At 11:00 AM 6/10/2010, Peter Gluck wrote:
I hope you do not suppose that after being for over 21 years a
faithful coldfusionist I do not know the necessary conditions to
obtain some decent and modest levels of heat excess.
The problem is that our champions cannot obtain consistently say
300% heat excess and please do not forget this is a minimum to get
real excess (1KWh electric energy needs 3 kwh thermal electricity).
These are engineering problems and, problem is, engineering without
understanding the underlying science, the mechanism, is stabbing in
the dark, it can take a very long time, and simple solutions may be
overlooked, and even good results may not be reproducible because
some unusual unidentified condition is not present next time.
But when there is a series of experiments, I'm impressed. If the
excess energy ranges from zero to well in excess of noise, and if
some other nuclear variable -- or even unexplained and possibly
non-nuclear variable -- is correlated with the excess energy, I'm
even more impressed.
P-F cells are too slow to work with, codep is probably the way to go
if one wants to stick with electrolysis. Codep has a reputatino for
reliability, compared to P-F cells. But not everyone has found that
to be true, or at least not clearly true. Earthtech. Kowalski. And
some fairly unclear results elsewhere. I'm worried, to tell the
truth. It's not going to stop me, but .... I'm just worried.
The 4 basic conditions are known in theory, in principle but the manufacturers
of Pd do not master the technology, metallurgy and nanotechnology to
make such materials batch after batch- so at least for me it is
obvious that it is some hidden parameter at play here. Plus as you
well know, palladium is very scarce- and cannot be the
basis of a really great energy source.
At this point I don't care about the practical applications, I care
about the science. If this were no more practical than muon-catalyzed
fusion, and I can show it, I'll be thrilled. If I were trying to
develop and sell energy, I'd have to be prepared for the long haul,
and I'd have to have very deep pockets, I would not bother with cold
fusion. Too hard. But I'm not trying to sell energy, I'm trying to
develop and sell kits to replicate cold fusion experiments. I'm
hoping for some kind of reliable results, but even if results are
chaotic, it's still doable. Just more difficult.
*As long as results are statistically significant.* And I have every
reason to expect that this is attainable. But to do it, one must
avoid cherry-picked results!
We should ask Mike what is "consistent levels of excess heat" And
can this level be increased? As regarding Energetics and ENEA they
have really obtained some excellent results- but are they able to
obtain 10 or 100 or 1000 times repeatedly the same level of energy
as in the historical cathode No. 64? Or is it only about condition
No 5- some smart method of stimulation? With a limited
potential....improving but not sooo much.
Or, in the absence of full data, maybe not improving at all. That's
the problem with a chaotic phenomenon. It takes a lot of instances to
get a picture of what underlies it.
Your analogies from aviation and rocket science are inspiring but do
not much for solving
the problem which can be formulated simply as Cold Fusion is not yet
technologically
reproducible.
I don't think this is true, it's an overstatement. It is not
sufficiently controlled yet, that's clear, at least with some approaches.
[...]
If the problem can be solved only with huge amount of money this can
be translated in pragmatese - the problem will not be solved. I
think creative, new ideas can do it, hopefully.
What I am not able to understand: we have got information that a
technologically reproducible system of LENR exists- nickel and
hydrogen based- the original Piantelli
system for which the necessary know-how elements were found and this
is developed
both by the author, Prof PIantelli and his former coworker Sergio
Focardi plus the inventor
Andrea Rossi and the results are encouraging if true- and nobody
from our community
has taken this seriously (?) despite the fact that our situation is
what it is. I have serious health problems (not mental, what I have
told there is true!) but I will try to pay a visit to
Piantelli's lab and to see the technology and know about the future.
Let us know what you find. I consider this work, though, to be an
isolated line. It deserves respect, we cannot rule it out, and it is
possible that the future of LENR likes with nickel, and wouldn't it
be great if it could use hydrogen instead of deuterium? The trail,
however, is littered with what seemed to be promising approaches that
either weren't, or there was loss of control and the effect could not
then be reproduced at all. Case catalyst, case in point.
Anyway, we have a serious reproducibility problem and we will not
solve it with slogans and forced analogies.
But I still hope one day our now unhappy tenor will sing on the
stage of the MET and will conquer the audience
Peter
Beautiful, beautiful soup! -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass.
