NASA partners with Global Energy Corporation to develop 10kW Hybrid Reactor Generator

Quote from JedRothwell

That is your version of the story. It is incorrect. Many results have been clear-cut and compelling, but you invent reasons to doubt them, such as your statements about entrainment in the Fleischsmann-Pons boil off experiments. Or your assertion that a 1 L cell will displace ~20 L of water.

Clear-cut results do not attract money in controversial fields. They attract attacks. They attract academic politics and irrational opposition. This can be seen in the history of many scientific and technological breakthroughs such as the laser and the MRI. The better the results, the stronger the opposition was. In cold fusion, for example:

The National Cold Fusion Institute published definitive proof in peer-reviewed journals that cold fusion produces tritium, so it is a nuclear effect. The Institute was quickly attacked and closed down. People such as you, who are determined not to believe any claim about cold fusion, never comment on these results. Or SRI, or Miles, or any other. (For some reason you feel free to invent nonsense about Fleischmann and Pons, but not these others.)

Most research at SRI was closed down as soon as they published positive results. The ANS paid Hoffman to write an absurd little book justifying this. The leader of the anti-cold fusion faction at EPRI wrote the introduction to it. They paid Hoffman hundreds of thousands, which is more than many cold fusion studies. The book was so full of lies it nearly triggered a lawsuit, so the publisher added a slip of paper with an addendum. It is one of the few true statements in the book.

When Miles published his results (http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesManomalousea.pdf), the managers at China Lake were furious with him. They cited his report as the reason to reassign him to a menial job as a stock room clerk, despite the fact that he was a Fellow of the Institute. See pp. 152 - 161:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanlettersfroa.pdf

While good studies were attacked and closed down, Kamiokande and other inept studies conducted by people opposed to cold fusion fusion were lavishly funded. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJlessonsfro.pdf

Display More

Jed,

“Clear cut results” seems rather subjective.

Results that are replicable by multiple trusted sources using the same BOM, build instructions, testing protocols/procedures and getting the same results will always attract money.

Attacks will certainly come, but will wither and die if he results are replicable.

Quote from Roseland67

Attacks will certainly come, but will wither and die if he results are replicable.

The negative reaction against CF in 1989 had two main reasons.

1) The going public by PF was against law, if they would have been physicists... National security tried to tease down the whole field before it could emerge.

2) CERN, ITER with 10'000+ physicists already had to fight against Mills theory. CF was a new threat to their funny live-style. Thus the establishment had to react.

Now about 30 years later and spoiled tens of billions and ten thousand of nonsense papers, the standard nuclear and particle physics has entered the end of live phase. If they are awake, then they can already smell the perfume of the new reality, that will erase their past.

Wyttenbach

Quote

If you can't accept that LENR is real, you should think about quitting the forum...

What makes you think I can't accept that LENR, or just about anything, is real? All it takes to get my acceptance is really strong evidence. The obvious problem with LENR is that it is unlikely to be real, based on known science. Using nickel and hydrogen to make LENR is even less likely than other proposed systems because so much is known about those elements from battery technology. The evidence, therefore, has to be compelling. You (and Jed Rothwell for sure) may think it's compelling but most people don't. Similarly, Jed and many others thought Rossi's claims were compelling and many still think it. Most people and most scientists either don't care or don't believe it because the evidence is not strong. Your opinion may differ but don't exclude me from the discussion because my opinion is different from yours. Not unless you want to make it a religion.

Quote

Attacks will certainly come, but will wither and die if he results are replicable.

The negative reaction against CF in 1989 had two main reasons.

1) The going public by PF was against law, if they would have been physicists... National security tried to tease down the whole field before it could emerge.

2) CERN, ITER with 10'000+ physicists already had to fight against Mills theory. CF was a new threat to their funny live-style. Thus the establishment had to react.

Now about 30 years later and spoiled tens of billions and ten thousand of nonsense papers, the standard nuclear and particle physics has entered the end of live phase. If they are awake, then they can already smell the perfume of the new reality, that will erase their past.

Display More

You and Adrien seem to like straw men. Sure, if the evidence is there and replicable, the attacks will die. Problem is, it isn't.

Nobody is fighting Mill's theories, most people don't know and don't care. Mills has yet to accomplish anything other than meaningless shows of bright lights and he has been trying to prove himself for going on 30 years with the theory.

CF is no threat to anyone except occasionally investors like Tom Darden, Neil Woodford and Dewey Weaver. A new reality? ROTFWL. Like the old lady used to say in the Wendy's add: "Show me the beef!"

Quote from seven_of_twenty

What makes you think I can't accept that LENR, or just about anything, is real? All it takes to get my acceptance is really strong evidence. The obvious problem with LENR is that it is unlikely to be real, based on known science. Using nickel and hydrogen to make LENR is even less likely than other proposed systems because so much is known about those elements from battery technology. The evidence, therefore, has to be compelling. You (and Jed Rothwell for sure) may think it's compelling but most people don't. Similarly, Jed and many others thought Rossi's claims were compelling and many still think it.

seven_of_twenty : Three years ago I had the same position concerning Ni-H LENR.

But since two years I work on LENR theory = new physics. It's a shame how easy it is to show that the standard model has a severe loop-hole. Anything you believe that is known about LENR, based on current physics, is just awfully wrong.

But I understand that for non physicists it is clear that it doesn't work...

Quote from Roseland67

“Clear cut results” seems rather subjective.

The definition of "clear cut" in this case is defined exactly, in the peer-reviewed papers. See, for example, Will's discussion of the tritium signal to noise ratios, the number of deliberate blank runs and failed runs, and the methods used to confirm the tritium. Or the discussion of these subjects at BARC and LANL. These are technical evaluations with clearly defined standards and criteria. Not subjective at all. Those people know a great deal about tritium. As they say, if they did not know a great deal about it, they would be dead, since BARC is India's largest power reactor as well as its premier nuclear research and bomb-making laboratory.

Quote from Roseland67

Results that are replicable by multiple trusted sources using the same BOM, build instructions, testing protocols/procedures and getting the same results will always attract money.

You do not know much about the history of science or commerce. See, for example, the difficulties financing the Transcontinental Railroad, which was arguably the most profitable venture in history; or the difficulties inventing the laser or the MRI.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

What makes you think I can't accept that LENR, or just about anything, is real? All it takes to get my acceptance is really strong evidence

There is really strong evidence, from hundreds of labs. As I mentioned, there is irrefutable evidence for tritium from Will (NCFI), LANL, BARC and many others. If you do not think so, that is probably because you do not know much about tritium. I think you should realize that your knowledge is limited and it is unlikely you are right about this, and the technical staff at LANL and BARC are wrong. As they said at BARC, "if we were wrong about tritium, we would be dead."

If you think you know much more about tritium than these people, and you think you can prove their papers are wrong, I suppose you are arrogant or you are suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect. I do not know your background. Perhaps you call tell us how you came to be an expert in tritium? Here, for comparison, is the CV of the guy who measured tritium at Los Alamos:

Roland A. Jalbert

*25 years working with tritium and tritium detection
*involved in the development, design, and implementation of tritium instrumentation for 15 years
*for 12 years he has had prime responsibility for the design, implementation, and maintenance of all tritium instrumentation at a major fusion technology development facility (Tritium Systems Test Assembly ).
*Consultant on tritium instrumentation to other fusion energy facilities for 10 years (Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princeton )

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/EPRInsfepriwor.pdf

This is from the 1989 National Science Foundation conference on cold fusion. The participants are listed and I see you are not among them. Why is that? Were you at Princeton or LANL?

I do not recall seeing any papers published by you showing errors in the experiments. Where are they? Can you cite any other papers? Do you have any technical reasons, or are you just making assertions without evidence or justification? If that's what you are doing, it ain't science.

JedRothwell

I don't recall claiming to know anything about tritium nor about errors in experiments. What I know is that most scientists have not been drawn to study LENR. Investors and entrepreneurs are not flocking to it. In my opinion, just opinion not based on my doing calculations or experiments, this is not because they hate LENR, are afraid of LENR, etc. etc. It's because attempts to get reliable and promising results from LENR seem to succeed only when done by people who "believe" in LENR. Mainline scientists have no luck with duplicating that work.

It might not be worthwhile to rehash the arguments for and against LENR again here. I didn't mean to. I was only replying to the absurd claim that, faced with enough powerful evidence, skeptics, me included, mainline science included would refuse to believe the evidence. Fact is, if LENR were as obvious a promising source of energy as Jed claims, someone, somewhere would be providing much more generous funding for it. LENR has gotten somewhat adequate funding as recently as Darden's attempts. How's that going for him and his associates so far?

Edited: Shanahan knows a great deal about tritium, apparently works with dangerous amounts of it, and he is not convinced by the evidence and states why. True, I know little or nothing about tritium but he certainly does.

Cue argument that Shanahan is a loon and thinks mice make water disappear or whole buckets of water can evaporate overnight without a heat source. I've been reading a little of Jed's stuff.

Seven~

If the reaction within lenr jeopardizes national security you absolutely would not find measuring devices built to test such a device nor would you see any active development anywhere in the world before a more terrifying device to keep nations at bay was available to keep the peace.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

I don't recall claiming to know anything about tritium nor about errors in experiments.

If you know nothing about the tritium cold fusion experiments, then you do not know anything about cold fusion, and you should refrain from holding any opinion or discussing it. You should not believe it, or disbelieve it.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

What I know is that most scientists have not been drawn to study LENR. Investors and entrepreneurs are not flocking to it.

If you talk to scientists who oppose cold fusion, you will see that they are as ignorant of subject as you are. They have no rational reason not to "flock to it," any more than the investors in San Francisco had reasons to denigrate and ignore the prospectus for the Transcontinental Railroad. The reasons they give for rejecting cold fusion are absurd violations of elementary science, and idiotic mistakes. See, for example:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

There is not a single published paper with a valid reason to reject these claims. If you disagree, tell us the author and title of such a paper.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

In my opinion, just opinion not based on my doing calculations or experiments, this is not because they hate LENR, are afraid of LENR, etc. etc. It's because attempts to get reliable and promising results from LENR seem to succeed only when done by people who "believe" in LENR. Mainline scientists have no luck with duplicating that work.

An opinion about a scientific claim that is not based on calculation and experiments has no merit. It has no meaning. Calculation and experiments are the only valid criteria anyone can use to evaluate science. Opinions, popularity, gut feelings and the like are irrelevant. These experiments are grounded in the laws of thermodynamics, and they use instruments and techniques dating back to the 1840s, so it is extremely unlikely they are wrong. If you cannot point to a scientific paper showing errors in these experiments, you have no reason to doubt them.

All of the scientists who replicated cold fusion are "mainline" (mainstream) professionals. Not a single one of them believed it before he or she replicated. Most did not believe their own results until several others replicated. So, what you are saying is incorrect.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

I've been reading a little of Jed's stuff.

Careful, that can be hazardous to your health (and it draws rodents).

Quote from Shane D.

and a good scientist will take them as they are, and base their conclusion on what the numbers tell him, not what he wants them to.

Which is why you can know that the majority of the CF researchers are 'bad' scientists. I took their numbers, analyzed them differently, came to a different conclusion, and they choose to ignore or denigrate that, rather than doing what you suggest (which is to let the data tell the story, not what the researcher wants to see before entering the lab).

Well, as a comparatively but not totally "lay" individual, I read or view things about subatomic particles, watch a NOVA segment on the LHC or on the Hubble's findings, theories about volcanoes, even stuff about black holes and come away with a feeling of solidity. Sure, not complete confidence but it sort of makes sense. I never got that impression from LENR research. I know that won't please Jed who will say it's stupid. Maybe it is but LENR seems too full of disagreements, too lacking reasonable theories, too against established knowledge, and way too full of overoptimistic predictions.

In additions to objections voiced here, I am also put off by a lack of followup and a vigorous calling out by the "community": about claims that are either frauds ornever come to fruition despite extensive hyping. Now, I am thinking, for example, where is Brillouin's fancy fluidized bed boiler? Where is Miley's space battery? Where is Mizumo's kilowatt machine? How about Ahern's promises? Where are Duncan's results for >$5M of Kimmel's foundation money? How about those sonofusion/bubble fusion guys that claimed the radiation exposure (forget their name)?, And of course there is Rossi who was believed for 7 years despite literally dozens of red flags and then it took huge volumes of depositions and evidence to bring him down and we are still arguing about him here, believe it or not! Those are other things that make me doubt that anything is there. To be credible, you have to be eager to disprove and root out the bad claims. Pro LENR people don't seem to be.

It is important not to judge the empirical evidence in a field such as LENR by irrational proponents who become attached to every implausible claim made by this or that entrepreneur. Familiarizing oneself with the literature will help to form an opinion about which voices are credible and which are merely credulous outliers in a small, self-selected group. The people and companies in the list you give are very different from one another; some are not credible, or even possibly predatory, while others have quite a bit of credibility. The temptation to lump everyone in the same category should be avoided.

I look forward to what Robert Duncan has to publish, for example, and am hoping some kind of publication is in the works in connection with the Sidney Kimmel grant.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

JedRothwell

I don't recall claiming to know anything about tritium nor about errors in experiments. What I know is that most scientists have not been drawn to study LENR. Investors and entrepreneurs are not flocking to it. In my opinion, just opinion not based on my doing calculations or experiments, this is not because they hate LENR, are afraid of LENR, etc. etc. It's because attempts to get reliable and promising results from LENR seem to succeed only when done by people who "believe" in LENR. Mainline scientists have no luck with duplicating that work.

It might not be worthwhile to rehash the arguments for and against LENR again here. I didn't mean to. I was only replying to the absurd claim that, faced with enough powerful evidence, skeptics, me included, mainline science included would refuse to believe the evidence. Fact is, if LENR were as obvious a promising source of energy as Jed claims, someone, somewhere would be providing much more generous funding for it. LENR has gotten somewhat adequate funding as recently as Darden's attempts. How's that going for him and his associates so far?

Edited: Shanahan knows a great deal about tritium, apparently works with dangerous amounts of it, and he is not convinced by the evidence and states why. True, I know little or nothing about tritium but he certainly does.

Cue argument that Shanahan is a loon and thinks mice make water disappear or whole buckets of water can evaporate overnight without a heat source. I've been reading a little of Jed's stuff.

Display More

Science runs into LENR from time to time and the are amazed by it. The SAFIRE project is an example. The research team there after years of research finally came to the realization that LENR was affecting their experiment in a major way. They now realize that the hot fusion systems are crazy. LENR is the only way to go to produce hydrogen based nuclear reactions.

Quote from Shane D.

I do respect you, but your stating "the majority of the CF researchers are bad scientists" is really uncalled for, nor true.

Shane,

To date, not one CF scientist has seriously considered the ramifications of my 2002 Thermochimica Acta paper (which actually was available in late 2000 as per the date on the manuscript). By simple mathematics, I demonstrated an issue with a set of calorimetric data that allowed for a 'normal' physics/chemistry explanation of the apparent excess heat signals in that Fleischmann-Pons electrolysis experiment. That math and chemistry is applicable to all F&P-type experiments and the math is applicable to any calibrated method. At that time F&P-type cell experiments giving apparent excess heat were the primary block of data suggesting CF (see Ed Storms 2007 book). Thus my postulates affected all electrolysis-calorimetry results developed to that time, and since they have not been addressed that extends to today.

The generic idea is that if there are two potential explanations for a set of observations, one can't claim one is correct and the other is not without investigating them. To date, no one has investigated the alternative I presented, yet I find suggestive evidence of it in every so-called 'replication' (to use JR's definition of the term). Instead we have the 2010 J. Environ. Monitoring paper JR always cites which uses a strawman representation of what I wrote, proves it wrong (correctly, as expected), and then claims to have proven my thesis wrong (incorrectly). Hagelstein quotes that paper in his 2015 MIT course intro when discussing the 'unfair' attitudes CF researchers will face, and then when asked a simple question about what I wrote, he has to defer his answer to the next day because he has to read my paper to get the answer. So he read it enough to extract the comments he wanted, but he clearly didn't understand the reasoning behind them.

In 2017, we have Melvin Miles writing me that he's never even read my papers (yet he could sign off on how 'wrong' it was back in 2010 and 2004). And then we have the recently released Miles-Fleischmann communications that shows Fleischmann didn't even want to read my paper, let alone communicate with me on it, but he would denigrate my idea in print (in the 2004 publication with Szpak, Mosier-Boss, and Miles, and the version that Miles published in Infinite Energy in 2017, supposedly written by Fleischmann himself, (on what technical basis could he do that do you think?)).

Also, we have the McKubre story, where I asked him twice for the 'transfer functions' he used to calibrate his M-series runs in his 1998 report. After he failed to provide them and I tried a 'Hail Mary' approach to see if anyone else knew them, rather than engaging me, he labelled me a 'grandstander' and broke off communications permanently.

I may not have mentioned it previously, but I tried talking with Tom Claytor about his experiments, but he quit communication as soon as he figured out I was skeptical (a total of 4 emails exchanged as I recall).

Also, as you know from reading my whitepaper, I tried to publish a comment on the Kitamura, et al., publication on Pd/ZrO2 studies and was rebuffed by the editor, but most importantly, Kitamura, et al., did officially respond to my paper in the review process, so they know the objections I have to their work (and subsequent Pd/ZrO2 work that doesn't address my raised issues), but they have never responded or changed anything they claim based on them.

And finally, all indications I have say that the CF community talks with each other, and that they all know about me and my objections. However, I suspect they are like Miles and have never bothered to read what I wrote, instead depending on the opinion of the one guy who did (Ed Storms), possibly with input from the second reviewer of my first paper who only wrote a couple of paragraphs against my paper with no details, unlike Storms. (If you want to know what Storms wrote during the review period, his 2006 publication against my work was nothing but a publication of the private review process, as was my response to him). By the way, the fact that Ed referenced my original paper in his book, and claimed to have rebutted it fully, without mentioning I responded to his 'rebuttal' point-by-point in a paper published side-by-side with the paper he referenced clearly shows the extreme bias against critics that the CF community has.

I doubt Robert Duncan has read my work either, since I am sure he at least would understand that if there is no real excess heat, there can be no real He-heat correlation as they construe it.

Another example not involving me is the claim by Miley that he produced all kinds of transmutation products in his Paterson Power Cell-beads experiments. Scott Little showed a) that he could reproduce the results, and b) that almost all of the 'new' element signals fell under the noise level and that of those that didn't, the largest ones could be traced to contaminants. Miley never changed his story on that either, nor do I recall that he even responded to Little's results (but I may be mis-remembering there, please correct me if I'm wrong on that).

The key thing about 'science' is that it is a group activity. There's an old adage that says you never have a discovery until someone else confirms it, and this is true (consider Rossi for example). So, 'good' scientists know this, and when criticized, they respond appropriately by either conducting more experiments to clairify the situation or by pointing out logical flaws in the criticisms (not inventing strawman versions of them to 'destroy'). 'Bad' scientists however do not do that. They use all the logical fallacies they can to denigrate their critics and then claim victory, which means they legitimize their failure to engage in the scientific process of criticism and subsequent refinement of the supporting data.

So Shane, show me a CFer who demonstrates understanding of my points (or Little's) and has actually addressed the issues. That would be 'good' scientific practice. By definition, those who do the opposite are 'bad'. And it is never uncalled for to point out bad science.

Kirk S.