Where is the LENR goal line, and how best do we get there?

On his Atom Ecology blog, Russ George has a new entry called "Have Cold Fusion Will Travel". In it, he lays out his hope that since his Androcles reactor is small he will be able to visit different laboratories and show off its capabilities. Here is how he puts it ...

"Whether it will be next week or a ‘few’ more weeks I am increasingly confident that my version of cold fusion will fit neatly into my shirt pocket like a fountain pen. With my highly portable ‘state of the art Gamma Spectrometer’ strapped/holstered to my belt, and my laptop computer at the ready, I’ll be able to travel"

So -- does a travelling demo show such as this put Androcles over the goal line? I understand that Smith et al may be planning to do other things too, but should anyone be convinced just by seeing the Androcles system producing gamma radiation right there in their own lab?

I think that the answer is no. It isn`t an independent replication.

Quote from Bruce__H

On his Atom Ecology blog, Russ George has a new entry called "Have Cold Fusion Will Travel". In it, he lays out his hope that since his Androcles reactor is small he will be able to visit different laboratories and show off its capabilities. Here is how he puts it ...

"Whether it will be next week or a ‘few’ more weeks I am increasingly confident that my version of cold fusion will fit neatly into my shirt pocket like a fountain pen. With my highly portable ‘state of the art Gamma Spectrometer’ strapped/holstered to my belt, and my laptop computer at the ready, I’ll be able to travel"

So -- does a travelling demo show such as this put Androcles over the goal line? I understand that Smith et al may be planning to do other things too, but should anyone be convinced just by seeing the Androcles system producing gamma radiation right there in their own lab?

I think that the answer is no. It isn`t an independent replication.

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If this demo has gammas as a clear anomalous positive (clearer, and more diagnostic, than excess heat) then taking the device to another lab and letting THEM measure gammas with their own equipment would indeed be useful, and provide enormous credibility if results are positive.

From this I'm not quite sure that is what Russ has in mind? Nor do I think that he has lab rat proof gamma generation going on. Hope I'm wrong.

THH

a traveling demo show would not do it for me.

again, my goal posts are "when Science, Nature, and Sci. American have a half dozen positive articles in a year." And that will likely be very far into the future.

Quote from oldguy

again, my goal posts are "when Science, Nature, and Sci. American have a half dozen positive articles in a year."

That depends entirely on politics, not science. You have to understand, once Sci. Am. has it in for someone, they never stop attacking them. The Wright brothers made fools of them in 1906, and they never forgave them, and never stopped claiming the Wrights did not really invent anything. Their most recent attack on the Wrights was in 2003 on the 100th anniversary of the first flight.

If cold fusion is commercialized, it replaces all other sources of energy, and it ends the threat of global warming, in 2089 Sci. Am. Nature and the others will denigrate Fleischmann, Pons and all other researchers now alive, claiming they did not discover anything. They never admit they were wrong, and they never take responsibility for the damage they cause.

Jed, you are likely correct - they will never or be very slow to acknowledge error and guilt.

But that is still my hope and where my personal goal posts are. I have long since given up on commercial profits or having everyone nod their heads at a demo.

I personally believe it will be within 5 to 10 years for a commercial product of some kind (water heater??) and such things are already in reach or at least "at the finger tips". Reaching that goal is inevitable and a true long range goal is something that is beyond your current reach. It is the hopes and dreams that keep people like me going through years of struggle.

Ah, alas, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

Quote from Alan Smith

What a good idea. why didn't we think of that?

Alan. Sarky "we know it all" comments are all good fun, but you are playing to criticism that you deliberately provoke.

(1) Data as revealed here of gammas is interesting but in the realm of "some weird error we don't understand" rather than "we have an LENR on-demand gamma generator".

(2) Russ George talks about his work in a way that does not inspire confidence, describing a demo in which he brings his own test instruments to take to other labs

Personally, I'm very open to the possibility that detected gammas from an experiment indicate some real unusual physics - low level nuclear reactions from unexpected high shielding of hydrogen nuclei within a lattice or whatever. Or, that the results noted are explained by some really difficult to identify experimental error source (and you well know that such things are common). Against that I'd note that such low level nuclear reactions do not cohere with observed excess heat (because the sensitivity is so much higher, for measurable excess you'd need much higher gamma counts). Additional hypotheses that conveniently dispose of most expected high energy products via one to very many coupling mechanisms are as you know one of the more difficult theoretical problems for a viable LENR theory, so there is no strong expected correlation between low level gamma evidence and excess heat evidence, and a concern about the coincidence that physics conspires to make real LENR indistinguishable from experimental error.

I have less patience here with the "special pleading" excuse of LENR experimenters for hinting at results without writing them up in a way that would allow critique and replication. In my view that is a strong encouragement for people with delusions to keep them for longer than is needed.

Whenever there are LENR results that look interesting they are replicated. Take for example the Letts dual-laser replication http://coldfusioncommunity.net…2018/08/1_JCMNS-Vol20.pdf

I'm almost tempted to start a thread on that since it describes in detail a careful experimental methodology not usually written up in LENR experiment writeups.

Quote from Shane D.

I would have to say I detect a bit of mainstream arrogance in THH's comment. A first for him IMO, and he and I go back a few years. Surprisingly so, when taking into account he is only a bus fare away from seeing it first hand, and has an open invite.

Shane, I beg to disagree. First because I'm not a "mainstream" person, whatever that is. Second because my view above that special pleading helps no-one and (when replicated across most of a field) harms it, is a valid point, not arrogance.

I was not aware of an open invite, nor of any such convenient bus (but then geography has never been my strong point and I guess the UK must seem a tiny place from a US perspective). Anyway, should Alan wish to invite me to look at this stuff I'd consider it. He could PM me. Personally I think what is needed is to write things up clearly. From that it is easier to see the strengths and weaknesses of the work, and how to proceed. Being on the spot and asking questions can help with that, but I'm a slow person. When I first encounter a new problem I don't usually understand it properly, and it takes at least a few weeks of persistent reflection (often longer) to get as far with it as (I) can. Which makes a day long or whatever visit a bit unsatisfactory because the visitor does not work things out enough in that timescale to ask the right questions. So in the interests of efficiency for everyone there might be better methods of initial engagement than physical visits: rather as committee meetings without decent preparatory documents are pretty bad at dealing with complex problems.

Quote from Alan Smith

You should take a memory test. Have you already forgotten your reply of June 2nd to my PM about a 'show and tell' 60 miles from London with an open date. quoted below in part.

"Dear Alan,

I am remiss in not replying to this. It came at the wrong time .... I must decline the invite, though honoured to have been asked...... "

Ok, I understand that. It was not billed as a show and tell (or i misunderstood), and it more importantly it was not open in date! If you are interested in getting a wider range of experimental critiques I still think that private internet communication might be more effective than physical demos. You will understand why I'm not a fan of physical demos, except as "the icing on the cake" after methodology and equipment have all been discussed? I would make a very bad attendee for any of Rossi's circus acts.

Anyway, if you go on hinting at results that your best efforts can't explain other than as new physics I will become progressively more interested in the specifics, on the understanding that as a skeptic my view of marginal results is that they are probably nothing. I'd think you would yourselves have the resources to obtain results that can be written up, and if you want to do that I'll offer to help, since I like trying to be clear about things, and I'm good at presenting technical stuff. In the process I might help understand what is going on, though I don't expect my insights to be better than others, especially since I'm not that skilled in experimental physics.

I think my PR on what I understand you have (if no writeup) would be: "hey we've got an experiment here where we cannot understand the results, but it is not yet coherent and repeatable enough to make writing up possible", or something. In that case I'd say you need different methodology or instrumentation.

THH

Quote from Alan Smith

Quote me where he says that, I should slap his legs uf he did. Would you take your own Geiger to (for example) Harwell? I don't think so. We will of course release more information gradually, but on our own timescale.

"Whether it will be next week or a ‘few’ more weeks I am increasingly confident that my version of cold fusion will fit neatly into my shirt pocket like a fountain pen. With my highly portable ‘state of the art Gamma Spectrometer’ strapped/holstered to my belt, and my laptop computer at the ready, I’ll be able to travel"

Quote from THHuxleynew

... such low level nuclear reactions do not cohere with observed excess heat (because the sensitivity is so much higher, for measurable excess you'd need much higher gamma counts).

Any chance of putting a rough lower limit on the level of gamma radiation expected for the rate of excess heat generation claimed (~ 25 Watts)?

Quote from Bruce__H

Any chance of putting a rough lower limit on the level of gamma radiation expected for the rate of excess heat generation claimed (~ 25 Watts)?

v rough: 10MeV = 1.6E-9J so we need 1E9 reactions each emitting a 10MeV gamma, to take a very simplified example, for 1W. Divide by 100 for safety and because heat comes from things other than high energy gammas. So we have 1E7 reactions/s for 1W. You then have to multiply by the GC efficieny (what fraction of gammas it picks up).

That is depends largely on the experiment geometry (what solid angle the GC window takes up). For example 1 1cm^2 window situated 10cm away from the source would catch a fraction equal to 1cm^2 / surface area of 10cm radius sphere = 400pi cm2.

In this case the geometric factor is 1E-3.

In addition there is the GC efficiency but that is usually quite high, and possible shielding from material between source and GC (like reactor casing). Probably for high energy gammas that will not absorb much.

If we use 10E-3 as Gc detection efficiency we get 10E4 cps of 600000 cpm.

The noted level here was I think around 1000cpm? I also suspect a higher efficiency than assumed above (if trying to pick up gammas close to background you put GC as close to reactor as possible). Having said that, if they have a oven-style reactor that maybe limits GC position and could have lower efficiency than above. Why I find "hint-like" reveals as here so frustrating is that you have a lot of unknowns to go into these approx calculations.

Anyway, ignoring that we have a factor of 500 or so difference between the just detectable (10X background) count here and a similar just detectable 1W heat. The GC is thus 500X more sensitive than any calorimetric measurement from this type of system, and 10,0000X more sensitive than the count expected from normal nuclear reactions generating 25W.

Which fact, and v few LENR experiments showing any radioactivity, means a viable LENR mechanism that generates detectable heat is normally expected to down convert high energy products to many low energy phonons at very high efficiency leaving almost no high energy products. Alternatively to operate via nuclear reactions that do not have any high energy products not immediately absorbed with 99.99% efficiency, but that is difficult for various reasons. Getting high cross-sections for such one to very many particle interactions is one of the key challenges in LENR that Hagelstein in particular has pointed out and tried to find theoretical solutions for.