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

  • I am sure the prospective investors are waiting for SOT's opinion with bated breath

    in view of SOT's extensive opus of technical knowhow..


    eg pressure relief valves are necessary on a 6 liter ss vacuum cylinder in case of thermal runaway

    when the 50 gm of nickel mesh (BP=2900C)inside will vaporise before the stainless steel container melts

    at 1400C... there is no way to calculate this...

    • Official Post

    Are you suggesting here that I am inadequately polite? Please cite a couple of examples if so.


    That is always in the eye of the beholder. My POV, is you are finding your place here, and getting less combative as time goes on. Contributing more towards the science of the day, rather than dredging up and fighting old battles. Even enjoying yourself on occasion.


    Between you, THH, Ascoli, SOT...I think we have a good team of skeptics to keep the balance.


    Now back to topic.

  • kirkshanahan

    I just read your Lenr report from 2006, I think, it's really interesting, all the same.

    But why do you suggest that Lenr researchers aren't credible from the moment they think the phenomenon can be nuclear ?

    Indeed, it may not be linked to the fusion, must we expect adequate knowledge that will be written in several centuries ?

    Today, many don't care about the theory but aim for watt packets.

    The Japanese have the lead thanks to their powder, nuclear or not ..

    You work in a big institution with a huge budget, yes, you know a lot about fusion, fission, but in 120 years knowledges about real matter structure, real architecture of the universe remain always weak as well.

    I think traditional researchers have been dazzled by all the fallout from fission discovery of, therefore I still think it's just the tree that hides the great forest.

    You aren't more credible than another to analyze the situation even if your report remains excellent, well written :)



    Voulez-vous dire ici que je ne suis pas assez poli? Veuillez citer quelques exemples, si nécessaire.

  • eg pressure relief valves are necessary on a 6 liter ss vacuum cylinder in case of thermal runaway

    when the 50 gm of nickel mesh (BP=2900C)inside will vaporise before the stainless steel container melts

    at 1400C... there is no way to calculate this...

    When the dangers of this technology are evaluated, several facts need to be taken into account. First, the reaction between D2 and O2 produces a reduced pressure after the gas cools. Consequently, when the electrolytic method is used, either the container needs to be strong enough to withstand the initial pressure or have a relief valve. My cells are designed to pop open if the D2+O2 reaction were to occur. Consequently, the event causes no damage.


    If a runaway LENR reaction were to occur, the temperature will stop rising and generation of energy will stop when the NAE is destroyed. This would happen well before Pd or Ni melted. This is not like a fission reaction that is self supporting and independent of the chemical structure. LENR can only take place within a very special condition formed with difficulty in a solid material. Consequently, this would be a very safe source of nuclear energy.


    But as usual, I can expect the "skeptics" to object by imagining all kinds of possibilities counter to this description. When you do this, remember just how hard it has been to cause LENR. Ask yourself why this is true before using your imagination to counter what I just described.

  • I hope you are not saying that researchers and colleagues can always identify proposed errors. I have seen too many situations where real, not proposed, errors were not identified for years. And it was not by the experimenters that the errors were exposed. I suppose if you define colleagues broadly enough and skeptics narrowly enough then the idea works. But that makes it into a semantic issue. Quite often researchers and many people in their field are not aware of errors. They are too close to the work to see them. Often, people more distant but still in the field discover the errors but yes, sometimes, it's people completely working with other topics and other disciplines. Why not?


    I would also add that scientists in general are easily duped by con men and frauds. They do not expect dishonesty and they have not paid much attention to how well sleight of hand and other techniques used by magicians and cons can fool them. They are easy prey exactly like Darden and in my opion (though maybe to a lesser extent) McKubre were prey to Rossi along with dozens of others who should have known better.

    Of course, some people are easily duped and others are not. I assume you believe your are not easily duped but everyone who accepts LENR as real is easy duped. Also, anyone who thinks Rossi made excess energy on some occasions is easily duped. Meanwhile, you were able to see through his lies and know that this claim was a fraud from the beginning. You also have the ability to see errors in measurements that other people have missed. Do I correctly understand you what you claim?


    Personally, I have yet to have a skeptic suggest an error that I have not considered or was suggested by colleagues who were very familiar with the study. Skeptics never come to the discussion with facts or the required background information. They have only their imagination and considerable hubris. In the process, their comments cause a causal reader to believe the researcher does not know what he is doing.


    When evaluating a claim, a person must first ask questions and become knowledgeable about what is being done and what is already known. Skeptics do not do this. Instead, they start with claimed superior knowledge. Any effort to correct their idea never results in mutual understanding. That is why I no longer interact with skeptics. I provide my knowledge, answer reasonable questions, and go no further. I have seen the great harm so called skepticism has done to all new discoveries including LENR. Justifying the effort based on the belief that people can be easily duped fails to acknowledge that the skeptic also can be easily duped, as the history of LENR has demonstrated. F-P were right: the skeptics were WRONG!!! The duped have been clearly revealed.

  • [Storms: Personally, I have yet to have a skeptic suggest an error that I have not considered or was suggested by colleagues who were very familiar with the study.]


    Ouch! Knife to my heart Ed! (P.S. You're wrong on that.)


    Not to put words in Ed's mouth . . . but I think he meant actual errors. Or possible ones. Errors such as instrument drift, or a clogged flowmeter. You and others have suggested many errors that are physically impossible. Your claims violate textbook laws, and there is no evidence for them, so Ed and others never thought of them. Once a person leaves behind the laws of physics, there is no limit to how many imaginary problems he can come up with. No one can anticipate them. In a way, your methods are more creative than real science. We are constrained by reality. As Fleischmann said, we are painfully conventional people. Whereas you say anything that pops into your head. For example, you blithely assume there was a constant 30 mph wind in Mizuno's laboratory, or that a person's sense of touch cannot determine whether an object is at room temperature or 100 deg C. You come up with errors that are invisible and inexplicable, such as a shift in the position of heat coming from a cell when heavy water and palladium are used, but not in any other circumstances, even though the choice of heavy water and palladium cannot affect the position. Indeed, nothing can affect it or change it. The whole scenario is impossible, and even if it happened it would not affect most calorimeters. Franklin described your mindset:


    "Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field, the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities."


    — Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and Other Commissioners, Charged by the King of France, with the Examination of the Animal Magnetism, as Now Practiced in Paris (1784)

  • Jed, you have a really biased view of publication. First off, Nature is a 'high impact factor' journal, which means only things of interest to a lot of people get published in it. The fact they published the Google thing was astonishing, and it got noticed. Second, editorials usually do express opinions, everyone knows this. It doesn't mean anything is 'banned'. Third, every journal has a topical area, so yes, many LENR articles may be rejected 'out of hand' because the editors think it is off topic. So would my papers if sent to the wrong journal...


    And let's not get silly about Szpak et al. How many times have I noted they published pictures of 'miniature nuclear explosions'? A few hundred? OK I exaggerate, only 50 or so times. Except I call them 'chemical', not nuclear, that's the jist of the disagreement. But it doesn't change the fact that 'miniature explosions' were photographed (and detected with piezoelectric transducers).

  • Personally, I have yet to have a skeptic suggest an error that I have not considered or was suggested by colleagues who were very familiar with the study. Skeptics never come to the discussion with facts or the required background information. They have only their imagination and considerable hubris. In the process, their comments cause a causal reader to believe the researcher does not know what he is doing.


    Thomas Clarke worked out the IR band vs total emissivity error in the Rossi Lugano tests. I'm not aware of a non-skeptic who did that. (Bob Higgins partly worked it out before TC, but made a mistake which halved its effect and meant the results were still clearly extraordinary).

  • The fact they published the Google thing was astonishing, and it got noticed.


    I do not find it astonishing. The paper essential said they found no evidence for cold fusion. It implied that cold fusion has not been replicated. It did not mention the many replications, although it did list LENR-CANR.org in paranthesis, which is gratifying. It confused cold fusion with plasma fusion. It did not describe their experiments in enough detail for me to have any idea what they did. In short, it was a hatchet job. An inept hatchet job, albeit one with a few redeeming qualities. I am not astonished the Nature once again showed it is biased against cold fusion, and ignorant.


    I am not upset by the article. A little disappointed. I am still curious about what the people at Google did, and what their results were. If they publish a better paper I will be sure to read it. They seem like skilled people. Maybe they did a good job. I can't tell.

  • Another recommendation for Matthew Trevithick at GoogleX

    (if he still reads this thread)


    verify that the Kirkshanahan CCSH,2001 is significant or not in LENR or anywhere... experimentally

    and what can be done to alleviate it if it is significant


    The problem I located can evidence anytime a calibration curve is used, which includes practically _every known analytical chemistry method_, not just mass flow calorimetry.


  • They don't need you to tell them that. The issue is about CCS is being sure that conditions relevant to the calibration cannot change between control (from which calibration is done) and active runs, and noting error bounds carefully and the way errors can be amplified. There are many ways (e.g. double isothermal barriers) which all work ok in keeping conditions the same as long as the power to be measured is continuous and long-lasting.


    Proving the specifics of ATER is difficult, since it is pretty well indistinguishable from LENR. You might take most of those positive F&P results as proof of it? You would need to monitor exact D2O and D2, O2 amounts out of the cell to distinguish it. It is possible, and can be done. But we expect ATER to be an elusive effect, like LENR, so you can never prove it does not exist, merely that it is not evident in one particular setup.

  • Quote

    I assume you believe your are not easily duped but everyone who accepts LENR as real is easy duped.

    Of course not. Bad assumption, at least in my case. And of course, I have never said (written) anything remotely like that. I think I am a bit harder to fool than the typical LENR enthusiast but not the last part of the remark.


    Quote

    Also, anyone who thinks Rossi made excess energy on some occasions is easily duped.

    Ah yes, most absolutely definitely. Rossi was an obvious crook virtually from the start. He resisted for no reason, all attempts and suggestions to put his experiments on solid ground. He behaved exactly like a sleight of hand specialist-- never the same demo twice. He never accomplished a thing in his life. He has no degree related to nuclear physics. He makes errors with simple calculations. He was coming off a huge ripoff of DOD with thermoelectric generators which were eventually traced by pseudonymous Gary Wright and turned out to be junk reject parts made in Russia that Rossi bought surplus from a San Diego company. It isn't required to show technical faults in experiments which are inadequately observed and documented and that basically, is all of Rossi's. Rossi never needed to make new reactors. If his oldest one had been real, the one Levi supposedly got 135kW bursts from and >10kW steady state, he would have revolutionized science. Discarding one after another supposedly successful and revolutionary devices is an absolute hallmark of fraud. I'll stop here but the suggestion that Rossi ever had or showed anything of value is completely silly. Please read some of the depositions in the legal case Rossi vs IH.


    Rossi lies prolifically about stupid things like his robotic factories, manufacturing nickel isotopes on the cheap (he bought them and not cheap) and he had a long list of fictitious clients and fictitious client representatives like the now legendary "NATO colonel Domenico Fioravanti, code name CURES (was it?)" The whole Rossi affair, every part of it, is laughable except to people who invested in him and so are people comical who believed Rossi after the fiasco of his November 2011 demo.

  • ... here is the matrix of experiments I created for our private group discussion.

    Comments are welcome, but please stay on-topic.


    https://docs.google.com/spread…J-jjOgns/edit?usp=sharing


    Here is my comment to complete the matrix by filling in the F&P data.

    Researcher

    Pons & Fleischmann

    Most significant experiment - name or number

    1992 boil-off experiment

    URL of last or best report

    http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

    Reported product(s)

    Input power = 37.5 W, Excess heat = 144.5 W

    Easy to build and run? 1-5

    5

    Low Cost to build and run? 1-5

    5

    Documentation quality? 1-5

    5

    Supporting theory? Comments!

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


    Considering that F&P are the pioneers of the field and the inspirers of all the other CF/LENR researchers (including Mizuno), I'd also suggest putting them on the top of the list.

  • If there's any continuing interest in the original topic (rather than the usual boring interminable arguing), here is the matrix of experiments I created for our private group discussion.

    Comments are welcome, but please stay on-topic.


    https://docs.google.com/spread…J-jjOgns/edit?usp=sharing


    Interesting. The table sort of leaves out do people believe in their hearts that it works for real (rated 1 - 5)? Maybe though that would be too subjective.

  • Ascoli65 Thanks for that. We left the F&P row blank precisely because of the large body of negative and often flawed criticism that has accumulated over the intervening years.

    The 1992 experiment in particular is not a good choice for that reason, though I agree that an example is needed for the work of F&P. Let's see if we can find a group consensus that will be less argument-prone.

  • Ascoli65 Thanks for that. We left the F&P row blank precisely because of the large body of negative and often flawed criticism that has accumulated over the intervening years.

    The 1992 experiment in particular is not a good choice for that reason, though I agree that an example is needed for the work of F&P. Let's see if we can find a group consensus that will be less argument-prone.

    Whilst this is very nice and politic I think you're missing the point. Ascoli65 would never post an experiment he thought was working. He posted this one precisely *because* it would be argument-prone.

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