Storms’ response echoes perfectly my own feelings as I wrote previously. There is a massive a priori assumption built in to their hypothesis. This is not science. We have 30 years’ of data with by far the XSH being the most reliable measure of nuclear mechanisms. Different types of calorimetry? Yes. Bring it on. We are building the ones we spoke about at iccf24.

These will be scrutinized by a very credible advisor. I wish Duncan, and other experts would all chime in to our calorimeter design, physics, instrumentation and uncertainty budget. I fully intend to open source the calorimetry part of our research as we wish it to be as robust as is possible.

Note my day job is calorimetry, although in much different types of systems. There is significant cross over from this experience.

Quote from Alan Fletcher

But they still need to be measured to a high degree of precision, as close-to-background neutrons is a signature.

As I said, I think it is probably a signature that the experiment is not working and there is no cold fusion. Or, it might be a secondary effect. I doubt it is a signature of cold fusion itself.

Quote from orsova

There's absolutely nothing controversial about that statement. The lack of theory has been a serious impediment to acceptance. Results were consistently dismissed for that reason.

That's true. It is not controversial to say this. But I think it is controversial to frame the statement the way he did, without pointing out this situation is outrageous. I think he should say: "These claims were rejected for lack of a plausible explanation. This is a gross violation of the scientific method. Replicated experiments can never be rejected because theory cannot explain them." That puts things in perspective.

There have been incidents in which opponents destroyed cold fusion experiments, in one case by dumping horse manure on them. Metzler would not write: "This experiment ended abruptly after a large quantity of feces were injected into the cell." As if that is a normal course of events. To say only that, without saying who injected the feces and why, and without saying the experiment was sabotaged in violation of academic ethics, would be to leave out essential context.

Even if sometimes it could be rough between us as pasionnates we are, i have to say however i'm agree with what you said and Storms point of view you shared.

However i didn't well understood this below:

The approach ignores the FACT that the rate of fusion decreases when the energy is reduced far more than can be compensated by electron screening.

Quote from JedRothwell

I asked Ed Storms what he thought of the DoE candidates. Here is his response, posted with his permission:

The driving force behind most studies and the choice of studies being supported by the DOE is based on the belief that LENR, if real, is caused by a variation of the hot fusion mechanism. People can not accept that a new mechanism involving a chemical system could be operating. In fact, this idea is even harder to accept than the LENR process itself.

The evidence is obtained by bombarding a material containing D with energetic ions of D+. People have observed the rate of the fusion reaction to increase above the rate expected when a plasma is used. The rate is increased when the applied energy is reduced. Therefore, the observed rate of LENR might be expected when the applied energy is reduced to the amount present during LENR. In any case, this gives an experimenter the ability to study electron screening, which is thought to be the cause of LENR.

This approach ignores the FACT that the mechanism causing LENR is completely different from the mechanism causing hot fusion because the nuclear products are different. The approach ignores the FACT that the rate of fusion decreases when the energy is reduced far more than can be compensated by electron screening. The approach ignores the true nature of the radiation produced by LENR. In other words, the lack of imagination forces people to explore behaviors that have no relationship to LENR.

In addition, the experimental approach used by new people in the field is very slow to learn from other people's experience. Everyone seems to think they know more than anyone else. This happens because the field lacks the true experts that normally guide new discoveries. This problem is amplified because the field lacks the university education that normally helps remove nonsense from popular beliefs. And finally, the work is mainly guided by the creation of a useful device rather than by obtaining basic understanding.

So, the problem is not the mystery of LENR. The problem is the basic attitude and skill of the people who have chosen to explore this mystery. They do not have the attitude and skill that has allowed progress to be made in other fields of scientific discovery. I see very little process until this condition changes.

Edmund Storms

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Quote from orsova

think you just want to pick a fight.

Non sequitur? or just rhetoric?

I shall 'pick a fight' with Dr Metzler via arxiv

Quote from preprint from Metzler

As you see, mine is more of a gut feeling or commonsense outside-the-field view of things. No theory. I just have a sense of how successful theories work. They do not strain the quality of feasibility; they droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. To mangle Shakespeare. You see that in the progress of theory for something like Ptolemy's astronomy. Trying to account for the movement of planets, it becomes more and more infeasible, more complex with add-ons, special cases, explanation piled on explanation (or excuse upon excuse, really). Then along came the heliocentric theory. Much simpler. All the apparent difficulties vanished. When you see people trying to eliminate 40 orders of magnitude, they are starting off with too many special cases and too much to explain. Theory progresses by becoming simpler. More obvious. Not more complex. It explains less, not more.

Back in 2011, people were using a lattice of nickel micro particles to generate the LENR reaction using lattice assisted fusion as it is called today. A demo of this type of system showed that the production of nuclear signatures was unstable as described by Celani below.

There are unrecognized operating parameters that change the state of the LENR reaction that make observations of experimental indicators unreliable. Gamma radiation and other nuclear reaction indicators can come and go along with particle production all while the LENR reaction is active and producing transmutation.

Current experimentalist are depending on the LENR reaction producing consistent experimental indicators to detect if the LENR reaction is underway. Past experience has shown that the consistent production of these indicators are problematic.

Some systems and even a single system will produce neutrons and heat intermittently, 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. I beleive that this factor is coherence. The LENR reaction is the only process so far discovered where nuclear reactions occur within a coherent system. There are yet undiscovered properties and behaviors of quantum mechanics that make observations of the LENR reaction confusing in the extreme.

Experimentalists new to this field who expect to see direct cause and effects will have to undergo a painful education in the vagaries of the LENR reaction that has plagued and is still plaguing the old guard for decades.

Celani's reaction to a LENR demo back in 2011 as follows:

Before the experiment began, without others realizing it, I ran some
checks to make sure, in the first place, that there were no
radioactive sources hidden somewhere in the reactor,
secondly, that there were no generators of powerful electromagnetic
interference capable of jamming electronic instruments.
Thirdly, that there were no massive power cables around, capable of
simulating a power excess with nothing but a 10 kW water boiler.

I ran these checks without Rossis's knowledge and everything seemed
OK.  At a certain point Rossi said he was about to begin the
experiment.  I then decided to use the gamma-spectrometer (which is
battery-operated as well) without the power cable, because if there is
any electromagnetic interference, this may be carried through the
ground wire, and can alter the measurement.

Everything was working : a battery powered mini-Geiger, a microwave
detector, also battery powered, and an ELF detector, battery powered
as well.

Therefore, four independent instruments, all battery powered.

After various vicissitudes, because the reactor was having major
problems, some inner resistors had broken down, Mr. Rossi came out of
the room delighted: "The reactor has started".  Before he came out, a
few minutes before, I had independently measured that both the gamma
detector and the mini Geiger had hit the top of the scale, whereas the
two detectors of electromagnetic interference were not showing
anything.

This meant that a short but intense emission of gamma radiation had
taken place.

Afterwards, everything went back to normal, and we stayed in the hall
to see what was happening.  After about half an hour, I don't recall
the time exactly, I was allowed to go back and take a look at the
working reactor with my portable detector set for gamma count, and I
began to perform a check.

I noticed that there was an increase of total gamma radiation compared
to the amount recorded before the beginning of the experiment, not a
dangerous increase, around 50%.  And, most important, it wasn't a
stable increase, rather a very, very unstable one.  This means that
there was something live inside, changing the emission, the feeble
emission, of gammas.

Quote from axil

This means that there was something live inside, changing the emission, the feeble emission, of gammas.

What Celani saw has been seen again..

"the feeble emission" of gamma photons may be an indication of huge "live" energy exchanges not picked up by any instrument so far

According to Wyttenbach...only a very small fraction of the magnetic energy exchanges

between gamma states produce gamma photons,,

"What our measurements imply is that

at most 10-8 of all LENR reactions lead to a gamma quantum emission".

For Nickel... Wyttenbach suggests, I think, that the odd Ni61 isotope is a key isotope becauseit is the only one of the 5 stable Nickel isotopes

that has relatively long lived state( 5 nanoseconds) in the low KeV range

at 67.4 Kev

Quote from JedRothwell

That's true. It is not controversial to say this. But I think it is controversial to frame the statement the way he did, without pointing out this situation is outrageous. I think he should say: "These claims were rejected for lack of a plausible explanation. This is a gross violation of the scientific method. Replicated experiments can never be rejected because theory cannot explain them." That puts things in perspective.

There have been incidents in which opponents destroyed cold fusion experiments, in one case by dumping horse manure on them. Metzler would not write: "This experiment ended abruptly after a large quantity of feces were injected into the cell." As if that is a normal course of events. To say only that, without saying who injected the feces and why, and without saying the experiment was sabotaged in violation of academic ethics, would be to leave out essential context.

Your point is well taken, but I don't think it's fair to fault Metzler under the circumstances. If he said what you want him to say, his paper would not be published.

The paper is constructed to make a few substantive points; namely: A) that there is a reasonable theoretical basis that can explain LENR (I know you disagree about this, but indulge me for a moment), B) that there are experiments that can be done to better understand this possible basis, C) that these experiments haven't been done, and D) that, thus, LENR cannot be dismissed.

That's the arc of the paper as I read it. It's a theory paper, but it's also a piece of rhetoric. If you haven't read the conclusion, then I'd urge you to do so.

I think it's a mistake to dismiss the substance of the rhetoric of the paper, which is (I think) saying much of what you wish he would say, simply because he's saying it in an orthogonal and politic manner.

If I recall correctly, this paper will be published in a mainstream journal.

In the nano and micro particle based lattices that enable lattice assisted fusion, these particles amplify LIGHT not electrons. So the electron screening theory as a basis for the reaction is not valid. In nanoplasmonics, the nano and micro particles that form the lattice receive EMF fields and amplify them. There is experiments where intense light from lasers produce transmutation without the generation of nuclear reaction indications.

There may be two simultaneous ongoing but separate mechanisms at play in the cold fusion reaction each having a separate set of indicators and reaction products. For example, Ed Storms has seen high energy electrons being produce in LENR experiments.

For example, there are LENR systems that only produce energetic electrons as a reaction product. These are other systems that produce transmutation products of very heavy elements far beyond any fusion reaction that can be produced on earth. For example, the SAFIRE system is producing rare earth elements in their experiments.

These anomalous indicators point to another LENR reaction mechanism beyond that of fusion of deuterium.

Florian Metzler in his next paper is concerned with just the nuclear mechanism in action during the LENR reaction. He has not recognized the photoelectric based reaction that is also likely taking place.

Quote from orsova

Your point is well taken, but I don't think it's fair to fault Metzler under the circumstances. If he said what you want him to say, his paper would not be published.

That's true! Maybe he could tone it down from what I said. Just mention that this violates the scientific method.

Quote from axil

Florian Metzler in his next paper is concerned with just the nuclear mechanism in action during the LENR reaction.

The next one on arxiv is concerned with all manner of reactions/mechanisms..

quantum..Hamiltonians.. Dicke models..

Maybe ARPA institutional support will enable Florian to get back into the lab.

Nuclear fusion is an expensive field

Quantum Engineering for Energy Applications

Quantum engineering seeks to create novel technologies based on the exploitation of distinctly nonclassical behaviors such as quantum superposition. The vast…

aps.arxiv.org

Quantum Engineering for Energy Applications..

Quantum energy science bears the promise of substantial performance improvements across energy technologies such as organic solar cells, quantum batteries, and nuclear fusion. The recognition of this emerging domain may be of great relevance to actors concerned with energy innovation. It may also benefit active researchers in this domain by increasing visibility and motivating the deployment of resources and institutional support.

Quote from Daniel_G

Pardon my naïveté but I tried searching Google Scholar for Duncan’s publications on LENR and couldn’t find anything.

I think it’s great that more mainstream institutions are supporting work in this area. I’d like to read anything he’s published in the field if anyone can point me in the right direction

Rob Duncan has authored a considerable number of articles on quantum phases. The quantum condensation of deuterium nuclei is the key to achieving cold fusion and Robert Duncan has all the scientific experience to be of extremely valuable assistance to the LENR community.

Daniel_G

"Pardon my naïveté but I tried searching Google Scholar for Duncan’s publications on LENR and couldn’t find anything."

Some more here...

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Duncan-25

In my opinion, the theory to LENR is going to come from those that are willing to take the greatest risks in how deep they are willing to go, rewriting the standard model and then approach the new empirical data with the greatest humbleness and respect for nature. The true groundbreaking revolutionaries that I have had the honor to meet are extremely humble, almost to a fault. I guess there are those that don't fit this mold like Steve Jobs, but that's more on the business side than the science side.

If you look closely enough and with sufficient scrutiny I think a logical and empirically fluent person can see many areas ripe for rewriting. So much of science from the late 20th and early 21st centuries is built on very fragile foundations of serial assumptions. It's high time we question the many assumptions in modern science from cosmological scales to subatomic scales. Non-falsifiable science is not science. The fact that we have replicated experimental results that can't be explained by existing models is big slap in the face to wake up and question our models and assumptions. Cosmology was the first victim in this degradation of science. How many times have they "adjusted" their models to fit specific experimental results? Now JWST data is further exacerbating this problem. The answer is in plain sight, so it is our cognitive dissonance that becomes the main obstacle to progress.

When I look at this industry, I see common threads of truth sufficient enough to at least cause one to consider alternative models in physics. My prediction is that enough empirical evidence to drastically alter significant portions of physics, will be available by the end of this decade. The LENR field has its share of charlatans and bad actors that have done their damnedest to discredit the entire field, but now I think there is sufficient critical mass to move to the next stage.

All we have to do is real science. Design a hypothesis, calculate the uncertainty budget robustly, assure sufficient statistical power to disprove the null hypothesis, and start publishing in more influential mainstream journals. Most of the papers in this field I have seen do not do follow this recipe. I think this echoes the sentiments of THHuxley and other skeptics. Although I personally am 100% convinced about LENR being real because I have seen, touched and felt it with my own senses, in order to convince the broader Society, we simply need to do more, good science.

In closing I would like to quote the great Rabbi Shlomo: "If you are one step ahead of the crowd, you are a genius. If you are two steps ahead, you are a crackpot."

Quote from fabrice DAVID

Rob Duncan has authored a considerable number of articles on quantum phases. The quantum condensation of deuterium nuclei is the key to achieving cold fusion and Robert Duncan has all the scientific experience to be of extremely valuable assistance to the LENR community.

He seems to be an expert on cryothermometry and calorimetry, not the type of high temperature calorimetry that we need for our experiments. I don't know how you can make blanket statements as the above quote. Based on what data? Personally I think the jury is still out but since no difference has ever been seen in using H2 vs. D2, this comment cannot be supported by the evidence. Whatever mechanism we are seeing for our XSH, either the 1/6000 H2 atoms that is D2, is fueling the reaction, or the D2 is not necessary. Since nobody has centrifuged D2 from H2 to create 100% pure H2, this hypothesis is difficult to test in practice. Mizuno has had reactors running for years on normal H2 so I doubt very much that deuterons are the key you suggest they are.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346953575_A_solid-state_open-system_differential_calorimeter

This is an interesting paper on a very sensitive calorimeter he designed, so at least he seems well versed in some relevant topics. The other impression I got is he seems to be a kind of a polymath, well versed in many fields. Surely a person like this could be a valuable contributor to the field.

Quote from Daniel_G

a very sensitive calorimeter he designed,

It was discussed on LF awhile back..

I think it was a team effort

Post

RE: Robert V Duncan at TTU: 5Mn$ for hydride research in "Seashore research LLC"

[…]

How much Texas funding did they use to produce this milliwhat.
Peltier calorimetry can go down to microwatts
. We have realized the setup with:
i compact calorimetric cell 32 mm of lateral size to be inserted in the gap of an electromagnet 2T maximum field,
iii miniaturized Peltier cells with high sensitivity which allows a resolution of heat flux measurement of about 1microwatt

A Peltier cells differential calorimeter with kinetic correction for the measurement of cp(H,T)cp(H,T) and

…

RobertBryant

Sep 17th 2020

Hopefully any calorimetry using ARPA funds will be more high T and cost less $..

Greg Gobble reported me a news about ARPA-E funding of LENR:

UC Berkeley just announced they are the lead of the ARPA-E LENR Program. Google Inc LENR patent inventors are head of the team. Odd... No mention of Google.

He wrote an article on linked-In

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gregory-goble-42939a12_berkeley-lab-to-lead-arpa-e-low-energy-nuclear-activity-7049830545530241024-vn5w

Quote from Greg Gobble

Jeremy Munday developed two LENR patents for Google Inc during Project Charleston. Thomas Schenkel developed two more recent LENR patents, at LBNL. The Department of Energy and Google Inc. are assignees of these. Now they are working together leading the ARPA-E LENR efforts. I expect these Google Inc. patents will be of significance to the success of the ARPA-E Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Program.

News Release UC Berkeley

Berkeley Lab to Lead ARPA-E Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Project By Carl A. Williams, March 29, 2023 from the Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are collaborating with colleagues from the College of Engineering at the University of California, Davis on low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) research.The project, titled “Quantifying Nuclear Reactions in Metal Hydrides at Low Energies,” is supported by $1.5 million in funding over two and half years from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). It aims to quantify LENR processes at excitation energies below 500 eV while systematically varying materials and conditions to monitor for fusion event rates. To achieve this, says Thomas Schenkel, a Senior Scientist who heads ATAP’s Fusion Science & Ion Beam Technology Program and is leading the research, “we will use a relatively low-energy ion beam as an external excitation source for LENR on palladium hydride samples loaded with deuterium—a stable isotope of hydrogen that also contains a neutron—and then quantify any LENR events using a suite of diagnostic tools.”

The work, he added, will leverage Berkeley Lab’s expertise in particle accelerator physics and ion beams that are used for higher-energy fusion experiments, as well as UC Davis’s expertise in metal hydrides and optics.Schenkel’s team includes ATAP Staff Scientists Qing Ji and Arun Persaud and UC Davis’ Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty members Jeremy Munday and William Putnam.If successful, the work could provide new insights into the fundamental science of nuclear reactions at relatively low energies and potentially lead to new applications in energy research.For more information on ATAP News articles, contact Carl A. Williams ([email protected]).

The news is :

https://atap.lbl.gov/lenr/

Quote from AlainCo

Greg Gobble reported me a news about ARPA-E funding of LENR:

UC Berkeley just announced they are the lead of the ARPA-E LENR Program. Google Inc LENR patent inventors are head of the team. Odd... No mention of Google.

Just to be clear, Schenkel is not leading the ARPA-E Program. He is leading the ARPA-E funded research at both LBNL (Berkely), and the University of California (Davis). There are 6 other teams ARPA-E is funding.

That said, nice catch Greg.

Revisiting cold fusion possibilities for clean energy

HANOVER, N.H. – With global attention becoming increasingly focused on climate change, more and more scientific research is turning to advancements in clean energy. One researcher at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) has set his sights on cold fusion.

Cold fusion — or low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) as it is referred to today — is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that occurs at, or near, room temperature. In 1989, two electrochemists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, claimed they could produce nuclear fusion using their apparatus on a small tabletop. Their claims were tested, found to be unreliable and have mostly been dismissed for the last 30 years.

“Engineers talk about three main problems that we strive to solve: communication, transportation and energy,” said Dr. Benjamin Barrowes, a research electrical engineer at ERDC-CRREL in Hanover, New Hampshire. “Of those three, we continuously make incremental improvements, but energy is a big problem these days. Generating and using energy with the current inefficiencies has led to greenhouse gases, climate change and even wars. It’s a big issue, so if we had a new energy source, it would be a huge benefit to everybody.”

With the current climate crisis, interest in LENR has grown.

“LENR hopes to show that there are nuclear effects under near ambient circumstances,” said Barrowes. “If we can do that, if we can show that there is any nuclear effect going on, and document it and have it repeatable then scientists around the world would believe that there’s something happening. Then they could get involved to help figure out why it’s happening, how it’s happening and then hopefully exploit it for a new energy source.”

Barrowes is new to the LENR community and has only been exploring the process for the last few years.

“I’m only able to do this because of Department of Defense Funding Laboratory Enhancements Across Four Categories, or FLEX-4 funding,” he said. “ERDC has invested in cold fusion in fiscal years 2022-2024. We’re halfway through at this moment, and that has allowed me to do some preliminary research to get myself in the game.”

For his research, Barrowes often works with the metal palladium and different types of lasers.

“Palladium has a very special property in that it absorbs a lot of hydrogen or deuterium, which is hydrogen with an extra neutron,” he said. “When palladium absorbs this hydrogen, it’s theorized that under the right conditions, those hydrogen or deuterium atoms get close enough to fuse — that’s our cold fusion.”

After a recent experiment, Barrowes discovered two very interesting features when examining the palladium.

“There is a triangular patch of silicon located in the general area of where we positioned the red laser,” he said. “It’s about a 1-millimeter square area of silicon, and it’s thick in terms of these things — like 50 microns thick — and it’s ridged and brittle. I don’t know how it got there, but if I can show that it’s from a nuclear process, that would be big news.”

Barrowes plans to analyze the silicon to see if it is natural or made in a nuclear process.

“There is another area where we used a blue laser and that also has silicon,” he said. It’s not very much — only approximately 1 micron thick — but that is about the size of the blue laser, and it’s located in the spot where it was positioned. It’s fascinating. It could be contamination, or it could be nothing.”

With renewed interest in LENR, more opportunities for research are becoming available. Last year the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, or ARPA-E, announced a $10 million award to revisit cold fusion. ARPA-E is a U.S. government agency tasked with promoting and funding research and development of advanced energy technologies.

“This is big news in our community,” said Barrowes. “An agency’s finally funding this again, and the potential payoff could be huge. I’m collaborating on two of the research awards. It’s exciting.”

Revisiting cold fusion possibilities for clean energy

With global attention becoming increasingly focused on climate change, more and more scientific research is turning to advancements in clean energy. One…

www.dvidshub.net

Carl Page and Hilda Palencia Address Students at the 2023 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit Washington, D.C.

March 22, 2023 — Once again this year, Anthropocene Institute partnered with The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) on the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit’s Student Program, a unique opportunity for student energy leaders to engage with companies looking for new talent, as well as learn about new energy initiatives.

ARPA-E 2023: Challenging students to go beyond net zero - Anthropocene Institute