[Vo]:Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries
See: J. M. Campanario, Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries, Departamento de Física, Universidad de Alcalá http://www2.uah.es/jmc/nobel/nobel.html This is an excellent paper! - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries
The Nobel involved in the discovery that ulcers are cause by an infection is a direct example of this problem. The researchers were rather angry about their treatment in a matter that was easy to replicate. Everyone knew they must be wrong. --- On Fri, 5/8/09, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com Subject: [Vo]:Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Date: Friday, May 8, 2009, 2:05 PM See: J. M. Campanario, Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries, Departamento de Física, Universidad de Alcalá http://www2.uah.es/jmc/nobel/nobel.html This is an excellent paper! - Jed
[Vo]:Mengoli paper and the normalization question
I should add that Martin Fleischmann also thinks highly of Mengoli. He considers him one of the world's top electrochemists. Mengoli retired several years ago. At issue has arisen in the discussion of this paper and in my earlier message Rough comparison of cold fusion Pd to UO2. The question is: to what part of the cell should you normalize the energy? The cathode? Or all of the parts on inside the calorimeter walls? Or, at the other extreme, do you only count the deuterium that is consumed, which can only be estimated by measuring the helium produced? As Stephen A. Lawrence pointed out, the palladium isn't the fuel, it's just a catalyst. That is true. Or at least, we hope that is true. Good arguments can be made for various way of normalization, and the answer comes out very different if you include lots of cell materials. As a guide to scientific theory, obviously the only thing you want to account for is the deuterium, since that appears to be the only thing which is actually consumed. But looking at it as an engineering problem, it seems to me you should account for the palladium because that is what actually gets hot and will probably need to be replaced sooner than any other component. It is probably the limiting factor for performance. Cathode materials are the main focus of research. Mengoli and most others go with normalizing against the cathode. He uses that comparison in the caption and discussion for experiment 3, which I quoted yesterday. Actually, with 1.4 MJ of output from a gadget the size of the Mengoli's cell, it doesn't matter what you normalize against! It has to be nuclear reaction. But they and most other authors focus on normalizing against the cathode. I go with the cathode as well, or perhaps the cathode plus the deuterium present in the cell. I mean the deuterium only: the D2 gas in a gas loaded cell, and with D2O, the deuterium only and not the oxygen. As I see it, the oxygen in the heavy water, the anode, the wires going to the electrodes, and the other cell components resemble the components of a fission reactor core that do not participate directly in the reaction, such as the zirconium cladding on the fuel rods, and the moderator rods. You have to have them, but only the uranium in the UO2 gets hot. It is the site of the reaction, just as the cathode is the site of the cold fusion fusion reaction. You might count the oxygen in the UO2 as a passive component, but I think that stretches it. What I am thinking is that as a practical matter -- or an engineering matter -- with a fission reactor you have to remove and dispose of the spent fuel UO2, as one thing. (Dispose of it, or recycle it.) The oxygen doesn't actually participate in the nuclear reaction, but it is inseparable from the uranium, whereas the other reactor components can be replaced on a different schedule. Along the same lines, with a cold fusion cell you will have to remove and recycle the Pd cathode and remove the tritium and helium. The Pd is somewhat analogous to the oxygen in UO2: it is an inseparable part of the fuel that undergoes a nuclear reaction. The palladium is also a useful comparison because it is highly loaded and the number of deuterium atoms that are available to participate in the reaction at any given moment is roughly equivalent to the number of palladium atoms, or perhaps 70% of that number, because the cathode will be unevenly loaded. The deuterons swap in and out: new ones continually migrate in other ones go out, but the total available fuel at any moment is comparable to the number of palladium atoms. I mean it is not a million times less or 10 times more than that, although obviously, the number of deuterons that actually undergo fusion in one day is many orders of magnitude fewer than those available. Roughly 10,000 fewer, as Mengoli shows in his discussion of heat after death, which is interesting. After electrolysis stops, and heat after death begins, the number of deuterons available to undergo the reaction then becomes roughly equal to the number of palladium atoms, so normalizing against this number becomes more valid, or scientifically meaningful, you might say. Mengoli et al. address this issue in section 4.4 After-effect (which is what they call heat after death): 4.4. After-effect Power output in the absence of any power input is the most remarkable instance of anomalous heat generation obtained in this work. This 'after-effect' may be explained by the comments made above for current: in o.c. [open circuit, zero input power] conditions, 'confinement' by the current vanishes and the 'activated' Beta-deuteride phase finds itself in strong thermodynamic disequilibrium . . . A second question concerns the nature of the process sustaining the power output in o.c. conditions for such long a time. Considering, for instance, the data of Table 3 (exp. 3), there is clearly no
RE: [Vo]:Mengoli paper and the normalization question
-Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell the palladium isn't the fuel, it's just a catalyst. That is true. Or at least, we hope that is true. I am NOT a big believer in Ockhams razor, but it firmly suggests that palladium is the fuel. IOW - the simplest explanation for LENR is that it is the result of a version of the Oppenheimer-Phillips effect - such that the neutron is stripped non-thermally from deuterium, due to containment and near field Coulomb shielding = and that this sub-thermal neutron is then adsorbed by Pd (the fuel) to result eventually in an alpha decay and around one MeV of mass energy - thus the helium. There should be Rhodium seen in the transmutation, if this were true. FWIW - Googling for (rhodium LENR) turns up almost 300 hits. This could be another reason not to trust Ockham for anything other than a casual aid to determine likelihood... Jones
Re: [Vo]:Mengoli paper
2009/5/8 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com: Michel Jullian wrote: The results look too good to be true These people do excellent work. Melich and I have a high opinion of them. So did one of the 2004 DOE reviewers I see ( http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf ), here is a quote of reviewer #4 commenting the paper in question: The GM experiments of 1998 (five years later than FP) clarifies in 13 pages many of the shortcomings in the FP article. (Of course other articles by Fleischmann and Pons may have also addressed these concerns.) The GM article contains both a summary of previous work and substantially more details of the experimental cell, the electrodes, and the experimental method. For example, the use of both strips of Pd metal foil as well as rod/wire material was reported. Foil strips from a Russian source and rod/wire from Johnson Matthey were each obtained through an intermediate supplier. The preparation of each Pd cathode was described as well as the electrical connection and electrolyte isolation technique. The heater wire, thermometers, and anode were described. A method to mix the electrolyte by gas bubbling was carefully calibrated by the tedious method of bubble counting. Operation at a controlled temperature of 95 oC was accomplished using a temperature controlled oil bath. Two different thicknesses of foil, 0.02 cm and 0.05 cm, and a variation of total weight of Pd cathodes between about 0.34 and 1.9 g were used in five experiments plus a sixth with the 0.4 cm diameter rod/wire or 2.2 g weight. And one experiment with H2O was performed with a foil similar to a foil used for a D2O experiment. Some excess heat was observed and considered to be enthalpy release from PdHx formation. Similar enthalpy output would occur for PdDx but in each case is much less (~0.3 W) than the reported anomalous values of ~0.6-1.36 W that extended over much longer times. Additional variations of experiments were made, some by bubbling H2 or D2 instead of N2 into the system. And the continued production of enthalpy when an open circuit of the electrolyzing current was established provided the most convincing proof of a non chemical process that was generating enthalpy. These results are not too good at all; they are in line with Roulette, Fleischmann and Pons' high heat results. Has anyone tried to replicate them BTW? . . . if excess heat of this magnitude had been reproducible since 1998 the fight for recognition of CF would have been won ten yrs ago obviously. Not at all. For one thing, these results are buried. As I said, you can't get to them. I cannot upload them, For all such papers for which you don't get permission to upload, maybe your site could suggest emailing you for a copy, or more discreetly for more information. and they are not available elsewhere on the web as far as I know. So no one outside of the field knows they exist. Same thing for most scientific papers I am afraid. Clearly, the world would be a better place if all published information could be accessed freely on the web. This could be achieved legally with a flat global license fee transparently included in the Internet access provider's fee, as has been proposed for music and movies, which IMHO it would make sense to extend to all copyrighted material. ... I am a programmer. We do things by strict rules. There is a huge different between parenthesis and a forward slash mark. Indeed, a computer program asked to evaluate both expressions will evaluate them differently. The slash mark notation may fare better in this respect BTW, Google for example can't evaluate (0.123 ampere) (milliampere), while (0.123 ampere) /milliampere is understood and returns 123. Michel
Re: [Vo]:Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries
Wow, we in CF are in excellent company. However, I doubt anything will ever change. Arrogant skepticism is a fixed characteristic of human nature and is self selected in certain professions, especially the academic. This is something we all have to endure because it will not change no matter how much we point out the harm. Its like complaining about crime, which has no effect on the criminal. Ed On May 8, 2009, at 8:05 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: See: J. M. Campanario, Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries, Departamento de Física, Universidad de Alcalá http://www2.uah.es/jmc/nobel/nobel.html This is an excellent paper! - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries
Edmund Storms wrote: Wow, we in CF are in excellent company. Yes indeed! It gives me confidence. However, I doubt anything will ever change. Then I think you need to study history more carefully. Arrogant skepticism is a fixed characteristic of human nature and is self selected in certain professions, especially the academic. This is something we all have to endure because it will not change no matter how much we point out the harm. Its like complaining about crime, which has no effect on the criminal. Human nature is indeed fixed, but the expression of it varies from one society to another in one era to another. Obviously, complaining about crime has no effect on criminals, but other factors do. The crime rate waxes and wanes depending on all many complex factors. Some of these factors are not known, but others are clear, and not so complex. For example, modern police forces, telephones and radios greatly reduced some kinds of urban crime in the U.S., such as mugging. In the 19th century, the per capita rate of muggings and robberies in places like Philadelphia was far higher than any place in the US today because there was no effective means of stopping it. That is to say, there was no way to call the police in time, or for one policeman to call another. Also, the police themselves were engaged in crimes, as they are today in Texas, where they routinely hold up loan motorists and steal thousands of dollars. (See http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/05/texas.police.seizures/) This kind of thing can be stopped, it has been stopped in the past. By the same token, academic politics are inevitable, but the level of academic politics can be increased or decreased by making changes in academic institutions, funding mechanisms, government agencies and so on. The present system encourages corruption and politics at levels far higher than they were in 1880 or 1930. This is partly the result of rules put in place to prevent academic fraud, which resulted in micromanaging by government officials in Washington, and excessive peer review that results in plagiarism of new ideas by established scientists, and suppression of new ideas. We did not have these problems to this extent in the past and we will not necessarily have them in the future. These problems are partly caused by the very high costs of some modern experiments. The book The Hubble Wars describes this. In the future, if society grows much wealthier than the cost of research relative to other things may fall and the problems may abate. Increased wealth and relative changes in monetary value have also reduced some forms of crime, such as pickpocketing. People seldom carry cash, and there is no point to stealing watches or even iPods these days because the resale value at pawnshops and fences are so small. To give a gruesome example, during Napoleonic wars wounded soldiers routinely robbed of their watches and money by stretcher bearers and hospital attendants. Officers never carried their watches into battle, for fear of losing them. A good watch was worth thousands of dollars by today's standards. By WWI and WWII this problem vanished because a wristwatch was hardly worth stealing, and soldiers did not need to carry around much money to get food and clothing. Taking wristwatches from captured enemy soldiers (and dead enemy soldiers) was still popular, but that was more for a a souvenirs than for the monetary value of the watch. The human heart will never change, and people will always be as evil as they are, but in the future I expect nearly all crime will be eliminated by technology, because no one wants to be robbed and the means of preventing it will become very cheap and reliable. I discussed this in the book. The combination of artificial intelligence and cold fusion energy will allow guardian robots of various sizes and descriptions that will prevent breaking and entering, fires, or small children wandering off unattended. Such events can be prevented by technical means. We have already seen the first stage of this technology in the form of electronic monitoring ankle bracelets. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries
- Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com Date: Friday, May 8, 2009 5:52 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries Edmund Storms wrote: Wow, we in CF are in excellent company. Yes indeed! It gives me confidence. However, I doubt anything will ever change. Then I think you need to study history more carefully. Arrogant skepticism is a fixed characteristic of human nature and is self selected in certain professions, especially the academic. This is something we all have to endure because it will not change no matter how much we point out the harm. Its like complaining about crime, which has no effect on the criminal. Human nature is indeed fixed, but the expression of it varies from one society to another in one era to another. Obviously, complaining about crime has no effect on criminals, but other factors do. The crime rate waxes and wanes depending on all many complex factors. Some of these factors are not known, but others are clear, and not so complex. For example, modern police forces, telephones and radios greatly reduced some kinds of urban crime in the U.S., such as mugging. In the 19th century, the per capita rate of muggings and robberies in places like Philadelphia was far higher than any place in the US today because there was no effective means of stopping it. That is to say, there was no way to call the police in time, or for one policeman to call another. Also, the police themselves were engaged in crimes, as they are today in Texas, where they routinely hold up loan motorists and steal thousands of dollars. (See http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/05/texas.police.seizures/) This kind of thing can be stopped, it has been stopped in the past. By the same token, academic politics are inevitable, but the level of academic politics can be increased or decreased by making changes in academic institutions, funding mechanisms, government agencies and so on. The present system encourages corruption and politics at levels far higher than they were in 1880 or 1930. This is partly the result of rules put in place to prevent academic fraud, which resulted in micromanaging by government officials in Washington, and excessive peer review that results in plagiarism of new ideas by established scientists, and suppression of new ideas. We did not have these problems to this extent in the past and we will not necessarily have them in the future. These problems are partly caused by the very high costs of some modern experiments. The book The Hubble Wars describes this. In the future, if society grows much wealthier than the cost of research relative to other things may fall and the problems may abate. Increased wealth and relative changes in monetary value have also reduced some forms of crime, such as pickpocketing. People seldom carry cash, and there is no point to stealing watches or even iPods these days because the resale value at pawnshops and fences are so small. To give a gruesome example, during Napoleonic wars wounded soldiers routinely robbed of their watches and money by stretcher bearers and hospital attendants. Officers never carried their watches into battle, for fear of losing them. A good watch was worth thousands of dollars by today's standards. By WWI and WWII this problem vanished because a wristwatch was hardly worth stealing, and soldiers did not need to carry around much money to get food and clothing. Taking wristwatches from captured enemy soldiers (and dead enemy soldiers) was still popular, but that was more for a a souvenirs than for the monetary value of the watch. The human heart will never change, and people will always be as evil as they are, but in the future I expect nearly all crime will be eliminated by technology, because no one wants to be robbed and the means of preventing it will become very cheap and reliable. I discussed this in the book. The combination of artificial intelligence and cold fusion energy will allow guardian robots of various sizes and descriptions that will prevent breaking and entering, fires, or small children wandering off unattended. Such events can be prevented by technical means. We have already seen the first stage of this technology in the form of electronic monitoring ankle bracelets. - Jed In your future world people will design crime-bots for the purpose of stealing. I don't think technology will ever eliminate stealing. Only societal changes would do that. As long as material possessions confer power and previelege an strong incentive to steal will remain. As for arrogant professionals, they should be reprimanded like sexists and racists. Harry
Re: [Vo]:Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries
Harry Veeder wrote: In your future world people will design crime-bots for the purpose of stealing. We already have them: Internet viruses. However, common criminals who break into houses and rob banks are not smart and they do not invent advanced technology. I am sure that cyber thieves and Wall Street manipulators will continue, and perhaps terrorists will too, but ordinary old-fashioned criminals who use nothing more sophisticated than a crowbar will largely be detected and stopped. Also, with millions of small semi-intelligent robots it would be possible to prevent most drug running and illegal border crossing. It is physically impossible to detect and prevent these things today. Watch the movie French Connection sometime and will see that the chase scene at the end simply would not happen in today's world. The cop would have a cell phone and the bad guy would find himself surrounded by cops with a helicopter overhead, broadcast live on national cable TV. Sort of like the scene portrayed in the book Fahrenheit 451 It happened in the movie (and often in real life) because cops and people on trains and elsewhere outside the home or office were isolated and unable to communicate. I don't think technology will ever eliminate stealing. I did not say it would eliminate it. I said it will reduce it far below today's levels, just as seat belts and safety devices reduce auto fatalities. Only societal changes would do that. As long as material possessions confer power and previelege an strong incentive to steal will remain. The incentive may remain but it may be practically impossible to steal most things. They have already have been stopped in many crimes. Bank robbers are less common and their take is smaller; credit card theft is much harder than it used to be; complicated schemes kiting paper checks no longer work. I have books on computer crime from the 1960s that describe all kinds of schemes are now out of the question. It almost makes me nostalgic. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Mengoli paper and the normalization question
In reply to Jones Beene's message of Fri, 8 May 2009 08:29:33 -0700: Hi, [snip] IOW - the simplest explanation for LENR is that it is the result of a version of the Oppenheimer-Phillips effect - such that the neutron is stripped non-thermally from deuterium, due to containment and near field Coulomb shielding = and that this sub-thermal neutron is then adsorbed by Pd (the fuel) to result eventually in an alpha decay and around one MeV of mass energy - thus the helium. [snip] The reaction Pd106 + D - H + He4 + Rh103 has an energy excess of about 1 MeV, which is quite a bit less than has been reported as characteristic of the reaction. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
