NASA: New Paper about Experimental Progress

Quote from THHuxleynew

Ahlfors

Alan Smith

We seem to be going round in circles here.

There was a NASA study that appeared to show nuclear activity from low intensity x-ray photon beam radiation, referencedby Ahlfors.

The paper Alan cites has the same authors and appears roughly similar in import. It is the same study.

Ahlfors cites an independent replication by Rob Davies, which does not find these results or anything like (no nuclear activity seen to within error limits). This is in fact Rob's second reported replication, the first used a different photon beam source and therefore did not precisely replicate the original conditions. He is obviously trying hard to see if there is anything there.

Rob Davies speculates why the original study might have obtained such clear positive results, when his replication does not show them. It is a plausible, but unprovable, speculation. I quoted it (from Rob's paper linked here) above:

Given our null result, we propose an alternative theory for the non-zero activities

measured previously. Namely, that the materials in the previous work were

contaminated with daughters of radon decay, which contain both alpha and beta

emitters. The plausibility of this theory is enhanced by the fact that the previous

work was conducted partially in a basement laboratory in a part of the country

where radon gas is common. Radioactive daughters are electrostatically charged

following radon decay, and thus can accumulate on electrostatically charged

materials. Pursuant to this theory, we have shown that our PE and DPE materials

are easily charged and can retain such a charge for an extended period of time. They

are easily discharged with an ion blower, but are not easily discharged through

contact with a grounded conductor, which is understandable given that they are

electrical insulators. One contraindication of this theory is the absence of a signal in

the control samples in the previous study. Both the PE and DPE materials, if

electrostatically charged, would be expected to attract radon daughters. This

difference could be explained by a systematic difference in method or timing of the

processing of the PE and DPE samples used in the previous work. We have no means

of exploring whether there was such a difference, and therefore, cannot come to a

firm conclusion about the validity of our alternate theory.

So, from my POV, this is an interesting anomaly raised, checked, and found not to be replicable. We have a possible artifact, though no certainty. That will usually be the case when there is some extraordinary result like this that cannot be replicated. The existence of the possible artifact is enough to make chasing for another possible artifact uninteresting for most.

While there is no certainty, the normal way to process this data is to go with the original unreplicable result indeed being an artifact. It is certainly how I process it.

No doubt, occasionally, such judgements are wrong. Perhaps the replication is different in some subtle not understood way from the original. But then there remains some replicable clear result, which will be found at some point. In this case there is no reason, other than an a priori bias towards wanting to find nuclear reactions in situations where they are not conventionally expected, to go with the original.

Finally I'd point out that there are web sites (not this one of course) that will continue to recycle any apparently positive scientific evidence, without the context refuting it, as evidence. It is context, and followup, that allows us to judge unusual results.

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JPL used an ion gun on the fuel to eliminate the possibility of static charge that could attract radon daughters. Could the ion gun have changed the fuel in a substantial way.

Did you notice the education and background of the JPL experimenter? Is he an appropriate choice for the experiment? Also note the exposure of the fuel to ions, and incorrect x ray beam focus and intensity, altering thickness of container, etc. I know nothing of the experimenter , nor enough about the physics to judge. The difficulties in making good fuel for LENR also should be considered,,,regardless who makes the fuel. NASA should repeat the work with verification that there are no radon daughters present. Will they repeat the work? There's thousands of positive experiments to prove LENR is a real nuclear effect. But I'm especially convinced by the Navy SPAWAR goups decades of work, and they were part of the NASA work. In general and in my humble opinion, there's no possibility that such a huge body of positive research , as compiled by LENR researchers, could be ignored by governments, unless the governments were being controlled by the oil industry and by secrecy concerns for military advantage.

tar ba·by

nouninformal

noun: tar baby; plural noun: tar babies; noun: tarbaby; plural noun: tarbabies

1. 1. a difficult problem that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it.

Tar Baby is a Perfect label Alan. The definition reminds me that I left out the hot fusion guys, some who are physics/energy advisors to our government, and have for decades killed funding for LENR. Such arrogance and breach of the core principles of science,, breaches of honesty even. I would have so loved to see Fleischmann receive his Nobel while he lived. And what could LENR researchers do to get our elected corporate leaders to finally fund the research? A lobbying/education effort directed at congress. Trump could be convinced by telling him that his hotels would pay 66% less for their electric bills. LENR plants would produce electricity and even heat, cheaper than wind, solar, natural gas, coal and Uranium.

Quote from Mugsie

JPL used an ion gun on the fuel to eliminate the possibility of static charge that could attract radon daughters. Could the ion gun have changed the fuel in a substantial way. Did you notice the education and background of the JPL experimenter? Is he an appropriate choice for the experiment? Also note the exposure of the fuel to ions, and incorrect x ray beam focus and intensity, altering thickness of container, etc. I know nothing of the experimenter , nor enough about the physics to judge. The difficulties in making good fuel for LENR also should be considered,,,regardless who makes the fuel.

For something as fiddly as a LENR experiment, it is worthwhile for the group attempting a replication to work with the original team if they're open to a collaboration, so as to reduce the likelihood of a misguided innovation on the original protocol.

Almost as good: the group with the null result should, ideally, after getting the null result using the approach they thought was best, then go back and hew more closely to the original protocol and see if they can get an apparent replication, and then add additional controls and checks on top of whatever was found to (seemingly) work, thereby isolating the important variable.

In the case of the radon daughter hypothesis, this seems like something the original team could control for in a followup experiment, as well as something the replicators could have looked further into to support their alternative explanation.

All good expectations Eric. Would it help if people emailed or mailed copies of the SPAWAR work, the work of Swartz, Hagelstein, etc etc. to their congressmen, or to Fox Faux news channel. Remember Radio Free Europe,, we need a Radio Free Science.

My expectation is that the military capacities gained from a cheap energy source that can generate neutrons and transmute metals,, is fear inducing to military planners. Consider a small, cheap, LENR closed circuit steam powered drone with a wood or composite body that can cross an ocean and deliver a payload anywhere, with high precision guaranteed by a cheap $100 car GPS. It could fly very low to avoid detection and easily hide it's heat signature. But much more than this,, it opens many new avenues of concern for military planners, and all would make the military want to keep it secret an exclusively theirs. They reluctantly released information on LENR type science , and we saw how long the SPAWAR DTRA report was withheld. It was perhaps released only because the threat of war from climate change is greater than the threat realized by releasing the SPAWAR DTRA report.

Any competition to fossil dominance is also a threat to the Putin Trump Exxon Tillerson trillion dollar oil exploration deal in the Russian arctic, a deal signed by Tillerson while he was CEO of Exxon Mobil, and spoiled by Obama's sanctions on Russia for election meddling. But LENR is a threat to the entire fossil fuel industry,,, the entire industry.

Energy efficiency efforts, solar and wind power, are being actively reversed in many U.S. states by fossil fuel interests, even though wind, solar, efficiency produce cheaper electricity and lower electric bills. Even solar is now cheaper than nuclear,coal, and natural gas,, wind is cheaper than that anything except energy efficiency. Yet they want to use Uranium and coal, which harms people and is more expensive. This is clear evidence of corruption.

So instead of attacking with logic , we need to attack using emotion. Reason clearly hasn't worked in an arena of fossil fuel influence on government, military fears, and hot fusion scientists lies and arrogant selfish ignorance. Did you see that ITER won't make any power at all after all the energy inputs are considered? They lied outrageously for years! Hot fusion guys should be viewed as suspect,, until they are hired to do LENR research :-).

But to effectively communicate the power and promise of LENR, to secure research funding, the strategy should be emotional, economic, military (fear),, and conspiratorial (fossil companies, hot fusion deceptions, fossil money to politicians, valid military concerns), and the arguments should be delivered to the press, the news and faux news, to rile the NASCAR and NFL and soccer fans off their couches and to cause legally bribed and corrupt fool politicians to act for the public good. Would our politicians receive their Russian arctic billions in suitcases, the way they received their money for the last election? We need a cash detector sensor at our airports apparently.

Who wants to bet a dollar (99 cents because its more legal) that there are Area 51 projects and Skunkworks type projects using LENR right now?

Careful, to much calcium can cause serious health problems, incl. dementia ....

Quote from Rends

@Ahlfors

Is Calcium Rossi’s Secret Catalyst?

Everybody knows that Rossi's results support every hypothesis.

So, reading further that thread...

Quote from Sanders

“This visible neon plasma layer that we call the photosphere, and a thicker, more dense atmospheric layer composed of silicon plasma, entirely covers the actual rocky, calcium ferrite surface layer of the sun.” http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com

If the Sun does have a solid surface made of calcium ferrite then maybe the Sun is a LENR reactor, and maybe calcium is Rossi’s secret catalyst.

...it's obvious that the answer will be: "yes, possibly".

Source: http://newenergytimes.com/v2/n…1/37/3726appendixd4.shtml

Nuclear fusion reactions were examined in high-density hydrogen isotope (fuel) nuclei embedded in metal lattices, in which a small fraction of the fuel nuclei is heated by energetic photoneutrons. Such a setting supports enhanced screening of the Coulomb barrier between fuel ions by conduction and shell electrons of the metal lattice and Compton electrons from photo-irradiation. Electron screening increases by several orders of magnitude the probability of large- versus small-angle Coulomb scattering of the reacting nuclei to enable subsequent nuclear fusion reactions via tunneling. This enhanced probability is integrated into the astrophysical factor, S(E). Electron screening also increases the probability of quantum tunneling due to uniform negative shift -Ue of the Coulomb barrier UC(r). The electron screening also provides for a significant increase in the probability of interaction between hot fuel and lattice nuclei due to Oppenheimer-Phillips stripping processes at much lower projectile energies, opening potential routes to reaction multiplication. This paper examines the applicability of the electron screening potential energy Ue for the calculation of the enhancement factor f (E) to the nuclear fusion cross section. Also, the expression of Ue is derived for general screening process, using the unifying concept of a screening length lambda-sc. It was found that energetic neutrons provide the most effective heating of fuel ions to initiate nuclear fusion reactions in condensed matter, compared to heating via energetic charged particles. The above concepts were integrated into an overall analysis of a nuclear fusion process that could be used as a theoretical basis for understanding, designing, and optimizing experiments, as exemplified in Part 2.

So this is one of the interesting byways here that is definitely substantiated and replicated science, with a long history of experimental work from different authors, and related theoretical work, all coherent but still circling round something not yet understood: why are those enhancement rates so high?

For those looking for useful (in the context of nuclear power generation) nuclear reactions these results don't seem at all directly relevant. But they are highly interesting. Further, I'd agree with those who look at this stuff as providing the possibility of some mechanism that would catalyse nuclear reactions at lower energies, even if other unexpected phenomena are also needed for anything to come of it.

One thing useful about this work is the difference between its substance and that of much LENR work. In this case the experiments are not scavenging for anything unusual and vaguely in the direction of nuclear activity (pits in film, temperature differences that if calorimetry is correct indicate continuous long-term power dissipation a bit higher than power input, He concentrations higher than typical atmospheric but not necessarily higher than the very variable local concentrations in labs, soft x-ray spectra at levels slightly above background that are unexplained). Here we have definite quantifiable results measuring what happens and related to a quantifiable model that seeks to explain them.

A breath of fresh air.