Posts by Bruce__H

Quote from JedRothwell

Minsky first put the kibosh on neural networks in 1969. See:

Minsky was right about single-layer networks. He showed rigorously that the problems they could solve were not the sort that people felt were needed for important AI tasks. So the field went into the weeds for several years until others had some bright ideas to avoid these limitations. I don't see how this is a corrupt and unethical mainstream barring the door. What do you want Minsky to do. Not publish his opinions.

And how do you want people to act? Do you want to give major public money to just any and every idea even if it seems barren at the time?

Quote from Shane D.

What opinions are you referring to that you see here often?

Alan Smith is number one. Then Jed, who has a whole closetful of stories about how the inability of LENR to make its case is totally expected because, you know -- Wright brothers! -- and how mainstream science rather than remarking on this lack of progress, should be admiring it.

I can go back and collect instances if you want. It might take a couple of weeks.

Quote from JedRothwell

Academic scientists often have evil character flaws that would bite their butts in another line of work. Perhaps that means S.O.B.s gravitate into academia, where it is safe to be that way. They wouldn't last long programming municipal billing systems.

Everyone thinks they have the hardest job. Much of what you say sounds to me like retroactive justifications for opinions you want to hold anyway.

The more your observations overlap into situations I have first-hand experience with the more untrue they sound. I remember your retailing some remark about academics only caring about their parking spots. That struck me then as so weirdly absurd that it could only be pushed by someone who has no insight or experience of academic science. I mean who cares about parking spots? There is no prestige in parking spots or anything like that. What people fight over is lab space, money, publications and so on. Not the sort of garbage you are talking about.

Quote from JedRothwell

In the 1990s, people who talked about neural network AI were harassed and fired.

What are you thinking of here? I was heavily involved in neural network research in the late 1980's. It was a completely normal instance of a new field springing to life in an academic milieu. At least that is how it looked from the inside. By the 1990's it was completely mainstream. I do recall an early story of someone having trouble getting a PhD because a member of his examination committee thought that his results had minimal importance. But these things happen.

What do you want people to do? Not object to things that they think are low-impact and or possibly wrong? When everyone (academic research) is spending public money?

Quote from Shane D.

Had you and the mainstream had your way, this ICCF never would have happened. There would be no talk of an X-Prize. No funding announcement from ARPA-E. The EU Horizon programs CleanHME/HERMES, and NEDO in Japan never would have happened. NASA would never have quietly continued FP's research, with no LCF space generation program today (with 25 dedicated researchers)...that may potentially be a game changer for space travel.

I doubt that any of this is true. The "mainstream" is much more adventurous than you believe. I see opinions like this often on this website. They are from people who have little experience of academic science.

Quote from Wyttenbach

... never accept a lab visit to see LENR at action e.g. producing gamma radiation.

What does this mean? Does this mean that you have recently been seeing heat and radiation from Russ George style fuel?

Quote from Alan Smith

Last week's nickel/nickel is still producing 120mV.So it works with identical metals.

If it works with identical metals then what non-nuclear mechanisms are ruled out? Are Galvanic explanations thus totally ruled out? Or does the electrolytic treatment of the working electrode somehow put such explanations back in play?

Quote from Daniel_G

I’m not sure what you are asking for. You are asking for the individual time vs temp curves for each input power? Yes I don’t mind to publish those data here but it’s a ton of data. Let’s ask Jed if we can upload to LENR-canr and post a link here.

First, let me thank you for your willingness to be transparent and open regarding your results!

I particularly had in mind the calibration data that you measured for your incubator-style calorimeter. In other words, the steady-state relationship between temperature and input power that characterizes the calorimeter. The individual time-temperature curves would be great as well.

More globally, if Jed sees fit to use part of his LENR-CANR library as a repository for this sort of data, that would be a hugely positive development!

Quote from Daniel_G

Bruce_H, I am hoping to publish a paper for ICCF24 with this data. I am waiting to hear if they accept our work.

Quote from Bruce__H

OK. To be clear, I was hoping to see the input power vs temperature plot only for the calibration case. I wasn't asking you to reveal such data for the active mesh. I am really just interested to know whether the calibration plot is only gently curved between 200C and 500C, or whether is really very strongly curved.

Quote from Daniel_G

you will have to wait

I would now like to know more about the input power vs temperature relationship you used for calibration in your studies involving the incubator-style calorimeter. The exchanges above are from April 28 of this year. You asked me to wait for the ICCF meeting, but the data you presented there were not very informative on this point and you have said you are not very satisfied with them. Can you now release a more informative plot? One which you used to establish the findings you talked about earlier on this thread?

Quote from JedRothwell

You are missing the point. At any power level, adiabatic calorimetry can only be done for an hour or so. The way Joule did it in 1841. It worked fine for his purposes, but it would not work for cold fusion, because you want to measure for days or weeks at a time.

If you have a system that sustains thermal runaway/meltdown, then only a short time would be needed to evolve an amount of energy much larger than can be accounted for by chemical means. Adiabatic calorimetry sound pretty good for this.

If Daniel_G really has what he claims -- a heat source that activates exponentially with temperature -- then thermal runaway is expected. I have made rough calculations that suggest that the threshold for thermal escape in Daniel_G's system should exist somewhere around 300-400W input and at a corresponding COP of 1.2 or so.

Quote from Daniel_G

We feel the next step is to produce steam. Once our control system is working well, producing steam is best and easiest first principles method of measuring heat output. We are aiming for 500-800C so anything involving water is a nonstarter as Alan mentioned.

The nice thing about this is that you can basically clamp the temperature to various values and measure the rate of XS heat production at each value. This would be either difficult or impossible at many temperatures otherwise.

Quote from Daniel_G

So put the entire calorimeter inside an airflow calorimeter? Do you have any idea about the uncertainties involved? Have you ever done such experiments yourself and are speaking from experience or it’s just your idea?

Paradigmnoia has extensive experience building and testing flow air-calorimeters. Look back on the original Mizuno reports increased heat and Mizuno replications threads to see his work from 2019 to 2021. When he says something it is usually from a pretty solid grasp of the technicalities involved. He is worth listening to.

In the video, I thought that the first question (which begins near 17:05) was a good one. Given that a system with exponential temperature-activated heat production has an autocatalytic nature ... why doesn't the reactor explode?

Explode is a dramatic word which I think could be replaced by others, but the idea is right. Daniel_G answered prospectively by saying that presently developed and planned future reactors contain an extra cooling loop which can take heat out of the system on demand so as to restrain any tendency for thermal escape. Bu what about in the past? Haven't there been a number reactors without such extra cooling? Why didn't they show thermal runaway?

Quote from CoherentMembrane

I will be honest with you. Although I hope I'm wrong, I doubt that enough information and data will be openly released on the internet to satisfy either of us. I think Daniel and Mizuno would like to share everything, but when projects go commercial with investors information sharing typically slows dramatically.

It's been this way for 30 years. Another reason for not releasing enough data to satisfy either of us is that it doesn't really exist.

But this is where I think Daniel_G's suggested project might be interesting. From what he says it sounds as though the original Mizuno and Rothwell recipe for making LENR-active mesh is expected to work reliably if exposed to even heating. The Mizuno and Rothwell technology is no longer secret IP and neither are the conditions needed to make it work so if Mizuno and Daniel_G were to ship a number of working versions of these reactors to people for validation then I don't see how commercialization would interfere. Just the opposite. Clear validation by open labs would surely not hurt.

Quote from CoherentMembrane

... it would make it more challenging for the pseudo-skeptics to make up issues that don't exist.

This is exactly my goal! Daniel_G's suggested program of shipping working reactors to outside labs holds out the promise of results of a type that would be convincing. Can we work out, before the studies are carried out, what this would look like? Can we cometo some agreement about what is convincing and what isn't? I hope to trap myself into having to agree that the results show nonchemical excess heat if that is the way things pan out. Equally, if the results are negative, I hope that others would feel trapped into agreeing that there is nothing here really.

I'm willing put my current opinion at stake. Are you?

Quote from JedRothwell

I would call that a first principle method. ...

Clearly explained. As usual!

Quote from Daniel_G

I don’t mind the skepticism. In fact I encourage it. But when someone calls measuring temperature in calorimeter an “indirect measurement of power” that is not up to the level of professional skepticism.

The "indirect measurement of power" phase was mine. I meant this as description rather than criticism. You directly measure input power and internal temperature. You then deduce output power by steady state arguments. You don't measure output power directly by, for instance, measuring the temperature gradient across incubator walls of known physical properties and so on.

I think that this steady-state method of deducing output power is fine. What I question are the results you have shared so far. They are fragmentary, inconsistent, and don't seem to back up your claims. To be fair, some of the inconsistency seems to be due to changing conditions as you refine your system. But that doesn't help a reader build up a consistent picture of what you are doing.

Quote from CoherentMembrane

The best way to convince those who really matter is to have a run in which for the longest period of time possible there is a constant production of heat with no input power. This should be possible if you can generate a very excited state in your fuel.

This is something I have been advocating. I think that a big clear signal is more persuasive than a small signal and if there is no input power at the time then all the better. What you call an "excited state" should be possible. Indeed, according to my calculations it should difficult to avoid. So I am puzzled as to why we haven't heard about such a thing so far.

On a larger stage, Daniel_G has professed some interest in sending working (but sealed) reactors to suitably equipped labs for study. I think it would be ideal to try to come to some agreement, before these validation attempts are undertaken, as what sort of data would be persuasive. A highly excited, durable, no-input state of heat generation? Great! Would something else be persuasive too?

Quote from Paradigmnoia

More expressly, using what method do you measure watts power output?

I believe it is an indirect method that uses the calibrated behaviour of the incubator.

First find the steady state relationship between temperature and input power when there are no internal sources of heating or cooling. It is assumed (because no internal sources) that at steady state input power equals output power. Thus the relationship between temperature and output power is known. Now put an active reactor inside the incubator, measure the temperature, and use the previously determined relationship to deduce output power.

Quote from Daniel_G

Different experiments use different calibrations so without specifics on which data you are referring to, I can’t comment. The calibration data on our iccf24 data used dummy reactors.

OK. Thank you. I see that conditions vary because you haver a rapidly developing R&D program. That is understandable.

I would like to try and understand the best evidence you have for a temperature-sensitive heat source in your incubator series of experiments. I am hoping that you can settle on and post here a set of calibration and active-reactor measurements covering input powers from 0 up to whatever you think shows unambiguous excess heating with an exponential dependence on temperature. I note that the only time you have released such data (in your iccf-24 presentation) they do not support your claim of exponential activation, and also you do not seem to have confidence in the results shown below 300C or so.

I am asking all this on this thread, the old "Mizuno replication and materials only" to make it plain that I am not asking you to reveal IP that you wish to protect. I am hoping you will take this opportunity to make a clear case and that this will aid any validation efforts to come.