Jed will note 100s of experiments apparently showing LENR. And we know it is an effect.....
Thank you for verifying that the effect has been replicated.
How many times has the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heating Event been replicated in peer reviewed journals?
- [email protected]
- Closed
-
-
Science moves forward when a scientist tries to prove something was wrong and fails.
No. Absolutely not. Failure may teach a scientist something true. But science moves forwards based on positive results. Defining something so well it can be reproduced in detail at will by those skilled in the art.
As I said before, if you fail to prove something, you just did it wrong. At last that's what can always be said....
-
Thank you for verifying that the effect has been replicated.
That comment also does not advance the debate.
-
That comment does not advance the debate.
You mean the last sentence? Because the earlier stuff I pulled almost word for word from the previous post.
-
No. Absolutely not. Failure may teach a scientist something true. But science moves forwards based on positive results. Defining something so well it can be reproduced in detail at will by those skilled in the art.
As I said before, if you fail to prove something, you just did it wrong. At last that's what can always be said....
Science moves forward on failures just as well as it does on successes, but someone's career might not move forward if they only generate failures. Notice how you say "No. Absolutely not" but then you practically agree with what was said. This is yet another example of why you have been ignored in this field.
-
Yet we need every single possible error to be proven wrong before we have a genuine LENR-capable anomaly.
Nope. You have that backwards. All you have to do is show one major error in an experiment, and in most cases that cancels out the entire result. For example, you show that the flow rate was measured wrong in a flow-calorimetry experiment. I have done this, in flow calorimetry with both water and air. I shot down results from 5 or 10 experiments by doing this. The other parameters were measured correctly, but the results were wrong.
(These experiments were never published, because they were wrong. They were abandoned.)
In any case your proofs here are assertion. Let us take a very simple case. Morrison suggested the high boil-off phase COP from the classic F&P paper from simplicity through complications.... might be due to liquid entrainment. You will have read MF's answer and think that this disproves that possibility. Yet it does not.
I think you are flat out wrong about that. Fleischmann demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that there was no entrainment. I gave the reasons elsewhere. I shall take the trouble to repeat them. I suggest you address them.
Fleischmann’s methods of ensuring there was no entrainment included:
1. Close attention to cell geometry. There is a small, narrow orifice well above the highest point the boiling water bubbles reach, as you see in the video.
2. Null runs with Pt-H and electrolysis power driving the boiling. There is no excess heat and only a small deficit from heat losses unaccounted for. If entrained water left the cell there would be an apparent positive balance of excess heat. It is not plausible that the choice of Pd and heavy water turned on entrainment but other metals and ordinary water turned it off.
3. There were null runs even with Pd-D. That is, no heat before or after the boil off, the same as Pt-H. There was no excess heat during the boil-off in these instances. In other words, there was no entrainment error with Pt-H, Pt-D or with Pd-D that did not produce heat in the other phases. Why would the entrainment error correlate with apparent excess heat in the other phases?
4. They looked for droplets of electrolyte around the cells.
5. Most important, after the tests they inventoried the lithium salts remaining in the cell by various methods, including rinsing the cell repeatedly and evaporating the water. The amount of salt recovered was very close to the amount added initially, so no salts left the cell in entrained water. There was a little salt embedded in the glass which they could not wash out. I think they said the glass was discolored by it, which is how they could tell.
Those are physical reasons why you are wrong, which you can confirm in the papers. Moving on to methodological reasons -- the hypothesis that there was no excess heat during the boil-off phase makes no sense, because there was abundant proof of excess heat for weeks before the boil-off (phase 1), and for hours after it (phase 3). Why would the excess heat stop for 10 minutes (phase 2) and then start up again? The calorimetry used in phase 1 and phase 3 is quite different. Entrainment could not explain it. To make a reasonable, believable case, you have to show mistakes in all 3 phases, and they have to be different mistakes.
-
Fleischmann demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that there was no entrainment
A.) reference please.
B.) Fleischmann was co-author of a paper in Thermochimica Acta in 2004 with S. Szpak, P. Mosier-Boss, and M. Miles. This is the very paper that Mel Miles comments on in Infinite Energy issue #132, where he presents a paper that Fleischmann would have preferred to publish instead of what Szpak apparently beat him to publishing. They claimed in TA, 2004 to have measured recombination by collecting water. They reported an excess of 6.5% by volume. As I pointed out in this forum, that number is low if my CCS/ATER proposition is true, since there would have to have been some LOSS in water for recombination to be occurring. Yet they saw an EXCESS. That means there really was probably about a 10% excess. When my comment on the TA2004 paper was submitted, the reviewers just said this measurement was 'in the noise'. If that is so, they how could they distinguish a 1% effect given a 10% error margin? They couldn't is the answer.
But more importantly, where did this excess water come from, if not entrainment? Does CF create water out of nothing too?
-
Hot fusion skeptics who rarely if ever use calorimetry in their physics profession failed to replicate P&F. They proceeded from that to say that it was proof that LENR wasn't real.
Actually, to be a little more historically accurate, they did not try to replicate P&F. They tried to replicate one aspect of P&F, which unfortunately, P&F themselves got wrong. What they did in most cases was: set up an electrochemical cell with a palladium cathode and heavy water, and then look for neutrons. They did not look for excess heat, and they did not measure some critical parameters such as loading.
P&F reported neutrons, but most people soon concluded that part of their paper was wrong. Fleischmann himself thought it was a mistake. He told me that in person, at MIT.
Excess heat is the most critical parameter. It is the "principal signature of the reaction" as Fleischmann put it. If you don't see excess heat, you don't have cold fusion, so there is no point to looking for anything else. It is like fishing in a dry hole, as Ikegami put it.
The other mistake made by many hot fusion and high energy physicists was to do the experiment without consulting with electrochemists. They made many mistakes. Enough to eliminate any chance of success. As I put it, they were trying to tune a piano with sledge hammer. See p. 11:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJlessonsfro.pdf
Electrochemists who reviewed other experiments discovered similar errors, such as confusing the anode and the cathode.
I suppose that if a group of electrochemists were to try to build a Tokomak plasma fusion reactor without consulting with plasma physicists, they would make similar mistakes.
-
That comment also does not advance the debate.
It is pretty straightforward in pointing out that replication of the effect has been acknowledged. That DOES advance the debate.
-
A.) reference please.
Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O system: from simplicity via complications to simplicity. Phys. Lett. A, 1993. 176: p. 118
Morrison, D.R.O., Comments on claims of excess enthalpy by Fleischmann and Pons using simple cells made to boil. Phys. Lett. A, 1994. 185: p. 498
Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Reply to the critique by Morrison entitled 'Comments on claims of excess enthalpy by Fleischmann and Pons using simple cells made to boil. Phys. Lett. A, 1994. 187: p. 276Y
Pons, S. and M. Fleischmann. Heat After Death. in Fourth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 1993. Lahaina, Maui: Electric Power Research Institute 3412 Hillview Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94304
But more importantly, where did this excess water come from, if not entrainment?
There is no excess water. The amount that leaves the cell is exactly the same as added to it.
In null a boil-off test driven only by electrolysis, such as a test with Pt-H, a little water is left in the cell below the anode-cathode. This is because the moment the electrolyte drops below the anode and cathode, the power is cut off, and heat production stops. Boiling stops, and the temperature drops immediately and monotonically according to Newton's law of cooling. A little water usually remains in the bottom of the cell.
When there is excess heat, the cell remains hot even after the power is cut off, so the remaining water boils away. There is only hot vapor in the cell. The Kel-F plastic holding the anode and cathode often melt. This never happens in a null test. Also, the cell does not cool down. On the contrary, it usually gets hotter, and sometimes even hotter hours later. This is additional proof of excess heat, rather than only heat from electrolysis. ("Excess" means in addition to the heat from electrolysis. It might be excess heat from chemistry, but there is no chemical fuel, and no chemical changes are observed, so it ain't.)
-
P&F reported neutrons, but most people soon concluded that part of their paper was wrong.
Basically, that was where they screwed the pooch. They could have gotten away with science-by-press release, and all the other mistakes. But they trampled onto the hot fusion boys' territory and that was where they were blown out of the water politically.
Imagine if they had ignored the neutrons and said something to the effect that they think it's a super-chemical reaction unseen before and they could use the help of their nukular physicist brethren to rule out a couple of things.
-
LENR makes no hard predictions that can be refuted - therefore it cannot be disproved.
What a thing to say! How absurd. Of course it makes hard predictions, and of course they can be refuted. I have refuted dozens of them, and disproved many experiments. (Mainly fifth rate ones, mainly done by me.)
Here is the best known prediction: If you manage to load a Pd-D cathode above a certain level, and maintain current density at a certain level according to McKubre's equation, it is likely the cathode will produce excess heat. At a very high level, it is almost certain to produce excess heat. See Fig. 1 here:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf
The exact set of parameters you must meet are listed in McKubre's equation.
Here is another: If a cell is producing excess heat, you can probably boost the power level by quickly raising the cell temperature. You can raise the temperature by various methods such as electrolysis, joule heating or a laser. It usually boosts output.
Here is how you disprove these predictions:
Show that there was no heat in the experiments by McKubre, the ENEA and the others he cites. As I said, you show an error. One error will usually clobber the whole experiment. Show that that flow rate was wrong, for example. That is the most likely problem with flow calorimetry, in my experience. The temperature measurements are usually right, but that does no good because the results go down the tubes anyway.
Good luck trying to prove that McKubre's flow measurements are wrong! They are described in detail, so have at it:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHisothermala.pdf
When there is a mistake, you usually find there is both excess heat and "excess cold." That is, the cell will as likely appear to be swallowing up heat as producing it. This is impossible. Look for that: it is a good tell-tale starting point. During a lecture, Fleischmann rather famously showed this was happening in one of the early negative experiments that supposedly disproved cold fusion. In that case, the researchers did measure the heat. He graphed their data and showed the heat appeared to be vanishing, so obviously their calorimetry was wrong. I don't recall the reason, but he described it in detail.
You yourself took a crack at showing an entrainment error in the boil off phase of Fleischmann's experiment. You have the right idea. That is the sort of thing that can go wrong. However, in my opinion, you failed to show an error. In fact, I do not see where you gave any reasons at all why there might be such an error, other than "I suppose." But keep trying! That is the only way you -- or any one else -- can disprove cold fusion. It is experimental science, not theory. You will never find one mistake or one overarching factor that cancels out all evidence. You have to wade in and deal with details. Detail after detail after detail. Even if you clobber McKubre's flow measurement technique, that leaves dozens of other flow measurements by Storms (rather similar!) and by many others (completely different), and you have show that every one of them was wrong, or that something else went wrong.
-
Display More
I am beginning to think that LENR supporters have a specific brain anomaly. They must be the only people in the world who don't understand that it is impossible to disprove the existence of something. Incredible!
On the other hand, these people are the keepers of amazing detailed information about who the top 100 electrochemists in the world are. How does one get on this list and who compiles it? Like I said, there are 8,000 members of the Electrochemical Society. Did only the card-carrying top 100 replicate LENR? Were the other 7,800 forbidden to try? Or did they fail? Or are they all morons and only the official top-100 count?
LENR has a rotten reputation because the people who speak on behalf of it make preposterous statements like this over and over again. Jed is always lecturing us on how science works and he seems to not have a clue. There is no other field in which such ludicrous claims are routinely made in an attempt to argue for results that should stand on their own if they are valid. In any other field, people might say that many renowned researchers have seen similar results, or perhaps that some of the top people in the discipline have replicated an experiment. That would be fine. All this top-100 talk is bullshit.
The excuse is that LENR researchers are mistreated, prevented from doing their work, crucified or dead. But somehow there is proof positive from the top 100 electrochemists in the world at major institutions despite the fact that they are mistreated, prevented from doing their work, crucified, or dead. Quite a trick!
There are no doubt some top-flight scientists who have done and may still be doing LENR research. Perhaps some of them have observed physical phenomena that cannot be explained by any conventional mechanisms. That might well be. On the other hand, the people who inhabit websites and battle the world on behalf of LENR seem to all be crackpots.
IO,
I'm with the LENR is real crowd, but will break ranks just to say your post was funny. I sometimes wonder, and maybe you can take a wag at it: Say we take 100 of the worlds 8,000 Electrochemists, give them a standard resistance heater. Lie and tell them it is a special heater, that may go nuclear on them. Have them run it for a year or two, measuring every conceivable parameter, then make a report.
Would you expect some to report seeing excess heat, or radiation, or Tritium, He, HAD, or even have a few blow up, along with the occasional melt down?
-
IO,
I'm with the LENR is real crowd, but will break ranks just to say your post was funny. I sometimes wonder, and maybe you can take a wag at it: Say we take 100 of the worlds 8,000 Electrochemists, give them a standard resistance heater. Lie and tell them it is a special heater, that may go nuclear on them. Have them run it for a year or two, measuring every conceivable parameter, then make a report.
Would you expect some to report seeing excess heat, or radiation, or Tritium, He, HAD, or even have a few blow up, along with the occasional melt down?
I doubt you can make it into becoming one of the top hundred electrochemists by reporting ridiculous results. But we might actually get to the bottom of how much Helium gets trapped in a cell, so it might be a worthwhile experiment.
The simple fact is, running an experiment like that for a year or two would be very expensive and you probably couldn't keep up the lie after a while. It's better to just explain that it's a double blind experiment and there's a possibility they could be looking at the control or the actual subject.
-
I doubt you can make it into becoming one of the top hundred electrochemists by reporting ridiculous results. But we might actually get to the bottom of how much Helium gets trapped in a cell, so it might be a worthwhile experiment.
The simple fact is, running an experiment like that for a year or two would be very expensive and you probably couldn't keep up the lie after a while. It's better to just explain that it's a double blind experiment and there's a possibility they could be looking at the control or the actual subject.
Price, nor the lie is important, since this is a hypothetical. But your point about "double blind" is good, so let us say that. Take 100 control electrochemists and give them a regular heater, but tell them it is a special heater. Take another 100 and tell them the truth...that it is a regular heater. Let both groups run the tests for 2 years, and see what they report.
-
Price, nor the lie is important, since this is a hypothetical. But your point about "double blind" is good, so let us say that. Take 100 control electrochemists and give them a regular heater, but tell them it is a special heater. Take another 100 and tell them the truth...that it is a regular heater. Let both groups run the tests for 2 years, and see what they report.
You're sorta exposing 2 separate parameters. In a double blind experiment, neither the electrochemists nor the test administrators would know which cells are which. By telling some and not others, you're introducing an expectation variable, which is what I suspect you actually want to look at.
It reminds me of an ancient chinese story about the emperor giving a hundred of the smartest kids in the empire a gift of a bean seed in a pot. Only one kid reported back to the emperor that he couldn't grow a bean or anything. It turned out that all the plants were sterilized, and all the 99 other kids reported results they thought were expected. The 1 true honest kid became the emperor.
-
I sometimes wonder, and maybe you can take a wag at it: Say we take 100 of the worlds 8,000 Electrochemists, give them a standard resistance heater. Lie and tell them it is a special heater, that may go nuclear on them. Have them run it for a year or two, measuring every conceivable parameter, then make a report.
Something similar has been done, many times. We know the results. Many researchers went for months or years running Pd-D experiments that did not work. Miles and Storms are good examples. Storms tested ~100 cathodes and found 4 that worked. That took a year or two.
None of the researchers who went through long dry spells with no heat reported anything else unusual in those failed experiments.
There have also been single blind experiments. Not double blind, but single. The best example was the mass spectroscopy portion of Miles' experiments. He knew which cathodes produced excess heat. He sent samples of the gas to three different mass spec. labs, with random numbers encoding the sample. So, he knew but they did not. They measured the helium and reported it back to him. He also sent blanks such as flasks for room air. The results were:
All three labs reported the same levels of helium.
Samples that produced excess heat had higher levels of helium, proportional to the heat, at a rate of 24 MeV.
The helium was not correlated with heat, because some of the blank cells ran hotter with higher electrolysis power than the ones that produced excess heat.
The helium was not correlated with anything else, other than excess heat.
See:
-
Display More
All three labs reported the same levels of helium.
Samples that produced excess heat had higher levels of helium, proportional to the heat, at a rate of 24 MeV.
The helium was not correlated with heat, because some of the blank cells ran hotter with higher electrolysis power than the ones that produced excess heat.
The helium was not correlated with anything else, other than excess heat.
I don't understand your explanations of the results. I'm having trouble downloading the file, maybe I'll get it later.
-
Thank you Jed. I have actually been on your site a number of times. The Miles account is a good one. He did an interview about 2 years ago on Cold Fusion News I believe, and recounted that story and some others.
-
I don't understand your explanations of the results. I'm having trouble downloading the file, maybe I'll get it later.
If you still don't get what I meant, I can try rephrasing later. PLEASE let me know if you continue to have trouble downloading. Try downloading any other paper. Display some pages from LENR-CANR.org. If an error message appears, let me know what it is. My ISP once shut down a whole geographic area for a month by accident.
Contact me by e-mail. The address is at LENR-CANR.org
