Did you read the CF mercury transmutation papers?
And did you think they were likely LENR?
Your "maybes" in the case of tritium are things that are obvious possibilities and that have been checked for and ruled out.
Indeed - for the ICCF24 case at hand that we discussed - but not obvious to everyone as you well know. My point is that all these things - and some other stuff - needs to be checked.
I'm sure Cardone et al will be amused by you calling them incompetent.
And that is not what I am doing. I said that both competence and trickery would in that situation need to be checked.
All I know about Cardone is that (if what you said above about his papers is correct) he does not know how to write an informative and useful research paper. That is a type of incompetence I guess. It does make me less motivated to read them in detail.
That is completely different from obtaining solid elements, in high concentrations, that were completely absent from a homogeneous sample of mercury with known impurities, none of which corresponds to the new elements identified after the treatment.
Yes, that is true. You also need to look at elements leaching from containers etc. You also need to be sure that these new elements were completely absent from the original sample.
And since this is beginning to resemble alchemy (with very visible solid residue) you might want to be careful about the competence and integrity of the person making the claims.
After all, large quantity nuclear transmutation of pretty well any sort will lead to very large enthalpy change. So getting your large lump of lead transmuted to gold in a low energy environment is problematic because it requires enormous amounts of energy, the otehr way also problematic because a large amount of energy is released.
THH
Another example:
Suppose you do electrolysis for a long time, topping up with water which has a known tritium content of 2bq/litre.
At the end you check the mixed hydrogen and oxygen gas coming out from the experiment at the end, and it shows 20Bq/litre.
Is that proof of nuclear reactions?
Not necessarily: maybe H2O is more likely to be split by electrolysis than T2O, in which case you get natural concentration of T2O or THO as times goes on.
Or, a similar effect, where the lighter gas is preferentially emitted from liquid and what is left dissolved in the liquid is much higher in tritium than at the start.
Okay... But the topic is just whether or not ultrasonic transmutation proves the existence of LENR. I guess the answer is a definitive "yes"? So if I gave a TED Talk, and I showed people the ULTR experiment and the results, and I said, "See? All sorts of new elements, this proves LENR is a real effect", I would be right, and then CMNS would be welcomed into the CMP world with broad acceptance? I'm idealizing my example here but hopefully you understand what I'm asking. Politics of science aside, am I understanding the physics concepts correctly?
New elements => nuclear reactions. That is the physics.
Proving you have new elements is complex because:
(1) results can be misinterpreted - often interpretations are ambiguous but of course those making a specific interpretation may not say that.
(2) you need before and after measurements, and comparison
(3) you need to consider differences between before and after due to heterogeneity in the sample
The most vivid (sic) example of this heterogeneity effect is where measurements from old CF bulbs showed a strongly skewed isotopic composition in the mercury. The hypothesis was that this was cause by nuclear reactions induced by the running of the bulbs.
In fact the skewed distribution was caused by an effect where the mercury was isotopically separated by the sputtering process, and the samples taken from old bulbs were juts part of the original mercury - with a skewed isotopic ratio.
However it was a mystery for quite a long time with some claiming LENR.
We can agree that LENR is a mainly experimental field with a wide array of working hypothesis that their proponents call theories. That would be more close to a formal depiction.
Agreed. I am not clear though whether an experimenter looking at FPHE anomalies has to subscribe to a specific "nuclear reaction" working hypothesis, or maybe have the unscientific view that out of all possible working hypotheses only the nuclear ones can have merit, to be classified as LENR.
I guess it is up to those in the field to demarcate it, words are what you want them to mean, paraphrasing Humpty Dumpty.
Last time I checked, one derived theories from observations / experiments that provide data, known otherwise as "the scientific method" and not the other way around.
Curbina: have you read anything about physics over the 20th century? How many times the theory came first, and predicted specific quantitative things which the experimentalists found afterwards?
It is a match between theory and experiment that science needs. Sometimes the theory comes first, sometimes the data.
https://timeline.web.cern.ch/p…late%20upon%20interaction.
and of course the most famous ones: special and general relativity...
(I'm quoting the theory first things because you are maybe not aware of them - the "experiment first" things have many examples too).
And here is an article which is on this topic - I have not read it but it looks fascinating - no idea whether I will agree with it. It is psychology so I suspect I will not like it!
There are several good theories Have you actually bothered to read any of them?
For fractionation of high energies down to low energy quanta? I've only read Hagelstein (in some detail).
I'd welcome research papers on this problem with more detail or a different approach.
I've asked here several times - I am aware that my reading is limited.
I am quite consistent - for example I've said that I think certain type 2 LENR hypotheses are quite likely. Those hypotheses have a complete theory that is quantitative and explains the results (bits of it, like the coherent stuff, are in principle quantitative and definite with known equations but I agree have not been worked out fully - so if you want to accuse me for being too eager to declare plausible LENR I admit it).
BTW - type 2 LENR was what F and many others were looking for in the early days, and what many people now are still looking to.
@THH - I just quoted what you said. Seems a clear enough statement to me - are you disavowing it now? Did you say one thing and mean something else?
Alan - you must have a poor opinion of the readership here if you think they will be swayed by rhetoric of that sort?
"LENR" is a statement. Specifically it is a statement that whatever are the reasons for those anomalies a good number of them must be caused by nuclear reactions.
The fact that you need data to construct a theory is irrelevant, also the fact that you are obtaining data,
I was as I think you know pointing out that data - or lack of data - is irrelevant to the epistemological status of LENR - which is a statement about the causes of a class of anomalies, not a theory.
I then said:
You can have all the data in the world : it must still be a match of theory to results that leads to a LENR conclusion rather than a "quantum spookiness heat effect" or a "weird chemical reaction effect" or a "God looks down on us and delivers heat" or a "certain chemicals induce local brain anomalies in lenr researchers" or even, it seems a popular topic here, "the whole thing is set up by secret russian agents" explanation for the experimental data.
You take the data and match each of these hypotheses, and others more plausible, to find what is the best fit.
You are misinterpreting an isolated sentence in an argument which I think, read as a whole, is pretty clear.
I am not denigrating the data. I am saying that "LENR" can only be established after a theory is found (incorporating nuclear reactions) that fits the data.
Without that theory you can still say "hey, look - we have found weird anomalies" but to call them LENR at that stage is putting cart before horse.
In addition - you can make up theories based on no data at all (extending, logically, existing theories) - and then go looking for the data. e.g. Higgs boson (Higgs + others) - positrons (was it Dirac?).
That is not my beef with LENR. The issue is that "it was nuclear reactions that did it" is not a theory.
The distinction is probably not one that everyone here thinks is significant - it most certainly is.
Huxley would kick your tuschi for a statement like that. You cannot just make theories up based on nothing more than imaginary data - people do of course, but they should go find a proper job.
Alan - read my WHOLE POST?
such an incorrect parse of my perhaps unclear writing does you no justice - you know full well a lot of research papers are less clear than me!
No - first you need data to construct a theory. We are providing that.
Alan - your statement does not contradict mine. (or perhaps it does, and is wrong. Not quite sure what you mean by "no").
"LENR" is a statement. Specifically it is a statement that whatever are the reasons for those anomalies a good number of them must be caused by nuclear reactions.
The fact that you need data to construct a theory is irrelevant, also the fact that you are obtaining data,
You can have all the data in the world : it must still be a match of theory to results that leads to a LENR conclusion rather than a "quantum spookiness heat effect" or a "weird chemical reaction effect" or a "God looks down on us and delivers heat" or a "certain chemicals induce local brain anomalies in lenr researchers" or even, it seems a popular topic here, "the whole thing is set up by secret russian agents" explanation for the experimental data.
You take the data and match each of these hypotheses, and others more plausible, to find what is the best fit.
If you said you were investigating anomalies with an open mind and no supposition there were nuclear reactions then it would be different. Then the field might be called FPHE or something.
Interestingly - LENR as a statement is not enough - because it does not deliver a theory. It is what you get at the end of the whole process, collecting data, finding a predictive theory to explain it, and then if that theory predicts nuclear reactions you have LENR.
Not quite sure why there is any disagreement here - I am just stating clearly what everyone knows, and it is neither pro nor con LENR - just open-minded. perhaps that is the issue? On here one needs to post not-open-minded on the topic of LENR?
Surely not! 
That is because you refuse to look. I gave you very specific reasons why your claims about Miles are wrong, and I gave you a short paper, but you refused to read it.
When was this Jed, and when did I refuse to read it. Was it a summary paper by somone else, or a paper by Miles. I don't like to read summaries because it introduces somone else's judgement into the equation. Often that is OK but with LENR where different people can have wildly different judgements it is not.
Anyway a short paper by Miles sounds good - and I'd be happy to read it. Perhaps when I refused I was influenced by the claims of wrongdoing between different LENR characters which (perhaps) related to Miles. I have conveniently forgotten those now, if they existed, so unless they crop up in obvious form again he gets a fair hearing.
Funny thing is, I do vaguely remember looking in detail about some of those results (not sure if it was Miles).
THH
Theory is NEVER needed to prove something is real. All you need to do is replicate an effect some number of times in different labs at a reasonably high signal to noise ratio.
Agreed.
But, you see, LENR is not an "effect". It is a statement that said collection of effects are caused by nuclear reactions.
For that you need theory.
THH
Yes, it is interesting. But why spend so much time defending data that logic and statistics suggest in too close to noise when others have presented data for non-thermonuclear fusion that is without this ambiguity?
Thank-you for being supportive. If you want to do more, you could acknowledge or at least ask questions about quality work. In the absence of peer review, we need people who point to the good stuff.
Sure. I think ICCF24, which we have been looking at, was not so much meant as a venue for high quality papers. It is also difficult to access papers as distinct from videos.
Some of the old papers are high quality (e.g. those Tritium papers Jed posted).
Lonchampt F&P replication is medium quality.
F&P simplicity paper is medium-low quality if taken as a presentation of new experimental results - higher quality if taken as a treatise on electrolysis.
Let’s say that I agree with you that they could have done a better presentation of their data. I still don’t see any way in which these results can be dismissed just because they could have been presented in a better way. The phenomena is striking on itself.
The matter I raised is not about presentation. It was:
(1) any yes/no comparison as they have given will give expected positives, without any elemental change
(2) they need to provide detail so that the data can be put into context and evaluated.
Without that extra data it can't be evaluated. It is not dismissing it - just saying - this is incomplete and therefore does not yet prove anything.
Because of (1) and (2) together those data are compatible with no elemental change in the sample.
THH
I 100% support Daniel_G in his comments here. And I agree with him that it is important the LENR field should be aware of quality standards and keep to them wherever possible, and wherever it is important that results are taken seriously. Why should LENR be different from any other branch of science in this respect?
I really don’t understand why you say they don’t show the data. They do. From a chemical analysis point of view the presence or absence of an element in a sample is pretty straight forward to asses (minimum detection thresholds for any specific technique considered). Presenting spectroscopic data itself would not add any further meaningful information.
Without quantitative data and given only "minimum threshold" yes/no results you expect, due to normal variability that there will be elements, not detected initially and detected after. We have very little information here.
In addition, because this type of data is easy to misinterpret, as Daniel_G points out, any referee would rightly need a lot of detail and a description of rationale so that others could check whether they agrees with the author's conclusions.
THH
