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

Quote from Bob

Is the assumption that LENR "excess heat" is only generated by the thermalization of gammas?

Thanks,

No, obviously there are other high energy particles, and not all reactions generate gammas.

But, if gammas are generated (as is the hypothesis for the RG experiment) then they will normally contain significant amounts of the released energy. I build into the above a factor of 100 - e.g. 1% of released energy going into the gammas. In fact if gammas are generated they are likely not to be thermalised within a lightweight calorimetric enclosure, so this is in addition to the thermal output. To get very low ratios of gamma energy to other (thermalised) energy you need branching ratios that just happen mostly to give reaction products thermalised, and only very occasionally gammas. That is possible, but not likely. You can always make any data fit a hypothesis as vague as LENR by choosing unlikely options, and maybe they happen, but I'm skeptical when they do.

Quote from THHuxleynew

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).

"Rhode Island could beat the crap out of it in a war. They recently had the entire country carpeted. This is not a big place." - Dudley Moore in the movie "Arthur"

Quote from Alan Smith

The usual assumption is that LENR doesn't produce gammas., Jed will tell you all about that. Actually if all the heat we see was caused by thermalised gammas we would be dead. As I have stated before in this (Atom-Ecology) thread they are an indicator of nuclear activity, but not directly related to the heat we see.

That is all understood Alan. Just for others reading:

My point is a subtler one, which is that unexpected excess heat is one thing, unexpected gammas is another. Both might be signs of unexpected nuclear reactions but they not likely signs of the same unexpected nuclear reactions. Therefore this is a coincidence of two independent highly unexpected things and means that they do not support each other. We can be pretty sure that either the heat or the gammas has a non-nuclear (experimental artifact) type explanation.

It is subtle, because the natural assumption when excess heat (could be artifact) and gammas (could be artifact) are observed together you would expect likelihood of artifacts to go down, because a single nuclear reaction cause would generate both observations.

It is this type of coherence between different observations, or observations and theory, that I always look for to see whether my spider sense indicates something that looks interesting. Alas I've not yet found much of it.

Quote from Shane D.

THH,

Mainstream in this context usually refers to university. Reminds me of Richard Garwin. No matter what he witnessed first hand (SRI), or who was making the claims (Robert Duncan), his response was always "well, they must be doing something wrong". That is arrogance, not science.

After hundreds (thousands probably) of man hours experimenting, checking and cross checking each other, the Essex trio think they have something that can not be accounted for by environmental, or chemical means. Not satisfied with their own opinion, they have subjected their work to outside scrutiny. In response, their Cambridge friends have taken on an active role. Visitors, including our Jurg Wyttenbach, have seen the set up and data in person (more will follow)....so far so good. They are consulting with Alan G. (MFMP) who is also very experienced in this. The government is also interested.

IMO, they deserve a little more respect for their efforts, quality of work, quality of equipment, experience level, than a "well, they must have done something wrong" attitude. In the end, maybe someone will discover an error, but until that happens I would think reminding them constantly they are probably wrong, is not helpful.

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Shane,

You will note in my posts here that I very rarely say disrespectful things about people. Any lack of respect you have noted in my posts on this topic relate to the information provided on this thread, and the way that I find it unhelpful in evaluating these exciting sounding experiments.

I also, and this is my personal view and I think a proper one, don't like teasers. Thus, if they have something serious that they wish for (many possible) understandable reasons not to be open about, they should not post gamma counts vs time teasers on here and claim that these indicate something extraordinary, inciting speculation. If they wish to be open they should be open, and as in MFMP open science (which once was) setups, methodology, data could all be discussed crowd sourcing ideas. Or a preliminary paper could be published revealing evidence that they want public in a way that makes sense but preserves whatever must be secret. I don't take a view on whether they would be better off with an open model or a closed model - just that the "semi-open" model as here is non-optimal.

Now, this is a criticism of the PR (on this public thread) from this group of able researchers, not of the researchers, nor in fact of their work. I know nothing of the work, nor of the ability of the people doing it, so would not dream of criticising either.

But I feel fully justified in pointing out when public engagement is in my view unhelpful.

Now, as for a "well they must have done something wrong" that is an entirely misperceived view of things, experimental artifacts are arbitrarily complex and having these is not "doing something wrong". Rather, considering all possibilities and directing future experiments to eliminate hypothetical artifacts is doing something right. Anyone with this type of data doing LENR must spend most of their time under the working assumption that there is an artifact, because till they have something publishable and convincing that is the best way to make their data publishable and convincing. Not because "mainstream scientists" are biassed, but because extraordinary results require that type of investigation, whether they are FTL neutrinos or LENR. LENR gets a tougher ride on this than - say - some non-standard gravitational theory - because the LENR hypothesis as usually put forward is non-falsifiable and non-coherent. That means it requires a higher level of positive evidence to be interesting. Just a little bit of coherence and that would change.

So - if you think you are helping Alan et al by criticising an approach to their work, like mine, which assumes it is artifact until proven otherwise you are I believe mistaken (in this I follow Abd's views).

THH

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)?

A rough estimate is gammas contribution is way below 10^-6!

Quote from Bob

Is the assumption that LENR "excess heat" is only generated by the thermalization of gammas?

In our case gammas are just the information of failures and do contribute virtually nothing to the LENR energy. Energy is transported by magnetism otherwise the fuel would melt.

Quote from Alan Smith

OK. Lets see how many others would prefer us not to communicate at all.

I'm not saying that what pleases the crowd is most helpful Alan...

Quote from Wyttenbach

A rough estimate is gammas contribution is way below 10^-6!

In our case gammas are just the information of failures and do contribute virtually nothing to the LENR energy. Energy is transported by magnetism otherwise the fuel would melt.

Right, but then for that to cohere you need "transported by magnetism" to work for nearly all gammas, and nearly all of any other high energy reaction products, nearly all of the time...

Quote from THHuxleynew

My point is a subtler one, which is that unexpected excess heat is one thing, unexpected gammas is another. Both might be signs of unexpected nuclear reactions but they not likely signs of the same unexpected nuclear reactions. Therefore this is a coincidence of two independent highly unexpected things and means that they do not support each other.

I see a logical fallacy here: you can't infer from the fact that both signs come from a different nuclear reaction that they are necessarily independent. For example a nuclear reaction may be secondary to a primary nuclear reaction. It is actually the route that I privilege in LENR.

Quote from THHuxleynew

We can be pretty sure that either the heat or the gammas has a non-nuclear (experimental artifact) type explanation.

No. Because heat and gammas, the two effects, can have a single cause, namely a primary nuclear reaction.

Quote from THHuxleynew

It is subtle, because the natural assumption when excess heat (could be artifact) and gammas (could be artifact) are observed together you would expect likelihood of artifacts to go down, because a single nuclear reaction cause would generate both observations.

Yes the likelihood of artifacts would go down, not for the reason you mention, but simply because the prior probability of one artifact leading to both effects, or to the prior probability of two independent artifacts occuring at the same time leading to one effect each, is low.

No subtelty here.

Quote from THHuxleynew

some non-standard gravitational theory - because the LENR hypothesis as usually put forward is non-falsifiable and non-coherent.

A bit of specificity, please. 'some non-standard gravitational theory'? "non-coherent"? "non-falsifiable? Is this perhaps Lipinski's UGC, and how their data coheres to their hypothesis. And is this a demand of Popperian falsifiability?

Quote from Alan Smith

Actually if all the heat we see was caused by thermalised gammas we would be dead

I never understood "thermalized gamma" arguments. Perhaps someone here can run the numbers, but at the claimed 1MW thermal, how much shielding would be needed to
"thermalize" gammas to that much power.

I seem to remember an old rule of thumb that it takes about 1cm of lead to cut "typical" gammas down by half. I see no such large shielding on all the E,S,Q cat things. The first Rossi things had lead wrap but none after that. Even at 1kW thermal, from little plastic garden plumbing things there wouldn't be much "thermalizing of gammas" possible - I expect the audience would be dead.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Right, but then for that to cohere you need "transported by magnetism" to work for nearly all gammas

Quote from oldguy

I never understood "thermalized gamma" arguments.

Sorry: But basic physics tells that 4He has no gamma levels at all. Why should non existent gammas be thermalized???

We discuss just plain D-D fusion with a single 4He produced, nothing else.

Quote from Alan Smith

The usual assumption is that LENR doesn't produce gammas., Jed will tell you all about that.

I would say that's an observation, not an assumption.

Quote from Alan Smith

Actually Rothwell UK is a very small place, I go there now and then.

Small, but famous for forced rhubarb. They have a statue of rhubarb. It is part of the rhubarb triangle, which is like the Bermuda triangle, only for rhubarb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle

Quote from JulianBianchi

I see a logical fallacy here: you can't infer from the fact that both signs come from a different nuclear reaction that they are necessarily independent. For example a nuclear reaction may be secondary to a primary nuclear reaction. It is actually the route that I privilege in LENR.

No. Because heat and gammas, the two effects, can have a single cause, namely a primary nuclear reaction.

Yes the likelihood of artifacts would go down, not for the reason you mention, but simply because the prior probability of one artifact leading to both effects, or to the prior probability of two independent artifacts occuring at the same time leading to one effect each, is low.

No subtelty here.

I agree Julian. I was surprised by THH's comment and logic - intending to write back - thanks for making the point so clearly.

CMNS was so-named because multiple different nuclear "things" do seem to happen in similarly prepared condensed matter systems. I regard them as having a common mechanistic origin - but different manifestations (like smoke and flame).

I remember being puzzled and frustrated when we ran a set of experiments all getting into the regimes of current, loading, interfacial flux and time, where we expected to see excess heat. All did and produced no tritium, except one that produced tritium but no heat. This last result to me is still inexplicable - but I count them all as evidence of CMNS. My hand-waving explanation is that tritium is a "booby prize" ... what you get on the cusp of real success (heat and helium-4).

But...

Quote from THHuxleynew

Therefore this is a coincidence of two independent highly unexpected things and means that they do not support each other.

sure ain't so ... unless you regard both as impossible.

Quote from JulianBianchi

I see a logical fallacy here: you can't infer from the fact that both signs come from a different nuclear reaction that they are necessarily independent. For example a nuclear reaction may be secondary to a primary nuclear reaction. It is actually the route that I privilege in LENR.

No. Because heat and gammas, the two effects, can have a single cause, namely a primary nuclear reaction.

Yes the likelihood of artifacts would go down, not for the reason you mention, but simply because the prior probability of one artifact leading to both effects, or to the prior probability of two independent artifacts occuring at the same time leading to one effect each, is low.

No subtelty here.

There is a common mechanism: where excess heat is from nuclear reactions and >99.99% or reaction energy gets thermalised without any detectable high energy particles. That is pretty well needed for LENR as hypothesised over the years because high energy particles are not detected. The problem then is why high energy particles (often tested) are not seen more often correlated with heat.

What we have here (and more generally in LENR work) is some work that indicates marginal high energy particles, some work that indicates marginal excess heat, but both happen arbitrarily in a non-correlated way and the chances of this having a common mechanism are small. Then, we need two novel and independent nuclear mechanisms, both strange enough not to be easily isolatable as testable physics.

Therefore this is a coincidence of two independent highly unexpected things and means that they do not support each other.

sure ain't so ... unless you regard both as impossible.

You need to consider both unlikely, in which case the two together have (roughly) the product of the likelihood - much less likely. you don't need to consider them impossible.

Whereas when considering artifacts, the more potential anomalies you monitor, the more chances to artifactually hit one of them, if in LENR work there is no requirement for coherence between different anomalous observations.

None of this proves LENR does not exist. Personally I'm fascinated by many of the various anomalies, both the well-conducted historical ones, notably those from McKubre, and the new ones. Say this hinted at daily gamma signal (which from the limited information disclosed here does not look much like an LENR sign, because of the chronological periodicity). I would dearly love some subset of these to come from nuclear reactions since it is not absolutely impossible and would if true open lots of possible technology. It is disappointing that the anomalies that seem clearest tend to get squashed (as the Letts double laser one I linked above).

THH