Which ICCF24 presentation is most likely to sway a skeptic?

    Quote from Bruce__H

    I am unsure how knowledgeable you are about Wyttenbach's current work.


    If Wyttenbach is currently seeing gamma radiation from fuel not prepared by Russ George (but prepared generally according to George's ideas) then this is a sort of replication of George's previous results isn't it? I would think that would be important.

    Don't think too hard. As for being unsure (your favourite stance) you will see a paper published by Jurg and me later this years or early 2022. So you might say we collaborate.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    ... you will see a paper published by Jurg and me later this years or early 2022. So you might say we collaborate.

    OK.


    I hope you two are not intending ResearchGate as the ultimate receptacle of this work. I wouldn't call a work appearing on ResearchGate a "paper". I would call that an unreviewed manuscript. Nor would I call it "published". I don't know what word should substituted for "publish" though. "Displayed"?

    I found Daniel Gruenberg's iccf presentation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFsEjW-U2Rs) to be disappointing. Little evidence was presented for his claims. The only plot that might be supposed to support his claims was poorly formatted and did not show what it was supposed to show. Nonetheless, I think that this research could potentially lead to something persuasive if the right approach is taken.


    A refereed paper demonstrating Daniel's results would, of course, be welcome. But even in its absence, I think that there might be another avenue that would persuade. Daniel has professed willingness to send working reactors to independent labs for validation of their ability to produce excess heat. I think that is this were done in an open data manner -- such as practiced by MagicSound -- it could lead to very persuasive results.


    I, personally, can conceive of a confluence of labs, procedures, and results that I would find persuasive as to the reality of LENR. I wonder if others feel the same way.

    Clean Planet is leading the globe in LENR R&D and at ICCF24 presented their strategy for both developing a technology and nailing down the science of the reaction itself.


    Hideki Yoshino built the group in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster and seemingly has marshaled all of Japan to support Solid State Energy, a.k.a. Quantum Hydrogen Energy, a.k.a. Metal Hydrogen Energy, a.k.a. LENR.


    No longer is it hit-or-miss to just get a reaction. Excess thermal power in the range of 200-300 Watts has been reported by Clean Planet and Tohoku scientists in the past, but now, researchers are now regularly making the reaction happen at will, testing parameters during repeated runs, and finding patterns on the similar outcomes.


    For instance, Yasuhiro Iwamura is regularly generating 5 Watts excess heat and testing how jiggling the heater causes excess heat bursts. See

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    Takehiko Itoh generated a baseline of 2-3 Watts and prompted controlled heat bursts of 1 Watt to test test the quantity and quality of radiation. See

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    Jirohta Kasagi has shown that the same Ni-Cu nano-films will generate similar heat whether using H or D. See

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    Masahiko Hasegawa of Technova has generated 17 Watts long term, and is testing parameters such as the metal/hydrogen ratio and temperature effects on excess power. See

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    But the new level of widespread low watt excess power reproducibility is not limited to Clean Planet or Technova, but appears in multiple labs. Si Chen reported 1 Watt with a bump to 2 Watts. See

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    Jean Paul Biberian showed results ranging from a few watts to tens of Watts. See

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    It will take some time to sift through all of these presentations, but another pattern emerging seems to be adding elements like CaO and oxidization to create dislocations and cracks which is claimed to initiate and enhance the reaction.


    Clean Planet reported a 1kW proto-type commercial boiler design has been in testing since May 2021. Also, a heating unit has been running continuously since May 2021 with no hydrogen fuel added since the initial saturation. They plan a commercial product by the year 2025. See

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    .


    I will edit and update this same post as I get to more presentation data.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Dear Bruce. You are an unutterable snob. Take that as a compliment.

    This is not snobbery. I am pointing out completely ordinary intellectual standards that the entire LENR community should be supporting if they want their subject taken seriously.


    Posting something or other on a preprint service can be worthwhile if, in the end, it gives rise to an actual published work subjected to real peer review. But it is not worthwhile if it is used to lend a faux aura of science to poor work, or nonsense, or malevolent fakery. If this is what happens, then it is literally pseudoscience.


    No one takes ResearchGate or other preprint services seriously as ultimate destinations for genuine science. Look at the so-called Swedish Professors who "published" a study on Rossi's fraudulent device on the ArXive.org repository. When legitimate questions were raised about this work, and when outright fraud by Rossi was suspected, did any of them address the concerns or publish anything notifying people that the work might not be valid? No. They just shut up about it and slunk away. Why? Because none of them see this as a genuine publication. Nothing is actually at stake. If they had actually published in a real journal and then failed to reveal a possible fraud underlying it, they would all have been at risk of serious academic sanctions from their respective universities ... even up to dismissal. No risk of that here though. In their judgement a preprint isn't worth defending. They are right too!


    Writing a real scientific paper is hard work. Fighting it through peer review to publication is just as hard. Wyttenbach definitely needs help writing and if you are doing that then more power to you. But why go through that hard work unless your intention is to end up with a real publication instead of something pseudo?

    Quote from Bruce__H

    Posting something or other on a preprint service can be worthwhile if, in the end, it gives rise to an actual published work subjected to real peer review. But it is not worthwhile if it is used to lend a faux aura of science to poor work, or nonsense, or malevolent fakery. If this is what happens, then it is literally pseudoscience.


    No one takes ResearchGate or other preprint services seriously as ultimate destinations for genuine science. Fighting it through peer review to publication is just as hard. Wyttenbach definitely needs help writing and if you are doing that then more power to you. But why go through that hard work unless your intention is to end up with a real publication instead of something pseudo?

    Surely you understand the issues this field has had with publishing? If not, then you would be surprised. Read How the Flawed Journal Review Process Impedes Paradigm Shifting Discoveries in the Journal http://www.iscmns.org/CMNS/JCMNS-Vol12.pdf

    published back in 2013. Your friends in academia may snub the Open Science option, but LENR scientists were forced to this avenue. The thing to do is look at the data, not the label, and take it from there.

    Need another analogy for a technology developing before full-understanding of the mechanism behind it is achieved? Look no further than AI.


    Charles Martin lays out how "no one understands how AI works", but they are continuing to develop applications for its use!

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    More data would be very welcome.


    I have looked through the last of those presentations and it contains the data I have seen before. The 1W or so excess heat was not provided with enough information for me to know whether it might in fact be an artifact.


    CP seem quite confident that it can be scaled up in a way that would deliver real power gain without corresponding chemical input. In that case, such a scaled up device will be easy to test in a way that even annoying skeptics like me will believe. Until then the headline figures do not look any more convincing than the many other claims of small excess heat: and I have not read detailed papers.


    All I can say is that if all these claims represent a real effect getting it into a form where it can be indisputably and independently tested should be quite easy - and as soon as that happens very large funds will be unlocked.


    THH

    Quote from Bruce__H

    Writing a real scientific paper is hard work. Fighting it through peer review to publication is just as hard. Wyttenbach definitely needs help writing and if you are doing that then more power to you. But why go through that hard work unless your intention is to end up with a real publication instead of something pseudo?

    Writing good papers (whether published on researchgate or elsewhere) is hard.


    The difference is that Researchgate does not require papers there to be good, and most are not. Reputable journals do require that quality - and getting it is hard work which allows readers to evaluate the significance of the published material more easily.


    I am not saying that everything which is published is high quality - all systems are fallible. Certainly not that everything which is published is correct - see for example:


    Comment on ’Phase transition temperatures of 405-725 K in

    superfluid ultra-dense hydrogen clusters on metal surfaces’


    The article in [1] has recently come to our attention. It makes a number of

    extraordinary claims that each contradict well established facts in several fields,

    ranging from atomic and molecular physics to superconductivity and superfluidity, with practically no supporting evidence. We think it worthwhile to rectify the literature with this comment.


    [1] Leif Holmlid and Bernhard Kotzias, AIP Advances 6, 045111 (2016), ’Phase

    transition temperatures of 405-725 K in superfluid ultra-dense hydrogen clusters

    on metal surfaces’


    https://www.lenr-forum.com/attachment/21714-2207-07844-pdf/


    [Thanks to Ahlfors]


    I am saying that if you can eliminate 95% of the low quality stuff (or force its authors to recast it in a form where it makes sense and can be understood) everyone benefits.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    That is a very offensive way to describe 2 people with distinguished academic careers at a respected university. Another example of academic snobbery on your part.

    You misunderstand. I completely agree that they are accomplished researchers with distinguished careers at prestigious universities. They are the real deal. In fact, that was precisely my argument. Real scientists don't think of ResearchGate or ArXive as the permanent home for genuine science.


    I called them "the so-called Swedish Professors" because that is what people were calling them here on LENR Forum ... "the Swedish Professors".

    Quote from rubycarat

    Clean Planet is leading the globe in LENR R&D and at ICCF24 presented their strategy for both developing a technology and nailing down the science of the reaction itself.

    I think that CP are most likely to succeed -- lots of small experiments to test various aspects, and (taking their published plans at face value) industrial-level units -- all with significant university, government and industrial cooperation.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    You only like open data that you can pick holes in by 'being unsure' of course.

    Not true.


    As I have mentioned before (here) I see hope, in Daniel's program, for open-science investigators and an online community to interact and come to agreement about what would sway a sceptic. I am hoping that such agreement (on what would be persuasive) would be achieved before the results come in and that sceptics would thus be trapped into committing themselves to valuing the outcome.

    Quote from Alan Fletcher

    I think that CP are most likely to succeed -- lots of small experiments to test various aspects, and (taking their published plans at face value) industrial-level units -- all with significant university, government and industrial cooperation.

    That is the point.


    Unless they have results, undisclosed, much more significant than what I have seen, this is a typical gap of hope.


    They have not yet shown power out that could not be a calorimetry artifact, given the relatively small levels out relative to the real power in: 30C on top of 700C? When temperature is a poor proxy for power.


    No doubt they have assumptions on which their scaling rests, which would make a bigger system work with useful power out.


    It is when those assumptions get tested that they and we will find out are they correct.


    Normally it is more cost-effective to characterise systems on multiple axes - at which point the characteristics of the system and its scaling become much clearer, before moving to large scale commercialisation. In the case of LENR this process has usually shown a lack of scalability (= whatever was seen was not what was expected - and probably some artifact).

    Quote from rubycarat

    Surely you understand the issues this field has had with publishing?

    I agree there are issues. Yet, when I look at ICCF24, I do not see the quality of unpublished but publishable in a fair world papers to back up claims of bias. And I can point to a number of cases where LENR papers (sometimes of dubious quality) have got through into serious Journals. They tend to describe phenomena and avoid the words LENR or CF.


    If it is just a matter of tact how you describe extraordinary new phenomena when writing them up that is surely a small price to pay.

    Quote from rubycarat

    Clean Planet is leading the globe in LENR R&D and at ICCF24 presented their strategy for both developing a technology and nailing down the science of the reaction itself.

    They are doing good stuff. So is Mizuno, it seems. However, as of today, taking all claims at face value, I would say that Frank Gordon and the LEC are leading the globe. By a wide margin. If the LEC can be scaled up, all other forms of cold fusion will probably fall by the wayside. I doubt there will be any use for thermal cold fusion, because you can always convert electricity into heat. The LEC has many advantages over other cold fusion devices. The two biggest ones are that it requires no input; and it produces electricity, which is the most flexible and useful form of energy.


    The LEC produces only microwatts, whereas the Clean Planet gadget reportedly produces 1 kW and will soon produce enough for a commercial heater. If you think that has any bearing on the future prospects, I think you do not understand technology. You do not understand commerce. Granted, you are in good company. Many venture capitalists and others want to see a "scale up." They do not understand that a microwatt at this stage may well beat a kilowatt. Size does not matter. The appearance of being close to a commercial produce does not matter. Nothing is now close to commercialization. Brillouin's ability to spin a Stirling engine tells you nothing about whether their machine is practical or has any commercial prospects. Compare Hiram Maxim's 1897 airplane to the Wright 1903 airplane. Maxim's machine was gigantic. It had 2 engines, 180 HP each. It flew, briefly, by accident when it left the guide rails. The design was hopeless, and there was no future to it. The Wright machine was far smaller, with a 12 HP engine, but every airplane that followed was based its design.



    Manuscripts Image of the Month – The Maxim Airplane – Cambridge University Library Special Collections

    Hiram Maxim's airplane. Maxim invented the machine gun and much else. He was a genius, but this was not one of his successes.



    When a new technology emerges, there is a short period of when many different forms and methods compete. Following that, one or two types dominate, and all the others are forgotten.


    The initial phase is a sort of Cambrian explosion. Lots of variety and rapid changes. Transistors began when Lilienfeld proposed a field effect device (1925). He probably never made one. The first working transistor was a point-contact device (1947). That was quickly followed by the bipolar junction device (1948). Many different ways of assembling them were developed. I read somewhere that factories were tossing out their fabrication equipment every year or two because the technology was changing so quickly. In 1959 the MOSFET was invented, and I believe that has been the standard ever since.


    Anyway, in cold fusion you can expect one approach will work much better than others, and it will soon dominate and then put all the others out of business. That is not to say there will only be one winner, and one patent. Transistor patents began with Lilienfeld, then AT&T. That was the beginning, not the end. There are now approximately 53,000 granted semiconductor patents and 42,600 application in "31,200 separate patent families."



    Semiconductor Patents | UpCounsel 2022
    Semiconductor patents, those that protect the invention of new computer memory chips, are among the most commonly granted modern patents.
    www.upcounsel.com


    If Frank Gordon's patents begin to rake in the money, I think that will prevent patents from Clean Planet, Brillouin or anywhere else from getting any royalties. It will not stop other people from improving the LEC, or expanding applications to many different areas. Products will be needed in for many applications, from watch batteries to megawatt power supplies, to aerospace engines. Even if the core technology is the same LEC in all of them, the implementations will be different. Decades from now there will be thousands of patents and thousands of winners. But the first round of people who invented thermal cold fusion devices will probably not be among them. That's my prediction.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    And I can point to a number of cases where LENR papers (sometimes of dubious quality) have got through into serious Journals.

    Ain't that the truth! There are scads of terrible papers about cold fusion. All of the skeptical ones to start with. Especially this one, which is the only skeptical paper that ever tried to find a technical reason to doubt cold fusion:


    https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf


    All the others say: "it doesn't work according to my theory so it doesn't exist."


    Quote from THHuxleynew

    If it is just a matter of tact how you describe extraordinary new phenomena when writing them up that is surely a small price to pay.

    Right again! You cannot express any tact. Give no quarter. You must ridicule both the research and the researchers. But you are wrong that it is difficult or that there is a price to pay. On the contrary, any fool can publish a paper attacking cold fusion. Such papers get into journals like shit through a goose, and the authors are rewarded.


    Perhaps you meant a paper that describes a positive cold fusion result. Such papers cannot be published anywhere, in any journal. It is best to submit them to the Journal of Universal Rejection. It saves time. See:


    Journal of Universal Rejection

    Quote from Bruce__H

    You misunderstand. I completely agree that they are accomplished researchers with distinguished careers at prestigious universities. They are the real deal. In fact, that was precisely my argument. Real scientists don't think of ResearchGate or ArXive as the permanent home for genuine science.


    I called them "the so-called Swedish Professors" because that is what people were calling them here on LENR Forum ... "the Swedish Professors".

    ArXive refused the Lugano paper.


    If one publishes first on RG probably forget publishing that paper again elsewhere, but the other way around is OK.

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