Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions

A shame Bela Lugosi is long time dead already...

Just kidding Dewey

Jed wrote:

Quote

The temperature in the cell immediately after the boil off corresponds to the power level of the boil off. In other words, the power does not immediately fall after the water leaves the cell. This can be demonstrated with rigor, as described in this and other papers. The temperature remains high, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, which shows that the heat continues at whatever level it was during the boil-off, which ranges from ~20 to ~100 W with cathodes of this size.

[my emphasis]

I think you are suggesting that if the cell output temperature is constant after boil off, the heat flow from the cell is constant but that is clearly incorrect. After boil off, the power out from the cell can be calculated mainly from the temperature, and the equations which describe radiation and convection heat losses (and conduction if not negligible in those cells). But before the coolant is gone, you have to add an evaporative heat component. In this case, the heat flow for a given temperature when coolant is being boiled off and when it is not is not the same. At constant temperature, heat flow is much less when the coolant is gone. Did I miss something here? And I still don't see 100W for days anywhere.

Well, thanks Dewey for your explanation and your clarity and candor -- there is way too little of that in past discussions of IH and Darden's role in the Rossifiasco.

Quote

MY - IH was aware of much R's past but not all of it. R is among the best at what he does and he worked hard to present a good story around his "exoneration" and explanations for the prison time / previous escapades. He had a lot of help along the way and was masterful at leveraging resources that helped him tell his story (a skill that he has honed over the decades). TD decided to make the bet with personal / friends & family funds knowing that it was one of extreme risk and presented it as such. He knew that the bet was an extreme long shot but also knew that it would bring hope and rejuvenation into the resource starved sector of aging front line researchers. He wanted to see if CF was real and had a resource problem or if it was an evasive anomaly with decades of research to go.

OK, so overlooking everything that Krivit, Wright and I (and many others) wrote about Rossi, his experiments, and how he cheated DOD/CERL as recently as 2002, suppose we take all of that at face value. There is still something I don't understand. Given Darden' awareness that Rossi's truthfulness was at least questionable, why did he think it was OK to pay Rossi a huge sum to conduct a one year test? Considering that all of Rossi's past short tests were questioned, would it not make more sense to revisit the simplest, low temperature, single unit, comparatively short duration ecat tests and make Rossi prove those were valid before committing $10M? It might have taken what... three months at most? It could have been done by any number of testing organizations in secret and/or as a black box experiment, and would have cost, at most 5% of what IH finally paid! (probably much less) THAT would have proven Rossi a fraud and a liar.

And then there was the inexplicable granting to Rossi of so much autonomy to choose a final arbiter of the testing. Penon for God's sake? He was the turkey, the braying jackass that did Rossi's original absurd and completely unnecessary high temperature test in 2012, paid by Rossi, involving Rossi and using Rossi's methods and equipment. And most of those methods were unchanged for the Levi test, Lugano and the other high temp tests that were made public.

So to summarize: why didn't Darden arrange for a quick preliminary repeat test of a simpler ecat using completely independent and well known experts, NOT from the LENR community and never involved with Rossi before? Why did Darden allow Rossi to use Penon as the purported final voice in deciding whether the $89M goal had been reached?

Quote

Having said all that, in a strange way, the R investment / fiasco has the potential to go down in history as being worth it. Only a handful of folks will be able to understand that and time will eventually have the last word.

Well, it wasn't my money so I am delighted that Darden did it. I just wish he had been more clever and had consulted with me and others about how to proceed. I alone could have saved him more than $9M. And I could have found him more experts.

Contrary to what a lot of believers think, I wish high power LENR were real. I am happy when it is properly tested, even as haphazardly, awkwardly and clumsily as Darden did it. Darden's investments may also go a little way towards disarming the old canard that no substantial money was ever spent on LENR and cold fusion though it is clear that P&F got plenty of money over the years as did others.

Finally, you say the money donated to the Rossi con was Darden's and friends (are they happy?) and maybe he has so much it doesn't matter. But what of the $50M in investor funds belonging to Woodford? I bet you that comes to little results also. As you say, time does tell. BLP/Mills have had more than TWENTY YEARS. Rossi is going on seven. Steorn lasted about ten-- long enough for Sean and "the Lads" to consume a veritable ocean of ale. But yeah, it will tell. Hopefully Darden will be more cautious when he vets other claims... but I sort of doubt it.

Quote

I haven't found any good, substantiated claims of enormous excess heat.

F used the video to claim a HAD event (heat after death). Unfortunately, he also published thermal histories (graphs) in his paper of the supposed HAD-cell and another cell that was as identical as possible, which he didn't claim showed a HAD. In my whitepaper, I took these two graphs and overlaid them with Photoshop (actually GIMP I believe). Except for the fact that D2O makeup water was added at different points, giving short dips in the temps, the traces were identical. So either Fleischmann missed a HAD or he claimed one that really wasn't there. His methodology for claiming one was based on the video, so my point is that that was a flawed way to detect a HAD. I claim he never saw anything out of the ordinary.

I am very grateful to Kirk and others like Pomp and Ericsson for keeping LENR claimants honest. I can evaluate most high energy claims which provide enough data (like Defkalion and Rossi) but I have neither sufficient electrochemistry, physics nor mathematics background and ability to deal with papers like F&P's that Jed linked. I am glad that Kirk and a few others have made the time and effort to examine papers like that critically. Because my general view on this is so often misquoted, I will restate it again: I am confident no high power LENR has been shown in any form I could evaluate, for any reasonable definition of "high power." I am agnostic on the low power stuff and the electrochemistry because I have neither the time nor probably the capability of understanding it. I doubt it, but I really don't know^*. I hope more work will be done on it but with a full disclosure of risk to potential investors including hapless ones like Woodford's.

* See, Jed, I really do say "I don't know"