ARPA-E LENR funded projects news and updates

Quote from Daniel_G

If one strives to develop a practical device that can do useful work, heat is what you need. If one's aim is to understand LENR mechanisms, reaction products would be but one part of the puzzle. Either way you slice it, heat energy is a critical component and comments like this seem illogical and unscientific. If, on the other hand one chooses to use heat as a goal, well thought out uncertainty budgets (something I rarely see in this research) need to be worked out and accuracy with statistical power beyond normal uncertainty is what is needed, not to hand wave away heat as "ambiguous".

I understand his argument to be about what is convincing to the broader world, not what is commercially viable or theoretically useful. You’re better off reviewing his presentation directly than listening to me possibly reduce or mischaracterise his argument, though.

Quote from orsova

I understand his argument to be about what is convincing to the broader world, not what is commercially viable or theoretically useful.

I get that. Unfortunately the nuclear evidence, such as neutrons, is so low it does not convince the broader world. The signal to noise ratio is low. There are always background neutrons. You can always find a reason to dismiss them. Helium and transmutations are also difficult to detect with confidence. Tritium is the only nuclear evidence that sometimes appears at high s/n ratios. That is even more unpredictable than excess heat, so an experiment to find it may not work.

More to the point, excess heat with no chemical changes, far beyond the limits of chemistry, is proof of a nuclear effect. People should accept that. If they will not accept that, I doubt they will accept neutrons, helium or even abundant tritium.

Quote from JedRothwell

, is proof of a nuclear effect.

well.. neutrons are a proof of fusion according to Forsley/NASA et al as I remember..

NASA’s New Shortcut to Fusion Power

Lattice confinement fusion eliminates massive magnets and powerful lasers

spectrum.ieee.org

"To be sure that we were actually producing fusion in our vials of erbium deuteride and titanium deuteride, we used neutron spectroscopy. This technique detects the neutrons that result from fusion reactions. When deuteron-deuteron fusion produces a helium-3 nucleus and a neutron, that neutron has an energy of 2.45 MeV. So when we detected 2.45 MeV neutrons, we knew fusion had occurred. That’s when we published our initial results in Physical Review C.

their postulated mechanism relies on collision

"When a gamma ray of sufficient energy—about 2.2 megaelectron volts (MeV)—strikes one of the deuterons in the metal lattice, the deuteron breaks apart into its constituent proton and neutron."

So their neutron generator is suitable for an unmanned NASA rocket far away..

or a 100 ton nuclear shielded submarine reactor..

Hopefully some at ARPA-E don't follow the NASA onward and upward neutron trail..

and look around at the current neutronless excess heat from Celani, Takahashi Mizuno etc etc

Quote from RobertBryant

well.. neutrons are a proof of fusion according to Forsley/NASA et al as I remember..

I guess a large number of neutrons accompanied by excess heat are proof. But as I said, a small number with bulk Pd and no heat might be proof that it is not working. I do not know about the electrodeposited material that Forsley uses.

A small number might also be background noise. People will not be convinced by a small number. I think it has to be far above background. I do not recall any neutron results that were far above background.

Quote from JedRothwell

I guess a large number of neutrons accompanied by excess heat are proof. But as I said, a small number with bulk Pd and no heat might be proof that it is not working. I do not know about the electrodeposited material that Forsley uses.

A small number might also be background noise. People will not be convinced by a small number. I think it has to be far above background. I do not recall any neutron results that were far above background.

There seems to be a phase change mechanism at issue in the LENR reaction. Some systems produce neutrons and heat, others produce just heat, other systems produce high energy electrons but no heat, and still others just produce transmutation without any production of heat, radiation, or particles.

There are also LENR systems that go through any number of these phases based on operational parameters such as power level production, or startup and shutdown.

There is some quantum mechanical factor(s) that triggers these phase changes. These phase changes make LENR systems difficult to understand.

Quote from axil

Some systems produce neutrons and heat

Which ones?

Quote from JedRothwell

Which ones?

NASA: Lattice confinement fusion

Quote from axil

NASA: Lattice confinement fusion

LCF is not LENR,,,according to Forsley..

Quote from axil

he LENR reaction. Some systems produce neutrons and heat,

Quote from RobertBryant

LCF not LENR,,,according to Forsley..

According to common belief and definition, any system that is demonstrating fusion and transmutation at low temperatures is LENR.

Quote from RobertBryant

LCF is not LENR,,,according to Forsley..

but Theresa said

"

Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm super happy to be here. I want

to thank Frank for inviting me to give a historical talk on the LENR activities that

we've been working on at NASA Glenn Research Center. And I want to acknowledge my deputy principal investigator Lawrence Forsley"

I guess there is some mixed message

Since no precise model on the mechanism of LENR currently exists, I don't see how its scientific to assume neutrons or any other reaction products a priori. Remember what happens when you ASS U ME. The correct empirical approach is to design replicable experiments that produce consistent results and then devise experiments that disprove the null hypothesis with sufficient statistical power. Assuming you know something about a mechanism that is far from being understood is both arrogant and wrong. I am sometimes perplexed how modern scientists proceed whilst somehow ignoring the basic tenants of proper scientific method. My personal approach is to look at a new problem with a "playful" mind, mess around a bit until I see something interesting and then in the next phase, devise the hypothesis, the protocol, the statistical approach, the uncertainty budget, and then proceed to collect data and then you get the whole thing reviewed by professional critics. This is precisely the flow we followed with the data we published at ICCF24. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was encouraging enough to become motivated to do more, better experiments.

Whenever I see people claiming "no neutrons, so no nuclear reactions", I wince and recall the DOE's report after Pons and Fleischmann's announcement in the following, weeks and months. The unabashed arrogance that is required to state such things is exactly what is wrong with science today. One of the most important things my professor ever taught me was just seven words, "check your assumptions. They are always there."

There are some real current examples of assumptions providing conceptual barriers to progress. For example, there is an absolutely wrong (and I might add well known in the right circles) assumption that antibody titer= immune response. The vast majority of medical doctors believe this to be true today as evidenced during the recent pandemic. However in 1986 Tim Mossman discovered our immune system consists of two distinct types of immune helper cells designated Th1 and Th2. The Th2 cells drive humoral (antibody) immunity. The Th1 cells drive cellular immunity. This is one of the most cited papers in all of immunology. The two types of cells are found to be counter regulatory, i.e. the more you have of one, the less you have of another. There are significant financial incentives to maintain this false premise as cellular antiviral immunity (the natural, long lasting response to viral pathogens) is at once difficult to measure clinically and difficult to elicit via an injected vaccine. Why are we "addicted" to boosters today? Because of this. The vaccine induces ethereal short lived (6-8 months) antibody Th2 responses which also happen to counter regulate the natural cellular response. If I was to say this 5 years ago, absolutely nothing I say would be controversial in the least. Today, due to perverse and massive financial motives, it has become controversial.

Circling back to LENR, I think we all can assume that such perverse and massive incentives related to the energy industry also exist and from multiple angles. Big Science hot fusion researchers don't want to have their rice bowl kicked, fossil fuel, solar, wind suppliers, green hydrogen developers, I could go on and on but every one of these industries stands to lose if LENR becomes a practical energy source. On the academic side Jed has gone into this rabbit hole much deeper than myself and has well documented the many pitfalls on that path. Academia is another can of worms where researchers risk everything for publicly attempting research in this field. I use models such as Gerald Pollack as a modern day contrarian who took an alternative route by publishing "The Fourth Phase of Water" book and became financially independent from this ground breaking and influential research stemming from the mundane H2O molecule. Similar examples can be made in the field of Cosmology from the EU crowd (RIP Wal Thornhill), or nuclear physics from the SAM crowd (kudos to Edo). In my mind none of this science exists in a vacuum, in order to elucidate the true nature of the atom and LENR, none of this can be ignored.

Physics has in my humble opinion traveled down the wrong—dead end—path. We will not find our path out of this dark zone by standing on previous—likely wrong—assumptions. Only challenging these wrong assumptions and relying upon superb empirical data will we formulate new testable hypotheses eventually leading us to a new physics. Yes I agree with Wyttenbach that the standard model is wrong. Yes I agree that the text book representations of the ball of neutrons and protons cannot explain many features of nuclear physics such as the asymmetric fission of U235, why certain elemental isotopes are radioactive or unstable, or even why the strong force or neutrinos must exist. The LENR researchers cannot explain the current data by shoehorning it into the standard model. Its high time to toss out the anachronistic standard model and create a new neo-rennaisance which will in my humble opinion have a massive influence on far reaching fields such as cosmology, climate, energy, medicine and indeed possibly the very existence of humanity. We must break out of this current modern dark age before we experience true prosperity. That is the heavy burden we now carry.

Quote from JedRothwell

I do not know about the electrodeposited material that Forsley uses.

A small number might also be background noise. People will not be convinced by a small number.

Szpak et al.'s work with CR-39 was convincing enough to get them featured in New Scientist twice, as well as the Economist. A very thorough characterisation of those experiments would be convincing if it were done in unimpeachable facilities and published somewhere august.

Has there been any confirmation of who the funded projects are, yet? For example, do we know who the MIT funding is for?

Daniel_G I appreciate the sentiments and I too am worried about the ARPA-E testing, but I think the LENR community, after all these years, is still struggling even to validate itself without tasking itself with overthrowing the standard model. But it that happens then great!

That's right the communauty continues to round in circle, years after years, even if at each ICCF so promising breakthroughs are promised then one week after the cake become flat once again as always.

Quote from ZenoOfElea

Daniel_G I appreciate the sentiments and I too am worried about the ARPA-E testing, but I think the LENR community, after all these years, is still struggling even to validate itself without tasking itself with overthrowing the standard model. But it that happens then great!

My point is not an ego-oriented "let's fix everything" statement. The main point I am trying to make is we must default to strict empiricism and try to eliminate as many assumptions as possible and then go where the data leads us but we must be both competent enough and confident enough to go in this direction without fear of overturning possibly some long held assumptions that have become immutable "truths" over the years. Everything is mutable. Yes there are a lot of potential pitfalls on this path but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I approached this industry with healthy skepticism but I saw reasonable XSH with my own eyes and measurements independent of Mizuno. So I find it valuable to move it forward. Let's see where it goes.

Quote from RobertBryant

well.. neutrons are a proof of fusion according to Forsley/NASA et al as I remember..

https://spectrum.ieee.org/lattice-confinement-fusion

"To be sure that we were actually producing fusion in our vials of erbium deuteride and titanium deuteride, we used neutron spectroscopy. This technique detects the neutrons that result from fusion reactions. When deuteron-deuteron fusion produces a helium-3 nucleus and a neutron, that neutron has an energy of 2.45 MeV. So when we detected 2.45 MeV neutrons, we knew fusion had occurred. That’s when we published our initial results in Physical Review C.

their postulated mechanism relies on collision

"When a gamma ray of sufficient energy—about 2.2 megaelectron volts (MeV)—strikes one of the deuterons in the metal lattice, the deuteron breaks apart into its constituent proton and neutron."

So their neutron generator is suitable for an unmanned NASA rocket far away..

or a 100 ton nuclear shielded submarine reactor..

Hopefully some at ARPA-E don't follow the NASA onward and upward neutron trail..

and look around at the current neutronless excess heat from Celani, Takahashi Mizuno etc etc

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Be careful of loose rhetoric! One neutron is not the same as another. As is obvious to any scientists looking at this stuff - but alas these details do not often inform journalism of even (alsos) press releases).

There is a big difference between:

"we looked for everything and we found a few neutrons - higher than normal background - we cannot work out where they came from"

and

• We knew from theory (done before we had any experimental results, so this was a known expected outcome) that 2.45MeV neutrons were expected.
• We detected a strong peak in neutrons at 2.45 MeV
• There are no known background sources of neutrons with that spectral shaping

Quote from teppo

ARPA-E Selects 8 Projects to Apply Scientific and Rigorous Approach Focused on Specific Type of Nuclear Energy:

https://arpa-e.energy.gov/news…funding-projects-studying

This is great news for LENR research. There seems to be a scattergun approach where some of this stuff is advancing scientific understanding, and some is trying for lots of excess heat under (let us hope) good enough experimental measurement conditions to be widely believed.

It would not be exactly my choice of projects but there is something here for (almost) everyone!

Also good for closing down ideas that are wrong - better experimental measurements, if negative, can help LENR researchers to focus on stuff that might work. I've not noticed much work done in that area (because everything still seems on the table here). And better results positive are the Holy Grail that would allow better investigation and optimisation of any (real) effects.

THH

Quote from Daniel_G

My point is not an ego-oriented "let's fix everything" statement. The main point I am trying to make is we must default to strict empiricism and try to eliminate as many assumptions as possible and then go where the data leads us but we must be both competent enough and confident enough to go in this direction without fear of overturning possibly some long held assumptions that have become immutable "truths" over the years. Everything is mutable. Yes there are a lot of potential pitfalls on this path but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I approached this industry with healthy skepticism but I saw reasonable XSH with my own eyes and measurements independent of Mizuno. So I find it valuable to move it forward. Let's see where it goes.

The approach to "saw reasonable XSH" for LENR as a whole (assuming "reasonable" means replicable and real) is:

(1) instrument the heck out of it to convince all those skeptics that it is really real and get scaling evidence that will help determine mechanism

(2) work on mechanisms and develop hypotheses for testing

(3) test those hypotheses in new experiments. Discarrd/refine them as needed.

You might think that is not the same as "trying to experimentally optimise the effect". In fact it is the mots effective way of doing that...

Quote from THHuxleynew

The approach to "saw reasonable XSH" for LENR as a whole (assuming "reasonable" means replicable and real) is:

(1) instrument the heck out of it to convince all those skeptics that it is really real and get scaling evidence that will help determine mechanism

McKubre and many others did this. Some of the best modern calorimetry in history has been done with cold fusion. Especially electrochemical calorimetry. This did not convince you or the other hardcore "skeptics." Nothing will convince you. You will not believe any result until Nature or the DoE say the heat is real and cold fusion is fusion. Then you will say you believed it all along.

You have never given a reason why you do not believe McKubre, Miles, Storms, Fleischmann or the others. (Except in the case of Fleischmann, you apparently sign on to the lunatic "foam" hypothesis.) You have no rational basis to doubt any major results -- not the heat, tritium or helium.