replying to Vortex post
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg75306.html
At 10:44 AM 1/12/2013, Jones Beene wrote:
Ah
cocktail party physics
Combining the best of life into the worst of science ???
From: alain.coetmeur@...
FYI and article by J ouellette
http://science.howstuffworks.com/starships-use-cold-fusion-propulsion.htm/printable
start with a nice pitch and is finally lenr
bashing, with cherry-picked critics on Rossi,
scientific sophism presented as evidence and irony when not enough...
see my article
http://www.lenr-forum.com/showthread.php?1017-JOuellette-LENR-bashing-Could-starships-use-cold-fusion-propulsion
some other story by Ouellette on lenr-forum
http://www.lenr-forum.com/tags.php?tag=ouellette
That article was appalling.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/starships-use-cold-fusion-propulsion.htm
worked for me, not the URL given above, which failed.
For fun, a list of errors. Her post is really a
blog post, with obviously no fact-checking
involved. She's simply displaying her ignorance,
her dependence on a casual perusal of pop media,
and what must be a poor memory. I.e., she may
*think* something when she reads a report, and
what she remembers is what she thought. Not the
actual facts. Common problem, in fact. But
horrible in a science reporter. From now on, I'm quoting Ouellette:
[...] For one scenario, he assumed a 500-person
space ship on a one-way trip to establish a
human colony on some distant exoplanet. That
would require an exajoule of energy, or 1018 J,
i.e., just about the same amount of energy
consumed by everyone on Earth in one year.
That's crazy. Somebody missed something, the
length of time it takes for the mission. Most
space colonization scenarios involve large
vehicles -- (or collections of vehicles, I
haven't seen, but it's an obvious safety
precaution, expecially when travelling in
intersteller space at high velocities) -- that
can self-sustain for centuries, if need be. Cold fusion might be quite useful.
[...]
The article has very little to do with space
travel, and she's got no clue about space travel.
One small problem...
There's just one problem. We can achieve hot
<http://science.howstuffworks.com/fusion-reactor.htm>nuclear
fusion, but recreating the intense temperatures
and pressures that exist inside stars currently
requires more energy than it gives back, so it's
economically unfeasible, and pretty much an
energy
<http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/sinkhole.htm>sinkhole
for the time being.
She's ignorant. Hot fusion is difficult to use in
confinement. If used for propulsion, it might not need to be confined.
If only we could achieve fusion at room temperatures!
No. Bad idea for fusion propulsion. The problem
is translating power into impulse. At high power,
what she's talking about for space travel, one
would use hot fusion to create massive
high-energy radiation and local heat, all of
which would be exhausted, the reactants being reaction mass.
But cold fusion might be useful for low-impulse
propulsion. Long-term space travel might use
solar sails, might use ion propulsion. Electric rockets, effectively
That's the claim of proponents of so-called
"cold fusion," a field that has languished on
the fringe since its alleged discovery almost
20 years ago. Back in 2000, TIME magazine
listed cold fusion as one of the "worst ideas" of the 20th century.
She has the typical pseudoskeptical mind set.
This isn't about science, it's about
"proponents." The field did "languish on the
fringe," but in that period, there was continued
publication in peer-reviewed journals, reaching a
nadir around 2004-2005. It is up by roughly a
factor of four since then, to roughly two papers
per month (in mainstream journals, there is a lot
more in the specialist LENR journals). And how is
a comment from Time magazine over a decade ago
relevant to *present science*? She's just writing
a fluff piece, and it gets worse.
Almost twenty years ago? When did she write this?
The "cite" link gives a date of 29 August 2012.
She doesn't specify the starting event, just "its
alleged discovery." That could be the 1989 press
converence, almost 23 years ago. But Pons and
Fleischmann only speculated on the reaction they
found. From the energy density, they concluded it
could not be known chemistry. They *actually*
claimed, if you go back and read the first paper,
an "unknown nuclear reaction." The paper, as
submitted, had "Fusion?" at the end. The journal dropped the question mark.
Call it the "fusion confusion." They had
discovered the heat from what later turned out to
be, indeed, fusion by an unknown mechanism, and
the mechanism is still unknown. Because of
"fusion confusion," the field came to be known as
"Low Energy Nuclear Reactions," LENR. She will come to that.
When did we know it was fusion? Well, that was
established by Miles, published, as I recall, in
1993. Or we could date it to the first
confirmation of Miles, some years later. However,
the real discovery date was much earlier.
In 1984, investigating the possibility of some
deviation between predicted behavior and actual
behavior, in the solid state, Pons and
Fleischmann had set up and loaded a cubic
centimeter of palladium with deuterium, and had
continued electrolysis beyond the time normally
considered adquate to maximally load the
palladium with deuterium. Others later realized
that they had seen the same effect, anomalous
heat (Mizuno, notably). Their experiment melted
down and partly vaporized. I don't know that we
have an exact date, but Beaudette reported
independent testimony regarding the event.
So 1984 would be the year of discovery. They then
worked on it for five years, and were not ready to announce. History.
Prevailing scientific opinion is still that the
vast majority of cold fusion research falls
under the rubric of "pathological science": the
results are always on the verge of a stunning
validation. Whenever said validation fails
(again) to materialize, there is always a handy
rationale for why it isn't really a definitive
failure -- and why the naysayers are just
closed-minded tools of the scientific
establishment, conspiring to keep these unsung geniuses down.
This is common pseudoskeptical opinion. There is
no "journal of prevailing scientific opinion."
Journals are mostly specialized, and if
"prevailing scientific opinion" is just the
general opinion of "scientists," it means
nothing. What really means something is expert
opinion, as shown in review panels (like the DoE
panels, about which more below), but most
routinely in the peer review process. Oullette
doesn't seem to know this, but there was a
definitive review of cold fusion in
Naturwissenschaften, a major multidisciplinary
journal (Springer-Verlag's "flagship"), "Status
of cold fusion (2010). Since then, someone who
writes confidently about cold fusion, but who
shows no awareness of that review or what it
plainly states, is simply ignorant. Even if they are presented as an "expert."
Expert on what? Cold fusion is a complex field,
with over 3000 papers published, over 1000 in
peer-reviewed journals. It takes years to come up
to speed on cold fusion, typically. Once Pons and
Fleischmann broke the ice, researchers started
looking in places nobody else had looked before,
and they reported what they found. Lots of it may
be artifact, that's unavoidable. But the body of
research shows something, with way under one
chance in a million that the central result is "artifact."
She is repeating the standard rap about
"pathological science." Bauer wrote a clear
refutation of that, something like 2004.
"The results are always on the verge of a
stunning validation." No, the "stunning
validation" happened about twenty years ago, with
Miles' heat/helium series of experiments.
Huizenga, the co-chair of the 1989 DoE review
panel, noted it in his second edition, about
1994, of his book, "Cold Fusion, Scientific
Fiasco of the Century." He wrote that it was an
amazing result. He merely expected that it would
not be confirmed. But Miles *was* confirmed,
quite amply to support the fusion conclusion, by
the time of the 2004 DoE review.
Ouellette is a "science fan." She believes there
is this thing called "science," that has a
collective opinion. She believes that she knows
what that collective opinion is, because, hey,
she read it once in a journal published twenty
years ago, and she is actually clueless, she has
no specific knowledge of what has happened since then. It gets "better."
There has been no "definitive failure." Ouellette
has no idea of how real science functions. There
were replication failures. It was understood by
the 1989 review that no replication failure, of a
complex experiment, could not be definitive. Only
*replication* with controlled experiment to
identify prior artifact (i.e., the artifact is
reproduced, then exposed), can be termed a
"definitive failure." No, she's thinking of
something else entirely, she's thinking of
*demonstrations.* Not scientific experiments. And
demonstrations can't be "definitive failures"
either, because, in fact, stuff does happen.
"Unsung geniuses" has nothing to do with the
science of LENR. It's all a set-up for a
pseudoskeptical frame. There are people who
believe in some anti-cold fusion conspiracy
theory, call them the tinfoil hat wearers.
However, there really was suppression of research
and report, and it's all well-documented. To
affirm that is not a conspiracy theory, except
for what was right out in the open. No,
pseudoskeptics attempt to discredit an entire
field with these polemic brushes. Ouellette is
really the mirror image of those tinfoil hat
wearers. She believes what she believes, and
she's rigid and inflexible. And a lousy writer, when it comes to accuracy.
Running Hot and Cold
It all started in 1989, when two chemists at the
University of Utah named Stanley Pons and Martin
Fleischmann believed they had succeeded in
producing nuclear fusion in a jar. Hundreds of
researchers all over the world scurried to
reproduce the experiments, and failed.
No. What a density of error. What happened in
1989 was the announcement, not the discover, and
the discovery was of anomalous heat. They
*concluded* that the heat was nuclear in origin.
They knew it was not ordinary fusion. However,
they believed they had found neutrons, a marker
of deuterium hot fusion. So, unfortunately, the
speculated that some level of ordinary fusion was
taking place. The neutron finding was, indeed,
artifact, and that was quickly shown (and the result retracted, as I recall).
So what happened with the "hundreds of
researchers" That is a highly inaccurate
representation of what happened in 1989-1990.
Reproducing the Fleischmann-Pons experiment was
*difficult*. Little information was available on
the details. Lots of people tried, including
people with no electrochemical experience. The
DoE spread out a great deal of discretionary
funding, because the administration wanted a fast
answer. The DoE panel convened was charged with
making a quick decision on a massive program of
federal funding. The time schedule was impossibly
short. When the resport was issued there was very
little confirmation yet. But Miles, in
particular, had told the panel that his
experiments had found no heat. And then, before
the report was issued, Miles phoned them to tell
them he was now seeing anomalous heat. They did not return his call.
There is some suspicion that the original ERAB
panel was convened as a "cold fusion killer,"
because there was a threat, from the possibility
of cold fusion, to existing, heavily funded and
institutionalized, hot fusion research. The
manner in which the panel conducted its research fairly well confirms this.
Ultimately, looking at the collection of
peer-reviewed mainstream journal reports on
anomalous heat from palladium deuteride, positive
reports outnumber negative ones, by a substantial
margin. *The first year*, negative reports
dominated. I'll say it again: this was a very
difficult experiment. It was not done "in a jar."
It was done, by Flesichmann and Pons, in a Dewar
flask, and the calorimetry they did to measure
the anomaly was far more sensitive than most
calorimetry, it was world-class. Their work has
been reviewed many times, as to their
calorimetric technique, and has always been confirmed.
So with her "hundreds of researchers" trope,
Ouellette confirms what is probably the most
widespread myth about cold fusion, i.e., that the
F-P work "could not be reproduced," which ignores
the *bulk* of the research. She's basically
spreading a lie. One might think she'd be horrified about that!
By the end of that year, a panel of experts had
conducted a Department of Energy (DOE) review
and concluded there was no basis for the claims.
No, they did not conclude that. The political
story is complicated. Under Huizenga's leadership
-- Huizenga appears to have been quite sure from
the beginning that this was nonsense, and he lays
it out in his book -- the panel was about to
issue a very strong report condemning the claims.
However, Norman Ramsay, a physics Nobel Prize
winner, insisted that certain language be the
report. And what was *actually* in the report? It
negates what Ouellette has written. She is
showing the pseudoskeptical tendency to interpret
evidence toward the favored beliefs; the normal "belief" is "I'm right."
Quoting the Executive Summary from
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ERABreportofth.pdf
Some laboratories support the Utah claims of excess heat production,
usually for intermittent periods, but most report negative results.
So much for the claim that "hundreds of
researchers failed," with the easy implication that nobody succeeded.
Those who claim
excess heat do not find commensurate quantities
of fusion products, such as neutrons or
tritium, that should be by far the most sensitive signatures of fusion.
Yes, in the early days, people were looking for
"signatures of fusion," but, actually, these are
only signatures of hot dueterium fusion. Those
products are absent, *mostly.* Tritium has been
found at clearly sigificant levels, many reports,
but definitely not "commensurate with the heat."
The main reaction obviously does not produce
neutrons or tritium. However, it does produce a
known fusion product, helium. The expected gamma
ray that normally accompanies fusion is missing.
Notice: this is about "fusion." What ever
happened to the *actual claim*, i.e., "unknown nuclear reaction"?
Some laboratories
have reported excess tritium. However, in these
cases, no secondary or other primary
nuclear particles are found, ruling out the
known D+D reaction as the source of tritium.
Probably, by the way. It's an "unknown nuclear
reaction." The characteristics of cold fusion,
the F-P Heat Effect, are now fairly well known.
Tritium is reported, sometimes, at about 10^6
below what would be expected from d-d fusion and
the measured heat. Basically, the reaction
produces two measurables: heat and helium. Far
below helium as to abundance is tritium, and
about the same amount further down are neutrons.
Proton radiation at the tritium level, if
produced, could be too low to measure.
The reaction is *characteristically* unreliable.
That's something very strange to physicists,
accustomed to dealing with relatively simple
environments, as in plasma fusion. That one
palladium rod might look like another palladium
rod might not even occur to them as an illusion.
Cold fusion appears to be extremely senstitive to
the nanostructure of the material, and that
structure, under electrolysis, can shift
massively with time. None of this was understood
in 1989, or at least it was not well-understood.
The Panel concludes that the experimental
results on excess heat from calorimetric
cells reported to date do not present convincing
evidence that useful sources of energy
will result from the phenomena attributed to cold fusion.
Given the restrictions that the Panel was
operating under, this was reasonable. However, it
does *not* say what Oullette reported. And there
is an important qualification that escapes her,
quite likely -- if she ever read this report
instead of just the Wikipedia article. The Panel
was charged with making a decision about a
massive funding program. By the time that the
Panel issued its report, it was becoming clear
that cold fusion, if real, was more or less a
laboratory curiosity. Cold fusion was *not
likely* to produce fast practical results. It's that reliability problem.
Before any conclusion could be made about
*ultimate practicality,* much more research was needed.
In addition, the Panel
concludes that experiments reported to date do
not present convincing evidence to
associate the reported anomalous heat with a nuclear process.
That was correct. In a left-handed sort of way,
the report is confirming the anomalous heat, but
pointing out that anomalous heat does not a
"nuclear reaction" is present. The evidence was
circumstantial. No smoking gun had been found.
Helium, being a rare branch of hot d-d fustion,
was not expected. But early on, Preparate
prediced that the "ash" was helium. Helium is a
nuclear product, and if helium is actually being
produced, commensurate with the heat, that
*would* be evidence of "nuclear process." Helium
was discovered by something like 1991, it had
previously been reported, without clear evidence,
by F&P, and the correlation with heat was studied
and reported in 1993, by Miles.
Recent experiments, some employing more sophisticated counter
arrangements and improved backgrounds, found no
fusion products and placed upper
limits on the fusion probability for these
experiments, at levels well below the initial
positive results. Hence, the Panel concludes
that the present evidence for the discovery
of a new nuclear process termed cold fusion is not persuasive.
Those experiments did not look for helium.
Further, many of them simply set up what were
thought to be the "conditions of cold fusion,"
and did not measure heat. In other words, a
negative finding from an experiment that would
mean *nothing* as to the FP Heat Effect, because
it might be completely absent, and, given the
norm in many of these experiments, probably was
absent. They found nothing from nothing.
Again, "not persuasive." And, again, I concur,
given their severe limitations, what they had,
the "present evidence" was not persuasive. It was
an *indication,* as with any primary research.
The Panel also concludes that some observations
attributed to cold fusion are not yet
invalidated.
The Panel recommends against the establishment of special programs or research
centers to develop cold fusion. However, there
remain unresolved issues which may
have interesting implications. The Panel is,
therefore, sympathetic toward modest
support for carefully focused and cooperative
experiments within the present funding
system.
Notice: "not yet invalidated." And "unresolved
issues which may have interesting implications."
They, then, went on record as suppporting cold
fusion research. But the report was not read as
it read literally. It was announced around the
world as if it were a rebuke, a complete
debunking. The DoE has yet, apparently, to fund
any cold fusion research. The Savannah River
facility may have supported Kirk Shanahan in
writing a fanciful criticism of cold fusion,
that's about it. No research was involved. No
deuterons were harmed in the production of his article.
Why didn't the DoE fund what its own panel had
recommended? It's called a "cascade." Google
"Cascade Taubes" to see an article in the New
York Times by Tiernan, on a different cascade,
where Gary Taubes -- who wrote a highly skeptical
book on cold fusion in the 1990s -- exposes a cascade in dietary science.
Mass "Scientific" opinion appearing real, as a
consensus, but never having been rooted in the scientific method.
The American Physical Society, and especially
Robert Park, of the Washington office, made sure
that nothing got funded. Every proposal was
attacked. At the same time, in universities, if a
student did work on cold fusion -- and grad
student labor is the major source of labor for
replication work -- they could see years of work
go down the drain. It happened.
The U.S. Patent Office began to routinely reject
cold fusion applications as "impossble." One
migth note that the DoE panel report does not
support that conclusion. They often make an
analogy with perpetual motion machines, which are
almost certainly impossible (as thought of).
That, in turn, created a situation where anyone
working with cold fusion had an economic
incentive to keep the work secret, since they
could not get patent protection. That inhibits investment.
Back to Oellette:
Fifteen years later, the DOE decided to take
another look at the accumulated evidence over
the last 15 years and re-evaluate the cold
fusion controversy. They still didn't find the
evidence sufficiently convincing to launch a federally-funded research program.
Now, this is remarkable. I was expecting to read
the usual pap here, taken from the conclusion,
that the "conclusions are much the same as in
1989." "Sufficiently convincing to launch a
federally-funded program" (the implication is
"major program), has little to do with the
reality of cold fusion, for effects can be real
and have no practical implications.
Muon-catalyzed fusion, for example, isn't
controversial. Impractical. (And, by the way,
it's definitely "cold" fusion, very cold,
pointing out the insanity of saying "impossible" to something unknown.)
But they felt that funding agencies should
consider proposed projects on a case-by-case
basis, provided those proposals met "accepted
scientific standards and undergo the rigors of peer review."
Yes. Now, that was 2004. Has any work been funded
following this recommendation? No. Proposals have
been submitted, but have always been rejected.
The DoE has not actively attempted to create research programs.
Heck, sometimes long shots pay off, so why not
throw some funding scraps into the hat?
Oullette seems completely unaware that the
original report recommended the same research.
One does not recommend research into bogus
fields. No, one recommends research when there
are *questions of interest* to be answered. Cold
fusion *might* have vast implications. It has
*already* been confirmed, and at other times,
I've covered the deficiencies of that 2004
review. (Basically, the panel clearly misread the
evidence, and the review was hasty, it can take
more than a day to have a back-and-forth so that
misunderstandings won't arise.)
That's why there are a couple of research
programs looking into cold fusion, most notably
one with the US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems (SPAWAR).
SPAWAR was working since the early days, I think
their publications go back to 1990. This had
nothing to do with the 2004 DoE review.
In 2009, SPAWAR claimed to have detected a cold
fusion reaction, and there have a been few other
promising glimmers here and there over the
years. But robust reproducibility remains
elusive, adding credence to criticisms from
physicists that the much-touted results are
likely to be due to experimental error (either
in the set-up, or the measurements).
"Robust reproducibility remains elusive." Notice
the shift in claim. Is cold fusion reproducible
or not? From the original ERAB panel report:
However, even a single short but valid cold
fusion period would be revolutionary. As a
result, it is difficult convincingly to resolve
all cold fusion claims since, for example,
any good experiment that fails to find cold
fusion can be discounted as merely not
working for unknown reasons. Likewise the
failure of a theory to account for cold
fusion can be discounted on the grounds that the
correct explanation and theory has not
been provided. Consequently, with the many
contradictory existing claims it is not
possible at this time to state categorically
that all the claims for cold fusion have been
convincingly either proved or disproved.
Apparently, Norman Ramsey had to threaten to
noisily resign if that was not included.
So, how many times must an experiment be
replicated before it's considered "valid"? If a
hundred people were to try to replicate, and only
one actually gets the same results, would that be enough?
Yes, it would be enough, particularly if
controlled experiment, with that one replication,
showed and explained why the other 99 failed.
Usually one replication is considered adequate,
but in highly controversial field it might take more than that.
It is now known, it's been studied, why most of
the "negative replications" came up empty. They
did *not* reproduce the conditions of the
Fleischmann-Pons experiment. Typical loading was
70%, and the reaction does not seem to appear
below about 90% overall loading. Given that,
those experiments show *nothing* about the
effect, other than confirming later work that
about 90% is required. In real science, that is
what ultimately happens. The *entire body* of
experimental evidence -- or, at least, most of it
-- confirms the ultimate undertstanding.
In the language used above, they were not "good
experiments." That is, conditions were not
adequately controlled. They didn't know the
conditions, generally. Before the work of F&P, it
was thought that loading over 70% was
*impossible.* And so they thought they were doing
adequate work by getting up to "maximum" loading.
How many confirmations have there been? Based on
the Dieter Britz database, there have been 153
confirmations, published in peer-reviewed
mainstream journals, confirming anomalous heat.
Contrary to pseudoskeptical claims, many of these
reports are *far above* noise. Some work is
relatively reliable, that is, almost all cells
show excess heat, and sometimes a lot of heat, sometimes less.
Heat/helium confirms that the heat is not
artifact, and the correlated heat confirms that
helium is not artifact, or "leakage." If it were
leakage, it would not be correlated with heat.
And in many of the results, the helium found is well above ambient.
It is not reasonable, any more, to make a claim
that the FP findings -- other than their neutron
report -- have not been confirmed. What we see,
again and again, from pseudoskeptics, of claims
that are repeated from very old claims that were,
at best, reasonable at the time. Real science moves on.
So, while physicists are willing to concede
there might be something of marginal interest
going on, most remain unconvinced that this is
bona fide cold fusion. Hardly anyone holds out
any hope of it becoming a viable energy source in the foreseeable future.
The opinions of those who are ignorant of
research in a field mean nothing. Cold fusion,
experimentally, is not the province of physicists
at all. They were at sea, most of them, trying to
replicate years ago. In order to have any
meaningful opinion, they need to know the
research. Otherwise, physicists, educated and
told for twenty years that cold fusion is
complete bogosity, simply believe what other
"experts" told them, and will cheerfully repeat it.
And a "reporter" who talks to one of these
people, or even a few, will then report this as the opinions of "physicists."
To know whether or not the FPHE is "bona fide"
cold fusion, they will need to know the
experimental evidence on which such a claim would
be based. They don't. Cold fusion papers are
passing review in journals. They *assume* cold
fusion is real. That is where cold fusion is
today. Ouellette is reporting yesterday's science
new, it never was science, because cold fusion,
see that ERAB Panel report, *was never found to be error.*
There is a separate issue in the field, the exact
nature of the nuclear reaction.
Oh, and we don't call it "cold fusion" anymore.
The current preferred terminology is Low Energy
Nuclear Reactions (LENR), thank you very much.
Storms, in his 2010 review in
Naturwissenschaften, titled the paper "Status of
cold fusion (2010)." That is because a major part
of that paper is devoted to examining the
heat/helium evidence, which is very strong
evidence that the reaction is *some kind* of
deuterium fusion. There is a minority opinion,
often promoted among the less knowledgeable, that
thinks the reaction may be due to neutron
formation and activation. Out of respect for this
minority -- and the possibility that it might be
*something else entirely* -- the field is still
formally called LENR, and there is a whole world
of reactions that might be possible, not just the
helium-producing reaction of the FPHE.
Abra-ca-dabra!
The latest cold fusion claims are coming out of
Italy from a physicist named Andrea Rossi, who
has invented a cold fusion device known as the
<http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-italian-scientists-cold-fusion-video.html>e-cat,
or energy catalyzer.
These are not the "latest" claims, they have been
active now for two years. Rossi is not a
physicist. Where does she get her facts?
Rossi claims that enriched nickel is being fused
with hydrogen nuclei to create copper, and
release large amounts of energy -- using simple
tabletop
<http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/chemistry-terms/electrochemistry-info.htm>electrochemistry
instead of huge machines that recreate
stellar-scale temperatures and pressures.
The Rossi invention does not use
electrochemistry. She's showing that she has no
comprehension of the reports. Lots of researchers
in LENR think that Rossi is a total con artist.
Others think that he might have something, but is
exaggerating. Few think that, if his device
actually works, which is questionable, that it
works by fusion of nickel and hydrogen to form copper.
Sounds pretty frickin' awesome, doesn't it? The
e-cat would be just the ticket for powering an interstellar mission.
Not at all. She goes over many reasons to think
that Rossi is a total clown/con. I'll only point
out some misleading points. She's not necessarily
wrong about Rossi, lots of people think his
claims are very shaky. But facts are facts.
* Rossi has never published a peer-reviewed
paper on how his device works, either theoretically or experimentally.
* here [sic] are only very rough schematics
publicly available, and they are all from the
Journal of Nuclear Physics, which is Andrea
Rossi's own private journal. But doesn't
Journal of Nuclear Physics sound reputable? Not
quite: it was founded just last year, in 2010.
Don't confuse it with the real journal, which is simply Nuclear Physics.
She's quoting a blogger named "Ethan"
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/11/25/cold-fusion-is-it-possible-is/
Copy and paste, she missed the original T. Small point.
* Andrea Rossi had a company in the 1980s,
Petroldragon, which claimed to turn garbage
into oil. Sound too-good-to-be-true? Andrea
Rossi went to jail for this scam, although he
<http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fit.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPetroldragon>gives
his own version of the events.
When a writer repeats a misleading report, there
is an obligation to correct what is misleading.
Yes, Rossi went to jail. He was later exonerated, the charges were dismissed.
[...]
Ethan followed up with a
<http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/12/the_nuclear_physics_of_why_we.php>second
post the next day, co-authored with Brookhaven
National Lab's Peter Thieberger, explaining in
careful detail the specific physics of why
Rossi's claims of cold fusion are highly
suspect. Go read that, and if you still want to
invest in Rossi's technology -- well, I've got a
bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in buying, too.
Rossi is an entrepreneur, not a scientist. He has
no obligation to be truthful, and entrepreneurs
-- and other businesses -- may lie to the public
about what they do and why they do it, and it's
not illegal. Someone who invests in Rossi without
very solid evidence, not even merely a private
demonstration, is asking to be fleeced. Rossi's
claim of fusion to copper is, indeed, unlikely.
Then again, without knowing a *mechanism*, it is
impossible to calculate a fusion cross-section. So what is in that blog post?
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/12/05/the-nuclear-physics-of-why-we/
quoting Ethan:
In the past, claims of cold fusion have been
unable to be scientifically reproduced under
controlled conditions, but it is universally
recognized that if cold fusion could be
achieved, it would be amazingly useful as a
clean, cheap, safe, abundant energy source.
Once again, the "unable to be scientifically
reproduced" trope, a clear sign of a
pseudoskeptical -- or at least ignorant --
response. Notice that cold fusion *has* been
achieved, that's scientifically clear. The issue
that remains is practicality. It's not true that
if "cold fusion could be achieved, it would be
amazingly useful." Muon-catalyzed cold fusion was
achieved long ago, and it remains a lab
curiosity. F&P cold fusion is *also* a lab
curiosity, but, unlike MCF, we don't know a
specific reason why it would be impractical. Most
of the experimental approaches, so far, are
either unreliable or are at low low levels, or
don't sustain long enough to be commercially
useful. But *we don't know what the reaction mechanism is.*
Until we know what it is, we cannot predict
"practical applications," either way. Without a
theory, we are stabbing in the dark.
They start with nickel powder ordinary nickel
as found on Earth and combine it with hydrogen
gas under modest pressure. You will see claims
that this is high pressure, but in the world of
physics, the claimed 25 times our normal
atmospheric pressure (or even 100 or 1000 times)
isnt anything spectacular. (For comparison,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion>inertial
confinement fusion compresses hydrogen to be
about a factor of 20 denser than solid lead to
obtain fusion, in line with
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_criterion>well-understood physics.)
This is confused, I think. Rossi doesn't use
"high pressure," 25 atmospheres is not truly high
pressure. The claims of very high pressures have
to do with effective pressure in metal hydrides.
It was thought, in the early days, that hot
fusion might somehow be happening in cold fusion
devices. While that is probably true, it's only
true to a *very small degree.* Most of the reaction is *something else.*
The nickel and hydrogen mix, under pressure, is
heated through simple electrical currents in the
presence it is claimed of a secret mix of catalysts.
And here may be where Ouelette got "electrolysis"
from. She simply misread the implications. No,
that the mixture is heated with "electrical
currents" is irrelevant. It could be heated by a
gas flame. It's just heat, nothing else, that
reaches the Rossi reaction chamber -- as far as we know.
And its claimed that a nuclear fusion reaction
takes place between the nickel and the hydrogen, producing copper!
let me guess, I haven't looked yet. He's going to
point out that this (allegedly) requires
temperatures exceeding those found in supernovae.
OKay, he does point out the main problem with the
transmutation claim, that the allegedly produced
copper had a normal isotopic ratio.
And, yes, he comes to what I expected, in effect:
In other words, even the most massive stars, at
the incredible pressures and temperatures found
at their cores, cannot fuse nickel and hydrogen
nuclei together. From the point of view of
astrophysics, the claims of cold fusion do not hold up.
Cold fusion requires conditions that do not exist
in stars! Stars are *hot* and condensed matter
does not exist there. The field of LENR is also
called Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. We do not know these things:
1. Whether Rossi's devices actually produce anomalous energy.
2. If they do, the nature of the mechanism. Rossi is not a physicist.
3. The nature of the mechanism for F&P cold fusion.
4. What might be possible in nickel hydride.
Essentially, very similar arguments apply to FPHE
cold fusion as were made here for copper
transmutation by the suggested mechanism. Rossi
might well know that copper transmutation is not
the mechanism. He might be lying about just about
anything, and legally. If one wants to invest
with Rossi, there are probably disclosures and
NDAs and the whole nine yards. Rossi is stubborn, but probably not stupid.
Back to Ouellette:
Alas, cold fusion acolytes have responded to the
criticism by (once again) shrilly decrying their
critics as being closed-minded, misinformed, not
willing to give cold fusion a fair shake, and so
forth. There is little evidence to back up such claims.
Most people seriously involved with cold fusion
recognize the problems with Rossi's claims.
However, Ouellette is once again playing the
pseudoskeptical game. There actually are
"close-minded and misinformed" people, sometimes
with influence and power. If one points that out,
perhaps with evidence, is that "shrill"? To get
"shrill," one would need to be listening to
audio. Otherwise, it's *made up.* Basically,
Oullette has her mental picture of cold fusion
"advocates," and she projects it all over what she actually sees in the world.
As I
<http://twistedphysics.typepad.com/cocktail_party_physics/2007/08/genie-in-a-bott.html>wrote
back in 2007:
The scientific community as a whole has not
unfairly dismissed the claims: it simply remains
unconvinced by the erratic evidence that has
been presented to it. Should cold fusion
advocates one day beat the odds and provide
truly reproducible, compelling evidence for
low-energy nuclear reactions, the stodgy old
scientific establishment might grumble a bit,
but ultimately it will accept those findings and
alter its theories accordingly. Because that's
what the scientific method is all about.
Nice to quote yourself. The "odds" were beaten
long ago. There was reproducible, compelling
evidence found and reported about twenty years
ago, and it was confirmed. The ultimate result
was that *skepticism* died, in the journals. It's
still alive among dinosaurs and their friends.
The last cold fusion skeptic to actually get
something published was Kirk Shanahan, and it was
only a letter, demolished by the article authors,
and Kirk was left complaining that the journal
would publish further ravings. Who is out in the cold now?
Yes, the "stodgy old scientific establishment
might grumble a bit." Richard Garwin, a real
scientist who became a bit attached to his own
ideas, was reduced to sputtering, when
interviewed for the CBS Sixty Minutes' special
report on cold fusion, that "there must be
something wrong, they have to be making some
mistake." Yet, in over twenty years, nobody found
that mistake. Now, *that's persistent belief!
The opportunity is coming for skeptics to put up
or shut up. Heat/helium has been measured to
adequate accuracy to confirm deuterium fusion,
but not accurately enough to nail down the helium
producing reaction as being predominantly one
reaction. Researchers in the field really don't
question this result, they don't need to know it
better, it's good enough for them. However,
measuging that Q to higher accuracy, which is
difficult and somewhat expensive, could nail down
the boundaries of mechanism, to a degree. And, of
course, measuring that Q, if done with higher
accuracy, would, if prior work was artifact, identify it.
So, I predict, that work will be done and
published. It's even possible that the DoE will
fund it. After all, they were so advised by both of their own panels.
And then,
The late Scottish physicist Douglas Morrison was
one of the rare skeptical attendees of the
annual cold fusion conferences until his death
in 2001. Each year, he would listen to the
extravagant claims of "excess heat," then stand
and make a simple request: "Please can I have a cup of tea?"
Morrison said the same thing regardless of
whether claims were "extravagant" or not. I see
extravagant claims from non-scientists,
generally, at cold fusion conferences. The
scientists are scientists, generally careful.
However, as McKubre pointed out, he could have brewed many cups of tea.
Morrison was demanding, for a scientific
conclusion, a practical application. He knew,
presumably, that muon-catalyzed cold fusion is
real, but he didn't expect any MCF-brewed cups of tea.
There are techniques that would *almost every
time* generate enough heat to brew a cup of tea.
However, most cold fusion research operates,
normally, below those power levels.
Pseudoskeptics believe that the whole thing is
impossible, so they don't think of the problem.
The reaction is unreliable. That cuts in both
directions. When Pons and Fleischmann experienced
their meltdown/vaporization in 1984, the *scaled
down*< and any sane cold fusion researcher does
the same. F&P might have been lucky. They could
have lost the whole lab or more.
Granted, it was a bit cheeky of him, but he made
his point: cold fusion talks a good game, yet
even the simplest applied energy task remains well beyond its reach.
That's actually not a simple task, compared with
scientifically demonstrating cold fusion, with
high certainty. Fleischmann wrote that he thought
it might take a Manhattan-scale project to
develop cold fusion commercially. Okay, was
Morrison prepared to spend billions of dollars for his cup of tea?
Morrison declared that cold fusion was dead. He's dead and it's not.
It takes 4.18
<http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_energy_is_needed_to_boil_water>joules
to raise a gram of water's temperature by 1
degee Celsius, and it needs to be 100 degrees
Celsius to make Morrison's cup of tea. Remember,
per Millis' calculations, we'd need an exajoule
to send
<http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-tourism.htm>humans
into interstellar space. So if you're hoping
cold fusion will be the answer to powering an
interstellar mission, you're in for a very long wait.
She got that wrong in the first place, it could
be done for much less energy, and cold fusion
might indeed help with intersteller exploration,
but that remains highly speculative. The main
application, if cold fusion devices can be made
practical, would be for ordinary mission power,
long-term. If the reaction is hydrogen-based, the
fuel is maximally light. Deuterium is heavier
(twice the atomic weight), but the deuterium
fusion reaction (cold fusion is *probably
multibody fusion*) is a very high-yield reaction.
Ouellette really needs to get, if she is not to
become increasingly irrelevant, that the
scientific consensus, in the journals, where
papers are reviewed by experts, has become that
LENR is real. The opposite position has
*completely disappeared*, and for a long time,
about a decade. Reviews are being published,
research is going on, theories are being
developed, but all this is invisible to
Ouellette, to her, this situation is impossible.
It's clear that Ouellette *assumes* a whole
series of old errors about cold fusion, believes
them, and projects tinfoil hats and "shrill
voices" onto cold fusion researchers. She's living in her own fantasies.
