The perpetual “is LENR even real” argument thread.

Quote from Alan Smith

THHuxleynew

I know nothing about what information the video will reveal, beyond the fact that it a boil-off video from F&P, I haven't seen it and neither have you. As ,that is the case, it is a little premature for you to be telling me it will be useless.

I was saying that boil-off experiments - as is obvious - are not good evidence. It might be the exception that proves the rule but only if it comes with other evidence.

I don't think that is over-reaching!

Quote from Shane D.

THH,

The EU, US, and Japanese governments are presently funding LENR research at multiple universities, at least 1 national lab (Lawrence Berkely), and through various agencies such as NASA, USNavy, and the USArmy. Almost all are reporting promising results. Not only with XH, but some kind of nuclear signature such as transmutations.

In your opinion, do you think that this government funding should be stopped, and these projects shut down?

Not if what they are funding makes the science (or lack of science) clearer.

I have heard promising results many times, but somehow they often do not end up with anything useful, nor any clearer scientific picture of what is going on.

I am in favour of the people looking at exactly what happens - rather than chasing high enough excess heat to be commercially useful when AFAIK they are often simply optimising their calorimeters to show artifacts more strongly. If LENR does exist I don't think we will get any commercial applications until the science is understood in great detail. And I also don't think we will get clarity about does it exist until anomalous effects are investigated with more persistence and care. Except for QM, God does not through dice much when you know what is happening.

Quote from orsova

THHuxleynew

If you'd like to read a thorough, scientific, treatment of why Langmuir's criteria are not appropriate for judging LENR, then please read Beaudette's book Excess Heat. He went to a great deal of effort to respond to this particular line of argument.

If you're uninterested in countenancing Beaudette's work - as you have shown yourself to be re: the work of Bockris/Oliver/Hoffman - then I think that that incuriosity would be unfortunate.

These social science pop arguments (and hence Langmuir as well) are like politics - you believe what you want to. Which means you and I will probably believe opposite things.

I know Beaudette has a strong summary of the pro-LENR arguments. And these arguments are like religious tenets. They can neither be shown true or untrue until such time as either LENR is narrowed to be a predictive theory. No - Jed - "something that could be explained by a (insert fudge factor) nuclear reaction happening at (insert fudge factor) rates and as far as we know does not otherwise seem possible" is not a predictive theory. Not unless the fudge factors are determined before the experimental results and can therefore lead to definite predictions. Or such time as a reproducible certain experiment is found (as McKubre was asking for at ICCF20 in my link above).

BTW - some of the current LENR hypotheses are narrow enough to be predictive, and I am highly interested in whether they will be proven true or not.

I am not willing to buy Beaudette's book when I expect it is PR - but I will happily read it free if someone links it and see if it answers the Section 5 meta-arguments arguments https://coldfusionblog.net/201…-cold-fusion-experiments/. Or perhaps you (with a bought copy of the book I guess) could answer those arguments. Those arguments are a bit more substantial than Langmuir, but still in the same area. The whole world's research papers are available free so i do not see why it is necessary to pay someone to look at their partial summaries of those papers.

it is difficult to have a connected discussion on these threads but you will notice:

(1) I have said for both Li (ages ago) and He4 (more recently) why I view the results unsafe. I understand you do not think my arguments good.

(2) I have also explained why my views and yours will not align even though we are both (I imagine) people of integrity.

(3) It is not necessary - and in fact unhelpful - to have a tribal "try to knock the other person down and prove them wrong" arguments about these things. I only do that with small bits of the picture where it is scientifically clear: Rossi/Lugano calorimetry, the maths (and hence significance) of Shanahan CCS, etc. I also have enjoyed trying to understand in detail some of the calorimetry experiments - I have done enough of that to have some ideas, the maths is pretty straightforward, and the thermal flow stuff is all within my comfort zone. But i really enjoy it because not being an expert I continue to be surprised at new things to think about when analysing the ways in which they might be uncertain. Whereas for example I could not properly do it with most of the mass spectrometer stuff because I do not know what are the typical artifacts etc. Anyway - you do not need to see me as an enemy - I can assure you I don't see you as one.

THH

And just so that peeps here (Orsova - you seem to have gone over to the dark side with Jed) don't see me as an LENR equivalent of Cruella de Vil, here is some LENR research I think promising:

https://inspirehep.net/files/a…0dcd04b5fa52de8c09eb14d8e (thanks Diadon Acs )

claims evidence for a resonance that

I like: quantitative and proposes a possible explanation for higher than expected low energy D+D fusion

I like: it makes predictions and tests these experimentally

I like: it presents a path forward for further experiments that could refine it

I dislike: not sure how much of LENR it explains

I dislike: it has a few fudge factors

This is trying to fill in one of the missing pieces without which LENR is pseudoscience.

A set of papers on di-neutrons as an intermediate will be my favourites if they ever become concrete and correct enough to make definite predictions, they would explain LENR:

https://www.lenr-forum.com/attachment/26589-stevenson-davis-2018-pdf/

I like: claims high coherence by explaining a wide variety of LENR observations

I dislike: ignores incredibly short lifetime of dineutrons - so how can one of these (created from a D+) get close enough to another D+ to react?

I dislike: Does not advance testable predictions.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2024.02.116 2024

Claims to be about stabilisation of dineutrons by metal nuclei but in reality says almost nothing about this. Promotes the idea, and ideas are free, and seductive, but only helpful if they can be turned into something that makes definite predictions:

I like: tries to fix a major hole in the dineutron LENR family of hypotheses - dineutrons don't have long enough lifetime to do anything

I dislike: does not attempt to be quantitative or examine the idea critically. E.g. how long would dineutrons need to persist to react with nuclei? Could this stabilisation achieve that?

I dislike: does not advance testable predictions

Papers showing clear nuclear reaction products from medium energy stimulation of metal lattices:

https://www.lenr-forum.com/attachment/27112-hang-zhang-mit-lenr-replication-almost-pdf/

7W/1mm2 = 5000 X power density of sunlight, and coherent irradiation

I like: it replicates other work

I dislike: Neutrons are not really LENR

I dislike: CR39, it gets hot, false positives?

Paper here(?) that showed strong alpha (I think) emissions from electrodes bombarded by electrons form a 500V source in deuterium, controls hydrogen and helium did not show this

I like: clear results

I like: very clear H/D differentiation

I dislike: I am not sure about artifacts / errors

I dislike: no predictions, where to go from here? How to parametrically validate?

You can see I tend to like things more when I understand them less as is expected.

Quote from orsova

He's certainly convinced, but I wouldn't call it PR. At times, he's critical of Fleischmann and Pons, and goes to great lengths to handle the larger surrounding arguments with respect to what is or isn't science. I do think you'd like it. He covers some of the same ground you cover. There's a sample at LENR-CANR.org.

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf

Yes. Just to state it categorically, despite my attempts to press you on the Bockris paper, I have never doubted your sincerity, and you've certainly never given me reason to doubt your integrity.

I certainly don't see you that way, and I don't see our back and forth here as tribal. To the extent I have been terse, you have my apologies. I accept that we've done this to death at this point.

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Not much there, but p303

A profound misrepresentation of what skepticism is in science.

I have THHuxley (real) & Feynman on my side, when they say that scientists need always to examine their own biasses and not trust results. That means it is necessary to be super-skeptical of ones own results when they:

(a) are what one hopes to find

(b) are not validated by any predictive hypothesis (so a wide range of results will be positive).

(b) is a crucial science meta-argument that every decent scientist understands, and that Popper provides a rather black-and-white version of, Bayesian inference (of a more general than usual type) provides mathematical justification for.

So skepticism is the opposite of what Beaudette says here - it is looking very closely at the results and asking questions about them.

There is not much of the book here but what there is strikes me as naive and incurious.

The argument that the results below (under CC conditions) need to be anomalous is poor. For example, over time the cell could form a foam top that reduces heat loss from the top of the cell. The idea that temperature and emitted heat correlate to within 1% (look at the graphs) when cell conditions are changing is one no skeptic would accept without a lot of additional evidence. maybe in some other part of the book Beaudette challenges this and shows why it is wrong? Could be.

Quote from orsova

The behaviour of some of those 'first wave' detractors was really abominable. People got hurt badly.

I agree.

I'd also say that the "badness" came as an unthinking reaction to the (unscientific) hype before. it is tough for scientists when they think they might have something of enormous practical significance and interest. Reflecting on the CF experience highlights the need for great skepticism and care in that situation.

Quote from Storms

Why do you all keep rehashing the same old understanding and information when new ideas and information are available? Please read and understand the following paper written in 2024. Here I identify the major behaviors and explain their relationship using a proposed mechanism based on logical implications. Application of this information leads directly to a working energy generator. We now only need someone to apply this understanding rather than keep rehashing old ideas.

"Cold Fusion Explained" by Edmund Storms is available at LENR.org. (https://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=1081)

DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.27890.52166

I judge any LENR model by the predictions it makes: things that narrow down the set of possible results from an experiment.

In this case there are two predictions (only AFAIK - I might have missed something) that look testable:

(1) Something about D/H ratio and T production. If we could have more quantitative clarity about how the graph of T production vs D/H ratio looks this would allow useful parametrisation of He4 detection experiments. But those experiments are difficult to do and get solid quantitative results from because of unknown amount of T in electrode vs eelctrolyte vs emitted as gas (or staying in elctrolyte of recombiner is used. Still some possibility of further testing

(2) The statement that in a range 20C - 80C electrolytic excess heat has activation energy of 0.303 eV/atom = 29 kJ/mol. This looks to be fruitful.

(a) Storms speculates that this could be due to the activation energy of D diffusion in Pd.

(b) I speculate that this could be due to either the activation energy of an unusual catalytic recombination reaction, or the heat of vaporisation of water at 40kJ/mol. My activation energy match (for vaporisation is the same as Ed's (40/29 < ~ 0.303 / 0.230). Since this heat determine PVP of H2O any artifact that scales with H2O (or D2O) vapour would have this activation energy.

(c) Further work could no doubt clarify things.

I don't have any great belief in my suggestions - just that they seem as plausible as Ed's. The rest of the model works as well for his proposal as for mine. And all three ideas (Ed's and my two) potentially fit artifacts, as well as fitting LENR.

THH

Quote from JedRothwell

In an open cell, if stored hydrogen emerges from the electrode, it leaves the cell unrecombined. There is no free oxygen and no recombiner.

That is what I mean Jed. FPHE is an unusual effect in which things happen that are not expected. you assume that the "unexpected" cannot be recombination in ways not expected. You cannot know that. Nor can anyone.

Quote from JedRothwell

No, any level that the instruments can measure will be detected. That is to say, if the water level is measured to 1 ml, you can detect the recombination from that amount of water. It is true that actually seeing the bubbles stop requires high recombination, but not 100%. If it were 50% it would look quite different.

You are being argumentative here. While 50% would look different from 100% I was arguing 90% vs 100%. But in any case, I do not believe given the change in appearance that foam gives it would always be obvious. So relying on electrochemists to notice this, especially when they argue as you do above so know recombination cannot be happening in an unusual way, is unsafe.

Sometimes, things are surprising, so much so that no-one looks for it. That applies to LENR, of course, which most people still do not think exists. It also applies to unusual recombination.