Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
I'm not understanding how one would need 130 KW to get, what was it, a
10 KW demo?
It produced 130 kW for "a while." QUOTE:
"Initially, the temperature of the inflowing water was seven degrees
Celsius and for a while the outlet temperature was 40 degrees Celsius. A
flow rate of about one liter per second, equates to a peak power of 130
kilowatts. The power output was later stabilized at 15 to 20 kilowatts."
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3108242.ece
But all this is beside the point. A determined and skilled con artist
could arrange an appearance like what we have seen so far, it's simply
not beyond possibility.
It is impossible as far as I know. There are only two techniques in this
situation: chemical fuel, and electric heating. The use of fake
instruments is ruled out because Levi brought his own.
The assertion that "a determined con artist" can do this or that strikes
me as inadequate. A con artist is not a magician capable of changing the
laws of physics or magically influencing instruments. Unless you can
suggest a specific technique that such a con artist might employ, I
think this assertion cannot be tested or falsified. As I said before, I
do not know of any instance in this history of science in what a con man
managed too fool competent scientists for weeks at a time, especially in
such a fundamentally simple experiment. People say that such things have
happened. Skeptics insist that they happen all the time. But I do not
know of any specific instances. All of the con-man over unity machines I
have heard of or seen personally did not fool me for 5 minutes, and
would not fool an scientist allowed to test them with his own
instruments, and poke around inside the way Levi did.
No. Not safe against a sophisticated con.
Unless you can suggest a specific method I do not think this assertion
is meaningful. There is nothing sophisticated about flow calorimetry on
this scale. It is incredibly simple, and first-principle. J. P. Joule
conducted experiments on this scale with a river and waterfall during
his honeymoon.
This is *not* a charge that Rossi is being deceptive.
I realize that.
I am merely pointing out that the possibility exists, and, I must
note, con artists sometimes have accomplices.
If you are saying that Levi is an accomplice then I fully agree -- this
could easily be a scam in that case. I discount that likelihood for the
reasons given by Levi in interview linked above.
So an involved scientist might have been duped, or might have been paid.
Duped how? Unless you can come up with a method this is like saying
"there may be an undetected error." That statement is true of every
experiment ever conducted since Newton. Every experiment conducted in
the last 500 years might have involved someone duping someone else, with
fake instruments or bogus results published to attract attention. That
is highly unlikely but conceivable. It is a useless hypothesis since you
cannot disprove it.
This points out that an "independent replication" by someone connected
with Rossi, by itself, can leave behind some suspicion, or maybe even
one replication by someone apparently not connected.
That is true, but the suspicion it leaves behind is more of an emotional
issue than a rational one that can be rigorously proved or refuted. It
resembles what I pointed out earlier: that higher power gives more
confidence in the results, and a 10 W experiment seems better than a 0.5
W one. There is no technical reason for that, yet for most people higher
power seems more convincing.
- Jed
