OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:
Can you elaborate a little more about such "unpublished information".
Nope. Sorry. Over the past year I mentioned several times that I heard about private tests of the eCats. Some worked, others did not. Some of the people doing these tests shared a few results with me. As I said at the time of the January U. Bologna demonstration, mainly what they had been telling me is "Don't dismiss Rossi. Our tests indicate there is something to it. We're getting 5 or 10 kW." Rossi told me "10 kW" too, but I had great difficulty believing it. I hope I did not fully _disbelieve_ it. Anyone familiar with the difficulties of cold fusion will know why it seemed outlandish to me.
It wasn't a "black swan" in the sense of being totally unanticipated, but it was a bigger leap than I thought possible.
My position was similar to that of a knowledgeable French person interested in aviation in 1908 who gets a letter from a U.S. colleague saying: "the Wrights reportedly flew for 24 miles in 39 minutes, in 1905." In 1908, the best French aviators barely managed to get off the ground. They flew uncontrolled hops, lasting a minute or so. The notion that anyone could fly for miles over a half hour must have seemed preposterous. It is no wonder the French experts did not believe the claims. The day after Orville actually flew in front of those experts, every one of them believed it -- even the ones who were not present and only heard about it from others. They were a small group of people who understood one another, and trusted one another (mostly) and they were in close communication. Some of them had colossal egos, and considered themselves the best experts in aviation in the world. Yet the moment those present saw the flight, they instantly admitted: "Well, we are beaten! We just don't exist!" (Delagrange). They told all the other experts and within a day. In a similar way, the Italians and French researchers at the Rossi demonstration were instantly convinced. They know calorimetry well enough to judge this issue. I probably would have been convinced if I had been present. As soon as I heard from them I had no real doubt about it.
This comparison works better than you might realize, because there were a number of stunts and uncontrolled flights before 1908 in Europe in the U.S. There were powered dirigible balloon flights, including one by Santos-Dumont around the Eiffel tower in 1906. A person who did not understand aviation back then would have had some difficulty distinguishing between what Orville did in his flight, and what what the French aviators had accomplished earlier. The difference was like night and day to them, but to an outsider it might be obscure. I am sorry to sound condescending, but some of the skeptical comments about Rossi (including a few of the ones here) sound to me like a person in 1908 saying: "How do you know the Wright airplane is not actually a dirigible with a motor on it? And how can you be sure he really did control the flight?" The answer back then was: I can tell by looking; and, M. Wright would have been killed had he not been fully in control of the aircraft. (It flew straight toward a grove of trees, but he veered around them.) The fact that Rossi has done what he claims is equally self-evident to me. The speculation about wet and dry steam is bunk. The second test proved that beyond any doubt. It is a waste of time even discussing it.
Can you post the information our here, or are there constraints preventing you from doing so.
If I were not constrained, I would publish it on LENR-CANR.org. I hope that I will be allowed to do that before long.
The Defkalion press release says they will release a lot of information on July 23, including some technical information. Unfortunately they do not plan to demonstrate a reactor, which is why I am not going.
- Jed
