Team Google wants your opinion: "What is the highest priority experiment the LENR community wants to see conducted?"

Shane D. you could do a first list of challenger's even if it seems they is a favorite ?

Quote from Shane D.

Well, getting beyond parables, and analogies, the way I see it is that Google has made us part of their team. They gave us a chore to do, and if we do not get it done, we will be fired. Then we have to go apply for unemployment.

Understandably, they do not want excuses from us for not accomplishing our assigned task of whittling the list down to 3 (was 1 until you made your point), anymore than the GPM wants to hear excuses from his fellow team members for blowing, or blowing up an assignment.

Quote from Shane D.

I would think all the researchers now tied up (except Mizuno) with IH/CP/LENRInvest, or going it alone are holding something back for the same reason.

Unless they have filed for a patent.

Quote from JedRothwell

Unless they have filed for a patent.

There are many old patents like super wave that run out. That's why Brillouin cannot issue a patent for a similar stimulation.

But also many new patents, even if granted, may be void, because countless patents have been rejected by USPTO based on fringe SM model logic, but cover many items brought up as claims in new patents.

Just to remind you: Even nonsensical patents of Rossi and others have a useful effect: Nobody else can defend a new patent that is similar to the old claims.

Just one example: What is the fundamental difference between Celani's wires & knots and Mizuno's mesh? If it turns out that the knots of the mesh are important then patenting a mesh is worthless as it is built of wires and knots..

Quote from Wyttenbach

There are many old patents like super wave that run out. That's why Brillouin cannot issue a patent for a similar stimulation.

But also many new patents, even if granted, may be void, because countless patents have been rejected by USPTO based on fringe SM model logic, but cover many items brought up as claims in new patents.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying the Brillouin cannot get a patent. The method was already invented and patented with the superwave. And even if they get a patent, you are saying it will likely be voided.

In that case, there is no chance they can make money with this invention. They cannot protect it with trade secrets. It is far too important. If they begin selling devices, and it becomes generally known that these devices are producing energy from nuclear reactions -- or from some unknown source -- the government and the public will demand they stop immediately until the reaction is thoroughly understood. Every industrial company will immediately begin reverse engineering the devices. All trade secrets will be revealed within a few months. Brillouin will be left holding nothing. No intellectual property at all.

Without a patent there can be no protection for anything as important as this. So they might as well give away everything they know now, because they will surely lose it later on.

I think this scenario is unrealistic. I think it may be possible to get a patent. I do not know much about patents, so perhaps I am wrong, but I am quite sure there can be no other way of earning money by inventing an effective method of doing cold fusion. Large corporations such as General Electric or Hitachi can earn trillions of dollars by implementing a method and selling equipment. That is a different story. Brillouin cannot compete with the likes of General Electric or Hitachi in manufacturing. The big companies can manufacture any product with far better quality, at a much lower cost, than any small company could achieve. You might as well try to manufacture a car by hand in competition with Ford as compete with Hitachi making cold fusion reactors. It is out of the question. You would not last a month.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Just one example: What is the fundamental difference between Celani's wires & knots and Mizuno's mesh? If it turns out that the knots of the mesh are important then patenting a mesh is worthless as it is built of wires and knots..

I think the mesh works much better, so I think Celani's implementation has no commercial value, and a patent for it would be worthless.

Furthermore, I think that any industrial corporation which investigates Mizuno's device can very quickly improve it. There is a great deal of low hanging fruit, as I said. However this might not void his patent. As long as the improved implementations are variations on his patent and still require some of the things he has described in the patent, he can still collect royalties. As I pointed out before, the Wright brothers 1906 patent described a small biplane only, which was hardly capable of flying. It was a pusher model with the elevator in the front. The patent did not include anything about motors or propellers, which are critical components to any airplane. By 1914 there were multiengine "tractor" configuration airplanes (with the motors in front) and the elevators in the rear. Some of them were capable of carrying several passengers for thousands of miles. They looked completely different from the Wright airplane, and they were far more practical and worth more commercially. See, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%86%22.jpg

However, the people who made them still had to pay royalties to the Wrights because the fundamental design was the same. If Mizuno, Celani, or Brillouin are lucky, their design might still fundamentally underly more advanced implementations.

I vote for effects that can be proven without significant chance of experimental error.

1. Mizuno R20 since the results seem high enough that calorimetry should be sufficient.

2. Any repeatable experiments showing detectable transmutations which do not require calorimetry (you pick one, you guys know better than me).

I would rule out smaller effects (COP2 claims, Brillouin, etc) as well as ruling out highly theoretical pet theory explorations involving word salad with no clear experiment (negative resistance regime EVO chiral polariton Bose Einstein condensates etc) especially when espoused by people that still believe Rossi..

Quote from PhysicsForDummies

1. Mizuno R20 since the results seem high enough that calorimetry should be sufficient.

With good, state-of-the-art calorimetry, any effect over 100 mW can be detected with assurance, at a high signal to noise ratio. Strictly from the scientific point of view, the results from Miles that peaked at ~500 mW should have convinced every scientist on earth the effect is real, and the results from McKubre, at ~5 W should certainly have convinced them. Strictly from a rational, analytical, science geek perspective, these results are no less convincing than Mizuno's 250 W excess. The advantage of Mizuno's experiments are not in believability so much as:

It can be controlled better than previous reactions.

It seems to be easy to do, but we'll have to see about that.

It produces higher power density at higher temperature, which is more likely to lead to a practical device.

It uses very little palladium, which also makes it more practical.

Whichever device Google and others test, they should use high quality, state-of-the-art calorimetry. There is no reason not to. They should at least measure to the nearest 100 mW. Mizuno would use much better calorimetry if he could afford to. His calorimeter is ingenious and quite good considering it cost practically nothing to make, and it operates in a poorly insulated room with no thermostatic environmental controls or air conditioning, in a city in the far north where temperature extremes occur all year long. See:

Effect of ambient temperature changes on air-flow calorimetry

Such ingenuity on a shoestring is admirable in a way, but it also a terrific waste of time and effort. Mizuno is unable to do experiments 4 months of the year (including this month and next) because of these problems. He keeps busy, but it is a shame. It is sort of good because I bullied him into writing the paper when he wasn't able to do experiments.

If cold fusion scientists had been given the resources they needed back in 1989, we would probably have cold fusion powered interplanetary rocket ships by now, not to mention cars and generators. Instead, we have global warming and wars for oil, which resemble cavemen clubbing one another fighting for seashells. This is the biggest waste of resources and the worst folly in the history of technology.

Quote from JedRothwell

If I understand you correctly, you are saying the Brillouin cannot get a patent. The method was already invented and patented with the superwave. And even if they get a patent, you are saying it will likely be voided.

The best thing you can do, is to be able to produce a cheap heater at low cost and in very high numbers. Or, try to sell heat of a black box!

But my opinion is the following: The world needs to end carbon burning and as a legislator I would allow the breach of any patent under these circumstances if it helps to rescue e.g. Manhattan, Tokyo,.. and many other cities from being flooded in about 50 years... (But todays legislator are feed by the investors..)

I would be happy if I could contribute something important for helping to end the carbon age. I do patents just to disable others doing them and that way preventing the field from suffering of "lethal" blocking by money greedy investors.

Quote from Wyttenbach

The best thing you can do, is to be able to produce a cheap heater at low cost and in very high numbers. Or, try to sell heat of a black box!

I do not think any individual or small company could make any money doing that. The regulatory challenges alone would bankrupt you before you began. The R&D will cost billions of dollars, even to develop something as small and simple as a room heater or a 10 W battery replacement. It took roughly $1 billion to develop the Prius, which is an incremental improvement over existing technology, based on ordinary physics that have been known for 150 years.

Developing something revolutionary based on no known physics will surely cost far more than this. Only huge corporations and governments will be able to afford such an undertaking. It will cost billions just to develop the regulations, which is how much it is costing for companies and governments to develop new regulations for self driving cars. Even if you could somehow get billions of dollars from venture capitalists, and develop this, you would then be in competition with every major industrial corporation on earth. Any one of them, such as Hitachi or General Electric, could run you out of business in a week. They have enormous expertise in manufacturing, distributing and selling machines of all kinds. You might as well go to war with a 5-man militia against the entire U.S. Marine Corps as try to compete with such corporations. It is completely out of the question.

The fact that it will cost billions of dollars and take enormous effort will not stop the development. Not for one minute. Any businessman with an ounce of sense will see that the payoff will be on the order of $6 trillion a year. $16 billion a day. The R&D will pay for itself before breakfast every day for the next several hundred years. Not to develop it because of the cost would be like not developing light bulbs, automobiles or computers because they cost a lot at first. No sane business executive would hesitate. Any major corporation that does hesitate will be bankrupt in a generation.

Quote from JedRothwell

It took roughly $1 billion to develop the Prius, which is an incremental improvement over existing technology

A Prius has about 30'000 parts. The Mizuno heater about 30. As complexity grows with logarithmic exponents, we can say that your factor for Billions is at least about 1000 times to large.

If we see a solid reproduction within the next two months, then the simple 3kW heater will be available within 2 years.

Something bigger like 50..5000kW will take time, but that's what investors have... And there is ample space for new inventions for larger heaters...

In addition to an excess heat/Mizuno experiment I think it would also be good if they could do a strange radiation experiment. ECCO or Woodpecker?

Quote from Wyttenbach

A Prius has about 30'000 parts. The Mizuno heater about 30. As complexity grows with logarithmic exponents, we can say that your factor for Billions is at least about 1000 times to large.

The number of parts is not the issue. No sane government official, regulator, doctor or physicist would allow the use of this device until it is thoroughly understood. Physicists and engineers worldwide will have to spend thousands of man-years developing physics theories and engineering practices. They will start with less knowledge of this reaction then Benjamin Franklin's knowledge of electricity. Not only that, but the reactor will have to proven perfectly safe, in hundreds of thousands of hours of testing, in every first-world country. Just as self-driving cars are now being tested. This is the 21st century. The public will demand no less.

Quote from Wyttenbach

If we see a solid reproduction within the next two months, then the simple 3kW heater will be available within 2 years.

This is a nuclear reactor that works by totally unknown principles. Suppose the public, or the police, or any political leader found out that you had installed a 3 kW heater based on this, before it has been theoretically explained, safety checked, licensed, and certified by UL. What do you think would happen? I will tell you what: An hour later, 50 police cars, a swat team, and a nuclear emergency team would show up at your door. The city would be evacuated for miles around. You would be on the font page of every news website and newspaper on earth. You would spend the next several years in various unpleasant Federal Facilities answering the same questions again and again.

This is real life. This is the 21st century. People are not allowed to use nuclear power just because it works.

Quote from Director

I don't believe that completely, 100%, understanding the physics of LENR is a requirement for selling commercial products.

It is a requirement for every other product sold in every first world nation. You cannot sell so much as a toothpick or a mousetrap that does not meet a long list of industry standards and regulatory specifications. Try selling a food product that has not been tested and you will see.

Quote from Director

However, if a company felt the need to gain a complete understanding of the basic physics taking place, I'd suggest they study the EVO (Exotic Vacuum Object) phenomena that's ubiquitous in nature,

You can suggest that all you like. Until the DoE, the APS and every major university physics department agrees with you, no one will be allowed to sell or use this source of energy. You are living in a dream world or a 19th century fantasy if you don't see that. Society will never again allow something like the health and vitality drinks made with radium that were popular as late as the 1920s. That era is gone for good.

http://theconversation.com/whe…-radioactive-energy-67976

Quote from Shane D.

Very simple; all Team Google wants is something they can try to replicate with a high chance of success.

It isn't simple. From 1989 to last month, no cold fusion experiment had a high chance of success. They all took lots of expertise, months or years of effort, and a large dose of good luck. During this time, if we had known of an experiment with a high chance of success, we would have replicated it ourselves. We wouldn't have been sitting around waiting for Google.

I think the Mizuno experiment has a high chance of success. I hope it does. But unless and until it is replicated, I will not know that. Nobody can know that. You would have to be omniscient, like God. The only way to know is to do the experiment. If Google wants to wait and find out whether this experiment has a high chance of success, they will have to wait for a month, or perhaps several months, or perhaps a year. Maybe after that we will know, or maybe we won't.

I think the other Zr-Ni-Pd experiments in Japan also have a good chance of success, but I know much less about them, and I could not replicate the material or tell anyone how to do it. It is a secret. Perhaps they can find out. They should ask Brian Ahern and the people at Ames NL, who apparently replicated it (to some extent).

If they want an answer today to the question "what has a high chance of success" the answer is: "nothing." No cold fusion experiment has a high chance of success. It is like trying launch a rocket into space in 1958. Most of the time, it fails. We have learned a great deal from the failures, but we still fail most of the time. If they want to increase the chances of success, I suggest they buy some pretty little gadgets used in the semiconductor industry that cost anywhere from $50,000 to $250 million, and get cracking. They might get somewhere. Or they might flush that money down the toilet. There is no guarantee of success, and no person on earth can tell them how to succeed.

I, and several others, can probably tell them many ways to fail. I have a sense from their Nature paper that they failed because they did not achieve high loading. It was a vague paper and I can't be sure. I can tell them many reasons why they might have failed to load. Perhaps they already know these reasons, in which case I cannot help.

Quote from Director

If what you are saying is true, then the first world deserves to continue stagnating like they have been doing for the last several decades - at least in key areas such as energy and propulsion technologies - until they crumble and collapse into nothing,

What I am saying is true, and if it were not true, our civilization would have collapsed decades ago. It would be impossible to develop modern technology without a complex scaffolding of rules, standards and regulations. Some time ago, I looked up the standard for the USB interface. It was a document about 1,000 pages long, with contributions by a large number of agencies and industry organizations. It is an immensely complex technology, yet a USB connector costs practically nothing, and by the standards of the 1970s era RS232 interfaces it works miraculously well, and incredibly fast. The RS232 standard that I used was a few pages long. A simple, small computer component might have hundreds of patents applied to it.

Every single gadget and structure, every food, every plumbing part, every medication and replacement eye lens, every single product of modern industrial society is immensely complicated by the standards of the past. Even by the standards of 30 years ago. The water pipe that the county fixed across the street from me is listed in a complex computer database the foreman had on his cell phone. He told me it was laid in 1959 and he had a record of every repair in the neighborhood. Every product is tested for safety in ways that would been unimaginable decades ago, which is why accidents, casualties and so on have fallen so much. It why people routinely walk away from automobile accidents, leaving an exploded air bag and a wrecked car, where 30 years ago they would be dismembered and dead. It is why eye surgery that used to take hours and required a hospital stay is now done in 10 minutes, with lasers and robots, and the patient goes home a half-hour later.

1970s minicomputer operating systems were so simple, and the system calls were so few in number, I literally knew them all for a given machine. I hardly needed the manual for things like dispatching a job. Whereas there must be hundreds of APIs in Windows. Thousands maybe. I cannot even find the number. You cannot have such a complex system without a giant organization (Microsoft) and cooperation from countless other organizations (outside programmers complaining and filing bug reports).

See the book by S. Winchester, "The Perfectionists" for other examples. It describes, for example, how an Airbus A380 was almost destroyed by a defect in the engine, a microscopic cooling hole -- one of 600 -- that destroyed the engine in 2010. This technology demands a level of reliability, precision, checking and regulation that would have been impossible in the 1970s.

Quote from JedRothwell

every single product of modern industrial society is immensely complicated by the standards of the past

A throwback to the past. Single use straws will soon be banned

The sixties equivalent of a hotwire anemometer was a Pitot tube and a water manometer