I notice that on the 'results' section of Piantelli's NicHenergy site, he claims that copper is found on the surface of his 'ash', but that this also diminishes over time.
I can't say for sure what's going on, obviously. But this situation would be expected if copper were an intermediate step in a larger chain of reactions.
(Deleted unconstructive reply.)
That's fine but can you tell me why you think so?
There are several things that I find hard to swallow with Mills's theory. First is the notion of orbitspheres. These are proposed to be thin spherical shells of circulating current, which take the place of the three-dimensional statistical electron orbitals that electrons are currently thought to occupy. In the current understanding, there are spherical harmonics which describe the electrons orbitals, and these take a number of different shapes, depending on how much orbital angular momentum an electron has:
The three dimensions and odd shapes of the orbitals are responsible for a number of effects in solids, including pi and sigma molecular bonds. But we must set all of this understanding aside if we are to adopt orbitspheres. For example, we can no longer understand internal conversion, in which an electron is ejected from an atom with an excited nucleus, as being due to an electron passing through the nucleus and having the energy of the transition dumped into it, for orbitspheres do not intersect with the nucleus. We must come up with another explanation.
Eventually I learned that a differential charge distribution has been proposed as being on the surface of the orbitsphere, which is described by the spherical harmonics. In other words, in some places the charge will be more and in others less, in a way that is mathematically described by those shapes above. But that does not deal with the problem of internal conversion or understanding sigma and pi molecular bonds. After enough times of running into difficulties like this, I asked myself, is this theory for real?
That said, there is at least one person whose opinion about physics I value who takes elements of Mills seriously.
BLP is not *obviously* wrong unless the benchmark of what is right or wrong is what most people believe. In science, majority does not ultimately rule. Facts rule. One scientist can change things.
It's just my opinion, of course. But it seems pretty obvious to me.
He was acquitted in some trials but convicted in others. So he remains a convicted con man.
Was he on trial for running a con game, and is that what he was not acquitted of?
The difference is that Rossi is a *convicted* con man.
Was he not acquitted of this conviction?
PS - I ask no-one to give leeway to scientists. Evidence must be tested and retested before it is credible.
When a scientist makes a claim of such-and-such, I don't think it's necessary to establish a strict chain-of-custody, like one would at a crime scene. The scientist mails something to another scientist, saying, "this is the control and this is from the live run; will you please take a look at it?" This seems quite acceptable to me.
Do we allow Rossi the same latitude? Perhaps it would not be wise to grant him quite the same amount of latitude. But how far do we go in this?
Rossi has a long history of saying things that are not true. Were he a scientist he would have lost his job.
Indeed. Thankfully he is not a scientist. Instead he's a colorful engineer with a colorful past. He has made a large number of distracting statements. Should we take his claims with a grain of salt? For sure. Should we view everything he does with extreme prejudice, as tainted with a kind of contagion to be avoided, not unlike leprosy? This is for each person to decide in seeking out the truth of the matter.
Rossi is pretty similar to otehr free energy companies like BLP. The difference is that Rossi's claims are much grander, and his lack of shoe therefore much more marked.
I put Rossi in a different category than BLP. BLP insist on promoting a theory that is obviously wrong, which is bound up in their intellectual property, while Rossi has been willing to change his position (all over the place). I put BLP somewhat in the same category as Steorn or Nanospire, making allowances for the possibility that BLP may actually be seeing a small amount of excess heat. I am not a fan of them.
Whereas with Rossi his continual twists and turns, and flat statements about what he has that are later contradicted (about both industrial developments and science), are more blatent.
Yes, he has contradicted himself on a number of occasions, and he is not very measured in what he says. What conclusions do you take from this?
The chicanery isn't subtle. Rossi personally and directly handled the samples in this supposedly "indipendent" test and it wouldn't take a lot of skill to inject a bit of prepurchased 62-Ni into the mix.
You are starting from a position of prejudice against Rossi, and see anything he touches as contaminated. This may be the case, but I don't share your prejudice. The description above would never be applied to a scientist collaborating with another scientist to reproduce or understand results. We are being asked to give broad leeway to scientists and to regard everything that Rossi does with extreme suspicion. Maybe this is warranted.
Or do you have a credible one? How does the reactor keep running at its usual power level when its nickel "fuel" is entirely converted to "ash"?
There are two explanations that I like in this connection, apart from deliberate fraud. There may be other good ones.
(a) Bob Higgins thinks that what might have happened is that enriched 62Ni was in the fuel, perhaps on the understanding that 62Ni helps somehow. When the fuel was sampled, the 62Ni was missed. When the ash was sampled, the 62Ni was picked up. In this telling, the fuel and ash are unrepresentative.
(b) The process consumes more than nickel (e.g., iron, etc.). Nickel is neither the sole fuel nor necessarily the most important component.
Or wait... is the nickel a catalyst now? Rossi said so (another idiotic contradiction).
Ok. Perhaps Rossi's understanding of what is going on is inadequate. Or maybe he's lying through his teeth.
As Storms, Lomax, Rothwell and others have said, from a scientific standpoint Rossi offers nothing of value to the LENR debate.
I disagree heartily with Storms and Lomax. I am sympathetic to Jed Rothwell's position, which is more nuanced. Rothwell is not saying that Rossi is a distraction in the way that Storms and Lomax are. Rothwell thinks the calorimetry of the Elforsk test was not done well, and as a layperson I can say that that seems like an accurate assessment.
I was personally dragged into this whole thing by hearing about Rossi, and I do not think he's been a distraction. I am sympathetic to his situation, although I think he could have taken some advice early on about how to communicate what he's doing with the public.
There were two isotope analyses done in connection with the Lugano test by third parties (third-third parties? At what point does one become uncontaminated?). They both corroborate one another. They do not rule out deliberate fraud through very subtle chicanery, or unrepresentative results due to how the fuel and ash were sampled. But I consider them to have interesting information.
I wrote:
What is your understanding of how copper fits into things, from the beginning?
An accurate, neutral writeup of this would be great. There are so many details, and the history spans a long enough time, that it's difficult to keep everything straight.
Shane,
If you go to the Rossi Blog Reader, starting in Oct 2014, you can see this exchange, along with others where Rossi gives his arguments against the various points the critics make. Many of the same you make here.
I recall hearing at one point that the ratios of isotopes in the copper were the natural ones; perhaps that was from the Pomp critique. I am still trying to sort out the facts relating to copper and the E-Cat, because the topic is interesting to me.
From your summary I conclude that Rossi is giving us to understand that the copper that was sampled for the Elforsk test was not a reliable indicator of what was in the ash commented upon by Pomp et al.; beyond that I am unable to infer whether copper was never reliably found in the ash at any time, or whether it was, but was in the normal ratios, or whether it was, and it was in abnormal ratios. But I don't recall much being mentioned in the way of copper in the Elforsk report; perhaps it was an earlier test?
What is your understanding of how copper fits into things, from the beginning? I know that copper has been reported by Piantelli, and there's the connection from Piantelli to Rossi via Focardi, so it's possible that copper was a hypothesis that Rossi adopted as a starting point.
"The result of this time showed that the nickel contained in both the “fuel” and “ash” had the natural distribution of isotopes of nickel, that is, no isotope change of nickel which could be observed."
This, I take it, from the Pomp critique. I'm having a hard time placing this in the timeline, as the nickel isotopes were clearly in abnormal ratios in the Elforsk test.
Since Rossi has always been extremely vague about anything commercial. It is more likely, if he announces a success, that anyone wanting to buy should contact him. Then, if like previous "sales" they will get no reply if not sympathetic, or a reply that no info can be disclosed without an NDA. If you are a company wanting to seem to be selling, but with no good data to provide to those who buy, it is easy to do this. And such behaviour can always be justified on grounds of commercial secrecy.
This conjecture seems consistent with scam or almost-scam. Just so I understand your position -- is it that Rossi/[lexicon]Industrial Heat[/lexicon] are
(a) running a con game,
(b) tricking themselves and behaving in a way that will avoid popping their bubble of self-delusion,
(c) in a different category than either of these and/or something more nuanced?
Indeed - but it was rather a giveaway that the Cu isotopic ratios were natural - don't you think?
It's been a while since I reviewed the assay that showed Cu from a few years ago. Do you have a link for the one you're thinking of, so that I can have more context?
I'd say that from somone who shows on this forum extreme flights of imagination when it comes to mix and matching bits of complex physics this argument shows a surprising lack of imagination about how things can be spoofed - either deliberately or even by mistake.
I don't disagree about the flights of fancy.
About explanations, one test for me is whether a suggestion about deliberate ruse or mistaken error has gotten into black ops helicopters territory or not. Sometimes skeptical takes get into territory that feels like Mission Impossible or MacGyver. This is not to say such possibilities are incorrect; just to say that I note in the back of my mind that they're pretty fancy.
I try to keep in mind several possibilities at once -- the extramundane, the mundane, and the sinister -- and not decide on which is the most probable right away. Eventually there may be a sufficient collection of evidence to force me in a certain direction, almost against my choosing. Sometimes there is not, and I'm left hanging.
If we had some prior information that meant we were 99% certain Rossi has an extraordinary physics reaction he was trying to commercialise, then these constipated arguments would make sense - you would be trying to fit the known facts into a preconceived viewpoint and any way it half worked would be good enough.
I think people should propose the extramundane if there is a specific reason to. Otherwise science would not advance. That is not to say that it's always probable or even likely. But it's good to have out on the table with the other possibilities.
From my POV there is no such prior information and therefore the overwhelming likelihood is that Rossi is a flake.
Perhaps. This reasoning feels a little tenuous, but you might be right.
So there are two mundane explanations for this result:
Just to mention one extramundane possibility for getting copper from nickel:
α + 61Ni → ɣ + 65Zn + 4115 keV
65Zn → ν + 65Cu + 1352 keV
65Zn is a synthetic radionuclide and will decay by way of electron capture to 65Cu with a half-life of 243.8 d. The ɣ photon from the α capture and subsequent deexcitation ɣ photons would presumably have had to have been replaced by internal conversion or something analogous to it.
So; the fan was not supposed to blow energetic particles fra the active cell towards CR39, as my impression was from your comment.
(Not reacting to your comments specifically.) It seems the fan significantly increased the number of pits in the CR-39 chip that was 3 cm out. I doubt very much these pits could have been due to prompt particles (protons and alphas) emanating from the cell, if only due to considerations of geometry. Also, those pits are not easy to make. If the low-power fan is sufficient to alter the trajectory of something, I doubt it has enough energy to create a pit.
One possibility I like is that what was altered by the fan was the trajectory of radionuclides, which then disintegrated further away from the cell.
What do you think is most convincing? NANORs, or CR-39, or both? Post the one killer paper that really convinces you (a modern one please). Unlike some here I can see that you read the papers you say convince you, which is admirable, and therefore your view on this would be helpful to me. I'd rather look at the best evidence.
I would start with these researchers: Michael McKubre (helium, calorimetry), David Kidwell (calorimetry), Pamela Mosier-Boss (CR-39). They are experimentalists whose work strikes me as good and free from theoretical preconceptions. David Kidwell has had a skeptical view for many years and has been involved in several null results (along the lines of MFMP), including working with other authors who were reporting interesting things.
It is hard to recall reading a single killer paper that cinches things. I doubt such a paper exists. I suggest doing some searching around. It does not hurt to glance through the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (JCMNS) or conference proceedings from time to time. Brillouin are a private company that releases press releases that are run through-and-through with theoretical preconceptions, which is not to say that they're not seeing anything, of course. I have similar complaints about NANOR.
Beaudette provides a good overview up to around 2002 or so, although it's definitely written in a polemical style, which can be distracting.
Tom,
Yes -- we can agree to disagree. I don't mind a lack of agreement on issues; in fact, it has been a fruitful source of ideas for me. I wish more people were comfortable with this.
You sound now to be plumping for (2). That is actually my favourite - it is least bad. The problem is that all the Ni-H apparent evidence then shows how easily something not real can seem real.
Almost. My position is perhaps better stated as "1.5," where I can think of how NiH might actually be a thing but haven't seen reliable evidence yet. See my question over at physics.SE. In that question I mention two related but different sets of processes; one might predominate in PdD and the other in NiH. I mention this only as an example of how a lack of imagination seems to have prevailed, and not as something I'm convinced is going on. But if I were to ask you, does physics already know about a process in which heat is seen, and there is a correlation of heat with helium, the answer would be "yes," and every physicist knows about it, and it is not controversial.
Eric
So if you hypothesise the physical version of LENR you have an immediate decision:
(1) Pd-D and Ni-H are both true examples of this
(2) Pd-D is a true example, Ni-H is "error+chemical"
(3) Pd-D is "error + chemical", Ni-H is true example
According to which you choose you have different issues to reconcile.
My position is more nuanced than (1). It's something more like, there's good (great actually) reason to think that PdD LENR involves the release of heat beyond what can be accounted for by chemistry as well as a correlation between heat and helium. On balance the evidence is strong enough that it would be unscientific to dismiss it.
NiH is less well established. There might be LENR, and there might not be LENR. In addition: the investigation of it is fascinating to watch.
For your comment to make sense I guess you follow (1). But in that case the inherent implausibility goes up further because the physical phenomena in the two cases are very different, and comprise two different extraordinary mysteries.
Perhaps this is true; or perhaps it is a failure of imagination. This is such a wide field that has been abandoned by physicists that I think there are several Nobel prizes worth of material waiting for unschooled hobbyists to come along and get the scoop, before the academic physicists get there. The prospect of that happening is by itself absolutely lovely. I suppose it would sow great distress within academia.
As far as theoretical physics goes the "four irrationalist" arguments don't hold, and Feyerabend in particular is just wrong.
Ok. You think Feyerabend is just wrong. I think he's pretty much correct. How are we to resolve this difficulty?
Specifically the history of physics has been a clearly ordered set of refinements in which each advance explains both a large range of phenomena, and old phenomena more accurately, with the previous theory seen as a decent approximation to the new and better one.
Even if for the sake of argument we were to allow your assertion that physics has seen a ordered set of refinements, without any of the difficulties that Kuhn and Feyerabend describe, I do not see any reason to think that LENR is a subfield of physics; it seems to be a weird amalgam of chemistry, physics and metallurgy.
Edisonian exploration is possible when there is some underlying physical phenomena to explore. Otherwise apparent Edisonian exploration (indistinguishable by the practitioners from the real thing) is in fact delimiting a set of methodological errors and chemical phenomena.
I don't disagree with this. It is a good point.
