Mark Gibbs <[email protected]> wrote: > > Exactly. Once again, Rothwell misses the point. The issue here is not > about science, it's about technology and making something that works > because the original question was about what would make LENR recognized. >
Gibbs misses the point. We cannot wave a magic wand and cause a theory to appear out of nowhere. Someone might come up with one, if we are lucky. What will we do no one comes with a theory? Give up? Abandon this research? Hope that Rossi or someone else will get lucky with the trial and error method? There is no magic wand to make technology appear either. Even when you have a theory (which we do not) technology sometimes remains out of reach. We need Plan B: We should play by the established rules of *experimental science*. Because that is what this is. It isn't theory-based, and it isn't a technology now being reverse-engineered. We should tell the public that a lack of theory is regrettable but it should not prevent anyone from accepting the reality of cold fusion. The research should be fully funded, with hundreds of millions of dollars a year, because it has been replicated, and because some experiments have produced practical levels of power and energy. F&P produced 294 MJ of excess energy at 101 W. As I said, replication is gold standard of proof. Actually, it is the only standard. I meant in experimental science. Other branches of science have other ways of testing or proving assertions. Replication plays no role in astronomy, biology or theoretical physics. One of the problems here is the theoretical physicists are applying their rules to experimental science. > A theory allows the process to be made reproducible and brings the process > under control. The CONSEQUENCE of this understanding is the important > aspect of a theory. Until we can bring the phenomenon under control, I do > not believe it will be accepted or made commercially useful. > > > Then again, perhaps "theory" is the wrong word ... perhaps "technique" > would be more appropriate. > The word you want is a "model," or an engineering model. What the Wright brothers developed before they could fly. It was rigorous and mathematical and it included a lot of first-principle physics such as air-resistance and center of mass. It was based on data taken with their wind tunnel, in dozens of notebooks. It involved engineering models that would challenge a modern aviation grad student with a computer. It was "the stuff of genius" but not first-principle physics. If the Wrights had not modeled the aircraft mathematically in detail before they flew, they would have killed themselves. It is not clear whether cold fusion can be developed with something like this engineering models. Mike McKubre uses some equations that model the performance of the cell closely, but it is unclear whether they have general applicability beyond the bulk Pd-D system. - Jed
