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, but tremendous progress was made
before that. Melich says that much of nuclear engineering and solid
state and catalytic effects is still understood only as an empirical
model, not a theory. Medicine is largely empirical. 'Medical
science' is practically an oxymoron . . .
The importance of theory is overrated in the modern era, in my opinion."
"Theory" is a poor term for what I'm talking about. Rather, "models"
would be more like it. I'm an engineer, Jed, basically. If I don't
have some model for what to expect from a variation, it could take me
way too much time to discover what works well enough to be practical.
You know the history of this field: worker finds effect. Tries to
increase effect through process variations, but every variation kills
the effect. And sometimes the effect disappears, presumably because
it was dependent upon an unrecognized process variation. Gradually,
the necessary conditions become known, but this knowledge process
vastly increases when theory starts to catch up and starts making
verifiable predictions. Engineering can be done, to a limited degree,
without much in the way of verifiable predictions, but not when there
is *no* predictive capacity.
(Predictive capacity: this is the same as replicability of
experiments. As an experimental result becomes 100% verifiable, it
becomes possible to "expand the parameter space," which then makes
the most primitive engineering possible, the kind where you may run
thousands of experiments with very small variations to seek
optimization. But theoretical knowledge, if available, can move way
beyond this, to new experimental approaches and thus new engineering
possibilities.)
Politically, I apparently disagree with you, Jed. Cold fusion was
oversold. It was oversold by our beloved Martin, whether he intended
it or not, as easy. The difficulty wasn't emphasized, it should have
been. Had it been emphasized, the whole history might have been
different. That's obvious, Jed. Sure, the hot fusioneers would have
tried to kill it, anyway. But it would have been much more difficult
for them to pull it off.
I suggest: Back up. What's the science here? What's going on? What's
known? What isn't known but is perhaps merely theorized or reported
without wide replication? When we have theories and the testing of
theories that show us verified predictions, and the more quantitative
these predictions are, the better, we may be able to become much more
confident. For now, it's hard enough to spread the realization that
LENR is quite real, quite well-known to take place, verified,
validated, and just plain undeniable, I'd say. We don't need new
science or even more research to do that. We need to use what's known.
