The perpetual “is LENR even real” argument thread.

Quote from Ascoli65

In other words, an "open scientific mind"

Ascoli "mind"= Open Wikipedia?

Ascoli65 said: January 20, 2017 at 6:08 PM

To argue that FF (cold fusion) is impossible, the first lines of the Wikipedia page on "cold fusion" are enough for me

Quote from Alan Smith

That smacks just a little of desperation.

"YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE."

Quote from THHuxleynew

You are using here a rhetorical device.

More Ascoli-openmindedness here

Ascoli65 said:

January 15, 2017 at 1:08 am

" In reality, most of the FF[Cold fusion} researchers wanted to believe things they knew weren't possible because it suited them and because someone else was willing to adequately compensate for these self-hypnotisms.

The number of scientists willing to back any hoax depends on the budget set by whoever wants it to be believed:“scientists believe whatever you pay them to believe” , as those who know it well said (1)

Quote from THHuxleynew

he main problem CF research has is that the highest quality results come from the early period when many well-funded competent scientists were studying it.

Huxleysay,,,

before the selfhypnotism ?

how is that for a 'rhetorical device'

Quote from THHuxleynew

Compare ICCF24 paper on tritium with the early tritium experiments. Which provides better evidence? I'd argue the early work.

There are no ICCF24 papers published yet.

Quote from THHuxleynew

That experiment would prove LENR - inasfar as the word has meaning.

In the Newspeak dictionary 1984 edition 'proof' is a fact endorsed by Big Brother whereas 'doubleplusunproof' is a fact endorsed by anybody else.

Quote from THHuxleynew

For LENR to be real - since "LENR" is not really a theory - it is a set of claimed anomalies that would seem difficult to explain without the existence of atypical nuclear reactions -

A nuanced and minimalist characterisation of LENR..

But I must commend on the positivist "one anomaly"

In contrast to LENR being the tip of the iceberg that.sinks the Titanic

"

Ascoli65 said:

January 16, 2017 at 7:32 PM

@ Camillo

– The engine is incompetence, not arrogance.

I couldn't tell you about the arrogance, but certainly the "prime" engine of the FF is not incompetence. The FF farce went on for 28 years thanks to hundreds of millions of $/Euros granted by large public institutions and famous private companies. If it had been as you say, perpetual motion would also have benefited from the same treatment, but this did not happen.

– We now deal with ff, but I imagine that the world is flooded with scientific literature of no value.

Nothing comparable to the FF.

Given the amount of scientific publications it is very probable that most of them have no practical value and in many cases not even scientific ones, however this does not mean that they are wrong or even contrary to what is sanctioned by the scientific community. On the contrary, the FF/LENR hoax is a unique case, due to the groundlessness of the phenomena claimed, due to the importance of the problems it was supposed to remedy, due to the quality and extent of the support received, due to the reputation obtained in any environment. With regard to the latter, I guess it has not escaped you that it is also mentioned in the interview with Dario Fo that I mentioned to you above, in which the writer, regarding the propensity of some politicians towards nuclear power, replies:“I believe it because they are crazy. But it is Rubbia himself, our only Nobel Prize-winning scientist, who claims that we cannot use nuclear power. At least until cold fusion happens. …”

– We are dealing with the tip of a single iceberg, but I imagine there are countless blogs denouncing much junk academic production.

It was a single iceberg that caused the sinking of the Titanic. The myth of inexhaustible nuclear energy is an iceberg that could do the same with the world, and the FF is its tip, clearly visible, but whose substrate we didn't want to take into account.

Altogether too much openminded rhetoric for me

for a while.

.back to the real world

Quote from Ascoli65

+In my opinion, you should restart from McKubre and THH.

You remind me of the old Arab proverb: "beware the camels nose". Not quite what I had in mind when I asked you skeps to keep an open scientific mind like Teller, and explore what it might take for LENR to be real. What's the harm? While he (Teller) was clearly skeptical and mentioned the daunting hurdles LENR would have to jump to be real, he did at least offer this explanation as to what properties this mysterious particle would have to possess (credit robert bryant )

While there is some evidence suggesting the production of tritium, the 0 +

D -> T + P reaction does not proceed in the usual manner: no gamma rays or Xrays

are observed. Yet, they should be present due to the fast charged particles.

Furthermore, the fast tritons should produce 14 MeV neutrons in interaction with

the deuterium, and they are also not observed.

Finally, the excess heat ascribed to cold fusion never occurs at the

beginning of the electrochemical experiments. It is claimed to appear with a

variable delay.

If the production of tritium and of excess heat should be firmly established,

a new physical phenomenon must be involved. I would like to propose a new

particle which catalyzes the transfer of a neutron from one deuteron to another.

In the reaction with the first deuteron, a proton would be left behind; in the

second reaction, a triton would be formed.

My friends have remarked that this proposal is "meshuge," which means crazy

but not necessarily repulsive. I accept this criticism and call my particle

Meshuganon.

The most frequent argument against the meshuganon is that it does not fit

into the systematics of new particles.

An even stronger negative argument is that

the Meshuganon does not explain the absence of gamma-rays, X-rays and 14 MeV

neutrons. The contradiction with experiments is reduced because the energy of the

D + D -> T + P reaction is delivered in two steps, rather than in one.

In addition, a considerable part of the energy is carried off by neutral particles

which can produce heat without giving rise to X-ray or gamma-ray emission.

The Meshuganon designated as M should be neutral to escape direct

observation. It may be produced in a small fraction of the D + D fusion

reactions. These reactions could occur in very rare cases due to strong electric

fields at cracks or surface irregularities. These reactions would account for the

few observed neutrons. The doubly rare production of Meshuganons would eventually

give rise to the presence of enough Meshuganons to catalyze the neutron transfer

which then proceeds at a considerably higher rate. The mass of the Meshuganon

would, of course, be limited by the energy available in the D + D reactions.

My proposed catalytic chain involves two reactions: D + M -> (Mn) + P and

(Mn) + D -> M + T. Here (Mn) stands for a neutral particle composed of a neutron

and a Meshuganon. Its binding energy must be greater than the binding energy in

the deuteron but less than the binding energy of the second neutron in the triton.

The binding of a proton to a Meshuganon (MP), must not occur because the

production of (MP) would break the chain. Since the Meshuganon has a mass

comparable to that of an electron, one can describe its behavior in its

interaction with nuclear particles according to the Bom-Oppenheimer method. It is

plausible that in the field of a deuteron, the Meshuganon will have not more than

one bound state. In that case, during a dissociation of the deuteron into a

proton and a neutron, the Meshuganon will almost exclusively stay with the

particle to which it is bound most strongly. Therefore, the systematic absence of

(MP) as a reaction product is in no way absurd.

It seems necessary to assume that the Meshuganon have a finite lifetime but

can accumulate so that in the presence of this catalyst the energy production and

the generation of tritium can proceed at an unusually fast rate. Models that can

accomplish this may be constructed.

In the presence of beryllium, the reaction Be + M -> (Mn) + a + a might be

observed. In the presence of oonnee might expect U235 + (Mn) -> M + fission.

This should yield observable fission-products and considerable release of heat.

Neither of these reactions is a necessary consequence of my assumptions. The

observation of either would be most interesting while the absence of both would

make the hypothesis of a Meshuganon more unlikely to represent reality.

Quote from THHuxleynew

You do a complex experiment.
You crunch the calorimetry, compare active runs with control runs, and get a small energy excess or deficit, or neither
If it is an excess you conclude you have LENR
If it is a deficit you check your calculations, since you don't think that can happen.
If it is neither you abandon that experiment and do another using a different electrode, or different methodology

(1) every other experiment does not test an effect whose positive results are indistinguishable from random variable small errors.

(2) every other experiment does not test a claim for an effect which makes no possible testable predictions. (there are some theories like this - but no-one takes them seriously till somone can find predictions that would falsify them).

All experiments include control runs.

No one ever gets a deficit, except well-know endothermic chemical reactions such as loading a cathode, which are very small. You cannot point any anomalous deficits. You made that up. "If it is a deficit you check your calculations, since you don't think that can happen" is a fantasy. That never happened, except perhaps at the NHE, described by Miles. *

All positive results are far above random variable small errors. No one would claim positive excess heat, helium or tritium if the results were close to random small errors.

No professional scientist would claim positive results that are close to random small errors. For that matter, no undergraduate doing textbook experiments would make that claim, or if she did, she would get a failing grade. Everyone who has ever done an experiment knows that. Frankly, it is astounding to me that you are trying to sell this nonsense the audience here. Do you think anyone will believe this?

There is a long list of testable predictions, shown in the McKubre equation and elsewhere. There are well-known correlations.

Every statement you have made here is wrong. Anyone reading the literature will see that you made this stuff up, and the actual papers do not say what you claim they do.

You have now revealed your beliefs in detail. That is helpful. Up until now, you have not clearly said what kind of errors there might be. Now we know that you think all results are close to the noise and yet professional scientists say they are positive. I thinks this conversation is at an end. I do not intend to respond to your trolling again, except perhaps to warn the readers here that everything you say is made-up nonsense, and to refer them to your above message.

* See pages 33 and 34, https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJreviewofth.pdf. I do not think this was meant to be taken seriously as an experiment. This is more of a political ploy intended to discredit cold fusion, like the MIT experiment. Anyone can see it is a put-up job.