Or describe a decent experiment to prove it in sufficient detail for it to be replicable.
Your bias is showing...
Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions
Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions
Or describe a decent experiment to prove it in sufficient detail for it to be replicable.
Your bias is showing...
Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions
Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions
“In Shanahan's case, there are no experiments backing up his theory. There is no evidence for it.”
“No one else agrees with his analysis.“
“There are many experiments showing it is wrong.”
Yup. Including the theory of LENR.
I've no idea whether these are good reasons.”
The word ‘nuclear’ should be ‘special’ or ‘special surface’. My theory is non-nuclear.
There are many different kinds of crackpots in the world.
Including ones who think whoever says something first is always right. Sorry to be the one to tell you, but you're the crackpot.
Are you going to be like Shanahan who alleges ad nauseam but won't show his calculations.?
To what do you refer?
No, it does not really mean that. Not at all. It really means they were scared, for good reason. In two cases, they finally did publish their own results, years later.
You should stop speculating about these people. You do not know them, or what they did. (Whereas I do, and Bockris did.) You have no idea what they thought. All you know is one sentence from Mallove's book. Based on that you wave your hands and declare they were wrong and they knew they were wrong. That makes no sense. A person who thinks he made a mistake would not tell Bockris or publish years later.
I suggest you assume they meant what they said.
And they still weren't conclusive, were they? There still is no funding available. There still are no indisputable publications. 28 years and zip is all you've got.
I think I will assume just that...zip is what the field has produced. And that when there probably is a real, albeit non-nuclear, effect.
No, that is not the reason. These people did not say "don't tell anyone" because they thought they were misinterpreting actual effect. If they had thought that, they wouldn't have told Bockris anything. They asked him to keep the results secret because they were afraid of being attacked for reporting a positive results. For good reason; many people were attacked.
What it really means is that they didn't believe their own results enough to publish them. In the early days (1989-1992) there were lots of publications of failures and successes. The problem always was they couldn't replicate the results later (replicate in the correct sense of reproducing essentially similar results at different times in different places by different researchers). But the bottom line is still 'secret' results don't count, it's nothing by mythology.
Both Jed and I have put the fleacomb through and..no fleas. The excess energy from the calorimetry tallies with Mizuno's calculations
But did you listen to what I said about the work? No, as usual. I repeat, the data is flaky, it shows signs of serious problems. Yes, when you chunk the data through the calcs, you get what Mizuno did, but it's all GIGO.
Are you going to be like Shanahan who alleges ad nauseam but won't show his calculations.?
Care to explain that?
This goes back to the beginning of the field. John Bockris and others told me about scientists approaching them in 1989 and 1990 and saying, "don't tell anyone, and please don't use my name, but I saw positive results like yours. [tritium and heat]."
That's probably because they were similarly mis-interpreting actual effects. E.g. Fleischmann-Pons excess heat == modeling error, commonly perpetuated throughout the field. Bockris transmutation with submerged carbon arcs == dust, as shown by the Bhabba replication where a dust cover cut yield by 50%, etc.
Unpublished results are non-existent to the rest of the world. So-and-so may have told you (or Alan) 'I got it to work!' but that in itself is worthless. The results must either be turned into a working device which can be sold, or published as scientific results that can then be studied and hopefully replicated.
I don't know about "most skeptics" but I know what the leading influential skeptics at the Scientific American, the New York Times, the DoE and the American Physical Society say.
You know what they used to say. You reference Gene Mallove, he was killed 10 years ago. The paper you linked to dates from 1991. Got anything more recent? I ask because I think most today would say "What? That stuff is still around?" Most would be up on the field enough to actually respond as MY suggests. But feel free to correct me on that if you can.
Did you say and do you think an unattended bucket with no significant "anomalous" heat source inside can evaporate overnight in a deserted indoor laboratory?
However, anyone with any sense realizes that an unheated bucket of water in a closed room with no air flow over it isn't going to evaporate very fast. But equally, people also realize that evaporating 10L of water with a heater (which is what a hot CF cell that maintains its temperature is) with a reasonable air flow over it is reasonable. Ergo, the whole situation is totally untenable. Too much missing information. This does however allow for interminable discussions on Internet forums based on conflicting sets of assumptions made by participants who then proceed to fight to the death over their choices.
To summarize, Shanahan is saying yes, this can happen. That answers Mary Yugo's question: yes, Shanahan does actually believe this crackpot nonsense. Anyone can prove this is crackpot nonsense by putting a bucket into a room.
???
(Dishonesty at its finest...)
BTW Jed, the rats are Norwegian, not British. They don't queue up, they just crowd around the bucket and push in for their drink.
Finally found it!
Post by Jed Rothwell 5/31/2002
Recently several harebrained "skeptics" have seriously proposed that a
significant amount of the water left in Mizuno's lab might have been
consumed by "vermin." I realize that "skeptics" are incapable of
quantitative analysis. Indeed they cannot even do simple arithmetic. They do
not understand the concept of a falsifiable argument, and they know nothing
about basic physics, chemistry or biology. As Harry Truman once said of
America's 50 most prominent journalists, "I know every one of those fifty
fellows, and not one of them has enough sense to pound sand into a rat
hole." So there is no point to telling these "skeptics" that their notions
and schemes are wrong, but other readers may be amused by a quick
examination of this "vermin" hypothesis. Some quick facts about rats may be
found here:
http://www.dscp.dla.mil/subs/proserv/PestFact/pestmice.pdf
The largest common vermin is the Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus). Body weight
is 200 - 500 grams. Daily water consumption 15 - 30 ml (25 ml average
according to other web sites). Other mouse and rat species consume less than
10 ml per day.
One more!
From https://groups.google.com/foru…ion/S4sGb64_YuE%5B1-25%5D
Post by Jed Rothwell 5/29/2002 where he responds to the vermin concept. This may not be the final word on this. I recall Jed actually did a computation. Maybe I’ll find that next… Note the reference to freezing through as well.
That is preposterous for the following reasons:
2. No amount of evaporation in a habitable room could evaporate water at
this rate.
Finally found it! My original comments to Jed on the evaporation and the 37.5 L of water and the introduction of the 'vermin consumption time profile'. They were actually to a guy named Richard Schultz, another 'foe' of Jed's.
(There are several interesting posts in this search results set. If you're interested in comparing 2002 to 2017 discussions...)
From 4/24/2002
Well Richard, I am going to have to agree with Jed (assuming he quoted
you correctly, since I didn't check) in that you made a mistake. It
is found in this quote (where Jed quotes you):
http://www.eren.doe.gov/rspec/studies_outdoor_inactive.html
you will find an equation for computing water loss in pounds/hour
based on these properties for swimming pools. This is a little
small for a pool to take a dip in, but I did some back-of-the-
envelope scratching thusly (using the eq. in the "Conclusions").
But anyway Richard, I wouldn't discount evaporation completely.
---
Kirk Shanahan {My opinions...noone else's}
{Note added in 2017 by KLS - I actually got it a little wrong with regards to Richard not considering evaporation. There are some posts to that effect in the subsequent posts in the search results.)
The infamous ‘rat pool party’ first posting…
"Kirk Shanahan" <[email protected]
By the way, I just thought of another missing major variable:
vermin consumption time profile
Where/when DID the "mouse drank it" meme start? Was it Mizuno's bucket, or an earlier experiment?
As I described here Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions
I initially posted this suggestion on the old Usenet newsgroup sci.physics.fusion in response to Jed rejecting the idea of evaporation driving the water loss from the "Mizuno bucket".
I can't get Google Groups to give me these two posts but I copied a couple of spf posts into this posting here Clearance Items for you to look at if you like that sets the date as pre-April 23, 2002.
In reply to the 'rat pool party' post (which did not do any calculations, just made the suggestion) Jed looked up how much a mouse drinks and then computed how many mice this then required to remove 10L, which of course was a large number, and of course which Jed then claimed proved it was impossible. As I noted above, I didn't pursue the issue by bringing up rats, cats, dogs, and people.
The point really is that the bucket was in an uncontrolled area and only monitored on a very infrequent basis, which is NOT the way to generate data that 'proves' or even 'strongly supports' anomalous suggestions. The whole bucket story is an anecdote, not an experiment.
kirkshanahan
OK. Hey Shanahan! Did you say and do you think an unattended bucket with no significant "anomalous" heat source inside can evaporate overnight in a deserted indoor laboratory? If so, does it require a large pack of very thirsty escaped rats who are excellent swimmers (for example, having passed the YMCA swimming pool safety certification?) And the absence of the local cat?
What I have repeatedly said, since 2002 when first discussing the Mizuno bucket anecdote on sci.physics.fusion, was that IT DEPENDS! It depends on whether or not a hot object was placed in the bucket, whether it stayed hot or cooled off, what the air flow over the bucket was, the relative humidity, the room temperature, the bucket shape, and even on the number of unaccounted visitors who withdrew or contributed 'water' to the bucket, etc. What I also did was use an equation I found on the Web for computing water loss from swimming pools on hot summer days and applied it to calculating what might have happened in the abandoned lab building, which is in itself an extrapolation that may or may not be correct. But that's the problem with anecdotes, you always have insufficient information and controls, which forces you to use lots of guesswork to try to figure out what went on. But in the end, you are ALWAYS left with unprovable guesswork. This is 'Rossi' to a "T" as the saying goes.
However, anyone with any sense realizes that an unheated bucket of water in a closed room with no air flow over it isn't going to evaporate very fast. But equally, people also realize that evaporating 10L of water with a heater (which is what a hot CF cell that maintains its temperature is) with a reasonable air flow over it is reasonable. Ergo, the whole situation is totally untenable. Too much missing information. This does however allow for interminable discussions on Internet forums based on conflicting sets of assumptions made by participants who then proceed to fight to the death over their choices.
Jed however is dishonest in this. He routinely takes bits and pieces of things people say (not only just me) and puts them together with his own interpolations and extrapolations, and tries to pass them off as facts, and he seems to think this is A-O-K. That is a mark of a fanatic, and the main reason why one should not trust 'facts' as presented by him.
I tried to look up when this brouhaha started on spf back in 2002 (maybe earlier) and when I first posted the 'rat pool party' suggestion as a joke, but the Google Groups search function won't seem to give me what I need. Maybe someone else can track it down if needed. I did find a couple of interesting posts though. I have pasted them in below. Sorry about the length. If you're not interested, stop reading now. Or jump to the end, there is a funny post of mine to Jed there about his use of the 'thousands of papers replicating F&P' claims.
---------------------------------------- from sci.physics.fusion archives on Google Groups ------------------------
JR post discussing Mizuno bucket anecdote from 4/23/2002
(Dieter Britz was an electrochemist and Professor of Chemistry at Aarhus University (Denmark) –now retired for several years – he compiled an index of CF papers that was later passed on to JR)
(Note: I cannot get google groups to give me the other thread Jed refers to here. Perhaps someone with better search skills can, since it is apparently in that other thread that the Mizuno bucket discussion started and where I first posted the ‘rat pool party’ suggestion as a joke, as I noted previously here https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/5287-rossi-vs-darden-aftermath-discussions/?postID=67823#post67823 )
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.physics.fusion/S4sGb64_YuE%5B1-25%5D page 1
Post by Jed Rothwell 4/23/2002
> Here is a precis of what you wrote in the book.
What Mizuno wrote, and I translated.
{unrelated part snipped - KLS}
Later that day, “John” makes an interesting observation…
“>> The waterline was below the cell. {KLS- quoting JR}
"the waterline was below the cell"
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.physics.fusion/S4sGb64_YuE%5B1-25%5Dfrom page 5
Post by Kirk L. Shanahan 5/30/2002
"Jed Rothwell" <[email protected]> R.S. writes:
>
> > Why did he keep the thermocouple connected to the power supply but fail
> > to do the obvious control experiment?
>
> It was not connected to a power supply. Thermocouples are not powered.
> Mizuno read the voltage directly with a meter. You may be confusing
> thermocouples with thermistors.
>
>The cell remained palpably hot.
---
Kirk Shanahan {My opinion...noone else's}
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.physics.fusion/IKGzrm2lq0E%5B226-250%5Don page 10
Post by Kirk L. Shanahan 2/12/2003
"Tom Kunich" <[email protected][email protected]
>
> A lot of this seems to hang on a missing amount of water which is
> assumed to have been evaporated by the heat of the anode. I'm having a
> lot of trouble with the idea that because water is missing that the
> heat was absolutely generated.
Yeah, especially for those rats, bats, cats, and elephants...
---
Kirk Shanahan {My opinions...noone else's}
From page 9, another funny suggestion
Post by Kirk L. Shanahan 2/11/2003
"Tom Kunich" <[email protected]
>
> Since the experiment has never been duplicated how do you know that
> one of Mizuno's drinking buddies didn't play a little joke on him?
> Japanese HAVE been known to have a sense of humor you know.
Hey, I like that one almost as much as the rat pool party!
My attempt to illustrate for Jed why each CF paper must be evaluated on its own merits before it can be used as evidence for CF:
"Jed Rothwell" <[email protected][email protected]>
| What I mean is that you selectively deny each and every paper, in turn. One
| day you may agree that Will has merit, but you will not discuss McKubre or
| Storms. Later you may grudgingly -- for a day or so -- admit that McKubre
| has merit, but you will not at the same time look back at Will, Storms or
| Oriani. You will never admit that the totality of evidence for cold fusion
| is overwhelming.
Let's try to explain this with a non-science example. Let's imagine that
tomorrow morning at 4AM you're awakened by a pounding on the door and someone
shouting "Police! Open up!" Being a good citizen, you do so, and you are
promptly arrested for felony hit-and-run. They take you to the police
station, put you in a line-up, then throw you in a cell. You get a lawyer
and he finds out that there are 10(!) witnesses to the fact that it was
you who ran down poor Joe at 10PM last night. (However, you were actually
typing in a post to spf at that exact time.) You go to trial, but your
lawyer has hired a PI firm to check out the witnesses. They discover that
one was actually in Denver, one was with a friend watching a ball game on
TV, one was drunk at a local bar, one (who only claimed to have seen your
car do the deed) recants under pressure, etc., etc. In other words, the
stories of all 10 of the witnesses are challengeable based on flaws in
their stories vis-a-vis the determinable facts. By your logic, you should
be convicted and sent to jail for running over old Joe. After all, there
are 10 witnesses claiming you did it, right?
The essence of science is quantitative analysis and getting the numbers to make sense
ROFL
Where is this 2.42 factor?
Proves you don't read what I write, which means it's pointless responding to you in most cases. However...
You *do* see all of the data.
There is no data missing. That's all the data there is.
A.) How many curves are in the paper Jed? How many have you posted data for? Are those numbers equal?
B.) Your admissions
Oops. That's probably my mistake, converting the Excel to Google format.
and
except that Mizuno converted the spreadsheet from a long-obsolete format into Excel, and I converted from Excel into Google
means that I am now totally unsure of what I see. Is it what Mizuno recorded? Or is it what you received and incorrectly converted? Or did you piddle around and accidentally screw something up? With reference to that in particular, lets discuss the time data, col A.
When I compute the timestep for the calibration run, I see a very nice pattern indicating that the '24.47' number is likely correct. The pattern apparently arises because there is round-off error. But that just means that what I see there looks normal.
However, when I do the same on the excess heat run data, I see something different. What I see looks a lot like 'fake' data over half the time. To describe it, from time 0 to 31961.17 sec, I see a noisy signal, not the nice pattern observed in the calibration run. Then at 31961.17 sec, the noise disappears, and I see the 24.47 value in all cells for the rest of the run. That looks 'fake'. What happened? Did you mess it up again? Did Mizuno? If that data is real it indicates a). different electrical behavior prior to 31ks from the calibration run, and b) a 'massive' change in that behavior later on. Why is that important? because data doing stuff like that means *ALL* recorded data can be messed up, and not necessarily in the same way. THAT IS WHY WE NEED *ALL* THE DATA, NOT JUST 2 CURVES.
As long as we are talking about the data, I also noticed that the blower was operated differently between the calibration and 'excess heat' runs. In the cal run, the blower voltage while on was 67.7V with a current of 1.77A, giving a blower power of 119.82W. In the excess heat run the values are 49.8V, 2.42A (no, that's not the 2.42 I was talking about before) which gives a power of 120.52W. Yes the powers are not noticeably different. The question is does the blower produce the same air velocity at 1.77 A and 2.42A? This was not addressed in the paper. What I wonder, perhaps incorrectly, is whether there are greater resistive losses at higher current, leading to less air flow, leading to higher deltaT, leading to higher computed excess heat? Perhaps that is your .58 delta over a COP of 1.0.
Regarding the suggestion I made about the input and output temps, you said:
the difference in the raw data Delta T temperature (outlet minus inlet) has to be explained.
You are confused. Input is not tracking output. They are both tracking ambient temperature. What else can they do?
In the calibration run, the Tout does track the Tin almost perfectly if you account for the rise during heatup and drop during cooldown. However, this is not completely true in the excess heat run. It may or may not be significant, but I also noted that there was a definite loss of tracking after the 31ks transition, which leads me to believe the time data is correct. As noted above, this suggests electrical problems. Which means we NEED ALL THE DATA, PREFERABLY NOT MESSED UP IN TRANSLATION.
Ummm... What?! A 100C starting point. Are you sure?
That sounds to me like another figure plucked from God-knows-where, for the purposes of, sorry to say it, 'stretching reality to your pathologically-skeptical heart's content'.
[emphasis added]
Using UNREASONABLE EXTREME assumptions prevents you making a REASONABLY ACCURATE estimate of evaporation rates.
Really?
From http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MizunoTnucleartra.pdf pages 2-3
"April 25. Mizuno and Akimoto note that temperature is elevated. It has produced 1.2 H 107 joules since April 22, in heat-after-death. The cell is removed from the underground lab and transferred to Mizuno’s lab. Cell temperature is >100 deg C.
April 26. Cell temperature has not declined. Cell transferred to a 15-liter bucket, where it is partially submerged in water. "
{emphasis added}
So, the cell was at 100C when placed in the bucket initially (per Mizuno/JedR). Assuming it cools to 16C and does not stay at 100C as asserted by Mizuno/Rothwell, I would need to insert an exponential cooling curve into the swimming pool equation. And I would also need to account for any heating due to H2 combustion, but that is probably small. This affects the vapor pressure of the water in air. Instead I assumed a simple linear decrease and used a rounded average of 60C.
From my CRC Handbook, the vapor pressure of water at 60C is 149.38 Torr or 11.92 kPa.
I stretch my thinking, and wonder if the relative humidity ever varies in Japan, and guess "YES". So I stretch my thinking again under the principle that I am seeking to see if a ‘mundane’ explanation can encompass the observations and assume 10% RH as a practical minimum. 0% would be too low.
So the swimming pool equation, which transforms into ( 1 – relhumid/100) * Vp * (.089+.0782*v), becomes [0.9 * 11.92 * (.089+.0782*v)]/2272.
So what is v (air velocity)? We have no idea. So, you start at zero and go up until it becomes unreasonable. Let’s look at the 2 m/s velocity though. That gives the evaporation rate per unit area of [.9 * 11.92 *(.089 + .1564)] = 1.159e-3 kg/sm^2, which means that for a 0.049 m^2 evap area, that 4905.6 g of water would evaporate in 1 day (under all the above assumptions). Half-way there. So, maybe not a linear representation. How about if we use 75C instead of 60. The Vp = 38.55 kPa then, that’s a multiplier in our formula of 38.55/11.92 = 3.233, giving 15,863 grams evap’d instead. Wow- 50% over now…so clearly what the temp was and its time profile is very important to these calculations.
What about the velocity? Unreasonable? 2 m/s ~ 4.5 mph, a brisk walk. Would this be unreasonable in an abandoned building? I don’t know. Think about the air flow around your face when you are walking fast. Do you notice it? Maybe. You’d probably notice a 5 mph breeze of course. Would Mizuno have noticed that in the lab? When he was worried about his cell exploding? Would there be a constant flow or would it gust a little depending on outside conditions? When the ventilation drops in the building I work in it can make the doors very difficult to open and I briefly get a ‘stiff’ breeze when I do. The hood in the room has a connection to the rooftop via the ventilation system. In an operating lab, flow would be controlled by a blower. But what would control it in an abandoned lab? Personally I can’t reject 2 m/s. Maybe even a bit faster.
So you see the temp profile is really the key factor here, once you make some *reasonable* assumptions about humidity and ventilation. Again the point is that to *actually* understand what is happening in the anecdotal story, you need more information, which we will likely never get.
Continuing to quote Mizuno/JedR:
“April 27. Most of the water in the bucket, ~10 liters, has evaporated.
The cell is transferred to a larger, 20 liter bucket. It is fully submerged in 15 liters of water. “
So now slightly bigger area which increases evap rate. All else being the same, more should have evap’d. Less evap’ing means T probably a little lower.
“April 30. Most of the water has evaporated; ~10 liters.
More water is added to the bucket, bringing the total to 15 liters again. “
So, now the rate is 1/3rd. More cooling? Less ventilation? Higher relative humidity?
“May 1. 5 liters of water are added to the bucket.”
Rate at ½ now.
“May 2. 5 more liters are added to the bucket.”
Still at ½.
“May 7. The cell is finally cool. 7.5 liters of water remain in the bucket.”
So today I went a little further and looked at this last datum, which means 7.5L evap’ed in 5 days, i.e. 1.5 L/day – almost down to 10% of original.
Let’s see now what nominal conditions might be needed to do that. Assume 16C, since Mizuno/JedR says it was ‘cool’. 1.5L/day means 15000 g/day = 15 kg/day = 1.74e-4 kg/s
Bocijn originally calculated 1.12e-3g/s and 2.3 10^-5 kg/s/m^2 for 16C and 70% RH. For the 0.049 m^2 area, we need 3.54e-3 kg/s/m^2.
So we have [.9 * 1.8 * (.089 + .0782*v)]/2272 = 3.54e-3.
That gives a velocity of 62.3 m/s. Wow! That’s probably better than a rocket engine exhaust (not really)! So yes, now we are unreasonable. What does increasing the temp do? Not too much. If the T was 20C, the Vp is only ~1.3X, cuts the velocity to about 48 m/s. Still unreasonable. Increase the velocity (windy weekend?), probably not too much help. Gosh, maybe the cell was still at 100C! No…Mizuno said it was cool….hmmm…. (Do you all get it that now the data seems unreasonable? Rapid evaporation from a cool cell...)
So what do we do now? Go out and buy CF stocks? No, we expect replication, as MY has already expressed. Let’s see. This incident happened in 1991, so Mizuno should have a cold fusion water heater by now right? Or be drinking cold-fusion-power brewed tea right?
I don’t know what happened in this anecdotal story. That’s the problem with anecdotes. As I showed above, 10L in 1 day during a cool down from 100C in a ventilated hood is possibly not unreasonable. 1.5 L/day at 16C is apparently. The anecdote seems that it should have driven Mizuno to replicate. But just like Storms and his Pt-based CF, the most controlled example of ‘excess heat’ I have seen, he went off and stared working on something else. As MY says, no one seems to be able to produce an incontrovertible demonstration experiment. In the end, this is what leads me to believe there is no LENR, but lots of hidden errors like the Mizuno ‘2.42’ factor from nowhere. No more discussion about anecdotes…
Dr Shanahan?
Not going to do it for two reasons: A) I don't trust the data. B) I don't trust your method. A + B= waste of my time