I'm at my first airport now! Our little hub only has one gate. Three more airports to go!
LoL my little hub has 2 Gates. Same number of airports but I bet I beat you on flying hours 
Driving up from Rome with Vittorio in a couple of hours. Bill has organized a press conference for tomorrow. Let's see if any press come but this was front cover of La Repubblica yesterday. Nothing to do with us - but nice choice of headline and nice timing.
Dug it out of my collection. Listening to it now. Looks like "D to He" may not be the only one.
maybe the toast is with Hawkes Bay Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc
looks like they might have had a good day sailing
Actually Hawkes Bay bubbly. It was March 23 after all.
Joy to all. 30 years is not so long to change the world.
I love the song list and have most of them (some on vinyl).
Best from down under,
Mike
Outstandingly profound comment.
Alan you need to issue an irony warning. Americans are not as familiar with this genre as you Brits. SoT probably believes that he/she/it has been complimented.
While their comment is critical it is not at all intelligent. The Bertrand Russell Professor at Trinity College Cambridge is not a "not a very critical thinker"??? 
This sounds like a continuation of the campaign to undermine authoritative opinion. I would ask why but suspect I know.
Now you need to tell me why the scientists gather for the annual conferences and workshops? Do they all have something commercial already?
This question is non sequitur - or very far off the point that I and Peter were making. Very few issues of science are decided directly in the commercial marketplace. Rossi's current offering will be, and I am suggesting that all we need do is wait a little. If this new device creates market demand, then the product is producing heat more cheaply than the local utility price of electricity. An economic calorimeter with unambiguous results! Rossi has set a course with binary outcome: he fails (and draws as few of us as possible down); he succeeds and drags all of us up.
I have been doing this long enough to recall that interest in Rossi provided a very significant boost to the LENR community (I think Jed's download statistics support this). But now we are in "fool me twice" territory. The offer (cheap heat) and claim (machines being made for sale) is unambiguous. No room for wiggling. I am also old enough to know that it is (or seems) far wiser to be able to explain the results of an experiment afterwards, than to predict it in advance. Experiments have a way of pricking our hubris (otherwise there would be little point - or fun - in doing them). Rossi's experiment has begun. If it fails it will be his last, at least in public.
I (obviously) am not going to predict a result but (equally obviously) hope Rossi succeeds. His success would do us all a lot of good, politically, although I have learned very little of real technical value from the Rossi experience. If he fails it will do us very little harm.
PS thanks to the folks who put together sequenced videos of the plasma spectrum. Very illuminating. A black body this is not.
Thanks for this link. I finally went through all 3 hours. Loved the jingle at the end - seriously it was good to end on an upbeat. I have not gone through the 466 comments above me and this point may have been made - but wonder what there is to discuss? The early adaptor clients will take the risks and do the experiments for us. Either excess heat is produced - many more units will be sold - and LENR with low radiation output will be proven. Or this exercise will subside silently, quickly and terminally. All we need do is wait. What am I missing here? There is no upside to asserting "Rossi is wrong" - that is the obvious answer and conveys no credit. There is no upside to asserting "Rossi is right" - the experiment is about to happen and it may turn out that you are very wrong and lose credibility also terminally. About the only useful argument would be "Rossi is right - because... and be right in your reason". But someone with special knowledge - or inside knowledge - would surely keep quiet. I repeat: "what is there to discuss"?
If an idea or a critique is interesting and/or valid, what possible difference does it make who it comes from?
I have thought about this a little and apologize up front to all the “anons” out there who are trying to help but I do agree with Russ (on this). Ideas are more than words – they are words backed by character and experience. For example I would read a book of fiction anonymously written – but not a non-fiction book (or paper) because I would have no way of judging the life-experience … and therefore bias behind it.
One of the reasons I do not participate more here is because of anonymity and “trollism”. These are not, obviously, synonymous. But if I see something anonymous that looks like attention-seeking I completely ignore it. I have responded to “interesting”, constructive, anonymous comment, and have even given a thumbs up, but would never engage in a conversation. It would be like talking to a ghost or a mirror … a clear sign of insanity (or hubris). I have also responded to “clearly wrong” (from my perspective) signed comments in areas I thought important.
For this reason I submit that anonymous participants hurt themselves more than they hurt this forum. But if an open conversation were started where every participant stood behind their ideas I would jump to it the minute an adult quorum convened.
http://iscmns.org/conferences/workshop13/
And from Dewey's posts since it is over Shane speculated that he ain't happy.
Speculated incorrectly I believe. Although I don’t (need to) speak for Dewey I was with him there and we both found the meeting in Greccio very productive. The problem that we face (pre-commercialization) is threefold – all facets were discussed and advanced in our little monastery in the hills of Umbria:
1. What is the nuclear active environment and how do we make it on demand? I believe this matter is now resolved. Many have found ways to achieve the NAE (many adventitiously) … see http://coldfusioncommunity.net/sav/sav-as-nae/
2. What is/are the triggers? Some were discussed publicly there (microwaves) – others privately.
3. What is the mechanism/theory of CMNS? This is still lagging and will until we have a more reliable/repeatable demonstration object but Hagelstein is making good progress, is still very much engaged, and still happy.
Progress is good. Results will follow. IH has put in a good effort to prop the community up. Others are also involved who can/will speak for themselves.
Mike - do you think that the Lubbock folks will be able to publish anything in the not too distant future?
Ciao Dewey. I helped with initial set up of the Texas effort but have not visited now for a couple of years. I do not know their publication schedule but knowing Rob, whatever emerges will be solid and well measured.
I speak for you below 
evil avatar if it helps spread this message. Those who attended my last few ICCF lectures (19, 20 in absentia, and 21) know that I have been beating the community up precisely on the topic of selfish secrecy. If you believe that what we are doing is good for science or good for mankind then you have a duty to disclose.
My experience when it comes to this field is that there are many people who think like McKubre. They start off dreaming of the benefits cold fusion or LENR could bring to the world and start working towards seeing it proven as a reality. When they start seeing extremely positive results -- not just a few watts -- they change their minds. Instantly, they put themselves first and decide that if they can't beat everyone else the world can go without such an energy source.
Personally, I absolutely despise the world we live in today. What I value about LENR is it's potential to change our civilization in huge ways. That's why I want to see the technology be acknowledged as real and proliferate.
Actually I agree with your analysis and have no problem playing the role of
McKubre claimed people have measured water loss and even put pH indicators in the collected water to check for electrolyte content. I want to see that published, not just asserted with a "Trust me" appended. I have looked for that thing since I started examining this field in 1995 and I've never seen it in print. And as I told McKubre, for revolutionary physics, there's no room for "Trust me"
Kirk: Too many words above this quote, and too many errors and quirks (not just yours) to address. Thanks Jed for helping. I don't trust either. So I do my own experiments, attended the conferences and battled out personally some of these issues with the originators. Your are not to be faulted for "not having been there", and I agree that we as a (now CMNS) community could/should have done a better job of documentation in early work. I have complained to the community on this point. But, as Jed can (also) confirm - there was plenty of discussion. Some heated.
THH: somewhere up there you mention something like "changes in calibration" of our calorimeters and Kirk also bring up this point. I just want to make sure that you recall that our mass flow method requires very little calorimeter dependent calibration. >99% of the thermal energy leaves with the mass flow. Presuming that the heat capacity of air-saturated water is well known (it is), all we need to calibrate are: the temperature difference, ∂T; the mass flow rate, ∂M in unit time ∂t. Of these only T is "difficult" and we used redundant pairs of platinum RTD's calibrated against a calibrated quartz crystal NIST secondary standard (often in the same bath). This method was spoken about often and early in nauseating detail, and is published in our first EPRI report (and elsewhere). The issues you raise are real and relevant. But I demur on the point that they have not been covered.
I am headed off on travel shortly. Will log in periodically if possible. These are important concerns - to me not because there are unresolved errors, but because there are clear confusions that "those who were there" might help to clear up (if possible). Personally I would prefer to see our collective intellect (meaning the whole forum) directed to the present and the future. All this retrospective makes me feel old.
And so you deliberately ignore my prior post where I directly quote Fleischmann stating that in the experiment reported in 2004, they measured an excess of water that had exited the cell. So, the point is that Fleischmann considers 7% errors acceptable, but I pointed out that 3% errors can give a 780mW excess heat signal in Ed Storms' work. Bottom line, Fleischmann (and many others) are making the data tell the story they want to hear, and ignoring what it really says.
I don't have you on "ignore" Kirk - although with this post I might.
I quoted from your post - using your name [7% over-Faraday]. And explained the origin of the observation [partial pressure of D2O].
7% errors were not made by Fleischmann ... and he would not have found them acceptable.
Your error analysis incorrect - as has been pointed out repeatedly by many and I will not go back there.
Your statement: "Fleischmann (and many others) are making the data tell the story they want to hear, and ignoring what it really says" is unworthy and, frankly a reason to ignore you.
a kaon flux could explain the various manifestations of nuclear products observed in LENR. This in function of the stopping power of the materials present close to the source (as secondary or even tertiary reactions in the case of muons). Evidence of a flux of relativistic kaons can be found in this paper. Pretty convincing to me I admit
Interesting. Not being a "particle guy" I expected to be repulsed by the paper you cited (despite your recommendation 😶). But thank you. I learned something.
Waxing philosophical I view the expanding particle zoo (I think that was Feynman's word) as evidence that we are plotting with ever increasing rigor the epicycles in the orbit of mars around the earth. In other words our perspective is wrong and we a doggedly pursue a channel of thinking that is getting deeper and narrower. Time to back out. Waves anyone?
He did not ignore that. He showed conclusively that no such droplets exist, with several methods, mainly by showing that all of the salt was left in the cell. Also, if that were the cause of apparent heat, it would happen with the control tests with platinum and ordinary water. It does not.
They and others did more than that. F&P were exquisitely aware of the calorimetric consequences of delivering unvaporized electrolyte out of the calorimeter as well as the housekeeping issue of the need to maintain electrolyte level. Some people put pH indicator in the bubble trap (very sensitive to any "gargled" alkali). He understood it. Others understood it. They checked. It didn't happen with any practical or calorimetric consequence.
Water does leave these cells - but as vapor in the D2 + O2 gas stream. I spent thousands of hours monitoring open cells of inferior design to the F&P "boiler". At high current these need to be frequently "watered" and we used various generations of syringe and HPLC pumps do do this job. Faraday's Law needs to be adjusted up by ~5% at 30-40‡C or so, to account for the partial pressure of D2O gas in the emerging electrolysis gas stream. Kirk quotes 7% above. I very well believe this number - it depends somewhat on geometry and temperature (of course).
But the point is - and has not been sufficiently well emphasized or recognized in this thread - that the full price of vaporization energy has already been paid inside the calorimeter. As Jed says:
1) Martin recognized the issue of electrolyte entrainment,
2) took steps to design against it
3) checked to make sure that he was right.
4) So did others - years and years ago.
5) There is "no there there".
Very interesting.
On this respect, I'd take the occasion to ask you some questions. Did you use the same power control strategy used by F&P? Did you use a galvanostat whose voltage was set at a certain rail value? Do you remember which was the cell voltage after disconnecting the wires: the maximum rail value, a null value, or a residual intermediate value as in Fig.6B (1)?
Did you publish these results somewhere? Are they available on internet?
Happy to answer with the preface that all (only 3 or 4) incidents of HAD that I saw were with cells that remained full of electrolyte (all closed cells - some with external recombiner) so my experience has little direct relevance to the F&P cases.
1) Our power supplies and strategy were a little different. We mostly used Kepco BOP power supplies in (slow) galvanostatic mode. But an (hypothetical) open circuit with a demand current > 0 would have driven the supply to the rail (typically 20V). As noted above these supplies were disconnected and various other strategies employed to check the reality of our I=0 and ∂T>0 assertions.
2) I spoke about HAD (I called it heat after life) at ICCF4 ... not knowing that Martin was going to speak about it too. I wasn't really interested as the situation is uncontrolled. It is a good way to refute some calorimetric concerns in those not very experienced (hard to make an input power-measurement error if I*V=0).
3) I do remember writing up one case in nauseating detail where the effect was small but certain. This was for DARPA so I doubt it is on the internet. My non-Google search of "Energetics/SRI replication" says it is mentioned in here http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusiona.pdf - I did not see it on casual glance but the experimental set certainly is.
4) The open cell potential is only a few hundred mV. This maintains for a surprisingly long time. Spontaneous deloading is slow for used cathodes. But this does not explain your "residual intermediate value". To understand this we would need to know I, and thus R, hence my inquiry. You might think about calculating the effect of a putative residual salt bridge (non-infinite impedance) between anode and cathode wires somewhere in the head of the calorimeter where the wires leave, but,
5) I admire your zeal but do not see much to be gained from this line of inquiry. The HAD phenomenon is mysterious - but it is real. Fleischmann was not incompetent - until the final stages of Parkinson's. The only person who can help with direct personal information is Stan Pons - who might respond to a respectful, scientific inquiry.
Now the big problem is that, in this single example of HAD documented by F&P, the input power has not ceased! So the cell was not "Death", and we can only talk of "Heat After Something", where the "Something" has not been highlighted and explained by the authors of the article.
Kirk, you've been following the F & P experiments for many years, and you've done some tests. How would do you explain the residual voltage in Fig.6B?
Do you have the current record? Obviously voltage is not power and a charged Pd cathode will maintain a potential difference with respect to a Pt electrode in the same electrolyte. There are quite a few other examples of "heat after death". The few that I saw absolutely had I=0 ... I disconnected the power leads myself.
I see a logical fallacy here: you can't infer from the fact that both signs come from a different nuclear reaction that they are necessarily independent. For example a nuclear reaction may be secondary to a primary nuclear reaction. It is actually the route that I privilege in LENR.
No. Because heat and gammas, the two effects, can have a single cause, namely a primary nuclear reaction.
Yes the likelihood of artifacts would go down, not for the reason you mention, but simply because the prior probability of one artifact leading to both effects, or to the prior probability of two independent artifacts occuring at the same time leading to one effect each, is low.
No subtelty here.
I agree Julian. I was surprised by THH's comment and logic - intending to write back - thanks for making the point so clearly.
CMNS was so-named because multiple different nuclear "things" do seem to happen in similarly prepared condensed matter systems. I regard them as having a common mechanistic origin - but different manifestations (like smoke and flame).
I remember being puzzled and frustrated when we ran a set of experiments all getting into the regimes of current, loading, interfacial flux and time, where we expected to see excess heat. All did and produced no tritium, except one that produced tritium but no heat. This last result to me is still inexplicable - but I count them all as evidence of CMNS. My hand-waving explanation is that tritium is a "booby prize" ... what you get on the cusp of real success (heat and helium-4).
But...
Therefore this is a coincidence of two independent highly unexpected things and means that they do not support each other.
sure ain't so ... unless you regard both as impossible.
I think the most useful replication of some unexpected and therefore "need to be certain before trusting" result is one in which the experimental conditions and procedure are as close as possible to the original, but the instrumentation and methodology are as different as possible.
You sound like me http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHtheimporta.pdf 
It wasn't until CF that I ever really attempted to replicate anything - which I found almost impossible to do in electrochemistry (and often teased my fellow electrochemists friends with that). Too much is hair trigger on microscopic details of the interface (which electrochemists well understood - hence dropping mercury electrodes) ... and in Pd, the bulk.
That having been said replication of effect (if not detail) is possible and the only people to ever replicate F&P in engineering detail (Lonchampt et al http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LonchamptGreproducti.pdf) did so with amazing success. The FPHE does replicate (with the precautions noted by Lonchampt). But we still do not have mastery over the phenomenon. Important details are missing.
I hesitate to ask, but what do you think went wrong at U. Missouri's SKINR? They were not able to replicate convincingly, although Dennis Pease told me he thought they did replicate. Was that not a "dream team"? If so, why not?
Essentially everything went wrong from attitude to leadership. Energetics (and I) gave SKINR a beautiful start in a research park near Mizzou, and my good friend (and friend of LENR) Sidney Kimmel (SK) was extremely badly served at SKINR. I don't want to go into detail as some of it is very personal, involving good folk who are still hurting. Arik El Boher is a very capable engineer who helped design and operated perhaps the best experiment ever run in LENR (reported at ICCF10). Dennis Pease is a great guy - and is correct. I wish him well and will help if possible. Replications were accomplished at SKINR albeit not with the amazing results of the 2003 Glow Discharge or ETI-64 that I have spoken about so often. There was a significant diversion of effort away from what had and was likely to succeed (according to me ) but the failure at SKINR was of securing funding continuity to supplement SK's support for his eponymous research center. This failure was due to inexperience (and ill direction, and late attempts) in fund raising, and diversion of focus into - aaah - ethereal realms.
You can see why I do not want to say more at this time. But no ... SKINR was not any kind of "dream team" (sadly). And it was certainly not "my dream team" and had no members of it ... although we will certainly need a superwaves expert to succeed.
