The perpetual “is LENR even real” argument thread.

Quote from Curbina

The nuclear nature at low excess heat levels is revealed by experiments of long duration from which the chemical effect can be ruled out because the integration of the total energy output could not be accounted by the chemical reaction of all the mass involved in the experiments.

The idea that the reaction happens even at low temperatures is something we can see being the cause of phenomena as what makes the LEC tick,

and for me it was also hinted greatly by the famous visual experiment of the brass balls of Dennis Letts.

So: just to say why that set of phenomena, if not viewed from an "LENR exists" standpoint, have other explanations:

Craven's balls. I have no idea. I was fascinated. I wanted that demo to be replicated and understood. In absence of that I'd have to say it most likely is magic (that is - stage magic - misdirection - not necessarily deliberate). If real - surely it is a prime candidate for an LENR "prove to everyone it is real" experiment?

LEC. This is one of the reasons why i find this site fascinating. It is a real - not explained - effect. But few looking at it without prejudice would see it as a nuclear effect. Interesting because of the low energy charged particles 9or electrons) emitted.

Quote from RobertBryant

Nanogaps in Palladium.... generating hotspots

Perhaps something like LSPR is happening..

Not the main mechanism of how 22 Mevs generates excess heat..

but one of the reasons hotspots initiate..

The LSPR-induced localized electromagnetic field is one
possible reason for the discrete catalytic hotspots. The slight
variations of the size of PdNPs and the distances between PdNPs
and AgNW may lead to a huge change in local electromagnetic
field, which decays exponentially with the distance to plasmonic
hotspot [42, 48, 49].

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12274-023-5548-7

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Agreed. These not properly understood effects could underlie much of the complexity of Pd electrode chemistry.

Quote from JedRothwell

100% recombination cannot explain these results:

"This second run-away event produced 2.40 W with 1.20 W input." (https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StakerMRhowtoachie.pdf)

Recombination can never produce more apparent heat than total input power.

Jed. I do not consider runaway events because the chemical system can store significant energy and release it quickly. You need energy > than what could reasonably be a chemical runaway.

The power splitting water in his experiment is 0.444*1.5 = 0.667W (roughly). With 100% recombination you could sustain a "burst" in principle for 24 days. of course that is not possible for lots of reasons, but a burst for an hour or so - no problem.

Quote from Storms

The skepticism now needs to be applied to determine which claimed behavior is real and which is not related to LENR. For example, is having a high D/Pd important? Some people believe this is an important condition when it might not be important. Also, skepticism now needs to be applied to the many explanations. They all cannot be true.

Absolutely. Which is exactly why I think skepticism towards experimental results which leave room for it is appropriate: results not caused by LENR excess heat will lead such investigation astray.

Quote from JedRothwell

Recombination can never produce more apparent heat than total input power.

You are mixing units. recombination can never produce more energy than total input energy (in fact total input current multiplies by electroneutral voltage multiplied by time).

But of course unrecombined H2 in the electrode (mainly) or gasses (only a small amount) can store energy later to be released at a higher power than caused it to be stored.

Quote from JedRothwell

Okay, here's one. You wrote: "The obvious error mechanism in this Seebeck calorimeter is if the spatial detection of thermal flux is uneven . . ." Ed thought of that. He put a fan in the box. He generated heat at various different locations and saw no measurable difference.

Right. I agree, the fan helps. But you I am sure would not expect a fan in a box with large blocking objects necessarily to equalise temperature exactly on the walls? How exactly would you estimate a fan would do that? And how confident are you?

On the one hand we have recombinator right next to one wall. On the other hand we have electrolyte in vessel supported by the opposite wall. We have no measurement of the airflow or the amount that equalises temperatures. The output test of "nearly the same" would need to be precisely quantified for us to have any idea from that of how safe the system might be - and even then for the reason I've given it could not be safe without a more complete check. Ed of course can perhaps provide other information not in the paper that would help this - like the air gap between the top of the recombiner and the wall of the box, or the (measured by TCs) temperature of different sides of the box. but my test is in fact much easier. Resistor on top of recombiner.

I thought you had more experience with practical setups than that. You think one fan, in that box, would equalise temperatures << 5C? Even on the sides blocked by recombinator or cell? And that 5C is what would be needed if the TEG sensitivity had a tolerance of 10%.

I mean I don't know - without checking carefully (e.g. with my resistor test - where with the fan on, and the air blocking stuff in the box as normal, you could see if there was any difference in output). But I have a pretty good guess! As i am sure, if you think about it, do you.

I read what Ed wrote in the paper, which I am sure is accurate. All of his heat was generated in the same location as the electrolytic cell, as I understand what it said. I am sure there would be differences, especially with the bulb, but nothing like the switch between recombinator (one side only) and electrolytic cell (opposite sides).

We cannot know. whereas somone with a skeptical frame of mind would have done that test of "heat in various places" thinking about worst case examples - or perhaps thinking about that recombinator - which is pretty close to a worst case.

Quote from Storms

Yes THH, a false measurement can lead people astray, but not about LENR being the result of error. We have to start by accepting the effect as real and then evaluate the behavior in the search for the correct explanation. The approach and goal really matter.

With respect I think that is perfectly valid as a way to guide investigation and theory. And it is perfectly proper to continue that investigation whetehr or not LENR is established as being a real nuclear effect. Science often pursues such uncertain but exciting pathways. But not valid as a way to obtain definite evidence that the effect is real - which is what team google tried to do and failed. I was thinking that the LENR community might be more motivated than google.

What I hear here is Jed insisting that an experiment which does not (yet) provide that evidence - it is an excellent calorimeter design but 1% is a small excess and hence things like spatial asymmetry in the TEGs needs to be considered - is in fact 100% evidence.

That misjudgement makes me think that maybe his judgement of all those old experiments, which he knows better than me, might not be accurate.

I don't say studying LENR is not a valid scientific enterprise. I just don't like definite claims being made which are cannot yet be properly substantiated. Partly, that motivated my wish to see such substantiated claims.

Sociologically - the scientific community overreacted to the original cold fusion claims. They should have been highly interested but muhc more cautious. Then, when results were less clear than expected, they overreacted in the other direction. I am sure at that time there was a lot of prejudice.

But that was a long time ago. I do not believe post-google that there is the same prejudice.

The difference is that the LENR community all know LENR is real and want to move on to how it works. Those outside do not know LENR is real, and that, for them (and me) is the first and most important question.

If LENR is real, the LENR community could take a rock solid "we can make it work" experiment like electrolysis and repeat it, adding checks in response to all skeptical criticism, until that excess heat either was found to be all errors, or found to be real. With results at the level McKubre obtained regularly that would be quite easy. With results at the level F&P claimed it would be trivial. Ed's results (1% of input power) are more demanding of a calorimeter but not impossible to make safe. It is quite easy to measure the effect imbalance of heat has on the results and even to weight each of the TEG outputs to minimise that. And a modern relatively simple experiment could be repeated again and again answering all skeptical questions - it would then be a great candidate by repeating in various different labs. After that, LENR is proven (as far as the mainstream scientific community is concerned).

THH

Quote from RobertBryant

doesn't apply to solid state-gas phase reactions with zero oxygen..

Storms has already said excess heat by two methods

electrolysis plus solid state

I have not seen a write-up of the solid-gas reactions, and have been wanting to stick with electrolysis because it is such an effort to understand even one system fully enough to make sensible comments. In any case electrolysis is what, AFAIK, all LENR advocates think delivers absolute definite provable excess heat (but with some tries needed to find correct electrode).

if everyone here says - well - the electrolysis results were a bit iffy and difficult to replicate, but now we have something easier to replicate and to prove which delivers excess power at nuclear levels, I guess we should stop discussing the electrolysis work, except as Ed says in its ability to investigate things. I am not sure about costs, but naively think the electrolysis experiments - even done well - might be cheaper, so a better bet for replication?

But, in that case, why be so concerned about ascoli's uncertainty (to put it politely) about the F&P boil-off results. For the record I am uncertain about them having compare the timeline of the graphs in the paper and the video. And for a long time i ignored it because it seemed an experiment set up specifically to make accurate judgement of excess heat difficult to determine (because of the way that very large sharply increasing input power is pushed into the cell to speed up the boil-off).

We could all agree that electrolysis results are not a good way to show LENR is real and move on?

THH

Quote from JedRothwell

If there were such positional problems with McKubre, or any other experiment, they would show up in calibrations. They do not show up.

Jed, I realise you did not do 1st degree maths (I assume from this comment). But trust me, if you have 12 TEGs each of varying sensitivity, with outputs combined, and a box where it is possible walls can vary temperature from each other - as is clearly the case here not withstanding one fan - in principle you need 11 separate heat source positions to "balance" the different TEG outputs. It is simple algebra - 12 unknowns require 11 equations to get the ratios between them right. And one more for the absolute values.

Now practically we usually do not need to do this much. But in this case we have two different heat sources at opposite sides of the box, and we do want very accurate (< 0.2% say) measurements. it has not been revealed how well the fan distributed heat from them. Therefore, at least, testing overall output for a less than 0.2% error (given results are at 1%) when heat source switches from one side to the other is needed. Either that or a lot more characterisation of internal temperatures, and the ab initio TEG uniformity, and external temperatures, e.g. how well does the water keep all external faces of TEGS the same temperature. I think through the more complete calibration which would combine a measurement of TEG measured and wall temperature imbalance without changing the TEG circuit is the elegant and simple answer.

A universal "they would show up in calibrations" is just not a scientific judgement. The numbers, and the details, matter. You need to work through them every time.

Quote from JedRothwell

you will go right back to saying things like: "Staker did not measure the make-up water, not with a syringe or any other method"

I did not say that, in fact I said the opposite. Read my writeup.

Quote from JedRothwell

"Staker assumed recombination is negligible so he neglected it"

I did not say that either, except as a summary of a very complex situation. Staker followed his reference [44] (Fleischmann & Miles I think) which argues that recombination does not happen in these experiments. He explicitly states this as his reason for not needing to consider recombination. A little thought will however tell you that such a statement cannot be used as a guarantee that recombination (catalytic, at the electrode, due to specific surface condition will never happen.

In addition Staker viewed evaportaion as insignificant (although his estimates of that, you have them privately, seem off by a factor of 10). But Staker was considering the effect of evaporation on excess heat which in any case would only tend to decrease the measured apparent excess, and by not very muhc so be perfectly safe.

Staker did not consider that evaporation might mean that measuring recombination via the make-up water is unsafe. Therefore he had another implicit reason for not thinking recombination significant - it would have shown up when he was measuring make-up volumes. But if evaporation is significant as would appear the case from equilibrium vapour pressure calculations unless he has a splashback outside the calorimetric boundary - but that would then make the calorimeter innacurate and dependent on splash level, which would be more problematic!

I would appreciate it if you were less reductionist when paraphrasing me? It does not help anyone to understand things.