Salut, Jed. I'm not Peatbog but this whole thing really bothers me, and I'd love to be convinced that it's real.
On 01/17/2011 10:05 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: > > So, you think it is a scam? All hypothesis -- including yours -- must > be held to the same standard of rigor. So why don't you give us a > thumbnail description of how this scam might work. Details are not > needed; just cover the basics to explain the following: > > There is small black box on the table. > > 16 kg of water is pumped into it; hot water and then dry steam comes > out. The box clearly could not hold 20 kg of water in the first place, > and it was not hot when the experiment began, so the steam could not > have been "hidden" inside it. > > An RH meter is used by an expert to confirm the steam is dry. > > Elementary, first-principle physics prove beyond question that the box > must be producing 12 kW. I hope you do not dispute that! > > The box is connected to an ordinary wall socket, which cannot possibly > provide 12 kW > > Less than 0.1 g of hydrogen is added to the box, so the heat cannot > come from hydrogen combustion. > > Here is a detail you do not know, but I know for a fact. The > experiment has been conducted several times over the last month, and > many times before that in front of other witnesses, often for very > long periods, which precludes the possibility that there is a hidden > source of > > SO . . . how do you explain it? How can anyone conduct a "scam" of > this nature? Where do you think the energy is coming from? /I don't know./ But I'm not a magician, and I'm not a con artist. As I already observed, after David Copperfield "disappeared" the Statue of Liberty in front of a live audience, there was, as I recall, a period of total astonishment on the part of an awful lot of people. He had done the impossible, and there was /no/ possible explanation! It was only quite some time later that the "trick" was explained. The fact that, initially, nobody outside Copperfield's inner circle could explain it did not prove that it was "real magic". It proved, rather, that somebody who was extremely clever and very devious had come up with a really remarkable way to fool the audience. In this case, we have, as I've already said, a black box with a secret ingredient known to just one person. The "trick", therefore, cannot even be attempted by anyone else. The secret ingredient thus serves a very important function: It prevents independent testing of the claims. Does it also provide the catalyst which makes cold fusion work in this case? Or is it just misdirection? Time will tell. ********** I also recall reading about a scam in which someone claims to have a tablet which turns water into gasoline. The demonstration consists of drawing a bucket of water straight from a spigot -- obviously totally ordinary water and a totally ordinary bucket, there is no place in the bucket to conceal anything. The scammer adds the magic tablet, lets it dissolve, and then the mark checks the contents of the bucket. It's gasoline! Wow!! In that case the trick is to drain the pipes and run a buck of gasoline into them before the demo. Need to do this in an upstairs room, of course, so the gasoline will ride on top of the water farther down in the plumbing, and maybe you need to use a small bucket. None the less it's a trick which most marks would /never/ think of. I can't think of a way Rossi could have brought the necessary energy into the room, either. But that doesn't prove it wasn't done. Only an open description of the process and honest replication can prove that. > > I think these professors do understand the laws of physics, and I am > sure they understand how much energy it takes to vaporize water. > > - Jed >
