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Quote from seven_of_twenty

I think the real reason was that whoever you are talking about did not believe the claim, not that they found such a claim insignificant if true.

You may be right about that. Most scientists probably don't believe the 90 day claim, or any of the hundreds of smaller claims, such as 5 W for a week. They don't believe anything.

On the other hand --

I have encountered a surprising number of scientists who do not understand the difference between power and energy, such as Morrison (https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanlettersfroa.pdf, p. 6). If you do not understand that difference, you will not understand why a 90-day, 100 W reaction is anomalous. Other scientists do not understand the significance of it. Some, such as Ascoli, make up absurd reasons why that might be a chemical reaction. Plus there are people like you, who do not understand the difference between input power and noise. You think that high input power degrades the signal and makes the results less convincing, or perhaps less believable or significant.

People who make such elementary mistakes are incapable of understanding the science. They cannot be convinced. It would be like trying to convince me that string theory is correct. I have no clue what string theory is about. I have no knowledge of that level of subatomic physics. I cannot hazard a guess as to whether string theory is right. People who do not understand the basics of cold fusion -- such as the difference between input power and noise -- cannot accept the claims.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

If it really is that noted authorities discounted well documented, irrefutable claims of continuous 100W excess power for 90 days, on the basis of insignificance, please cite it.

There are few documented examples other than Morrison and Kreysa above, because most the scientists who reject these claims know nothing about them. They have never read the papers. They just say they are sure the experiments are all mistakes, fraud or lunacy. They never talk about specifics because they do not know any specifics. For example, if you were to ask them "what error did you find in the reflux boiling calorimetry that produced a 90-day, 100 W reaction?" they would have no idea what you are talking about. In such cases they often tell me "you made that up." I point to the paper, and they do not respond. It isn't as if we are having an academic debate. They are making ignorant, unfounded assertions about something they know nothing about. They are not writing papers showing errors in the experiments. As far as I know, no skeptic has ever found an error in any paper. (Morrison and Shanahan think they did, but anyone can see they are wrong.)

Jed: Plus there are people like you, who do not understand the difference between input power and noise. You think that high input power degrades the signal and makes the results less convincing, or perhaps less believable or significant.

On the contrary Jed, it is you here who have a simplified view of things if you believe there are no expected errors that scale proportional to input power.

Specifically, anything that changes conditions between calibration and active setups and therefore (due to some second order effect) alters calibration will generate errors proportional to input power. In fact any inaccuracy in calibration (and such things must always exist) will also scale with input power.

even if such things are small, they always exist at some level. Without very careful analysis you cannot be sure at what level, and therefore a given output signal is less significant compared with possiblr errors if on to of a much larger input power.

As far as I know, no skeptic has ever found an error in any paper. (Morrison and Shanahan think they did, but anyone can see they are wrong.)

Finding errors in papers is often impossible. It does not mean however that results are necessarily of high quality.

Elephant in room: if so many historic papers show clear LENR without errors why can they not be replicated now by TG who want to do this?

AFAIK few people here are even recommending TG try such replications?

THH

Quote from Shane D.

Anything on that thread is well known within the TG group, as they digested, and parsed every word said in it. Does that mean they "examined Stakers calorimetry results"...I do not know. Probably not. He (Staker) has been around LENR for a long time, but his seminal piece you refer to, that earned him a high ranking in last years "LF Best of Science" poll, came a few years after LENR started planning LENR replications.

Perhaps after discussion with Michael Staker at Loyola

it might be helpful for Berlinguette and TG co..to attempt to replicate his recently published replication of the historical F&P results..

especiaily if they are interested in the electrochemical method..

and especially if they are interested in the phase changes in palladium hydride..

I am sure there are others who have recommended this work on this forum..

on the other hand ... the more recent dry gas phase approach as pursued by Mizuno.. Brillouin Takahashi.. Iwamura Celani..

may be more useful because the reactors have a much higher running temperature

Quote

You think that high input power degrades the signal and makes the results less convincing, or perhaps less believable or significant

If you can find that precise statement in anything I wrote, ever, please show me and I will send you a check for $1000 (or to your favorite charity) immediately. It is a typical Rothwellian distortion. If you want to know what I actually wrote on this issue, let me know and I'll repeat it. I've been saying it for going on 10 years about various claims.

What I did not fully recognize was the precise role of insulation in the consideration and comparison of output/input power ratios in reactor experiments and for pointing that out to me, thanks.

Quote from JedRothwell

Asami's analysis is physically impossible. It shows the cell is endothermic, swallowing up energy for weeks during calibrations. See pages 3, 4, 16 and 17, especially Fig. 4 on p. 17:

I gave a look to these pages and the other documents you cited, but they don't answer my point. I was referring to Naoto Asami not as a researcher, but as the "program manager" of the NHE team. In this specific role, he reported the findings and the opinions of the entire research team.

The Infinite-Energy article coauthored by you (1) reports the opinion of Elliot Kennel, an American researcher at NHE, who became convinced that the F&P cells didn't produced excess heat at all due to entrainment. He said: “In the case of boiling cells, we were able to verify that the electrolyte is entrained in the vapor column by measuring the pH of the condensate. Whenever excess heat was calculated, it was always due to overestimating the vapor mass transport."

Kennel arrived at the right conclusion on the basis of a wrong argument. The true big problem was not the droplet entrainment, but the formation of foam.

Your article quotes the "Melvin Miles comments on the problems of foam: “. . . four experiments were all hindered by unusually large fluctuations in the cell voltages (±0.5 V) that were traced to a foaming problem in the D2O-LiOD solutions. This foam would collect in the coils of the anode and then release. These four experiments all used D2O supplied by NRL (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Lot No. PSO EH-283) and lithium foil supplied also by NRL (Alfa/Aesar Stock No. 10769). This shows that the D2O can be an important uncontrolled variable in these experiments.”"

The article continues, recognizing that "Foaming and entrainment are well-known problems. They must be checked for and prevented." However, it adds that "They cannot explain IMRA Europeʼs results because Pons and Fleischmann did check for them and found no significant problem." Well, this is not true, at least not entirely true. F&P could have checked for the entrainment, not for foaming. We have plenty of visual documents showing that F&P cells did actually produce a lot of foam (*).

Anyway, you were absolutely right in remarking that "On the other hand, as far as is known, entrainment has never been observed to cause more than a minor error, no more than a few percent. We cannot imagine how it could carry off most of the water and cause 50% to 300% apparent excess, like that measured using boil-off calorimetry at IMRA …"- True, but only because the real cause of the 300% apparent excess heat was foaming (**).

Kennel was aware that their "positive results are due to flaws in the calorimetry, rather than to real excess heat.” But when you "asked him whether he meant they have replicated the 300% excess heat and proved that it is an artifact. He did not respond." So, the NHE people failed in identifying the real cause of the artifact which caused the 300% excess heat. Maybe, they were not in possession of the videos recorded during the "1992 boil-off experiment". Now, those video are public (***) and everyone can see and understand the artifact caused by foaming.

If Team Google is really intentioned to solve the "CF cold case" they have just to complete the NHE work by reproducing the "1992 boil-off experiment" and showing how foaming can lead to a wrong estimation of the residual content of water inside the cell which can lead to a wrong estimation of apparent excess heat up to 300%.

(1) http://www.infinite-energy.com…/pdfs/JapaneseProgram.pdf

(*) FP's experiments discussion

(**) FP's experiments discussion

(***) FP's experiments discussion

Quote from Wyttenbach

Pd loading e.g has been researched much deeper and load factors up to 1.3 are possible. But this leads to extremely high energy content if all D would fuse. Further Pd is expensive and transmutes to Silver and then to Cadmium and thus finally will be lost

The historical electrochemical processes used grams of palladium..at $60 per gram..it becomes expensive

If 50 grams are needed that is a cool $3000.

However the small coating of Pd 50 mg on 54 gm of nickel is much cheaper..in the Mizuno R20 reactor

Stiil ..the transmutation rate to Cd/Ag has yet to be established...

..there was significant Ag109/107 on electrochemical electrodes

from F&P and others,,

''if the transmutation rate reduces the heating rate by 20% or more in a year of usage

a more stable metal or combination of metals than Pd may well be more economic overall..

Quote from seven_of_twenty

"You think that high input power degrades the signal and makes the results less convincing, or perhaps less believable or significant . . ."

If you can find that precise statement in anything I wrote, ever, please show me and I will send you a check for $1000 (or to your favorite charity) immediately.

You said it time after time. However, I cannot easily wade through these message to find things. If you now claim you did not say it, we need only wait a month, and you will go back to saying it again.

Ah, but here is one example. There are many more:

Mizuno Airflow Calorimetry

Quote

seven_of_twenty wrote: What you are missing is that small increases in output power compared to blanks indeed can subject the experiment to a poor signal to noise ratio based on noise in the output measurement. If the out/in ratio is very poor, then the input power contributes to the output noise because more power is needed to run the experiment.

ME: No, that is completely incorrect. As I said, you fail to understand the fundamentals here. This is simple arithmetic. The input contributes only a tiny amount to the noise, because it can be measured with great precision. At the highest input power in this experiment, input contributes less than 0.5 W to the noise, which is so small it cannot be measured on the output side with this equipment

I suggest you spend the $1,000 on tuition to learn physics.

Quote from Ahlfors

"Materials advances result from study of cold fusion"

Great read. Is Ball saying that Schenkel has found tritium and helium, or is he just giving hypothetical examples of reaction products? Not quite sure how to read that sentence (pg. 2, bottom of middle column).

3He was not measured,,

no tritium above background was detected by the 18.59 eV decay signal..

..

No activity above background (13 counts per minute) was detected for either sample.

Quote from Curbina

Now I am wondering why Ball states unambiguously that Schenkel et al found Neutrons, Helium 3 and Tritium if the paper only asserts the neutrons unambiguously ....

That's exactly what I'm wondering.

Philip Balls physics was a while back.. now he is something of a generalist..like me

Tom Schenkel's area is a bit specialised..close reading is advisable

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