On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[email protected]> wrote:
> They asked him to, instead, write a review of the entire field. Storms (2010) was a solicited review from a major, highly reputable, mainstream journal, published by the second-largest scientific publisher in the world. 1. If it was solicited, it is pretty certain it was treated with kid gloves, meaning friendly, uncritical reviewers. 2. NW has an factor is 2.something, and it certainly is non-physics. At least, I couldn't find any physics luminaries who have published there in the last 30 or 40 years. (It was different in the 20s and 30s.) It's not an insignificant journal, it's just that publishing there is not an indication of general acceptance, but rather an indication that the paper couldn't get published in a more appropriate journal. Can you identify ground-breaking research published there in the last 30 years. And considering the importance of a real cold fusion effect, that means it's being largely dismissed by the mainstream. 3. I know you're hung up on the size of the publisher, but that's meaningless. The publishers do not endorse what they publish, they just get paid to do it. It's the editorial boards that answer as to quality of the content. > In real *scientific* circles, where "peer review" is important, cold fusion apparently won this battle about five or so years ago. Afraid not. See above. > In fringe science, negative publication does decrease and stop, but only because positive publication also stops. Given two dozen papers a year that seem to *assume* the reality of some LENR effect, given that these are not just, as claimed, minor journals of no importance (and I'm not at all including conference papers or the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science), where is the critique from outside the field. You are including the sourcebook and the J Sci Explor, both of which are less than minor journals of no importance. Publication of new results remains at a pitiful paper or two, mostly in NW. No one outside the field considers it worthy of their time. (Except me, evidently.) >> The claim is a factor of a million more energy density than chemical. How can that be so hard to make obvious. Why can't they make an isolated device that remains indefinitely warmer than its surroundings? Why can't they make an isolated device that makes a cup of tea? That's what's needed. >Just remember muon-catalyzed fusion. It's real, that's not disputed. It can't do the things demanded. Please. It's not the existence of fusion in deuterated Pd (which certainly happens at a low rate) that promises clean energy. It is the claimed measurement of *energy* attributed to fusion in deuterated Pd that suggests it as a potential source of *energy*. If you observe the thing you want to produce, then the only problem is scaling. And regardless of whether it's understood or controllable, if it's the D/Pd producing energy, then more D/Pd ought to produce more energy. Muon-catalyzed fusion is observed by the accompanying radiation, and understood in great theoretical detail, but it requires muons. So far, no one has figured out how to get more energy from the fusions a muon can catalyze than it takes to make the muon. That's a problem CF advocates claim they do not have. They're not the same, and continually invoking muons just makes you look desperate. > It can, indeed, be "hard" to turn a discovered effect into practical application. That's not the problem. It appears to be impossible to demonstrate the effect convincingly. > My sense of Rossi is that the "isolated device" that will brew tea is quite possible with his approach, but that it would be unstable and dangerous, I don't believe it, but there are ways of protecting the observers. > and, further, he doesn't appear to give a fig about what people like Cude care. So he says, but I don't believe that either. His more recent demos for the Swedes, and his trip to Sweden seemed pretty voluntary. > There is only one practical reason to make a isolated device as Cude demands, to make a more convincing demonstration that has fewer fraud possibilities. What more reason does he need. A convincing demonstration wold make him famous, rich, and loved all over the world. Unless of course it doesn't work, and that's why he's not doing it. > Scientifically, this is not necessary at all, Of course it is. Right now, very few scientists believe in Rossi. More scientists would mean more progress -- scientific progress. > it would be a political device, and it would be expensive. We're talking about a billion dollar industry here. And millions of investment already made apparently. And it would be cheaper and more effective than his 1 MW plant. The difference is that if the effect is absent, the isolated device would kill Rossi's plans. > That is, to run the control electronics, Rossi would have to generate electricity. Not necessarily. If he could control the heat using a solenoid valve powered by a battery, he wouldn't need to generate electricity. Unlike electrolysis experiments, Rossi uses heat to initiate the reaction, and the reaction generates heat, so he does not have the excuse that the conversion efficiency is too low. Use the heat directly to maintain the reaction, and use cooling water to control the heat. > That's very inefficient If it's too inefficient, then the device is no more (or only a little more) practical than a heat pump. > and it would vastly complicate the device. Oh come on. It would take some work, some engineering, but this is not rocket science, and the technology has been around forever. We're talking about replacing fossil fuel, and you're concerned about a little complication? > He also would need a method of control that does not depend on generating control heat. No. These objections do not both apply at the same time. If he can generate electricity, then he can generate control heat with the electricity. And a storage battery would smooth out fluctuations. > We don't know if that's possible, he may. But it's a hell of a lot more complicated. His device would become much larger, I'd predict. That's ok. The payoff would be much larger too. > And it might not work, and here is why: > Suppose that the effect is, to some degree, chaotic. That is, for difficult-to-control reasons, the operating conditions shift. Say, at 450 degrees, the reaction runs quite well. For a while, and suppose that we have this thing set up so that it runs at 450, supplying its own heat to maintain that. Surely, if this thing is working, it can generate that heat. But what if the operating point shifts? What if it increases a bit? What if a ten degree shift is enough to lower the heat production lower than that necessary to maintain 450 degrees? Even without that, output heat would decline, until it starts to collapse. What Rossi apparently does is to introduce heat that is adequate to maintain the reaction chamber, relatively small, at 450 degrees, or whatever the optimal point is. He then prevents the reaction from running away by cooling, and the heat that leaves through the cooling method is the "heat product." The input is a fraction of the output, so the output is many times what you claim is necessary to keep it going. Reduce the flow rate by 10% or whatever, and you have the identical situation. There is no indication of feedback, and the power input is flat, the flow rate is constant. You're just inventing excuses… badly. > There is a reason to use steam for cooling, because steam will be generated, under E-Cat conditions, at a constant temperature. Rossi can then depend on the heat transfer coefficient of the hotter reactor chamber to a constant coolant temperature, The amount of heat removed by the steam/mist mixture is not constant just because the temperature is constant. There is no regulation there. If the reactor gets hotter, you just get more steam. Once all the water is converted to steam, then the steam is free to go to higher temperature. > and simply needs to maintain the reactor chamber at a desired temperature with his heater controls. >From the input power graphs there is no indication that this is done. > It is certainly possible to measure input power, and it's done all the time, with wattmeters. If, long term, output power (considered as the heat transferred to heating water or creating steam) is much greater than input power, this can be a successful commercial device, Heat pumps can already do this. Ground source heat pumps can supply hot water at 45C at a COP close to 5. Not good enough for tea, but it'll do for space heating and hot water. Rossi's device might be a little better at a COP of 6, but it's hardly a revolution. The revolution comes when he exceeds a heat pump COP by enough to run that heat pump backwards and provide the input with the output. And then the COP is infinite, and we have a revolution. > None of this means that Rossi is for real. It merely means that there are quite plausible explanations for the secrecy and for the lack of "convincing demonstrations," as defined by Cude. They're not plausible to me. > It means that Rossi, like the real world, is not arranging itself for the convenience of Cude (or for me, for that matter). Given the level of examination of this work, even as limited by the secrecy, I personally find the "fraud" hypothesis untenable, The measurements reported by those examiners are consistent with the absence of excess heat. > The experiment: reproduce the FPHE, using whatever state of the art is known to do that. Measure helium. Compare the heat and the helium. Does it correlate? While a single experiment is of interest, what is truly interesting would be a series of them, all identical. This one has been reproduced by more than twelve research groups around the world. And yet, only Miles has published quantitive heat-helium results under peer-review. >> Dardik required Duncan to come to Israel to see the experiment. > What Cude has missed, to be charitable, is that Dardik's work was confirmed independently in the United States, and in Italy, and we know that the CBS producers visited the McKubre replication, which was, apparently, one of those relatively rare exact replications, and with a substantial series of cells. None of this changes the fact that Duncan went to Israel to see the experiment. And what they showed the 60 minutes audience was so unconvincing it is laughable. Here's a bunch of meters and power supplies and hoses and wires and Duncan making calculations in a notebook. Talk about the need for special context, special conditions. Dardik pulled that result right out of his sleeve. >> Rossi invites only select people to his laboratory, with protocol under his control. They need input for safety they say, and the evidence for GJ/g heat comes in the form of instrument readings. It is purely a mug's game trying to understand and analyze these contrived experiments. > To a degree, I agree. So? That's about Rossi, not about an entire field with many hundreds of researchers around the world. But to listen to CF advocates, Rossi is the long awaited vindication of the field, suggesting they think what he's done is better than everything else. If his stuff is not convincing, everyone else's is even less so. >> If D-Pd or H-Ni generates GJ/g of heat, then take some D-Pd or H-Ni and put it in an isolated beaker and watch it boil. >That's totally silly. PdD only generates excess heat, it's known and demonstrated conclusively, at greater than 90% loading, which loading evaporates if you stop the pressurization through electrolysis. What about all those claims of heat after death that go on for days, including from Dardik's lab? If the heat after death is real, put the electrode or foil into a beaker and see what happens. They never do that, or if they do, they never report it. And what about H-Ni or gas-loading D-Pd? Evidently those don't need 90% loading. And why can't they take a little of that, put it in a tiny cell, pump hydrogen in and watch the thing generate heat. And if you claim this is dangerous, use robotics and a video camera. Just make it obvious. >> If an electrode is producing heat after death, isolate the electrode and prove it. If Arata's deuterated Pd generates heat for days without power, then remove it from his device (under pressure) and prove it. > This is crazy. The "device" is just a small chamber containing PdD (more accurately, an alloy). It does generate heat, and that's been confirmed, and there is no power input. Then why can't he remove that small chamber from all the complicating things, and put it in an isolated beaker of water. Or better still put the Pd in a tiny pill box type container that can be remotely closed while under pressure, and then remove just that box and drop it in a thermos. Even his low levels of heat, a temperature change would be readily observable this way. What he reports is not in the least convincing. > The problem is more complex than Cude would have it, indeed. The claim of complexity is the refuge of the failed experimentalist. > I don't consider the Arata work conclusive, by any means. You just said the heat was confirmed. You should make up your mind. > This is hot stuff, potentially extremely valuable, and why give away the information that you have personally gained at high cost? Because of people like Cude, because of what remains, still, probably a majority assumption among "scientists in general," nobody would believe you anyway! You're not making any sense. Arata is not keeping secrets as far as I can tell. And he does demonstrations, presumably to convince people. What would he have against doing one that actually could convince people. > Pseudoskepticism is one of the worst enemies of science around. […] Rejecting reports merely because they contradict theory is the end of scientific progress. Skeptics of CF reject it because of lack of good evidence. Can you give an example where skepticism of mainstream science (scientific inertia) has retarded scientific progress? And I don't mean Galileo or Darwin, where the skeptics were not scientists. The best examples I've seen are Wegener’s tectonic plate theory and the Semmelweis hand-washing in the mid-1800s. Wegener's theory took a long time to be accepted, but that is because geography does not yield evidence easily, and of recent (successful) revolutionary theories, it is very much the exception. Semmelweis was in another time. I don't know of a relatively recent example of benchtop science rejected by mainstream science over a period of 20 years like CF has been that turned out to be right. In the last century, most revolutionary ideas that turned out to be right, were accepted rather quickly. To me, the worst enemies of science are fringe groups who accept some idea almost religiously, who usually have a stake (religious or economic) in it, and pursue it to the exclusion of all reason. Things like creationism, global warming denial, autism-vaccine correlation, homeopathy, and so on. CF is pretty harmless, as far as it goes, at least to science, but the ones involving health or science education can be more poisonous.
