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 P&F,
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
very RELUCTANT to even do a demo.
Mark, you simply believe what you want to believe. If a believable
demo was required, why didn't he do one? There were lots of people
available to make suggestions? He could have, even, still controlled
his "secret formula," he could have prohibited gamma ray
spectrometers, that wasn't crucial, he could have set lots of
conditions to protect his secret, but, instead, there was a chaotic
mess. That would serve the purpose of publicity, and avoid the
necessity of coming up with a clear and pure demonstration.
Is this the truth about him? I certainly can't claim so: it's a
hypothesis, a speculation that may or may not be consistent with the
truth, and it could even be consistent with the facts, and be false.
I cannot determine the validity of the Rossi reactor, sitting here in
Massachusetts, looking at this confused mess. Nor, indeed, do I
believe that those who were present can do that. We won't know,
probably, until the promised 1 MW reactors show up. Or until they
don't. And if they don't show up, we still won't know, because, I'm
sure, there will be excuses that those who want to believe will believe.
The list of plausible excuses starts out quite long!
He knew that it was still somewhat 'tempermental', and a botched
demo could cause serious delays in getting the 1MW plant online --
which is his ONLY focus right
now.
Then he wasted everyone's time, including his own.
He is an engineer first, and in his mind, the best way to PROVE this
works is to get an
operating plant online; to win in the marketplace.
It's a huge bet, for there can be many unanticipated problems,
scaling up. Yes, that would be a killer demo, if you can buy one of
these things and run it yourself. And take it apart, if you want to.
But is that the best way to proceed? My guess, not. The best and
safest way, my opinion, for Rossi as Legitimate Inventor would be to
get as much information out there on the process as possible, so that
if there are the Men in Black, they will be helpless to stop this.
Consider this possibility: Rossi disappears. What does that mean? I
can tell you: we'd be arguing for decades or longer whether or not
this was real.
That is the only thing that he can use as a
'trump card' against the skeptical scientists that, all too easily,
fall back on (hot fusion) theory
to refute his claims... He wants to boil some water to make Garwin some tea!
This could have been done with a lot less fuss, I'm sure. All he did
with that demo was to provide much more fodder for skeptics. 1 MW
reactors, sure. If he can pull it off. If the creek don't rise. If he
doesn't run short of cash. He has, supposedly, if we believe the
"calculations," run a 12 KW demo for, what, about a half hour? But
with loose ends like a plate of chopped spaghetti. Focardi wanted it?
So? Why did he actually do it? Is Focardi funding this? Did someone insist?
I'd certainly heard of Rossi long before this recent demo, the news
had been percolating and brewing for a long time. I'd seen the patent
mess. Why bother applying for a patent if the patent clearly doesn't
satisfy patent requirements? If he'd applied properly, and the patent
were denied, and by that time he had a functioning model, he'd have a
basis for court action to force validation of it. But because the
patent did not disclose nearly enough, he may not have any protection. At all.
I can think that he's either foolish or foolish like a fox. I.e.,
that there is a purpose to his actions, simply not necessarily the
openly declared one. I think of Steorn, which is still operating,
apparently. One might ask why and how, and I don't think it's rocket
science. This can go on amazingly long.
