Press Release: SRI Successfully Replicated Brillouin’s LENR Technology

Quote from kirkshanahan

What I should have expounded on is the observed variation coupled with the temperature dependence in the fit coefficients (noted by others as well), and the comparative sizes of the terms used to compute COP in Table 4. One can see that the COP has 3 parts: DeltaQ_heater, Q_k, and Q_pulse, which are all of the same approximate size. Thus the calculation of all is relevant, but the data supplied for the m’s and b’s for the Q_k calculation suggest a very wide spread, which means a large % error, which means it is unlikely the listed COPs are statistically different. But as I noted, with no information on the standard error of the slope and intercept, or statements on the errors of the computed points, I can’t go any further than simple cautionary speculation at this point. BTW, these numbers are standard output for most linear regression routines. Microsoft Excel 'trend analysis' however doesn't show them. You have to use a canned function in a cell to produce tabular output that will show this.

Q_k is an intermediate result; if you insert its formula into the COP formula, then the COP formula simplifies to:

COP=DeltaQ_heater/Q_pulse + m + b /Q_pulse

If we take the most extreme values for b and Q_pulse, we have b /Q_pulse=0.1/3.75<0.03.

So I'd submit b is not significant when assessing error.

Now, m is directly added to the COP calculation and varies between 0.41 and 0.57. So that's a +/- 0.08 range when we're working with a COP of 1.2. Are we really gonna see a confidence interval of +/- 0.2 for m? I tend to doubt that. And then we have to deal with the 1.4 and 1.6 COPs. We would have to assume no energy was dissipated (m=0) for the highest COPs to be reduced to 1.

That leaves us with the question of whether using a linear model is valid. I agree we would need to see their modelization data.
I do question even the need to have a linear model for power dissipated vs pulse power, when they could just use actual measured values (or at least they could do both).

Finally the last term DeltaQ_heater/Q_pulse ; those power values are given with 3 significant digits. Unless they totally messed up, are we going to see an error higher than 0.01?

I'm kinda rambling, but somehow I doubt that the error discussion will be what brings down the COP (if anything does). We'll see!

Quote from Mary Yugo

That's why I like large results, both absolute power *and* energy *and* high COP. And of course, a very robust calorimetric method. I am pretty convinced I have not seen such a thing. Jed will say I don't look enough but in actuality I do.

Quote from zeus46

Did you read that 100W+ lenr paper that JedRothwell keeps on giving you the link to? What are you opinions on that?

I take it that your silence means that you didn't bother to read it?

LENRCalendar wrote:
"[...]
I'm kinda rambling, but somehow I doubt that the error discussion will be what brings down the COP (if anything does). We'll see!"

Let's try to do a POE calc...

Comparing Table 2, 3, and 4, we see the range on both the m and b values is 0.15, that’s 33% of 0.45, which is a representative value for m. (This occurs because the Table 4 m data has an inverse T dependence from Tables 2 and 3.) Many years ago Shewhart developed control charting during a time when calculators weren’t available. But he wanted to watch the variance of a measurement over time, so he developed a way to approximate the std.dev. with the range, and promoted using range charts. The relationship he developed (as I recall) based on random statistics says that the observed range is ~1.6*the standard deviation, so m’s standard deviation is .15/1.6 ~ .1 (also the numerical standard deviation of b).

Q_k = m* Q_p + b. Let’s assume for the moment that Q_p is error free. It isn’t of course, but we can calculate the other error terms numerically. using sig() to mean standard deviation of what's in the parens., the variance of Q_k = the sum of the partial derivative w.r.t each variable times the variance of each variable, i. e. sig(Q_k)^2 = m^2*sig(Q_p)^2 + Q_p^2*sig(m)^2 + sig(b)^2. The first question to resolve in computing numerics is what values to plug in for Q_p and b. Often the average is used, so we can use 4.6 as ~average of Q_p and .5 for ~average of m, and sig(m) and sig(b) = .1.

So what is sig(Q_p)? Not sure right now. Let’s table that term for a moment.

The other two term then are 4.6^2*.1^2 + .1^2 = .2116 + .01 = .2216. So sig(Q_k) ~>= 0.47, i.e., 1 standard deviation is ~0.5. It may be slightly larger if the variance of Q_p is of the same order of magnitude, massively larger if Q_p is not known precisely, or trivially small if Q_p is actually known to many decimal places.

Now COP = (delQ_h + Q_k)/Q_p. so sig(COP)^2 = sig(delQ_h)^2/Q_p^2 + sig(Q_k)^2/Q_p^2 + ((delQ_h+Q_k)/Q_p)^2*sig(Q_p)^2. The first term is 0.047*sig(delQ_h)^2. The second term evaluates to .47^2/4.6^2 = .01. The third term is ((3.00+2.25)/4.6)^2*sig(Q_p)^2 = 1.3*sig(Q_P)^2. *IF* the sigs all = .1, then the sig(COP)^2 = .00047 + .01 + .013 = ,02347, and sig(COP) = .15, which gives a 2 sigma band of +/-0.3. Using these numbers (if correct) one might claim the numbers above roughly 1.3 are statistically different from a COP of 1.0.

So, it comes down to the validity of the assumptions in this analysis. Is what we see with the m and b’s the largest variation we can expect? What is the precision of the Q_p and delQ_h? Are the sigs all equal to 0.1? Personally, I expect the sig(delQ_h) to be smaller since that is derived from a measurement of I and V, and I normally consider those measurements to be more accurate, but that’s just a guess. The real problem, as noted by others, is the precision and accuracy of the Q_p. That is key. My tendency is to believe it is harder to measure precisely because of its dynamic nature, and thus the sig(COP) will be larger. I usually start throwing in factors of 2 or 3 at this point. This also folds in the problems that arise if the data isn't randomly distributed, which in the real world actually doesn't happen without a lot of method development. That makes me suspect that all the numbers listed are within the noise. Everyone else can make their own choices of course.

But the *REAL* point of all this is that we are *GUESSSING* at this point. The authors of the report shouldn’t make us do that…

P.S. the above analysis shows why sig figs aren’t good precision (error) estimates. (and don’t forget systematic effects either)

Also, this was done rather quickly and I always like to recheck my work, but I didn't here due to time constraints. Hopefully I didn't make any serious mistakes!

Quote from padam73

At the end, what remains the most problematic to me, and this independently whether the Q-pulse was capable to induce a reaction, is that at the highest COP that SRI was able to obtain, they still had to inject a higher power IN than the power OUT their calorimetric system was able to measure (see Table 9).

And I'll add to this the fact that the whole analysis assumes the Q pulse is required for excess heat. That wasn't the case back in the F&P days, why is that so here? Are we *really* sure you have to complicate the situation by using nanosecond pulsing??

Quote from Norris Roark

We know you think it has been ruled out, but if the skeptics you're arguing with agreed, there wouldn't be an argument.

The skeptics would have to show there is an error for them to be right. You can't just wave your hand and say "I think there might be an error, so this is wrong." That's not falsifiable, as I said. The experiments use conventional instruments & techniques going back 100 to 200 years, that have been used millions of times in experiments and in industry. Most of the experiments are performed by experts. There is no indication whatever that they made mistakes.

Quote from Norris Roark

The argument that the observations can be plausibly attributed to artifacts is not contradicted by the fact that chemical fuel is not consumed. None of the artifacts put forward to explain Rossi's or Mizuno's observations resulted in the consuming of chemical fuel.

No similar artifacts have been found in any of the mainstream claims. The fact that errors were found in these experiments -- by me, in this case -- shows that errors are not all that difficult to find. In Rossi's case the errors were obvious at a glance.

There has to be a statue of limitations in science. The skeptics have had decades to find an error, but they have found none. (Shanhan's deus ex machina tin-foil-hat theories don't count.) Nothing would ever be settled in science if all experiments were forever open to question. We would not believe Ohm's law, because maybe every single person who has measured electrical resistance in history made a mistake. How likely is that?

Alainco:

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... [skeptics] claim there is an artifact not describing an artifact,...

Likewise, advocates claim there is a nuclear effect without describing a nuclear effect.

It may be enough for non-scientists like you and Beaudette to accept LENR because of what you consider poor criticism of it. But most of the world requires good evidence to accept a claim as radical as cold fusion. And there isn't any good evidence in the judgement of most of mainstream science.

When the DOE enlisted a panel of experts to evaluate the best evidence, the panel did not consider the quality of the published critiques. They looked at the primary evidence and 17 of 18 did not consider the evidence for nuclear effects to be conclusive. It's the same judgement that the reviewers for the best journals and for granting agencies have reached repeatedly.

If you think trashing the critiques of 30-year old experiments is going to win acceptance for those 30-year old experiments within mainstream science, you are sadly mistaken. What would be needed to attract the attention of mainstream science again is new and better evidence, not more arguments about the old evidence.

The Beaudette argument clearly has some persuasive power among lay observers, and keeps them active in internet forums, but time has all but vindicated the skeptics. Whether the particular criticisms Beaudette refers to had merit isn't the point anymore. The point is that the claim of nuclear effects are not considered to have merit. If skeptics were not confident in their skepticism in the early 90s, they were probably confident that if cold fusion were real, the millionfold increase in energy density allegedly reachable at such easily accessible conditions would become unmistakeable with protracted efforts. But it didn't, and the confidence in skepticism has only increased.

When a new phenomenon is discovered, even if it is not understood, ordinary exploration of parameter space invariably leads to progress -- to bigger effects, more easily achieved. But if the phenomenon is the result of errors or artifacts, increased investigation leads to smaller effects, more difficult to achieve. This is what has happened in cold fusion.

Fleischmann and Pons claimed 170 W output with a COP of more than 4 in 1992, and even infinite COP in some cases. Then when McKubre reported a so-called replication in 1994, he reported a fraction of a watt with a COP of less than 1.1, and 5 years later, he admitted that with hindsight, he had been too optimistic. And in 2001, Rothwell lamented that researchers could not make the effect stand out; that most experiments only produce a fraction of a watt of power, when they work at all. And artifacts seem more consistent with a field in which one of the more prominent theorists (Hagelstein) and one of the more prominent experimentalists (McKubre) both admit that very little is agreed upon within the field.

You do know that Beaudette's book is 16 years old, and the experiment he defends so valiantly is scarcely being performed anymore. And that the publication rate has continued to decline, with no new claims of excess heat in electrolysis experiments in the refereed literature in more than a decade.

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Publish something to refute all the F&P papers in Journal of electroanalythical chemistry, and you will have a chance to be scientific.

I doubt that any journals would be interested in publishing arguments about 30 year old experiments that simply endorse an already strong consensus view. The J Electroanal Chem stopped publishing on the subject of cold fusion around the year 2000.

Anyway, given the current consensus, it is up to advocates to improve the evidence for their claim; to publish papers that exclude or reduce the possibility of artifacts as explanations, by identifying commensurate reaction products many times above background, by discovering critical parameters that allow the effect to be scaled up, and by demonstrating that this *source* of energy does not need its own source of energy.

Shane D:

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That is a double edge sword as yes, it shows problems with transportability in support of your anti-LENR belief, but also that high level military research facilities were successful in replicating LENR, which supports our pro-LENR beliefs.

That military research facilities have claimed replications is a matter of record; this quotation is not a new revelation of that. What it reveals is that a consistent recipe eluded them, and that suggests the observations are plausibly attributable to artifacts.

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Nonetheless, debate over, as BE seems to have licked the problem, which this excerpt from the SRI progress report shows:

Yes, well when these sorts of claims are made and well-supported *outside* the context of someone without qualifications, attracting millions in investment from philanthropists with even fewer qualifications, it might get interesting.

Rothwell:

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The skeptics would have to show there is an error for them to be right.

I get the feeling you're not reading most of my posts, because we're going in circles.

Skeptics do not have to identify an artifact to consider the possibility that there is one, any more than you have to identify a nuclear reaction to consider the possibility that there is one.

When someone shows you a blurry picture of what looks like a hairy monster and claims it's bigfoot, you don't have to identify what it really is to be skeptical that it's bigfoot, or that it's even an animal. People who were skeptical of the surgeon's alleged photo of the Loch Ness monster couldn't *show* it was a hoax, but they were right to be skeptical nonetheless.

In any case, you can't dictate to skeptics what they have to do to remain skeptical. It's a personal thing. You can only dictate what they have to do to affect your thinking.

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You can't just wave your hand and say "I think there might be an error, so this is wrong."

Nor can you just wave your hand and say you can't think of an artifact, so there isn't one.

But what skeptics do is look at the reported observations, at the kinds of artifacts that are common or typical in calorimetry experiments, and look at the evidence supporting nuclear reactions, and say that artifacts are more plausible than revolutionary nuclear reactions.

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That's not falsifiable, as I said.

Poor Popper probably rolls over in his grave every time people abuse his ideas this way. Do you really think Popper was arguing that if you can't think of an artifact to explain something, then it can't possibly be an artifact. That's absurd.

That's like arguing that until the subject of every blurry photo of bigfoot is identified as not being bigfoot, bigfoot must exist. But skepticism of bigfoot photos *can* be falsified by trapping bigfoot and plopping him down in front of the skeptics. In the same way, the suggestion that LENR claims are the result of artifacts can be falsified by getting better evidence for LENR. By identifying commensurate reaction products far above ambient levels, by increasing the size of the effect and running it without input, by powering your car for a year on a teaspoon of water, by replacing fossil fuels. You do this, and no one will suggest LENR claims are the result of artifacts. Therefore, artifacts are falsifiable.

Vague claims based on the process of elimination that the observations of heat are caused by nuclear reactions are far more difficult to falsify. One could as easily claim the heat comes from anti-matter reactions, or vacuum energy, or from an as yet undiscovered fifth force. Without evidence specific to nuclear reactions and commensurate with the alleged heat, artifacts are on the table. And experienced scientists, for the most part, consider them by far the most likely explanation.

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The experiments use conventional instruments & techniques going back 100 to 200 years, that have been used millions of times in experiments and in industry. Most of the experiments are performed by experts. There is no indication whatever that they made mistakes.

So, now you're arguing that cold fusion researchers are infallible. That their tools are old, and they are expert, and so they don't make mistakes. For a while you were more confident in Rossi's results than in any previous cold fusion results, and now you admit that he made mistakes. You argued Mizuno had evidence of LENR, but then you found he made mistakes. In 2001 you wrote "calorimetric errors are more common than researchers realize". No one is perfect.

Quote from JedRothwell

There has to be a statue of limitations in science.

No, there isn't one. Any theory, any Law, can be shown to be incorrect at any time by adequate new information (that includes data and data interpretations). THAT is modern science. Thinking that since a theory/law has been around for X years, it is and always will be true is the Aristotlean approach.

Quote from Norris Roark

But what skeptics do is look at the reported observations, at the kinds of artifacts that are common or typical in calorimetry experiments, and look at the evidence supporting nuclear reactions, and say that artifacts are more plausible than revolutionary nuclear reactions.

What I actually did was look at the differences in calibration constant obtained and reported by the data author himself and ask "Is that significant?". I then discovered it was, very much so. I didn't even consider where the reported differences might be coming from until I had determined they were potentially important. So I would alter your statement to read:

But what skeptics do is look at the reported observations and the variation (error) levels, and assess the reliability of any conclusions presented. If warranted, they then consider the kinds of artifacts that are common or typical in (calorimetry <- fill in the blank with your favorite technique) experiments, and look at the evidence supporting nuclear reactions, and say that artifacts are more plausible than revolutionary nuclear reactions.

Quote from Norris Roark

Likewise, advocates claim there is a nuclear effect without describing a nuclear effect.

No, that is not "likewise" at all. You fail to understand the difference between a theoretical claim and an experimental observation.

Advocates claim there is excess heat beyond the limits of chemistry with no chemical changes, tritium and helium in the same ratio to the heat as D+D fusion creates. They say these facts indicate that nuclear fusion is occurring. They do not offer any theory to explain this, and no theory is needed. That is not how science works. You never need a theory to prove that an experiment is right. It always works the other way around. Experiments prove or disprove theories.

Some of the people working on cold fusion do have theories. Those theories might be wrong, but the experiments are right, and the observations are correct. We can be sure of that because the experiments have been widely replicated at high signal to noise ratios. That is the only standard of truth in experimental science. There is no other way to determine what is true and what is false. Theory is no guide.

Quote from JedRothwell

Advocates claim there is excess heat[1] beyond the limits of chemistry[2] with no chemical changes[3], tritium[4] and helium in the same ratio to the heat as D+D fusion creates [5]. They say these facts indicate that nuclear fusion is occurring. They do not offer any theory to explain this, and no theory is needed. That is not how science works. You never need a theory to prove that an experiment is right.[6] It always works the other way around. Experiments prove or disprove theories.

Some of the people working on cold fusion do have theories. Those theories might be wrong, but the experiments are right, and the observations are correct. We can be sure of that because the experiments have been widely replicated at high signal to noise ratios[7]. That is the only standard of truth in experimental science.[8] There is no other way to determine what is true and what is false. Theory is no guide.[8]

[1] apparent excess heat - given that said signals can arise from mathematical issues and might not be real. more than just a blip in a line is needed to remove the word apparent

[2] integrating an error over a long time gives a really big error

[3] patently false - electrolysis/recombination and contamination processes are obvious

[4] unspecified low level measurements - high potential for artifacts

[5] untrue, the results are so noisy no conclusions can be valid drawn (P.S. Such arguments do propose a theory - D-D fusion of some sort)

[6] This is correct, as long as the experimental results and conclusions drawn are reliable - failing to take into account a demonstrated systematic error means the results/conclusions are NOT reliable

[7] unproven

[8] agreed

Quote from AlainCo

They don't need to prove the artifact, {snip}, and the claimant are just proving they are not honest.

What you leave out is when an artifact is not just proposed but instead demonstrated. In that case the researchers must adjust their conclusion-drawing process to incorporate the demonstrated problem and any potential solution to it, at least if you want to propose that 'good science' is being done. Of course this has NOT happened in the CF field. Instead the opposite has. The demonstrated problem has been swept under the rug via flawed logical arguments, which anyone familiar with correct logical techniques can see immediately. This is essentially the definition of how to do 'bad science'.

Rothwell:

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No similar artifacts have been found in any of the mainstream claims.

That's not the point. The artifacts in the Mizuno case were different from the several different artifacts in the Rossi case, and none of them resulted in the consuming of chemical fuel. I wasn't arguing that all artifacts are the same. Only that you can't eliminate artifacts because chemical fuel is not consumed.

The other point that those examples illustrate is that during the time before artifacts were identified, they nevertheless existed.

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The fact that errors were found in these experiments -- by me, in this case -- shows that errors are not all that difficult to find. In Rossi's case the errors were obvious at a glance.

It shows that *those* errors were easy to find. Not all errors are alike. And the fact remains that before the errors were found, it would have been a mistake to say they were ruled out.

Some of Rossi's errors were easy to spot for *some*, but in 2011, you said Rossi had the best evidence for cold fusion ever, and that one test was "irrefutable by first principles". And I'm not aware that you expressed skepticism about Rossi until the law suit in 2016. It was a mistake to "rule out" artifacts just because they were not identified to your satisfaction.

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There has to be a statue of limitations in science. The skeptics have had decades to find an error, but they have found none.

A statue of limitations? Would it be a statue of you? Or perhaps it should be the vulcan statue (see below).

Allowing that you meant "statute", are you high? I can't imagine anything more anti-science. You can't legislate something that has an objective and independent reality.

Are you also proposing thought police to enforce such a statute? And those who have thoughts contrary to your statute would be put under house arrest, as Galileo was? I suppose that's similar to the suggestion by a certain believer that there should be Nuremberg trials for skeptics, or the accusation in ECW that Bill Nye is as bad as Hitler and Stalin combined because he expressed skepticism about cold fusion.

That you could suggest something so ridiculous as a statute of limitations in science, and that 2 of your fellow believers liked the idea, just shows how cult-like your community has become.

When Le Verrier hypothesized planet Vulcan to explain the perihelion procession of Mercury, many amateur astronomers reported observations of the planet. The artifacts that produced those observations have *never* been identified, but with Einstein's general relativity, Vulcan is no longer needed to explain the peculiarities of Mercury's orbit, and the consensus is that the observations interpreted as planet Vulcan were artifacts. Your statute would require Vulcan to be a real planet. You may find some support for this among trekkies...

Similarly, in late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was erroneously believed that there were canals on Mars, and some people attributed them to intelligent life. Eventually (after several decades) it was revealed that the "canals" were an optical illusion (an artifact). Your statute would require that the reality of those canals had to be accepted.

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Nothing would ever be settled in science if all experiments were forever open to question.

Wow. You really don't have the first clue about science. Nothing is ever completely settled in science, and all experiments *are* forever open to question. Indeed, *that* is the message Popper was conveying with his treatise on falsifiability. The idea is to distinguish between scientific theories that are always subject to challenge (falsifiable) and religious dogma or presumably Rothwellian statutes, which are written in stone.

As Feynman said, "scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain".

It's obviously possible for the levels of certainty in LENR to change. But for it to become more believable among skeptics is going to take better evidence, not more argument. Given the closed minds exhibited by believers in LENR, and the religious nature of the belief that you so clearly exemplify, it's unlikely the level of certainty will change among believers, except possibly by attrition.

When an observation produces a result, that result is "verified" through a comparative process with a set of existing assimptions to produce a conclusion about the cause of the artifact.

For example, when a galaxy rotates faster than is "supposed" to the assumption is that additional hidden mass must exist to produce that result. Based on assumption, that mass must be supplied by a particle because only particles can produce mass and therefore additional gravity.

It is also possible, that the observation of anomalous galactic rotation rates speak against the assumed assumptions. In this example, the way gravity behaves could be changed through an unknown mechanism that has nothing to do with particles. Because this distroys existing assumptions including the way that general relativity works, this new line of logic is not taken seriously.

In LENR, it is assumed that a active reaction must produce anomalous heat. But there are a large set of other energy output format(s) that the output energy can assume. Why is excess heat the hallmark of an active LENR reaction, why is gamma ray output this hallmark? Why can't ionization projected to the far field be a valid LENR artifact, as is seen in many LENR experiments. Why is sub atomic particle creation not a possible artifact of a active heatless LENR reaction.

Why is excess heat the gold standard in all LENR detection methods? The heat based assumption is based on long standing prejudices whose origin is lost in the lure of LENR research.

Quote from axil

It is also possible, that the observation of anomalous galactic rotation rates speak against the assumed assumptions. In this example, the way gravity behaves could be changed through an unknown mechanism that has nothing to do with particles. Because this distroys existing assumptions including the way that general relativity works, this new line of logic is not taken seriously.

axil: Thats a good observation: But if you study Mills theory, then you may notice that general relativity is no wrong, only the metric is off, as it assumes the wrong nature of space...
Already Einstein new that his theory has two big flaws (singularity and cosmic constant) , but he never found an improvement. Just dig a little bit deeper into maths.

Quote from Wyttenbach

you may notice that general relativity is no wrong, only the metric is off, as it assumes the wrong nature of space...

You highlight the importance of assumption as a component in determining the validity of truth in science. One of the important assumptions about the standard model is that supersymmetry as its extension requires the addition of energy to produce the reunification of the four fundamental forces.

This assumption could be completely incorrect. This is important in LENR. People say that the way to amplify the weak force is to add impossible levels of energy to space/time to amplify the effects of the weak force.

However, if the true assumption is that a departure from random spin nature of space/time is the true measure for force amplification of a fundamental force then both gravity and the weak force will gain strength as the COHERENCE in spin in the body of space/time is increased.

Any condinsation of spin as produced by any number of many possible factors could produce amplified weak force results and the onset of the LENR reaction.

In like manner, coherent organization of the spins of matter that comprises a galaxy can amplify the force of gravity on that galaxy. That is to say, the way fundamental forces work has nothing to so with temperature. This is a bad assumption that LENR will work to prove.