The perpetual “is LENR even real” argument thread.

Quote from RobertBryant

Judge.thyself. .. if. you are a person?

another one of those. vague. statements..

like. "antivaxxer"...

I mean who has the preponderance 'antivaxxer' comments on LF forum?

Judge thyself

I do judge myself - and sometimes I find myself wanting - but on this forum I see prolific posters whose conduct makes mine look pretty good.

Quote from Alan Smith

I think that is very disrespectful. I am not aware of anybody doing fundamental research in the LENR field (as distinct from people trying to sell vapourware or raise cash for investment funds who might be involved in what is called 'astroturfing') who mistake patents for practical realities.

My comment was that many here look at patents to find hints towards methods. And many here do take patent claims as supporting evidence that something is possible. We could look back through threads to find examples. patents get a lot of time. Which in my view is a big waste.

Quote from Curbina

The “corpus of Rydberg matter published stuff” has been used to obtain patents, with mixed results (one Sweden grant and one EPO rejection that wasn’t appealed).

You claim LENR is poor science, do you consider this very exhaustive experimental work, to prove transmutations and rule out contamination and / or transport processes, poor science?

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

Re Rydberg stuff - yes that aligns with my understanding

Re Miles paper: notice that I made an exception for older papers many of which are good science. You post work 27 years old.

That paper is influential (within LENR). It has 48 citations - all of them LENR people.

Somehow none of the replications has made it to the level of more certain positive corroboration that would encourage more non-LENR-convince scientists to take a look.

Remember: scientists are rewarded for new discoveries. Greatly. Many (at the more prosperous institutions) have lab equipment and Phd candidates free for pursuing way out ideas. Anything strange but half-convincing is worth one PhD investigating when you have available the equipment. And if there is a real effect, replicable, the extra evidence of an independent lab finding it who did not expect it (and therefore was, in there own ways - properly skeptical) will encourage an avalanche of independent replication.

This lack of follow through is what makes me pessimistic. And all the excuses here would count for more if those who were putting effort into LENR now cared more about showing it was real, rather than keeping their audience of fellow-converts happy.

Which was why I was very happy about the google investigators. I still do not understand what they did wrong with thoise electrolysis experiments(as the rumour is here).

Quote from THHuxleynew

https://www.sciencedirect.com/…S0360319922047140#abs0010

This paper is what this site should be discussing - looking in detail at all of its elements. I was unhappy at the time with the relative lack of detailed critique - yet this data is surely more interesting (because more detailed and well described) than Mizuno's experiment about which there were 100s of pages of comments.

In order to understand what this paper does, you need to read:

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

which discusses the electrolysis experiment in detail.

Also - you get to this in a roundabout way with citation search -

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/…7JPSJ...86g4201P/abstract

and - same stuff but commercial with more guesswork on usefulness as mechanism for LENR:

http://www.targettechnology.co…Papers/H_Nee_06_04shf.pdf

Now, these papers (and ones like them) are what give me hope LENR might exist - although maybe not at useful rates. They are completely coherent, and do not have any obvious need for divergent theory which would have been seen elsewhere. They break some modern lenr canons: supposing lenr is not possible with H.

Only hope though - there are some issues with both:

(1) The theoretical stuff - suggesting high density of H or D in Ni or Pd vacancies. It is indicative only, and could be making approximations that invalidate it. DFT is good for many things but not necessarily this unusual situation - so I would not trust this until it received a lot of attention and critique from people who do detailed electron wave function simulations and can estimates the likely errors from DFT in this work.

(2) The experimental work.

A. Staker's attention to exact calorimetry is extraordinary and excellent. His use of resistivity to monitor D (or H) loading is excellent - though I am not sure how he gets his exact figures for loading - I think these may be contentious. I'd like to understand it and make sense of it in the context of the detailed work some of the google people did on measuring loading to see what is what.

B. There is a big elephant in the room - which perhaps invalidates all Staker's careful work. The cells he uses are open cells. The power in calculation assumes that the thermoneutral voltage (what is needed to electrolyse water) should not be included. He calibrates D vs H of course. If there is any recombination, not expected, but therefore could be elusive and different D from H, it would look, in this experiment, like excess heat. Staker relies on:

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

Which says that recombination is zero, or too small to alter heat balance, in such open cell calorimetry. This needs investigation. If the result is experimental - because recombination is elusive and could well be as variable as LENR - how do the authors know it is always so small?

THH

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From:

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

Key features (their words):

The long and narrow design of the calorimeters ensures that the contents are well mixed by the gas sparging induced by gas evolution at the anodes and cathodes. The radial and axial mixing times of the system (as revealed by tracer experiments) are ~3s and ~20s whereas the thermal relaxation time of the ICARUS-2 cell investigated in the present paper is ~5000s1,2.

The volumes of the gases evolved agreed to within ~1% of those calculated assuming 100% Faradaic efficiency of the electrolytic reactions provided we neglected the initial parts of the measurement sequences during which there is charging of Pd-based electrodes by hydrogen isotopes. The volume of D2Ο required to maintain the levels of electrolyte in the cells also agreed with those calculated by Faradays Laws. There is therefore no possibility of invoking the large-scale recombination of the evolved gases to explain excess enthalpy generation.

So:

(1) O2 and D2 or H2 will be well-mixed in the cell

(2) therefore catalytic oxidation of D2 or H2 on or inside an electrode surface ("at the electrode recombination") is a theoretical possibility

(3) this paper claims that it is very small. The question then is, given that we would expect suhc catalytic recombination to be very dependent on cell conditions and exact details of electrode preparation, also perhaps sensitive to D vs H, how do we know that it is always constant, and small?

I accept that this paper shows proper measurement of evolved gas volume that agree within 1% with the energy input from the calculated electroneutral voltage (e.g. the energy needed to split H2O or D2O).

I accept that if this is true the Staker results look very interesting (I cannot see any other loophole - though my record on seeing loopholes is bad - so proper review from an expert might find one).

However, I cannot for the life of me see how variable ATER in these experiments, as in F&Ps experiments, can be ruled out. It would then have exactly the characteristics of LENR excess heat, and the same experimental difficulty in making it happen. therefore an experiment which shows that sometimes the rate f ATER is too low to affect heat balance cannot show that that is always the case. By exactly the same argument that negative LENR electrolysis experiments do not disprove LENR.

I'd be very happy for someone (Jed?) to poke holes in this argument. If they are rational holes, not just "Fleischmann was a great man and could not make a mistake".

The key point: how can catalytic ATER be distinguished from LENR excess heat - except in experiments that accurately measure gas volume and do calorimetry showing LENR at the same time. So, for example, Staker needs to add gas volume measurement to his careful calorimetry for his results to be credible.

Quote from Alan Smith

Why should anybody listen to unsupported objections from an obsessive foamist - who sadly has only one rabbit and lost his hat long ago?

Quote from Ascoli65

Why should anyone explains in detail the errors made by Staker in the interpretation of his results?

As shown by the obstinate refusal to take into consideration the well documented and irrefutable errors made by F&P in the Simplicity Paper, you, as any other LENR's fan, are not willing to recognize any error made by a CF/LENR researchers.

When such an error will be found and explained in detail, you will just pull out another rabbit from your hat.

No-one here has any obligation to do anything.

But I'd be interested in any errors of interpretation in that Staker paper. I do not know of any. But I do not think I am competent to find all possible errors! Not even, in this case, half-competent.

The issue (error is the wrong word) I see is in the properly stated reliance on his reference [44]. That seems a stretch to pin such an extraordinary result on.

Anyway: rather than insulting each other we could be making real comments about that sequence of papers which I find interesting. (Myself in that non-social-media possible gap between "LENR is impossible" and "LENR is proven").

Quote from Ascoli65

As shown by the obstinate refusal to take into consideration the well documented and irrefutable errors made by F&P in the Simplicity Paper, you, as any other LENR's fan, are not willing to recognize any error made by a CF/LENR researchers.

For me, the errors are well documented. However you slice it there is inconsistency between the video and the graphs in the paper. However the thesis of the paper - even that implausible heat-after-death claim - cannot be ruled out from the evidence, the inconsistencies make it unclear what happened.

I don't by that mean that "maybe the paper proves its thesis". Clearly given inconsistency it cannot. I mean that it is possible the claimed levels of excess heat existed.

Now, for me, that statement (of uncertainty) is not a big deal. Nor does it mean I find that experiment indicative of its thesis. It is just badly documented and therefore of no value as to its main results.

What is more relevant is why those who have as settled opinion that LENR exists care so much about that one experiment. Whatever its significance at the time surely such a grand thesis (as LENR) cannot rest on one experiment.

Why Staker's results matter

Staker has done us all a favour by reducing uncertainty in his replication of open cell calorimetry.

(1) he has very accurate results

(2) his resistivity measurements are an interesting and it seems successful way to instrument and therefore more easily obtain high D or H loading.

(3) with the addition of accurate measurement of evolved gas volume his work would go some way to resolve the issue of "do those D/Pd experiments show excess heat". Either by showing recombination at levels higher than expected by F&M, or by replicating with high accuracy the older experimental results.

My one hesitation here is that maybe those who understand calorimetry much better than me can see problems with his work.

Quote from Alan Smith

Tell Ascoli that.

I have! We are however all free to have different views...

Quote from Alan Smith

I agree. But pointing out the shortcomings of somebody who does not hesitate to denigrate the work of people who are either dead or not here to respond, criticisms based on what appears to be very little scientific knowledge is not insulting, it is a public service to the forum.

Like many here ascoli is obsessive about detail, which I respect.

That can lead you astray. It can also identify inconsistencies that would otherwise not be noticed.

If ascoli wishes to do more than note the errors in a seminal experiment - something that is entirely proper - well that is a shame.

However it is no more of a shame than those here who view F&P's work as being unchallengable because they were great scientists, or who think such a result should be accepted when the results on which it rests (from F&P) are not clear. Both views personalise things.

Anyway that does not matter, given so much subsequent work. It would be helpful to move things on from those very early results, while also seeking to understand the evidence from D/Pd electrolysis from more recent (and better) experiments like Staker's.

THH

Quote from Alan Smith

THHuxleynew

The big technical problem with so many of these experiments is that they are complex and technically challenging in many ways. Few individuals have all the talents required to cover all the bases. To give a personal example, I have the engineering, the chemistry and the calorimetry skills. I lack the modern level of data handling skills, but get on ok with more traditional methods, and feel I am a novice at electro-chemistry (though I'm learning.) Most people I have met or worked with in the scientific field are similar- good at some things, poor at others. That's why a team is good, and why LENR conferences are important bacause from those meetings alliances are built that help plug the skills gap.

I agree. I only see the "public - here" output from those conferences and I would want more focus on the uncertainties in the various experiments.

What would improve the quality of the evidence is for existing work to be discussed, possible loopholes found, spurring authors - or others - to close those. LENR has a special reason for doing this, because of the nature of the evidence "anything anomalous" (that is an exaggeration, but not by much). the fact that everyone at such a conference may be convinced that nuclear-level excess heat from those electrolysis experiments sometimes happens is not the point. Everyone looking from the outside can see an anomaly, and would be interested in pinning it down. That requires work like that of Staker: but also open and clear critique of it, so that Staker or others can repeat closing loopholes.