Atom-Ecology

    Wyttenbach wrote:

    Depends on what linear means. If the excess energy is constant - e.g. 25 Watts - then certainly the LENR reaction rate is independent of the current cooling T.


    I don't think that the excess heat production in the figure from Russ George's blog can be very constant. If you look at the shape of the gold coloured region in that plot it seems to suggest that the lenr-associating heating turns on slowly and then turns off slowly. It also seems to suggest that the lenr-heating is increasing as temperature declines .. which is possible but odd.


    Note that the labels on the figure only say that excess heating is "25+ watts" over 2.5 hours.

    Bruce__H wrote:

    It also seems to suggest that the lenr-heating is increasing as temperature declines .. which is possible but odd.

    First of all, it is odd why a nucleus would care at all about a bit higher temperature than room temperature.

    What effect / mechanism should trigger a nuclear reaction at, lets say, 500 Kelvin, but not at 300 Kelvin?

    I would suggest that this discussion on cooling curves and the heat/heresy relationship be moved to a dedicated thread- you can discuss our current data there with pleasure, but it's rather derailing this thread. What do you think?

    Alan Smith wrote:

    I would suggest that this discussion on cooling curves and the heat/heresy relationship be moved to a dedicated thread- you can discuss our current data there with pleasure, but it's rather derailing this thread. What do you think?


    I launched my part of the discussion on activation and cooling because the figure in Russ George's blog that shows "heat after death" does not accord with how I I think this phenomenon should appear given some very common assumptions.


    So from my perspective I am still trying to sort out the Androcles results. I think the discussion belongs here.

    Bruce__H wrote:

    I'm not clear on your meaning here. What is "this"?


    If you are saying that the sigmoidal activation relationship I posited is linear over part of its range, then I agree. The crucial point is that it is not globally linear like newtonian cooling. Just the property of lenr activation being near zero at low temperatures and then nonzero at more positive temperatures is enough to establish a threshold.

    Bruce__H wrote:

    What is W when T < -a/k ?

    The plot indicates this linear relationship in the region of interest, this condition would never be satisfied in this region else of cause for all possible temperatures you have a variation and your

    analysis is for cases seen in other experiments. Data suggest linear, and that's possible with a reaction that is linear in the region so if the experement is ok we can draw the conclusion that probably the reaction rate is close to linear in the region and that's the reaction kinetics for this kind of experiment LENR or checmical whatever.

    stefan wrote:

    The plot indicates this linear relationship in the region of interest, this condition would never be satisfied in this region else of cause for all possible temperatures you have a variation and your

    analysis is for cases seen in other experiments. Data suggest linear, and that's possible with a reaction that is linear in the region so if the experement is ok we can draw the conclusion that probably the reaction rate is close to linear in the region and that's the reaction kinetics for this kind of experiment LENR or checmical whatever.


    I don't think you have understood the analysis.


    Along the linear part of the lenr activation curve a positive feedback develops -- as temperature rises, lenr heating turns on, but this creates a further temperature rise which further increases lenr heating etc. The part of the temperature range where activation is linear is therefore not stable and temperatures increase until the reactor melts or some other factor comes into play. At low temperatures, below the linear range of activation, heating power is zero or near zero. This is what confers the threshhold on the temperature behaviour of the system.


    I see no indication of a threshold at play in the freely varying fueled-reactor temperature (the red trace) in Russ George's figure.

    Bruce__H wrote:

    I see no indication of a threshold at play in the freely varying fueled-reactor temperature (the red trace) in Russ George's figure.


    Don't go confusing LENR with chemistry. For example, the system was much less active today, nothing in the parameters was changed, the same test gave us around 2W. Tomorrow it may be different again. Simple chemistry - or simple linear relationships between temperature and anomalous heat don't always work out in this system. In fact, we suspect that there are no less than 3 systems (or event-chains - whatever) at work here, moving in and out of synch with each other. I'll sleep on the 'dedicated thread' issue and decide tomorrow. Making another thread -as I said before- does not stop you discussing the data Russ presented. If I move everything, I will do my best to keep the discussion coherent.

    Alan Smith wrote:

    Don't go confusing LENR with chemistry.

    LENR is definitely the product of chemistry, and it follows many laws similar to chemistry. Many nuclear reactions do.


    LENR is the product of chemistry in the same sense that a plutonium fission explosion is the product of a chemical implosion. It is triggered by a chemical effect. In LENR, increased heat will increase chemical activity which -- presumably -- triggers more LENR activity. However it does that.


    It is also the product of chemistry in that it only works in a narrow set of physical and chemical conditions, in an NAE (Storms). It is form of catalysis. I mean the physical properties and configuration of the metal trigger the reaction, and they are not "used up." The metal catalyzes and the deuterium or hydrogen is the fuel.


    There are also nuclear catalysts.


    Alan Smith wrote:

    For example, the system was much less active today, nothing in the parameters was changed, the same test gave us around 2W. Tomorrow it may be different again. Simple chemistry - or simple linear relationships between temperature and anomalous heat don't always work out in this system.

    Nothing about LENR is simple. Catalysis never is. It isn't linear, but it has some linear components which you can see if you can strip away other control factors.


    Assuming this is LENR, I would expect it to change even though the parameters were not changed. Not changed by you, that is. Some unknown, uncontrolled parameter changed.


    Then again, this behavior might indicate some sort of error. Because I would also expect the HAD to be quite different than what these graphs show. It is possible you have discovered an exceptionally stable form of LENR, with HAD that looks entirely different from other forms. Possible, but I kind of doubt it, so if I had to guess, based on this graph, I would guess this a mistake. I have no idea what kind of mistake it might be. As I said before, I suggest you try to repeat it and see if the results are very close the previous ones. That would be a bad sign.

    Alan Smith wrote:

    For example, the system was much less active today, nothing in the parameters was changed, the same test gave us around 2W. Tomorrow it may be different again. Simple chemistry - or simple linear relationships between temperature and anomalous heat don't always work out in this system. In fact, we suspect that there are no less than 3 systems (or event-chains - whatever) at work here, moving in and out of synch with each other.


    I don't suppose that my simple models capture the full complexity of any physical situation. All models are caricatures. But that is their strength as well as their weakness. One should always begin with the simplest of proposals to see how much they can explain.


    I am also trying to make any assumptions I make testable. That is one of the points of positing a simple signmoidal activation with temperature. You should be able to see it pretty directly if it is there (although you might be limited by the lack of active cooling available to your PID controller).

    JedRothwell wrote:

    It is also the product of chemistry in that it only works in a narrow set of physical and chemical conditions, in an NAE (Storms). It is form of catalysis.


    Why is that tiny fleck of Russ' fuel so central to LENR activity? How can that minuscule portion of fuel be so chemically active for so long? Does the fuel have cracks as Storm's theory requires? Why doesn't the NAE degrade in Russ' reactor in short order? How can a catalyst produce gamma radiation. If fusion was going on, we would see the spectrum of that fusion...in fact, we don't see that gamma spectrum. It might be time for Jed to go back to the drawing board.

    RussGeorge wrote:

    While a bit less poetic but perhaps equally inspirational here's a glimpse of the end of the fossil fuel/fool age, revealed to Alan, Martin, and I in this afternoons experiment in the barley fields of Essex, and coming real soon to a blue planet you love. The crop is nearly ready for harvest, these tiny grains of cold fusion barley will save this blue planet for one and all at a cost 'too cheap to meter.' Oh what those lovely gammas can do when they want to dance. Want the context for you personally, a mere handful of these grains might likely cook your families food, and heat and light your home forever! read more


    I hope that you'll try to enhance the heat production so that a constant temperature can be maintained for a period of time after the power has been cut off. There are many possibilities to try, but I understand that you are a small team with a ton of work and a lack of lab assistants. One quick suggestion would be that after you electrolytically load your fuel pellet, that you expose it to an atomic hydrogen plasma either before placing it in the active reactor or in the active reactor. A big issue here is the KE of the atomic hydrogen that you want to get into the pellet. The greater the KE the deeper they will penetrate. You will be severely limited in electrolytic systems due to the low voltages involved. In an atomic hydrogen plasma, the atoms can have much higher KE and penetrate further and load the metal to a higher degree. Moreover, I'd even suggest loading the pellet in an atomic hydrogen environment with varying but small percentages of argon. Simply put, the argon (xenon would be even better) would help stabilize EVO production so the spheromaks produced in the plasma would not only be more plentiful but have more penetrating power. Interestingly, I saw a plasma based cigarette lighter at Walmart the other day and I thought that it would be awesome to place it in a hydrogen environment and hold your pellets between the electrodes to "load" them with hydrogen.

    Those here who are reading into my work more than what appears are just fooling, or satisfying, themselves alone in the dark. My series of exploratory experiments are able to last for very long periods of time, one well over 100 days now. During these long time frames where a large array of data is collected every second from multiple reactors. Some few are stone cold dead controls, others with variations on my Atom-Ecology fuel mix, all the active ones show distinct similarities and distinct differences in both thermal and gamma data. Shortly I expect to double up on the simultaneously running active experiments all of which act as 'controls' for one another by their differences. To suggest that one brief snap-shot from but one active reactor such as my 'golden heat after power off curve' is all there is, is of course simply foolhardy or worse. My publication of that golden curve has served me well to attract some useful communication from those skilled in the art and sadly has also resulted in 100 times as much anon troll drool. That anything is shared in such an early stage of an ongoing experimental process I think all will agree is extraordinary, and very possibly foolhardy on my part.


    To settle this banal discussion about the defining characteristics of that golden curve experiment, that experiment has periods where no changes whatsoever are made in the operating protocal, and the golden difference changes dramatically. That frequently changing behaviour puts an end to all this silly talk about the validity and meaning of the curve(s) with regard to heat after power off.


    My attention is captured more by the phenomenal gamma data which is far more interesting than the heat at this point. It is perfectly clear that the myriad gammas are associated with a miniscule fraction of the cold fusion heat reaction but are imminently useful as a diagnostic tool. To my knowledge no one has ever seen such a plethora of gamma data from cold fusion or indeed any known nuclear process, it is true pioneering work in unknown territory. One does not catch the unknown in a net of the known as Krishnamurti used to say.


    This is easy science, as easy as putting a piece of toast in a toaster and knowingly watching, describing, and musing on the effects. I constantly am amazed at how so many people treat this as Twainian science and a game wherein ..."'There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.' Twain's more useful admonition was, ' Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.' Alas there is a lower ratio of sailors to humanity than there is of gammas to cold fusion heat.

    Bruce__H wrote:

    I don't think you have understood the analysis.


    Along the linear part of the lenr activation curve a positive feedback develops -- as temperature rises, lenr heating turns on, but this creates a further temperature rise which further increases lenr heating etc. The part of the temperature range where activation is linear is therefore not stable and temperatures increase until the reactor melts or some other factor comes into play. At low temperatures, below the linear range of activation, heating power is zero or near zero. This is what confers the threshhold on the temperature behaviour of the system.


    I see no indication of a threshold at play in the freely varying fueled-reactor temperature (the red trace) in Russ George's figure.

    Yes this is the case if Wreaction - Wcooling is positive, my point is that if Wreaction is k1T and Wcooling = k2T and k2 > k1 (assuming a = 0), then you will not get an increase as you suggest because it will cool just like with

    newtonian cooling, but with a slope with longer time constant, just what we see in the drawing. Yes you may say that the reaction rate follows another law, cause that is what we see in other experiments and then I counter

    that we do not know enough about the theoretical properties of the experimentr to exclude a k1T law in the region of the experiment.

    JedRothwell wrote:

    As I said before, I suggest you try to repeat it and see if the results are very close the previous ones. That would be a bad sign.


    I already said we repeated it and got different results. It will be repeated again and again I expect. Your argument is a bit like a 'cant win' scenario, repeat a test and get the same result is a bad sign you suggest, personally I think that repeatable experiments are better than those with wildly different results, which suggest equipment failures or data errors. Science and the data it produces will not always want to conform to your ideas, or mine.

    Forty-Two wrote:

    What effect / mechanism should trigger a nuclear reaction at, lets say, 500 Kelvin, but not at 300 Kelvin?

    Desorption of H from a metal hydride such as NiH into excited Rydberg species can only occur at high temperature, or - still better - following a rapid increase in temperature. This is well known physics.


    Less known physics: these excited H* atoms can then form ultra-dense hydrogen which, according to Holmlid, leads to various types of nuclear reactions depending on whether H or D is used.


    Meaning that the relation between temperature and nuclear reactions is indirect because mediated by the production of Rydberg matter such as when the temperature is increased from 300 to 500K.

    stefan wrote:

    my point is that if Wreaction is k1T and Wcooling = k2T and k2 > k1 (assuming a = 0), then you will not get an increase as you suggest because it will cool just like with

    newtonian cooling, but with a slope with longer time constant, just what we see in the drawing.


    Let me plot out your suggested relationship between lenr heating power and temperature.




    This involves negative power below some temperature. I don`t know what that means physically and I don`t think it is really what you mean to suggest, but it is a consequence of your model. Another problem with your models is that you need a=0 which corresponds to the supposition that the most important temperature along the activation curve -- the point where lenr power goes from positive to negative -- is exactly at laboratory ambient temperature (which is where newtonian cooling goes from positive to negative). I don`t get that.


    In contrast here is what I see as the simplest proposal that avoids a nonphysical negative power ...



    The lenr activation curve is now nonlinear. I have shown it as two straight lines in order to match your requirement of a linear relationship above some temperature. Nonetheless, everything I said previously about the establishment of a threshold still applies. The cooling curve you will get from this is not exponential. Exponential relaxations are for purely linear systems and this is not linear.


    One of my complaints about the Androcles results is that some of the behaviours from that system are very nonlinear (e.g., the bursting) and yet the cooling in Russ George`s golden-area figure cooling seems to be exponential, i.e., linear.

    Alan Smith wrote:

    Don't go confusing LENR with chemistry. For example, the system was much less active today, nothing in the parameters was changed, the same test gave us around 2W. Tomorrow it may be different again.


    I have no problem with this. I have supposed all along, because of the approximately 24 hr bursting cycle that there is another slow variable in the system. But over a period of several hours we can suppose that this variable is quasi invariant and that is the sort of assumption under which I have introduced simplistic threshold model and compared it to the Androcles results.

    RussGeorge wrote:

    To settle this banal discussion about the defining characteristics of that golden curve experiment, that experiment has periods where no changes whatsoever are made in the operating protocal, and the golden difference changes dramatically. That frequently changing behaviour puts an end to all this silly talk about the validity and meaning of the curve(s) with regard to heat after power off.


    The observation of changing characteristics in the golden curve experiment does not put an end to my objections unless the system at other times exhibits nonlinear behaviour such as thresholds and nonexponential relaxations during cooling.


    You are going to have to engage with well-founded objections such as mine sooner or later. I suppose the timing is up to you however. In the meantime, perhaps Alan Smith can convince you to lay off insults such as `anon troll drool`.


    So let's be more rigorous, Wcool = k1(T - T1), Wreact=k2(T-T2), T2 activation temperature,

    then Wreact-Wcool = (k2-k1)(T-(T2k2-T1k1)/(k2-k1)) = (k2-k1)(T - T0),

    say that k2 = k and k1 = Ak (A > 1 if k1 > k2)) lead to the everall cooling to be

    k(A-1)(T -T0), T0=(T2 -T1A)/(1-A), now assume

    A>1, T0 < T2

    <=> (T2-T1A) > T2(1-A)

    <=> (T2-T1)A > 0

    <=> T2 > T1


    which probably is the case, hence we know that under the condition A > 1, the system will decay

    with rate k1-k2 towards T2 and then the reaction deactivates and the system continous to

    cool to T1 with decay rate k1. This is true for all cases here k1 > k2.

    Bruce__H wrote:

    But over a period of several hours we can suppose that this variable is quasi invariant


    That would be a mistake. I have just been looking at some very strange data, with suggests there is a 15 second 'bursty heat' cycle, and at times another 5 second cycle. Puzzles the hell out of me.


    As for Russ, that comment was not personal, he gets pretty steamed up by anonymity though.

    stefan wrote:

    ... the system will decay with rate k1-k2 towards T2 and then the reaction deactivates and the system continous to cool to T1 with decay rate k1.


    This is incorrect as far as I can see. In your model the temperature doesn't decline to T2 at rate k1-k2 and then decline further to T1 at a different rate. Instead it declines globally towards T0 at rate k1-k2. And T0 is a temperature that is lower than the ambient temperature in the lab (which is T1).


    Why does your system head towards a temperature lower than the lab surroundings? It is because you have assumed that the lenr effect produces cooling power below T2 and I don't see how that is a physical assumption. You have gotten around this in words by saying that the reaction "deactivates". Well that is exactly my point. There is no deactivation in your model but there is in mine. And that region of temperatures over which the lenr process deactivates is exactly the nonlinearity that introduces thresholds and nonexponential relaxations.

    Alan Smith wrote:

    I already said we repeated it and got different results. It will be repeated again and again I expect. Your argument is a bit like a 'cant win' scenario, repeat a test and get the same result is a bad sign you suggest, personally I think that repeatable experiments are better than those with wildly different results

    It depends on how close the two curves are. If they fall exactly on top of one another, I would suspect that is generated some sort of instrument error, or method error. I have seen many results like that. Wildly different results are also bad.

    Bruce__H wrote:

    This is incorrect as far as I can see. In your model the temperature doesn't decline to T2 at rate k1-k2 and then decline further to T1 at a different rate. Instead it declines globally towards T0 at rate k1-k2. And T0 is a temperature that is lower than the ambient temperature in the lab (which is T1).


    Why does your system head towards a temperature lower than the lab surroundings? It is because you have assumed that the lenr effect produces cooling power below T2 and I don't see how that is a physical assumption. You have gotten around this in words by saying that the reaction "deactivates". Well that is exactly my point. There is no deactivation in your model but there is in mine. And that region of temperatures over which the lenr process deactivates is exactly the nonlinearity that introduces thresholds and nonexponential relaxations.

    your wrong, I modeled the T2 as the activation temperature and T2 > T0 so it will reach T2

    and then become deactivated and no longer active e.g. no more heat generated and what remains is the

    cooling only

    Alan Smith wrote:

    That would be a mistake. I have just been looking at some very strange data, with suggests there is a 15 second 'bursty heat' cycle, and at times another 5 second cycle. Puzzles the hell out of me.


    From your description of this strange behaviour I get the impression of a burst of heat excursions followed by a period of quiescence followed by another burst and so on with the bursts and possibly the quiescent periods having variable duration. If so then one explanation is a slow variable whose level builds up a little bit, but not much, during each heat excursion. A burst of such excursions then changes the variable sufficiently that the burst ends. Thereafter there is a decay of the slow variable until it hits levels low enough for the heat excursions to begin again. From the standpoint of the mechanism underlying individual heat excursions, the slow variable appears as a slowly changing parameter.


    Many conceptual tools have been developed over the years for thinking about the behaviour of nonlinear systems possessing multiple interacting variables and/or interacting entities. This all comes under the rubric of "nonlinear dynamical systems theory", if that is useful information for you. The theory contains terms such as limit cycle, steady state, basin of attraction, bifurcation, singular pertubation, and synchronization.


    If you wish I can amplify a bit, with particular relevance to lenr, or I could suggest some basic references where these ideas have been applied to ecology or neuroscience. Or maybe you guys know all this already.

    stefan wrote:

    your wrong, I modeled the T2 as the activation temperature and T2 > T0 so it will reach T2

    and then become deactivated and no longer active e.g. no more heat generated and what remains is the

    cooling only

    You say Wreact=k2(T-T2). Doesn't this mean that Wreact <0 when T<T2? What does a negative power mean physically for the lenr mechanism? It is in your model but what does it mean?


    You keep saying that the lenr mechanism will deactivate at some point. This is how you avoid the negative lenr power. But that is just words, you don't have the deactivation in your model. I have it explicitly in mine and that is exactly what confers the threshold and nonexponential behaviour.

    Bruce__H wrote:

    You say Wreact=k2(T-T2). Doesn't this mean that Wreact <0 when T<T2? What does a negative power mean physically for the lenr mechanism? It is in your model but what does it mean?


    You keep saying that the lenr mechanism will deactivate at some point. This is how you avoid the negative lenr power. But that is just words, you don't have the deactivation in your model. I have it explicitly in mine and that is exactly what confers the threshold and nonexponential behaviour.

    I presented the formula and said T2 is the activation temperature meaning Wreact = 0 for T < T2

    OK. With Wreact = 0 for T less than some activation temperature (which for moderate temperatures qualitatively matches my model), and for k_cooling (k1) greater than k_heating (k2), I see that T should exponentially decline from some high temperature down to the activation temperature and then more quickly but still exponentially decline towards T1.


    How do you match all this with the red trace in Russ George`s figure.




    Where do you think T2 is?