Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 04:00 PM 12/16/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: What's the payoff? ...That Steorn is really good at manipulating PR? ...That they they can pull a fast one on everyone? There seems to be an equally unproven assumption that if Steorn can pull it off that future prospective clients will know that they, too, will be able to cash in on Steorn's PR skills and make tons of money by hiring them to manipulate PR to their own advantage. Such convoluted reasoning stretches my own internal BS scale. However, I also have to confess that having such a conclusion prominently displayed over at Wikipedia as the preferred explanation probably didn't help my predisposition in taking it seriously. ;-) Okay, being the resident expert on Wikipedia (there are certainly people who know it better than I, but they aren't reading this list, I think), I'll look at the article. All right. The account above is inaccurate. While individual articles often violate guidelines on neutrality and sourcing, due to the way that Wikipedia process operates, and there are also groups of editors who might be highly inclined to put in skeptical material outside of what the guidelines allow, the article doesn't state that advertising PR skills is the preferred explanation. Rather, the article simply reports that this explanation has been offered by some published commentators, and it also notes others. It's possible that the standards for published have been pushed a little, but the article presents this neutrally, as far as I've noticed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn About the 2007 demonstration. They blamed it on a failed bearing due to the greenhouse effect in the plastic housing. Okay, so it took them two years to fix the bearing and pop some cooling holes in the plastic housing? No, it's obvious, I'd say. They are creating delay. If the article is accurate, they have already, at least once, released misleading information, by their own account. In May 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sunday_Business_PostThe Sunday Business Post reported that Steorn was a former http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot.comdot.com business which was developing a microgenerator product based on the same principle as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energykinetic energy generators in watches, as well as creating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commercee-commerce websites for customers. The company had also recently raised about 2.5 million from investors and was three years into a four year development plan for its microgenerator technology.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn#cite_note-post-ie-9[10] Steorn has since stated that the account given in this interview was intended to prevent a leak regarding their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energyfree energy technology.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn#cite_note-steorn-crisis-management-interview-10[11] In other words, when it suits them, they will lie. At least that's how it looks to me! Lies are sometimes not reprehensible. But ... the lies that aren't reprehensible are lies to enemies who will do harm with information, but the Sunday Business Post? The public? Gratuitous misinformation? Does that explanation make any sense at all, on the face of it?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 12:11 AM 12/17/2009, William Beaty wrote: 7. It's NOT the company's number one goal to prove that the invention is real. The scam company seems to have no goal besides creating an aura of attractive secrets: secrets which will only be revealed to an in-group of superior blue-blooded investors, while we rabble on the outside are obviously inferior since we haven't invested and don't know the secrets. (It's the old treasure map trick, playing to your victim's self- importance.) Scamsters have all sorts of other tricks to appeal to snobbery or play up to the egos of investors. They also have many really sensible excuses for not proving that their discovery is real. But honest companies just sit down and prove their claims beyond any doubt BEFORE gathering investors. After all, its unethical to take investors' money for extremely questionable and totally unproven devices as if they were normal inventions developed by reliable companies. I wrote that, when? Late 2005? Was that before Steorn's stuff? I don't know and don't really care. It's right on. It can happen that a legitimate new invention or discovery can look like a scam operation. In fact, scammers certainly take full advantage of that, and will remind us of it over and over, they use it as part of the smokescreen. With Steorn, though, the string of coincidences involved has come to the point where there really isn't any other reasonable hypothesis except scam. Probably half or more of those writing here thought of using a capacitor. So, okay, supposed they need to get this thing going with some stored energy. That's completely reasonable. Now, if this is to be a demonstration of an over-unity device, as distinct from a teaser that really shows nothing at all except some alleged elements of the technology, they would know completely that the battery has to go. Fine. Start with a battery, but parallel a supercapacitor, and then pull the battery. The supercapacitor will behave as a very efficient battery, right? But with no complicated internal chemistry where complications lurk. And then there would be a simple device added: a voltmeter across the battery. The webcam would show the voltage. No demonstration alone would prove this wasn't a scam, it's obvious that there are more ways to fake a demonstration than to discover the fakes just by simple, hands-off observation. A real demonstration must be repeatable to be most convincing, repeatable simply by the transmission of detailed plans. Again, there are possible complications. What if the inventor has unconsciously done something that doesn't get documented? That makes it work? This happens, out of sheer luck or out of intuition. But Beaty has put his finger on the critical difference between an inventor working with a difficult technology and a scammer: transparency, honesty, open disclosure, and there are ways of obtaining independent confirmation without risking loss of what might, indeed, prudently remain secret for a time. Steorn isn't doing that. Instead, they are putting their energy into a scheme that would raise money for them whether the technology works or not. They are charging for a peek at the technology. This, then, depends on their ability to manipulate media to generate publicity. And the fact that so many mails here are discussing this ersatz demonstration shows that they are succeeding. The NDAs are really the proof. The NDAs are radically over-restrictive, requiring secrecy on far more than necessary. Why would the text of the NDA be, itself, a secret? Obviously, people see that text before signing the NDA, though possibly they sign a pre-NDA requiring them to keep the NDA text secret. That pre-NDA text would still not be covered by the NDA, because it has to be revealed to people who haven't signed yet. Okay, Hoyt, what can you tell us? How did the NDA work? What was revealed to you before you signed? What a legitimate inventor would tell us, as soon as possible, why the inventor believes that the thing works, or will work when better engineered. Steorn is talking about an effect, and, indeed, they disclaim interest in selling practical devices. That takes a away a lot of burden! However, it means that, in order to make a profit, they will need to sell the idea itself; what is the basis for believing that there is a particular way to wave the magnetic magic wand to get some energy to pop out of a hat of coils? A simple demonstration of even the smallest -- but measurable -- effect? And if they don't have that, they have *nothing* but a wild idea, the kind of thing that is easily based on an error in their analysis. And they've been at this for years. How many people have signed NDAs? How many of those are convinced? Why would such data be inaccessible? Keeping information like that secret can certainly be justified by the raw self-interest of Steorn. But all this secrecy simply
Re: [Vo]:Charging to get a look
At 12:23 AM 12/17/2009, you wrote: On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: They are charging for getting a look at the technology, and, I'm sure, this comes with heavy NDAs, Hey. Is charging to get a look at technology a dead givaway for an FE con game? In other words, what other companies let individuals get a look at unreleased technology, require NDAs, and charge a hefty fee? Note well: individuals, not interested companies. And NDAs or swearing to secrecy, not simply buying a special videotape or whatever. What businesses make money by getting a few thousand people to pay a ?couple hundred? bucks each in order to sign NDAs and be privy to secret information? Scammers. Big red warning flag. He said it. I said it. Quite a few of us have said it. And this is a list where wild ideas get some serious hearing. But there isn't any idea here that hasn't already been covered over and over. MLM marketers. More weasels. So, who else? Has *any* legit company ever done this? You can justify NDAs, and they'd need to build a base of people who have seen the technology, thoroughly enough to overcome the obvious theoretical objections, but ... you wouldn't charge them, and you wouldn't pay them, you'd allow them and encourage them. You might well restrict this to people who could be trusted to follow an NDA, or who'd have assets that could be touched if they violate it. That all makes sense. But the fees don't make sense. Disclosure would be one package, it need not be individually designed, there would not necessarily be any hand-holding. What if the NDA got you a simple kit design? That worked, that could then be studied, a demonstration of the alleged effect. I would not have to be over unity to the extent that it continues to run with power output, but it would show that there is excess energy in the system, in ways that demonstrate a clear anomaly, at least. Where there is an anomaly, there is something to learn. But there is no reason to believe that there is any anomaly at all here, no reason to believe that any demonstrations done so far have been adequately studied to rule out even the most obvious objections. (Like the behavior of batteries when pulse-charged.) You know, if I were in Dublin, I'd go look at the thing. They've made it all that interesting. But it's not any science they have that is interesting, it's the effing human engineering, the province of marketing professionals and scam artists, there is an interplay between those two categories. (Legitimate sales matches products to customers who need them, and scams -- even legal ones -- sell products to customers who don't need them.) I'm being quite committed on Steorn, taking a very public position that this is not a real breakthrough, that the publicity is essentially lies, not even justified by self-deception. (It's possible that Steorn began with a sincere belief in a new theory, but that path can lead to traps and pitfalls, we've read this story many times. How often has a would-be inventor of some free energy device, after some serious investment, come out and said, Oops! I was wrong, I overlooked this factor! Yet it has certainly happened many times. The Men in Black are invoked. There are real Men in Black. And if they wanted to know what was happening with Steorn, they'd know, all the NDAs and smokescreen -- Steorn has acknowledged releasing misleading information to protect themselves from what they considered premature disclosure -- would not protect them. The Men in Black, by definition, have huge resources behind them. They could buy and sell companies like Steorn, several before breakfast. They could bribe engineers under NDA, or, alternatively, threaten them, but people don't like to be threatened and it's much cheaper, overall, to pay them off, if you have the money. The Men in Black are simply one more red herring, a variant, useful for them, on They Will Try to Kill This Technology. And there are those who fall for this. The Cold Fusion field is afflicted with paranoia about these Dark Forces. There are true repressive forces, there are enemies of truth, but there are also limits on all these. Rarely are they the real enemy, the real problem. The CF field was diverted by the Injustice Of It All. Instead of focusing on brass tacks, on nailing down the real difficulties, the reasons why skepticism was legitimately appropriate, instead of firming up and making solid what was already discovered and known, which takes disinterested research -- that's why replications are done by grad students and academics, you can't patent a replication! -- the field was, for better or worse, diverted prematurely into search for commercial levels of effect. That may indeed take what Fleischmann claimed: a Manhattan Project-scale effort. And until the science is clearly known and accepted at least as a demonstrated anomaly, beyond artifact, that scale
Re: [Vo]:Executive Director of the AIP says cold fusion is wrong and fraud
At 09:58 AM 12/17/2009, you wrote: Steven Krivit wrote: I'm sure Shanahan is finding immeasurable entertainment in these messages. Particularly your comment about certified fruitcake. It is the season, though, isn't it? Absolutely! And for the record, I'm crazy about fruitcake, especially made with cognac. I don't know why people dislike it so. I think that people like Shanahan and Morrison are good for cold fusion, and I appreciate their contributions. They make the researchers look good. They are good foils. Anyone familiar with the facts will see, for example, that Shanahan has a screw loose when he claims: 1. There is no opposition to cold fusion. 2. And because there is no opposition, researchers have been able to convince organizations such as the ENEA and the Italian Physical Society to sponsor conferences, and they have magically hoodwinked experts such as Robert Duncan to believe there is ~1 W input and ~20 W output at Energetics Technology. He honestly believes that people such as the President of the Italian Physical Society and Duncan are gullible fools who cannot understand basic chemistry, and they have overlooked Shanahan's technical objections. Shanahan, Morrison, Taubes, Park and these others do have monumental self confidence! You have to hand it to them. They think they know more about electrochemistry than Fleischmann or Bockris; more about calorimetry than Duncan; more about tritium than the top experts at Los Alamos and BARC, and more about theoretical physics than Schwinger. Look, Jed, you're right. Now, dump the collective victim complex and start believing that other people, given the right opportunities and time, will see it. What you've said about Shanahan is generally correct. The response to Shanahan is diagnostic. Here he is, someone with some actual credentials, and I welcomed him at the Cold fusion article, because knowledgeable skeptics are needed, and was really only disappointed because his criticisms were so shallow, over-extended and largely without substance. There has been little support for Shanahan, who would really like the article to be a skeptical hit piece, far more than it is. There are, in the article, at least some shreds of evidence that might lead a reader to read the literature; at least readers can understand from the article that research is continuing, it is not a dead field. They will end up with an overly skeptical understanding if they read nothing more, and that's a problem, for sure, but Shanahan's sense of frustration at Wikipedia, which I believe is real, demonstrates how weak the skeptical position has become. It's failing and falling. Positive research reports are on the increase, and negative reports have almost completely vanished. Want to find something negative and recent, you'll have to be content with Kowalski's paper responding to Mosier-Boss. And Kowalski clearly believes that CF is real, he's merely criticizing some particular conclusion, and, to my view, with some justification. It's great that his criticism was published, even if he's wrong in some way. When positive papers are being published in peer-reviewed journals, and if the skeptical position were tenable, we would also see truly negative publications passing peer-review as well. The idea that there is a conspiracy of some kind against skeptical papers is beyond belief. No, if there is a blackout on the cold fusion topic in some mainstream publications, the skeptics have shot themselves in the foot, but the other publications, willing to publish positive articles, would also publish negative, if they could pass peer-review. My own opinion is that there aren't continuing negative publications, criticizing the continued positive publications, because it has become really difficult to find convincing negative evidence. It's not about the difficulty of proving a negative, that's a red herring. It's about the difficulty of explaining the positive results and showing evidence that demonstrates they are artifact, like the experiment done by the scientist who exposed N-rays as observer imagination, by secretly removing a critical part of the device in a demonstration, but the observations continued unchanged. Like the NMR spectrum of polywater that showed the apparent origin with high probability. The current skeptical bias, which may even be a general majority view, is mere inertia, persistence of vision, and it will pass as the evidence becomes more and more visible and more and more difficult to ignore.
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 10:10 PM 12/17/2009, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: Abd remarks, [...] What I do claim is that the Steorn situation bears very strong marks of being a con, a fairly sophisticated one, where they are deliberately setting up demonstrations with obvious flaws, which they can then remedy, setting up the rebound effect. You may recall that I also recently voiced similar speculation. I also speculated that STEORN is deliberately attempting to lead all the skeptics and debunkers down to the slaughter house where at the right moment they will all get wacked on the head. Very calculated... Very dramatic. Yes. Noted. However, in my scenario, I seem to have come to a different conclusion. It seems more plausible for me to speculate that Steorn actually believes that their ORBO device is for real. IOW, I don't yet buy the premise that it's a con job. I don't think you are considering the implications of that apparent set-up sufficiently. The premise isn't an assumption, it's a conclusion, from the consistency of the smoke-screen. Instead of looking for the fire, look for smoke! Why is so much smoke being generated? Demonstrations that don't demonstrate? That don't even attempt to demonstrate, at least at first. It's a show, not a demonstration. OF course, under my scenario it's quite possible that the Steorn engineers have deluded themselves. Sure. Or some of them are deluded and some are not, some are in. But I have another hypothesis. Please understand, I remain highly skeptical of Steorn's claims. Like everyone here, I demand definitive evidence and am disappointed that Steorn has not yet delivered on that point. Nevertheless I'm having a difficult time perceiving how this con game you have described could possibly benefit Steorn. If this is all nothing more than a deliberate (albeit sophisticated) con game then it's all a house of cards and they will eventually get caught. There's no way around the fact that they would eventually get caught. The village will rise up in arms with pitchforks they and torches in hand and run them all out of town, that is after they are tarred and feathered and sent to the slammer. Granted, I could be wrong but I really, REALLY have a difficult time believing they could be that stupid as to believe they could pull off such a con job on the public, not with the amount of constant scrutiny they are receiving. Yet it appears to be working, Steven. You are making assumptions about how they will proceed, and, also, assumptions about what is involved in the NDAs. When do they get to eat their cake? More to the point, how can they get to the cake without getting the heads cut off? They are already eating the cake, for some years now, and the cake continues to be baked and served to them as long as there is positive cash flow, which there may be. And when the cash flow goes negative, the corporation goes bust, and those who collected salaries keep the money. And the directors may be on the hook if there are burned creditors, but they could easily arrange that the corporation closes down without doing that. They pay their bills, it's that simple, the directors make sure that this happens, but they are not required legally to ensure success, and, I'm quite sure that the investors, who will be the real losers, are themselves involved in agreements that protect the personal property of Steorn officers and employees. The Developer agreement is quite well-laced with clauses that disclaim any claims of functionality. You imagine that they would be tarred and feathered and jailed. Okay, jailed. What would be the charge? Deceiving the public? But that is not generally a crime, and magicians do it all the time. Deceiving people who purchase the right to see the technology? Without knowing the NDA contents, it's difficult to know that there has been any deception of these people at all. As one extreme, what you get when you sign the NDA is a disclosure that there is this idea that might result in over unity power, but that they haven't proven it yet, they are working on it. Or perhaps there is a disclosure that it's all for show, and if you reveal that, well, you will be sued. They gave you what you paid for, the secret. Perhaps they offer your money back. Why wouldn't you go for that? Well, there is a kicker: if you don't ask for your money back, you will get a cut of all the new sales of disclosure agreements. They can refund the money, they can keep it for long enough that the interest on it will cover their expenses of refund. The agreement the person signed allows them delay in refund. And they perform on the agreement until they can't. When they can't, the thing will collapse, and so their game is to see how long they can keep it going. When it collapses, sorry, you have an agreement with a defunct corporation, and you are last in line. Employees get paid first, you know. As I mentioned, the board may act to
Re: [Vo]:New hypothesis about what Steorn is up to
At 11:55 AM 12/18/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Well, as Deep Throat sed: Follow the money. What's the payoff. Smuggling donkeys. While this scam is running, do you have any idea what salaries Steorn executives are drawing? Do you know if any payments are being made to investors? Where is the money coming from? Absolutely. Follow the money. Steorn may be showing a loss, even. But suppose if the major expense has been those salaries, and those drawing the large salaries are among the investors. They may even have been fully paid off and are still drawing the salaries. They can lose their investment and it will give them a fat tax deduction, blunting the effect. What would be of real interest would be the cash flow. What's coming in and what is going out, and from where and to where? For the moment it's still looking to me, personally, as if Steorn IS attempting to perform a major slam-dunk. I fear for their lives. Only because you are disposed to think an over unity device is possible. Who is going to kill them for a hoax? Only some burned investor would even consider it, and if they don't have any of those, if they are keeping their investors happy, no danger. If they don't have investors who have been deceived, they aren't in danger. The engineers who have blessed Orbo, have they been deceived? Sure, maybe. But they were also paid, I might guess. What would be the basis for revenge? That they were fooled? They would hang their heads in shame all the way to the bank Or they know the scheme, fully, and are enjoying it. Under such an obviously elaborate scenario (a scenario that is NOT Occam Razor's approved) it seems to me that the only chance they have of succeeding would be to have the equivalent of another ORBO contraption waiting under wraps, a device that DOES perform the equivalent of powering a light bulb, and also has no deceptive battery attached to the housing confusing everyone to no end. Preferably a capacitor. Nah. You are not defining succeeding as making money. I think they are or will be making money, for some, at the expense of others. The others will each lose only a little, and they will have done so by making a speculative investment at the wrong time. Too late. Happens all the time! To me, it's speculative whether they will or will not show an actually fraudulent machine, with no obvious faults. They might. That would be the last stage in the game, or approaching it. At that point, people who invest in this by buying a developer license will almost certainly lose their money, or most of it. Because the only way to recover would be to allow, then, within a reasonable time (a year?) independent replication, which will blow the covers off. On the other hand, perhaps they will figure out a way to keep it going. Tell me, folks, would you have predicted that Steorn would be, three years later, still on this track? Murky as ever? My wacky reasoning: One of Steorn's advertisement clearly states that their magic juju bean technology is capable of powering laptops, even cars. Yeah, but they also prohibit Companies in the proposed company licensing from being companies that will develop those applications. Interesting, eh? And as we all know powering cars (50 kw for starts) would obviously take a lot of juju been juice. Meanwhile, what's obviously on public display right now at the Waterfront is pathetically inadequate in suggesting to anyone that such juju bean juice is in the works. It's as if Steorn has deliberately placed a straw dog in front of a bunch of bullies in a calculated attempt to entice them to start swinging at the decoy, and then at the right moment swap out the decoy with the real McCoy. Nah. All they would need to do to keep it all going would be to replace the obviously defective toy with one that looks better. I have to admit... it's a romantic scenario I've concocted. Worth a good screen play! Not very realistic, however. ;-) That's right. It requires a device which is probably impossible, with anything like the technology they are using, if it's possible at all.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 11:20 AM 12/18/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: From Stephen Lawrence ... But he's [MADOFF] **NOT** held up as an example of a successful con artist, because he (a) had no exit strategy, ... Ok, then then what's Steorn's exit strategy? I certainly don't know for sure. Depends on how greedy they are. Get too greedy, they end up in jail or fugitives. But if they stay short of that, the exit strategy is that Steorn shuts down. The creditors are paid. Those who invested early on have made more than their money back. Those who invested toward the end may lose their investment. Standard, think of it as being similar to those who buy stock in a company that is about to go under. If there were refund provisions in the purchase agreement, they may get their investment back, but if they waived the refund in order to gain participation and payments as long as it lasts, well, they lose. And their money is where the earlier investor profits came from, it we look at it passed down the line. The payments out would depend on income from payments. So if the income collapsed, so do any payment obligations. As long as they keep reserves for any debts and contractual payments that are fixed, they'll be okay legally. That's an exit strategy. It's possible that they will never admit that it was a shell game. Eventually, someone will break an NDA. But it might be a long time before we find out what happened with certainty. The whole Storn group (at the correct strategic moment) buys themselves one-way tickets to the Camen islands? Nigeria??? ;-) Nah. That's a naive exit strategy. The people running Steorn can walk away with less money, but also greatly reduced risk. They merely need confine the sheep to a carefully selected group that they shear, and one that is informed about the risk, but simply neglects that as unlikely to fall down, or just wants to gamble.Sean, the 3rd: And what did you do gramps? Sean: Well, grandson, I bilked a lot of gullible people out of millions by staging a sophisticated hoax in at attempt to prove to a bunch of idiots that it's possible to extract blood from a turnip. Enough of these dimwits fell for it that I was able to accumulate a tidy little nest egg for my retirement years, and, oh by the way, fund your college education. So, my grandson, what do you plan on studying when you go to college? Sean, the 3rd: Why, marketing, of course! You got it, actually. However, bilked may not be it. Rather, he set up a speculative investment opportunity for people, under this particular theory: now that you know we don't actually have anything yet -- we might find the magic wand waving technique! but, you know, those stupid physicists say it's impossible -- you have the option of leaving your money in, and as long as our research program can stay open, you'll get payments from the new people buying in. So you can make some money, if it lasts long enough. If it doesn't, well, there is always risk in investment. We hope you will continue to study the information we sent you, and perhaps work on modifications that might find the necessary improvements, but, if not, you can still make a profit. Our early investors have made 150% profit over a few years. If you'd like out, now, you may request your refund, it will be processed and refunded within a month. By the way, your nondisclosure agreement continues to apply according to its terms. What has been revealed to you must be kept in strictest confidence, I'm sure you can understand why. I'd call it clever, in fact. But I don't know that this is the actual plan. It is merely a possible one that includes an exit strategy and which explains just about everything except precisely how this got started, which isn't that important. It may have begun with some sincere investigation of an idea. But it didn't stay that way, they found an opportunity and took it and ran with it.
Re: [Vo]:New hypothesis about what Steorn is up to
At 12:06 PM 12/18/2009, Mauro Lacy wrote: You maintain this business as long as you can, and when things are starting to get murky(really murky) and profits are falling, you suddenly fire all your employeess, close offices, and disappear in your private jet, to have a well deserved recess in your private island. Come to think of it, a perpetual motion machine is the ideal project for these kind of business. And now that the world is turning green, time is ripe. That's right. See, those who collected those salaries, high enough to give them plenty of cash to console them for the eventual loss of their high-paying job as the chief executive, didn't make a profit from investment in the company. They may have invested, themselves, they have a loss on paper, but a net profit, a hefty one, from the salaries. If they sold stock at a profit, knowing it was really worthless, they'd be in trouble as insiders, but if they avoid that, what's to prosecute? If they are careful to avoid fraud that isn't merely hype or puffery, i.e., it isn't outright lying to extract cash or property, there is little risk of prosecution. The danger, though, is if some of those investors don't take it lying down. The scenario described involves some big investors who take large losses. Sometimes if they get pissed, they get even and don't care about the law. I think that Steorn has avoided this, my guess, or one of those investors would have blown the whistle, realizing that they'd been had. I suspect that any large investors know exactly what is going on. It is even possible that Steorn never shuts down, if they manage a transition to selling a real product that actually works, as they have started to do. Depends on exactly how they conduct themselves, how greedy they are, etc.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 03:42 PM 12/18/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: However, bilked may not be it. Rather, he set up a speculative investment opportunity for people, under this particular theory: now that you know we don't actually have anything yet -- we might find the magic wand waving technique! but, you know, those stupid physicists say it's impossible -- you have the option of leaving your money in, and as long as our research program can stay open, you'll get payments from the new people buying in. So you can make some money, if it lasts long enough. That would be a Ponzi scheme. That's against the law, at least in the U.S. If the authorities found out about it they would shut down the company immediately. This would depend on certain details, and, as well, on local law. My sense is that it could be managed so as to not be illegal. Is it legal for them to charge for revealing the reality of the situation? That reality could include investigation of the devices. The leave your investment in option could actually be a reinvestment, i.e., the conversion of a payment for disclosure to an explicit investment in the company, perhaps with preferred stock, which then is paid based on the profits of the company, or perhaps profits within a certain area, such as sales of disclosures. To determine if this would be illegal in the U.S., I'd need to look more carefully at our law. Multilevel marketing, though, runs on a very similar process, and is legal if structured properly.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Advertisement
At 03:46 PM 12/18/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: Sorry, I wasn't clear. Not the end of the ad, but the end of the sequence of damning quotes. But the sequence of quotes takes up most of the ad, and I found the inclusion of the quote from their own jury as the last one in the sequence more than a little surprising. As it happens the last slot is the most memorable with something like this, because they go by so fast, so a lot of viewers will carry away the message that the jury said no-dice; if they've ever heard of Steorn in the past, that'll mean something to them. Notice that scientific jury is in quotes. They don't disclose that they accepted the jury, that they set it up. So it's easily dumped in with the rest of the comments. I.e., knee-jerk rejection by scientists. It's very sophisticated, Stephen, they are setting up certain conclusions, and it only has to work with a few people, if the product they are really selling is disclosure, which costs them nothing but the marketing cost. That sequence is, as I also mentioned (equally unclearly, mea culpa), followed by a quote from a philosopher, and then they close with the single blurb, Get Real, Get Orbo. (Up until the final screen, I was actually wondering if this was a hatchet job done by somebody other than Steorn.) But as to the Get Real thing, so what? The last screen is the kind of garbage we all learn to filter out -- Get Chevy Get a Winston Get Fat, Drink Milk -- just a meaningless image and an assertion you should get one. It provides name recognition and nothing else. The only content of the ad is in the quotes. Nope. Any reader will wonder who is providing them these quotes and why. They will fill in the blanks. There's absolutely nothing positive in it -- the closest they come is a quote from a philosopher about great truths starting as blasphemies (which doesn't seem like it's ideally chosen for an Islamic audience, but what do I know). But that quote is exactly the point. They are painting themselves as blasphemous. They'd like to be, no doubt. The quotes don't paint them as blasphemous, though -- they paint them as dishonest failures. Not quite the same thing! You've completely missed the effect. When people call others blasphemous, they also toss in every possible criticism they can think of. Steorn only presents one piece of actually damning evidence: the jury, and the way they present it, it makes the jury situation look like just more of the same. It's very clever, in fact. I think if you want to understand Steorn, you should start with the assumption that they are very smart and that they know exactly what they are doing. It's safer, in fact, you are less likely to be fooled. You're suggesting it's a Ponzi scheme? So are they paying off early investors? I wasn't aware of any evidence to that effect -- I was aware of no evidence that they'd paid off *any* of their investors. How would you know? Companies trying to develop new technology don't typically pay dividends. They don't pay off early investors, either, or anybody else, until they finally hit their stride in the marketplace. So, it's hard to see how it could be structured as a Ponzi scheme. How would you know? Yes. It's possible that early investors haven't been paid off, that, instead, they see that this is likely to pay them off. Don't assume that the investors are stupid, though some may be. And please notice: the early investors may be officers who are collecting salaries. You don't think that they are paying salaries? On paper, the early investors may lose everything, but, in fact, they might be walking away with fat pockets.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 04:46 PM 12/18/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: -- I think it's unlikely that they're cash positive right now, if we leave cash flow from stock sales off the balance sheet. But, that doesn't really matter much; with repeated rounds of financing, companies can go for years in a cash-negative, money-losing state. With the officers collecting salaries all along the way. There are two basic ways to survive in this situation: loans and investment. Loans are tricky, if a corporation has negative cash flow and failed product launches, my guess is that loans can get difficult to find. But investment can still be managed, if you have something you are doing that is or might be making money. Many of these here assume that this product is Orbo. It might not be, not exactly. It might be peeks at Orbo. And if you don't do anything to seriously upset those who have signed the NDA, the cat doesn't get to jump out of the bag. Thanks for your signing the agreement and for your confidence in us as represented by your $400 payment. As soon as that payment clears, you will get an access code to look at our full disclosure of everything. Let us know what you think when you have looked at it. I'm sorry that you were disappointed in our disclosure. Is there anything there that was contrary to your reasonable expectations? However, we don't want anyone to be disappointed. We require developers to take 30 days to fully review and do not accept termination requests during that period. However, if, after that, you wish to withdraw from being a developer, please let us know within the following 30 days and we will provide to you the termination agreement; upon your signature on that, we will refund your payment in full. As you have provided your signature on the document, your refund will be issued within 60 days as provided in the termination agreement. Thank you for your interest in Orbo. We remind you that all details that were disclosed to you remain completely confidential, and we vigorously enforce the non-disclosure agreement, because confidentiality is the core of necessity at this point. So, they take up to 90 days to return the $400. Meanwhile the mark is highly motivated to remain silent, for sure, knowing that if he breaks the confidentiality agreement, as provided in the original NDA and the termination agreement, the refund will not be issued and, in fact, he may owe more money as liquidated damages, or face a lawsuit. Meanwhile the money is drawing interest if it is put into interest-bearing securities or deposits. Steorn doesn't have to do that, and if Steorn goes backrupt, anyone owed money may be screwed. But if they play it very conservatively, they get three month's interest on $400, or, say, $4.00, enough to pay the costs of running this shell game. But as part of the termination process, they offer an opportunity to become an investor with the money, and they give incentives. The language is such that it appears they are offering investment in the technology, but they make sure that it's pointed out to the mark that even if the technology doesn't work out, because of the basic laws of physics or other nonsense, the now-investor may still make money, and good money. Yes, absolutely, it's a Ponzi scheme, in reality, but probably not, because of the investment-in-technology aspect, not an illegal one. With this device, they have attracted people who might be inclined to believe that over-unity is possible, otherwise they wouldn't bother (other than sheer curiosity, which may trap a few cats as well). If the Orbo investigation is sophisicated enough, the physics of it might be fun. Some people might keep their money in just for that. It's been said that I'm making assumptions. Sure, but probably reasonable ones. However, don't mistake my speculations as to what might be under the NDA covers with assumptions that this is what they are doing. I'm merely pointing out that, from what we see, a very clever and sophisticated and legal scam might be under way. The advertising on al-Jazeera was brilliant. They are taking the most negative material and turning it into a hook. For their target audience, I'd expect it to be very effective. Remember, the ad could fail with 99.99% of the people who see it, who might indeed leave with the impression that Orbo is just plain weird. But they pull the rug out from under critics who respond, in a knee-jerk way, as I've seen on YouTube many times: Obviously you idiots don't realize that what you are doing is completely contrary to the laws of physics. Because obviously they realize that *this will be the opinion of nearly everyone who knows the laws of physics.* By incorporating that into their ad, they create a certain level of rapport with these people, it is a classic trick employed by hypnotists and marketers. Incorporate the possible rejection, then reframe it. -- In the United States, the
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 05:43 PM 12/18/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Mongo want to see a light bulb real soon. No light bulb soon, Mongo send candygram to Sean. Light bulb! Light bulb! Light bulb! Steorn response simple: light bulb. Lights up. What does that mean? Or not. Whatever they think will have the maximum effect on delay. They can create whatever appearance they want. It's not illegal to put on a show and pretend that something is what it is not, unless you collect investment without disclosing that there were deceptive statements made in public to fool competitors or for whatever reason. You don't defraud someone specific, there is no fraud. There is, in most places anyway, no law against fooling the public with deceptive evidence. Or else a lot of politicians would be going to jail. Happens all the time. Not just politicians. Companies advertise products with deceptive advertising as to quality. In some places they can outright lie, in others, they have to be more subtle. Puffery, exaggeration without specifics, is legal almost everywhere. Our product is better than theirs isn't specific, it's not a provable statement either way unless far better specified. Perhaps their product makes a better doorstop. They didn't say what it was better at.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 05:27 PM 12/18/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/18/2009 02:31 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 11:02 PM 12/17/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: Sounds good. But magicians don't usually start by working to convince everyone that they are incompetent liars. That's a label nobody wants to start with. I have experienced the exact opposite. They are very good at starting with that label, they amplify it and play with it. Eh, hold on -- they do it for a few seconds, a few minutes, perhaps more than a few minutes. They patter away, with an ace of hearts glued to the back of their jacket where all can see it, or whatever. But very soon, far sooner than the timeout after which the audience leaves in disgust, they do something which reveals they are monumentally clever after all. These magicians are playing a longer game, to a far wider audience, with a longer attention span. Imagine, instead, a magic show where the magicians did nothing but show tricks that didn't work, or do slight of hand where all could see the hidden card on the back of the hand, or attempted to juggle but dropped the balls -- imagine that they did this for the ENTIRE FIRST HALF of the show. Then there's the intermission. Then, only after the intermission, they show that they can really pull off some fine stunts. Only problem -- the hall's kind of empty at that point, because an awful lot of folks didn't come back after the break. Timing. When is the intermission for Steorn? Is it scheduled? Scheduling one is part of what they might do. We have decided to close all public activites for X months to give us time to focus on blah, blah. We will open a new public demo, which will reveal far more about our technology than has been previously revealed, on [six months away]. That would be a show where the magician started by CONVINCING the audience that he was an incompetent liar. It's been more than seconds, minutes, days -- it's been years -- Steorn has yet to show the clever part. All they've shown is the boobery. What they've shown is that they can continue to attract attention, and that's exactly what they need. ,.. Sure, sure, sure. The bit about magicians is all true. But what makes you think that Steorn fills the bill of a skilled magician? What EVIDENCE is there that anyone at Steorn is competent to pull off any kind of convincing demo of anything? The level of competence required for the convincing demo -- if we allow actual fraud -- is low. I'm sure I could build it, just give me a little money. Hah! Indeed, I'm absolutely sure you could. But, you're not an average Joe off the street. What makes you think anybody at Steorn is as competent as you? Your definition of a low level of competence probably doesn't match most folks'. There are countless people who could build it. You hire one. They have the money to do it, should it be that nobody already involved could do it. There is a hint, by the way, as to what they intend to do, and are doing: they have a product that is pre-announced or something like that. Very low friction bearings. Now, why would you need very-low friction bearings? Only if you have some perpetual motion imitation that needs to run for a long time on inertia or with extremely low power input. Or, alternatively, you have found, or believe you have found, some tiny effect, an energy anomaly. So to demonstrate it, you need a system with extremely low losses. However, if that is all you have, you are nowhere near having found something that can be exploited for power production, for you aren't producing enough power to overcome losses in ordinary bearings. That isn't much power! And suppose their real product is very-low-friction bearings? They would have, with their best demonstration -- which hasn't been rolled out, I suspect -- demonstrated these bearings. They would, when ready, pull off the wraps, disclose the trick, and show what a very low power input was necessary to keep the beastie running. All I'm saying is that thinking of them as just plain stupid and incompetent could be quite premature. There other other explanations, for sure, and it seems to me that some of those explanations are more likely than the incompetent boobs theory. I'm serious here. I have seen no evidence of such competence at Steorn. In the absence of such evidence, I see no reason to believe it's present. Elsewhere you contradict yourself. Here you are using competence as the skill to build a convincing demonstration of nothing, a fraud. But you can hire that competence, at a price that they could clearly afford. Assuming incompetence is all staged, and that more apparent incompetence just proves it's staged better -- well, it's an assumption, and I can't really see any reason for retaining it. It's not an assumption, it's an organizing hypothesis. It explains the behavior so far. Got a better one? But this argument of ours
[Vo]:Steorn hosting new ads, explanation
http://www.steorn.com/ The al-Jazeera ad is there under the Watch the advert button. And Sean describes the technology, sort of, (absolutely no critical details, and the bottom line is, trust us). Very slick. They are claiming that the battery is merely an energy reservoir. That the generator is producing more power than is being used to run the motor. Sean notes that much energy is dissipated as heat in the coils, so he estimates the over-unity ratio as three to one. Entirely possible it will come out later that the claim is that the battery simply doesn't run down as fast as expected. In other words, they aren't doing the supercapacitor substitute for a battery, with a voltage readout showing charging, because there is no charging, we don't quite have the output up to the necessary over-unity level that would show actual increased charge, but our studies show that more energy is being generated, if we include the Joule heating, than is being input from the battery. Nothing is actually is demonstrated, because the devil is completely in the details, details that aren't being shown. What you see is a spinning rotor. So it looks like a demonstration. However, in order to understand the demonstration, one would have to characterize all the components, know the voltages as they vary at many points in the system, look at the currents in every leg, and then do an analysis of power distribution. And there are lots of places to get it wrong. A simple analysis, not complete, would look at the voltage across and current through the coils, where heat is being dissipated. If the rotor rotation is roughly constant, and if it's very low friction, which is expected, then all that movement is a red herring. How much power is being sucked from the battery, and how much power is being dissipated in the coils? If, with constant rotation, the latter is greater than the former, they have a demonstration, at least a first order one. They could easily have shown that: voltage/current display for a supercapacitor replacing the battery, and power consumption of the coil (voltage times current). Because these will be time-variant, it can get a little tricky, if I'm correct, but it's a standard problem. As the rotor turns, there will be increased consumption of power at certain points in the rotation cycle, and increased generation of power at other points, as energy is dumped into rotation and then sucked out. It would be simple to display all this so it could be seen. If they wanted to. Of course, if they could show steady increase in battery/supercapacitor charge, that would be a real demonstration, but is more than over unity. His estimate of three times unity being necessary may be correct. Or does he say that they are getting three times unity. I'm not inclined to watch it again. At a certain point for me, slickness starts to be perceived as sliminess. Yuck. The Orbo noise, er, music, is starting to grate.
Re: [Vo]:Need help with AIP posting
The error message is from the Captcha Turing test. I ran into that too. I may have used the back button? I'm not sure. At 07:17 PM 12/19/2009, you wrote: I deleted the Richard Feynman quote and the blog entry was sent forward for censoring. It will be interesting to see if my one sentence makes it through. On Dec 19, 2009, at 2:19 PM, Horace Heffner wrote: Using: http://blogs.physicstoday.org/newspicks/2009/12/opinion-scientific- integrity.html http://tinyurl.com/y8p69r6 I attempted to post the following: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Richard Feynman concluded his report on the shuttle Challenger accident: For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. It is regrettable the AIP has no enforceable code of ethics, especially one that proscribes unethical censorship by means such as eliminating a brief polite blog statement because it is in conflict with the censor's views, or eliminating brief supporting references or the author's title and degree. Horace Heffner - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I immediately received the following error message: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Comment Submission Error Your comment submission failed for the following reasons: Text entered was wrong. Try again. Return to the original entry. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Anyone know what I did wrong? I did provide my name and email address. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 10:56 PM 12/19/2009, you wrote: A Ponzi scheme is specifically a scheme for allowing *investors* to make money even though the company has no source of income. It's the lure of assured high return on the money which pulls in the investors. In particular, investors who pull out before a Ponzi scheme collapses make a profit. The (very plausible) scheme you describe doesn't earn anything at all for investors which pull out; they just break even. The *only* winners are salaried employees. That's just business as usual in the startup world -- save that in an honest startup, when things start to go sour, the officers often stop drawing salaries, in an effort to bolster cash flow... I wrote that it's a Ponzi scheme as an analogy, not as a literal Ponzi scheme. I've also called Wikipedia a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. Steorn has a source of income: those who pay for access to the technology. That, in fact, is their core business plan, and they have disclaimed any interest in making Orbo products. They also have products: stuff used to test Orbo (or maybe other magnetic devices). I've been reading over the history. Remarkable. There are a lot of details, if you read between the lines. For example, very low-friction bearings are crucial to the technology; they are offering them and they make this statement about them. Now, what does that imply? It implies that if there is any excess energy here, it is very low, and that ordinary bearings aren't good enough. The 2007 demonstration allegedly failed because the special low-friction bearings got fried. Now, if they believe that they have found some anomaly, they may also know that the anomaly is clearly small. Any attempt to extract energy from the rotor, of course, will act to slow down the rotor more than an ordinary bearing would, so what this implies is that they haven't succeeded in scaling up the effect they see or imagine. And that, then, explains their business plan. They aren't going to market practical devices. They are only selling licenses. So if they can convince someone that the anomaly is worth researching, they make their money selling the technology to produce the anomaly, as well as bearings, hall sensors, and torque measurement equipment. Never mind if it's totally impossible to scale it up, whether because it is actually non-existent, is some kind of artifact, or even if it exists. Scaling up cold fusion, as an example, even though the reactions are clearly real, is an entirely different problem, and solving it is really where the money will be, if that happens. Steorn may well know that scaling up is extremely difficult, that is, they do know the effect is very small, or they would not be stating how important ultra low friction bearings are to Orbo. And then that means that when they talk enthusiastically about applications, powering cars with Orbo, etc., they are truly blowing smoke, pure speculation. And if you read the licensing info that they have, you'll discover that a whole series of applications aren't available for commercial licensing, including automotive applications. If you become a developer, the cheapest license, apparently, you gain no rights at all, you can't market what you develop. Interesting model, if I've read it right. So: they ask for a scientific jury, they get, they claim, a thousand applications, they send out contracts to a few and end up with over twenty scientist for the jury. There is some rumor I came across that Michael McKubre was on the jury And then, after something like three years, the jury announces that it is quitting, that Steorn had not shown any evidence of energy production. And Steorn doesn't exactly announce that. They announce that they understand why the members of the jury were frustrated, but now Steorn has solved the problems and will be going ahead. And then they use this jury that they picked in their ad, lumping it in with knee-jerk rejection. It's highly deceptive. Today there was a talk by Sean on the technology and the demonstration. He showed an oscilloscope display of the coil voltage and current, and claimed that the traces showed the absence of back EMF, and that therefore all the battery power was going into Joule heating, and that therefore the rotation was entirely free energy. There is an immediate YouTube rebuttal up that shows another motor, similar concept, with a hall sensor that pulses the coil voltage, and he showed that the lack of variation of voltage and current with rotor velocity was totally normal for a pulse motor. In other words, the demonstration, even with some instrumentation, was pure smoke.
RE: [Vo]:Steorn toroids
At 07:39 AM 12/20/2009, Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. wrote: Electrical engineers should immediately understand the implications of toroid and no back EMF. I'd think so. Now, what would you say about the rebuttal video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF0PdJn984s
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 10:03 AM 12/20/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/20/2009 12:22 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 10:56 PM 12/19/2009, you wrote: A Ponzi scheme is specifically a scheme for allowing *investors* to make money even though the company has no source of income. It's the lure of assured high return on the money which pulls in the investors. In particular, investors who pull out before a Ponzi scheme collapses make a profit. The (very plausible) scheme you describe doesn't earn anything at all for investors which pull out; they just break even. The *only* winners are salaried employees. That's just business as usual in the startup world -- save that in an honest startup, when things start to go sour, the officers often stop drawing salaries, in an effort to bolster cash flow... I wrote that it's a Ponzi scheme as an analogy, not as a literal Ponzi scheme. I've also called Wikipedia a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. In conversation with other parties who are not intimately familiar with your particular use of language, it's good to stick to standard definitions. Using Ponzi scheme to describe Wikipedia is a solecism, to put it politely. Language is used for communication, and that's a process which involves more than one party. If the sender of the message takes total responsibility, it can take a long time. If it's a cooperative effort, it can be much more efficient. Please consider that I have extensive experience with Wikipedia. As Wikipedian's go, it's no great shakes, about 14,000 edits, as I recall. I mean something by calling Wikipedia a Ponzi scheme. What could that possibly be? Words have meaning only to the extent that the members of the culture in which they're used agree to that meaning. Words have meaning as used and as heard. I'm communicating interculturally, in any sense. Hey, what's your culture? Care to specify it? But does it matter. Was I writing for you? I was responding, but I use language for my reader, not necessarily for my subject. If you insist on fixed meanings, you deny poetry and a host of other efficient communications, which involve the interplay of meanings. The way you're using these words is not correct according to that agreed meaning. The way you are thinking is not correct according to a deeper understanding of language. You can take Ponzi or leave it. Seems you would prefer to leave it. I'm fine with that. This leads directly to confusion and misunderstanding, and eventually to the suspicion that you are using Ponzi scheme as a synonym for bad. Well, you may suspect that, but it's not true. I stated it was an analogy. That means that it need only match the application in one sense, it could be incorrect in many others. Were I writing an academic article, I'd be very careful. I'm not. Both Ponzi scheme and pyramid scheme have standard definitions, and they should be used in accordance with those definitions in public discussions, unless you are intentionally trying to cloud the issues. Neither Steorn nor Wikipedia is either a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. According to the authority. Pyramid scheme is definitely applicable to Wikipedia. How, I'll leave as an exercise for anyone who understands Wikipedia, how it works, and how it is breaking down. Note, applicable means that there is an analogy, that the comparison is useful. Not that Wikipedia is collecting money, the scheme isn't much about money, it's about investments of editor labor and what happens to them. ... There are a lot of details, if you read between the lines. For example, very low-friction bearings are crucial to the technology; they are offering them and they make this statement about them. Now, what does that imply? It implies that if there is any excess energy here There isn't. Why do I feel like I'm swimming in molasses?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 10:10 AM 12/20/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/19/2009 06:25 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Further, we know that they can produce something more interesting. I don't think Hoyt is lying. Do you? No, Hoyt's not lying. But Hoyt has been lied to and has apparently been taken in by them (sorry, Hoyt, that's what I see). That's irrelevant. Hoyt is proof that they can produce something interesting. I didn't say that it was real. I would guess that if what he saw under the NDA was the same as what we have all seen, those who have nosed around the site and associated web pages, etc., then he would quite likely not feel as he apparently does. I see no evidence in anything Hoyt has said that they Steorn can do anything more interesting than what they've done. He says they SAY they can do better but he hasn't quite seen the good stuff actually working. Hoyt is as valid a judge of interesting as any of us. Don't confuse interesting with valid. Interesting isn't strictly a product of a thing or condition, it is a relationship between such and an observer. From Steorn, it's just lies, lies, lies, and that's all. Ah, but such interesting lies, and that's quite obvious. Are they paying all of us to talk about them? They paid the jury, not us.
Re: [Vo]:Falsifiability of cold neutrons in LENR
At 05:19 PM 12/22/2009, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:29:37 -0500: Some of the alphas, statistically, would be hot enough to induce secondary reactions as well. (Which comes first, the photon emissions or the fission?) [snip] Be8 has a very short half life. I would expect an excited state to have an even shorter half-life (a lot shorter). Therefore I would expect the fission to occur first. However perhaps energy is radiated from the complex while it is shrinking? I don't think so, as to radiation while condensing. However, Takahashi has covered the expected radiation after fusion, in an earlier publication. First, though, looking for the earlier paper, I'll quote this as an explanation of the process, from a 2007 paper. http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2007/2007TakahashiA-TheoreticalSummary.pdf In Fig. 3, TSC will form in the near surface region of condensed matter by the mechanism (A) or mechanism (B) as discussed in Session 2, with certain probability depending on methods of experiments and near-surface physics of condensed matter: Step 1 (TSC forms). Then TSC starts Newtonian squeezing motion to decrease linearly its size from about 100 pm radius size to much smaller size and reaches at the minimum size state: Step 2 (minimum TSC). Classical squeezing motion ends when four deuterons get into the strong force range (5 fm) and/or when four electrons get to the Paulis limit (about 5.6 fm for ee distance). Here for the Paulis limit, we used the classical electron radius of 2.8 fm, which is determined by equating the static Coulomb energy (e2/Re) and the Einsteins mass energy (mec2) to obtain Re = e2/mec2 = 2.8 fm; classical electron radius. (16) Since the range of strong interaction (about 5 fm) is comparable to the classical electron diameter (5.6 fm), as shown in Fig.3(2), the intermediate nuclear compound state 8Be* will be formed just after the minimum size state (overminimum state); Step 3: 8Be* formation. Immediately at this stage, 4d-cluster shrinks to much smaller size (about 2.4 fm radius) of 8Be* nucleus, and four electrons should go outside due to the Paulis repulsion for fermions. Shortly in about few fs or less (note; Lifetime of 8Be at ground state is 0.67 fs), 8Be* will break up to two 4He particles, each of which carries 23.8 MeV kinetic energy; Step 4: Break up. It will take about 60 fs from about 100 pm initial size of TSC to its minimum size about 10 fm. About 60 fs is regarded as rough measure of TSC lifetime for this very transient squeezing motion. Takahashi gives very strong arguments as to why the hypothesis of direct d-d fusion to He-4 is implausible. In any case, I found the page I'd seen where I got the idea that Takahashi is proposing loss of Be-8 excitation energy through photons. His more recent papers, as far as I saw, don't mention this, but I don't see a discussion, either, of the rejection of the idea. However, http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/TakahashiAdeuteronst.pdf, a presentation from ICCF 13 (2007), has a copy of a diagram from his earlier paper, which is from Fusion Technology (1994), see page 36 of the linked paper. In the extreme scenario, the final products are two alpha particles with 46.6 keV each, and most energy (47.7 MeV) is transferred to lattice vibration via QED photons. He then predicts a series of energies will be found, ranging from the minimum all the way up to the full 23.8 MeV that would be expected to result from immediate decay. And he states, after this, that quantitative studies on transition probabilities will be needed. Apparently Takahashi thinks, contrary to what Robin suggests, that photon emissions are possible in the lifetime of the Be-8 nucleus, before it breaks up. He does not predict the ratios, only the values expected for He-4 energies.
[Vo]:American Chemical Society LENR session in March?
I see that Jan Marwan is scheduled with a symposium on New Energy Technologies at the ACS meeting in San Francisco in March. Any clues?
RE: [Vo]:query for opinions re: video from steorn waterways
At 09:02 PM 12/23/2009, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: Esa, Both vimeo videos came through clean for me. Looks great. Iphone... Good! If you get the chance, could you personally ask someone like Tachoman why Steorn didn't design the ORBO demo device around a high functioning capacitor, as compared to the battery currently used. I think it would really be interesting to get their explanation recorded and then uploaded to a server like vimeo. The demonstration didn't have the generator. In other words, it wasn't a demonstration of the supposed technology that the videos show as a diagram. They were making no attempt to measure the energy stored or provided to the rotor. Nothing quantititative at all except a *claim* that the system was running at 300% efficiency. If it were that high, one would think it easy to make it self-charge. I rather doubt it, to say the least. Otherwise why the great concern for very low friction bearings? You put a generator on that rotor and it's going to have a lot more drag than any reasonable bearing would produce, the bearing drag would become irrelevant. Just a suggestion. :-) Inquiring minds want to know! One has to assume that Steorn has been reading skeptical commentary. Surely many skeptics have also complained about Steorn's use of the battery. On the surface it seems to be a big strike against Steorn's claims that the device proves it is a functional OU demonstration. Or has Steorn already given an explanation. If so, can someone direct me to the source? I don't really see that they are claiming proof. It's just a showing of the technology, with hints. Here is what I derive from the hints and discussion at the Village of the Banned and elsewhere. Note that I don't have necessarily the right terminology. They have a rotor with four permanent magnets arrange at each ninety degree position, pole outward radially. They have four toroid electromagnets with a core that will attract the permanent magnets. When a current flows in the toroid, the core loses its attractiveness to the permanent magnets. By timing the current flow, they can preserve the attraction that accelerates the rotor, while eliminating the attraction that would be a drag. The issue is how much energy it takes to turn off the attraction. The claim that the energy of the battery is entirely dissipated as heat is crucial. If that is true, where is the energy accelerating the rotor coming from? Note that the battery is *not* creating a magnetic field that is attracting the permanent magnets, i.e., this isn't the usual electric motor arrangement. Rather, the battery is quenching the attractiveness of the toroid core. I find it fascinating that this seems to be common knowledge or opinion among those of the Banned. I.e., those who have been closely following this. It seems that Steorn may have revealed the anomaly they are talking about. It would be an alleged mismatch between the energy dissipated in the toriods and the acceleration of the rotor. The user Alsetalokin on http://www.moletrap.co.uk/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=552page=1#Item_0, who has a YouTube video that shows how a permanent magnet is attracted to a core, and when the toriod is connected to a battery, the permanent magnet drops. It makes no difference which way the battery is connected. Someone here probably can describe this far better. But I've got, now, an idea of how Orbo is supposed to work. Highly skeptical, I remain. Here is where I think the problem lies. Yes, the current in the toroid, while the magnetic field is constant, and current is constant, is resulting entirely in heat. However, the inductance of the toroid will resist changes in current. Extra work is done to set up the magnetic field initially, the field that neutralizes the attractiveness of the core to the permanent magnets. That is *not* dissipated as heat, it is stored in the field energy. I'm way outside my field, so to speak, so please forgive the language and possible weakness of understanding. But I haven't seen anyone but Alsetalokin discussing this, and even that was oblique, I haven't seen an explicit description of the operating technology.
Re: [Vo]:query for opinions re: video from steorn waterways
At 10:51 PM 12/23/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: As I understand it, they are not claiming that the motor being demonstrated is OU in the sense of more *mechanical* energy out than electrical energy in. Yes. The electrical energy is entirely being dissipated as heat, they claim, it is not accelerating the rotor. I think they are deceiving themselves. Or others or both. But at least we now have an idea of the claim. Rather, they are claiming that it is a unique design which has no (electromagnetic) back EMF, with voltage drop and current both independent of load, and that, in fact, all input power goes into resistive heating of the coils. What they are doing is turning of the attractiveness of the core. Alsetalokin says this: In the Orbo, the coil's field per se does not contribute to the rotor motion directly since it is mostly trapped in the toroidal core, and there is no repulsive modality active (except for the slight coil and lead leakage fields).) EDIT @LC note that this also explains your oscillations. The magnets are attracted to the cores, not the winding's field, so when the power is OFF the thing cogs strongly, and when the power is ON the rotor is freewheeling. From user Angus repeating Alsetalokin: the motor works by switching off the attraction of a magnet to a ferrite by saturating the ferrite. It's not new, (US Pat 5,327,112) , but is perhaps new in a motor? Instead of using the electromagnet to generate force you use it to turn off force - a kind of inside out affair. Back to Stephen: Consequently, the mechanical energy which comes out (and which also eventually turns into heat, but that's beside the point) is all free, as a result of which *total* energy out (mechanical + resistive heat) is larger than the electrical energy in. However, whether their claim is true or not, the fact remains that the battery's energy is being dissipated, and a supercap, with smaller capacity than the battery, would just run down faster. That is, at least, the obvious conclusion. Until they put a generator on the rotor. That's when a supercap would be appropriate, and would demonstrate the effect if it exists and the losses aren't too great. Anyhow that's my take on their claim, and the reasoning behind demonstrating the motor with the battery as though it is something more than just a motor run by a battery. They didn't really explain it, which I find odd in itself. Some of the snarkier folks at VOTB have observed that Steorn's claim that all electrical energy goes into heat could be interpreted to mean their motor is essentially 0% efficient, and that they are spinning this to claim its efficiency is greater than 100%. Be that as it may, it's interesting. There are a lot of criticisms which are completely off. For if it were true that the battery power were going entirely into heat, the motor would certainly be over-unity, so that snarkier person was blowing smoke. However, it only takes a small fraction of the battery power pumping that magnetic field, turning it on and off, if that energy ends up in angular momentum of the rotor, to make the motor obey conservation of energy. If that's the case, then there is no way to extract enough energy from the rotation to keep up the charge on the battery or capacitor.
Re: [Vo]:query for opinions re: video from steorn waterways
One thing should be kept in mind. Steorn claims that it noticed an anomaly. It has never described the exact nature of the anomaly, not publicly. Thus much of the criticism is simply an assertion that an anomaly is impossible. Steorn quite directly confronts this, with a truth: anomalies are not expected through accepted physics. The business plan of Steorn, though, is to keep the anomaly secret and sell the secret. They thus avoid direct and cogent and open criticism of the experimental work that underlies their years of confident claims. We are left with three hypotheses. 1. They are total scam artists, there is no basis for believing that over-unity is possible, what they found wasn't an actual anomaly, and they know it, it was rather something that can be made to appear to be an anomaly, through sufficient obfuscation. 2. They believe there is an anomaly, and they actually found one. They are concealing the information for publicity purposes. They are aware that the funding necessary to create a practical application from the anomaly is greater than they could manage with existing capital. Besides, it's possible that, for some reason, the anomaly isn't actually practical, and they don't want to be on the losing side of that possibility. They want to shove that risk off to bigger pockets. With a real anomaly, they have figured out how to make money even if it isn't practically useful. 3. The anomaly is an artifact, a result of an incomplete understanding of the physics involved and how to measure the energy balances. Steorn is pursuing an approach designed to maximize their profit while minimizing their risks. For example, consider possibility three. What is Steorn selling? Two things: Disclosure, and a set of products. Products for what? Investigating the anomaly! There is a similarity to my own business plan, except for one thing: I'm totally disclosing everything, from the start. What I will be selling is not disclosure, that's free. It's simple products for investigating the known (or believed) anomalies involved in cold fusion experiments, starting with a codeposition experiment optimized for low cost and neutron detection, basically reproducing the Galileo protocol (or a close analog), which was designed by SPAWAR. However, the nature of the alleged Orbo anomaly has become more visible. They are using the effect of a toroidal coil on a ferrite core to control the attraction of permanent magnets on a rotor to the core, which attraction, when the ferrites are open, will cause rotary motion, but which, without the control, will cog. Now, we can look at that configuration and expect no energy gain, but we are assuming that there is no anomaly. Until we see evidence for an anomaly, that's rational. The only evidence we have (those of us who haven't received the disclosure) is Steorn's confident assertion of things like over-unity, to a ratio of three. I.e., with so much power used to flip the ferrite state, they are gaining double that power in the rotor. If this were true, however, why the need for very-low-friction bearings? Where is the pudding? Still in their fridge. Where it's been for years. And we know enough about Steorn, from what has come down, what's in the record (there is lots of stuff on the Village of the Banned site), that they are deceptive, they have actually admitted it at one point. (I.e., that they released misleading information in order to lead possible Men in Black astray.) They have suppressed or reframed negative information. For example, they recruited a jury, named it, and supposedly provided the jury with evidence. The jury concluded, apparently after being frustrated by lack of full disclosure, or, alternatively, with the shallowness of what was disclosed, that there was no reason to believe there was an anomaly. They then used this jury conclusion as if it were some outside jury of scientists with their minds fogged by conventional theory. And they eliminated the earlier references to how the jury was formed and the history. In other words, I trust them not in the least. Not because of conventional physics, but because of how they have behaved. Which anyone can discover with a little digging.
[Vo]:Thermonuclear indeed inaccurate.
Original subject was Re: [Vo]:Krivit Elsevier Encyclopedia Articles Publish At 06:08 PM 12/24/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Steven Krivit wrote: On 23 March 1989, electrochemists M. Fleischmann and S. Pons claimed in a press conference at the University of Utah that they had achieved nuclear fusion . . . Their hypothesis that a novel form of thermonuclear fusion was responsible for their experimental results is still unproved. I don't get this. I don't think Fleischmann and Pons ever claimed this is fusion caused by heat (thermo-nuclear fusion). Or anything remotely like plasma fusion. The only people who said that were the skeptics. I misread Jed's comment at first. He's correct, more or less. The key word is thermonuclear. Nuclear reactions caused by heat. Extreme heat. However, see below, Fleischmann claimed an effective pressure of 10^27 atmospheres. That's equivalent to heat, at least in some ways. So it may not be worth recalling the encyclopedia and, of course, the publication is good news, one more nail in the coffin of mindless rejection. If the skeptics are going to prevail, they will have to get off their duffs and out of their armchairs, escape the nursing home, and do some actual research and get it published. They might not find it easy to stuff this cold fusion zombie back in its grave. It's got legs and teeth. The suggestion that LENR research represented a new form of thermonuclear fusion has caused significant confusion. This suggestion was a strawman argument by the skeptics intended to cause confusion. No cold fusion researcher has made this suggestion as far as I know. I hope the rest of the article makes this clear. It is and was blatantly obvious that the reaction isn't thermonuclear, not even on a very small scale, as with possible fractofusion or sonofusion, because of the lack of heavy neutron radiation. (Very low level neutron radiation can be explained by secondary reactions or rare pathways.) It would seem that the use of thermonuclear there was an error. Some of what Fleischmann and Pons said was supportive of a quasi-thermonuclear explanation (i.e., very high pressure) and some wasn't. Whatever this discovery was, it wasn't simple thermonuclear reactions, and that was blatantly obvious. It was something new (or at least, not previously recognized). From the press conference (http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/reports/UUtahPressConferenceTranscript.shtml): Pons: weve established a sustained nuclear fusion reaction by means by means which are considerably simpler than conventional techniques. Deuterium, which is a component of heavy water is driven into a metal rod similar ... exactly like the one that I have in my hand here under to such an extent that fusion between these components, these deuterons in heavy water, are fused to from a single new atom. And with this process there is a considerable release of energy and we have demonstrated this could be sustained on its own. In other words, much more energy is coming out than were putting in. Fleischmann: It is very simple, you drive the deuterons into the lattice, you compress the deuterons in the lattice and under those circumstances we have found the conditions where fusion takes place and can be sustained indefinitely. Now, indefinitely is an emotive word, we have run experiments for hundreds of hours and on our timescale that is a pretty long time. Pons: OK, as far as ... direct measurements well first of all, the heat that we then measure can only be accounted for by ... nuclear reactions. The the heat is so intense that it cannot be explained by any chemical process that ... is known. The other evidence is of course that we have direct measurements of neutrons by measuring the ... gamma radiation which builds up in a tank where one of these cells is under operation. We can measure have a gamma ray spectrum of the ... neutrons as they interact with the water to form a gamma ray and and another deuterium atom in the water ... in addition -- there is a build up of tritium ... in the ... in the cell which we measure with a scintillation counter. But I can easily forgive the thermonuclear impression. Fleischmann ascribed the reaction to very high compression. Fleischmann: If you apply if you drive the deuterons into the lattice with an electric field at the interface, then you achieve a very high compression. If you tried to achieve the same compression by ... compressing deuterium gas, D2, the isotopic equivalent of Hydrogen gas, H2, then you would need between 1026 and 1027 atmospheres of pressure to achieve the same compression of the deuterons in the lattice as we can achieve in our sophisticated test tube (audience laughter) and it is that, we believe, which is the crucial factor in achieving fusion at room temperature. He's unlikely to have been right, certainly in terms of bulk
Re: [Vo]:Krivit Elsevier Encyclopedia Articles Publish
At 06:24 PM 12/25/2009, Steven Krivit wrote: Fleischmann, M., et al., Electrochemically Induced Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Vol. 261, Issue 2, Part 1, p. 301-308 (April 10, 1989) and errata in Vol. 263, p. 187-188, (1989) In view of the very high compression and mobility of the dissolved species there must therefore be a significant number of close collisions and one can pose the question: would nuclear fusion of D+ such as 2D + 2D 3T(1.01 MeV) + 1H(3.02 MeV) (v) or 2D + 2D 3He(0.82 MeV) + n(2.45 MeV) (vi) be feasible under these conditions? Yeah. Very high compression and mobility is somewhat of a proxy for very high temperature. But not exactly. Thermonuclear fusion would refer to fusion taking place because of the high energy of the nuclei, allowing them to overcome the Coulomb barrier by sheer momentum. High compression and mobility, absent the high nuclear velocities, would increase the number of potential collisions and possibly reveal some tunneling or shielding effect. No idea was expressed, in the news conference or this article, that high temperature was the cause of the apparent nuclear reaction. And that is what thermonuclear means. Webster's on-line dictionary defines thermonuclear as: of, relating to, or employing transformations in the nuclei of atoms of low atomic weight (as hydrogen) that require a very high temperature for their inception You wrote, if I'm correct, in the encyclopedia article: Their hypothesis that a novel form of thermonuclear fusion was responsible for their experimental results is still unproved. As the introduction to the article, the text quoted above from them explains the question that they were researching. They were looking for evidence of those reactions. Now, oddly, they didn't find that evidence. They found something else, heat without the levels of tritium and neutron radiation which those reactions are known to produce. The conditions were not thermonuclear. After they have presented their experimental results, they state: We realise that the results reported here raise more questions than they provide answers, and that much further work is required on this topic. The observation of the generation of neutrons and of tritium from electrochemically compressed D+ in a Pd cathode is in itself a very surprising result and, evidently, it is necessary to reconsider the quantum mechanics of electrons and deuterons in such host lattices. In particular we must ask: is it possible to achieve a fusion rate of 10-19 s-l for reactions (v) and (vi) for clusters of deuterons (presumably located in the octahedral lattice positions) at typical energies of 1 eV? at typical energies of 1 eV That means *not* thermonuclear. It means at low temperatures. High density, low temperatures. This article does not support the text that claims that their hypothesis was a novel form of thermonuclear fusion. We must say that they were claiming fusion, yes, that was laced through what they wrote, though they were aware that too little was known to really come up with something solid. I don't see that they proposed a mechanism, and a thermonuclear reaction would be very unlikely (from, perhaps, fractofusion?), wouldn't explain the experimental results, and the question they were asking was what could happen at low energies (temperatures), not high.
Re: [Vo]:Krivit Elsevier Encyclopedia Articles Publish
At 08:24 PM 12/25/2009, you wrote: I do not want to make too big a deal about this, by the way. I think thermonuclear is technically inaccurate in this context but broadly speaking, taken to mean conventional, known, plasma fusion reactions then Steve is right. This hypothesis has dogged the field. I do not think Fleischmann and Pons proposed that hypothesis but someone reading their first paper might have gotten that impression. I agree with this. That 1989 paper did not actually propose those reactions as a hypothesis, but the writing was obscure and it could certainly look like that. As I said, I wish they had inserted the caveat Pons introduced a few months later, in his testimony. They had been thinking about this subject for a long time and they are not fools, so I am sure they knew long before they published that this cannot be a normal fusion reaction. Charles Beaudette told me that the paper was written in haste. Perhaps it was the best they could do in a short time. There were a number of sloppy errors corrected in the next issue of the journal so evidently it was written in a hurry. I do not recall why. Perhaps to ensure priority because of the showdown with Steve Jones. Yeah, seems possible. We have a technical term for situations like this. Mess. Regarding the hypothesis that extreme pressure causes the reaction, that is discussed in the Congressional testimony referenced above, and in Mizuno's book. I think people still take that hypothesis seriously. It is difficult to discuss this or any other scientific subject in a congressional hearing because you have to be 100% honest and not condescending, but at the same time you cannot use the kind of detailed technical language Mizuno uses in his book, and you have to say everything in a few minutes. Pons did his best, saying: On the next slide, we point out that if, indeed, you would try to -- if you were to try to obtain that same voltage by the compression of hydrogen gas to get that same chemical potential of .8 volts, you would have to exert a hydrostatic pressure of a billion, billion, billion atmospheres, tremendously high pressure. That's an interesting statement, since Fleischmann mentioned, in the press conference, 10^27 atmospheres as the equivalent pressure to the conditions attained in the lattice. A billion, billion, billion. And, further, we see -- or the point here is that also these pressures -- or certainly these pressures, absolute hydrostatic pressures, are not attained inside the metal lattice. The dissolution of this material, these atoms going to these ions inside the lattice, represents a very high energy process, and it is not very well understood. . . . Taubes claims that Fleischmann had made a calculation error with the 10^27 figure. Has Fleischmann written about this, later? Fleischmann was really writing about compression, i.e., resulting density, not pressure, per se. But 10^27 is still vastly too high. What did he have in mind?
Re: [Vo]:JL-naudin replicates current Steorn Orbo (Dec) demo
At 06:00 AM 12/28/2009, William Beaty wrote: Rather than focusing on some perhaps-unexpected measurement, just close the loop. Ditch the battery. Make a perpetual wheel. Close the loop. If it's real, then closing the loop should be easy. If it's an artifact which misleads FE-enthusiasts, then closing the loop will be impossible. But there is the tantalizing middle. They find that they almost close the loop. So they think that they are actually over unity, but with losses that maybe with better engineering they can fix. All it takes is more money. But this is the real and present tipoff: their development of extremely low-friction bearings. That is an abandonment of over-unity and indicates a desire to become ever more and more sensitive, allowing more spectacular demonstrations where a tiny effect is accumulated. But given so much energy being dumped into heat, in the end, it only takes a tiny, tiny fraction of that to be coupled into rotor motion instead, very difficult to detect, if you have a very low-friction rotor which won't lose heat there. So much, though, for actually generating power, which will immediately dump much rotor energy into heat again. Calorimetry would show the overall problem, but, of course, doing really accurate calorimetry is difficult. Much easier to make a roter spin fast and claim that the energy for that is free, that the battery is only generating heat, that none of this cycling of the magnetic field is accelerating the rotor. Though it obviously is. They claim there is no energy going there, but that hasn't actually been shown except by a gross and coarse display that would completely miss the tiny amount of energy expenditure necessary to make that rotor accumulate angular momentum.
Re: [Vo]:JL-naudin replicates current Steorn Orbo (Dec) demo
At 08:58 PM 12/29/2009, William Beaty wrote: On Tue, 29 Dec 2009, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: But there is the tantalizing middle. They find that they almost close the loop. You're giving them the benefit of the doubt. Count how many times you have to do that! It's very telling. Their acting very Newman-esque and using a battery? Rather than using a five dollar supercapacitor? They're either insane, or they're scammers. I've already concluded that they are a variation on the latter. But there is a *possibility*, I'm pointing out, that they are sincere. Still unethical, but that they believe they just need to get some more money to fix this or that, and that this justifies withholding the critical information. The critical information is *why* they believe they have overunity, or, in fact, why they believe that they have any evidence at all of excess energy. What they showed us, quite simply, didn't reveal that. Come on, they looked at some oscilloscope traces and they looked okay? The amount of energy that would need to be dumped to rotation would be quite small compared to the heat, as if the toroids were resistive loads. But, as I recall, I saw some ringing. So they think that they are actually over unity, but with losses that maybe with better engineering they can fix. All it takes is more money. If they're insane, then they'll talk themselves into using a battery and never actually try a supercap, even in private. They'll have all sorts of important reasons why they cannot ever try a supercap. Oh, and by insane, I mean the same as fooling themselves. There is a threshold past which the self-fooing becomes a complete break with reality. I don't think they are simply fooling themselves, I think they got led into a situation where they needed to fool others. Do they know that the whole thing is bogus? How could they *know* that? They'd have to do much more careful work, and they are too busy marketing what they have: a concept, not engineering to *actually work*, just an idea that there is some anomaly here, and they want to see you the anomaly. You can figure out how to use it, not their business, they are in the business of selling you the idea and some of the equipment you'd use to test it. That way, they make money whether there is anything real here or not. Quite a business concept, actually. I'm even doing something a *little* like it, except that I'm fully disclosing everything. I don't have any supersecret idea, I'm trying to sell kits to replicate a SPAWAR experiment. In theory, I could make money even if SPAWAR is bogus, though it would be more difficult. I could sell you the kits to show that it doesn't work. (But the problem is, how would I know that my kit wasn't missing some critical feature, some parameter that I varied, perhaps without realizing it?) I can say this: if I can't get the kits to work, i.e., to show radiation evidence, I might still sell them, but with that disclosure and all the associated caveats. Maybe somebody else could figure out the missing link. Quite simply, I have a few thousand dollars in this, and I could get most of it back by selling my stuff for other applications. I have no intention of putting myself in a position where I'd have to lie or deceive in order to escape with my shirt on. I'd rather eke it out on social security, I'd sleep better.) Were you here when Doctor Stiffler was presenting his LED overunity device? One of his odd behaviors was, rather than just sitting down and honestly demonstrating his claims, and always sticking with straight un-twisted discussions, he claimed to be making youtube postings to mess with the heads of skeptics. Steorn made a claim like that about one of their prior announcements. It was to lead the Men in Black astray. In that case, nobody knew which of his videos were hoaxes intended to mislead skeptics, and which were honest experiments. Steorn mentioned doing something similar. You noticed. But this is the real and present tipoff: their development of extremely low-friction bearings. That is an abandonment of over-unity and indicates a desire to become ever more and more sensitive, allowing more spectacular demonstrations where a tiny effect is accumulated. Definitely! That's the Newman fallacy: pretending that a whirling massive flywheel represents a huge energy output. With low-friction bearings, you can spin a fairly large wheel for months using just a few 10s of cc of battery volume. That's how the fake PM machine sculpture built by David Jones of Nature journal accomplished its feat. (I replaced those hidden batteries myself more than once over the years.) Yeah. Classic. I've been reading Park's Voodoo Science. He makes, of course, some crucial errors, he fails to understand and apply his own advice. But he's also right about some stuff. Some of the scams he reports on were truly cheeky. And he seems
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Replication
At 12:14 PM 12/30/2009, Craig Haynie wrote: Here are two more replications: The first link shows no apparent current increase as the speed of the rotor picks up, and tends to really display the effect that is perplexing all of these people. http://www.youtube.com/user/m1a9r9s9#p/u/2/nDABKqdB538 You have got to be kidding. He uses a 5 amp analog meter to show a stated operating current, coil turned on, of 100 mA. It's hardly visible. The demonstration shows the claimed basic effect, which is a no-brainer: switching on the toroid current quenches the magnetic attraction toroid core for the permanent magnets mounted on the rotor. Thus the rotor accelerates. Where does the energy being stored in the rotor angular momentum come from? The demonstration is unable to show if there is any significant increase or decrease in current. It's just an analog meter, and way, way too insensitive. Further, I would not expect, even with a more sensitive meter, any visible change in current as the rotor speed varies, except when it gets very slow, you would see the coil current switching on and off. Rather, the key to the effect is the transitions. It is the switching of the response of the toroid to the permanent magnets that produces the acceleration of the rotor. Steady-state on, the rotor is freewheeling. Constant current, independent of rotor speed. Steady-state off, likewise, no effect on current (zero) from rotor speed. It's crazy to expect a visible change in steady-state current from rotor speed. But it is the transitions that are the issue. What happens during transition? It is during this time that an interaction between rotor velocity and current exists. Basically, the electronics, such as they are, are switching on and off a response to a magnetic field. This takes energy. Standard overall theory would predict that the energy it takes is greater than or equal to, but never less than, the energy increase in the rotor. And, since the energy it takes to accelerate a rotor like that, slowly, is quite small compared to the power consumption of the coil, it only takes a small jolt, each time the magnet passes the coil, to cause acceleration. And then this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGPRoHgz8Rw Nice demo. Notice the neon bulb lighting up, apparently with each shutdown of current to the coil. That's back-emf, as he notes. Lots of it, the bulb is a voltage-limiter, I'd expect, what, 65V? Notice that the bearing isn't low friction, the rotor slows down when the current is shut off. That high back-EMF will be associated with a current spike. That current spike, forgive me if I'm wrong, could cause a reversed magnetic field, to repel the permanent magnet as it moves away from the core. In any case, to show that there is some anomaly here would take far more sophisticated instrumentation, and might even be very difficult, since the amount of energy necessary to produce the observed acceleration is much less than what is being dumped through the coil with each cycle. It would only take a small effect, such as the repulsion I mention as a possibility, to cause acceleration. And I'm not satisfied with this explanation of mine. The basic cause of the acceleration is the attraction of the permanent magnet for the core. That attraction is switched off by the electronics, at a critical time, presumably the ideal point to switch it off is as the rotor magnet passes the ferrite core. how much power does it take to switch off the ferrite's attraction? Apparently quite a lot, and it must stay off for the entire time until the magnet begins to approach the next attractive core. This seems horribly inefficient, but that's beside the point. I've seen no evidence or analysis that actually considers the obviously relevant effects. The claim of no back EMF is obviously wrong. If I'm correct, they had a clamping diode in the Steorn demo to dump the back EMF current, back to the battery, providing a minor recovery of energy. Hand-waving. Suppose you have a magnet in your hand and you wave it. Wave it at the right time, and you could accelerate the rotor. But that process, action vs. reaction, would cause drag on your hand-waving. Not necessarily much, it might be imperceptible with each wave. But it only needs to be just a little to cause rotor acceleration. It is the high inefficiency, in fact, that makes it difficult to detect and measure the effect.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Replication
At 12:15 PM 12/30/2009, Harry Veeder wrote: Here is the same unit turned by hand http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xungPOZtIo Setting aside the issue of over unity or free energy, what does the 'zero' meter reading mean ? a violation lenz law? a faulty meter? or meter leads located at the wrong place? It means a 5 A meter being used to show a 100 mA steady-state current. Look at the label on the meter! It looks to me like the current might not even be 100 mA, I didn't see any change at all, but I might have overlooked it. I wasted enough time looking at that demo as it was. Like, duh! I get it! Steorn is running a school to teach people how to make totally stupid demonstrations that obfuscate the issues. It could be quite a useful skill, if you are planning on working on over-unity devices. I'm sure that there are lots of people wanting to know how they do it.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Replication
At 01:13 PM 12/30/2009, Craig Haynie wrote: Setting aside the issue of over unity or free energy, what does the 'zero' meter reading mean ? a violation lenz law? a faulty meter? or meter leads located at the wrong place? Are you implying that the amp meter is not connected correctly? If so, why would the current increase at low RPM. His explanation, that the circuit is open for a longer period of time, makes more sense. I see no sign that it's connected incorrectly, but ... it's entirely the wrong meter for the task. Actually, the circuit is closed for the same time, I'd assume, except for a response time factor. When the rotation is very slow, though, you would see the on current distinct from the off current (zero). On that meter, the tiniest twitch. Assuming immediate response, the circuit is closed, current running, for a time dependent upon the angular position of sensors that turn it on and turn it off. The duty cycle will be constant, independent of rotation speed, only the frequency will change. But this neglects what happens during the transitions.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Replication
Craig, I don't think you get that the demonstrations show almost nothing, except that the second video you pointed to conclusively refutes the claim of no back-EMF, and quite visually, with the blinking of that neon bulb, which, as I recall, requires about 65 volts to initiate, the bulb then becomes low-resistance, dumping the back-EMF current (into the power source, I think, you can see the schematic provided) until the current falls below a keep-alive value, much lower. That bulb can dump a few watts of power, as I recall. Steorn used a diode, I believe, which will do the same thing, but at lower voltage, and not visibly.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Replication
At 04:37 PM 12/30/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/30/2009 03:31 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 12:14 PM 12/30/2009, Craig Haynie wrote: Here are two more replications: The first link shows no apparent current increase as the speed of the rotor picks up, and tends to really display the effect that is perplexing all of these people. http://www.youtube.com/user/m1a9r9s9#p/u/2/nDABKqdB538 Rather, the key to the effect is the transitions. It is the switching of the response of the toroid to the permanent magnets that produces the acceleration of the rotor. Steady-state on, the rotor is freewheeling. Constant current, independent of rotor speed. Steady-state off, likewise, no effect on current (zero) from rotor speed. Wait -- after reading your descriptions (and others), if I understand what the descriptions describe, it looks like the key is somewhere else. Depends on key to what. But sure, I like Mr. Lawrence's explanation, in some ways. But I'm not sure it's accurate yet. Look at what we've got: We have a magnetic core in a coil, and a separate movable magnet, which can move past the core/coil combination. Ferrite core. (I'm very weak in this field, something whacked me over the head when the right-hand rule was introduced. Right hand? Why right hand? Does the universe have something against lefties? Apparently!) Characteristic of ferrites: the magnetic field can be easily reversed with relatively low energy losses as heat. Switch the coil on, the field of the core is canceled. A while later, switch it off, the field in the core comes back. Right. You put energy in when you switch it on, you get it back when you switch it off; to the extent that the system gets warm in between you get back less than you put in. Yes, the back-EMF represents getting the energy back as the magnetic field collapses. Collapse it quickly, the voltage can go very high, burning out the switches, unless you dump enough current that the voltage doesn't rise that high. However, note, it only takes a certain amount of current to establish the toriod magnetic field that cancels the ferrite's field. Only that energy, stored in setting up the toroid field, is returned when shutting the thing off. The current, however, must be continuous during the freewheeling phase, or else the ferrite will retard the rotation of the rotor, by attracting the permanent magnet in the reverse direction, slowing the rotor down. That energy is not going to be recovered, it does not get stored in the rotation, it is pure heat loss. Fine, but that's not where the motor part comes in. The motor part is the interaction between the other magnet and the coil. The full system is apparently this: 1) A magnet moves close to the magnetic core. It's attracted to the core, so it gains mechanical energy during this phase. Yes. Now, without the switching system, the rotor will oscillate if it starts out with the magnet to one side of the ferrite. This will continue and slow down only due to friction, because whatever is gained in one direction is exactly subtracted in the reverse direction. 2) At closest approach, the coil turns on, energy goes into the system, and the core is quenched. Yes. 3) The magnet moves away from the core AND coil. Since the field of the core is canceled, this apparently takes no work. And it doesn't take work. That is, at that point, the rotor is freewheeling. But notice, the core has a certain field. That field could be reproduced by an electromagnet. In this configuration, the permanent magnet on the rotor would be attracted by the electromagnet, which, when the permanent magnet passes it, would be shut off, awaiting the next cycle of approach. In this situation, we have one kind of motor. We are attracting a part of the rotor with an electromagnet, it takes energy to set up that attraction, which then does the work. The Steorn motor appears to be symmetrically the reverse. Instead of the work being done when the coil is energized, it's done when the coil is de-energized. But, it seems, or we would expect, the energy is the same either way, it's simply that the arrangement operates inversely. It appears that Steorn claims some anomaly in this. *How much of an anomaly?* If the anomaly is near noise levels, difficult to measure, compared to the energy already being dumped into the system, we can easily consider it artifact. However, Steorn is claiming 300%. I.e., that for every watt-second going into the coil, there are two watt-seconds of power going into the rotational energy of the rotor. This, if true, would not be marginal. But it would then also be easy to recover that energy and use it to maintain or increase the battery charge (or, much nicer, a supercapacitor charge, which then would provide a very convenient and direct measure of energy storage, not complicated). The generator would have to be only 50% efficient
Re: [Vo]:Request claque support
At 10:06 AM 1/8/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: For my comment here: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/qa-googles-green-energy-czar/http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/qa-googles-green-energy-czar/ This has got to be against journalistic ethics at some level. Are you a journalist? If so, not there! You were right, and what you wrote was worth noticing. Likewise Kowalski, by the way. I don't necessarily agree that cold fusion is economically viable, it's possible that huge sums could be spent with no commercial result, but at this point, huge sums aren't needed; rather what is needed is what Kowalski suggests, and what a DoE panel also recommended in 2004, and even recommended back in 1989, though it was half-hearted in 1989. Targeted research to establish more firmly the basic science. Not hundreds of millions of dollars. There are, indeed, *possibilities*, and we won't know unless the basic science is better characterized and known. WTF is going on with palladium deuteride? And how the hell did Vyosotskii find Fe-57 where it didn't belong, in a bacterial culture? With a technique, Mossbauer spectroscopy, that is absolutely positive as to the isotopic identification? My guess is that there are lots of these anomalies that get blown off as must be experimental error without any actual identification of experimental error, and even when that presumption is quite unlikely. And thus we may be missing countless opportunities to move beyond the limitations of incomplete theory, and thus into new possibilities for eventual commercial applications. Cold fusion itself is beyond the point of reasonable doubt, though. (But we can quibble about whether or not the nuclear reaction taking place is fusion.) But with good research support, we might have collectively known about cold fusion by 1994 or 1995, instead of this excruciatingly slow process that it took for the knowledge to start to spread more widely. Not a massive program, just targeted grants to fund basic scientific research in fields with a reasonable potential for eventual application. Or even just for the pure science of it. One never knows. If you want to make a lot of money though, you'll wait for others to support the basic research, and you will watch emerging research closely. If I was out for making a lot of money, you can be sure I wouldn't be fiddling with cold fusion. I'm out to make a *little*, commensurate with my effort and investment. Peanuts. But pretty safe. I'm selling science, known science, not energy pie in the sky, even though what I'm doing might help that goal eventually by widening the circles of awareness and making certain kinds of experiments much easier and cheaper to set up. My efforts won't require Google grants, or any grants, for that matter (though I've received some much appreciated support, making my situation less precarious), but what follows might get to that point.
Re: [Vo]:Request claque support
At 08:54 PM 1/8/2010, Mike Carrell wrote: Meanwhile Mills announced to as investment group expectations of a working prototype this year with scale-up to the megawatt powr plants next year. At Rowan university, members of the chemistry faculty, using commercially available chemicals, were able to create hydrino-bearing compounds. The present of hydrinos was verified by NMR measurements at an independant external laboratory. Bottom line: the physical existence of the hydrino state of hydrogen can no longer be reasonably doubted. Rowan has also repeatedly verified the 50+ kW, 1 megajoule energy burst from a half-gram of BLP 'solid fuel'. Do you have any independent sources for these claims? Last I looked, there was only BLP as a source for practically all of it, which is hardly sufficient to consider that hydrinos can no longer be reasonably doubted. I'd be truly interested in independent sources.
Re: [Vo]:Request claque support
At 04:15 PM 1/8/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: I don't necessarily agree that cold fusion is economically viable, it's possible that huge sums could be spent with no commercial result, but at this point, huge sums aren't needed; rather what is needed is what Kowalski suggests, and what a DoE panel also recommended in 2004, and even recommended back in 1989, though it was half-hearted in 1989. Targeted research to establish more firmly the basic science. Not hundreds of millions of dollars. I think tens of millions would be appropriate now, but as soon as someone demonstrates a 10 W stand alone Arata effect device that continues for a month, I would recommend hundreds of millions per year. Reasonable, I'd say, if the 10W experiment looked like it had a prayer of being scalable. If not, it would still be worth substantial continued support, depending on such things as the economics. If one needs $100,000 worth of palladium to generate 10 W, it may be striking as a phenomenon, but not as a commercial product. Yet. As to tens of millions now, I'm not certain. Proposals should be entertained, as they said. It's about time for the DoE to follow its own panel's recommendations, instead of the private political maneuvering and contrary influence from the entrenched. The priority at first should be exploring the science, WTF is happening in there? Without knowing, speculating about commercial applications is just that: speculating. Not engineering. We need to know the science, period, regardless of practical applications. But applications will quite reasonably follow, either specialized or general.
Re: [Vo]:Request claque support
At 12:34 PM 1/10/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Reasonable, I'd say, if the 10W experiment looked like it had a prayer of being scalable. 10 W would already be a significant scale up, by a factor of ~10. If it worked I am sure any larger size would work. Also, I know of no reason to think it would not scale up. Kitamura has already scaled up substantially. Jed, I'm afraid that's naive. But I should have, perhaps, been more specific than scalable. It's clear you can, in a simple way, scale up the Arata effect. If so much material generates so much energy, presumably more material will generate more energy. That's scaling up. But has any such experiment recovered all the energy used to set it up? And then produce a positive return, more productive than alternatives *considering the investment*? Jed, I know that you know that when someone shows the necessary conditions, venture capitalists will be falling all over themselves trying to rush to the head of the line. I haven't seen it yet, and, apparently, neither have they, except a few hardy souls, perhaps, willing to go for a very long shot. It's not a long shot in the sense of the field being a known blind alley, it's a long shot in the sense that any particular investment is very risky at this time. Because what is clearly open and needing funding is basic science, that -- most likely -- won't *directly* create a commercial opportunity, we should be pushing for academic and public funding of basic science. We need more and better understanding of LENR processes before the *engineering* can kick in. If not, it would still be worth substantial continued support, depending on such things as the economics. Substantial compared to what? Compared to what it costs to develop a new shade of lipstick or to build yet another marginal shopping mall in an overcrowded market in Atlanta? Depends on the goals of the investor. Right now, in my view, a sensible investor will be parsimonious. If I had the money, I'd retain some experts to watch the field and look for opportunities. Low-cost, relatively. The temptation is to try to pick some expert and pour in tons of money to the expert's favorite project and approach. That's what is highly speculative, and, notice: it's been done. Many times. Any profits result from it? Sure. For at least one expert, whom we both know, profiting from consulting fees or other non-energy-producing sources. Maybe, even, I'll make a profit, but selling science and materials for science (including education), not energy. If one needs $100,000 worth of palladium to generate 10 W, it may be striking as a phenomenon, but not as a commercial product. The nanoparticle approach uses less palladium than others. A nanoparticle cold fusion device capable of practical levels of energy generation would use no more palladium than an automobile catalytic converter. Jed, you hope so. Got any evidence to back that up? The basic problem I've seen described by experts: the reaction disrupts the lattice, and the reaction energies are such that preventing this disruption may be impossible. There are possible approaches, for sure, but none that are proven yet. Maybe the Arata approach will work, it depends on how long the material continues to function. If your auto catalytic converter only worked for a few days or weeks, even though the palladium could be recovered and reprocessed, it would be quite impractical. When I wrote $100,000, I was considering what information I had about the nanoparticle approach, already. It's possible that this will be reduced, of course. But the problem must be noticed! That we know LENR is taking place isn't necessarily even half-way there. Lots of people have known that for quite some time. It doesn't solve the engineering problem. And to solve it will probably take better understanding of the science, otherwise every experiment is more or less a stab in the dark, it can take a lot of stabs until you bring down the bear. In the dark, the bear might eat you first. The priority at first should be exploring the science, WTF is happening in there? Without knowing, speculating about commercial applications is just that: speculating. Not engineering. I think it is far beyond speculation. Also, many technologies in the past were developed without a theoretical basis. I recently wrote to a correspondent about this: Sure, it can happen. But with fields whre basic understanding was much better. Other technological revolutions in the past got underway and made tremendous progress before a theoretical understanding was developed. That has not happened often since 1945, but it is not out of the question. Look at telegraphy, railroads, heat engines and incandescent lights. The thermodynamics of heat engines (steam and internal combustion) was not understood before 1870, and not fully understood until around 1910
Re: [Vo]:steorn talk#2 today at 5pm irish time + closeup shots of steorn talk#2 demo-rig
At 05:45 PM 1/13/2010, Terry Blanton wrote: Here is 1 of 5 youtube vids: http://www.youtube.com/user/SteornOfficial#p/u/0/bzcZDr1AcEU The set of videos is too long for me to watch now. But my immediate impression. The demonstrations are technically far more complex, they *look* much better. But it still seems like a snow job. Actual description of the details of the motor seem to be missing, and there are lots of statements that miss and don't address the fact that it would only take a relatively small amount of energy transfer during a transient, and there are lots of transients, to cause the rotor to accelerate. It amounts to hand-waving. The man keeps saying absolutely no back-EMF. He claims that the energy output is greater than the input, but he says that again and again without showing a measurement of this. Next week, he says. Steorn is bypassing the normal process of revelation of a new discovery. Why? I've already speculated why. He's not selling energy, he's selling technology or access to information. If he reveals the real scoop, he's got nothing to sell if he doesn't have patents. And he doesn't. If he has a working model that is over unity, he could get a patent, he'd have to submit the model, I believe. And it would have to work. That's not building motors or generators, that's demonstrating the effect. Basically, it's blatant: he's blowing smoke, a *prediction* that the effect can be used to generate power. He hasn't done calorimetry, they are working with a German company. And they will be doing this or that test. Okay, I kept watching. Questioner asked why they weren't using capacitors instead of a battery, for all the reasons we discussed. And the answer was essentially to first give a bullshit answer, that a capacitor couldn't supply the instantaneous current needed. Put enough capacitance in there and and you could vaporize the conductors if you shorted it. And then, when the questioner asked a little more, he asked him to dream the dream a bit and talked about how important this could be. In other words, please stop asking this inconvenient question
Re: [Vo]:steorn talk#2 today at 5pm irish time + closeup shots of steorn talk#2 demo-rig
At 03:07 AM 1/14/2010, Esa Ruoho wrote: At 05:45 PM 1/13/2010, Terry Blanton . He claims that the energy output is greater than the input, but he says that again and again without showing a measurement of this. Next week, he says. So, Abd, do you even know what happens next week? They open it up for visitors to come and measure it themselves. If they (steorn) had measured it this or that way, the skeptics would have wanted it a third way. If they did that, then a fourth and fifth way. If those, then the equipment wasn't to be trusted, and so on. It never ends. That's right, and that's exactly what they are about. Release just enough to keep the buzz going. These people are marketers, and they are marketing a product, very effectively. They are marketing differently than they would market if they had an actual over-unity device. If they had that, they might not be marketing at all, by this time. They'd have a demonstration model that works, that can be replicated easily, that shows the effect they claim to have discovered. Do they believe they have a real discovery, or do they believe that they have something that looks enough like a real discovery that they can milk it for years? What I'm saying is that their behavior matches the latter possibility, not the former. In one month, they go from a totally stupid demonstration, inviting lots of derisive comment, setting up the conditions for it, then the next month, they have a far more sophisticated demonstration going, but still not actually addressing the points made by skeptics (or just neutral critics that might even welcome an over-unity device!). They've been at this for years. This should be obvious: they aren't revealing enough details so that someone can accurately replicate it. That's part of the plan, and, directly asked, they might even acknowledge this. They are revealing glimpses of the technology, meting it out carefully so as to generate maximum interest among their target audience without dousing that interest with a bucket of cold water. They would justify the drips and dabs approach by saying that, after all, they are selling the technology. Want to see it, pay for it! They don't have a demonstration device. Look carefully. Everything is we are working on it. We have arranged with a German calorimetry company so that they will All future. It is conceivable that they believe they have found an effect. A small one. And they realized that scaling this up to something solid would require much more money than they have or will be able to obtain as direct venture funding. So they got the bright idea to sell what they *do* have in hand. Some experimental evidence. Valid or not. And if they sell this, what they are doing is legal. But, of course, what they have, then, isn't a proof, it's just a clue, with the far more likely truth being that it is simply an as-yet unexplained anomaly. And by keeping it secret, they sure aren't going to allow others to find the explanation, because that would blow their business opportunity! They are selling mystery. Call it entertainment. Have a few hundred dollars to blow? Like puzzles? You can buy it and see for yourself. Of course, since it's a secret and under a non-disclosure agreement, you can't tell anyone else, and you sure can't get your money back. Or maybe you can, under certain narrow conditions. We don't know what's in the NDA, the NDA prohibits disclosure of its contents, and I'd strongly guess that before you even receive the NDA you sign a previous NDA that prohibits disclosure of the final NDA contents. Someone judgment-proof might get through and around this, but, then again, they investigate anyone applying and don't accept everyone. I assume they check out this possibility. Whatever they are, they are not stupid. And when they do a stupid demonstration, like in December, be sure of this: they know that it was stupid. That's part of their plan. You've got two reasonable choices: 1. They are stupid. This choice, however, is not terribly compatible with the opinion that they have something real. More likely, it would also be a stupid mistake, or even a less-stupid one. 2. They are not stupid. (They might occasionally do a stupid thing, but as consistently stupid as they appear to have been, no. Their apparent stupidity at times is part of their plan. Oops! The bearings burned out! We've only been working for a few years preparing this incredibly simple demonstration, and we didn't anticipate that the temperature would rise as it did. Silly us, we apologize. Then, how long was it?, a long time later, another simple stupid demonstration. This time the bearings don't burn out, but it's all run by a big battery that obviously runs down, but there is no measure of power input, nor of power dissipation in the coils, and no measure of acceleration of the rotor, with any calibration of speed vs. stored energy. Yet they
Re: [Vo]:steorn talk#2 today at 5pm irish time + closeup shots of steorn talk#2 demo-rig
At 03:11 AM 1/14/2010, Esa Ruoho wrote: On 14 Jan 2010, at 06:07, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.coma...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: http://www.youtube.com/user/SteornOfficial#p/u/0/bzcZDr1AcEUhttp://www.youtube.com/user/SteornOfficial#p/u/0/bzcZDr1AcEU The set of videos is too long for me to watch now. But my immediate impression. Tl;dw is a great way to go. I give you a WTG for this one, possibly followed by a few other acronyms, which I dislike, such as LOL and OMG Even I had the time to watch the live presentation, and I can't finish most documentaries or even a song. The writer here violated his own principles by responding to a message he did not read. If he'd read all the way through, he'd have seen that I did, in the end, watch the whole damn thing. Ah, I've been involved in on-line debate since about 1986 or so, with the W.E.L.L. Just to explain some stuff to those who might be watching. I certainly don't intend to continue this thread. As I read from another today, I concede the last word, in advance. He who laughs last laughs best, and it's impossible to actually laugh on-line, LOL isn't laughing, and about half the time the person didn't actually laugh but is simply attempting to deride, or, at least, it's impossible to laugh last, what is on-line can't cover it. I'll be laughing, I expect and have reason to hope, after I'm dead. So whatever you are doing, be sure to have fun. You'll probably do less damage if you remember this.
Re: [Vo]:steorn talk#2 today at 5pm irish time + closeup shots of steorn talk#2 demo-rig
At 01:03 PM 1/14/2010, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Nevertheless, you state at the very beginning that you didn't have enough time to watch the show in its entirety. Let me reiterate: It is in fact the first thing you tell your readers. While, in a sense, you are taking advantage of literary license (something I'm guilty of having done as well) I still think you share some of the blame for misleading some of your readers. Sure. I wasn't blaming him purely for thinking that what I wrote at the beginning was no longer true. That's obviously something reasonable for him to conclude. But he was faulting me for commenting without, supposedly, watching the whole damn set of videos, which would take much longer than to read over my post, yet he commented on my post without reading it all the way through. Don't you agree that's ironic? So whatever you are doing, be sure to have fun. You'll probably do less damage if you remember this. I agree. This is a fun topic, regardless of what side of the fence one is leaning towards. Yes. I think Steorn is brilliant. (I have trouble using the plural for them, except like in this sentence. Steorn are brilliant? Sorry, that grates. it is a company, a single entity, but I can also speak of those involved as them.) Brilliant as entertainers and sophisticated marketers. Never mind the product they are marketing, it's an excuse for making money, which is what marketers are supposed to do.
Re: [Vo]:steorn talk#2 today at 5pm irish time + closeup shots of steorn talk#2 demo-rig
At 03:02 PM 1/14/2010, Terry Blanton wrote: Somehow Steorn must measure the torque or have the motor perform work, eg lift a weight, pump water, etc. But they seem to have a basic lack of understanding of this fact. This is quite the response that Steorn wants from people who realize the problem. However, that they seem to have this lack, yes. That's deliberate. Sorry, they aren't stupid.
Re: [Vo]:steorn talk#2 today at 5pm irish time + closeup shots of steorn talk#2 demo-rig
At 03:38 PM 1/14/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: In politics, business and consulting, many people make a good living by obfuscation and sewing confusion. I like that. Sewing. They stitch it together rather than tossing seeds in the ground.
Re: [Vo]:Back EMF: Sean may be right
Of course Sean may be right. In a sense. But wrong if we take No back EMF as an absolute, and wrong in the implications. I don't think I've seen how the Orbo motor allegedly works stated clearly. The drive current doesn't accelerate the rotor directly, or, more accurately perhaps, it doesn't do that with most of the current. Rather it turns on and off the attraction of the toroid core for the permanent magnets in the rotor. If we are talking about substantial rather than making absolute statements, there is no back-EMF. That's the design! But what's really suspicious and an astounding claim is that Sean is claiming that twice as much work is done on the rotor as is dissipated in the toroid. And we have not seen one shred of evidence regarding that, we haven't seen figures for the rotational energy/rotational velocity of the rotor (easy to calculate from theory, and to measure, in fact), nor have we seen information on the power drawn from the battery, nor have we seen correlated data: acceleration of the rotor and power dissipation from the battery. We only have Sean's claim, with no data at all: twice as much energy going into the rotor as is going into heat. We have seen oscilloscope plots of voltage vs. current, showing no back EMF, at a gross level. But none at all? How much would it take to have an effect on the rotor? This is what I've seen: the rotor is on a magnetic bearing, extremely low friction, so the rotor can accumulate energy that is provided in tiny bursts. There are transients in the oscilloscope plots that Sean waves away. All it takes is a little leakage. If, in fact, there were twice as much energy appearing in the rotor, that rotor would accelerate with extreme rapidity, and low-friction bearings would be completely unnecessary. Hence, my conclusion: Sean is lying about the twice the energy thing. He doesn't know that at all. Calorimetry? Hopeless! The acceleration is apparently coming from a very small energy transfer, a tiny fraction of what is being dissipated from the battery. However, of course, if there is 300% power, i.e., some brake is put on the rotor that causes any rotor energy to be dissipated as heat, and there are appropriate controls, etc., etc., calorimetry should be quite effective. We will see, of course, what the calorimetry company comes up with. Or will we see some excuse. Remember, the calorimetry apparently hasn't been done yet. Sean is, as before, making predictions. Gosh, something happened and the calorimetry company had to withdraw. Sorry, folks. And, remember, Sean justifies the battery because he needs to handle very high transient currents? Wait a minute? Why high transient currents? What would happen without these high transient currents, what if the current were limited to some value, still enough to accomplish the transition in a time short compared to magnet proximity? Remember, again, Steorn has never disclosed what effect they discovered. That's what they are selling, in fact. So don't hold your breath. But, my prediction: when the smoke clears, he was lying. Not merely making a mistake. I'm saying that if he's claimed 300% (100% plus 200%), without having decent evidence for that, but merely some prediction based on conditions or measurements not made yet, or extrapolated from measurements so small within the context of possible noise, like a few milliwatts of anomaly measured in the presence of a hundred watts of power dissipation, he's lying. He is attempting to create an impression of knowledge that doesn't exist. If he'd said, We predict from what we know not a lie. But that's not what he's written.
Re: [Vo]:Back EMF: Sean may be right
Sent from my iPhone On Jan 17, 2010, at 12:06 PM, Harry Veeder hlvee...@yahoo.com wrote: - Original Message From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com; vortex-l@eskimo.com vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sun, January 17, 2010 10:06:18 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Back EMF: Sean may be right If, in fact, there were twice as much energy appearing in the rotor, that rotor would accelerate with extreme rapidity, and low-friction bearings would be completely unnecessary. How do you know? With regular bearings it may require more energy then the system can generate. Isn't that my point? They are drawing relatively high power from the battery. If all of that ends up as heat, and twice as much is going into rotational energy, there should be no problem with bearings. But hey , if I have the math wrong, let's say they haven't given us the info to show it. I didn't do actual calculations, just seat of the pants estimation.
Re: [Vo]:Orbo: It's a magnetic-shield perpmo
Sent from my iPhone On Jan 17, 2010, at 12:42 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: OK, folks, we're all talking about it but nobody's quite said it. This apparently novel motor is actually just a new manifestation of a very old concept. The Orbo, as described, is a perpetual motion machine which uses magnetic shields. Bingo. Better said than what I said, but that's what I said.
Re: [Vo]:Back EMF: Sean may be right
At 12:47 PM 1/17/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Gosh, something happened and the calorimetry company had to withdraw. Sorry, folks. This has not actually happened. Please identify statements such as this as hypothetical or cynical, to avoid confusion. (Seriously.) I believe that anyone who would take that statement as other than hypothetical (and cynical!) wouldn't have been paying attention. Sean has done this kind of thing so many times that it's not purely cynical to expect it. It's a realistic possibility. I think we should be a little more careful around here with the use of words like scam and fake. Sure. But I haven't called Steorn a scam or the demonstration fake. I've stated that there is a possibility of fakery, but, so far, no evidence of it. I suspect that there are layers of traps laid, objections that they are setting up precisely to attract criticism that they can then refute. Here is what it looks like they are selling: an anomaly of unknown explanation. They found this, apparently, and couldn't find an obvious way to scale it up and generate energy, and it could take a boatload of money to do that. They don't have the boatload and they couldn't get it. So how can they profit from their discovery? Note that they have not disclosed the anomaly. That's what they are selling. But it also appears that they haven't disclosed it yet even to those who have paid. It's coming, supposedly by February 1. They have provided hints only, it's part of the marketing strategy. Is there a real anomaly here, when the smoke clears? I rather doubt it, but I certainly can't say it's impossible. Steorn principals don't want to go to jail, I doubt that they are engaged in actual fraud. Lying is not illegal, folks. Not unless there is detrimental reliance by someone with a contractual or other legal right. But I did claim that Sean was, effectively, lying. That's about the claim of 2:1 energy. Note that, if true, this would provide an immediate commercial application (or close). Heating. I'd love to have a heater that produced three times as much heat as its energy input. However, the claim is that the excess energy is stored as the kinetic energy of the rotor. Sorry, folks, contrary to what someone wrote here, you can't just use F=ma, the kinetic energy of a rotor depends on the mass distribution of the rotor, but a low-friction supported bearing could readily be calibrated so that one would know the stored energy from the rotational velocity. Sean could easily have gathered all this data, and it would make all the claims about no-back-EMF moot. If the figure of 2:1 is a demonstrated fact, if Sean has a basis for it, measurement precision would be a dead issue. They are dumping a lot of battery power as heat! Sean is obfuscating, and why he is obfuscating I consider obvious: he's postponing the resolution of all this, because when it's resolved, there goes interest in Orbo. Until then, until the matter is closed clearly, assuming that there is no real effect here, he's making money. We don't know how many people are buying the disclosure, they've made sure we won't know that. He's behaving as a skilled marketer of his products. One way to look at it is that he is selling entertainment. A puzzle to solve. He's having fun watching all the contortions, great fun, I'm sure. Sorry about the broken rib, Sean, that hurts. Get well soon. After this is all done, Sean, you can then write a book about it and make even more money. Perfectly legitimately. Anyone associated with cold fusion has heard these terms far too often, applied inappropriately against people who have done nothing wrong. Sure. And against some who have. It is one thing to say that Steorn seems like a scam, or it gives you that impression. It is quite another to assert that it actually is. When you say this, you should have proof. And proof of a scam has to be narrowly defined: you have to show there is an aggrieved party. That is, a person or funding organization who feels that their money was taken on false pretenses, by a researcher who knew for a fact that his claim was false. Yup. Well, generally. The term scam can be more broadly applied. I think that you are referring to fraud. There are legal scams, Orbo could be one. Researchers who are wrong, or inept, furtive, lazy, intellectually dishonest or highly disagreeable people are not scams. Researchers who threaten to sue people who criticize their work or quote from their papers violate academic norms, but that is not the same as being a scam either. Note that Steorn hasn't disclosed their research. They simply claim they have some. But when we look closely, we find that critical testing hasn't been done. Calorimetry hasn't been done, it appears. Has the energy balance been studied by actual measurement of energy extracted from the battery and actual energy accumulated
Re: [Vo]:Back EMF: Sean may be right
At 02:46 PM 1/17/2010, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: On Jan 17, 2010, at 12:06 PM, Harry Veeder hlvee...@yahoo.com wrote: How do you know? With regular bearings it may require more energy then the system can generate. Isn't that my point? They are drawing relatively high power from the battery. If all of that ends up as heat, and twice as much is going into rotational energy, there should be no problem with bearings. But hey , if I have the math wrong, let's say they haven't given us the info to show it. I didn't do actual calculations, just seat of the pants estimation. Suppose that Sean is right. So, they put a controllable brake on the rotor. It could be done by using an induction coil to extract rotational energy from the rotor and dump it into a resistor to generate heat. They let the thing fire up, then move the induction coil in until rotor acceleration is zero. Or lower the resistance value until that point. How much power is being extracted from the battery? How much heat is being generated there (mostly in the toroids)? And how much heat, in this steady-state situation, constant RPM, is being generated in the resistor? If Sean's claim of 2:1 is correct, say at some rotational rate, then twice as much power would be dissipated in the brake resistor. Very easy to measure the resistor dissipation, the waveform would be simple, no complications at all. But this is what classical understanding would predict: the resistor would be dissipating only a small fraction of the energy being dissipated in the toroid circuit, representing some small deviation from the claim of 100% generation of heat of the current in that circuit. Some (small) fraction of that current is converted into rotor energy. And that's why very low friction bearings are required. It's a very low percentage, and being so low, it's not easy to see, the measurement accuracy would have to be high, and with transients, which is where it's happening (during the turn-on and turn-off of the circuit), such measurement is quite difficult. This is what I'd predict if careful analysis is done: the continuous energy that can be extracted from the rotor, by the induction pickup, is within the noise in the measurement of energy input from the battery, minus energy dissipation in the toroid circuit, or it is observable as a deficit from that circuit, missing energy there, as would exist with a classic pulse motor. There would be a smaller missing component of energy, so the efficiency isn't actually 100%, because some energy will be radiated as RF. So (work in the toroid circuit) minus (work in the induction circuit) will be positive, if measured accurately enough, or will be in the noise, if not. If Sean's claim is true, this difference will be very negative, the dissipation in the pickup coil will be double that in the toroid circuit. Simple hypothesis to test. Now, obvious question that will be asked, and this kind of question has been asked many times. Why haven't they thought of this? Well, I assume that they have thought of it, if fact, the alternative is to assume that in spite of having the money to bring in serious expertise, they are seriously stupid. And I rather doubt that. Abd's version of an old maxim: Never ascribe to stupidity what may be effective marketing.
Re: [Vo]:Back EMF: Sean may be right
At 12:05 AM 1/19/2010, Harry Veeder wrote: I noticed on the Steorn forum there is talk of a punch line that Steorn will give at the end of the month. Perhaps the test you describe is it. I rather doubt it. If they've done this and they have the data and it shows significant excess energy, they would have something very, very solid, so why all this smoke and mirrors for so long? It's quite plain to me that they have been drawing it out, providing information in little bits and pieces. If they had this test, and if they have 2:1 excess:input, it would be a conclusive demonstration, and they could actually raise huge sums as investments. So I don't think so.
Re: [Vo]:steorn addendum video posted on youtube
At 07:00 PM 1/20/2010, you wrote: Don't forget the Al Jazeera ad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcNwc-GhzIs 50 sec into it. Thanks for the reminder. They quote their own hand-picked jury's statement that there Orbo hasn't shown evidence of energy production. And immediately after that, all scientific truths began as blasphemies. It just says scientific jury, 2009 as I recall. The implication is that this was a knee-jerk response based on blasphemy against the gods of theory. That's deceptive. They are liars. But they were, in this, lying with the truth. That is still lying, it's the attempt to create an impression contrary to fact. It's highly skillful marketing. To an audience that includes some people who might toss in a few million dollars just for fun. Sure, if they sell certain kinds of investments, with lies, it would be fraud. But I assume they will be quite careful about that.
Re: [Vo]:steorn addendum video posted on youtube
At 01:36 PM 1/21/2010, Michel Jullian wrote: This premise assumes that Stoern BELIEVES their ORBO is valid technology... that Steorn just needs a few of those big spending corporate entities to buy a cheap (for them) licenses and subsequently work out a few minor pesky bugs! Well not exactly, your premise assumes that the technology IS valid (what Steorn believes is irrelevant to what will ultimately happen). Mine assumes it isn't, but whether it is valid or not, they will make money. I have seen dumber schemes :) The cheap licenses provide no production rights, only experimentation, I forget the details that they have disclosed. I'm sure that to buy a license of any kind, you must first agree to a nondisclosure of the license terms, i.e., a non-disclosure of the final non-disclosure agreement, which must be binding, before they even send you the complete NDA. they'd be stupid not to do that. Otherwise the license terms are out of the bag, quickly. They will have both big and small customers. The internet is vast and what would be insanely small markets can be lucrative now. An ability to generate publicity is a very good way to tap this diffuse market, and they've been doing that quite well. To the small customers, they sell the investigational license. Some of those in this market will also buy equipment from them. To the large customers, more profit may come from equipment sales than from actual disclosure licensing, and a company will look at equipment purchase as an investment. The equipment sales are quite legally safe for Steorn, as long as the equipment itself is not represented. Some of the comments here refer to selling a device that doesn't work as advertised. That would variously be puffery or fraud, depending. But they are not selling, to my knowledge, devices claimed to work for energy production. At most, it seems, they might sell a device that is claimed to show some anomaly, and it's quite possible that it does. What they believe themselves, personally, about this device is not actually legally relevant. However, if they induce people to directly give them money based on lies as to performance, as investors, not merely as purchasers of a disclosure, they could be in very hot water. My guess is that this has been avoided. If an NDA is signed, I'm sure it would have a clause that private or public comments made by Steorn representatives were to be disregarded and only what is included in the NDA as the product being sold -- which might be just a core dump of research results -- is legally binding on Steorn and represented as truthful and accurate. That's very common in contracts: This document constitutes the whole of the agreement between the parties and verbal or other representations not included herein are not a part of the agreement. So Sean can claim 2:1 in public until the cows come home, and there can be no basis for it at all in the actual evidence to be disclosed, and Steorn -- and Sean -- are safe. Get this: lying, as such, is not illegal. Most subscribers to this list are really space aliens, and I'm not yet revealing my secret knowledge, because I must protect my sources. However, I need money, so if you want the evidence apply for a disclosure license, which I will sell to anyone I decide to trust, for the modest sum of $49.95. To inquire, use the email address provided with this mail. Skeptics welcome. I have also placed the necessary proof in a sealed envelope, mailed to an undisclosed friend, so that if anything happens to me, it will all be revealed. Space aliens, you better hope I don't have an accident, because if so, your secret is out!
Re: [Vo]:More on Pycno
At 03:07 PM 1/21/2010, Jones Beene wrote: When deuterium is loaded in an atomic ratio of 1:1 within a metal, it must be in molecular form, and seldom atomic form, as was once thought (and taught) since the molecule is so much smaller than the atom. Given what has gone on in LENR over the years, this 1:1 ratio is probably a threshold level for fusion to happen. Holy moly! The biggest argument against Takahashi's Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate Theory is the supposed rarity of the molecular form in the metal. If D2 is common, then, from his calculations, all it takes is some tiny occurrence of double confinement, two molecules in a lattice site, which will naturally assume the tetrahedral configuration, for a very short time, and the two collapse and fuse, 100%. Is there any source confirming this statement about the molecular form in the metal? If it's true, then real ratio for fusion is 2:1, but that would take place only in one site at a time, because it collapses and fuses within roughly a femtosecond, Takahashi's calculation. At 1:1, any attempt to increase the loading ratio would either cause lattice disruption -- the interatomic spacing of the metal would increase beyond some limit, internal voids forming, perhaps, so the true ratio in intact lattice would still be 1:1, or it would cause fusion, and the fusion rate would be proportional to how rapidly one could bump up the loading. I wonder. What would happen if high pressure were applied to resist the disruption of the lattice by increased deuterium pressure? Could that be done? I mean *really high* pressure. What would this do to the predominant species, i.e., how does the molecular form sit in the lattice at 1:1? It would have to be occupying two sites, straddling them, one deuteron in one site, the other in the other, sharing their electrons.
Re: [Vo]:Pycno-pockets?
At 04:06 PM 1/21/2010, Jones Beene wrote: The natural abundance of D in the oceans of Earth of approximately one atom in 6,500 of hydrogen (~154 ppm) or four times lower than Jupiter. What happened to the rest of it, if it was initially the same as Jupiter? Fascinating question based on an interesting discovery. I have a hypothesis to propose: biological transformation. Vyosotskii has published striking evidence that it happens, specifically with deuterium. As to how, proteins can manage some pretty sophisticated confinement tricks, putting stuff together and holding it together in amazing ways. If low energy nuclear reactions are possible, maybe those bacteria are smarter than we think. They had a lot of time to work it out, and a lot of experiments that they would run until something happened that was useful. It appears that the bacteria studied use the reaction to generate iron that they need for other reasons. The reaction would generate disruptive energy, but one of the bacteria studied was deinococcus radiodurans. The name says it. Radiation resistant. Amazingly radiation resistant. Why? What value would that confer large enough to make the trait dominate in a population? I can think of several answers. An ability to handle low energy fusion or transmutation would be one of them. What we have that is basically different from Jupiter is a 20% surface zone that is largely rock and biomass, bathed in solar radiation plus much lower gravity. If deuterium where to form into dense accumulations preferentially over hydrogen, such that some of it fuses into helium by QM probability, which is enhanced in confined containment (and thus deuterium is removed from water on average) then this dynamic would alter the ratio lower over eons. Given that our atmosphere is not held by gravity as tightly as Jupiter, that should mean that more H than D escapes, so that is a counter mechanism that indicates the fusion rate is even higher. All in all, this could indicate that quantum fusion of deuterium happens on a slow but massive planetary scale on Earth and at a rate which is actually predictable, based on the comparative abundance here and on Jupiter, divided by the time lapse and other variables which will probably enter into the picture. I find it a stretch, compared to the biological hypothesis. But maybe it would work. One would attempt to simulate conditions that might form to do this. Given how persnickety the reaction seems to be, that could be difficult. But remember, it only takes two deuterons at a time, or some transmutation reaction involving a deuteron and another nucleus, so that's all a bacterium has to line up and confine or channel. There is also another possibility which is the ultra-dense deuterium of Holmlid which presumably would form in the mantle from sedimentary matter and eventually migrate to the earths core- and probably fuse along the way into helium thus to provide some of the internal heat seen, which is often attributed to uranium. This also explains why some wells drilled for natural gas turn out to be high in helium content. Concentrations of helium in natural gas in New Mexico and Texas are as high as 7%. It is very doubtful that this could be primordial helium. Some could come from radioactive decay, but given the huge quantities, some could be from pycno-fusion. Jones Wasn't this more or less Steven Jones' idea (or an idea he picked up)? But source could just as well be biological; natural gas forming from decay of material that may have included fusion-enabled bacteria or other biological structures that could pull off the trick. That would also explain the coincidence of natural gas (or oil, if that's the case) and helium.
Re: [Vo]:steorn addendum video posted on youtube
At 03:02 PM 1/21/2010, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Peatbog sez: The cost is 419 euros per year. Here are the terms: http://www.steorn.com/orbo/licensing/ Thanks for the clarification. The initiation fee is certainly way too steep for my tastes! Interesting that it's an annual fee. One assumes that the renewable annual fee is in order to receive key future developments. Sure. Or payments. Remember, I proposed a way to turn the initiated into legal investors who participate in the growth. As you have previously speculated, it might seem dubious to assume that Storn would be able to keep all the garage inventor Robin Hoods out there from spreading the information wealth throughout the Internet. It might seem that way. But we already know that a fair number of people have forked over the dough. I haven't seen any illegal disclosures yet. So, at least, we must allow the possibility of it being kept quiet. And, suppose this: If the secret is disclosed, Steorn stands to lose a lot of money. Therefore, in the agreement, I would put a liquidated damages provision that provides for a specified payment, a large one, if the person signing discloses the material. Further, if they keep the initiated happy, reasonably, the motivation to bypass this, neglecting personal risk, and reveal it through some clandestine means, goes down. All it would take is one disgruntled licensee who has a survivable case at law, and it would be over for Steorn. So I conclude that whatever they are disclosing to people who fork over the money, is sufficient to satisfy them enough that they aren't motivated to expose the scheme. It would be possible to get around this, all it would take is some clandestine organization. I know how it could be done, very low cost, it would work, and I doubt it could be prevented without Steorn shooting itself in the foot. But I'm not going to do it. Why bother? We are likely to know, sooner or later, what was going on, and I don't see anyone being actually fleeced of anything except maybe their time. Talk about full disclosure: Steorn has paid for ads calling their idea blarney, etc. Well? If you didn't pay attention to that, it's your own damn fault and, I'd say, you deserved to have your time wasted. Congratulations, Steorn, you are performing a service even if you have no leg to stand on with the overunity claims. And, of course, if I'm wrong and you *really do have something*, I'd seriously wonder why you are taking this pseudo-con-game approach, because you wouldn't need to do it. But what do I know? (Much, but not necessarily enough!) This would seem to conform my previous premise that the only way Steorn hopes to make any real money would be through a cut in the profits from the sale of products utilizing technology that uses ORBO technology. It seems to confirm my suspicion that Steorn is banking on a belief that their ORBO technology is valid. Or enough curiosity, coupled with sufficient spare cash.
Re: [Vo]:steorn addendum video posted on youtube
At 03:03 PM 1/21/2010, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Abd sez: ... Get this: lying, as such, is not illegal. Most subscribers to this list are really space aliens, and I'm not yet revealing my secret knowledge, because I must protect my sources. However, I need money, so if you want the evidence apply for a disclosure license, which I will sell to anyone I decide to trust, for the modest sum of $49.95. To inquire, use the email address provided with this mail. Skeptics welcome. I have also placed the necessary proof in a sealed envelope, mailed to an undisclosed friend, so that if anything happens to me, it will all be revealed. Space aliens, you better hope I don't have an accident, because if so, your secret is out! Many within the UFO community would love you. ;-) Heh! Part of the plan. Which plan it is, I won't tell you except for $49.95. Satisfaction guaranteed, full refund except for actual expenses. By the way, are you aware that a refund guarantee from a corporation can be worthless if the corporation runs out of money and no embezzlement is shown? (And even if embezzlement is shown, it might be difficult to get the money back.) Similarly a refund due from an individual who is judgment-proof due to lack of assets. Damn it! I can't spend it because I don't still have it! (This would be illegal under some circumstances, if formally claimed in a bankruptcy action, and the person has concealed assets and this is discovered, but not illegal if simply a refusal to pay and not formally asserted under oath in court. I can't pay is vague, actually, it might mean that the mortgage on my million dollar house eats up all my income.) But who would sue for $49.95, and, for that matter, for, what is it, under 500 euros? Ever have a corporation stiff you for something like that? Did anyone go to jail? Let me guess. Not. But getting back to your original premise, yes, it does seem unlikely that anyone would end up doing any jail time - assuming that Steorn believes in their ORBO technology. I'm saying that this can hold even if they don't. Or did but don't any more, which might be the case. They thought they had discovered fabulous wealth, but found out it was a lemon. So they figured out how to make lemonade and sell it. Granted, we are likely splitting hairs here, but it seems to me that if this was a deliberate con operation that someone will eventually spill the beans and go public with what they know. At that point what protection would an iron-clad contract give? Depends. I doubt that they reveal the secret to anyone who they find judgment-proof. I'm guessing that they would do a credit check. They could take the person for all they are worth, up to the liquidated damages. They'd use liquidated damages instead of actual damages, because it avoids the whole issue of what the disclosure was worth, and they could immediately move for collection. So their scam might be over, but they might get a small consolation payment, and meanwhile they worked it for all it was worth. Now, consider this. In each disclosure package they plant information unique to each disclosure. It's irrelevant as to the substance, but it identifies what package was disclosed. A fingerprint, could be data, could be a form of words using synonyms, etc. So, to protect yourself, if you want to reveal it, you'd have to alter it or paraphrase it and present all the information in new form. And, of course, Steorn would deny that it was what was in the package, at first, until they decide that you still have enough assets to be worth suing. I would not recommend agreeing to the disclosure agreement unless you were heavily protected or actually judgment proof. But somehow will look to them like a solid citizen of sufficient means to be worried about losing it. I might fit in that category, but ... what if I end up making a lot of money on something, some years later. Oops! That judgment can survive for quite a while. Just how much would I be willing to expose myself to the risk. Let me answer that: you'd have to pay me a lot! And I'd make sure that it was moved safely and legally out of a judgment's reach before disclosing. Now, who is going to pay a lot to gain the disclosure with a plan of revealing it? I don't see anyone with sufficient motivation.
RE: [Vo]:orbo is a heat pump?
At 02:10 PM 1/24/2010, Jones Beene wrote: As for the claim of OU heating from an electric motor - which has been around for years - google Szabo EBM. Here is a video which makes a clearer claim for OU than anything coming from Steorn, yet AFIK they have not been successful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6MDHF39XmU Holy moly!!! This claims that once the rotation is set up, the thing generates power continuously, with no more input power. It's just as impossible as Orbo, but the claims are far more striking. The claims and models make Steorn look like a toy manufacturer, there is explicit claim of calorimetry, self-powered operation and output, etc. 15 ton generator, the EBM 720. But when was the film or video made? It seems old, maybe about 2000. This was a very ambitious and apparently well-funded effort. From http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Energy_By_Motion_%28EBM%29 Oct. 13, 2006 update -- NOT SELF-RUNNING YET: The company's present prototypes measure a small degree over unity, according to the measurement instruments and methods used. However, the extent of output exceeding input is not enough in the present prototypes to then cycle back to keep the unit running, as a self-runner. Any language expressing the self-running capability is extrapolative to a larger size, not yet built or proven, which allegedly has the necessary combination to keep the unit running and provide extra energy for use. (Source: Prof. Szabo, by phone to http://peswiki.com/index.php/Congress:Member:Sterling_D._AllanSterling D. Allan.) Ooops! Small degree of over unity. How small? http://www.gammamanager.com/blog.html last entry 2007. So, they have this 15 ton device shown in film from roughly 2000. In 2006, the claims of self-running are based on extrapolation. So, the $1.5 million dollar question (that's the price of the smallest commercial unit which they claim they can build to order, they just need a year and a half) is, what happens if they don't draw off energy for use, but just let the thing run self-powered? Is rotational velocity stable? Or how does it respond to small draws of energy? What is the evidence for over-unity? So many questions, and so may years in which to have answered them I certainly got the idea from the 2000 film that this was ready to go! What that says to me is that they are prepared to hype what they have. It just makes Steorn look pitiful by comparison.
Re: [Vo]:STEORN: THE FINAL DEMO ... ...PROVING OVERUNITY
At 12:23 PM 1/25/2010, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Big splashy advert screens are being displayed at steorn.com Sounds like they intend to deliver the final punch line this coming Saturday, Jan 30 we shall see... Yup. Unless all their bearings freeze up, the building mysteriously catches on fire, or, or. But assuming that this goes through, it then becomes possible to more adequately judge all the previous claims. Does the proof support them? Or were they exaggerated, puffery? Remember, Sean has claimed 2:1 (which is actually 3:1, because the 2 is the claimed excess, as I recall.)
Re: [Vo]:STEORN: THE FINAL DEMO ... ...PROVING OVERUNITY
At 01:09 PM 1/25/2010, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: What we absolutely will *not* see: -- A true self-runner, which convinces all but the most pathological of skeptics. Will not happen -- not from Steorn. Not now, not ever. This includes motors with no external power supply, and motors driven by capacitors (which are shown conclusively to remain charged during the run) instead of batteries. While I've seen no evidence from Steorn that would lead me to consider the possibility significant, and lots that indicates to me that it's highly unlikely based on their history, I will now take the position that overunity is possible in theory, in terms of local results, not to mention the deeper possibility of error in the concept of conservation of energy. What if something about the behavior of magnets and magnetic fields and ferrite cores and magnetic domains and all that causes some unexpected phenomenon that releases energy from unknown or unanticipated sources? Perhaps Steorn discovered an anomaly and in order to cash in on it, they adopted their approach rather than simply publishing it. It is not essential to this, at all, that they understand the anomaly. But, as I wrote, highly unlikely. But experiment is king. If the anomaly is shown, they will have indeed made a major discovery, of an anomaly, at least, and then is the anomaly worth exploring? Scientifically, yes, absolutely, until it is explained and the explanation is proven to be more than just an alternative hypothesis, and assuming that the anomaly is significant in amplitude, and is replicable. It is an entirely separate question whether or not there is enough energy over-unity to be of practical use. Hence demands for a self-running demo are excessive, as to the ultimate issues, that transcend whether or not Steorn are scammers, or legally milking this. But if it is true that there is twice as much energy going into rotational inertia than into heat, some commercial application, if only for heating!, would seem possible. Hence I do, in fact, think that puffery is highly likely, that claims of Sean for 2:1 are based on extrapolation and imagination, not actual experiment, properly analyzed. Same thing with the Szabo motor, which seems quite similar in certain ways. But, indeed, we will see the next act in this play in a few days. What rabbit will the author pull out of the hat?
Re: [Vo]:OT: Space travel, moon colonization.
At 03:16 PM 1/25/2010, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 01/25/2010 03:08 PM, Alexander Hollins wrote: Is anyone here familiar with any organizations dedicated to helping push along space travel? http://www.nss.org/ Well, I was Administrator of the L-5 Society, over thirty years ago, which was later absorbed into the National Space Society
Re: [Vo]:OT: Space travel, moon colonization.
At 04:28 PM 1/25/2010, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 01/25/2010 04:09 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Well, I was Administrator of the L-5 Society, over thirty years ago, That is seriously cool! Thanks. I thought so myself. I've done some other cool things, too! Right now I'm working on several projects -- that's always been the case, the good news and the bad news. I'm working on, of course, cold fusion. That's what brought me here. But I'm also working on social structures (organizational technology) that can avoid the kinds of mistakes involved in rejecting cold fusion. And, as well, the space colonization concept. More accurately, if these things were rejected, we'd know exactly why, and pathways would exist for gaining reconsideration if circumstances or evidence change. Efficiently. And, then, what happened to the L-5 Society? That, too, has to do with defects in organizational structure (of the Society), very common. Same problem with Wikipedia, in fact. Same problem all over the effing place and very few people looking at the root problems, just lots of people complaining about the symptoms. So I'm changing that, adding and attracting more people to at least start looking at it First step, eh?
Re: [Vo]:STEORN: THE FINAL DEMO ... ...PROVING OVERUNITY
At 07:45 PM 1/25/2010, Harry Veeder wrote: - Original Message From: Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com What we absolutely will *not* see: -- A true self-runner, which convinces all but the most pathological of skeptics. Will not happen -- not from Steorn. Not now, not ever. This includes motors with no external power supply, and motors driven by capacitors (which are shown conclusively to remain charged during the run) instead of batteries. In the last set of videos, Sean made it pretty clear that it is not part of Steorn's mission to build such a device. He expects future developers of orbo technology to build one. If he does present a self-runner, he is a liar! ;-) Or, hey, they managed to find an easy way to do it. However, self-running is a red herring. What we would want to know are these things, which they could easily provide: The inertia of the rotor, i.e, how much energy it stores at a particular rotational speed, so we can understand how much energy is stored at a particular RPM level. How this energy decays (the rotor slows down) in the absence of any input, to determine the energy being dissipated in friction or other losses. How much energy is being supplied from the power supply, which is difficult to assess with a battery, but far easier with a capacitor bank, which could be designed to emulate the low resistance of a battery, avoiding the problems of high current spiking of batteries, which could produce spurious results. The capacitor voltage will show the rate of energy supply from the capacitor bank, which can be calibrated by dumping current through a resistor of known value. So we can compare the energy being accumulated in the rotor with the energy being supplied from the power supply. It is not necessary to reach self-running, which might fail even if the system is overunity, by not being sufficiently efficient in recovering power from the rotor. It is also possible to apply an electromagnetic brake, a pickup coil that generates current from the motion of the permanent magnets past it. If the coil is open circuit, it will not slow the rotor at all, but as resistance in series with the coil is decreased, the coil will draw more energy from the rotor and slow it. This can be adjusted to keep the rotor at constant speed, thus providing an almost direct measure of power being supplied to the rotor by the process. (It would only be off by the friction, measured already by the slowing down study). Then, study of and measurements of voltage and current in the toroidal circuit can be performed, and the disposition of the power dissipated there determined. How much power is being dissipated in the coil and in other circuit elements. How much heat is being generated? Calorimetry of the whole system would, of course, be of great interest. If the rotor is held at constant RPM by a brake as described, then the total heat generated should be directly correlated to the consumption of power from the capacitor bank, and be about the same, unless it is overunity. If it's over unity by a factor of two, that would be hard to miss, eh? The reason for using a capacitor bank is that the voltage provides a measure of stored energy, and its decline, that is not dependent upon calculations from what may be ridiculously complex waveforms. The most difficult of all these would be the calorimetry, I assume. The rest is trivial. The rest, however, might make the calorimetry unnecessary. They are presumably not presenting calorimetry data in the final demo, as of a few days ago that was still a future project, not a done deal, it seems. The back-EMF claims, which seem reasonable as a first approximation, imply that all the energy of the battery is going into heating, in the end. So, put a heat sink on the coil, and measure the thermal mass of the assembly, which can estimate energy dissipation in the coil from differential temperature measurements. Measure or calculate heat in the rest of the circuit and add it all up. Does this sum correlate well with what is expected from energy drawn from the battery? Or is there some missing energy? And, if so, how does the missing energy compare with the energy appearing in rotation of the rotor? Let me guess. The energy appearing in the rotor is quite the same as missing energy in the coil circuit, or indistinguishable from noise in the measurements. It is not necessary to understand the system adequately to calculate stuff, what calculations are needed should be simple ones, such as rotational inertia from the effect of known energy draw (through a pickup coil, for example). Instead, let me guess. It will be complicated, with calculations being asserted as proper and complete, neglecting minor variations. Such as the claim that there is no back EMF, based on a display that only showed that, sort of, what we'd expect from back EMF could not be seen. But which would
RE: [Vo]:Spam has been eliminated? Robin posts considered spam (was Re: OFF TOPIC Davos predictions: predictably wrong?)
At 08:50 AM 1/26/2010, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: http://blogs.msdn.com/tzink/archive/2010/01/25/spam-is-solved-we-can-all-go-home-now.aspx http://tinyurl.com/ylj42d5 I would love some comments on this article. Okay, here goes! The article describes an interesting technique that can be used to identify some spam, but does not even begin to address the overall problem, for this technique only works to identify spam after spam has been already identified by some other means, with, quite likely, a substantial delay. Then filters can be advised and used to tag spam for rejection, but the spam traffic is unimpeded. It should be realized that even if spam traffic never gets to users, being rejected at the server level, it still adds a great burden to mail server load. It is still a serious problem, impacting ISPs directly and thus users indirectly, for we pay all the costs of most ISPs. We also pay another cost, even if we don't see spam, we pay the cost of rejected legitimate mail, which is so high, particularly when one is in businss using email, as I am, that I do not allow my personal spam filter to automatically reject mail, it merely tags it and categorizes it for my review. In practice, there is so much spam that I do rely on IP blacklist filtering, when I've been away and the queue of mail to be rejected is large, but I still have a log of rejected mails with 20 lines from each mail, after a mail is deleted, and I can restore these mails and, at least, respond and ask for it to be resent. I do not allow my mail server provided to reject mail at all, except when a major attack occurs, such as one time when it looks like some spambot got stuck and I was getting 100 spams per minute. To me, there is a generic solution to this and many other problems: organization of those most directly affected, and all those interested in the problem. Among those affected, there is a small number who will actively fight spam, and these efforts should be coordinated to be efficient. However, the general membership of such an organization can be advised to install a particular kind of spam filter, that the organization would provide. It would need money to do its central work, but the membership that would be benefited could be so large that collecting modest donations for this would be trivial. How much would you pay to substantially kill the spam problem, without doing harm to legitimate mail? How much would ISPs be willing to pay for something that made their job much easier by offloading analysis of spam to a trustworthy organization of users. Including their users. The key organizational problem is trustworthy. Spam filtering can quickly and easily become a tool for information control, and there are signs that some anti-spam organizations have been co-opted by those with particular agendas, such as by spammers whose goal is to block competitor's spam while passing their own. How would a voluntary association of mail users address spam? Well, that's a problem for the users themselves to address, gathering and vetting expert opinion, and the details of the organizational structure that would make this so efficient that a mail user could join and be effective with practically no more investment than raising a finger. I won't detail the process for right now, but trust me. It can be made incorruptible; those who attempt to corrupt it end up with a mouthful of hair. The structure is cellular, fractal, and probably bulletproof against any danger except massive governmental-level censorship and repression. If we have come to that point, we have much more serious problems than spam. Spammers have been known to successfully attack anti-spam solutions that implemented part of what I imagine the organization would do, and they were able to accomplish shutting these solutions down because the solutions were centralized, operated by a private company, depending on a single ISP, and turning a botnet to attack this company was trivial for a serious spammer. The ISP, facing massive DOS attack, booted the company in order to protect the rest of its subscribers. But the association I'm talking about would itself use distributed process and would not be vulnerable to attack by botnets; they would be able to shut down particular nodes, but, in the process, revealing themselves and their assets. Which can then be addressed directly. It's obvious that detection of a spam bot, as quickly as possible, and rapid notification of the ISP for the corrupted computer, with rapid shutdown of most internet access for that computer (everything outgoing, basically, though filtering could become more sophisticated: everything outgoing except for the ISP's own support, so that the blocked user can inquire by email and get immediate advice on bot removal and prevention of reinfection). So how to detect spam as quickly as possible? Well, users
Re: [Vo]:Contropedia
At 10:35 AM 1/27/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: There was a well publicized comparison made of Britannica versus Wikipedia a few years ago. Conclusion: Wikipedia is about as good a source of accurate information as Britannica, the venerable standard-bearer of facts about the world around us, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature. http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html Goes to show. That study has been impeached this is about equivalent to citing the MIT study on cold fusion. You know, the one with the hacked data. Wikipedia articles are often very good. Most articles are unreferenced and a mess, but those are articles on relatively obscure stuff. There appear to be something like 80,000 biographies of living persons with no references at all, and a big flap over what to do about it. Wikipedia articles, when there is controversy, are often very bad. Basically, it depends on which side can marshal the support of a core group of editors and administrators, and which side is better at manipulating the structure. Lots of good theory behind Wikipedia, in fact, but not the structures to make it so. I hate to admit it, but Wikipedia really is a good source of information for many topics. It is not good for some controversial and politicized topics such as cold fusion, but for matter, neither is Nature magazine, Scientific American and probably not Britannica. (I haven't checked the latter.) http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/421667/nuclear-fusion/259125/Cold-fusion-and-bubble-fusion#ref=ref917674 Pretty bad, actually. There are positive statements that aren't justifiable. Never were, actually. This is just what would be called a stub on Wikipedia, very brief, and that text wouldn't be likely to survive long at Wikipedia. The problem with Wikipedia and cold fusion is more about balance and the persistence of an overall coloring of the article. And, of course, the meddling of certain administrators using their privileged tools to warp the article and usable sources, plus the selective banning of editors who were actually working for neutrality, civilly and moderately (such as Pcarbonn and myself), while the most utterly outrageous behavior on the part of admins and editors goes practically unnoticed. It's really an aspect of the problem of scale. Those who could do something about it are overwhelmed and must make snap judgments, so when an issue is complex, really bad decisions are made. The Wikipedia article on Japanese language had some serious problems when I last checked it. I described some of the problems in another forum: I am not sure if the problems are still there . . . There were mistakes that seemed to be written by an enthusiastic person who has recently begun studying the language. He or she was trying to construct sample sentences in Japanese that were too much like English and that no native speaker would use. If you are going to use samples, you have to either find them in Japanese text somewhere or ask a native speaker. You might copy one from a highly authoritative source such as Martin, which has thousands of sample sentences, all carefully sourced. The problem was not that the person was obstinate or aggressive. He just does not know enough about the subject to write about it. Very common on Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit. There is inadequate structure, and a lot of resistance to the formation of what would be necessary.
Re: [Vo]:Encyclopedia Britannica article on cold fusion
At 06:00 PM 1/27/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: I guess I would have to say that despite its many faults, the Wikipedia article is better. [than the Britannica article]. Yes. The Britannica is depending on old information that was never really accurate, but it's not surprising that this is what they'd have if they consulted nuclear physicists for an article on fusion, but the effect they claim couldn't be confirmed is not a nuclear effect as such, rather fusion is simply one hypothesis as to what causes the anomalous heat. And the nuclear physicists, after finding that it was not simple to confirm (then) were not about to consider the excess heat claim legitimate until tea could be brewed on demand, and I'd bet that they would reject even that. And, in fact, they did. Mizuno evaporated a lot of heavy water (But that was tough to replicate... the whole tea thing was a huge red herring. Don't brew tea with muon-catalyzed fusion unless you sit it on your muon generator Might as well use the heat for something!) Hey, that's an idea! Build a device for heating tea into my CF kits. All it would take is a bit more power from the power supply Okay, a lot more power. I think what Wikipedia needs most is competition. If something like Citizendium were to become as popular -- or nearly as popular -- as Wikipedia, and if the governing philosophy of both remained distinctly different, that would be good for both. There would be no point in having two anonymous crowd-sourced reference books, both governed by free-for-all rules. You want one to be more traditional. Probably. The Wikipedia model is potentially more powerful, but it needs to become a hybrid. I'm suggesting a fractal structure for governance that would escalate disputes gradually until a level is found where there is consensus (or possibly rejection of a dispute as trivial piffle, many of them are.) Wikipedia needs to respect experts, and, instead, it bans them, if it happens that the expert knows more than the editors and contradicts them. So Pcarbonn is topic-banned (so far, I haven't begun to do anything about it except talk it up a little bit at Wikipedia Review), I'm topic-banned, and Jed is indefinitely blocked which is similar to being banned without a formal ban finding. Steven Krivit is not blocked or banned because he was nicer than Jed and doesn't tilt at windmills. Of course with regard to the search term cold fusion Wikipedia does have competition: Cold Fusion Times, New Energy Times and (far down the list, alas) LENR-CANR.org (by Google ranking and also Bing.com ranking). You serve a serious purpose, Jed. New Energy Times is more like a popular magazine, but on-line. To each his own. People who look at Wikipedia only are not seriously interested in a subject. That's right. They just want some quick information, ordinarily. I use it all the time. *Usually* it is more-or-less right. And even where there is some pretty bad and biased editing, there is a limit to what the cabal can get away with, which is why the article on Cold fusion is as good as it is. And it would be quite a bit better if not for snap judgments by some Arbitration Committee members. I had actually gotten some of the notable theories into the article, which until then had only a claim that there weren't any serious theories, only ad hoc attempts at explanations. I'd done this in spite of revert warring from an editor aptly called Hipocrite; but the administrator William M. Connolley reverted the article back, violating policy; ultimately, he lost his administrative privileges over that and some related actions, like banning and blocking me, but ArbComm does not, supposedly, make content decisions, it only adjudicates behavior, and it also decide that I had violated the policy against being a Pain In the Ass and tempting Reputable Administrators into breakling policy to get rid of me. Of course, WMC is now getting serious attention and my guess is he'll be banned soon himself. That's the WikiDrama. Seriously dysfunctional. Fixable? I think so, but it is certainly not guaranteed! The same forces that make Wikipedia grossly inefficient and often lead it quite astray are the same forces, in kind, as led to a silly and premature rejection of cold fusion. Science runs on consensus, in the long run, a consensus produced by deep study of what's controversial or new or unexplored, and that broke down with CF, and experimental results were rejected and even impeached based on little more than theory, and definitely not on conclusive demonstration of artifact, incompetence, or fraud, as to the critical excess heat findings. For some electrochemists to make an error with respect to neutraon radiation detection was one thing, but it was quite another to infer from this that the world's foremost electochemists, expert in calorimetry, had made bonehead errors in what they were really good
Re: [Vo]:Contropedia
At 06:41 PM 1/27/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: It's really an aspect of the problem of scale. Those who could do something about it are overwhelmed and must make snap judgments, so when an issue is complex, really bad decisions are made. This is true, and it is difficult problem. Sometimes, this is what causes capable people in the top ranks of huge organizations to make horrendous errors. For example, in the Federal Gov't, or at IBM or GM. It seems likely to me that Obama or the head of the DoE have no knowledge of cold fusion, for example, because they have so much else on their plates, and so many people giving them advice. They have no time to hear about cold fusion. No one in their office happened to see 60 Minutes last April. (I suppose . . .) What I've been suggesting is to understand the mechanisms by which a general consensus is overthrow, the ways in which fringe ideas that have an actual basis can (and do, eventually) gain wider consideration. Instead of going for Obama, find who has Obama's ear and who might be willing to take the time to understand the topic. And if you can't find any such person with the time (good chance), then someone who has the ear of the one who has the ear. And then another, so that it comes in from two different sources. When several people start mentioning Cold fusion to people close to Obama, the message starts to punch through the noise. This also explains why skilled generals in the heat of battle sometimes make huge mistakes that are out of character. The press of events, fatigue, or the need to make snap decisions without enough information causes them to make mistakes they would not normally make. Right. Hence a truly skilled general surrounds himself with people who criticize his proposals. By nature, the office of general is one where a decision must be made, but to fool a well-advised general is much more difficult than to fool one who only surrounds himself with sycophants. You have to sympathize with the Wikipedia Foundation in this regard. When a method generally works but occasionally causes disastrous failures it is hard to say they should abandon it. That's right. And, in fact, they should not abandon the method. They should modify it with structure that detects the errors and escalates efficiently when it's needed. They also need to stop requiring Sisyphus to roll the boulder up the hill over and over, and the software tools exist for what's called Flagged Revisions. But Flagged Revisions requires a set of editors trusted to be able to set the flags, and the community has become paralyzed, unable to make decisions on a large scale. And there is no mechanism for doing it, in fact, because the whole of Wikipedia operates as an adhocracy or ochlocracy, avoiding the making of actual deliberated collective decisions. It can be fixed, but the conservative forces on Wikipedia, clinging fervently to the status quo, are formidable. The free-for-all technique does not work for an article on cold fusion, but it works for hundreds of thousands of other articles, and many of these would not even be written in the first place with a tighter set of rules. Articles about Japanese comic book characters, for example, would not be written. They have some social and literary value for people who want to learn about Japan. See, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maison_Ikkoku Not important, you say? Maybe not, but neither is most literature. It is a good way to learn about what it was like living as a college student in Japan in the 1980s. If I didn't think Wikipedia was important, I'd not have devoted several years to it I do believe I know how to fix it, which doesn't translate to instant fix. I just suggested on the major Wikipedia mailing list a solution to what has become a huge flap over unsourced biographies of living people. A bot was developed to find these articles and automatically delete them. Bad idea, actually, but there is a good idea which is very close to it! There may be something like 80,000 of these biographies, with more being created all the time. The idea isn't a new one, it's called Pure Wiki Deletion, which refers to blanking content rather than actually deleting it. Strictly, with these, the content would not be blanking, it would instead be redirected to a page which explains the problem with the article, and which then provides instructions to how to read what was there, and to restore the article. A bot could do this in a flash, it fixes the legal problem with the articles immediately, it leaves the content where anyone can read it, warned about the unreliability, and anyone can fix it, and, then, activity fixing these articles can be monitored. Note that actual deletion isn't really the case with Wikipedia, content is not deleted, it is, rather, hidden from all but those with administrative privileges. There is true
Re: [Vo]:An Incoherent Explanation of LENR
At 05:46 PM 1/30/2010, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: http://newenergytimes.com/v2/blog/ Krivit says: Bottom line, there is something real, no doubt. Nuclear, absolutely. Potential for energy, yes. But fusion? I can't know for sure, but at this time, I highly doubt it. So if it's nuclear but not fusion, what is it? Fission? Or what? What else is there? I think Krivit is confused on this. He has been promoting Widom-Larsen theory, and seems to have swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. Now, I'm not saying that W-L theory is wrong, it's on the table, but W-L theory involves ultra-low momentum neutrons, which could theoretically cause, if they are generated somehow, a whole nucleosynthetic chain of reactions. Supposedly this isn't fusion. It's semantic. Neutrons can fuse with nuclei, so could Takahashi's Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate, both are neutrally charged. In other words, fusion but not d-d fusion. Both of them. The TSC, though, Takahashi predicts will indeed fuse within a femtosecond, all by its lonesome. I've started trying to understand W-L theory and am finding it pretty unpenetrable. Larsen agrees there is helium synthesis. What's the fuel, precisely? What energy/helium ratio does W-L theory predict? And then I found out why. It hasn't been explained, the understanding is proprietary. Krivit is backing what appears to be a commercial venture, Lattice Energy, that is not fully disclosing the basis. Sound familiar, folks? I can tell you what Lattice is predicting: cheap, clean energy. Why worry about details like Q factors when you have something Really Important to talk about, Cheap Clean Energy? The material Krivit points to in his W-L theory portal is mostly promotional fluff, unfortunately. Now, I haven't read it all. Maybe someone can point me to something useful. It's okay, nothing wrong with commercial ventures, but I do get a bit concerned when it involves attacking just about everyone in the field as obtuse and wrong, particularly when the attacks themselves are obtuse and wrong.
[Vo]:comment on New Energy Times' editorial about MeV/He-4
, and, except for other reactants or ashes being involved, this would produce the expected energy of 23.8 MeV/He-4. Larsen is correct that there are other possibilities, but he is improper in criticizing the work of Hagelstein et al as not having bothered to search for other forms of ash. Other researchers have done this, and other ashes have been found, but the *predominant* ash does appear to be helium. Now, I'm trying to understand what predictions Widom-Larsen theory would make for helium generation as correlated with excess heat. I'm not at all averse to the concept of neutron involvement, but two basic questions: what's the fuel? i.e., what are the initial reactants, and what are the catalysts, if any? And what is the ash? W-L theory apparently predicts transmutation abundances, or does it? Trying to find a good summary of W-L theory has not been simple. http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/2009Jan30LatticeEnergySlides.pdf is mostly promotional hype, of the kind we have seen from many prior and failed efforts at commercialization. What specific predictions has W-L theory made, confirmed by subsequent experiment, that would allow rosy predictions of cheap, clean energy? And the kicker: in the above slide show, I find this statement: Using its unique, unpublished proprietary understanding of LENR, Lattice is now ready to begin device engineering programs. In other words, We are not telling you what we know. Steve, are you sure you want to hitch yourself to this star? Much of the flap is over semantics. If low-momentum neutrons are being absorbed by nuclei, this is, by any broad definition, nuclear fusion, of neutronium, i.e., atomic number 0, mass 1, with other nuclei. It is, indeed, cold fusion, that is nuclear reactions resulting in higher mass number products or nuclear rearrangements with fused nuclei as intermediates (fusion/fission), taking place at low temperatures. The Widom-Larsen slide shows appear to be quite unaware of serious alternate hypotheses, such as Takahashi's Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate or Kim's work with Bose-Einstein condensates. In the end, absent the normal process of prediction and test, no theory can be considered proven. What predictions is W-L theory making? What tests have they bothered to research? Take home: d-d fusion does not refer only to smashing together two deuterium nuclei, violating the coulomb barrier, but to any process that takes in deuterium as fuel and produces helium as ash. Such a process is also expected to produce other ashes when other nuclei are involved; for example, if a TSC intermediate forms per Takahashi, the TSC is neutrally charged, it sees no Coulomb barrier, and, like slow neutrons, it could cause transmutation if it encounters a palladium nucleus during its short life. He-4 produced could easily be hot enough to trigger secondary nuclear reactions. Minor pathways of the primary reaction could produce tritium, perhaps. And on and on. Abd ul-Rahman Lomax http://lomaxdesign.com/coldfusion
Re: [Vo]:An Incoherent Explanation of LENR
At 08:12 PM 1/30/2010, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 03:33 PM 1/30/2010, Steven Krivit wrote: NET 34 is out. Read it carefully. http://newenergytimes.com/v2/blog/ Feathers will be ruffled; yes, I know. You don't know half of it, Steve. Your comments, questions and critique, as always, are invited as letters to the editor, however, I will most likely not engage in debate on this here in Vortex. Fine with me. I'm sure you have better things to do If you think you have a valid critique and are willing to put your reputation behind it, as I am with what I have published, then submit your letter to the editor and have your voice heard worldwide - and I will respond and answer to any letter that is honest, factual and concise. Well, I wish you'd have consulted more widely before diving into this, I've been worried about your strong advocacy for Widom-Larsen and your apparent lack of balance on the heat/helium and cold fusion issue. Indeed, some have perhaps overstated results, but it could also be said that results have been understated. In the 2004 DoE report, the DoE reviewer completely mangled the heat/helium evidence and totally misrepresented what the review said about it, and my conclusion is that it wasn't stated strongly and clearly enough; more accurately, the appendix probably distracted from the evidence in the main text. It was very easy to misread the appendix, and one reviewer did misread it, and then the DoE reviewer misread that in turn and turned what is a strong correlation between excess heat and helium into an *anticorrelation*, a complete error. Heat/Helium is the strongest evidence for nuclear reactions that we have, as to the primary reaction. Because it involves a correlation that has held up, within a factor of two or so, across many experiments, attempts to impeach it through impugning the calorimetry and helium measurements, as I've seen attempted, become quite difficult and complicated, for it is difficult to understand how an artifact in calorimetry would produce a corresponding artifact of roughly the right magnitude (for d-d fusion, without at all assuming that this is the actual reaction) in the helium measurements. In this, the variability in heat results actually creates controls, and the finding has been well established: no excess heat, no helium. Excess heat, helium, almost always. Outliers may indeed be artifact, but the substance, man!
[Vo]:comment on Violante data as covered by Steve Krivit
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/34/345revisions.shtml We have learned, through a better understanding of their paper, that the authors did not perform calorimetry. Rather, they used the helium measurements to back-calculate the excess heat they would have expected from the amount of helium they measured, assuming the hypothesis of a D+D 4He + 23.8 MeV (heat) reaction. That statement appears to be radically incorrect. If it were true, the green dots would be right on the helium actually measured! You have misunderstood the chart, and you are directly contradicting the article. The chart plots, for three experiments, the numbers of helium atoms found, with error bars. This is total helium, and it appears that background helium is included. There are, however, some problems with the presentation. On the one hand, the experiment that shows a green dot on the money, is the noisiest point, it's actually a low excess helium measurement, obscured by plotting total helium including background. I doubt that the intention was obfuscation, though, rather it seems a bit sloppy to me. But it was only a conference paper! You state that they did not perform calorimetry. On the contrary, they describe their calorimetry in the paper, http://newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2005/2005Apicella-SomeResultsAtENEA.pdf, in detail, and they give the data in the text, and I have converted to MeV using the NASA energy calculator at http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/Tools/energyconv/energyConv.pl Laser 2: 23.5 kJ, 1.47 x 10^17 MeV Laser 3: 3.4 kJ, 2.12 x 10^16 MeV Laser 4: 30.3 kJ, 1.89 x 10^17 MeV If we expect 24 MeV/He-4, these figures would translate to Laser 2: 0.612 x 10^16 atoms Laser 3: 0.088 x 10^16 atoms Laser 4: 0.787 x 10^16 atoms If background is to be added, 0.555 x 10^16 per the chart, this becomes expected measurement: Laser 2: 1.167 x 10^16 atoms Laser 3: 0.643 x 10^16 atoms Laser 4: 1.342 x 10^16 atoms And these are the green dot positions: Laser 2: 1.20 x 10^16 atoms Laser 3: 0.72 x 10^16 atoms Laser 4: 1.27 x 10^16 atoms It appears that they took the energy, divided it by 24 MeV/He4, and plotted that as the green dots for reference. However, the positions aren't exact, so they have made some approximation or there is some other factor they have not disclosed. Nevertheless, the green dots are *approximately* what they say they are: measured energy converted to expected helium at 24 MeV. For reference, here is the helium data taken from the chart: Laser 2: 0.80 x 10^16 to 0.97 x 10^16 atoms, increase over background: 0.245 - 0.415 x 10^16, midpoint 0.330 Laser 3: 0.68 x 10^16 to 0.79 x 10^16 atoms, increase over background: 0.125 - 0.235 x 10^16, midpoint 0.180 Laser 4: 0.94 x 10^16 to 1.18 x 10^16 atoms, increase over background: 0.385 - 0.625 x 10^16, midpoint 0.505 Calculated Q factors from the energy/helium: Laser 2: 35 - 60 MeV, midpoint 45 MeV Laser 3: 9 - 17 MeV, midpoint 12 MeV Laser 4: 30 - 49 MeV, midpoint 37 MeV Laser 3 certainly looks like an outlier. I'd have been much happier with statements of the actual measured values, or series of values, but this kind of specific and detailed data is often omitted. The round numbers are very clearly claimed. Then there are the green dots. These are not presentations of raw data, but of the raw energy data (stated explicitly as numbers) interpreted as helium on the hypothesis of 24 MeV/He-4. But there is an unfortunate problem. They do not state how they correlate measured helium with total helium, and they are not clear on whether or not the data in the chart is measured helium including background, the caption implies that it is the increase, but the caption could be interpreted merely to indicate that an increase over background is shown, and, from the calculations above, the figures are for total helium, i.e., background plus increase. However, the variation in the background is not stated. Do the error bars include that? It is quite unfortunate that they did not present the data clearly! They did do calorimetry, they are explicit about that. Those are the measured energy figures given, and those figures were not simply extrapolated from helium measured as you claimed: were it so, the green dots would be meaningless, but they also would be consistent, i.e., all three experiments would show green dots right on the money. The only experiment that shows that ratio, roughly, is the one with the lowest energy production, and the error bars in the helium measurement would make this not as important as it might seem. In any case, nobody with any sense would look at the series of three experiments and think that it was some kind of definitive confirmation of 24 MeV/He-4. It's one data point that looks like that, that's all, and two data points, less down in the noise, that look like there is missing helium, the same as with about everyone else. Definitely,
Re: [Vo]:An Incoherent Explanation of LENR
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/34/343inexplicableclaims.shtml This is a discussion of the Violante presentation, http://newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2004/ICCF11/pres/64-Violante.pdf Here, I will comment on the Krivit report, pointing out how he has misunderstood and/or misrepresented research in the field. 3. Inexplicable D-D Cold Fusion Claims From Italy By Steven B. Krivit For 21 years, a subgroup of LENR researchers has hypothesized a D+D 4He + ~24 MeV (heat) cold fusion reaction to explain the excess heat and helium-4 measured in some LENR experiments. That's misleading; here the Violante presentation is discussed, and it does not do anything more than, in one figure, plot excess heat onto a plot of helium measurements using the 24 MeV Q-value, a convenient way to show that the measurements are consistent with this. But that's the only mention of d-d fusion in the article, in the caption for the plot. What the report emphasizes is: The accordance between revealed 4He and produced energy seems to be a clear signature of a nuclear process occurring in condensed matter. The paper is not about the theory. It's about correlation of heat and helium. Attempts to measure experimental values of MeV/4He were considered very important by the subgroup because the group members thought such attempts would help validate their hypothesis of a D-D cold fusion reaction in LENR experiments. That's mind-reading, like that done by Gary Taubes fifteen years ago. Rather, there have indeed been attempts to determine heat/helium ratio, beginning with Miles in the early 1990s, and it's certainly of interest! In particular, Preparata had predicted that helium would be found, whether or not the rest of his theories were correct. What has actually been said is that the heat/helium measurements are consistent with the heat expected from helium production from deuterium as a fuel. They are not proof that d+d is the exact reaction, and there has not yet been, to my knowledge, sufficient work to nail down the actual ratio; what has been found is ample to be able to state that results are consistent with the expected Q value, given experimental error and the very real probability of some level of unrecovered helium. At the October/November 2004 11th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science meeting in Marseilles, France, a group led by Vittorio Violante (ENEA Frascati) presented a graph (shown below) from its presentation http://newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2004/ICCF11/pres/64-Violante.pdfReview of Recent Work at ENEA, which claimed reasonable experimental agreement with the ~24 MeV prediction of the D-D cold fusion reaction. The graph shows the results of three runs of the groups experiment C3. Violante gave a http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government/DOE2004/Aug23-2004DOE-ReviewMeeting.pdfpresentation with the same name on Aug. 23, 2004, to the Department of Energy and its LENR review panel. Reasonable experimental agreement means within roughly a factor of two of the predicted value. Note that this is a prediction, not from the reaction itself, but from energy released per helium atom of it is formed, by whatever reaction, from deuterium. There are other ways of creating helium that would not involve deuterium, perhaps, such as by neutron absorption by heavier nuclei and resulting alpha radiation, but this would run into the difficulty of the apparent importance of using deuterium. For whatever reason, the presentation does not appear to have impressed the DoE reviewers, and the report itself mangled what solid evidence was in the main text of the Hagelstein report paper, instead focusing on a completely garbled and incorrect report based, I figured out, on the Appendix, which was difficult to read and understand. New Energy Times contacted Violante for more information about this experiment and the data reported. He directed us only to the related paper http://newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2005/2005Apicella-SomeResultsAtENEA.pdfSome Recent Results at ENEA and explained that it was published in the ICCF-12 proceedings. [1] Unfortunately, this paper gives only a little more information. But it does confirm that the Violante group did do calorimetry. The graph below is, in fact, largely but not entirely illogical. The authors intended this slide to support their claim of reasonable experimental agreement with the prediction of the D-D cold fusion reaction. This article will examine and investigate the differences between the slides apparent meaning and its real meaning. (http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/34/ENEA-ViolanteEV-4He-Fall2004-100.jpgClick here for full-size image of the graph.) They don't state that claim. Rather, in order to present the energy data in the same plot as the helium data, some conversion factor would need to be used. They picked an obviously
Re: [Vo]:group seeks to discredit Rossi
At 08:28 PM 2/6/2011, Harry Veeder wrote: Based on this google translation it seems the Italian Committee Against the Claims of the Paranormal is seeking to discredit Rossi et al. http://translate.google.ca/translate?js=nprev=_thl=enie=UTF-8layout=2eotf=1sl=ittl=enu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.net1news.org%2Fcorsa-alla-fusione-fredda-litalia-passa-il-testimone-alla-grecia.html http://tinyurl.com/6za8ler harry They keep repeating this violates the laws of physics crap. It is impossible to say that an unknown nuclear reaction violates the laws of physics, unless the reaction is specified adequately to apply the laws! With Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion, at least, there was an understandable if totally-stopid-in-hindsight assumption that the reaction was d-d fusion, but even there, the claim that d-d fusion under P-F conditions was impossible was not based on sound physics, because there was obviously, if this was real, something not understood. The same impossible claim could have been made about muon-catalyzed fusion, before it was theorized and verified. If MCF had been discovered first, experimentally, the same pronouncement of impossible would have been possible on the same basis (failure to consider a possible catalyst that overcomes the Coulomb barrier). My own operating assumption has become that the reaction is not d-d fusion, for all the obvious reasons. But fusion it is, we know by the fuel and the ash, deuterium and helium, and all the flapping about transmutation and neutrons is just fluff. Minor. Not part of the main show. Krivit's nonsense about neutron absorption, with the neutrons being made from deuterium, not being fusion is semantic quibbling. The reaction is one which *accomplishes* fusion, mechanism unknonw. Why is neutron activity not part of the main show? I can't actually say with complete certainty that it isn't. It's just extraordinarily unlikly, because of reaction rate considerations, multiple miracles required, and other expected effects from such that are not observed. The concept of gamma suppression by heavy electrons, an effect that has no known experimental support, with the suppression being *almost perfect,* would be, itself, a major discovery, of vast importance. Not seen, not observed, no confirmation at all. Widon-Larsen theory only matches a piece of the experimental evidence, and not the rest. If we have a black box into which deuterium flows and inside the box, deuterium is broken into protons and neutrons, and the neutrons proceed through some pathway to create helium, and helium flows out of the box, and 24 MeV of energy is released, we have a fusion box. It looks like a duck, it acts like a duck, and it smells like a duck. It's a duck! So the claim of Widom and Larsen, and of Krivit, that if W-L theory is correct, it's not fusion is just bogus polemic, intended to sanitize the image of cold fusion -- and, by the way, quite recognized as such by critics of cold fusion. It doesn't work except transiently with a few people. Instead, because we do know that P-F activity is turning deuterium into helium, because the signature energy is observed and the product is observed correlated with that energy, very strongly, it's time to simply call it cold fusion. LENR is a field that is broader, and which may encompass completely different reactions, some of which might not be fusion, i.e., might not be synthesizing higher-Z elements as ash. More likely, though, the possible other reactions being observed through unusual products, are from rare branches or secondary reactions; if fusion is taking place, energy is being released that can, under some conditions, do Other Stuff. The Hagelstein limit of 20 KeV for charged particle products from the P-F effect does not prohibit minor side-effects and branches, because, in fact, what Hagelstein notes as missing is not *entirely* missing, the observed levels are simply way too low for high-energy CP radiation to be a normal product of the main reaction. In the case of tritium, as the most prominent example, there is plenty of tritium found, it's not artifact, at least not all the time, but -- this was an early argument that tritium findings must be artifact -- the level of tritium is far, far too low to explain the excess heat through fusion to tritium. Tritium and excess heat, according to Storms, are not well-correlated. I'm amazed that Krivit is making all this fuss about Rossi, who may turn out to be fabulously wealthy, or who may end up broke and discredited, who may have originated some idea or may have stolen it, or may have simply figured out a way to generate a lot of heat for a short time from a black box, contents not disclosed, with or without some nuclear reaction, but, as far as I can tell, Krivit has not covered, at all, the Naturwissenschaften review, Status of cold fusion (2010), Storms (2010), a mainstream-published
Re: [Vo]:group seeks to discredit Rossi
At 09:27 PM 2/6/2011, Rich Murray wrote: I am Rich Murray, rmfor...@gmail.com , and have suggested Feb. 5 and 6 that the Rossi device may have internal leaks that cause the electric heater to short out to the output water, electrolyzing water into hydrogen and oxygen in the cell and messing up the heat measurements, while creating the hazards of severe electric shock and explosions. An internal leak would simply be another internal arrangement. It would be using input power to heat output water, and because energy would be lost, perhaps, as hydrogen gas, *less* temperature rise would be seen, not more. In other words, this possibility would be *completely irrelevant.* Right now, the Rossi device is a Black Box, with two apparent inputs: electrical power, as a supposedly measured level, and water, and an output: steam or, at least, very hot water, at the boiling point. The only other inputs would be hidden, if there is fraud, and one of them might be some form of chemical energy storage or potential energy realized during the experiment. As a thin possibility, Rossi might have accidentally discovered a new chemical mechanism. But this is inconsistent with his reports of more reliable and more extensive operation. Inventors sometimes exaggerate what they have done privately, because they are highly motivated to attract investors. So some shed of possibility of non-fraud combined with error exists. (The reports about prior work are legally irrelevant, they are puffery, and generally don't created any cause of action unless they are very, very specific, and clearly fraudulent as shown by evidence later. Simple exaggeration doesn't create fraud.) so the question is, Is the Rossi Black Box producing more power than is put into it? Once the excess power, if seen, moves beyond known chemical possibilities, by a huge margin, we don't need to know what's in the box to conclude that something very important is being shown. There is, at the very least, some new chemistry. Since we don't expect violation of the known conservation of mass/energy, if there is huge excess power, we come to a default hypothesis: a nuclear reaction of some kind, though if we are inclined to wilder speculations, there is always that generic idea: Zero Point Energy. I'm not putting any money on the ZPE slot on this roulette wheel. If I had a way to sell short, at this point, I might make a modest investment and I might not, but I wouldn't bet the farm, either way.
Re: [Vo]:Comments by Duncan, Celani at ICCF16
At 08:58 AM 2/7/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: Celani's description of the demo was more critical than his discussion with me, yesterday. He was quite upset that they did not let him make nuclear measurements, and I suspect that has colored his thinking. Rossi told him we can't let you take a gamma spectrum because that will tell you exactly what reactions are going on, and we cannot reveal that information until we can get a patent. That remark alone is revealing, isn't it! I don't trust anything Rossi says; once the fraud possibility exists, as it does from many appearances, nothing can be taken at face value, everything must be independently verified. Rossi, if not a fraud, is acting very suspiciously, without a clear non-fraud reason for it. Obviously, if there were suspicious gamma, this would be a nuclear reaction of some kind (though possible, perhaps, a fake with some hot radioisotope inside. Not easy to do, and I don't have the knowledge to quickly come up with a possibility.) On the fraud theory, Rossi prohibited the gamma spectrum measurements to increase the appearance of a nuclear reaction! After all, if it produced no gammas, why not allow the measurements? And if it is producing gammas, then we have nuclear right at the tip of our tongues. If it's assumed that Rossi's purpose is publicity at this point -- and isn't it, rather openly? -- then this fits perfectly. And if the patent is denied? If Rossi applies for a patent, it's denied because he hasn't satisfied the requirements of patents, that is adequate disclosure for someone skilled in the art to produce a working device, he's not protected. Failure to disclose, here, could be destroying his patent rights, not protecting them. If the patent were granted, he'd be protected, from the time of filing, as to any subsequent work by others. So he's playing the game as if the patent will not be granted. He expects that it will not be granted, and, I suspect, he filed it only to gain publicity. Had he seriously desired a patent, he would have made adequate disclosure, from the beginning. Contrary to what you've said, Jed, this doesn't look good. All that it might mean is that Rossi faked a demonstration, well enough to cause some experts to make some noises. Experts will not -- and should not -- speculate on fraud, unless they clearly identify it. They would be expected to couch their comments with plenty of caveats -- assuming that input power was accurately measured, etc. What I've seen from the experts who have reviewed this is such as to make me think that, if there was no fraud, Rossi is working on something huge in import. But there is a big caveat, for two little letters: if.
Re: [Vo]:A few comments by Celani about the demonstration
At 08:00 AM 2/7/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: Rich Murray mailto:rmfor...@gmail.comrmfor...@gmail.com wrote: If conducting paths start to open up within the cell from the heater electric power input, they will evolved and expand complexly. The H2 that Rossi thinks is being absorbed into the Ni nanopowder may in part be leaking into the coolant water output . . . That is completely out of the question. There are no leaks. There is no measurable change in H2 pressure. Even if all of hydrogen leaked out and burned it would contribute 14 kJ, and of course they would see it had leaked out. In my opinion, that is the kind of skeptical hypothesis that does not need to be addressed. Sure. I responded here out of concern for Murray. The explanation is preposterous because there is far too little hydrogen being introduced. Unless, of course, that's faked, i.e., a lot more hydrogen is introduced. There would have to be an oxygen input, but that could come from ambient air. And once we consider the possibility of fraud, as we must in this case, the refutation of that hypothesis is independent replication, and probably some multiplicity in this, depending on details. Fraud is not a specific hypothesis as to the mechanism of the fraud. For a convincing demonstration of a Black Box device, rigorous and independent monitoring of all possible inputs and outputs is necessary. I've never seen an inventor making claims like Rossi allow that, and then still have visible *major* excess power, beyond chemical storage possibility. I think these public demonstrations are a waste of time and effort, they will convince only those who are ready to be convinced, those inclined to trust someone based on? Appearances? By appearances, this thing sucks big time! Reputation? Whose reputation? Very bright people, experts, can be fooled, by something that they just didn't expect and check for. Happens all the time! And the experts who witnessed that demonstration are queasy about it, particularly Celani. What did Rossi hope to accomplish by the demonstration? My suspicion is, he got exactly what he wanted. Lots of publicity, and by attending the demonstration, all those experts facilitated that If I were an investor, I'd insist on full disclosure of adequate details for reproduction, to me, under a non-disclosure agreement, and I'd pay an expert of my choice to review those, and if the report were possible, even if unlikely were appended, I'd enter into a contract with Rossi that gave me an investment option, and I'd arrange for independent replication under my control. I'd allow Rossi to make all kinds of suggestions, but not to touch the device, nor would I allow anyone affiliated with Rossi to get anywhere near it. It's also possible that the first step,before that, would be an independent examination and operation of a device supplied by Rossi, and he'd be paid for that device. And if it turned out that Rossi had lied in the disclosures, I'd demand the payment back, and the lying would void the non-disclosure agreeement -- a non-disclosure agreement that allowed fraud would be contrary to public policy, I believe, doesn't matter what it says! I'd understand that I might not get my early investment back. Investors inclined to risky investments expect to lose money on most ideas, they are playing for the big one. Rossi claims, though, that only he knows the secrets of the device. Am I correct about that?
Re: [Vo]:Focardi Rosssi-Off- Topic - What gets Funded/Cashed Out..very upsetting
At 08:43 AM 2/7/2011, Ron Kita wrote: Greetings Vortex, I still cannot believe that Clorox acquired Burts Bees Wax for 925 million. I tried to find some lower numbers, none were found. Will keep looking..it is so incredible. http://www.newser.com/article/d9l66eg00/clorox-2nd-quarter-earnings-fall-on-burts-bees-charge-revenue-declines-post-swine-flu.htmlhttp://www.newser.com/article/d9l66eg00/clorox-2nd-quarter-earnings-fall-on-burts-bees-charge-revenue-declines-post-swine-flu.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/business/06bees.html says $913 million. Close enough for folk music. the story is pretty simple: From 2000 to 2007, Burt's Bees' annual revenue soared to $164 million from $23 million. They bought for less than six year's revenue, but also on an expectation that it would continue to grow. Apparently it has. This isn't big money in big business. For perspective, it's only a few dollars for everyone in the U.S., and even further short if we consider the worldwide market. Cold fusion money is waiting for a killer application. A lot of money has been spent trying to scale the effect up, without success, so far. Without a demonstrated theory that can be used to predict device behavior, engineering is very difficult, so the main task ahead of us is to reverse the general impression among theoretical physicists that CF is pure bogosity, because what's needed right now is far more intense theoretical work, leading to experimental predictions that are then tested. The biggest loss in 1989-1990 was the possibility of massive theoretical investigation. To be fair, there wasn't enough evidence ready at first, that the ash was helium was not known and was not expected from the lack of gammas. But that situation shifted, and the Storms review, Status of cold fusion (2010), is crucial as a wedge into the consciousness of physicists. That review follows and seals an obvious publishing decision by Sprinter-Verlag and Elsevier to being publishing work in the field, and they are the two largest scientific publishers in the world. From my point of view, the battle is over, but the enemy hasn't realized it yet. Shanahan is complaining that he can't get published any more. No negative reviews have been published in the last six years, only a single crank letter from Shanahan, that the Journal of Environmental Monitoring published, my guess, to bash the skeptics thoroughly and completely with the response that they copublished from the Most Notable Researchers in Cold Fusion, et al which was, for the editors, the End of the Question. Next case?
Re: [Vo]:A few comments by Celani about the demonstration
At 12:09 PM 2/7/2011, Rich Murray wrote: I want to be wrong, but all doubts have to be candidly explored in this very important scientific debate, in which Rossi at least could share critical details with some independent scientists of repute who can be trusted with secrets. There is no scientific debate yet. There is a staged demonstration, under the control of Rossi, with experimental details concealed, purporting to show substantial energy generation, enough that the only likely explanations, from the observers, become fraud and Wow! Rossi clearly wants to pursue the path of secret development. That's his privilege. He's been otherwise advised, by people who should know, such as Rothwell. Discussing this at this point, as if there were a serious scientific debate, is like discussing if a magician really can pull a rabbit out of a hat. Well, yes, he can. Or make it appear so. Some people may want to debate if there might be a possible real effect involved, i.e., *any LENR.* From the whole cold fusion debacle, we should know that just because something seems theoretically impossible, experimental evidence can't be discarded on that basis. Rather, if reputable researchers report an effect, the norm is to accept that their report is honest, and then, if the implications are great, to look for -- and perform, if possible, according to the individual choices of researchers or research groups -- independent replications before jumping the shark over it. There are a million ways that there could be artifact, with any experiment. Without an experimental protocol to replicate, we can't even begin to assess them. Bottom line, Rich, simmer down. Many of us have suggested how Rossi could open this up. He either is a fraud, or he doesn't trust anyone, and just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you. Barring some unexpected event, we'll just have to wait, love don't come easy, it's a game of give and take.
[Vo]:How New Energy Times has become a crank web site.
I posted a comment wondering why Krivit hasn't mentioned the Storms review, published in Naturwissenschaften last October, Status of cold fusion (2010), and hasn't listed the paper on his Recent papers page, in spite of it being, arguably, the most significant paper published in the field in recent years, as to demonstrating the progress of the field, and its present status among experts, specifically, peer reviewers at mainstream publications. This was, in fact, only the latest in a series of reviews, I've counted about nineteen in mainstream peer-reviewed publications, per the Britz database, published since 2005. No negative reviews, beyond the Shanahan crank letter published in Journal of Environmental Monitoring, apparently so that the knee-jerk skeptical position could be demolished. Well, here is his explanation: http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/02/07/missing-cold-fusion-from-new-energy-times/ He's not covering cold fusion any more. If it's called cold fusion, it's to be excluded from NET. He's only covering LENR, specifically, things that might be explained by Widom-Larsen theory. Krivit writes: In the last few years, we have figured out that there really is http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35902coldfusionisneither.shtmlno evidence for cold fusion and that the best so-called evidence for it was http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35903tangledtale.shtmlfabricated. In the course of our investigations, however, the evidence for low-energy nuclear reactions, http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtmlperhaps understood, perhaps not, has been clear and consistent. If it's science you want, you'll find it here. But cold fusion? You'll only find that in our history section. I've been following Krivit since before his shift became obvious. He wrote, in explaining his history, that be believed in cold fusion because experts told him it was real. PhDs. Krivit is not a scientist, but a reporter, and has clearly shown that he often doesn't understand experimental reports, much less complex theories like Widom-Larsen theory. He now believes W-L theory because PhDs told him so. How does Krivit pick which PhDs to believe? I think it's obvious. He is constitutionally disposed to fight for the underdog, the minority, the rejected. Not understanding the evidence, when he saw that W-L theory wasn't being given what he thought was due attention, he began to investigate the basis for the common fusion theory. The fact is that there is no common fusion theory except as to what is very simple, deuterium in, helium out, with commensurate energy. That's not a mechanism, and it matters not if the mechanism resembles W-L theory or something else, the laws of thermodynamics predict the 24 MeV figure no matter what the mechanism is. Krivit has never understood this. Krivit, his suspicions now aroused, began to investigate the details of the research underlying the helium ash theory, and found some details that he did not understand. He is now clearly presenting these details as fabrications. I've looked at his charges. I've seen no evidence at all for fabrication, but plenty of evidence that Krivit isn't capable of sound scientific analysis. At one point, he charged an Italian researcher with scientific misconduct for changing his results without explanation, when what the researcher had done was to move a decimal point in a figure, and change the exponent, the power of ten, commensurately. I.e., no change. Krivit also misunderstood and misrepresented what the paper of that researcher was saying and claiming. They were *using* 24 MeV as a method of plotting helium and excess energy on the same chart, readily comparing results with that correlation value, which is useful; the work was not intended to prove 24 MeV, the data was too thin. (It supported 24 MeV and the correlation between heat and helium, though, reasonably, as has *all work* that has measured heat and helium, *including the original negative replications*). Similarly, a change that McKubre made in a calculation, many years ago, in a direction that *weakened* his helium correlation at the deuterium fusion value, was reported as if it were fraud, and claims of misconduct were made. Nobody has confirmed Krivit on this, he's an isolated crank. With a web site. And able to get real reporters to interview him, with his comments being reported as if he were an expert. Krivit is presenting, as if it were proven fact, a position totally at variance with what is being published in mainstream journals, more totally at variance than ever was cold fusion itself, which always had a significant level of positive publication, with the positive, after the first two years, greatly outweighing the negative. Krivit, initially, was reporting on and supporting, and being supported by, a large field of researchers, outnumbered only by knee-jerk skeptics in the scientific
RE: [Vo]:A few comments by Celani about the demonstration
At 02:34 PM 2/7/2011, Mark Iverson wrote: Abd... I think you haven't been following this as closely as the active contributors... Perhaps your time is limited and you have not been able to read all the postings... What did Rossi hope to accomplish by the demonstration? My suspicion is, he got exactly what he wanted. Lots of publicity, and by attending the demonstration, all those experts facilitated that Rossi has stated that he did NOT want to do the demo; that was Focardi's idea. Given one of the two major operating hypotheses, I don't accept any statements about this as definitive. If he wanted publicity, he would have been much more active at public venues such as scientific/engineering/energy conferences. Compared to most others with novel ideas/research, he has been keeping a pretty low profile until this demo. Perhaps. It's certainly not a low profile now. He's trying to scale up to production. That takes a lot of money. By appearances, this thing sucks big time! My impression to date is that most of the contributors on vortex think that the Jan demo was the most important (can't quite say 'convincing') demo ***SO FAR*** for any kind of LENR/Mills process. Assuming no fraud, I have no difficulty believing that. By the way, I *have* been following the discussions and reports. Yes, the concensus is also that it could have been done better (i.e., easily made 'irrefutable'). Easily. But an inventor-controlled demonstration, while it could be made more *convincing*, for sure, than the Jan demo, simply cannot take the place of an independent replication, or, short of that, a semi-independent demonstration where full external investigation is possible, and operation beyond a certain time period can be accomplished. However, the apparent energy gain has been far greater, for a demonstrable time, and more or less on demand, than any previous LENR/Mills reported results. Key word: apparent energy gain. Yes. That is why the normal possibility of error or artifact is largely ruled out. This is not marginal. And the non-public test in Dec had even more interesting results when input power was shut off completely... So your statement that it 'sucks big time' means that all other LENR results suck even bigger... Yet, you are convinced that those results prove that something is going on! No. You quoted me out of context, Mark. What I actually wrote was: By appearances, this thing sucks big time! Appearances refers to many details of the demonstration and the associated facts, the secrecy, the little detail with the gamma ray spectrum, the lack of independent confirmation, and a disinterest in arranging the same, and more. I am simply pointing out the obvious. Appearances can be deceiving. That Fleischmann screwed up and reported neutron radiation from his cells was a mistake, and it sucked, as did various other aspects of the situation, the announcement by press conference, the lack of detail, even in the hurried paper that was published, all of which practically guaranteed replication failure (plus a lot that can't be at all blamed on PF, they simply didn't know all of the required conditions). But cold fusion is established by the work of hundreds of independent research groups, and there is a single experiment, replicated widely enough, that proves (as well as proof can be expected for anything like this) that deuterium fusion to helium is taking place, *mechanism unknown.* Within a couple of years, it moved from a postion where extreme skepticism was reasonable, to one where it was not. Very different. Rossi is in the first stage, and without the very substantial reputation of Professors Pons and Fleischmann. Who, by the way, still deserve the Nobel Prize. Freedom from all error or misjudgment is not a requirement. Or shouldn't be! What they did was huge, paving the way for all the rest of LENR research. You also seem to be unaware of the statement from Rossi himself, that he has funded this out of his own pocket. No, I was aware that he has asserted that. Mark, you seem to accept what Rossi says as if it were confirmed fact. That is ordinarily a reasonable assumption. It is not, here. That's unfortunate, perhaps, but this is what happens when one allows the appearances that have been described to arise. This is *not* a claim that Rossi is lying, I have seen no proof of any lies, at all, so far. If Rossi is funding this out of his own pocket, that is, probably, his own foolishness. He's been complaining that he's short of the money he needs, that he's short of time, he's working so hard. To relieve that burden, it would only take ... money. But he's chosen a path that doesn't seek to share this, he apparently wants to own it, though it looks to me like this strategy could radically fail, he's taking huge risks. So doing the demo to attract investors is quite unlikely... In fact, that's why he was
RE: [Vo]:group seeks to discredit Rossi
At 02:08 PM 2/7/2011, Mark Iverson wrote: Abd: You stated: Right now, the Rossi device is a Black Box, with two apparent inputs: electrical power, as a supposedly measured level, and water, Did you forget the hydrogen? At least I would consider it an input since it is not entirely contained within the reactor. I.e., there is an external tank and connection to the reactor... I suppose one could go as far as considering the H tank as an extension to the reactor... Yes, I did forget the hydrogen for that moment. Thanks.
Re: [Vo]:group seeks to discredit Rossi
At 02:22 PM 2/7/2011, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Recall the tragic PR mess that transpired when scientists (most of them physicists) in their initial curiosity attempted to independently replicate a chemistry experiment, for which most had little experience in executing, the Pons Fleischmann 1989 cold fusion experiment. As we all know, the vast majority of those preliminary independent replications failed. The result was a tragic history lesson on how NOT to conduct independent replication, a lesson that has taken decades to turgidly work its constipated way through the alimentary canal of pseudo science accusations. Yes, quite precisely. However, those negative replications actually were useful, if properly understood. Especially those that measured helium! The rush to replicate was, indeed, extraordinarily foolish, mostly a waste of time. On the one hand, the would-be replicators seemed to assume that, if it worked, it would be simple; that was partly the result of the experiment having been presented as being simple, when it was far from simple, and Pons and Fleischmann knew it. It was more complex than even they knew, as they found out when they ran out of their original batch of palladium and they couldn't get cells to perform for a while. (Huizenga notes this with Miles, with some apparent glee, not realizing that this actually was evidence for the reality of the effect, explaining the difficulty of replication. Aha! sensitive to unexpected details!) Looking back on those events we can see that to a very large extent that independent replication was premature. That's right. The first step is internal replication, where the originator runs the experiment multiple times, developing a protocol, and publishing it. It's common that the protocol is not entirely complete, and communication with the originator is necessary. Especially when replications fail to come up with the same results. It was a total error to jump to the conclusion that Pons and Fleischmann's work was bogus based on replication failure. There is a far more common reason: inadequate specification of or adherence to the protocol. Properly, massive effort should have been put into identifying the actual artifact in the P-F work, instead of coming up with some vague generalities. Suppose, for example, the problem was some error in measuring input power, as the skeptical Barry Kort has proposed. An exact replication would, with this, come up with the same error, which would then, in fact, rather easily be identified. Same with Kort's other proposed artifact: misting, loss of electrolyte from open cells as mist, rather than as vapor, with a consequential incorrect adjustment for vapor, leading to a calculation showing excess heat. That would have, as well, been easy to replicate and then identfiy. Hey, Ralph! What's this white stuff appearing around the cell vent? Did you forget to dust this thing off? It was premature because the necessary protocols were not yet sufficiently understood by PF. If they didn't know all the crucial details, could they accurately tell others what they must do? Of course not. But the fact is that replication did start coming in, reasonably quickly. Miles started getting results before the ERAB panel had completed their report. It was simply more difficult than the gung-ho physicists were expecting. Hubris, perhaps. Exacerbating matters, physicists were attempting to perform delicate experiments within a field (chemistry) for which they were not trained in. JEE! WHAT COULD GO WRONG Obviously, just as much as could go wrong with Fleischmann making neutron measurements, similarly. There were too many unknowns and variables that tended to mess things up. The uncertainties PF secretly harbored quickly came back to haunt them. Due to a collection of unique political circumstances of that time period PF felt they had no choice but to come out of the closet, so to speak, and (prematurely) reveal what they suspected was probably occurring. IOW, they speculated. Due to their own lack of adequate knowledge pertaining of certain experimental factors some of their speculations turned out to be premature, as well as I gather inaccurate. Well, they did make some errors, but the paper published actually did say unknown nuclear reaction rather than fusion. Even though, it turns out, it was fusion, just a different kind of fusion than everyone was expecting. I find it weird: they expected that fusion was impossible, but if it was to be possible, it would have to be what they were used to seeing. It's as if some massive brain fault rained down in 1989, some sort of collective delusion. Some of these unfounded speculations ended up skewering them in the light of the scientific community. They could see the rusty blade coming at them, skewering them in slow motion - and there wasn't a damned thing they could do about the ensuing circus. Timing is
Re: [Vo]:How New Energy Times has become a crank web site.
At 02:37 PM 2/7/2011, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 02/07/2011 02:24 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: I'm not sure how he took my criticism, since I have nothing invested in any particular theory As far as I can tell he didn't have the patience to understand your criticism. You used too many words, so Krivit dismissed what you had to say. Probably most of the papers he should be reading also use too many words. Isn't a reporter supposed to be able to digest complex information? Anyway, mea culpa. I do use a lot of words, sometimes. Frankly, I don't think he's the brightest bulb in the string. He seems to have a hard time following arguments which are longer than a sound bite. And, BTW, criticism directed at him, personally, seems to be dismissed out of hand, which makes it difficult for him to see any flaws in his approach. If you point them out, that's a priori a personal attack, and consequently dismissed. Yes. I first noticed how Krivit had published his private correspondence with many people, stuff that was pretty much senseless argument, personal mishegas. He readily became embroiled in debate. Not good for a reporter
RE: [Vo]:A few comments by Celani about the demonstration
At 02:52 PM 2/7/2011, Mark Iverson wrote: Abd: You really need to be more careful with your choice of words... There is a staged demonstration, under the control of Rossi, with experimental details concealed... No, there were at least two tests done with the same seasoned university scientists present. Really? They knew what was inside that device? No, it was not a 'staged' demo... And Rossi had very limited control. From everything that I've read, which is considerable, Rossi brought in the reactor but it was the Univ of Bologna scientists that set it up and brought in THEIR OWN instruments and hooked them up THEMSELVES. I believe I mentioned that my comments weren't accurate if that happened. Also, as mentioned several times so far, those same scientists looked for all possible ways to bring in other power sources, and the reactor was even ELEVATED off the surface of the table so one could see ALL connections to the reactor. Maybe that's what you call a 'staged' demo, but I think that's clearly an exaggeration. To the extent this was true, then my comments were off. There remains the possibility of internal tricks. How about this: why is the device insulated? Could it be that it already contains some very hot material? Geez, that seems like it would be simple! There is no end to possible frauds, which is why, with something of this magnitude, most scientists won't be satisifed until there are independent replications -- and, by the way, 1 MW reactors for sale certainly allows a kind of independent replication No, all experimental details were NOT concealed... There were a few, yes, but only those that were of a proprietary nature, and then, according to Rossi, only until patents are granted. Patents won't be granted, my prediction. Inadequate disclosure. And that, then, gives Rossi the excuse to put off making the 1 MW reactors available I'd love to be wrong. Cheap energy would be wonderful.
[Vo]:Outline for prosaic black-box generation of higher than chemical heat
Consider a well-insulated box. It contains a reservoir holding a substance with high specific heat and high melting point. Into the reservoir, and through a tube into the box, may flow water, and steam may escape. Internal controls may regulate flow. Hot air may be used to initially heat the substance. How much heat may be stored in the substance and used to vaporize water? It is certainly not limited by chemistry. No claim is made by me that such a device has been used to demonstrate heat generation, only that it is possible, and not particularly difficult.
Re: [Vo]:Outline for prosaic black-box generation of higher than chemical heat
At 12:34 PM 2/10/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: It would be a little tricky to have something like this produce the output performance of the Rossi device. You would have to have a secret remote control that vectors most of the cooling water around the heat source at first, and then gradually sends the water to carry off the heat from the hot material. To store 23,107 kJ, you would have to have a much larger mass of material than you can fit into the Rossi device. Mmmm. how much water did the device heat to 100 C? I haven't looked at the specific heat numbers, but it looks to me like you could have an internal control that would simply send water into the heat source, it would boil rapidly and leave, so you'd control the amount of steam by how much water you let in. Until the heat source approached 100 degrees C, a constant flow of water would produce a constant flow of steam. Using water to hold the heat would require pressure containment, complicating everything. Instead, you couldn't use a very hot metal? Below melting or even molten? Was that figure 23 MJ? Anyway, rough calculation, I came up with about 10 or 15 quarts of iron just below melting. Did I do that right? That's not all that much volume. And if you use molten iron, it's quite a bit more. Gets more dangerous, of course.
RE: [Vo]:does classical mechanics always fail to predict or retrodict for 3 or more Newtonian gravity bodies? Rich Murray 2011.02.18
At 11:12 PM 2/18/2011, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: Congratulations on your Sinclair project. I started on a TRS-80. Heh! Well, *I* -- the word is drawn out -- started on an Altair 8800. Pthtpthhh!
Re: [Vo]:does classical mechanics always fail to predict or retrodict for 3 or more Newtonian gravity bodies? Rich Murray 2011.02.18
At 10:17 PM 2/18/2011, Rich Murray wrote: does classical mechanics always fail to predict or retrodict for 3 or more Newtonian gravity bodies? Rich Murray 2011.02.18 I think there is a misconception here. There isn't any true two-body or three-body problem because there are far, far more than two or three bodies in the universe! We simplify problems by neglecting what is remote. So we might, indeed, look at 3-body problems; some solutions are known that are special cases, if I'm correct. As the attempt to predict extends into the future, however, the results become more and more inaccurate, except in stable special cases. I don't recall description of the overall problem mentioned when I was young, before chaos theory became well-known. The problem is infinite sensitivity to initial conditions. In setting up an attempt to predict behavior of a system, even when the laws of motion are well-defined, it's necessary to specify the initial conditions, i.e., the position and velocity of the elements. Now, from the Uncertainty Principle, we can only know these to a certain combined accuracy, the product of the uncertainties cannot be less than a fixed value. But surely that's only a tiny detail! However, turns out, some physical systems are infinitely sensitive to initial conditions. Real physical systems, some fairly simple ones. Using math, start with one particular exact initial condition, and you get one result. Start from something infinitesimally different, you can get a radically different result. In practice, this means that the future of a system cannot, in general, be exactly predicted, and for long periods of time, relatively, the inaccuracy can become gross. There is a lovely youtube video showing a pendulum suspended over four magnets. If you start from a particular starting position, hovering over which magnet will the pendulum end up settling? Outside regions close to the magnets, it turns out to be *unpredictable.* That's because one cannot set the initial conditions *exactly* the same. You can't predict the outcome even by a history of tries, by releasing the pendulum again from the supposedly same spot. You can't make the spot 'same' enough. (Probably. There might exist some regions where the outcome is predictable, besides the obvious ones over the attractors.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe5Enm96MFQfeature=related
Re: [Vo]:Counter-strike launched in textbook controversy
At 01:51 AM 2/21/2011, Horace Heffner wrote: http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/02/21/rothwell-makes-pre-emptive-strike-against-new-lenr-textbook/ http://tinyurl.com/4s3xhjt Right there, in a nutshell, is perfect evidence as to Krivit's effective demise as a reporter on LENR. This leads me, at the end, to specific situations as to how to proceed. But to start: Rothwell wrote a letter based on his impressions. Looks like Jed made a mistake, an assumption, connecting Wiley, the publisher of the encyclopedia, with the proposed textbook. So? People make mistakes all the time, especially when it's based on a verbal announcement. Rothwell is *not* a professional reporter. And for all we know, what Krivit did and said in Chennai might have been susceptible to that explanation. Or not. The Rothwell mail was more of a mild warning that there are experts concerned about Krivit, re the field, than a pre-emptive strike. Rothwell believed that Wiley had already agreed. Krivit then takes his own knowledge and frames Rothwell's action as if Rothwell knew differently, thus pre-emptive, i.e, before the fact. Krivit writes: Rothwell also e-mailed additional lies to one of the Wiley editors and then posted them in the Vortex-l chat room. Thus Rothwell's belief as to what Krivit has announced becomes, not an error, but a lie. This is the comment of someone who has become very highly involved, very personally. What Krivit then presents is then the highly involved, highly reactive view of someone taking things very, very personally. The people who wrote one of the Encyclopedia articles Srinivasan and Storms and others were at the conference, Rothwell wrote. They assumed he would ask them to contribute to the new textbook, as well. So they approached him and asked about his plans. They were disconcerted when he told them to shut up and go away. Literally. Rothwell is presenting a loose summary of an event. Did he witness the event? Is his understanding of what happened based instead on comments made by others? Rothwell is writing about, not just Storms, but others. Specificity is lost in Rothwell's comment, then about the approach. It could have been someone else, for example. Presenting the state of mind of a whole group of people is dicey. I have extensive correspondence with Jed. I've found him to be highly knowledgeable, truthful, I'd be astonished to catch him in an actual lie. However, he's not a skilled objective observer and reporter. Sometimes he presents his personal conclusions and opinions as if they were objective fact. Lots of people do this, but we expect something different from professional reporters, who are trained -- and paid -- to carefully separate their own opinions from what they know to be fact. A reporter might still cherry-pick facts, because reporters still have biases and also find it necessary to present what is important -- they aren't robots, nor should they be -- but they don't present opinion (such as lie) as if it were fact (in this case, a declarative statement of an opinion or conclusion without expressing the source, such as according to Steve Krivit, Rothwell was lying.) And, normally, backing up and regulating professional reporters are editors and publishers, who ensure that work is checked and that the biases of reporters don't overwhelm what is published. What we've linked to is a blog, Krivit's opinion. The concern of LENR experts is that Krivit's opinions have become so strong that they may badly warp his professional work, the reporting. And we can see that, with one clear example. To my mind, the biggest event in cold fusion history this last year -- let's set aside Rossi! -- was the publication of the Storms review in Naturwissenschaften. If Wikipedia were following its own guidelines, this would have radically reformed the Cold fusion article there. As far as I can see, Krivit has not mentioned it. It's not listed in his page showing recent and significant papers. It is as if it did not happen. Why? I think it's obvious. In the abstract for that paper, Storms states, The evidence supports the claim that a nuclear reaction between deuterons to produce helium can occur in special materials without application of high energy. The title of the paper is Status of Cold-Fusion (2010) Cold fusion has come out of the closet. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEstatusofcoa.pdf (I believe I suggested different language for that abstract, but whether or not I did, it would have been more accurate or more neutral to state something like the claim that an unknown nuclear reaction is fusing deuterium to helium, occurring in special materials Using the term deuterons implies bare deuterons, thus leading some readers into the old error of assuming d-d fusion, which makes the theoretical problem far more difficult. It might be deuterons and it might even be some
[Vo]:What will convince Joshua Cude?
Subject was Re: [Vo]:Revised version Celani reports on gamma emission from Rossi device At 04:12 AM 2/21/2011, Joshua Cude wrote: Not true. I have described what it would take to convince me (and so has Jed Rothwell), and if cold fusion could deliver a tiny fraction of what has been promised for 22 years, my criteria would be easily met. This discussion has been about the Rossi work, which is based on a secret process, and which is inadequately confirmed, there has merely been a somewhat convincing demonstration that *something* is going on in that thing. This is nothing like the accumulated evidence for cold fusion, based on open and documented and reproducible experimental techniques, widely confirmed. I'm not interested in Rossi's work for the moment. Obviously, if *Rossi's promises* are fulfilled, all bets are off. Rossi, by the way, is also working on unknown nuclear reaction, he'd merely be succeeding, if he does, in demonstrating a far more vigorous reaction than any prior reports. So I'm going to ask, as to cold fusion in general, what has been promised and what do promises have to do with science? And... convinced of what?
Re: [Vo]:Counter-strike launched in textbook controversy
At 09:50 AM 2/21/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: Ah. It seems Wiley has not agreed to publish this textbook. That is relief! I tried to ask Krivit about this textbook, but as I said, he refused to talk to me. He acted as if I was not there. When I tapped him on the shoulder he walked away. An extraordinary thing to do! If he had paused for a moment to answer a few of my questions this entire misunderstanding could have been avoided. I was planning to ask who was going to write the chapters and I probably would have asked about Wiley again. At very least, I would have written to him first, rather than Wiley. Jed, your mail talked about the rejection as being of a whole group, not just you. Did you extrapolate from your own experience to that of the group, or do you have any other testimony to present? I.e., your actual experience, or as close to actual quotations of what others told you as you can muster? Indeed, extraordinary, but to be expected from the personality type. It's unfortunate, and signs are that Krivit has been completely impervious to attempts to encourage him to reconsider, he takes them all as hostile, attempting to censor or suppress him. I've asked this before, with no effective response. Does he have any friends he trusts, who might be able to help him see how he's trashing his career as an investigative reporter?
Re: [Vo]:What will convince Joshua Cude?
At 10:33 AM 2/21/2011, Joshua Cude wrote: On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.coma...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: So I'm going to ask, as to cold fusion in general, what has been promised and what do promises have to do with science? A new energy source has been promised. By whom? And, I'll ask again, What to promises [and speculations] have to do with science? Cold fusion is a natural phenomenon, it promises nothing unless a way can be found to make it happen reliably and with sufficient return on energy input to cover losses. Muon-catalyzed fusion, when discovered, was first thought to be a possible energy source. That remains as a possibility, but, the problem was, nobody knows how to make muons and keep them active long enough to recover the energy cost. And... convinced of what? Convinced that nuclear reactions in cold fusion experiments have produced measurable heat. Thanks. Now, may I assume that you are not ignorant of the literature? There are two questions here: the first is measurable heat. We have a huge number of experiments, some being repeated series of identical experiments, showing measurable heat. To be clear, this means, for most experiments, heat that is not expected from known prosaic processes, also called anomalous heat. Anomalous heat is heat of unknown origin, by definition. Is there such heat? The second part of the question concerns the origin of the heat, whether the origin is nuclear or not. May we agree that anomalous heat, by itself, does not prove nuclear. But if we cannot agree that there is anomalous heat, surely we will be unable to agree on nuclear. That's why the 2004 U.S. DoE review panel, 18 experts, was evenly divided on the question of excess heat, half the reviewers thinking that the evidence for it was conclusive, but only one-third considered the evidence for nuclear origin to be convincing or somewhat convincing. Right? So, first question, is there anomalous heat? Given that there are massive reports of it, widely published, from hundreds of research groups, 153 reports in mainstream journals as of 2009, there is only one sane way for you to deny it, as least as far as I can imagine. That would be to claim that you know the origin of this heat, or at least that someone does. Otherwise it's still an anomaly. Right? (The 2004 DoE panel, half, thought the evidence for anomalous heat to be conclusive. If we imagine that the other half thought it was bogus, we end up with a paradox or conundrum. It's unlikely. In fact, the other half, probably, was mostly and merely not convinced, which can be a lack of conviction from pure caution, some need to see more evidence, and for only for a few on the panel would there be a belief that the evidence was totally spurious. One reviewer seems to have thought that fraud was involved, as I recall, or certainly Bad Science. But this has become an isolated, fringe position. Sometimes, as well, people argue and apply logic from conclusions. I.e., if they believe that LENR is impossible, they then discount the evidence for LENR, more than they would if they were not attached to a conclusion. Human beings. Don't leave home without being one. This is backwards. There may be anomalous heat that is not of nuclear origin.)
Re: [Vo]:Counter-strike launched in textbook controversy
At 10:38 AM 2/21/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: This was all a tempest in a teapot! Good thing. I sent a message to the Wiley editor, pointing to Krivit's article, and apologizing for the misunderstanding. Regarding Abd's comments, several potential authors told me that Krivit pulled this stunt of pretending you are not there. I mentioned McKubre. I witnessed another, a few others people told me. I did not ask Storms or Srinivasan. I don't see any point to sharing the names. It is enough to say that Krivit made a fool of himself in this manner, and if he had not acted like such an ass, I would have spoken to him or written to him first, rather than write to Wiley. Right. Krivit shoots himself in the foot. I think part of his is his sense of story. He likes dramatic stories. So ... he creates them! I'm quite sure there are plenty of real stories to be investigated. As I noted, I'd really like to know more about W-L theory. But Krivit's reporting on it is shallow, mostly telling the story of CF believers reject it, and how unfair that supposedly is. I was not the only one to get the wrong impression from his announcement. I circulated a draft of that letter to several people at the conference, and they all agreed I should send it. If even one had expressed reservations or said, I don't think Wiley is the publisher I would not have sent it. In other words, it's likely Krivit was ambiguous. He might even have wished to create some ambiance of his own acceptance, i.e., since he'd just done this encyclopedia thing, surely he'll have a publisher waiting and eager. But that's speculation. I haven't seen the video he cites, as if it would be some kind of proof. He might even have been explicit in the video that he didn't have a publisher, but people remember, Jed, impressions, and the people you approached hadn't studied the video or a transcript, they might have been distracted, etc. It will be of some mild interest what is actually in that video Regarding the WL theory, as I have stated before, I have no opinion about this theory, or any theory, and I could not care less whether it is true or not. Some experts recently advised me that if the WL theory is correct, cold fusion would not technically be fusion, so as I said here, score one for Krivit. I do not know what the ratio of helium to heat would be if this theory is correct. In any case, I am quite sure McKubre is not committing fraud, and Krivit's assertions about this are misunderstandings. That opinion (about fusion) is a particular point of view that depends on a very narrow definition of fusion, and that is about fusion as a specific mechanism, rather than as a result. If you start with deuterium and you end up with helium, inside a black box, with the expected energy, you have a fusion box. A box that results in the fusion of deuterium to helium, no matter what happens inside. The box may contain quark gremlins who can dismantle stuff, using their Special Powerz, into component quarks, provided that they then reassemble them to something energetically favorable, and if the imput is deuterium and the output is helium, they are using their Powerz for fusion. Krivit (and others) confuse two different meanings of fusion, one being process and the other result. W-L theory, however, as I understand it, predicts a whole lot more Stuff going on in the box than deuterium fusion to helium. (W and L are vague about what they actually predict! but they do show a pathway from deuterium to helium, and that pathway, if it predominated, would then show the expected net energy, the same as any other pathway. The laws of thermodynamics care not about pathways.) Problem is, I'd expect a very different product mix than what is known, from W-L theory. There are some severe rate problems. By confining the definition of fusion to d-d fusion, which is only one of many possible pathways, Krivit can then attempt to shed the dirty mantle of cold fusion, pretending that it's something else. ULM neutron-induced nuclear reactions. Except that if you make the ULM neutrons from deuterium, and use them to create helium and other heavier elements, what you have done is a fancy, complicated form of fusion, defined as the creation of heavier elements from lighter ones. Really, Jed, don't agree with Krivit on this one! If W-L theory is correct -- that's highly undefined! -- the production of helium is still fusion. Some pathways might make this vaguer. It could get really complicated, when we start considering fission caused by neutrons. But, Jed, 25 MeV! Read Storms (2010). There really is only one set of candidate reactions, those that start with deuterium and end up with helium. TSC theory is one that predicts the ratio, but cluster fusion, if it starts with some nanomass of deuterium and ends with helium, through a Be-8 or other pathway, may be the most likely. And let's agree on this: we don't know
Re: [Vo]:Counter-strike launched in textbook controversy
At 10:38 AM 2/21/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: This was all a tempest in a teapot! Good thing. I sent a message to the Wiley editor, pointing to Krivit's article, and apologizing for the misunderstanding. Your letter may have done good, pointing out to Wiley that there could be problems with agreeing to publish a textbook authored by Krivit. At the very least, they'd make sure that there was some knowledgeable editorial review. If I were at Wiley, I'd start looking around for other possible authors/editors. What I've noticed is that the largest scientific publishers in the world have signed on to cold fusion: Elsevier, Springer-Verlag. At some point, the others will start playing catch-up. Jed, do you see why I'm claiming that the corner has been turned? It's not over, the skeptical position is probably still predominant *as to general scientific opinion.* But not among experts, by which I mean reviewers who actually review papers at the mainstream journals, presented with evidence to assess in the normal scientific manner. Given that there have been 19 positive reviews of cold fusion in mainstream peer-reviewed journals and academic sources (i.e., the stuff of the Britz database), since 2005, where are the negative reviews? All that has appeared is a Letter from Shanahan to the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, copublished with a devastating rebuttal by Everybody And His Brother. It's obvious to me what JEM was doing. They knew that lots of their readers, looking at the article by Marwan and Krivit, would be sputtering, But... but ... but, so they published Shanahan's ravings, so that they could be clearly refuted. They were running classic CYA, interdicting unspoken criticism from their readers. My guess is that they got a lot of spoken criticism, but not of a quality that they could publish. Shanahan gave them something more cogent (relatively!) to bite on. And then they told Shanahan, no more. Shanahan sputtering, himself, receding into the history of failed information epidemics. Ironic justice. That's publishing politics, not science, but ... it cuts both ways! (Failed information epidemic is a reference to the last negative review, from about 2006, in the Journal of Informatics, did I get that right?, which simply analyzed publication frequency, and, in 2006, it looked like the field was dead, i.e., was following the path predicted by Langmuir's pathological science criteria. 2005 or 2006 were the nadir, publication rates have quadrupled since then. Failure was a premature judgment, an appearance, and represented no judgment of the science itself.)
Re: [Vo]:What will convince Joshua Cude?
At 10:52 AM 2/21/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.coma...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: This discussion has been about the Rossi work, which is based on a secret process, and which is inadequately confirmed . . . I think the confirmation is better than most claims, simply because the power is so high, and the input to output ratio is so good. It was a rather sloppy demonstration. You might say that the NRL tests with Pd powder are the extreme opposite. They are as careful and exacting as any test can be, and they have been repeated automatically hundreds of times. Yet, because they produce only ~100 J per run, I find them less convincing than the Rossi demo. Jed, a single demo has so many possibilities for problems that, quite simply, it can't be considered conclusive. For the science, an experiment repeated hundreds of times is more convincing, even if the results are not so dramatic. However, the NRL report is just one report! They might be seeing the result of some systematic error. Rossi might be a skillful fraud or be resulting from unexpected phenomenon. (I agree, unlikely. But Rossi is not a clear confirmation of any prior work, since we don't know what's inside. Obviously, Rossi is interesting. Were I a venture capitalist with lots-o-money, I'd be looking at Rossi, through he doesn't seem to be interested -- in which case I'd mostly disregard it. I *might* deprecate other investments pending knowing more about Rossi, which is how Rossi could be damaging the field of cold fusion, effectively inhibiting research into other approaches. I dislike the secrecy, for sure. It's Rossi's right to be secret. It's partly a consequence of the horrible situation with patents. That either is causing Rossi to be secretive, or is providing him with cover, a plausible reason for secrecy. Either way, harm. . . . there has merely been a somewhat convincing demonstration that *something* is going on in that thing. That is what Levi reportedly said recently, in conversation with another researcher. Something worth further investigation is how I think he put it. Of course. But we have been given nothing to investigate further! I am not arguing with that Cude should accept the Rossi demo completely. I have some doubts about it myself. Any claim of this nature calls for more tests, especially independent tests. However, I do think that questioning the flow rate is ridiculous. I think these demands about the pump and reservoir are mere excuses to evade the issue. If there is a problem, it isn't in the flow rate. You have to look elsewhere. I've discussed Rossi with pseudoskeptics, a little. They certainly aren't convinced! Nor would I expect them to be. It's a huge red herring. Pseudoskeptics dismiss Rossi for the same reason that they dismiss cold fusion: because it seems impossible. We know that this logic is seriously flawed. Cold fusion, per se, is not impossible, which is why there were Nobel prize-winners working on theory! It's merely unexpected. So pseudoskeptics will confidently predict that Rossi is bogus. It's just what can be expected from them. I do not predict, confidently, that Rossi is bogus, because I see no theoretical impossibility. There might be some reaction that does what he's claiming. It's not impossible, on the face. Unlikely. Sure. But so seemed a lot of things until our understanding expanded. Because we know, as students of cold fusion, that what seems impossible might not actually be impossible, we are vulnerable to all kinds of claims that seem to contradict accepted wisdom. That's the cost of being open-minded. We still choose where we put our energy and our attention, and I'm not pouring my attention into Rossi, because I'm interested in the science, and Rossi contributes almost nothing to the science but some speculative, contingent possibility. Cude has added that he is not convinced that nuclear reactions in cold fusion experiments have produced measurable heat. From my point of view that puts him in the category of creationists who are not convinced of the evidence that the world is more than 6,000 years old, or that people did not ride on dinosaurs. The evidence for cold fusion heat far beyond the limits of chemistry overwhelming. If you do not believe it, you are not a scientist. Period. I've seen no claim from Cude that he's a scientist. Nor do I know the nature of his rejection of excess heat results. There are reasons for most people, including most scientists, to be skeptical, and it doesn't mean that he's like a creationist. It could simply mean that he's unfamiliar with the evidence, and he's framed it within a general mind-set that was effectively created by the particle physicists in 1989-1990, that had nothing to do with real science and normal scientific protocols. He's bought the propaganda, which is very understandable. It was designed, like most
Re: [Vo]:What will convince Joshua Cude?
At 12:47 PM 2/21/2011, Joshua Cude wrote: On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 9:52 AM, Jed Rothwell mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.comjedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Cude has added that he is not convinced that nuclear reactions in cold fusion experiments have produced measurable heat. From my point of view that puts him in the category of creationists who are not convinced of the evidence that the world is more than 6,000 years old, or that people did not ride on dinosaurs. Points of view clearly differ. From my point of view, being convinced by flaky evidence like Rossi's puts you in the category of creationists, who believe in a young earth because of scripture. And I think the similarity favors my point of view. Joshua, don't be distracted. You are now entering You territory, the exchange of accusations. You don't understand Jed's position on Rossi, he's not convinced. He's aware of the problems and has documented them. He's examined some of them and has rejected some alternative explanations. From what I've seen, there are only two likely explanations of the Rossi demo: he's got a genuine nuclear reaction going, or he's got a sophisticated fraud going. And, frankly, I can't tell the difference. Can you? How? In both cold fusion and creationism, you have a small group of fringe scientists who adopt an idea in which they have important self-interest, and try desperately to prove its reality. That's a political description, polemic. Every researcher has self-interest in their field of research. Desperately doesn't describe the mental state of cold fusion researchers today. They aren't trying to prove that it's real. That happened years ago. You may not agree, but I'm telling you how they think. Do you know how they think? How? Have you talked with them? You've missed something huge. Cold fusion is now routinely accepted as a reality by the peer reviewers at mainstream publications, and it is the purely skeptical view that is being rejected. There may be a small group of scientists -- you put scientists in quotes as if they are not scientists, though these are scientists by every definition of the word, including general recognition (Setting aside a few relative amateurs) -- but the real issue is the collection of peer reviewers at mainstream publications. We could toss in the 18 experts of the 2004 U.S. DoE panel, though that was a review far shallower than the normal peer-review process at a mainstream publication. Those experts *unanimously* favored further research and publication, which is entirely contradictory to your confident assertion that it is only fringe 'scientists' who are desperately tryingto prove it's real. If you examine what's being published, you don't find an attempt to prove it's real, not lately, anyway. You find, in primary research, reports of phenomena that imply reality, discussion of possible explanations that assume CF is possible, etc. In secondary reviews, and there have been nineteen published since 2005, you find acceptance of the phenomenon as a reality. The latest is Storms (2010) published in Naturwissenschaften, Status of cld fusion (2010). That review now represents what mainstream reviewers will accept. The review does not contradict former reviews of the field, rather it confirms and extends them. I.e., say, in the early 1990s, there was a review that concluded that neutron radiation was far, far below that expected from d-d fusion, setting an upper limit. Storms confirms that neutron radiation is almost entirely absent. There were many negative replications published. Later work shows that those replication attemps could be expected to fail to find anything, because they did not, in fact, replicate, they did not reach the apparently necessary 90% loading. At that time, 70% was considered to be about the maximum attainable. To go above that took special techniques that the replicators did not know and understand. And so on. We understand science by understanding the entire body of publication, and attempting to harmonize it. Later reviews, published in the normal cautious manner, are expected to extend the conclusions of earlier reviews. And that's what has happened. And in both cases the idea is completely contrary to the virtually unanimous opinion of mainstream science. And in both cases, you have the fringe group claiming a conspiracy against it by the mainstream. That's irrelevant, were it true. The real situation now is that the *skeptics* are claiming a conspiracy. Have you talked to Shanahan? As to the virtually unanimous opinion of mainstream science, what do you mean by this? Ask a random scientist, call him up at work, about cold fusion and what is his opinion? Does it matter what his field is? If you want to know the opinion of mainstream science, there are generally, two ways. You can look at the results of a review panel, or you can look at what is being published in the way of
Re: [Vo]:What will convince Joshua Cude?
At 03:28 PM 2/21/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: But Rossi is not a clear confirmation of any prior work, since we don't know what's inside. Sure he is. This is a confirmation of Piantelli and Focardi, and Mills for that matter. We know approximately what is inside: finely divided Ni and two other elements in trace amounts. Several reliable sources have confirmed that. Okay, to Jed, and perhaps to others, this is confirmation of prior work. But because it's secret protocol it's weak in that respect. I agree that the existence of (possibly) similar prior work is supportive, and is reason to be less likely to dismiss Rossi out-of-hand. I dislike the secrecy, for sure. It's Rossi's right to be secret. He has no choice. He would lose everything if he revealed the recipe now. He would lose years of effort and the opportunity to make billions of dollars. No one can blame him for being secret, although I do blame him for writing bad patents. Jed, you have pointed out that he may be shooting himself in the foot with his secrecy. It's just not true that if he disclosed everything he'd lose everything. It depends on how he discloses and to whom. His strategy might be reasonable. But a consequence of that strategy is that I'm not going to believe that Rossi is a demonstration of cold fusion. I'm not going to claim that it's fraud, on the other hand. I'm going to claim that *I don't know* and that I think I don't have enough information to decide. On the one hand, there are all the obvious reasons to be skeptical. On the other hand, there is what Jed has pointed out. Which is why I am *not* going to get into an extended argument over Rossi. Anyway, I hope Levi, Daniele Passerini and the others who witnessed the 18-hour test will give us more details. It says they will. Google translate: About what they are not branched [?] official report, which will instead be provided on the experiments that will soon be initiated in accordance with the Department of Physics. That will give us more to work with. It certainly eliminates any chance of stored chemical energy. I think the 30-minute run was beyond any real-world chemical explanation, but it was perhaps on the edge of some extreme techniques with rocket fuel. 18 hours completely closes that question, and several others. Again, depending on so many details about which we know nothing, so far, and may not ever know. I've argued that making a huge fuss over Rossi simply discredits the field, and I've hoped that reputable cold fusion scientists would be very, very cautious about Rossi, as most seem to be. Some of the damage will be done anyway. People are already using Rossi as an example of overblown, inflated claims. That could backfire, for them, but, then, if Rossi doesn't show up with his 1 MW reactor, we end up looking very foolish. And there are millions of reasons why some project like that could fail, *even if Rossi's demonstration was real*. Those who are using Rossi as an example of obvious bogosity don't care about future reputation, they will simply shrug it off and say, Okay, I was wrong, surely you can understand how shady this operation looked? And they'd be right! It looks shady! If someone trusts Rossi, thinks that his work is solid, great. Perhaps they should send him a check. If Rossi is right, he'll become fabulously wealthy, and might remember this with kindness. I just don't want to see cold fusion standing up with Rossi, in the firing line, depending on whether or not Rossi is real and useful. If Rossi produces and starts selling 1 MW reactors, and they work, I'll be happy for the world. And for him. If I wanted to place a bet, though, it would be on Rossi disappearing when the 1 MW reactor doesn't appear. Which may or may not mean that he was right. The world is complicated, and I don't pretend to have a comprehensive understanding of it. I'm not sure that anyone does. Just because you are paranoid does not mean that they are not out to get you. In Rossi's shoes, I'd be very worried, and I'd want to be connected to and working with as many people as possible. I'd want to make sure that my secret is not closely-held, that if something happened to me, it would come out. In many places, so that it could not be suppressed. I do *not* believe in a conspiracy to suppress cold fusion. I'm just talking about prudence, with something that the U.S. military has noted could be vastly destabilizing, economically. There are people who don't like destabilizing. Some of these people may have no scruples, and they have a lot of money and power, which they, big surprise, might seek to protect. I place high odds on disappearance because two different scenarios support it: Rossi is real and is disappeared, and Rossi is a fraud and disappears. As to the other major possibility, Rossi is real and we have a 1 MW reactor this year, well, I like that one
Re: [Vo]:What will convince Joshua Cude?
At 01:41 PM 2/21/2011, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: I don't know about Joshua, but a report of an experiment with no details given sure doesn't convince *me*, but maybe that makes me a pathological skeptic, too, eh? Of course not. That was hyperbole on Jed's part. He might be right, if Joshua is very knowledgeable. He's, so far, parroting some pieces of the pseudoskeptical line, but that's understandable. After all, the pseudoskeptics dominated coverage in media for twenty years. However, this is what I find fascinating. If you just read mainstream peer-reviewed journals, you don't find this imbalance. You can find, in peripheral journals, tertiary references to cold fusion as being an example of pathological science, but these are not reports by experts in the relevant fields, they are people studying other things who use the example as if it were an established thing. But the thing is *not* established by what's in peer-reviewed mainstream journals. Quite the opposite. There is an *impression* that the rejection was established. That may have largely been created by the 1989 U.S. DoE review, which was highly negative in reality (much more negative than the report they issued implied, as to the strong majority position). That review took place only a few months after the announcement, before the positive replications started to come in! It was highly imbalanced, representing what seems to me like a somewhat reasonable skeptical position *at the time.* And then it was treated as if the conclusions were written in stone. And when it says that the experiment could not be reproduced -- which was true for a few months! -- that has been quoted over and over, long after it became preposterous.
Re: [Vo]:What will convince Joshua Cude?
At 03:01 PM 2/21/2011, Joshua Cude wrote: On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.coma...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: At 10:33 AM 2/21/2011, Joshua Cude wrote: On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.coma...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: So I'm going to ask, as to cold fusion in general, what has been promised and what do promises have to do with science? A new energy source has been promised. By whom? Maybe you're new to the field. Well, not exactly. In 1989, I bought $10,000 worth of palladium, as a palladium account at Credit Suisse. That was a low-risk way to make a modest investment, in case this thing turned out to be real. Palladium is a precious metal, this was not a high-risk investment. If I'd been a little faster, I'd have made a little money, maybe 10% or 20% As it is, I broke even. The price went up and then went down. I concluded, with everyone else, that it had been a bust. And there the matter stood until the beginning of 2009, when I had independent reason to investigate. I bought all the books, including the ones by skeptics like Taubes and Huizenta, Close and Park, etc. Compared to your average bear, no, not new to the field. By now, intimately familiar with it. I was credited in the 2010 review by Ed Storms in Naturwissenschaften. Have you read that? Promises have been made by Pons Fleischmann first in 1989 (just watch their interviews on youtube, where they claim it is the ideal energy source: clean and unlimited and simple) and then by just about every cold fusion advocate since, including McKubre on 60 minutes promising cars that don't need refueling, Rothwell's entire book of promises, and promises from shady characters like Dardik and Rossi. There are endless promises every time the topic arises. Pons and Fleischmann made no such promise. They noted the potential, *if* this could be developed. Fleischmann wrote that it would take a Manhattan-scale project. This is not an easy problem. Unlike the original Manahattan project, there is no explanatory theory, making engineering extremely difficult. And that has nothing to do with the science. It certainly has nothing to do with whether or not there is measurable excess heat, since we can measure heat in milliwatts and the experiments often generate heat in the 5 or 10 watt range, sometimes much more. Sometimes the heat generated is well in excess of all energy put in to electrolyse the deuterium. In gas-loading experiments, there is no input energy, beyond the natural heat of formation of palladium deuteride. I.e., we definitely get excess heat, over input energy, with gas-loading, but this is still small, overall, and it's difficult to scale. This is where a lot of current work has gone. And, I'll ask again, What to promises [and speculations] have to do with science? I'm not sure what you're getting at. Many scientific breakthroughs and inventions are associated with the promise of benefits to mankind. Insulin promised to save the lives of diabetics, and delivered; high temp superconductors promised cheaper magnets, but have not delivered (yet). Cold fusion promised abundant, clean energy, and has not delivered. Sure. But, again, that has nothing to do with the science. Phenomena have been discovered and accepted, sometimes, for a century before appplications became possible. Quite simply, that an effect is commercializable -- or not -- could affect decisions about research funding, for sure, but it has nothing to do with whether it is real or not. Agree? Cold fusion is a natural phenomenon, it promises nothing unless a way can be found to make it happen reliably and with sufficient return on energy input to cover losses. Well, yes, but there are many claims of reliability (100%) with huge returns (10, 20, even hundreds), but still no delivery on the promise. There is a single, easily-describable, repeatable experiment. It has nothing to do with huge returns, which are, themselves, anomalous, i.e., generally not repeatable. It is pure science, i.e., it establishes that there is an effect, excess heat correlated with helium. You do, I hope, understand that correlation can establish this kind of thing even if the effect itself is quite unreliable. Right? Muon-catalyzed fusion, when discovered, was first thought to be a possible energy source. That remains as a possibility, but, the problem was, nobody knows how to make muons and keep them active long enough to recover the energy cost. Muon-catalyzed fusion was discovered by the associated radiation (neutrons). Cold fusion was claimed on the basis of excess energy. That's a big difference. If you start with excess energy, then there's no need to find a way to get excess energy. No, muon-catalyzed fusion was predicted first, before it was confirmed. Yes, it was then confirmed through neutrons, I understand. Cold
Re: [Vo]:Counter-strike launched in textbook controversy
At 03:50 PM 2/21/2011, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Mon, 21 Feb 2011 09:40:47 -0500: Hi, [snip] But the result that is known is that helium is produced, and the observed energy supports the conclusion that the primary fuel is deuterium. unknown nuclear reaction would bring us full circle. That is what Pons and Fleischmann actually claimed, not fusion.) [snip] Even hot fusion operates on tunneling rather than overcoming the Coulomb barrier by brute force. (The latter would require about 30 MeV). I think 30 MeV is vastly overstated. But, regardless, the Coulomb barrier is really a probability of fusion, which varies with incident energy. At room temperature, forgeddabout it. But this is not relevant to what was quoted from me.
Re: [Vo]:What will convince Joshua Cude?
At 03:31 PM 2/21/2011, Joshua Cude wrote: I've seen what they write. Practically every review is preoccupied with defending the reality of the field. I know you've read Storms' abstract to his latest review, because you are acknowledged in the paper. It's 2010, and most of it reiterates the reality of the evidence for the effect. That's desperately trying to prove it's real. Try to find another 22-year old field that adopts that sort of defensive tone in the abstract. Thanks, Joshua. I'm seeing better critique here than I've seen from any ordinary pseudoskeptic. First of all, reviews cover a field. If they cover a field, and if the reviewer concludes that the field is investigating a real phenomenon, the review is going to be proccupied with defending the reality of the field. Further, people who believe that a field is bogus are going to read any review that accepts it as real as preoccupied with defending. Storms' 2010 Review, however, is concerned with presenting the overall status of the field. That's what he does. The abstract is a sober presentation of the state of research. No review of cold fusion could present it as being uncontroversial, because, obviously, there is still some controversy among people. Storms focus in that paper, though, is in presenting the breadth of the evidence. He puts a lot of attention into the heat/helium evidence. Any review of an effect that is not trivial to observe will reiterate the evidence for the effect. You state this as reiterating the reality. You are writing polemic, you know that, right? You are *advocating* a position. I'm asking you why. Storms and 18 other reviews have been published in mainstream journals. I didn't decide that these were mainstream, Britz, a skeptic, did. You've missed something huge. Cold fusion is now routinely accepted as a reality by the peer reviewers at mainstream publications, and it is the purely skeptical view that is being rejected. On which planet? Cold fusion papers appear in a tiny subset of the peer-reviewed literature, mostly second-rate, non-physics journals. They do not appear in APS journals, and certainly not in the prestigious journals like Phys Rev, PRL, Science or Nature, where discoveries of this magnitude would automatically appear if they were accepted as a reality Any field is going to publish in journals that consider work in the field relevant to their readership. Second-rate journals are not interested in trashing their own reputation by publishing fringe nonsense. Presumably you know the history behind the effective blackout in certain journals. However, Naturwissenschaften is not a second-rate, non-physics journal. It's Springer-Verlags flagship multdisciplinary journal. Cold fusion is not a physics field, it's more chemistry, but is cross-disciplinary. This is not the place to go into the shameful history of what became the automatic, non-reviewed rejection of cold fusion research papers in certain journals. It's a well-known scientific scandal, covered in sociological sources. There is a law called Moulton's Law: when a bureaucracy makes a mistake, it is impossible to fix. That's because bureaucracies defend what decisions they made in the past, and I've seen this operate even when the decision is utterly preposterous. Editors reject a paper becauseof A and B. When it's pointed out that A and B are errors, they then reject it because of C and D. And, besides, our readers aren't interested in this nonsense. This is what is really happening: the two largest scientific publishers in the world, Springer-Verlag and Elsevier, are now publishing substantial material on cold fusion. The largest scientific society in the world is now regularly hosting seminars on cold fusion, and publishing, with Oxford University Press, the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook. The prestigious journals you mention are *holdouts.* The discovery is old news, and current work is not designed to prove that cold fusion is real. Hagelstein's review, also published in Naturwissenschaften last year, covers a detail, setting an upper limit on routine charged particle emission from the reaction (which is of high interest for theoretical work, it kills a whole pile of theories). The work that was recommended by both DoE reviews, but which the DoE never funded, is being done, slowly. And it's being published, because the blackout journals can't control the world. But some people, living in their own peculiar dream, think those journals are the world. Especially U.S. physicists. Cold fusion is just a small field, though there is potential for something big. It's not nuclear physics, in how the research is done. It's chemistry and materials science. It has implications for physics only in a certain detail: it is a demonstration of how the approximations of two-body quantum mechanics break down in condensed matter, which really should have been no
