LENR Future Hopeless Until Looking for Heat 2.0 Emerges

Quote from Director

Things are bad

If one is depressed about that.. then maybe snake oil is a salve.

Scientific American states.

"Snake Oil Salesmen Were on to Something Snake oil really is a cure for what ails you, if that happens to be arthritis, heart disease or maybe even depression"

https://www.scientificamerican…-salesmen-knew-something/

Quote from Director

People like to [...] talk about openness when they haven't done much testing

You being a case in point.

Meanwhile, on planet earth, Brillouin Energy - the evil corporate entity, who don’t wish to deny their investors a reward for having shouldered the risk - have demonstrated a “weak” and “low” COP of 2.34... And signed at least one license agreement. Plus they measure their output with a real calorimeter too. (Rather than measuring the idiocy of their supporters by merely offering some bastardised equations).

Obviously none of that counts though, as the claims of a proven liar are to be deemed more important than claims verified by an independent assessor. Perhaps Brillouin should add more puppets to their website, in order to be truly convincing? (Sock and finger, that is).

(Edit: Even the noted skeptopath / dangling sausage Seven Of Twunty can’t find anything to criticise them over, bar one spelling error they made several years ago).

Maybe Brillouin could regain some much needed credibility by moving their operation to one of the last four the last remaining truly communist country (Cuba), well-known for being a hotbed of innovation and cutting-edge technology. No doubt a large workforce could be pressed into working for free, as Director insists on.

Should speed up progress no end.

I wouldn't be too despondent about LENR's progress - surely this is a good time to take stock of all the evidence from a scientific standpoint. This makes a clear conclusion that just how to trigger and regulate cold fusion to induce a sufficiently high rate of nuclear fusion reactions for energy/heat production at a commercial level simply has not as yet been discovered. Combining further theoretical modelling (eg Wyttenbach's new theories) with new experimental nano-or pico-scale approaches (looking at new materials eg other transition metals and their oxides) is clearly the way ahead and we are now far better equipped to study this now in the C21 than we were in F&P's time. So remain optimistic - its just a matter of time before we have the answers, make a new discovery.

Being held hostage? BS! Most likely reason LENR doesn't take off is that either it doesn't work at all or, like muon-catalized fusion which does work, it isn't economical or feasible to make practical amounts of power from it.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Being held hostage? BS! Most likely reason LENR doesn't take off is that either it doesn't work at all or, like muon-catalized fusion which does work, it isn't economical or feasible to make practical amounts of power from it.

That is not a "likely reason." If cold fusion did not work at all, this would the first time in the history of experimental science that a widely replicated high sigma result was wrong. If you think that experimental science and the scientific method can fail, you are the extreme opposite of a "skeptic" or conservative. You are a new-age true believe in woo-woo nonsense. You have no basis to judge whether any claim is true or mistaken.

Cold fusion has already achieved temperatures and power density equivalent to a nuclear fission reactor core, so there is no doubt that it is feasible to make practical amounts of power from it. The only thing that can prevent that is academic politics.

Yeah, well, a lot of people who know much more than me and perhaps you, disagreed. Now, most main line scientists simply ignore it.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Yeah, well, a lot of people who know much more than me and perhaps you, disagreed. Now, most main line scientists simply ignore it.

I know more than those people know. I have read their letters, newspaper columns and papers. So I know why they reject the findings, and I know that they are mistaken. If you read them, you too will see they are mistaken. See, for example:

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

https://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?p=294

Or, if you agree with them, you too will be mistaken. The thing is, in science you can look at original source data and the textbook laws of physics and chemistry, and you can often reach firm conclusions on your own. You do not need to depend on other people, or respect their opinions just because they are considered experts. You are making a logical fallacy here: a Fallacious Appeal to Authority. The people you cite are not actually authorities, although they think they are.

Most main-line scientists ignore it because of academic politics ie its too dangerous, they'd lose their jobs by taking a risk of supporting a so-called pseudoscience . More enlightened cultures eg Japanese/Russians/Chinese take any data at face value and investigate accordingly without any preconceived dogma. Unless we can pull something out of the bag soon in the UK or US, the Japanese will probably be the first to crack this one.

Quote from JedRothwell

in science you can look at original source data

"You" is too inclusive.... "another" is better

Director, your obsession with the so-called "Inventors Syndrome" I believe is misguided, particularly because I don't think there is such an officially sanctioned syndrome by the mental health authorities.

In all these cases there are simpler and case specific reasons why the technologies have not progressed, from problems with reproducibility and materials (ex. FP, Mills), to probably fraud (ex. the puppet show dude).

Then there always is the explanation that none of them work at all, which I hope is not true.

Quote from JedRothwell

The thing is, in science you can look at original source data and the textbook laws of physics and chemistry, and you can often reach firm conclusions on your own. You do not need to depend on other people, or respect their opinions just because they are considered experts. You are making a logical fallacy here: a Fallacious Appeal to Authority.

In some cases, where the claim is very complicated and you cannot understand the technical details, you are forced to depend on the opinions of experts. In that case you hope that the experts you depend upon really are experts. If they are experts, you are good to go. You have not made a fallacious appeal to authority. An appeal to an actual authority is a valid argument. It is logical. But it is weak. An argument based on scientific evidence and laws is stronger.

For example, researchers at the LHC claim they discovered evidence for the Higgs boson. I know practically nothing about high-energy particle physics and I have no idea whether their claim is valid. It is over my head. However as far as I know, these people are real experts, and there are no other groups of experts disputing the claim. So I will take their word for it. I assume it is right. I am aware that some experts think the quality of the science at LHC is poor, and there have been a number of false alarms there. See:

The Uncertain Future of Particle Physics

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0…arge-hadron-collider.html

I would not be shocked to learn there is room for doubt in the Higgs boson claim. But I wouldn't know about it now, and if doubts emerge I would not understand them.

In contrast, the technical issues in most aspects of cold fusion are much simpler than the LHC. They are based on 18th and 19th century instruments and techniques. So, unlike the LHC, I can judge these claims. I can see that the "main line scientists" that seven_of_twenty cites do not know what they are talking about. I do not have to depend on an appeal to authority.

People who cannot understand the technical issues in cold fusion papers are forced to depend on an appeal to authority. In many cases, they accidentally pick the "main line scientists" who oppose the research, because they do not realize these scientists are wrong. They should, instead, pick the main line scientists such as the Chairman of Indian Atomic Energy Commission who published experiments showing cold fusion is real. If you do not understand the literature, or you do not read it, you are likely to pick the wrong group. There is a tremendous amount of misinformation in places such as the DoE, Scientific American, Nature, and Wikipedia. That is why many main line scientists have reached incorrect conclusions.

Quote from PhysicsForDummies

Director, your obsession with the so-called "Inventors Syndrome" I believe is misguided, particularly because I don't think there is such an officially sanctioned syndrome by the mental health authorities.

I have often use the term "inventors syndrome." I don't suppose there is an officially sanctioned syndrome but there are many inventors both in history and alive today who suffer from the syndrome I have described. In most cases it is greed. They want lots of money and fame for their discovery. Greed itself is not a mental illness, but they go to such extremes that their greed prevents them from developing or profiting from the invention. I cannot judge whether it is mental illness but it is dysfunctional. It prevents them from reaching the goals they seek.

However, most cold fusion researchers are immune to this syndrome. They cannot possibly benefit from the discovery. As I pointed out recently, most of them worked for government research laboratories such as China Lake, BARC, or Osaka National University. No financial benefit could accrue to them personally. They do not own the IP. They are in the same position as the government researchers who invented nuclear power, computers, and the Internet. They might become famous among scientists, but only if they publish the results first to get priority. It is extremely unlikely they will get any financial benefit, such as the Nobel prize.

I see nothing wrong with that, by the way. I have no objection to a social system that rewards scientists with research money, laboratory space, and a lifetime of doing what they love to do. Their efforts sometimes result in billions of dollars of benefits to the rest of us, or even trillions of dollars. Some of them feel they should be rewarded more, and I get that. Shuji Nakamura invented the first blue LED, which also meant there could be white LEDs since red and greens ones were already invented. His discovery led to unimaginably large benefits to society, saving energy, increasing communications and recording bandwidth, and in many other ways. He felt shortchanged and he eventually sued the company for more money. He was angry. He was bitter. I read his autobiography in Japanese, so I know some of the details. He did eventually win the legal battle and got some money, and not only that, he was eventually awarded the Nobel prize. He is doing pretty well for himself now, so he cannot complain. Other scientists who have made important discoveries have been given various prizes such as the Arata Award, established in his Arata's own name, or the Turing Award. These are high honors and recognition, but not cold cash! (The Turing award nowadays is cold cash, $1 million.)

It is a little unfair that people who invent practically nothing, such as Steve Jobs, sometimes make huge amounts of money, and not only that, but the public mistakenly imagines they are technical geniuses so they also get recognition as inventors. However, life is unfair and there is no point to moaning about that. Jobs did have remarkable instincts for what makes a good product. He was incapable of inventing things, but he recognized good things when other people invented them.

Quote from JedRothwell

Cold fusion has already achieved temperatures and power density equivalent to a nuclear fission reactor core, so there is no doubt that it is feasible to make practical amounts of power from it.

Cold fusion has already demonstrated that "power density equivalent to a nuclear fission reactor core" can be claimed on the basis of misrepresented data:

Quote from JedRothwell

You are making a logical fallacy here: a Fallacious Appeal to Authority.

Like this one?

Quote from Ascoli65

Flieschmann

?

Quote from Ascoli65

You are making a logical fallacy here: a Fallacious Appeal to Authority.

Like this one?

[Quoting me]

But here is my larger point. Somewhere out there, someone may have a coherent set of arguments and facts that call into question the results from Flieschmann, Miles, McKubre, Srinivasan, Lonchampt, Storms, Will, Bockris and the other major results. Say, the top 50 studies. Someone may know good reasons to reject all of these claims. Or they may have reasons to reject one of them, leaving the others intact. HOWEVER, I have not heard from this person. He or she has not published a paper. So I have no way of knowing what this person thinks, or why he rejects the claims. I cannot guess, and I have never read a critique from anyone address any of these claims. (Except Morrison and Shanahan!)

Display More

That is not an appeal to authority. It is the opposite: I am saying there are no papers by anyone, authority or otherwise. I am not appealing to (that is, citing; pointing to) non-existent papers! This is a negative appeal to non-existant authorities.

As far as I know, the authorities do not exist. If Ascoli65 has some authorities in mind who have published arguments and facts that call into question these experiments, he should tell us who they are. He himself has called these experiments into question. I believe he is mistaken, for various reasons I have given.

Quote from JedRothwell

For example, researchers at the LHC claim they discovered evidence for the Higgs boson.

Jed you are completely right. The so claimed Higgs boson is an exact (= all measured digits and easy to predict...) resonance of the proton magnetic mass. Or let's sum up: The standard model is outraging nonsense or just fringe science. I wouldn't give any physicist more than a few dollars until they give a model that is really able to predict the measured data of the last 40 years....................

Quote from JedRothwell

As far as I know, the authorities do not exist. If Ascoli65 has some authorities in mind who have published arguments and facts that call into question these experiments, he should tell us who they are.

Morrison and Wilson have published some valid arguments against the validity of the F&P experiments. In particular, Morrison has raised many remarks on the 1992 boil-off experiment. Some of them were valid, but he failed in recognizing the "foam issue", which easily explains the cause of the error made by F&P in calculating the excess heat during the boil-off phase. He probably saw the lab video only once during the Pons' presentation at the ICCF3 and he didn't have the chance to perform an accurate comparison between the paper and the video, otherwise he would probably have found the same errors that I have pointed out in these last months in the recently closed thread (1).

Quote

He himself has called these experiments into question. I believe he is mistaken, for various reasons I have given.

I replied to all your comments, showing that all your reasons against my remarks on the F&P's boil-off experiment were wrong. You have abandoned the confrontation many times and eventually your supporters have thrown the towel in the ring, proving in the clearest way that you were not able to oppose valid arguments to my criticisms.

The closure of the thread dedicated to their experiments has definitively sanctioned that F&P were wrong.

(1) FP's experiments discussion

Quote from Wyttenbach

I wouldn't give any physicist more than a few dollars

I wouldn't give a lira for anselmi's speculation

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.02600

The Higg's boson is a fakeon.. Is this physicist for real?