Sorry, I meant fusion. Not all nuclear reactions, just fusion.
Rob
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Posts by Rob
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I suppose the title of this thread was an error. What I actually meant was "(for newcomers)" or "(for CF newbies)". The reason I said "for skeptics", is because I believe any newcomer to ANY new subject, especially a field of science having a history such as this one, would have some level of healthy skepticism. So really all I meant was, can we consolidate all of our knowledge to a nice, neat, tidy little list of Q's and A's so newcomers (be they scientist or not) can ramp up more quickly?
Given this is the case, I'm thinking of just making a new thread.
The amount of activity this thread has generated seems to be interesting to some here. I don't really think anything of it. I'm just looking to do something to help, and I think a list of Q's and A's would be helpful. It would be so awesome if people here could organize around this idea, given you all have been here so much longer than I have. But it not, that's okay too, I can try to take it on, just not right now.
Best of wishes to everyone here, I have no beefs with anyone, and I hope it will just stay that way. I guess this is easier for me because I'm not a scientist
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Does anybody know where exactly in the history of science, the orthodoxy of physics first established this idea that fusion can only happen by way of high energy plasma? Or am I not understanding this correctly? If so, how would you describe this issue?
It seems that not even the condensed matter physics (CMP) people were receptive to this idea that fusion or fusion-like reactions could POSSIBLY occur somehow in other states of matter. With the state of things being that CMP concerns itself with the study of emergent phenomena, one might think this would create some open-mindedness to the idea, "hey, maybe there's a way to trigger a fusion reaction because of some unknown emergent effect we simply haven't noticed before". Yet, Robert Laughlin, a CMP scientist at Stanford, is pretty staunchly critical of CF. Why?
If you're interested, Laughlin gave a really enjoyable talk that's on YouTube, and he happens to mention his early experiences of CF, you can see it here (I added the timestamp for you):
Dr Robert Laughlin, Stanford – A Different UniverseA Different Universe –Reinventing the Universe from the Bottom Downwww.youtube.comHe also makes a lot of other very interesting comments that are extremely critical of fundamental physics, and he argues that physicists approach science in a certain way because of religious orthodoxy. I'm not sure I actually buy that conclusion, but he does make a lot of interesting points. I would be interested to hear who here agrees with him on those things, or disagrees, and why.
Getting back to my question, where does this aversion to the idea of fusion POSSIBLY being able to occur outside of plasma, come from? I'm talking about the history, where in the past was this idea first established and where did all this conviction first originate? IOW, what evidence supports this idea? Some scientists believe in this quite strongly, so there must be a reason for it. What is that reason?
I was having a nice chat earlier today with Gregory Byron Goble and his friend, and they suggested I might find the answer in Mizuno's book, which I haven't read yet, but will soon.
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Frogfall thanks for sharing all of this. These sort of anecdotes are very useful for what I'm working on.
Williams shared a lot of commentary in this BBC Horizon episode, "Too Close To The Sun", (1994). By any chance, are you able to speculate or infer what may be the psychological angle that Williams is approaching this with? Being that you're a scientist (so drawing upon your perspective from your career) and we have some commentary from him in this interview – and let's just say you were forced to make a guess, what might it be?
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Ok, check on the net the maximum US frequencies reachable with the current technology.
This is why Letts & Cravens used 2 lasers to generate beats at the good frequency with xsh, transmutations.
However lasers contrary to US are only playing on a spot.
Cool. So, does ultrasonic transmutation prove low energy nuclear reactions occur?
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Does an US actuator able to reach Thz frequencies ? You have your answer.
I know what terahertz frequencies are, but I don't know what an ultrasonic actuator is. And I don't know how this is related to the question.
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Transmutations are unequivocal evidence of nuclear reactions as reported by US Army, NASA, USN, Mizuno, etc etc
Are ultrasonic transmutation products proof of LENR? I asked one researcher about this and the response was, "we don't know." The suggestion is that these transmutations may be caused by conventional fusion reactions, somehow driven by ultrasound. Does anyone know the answer to this?
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I heard that the director who replaced Iyengar was strongly opposed to cold fusion.
Ya, Chidambaram.
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if properly implemented it can lead to indisputable results.
Indisputable results are very much desired.
There seems to be an amplification effect in the minds of skeptics, where anyone can rationalize a criticism, no matter how unscientific it may be, and then all other skeptics will elevate the prior criticism, make zero effort in checking it for scientific legitimacy, and simplify the claims to appear more damning.
So, seems we have a difficult task in that we need to anticipate every possible criticism and prove it wrong before it's been made. Yay...
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Three years ago, I proposed the LF community to select the F&P "1992 boil off" experiment as the highest priority experiment to be suggested to Team Google for replication (1), but my proposal didn't get through. Now, your intent is interesting, but I fear it doesn't have the resource, nor will have the notoriety of the Google initiative. Anyway, I wish you good luck.
However, consider that, even if you will show a lot of foam emerging from the electrolyte, somebody will probably object that your "heavy water can be contaminated with surfactants" (2) or that you have not carefully degreased everything (3).
My suggestion. Before engaging in a new demanding replication of the "1992 boil off" experiment, you should carefully examine the old one, especially the two lab videos (4-5). You are a video maker, probably you have the instrument and the skill to analyze these videos and possibly estimate the volume occupied by the foam. This would provide a further element to judge the correctness of the F&P conclusions.
(2) http://www.infinite-energy.com…/pdfs/JapaneseProgram.pdf
(3) RE: Where is the close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons boiling cell?
It will go on YouTube. I aim to make the video as viral as possible. If we can answer past questions, like degassing, that seems easy enough to do. The idea of continually measuring the weight of the cell over the duration of the experiment seems solid to me.
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JedRothwell, Frogfall, I came across something new (new to me, old historically). Srinivasan was in hot fusion research at the time of the CF announcement.
https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GeorgeRthecoldfus.pdf
Certainly there are some differences between the BARC facility and US labs, which Srinivasan explains in this interview, but still, I think this lends some support to the idea that HF proponents could have chosen to get into CF. Thoughts?
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This is excellent. I will use this. Feel free to send more if you have it.
I agree that the problem is psychological. When I think about scientific work, I imagine people who are mentally interacting with conceptual structures that are not directly observable. When science is taught, these conceptual structures are taken for granted. We are taught about the atom and the DNA double helix, and these are conceptual structures which have been elaborated to extraordinary extents. If an experimental result is a brick, then the DNA double helix is a large building. The number of bricks which are fit into this building constitutes its hold on our opinions.
Is it possible that the bricks can be rearranged to fit an entirely different building, to accommodate some bricks that had previously not fit? Sure, but that's a scientific revolution. It's the bricks which don't fit that provide the motivation for studying rearrangement. But when you've spent decades working with a particular framework, a particular building, there is little reason to think that the few bricks which don't fit cannot be incorporated, eventually, into the existing framework. And that's why scientific revolutions might rely on new people, who still see the building as mentally constructed from bricks, while many of the older people no longer pay much attention to the bricks, seeing the building instead.
Epicycles made perfect sense; there was a building, and there were a few bricks that were needed to make it more perfect. So you add epicycles, unless you're disrespectful of authority and also a genius.
This is excellent. I'm in search of good analogies because they're so effective for conveying ideas, and I really like the bricks-of-a-building analogy. Thank you!
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I am still processing the thrill. It's quite an endeavour tho, starting with the specialized cells and materials it requires.
Right. It looks we have a contact to lend us an ICARUS 2 cell. I don't want to name a bunch of names prematurely and potentially get myself in trouble.
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As part of my video project, I'm hoping to recreate the boil-off experiment and get a much better video documentation of it (4k, two cameras). I'm not doing the experiment itself because I'm not a scientist, so I'm partnering with someone who is qualified. If anyone here wants to produce a bullet list of requests for this experiment, I'd find it helpful and be happy to report back how much of it we can do.
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That is your decision. If you "can't keep up" then maybe there is a better place for you to find those "productive results"?
IMO, in order to make a point here on LF, you have to be willing to be strong in conviction, fight back if needed, know when to back-off, able to defend your position in a scholarly way, and be respectful of differing opinions.
The LENR field, out of necessity, is grounded in those principles, so those writing about it should at least try and do the same.
Why so serious?
I just have to work on this later, there's only so many hours in a day.
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I have a private conversation with THHuxleynew and they've actually shared some useful insight. Sometimes their comments come off like trolling, but it seems that this is not they're intention.
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Rob authored the thread, so he decides.
I'm not going to police the thread, it moves at a pace that I can't keep up with.
Most of what's posted here doesn't seem to be building toward the suggested outcome. If we want a productive result, someone should start a shared google doc, then people should focus their efforts on building the list of Q's. Once you have all the Q's, then work on the A's.
As it stands now, JedRothwell 's list looks like a strong starting point, along with the LENRGY page I shared. I will probably work from these once I have bandwidth for it. All my available time is allocated for the video development right now.
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Except for Huizenga, to give credit where it is due. He wrote a book about cold fusion. It has a lot of in-depth technical information, and it is worth reading. You have to watch out for the illogical minefields, and his final conclusions are outrageous.
Robert Park was aware of progress in the field. He made a show of not reading the papers. Not even touching a paper in one memorable encounter with me. I think he wanted "plausible deniability" when he went around saying cold fusion was never replicated. He knew better though. Perhaps he sincerely believed that all replications were mistakes, but he knew that many replications were published. Dave Nagel and Scott Chubb kept him informed. I have a photo of them having lunch in 2008. He looks uncomfortable to me. Left to right, Dave Nagel, Robert Park, Scott Chubb:
JedRothwell so in the case of Huizenga, do you think the denial explanation makes sense?
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They never looked at the data or read any papers. They dismissed it out of hand and never thought twice about it again.
This is not true for Garwin:
Quote from Fusion Fiasco, pg. 366The Casaccia researchers ran the experiments a second time and got 1,800 counts/minute. A third run registered 7,000 counts. This is the only instance I have ever seen in which Garwin was motivated to do a "cold fusion" experiment. "This is sufficiently quick and clean that I think we should do it," Garwin wrote. No records in his archive mention whether IBM made such an attempt.
So Garwin did think about it in more depth.
However, I think that Seaborg's description very much matches with your assessment.
I think the motivations varied significantly between the many people both inside the ERAB panel, and their close colleagues outside it.
I appreciate your response to my earlier comments, I think you and Frogfall have convinced me that hot fusion proponents could not so easily have switched. I'll be sure to explain these issues in my video and I'll welcome your feedback on it before I upload.
Thanks so much!
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I assume you are familiar with "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn. This is the kind of paradigm shifts he referred to, which causes violent oposition, and that's why he talks of Scientific Revolutions, because none has been quietly accepted by the defendants of the paradigm being replaced.
Yes, I'm reading this book right now. I think that, the more we can demonstrate similarities to previous scientific revolutions, the more convincing the presentation will be.
EDIT:
Of course, that presentation will also need to make a very clear case for the strength of the evidence.
