Posts by Mugsie

All good expectations Eric. Would it help if people emailed or mailed copies of the SPAWAR work, the work of Swartz, Hagelstein, etc etc. to their congressmen, or to Fox Faux news channel. Remember Radio Free Europe,, we need a Radio Free Science.

My expectation is that the military capacities gained from a cheap energy source that can generate neutrons and transmute metals,, is fear inducing to military planners. Consider a small, cheap, LENR closed circuit steam powered drone with a wood or composite body that can cross an ocean and deliver a payload anywhere, with high precision guaranteed by a cheap $100 car GPS. It could fly very low to avoid detection and easily hide it's heat signature. But much more than this,, it opens many new avenues of concern for military planners, and all would make the military want to keep it secret an exclusively theirs. They reluctantly released information on LENR type science , and we saw how long the SPAWAR DTRA report was withheld. It was perhaps released only because the threat of war from climate change is greater than the threat realized by releasing the SPAWAR DTRA report.

Any competition to fossil dominance is also a threat to the Putin Trump Exxon Tillerson trillion dollar oil exploration deal in the Russian arctic, a deal signed by Tillerson while he was CEO of Exxon Mobil, and spoiled by Obama's sanctions on Russia for election meddling. But LENR is a threat to the entire fossil fuel industry,,, the entire industry.

Energy efficiency efforts, solar and wind power, are being actively reversed in many U.S. states by fossil fuel interests, even though wind, solar, efficiency produce cheaper electricity and lower electric bills. Even solar is now cheaper than nuclear,coal, and natural gas,, wind is cheaper than that anything except energy efficiency. Yet they want to use Uranium and coal, which harms people and is more expensive. This is clear evidence of corruption.

So instead of attacking with logic , we need to attack using emotion. Reason clearly hasn't worked in an arena of fossil fuel influence on government, military fears, and hot fusion scientists lies and arrogant selfish ignorance. Did you see that ITER won't make any power at all after all the energy inputs are considered? They lied outrageously for years! Hot fusion guys should be viewed as suspect,, until they are hired to do LENR research :-).

But to effectively communicate the power and promise of LENR, to secure research funding, the strategy should be emotional, economic, military (fear),, and conspiratorial (fossil companies, hot fusion deceptions, fossil money to politicians, valid military concerns), and the arguments should be delivered to the press, the news and faux news, to rile the NASCAR and NFL and soccer fans off their couches and to cause legally bribed and corrupt fool politicians to act for the public good. Would our politicians receive their Russian arctic billions in suitcases, the way they received their money for the last election? We need a cash detector sensor at our airports apparently.

Who wants to bet a dollar (99 cents because its more legal) that there are Area 51 projects and Skunkworks type projects using LENR right now?

tar ba·by

nouninformal

noun: tar baby; plural noun: tar babies; noun: tarbaby; plural noun: tarbabies

1. 1. a difficult problem that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it.

Tar Baby is a Perfect label Alan. The definition reminds me that I left out the hot fusion guys, some who are physics/energy advisors to our government, and have for decades killed funding for LENR. Such arrogance and breach of the core principles of science,, breaches of honesty even. I would have so loved to see Fleischmann receive his Nobel while he lived. And what could LENR researchers do to get our elected corporate leaders to finally fund the research? A lobbying/education effort directed at congress. Trump could be convinced by telling him that his hotels would pay 66% less for their electric bills. LENR plants would produce electricity and even heat, cheaper than wind, solar, natural gas, coal and Uranium.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Ahlfors

Alan Smith

We seem to be going round in circles here.

There was a NASA study that appeared to show nuclear activity from low intensity x-ray photon beam radiation, referencedby Ahlfors.

The paper Alan cites has the same authors and appears roughly similar in import. It is the same study.

Ahlfors cites an independent replication by Rob Davies, which does not find these results or anything like (no nuclear activity seen to within error limits). This is in fact Rob's second reported replication, the first used a different photon beam source and therefore did not precisely replicate the original conditions. He is obviously trying hard to see if there is anything there.

Rob Davies speculates why the original study might have obtained such clear positive results, when his replication does not show them. It is a plausible, but unprovable, speculation. I quoted it (from Rob's paper linked here) above:

Given our null result, we propose an alternative theory for the non-zero activities

measured previously. Namely, that the materials in the previous work were

contaminated with daughters of radon decay, which contain both alpha and beta

emitters. The plausibility of this theory is enhanced by the fact that the previous

work was conducted partially in a basement laboratory in a part of the country

where radon gas is common. Radioactive daughters are electrostatically charged

following radon decay, and thus can accumulate on electrostatically charged

materials. Pursuant to this theory, we have shown that our PE and DPE materials

are easily charged and can retain such a charge for an extended period of time. They

are easily discharged with an ion blower, but are not easily discharged through

contact with a grounded conductor, which is understandable given that they are

electrical insulators. One contraindication of this theory is the absence of a signal in

the control samples in the previous study. Both the PE and DPE materials, if

electrostatically charged, would be expected to attract radon daughters. This

difference could be explained by a systematic difference in method or timing of the

processing of the PE and DPE samples used in the previous work. We have no means

of exploring whether there was such a difference, and therefore, cannot come to a

firm conclusion about the validity of our alternate theory.

So, from my POV, this is an interesting anomaly raised, checked, and found not to be replicable. We have a possible artifact, though no certainty. That will usually be the case when there is some extraordinary result like this that cannot be replicated. The existence of the possible artifact is enough to make chasing for another possible artifact uninteresting for most.

While there is no certainty, the normal way to process this data is to go with the original unreplicable result indeed being an artifact. It is certainly how I process it.

No doubt, occasionally, such judgements are wrong. Perhaps the replication is different in some subtle not understood way from the original. But then there remains some replicable clear result, which will be found at some point. In this case there is no reason, other than an a priori bias towards wanting to find nuclear reactions in situations where they are not conventionally expected, to go with the original.

Finally I'd point out that there are web sites (not this one of course) that will continue to recycle any apparently positive scientific evidence, without the context refuting it, as evidence. It is context, and followup, that allows us to judge unusual results.

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JPL used an ion gun on the fuel to eliminate the possibility of static charge that could attract radon daughters. Could the ion gun have changed the fuel in a substantial way.

Did you notice the education and background of the JPL experimenter? Is he an appropriate choice for the experiment? Also note the exposure of the fuel to ions, and incorrect x ray beam focus and intensity, altering thickness of container, etc. I know nothing of the experimenter , nor enough about the physics to judge. The difficulties in making good fuel for LENR also should be considered,,,regardless who makes the fuel. NASA should repeat the work with verification that there are no radon daughters present. Will they repeat the work? There's thousands of positive experiments to prove LENR is a real nuclear effect. But I'm especially convinced by the Navy SPAWAR goups decades of work, and they were part of the NASA work. In general and in my humble opinion, there's no possibility that such a huge body of positive research , as compiled by LENR researchers, could be ignored by governments, unless the governments were being controlled by the oil industry and by secrecy concerns for military advantage.