At 10:12 AM 9/15/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
If high energy density can be reliably created and sustained for
substantial periods, it is then intrinsically scalable, and it could be that.
It has been sustained for as long as 3 months, at ~100 W, by
Fleischmann and Pons. See Roulette et al. If they can keep it stable
for 3 months, people can learn to keep it stable indefinitely.
Not necessarily. Probably. The difference is critical. Jed, you are
claiming that P&F sustained a reaction for 3 months, at 100W.
However, it would be more accurate to say that they *observed* such a
reaction. They didn't necessarily create it, "keep it stable."
Perhaps it *stayed* stable. There is, practically speaking, a huge difference.
If they'd been able to do that reliably, I doubt that Toyota would
have given up funding Technova. And this technology would have been
transferred.
No, the FPHE could be *inherently* unreliable.
Or not. Basically, there is a lot of work to be done. Until the work
is done, we are mostly speculating. There are clues that reasonably
stable PdD reaction is possible, in the long-term Fleischmann
accounts, but aren't those anecdotal?
Suppose an experiment is like tossing a coin (or a series of coins).
Run a lot of experiments, you might see a long series of some
outcome. That doesn't mean that you can control this.
Incorrect. Experiments have run at stable power levels for weeks or
months. That is not "transient." Transient would be the longest and
biggest plasma fusion reaction in history at the PPPL, which was 10
MW lasting 0.6 seconds.
Hot fusion is seriously transient, so far. I meant not sustained, and
I was not using transient to refer to seconds. Days can be transient
in the meaning I'm using. How long would a commercial cold fusion
product need to operate reliably?
It's possible that Rossi has zilch, but more likely he's setting up
some reaction; and if this is not reliable, it would explain a great
deal about Rossi's behavior. He'd think he'd manage to make it
reliable "any day now." Maybe if we make it hotter, it will become
reliable. Etc.
And maybe it will. But we have seen no proof, just tantalizing
anecdotes, demonstrations that could be utterly bogus or seriously
misinterpreted, etc.
To be what this site is claiming, it must be not only high density,
but reliable.
Obviously. If the reaction were reliable, we would have prototype
automobiles by now. We would not need this website. Reliability is
the only thing missing. The purpose of this website is to raise
money, conduct research, and make the reaction reliable and controllable.
Actually, that's not what they say. That might be what you want, Jed,
but what they talk about is making it known that LENR is real. We
already know that, and if there is a real commercial product, as soon
as that product is available for sale and within a very short time
after that, it's all over. We don't need the web site to buy a 1 MW
reactor in order to promote LENR. People will be scrambling to buy
in, once there are independent tests. If the thing works.
The web site appears to have been started by a student who imagines
that the only problem is getting the news out. That's a problem,
ignorance about LENR has certainly hampered research and research
funding, but tossing an E-Cat fee at Rossi will have no impact at all.
I'd be much more impressed by someone raising money for basic
research, instead of feeding the proprietary technology monster.
Brillouin, if they follow through with the plans to have SRI test
their work, now that's interesting. Independent, reputable
investigational lab. A good deal of what we actually *know* about
cold fusion is from SRI.
If someone wants to develop test kits so that people anywhere can
verify cold fusion results, great. I've been looking at the radiation
detectors from our own SPAWAR neutron confirmation attempt. More
later, I assume, on that.
It ain't necessarily easy. However, I've pointed out again and again
that Rossi, or Defkalion, or Brillouin, for that matter, if they have
something that *usually* works, could sell investigational kits. If
those kits work, it's all over, again. The news will get out. Jed,
you know there is some history related to this, I'm sure you know it
a lot better than I do. How did it go?
We do not yet know if LENR can be reliably generated and sustained
at adequate levels for commercial application.
Incorrect. We do know this, because it has been done, on a scale of
100 W. That is actually big enough for a large fraction of all
real-world applications. Furthermore, there is no reason to think
that cannot be scaled up.
Anything that can be done once in the laboratory, even by accident,
can be mastered, controlled and scaled up. The 100 W runs were not
accidental. They were repeated many times.
The existence of LENR, scientifically, is only a step toward that
further development.
Many other steps have been taken.
- Jed
