So Zeus, I thought you wanted to be kept out of it? Oh well...guess not.
BTW, how do you know what an evaporation rate at X mph wind speed and Y % air humidity will be? Oh wait, ESP, that's right, you got it from Jed! Well, I didn't, so I have to use equations and actually calculate it...
Make them any reasonable temperature you like,
No, that's called 'dry-labbing' in school, and in a professional setting it's called 'falsification of data' and sometimes 'fraud'. That of course is my point in asking 'What was...', to point out that you falsify data to suit your needs and then pretend it is true and incontrovertible.
It is absolutely impossible!
Really? But then you say...
The airflow would have to [be] so high the wind would knock you over.
So it actually could happen then...
What I am pointing out here is your extremism. "It can't happen! But it can if... But that can't happen! But it can if...."
Make up your mind. Are you saying it can't happen, or that given what I pointed out about what the swimming pool equation says, that it might in certain circumstances (which you automatically fanatically turn around and say could never happen, even though I reported my own personal experience of just that happening!).
BTW, the '20' mph wind you mention (I said 17 based on calcs regarding a lab I worked in) will not 'knock you over', more extremism on your part. Further, that was at the face of the hood intake vents. Out in the room it would seem much less. My personal experience told me that the only place I actually felt the breeze was right at the hood face. Papers on benchtops did not blow away, etc., etc. What did happen was the room temp was difficult to control. It got cold in winter and hot in summer because the air flow rate made it hard for the HVAC to keep up.
You "concluded" again and again and again that it did evaporate
No, I 'concluded' that no conclusions could be drawn due to missing information which I stated multiple times since you and others never seemed to get it. You're the one who concludes LENR with no replicable experiments (fully replicable, not 'vaguely similar').
I also 'reported' my computational results obtained by systematically varying parameters, from which you cherry picked singular results which you misrepresent and denigrate as 'ridiculous' or 'crazy' or 'crackpot', instead of understanding what was going on in the entire study. All you do with that is prove your incompetence with scientific investigation.
Enough on this subject I think...
@Kirk: no doubt, but that doesn’t work with Jed’s narrative. He wants us to believe that the only thing stopping cold fusion from taking over the world is the evil mainstream science community protecting its turf and its funding.
OK, so I wasn't concerning myself with JR...
One point though, if someone can reproduce and control the effect, they can bypass the scientific community by making and selling working devices (and more than 3 or 4, which would be bought by curiosity seekers or uniformed customers, we need a few thousand being sold to prove things via the 'inventor path').
What actually needs to be accomplished to move LENR from a internet cult topic to something of real impact?
Reproducibility.
in room temperature conditions.
This demonstrates your lack of scientific understanding. After all the posts about the evaporation rate equation, you write "in room temperature conditions". What was the bucket temperature, as reported by Mizuno? What was the room air temperature, as reported by Mizuno? What was the room air humidity content, as reported by Mizuno? What was the ventillation rate, as reported by Mizuno (and '0' is not likely at all which is what you have asserted several times)? And finally and most importantly, how many times did Mizuno repeat his experiment? (That one we know. He didn't.)
To summarize what I concluded and what you refuse to acknowledge, I said that a 'room temperature' bucket of water (i.e. 20-25C) or colder was unlikely to evaporate overnight unless a high airflow rate of dry air was passed over it. I said that Mizuno's report was an anomaly, (That means I don't have a specific explanation for it.) But I also said the most important thing about the whole drama was that it was a single event that was never reproduced. Science is NOT done with single events, replication is REQUIRED, and not the strangely defined thing you call replication. I'm talking about real replication.
Your attempts to mangle what I say into some kind of 'proof' that I am a 'crackpot' just backfires on you.
The quotation means you think a bucket of water might evaporate overnight in room temperature conditions. You have said that dozens of times in many different ways.
What the quotation means to those who are scientifically inclined is that there are unreported variables of significance to the problem, whose absence makes it impossible to draw a certain conclusion. (Especially since the whole issue rests on 1 anecdotal experiment.)
You on the other hand, use your ESP to delve into those missing variables and conclude it had to be LENR, and then expect all of us to agree. When we don't, you go ballistic and start making stuff up to bolster your character assassination attempts.
To summarize, you still haven't proved your strawman true.
I cannot tell whether you actually believe
That's because you refuse to understand the situation and what I write about it. That's your fault, not mine.
The quotation you supplied does NOT support your strawman argument.
And to be clear, I realized what I should have wrote was more like:
"This appears to be a strawman argument, which, in case you didn't know, means it would be false construct. Please state evidence for any such claims that you may have. Be specific. No more strawmen or ambiguousness."
since it is always possible an apparent strawman really isn't false. That's what the evidence would prove, if you could find it. Instead what you will find, if you look, which you have already said you won't do, is that you can NOT support your contention with relation to me. I don't recall anyone else you might be attempting to assassinate, but I may have missed someone.
but only to people so delusional they imagine that a bucket of water will evaporate overnight.
This is a strawman argument, which, in case you didn't know, means it is a false construct. Please state evidence for any such claims that you may have. Be specific. No more strawmen or ambiguosity.
It would be interesting to hear a dispassionate assessment of just where things stand
There have been hundreds of experiments run since 1989 purporting to demonstrate 'cold fusion' or 'LENR'. If one separates them into similar experiments types, such 'F&P-type' electrolysis, 'high temp Ni-H', 'spark gap', etc., one notes that there are many of these categories populated with just a few or even one experiment only. Those categories immediately fail to compel belief in LENR due to lack of replication. There is only one body of experiments that seems large enough to suggest the possibility of discussing replication, namely 'F&P-type electrolysis', but the results from this sub-group are not reproducible enough to claim any understanding of how to produce the effect at specified magnitudes reliably. There are commonalities however that suggest such a position might be obtainable, if the actual controlling factors could be identified. The lack of experimental control to date indicates that the extant proposed controlling factors (all related to fostering a particular 'nuclear' environment) are likely not correct. There is one detailed analysis of actual logged experimental data that suggests a particular explanation of a non-nuclear nature, but the primary researchers in the field reject this out-of-hand and do not incorporate the suggestions into their experimental protocols to see if the suggestions could be borne out. Recently, attention had focused on 'Ni-H' systems, but the primary proponent of this arena has been shown to be devoid of scientific rigor and thus offers no valid proof. Most of the rest of the field remains at the 'anecdote' level, with many type of anomalous results being reported but rarely reproduced even marginally.
27 years since his Saul conversion.
But 29 years from the first claims. The criticisms of the calorimetry occurred almost immediately (just ask Jed), but weren't as specific or as forceful as they are today.
Gerischer attributed his change of view to the improved calorimetry by those doing the research. It should be noted that today, 27 years later, that is still one the main criticisms from the mainstream: "well, they must have done something wrong".
Correction:
It should be noted today, 27 years later, that it is still one of the main criticisms from the mainstream: "Well, they appear to be using the wrong underlying assumptions to their calorimetry, assumptions that lead to the production of an artificial excess heat signal."
Quite a bit different from what Shane D. suggests. Just so no one misses it...
P.S. It's 29 years later actually.
The distinguished mainstream scientists who say that cold fusion is wrong know nothing about it. I have spoken with them, and read their comments. They have no idea what instruments are used, what has been observed, or what conclusions have been drawn. Therefore, they are not acting as scientists and their views are worthless.
Except for me...
Calling him an internet troll
What? But I'm not anonymous, so JR must not have been talking about me. I thought he meant Zeus46...
Also, for U and Th in North America, see
Terrestrial Radioactivity and Gamma-ray Exposure in the United States and Canada
By Joseph S. Duval, John M. Carson, Peter B. Holman, and Arthur G. Darnley
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1413/index.htm
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1413/maps.htm
It is also interesting to note that kaolin mining is big in Georgia/S. Carolina
For our European friends: https://remon.jrc.ec.europa.eu…tlas-of-Natural-Radiation
I remember we had a guy here getting really HIGH radiation readings
I remember a time here when I had to 'heat my heels' (as opposed to cooling them) in our Rad Con office because I had picked up radon daughters from walking through rain puddles. I had set off our radiation detectors. There were several other people sitting in the office with me with our heels pointed towards a space heater. It took about 30-45 minutes to drive off the radioactive material such that i could pass the detectors. We have a high level of trace radioactivity in the ground here.
If in fact there was some leaching of radioactive substance in the paper, it would surely also be radioactive in the absence of condensed water vapor.
No, you ignore self-shielding (self-absorption).
OTOH, if something could leach from the paper into the electrolyte
...it would be too dilute to be detected, although I agree it has the potential for a catalytic, or even just regular chemical, effect.
- Water extracts contaminants from materials, andbasic (LiOH) solutions can accelerate that. Thepaper used to cover the cells WILL BE wet, even if not apparent to the eye,since it may be surface absorbed on the paper components. So the paper should be independentlytested. Run an experiment with warmed electrolytein a standard cell, but where no electrolysis is ongoing. I would even push it, and heat the water to75C or greater to maximize the vapor content.Keep going for as long as you would run an electrolysis run.
I cut and folded a fresh strip of printer paper, taken from a closed ream package. I left the paper sitting face-up for ~12 hours next to the lead cave that is part of the test bench, about 20 cm from the cell. The test paper was thus shielded from the cell by about 15 cm of lead bricks.
IOW, you put some paper in the vicinity of the cell and expected that to test for leaching? No. That doesn't compute...
try self developing x-ray film instead of paper.
except for the hypering and heat sensitivity problems...
MS replied to several of my comments. Interestingly, I see some groupthink at work… That being said, I have no reason to believe anything I have suggested is correct. They are all speculations.
Re. 1.) Signal above the mean for a period is known as a baseline shift. There are many, many causes for baseline shift that have nothing to do with an actual signal. Then again, maybe it is. Reproduce and control.
Re. 2) LiOH and LiOD are both basic water solutions. They will have similar chemistry, and maybe even very similar. Isotopic differences will not cancel out acid/base-type of considerations. Agreed that you are just starting, much more to do, Reproduce and control.
The primary difference is in the electrolysis I think. The thermoneutral voltages are different for H2O vs. D2O. That means for a fixed current and voltage, you will get different loading levels and extents of ohmic heating. One impacts 'LENR' probabilities supposedly, the other supposedly would impact chemical rates. You might get minor differences in extraction (leaching) rates due to pH not being the same as pD.
Re. 3) This directional sensitivity needs to be worked out long-term as you note. Also, glad you picked up on the ‘Bockris Effect’ as I jokingly call it.
Re. 4) ‘Mined minerals’ as I called them will have contaminants. One common contaminant is U, another is Th. The decay chains produce alpha and beta radiation according to what I see. Wikipedia lists _average_ contamination levels at 2 to 7 ppm. What might be in your paper? Would it be the same as J5’s? Who knows? The water/base that gets to the paper can leach (extract) the contaminants. Now you have to consider self-shielding. Rad contaminants held in filler particles will be highly shielded, reducing the amount of radiation that can be detected externally. Leaching into a thin liquid layer could well change that, allowing the radiation to be more easily seen. (Further in relation to a J5 comment, that liquid can slowly weep down the sides of the container.) Again speculation. If you don’t like what I say, no skin off of my nose, but if you don’t check, shame on you…that would be groupthink especially. Oh, and how often do you think people wet office paper and measure it for radiation? Every day right?... Also, sometimes paper has acid content. Acid can also aid leaching.
Re. 5) The blank run with no electrolysis being run at a different time shouldn’t be a problem if my proposed mechanism is active. I would worry about not getting enough vapor if no electrolysis and no heating. The electrolysis gases will carry the vapor up to the paper, just like in our extended discussion of this in the “F&P Experiments…” thread w.r.t. water loss from open cells.
