Nevalinna on Cobraf : Yeong E Kim funded by Industrial Heat and Cumberland & Western Resources

Quote from kirkshanahan

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

If it does he may have shot down my theory. Kind of telling that no one in the field wants to look into that, isn't it?

I think you meant "doesn't." The issue of laser power, as I recall, is addressed in the papers, but I'm not looking now. I have, in fact, asked Letts for some data and he might answer. Or maybe eventually I'll go and read the papers again. This was not the purpose of this inquiry, for me, it was to explore how we think about LENR and consider hypotheses.

Kirk, let me break it to you: what people do not look at demonstrates very little of anything. Maybe they are distracted by pizza or the opposite sex or their 401K or something. It is not "telling," except for those who like to make up stories about life and how the world works.

I've asked a question about the resistance drop and, as it happened, the same question came up privately in a discussion. And the various possibilities here were mentioned, including the one that I asked Kirk if he could imagine or see or postulate, a "LENR explanation" for the resistance drop. And, now, it was not "heating." As I mentioned, Kirk already got close, just not quite there.

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

Quote

To repeat the question, how could LENR explain the resistance drop?

The same way my non-LENR response does. R drops due to cooling is what I said. Cooling occurs because of endothermicity for example. Suppose an endothermic LENR. It causes cooling, R drops. Heat then subsequently appears because LENR rx 2 kicks in...now, what are the LENRs?[/quote]
The resistance drop appears immediately, before the cell has time to change much in temperature. I will give the hypothesis I have in mind below.

Quote

You have to use analytical chemistry to collect the measures of reaction products, and from that back-postulate the reactants. (But you'd better do your analytical chemistry right...) Then you revamp your experiment to demonstrate that that is true (by showing control over the extent of reaction). Once you've successfully done that, you're 'done', you have developed a reproducible method that those skilled in the art can follow. Patent or publish as you desire.

Kirk's thinking is complicated and convoluted. He is describing, I think, what one would do before announcing some hypothesis as supported by evidence. I am here looking at the generation of hypotheses, a step well before what he's focused on.

The hypothesis: the resistance drops because the LENR reaction is a surface reaction and generates helium, and the helium has a "birth energy." From the Hagelstein limit, we know that this birth energy must be below 20 keV. If the reaction starts up suddenly, as with laser stimulation, this low-energy alpha radiation will cause ionization in the electrolyte interface layer, a major source of cell resistance exists. That ionization immediately lowers resistance, before the heat can raise temperature. (In the measurements, every 1 minute, the resistance drop shows up and then, the next minute, temperature rise begins.)

Now, obviously, we would need to look at other possibilities, such as laser effects, the most obvious.

Quote from kirkshanahan

Amongst all the psycobabble, Abd does make one good point… “Then why are you wasting your time with LENR,” … but it really should be “why am I wasting my time with Abd?”

The answer is that I realize I have no hope of changing Abd’s mind, he is a “true believer” and can’t be bothered to deal with the facts and the evidence in a rational and logical manner. But…there are others on this forum who may not be such a lost cause, and it is for them that I try to correct Abd’s fallacies.

I have spent a great deal of time looking at Kirk's ideas, even lamenting that they may not have been understood, but I will now short-circuit this: if any of the "others" want my comment on Kirk's ideas, ask me. Kirk understands a lot, but also misses even more. I look here only at the beginning of his rant:

Quote

To whit:

Wit.

Quote

“I hope you understand why I consider heat/helium correlation the only confirmed direct evidence of the nuclear nature of the FPHE”

Kirk completely misses the point. I am not here making the claim directly, but hoping that Kirk would understand why I consider heat/helium important. He completely misses it, with an objection that demonstrates clearly that he fails to understand the power of correlation in science. It is an appalling shortcoming. Correlation is used to cut through noise and "unreliability."

Quote

Because of his bias, Abd fails to realize that there is no solid evidence of any true excess heat having ever been measured.

Well, in 2004, a sample of experts, 18 of them, in the DoE review, were evenly divided, half thinking that the evidence of anomalous heat was conclusive. Given the conditions of that review, that was quite high. "True excess heat" means something special to Kirk, but what is being confirmed is a heat anomaly, and, in fact, Kirk thinks there really is one, but it is non-nuclear in origin.

So what happens, then, if we look for nuclear products? This is what was done in 1989 and 1990, and little was found, and this was a major factor in the rejection cascade. No ash, there must be no reaction, and there was a sensibility to that.

However, in 1991, Miles found that helium -- which had already been reported, but without any correlation study -- was being produced, correlated with the heat anomaly. This was a bombshell, to Huizenga, who thought it amazing, but who then considered it would probably not be confirmed, "because no gammas." I.e., Huizenga showed that he was thinking of a particular reaction, d+d -> 4He, which, it can be argued -- true or not -- must be accompanied by a gamma. Huizenga was comparing the result with a known reaction. Let's just say that cold fusion is not that known reaction, it is something else, and I leave it as a mystery at present.

Is the Anomalous Heat Effect -- now often referred to as the AHE -- correlated with helium? Then, if it is, why? Leakage? That seems to be all that Kirk can think of, because he only comes up with non-nuclear hypotheses, we just showed that with that little exercise about resistance lowering just before onset of temperature rise from the AHE.

This is a question answerable by experiment. Storms lists many confirmations, there are at least a dozen, and in two experiments, anodic reversal was used and apparently releases all the helium, and those values were within experimental error of the theoretical value for deuterium conversion to helium. (SRI, 10% error reported, and ENEA, about 20% error). Attempting to explain this with leakage is a futile exercise, it won't fly, and nobody is going to pay attention to Shanahan, anyway, he already shot his wad on this, with his Letter to JEM.

For some years, I promoted the idea of repeating the heat/helium work -- which hadn't been done in ten years -- with increased precision, to nail this. I suggested that this was work that was very likely to produce results, being confirmation, not exploration. The money would not be wasted. Within the field, there was opposition, on the idea that heat/helium was already known and this would not help with what was Really Important, i.e., control of the reaction and More Heat. And so it would be a waste of precious funds.

Whether as a result of my work or not, this idea was accepted and has been fully funded, unlike anything coming from Kirk Shanahan.

This is real science: what Kirk thinks I "believe" is simply what I see as the implications of the preponderance of the evidence, and Kirk is steadfastly ignoring much of the evidence, focusing on his own pet ideas. What I have promoted is a definitive test of what I've claimed has been shown.

A few weeks ago I experienced a health situation where I could have died, and it was clear to me: I was ready, because I have made a difference, with my family and with my communities and the world. However, the chance of my dying soon is now reduced below 1% or so. I will very likely see the results of that research. What if the AHE is *not* correlated with helium? This, from the existing evidence, is extremely unlikely, but if there is no heat/helium correlation, then helium is not the ash, and there is no other reasonable candidate.

At this point I would very likely abandon cold fusion as a project of mine. I have many others that might be just as important, not to mention my 7 children and 6 grandchildren so far.

I pushed for a test, that would challenge my own ideas. That is science, not attachment to personal views. My trust is in Reality, not in what I think about it.

Quote

Thus there is no validity in the correlation statistics derived from comparing heat and helium numbers. Further, there is no reason to believe the He numbers represent anything but leaks.

Because Kirk says so? It's actually preposterous. Kirk simply states this about leaks without looking at how leaks would function, without looking at the actual research and seeing how the leak possibility was addressed, and especially not looking at all the no-heat experiments that were otherwise identical, but the cathode was "dead," not producing XP, because of the famous unreliability. Why would these experiments all show no helium? Does a "dead cathode" somehow protect against leaks? Sometimes people think that cells with XP are hotter than cells without. Not always, they might be cooler, sometimes temperature is constant, and in most experiments, the temperature rise is quite small, certainly not enough to have a massive effect on leakage.

Kirk is demonstrating exactly how he thinks, and it's obvious. Kirk, the future is watching. I keep that in mind, constantly. I recommend it.

Quote from nobody

"Yeong E Kim funded by Industrial Heat and Cumberland & Western Resources"

Kim had better read the fine print, as those bloodsuckers might play the corporate shell game and leave some fictional entity to go bankrupt on him after stealing his technology.

Kim doesn't have a "technology." He is a theoretician, like Hagelstein, who is also funded. The story here is apparently based in a belief that IH screwed over Rossi.

Kim has actually been given cash, not stock or promises. I'm amazing at the idiocy that passes for "thinking" sometimes. If IH goes bankrupt, Kim loses nothing. (At this point, though, the money is elsewhere, not in IH. It is passing through IH, coming from IHHI, apparently, which is sole owner of IH; IHHI then is owned by its shareholders, and is not likely to go bankrupt any time soon. Given what they are doing, they could stay the course for many years.)

Nobody makes money from "stealing technology." They might make it from applying the technology or selling licenses (where someone else applies it). IH has not "made" any profit. They have cash flow because of their investments in LENR, accepted by Woodford and maybe others. It is clear that they are using this cash flow to support general LENR research, and Kim is an example, one where specific profit would not be a motive, this would be general research support that might produce overall results, supporting later applications, speculatively. Same with Hagelstein. Generally, it appears, the results of sponsored research like this is being published.

And Rossi still has his technology and could still develop and sell it, say in Sweden. Yes, the Agreement requires him to give a a right of first refusal to IH. I.e. they'd need to give him more money. But there is zero sign that he has asked. And right now, my guess, they would pass. "Good luck, Andrea. Don't take any wooden nickels, unless you want them for your collection."

If Rossi is left bankrupt, it would be because IH wins a substantial judgement in Rossi v. Darden, which is certainly possible. That would be a result of his own actions. He created that case, in haste, and U.S. Federal court is not Planet Rossi.

Quote from kirkshanahan

KLS: “Thus there is no validity in the correlation statistics derived from comparing heat and helium numbers. Further, there is no reason to believe the He numbers represent anything but leaks.”

Abd:“Because Kirk says so?”

No, because anyone with intelligence understands that ‘correlating’ to a fictitious number is bogus.

Actually, correlation with "fictitious numbers," if the correlation is strong enough, is evidence that the numbers are not "fictitious." Rather, there is some common cause or condition linking them. Kirk, so convinced is he of his own rightness, is massively careless in what he writes. Let's look at this narrow point and how it actually applies.

What are the allegedly "fictitious" numbers? Let's look at Miles.

He measured anomalous heat in his experiments, using calorimetry similar to that of Pons and Fleischmann (which was precise.) Shanahan believes that these results were from a "prosaic cause," but does not deny the anomaly, generally. He simply thinks that it is a chemical anomaly. However, bottom line, the measured heat was measured, with actual values being reported.

Miles also captured the produced gases, deuterium and oxygen, measuring the volume, such that he knew the volume of gas generated in a period with so much "excess energy." He sent these samples to an independent laboratory, which did not know the heat results, and which then reported the helium results.

What is "fictitious" here? Kirk is very sloppy in his thinking and writing. Miles is a careful scientist. He reported all his results, apparently (out of 33 measures, there are 3 outliers, both with excuses he could have used to leave them out. He reported it all.)

Miles used a specific technique to calculate heat. It is certainly possible to argue that there was calorimetry error, and that is what both Shanahan and Jones claimed. (In fact, Shanahan's general position is that the calorimetry is not wrong, rather, there is a "non-nuclear explanation." And that sometimes this creates calorimetry error. If the heat is from recombination in the cell, however, one of Shanahan's ideas -- he has two major ones --- the calorimetry would not be "wrong," rather there would be a chemical explanation.)

Then the helium data comes from an independent analysis. Miles did not cherry-pick it.

Again, it could be argued that -- in this case, not in all heat/helium work -- the helium is from leakage. The levels of helium found are below ambient, making that seem possible.

However, the correlation is strong. Very strong. Way beyond any likelihood of chance. Anomalous heat and helium are correlated. Shanahan covers that up, claiming that correlation with garbage data is useless. In fact, such correlations are used in science to detect signals in the presence of high noise. In medical practice, every patient is different. Medicines work for some and not for others. However, when possible, controlled experiments are done. Is there a correlation between the use of a medicine vs. a placebo, and the medical outcomes? If so, and if that correlation is strong enough and confirmed, the medicine is accepted and used. Even if it is unreliable and a given patient might not recover. An additional check is dose/response. Do results correlate with dosage? If there is no dose-response effect, it is likely that any correlation is artifact, produced by chance in small studies. (But sometimes a very small dose might be effective, so this does require caution.)

There is an equivalent to dose-response in the variation of helium results with anomalous heat. The more helium, the more heat. There is another "coincidence" that Huizenga -- the highly skeptical co-chair of the famous 1989 ERAB panel that considered evidence for cold fusion not established -- noticed in his book, second edition: the ratio of heat and helium was within an order of magnitude of the value that would result if deuterium were being converted to helium, with no leakages of energy, if it all ends up as heat. Huizenga remained skeptical, predicting that Miles would not be confirmed, but he recognized the importance of the work, and wrote that, if confirmed, this would solve a major mystery of cold fusion. His reason for thinking it would not be confirmed was simple: "no gammas." It's understandable, but depends on an obvious assumption, that the reaction would be a known reaction, just because the "fuel" and "ash" might be the same. In fact, they were obviously not the same, because if the reaction were d+d -> 4He plus gamma, the gamma energy would mostly escape the cell and it would not heat as observed, It must be something different.

Later work tightened up the correlation such that the two experiments that did anodic reversal (which would release trapped helium from the near-surface in palladium) found the theoretical value within experimental error.

Shanahan has had many opportunities to come up with a plausible explanation for the correlation, but he generally bails at this point, blaming me for being a stubborn believer. Pot. Kettle. Black.

The obvious alternative explanation that is most easily suggested is that somehow heat causes the seals to leak atmospheric helium into the cell, which would then create a heat/helium correlation. I am not going into the reasons why this idea is rejected, but it is not actually plausible, for many reasons. Shanahan's garbage-in, garbage-out argument is utterly bankrupt, he could not get it published in any peer-reviewed journal worth publishing in. The correlation demonstrates that the data is at least approximately valid.

This isn't close, some mere disagreement. The only reason Shanahan keeps insisting on this is that the actual experimental results challenge his theory, so he must have a way to dismiss them. He has convinced himself, but I have never seen him convince anyone knowledgeable about either science and scientific process or LENR.

There is a discussion currently on the CMNS list, where a researcher who has been trying for a decade or more to see LENR effects has failed to see them. When I look at what he has tried, it has been what I call "marginal" research, generally unconfirmed. That is not the place to start with LENR! There are a million ways to get an experiment wrong, and then there are reported results that are artifact or not understood. I'm suggesting to him that he back up and attempt to confirm, not the sexier results that he has worked on, but plain old boring FP Heat Effect. That is quite difficult enough!

However, this researcher doesn't doubt that LENR is real, and he is perplexed by his "failures." (In fact, I don't think he has failed, rather he has demonstrated methods that don't work, and maybe that some original reports were, in fact, artifact. It certainly happens!) Why is he convinced?

Heat/helium. I will repeat what Shanahan mostly ignored or rejected out of hand with his GIGO argument: this is the only *direct* evidence that cold fusion is not only a real heat effect, but is also nuclear in nature. As such, I considered it well worth putting it to the classic "pathological science" test: repeating the work with increased precision, and that is what is happening. The evidence is already strong, but there is room for improvement, and the exact value of the heat/helium ratio has theoretical implications. Tightening it may eliminate some theories from consideration.

[quote']I have devolved past the point of usefulness.[/quote]
Indeed.

@Kirk:

Quote

I have devolved past the point of usefulness. I will not respond again to Abd.

Abd puts up such a blizzard of a sh*tstorm that it would take all day every day to keep up. He's like the energizer bunny of mixing an occasional tidbit of sense with a huge garbagy mess of crappola.

@Abd: Abd agains postulates that Rossi may have some technology to sell to the Swedes. ROTFWL! Rossi's only "technology" is bamboozling and flummoxing. Actually, as I noted before, his real gift is in choosing his marks and in telling them what they want to hear and are likely to believe. Rossi has never had a customer (unless you count the dupes at IH), has never had a proper independent test, has no factory (much less a robotic one) and the QuarkX is pure fantasy. At least the ecat and the hotcat had useless kluges that hapless investors could be snowed with. I doubt that Rossi even has that much for the QuarkX.

Quote

Bankruptcy order or not, I should imagine that trying to get money out of Rossi would be like trying to push butter up a mongoose's ass with a red-hot needle...

Rossi, when last checked, had ten or so condos in and around Miami, worth quite a bit of money. A court could put a lien on these to insure he pays any judgements against him. I suppose he could liquidate those and leave the country to a non-extradition nation but that's a bit difficult. Hiding the money from the court or giving it to a third party in the face of a large court judgement against him would be a crime, I think.

Rossi got upwards of $11M. I doubt his parties are so lavish that he expended it all already. His so-called "plant" certainly did not consume that much cash.

Quote from kirkshanahan

I simply take the reported atoms He/W-sec and divid it by the reported atoms He/W

Kirk has stated this backwards. That is, the total atoms would be divided by the rate to get time. A simple slip.

The collection period would vary with the electrolytic current, not with helium reported. My recollection is that I checked and Miles collection time did vary, a little, but I'd need to look again, and Shanahan didn't look.

What is the He/W figure? The data table (Table 7) shows figures for power (which I think is XP), helium atoms per 500 ml (the collection volume, this is a helium analysis result), and the calculated helium/watt-sec. It is obvious that the anomalous energy was calculated from the experimental record, as integrated power. It is not clear to me what "power" means here. Average power for the collection period? Let's assume it is.

So what Kirk is doing is to looking at the number of atoms reported, (He/500 ml), and dividing that by the average power in watts. He then uses the calculated helium/watt-sec ratio to calculate collection time for that sample. (Helium/watt-sec will depend on average power times the collection time, which is excess energy for that time).

The data in Storms is "selected results" from http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesMcorrelatioa.pdf which is a review by Miles published in 2003, based on earlier data. Analyzing Storms (2007) is analyzing a secondary source, and Storms does contain occasional errors. The Storms data that Kirk is analyzing has been calculated by Storms, not Miles.

Assuming the data is valid, Shanahan finds a correlation between helium and calculated collection period.

Miles claims:

Quote

It requires 4440 s to produce 500 mL of electrolysis gases (D2, O2) at 525 mA for normal laboratory conditions (T=296 K, P=690 Torr) at China Lake

That is not quite the same as claiming that the collection period is constant, but it does give us something to look at. 4440 seconds is 75 minutes. This is very different from what Kirk calculates. What gives?

Shanahan has:

Quote

This strongly suggests to me that Miles had a procedural step that introduced a slug of air that was then bled down over time.

This appears to assume that the "collection time" shows experimental time sequence, when it would probably not. To really look at this would be a piece of work. These experiments were spread out over years.

Storms has compiled those numbers from various tables in his source. Associating the dates from the review with the numbers of helium atoms:
12/30/91-B 1.34x10^14
12/30/91-A 1.05x10^14
01/03/92-B 0.97x10^14
(5/21/93) 1.02x10^14
(5/21/93) 1.09x10^14
(5/30/93) 0.84x10^14
(5/30/93) 0.75x10^14
(7/7/93) 0.61x10^14
(9/13/94) 0.90x10^14
(9/13/94) 1.07x10^14

Miles gives his calculation for the first result:

(1.34 - 0.51) x 10^14 He atoms / 500 ml
divided by
(4440 s / 500 ml)(0.100 Watt)
equals
1.9 x 10^11 He atoms / W-sec.

0.51 x 10^14 is the figure for mean background helium (not ambient). A series of experiments are given that show this result.

Kirk gives 11.75 minutes, or 705 seconds, for this same result, compared to Miles' 4440 seconds.

Let's follow his track. Right off, Kirk has not used the corrected atom count, but the raw count. I will, for the following, use the raw count:

1.34 x 10^14 He atoms / 0.100 W
divided by
1.9 x 10^11 He atoms/W-sec
equals
7053 seconds.

It looks like Kirk forgot to consider that this was a tenth of a watt, not a watt. He left the power out of his calculation. At least with this value.

Kirk neglected the consistent background correction, but used the corrected He/heat figure, and then his math was wrong, and then he seems to have assumed time sequence from data that was not in time sequence. I could examine this further, but why bother? What would a time correlation show? His "slug of air"? When the experiments were spread out over almost three years? When Miles did not take samples one after another, and I'm sure allowed time for flushing. Essentially, Shanahan assumes that Miles was an idiot. He is searching desperately for Something Wrong, and he is way too quick to accept whatever he comes up with.

Further, this was 10 samples out of a total of 33 for Miles, which were 12 no-heat samples (no helium) and 21 with heat. And the Bush and Lagowski data was more "on the money," Storms shows three samples. The bulk of the data shows, without anodic reversal, roughly 60% helium collection, leaving perhaps 40% trapped -- if the production ratio is the theoretical value. Looking at the Stomrs plot, there is a major outlier, and the cause is obvious. That was at the lowest power level, so calorimetric error -- and possible helium error, made it a flyer. As power increases -- this was the purpose of the Storms plot -- the value settles, because error has less of an effect.