At 05:04 PM 12/29/2012, Mark Gibbs wrote:
I admit that there appears to be evidence of something remarkable. I
just want to find out what's real and what's fake.
Great, Mark. How do you want to approach this, to "find out"?
We can tell you that the Fleischmann Pons Heat Effect is the result
of small amounts of deuterium being converted to helium. That's
"nuclear fusion." The mechanism is unknow, but the reaction is real
and is amply confirmed. The scientific method has led us to this
conclusion. It remains falsifiable, but it is *totally consistent*
with the experimental record.
Which also shows that the FPHE is unreliable, erratic, variable,
downright cantankerous.
So when someone claims a device that produces lots of heat reliably,
it may easily not be real. It's beyond or outside the state of the art.
So consider it as unknown. Not to be assumed to be real, but not
necessarily fake.
Here is the problem. The FPHE is unreliable because the site for the
reaction is probably cracks of a just-so size in the surface of
palladium hydride. It's been difficult to get just the right
conditions for the effect to work at all, but there are protocols
where almost all cells show anomalous heat. And then they don't. The
conditions for the reaction are not stable.
It also looks like the reaction may itself poison the conditions. In
any case, suppose that someone has scaled up.
You should realize that Pons and Flesichmann deliberately scaled
their work down, because of that meltdown. They did not know -- and
we still don't know -- just how bad that meltdown might have been.
This *is* fusion, and if they somehow had gotten the reaction *just
right*, they might have lost not only the apparatus and the lab bench
and a few inches of concrete floor, they might have lost the
building. Or the campus. Really. This is *fusion.* It's only safe
*if* the reaction is small.
The nickel-hydrogen researchers have largely scaled up. So they are
seeing more power. But. Is it safe?
And is it *sustainable.* If a cell produces kilowatts of power, but
that dies down after a couple of days, it's almost useless (unless
you can cheaply refuel).
There is a major possibility that would explain Rossi's evasiveness
and failure to deliver on promises. He's actually got something, but
... it's not *just* right, it isn't reliable, it doesn't seem to last
and he keeps believing that if he just tweaks it this way or that, it
will keep operating.
That's *speculation*, Mark, but reliability is the problem with cold
fusion, *not reality*. We could get massive power from cold fusion
devices, already, if we were prepared for them to work, sometimes,
better than we expected!
No, at this point attempts to scale up are seriously dangerous and
unnecessary. If we can make a small device that reliably produces,
say, ten watts, we can then make a large device that produces a
kilowatt or more.
If you want to know what is real, don't look much at Rossi. Celani,
okay, he's a scientist. That does not mean that his device works,
i.e,. his public results may be artifact, but it's being openly
tested. Brillouin is working with SRI. If you want the real skinny in
the field, as to practical work, the person to talk with would be
Michael McKubre. He's widely respected and deserves it. The Defkalion
people are not like Rossi, they do not appear to be crazy, and they
have been working with some real scientists, such as Vysotskii, but
they are a commercial interest and they are still secretive. Under
those conditions, we cannot, as the public, distinguish between hype
and reality. Not until they have a product that can be independently tested.
My guess is that Rossi and Defkalion are struggling with reliability.
Rossi may have *nothing*. He was dismissive when someone suggested
control experiments to him. (I.e, run two reactors the same, but
maybe one has hydrogen in it and the other has helium or nitrogen.)
He said, "I already know what happens when I do that. Nothing." He
totally missed the point, his answer was that of an inventor, not a
scientist. Had a control been run with the demonstration unit, in
most or all of his demonstrations, we'd have an understanding of how
the input energy affects the behavior of the cell *apart from* a
supposed anomalous reaction.
Rossi may also be a total con. It's not impossible. Krivit certainly
did notice suspicious behavior. And (from recent news on the New
Energy Times web site), apparently the Swedish physicists, Essen and
Kullander, have *still* not acknowledged their errors. Face-palm.
That's truly disappointing. It is *crucial* for scientists to
ackowledge error or even simply possible error.
Bottom line, it is *entirely possible* that these reports of imminent
commercial products are misleading or downright false.
Palladium deuteride reactions are proven, established, and the
fuel/ash relationship is known. That is not true for nickel and
hydrogen. While there are persistent reports, over the year, of
anomalies with nickel and hydrogen, there is a vast gulf between the
solidity of what we know about palladium deuteride and what we know
about nickel and hydrogen. Nickel and hydrogen are well worth
investigating, especially because they are far cheaper and far more
plentiful than palladium and deuterium. *But we don't have clear
knowledge about LENR with them*
