Unfortunately, the people who need to be inspired are not present in this discussion.
You would be amazed who reads these pages. But please do write up some more of your work and thoughts.
The perpetual “is LENR even real” argument thread.
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I don't mean to quibble, but let's look at how people such as THH and editors at Scientific American claim they can falsify observed behavior. They say that all of the observations are mistakes, or fraud. Let us grant that if that were true, cold fusion would be falsified.
What I say in response is: Observed behavior that has been replicated in hundreds of labs cannot be a mistake. If hundreds of scientists could be wrong, experimental science itself would not work. In normal scientific discourse, no one would say that widely observed, high sigma behavior can be falsified. Ed is 100% right about that.
I also say to THH: if that is your hypothesis, then read the leading papers and show us what mistakes have been made. You have to show why these experiments are wrong. You don't get to claim "there may be mistakes somewhere" without specifically telling us what experiments you mean, and what mistakes were made. A negative opinion does not get a free pass. You have to support your assertion with facts and rigor, just as the researchers support their claims.
THH and the editors at Scientific American refuse to read papers or give any evidence for their claims. THH says the tritium might be caused by contamination. He does not address the papers by F. G. Will and others that show contamination is ruled out.
This is an old argument: here is the other side.
All science depends on interpretation of observational results using theories. Sometimes (dropping things from tower of Pisa) the theory is pretty simple and the assumptions needed to validate theory from observations are minimal. Sometimes that set of assumptions and theories is more complex.
The people who are unsure about those CF results do not doubt the observations* - they doubt the interpretation.
The reasons for that doubt have been articulated by me here and by one of the ICCF24 (23?) talks.
And those reason don't go away just because you can't show what the mistake is.
Suppose a very complex computer program supposed to generate a sequence of squares instead generates pseudo-random numbers. Given enough time, and access to all the code, the mistake can be found. But it may not be at all obvious. And no programmer would be taken seriously if he said "this is a new computer showing new laws of Computer Science - it is on you to find the bug in 10,000,000 lines of my code, else it should be assumed correct".
Those old CF experiments are more difficult than this example because we do not have the code to debug. We can redo the experiment but then unmeasurable variables mean it does (is expected to do) different things. We do not have any clear theory that delivers definite results that could falsify LENR if not found. And anyway the experiments that have any sort of clear results are complex and not simple or cheap to reproduce.
Papers by F.G. Wills and others may claim that contamination is ruled out. And certainly show that some obvious types of contamination are ruled out in some experiments. But I gave three different error mechanisms - all in play because the claimed results are so very small. They all need to be ruled out - and the assumptions on which that ruling out rests need to be 100% correct with no wiggle room. That is an almost impossible standard - which is why if CF is real what is needd to show that is a live experiment that can be repeated, reproduced, checked every which way, and goes on producing a clear anomaly. And - given that the comparison is an unknown nuclear phenomenon - we must also include an unknown source of experimental error (whether contamination, concentration, etc).
We also do not expect all those experiments to have the same reason for those positive results. Reading those old papers teaches you (from the excellent authors) how very difficult it is to get valid results at those very low levels of claimed tritium. There are many possible false positives, and unknown false positives cannot be ruled out.
Of course, you can, in most science, find clear predictions of scaling and parametrisation (alter this input - it has this affect on that output) and they test out without needing fudge factors or correct post-processing - so very greatly increasing confidence.
If CF is real, such results would be expected. They have, a number of times, been claimed. None of those claims have yet been substantiated. except for some of the CF-lite ones. As you know I am broadly on the side of CF-lite. It has at least a potential of being shown correct or falisfied.
THH
CF-lite: NAEs + electron screening enhancement + resonance enhancement + coherent oscillations enough to increase reaction rate - branching ratio skewed so only unmeasurable reaction products are seen at measurable rate. All the bits of this can be individually tested and falsified or validated - both via theory and experiment.
* OK - they doubt a few of the observations - e.g. all of Rossi's, some of Parkhomov's, and a few others where experimental documentation seems poor. But the point is that is not the reason for doubting those old high quality results - nor for example Ed Storms's, Staker's, new high quality results.
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THH, I'm at a loss to understand what you intend to accomplish with your comments. Cold fusion is real. The only unknown is why and how the nuclear mechanism works. I have described the basic behaviors in my paper and suggested a mechanism. This description is based on well-documented and replicated behaviors. If you want to be useful, I suggest you explore the logical implications of this body of work. Simply claiming that errors are present is not only useless but demonstrates a juvenile approach to a serious problem. You are able to make a useful contribution but not by the path you have taken here. We need creative ideas but only when they are connected to the well-documented reality. Are you willing to do this? Will you help find the correct explanation?
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Papers by F.G. Wills and others may claim that contamination is ruled out. And certainly show that some obvious types of contamination are ruled out in some experiments. But I gave three different error mechanisms - all in play because the claimed results are so very small.
No, the results are very large. Why do you make up this kind of bullshit? Who are your trying to fool? Obviously you have not read the papers. Do you think no one else has read them?
The people who are unsure about those CF results do not doubt the observations* - they doubt the interpretation.
No, they say the observations are mistakes and fraud. You yourself constantly say the results are mistakes because they are small, as you just did. Claiming a result is close to the margin when it is actually high sigma is tantamount to falsely claiming it is a mistake.
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No, the results are very large. Why do you make up this kind of bullshit? Who are your trying to fool? Obviously you have not read the papers. Do you think no one else has read them?
I suppose I should give the actual numbers from the literature. Obviously, THH never will. THH claims that contamination has not been accounted for, and that the amounts of tritium are small. Here are some quotes from Will et al.:
Contamination
The closed-system procedure has been applied to nearly 100 as-manufactured palladium wire samples of various lots and sizes from two different sources. None of these samples show any tritium contamination within the detection limit of 5 x 10^7 tritium atoms.
Amount of tritium detected
The largest amount of tritium, generated in 7 days of continuous electrolysis, was 2.1 × 10^11 tritium atoms, compared with a background of 4 × 10^9 tritium atoms. The concentration of tritium and its axial distribution in the Pd were determined and
concentrations of up to 9 × 10^10 atoms/g Pd were found compared with a maximum background of 5 × 10^8 atoms g^-1. . . .. . . The palladium cathode area in all four cells was approximately 2 cm^2 and the number of T atoms generated in the four cells is in a relatively tight band, from 4.3 x 10^10 to 1.1 x 10^11 T atoms/cm2. These values are in good agreement with those obtained by several research groups at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Bombay, India [7]. Their values run from a low of 5 x 10^9 to a high value of 1.7 x 10^14 T atoms/cm2. Predominantly, however, their values are in the range from 10^10 to 10^11 T atoms/cm2. These experiments were run for comparable lengths of time as our experiments. The average tritium generation rate in our experiments varies from 5.8 x 10^4 to 2.0 x 10^5 T atoms/cm2/sec and the tritium enhancement factor (tritium after to tritium before
the experiment) attained values of up to 52. . . .it's time to block THH posts so the rest of us can benefit from your experience.
52 times background is not small or difficult to detect. I suppose THH has not read these papers, because everything he says is contradicted by them. Perhaps he has read them, and he is trolling us, hoping to deceive people who are too lazy to read the literature. Either way, his behavior is annoying. However, it does prove that THH -- along with the editors and Scientific American, and other skeptics -- is completely wrong. In a sense his contributions to this forum are valuable because they prove that the skeptics are wrong and they contribute nothing to the discussion. So I do not think we should block him.
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Opinions are frequently based on reasons other than a search for the truth. Psychological issues, political goals, or economic benefits can determine the reasons. If any one of these motivations applies, neither facts nor logical argument will have any effect on the opinions. We see these motivations operate in the political environment all the time.
Without naming names, many of the opinions expressed here are driven by psychological issues. The flawed opinions of Scientific American and the other skeptics are driven mainly by political goals. Some of the flawed theories such as the W-L theory were driven mainly by economic expectations. The people who actually make progress by searching for the truth are largely absent from cold fusion because it’s not worth their effort. Besides, the truth is difficult to find because it is so diluted by nonsense. These conditions make any progress impossible, as the experience here demonstrates on a small scale. The conditions have to change before progress is possible. Meanwhile, we can only sit back and wait, which is what I intend to do.
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The flawed opinions of Scientific American and the other skeptics are driven mainly by political goals.
Yes! Academic politics. And also regular public policy politics, such as Congressional funding of plasma fusion.
The conditions have to change before progress is possible.
I agree. I think conditions will only change if we can facilitate the replication of some experiment, and the number of people who see the effect in their own lab increases exponentially to 5, 10, 20 . . . up to hundreds.
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Formers our planet did 35 laps since 1989 wake up...
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I agree, we need people to replicate the effect. Unfortunately, this is not easy to do. I was able to do this only because I could design and make the required apparatus. Thanks to several wise individuals, I had the money to buy the parts. Cold fusion makes heat, which requires a sensitive calorimeter that costs in excess of $25,000 even when it is self-made. Helium and tritium are even more difficult and expensive to detect. Radiation detection requires special skill because it can be detected mainly within the apparatus. Now energetic electron emission is found to occur. Unfortunately, its relationship to cold fusion is not agreed upon so that it cannot be used to demonstrate fusion as the cause. What is worse, each proposed model identifies different behaviors as proof that fusion occurs. Consequently, a person does not even know what to measure in order to prove that anything special is happening. People like THH will always find a reason to reject any claimed replication.
I predict the phenomenon will be studied seriously in the US and elsewhere only after it has been developed as a practical source of energy in China or Japan. Then economic desperation will be the driving force. Meanwhile, people will entertain themselves with mind-games having no value.
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What is worse, each proposed model identifies different behaviors as proof that fusion occurs. Consequently, a person does not even know what to measure in order to prove that anything special is happening. People like THH will always find a reason to reject any claimed replication.
The broad range of conditions under which cold fusion occurs and the wide range of materials it can be made to happen in is indeed a problem for the reductionist school of science. However, natural phenomena can be very diverse, life itself is so since it comes in a mind-boggling variety of types and can flourish in a wide variety of environments. Nobody seems to have any argument with that
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And you are an US citizen, you wrote books you spent maybe all your retirement in LF, you are famous..
Now let's imagine a poor individual french not yet retired who all the week spend several months only to find ways for machining..
Because the powder reduction needs powerfull devices as jet milling but costing at least 5000 coins...etc etc
Special graphite tubes 400 coins each boumm...etc etc
Thanks to several wise individuals, I had the money to buy the parts.
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The broad range of conditions under which cold fusion occurs and the wide range of materials it can be made to happen in is indeed a problem for the reductionist school of science. However, natural phenomena can be very diverse, life itself is so since it comes in a mind-boggling variety of types and can flourish in a wide variety of environments. Nobody seems to have any argument with that
I’m also a member of the reductionist school of science. I believe cold fusion occurs by the same mechanism regardless of the material or the method used. It’s just like life, which also uses the same mechanism regardless of the life-form. The challenge is to identify this common mechanism. Right now, everyone is proposing a different mechanism, many of which are in direct conflict with observed behavior. But, complaining is also a waste of time.
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I agree, we need people to replicate the effect. Unfortunately, this is not easy to do.
Yes! That sure is the problem. It seems the LEC is easier to replicate than other experiments. I hope it is. I am trying to facilitate replications. I have offered to pay for the equipment. So far, no one has been able to take up my offer. They don't have the time or the right lab tools.
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No, the results are very large.
If you want to argue specifics - we can argue specifics.
There was one (two?) cases with very large results where other factors (contamination if I remember right) are very possible.
Otherwise the tritium results are relatively small compared to the very variable background water levels.
But my memory might be wrong - please cite papers and quote claimed tritium level in each and we can have a proper quantitative discussion.
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There was one (two?) cases with very large results where other factors (contamination if I remember right) are very possible.
No, you don't "remember" that. You made that up. There are dozens of cases with large results, from Will, Bockris, BARC and many others. You would know that if you had ever read the literature, but you have not.
Why do you keep making up stuff? Who do you think you are fooling? What is the point?
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I agree, we need people to replicate the effect. Unfortunately, this is not easy to do. I was able to do this only because I could design and make the required apparatus. Thanks to several wise individuals, I had the money to buy the parts. Cold fusion makes heat, which requires a sensitive calorimeter that costs in excess of $25,000 even when it is self-made. Helium and tritium are even more difficult and expensive to detect. Radiation detection requires special skill because it can be detected mainly within the apparatus. Now energetic electron emission is found to occur. Unfortunately, its relationship to cold fusion is not agreed upon so that it cannot be used to demonstrate fusion as the cause. What is worse, each proposed model identifies different behaviors as proof that fusion occurs. Consequently, a person does not even know what to measure in order to prove that anything special is happening. People like THH will always find a reason to reject any claimed replication.
Thanks, I didn't know it cost that much. I would venture to guess few in the public do, nor appreciate what it takes in terms of skill, and time to attempt replication. Makes me appreciate even more that we now have the DOE/ARPA-E, NASA/USNavy -both of which have been at this as long as you, new-comers USArmy/AirForce labs, EU (CleanHME/HERMES), and the Japanese government (NEDO) funding some sophisticated LENR efforts with access to state-of-the art equipment.
I'm curious; if you have read their most recent work as presented at ICCF24/25, which, if any, do you think is on the right track?
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Thanks to several wise individuals, I had the money to buy the parts. Cold fusion makes heat, which requires a sensitive calorimeter that costs in excess of $25,000 even when it is self-made. Helium and tritium are even more difficult and expensive to detect. Radiation detection requires special skill because it can be detected mainly within the apparatus.
Russ George told me hat his MS he built around 1990 for the ultra sound target mass 4+/- delta analysis did cost > 300'000$. At least he could show 10 > background 4-He in his Pd foil.
I personally think that this is a waste of time and money one better should use for improving experiments. The best way to follow CF is to make the reaction gamma active. A good spectrometer costs about 3000$. You can order some at https://www.gammaspectacular.com Steve is ready to build special configurations - NaI or CsI - that are sensitiv down to 5keV!
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I predict the phenomenon will be studied seriously in the US and elsewhere only after it has been developed as a practical source of energy in China or Japan. Then economic desperation will be the driving force.
Dear Dr. Edmund Storms,
I wanted to reach out to you after completing an application process for supercomputer simulations. In our application, I referenced your latest paper because it could provide valuable justification and additional information for our LENR project.
So I am lucky to have seen your comment in this forum in advance. I do not want to draw attention to the subject that I quoted from your comment, as it is not permissible to engage in debates here. However, as a Japanese citizen, I believe that LENR has the potential to become a major energy source in the future, and its impact on society could be far-reaching, affecting many aspects of our lives beyond just the energy sector.
The only/best solution to avoid such tensions lies in semiconductors or AI. I believe that making LENR's core technology open-source and patent-free would be the most effective way to address these issues.
I am not an expert in intellectual property, but I presented the idea at the 24th Meeting of Japan CF-Research Society (JCF24) last year. I have presented my LENR experiment project, which aims to directly generate electrical output from LENRs. If you are interested, please take a look.
basic/JCF24presentationA.pptx at main · nanofusion/basicbasic concepts and designs. Contribute to nanofusion/basic development by creating an account on GitHub.github.comThere is also a draft version of the proceeding. Both were developed in the communication on this forum.
basic/jcf24proceedings_RFurui2D.pdf at main · nanofusion/basicbasic concepts and designs. Contribute to nanofusion/basic development by creating an account on GitHub.github.com -
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Dear Dr. Edmund Storms,
I wanted to reach out to you after completing an application process for supercomputer simulations. In our application, I referenced your latest paper because it could provide valuable justification and additional information for our LENR project.
So I am lucky to have seen your comment in this forum in advance. I do not want to draw attention to the subject that I quoted from your comment, as it is not permissible to engage in debates here. However, as a Japanese citizen, I believe that LENR has the potential to become a major energy source in the future, and its impact on society could be far-reaching, affecting many aspects of our lives beyond just the energy sector.
The only/best solution to avoid such tensions lies in semiconductors or AI. I believe that making LENR's core technology open-source and patent-free would be the most effective way to address these issues.
I am not an expert in intellectual property, but I presented the idea at the 24th Meeting of Japan CF-Research Society (JCF24) last year. I have presented my LENR experiment project, which aims to directly generate electrical output from LENRs. If you are interested, please take a look.
https://github.com/nanofusion/…n/JCF24presentationA.pptx
There is also a draft version of the proceeding. Both were developed in the communication on this forum.
Dear Dr Furui,
Thanks for your interest in my work and your unusual design for making electrical energy from cold fusion. I suggest you are getting too far ahead of the process to be useful. First, you need to find a way to cause the fusion reaction in an environment that is required to produce electric power. Second, you need to couple the energy generated by the fusion reaction to this environment. Both of these efforts will be very difficult. and without a clear path to success at the present time. I simpler method would be to use the heat energy to generate electrical power using thermoelectric converters. This method is well-known and easy to apply. But first, you would need to design an effective heat generator.
I agree that any basic design would be useless to patent because most of the money would be made by the lawyers. I expect the final design of a useful generator will have very little relationship to our present limited understanding. Cold fusion involves a new kind of nuclear process that we do not yet understand. Eventually, a correct understanding will lead to an entirely different approach. We are still a long way from that goal.
