Posts by Ascoli65

Quote from RobertBryant

So Staker's results are not credible without gas volume?

Please explain.in detail why not? with numbers rather than words

words are easy but numbers are not

Why should anyone explains in detail the errors made by Staker in the interpretation of his results?

As shown by the obstinate refusal to take into consideration the well documented and irrefutable errors made by F&P in the Simplicity Paper, you, as any other LENR's fan, are not willing to recognize any error made by a CF/LENR researchers.

When such an error will be found and explained in detail, you will just pull out another rabbit from your hat.

Quote from RobertBryant

It is widely accepted now by persons familiar with the relevant literature that tritium can be produced in LENR experiments due to the existence of many strong reports by competent scientists of the generation of tritium in such experiments.

This is a very clear description of how LENR faith works:

The LENR community (persons familiar with the relevant literature) believes (widely accept) that a abnormal phenomenon (LENR) exists because certain anomalous evidences (in this case, generation of tritium during experiments) are reported by competent scientists.

So, this LENR belief is based on a chain of assumptions which starts from and relies on the competence of a few LENR scientists.

But competence is not enough, what matters is reliability. Are LENR scientists all reliable? Well, evidences show that at least some of the most important and representative LENR scientists are not so reliable. The list includes F&P (CF's pioneers), Takahashi (president of ISCMNS), and others, who made documented huge errors in reporting some of their most important achievements.

Quote from RobertBryant

The results reported here support, to a certain extent, the claims of tritium generated in

the electrolysis of D2O on Pd of deuterium reported by Fleischmann, Pons and Hawkins

(1). The following conclusions have been reached:

Now, considering that the two main authors of the above mentioned report overestimated the power output from their cells by a factor 4, because they ignored the presence of a well visible element such as foam, how is it possible to give credit to their claim to have generated invisible particles such as tritium?

Quote from THHuxleynew

and went with McKubre etc as better proof - admittedly of a less clear sort.

No doubt, McKubre is now a much better reference point for the LENR community, rather than F&P. He is the most famous face of the field. He has worked on CF experiments in a prestigious scientific institution for about 3 decades, and is still active in the field.

However, he has also been, and still is, very convinced of the reality of the F&P claims about their boil off experiment in 1992. In 2003-4, he was in the group of 5 CF representatives who selected the Simplicity Paper as the first in a short list of documents, which should have demonstrated to DoE the reality of the LENR phenomena. And less than two years ago, in June 2021, at ICCF23, he said that that specific F&P experiment is the only one to have been exactly replicated.

So, my opinion is that before taking into considerations his personal achievements as a better proof for LENR reality, it should be important to know the reasons why he gives so much importance to the 1992 boil off experiment.

McKubre is a member of LENR forum, so it would be a good idea if he will directly explain these reasons. I think.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I'd be happier if LENR community admitted F&P evidence is v suspect

Why suspect?

If you refer to the 1992 boil-off experiment, it's not a matter of suspect. There are clear and irrefutable evidences that both conclusions claimed in the F&P's "Simplicity Paper" are wrong.

But, I don't think that the LENR community (with the exception of Robert Horst) will never admit these errors.

Quote from Curbina

There are plenty of replications of Fralick with difussion through Pd and one of those, through a Pd thin film, proved that the level of excess heat was comparable to nuclear in Energy density.

Biberian also did a replication of sirts with 3 W of excess heat and proposed two mechanisms for explaining the excess heat, one of them nuclear.

Difussion of H through a Nickel tubing was also proven to generate excess heat far beyond that chemically explainable, this is work done by trying to replicate Mills claims, but I mention it because was done by independent party.

This is quite a vague list of replications, and Biberian not so much independent. If the whole LENR field thinks that Fralick experiment is the new frontier to demonstrate the existence of LENR, they should declare it explicitly. But, for what I see, this is only your personal opinion.

Presently, the only CF/LENR experiment considered to have been fully replicated by McKubre is the 1992 boil off experiment by F&P. Moreover, the "Simplicity Paper" was on top of the short list of documents submitted in 2004 to DoE by McKubre and four other CF experts, who were the crème de la crème of the field. On the contrary, Fralick is not even mentioned by Storms among the 64 references listed in the preview his last paper. "Simplicity Paper" is there as reference [36].

Until now, the "Simplicity Paper" is still considered by the fusionists the most representative paper of the field, and the "1992 boil off experiment " the most convincing proof that CF is real. But the first is wrong, and the second is effectively the most convincing CF experiment ever done, but for proving the opposite.

In any case, when CF community will recognize the evidence, admitting that F&P were wrong in drawing the conclusions of their 1992 boil off experiment, it will be worth taking into consideration the claims of another experiment. Otherwise, this is only a switching target hunt.

Simplicity comes first, then Fralick or anybody else.

Quote from Curbina

There are experiments reproducible at will that show more or less the same results, i.e. the anomalous heat during difussion of H or D through the PdAg tubing of a Johnson Mathey Hydrogen purifier (Fralick et al 1989, repeated several times and last confirmed by Benyo et al 2020 and further expanded at ICCF 24th).

Do you mean Fralick et al 1989, Fralick, Benyo et al in 2020, and Fralick, Benyo et al at ICCF24? Is this the new reference for experiment replications which demonstrate the reality of LENR?

McKubre seems not to be aware of these achievements. Is it your personal opinion, or is it largely shared in the LENR field?

In any case, please, remind me of this Fralick experiment when it will be replicated "more-or-less the same results (including magnitude and timing) more-or-less every time" by some other lab and authors in the world.

In the meanwhile, the only replicated experiment in the LENR field remains the 1992 boil-off experiment by F&P, but the reported conclusions were wrong.

Quote from Alan Smith

Is there anything that would make you change your mind about LENR ?

"d. Until an experiment is reproducible more-or-less at will, producing more-or-less the same results (including magnitude and timing) more-or-less every time then we cannot know that it is real and fully under our control." (McKubre, ICCF23)

Quote from THHuxleynew

But everyone agrees excess heat at some level happens in mots LENR experiments, almost everyone agrees that electrolysis experiments generate He, that correlation would help.

Really? Everyone, who? And where? For sure in the CF/LENR field, but outside this tiny circle?

Please,let me know. Do you also agree that excess heat at some level happens in most LENR experiments? And that electrolysis experiments generate He?

Quote from Shane D.

Notice the words "open scientific mind". In that same Nobel spirit, it would be nice if our resident skeptics would tell us what they think it would take for LENR to be real? Could it possibly lie within the boundaries of the Standard Model, or would it take something else like Teller's "meshuganon" particle?

In my opinion, you should restart from McKubre and THH.

In his presentation at ICCF23 (1), McKubre provided the solution urging the field to "Replicate, Replicate, Replicate!!!" (slide 6).

However, at slide 11, he admitted that in 30+ years the only replicated experiment was the "original Fleischmann Pons experiment", that is the 1992 boil off experiment reported in F&P "Simplicity Paper". Unfortunately, irrefutable evidences show that this experiment has produced no excess heat at all, and its conclusions are completely wrong.

Here, it comes THH. I think, you should follows his advice (2):

Quote

"What gets me is Jed's insistence here that the great pioneers of the LENR filed are above that and their write-ups - often lacking detail (I include F&P in that - the simplicity - complication paper lacks an enormous amount of necessary detail) are proof perfect.

Those now who are seriously trying to establish what LENR effects can be replicated would be better served with a less reverent attitude towards the LENR greats."

In other words, an "open scientific mind" who really want to demonstrate that LENR is real, should first respect the principle of reality, and admit what is for sure not real, starting from the conclusions reported in the "Simplicity Paper".

Quote from JedRothwell

Since THH now believes the boil off theory, perhaps he can put on his tin-foil hat and fill in a few details that Ascoli refuses to enlighten us about.

I've already answered these questions many times. Let's try again.

Quote

For example, why does the cell produce heat before the boil off, and after it, but not during it? Or have you people discovered errors in the calorimetry before and after the boil off? Since that calorimetry is totally different from the boil-off version, what errors have you found?

The aim of the 1992 experiment, as reported in the abstract of the paper presented by F&P at ICCF3 (1) was to "present here one aspect of our recent research on the calorimetry of the Pd/D2O system which has been concerned with high rates of specific excess enthalpy generation (> 1kWcm-3) at temperatures close to (or at) the boiling point of the electrolyte solution." So the investigation concerned the boiling region.

The conclusion are reported at page 19: "We note that excess rate of energy production is about four times that of the enthalpy input even for this highly inefficient system".

This conclusion is wrong because the calculations at page 16 show that F&P completely ignored the presence of foam, which, as suggested by common sense and confirmed by their lab video, was present inside the cells during the last 600 s of the boil-off. This is a huge error, a +400% error.

But, you ask: what about the periods before and after boil-off?

Let's start from the second one. Conclusions at page 19 contain a second claim:"following the boiling to dryness and the open-circuiting of the cells, the cells nevertheless remain at high temperature for prolonged periods of time, Fig 8".

F&P mention Fig.8 were they wrote "Cell remains at high temperature for 3 hours". This period represents the delay between a vertical arrow indicating the "Cell dry" instant and the downward slope of the temperature curve. Starting from ICCF4 this alleged phenomenon will be called HAD (Heat After Death). Well, looking at the lab video, anyone, capable of calculating a simple time conversion, will realize that the vertical arrows was mispositioned of more than 2 hours. Conclusion, there was no delay in the cell cooling, so no HAD. The phenomenon came from a blatant error of the authors.

And finally, the period before boil off.

The alleged excess heat are reported in Figs.6A to 6D. A few tenths of watt compared to a few watts in input. Let's say less than 10%. This excess heat, calculated in a very complicated way, was not mentioned in the conclusions.

Is it real or not? Well, my answer is: there is no reason to believe that it is real, on the contrary there are serious reasons to assume that it is wrong. Why? Because it is an extraordinary claim coming from the same authors who made much more impressive and bigger errors in estimating the heat released during and after the boil off.

In other words, the careful analysis of the "Simplicity Paper", compared with the evidences of the lab videos, clearly shows that the authors are unreliable, at least for this specific work. So the tiny X/H claimed before the boil off can be more reasonably explained by any possible error they made in the calibration procedure.

Believing those four cells produced any excess heat before, during and after the boil off phase is only a matter of faith.

(1) http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

Quote from JedRothwell

That is what you think, but you are the only person on earth who thinks that. You should not confuse your unfounded opinions with reality.

You better not confuse LENR-Forum with earth.

Quote from JedRothwell

The leading researchers were the crème de la crème of modern electrochemistry and physics. So of course they did superb research. They were people such as Fleischmann, FRS; Bockris, who wrote the book on modern electrochemistry ("Modern Electrochemistry," Vol. 1 and 2),

Superb research? Not in the CF field.

F&P (the CF founders) confused foam with liquid, Takahashi (ISCMNS president) ignored the effect of an AC unit placed just above his rig, Celani (vice-president) made a similar mistake in his 2012 test, Focardi and many colleagues of him were convinced that an ugly iron pipe bunch was a nuclear reactor. This is only a short set of mistakes made by the crème de la crème of modern electrochemistry and physics involved in the CF research.

Quote

Have you found any hidden errors in McKubre's work? Or Miles, Storms or any other leading paper? Has anyone found any hidden errors?

It's not so easy to spot hidden error in formally well written papers. It doesn't mean that they report correct results.

The above mentioned mistakes have been found thanks to the availability of side documentation, especially videos, photos and auxiliary information contained in presentations and interviews. On the basis of the main papers only, it would have been impossible to spot those mistakes, they would have remained hidden and undetectable forever. For instance, it would have been impossible to find the big errors in the F&P's "Simplicity Paper" without the availability of their lab videos.

So, it's pretty impossible to know if an apparently well written report contains some of such errors, unless you have enough extra documents.

A number of well written documents doesn't allow to say that CF is real, until the reported experiments are reproducible, as McKubre said at ICCF23 (1):

"d. Until an experiment is reproducible more-or-less at will, producing more-or-less the same results (including magnitude and timing) more-or-less every time then we cannot know that it is real and fully under our control."

In the same slide he wrote:

"b. As far as I am aware Lonchampt and his team were and are the only group ever to attempt an exact engineering replication of the original Fleischmann Pons experiment."

And this original F&P experiment is just the one reported in their "Simplicity Pape", whose conclusions are completely wrong.

This is the status of CF/LENR, today.

(1) RE: What should we do next ? - A relevant question from Matt Trevithick

Quote from Alan Smith

I know only two Unibo people who were actively involved and one of those (Foschi) was a technician. Stremmenos had retired, others were spectators. Actively involved at that time (as distinct from spectating) were (from memory) Giuseppe Levi, Evelyn Foschi, Bo Höistad, Roland Pettersson, Lars Tegnér and Hanno Essén

Only Levi and Foschi were employed by Unibo. And Assistant Professor Levi was the only one so titled.

I mentioned the January 2011 demo. I repeat, ten people from UniBo were present at that public test, all of whom contributed in different ways to the involvement of UniBo in the Ecat adventure. A few months later, the Physics Department Board approved a contract with EFA for continuing the research on the Ecat for 24 months. In January 2012, UniBo withdrew from the contract.

I'm only interested in the 11 documented Ecat tests performed in that period, until the official withdrawal of UniBo. FWIK, Evelyn Foschi was not involved in those tests.

Quote from Alan Smith

I didn't know they had that many, and I know the sub-department well. I can think of around 6 at most who were involved, most only peripherally. Do you know the names of this 10.

Yes. But, please, consider that writing "a dozen of UniBo professors prepared, assisted, described, certified and confirmed …", I mean that about a dozen people of UniBo (two of them were not actually professors) were involved in one or more of the listed activities.

Anyway, ten were the UniBo professors (or assistants) present during the January 14, 2011 Ecat demo. Beyond Focardi, three of them prepared the experimental setup (and/or the nuclear instrumentation around it) and issued the 3 experimental reports. Three other professors were in the Ecat working group. The two deans, of the Physics Department and the local section of INFN, were also present, supported the initiative and defended the claimed results. And finally Stremmenos. Ten people in total, well trained and informed about experimental physics, and in many cases with a long experience in CF.

Quote from Alan Smith

? A dozen?

Yes. Around 10 to 12. At least 10.

Quote from JedRothwell

Is it plausible? Only if you can point to some evidence. Perhaps time-stamped power from the AC unit is asking too much, but can you show that the perturbations continued throughout the experiment?

Yes. For instance, graphs on page 14 of the Takahashi presentation at JCF20 (1) show that the TC4 oscillations continued throughout the entire time axes. This is exactly the behavior expected when the ambient temperature surrounding an experimental setup is strictly kept constant by means of an AC unit.

Quote

That they continued when there was no experiment in process?

No, for two simple reasons. First, if no experiment is in process there is no needing to keep the ambient temperature constant. Second, even if the AC unit was kept in operation when there was no experiment in process, no TC4 down-spike could have been recorded, because the H/D pipe hit by the blown air and the connected upper flange were at the same temperature of the surrounding air.

Quote

Do you have any data to support your hypothesis, or is it only speculation?

Yes. a lot of. For instance those contained in the above said presentation (1), confirm the AC hypothesis.

Quote

Is there any way we can tell the difference between your hypothesis and Takahashi's?

The main difference between the AC hypothesis and the Takahashi's is that the first is plausible as confirmed by the published information, and the second is impossible, as shown by the same published information. In fact the regular series of down-spikes are perfectly compatible with the on-off operation of an AC unit, that we know was just above the experimental rig. Viceversa, this same behavior is incompatible with the Takahashi explanation of a random development of turbulence inside the RC due to a mystery AHE phenomena of nuclear origin, because anyone knows that hotter gases cannot induce temperature down-spikes.

Quote

The burden of proof is as much on you as Takahashi. Just because a hypothesis is more mundane, that does not make it more likely.

Well, this contradicts the paraphrase of Alan Smith of the Takahashi's words about experiment, theory and explanation. See (2) for details.

Quote

It is actually extremely unlikely that there would be perturbations all through the experiment, and even when there was no experiment, yet no one noticed that. It is a sure thing they ran the temperature data collection before and after the experiment was performed. People always do that. They wouldn't turn it on the moment before commencing the experiment.

You should read better the literature in your library.

Quote

Give Takahashi and the others some credit for common sense. They must have some ability to do experiments. The guy is a professor who has been doing experiments for 50 years. The people from Mitsubishi there have been doing experiments for decades. Many outside observers have come. Someone would have notices if the temperature fluctuations were always there, and always of the same magnitude as the spikes.

Jed, I don't have 50 years of experience in doing CF experiments, but I've more than 12 years of experience in looking at the CF results claimed by as much authoritative professors as Takahashi.

In January 2011, a dozen of UniBo professors prepared, assisted, described, certified and confirmed for years the results of the famous first public experiment of the Ecat, and dozens of CF experts in the world, including you, believed and strenuously defended those results.

Strange things happen in the CF field, but I think their nature is psychological, not physical. They are happening since long, at least since F&P, the two pioneers of the field and indubitable world-class experts in electrochemistry, claimed to have achieved four times the input power, by ignoring the presence of foam in their cells.

After having followed the CF field, I am no longer surprised by anything

(1) https://www.researchgate.net/p…_of_Nano-Metal_and_HD-Gas

(2) RE: The perpetual “is LENR even real” argument thread.

Quote from JedRothwell

You say "they are caused" as if you know that for a fact. Okay, it is plausible, but until you show us data from the AC unit, and show that it correlates with the TC4 spikes, you have no proof.

Do you not understand this?

Or do you have proof? Did Takahashi send you time-stamped AC unit power consumption data?

Jed, you are reversing the duty of the proof.

If the AC unit operation is a plausible cause, then the burden to demonstrate that it actually is not the cause of the TC4 down-spikes is on the authors' shoulders. If they have not provided any documentation to disprove such a plausible cause, it follows that this same plausible cause is the only one that can be reasonably and legitimately considered as true. Not the other way around.

Science works in this way.

Quote from Alan Smith

I asked Akito Takahashi about this 'face to face'. He told me that the lab temperature was stable to less than 1 degree - I think he mentioned 0.1 degree and it was continually logged. If anybody thinks that this work was done without anybody checking fluctuations in the ambient temperature they need their thermostat changing.

Alan, nobody is saying that the ambient temperature was not maintained in a tiny range, not me for sure.

The TC4 down-spikes are the direct consequence of this strict temperature control, because they are caused by the continuous on-off operation of the AC unit required to keep constant the ambient temperature.

Quote from JedRothwell

It is a hypothesis, not a fact. It may be plausible, but it is not proven. You seem to have difficultly distinguishing plausible from proven.

THH has already properly answered to you: a plausible cause is a more than sufficient explanation, when compared to a weird nuclear hypothesis.

Moreover, in the case of the Takahashi experiment, we can also add that his hypothesis is not only weird, but also blatantly wrong: a temperature down-spike can't be caused by the enhanced turbulence of an hotter gas.

So, the effect of the AC unit is the only cause to be considered as true in this specific case. And not only in this case.

Quote from JedRothwell

He did say "no doubt." Those are his words:

"In fact, there is no doubt that the variable cooling effect due to the on-off operation of an AC unit provides a much simpler . . ."

Yes, those are my words, but only part of them, you omitted to quote the second term of the comparison. I actually wrote (1): "In fact, there is no doubt that the variable cooling effect due to the on-off operation of an AC unit provides a much simpler, older, and already theoretically explained interpretation of the oscillatory down-spikes in the TC4 signal, rather than any other hypothetical, exotic, and unexplained new nuclear phenomenon."

Do you think, instead, that a hypothetical, exotic, and unexplained new nuclear phenomenon is simpler than the periodically increased convective cooling due to the on-off operation of an AC unit placed just above the experimental rig?

It should be obvious to everyone that AC provides a much simpler possible explanation than a controversial nuclear effect.

Quote from JedRothwell

Ascoli might write something like:

"Takahashi ascribes the periodic fluctuations in the temperature in cell to [fill in Takahashi hypothesis]. I think these fluctuations may be caused by the thermostatic heating and cooling of the laboratory air. I say this because the periods are about equal, and the fluctuations are seen at every stage of the experiment [assuming that is true]. If data from the heating and cooling is available, it might show a correlation with the fluctuations in the cell temperature. Without such data, it would be difficult to test my hypothesis."

Nice wording, wrong conclusion.

As a much simpler possible cause of the down-spikes, the intermittent operation of the AC unit should have been considered as the first option by Takahashi et al. It should have been their duty to investigate first this possibility, and be sure that it was not the real cause of the TC4 strange behavior. Of course, the experimental data used to exclude such hypothesis should have been included in the report, but this was not done. This is their fault. So, the AC unit hypothesis, the simpler one, remains the more logical and legitimate to be considered as the real cause of the TC4 down-spikes.

But let's give a look to the Takahashi explanation. In (2) he wrote:

and he concluded:

So, Takahashi also hypothesizes a periodic increase of the convective cooling on the RC upper flange, but due to a supposed periodically enhanced turbulence induced by a mystery AHE power evolution.

But this explanation is evidently wrong.

In order to induce a down-spike the convective gas should be colder than the flange, as is the case of the air blown by the AC unit. But the H (or D) gas inside the RC is much hotter than the flange! You can see this, for example, on the slide 12 of the Takahashi presentation at JCF20 (3). The lower left diagram shows that TC4 is normally at 270 °C and it spikes down twice to about 175 °C. The upper left diagram shows instead that the temperature inside the RC ranges from 320 to 520 °C. So the internal cooling invoked by Takahashi cannot be the cause of the down-spikes recorded by TC4!

This would be against any old law of physics. Just a nonsense.

(1) RE: The perpetual “is LENR even real” argument thread.

(2) https://www.researchgate.net/p…-Metal_and_HD-Gas_revised

(3) https://www.researchgate.net/p…_of_Nano-Metal_and_HD-Gas