Posts by THHuxleynew

Quote from JedRothwell

There are no leaks this small, as I said. You could not leak such small amounts deliberately, with an ordinary mechanical device such as needle valve. You can let helium permeate through materials, which is what happens here. The rates are well known and they do not vary. Any physical hole, no matter how small, will admit thousands of times more than permeation.

Jed, surely you can see this is bogus.

We agree low leak rates come from diffusion through some membrane. We agree leaks (air gaps through a seal) are possible. Therefor a partial air gap through a seal must be possible - with diffusion through a small part of the seal that is blocking the gap. Further, such gaps would very likely be temperature dependent. Very possibly they would open up only after some time. You cannot assume because you have tested one apparatus and it had leaks below a certain level, that this is always the case. Nor can a single heat cycling episode ensure that.

What you can say is that sometimes the leaks will be low.

Quote from JedRothwell

As I said, Miles ran null electrolysis at higher temperatures than electrolysis + excess heat. He saw no excess helium. So, the helium is not temperature dependent. Also, most of the equipment is the tube and flask which are far from the cell, and not affected by its temperature.

If the leaks began after gadget was initially tested, the background levels would change. They do not. (It couldn't be leak in any case, because levels would suddenly be thousands of times higher than any excess heat event or calibration.)

The main point is, leaks cannot correlate with excess heat. You need to come to grips with that fact. There is nothing about the production of 0.3 W of excess heat that can cause helium permutation or leaks to change. That level of heat is far too small to have any effect

I think you mean in some cases, leaks did not correlate with excess heat.

We can go through Miles's methodology in detail and see what is possible.

If the leaks began after gadget was initially tested, the background levels would change. They do not. (It couldn't be leak in any case, because levels would suddenly be thousands of times higher than any excess heat event or calibration.

Could you possibly amplify that statement with your reasoning - I am not sure that I understand what you mean?

Quote from Alan Smith

Are you suggesting that He only leaks in one direction?

when it has a much higher concentration in atmosphere than in experiment: yes!

Quote from JedRothwell

A small amount of helium does leak in at a constant rate. The background helium. It is the same for all 1.2 hour samples: 3.4 to 4.6 ppb, with no excess heat. With excess heat it was 7 to 9 ppb, correlated with the level of excess heat. If this was a leak, it would be somewhere around 1,000 to 5,400 ppb (atmospheric). In some experiments, they start out at 5,400 and go up from there, which eliminates the leak hypothesis.

If there is a tiny leak the atmospheric He3 will leak into the experiment at a slow rate. We know this can happen. We also know that larger leaks can happen - and are easily detected. That is my point. There is no way to distinguish between a small leak and He generated from the reaction. You cannot control for this, because to change the reaction you need to unseal/reseal the apparatus. In addition, leaks can be temperature-dependent, and not be present when apparatus is initially tested, which further complicates any attempt to control this effect. Careful methodology can do this, I agree, given enough effort and testing.

Jed's statements relates to large leaks. But the integrity required for these tiny amounts of emitted He is much higher than that, and no-one can say a small leak (if you like, diffusion through a seal which is almost leaking) is not possible.

THH

Quote from JedRothwell

The meaning is a little unclear to me. I think you are saying that both excess heat and leakage increase with time, so they will both go up in a correlated way.

Are you confusing power (that is, heat) with energy? In most cases shown by Miles, excess heat does not increase with time. It varies within a range, but you do not get more with more time. See the graphs at the end of this paper:

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesManomalousea.pdf

Net excess energy, when present, does increase over time, of course. Both the power and the energy from electrolysis have no effect on the helium level.

Yes - I was using heat in the physically correct nomenclature - e.g. energy.

And saying that total He leakage in from atmosphere (nwith constant leakage rate) and excess heat would both scale linearly with experiment runtime.

Why does the graph sit with its peak < expected He output?

To answer Ed's point, and yours...

One effect that can address this is selection. In these experiments which suffer atmospheric leakage apparatus may have too much leakage - which will be obvious because the He found is larger than that expected. If experiments have a methodology which checks for leakage and stops/cancels experiments, restarting them with new seals, when the He level is too high this is a mechanism for ensuring that variable leakage rates have a stochastic distribution between 0 and some upper limit not much higher than the He level expected. If experiments designed to measure He come in with values obviously too low they will be regarded as failures and I expect not inlcude din Ed's meta-analysis. There is also the question of how those 16 studies included in the histogram are selected. there are many ways to select that many studies, some will produce nicer histograms than others. In order to take the niceness of the histogram as evidence of anything we need the selection criteria, as well as an analysis, based on experiment protocol, of the prior probability distribution expected from leakage as selected by the experiment methodology.

You can't say that histogram is evidence without examining all of these effects.

THH

Quote from JedRothwell

If you cannot list an actual variable that might affect thermocouples in one lab, and then three mass spectrometers in other labs months later, you have no case.

This is a matter of causality.

All I need is an uncontrolled variable (that is one that varies and is not included in the results) which correlates with both He4 and excess heat. That will result in a correlation.

Of course a fusion reaction could be such a variable. But so could many other things.

So observation of a correlation on its own is not enough - and for He measurements the problems from lab atmosphere leakage - which is difficult to control - make otehr correlations quite possible.

Quote from JedRothwell

I do not misunderstand you. Your writing is clear and easy to understand

In

Quote from THHuxleynew

My comment about lack of replication was that Ed was, as I understand it, summarising work in the field.

Jed then quoted my quote exactly as above and said

Please, Jed, abstain from making reactive criticism of what I write based on what you expect it to be, when reading what I actually say shows that in fact I say the opposite. In this case it is an extreme example - the tiny fragment you quote contradicts what you accuse me of.

Unless you think I think a review paper is written with zero references?

THH

Display More

I think you misunderstood me. (you need to click through to the post to see what you said - I hate this site's cross-referencing capabilities)_.

PS - I have another variable that could cause correlations, if you don't like the one above.

Quote from JedRothwell

What independent variable would that be? Give an example. How could it affect both the heat and helium mass spectroscopy? BE SPECIFIC.

OK:

runtime

excess heat ~ runtime

leakage from atmosphere ~ runtime

There are various arguments against this, and also more elaborate (realistic) models of what happens which address those arguments against. All of which depend on experimental methodology. For example, when you run and experiment maybe you observe higher than expected He4, and conclude that is due to leakage. So you rerun the experiment with new apparatus.

More subtly:

excess heat - depends on runtime

runtime - depends on excess heat. e.g. if no excess heat some protocols will terminate the experiment early (F&P have done this).

THH

Quote from Storms

TH, you ask for the impossible. The effect is not statistical. It is not based on a random process. When the required conditions are present, it happens without any doubt. The excess power is easy to measure without ambiguity. Why are you so determined to deny this fact?

Ed - the random stuff related specifically to H4 correlations - where one issue is leakage which can be modelled as a random process, both lab elevated He4, and leakage of given equipment. Otherwise, unless the conditions for success are as you say known and can be measured and recorded, conditions that are variable behave as a random process and introduce the standard statistical issues.

I am more interested in your question, and comment on it below.

That is a very good question. That you state it with assurance gives me hope. On this site there is been discussion of a "lab rat" experiment that could fairly easily be replicated and would give clear evidence of LENR. Thus far, I don't think there is any consensus as to what experiment fulfills those criteria - though I think people have hopes:

LEC - I agree it is lab rat and shows unexpected production of atmospheric ions (best guess), and therefore indicates unexpected surface behaviour. I don't agree it points to LENR, although it could hint at surface mechanisms (high Q plasmons etc) that might be required to generate LENR. I also note that the LEC phenomenon has been noted before in other contexts (sorry - I and otehrs put links on the LEC thread, I do not have them to hand). So I think understanding LECs is very worthwhile, and might have some utility in theorising about LENR, but I do not think the LEC phenomenon is LENR.

Excess heat experiments (e.g. Daniel - following Mizuno - gaseous H/Ni mesh). Hope I've got that right Daniel. There has been less high quality work in this area then for D/Pd electrolysis and I have not yet seen any detailed experimental writeups which taking all into account look convincing. But Daniel and maybe others think they do have not yet released evidence which is convincing. So we will see, and I am very interested, though even more cautious. (The Clean Planet published experiments are distinctly not convincing when viewed as a time series and appraised).

Other lab rate stuff currently being pursued? Perhaps, Ed, you would suggest a D/Pd classical experiment, or given what you say H/Pd the same, which would serve this purpose. Personally I've always been more interested in D/Pd than anything else because it has a clearer track record of positive results. If due to your work it is possible reliably to obtain working materials then I think on this site we should reopen the question of "what is a good lab rat experiment?".

Jed,

We disagree about a number of things, but I've noted an unfortunate tendency, when you reply to me a lot all at once, of your completely misunderstanding what I say.

In each of the three posts above I have highlighted where you have misunderstood me, and then said something not very polite about me based on what you think I said, but where in fact I said something different - or opposite.

In the way of this site - your incorrect replies are liked - as though this was some sort of pro/anti LENR game of cricket. Absurd. Personally, it interests me how evidence stands up, what indications it can give to some greater understanding of the world, not whether it agrees with my expectations.

I am no shrinking violet and will post things I think are interesting and logically related to other stuff here - independent of views of others.

I will also happily engage in dialog and correct any mistakes I make.

I'd recommend to you that you read what I write and think about it before replying. I'd also recommend you entertain the possibility that when you do not understand me... it is becasue you have misunderstood me - not that I am talking nonsense or wrong.

I am sometimes wrong, but I seldom talk nonsense. When i am wrong I admit it, or else we can drill down to some judgement about the world where you and I simply have different views. I think everyone here accepts there are those different views, and therefore discounts that part of what I say. Mostly though I am interested in the internal consistency and consequences of things other people post - for that whatever judgements I or you make about the overall preponderance of evidence on LENR in the world is irrleevant,

As a general point. If Daniel and various other people here are correct, we will very shortly have clear indisputable evidence of LENR ion a form that will convince everyone - including me. I look forward to this - and I hope for this. However I have been on this site for some time, and looked at LENR a bit before coming to this site (though of course nowhere near as long as you). My experience has taught me to be cautious.

My posts here reflect that caution - by suggesting ways in which apparently slam dunk results might in fact not turn out to be what they seem, when I can see such ways.

THH

My comment about lack of replication was that Ed was, as I understand it, summarising work in the field.

Jed then quoted my quote exactly as above and said

Quote from JedRothwell

It would appear you did not read the paper. There are 64 footnotes listing his sources. Most of them list other people's work.

Please, Jed, abstain from making reactive criticism of what I write based on what you expect it to be, when reading what I actually say shows that in fact I say the opposite. In this case it is an extreme example - the tiny fragment you quote contradicts what you accuse me of.

Unless you think I think a review paper is written with zero references?

THH

Quote from JedRothwell

The papers give you all of the "source data" you need to understand it is preposterous. I cannot imagine you read them because anyone who reads them would know what I just said. You wish to avoid "elaborating" is an excuse to avoid reading the papers, or stopping to think for a moment.

That is not true, because at least some experimental write-ups have described methodology - including selection methodology, exact conditions for stopping/rerunning tests, etc, etc in detail. If experiments do not do this, then their results cannot safely be used in any sort of statistical aggregation (even within one group).

By source data I did not mean the experiment source data, but details of how the aggregation is done, how many groups, what number variation between groups, are different groups averages averages or is it an average of all runs etc. Just what would normally be needed.

Toi validate any statistical aggregation you need to know:

(1) balance between different groups. For example 150 runs aggregated with 120 runs coming from one group does not give much additional information.

(2) selection methodology for experiments/groups chosen to aggregate

(3) details, for the individual experiments, of experiment methodology specifically exclusion criteria, experiment stopping criteria, etc.

Without all those three things I can show you a way that aggregation could give highly misleading results. With them - it is possible to check whjetehr it might give highly misleading results.

Quote from THHuxleynew

My comment about lack of replication was that Ed was, as I understand it, summarising work in the field.

Quote from JedRothwell

The methods used to measure energy are totally different from those used to measure helium. In most studies, helium is measured after the experiment concludes, from samples taken during the experiment. With Miles and some others it was measured with 2 or 3 different mass spectrometers, in double blind tests, in labs that did not measure heat. There is no conceivable systematic error that could cause these values to correlate. The systems (instruments) used to measure them are totally different in principle and construction, located in different labs, and operated by different people.

In short, your suggestion is preposterous.

Jed. You did not read my post. All that is needed is an independent variable, uncontrolled, with which both excess heat and He4 correlates. So your first paragraph (even if true - since I've not thought about it I am willing to accept your greater knowledge for now at least) does not imply your second paragraph.

Please state that you agree with the paragraph above, or if you do not understand it ask for more clarification, or provide some counter-argument?

Quote from Daniel_G

I posted showed an XSH of 170W and the incubator emits more than that radiatively even at 30C

I am not sure I understand this. At 30C, close to room temp, the radiative emission from the incubator will be almost exactly balanced by opposite emission from its surroundings (e.g. the absorption of the incibator), so that the heat emitted as calculated from Boltzmann is not the point.

I'd expect you are taking this into account, but it sounds a bit here as though you are not considering the absorption as well as the emission!

THH

Quote from Bruce__H

I understand that there is no deactivation process in your system. The only reason I brought it up on this thread is because, in 2018, Alan Smith described an LENR behaviour (spontaneous thermal bursting) that I thought at the time indicated a deactivation process. You see me remarking to him that you say that your system has no such thing. That is it. That is all I said. I didn't misunderstand you. So don't worry about deactivation. It is not in the model I am using and never was.

I am modeling the reactor and incubator as a lumped system. In other words, I assume that the temperature gradients inside the incubator and reactor are small (i.e., the Biot number is less than 1). I think that this is a worthwhile starting point, particularly as the air inside the incubator is mixed by fans. So I model radiative transfer as from the incubator to the surrounds. Your information about an emissivity of 0.9 is important. I have been using an emissivity of 1 because I didn't know otherwise.

My primary consideration when I first started considering how to model all this was the temperature-power plots you posted in 2021. They appear linear (with little hint of a T^4 dependence) and this is the mark of Newtonian cooling. While I realize that there is substantial radiation out of a system even at room temperature, there is also absorption from the room-temperature surroundings back into the system. I had assumed that this partly explained the linearity of the observed calibration curve near 20C with T^4 dependence only really making itself felt substantially above 20C. Perhaps I was wrong. Do you know why your 2021 temperature-power plots are so linear?

radiative transfer gives a natural:

$K(T1^4 - T0^4)$ curve where T1 and T0 are the inner and outer (or object and background) surface temperatures. (I am ignoring different emissivities, also ignoring change in emissivity with temperature which could be significant e.g. for alumina).

T1 & T2 are measured in Kelvin.

Although asymptotically for T1 >> T2 this scales as T^4, and it will look close to that for even 1.5X temperature, since 1.5^4 = 5, 1.5X is a temperature of 150C above room temp.

at a 50C uplift we have ratio of only 2 between the two powers and things will look a bit nonlinear, but nowhere near T^4 nonlinear.

Quote from Daniel_G

Hello THH

What you are describing is simply correct statistical experimental design although it is stated in an unusual or unorthodox way.

Yes we do uncertainty budgets in every reading and we calculate the statistical power required to falsify the null hypothesis at a given confidence level and a hypothetical effect size.

That’s exactly what Google proposed in their Nature Perspectives paper and exactly what we intend to do. That’s just normal science how everyone is trained to do it.

Blinding can have its utility in biological experiments where placebo effect is something real that has to be considered. If I’m dealing with measurements logged to a real time data logger, it’s rather meaningless in my opinion.

As for input measurement error it’s typically less than 1W. Output is calculated based in a delta T measurement (errors add) and a mass flow reading in flow calorimeters which can be in turn based on velocity profile, diameter and density measurements. The two labs we intend to cooperate with use either airflow or water flow calorimeters. Uncertainly in any of these specific measurements or assumptions add up and the more measurements you have the higher the uncertainty.

Each lab is highly experienced and credible in calorimetry using different methods, instrumentation and personnel. Of our total uncertainty is plus or minus 5W at 3 sigmas and we detect a 100W effect, I don’t think any peer reviewer is going to be able to claim systemic error, especially with multiple calibration runs and multiple active runs chosen randomly and repeated 4-6 times.

The same randomization method (choosing calibration or active reactor) over 4-6 runs on at least two different calorimeters will likely bring us over 5 sigmas of statistical significance.

The reason I also choose the incubator method is simply due to its simplicity and single measurement reduces any chances for error. The only error could be from PTD resistance or thermocouple voltage or from insufficient mixing. Since we are using class A thermocouples maximum error is 5K at 1000K or 0.5%. Mixing can be confirmed by multiple probes at different physical locations in the incubator.

If 200W calibration input gives us 1000K and we can achieve 1000K with only 100W input then the maximum input can be 101W and at maximum error in the temperature can become 995K then you still would claim systemic error? Alternatively one could fix the input power and measure the equilibrium temperature with and without an active reactor.

After all the above is said and done, I’m not sure how any serious reviewer could claim systemic error. The incubator calorimeter was specifically designed to eliminate all types of errors to the extent possible.

If I programmed the system to choose any random input, equilibrate, measure and the. Randomly choose a new input, and we could detect such random input within a few Watts, would you suddenly feel that we could not properly detect additional heat when the active reactor is placed in the system?

Would not the suddenly doubling of input power be enough to convince you in such a system?

Display More

Daniel, that sounds all good - but the problems reviewers would have, if they exist, can come from details not include there. So what you said could all be true and the results not safe.

If the calorimetry method is bomb-proof - and I agree it could quiet easily be made that - I'd look for unexpected things like chemical contamination of RTDs, or unexpected oxidation of H2, or electrical interference, or XXXX. All of these things can be eliminated, but a lot of detail is needed to do the elimination - or even know what needs to be eliminated.

The point is that these are not included in the calorimetry error budget - they are what experienced experimenters will be on the lookout for and check. Make sure that the checking gets done in your case. For that, multiple people doing their own independent checking is very helpful.

Best wishes, Tom

Quote from Alan Smith

All the above steps can be influenced in terms of rate. For example, increasing system temperature increases diffusion into the active sites (Nuclear Active Environments - NAEs) and so increases the fusion rate

It is exactly such dependencies which are worth studying.

Looking at Ed's results (Fig 1) the form of the temperature vs excess power graph he quotes does not look like this effect because it is not just linear but proportional to deltaT from room temperature. Unless I have misunderstood this graph. Any number of calorimetry errors might scale in that way - but not diffusion which would be proportional to temperature in K.

If I was, as (and it is a bit annoying) some people here say - close-minded and interested disproving LENR - I would leave this stuff. It is exactly because the NAE hypotheses look half plausible, the lattice confinement fusion stuff is real although it requires a lot of wishful thinking to get to useful fusion rates, that I stay interested. It frustrates me when people do not critically appraise the diverse evidence but instead look for anything that might be consistent with LENR while ignoring inconsistencies that would allow some invalid hypothesis to be excluded. That is a general comment, not one directed specifically at this thread.

THH

Quote from Storms

The evidence for the formation of He4 as the source of the measured energy is so strong, I'm amazed this evidence is questioned. In fact, this behavior represents the critical feature in the discovery by F-P. The 2003 review you cite by Mel Miles only involves his work. I have reviewed this work as well as all of the other studies in the attached papers.NAWI-S-10-00209.pdfTwenty.edited(corrected).edited.pdf

I think this topic (He4 evidence) is maybe OT for this thread, so I do not want to argue here, although I would happily on another thread, if anyone wishes to do this.

From Ed's review:

Because energy and helium involve independent measurements with separate errors, the probability is essentially zero for this close agreement within the data set and with the expected amount based on the mass change to result from random chance or a combination of systematic errors. If such errors were present, the ratio would be expected to fall at random values from near zero to infinity instead of being tightly clustered.

This statement is incomplete - as a matter of statistics.

All that is required is systematic errors, or selection effects (not the same as errors) which depend on other variables, where both the excess measured energy and the excess measured He4 both depend on the same variables.

I don't want to elaborate on this here because looking in more detail at the evidence would require the source data, and the details of the experiment protocols from which the data is derived, to determine what are the selection effects. For example, in any set of experiments, He measured due to leakage from atmosphere, and excess heat measured, will both correlate identically with experiment time, leading to a graph as shown. The correspondence of (from leakage) He with that expected can be explained by a reasonable methodology in which experiments are monitored for obvious leaks (He > expected) and when this happens the runs are stopped and equipment changed. These two effects + central limit theorem can possibly deliver a histogram of the form shown.

I say possibly because obviously the above argument is not proven and needs to be elaborated, and this requires a lot more details of the experiments aggregated in the histogram - how many from each source, methodology of each source, selection criterion for an experiment to be included, etc. I'd welcome doing this on another thread.

As a general point - where individual experiments deliver variable results and so statistical processing is required to obtain the real effects, I distrust (greatly) all results when there are uncontrolled confounding variables and the dependencies are unclear. A good data scientist will be able to look at all these issues and state the uncertainties, or the potentially erroneous conclusions. For a great example of this see the many statistical analyses of COVID vaccine effect on excess deaths as deconstructed here. I am not saying that He4/excess heat measurements are as complex as COVID death statistics. But equally, they are complex, and statistically aggregated evidence of He4/excess heat correlations needs to engage with the complexity.

I am also happy to engage with anyone on these matters privately - public forums are not always conducive to clear argument. The mods here have my details.

THH

Quote from JedRothwell

The other distinguishing characteristic of people such as THHuxleynew is that they have no scientific or rational basis for their opinions. I mean none whatever. They have never given a single reason to doubt any major study. They just make stuff up, and the stuff never has any technical meaning. It cannot be pinned down. For example, THH just told us Storms' results have not been replicated

I never said that. And while my being misunderstood on this site is something I am used to - I think it mostly happens when people have prejudices.

My comment about lack of replication was that Ed was, as I understand it, summarising work in the field. If he is summarising his own work then I'd again expect more specific details of results - then I or he could comment on replication or lack of it. I have no idea whether Ed's work has been replicated because the paper here is not a precise description of it. Nor was I addressing that. My point remains that the less specific the findings are as to what works/what does not work the less strong the results. I think from what Ed says above that his intent is to isolate precisely what is definitely necessary and discriminates working from not working - an intent I applaud.

I thought the aim of this paper was to draw together known results relating to Material Science aspects of LENR: for the three sections I highlighted I think (though I could not do it myself, not being a Material Scientist) there is likley stuff to say.

If however it is to describe Ed's own results - then I apologise - it had the form of a review paper so I misunderstood.

In that case my comment would be that more details are needed: and would be very welcome since removing the "some materials work and others do not" uncertainty would be a major achievement, and helpful in many ways.

They have never given a single reason to doubt any major study

Well - not to labour a point - I have given specific reasons here recently to doubt the boil-off and HAD phase of F&P boil-off experiments as documented in videos and a much posted here paper. Personally - I do not see that as a major study - there is a lot of other much better and more careful work. I only wish others here would agree with me and not insist on that one experiment as being a major piece of evidence: when it has such very clear flaws. To continue to insist on its seminal importance to the field does a disservice to much of the better later work.

I have also given specific reasons to doubt the aggregated He4 vs excess heat data, reviewed here - the reasons for a possible artifactual correlation are subtle and to do with the exact details of which experimental results are included and which are not included, when the experiments were terminated and checked for leaks, how long those experiments were run for, and the known artifact (leakage from atmospheric or higher than atmospheric lab He4). This is dismissed in that reference on the basis of glass diffusion rates, when other papers note that many experiments needed to be terminated and equipment seals checked because of He4 ingress from leakage at joints.

I wish very much we had better modern evidence from excess heat / He4 correlations, since it would be strong and also give real information as to LENR mechanisms. I think it is a good although experimentally very challenging way to convince the skeptics.