Ed Storms Pre-print on Cold Fusion, Materials and Gaps. Comments Please!

Quote from Alan Smith

It is indeed a difficult problem. But it is a fact of physics that hot (thus energetic) He atoms at higher concentrations than found in the atmosphere (equalisation of partial pressures etc etc) will leak out of a reactor faster than cooler ambient He can leak in. So anything over background is an anomaly of interest.

Yes of course Alan. My understanding is that the concentrations found in the He experiments were hundreds of times lower than background concentrations - or in some cases (the experimental conditions varied) 100s of times lower than plausible lab atmosphere background concentrations (at times) from He used in the lab in other experiments. Single-time (or even single-location - unless colocated) measurement of He in a lab would not be enough to determine these, unless it could be certain that no lab equipment used He.

understanding all the He experiments is complex - we would need to engage with that complexity and all of the details now to redo the analysis done at the time, which convinced some, but not others. For me who it convinces is not the point (I am not a fan of PR) but the details are the point.

Quote from Storms

hanks to such people as THH, the field is ignored by conventional science.

Ed - with respect - I don't think you should tar me with that brush. At least, I hope you should not. Since if you do the field of LENR is in poorer state than I think.

After all, I am not ignoring it. Nor am I discouraging other people's interest in it.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Jed - I'd welcome wading into the literature on another thread if others are interested - I am not sure anyone except me is!

You have not waded into the literature. You have not taken a quick dip, because your assertions are completely wrong. For example, you said, "once we have a protocol in which high He values are discarded . . ." There is no such protocol. No one discards anything. Miles makes it very clear that all results are included in the papers. You made that up.

Again let me recommend that you first read the literature before commenting on this, or any other technical subject. When you make stuff up and post it here, you confuse the issue, mislead people. Plus anyone who has read the literature can see that you are ignorant. That makes you look bad.

Quote from THHuxleynew

You make an assumption here which I would never assume, and it is pretty obviously wrong.

Not me. I did not make this assumption. Experts in gas studies and experimental apparatus said this. It is not an assumption, it is a fact as far as they know. You say they are wrong, so I suggest you do the arithmetic and show us why.

Quote from THHuxleynew

The microleaks in this case are incredibly small - so small that in most experiments they would not be noticed. They could rely on the diffusion of He through barriers (to take just one example: no hole, but barrier that is thinner than usual in one spot). So the idea that leaks must be larger than the holes from needle valves does not fly.

That's not what the experts say, but anyway, for the sake of argument, let's say that is true. You have answered the first question. Now tell us why the helium correlates with excess heat; why it is the expected amount from D-D fusion; and how your proposed mechanism works when the collection flask is first filled with helium at atmospheric concentration.

Quote from THHuxleynew

You cannot cite "what everyone knows" because very few people care about such incredibly tiny leak rates for high mobility gasses. How in a normal experiment could you even measure this?

I cited an expert! Melvin Miles, former Fellow of China Lake. A normal experiment would measure this the same way Miles did, with mass spectroscopy. In his case, he had the three best helium labs in the world confirm the numbers. You could do it with less impressive equipment. Several people did. Also, cold fusion is a normal experiment. The instruments and techniques are entirely conventional. Most of them go back to the 1840s. Only the conclusions are unconventional. That is the only reason you do not accept the results, and you invent nonsensical hand-waving to deny them. In the normal course of events, neither you nor anyone else would question these results. I doubt you think you know more about helium than the three top labs, or more about tritium that the Safety Division people at BARC, or the world's top experts at Los Alamos and the PPPL.

Quote from JedRothwell

and you invent nonsensical hand-waving to deny them.

all under the aegis of a Victorian biologist...

Huxley must be rolling in his grave

Well microleakages are a problem for all the Apostles of low and very low pressure experiments.. Now at the other side when Focardi/Rossi filled by 25 bars H2 their first release microleakages have had no importance.. As Storms have an opposite point of view than you ( or JedRothwell ) on these guys ahahaha..

Quote from THHuxleynew

Yes of course Alan. My understanding is that the concentrations found in the He experiments were hundreds of times lower than background concentrations - or in some cases (the experimental conditions varied) 100s of times lower than plausible lab atmosphere background concentrations (at times) from He used in the lab in other experiments. Single-time (or even single-location - unless colocated) measurement of He in a lab would not be enough to determine these, unless it could be certain that no lab equipment used He.

understanding all the He experiments is complex - we would need to engage with that complexity and all of the details now to redo the analysis done at the time, which convinced some, but not others. For me who it convinces is not the point (I am not a fan of PR) but the details are the point.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Just a logical comment here.

I think many people would agree with "assembly of many electrons". However some would disagree that the behaviour comes solely from electron screening rather from electron screening and high energies. That is because:

(1) The obvious way to get higher screening is to have a higher electron charge density - that requires higher energy. I am not saying that is the only way - there are other possibilities.

(2) There are known processes that might result in high energy electrons in a lattice (and indeed that are also evidenced by the LEC work, which requires higher than typical energies).

And another comment:

Temperature scaling of any effect can be very helpful in identifying mechanism. What are you proposing is the precise temperature scaling shard by LECs and cold fusion?

Best wishes, THH

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The problem seems to be that assumptions are made by you and other people that have no basis in reality, yet they are being applied with certainty.

For example, you say that higher electron density requires higher energy. We know exactly how much energy is present in the material. We know that it is not enough even to affect a normal chemical process, such as the decompose D2O. Therefore, it is not sufficient to cause a nuclear process, yet a nuclear process happens. Therefore, an additional mechanism must be operating. I'm searching for that additional mechanism.

Yes, the LEC demonstrates that higher-than-normal energy is being generated by an unknown process. That process appears to be LENR. The question is, "Why does the fusion process cause so many electrons to acquire higher than normal energy?" I have attempted to answer that question. I propose that all of these electrons were in the electron assembly that allowed the Coulomb barrier to be reduced enough for fusion to happen. The resulting release of mass energy caused each of these electrons to acquire a small fraction of the total and to scatter in all directions, thereby conserving momentum and distributing the energy as heat. Do you have a better idea?

the fusion or Lenr energy is thermalized so it goes from the nucleus centre to the "outside"... Contrary to the classical electronic movements which are tangential. By being thermalized this energy makes the level electrons jump. So the best way to exploit this energy is to use light. In the same way, the earlier NIH reactions described by Focardi were classical beta reactions.

Quote from Storms

The resulting release of mass energy caused each of these electrons to acquire a small fraction of the total and to scatter in all directions, thereby conserving momentum and distributing the energy as heat. Do you have a better idea?

Quote from THHuxleynew

Ed - with respect - I don't think you should tar me with that brush. At least, I hope you should not. Since if you do the field of LENR is in poorer state than I think.

After all, I am not ignoring it. Nor am I discouraging other people's interest in it.

You, as the result of your comments, cause other people to question the validity of the measurements. Rather than being an advocate of experimental support, you try to find all the flaws. You think you are doing the field a service. You are not. All of your suggested errors have been considered and addressed.

We all know that all experimental studies contain errors. We all try to reduce these errors as much as possible. We are not fools or ignorant of how to do proper science. Conventional science even has well-accepted ways to evaluate the effect of such errors on conclusions. These methods have been applied. The errors are not enough to change the conclusions. Yet, you reject this fact. Your rejection has an influence on people's opinions. So yes, with respect, you have been tarred.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Your argument (I think) is that the identification of dominant and recessive units of inheritance and how they interact, the probabilities you get from that, and its inference from, and prediction of, experimental data is not a case of scientific theory. I disagree.

You are talking about theory developed starting from the laws of dominant and recessive genes, and other pre-1953 genetics. Yes, the laws of genetics such as dominance were well established, and yes they allowed elaborate theory. But there was no theory below these laws. They were at the limits of scientific knowledge. Just as the fact that the speed of light is invariant was a law at the limits of physics in 1905. That fact formed part of the basis of relativity. But no one knew why the speed of light is the same no matter how fast the star is moving away from us.

Nowadays, of course, there is an elaborate scaffolding of fact and theory supporting dominance. Biologists now know why it exists. It is no longer at the limits of knowledge, so in a sense it is no longer a law, but one of many expected outcomes of DNA theory. However, genetic theory above the level of dominance and regression is still based on these things, and other pre-1953 genetics. My mother's textbooks from the 1930s are still correct, and still useful. This is similar to the fact that chemists still use Boyle's law. When that law was discovered, it was at the limits of knowledge. There was no theoretical basis for it. It was a stand-alone assertion. Later, atomic theory and thermodynamics were developed, and we now know in detail how pressure and volume are related.

This is an important topic, and fully relevant to this discussion, because you and other skeptics do not understand the basis of the scientific method. You do not grasp the difference between facts, observations, laws and theory. You said several times that you cannot accept cold fusion until there is a theoretical explanation. That turns the scientific method upside-down. It is more a perverse form of religion than science. Theory is never needed to justify a replicated experiment, and it can never be used to deny the experiment. It only works the other way around.

By the standard you apply to cold fusion, you would not accept the fact that radioactive elements decay at different rates; or that high temperature superconductivity exists; that human brains are sentient; or that coral throughout the ocean spawns at the same time. There are any number of known phenomena that have no theoretical explanation. Actually, the total number of unsolved mysteries in science increases exponentially with discoveries, so it is now at a record high. Every discovery reveals dozens, hundreds or thousands more unsolved mysteries, especially in biology. The discovery of DNA has filled entire libraries with the answers to questions that no one even thought to ask before 1953. Read old textbooks and you will see that most facts of biology were accepted "just because." No one had the slightest idea how something as complex as a human body could form from a single cell. I have seen old textbooks that said we will never know this.

Some physicists take it amiss when you demand a theory. They act as if theory is not only unknown, but you shouldn't ask for it. Kind of the opposite of your approach, when you demand a theory before you will believe proven facts. Here is one of my favorite quotes from the textbook "Physics Made Simple:"

"Notice that Newton's law allows us to calculate the force of gravity but does not tell us what gravitation is or why it exists. These are questions of philosophy, not physics."

That's hilarious. That's on p. 27, Revised edition from 1990. Even I knew there was a theory of "graviton" quanta and gravity waves in 1990. The author was born in 1905, so he should have known better. Despite this and some other amusing statements, I highly recommend this textbook.

Above is a 5* post! Alan.

Here about interesting works around D2 and electrons clusters ( Sorry nothing from McKubre or Biberian aahahaha).

Quote from Cydonia

Here about interesting works around D2 and electrons clusters ( Sorry nothing from McKubre or Biberian aahahaha).

Thanks for the copies of these papers. I agree with Chicea that the EVO and clusters of electrons are important. The big question is how and why such clusters can form in a material.

Here is another example from biology of something we have known for a long time, but which had no theoretical explanation until recently. For hundreds of thousands of years, people have known that plant roots grow down, and the shoots grow up. This is gravitropism and negative gravitropism. In the early 19th century, scientists proposed many hypotheses to explain this, such as attraction to light, or attraction to water. In 1806, physiologist A. Knight demonstrated that plants respond to gravity. NASA described this: "Knight conducted an experiment that clearly demonstrated the influence of gravity on plant growth. Dr. Knight fixed seedlings to a rotating wheel, thereby subjecting them to the artificial, gravity-like pull of centrifugal force. The plants’ roots grew downward at approximately a 45° angle, the result of both centrifugal force and gravity." That's elegant!

Anyway, for a long time this was an established fact, but no one knew how plants can sense gravity. It was a fact at the limits of knowledge. There was no deeper explanation. Sometime after 1953, people began to learn the nitty-gritty details. Nowadays you can find studies such as "The gravitropism defective 2 Mutants of Arabidopsis Are Deficient in a Protein Implicated in Endocytosis in Caenorhabditis elegans."

The gravitropism defective 2 Mutants of Arabidopsis Are Deficient in a Protein Implicated in Endocytosis in Caenorhabditis elegans

The gravitropism defective 2 (grv2) mutants of Arabidopsis show reduced shoot phototropism and gravitropism. Amyloplasts in the shoot endodermal cells of grv2…

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Abstract: "The gravitropism defective 2 (grv2) mutants of Arabidopsis show reduced shoot phototropism and gravitropism. Amyloplasts in the shoot endodermal cells of grv2 do not sediment to the same degree as in wild type. The GRV2 gene encodes a 277-kD polypeptide that is 42% similar to the Caenorhabditis elegans RME-8 protein, which is required for endocytosis. . . ."

I do not know when people began to learn the details, but it had to be after 1953. The point is, if this was 1953, THH would be telling us that plants do not grow upwards, or if they do it is a meaningless coincidence, or gravity cannot have anything to do with it because there is no theory to tell us how plants sense gravity.

I am kidding. He would not say that. All textbooks in 1953 agreed that plants detect gravity. THH would not have rejected that because there was no theory. He only applies that standard to cold fusion. He does not reject any other scientific fact for lack of theory. If someone claimed that high temperature superconductivity is a myth because it cannot be explained, he would say that person is an idiot. There are thousands of unexplained mysteries in science, but he accepts them all. All except cold fusion.

Quote from JedRothwell

I doubt you think you know more about helium than the three top labs, or more about tritium that the Safety Division people at BARC, or the world's top experts at Los Alamos and the PPPL.

For people unfamiliar with the literature, the three helium labs confirmed Miles, and the people at BARC, Los Alamos and the PPPL confirmed cold fusion tritium. So did many others, of course. I do not mean to suggest that only the tip-top labs confirmed cold fusion. It does not require the best instruments in the world. Still, it inspires confidence knowing the top labs confirmed these results. I think Miles selected these labs because he could. As a Fellow of China Lake, he had influence. They answered his phone calls.

Quote from JedRothwell

Above is a 5* post! Alan.

What is a "5* post"? Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Since I have a large ego and I don't cotton to criticism, I am going to assume it is a good thing, and you are giving it a 5 star rating.

THH, while your comments about the errors in the experimental measurements are not useful, your comments about the errors in the explanations would be very useful. This field suffers from the inability to apply logic, conventional understanding, and experimental fact to the proposed explanations. Your help in correcting this source of error would be greatly appreciated.

Ed

I think it's time for THH to quantify his skepticism (an "unconfidence interval") .1:750,000 for experiment, what for denial?

Otherwise it's "If there's excess heat it must be a calorimetric error" or "the mice/rats drank the electrolyte'.

Also noting that the Wright brothers' crashes (and other pilots fatalities) are not counted in the annals of flight records. THH demands the number of failed experiments, to allow a small (16?) number of positive values in a histogram.

Quote from Alan Fletcher

I think it's time for THH to quantify his skepticism (an "unconfidence interval") .1:750,000 for experiment, what for denial?

Otherwise it's "If there's excess heat it must be a calorimetric error" or "the mice/rats drank the electrolyte'.

Also noting that the Wright brothers' crashes (and other pilots fatalities) are not counted in the annals of flight records. THH demands the number of failed experiments, to allow a small (16?) number of positive values in a histogram.

How many missed cases of Insufficient Heat have been discarded as errors of some sort?

Oh ... Google did a sweep of a zillion failed configurations.

Quote from Alan Fletcher

"the mice/rats drank the electrolyte'.

I think that was Shanahan who said that?