Some Points Regarding a Recent Presentation at ICCF20 on the ‘Lugano Report’ (Rainer Rander)

    Quote from axil

    Not only did the gigantic NI62 nickel particle prove out to be pure but also the large silicon oxide ash particles were essentially pure


    Axil, that oxide particle cannot be silicon oxide (much more likely to be silicon dioxide in any case). There is not enough silicon detected.
    It is far more likely to be a lithium oxide of some sort. Maybe even lithium hydroxide. Lithium and hydrogen cannot be seen with EDS, so the only oxygen shows up. There is not enough atoms of elements heavier than Li to make other heavier oxides and have that much oxygen detected without them. (Obviously it was not an oxygen particle).


    Pure Ni particles and almost pure LiO (or even worse LiOH particles) suggest a mix of particles that were never heated at high temperature together. That is far more likely than highly heated ingredients that miraculously separated into pure, or nearly pure, substances. Especially these particular ingredients

    Quote from JedRothwell


    Oh come now. There is nothing strange about it. It's just another Rossi "magnificence" or whatever he calls his stupid fraudulent tricks. You don't actually believe those results, do you?


    Keep your eye on the ball. The Lugano test was run by IH for the benefit of IH. Rossi had no interest in the Lugano test. IH established the test as well as the relationships with the 7 profs. The professors were in charge of what was seen and what was tested. Rossi made suggestions but those suggestions were not followed. The Lugano reactor was a IH reactor that later appeared in the first IH patent application where major sections of the report were included in the patent. Don't let your hatred of Rossi impair the logic of your thinking.

    Quote from Paradigmnoia

    Axil, that oxide particle cannot be silicon oxide (much more likely to be silicon dioxide in any case). There is not enough silicon detected.
    It is far more likely to be a lithium oxide of some sort. Maybe even lithium hydroxide. Lithium and hydrogen cannot be seen with EDS, so the only oxygen shows up. There is not enough atoms of elements heavier than Li to make other heavier oxides and have that much oxygen detected without them. (Obviously it was not an oxygen particle).


    Pure Ni particles and almost pure LiO (or even worse LiOH particles) suggest a mix of particles that were never heated at high temperature together. That is far more likely than highly heated ingredients that miraculously separated into pure, or nearly pure, substances. Especially these particular ingredients


    Look at particle 2 on page 45 for the silicon ash particle. The fuel particles 2 and 3 on page 44 show iron oxide and aluminum oxide particles.

    Quote from axil

    Look at particle 2 on page 45 for the silicon ash particle. The fuel particles 2 and 3 on page 44 show iron oxide and aluminum oxide particles.


    Yes. Look at them. Look at how much O goes with how much Al or Fe.
    Then look at the "silicon [di]oxide" particle. There is nowhere near enough Si, or anything else, in the peaks. Therefore it is an oxide or oxygen-rich molecule made with an element or elements below the detectable range of the EDS equipment. (It is not water).
    Lithium is specifically mentioned as being undetectable by their EDS machine.


    Maybe they are giving everyone a hint. A message to the outside world hidden in plain sight. They are fighting the Imperious Curse, but can't... quite... break... free...

    Quote from Paradigmnoia

    Yes. Look at them. Look at how much O goes with how much Al or Fe.
    Then look at the "silicon [di]oxide" particle. There is nowhere near enough Si, or anything else, in the peaks. Therefore it is an oxide or oxygen-rich molecule made with an element or elements below the detectable range of the EDS equipment. (It is not water).
    Lithium is specifically mentioned as being undetectable by their EDS machine.


    Maybe they are giving everyone a hint. A message to the outside world hidden in plain sight. They are fighting the Imperious Curse, but can't... quite... break... free...


    From figure 11 bottom, the particle in question looks like sodium (di)oxide. The sodium must be a transmutation product.

    Quote from Axil

    Keep your eye on the ball. The Lugano test was run by IH for the benefit of IH. Rossi had no interest in the Lugano test.


    As often in this story, you need to think pragmatically about what the parties likely faced at the time and avoid simplification.


    IH wanted a truly independent test, but knew that Rossi was his own person and difficult to control. Also, they needed his help with any test (the magic powder, anything specific that must be done when controlling the device to turn on the magic Rossi effect).


    It is speculation for me to say exactly how IH felt about Rossi at this time but we do know the test was conducted with Rossi present at start and finish, for a total of nearly 7 days. That is so far from independent that it is a problem. IH I guess hoped that the Swedes and perhaps Levi would keep things straight. Rossi knew of Levi as a friend, knew that the Swedes were highly sympathetic, and felt that an independent test in their hands would maybe be OK.


    Did IH choose these testers? We don't know, but I'd be surprised if they would not have preferred a completely independent test lab. What was done, and how it was done, was very amateur.


    Rossi no doubt did not want the Lugano test but he was (from his blog) highly interested in it, and nervous about it. He badly wanted it to go well because his prospects of future big riches from collaboration with a richer IH depended on this.


    Neither IH (at the time), nor the Swedes, realised quite how easily the thermography could go wrong. In retrospect the mistakes you make are often like that. Most non-scientists tend to believe scientists when they write long reports that claim something, and it requires time, and attention to detail, from someone competent to find mistakes unless you find exactly the right expert.


    The wrong thermography was promoted by Levi who continued to support this wrong thermography when questioned more than a year later by Mats. He was not sufficiently expert to realise that the special characteristics of the Al2O3 would give a large false positive even when corrected for the (obvious) temperature-dependent emissivity effect. He ignored, or had too little practical experience to realise, the evidence from the colour of the device. He was not professional enough to review matters properly when critiqued (as he was at the time).


    This mistake was signed off by the other Swedes but we do not know that any of them considered this aspect of the work to be within their domain of competence. So we get a report signed off by 6 scientists where the critical mistake was probably only checked properly by one, and he was very unexpert.


    Abd here says that LENR scientists looked at the report and realised the various negative issues - lack of at temperature control etc. But they were not expert enough, and simply did not put enough time into checking, to see the definite error. IH had this report from 6 Swedes with other scientists not happy about the poor methodology but unable to identify any obvious error. That is a situation in which there is no certainty for IH either way. They would not want to sound like pseudo-skeptics, but equally would be aware of the uncertainty.


    I realise this is rehashing old stuff but it seems that the complexity and uncertainty of real world information, and the fact the Murphy's law sometimes bites, is often not processed when people (specifically Axil above) think about these matters.


    Whether this matter was Murphy's law alone, or was helped along by Rossi perpetuating a fraud, is something we do not need to resolve, and should not speculate about.

    Quote from Paradigmnoia

    Yes. Look at them. Look at how much O goes with how much Al or Fe.


    @P: Until recently i thought you were a clear thinking man, but now I see that you follow the common fraud/anti fraud scheme of IH.


    May be You explain us where on p.45 fig.4 particle 2 you saw iron or aluminum? May be you were asleep...


    Or was this a revelation of your real intentions??

    @Wyttenbach,
    Please have another coffee, or something.


    Quote from axil

    Look at particle 2 on page 45 for the silicon ash particle. The fuel particles 2 and 3 on page 44 show iron oxide and aluminum oxide particles.


    This (above) is what I responded to. Note axil mentions both pages 44 and 45. Page 44 contains aluminum oxide [c] and iron oxide [d], (and a Ni particle). Page 45 contains the mystery oxide [c], (and a nickel particle).


    My evil intention is to have people look at the two oxides to look at what a fairly normal oxide analysis looks like, then compare to the oxygen-rich particle that is missing its partner element.
    The absence of a partner element for the oxygen (there is nowhere near enough Si) is explained easily by lithium being undetectable to the EDS method.
    Do you have a better explanation?

    Quote from THHuxley

    Did IH choose these testers? We don't know, but I'd be surprised if they would not have preferred a completely independent test lab. What was done, and how it was done, was very amateur.


    I do not know whether IH chose the testers. However, some of them are friends of Rossi, and they did the first test a year earlier, so I suppose Rossi had influence in the selection. I suppose he recommended them. Or they recommended themselves to I.H.?


    In retrospect, it would have been better to find people who had no previous connection to Rossi. That does not always work out well. Sometimes, when you gather a fresh group of people to do an experiment, they do a terrible job. That happened a lot in 1989.


    It was indeed very amateur. It was worse than the first test a year earlier. I do not understand that! I suppose Levi is not to blame, because he did a better job earlier.

    Quote from Paradigmnoia

    y evil intention is to have people look at the two oxides to look at what a fairly normal oxide analysis looks like, then compare to the oxygen-rich particle that is missing its partner element.
    The absence of a partner element for the oxygen (there is nowhere near enough Si) is explained easily by lithium being undetectable to the EDS method.
    Do you have a better explanation?


    @P: page 45/particle 2: The combined sum of Si02 and CO2 could work fine for an explanation but there is some room for H20 and Li20 LiOH too.


    But this particle looks more like simple dust caught from the air (no Ni!)... That's why professionals should do such experiments!

    This is an interesting analysis. It is based, if I'm correct, on certain speculations considered plausible by THH. I think this is worth looking at in detail. I do hope that, for the future, more information can be revealed about what happened with the Lugano test, how it was set up, etc. Lugano was the closest thing to an independent test of the Rossi technology that we know about with relative clarity, but it was not truly independent, for multiple reasons, all easily anticipated, so if the goal was a truly independent test, whoever organized it had his head wedged.


    (Industrial Heat certainly attempted to test the technology themselves; and reports having failed to measure any excess heat, and I will insert "significant" there because it is highly likely that some of their work showed heat not considered significant. Some experiments could be expected to do that!)


    Below, I present some of my own inferences about Industrial Heat. They are consistent with what I know, but I have little direct information; with few exceptions, I have only what I have seen of the public record, since 2011.


    Quote from THHuxley

    Axil wrote:


    This is stated, as is typical for Axil, with no sources for his conclusory claims. Rossi obviously had an interest, and I remember his blog comments at the time. He professed being nervous about it. The test was certainly done with the cooperation of IH, as I understand that they built the devices, and they were credited for this by the Lugano authors. However, the test design, including the identity of the authors, is not what I'd have expected from IH. I conclude that this was likely Rossi influence or even demand. IH was operating with an inventor known to be quite touchy, someone who was set off, for example, by the mere presence of Dewey Weaver with a portable IR heat measuring device. Someone who rejected Jed Rothwell as an observer because Jed wanted to bring some of his own equipment. Someone who bailed on demonstration opportunities, going back to 2009, because the observers would make their own measurements.


    They had decided to set all that aside and the obvious concerns it raised, in order to pursue the possibility that this eccentric inventor (at best) actually had a real effect. They were not content with a "preponderance of the evidence" conclusion that this was fraud or insanity. They did not want to be Steve Krivit, they wanted to actually nail it. And that was worth as much as $20 million to them.


    Frankly, it was brilliant. It was their money, their right to place it at risk. They deceived nobody, including Rossi. (If Rossi was deceived, he did it to himself.) I fully understand why Woodford later trusted these people with $50 million. Basically, the more I see of what they did, the more I trust them myself. Yes, trust can be violated. But I don't go through life expecting it, and I find it is actually rare.


    Quote

    As often in this story, you need to think pragmatically about what the parties likely faced at the time and avoid simplification.


    A useful exercise. The simplification to avoid is premature simplification. Often, when there is enough evidence, reality does become clear and will be *relatively simple* and, indeed, that simplicity is a sign of reality, as long as it is not obtained through denial. That is, a model of reality becomes clear and appears to explain all or at least most of what is known. Technically, the model is never reality itself. And that is, of course, a whole other conversation.


    Quote

    IH wanted a truly independent test, but knew that Rossi was his own person and difficult to control. Also, they needed his help with any test (the magic powder, anything specific that must be done when controlling the device to turn on the magic Rossi effect).


    We know that they wanted independent experts involved with the Validation Test in 2013. Referring to the previous report by some of the authors, which was undertaken before the alleged transfer of technology to Industrial Heat in 2013, the report has:


    Quote

    In the course of the year following the previous tests, the E-Cat’s technology was transferred to Industrial Heat LLC, United States, where it was replicated and improved. The present E-Cat reactor is therefore an improved version running at higher temperature than the one used in the March 2013 experiment.


    Notice that the report claims that the technology was "replicated and improved." Definitely, IH was making devices. But "replicated" implies successful testing. What this really means is that the Lugano authors were told something that they relied upon, without telling us where it came from. They do that a few times, it's a flaw in the report, one that a peer reviewer might -- or might not -- catch. The March 2013 reactor, at least one of them, got hot enough to basically melt down, so I'm not quite sure what they meant here.


    Quote

    The test started with a run with no fuel in the reactor in order to make sure that our experimental set-up gave a perfect balance between the measured input and output power.


    Great idea. Rossi, by the way, had previously dismissed control experiments as unnecessary, since he already knew what would happen: nothing. But that was simply a sign that Rossi had no clue about how science works -- and this was obvious to CMNS researchers by 2011. An engineer might think that way, but not the best engineers! Unfortunately, they very strangely avoided running the control with input power as high as used in the actual test, leading to an obvious deficiency that was immediately noticed, including by McKubre, who wrote an otherwise-positive (with reason!) review of the Lugano report. I.e,. McKubre basically, said, looks good, but ... there is this big hole in it. It took only a few days for a writer (Jed Rothwell!) to notice the problem with color temperature. It is very odd that a physicist on the Lugano team would not have spotted this problem immediately. Maybe it was the wine. A month sitting there watching paint dry. That would probably make me pretty stupid.


    Quote

    It is speculation for me to say exactly how IH felt about Rossi at this time but we do know the test was conducted with Rossi present at start and finish, for a total of nearly 7 days. That is so far from independent that it is a problem. IH I guess hoped that the Swedes and perhaps Levi would keep things straight. Rossi knew of Levi as a friend, knew that the Swedes were highly sympathetic, and felt that an independent test in their hands would maybe be OK.


    This is very obvious and was obvious in 2013 when the news hit the CMNS list. From many signs, I consider that IH was fully aware of the problem of lack of independence, both of conduct of the test, i.e., Rossi being present at the critical points, and with the identity of the authors, but IH had decided that, while they might ask for what they wanted, here and there, they would not confront Rossi and demand that he improve his behavior. They knew his instability, knew his tendency to fly off the handle and seize control, so they would not push. I do not know where the impulse for the Lugano test came from, I recall no information about it.


    Quote

    Did IH choose these testers? We don't know, but I'd be surprised if they would not have preferred a completely independent test lab. What was done, and how it was done, was very amateur.


    I agree. There seems to have been no awareness of the difficulties. The report glosses them over, to the extent that it mentions them at all. The lack of a control run at full input power was a huge error. Ideally, one would also want control at up to full reported temperature, but .... that would have been impossible, the heating coils would have melted. So at least a full input power control run ... but they skipped that, and gave a reason that appears to be insane. Where did that reason come from? And why did the Lugano team totally clam up? They are not defending their work. They apparently refuse to comment on it at all. Not a good sign.


    Did Rossi know about the emissivity problem? If so, then, by insisting on a lack of full-power control experiment, as I suspect -- I doubt this would have come even from Levi -- he set up the erroneous conclusion. But that's speculation, not fact. He might just have been "lucky." In support of the idea that he knew, however, he had probably run these tests himself.


    Did Industrial Heat know? From their pleadings, they seemed to think the Lugano report looked good at first. I have seen hints that the Industrial Heat people were not in agreement on some things. In any case, their plan would be to continue, to "crush the tests." They did not want to abandon the project on mere suspicion, which so many people would have had them do -- even before it started!


    Quote

    Rossi no doubt did not want the Lugano test but he was (from his blog) highly interested in it, and nervous about it. He badly wanted it to go well because his prospects of future big riches from collaboration with a richer IH depended on this

    .
    I don't consider the matter clear. The test as-run heavily involved him. This was not necessarily a make-or-break test. Rossi could always come up with some excuse why a device did not work in a particular test. While, in theory, the test could have made it easier for IH to raise money, it doesn't look like they actually took advantage of that. The big funding that we know about, Woodford, was later and Woodford was, I'm sure, informed that IH's own testing was unable to confirm Lugano, or any measureable excess heat at all, as they have later claimed.


    Rossi may have fooled himself as a result of IH compliance. He may have assumed that he had fooled them -- or, in the "Rossi is sincere" scenario, that they believed him and would go the distance with him, no matter what. If he fakes a customer in Florida, no problem! After all, the issue is the heat, right?


    Quote

    Neither IH (at the time), nor the Swedes, realised quite how easily the thermography could go wrong. In retrospect the mistakes you make are often like that. Most non-scientists tend to believe scientists when they write long reports that claim something, and it requires time, and attention to detail, from someone competent to find mistakes unless you find exactly the right expert.


    Well, I'm accustomed to reading LENR reports of calorimetry. When I read Lugano, my immediate thought was, "OMG, this is frikkin' complicated!" It is easy enough to be fooled by relatively simple calorimetry, make it complicated and the possibility of error rises dramatically. I did not undertake research to identify a possible error. But I was utterly unsurprised to see it when it was revealed.


    That error would not have been made if they had calibrated by running a control at full input power.


    Quote

    The wrong thermography was promoted by Levi who continued to support this wrong thermography when questioned more than a year later by Mats. He was not sufficiently expert to realise that the special characteristics of the Al2O3 would give a large false positive even when corrected for the (obvious) temperature-dependent emissivity effect. He ignored, or had too little practical experience to realise, the evidence from the colour of the device. He was not professional enough to review matters properly when critiqued (as he was at the time).

    That is how the matter appears.

    Quote

    This mistake was signed off by the other Swedes but we do not know that any of them considered this aspect of the work to be within their domain of competence. So we get a report signed off by 6 scientists where the critical mistake was probably only checked properly by one, and he was very unexpert.


    More or less, yes. Now, in the other direction, this was not formally published. Consider it a draft out there. So, what's the big deal? At least that is how they might think. Besides, they may not have a clear memory of what happened. What did they do for a month in Lugano? Ah, the human story.....


    Abd here says that LENR scientists looked at the report and realised the various negative issues - lack of at temperature control etc. But they were not expert enough, and simply did not put enough time into checking, to see the definite error.
    More a matter of time, I'd say. To become expert enough to have a decent opinion on the thermometry would take some time for most, if they were not already expert, and nobody was, that I know of. This method of calorimetry is not normal in LENR. Inferring a temperature, then inferring heat dissipation, to me, seemed immediately far too complicated. I did not have to be an expert to notice this!


    Had the method been calibrated, i.e,. with control experiments, then I'd have had far more confidence in it. So a particular input power generates a particular IR signature. That's simple! There would be a slight worry that the presence of fuel in the fuel container would shift the heat distribution, but if that was a stainless steel fuel container, I'd not expect much effect. That lack of calibration was *devastating.* What were they thinking? This is basic science, not complicated.


    Quote

    IH had this report from 6 Swedes with other scientists not happy about the poor methodology but unable to identify any obvious error. That is a situation in which there is no certainty for IH either way. They would not want to sound like pseudo-skeptics, but equally would be aware of the uncertainty.

    It didn't take long. Mostly, one might notice, IH kept their mouth shut about almost all of the Rossi relationship. They had set up a situation that allowed Rossi maximum freedom, giving him every opportunity to disclose the technology fully.


    Now, if we think they are lying, we can then set up almost any scenario we want. However, I don't see a clear motive for lying, the opposite. They would not want to spook other researchers into thinking that they will turn on them at the first opportunity. If the Rossi claims are real and he had been able to reveal the technology to him, as he committed to doing, they'd be in line for huge profits. I don't find it useful at this time to hold on to that hypothesis. If IH is lying, and if Rossi was truthful, it will come out. I operate my life based on preponderance of the evidence, not on "proof." Preponderance can shift with new evidence. Easily. However, when we decide that something is "proven," we stop looking. Why bother wasting time with the impossible?


    Quote

    I realise this is rehashing old stuff but it seems that the complexity and uncertainty of real world information, and the fact the Murphy's law sometimes bites, is often not processed when people (specifically Axil above) think about these matters.


    Axil is a "bold thinker," not a careful one, and is famous for strong conclusions presented with inadequate evidence. Maybe he thinks that some day he'll hit a home run if he swings wildly. I've decided to stop wasting my own time with his bloviations, so normally you will not see me responding directly to Axil. He is carefully anonymous, so he has no reputation at stake.


    Quote

    Whether this matter was Murphy's law alone, or was helped along by Rossi perpetuating a fraud, is something we do not need to resolve, and should not speculate about.


    Well, we may speculate. That's obvious. Some on Planet Rossi have emphasized that for most of the Lugano test, Rossi was not there. However, for these periods in the test, settings were constant, basically nothing was happening except the continuation of what was already happening. Rossi loaded fuel, started up the reactor, then left, and returned to shut down the reactor and unload fuel.


    That Rossi was allowed to touch the reactor shows a complete naivete about independence. That he took the fuel samples, ditto. If necessary to preserve secrecy, that could have been accomplished in a way that preserved independence as well.

    Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax: Axil is a "bold thinker," not a careful one.


    A careful thinker is on who conformed to groupthink, a thinker that is susceptible to the FUD erupting from many quarters here, a thinker that depends on ad hominem attacks and a FUD generator extraordinaire in his own right, a thinker who is compelled to write words by the megaton to formulate his point, a thinker whose point devolves into pointless family and medical anecdotal nonsense, a thinker that thinks in endless orbits as the aimless pages of bloviating roles on, a nattering nabob of nonsense: Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax is a careful thinker.


    Not helpful. Alan.

    Quote from Paradigmnoia

    Some CO2 particles, eh? Dry ice?


    Nice phantasy: I just summed up the average active valences of Si/C. Si can bind up to 4 "O" in Si(OH)4 carbon up to three in -CO3. In dust it is very likely that you find SiO(OH)2. Just to complete your 'dusty' speculations.. about where the O could bind...


    Did you never think of how a particle whith no Ni at all came into the sample..?

    Quote

    A careful thinker is on who conformed to groupthink, a thinker that is susceptible to the FUD erupting from many quarters here, a thinker that depends on ad hominem attacks and a FUD generator extraordinaire in his own right, a thinker who is compelled to write words by the megaton to formulate his point, a thinker whose point devolves into pointless family and medical anecdotal nonsense, a thinker that thinks in endless orbits as the aimless pages of bloviating roles on, a nattering nabob of nonsense: Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax is a careful thinker.


    Physics is an annoying thing: it has rules. While occasionally ignorance of those now understood and all their consequences can lead to correct leaps of faith, much more often it leads to rubbish.

    Quote from THHuxley

    Physics is an annoying thing: it has rules. While occasionally ignorance of those now understood and all their consequences can lead to correct leaps of faith, much more often it leads to rubbish.



    Linus Pauling: "The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. "

    Quote from Paradigmnoia

    You continue to repeat a false statement as though it is fact.


    Are you writing about yourself Paradigmoia?
    I see that you must continue "to not understand" and just repeat what you must repeat.
    You intentionally ignore experimental facts ( from the Lugano Report ) ant try to generate false evidence.
    If you want to really measure the emissivity of a brick then you must follow a strict scientific procedure.
    Is not just like playing with kids !
    Seems that the motto here is that anyone can do any measure in better way then experienced scientists.
    Nice dream. Reality is much harder.
    Regarding the table you linked and the page of Optris manual.
    We of course know those sources as many more others. I have tried to explain you when and why use narrow band emissivity and when total. I have explained to you that our company normally use narrow band IR measurements to obtain the emissivity of the ground from satellites. You can detect a lot of interesting things with that method.
    But I see that you completely ignore what I'm writing. Apart for dislike it.
    No problem. We have time.
    BTW emissivity has nothing to do to the gas (air) or other materials that are between the camera and the measured object.
    Emissivity is a property of the object surface. Then if you are observing it through others materials (e.g. Quartz glass or Alumina window) win then you must correct the measure for "transparency" of those materials adding the energy that was absorbed by them. Lugano people have done no correction in order to avoid temperature overestimation.
    So their measure is probably slight lower then real.

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