggestion. They pointed out that used moderator water is 100,000,000 times too radioactive to be sold commercially, and it would violate the law to sell it. They said:

Quote

Theoretically, deuterium gas produced by electrolysis has lower D/T ratio than the source D2O. However, in practice, there is no difference, as the separation factor is so small, and the operation is done in a single stage process. . . . [Hoffman's] suggestion that commercial D2 gas suppliers must start with heavy water that is higher in tritium activity than any commercially available product any is also pure nonsense. Ontario Hydro is one of the world's major deuterium gas suppliers and we provide heavy water to one of the world's other major suppliers. The heavy water starting material is our normal virgin product.

This seems like a serious mistake to me. I think a book published by the American Nuclear Society should be held to higher standard of fact checking. Abd thanks I have over-reacted. It is only five pages, after all. On the other hand, that's five pages more than he devoted to any discussion of excess heat.

This little book is a travesty. So are the books by Taubes, Close and Huizenga. Those are the only books in opposition to cold fusion, as far as I know. These are the best arguments the skeptics marshaled against the subject. Granted, these particular skeptics are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Still, with all these distinguished scientists raving and forming at the mouth you would think someone could have come up with viable sounding arguments, instead of this slop. As McKubre says, I could write a better attack against cold fusion than these people did.

Quote from Mary Yugo

That also applies to Rothwell and McKubre who should have insisted on proper testing of Rossi when they commented on his work.

Insisted to who? On what authority? Do you think we were in charge of these tests? Do you think Rossi listens to us or to anyone else? Mike and I have no influence over these events. As I wrote earlier, I stopped paying attention to Rossi years ago after his 1 MW extravaganza with the NATO engineer, because he never did a proper test. I heard periodic reports last year that I.H. was unhappy with the test. I did not pay much attention to him again until this spring when the full extent of the fiasco was revealed. I had no role in any of these events. If you have read Exhibit 5 from the lawsuit, you know as much about these things as I do. If you have read the legal papers you know more than I do, because I cannot make head or tail of legalese.

Quote from THHuxley

For the favoured NAE LENR mechanisms what matters is surface area not total cathode mass.

The NAE mechanism is a hypothesis advanced by Ed Storms, and it does not have universal support. There are some people who like it. But in general there is little consensus with regard to the parameters that describe LENR. There are certainly people who withhold no effort to assert that there is consensus. But even the surface reaction hypothesis rests on the back of a small number of experiments that could be followed up on. Questions like this could easily be asked and would be difficult to answer at the present time: ok, so from these handful of experiments you think there's good evidence of 4He arising from a surface reaction in the PdD system. Is it always and necessarily a surface reaction? Any strong strong affirmative answer would be merely an assertion of someone's opinion.

Quote from AlainCo

NAE is not specifically Edmund Storms Hydroton theory.

NAE just mean that LENR happens in a very uncommon specific domain, and neither in the bulk, the surface, or even frequent defects like vacancies and joints.
He have very good argument to defend this concept of NAE.

From Edmund Storms NAE come from the evolution of well sized cracks filled with hydrogen forming a quantum insulated object under good conditions...
This is his theory. I imagine with more imagination that other theory for the NAE can emerge, based on the same idea that something improbable hosts locally LENR reactions.

The NAE is like a womb in which metalized hydrides are put together, Those crystals can remain inside that womb but they can also be born and float freely around in the hydrogen envelope. The nickel or palladium substrate that hosts the NAE can melt but any liberated metalized hydride crystals that have been produced before the melting will generate the LENR reaction at temperatures beyond the melting point of nickel.

Ed Storms never wanted to deal with the implications of reactor meltdown and what that did to the NAE conjecture. But clearly, when a reactor turns to vapor, this has important implications for he NAE concept.

I found this transcript in the LENR-Forum archives, from what Storms says from minute 13:24 In an interview posted on Youtube. It should relate well with the previous two posts:

Quote

Hydrogen has a very limited possible electronic interaction, meaning there's only one electron involved with each nucleus. So, the number of energy states is very very limited and Hydrogen is one of the more well-known electron states. If I were going to form a particular structure that had the capability that I proposed the Hydroton has, I almost have to accept the same electron state that would be creating metallic Hydrogen. So there's a natural relationship between the two. On the one hand, people have proposed that metallic Hydrogen can initiate a nuclear reaction; I'm saying that I can create something that has the characteristics to do precisely that within cracks and so therefore, that it has the characteristics of metallic Hydrogen.

How is this in-topic with this thread? Well, Holmlid too reports that he creates something that has the characteristics of metallic hydrogen (which Axil appears to call metalized hydrides), so...

The term I choose to use "metalized hydrides" is a generalization of the metalization process where a compound such a lithium hydride could be produced inside the NAE. Water can also be metalized and has been seen inside the lattice of beryllium as well as produced in cavitation and also in electric spark discharge.

It is not unlikely that many compounds and elements can form under extreme conditions a metastable, crystalline state of matter that has metallic characteristics. Even in the case of Holmlid, what he calls Rydberg matter (which has exactly these characteristics) can be composed not only of hydrogen atoms, but also alkali atoms and small molecules.

However from what I have read so far from his works only hydrogen has been observed to further condense into a denser form ("ultra-dense") that can engage in spontaneous nuclear reactions and apparently also nuclear decay. Also, only this form was observed to be superconductive and superfluid. Axil, can you guess why? Do you think that Holmlid is wrong?

Quote from gameover

It is not unlikely that many compounds and elements can form under extreme conditions a metastable, crystalline state of matter that has metallic characteristics. Even in the case of Holmlid, what he calls Rydberg matter (which has exactly these characteristics) can be composed not only of hydrogen atoms, but also alkali atoms and small molecules.

However from what I have read so far from his works only hydrogen has been observed to further condense into a denser form ("ultra-dense") that can engage in spontaneous nuclear reactions and apparently also nuclear decay. Also, only this form was observed to be superconductive and superfluid. Axil, can you guess why? Do you think that Holmlid is wrong?

Hole superconductivity is the process that produces metalized hydrides. The mechanism that produces hole superconductivity is the minimization of kinetic energy. The Meissner effect is a result of this minimization process.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.3912.pdf

Kinetic energy driven superconductivity, the origin of the Meissner effect, and the reductionist frontier

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

What Jed has done is to interpret the sources, then to present his interpretation as if that is what Taubes or Hoffman wrote, but they did not. I could not find the source for Taube's alleged "Factories closed on weekends" comment.

Ask Taubes! I expect he will be pleased to repeat this nonsense. He has said it many times before. This is a guy who will tell you that Japan was so backward in 1965, they did not have modern mills and people ate brown rice. He will say anything that pops into his head.

Regarding electricity on weekends, he said that on NPR. I gather he said it several times subsequently. I do not have my copy of his book at present. I will look it up when I get it back.

Your critiques of Hoffman did not address the issues I raised in the first paragraph of my review, quoted in the message above. I agree with SRI. I think the fact that Hoffman did not even mention any paper describing excess heat disqualifies it from consideration. It is not a book about cold fusion. It was an attempt by Tom Schneider and the other anti-cold fusion people in EPRI and in the ANS to erase cold fusion. Pure politics. I do not understand why you fail to recognize the problems with this book. You seem blind to people's bad intentions and politics.

Quote from AlainCo

NAE is not specifically Edmund Storms Hydroton theory.

Indeed, "NAE" is not specific to the Hydroten. It's one of several steps Ed Storms uses to get to the Hydroton. Storms is notable among LENR researchers, however, in advocating for the notion that there's a special "nuclear active environment" that will only form after an extended period of time and that appears only in small areas. Other people may adopt a similar approach, but the term "NAE" is Ed's, and he's the biggest advocate for it, and he may have been the one to come up with the idea (this is hard to say, since there's so much that has been written since 1989).

Is there an NAE? That's for experiment to sort out. Can and do other people use the concept? Surely.

Quote from Mary Yugo

Want a serious travesty? It's Lewan's farcical book "An Impossible Invention". All of it is Rossifiction.

That book was inconsequential. I would call that more of a farce or mistake than a travesty. Hoffman's book was commissioned and published by the American Nuclear Society, which was goaded by the anti-cold fusion clique at EPRI. Huizenga was the head of the 1989 DoE panel that lied about cold fusion and covered up positive results. These are important consequences.