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

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.

It is pretty difficult to quantify such things, as I am sure you know!

If I were to look at any of the "good" experiments without context I would say "wow - there is something here - why has no-one pursued it!".

The context is that people have pursued it and the results continue to be as uncertain and marginal as the original ones. Which is unexpected if they are truly a nuclear effect - because one way of another that would be expected to generate an experiment somewhere with clear results - even if generating "active material" was still an unsolved problem so that only some sourced worked.

So my negativity about the experimental evidence indicating nuclear reactions comes from the totality of the evidence and the way that it always seems marginal. That history reduces my confidence in what looked like very good old experimental results (not however F&P's results - which do not look good).

As for "how could it not be nuclear" given those very good results. One thing working with complex systems tells you is that results can be misleading. Pd-D (and Pd-H) systems certainly give rise to anomalies - the question is how those are interpreted.

The way I feel about it is that those old excess heat results coming from nuclear reactions, rather than chemical driven calorimetry anomalies, is 10%. Not impossible, but not likely. That is just a feeling not scientific - no-one's quantitative evaluation of the issue can be scientific (and those who think it can be are deluding themselves). Because it is a feeling it varies between 5% and 30%. Because it is a feeling I know better than to believe it.

Two points:

1. Why are my views about any of the experiments now so different from others here? We have different contexts. If you think LENR certainly exists the chances of some random anomaly that could be LENR being LENR go up. A lot.

2. How can this evaluation be changed. It is amazing, and depressing, but all that is required is a result which is certain and replicable. LENR results of both forms exist - but not both together. If we had that any issues about it could be closed by different groups replicating with different instrumentation. It would take a while but be very doable, even if the effect was small - say calorimetry of excess heat output 10% of input energy. But of course the fact that it is so hard to scale certain results to higher COP is negative. Even if LENR requires thermal or even electrical stimulation it ought to be possible to reduce the input power for the same output - so making an excess heat effect clearer.

3. Why silence from me on the He results? I started downloading the papers. What I found was: the "polished" summary and meta-analysis results were very different from the original reported results in some cases. Now re-analysis is respectable and can always be done. But where the original results are difficult to interpret, re-analysis that makes them much closer to the expected positive results must be viewed with suspicion. Not because any nefarious intent is suggested, but because complex data can be interpreted in multiple ways, and it is understandable that a positive interpretation would be selected. So my plan for understanding He evidence is:

(1) obtain a complete list of the initial (first) write-ups of all of the relevant experiments

(2) compare them with Miles's 16 data points, try to understand the re-interpretations and any selection mechanisms where they exist.

(3) look at original experiment methodology for whether in each case the expected He results have plausible non-nuclear explanations and compare that with nuclear explanation plausibility.

It is quite a long job but I'd be more likely to do it if someone could list for me all the relevant original experiment results.

My partial list is on a different PC so I can't post now - I have thus far two papers, one from McKubre et al, one from Miles et al. But I think Miles, and maybe McK, have done multiple series of He experiments. Also there are others...

Best wishes, THH

Quote from Storms

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

Yes, I understand.

I am interested in explanations, so happy to review. I am not that interested in high-level explanations of experimental results: they inevitably compress information leaving out details - and for me the details are what matter. But, given any explanation I can indicate where an external observer who was curious might feel the arguments need to be strengthened, or don't make sense.

This discussion was started by Alan in order to examine my paper in which I describe the methods used to produce LENR. Instead, the main focus has been on how various imagined errors can explain the behaviors and why the suggested errors are not important. Very little time was spent discussing the paper or how LENR might function. In other words, nothing of importance was achieved because the same war keeps being fought without end.

What is worse, the people who would benefit from such discussions are not participating. In fact, these people never participate in effective discussions. As a result, their beliefs never change. A new understanding is never considered. In other words, this is a dying science in spite of the efforts Shane and Alan have made. Nevertheless, I appreciate their efforts.

I have come to realize that only the published information will have any influence or value, but only after enough time has passed for the nonsense to be forgotten. Someday, a young inquisitive scientist will rediscover the published information and force the political-ecconomic system to take notice. This has proven to be how all new discoveries are eventually accepted and applied. Meanwhile, I will focus my attention on writing papers rather than on pointless discussions.

Our new group is working on a new theoretical frame work that does involve the rewriting of major areas of physics. What I can say is that there are little nuggets of truth in the many "mysterious" aspects of LENR, from EVOs, to UDH/Rydberg matter, even Hydrinos (to be clear we don't think they exist but we think its a misinterpretation of empirical data), hot fusion, geology, cosmology, and yes including much of what Dr. Storms says here and about NAE and LEC as well. Wytennbach, is someone who I have had many public disagreements with but actually I agree with what he has to say about the standard model. The endless complexity, fudge factors, and non-transparency of their data very much reminds me of the epicycles the Geo-centrists developed to ad hoc maintain their planetary motion into a single model.

The symptoms we are seeing with the standard model are very much symptoms that we are moving in the wrong direction. To be clear, our goal is to develop LENR commercially not to win a Noble Prize in physics although one might be a byproduct of the other.

In the gray sea of alternative physics, our group believes we at least can see guiding principles to help us navigate our way to improved LENR catalysts and fuels as little rays of light (truths) and much of what we see ties the many aspects of the last 30 years together from multiple conflicting models to a single, simple explanation for what we see in nature from cosmological to sub-atomic scales. More to come...

As for THH, my humble personal opinion is that in many cases I can at least partially agree where he's coming from. I think any good scientist welcomes criticism much as Dr. Storms has hinted to here. Honestly, show me a paper worthy of being published in Nature with positive LENR results. In fact it would be a great exercise of mutual benefit to skeptics and LENR researchers alike to really come up with a publication that we deem worthy of Nature publication but has somehow been denied. I am no expert compared to the likes of Jed or Dr. Storms, but from the papers that I have read, this field is plagued by poor experimental design, poor writing, insufficient or wrong analysis (for example the Waseda group reporting on exothermic chemical heat at a LENR conference, etc. etc. Can anyone familiar with the best papers pick one or several papers deemed by pro-LENR scientists to be worthy of publication in a major journal?

A good open discussion about the positives and the shortcomings of the selected paper or papers would be of benefit to us all. I for one am highly confident that we are getting close to a major publication of positive LENR results.

Quote from Storms

This discussion was started by Alan in order to examine my paper in which I describe the methods used to produce LENR. Instead, the main focus has been on how various imagined errors can explain the behaviors and why the suggested errors are not important. Very little time was spent discussing the paper or how LENR might function. In other words, nothing of importance was achieved because the same war keeps being fought without end.

What is worse, the people who would benefit from such discussions are not participating. In fact, these people never participate in effective discussions. As a result, their beliefs never change. A new understanding is never considered. In other words, this is a dying science in spite of the efforts Shane and Alan have made. Nevertheless, I appreciate their efforts.

I have come to realize that only the published information will have any influence or value, but only after enough time has passed for the nonsense to be forgotten. Someday, a young inquisitive scientist will rediscover the published information and force the political-ecconomic system to take notice. This has proven to be how all new discoveries are eventually accepted and applied. Meanwhile, I will focus my attention on writing papers rather than on pointless discussions.

Ed, I am somewhat less cynical than you. Your paper has stimulated more constructive discussion than anything in recent memory. Any engagement, even from skeptics, is a positive result for us I believe. Your work is of much more value that you give yourself credit for.

Quote from Storms

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?

So: coherent quantum effects amongst N particles can trade probability for energy with N X normal energy. That is a gross simplification, but sort-of true. However the same effect does not so easily scale charge density and hence screening.

Since either screening or energy is required to get higher probability of tunnelling through CB I prefer energy once the understood (real but not as you say enough) screening effects are accounted for.

Of course, if it was even remotely plausible for deuterons to exist in a BEC inside lattices then we have a perfectly good mechanism (Chubb IBST etc). But I cannot see any way that incoherent interactions could be made small enough for that to fly. If somone finds a 2D "topological" quantum state for deuterons with a large excluded band it would fly so I guess you never say never.

Ed's paper contained new information for me, presented in a clear and concise way and stimulated many new lines of thought and inquiry so I think its a great paper and meets the goal that he set out to achieve.

THH, if you contend that LENR needs a viable working theory on its mechanism to be accepted, I have to disagree with you. There are myriads of examples of practical developments preceding the mechanistic theory. From my perspective there is so much wrong with science today, a huge swath of science is pitched upon very shaky foundations.

I refrain from commenting more specifically on this in Ed's thread, but I for one feel its a great paper that opened my eyes. Let's keep upping our game and producing more data and better written papers.

Quote from Daniel_G

Ed's paper contained new information for me, presented in a clear and concise way and stimulated many new lines of thought and inquiry so I think its a great paper and meets the goal that he set out to achieve.

THH, if you contend that LENR needs a viable working theory on its mechanism to be accepted, I have to disagree with you. There are myriads of examples of practical developments preceding the mechanistic theory. From my perspective there is so much wrong with science today, a huge swath of science is pitched upon very shaky foundations.

I refrain from commenting more specifically on this in Ed's thread, but I for one feel its a great paper that opened my eyes. Let's keep upping our game and producing more data and better written papers.

That is not exactly what I am saying.

It needs either a certain replicatable anomaly which is solidly "can't be anything chemical" and replicated with different calorimetry by different groups - or a theory (and also supporting results, but in that case the fact that the theory predicts the results makes the bar lower for them to be accepted as real).

Nor is it either-or. The more convincing and predictive the theory - the lower is the bar for experiments that support it to be accepted. But of course the more predictive teh theory, the more difficult it is for errors - even with file drawer effect - to match the predictions over a range of parameters.

Thanks for the comments and positive support.

We have a puzzle to solve for which some of the pieces are missing. I hope we can agree on this. We seem to be unable to agree on the value and meaning of the pieces we do have. Without this agreement, we do not know where to look for the missing pieces.

Scientific progress seems to need a controlling structure because without this structure everyone thinks they uniquely know what is real. This structure is normally present at a university or in an organization. I experienced the effective operation of this structure at LANL. As result, nonsense could be identified and good ideas could be applied. We have no such structure in the LENR field. Here, nonsense is allowed to flourish because no one has the power to kill it.

I identified four mechanisms that need to be understood in sequence. Even getting this simple task acknowledged has been impossible. Instead, obvious and self-evident facts are challenged and debated without resolution. So, the discussion goes in circles. I do not know how to stop this from happening. Do any of you have a solution?

Ed

When you are one step ahead of the crowd you are a genius. When you are two steps ahead you are a crackpot.

Take it as a compliment Ed!

Quote from Daniel_G

When you are one step ahead of the crowd you are a genius. When you are two steps ahead you are a crackpot.

Take it as a compliment Ed!

Thanks Daniel. I will accept this as a small comfort.

Quote from THHuxleynew

It is pretty difficult to quantify such things, as I am sure you know!

No, it is dead easy. My mother, a statistician, taught me how to do this when I was 12 years old. I learned enough to understand that Miles and others have shown overwhelming proof of cold fusion.

Quote from THHuxleynew

If I were to look at any of the "good" experiments without context I would say "wow - there is something here - why has no-one pursued it!".

The context is that people have pursued it and the results continue to be as uncertain and marginal as the original ones.

That is COMPLETELY false. On many levels:

1. The original claims were not uncertain or marginal. They were definitive. Again let me quote:

"Enthalpy generation can exceed 10 W cm-3 of the palladium electrode; this is maintained for experiment times in excess of 120 h, during which typically heat in excess of 4 MJ cm-3 of electrode volume was liberated. It is inconceivable that this could be due to anything but nuclear processes."

The only reason you could not be certain these results were real when they were published was because they were not yet replicated.

2. The leading replications that followed were equally definitive, such as McKubre, Storms, Miles and BARC. Many of the tritium results were also definitive. If they had been caused by contamination, everyone in the labs would be dead.

THH has never once given us a reason to doubt any of these replications. He has not even read them, as we see in the discussion of Miles. He makes up nonsensical claims such as, "Miles threw away examples of helium leaks." From what he himself writes, you can see that he knows nothing, and he has no basis whatever for saying the results are "uncertain and marginal."

No other skeptic has ever found a valid error in any major study. Most of them, like THH, have never even read these papers. They have no idea what instruments are use, what results are obtained, or what conclusions were reached based on these results. They think cold fusion is the same as plasma fusion.

Quote from THHuxleynew

That is not exactly what I am saying.

It needs either a certain replicatable anomaly which is solidly "can't be anything chemical" and replicated with different calorimetry by different groups - or a theory (and also supporting results, but in that case the fact that the theory predicts the results makes the bar lower for them to be accepted as real).

Nor is it either-or. The more convincing and predictive the theory - the lower is the bar for experiments that support it to be accepted. But of course the more predictive teh theory, the more difficult it is for errors - even with file drawer effect - to match the predictions over a range of parameters.

THH, your requirements have been met. Nuclear products have been detected dozens of times by many researchers. You only need to read my first book published in 2007 to know this. The power and energy have been measured by many people using many different calorimeter designs. The amount of power and energy is far more than can be supplied by any chemical process. Standard probability has been applied to the errors in order to determine their influence on the conclusions. In other words, the application of normal and conventional science has demonstrated that LENR is real. The only remaining question is, "How does it work"? Can we focus on that question?

Ed

Quote from Storms

The only remaining question is, "How does it work"? Can we focus on that question?

And this can’t be stressed out enough. Thanks!

I know you have already addressed a somewhat similar question in this thread, but I will try to make it more comprehensive. There are hydrodynamic (in ultrasound on water) and “magnetofluidodynamic” (in various kinds of self organizing plasmas) systems where LENR like behavior has been reported without a solid matrix material where the NAE could be produced as you reference it. Do you think it possible that the NAE can exist without a metal crystalline matrix to create it?

It has been suggested that what is known as EVOs, without really knowing what they exactly are, but probably referring to a group of related modes of matter organization that in some cases can be stored in metals, and be inactive until certain conditions are present, are in great part responsible for LENR observations. Do you think is possible this is at the root of LENR, or you think these are entirely separate things?

That is a real good question, for example if i remind well, first Mizuno's exoperiments were done by discharges in water.

Quote from Curbina

Do you think it possible that the NAE can exist without a metal crystalline matrix to create it?

Quote from Curbina

And this can’t be stressed out enough. Thanks!

I know you have already addressed a somewhat similar question in this thread, but I will try to make it more comprehensive. There are hydrodynamic (in ultrasound on water) and “magnetofluidodynamic” (in various kinds of self organizing plasmas) systems where LENR like behavior has been reported without a solid matrix material where the NAE could be produced as you reference it. Do you think it possible that the NAE can exist without a metal crystalline matrix to create it?

It has been suggested that what is known as EVOs, without really knowing what they exactly are, but probably referring to a group of related modes of matter organization that in some cases can be stored in metals, and be inactive until certain conditions are present, are in great part responsible for LENR observations. Do you think is possible this is at the root of LENR, or you think these are entirely separate things?

Good questions! You cite other LENR-like behavior. Please describe this in more detail. Remember, LENR is unique in causing a nuclear reaction that results in He-4 gas as the final product. Other kinds of nuclear reaction have been produced in solids but these are not the result of LENR because they do not produce He-4 gas. As far as I know, the LENR reaction has only been detected when a solid material is used.

The EVO is an unusual collection of ions and many electrons. This much is known. It's unlikely they are present in material as an inert structure until activated. Like ball lightning, they are unstable after leaving the source of their creation. I suggest we have many other examples of electrons having the ability to interact in unexpected ways. The behavior of high-temperature superconductors is an example. I believe the theory conventionally applied to the electrons in chemical structures has largely failed because electron interaction was not considered. This is where the Mills theory shows promise.

Quote from Cydonia

That is a real good question, for example if i remind well, first Mizuno's exoperiments were done by discharges in water.

The plasma discharge in water involved a solid that was used as the electrodes. This solid would have provided the environment in which LENR occurred. The discharge simply provided D+ to the nuclear process and heated the solid, which is known to increase the reaction rate.

Quote from JedRothwell

No other skeptic has ever found a valid error in any major study.

Jed,

It is repetitive, and I will therefore not argue (as I could) with all of your points.

The summary statement above is of course true - according to your judgement of validity.

Other competent observers as you well know do not agree with you. Most in the LENR field do agree with you.

I'd just put on the table (from others, not me) as discussed at length on this site. Before people make personal attacks on the people mentioned, may I suggest looking at the arguments impersonally. In Shanahan's case we have written argument and counter-argument (a total of 5 papers) all of which must be read to decide which of the competing viewpoints is more reasonable. I doubt many here other than me have read all 5. And I have now forgotten most of the details - interesting though they were at the time!

1. Ascoli - valid critique of the boil-off and HAD phase calorimetry by F&P in the famous boil-off experiment. The video and graph timelines, when correlated, show a clear inconsistency which contradicts the famous determination of HAD, and of high COP during the last stages of the boil-off.
2. Shanahan. Valid critique (generic) of all closed-cell Pd-H, Pd-D calorimetry. Shanahan does not prove this error, he advances a possible non-nuclear mechanism for apparent excess heat as being due to large differential heating between electrode (ATER) and recombinator and this causing differences from calibration behaviour. He has not proven this mechanism is ever significant. Equally, none of the closed-cell experiments have ever ruled it out as being not significant.
3. Shanahan. Valid critique (never answered) of one set of error bounds calculations which did not take into account what Shanahan called CCS (and it has been comprehensively never understood by Jed and some others since then). It is really just the way that when excess power << input power in calorimetry - an unusual case normally - but typical in LENR calorimetry -some errors get amplified. Having identified the problem in one paper (not acknowledged by the author even when pointed out) Shanahan suggests that it might be more prevalent. I'm not sure.

Now: Jed may mean by "valid error" - an error shown to be quite likely, or even one proved. In the nature of these things it is difficult to prove errors. All that can normally be said is "this is an unchecked error that in principle could be large enough to explain the apparent anomaly".

I, and most people outside the LENR field, would see as valid errors "there is a reasonable non-nuclear mechanism which has not been ruled out and could account for the observations".

The existence of such errors does not mean that LENR does not exist. On balance, the likelihood of all the needed such errors might be lower than the likelihood of LENR. Bus since I am quite certain Jed's mother never taught him how to estimate Bayesian priors (or even what Bayesian statistics as a logic of science is) he is not equipped to work out that balance of posterior probabilities - if anyone can. (It is practically difficult in all but simple cases to estimate relative priors for different hypotheses in science).

I am happy to substantiate the above paragraph in great referenced detail should anyone want to ask me questions about it.

Quote from Storms

THH, your requirements have been met. Nuclear products have been detected dozens of times by many researchers. You only need to read my first book published in 2007 to know this. The power and energy have been measured by many people using many different calorimeter designs. The amount of power and energy is far more than can be supplied by any chemical process. Standard probability has been applied to the errors in order to determine their influence on the conclusions. In other words, the application of normal and conventional science has demonstrated that LENR is real. The only remaining question is, "How does it work"? Can we focus on that question?

First of all I see the sub-theme on this thread about LENR evidence to be a distraction. As you know I have an annoying personailty defect that I find it difficult not to reply when people say things I believe to be obviously incorrect. I have therefore been contributing to this sub-theme.

With great self-control I shall therefore reply only to your last sentence.

Yes.