Posts by Ecco

@sveinol: thought of the week, please bear with me! Hopefully you're still following this thread.

If according to the paper "Ultra-Dense Hydrogen H(−1) as the Cause of Instabilities in Laser Compression-Based Nuclear Fusion" submitted in 2014 by Holmlid strong compression of hydrogen to high temperature and density (as what happens in inertial confinement fusion) can cause it to spontaneously condense to H(0) - as it is now called - wouldn't this have huge implications for stars and gas giants in space? Has prof. Holmlid ever discussed about this?

Quote from Eric Walker

I read it to mean that they had enlarged everything to the right by two orders of magnitude. So a value that nominally was at 5e4 was really at 5e2. Perhaps this is a mistaken interpretation.

Interesting. On the basis that this way the "Li-containing particle" would be composed almost entirely of Li and that the one without Li would be composed almost entirely of Na, I assumed the opposite.

Since we're at it, (and putting aside that overanalyzing the Lugano report is probably like beating a dead horse) how is the "x100" in this spectrum and similar ones in the document supposed to be read in your opinion? Could it indicate that counts on the right of it have been scaled up 100 times, or that they are actually 100 times larger than depicted?

@Eric Walker: a few other observations:

- If the Lugano reactor was entirely made of a ceramic material, even internally, then Li would have reacted with the tube especially at high temperature and probably couldn't have moved freely for a long amount of time.

- If the reactor was entirely made of a ceramic material, and if the powder was found to be encrusted on the inner walls, does this mean that the tools used to scrape it off also took away some of the reactor tube material?

- Several months ago I tried digitizing the TOF-SIMS spectra (Fig.11) of the ash particles with and without Li and order the elements by abundance.

The most abundant elements Si, Al, Ca and Na, K could be part of the reactor tube material. The former group could be hinting at an inner ceramic tube made of a different material than the pure alumina of the exterior cement. The general assumption was that the entire reactor was made of 100% alumina, but this might have not been the case.

@Eric Walker: later on I didn't feel that the "Playground" would be the best forum thread for serious discussions, but since you cited it, the comment was as follows:

From experiments with early MFMP Lugano "Dog bone" analogs and Parkhomov-type replications with the heating wire in good thermal contact with the inner tube we know that at about 1000°C on the exterior surface the internal temperature is at least 30% higher. If heat is being internally generated, it's conceivable that this value would be even higher.

An external temperature of 1100°C (Bob Higgins' estimation) for the Lugano dog-bone would have meant that the nickel powder inside the reactor was on the verge of melting, and that it probably melted - perhaps not homogenously - if excess heat was being internally generated.

This is assuming that there was indeed powder in the working reactor and it was the active component. I find plausible that the inner ceramic (?) tube may have participated to the reaction, but this wasn't analyzed in detail; probably for good reasons. Also note that the Cook-Rossi paper on ArXiv mentions that the powder was found to be "encrusted" on the internal reactor walls.

- It's a "catalyst"
- It's been treated for porosity
- Overall particle size does not seem to matter much
- It somehow "inherently" contains water

To me this always sounded like the description of Raney Nickel or similar Ni-based spongy/skeletal metallic catalysts that are often stored in water because of their pyrophoricity.

Much information missing from this report.

Anyway, I tried graphing the data into something hopefully more readable. Unfortunately lower temperatures were not sampled. It looks like there's a small jump in temperatures above 1000°C. Curiously the 400-575W range of the fueled run almost looks like the calibration run shifted upwards by 75°C:

@Alan Smith: Rossi never claimed using iron either, but the 2009 TOF-SIMS analyses that were given to Krivit in 2011 seem to be mostly showing iron or more broadly speaking something similar in composition to a typical Fischer-Tropsch catalyst with very little Ni. The logarithmic scale can be misleading. It's possible these were showing only a very limited portion of the "fuel", but I find that unlikely, given published results by others (Holmlid) using similar catalysts. I also wrote a thread about this in the past.

Rossi LENR might have not always been Ni/Ni+Li.

@Alan Smith: don't worry, I deleted that simply because in retrospect I didn't want to dilute the message of the last few pages with additional information and requests, and because I won't have too much time to participate to the discussion until this weekend.

In theory any element capable of being ionized can potentially form condensed excited states of matter (e.g. Rydberg Matter. I believe there are similar theories under other names). If one assumes this to be the model behind which LENR anomalies hide, it shouldn't be too implausible that a low grade/non-ideal carbon plasma could show related anomalies.

Quote from Tarun

That's surely a million $ question, is it actually happening in that reactor? How to know for sure? Is there a litmus test for RM?

Yes, sort of. There are some macroscopic parameters which could be looked for:

- RM clusters do not move in space like a gas, so pressure may anomalously decrease as they form. Additionally, they can absorb to some extent ions and small molecules and act as a sort of getter themselves, further causing a decrease in pressure ;
- RM is reported to be somewhat conductive (10^−2 – 10^−3 Ω·m). And its formation could thus be detected by an anomalous electrical conduction between cell components that don't normally conduct electricity to each other;
- RM has been measured to have a work function of ~0.5-0.7 eV, but I don't think this would be easy to measure in a DIY reactor by the average experimenter;
- RM clusters have a large magnetic moment; it's been theorized that at a large enough density they can to give rise to detectable magnetic fields (this is somewhat speculative).

Quote

And even before that, is RM certainly, without any doubts, proven, indicator of LENR?

I think you're asking for some kind of proof that never existed in the LENR field in the first place. This being said, there are several points in common between the conditions for the formation of RM and those for obtaining anomalies in several LENR experiments, especially by focusing on the so-called "ultra-dense" form of RM which involves hydrogen+catalytic surfaces and about which several papers have been published in the past few years.

Quote

If there are no rock solid answers, then I say, move on, don't care about someone else's theoretical stuff. Write your own little theory and test it on your own little reactor. If an experiment stands on firm ground, there is some hope for it. (I'm not preaching, just an opinion ;))

It's more than theoretical stuff. Most of the papers written on the subject are experimental, but there's admittedly a scarcity of independent verification as they are for the most part from Holmlid and colleagues, with some exceptions.

Anyway, I wasn't going to ask Alan Smith to perform involved, time costly tests, if this is what you were concerned with. Perhaps checking out if the anomaly changes significantly with pressure, and that's all. Besides, even if it's just an artifact it's important to find out how to debug it in order to avoid false positives in future experiments with this kind of reactor.

@Tarun: it's been reported that the formation of Rydberg state atoms and Rydberg Matter of one element/molecules can catalyze the formation of the same of other elements (e.g. Hydrogen), so - if this is what is really happening in Alan Smith's cell - exploring what is going on with other gases might not necessarily be unhelpful. Read for example section 2.2 in this paper (free access).

Hopefully I am not starting to sound like a broken record now.

* * *

As for the MFMP GS5.3 experiment, no big signal like last time, but actually there have been interesting indications of a repeatable slight increase in radiation counts from a NaI X-ray probe when the following conditions were met:

- Elevated temperature (> 600°C internal as far as I recall);
- Desorption of hydrogen from internal materials (primarily due to an external decrease in H2 pressure and/or to a controlled decrease in temperature) or more generally speaking, shortly after large pressure changes.

Additionally, attempting to make a vacuum at elevated temperature could in some instances make pressure drop to an anomalously low level - significantly lower than what the vacuum pump could normally achieve.

Assuming that no strange artifact was in reality causing these anomalies, given that Hydrogen is ab/adsorbed on materials in atomic form, my take is that something unusual can under certain circumstances take place before recombination occurs, as others have also suggested.

@Alan Smith: I'm actually saying that it could be thanks to the high voltage triggering system that you're possibly seeing anomalies, even if you're only using air in the cell and nothing else.

An atom in a Rydberg state is simply one with a valence electron occupying a higher orbital than ground state; you could consider it in an "almost ionized" state. Short spark discharges or an electric field gradient should be able form such atoms.

Rydberg Matter is a state of matter composed by the condensation - usually on non-metallic surfaces (the geometry of your reactor might be helping here) - of atoms in a certain Rydberg state. This potentially includes nitrogen, for example.

If you're actually creating an exotic state of matter inside your reactor tube it shouldn't be too surprising to witness strange anomalies.

I would try to make sure if the radiation count spike wasn't actually due to electromagnetic interference coming from the tube.
However, it's also been theorized that the formation of large enough amounts of RM can produce electromagnetic anomalies. If other macroscopic evidence for the creation of this state of matter in the tube could be found (as I previously mentioned), it would be even better.

@Alan Smith: actually I was interested knowing more in detail the nature of the apparently non-LENR anomaly you're reporting. Was it for example related to the internal cell pressure? Or perhaps did you find an anomalous electrical conductivity between both cell ends long after electrical stimulus was removed?

I don't like to bring this out often in order to not sound like an advocate (and as a broken record), but if one accepts Rydberg Matter as a possible precursor for LENR effects, then the assumption that the Ni is the "fuel" could be incorrect. Potentially, Rydberg Matter can be formed by any element capable of being excited to a so-called circular Rydberg state (although nuclear anomalies and excess heat have only been observed with RM of hydrogen, to my knowledge).

I am interested in these tests with a supposedly inert (air/nitrogen) atmosphere. Are you able to use 100% Nitrogen gas too?

@Alan Smith: what pressure do you usually employ in these cells? Do you monitor the vacuum level in real time?

@Hank Mills: I would suggest to give up. He's made it clear enough that he's waiting for patents to get approved and that he (+ his group of buddies) has much to lose by disclosing information at this time, so he's not going to soon. I wouldn't even count nor hope that he privately discloses information to select MFMP members - which I'm not - as it will put them (again) in the very awkward situation where they have the knowledge for building a fully working LENR device, but cannot tell about it in public because of intellectual property reasons.

I'm quite a bit tired of this charade too. A possible way out could be trying to replicate what is already public instead of playing the lottery with very slight variations of the same experiments over and over again. Sometimes I almost get the impression these efforts mostly serve to buy time for others to build a patent portfolio.

I can say I'm quite disappointed at what is being hinted here, but I saw this coming long ago.

Quote

Cleaner planet, better world, no more fossil fuels, interest.

Quote

Safety, safety, patents, risks, many things to lose.

Quote from smartypants

Do not underestimate the importance of privacy. I come from the cryptocurrency world, where privacy is highly regarded.

I'm afraid that if privacy is Me356's concern it might already be too late. He's already posted enough information - it doesn't even look like he's made any effort hiding it - that would make it far too easy for determined attackers to trace down his personal details and location, unless he's operating as a frontman for covering the identity of other people. So, withholding replication data on that basis would seem pointless and perhaps even counterproductive in my opinion.

@Andrea Calaon: please forgive me if this is drifting the topic away.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

I don't understand why it should do it.

The main reason is likely because the lifetime of circular states compared to low-l Rydberg states is several orders of magnitude larger - allowing them enough time to condense to the so-called Rydberg Matter, which is long-lived.

Quote

In addition, the Rydberg states are traditionally connected with low energy levels, whereas just the Holmlid fusion runs at quite substantial energy density, non typical for cold fusion approach...

Keeping in mind that fusion processes have been observed in the further condensed form tentatively called "ultra-dense" state, in doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2015.06.116 it's been stated that the high temperature of the laser is not the reason why this appears to happen.

That Holmlid usually uses a laser in his experiments doesn't mean that a laser is necessary. The process can also eventually occur spontaneously, without a laser. Other triggers may be suitable too. From doi:10.1063/1.4928109

Ólafsson also confirmed here on LENR-Forum that a laser is not strictly needed.

Quote

[...]The laser can start the process but just waiting after admitting the D2 gas does the same.

Quote from StephenC

[...] I understand from some responses on vortex and other documentation that when atoms are in Rydberg state the outer valence electron orbital closely resembles a Bohr atom orbit however, but I wonder if this is only in certain orbital angular momentum (l) states, with l >0 for example.

With high values of n and l (ideally when l = n-1) a "circular Rydberg state" is formed. According to Holmlid et al., Rydberg Matter requires (at the very least, as it's not the only prerequisite) the formation of such states. For a brief overview of circular Rydberg states see this link.

Quote from hendersonmj

[...] Get a copy of those logs, match timestamps to posts to identify a user, search for the location at a site like iplocation.net/find-ip-address, and presto! all is revealed.

They could be using a VPN... nothing meaningful would be revealed in that case.