Not gonna happen. There is no way any mainstream news outlet will cover this.
I spoke too soon! BusinessWire covered it:
https://www.businesswire.com/n…-Brillouin-LENR-Reactions
That's a mainstream source, owned by Berkshire Hathaway. They run press release that companies send them. I assume they filter the press releases to some extent, and they would not run one that they suspect is a scam.
Yeah, David first linked to Businesswire, but I did not count them. They are business oriented, and doubtful they understand the implications involved, and what exactly distinguishes this from any other report from SRI, Boeing, MS etc. Probably just another investment opportunity to them. Same thing for their intended readership...a bunch of business people. Yes, it is a start, but IMO we need the science orgs to pick up the story.
Where have you been H-G? They have been asking "where are the dead lab assistants" since 1989. If you ever find out why, tell the LENR researchers, as they would like to know also.
Not entirely obvious, but I was referring to my previous post about the Q pulses producing copious amounts of free neutrons. Those neutrons are supposed to be 100% and immediately absorbed by hydrogen atom nucleuses aka protons. This absorption is possible, but I don't know the cross section for it. But I can give you a real life example to show that it is very small.
In a fission reactor each fission produces on average around three high speed neutrons. In order to create new fissions the speed of the neutrons has do be decreased, they must be thermalized. This is achieved by letting the neutrons collide with light nucleuses. This process is called moderation. somewhat akin to the moderation here, it cools things down. When doing so it is essential that the cross section for transmutation of the target nucleus is small, because that means loss of the neutron. In the first fission reactor carbon was used as a moderator. In most of our power reactors we use light water for moderation which also doubles as heat transport medium. And the absolute majority of the neutrons survive collisions with protons! But not all do, if you want to build a reactor running on natural uranium which has only 0.71% U235 you cannot use protium water but it works with deuterium water, The Canadian Candu pressurized water reactors are using this system.
Eric: In spite of all the deuterium surrounding the more or less spent fuel in the Candu reactors I am pretty sure that there is very little fusion going on in them! 
The emphasis in the report seems to be on careful measurement of output power, but the input power measurement is far from trivial. From Fig. 6 in the report it's evident that the input power calculation depends on accurate measurements of voltage, current and -- especially -- phase over a bandwidth of at least 200 MHz. It's not just the bandwidth of the measuring instruments that matters; there are potential problems with impedance matching, reflections and reactance in the measurement wires and in the heater. Just a little kink in a wire can make such measurements look much different.
I don't doubt that SRI and Godes know what they're doing, but people with experience in this area are going to be pretty skeptical of such measurements, and if I were a Brillouin investor, I wouldn't trust the measurements without much more well documented validation. It appears that calibration of input power was done using Q pulse signals having spectral distributions much different from those supposedly producing LENR, and the load will almost certainly absorb varying amounts of power at various frequencies. ("[C]alibration runs used Q pulse parameters that were known not to produce LENR heat (low voltage pulses) but impart the same power to the core as parameters expected to show LENR heat (high voltage pulses)".) Thus, this procedure doesn't exclude the possibility that the LENR-producing input power measurement using high voltage pulses (thus, narrow width and higher power density in the high frequencies) is too low -- maybe even by 60%. Godes must know all this; he's an electrical engineer. You'd think these objections would have been addressed more explicitly in the report.
Bruce, thanks for elaborating on the problems of measuring the power transferred by pulsed electric current.
Yes, Godes is an electrical engineer. He started Brillouin Energy in 2005
From LinkedIn:
"In 1992 I constructed a self-consistent theory of the physics behind the phenomenon “Cold Fusion”. This theory has had a successful first principal test performed by Tom Claytor, before he retired from LLNL. A key aspect was successfully simulated in a TAP at PNNL. I personally have constructed multiple control systems that allow the reaction to run in a controlled fashion. With my team at Brillouin Energy we have designed and built progressively more advanced systems to do same and run several successful tests demonstrating more than 4X more energy out than in. The theory explains the results of the “Lugano test”. It also explains the results of John Bockris at Texas A&M and why he was exonerated multiple times of fraud or scientific misconduct. Brillouin Energy is a multidiscipline group of engineers now solving the materials manufacturing and system design issue need to turn this phenomenon into a real technology. We have two design pathways with enough synergy that we are pushing forward on both systems. The HHT™ system is targeting high quality industrial heat up to 700Cᵒ. The WET™ system will provide lower quality heat possibly up to 200Cᵒ but will likely be lower maintenance. For more information and to contact us visit the Brillouin Energy website."
The preceding 9 years he did this:
"Designed distributed control hardware for sub-transmission/distribution level power grids. By putting intelligence and sensors at each switch it is possible to automatically isolate faults and reconfigure the grid to restore power to as many customers as possible in as short a time as possible."
He should know a thing or two about measuring true rms power.
What does Q in Q-Pulse stand for? Perhaps Godes borrowed the idea and the name of it from this famous inventor:
Eric: In spite of all the deuterium surrounding the more or less spent fuel in the Candu reactors I am pretty sure that there is very little fusion going on in them!
H-G, presumably you're addressing a statement I made?
Yes, it was in the tread about the imaginary Genie reactor:
"Given your confidence, H-G, presumably you have read a pile of empirical studies that show that impregnating spent nuclear fuel with deuterium does not appear to induce fission, which would be suitable to dispel any false hopes raised by any internal research this group may have done to conclude that it does induce fission?"
I thought that the counter arguments to my proposition that the Genie concept was as crappy as crap can be were too lame to respond to so I let you and Mr. Goble have the last words.
We do not have to discuss this subject further, it is just a waste of time and key strokes.
H-G, my earlier statement referred to "fission," and your statement addressing my statement referred to "fusion." Also, in the Candu case, the fission fuel is contained in long metal tubes and is separated from the surrounding heavy water. And deuterium is not being impregnated into the fission fuel (e.g., by way of an electric current). We must compare apples to apples and not oranges to orangutans.
Is an argument that points the reader to a directly relevant patent by an independent author reporting what looks like the same phenomenon a lame one?
H-Gs whole argument is that LENR is impossible by known physics. No duh! Like we have not heard that before.
So does that mean all those seeing these odd, in some cases overunity effects in the lab, should just stop what they are doing?
H-Gs whole argument is that LENR is impossible by known physics. No duh! Like we have not heard that before.
So does that mean all those seeing these odd, in some cases overunity effects in the lab, should just stop what they are doing?
Not at all, but when after years of development they remain below possible artifacts, they should perhaps note that.
In this case there is quite a bit of work to do when COP is 20% and they have not checked for Q-waves altering low-level TC readings, nor for Q-wave power mismeasurement.
The setup here is a false positive paradise and so extra work is needed before it is taken seriously by skeptics. If they can quantify those two errors and still have 5W discrepancy I'd think it more interesting. Perhaps they will.
In this case there is quite a bit of work to do when COP is 20%
The COP is 1.6. I guess that is 160% or 60% by your reckoning. Not 20%, anyway.
It is ~8.3 W input, ~13.3 W out, in some of the best cases.
Brillouin Energy tech involves passing a high voltage pules through a metal nanopowder in a envelope of hydrogen gas. The tech is almost identical to the glow tube experiment that Alan Smith will be demonstrating at the New Energy World Symposium. That's Mats Lewan's event happening next June 18-19th in Stockholm Sweden.
The high voltage pulse is designed to avoid destroying the nano powder.
It seems that LENR experiments are repeated over and over again with only slight changes in configuration, but demonstrating the same basic LENR mechanisms.
The Brillouin Energy theory is malarkey.
Here is my post covering this glow tube system.
Cold Fusion Now : New Podcast with Alan Smith interview by Ruby carat
Not at all, but when after years of development they remain below possible artifacts, they should perhaps note that.
In this case there is quite a bit of work to do when COP is 20% and they have not checked for Q-waves altering low-level TC readings, nor for Q-wave power mismeasurement.
The setup here is a false positive paradise and so extra work is needed before it is taken seriously by skeptics. If they can quantify those two errors and still have 5W discrepancy I'd think it more interesting. Perhaps they will.
Looks like a stalemate then; LENR is going to keep on reporting 20-100% overunity...with the occasional near runaway, for years to come, and established science will continue to ignore them because it is within the noise range. If you go back and read the earliest official CF conferences, they talked of the same thing: We have to make our calorimetry even better, or we won't be believed. They think they have achieved that level where their results should be worthy of attempted replication, yet mainstream science still disagrees.
Maybe, as has been said many times, it will take a product making it to market, before it will be believed? Like the proverbial slap-upside-the-head wake up call. Although, IMO, if someone like NASA made a breakthrough, that may break the stalemate.
SRI reported two COPs. The higher "legacy" COPs were calculated using last years methodology. The lower "DS" COPs are from the *new* methodology, which I assume was influenced by this third party engineer they brought in to help tighten up the calorimetry. That is how I read it.
established science will continue to ignore them because it is within the noise range.
Side note: an output of 160 percent of input (if true) would only be within the noise range if there was a large standard deviation in the figure of merit. (I haven't reviewed this report, so I do not know whether they're looking at power or energy; hopefully energy). If the observed standard deviation across trials was very small, 160 percent might be well above the noise floor, and the ball would be in our court to identify some kind of systematic error.
Looks like a stalemate then; LENR is going to keep on reporting 20-100% overunity...with the occasional near runaway, for years to come, and established science will continue to ignore them because it is within the noise range. If you go back and read the earliest official CF conferences, they talked of the same thing: We have to make our calorimetry even better, or we won't be believed. They think they have achieved that level where their results should be worthy of attempted replication, yet mainstream science still disagrees.
Maybe, as has been said many times, it will take a product making it to market, before it will be believed? Like the proverbial slap-upside-the-head wake up call. Although, IMO, if someone like NASA made a breakthrough, that may break the stalemate.
Shane, if an exothermic nuclear reaction that can often and reliably generate 20-100% overunity exists, as claimed here, it is always going to be possible to generate an unambiguous experimental result, especially because nothing about nuclear mechanisms makes the output power directly depend on the input power. So there is no inherent limit on COP.
Side note: an output of 160 percent of input (if true) would only be within the noise range if there was a large standard deviation in the figure of merit. (I haven't reviewed this report, so I do not know whether they're looking at power or energy; hopefully energy). If the observed standard deviation across trials was very small, 160 percent might be well above the noise floor, and the ball would be in our court to identify some kind of systematic error.
In this particular case I've suggested two such. If the effect if real it would not be that difficult to knock both on the head. Maybe they have.
It is not about noise, it is about uncontrolled error. They have a system about which it is difficult to be sure what are the errors.
They have a system about which it is difficult to be sure what are the errors.
You mean like a Rossi system?
More precisely, for Rossi the word is not "difficult" it is "impossible".
Shane, if an exothermic nuclear reaction that can often and reliably generate 20-100% overunity exists, as claimed here, it is always going to be possible to generate an unambiguous experimental result, especially because nothing about nuclear mechanisms makes the output power directly depend on the input power. So there is no inherent limit on COP
"especially because nothing about nuclear mechanisms makes the output power directly depend on the input power"
This is why I am always suspicious of nice plots with the excess heat/power/temperature looking like an inflated lock-step trace of the input. Maybe truth is stranger than fiction, and Nature does whatever she wants anyways, but it seems to me that a triggered nuclear event, in general events that are orders of magnitude more powerful than chemical reactions, should depart from a tidy lock-step relationship with the input heat/power/temperatrature. Certainly the level of control would be remarkable to maintain such complete control of nuclear reactions that no spike in output as the process begins, actually occurs.
"especially because nothing about nuclear mechanisms makes the output power directly depend on the input power"
This is why I am always suspicious of nice plots with the excess heat/power/temperature looking like an inflated lock-step trace of the input. Maybe truth is stranger than fiction, and Nature does whatever she wants anyways, but it seems to me that a triggered nuclear event, in general events that are orders of magnitude more powerful than chemical reactions, should depart from a tidy lock-step relationship with the input heat/power/temperatrature. Certainly the level of control would be remarkable to maintain such complete control of nuclear reactions that no spike in output as the process begins, actually occurs.
Yes, in fact you could say any obsession with COP as an indicator of technological progress is a sign that what is measured is not a novel exothermic reaction.
