Clearance Items

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Someone for the love of God please explain to me why replicate an experiment that makes "40 to 100W" while the newest claim from the same experimenter is a reactor that sits quietly in his fireplace, making 3kW from a 300W input?

If people skilled in the art trying to replicate get ~10 W the first time around, it will be a triumph. It will prove that Mizuno is right.

If they keep at it for a year or two, I expect they will get kilowatts for that mass of reactant (~54 g). More likely they will want to work with a smaller mass of reactant at lower power, at a similar temperature and power density. It is much easier to work with 10 to 100 W than kilowatts. It is easier to measure that accurately. That reactor is so big, it is unwieldy. It is big because Mizuno thinks a large mass of reactant is more likely to work, and because if it only works at a small power density he can still detect it. Last year he was getting ~12 W out of that much reactant, which was close to the margin to measure.

The kilowatt scale reactions are probably mainly due to the improved design. That is the only design we described and illustrated in the paper. So that is the only one people will try to replicate. That does not mean it will work. Even if it does work, that does not mean it will work as well as this reactor did. That would be a miracle, not a replication. That never happens the first time around in experimental science. There may be large variations in Pd-on-Ni reactant performance. The high power may be partly a matter of luck. Mizuno himself might not see it with the next batch of reactants. That is hard to predict. After a few years and several hundred million dollars of R&D, people will probably figure out how to make the reactant more consistently. A few years after that, and a few billion dollars later, they will have far better reactants and better control. I suppose the reactors will look quite different as well.

Quote from Max Nozin

That is why it took 30 years and still there.

I think it took 30 years because it is difficult, there was no funding, and there was tremendous opposition. I do not think differences of opinion slowed things down much. Experts usually disagree with one another. Ask any question to three physicists and you will get five different answers.

Regarding the question: What are the best three experiments? Anyone can hazard a guess. Some of us are probably more qualified than others. But you would have to be omniscient and able to see into the future to know for sure. The only way to find out anything in experimental physics is to do experiments. Until you do them, you don't know.

For all anyone knows, some obscure experiment such as Ohmori's gold cathode experiments might be the best approach. No one has even tried to replicate that, as far as I know.

It is not possible for people to reach a consensus about this. There are too many candidate experiments. No one knows enough to judge which is best. If Prof. A or Prof. B knew what works, they would have done an experiment proving they knew. At best, we are like the blind men trying to describe the elephant. If we happen to be lucky and we touch the right parts, our description will be more useful and a better prediction than others. If we happen to touch the wrong part of the beast, and we conclude it is a hard, cold object (the tusk) our recommendations will be useless.

yes, i confim too it's a good analogy, classicism before daring like Lenr field since 30 years ?

Airplanes need to fly a relative wind created by the movement. Now, if you blow above wings you will get the same effect but more effective. Then you can remove wings if you blow above the central body. you see now that current sky masters as Boeing or Airbus aren't so exciting as expected, they are just some followers of brothers "W right" ..

Let's see channel wings concept from Willard Custer.

http://www.rexresearch.com/custer/custer.htm

Now, i hope that last Mizuno"s experiment is also an airplane without wings

Quote from JedRothwell

That is a good analogy. Maybe not the way you meant it. There were many different approaches to building airplanes circa 1900, such as A. G. Bell, and Maxim and Lilienthal. Those were smart people. Their ideas deserved respect, although the efforts did not make much progress. However, in 1906 the Wright patent was issued. All successful airplanes after that have been based on their discovery, which was 3-axis control. Also, all of them have wings with chambers similar to this, and similar length to width ratios. These are very different from Lilienthal and other early attempts. The Wrights were superb engineers and they had rigorous proof these were the best chambers and ratios, at the low speed their airplane was designed for.

In other words, every airplane after 1906 is a descendant evolved from this design, and all other precursor designs are extinct.

Needless to say, there has been tremendous progress in aviation! There was tremendous progress between 1908 and 1914. By 1914, there were airplanes that could fly 6 passengers for hours, going thousands of miles. Outwardly, they looked completely different from the pusher design of the Wrights, with the elevator in front. But from the engineering physics point of view, they were similar. They owed the Wrights royalties for the patent.

If the Mizuno design actually works and it is widely replicated, it will probably be the starting point for all future designs, just as the 1906 Wright patent design was. But there will be tremendous progress. Future designs may look very different outwardly, but the microscopic details of surface where the reaction occurs will probably be similar. It is likely there is fundamentally only one effective design, just as there is only one way to control an airplane (with 3-axis control).

Display More

Quote from JedRothwell

It is not possible for people to reach a consensus about this. There are too many candidate experiments. No one knows enough to judge which is best. If Prof. A or Prof. B knew what works, they would have done an experiment proving they knew. At best, we are like the blind men trying to describe the elephant. If we happen to be lucky and we touch the right parts, our description will be more useful and a better prediction than others. If we happen to touch the wrong part of the beast, and we conclude it is a hard, cold object (the tusk) our recommendations will be useless.

This situation will not last indefinitely. After a hundred thousand people spend a few billion dollars researching cold fusion, the parameter space will shrink and we will know what the most promising approach is. A few billion dollars is a trivial cost compared to the benefits. Cold fusion will earn back that amount of money every day for the next several hundred years.

In 1911, three years after the world realized that airplanes exist, the Scientific American reported there were 500,000 people frantically working on airplanes: "more than half a million men are now actively engaged in some industrial enterprise that has to do with navigation of the air." I suppose it will take some similar effort to develop cold fusion. Maybe not as many people, but nowadays we use expensive equipment instead of people, so the cost should be similar. Despite this tremendous effort, airplanes were still many years away from being practical. Basically, there were complicated and expensive machines that accomplished only one thing reliably: they killed wealthy, daring young men.

I doubt those aviation pioneers were earning a lot of money. The average American earned $400 per year in 1911. Doctors, accountants and other professionals earned more, but I'll bet the ambitious people working on airplanes made about $400. So, 500,000 people cost about $200 million per year. That would be $5.4 billion today. Three years after the world realizes that cold fusion exists, I expect companies, governments and universities will be spending at least that much developing it.

Quote

It is easier to measure that [lower power] accurately.

Here we go again JedRothwell . If Mizuno really has a 3kW reactor that runs on 300W of electricity, you really think anyone needs a highly accurate power measurement? For what, exactly?

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Here we go again JedRothwell. If Mizuno really has a 3kW reactor that runs on 300W of electricity, you really think anyone needs a highly accurate power measurement? For what, exactly?

Several reasons. What they boil down to is that accuracy, precision and speed are needed to learn what the reaction is doing. There is all kinds of fascinating information in the way it responds to heat, the time it takes to heat up and cool off, and so on. Also, it is a big help to have a fast-response calorimeter that tells you what is happen on a short time scale. I would love to see results from a microcalorimeter that works on the 0.1 s scale! However, rapid calorimeters can only measure small reactions. That's a trade off.

It is similar to looking at a sample with your eyes, or through a magnifying glass, a microscope or an electron microscope. All four methods have value. All four should be used. But at present our tools are limited to the equivalent of using our eyes.

Many others diagnostic tools are needed. Not just calorimeters. Mass spectrometers and SEM, for example. Unfortunately, they are not available. Mizuno's SEM was busted in the earthquake and it will cost $30,000 or so to fix, I think, which is $30,000 more than he has. Beyond that, there are wonderful modern diagnostic tools used in the semiconductor industry that would probably tell us a terrific amount about what is happening. With such gadgets, we could probably learn more in a month than we have learned in the last 30 years. Jean-Paul and others have told me they range from $50,000 to a few hundred million each. $50,000 might as well be $1 trillion.

A 1-W reaction subjected to these marvelous diagnostics would be far more beneficial than a 3 kW reaction measured with "quick and dirty" techniques. Such techniques would probably not reveal anything useful about the reaction. They would not convince any hardcore skeptics such as THH or anyone at the DoE, so they would have no political benefit either.

OK. But don't complain that skeptics don't believe you and Mizuno on faith when you won't do such an obvious and compelling proof test as a brief heat meter experiment on the most powerful reactor claim in LENR history. It's reactions like the above that make me more skeptical. I think it will be quite a while before the merits of Mizuno's claims are known. That will be on the believers. It really does work a lot like a religion.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

OK. But don't complain that skeptics don't believe you and Mizuno on faith when you won't do such an obvious and compelling proof test as a brief heat meter experiment

The "skeptics" you speak of do not believe McKubre, despite the best conventional calorimetry in history and a gigantic signal to noise ratio. Better than Mizuno's. They don't believe the people at BARC can measure tritium at millions of times background, even though that is their job and they would be dead if they could not do it. They do not believe that the people who designed and operated the U.S. national tritium lab at Los Alamos can measure tritium at levels that would trigger a permanent evacuation of the building if it were outside the test tube. In short, there is no amount of proof, by any world class experts, that will ever convince them of anything.

The notion that this experiment by Mizuno might convince them is risible. You have seen how the pathological skeptics respond. They make up preposterous nonsense based on the idea that 2 * 4 = 8, but 8 / 2 does not equal 4. They invent "explanations" that are 7 orders of magnitude too small to explain anything. They will go on waving their hands and explaining this away until the day Nature magazine and the New York Times admit it is real. Then they will claim they believed it all along. This is how slavishly conformist people think. They dare not think for themselves, and they dare not believe anything not in the textbooks. They are endlessly creative when it comes to making up ridiculous reasons to dismiss the facts, but somehow incapable of understanding that you cannot traverse 60 mm across a 58 mm opening.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

I think it will be quite a while before the merits of Mizuno's claims are known.

That depends on who replicates it (if any), and who they tell about their replication. I know some people trying to replicate who, if they succeed, are well positioned to convince Very Important People who have Large Sums of Money which they will spend quickly. If word gets out that they are engaged in large scale R&D, the situation might turn around in a few months. All it takes is the smell of money. Lots of money. Billions and trillions of dollars. Believe me, no one but THH and a few other pathetic conformists will take their marching orders from the editors of Nature once that starts. Nature will, of course, fight to the end with accusations of fraud and lunacy, as they did from day one. But the smell of money will overcome them. Nature and the DoE can stop a group of poverty stricken superannuated professors. They cannot stop thousands of smart people determined to become the next Bill Gates. Or the present Bill Gates, for that matter.

Edited out a personal comment about Google. Shane

Naughty boy, Shane! The Nature report had no useful information in it. It contributed nothing to the field. I agree with Carl Page on this. Is it okay for him to criticize Google?

I wouldn't know where to even start with the above so I am going to leave it alone. I've been following LENR since 2011 when Rossi first started braying. I guess I can wait a bit longer to know whether or not Mizuno is for real. It's a pity though that I (we) have to wait when the simple experiment I proposed would make it far more clear in less than a week at a cost less than $1000, which by the way, I offered to pay in advance. Of course, it's always clear to JedRothwell - I have a sinking feeling we might be revisiting the Rossi past soon because Jed and others have forgotten it. I hope not. I will not forget that Rossi's claims had to be true because the data were derived on the basis of first principles and that anything in papers that the skeptics can't cite specific technical errors in have to be right. In fact, I am thinking of calling those Jed's Postulates.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

It's a pity though that I (we) have to wait when the simple experiment I proposed would make it far more clear in less than a week at a cost less than $1000, which by the way,

I do not know anyone who agrees with you. More to the point, I don't know anyone with resources who could fund real research who agrees with you, and by gum, I know what those people think. They are not shy. They do not hide their views. You might suppose this test would convince people, but I know for a fact it would not convince the people we need to convince.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

$1000, which by the way, I offered to pay in advance.

I do not know anyone capable of doing this test for any price. You could pay $20,000 but Mizuno, I and others are far too busy and unable to do anything like it at present. Not just busy with cold fusion, as it happens. Also, we don't agree with you. If you would like to do this, I suggest you buy some mesh and palladium and get cracking. Be careful with the Ni nano powder! In six months or a year of intense effort, you might be able to do the test you describe, if you are skilled in the art.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

JedRothwell- I have a sinking feeling we might be revisiting the Rossi past soon because Jed and others have forgotten it. I hope not.

Are you suggesting that Mizuno or I resemble Rossi? Perhaps you have noticed, we have not hidden any details of the experiment or the calorimetry. If people cannot replicate, we will have nothing to offer anyone, and no way to make money. (Not that either of us has ever made a dime on cold fusion.)

Quote

Also, we don't agree with you. If you would like to do this, I suggest you buy some mesh and palladium and get cracking. Be careful with the Ni nano powder! In six months or a year of intense effort, you might be able to do the test you describe, if you are skilled in the art.

Ridiculous. I know oldguy gets it. Maybe others also who have not spoken up. Maybe I wasn't clear but I doubt that. Sure, I'm going to build a complex machine because you and some guy in Japan says it makes LENR. You're dreaming.

I am not suggesting that you or Mizuno are like Rossi. I am saying that you believed in stuff from Rossi (and his associates and offshoots) about which you should have known better much earlier and you put down as ignorant the people who did know along the way. That's a fact. The similarity I see is that you use the same paranoid rant again against Nature, Science, several institutions and skeptics in general. I don't think Mizuno is necessarily FOS like I thought from mid late 2011 that Rossi for sure was. But it is certainly possible. The claimed results alone don't make LENR more probable outside the usual suspects community of believers.

And to my thinking, it is very curious that Mizuno exhibits a claim for a hugely capable reactor but well... sorry. We can't do any test at all on that one. Too powerful. I'm sorry you don't understand the concept of estimating heat flow from a hot surface using a heat meter. I thought you had worked with Storms on envelope "Seebeck" calorimeters and purchased commercial models from Thermonetics (and the late Dr. H. F. Poppendiek). Maybe you didn't realize it but those are made from electroplated thermocouple type heat flow transducers connected in series and embedded in their walls.

On another issue, I am puzzled that Mizuno's large reactor doesn't exhibit thermal instability or runaway because the reaction is temperature dependent with a positive temperature coefficient. And it is haphazardly cooled by radiation and air convection. In fact, if I am seeing the image right, there is a heat reflector above the reactor which inhibits cooling further. I would have expected forced air or better yet, forced liquid cooling or at least careful temperature monitoring. If the claim is true, the potential is probably there for uncontrolled temperature rises. And people venturing by are exposed, unshielded, to the reactor in a living room. Something doesn't seem right with all this, it's just that I can't figure out what it is. But it doesn't matter. You guys go ahead. I do like a good train wreck when nobody gets badly hurt and I suspect one may be coming with this project. And just to be crystal clear, it's a suspicion, a feeling, nothing scientific and I sincerely hope I am wrong. Me being wrong would be much more interesting of course.

ETA: I wish I could volunteer to bring a heat meter and read out gear to Mizuno's lab. If I did that, the test I propose would take an hour or two for the active test. A blank would not even be necessary because, in Rossi's immortal words, "we already know what that would show." Everyone is familiar with 300W heaters. Unfortunately, I can't volunteer for that even if Mizuno were willing. It's a bit far and I'm busy too.

Quote from Promethian

Mizuno and anyone from Japan, only because he/Japan has/have no financial interest in NDA's

Many of the Japanese researchers have NDAs, or they are not open about their research. Mizuno is the most open person I know. As noted here, he has filed for patents. A patent is the most open source research you can have, by definition. A person skilled in the art is supposed to be able to replicate from it. If he cannot replicate from it, the patent is invalid. If it turns out there is some merit to the invention, and it actually works, it is thrown into the public domain after people figure out how to replicate. Either way, a patent reveals all secrets. That's the whole point of a patent. That's what it says in the U.S. Constitution:

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

It does not say "to make inventors rich" or "to assist patent trolls." It says "to promote the progress of science." If the patent cannot be replicated, it does not promote the progress of science, so it is not valid.

Some people here and elsewhere say they will not patent because it would be "giving away" their discovery. This makes no sense. A patent is the opposite of giving it away. If you do not patent something like cold fusion, you will definitely be giving it away. It will be snatched away from you, for sure. Others say they will not patent because the system is unfair and powerful people will take away the invention whether it is patented or not. If that is what you believe, you might as well give it away first as last.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Maybe others also who have not spoken up. Maybe I wasn't clear but I doubt that. Sure, I'm going to build a complex machine because you and some guy in Japan says it makes LENR. You're dreaming.

I was joking! Of course I do not expect you to make a useful contribution to this field. I doubt you are skilled in the art.

To be serious for a moment, I do not want to encourage anyone without a fully equipped lab and a glove box to try this. I fear they might hurt themselves with nickel dust. Also I do not think a person who is not an expert with turbomolecular pumps, SEM, mass spectrometers and other gadgets has a snowball's chance in hell of replicating this. I myself hardly know which end is up with some of that stuff.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

And to my thinking, it is very curious that Mizuno exhibits a claim for a hugely capable reactor but well... sorry. We can't do any test at all on that one. Too powerful.

Too powerful for a full scale test at present, with things as they are. Perhaps some time before the end of the year he will be in a position to test it. The test will be with the equipment and with a method that he thinks is best, and safest. Not what you think or I think is best. As I said, you should not try to teach grandma how to suck eggs. This stuff is harder than you think.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

On another issue, I am puzzled that Mizuno's large reactor doesn't exhibit thermal instability or runaway because the reaction is temperature dependent with a positive temperature coefficient.

Why is a fire sometimes stable, and why does it sometimes go out of control? Think about that. It is temperature dependent, and self-heating, like this reaction. A fire in a Franklin stove is under control. A fire under your front porch may not be.

I would not rule out the possibility that this reaction can become unstable, or a runaway. I don't know enough about that. I doubt anyone does, which is one of the reasons Mizuno is cautious about another large scale test.

Sorry this got OT

Far as I am concerned you can move my recent discussion with JedRothwell elsewhere if he agrees. I did feel a need to be on the record about what I thought should come next.

Just a little note @Shane D, i'm agree with you however Google staff remains unclear.

At the beginning of this thread they should have clearly asked what they want to do or not with LF people.

A specification, they must know ?

A little politeness too, just to introduce themself ? team, task ?

They are the claimant.

Quote from Shane D.

We have many watching this thread. Guest visits are way up, with healthy participation by our members. So far, I am not sure we are putting on a good show for them. I believe we have to up our game, and do better than this. Put petty differences aside, and keep old disputes where they belong. Respect the purpose of this thread. Think beyond self interests, and favoritism, and put the field first when commenting.

LENR forum is encouraging the trashing of this thread by not removing pointless posts

Mizuno should throw caution to the wind at the present time and do as many large scale tests as he can to confirm his R20 data. Strike while the iron's hot - otherwise I worry that other replicators may not set the conditions quite right and and important breakthrough could be lost, or end up simply not being believed as has happened before in cold fusion - if he's worried about a runaway reaction, surely an emergency release valve could be installed in the reactor activated by excessively high temperatures?