[Vo]:I wonder...SWOT
I wonder why we are worried for a strong opposition to Ni-H LENR as a form of cold fusion...not the scientists will decide The initial problem of cold fusion is one well known to the players of 'contract bridge' game- bidding too high, promise of cheap, inexhaustible rich source of energy. But even after 20 years Pd-D LENR/CF is science, very interesting science with many areas and ramifications and open ways of research but definitely nothing good for Technology (yet), A bad question is -will it ever be? The Battle is now about the acceptance and implementation of the Rossi E-cat on the energy market, especially the US market. Can we consider the disastruous PR of Cold Fusion so strong that the E cat will be a collateral victim? Let's look to the elementary conditions for an energy source, old or new to stay on the market: It must be sufficiently INTENSE to be *useful*, It must be sufficiently REPRODUCIBLE and CONTROLLABLE to be *reliable,* * * It must be sufficiently CONTINUOUS (i.e. long lasting) to be *practical* * * It must be sufficiently SAFE and CLEAN to be *harmless* * * It must be sufficiently easily UPSCALABLE to be *extended* and *diversified, * It must be sufficiently CHEAP to be *competitive* It must be sufficiently VALUABLE to be. or to be easily convertible in, electrical energy (it is usual to speak about high currency and low currency energy. These are ideal conditions and all the energy sources that had been, are, or will be used fulfill these requirements- more or less. Let's analyse thoroughly the Rossi generator, does it possess an irresistible combinations of the above characteristics- so it could conquer the markets? Which are its weak points, can they be they cured or eliminated by development? Is it necessary or possible to elaborate an even better variant of Ni-H LENR? PIantelli is doing this, why other skilled people do not try? Or...? Can somebody of you, friends, ask smarter questions? Peter PS just for fun, Google Translate- Italian to English (Stremmenos interview) has translated Pd as Democratic Party - it's true it was very late when this has happened and after long hours- the machine could be very tired. Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Comic gets it right
From Mark: ... ... and one can start by simply scanning all the comment sections of websites where a CF story ran, and summarize each skeptic's question or statement, and counter it with the facts. Keep it short and sweet, with links to references... the list of Rossi's 'clues' was put together in a matter of a week... perhaps 10 days. Wouldn't take long to do something similar, and I think I've got the perfect title: Cold Fusion or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Fact vs Fiction -- Reality vs Perception Very good idea: Keep it short and sweet, with links to references. One of my biggest posting behavior faults is the fact that I occasionally don't know when to shut up. The objective can get lost in a plethora of details - particularly if one feels obliged to correct every innuendo false statement - all in a single post. That's what the links are for - for those who want to follow-up with the details. ...and be relentless. Jed can be pretty good at that. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
[Vo]:Mother Jones: The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science
Pretty decent article: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney Excerpt: In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers (PDF). Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Comic gets it right
Mark Iverson zeropo...@charter.net wrote: Now that's a good idea... and one can start by simply scanning all the comment sections of websites where a CF story ran, and summarize each skeptic's question or statement, and counter it with the facts. I have looked at previous compilations of skeptical assertions, such as this one: http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/293wikipedia.html If Rossi succeeds, begins selling units, and it becomes generally known that cold fusion is real, all of the objections listed here will be voided. They will be inoperative as Nixon's people put it. There will be a new set of objections. Many are hard to predict now, but I have heard some of them already: 1. The device has not yet been extensively tested for safety and it may be dangerous. (I made this objection myself.) 2. Nuclear energy can never be trusted. We should rely only on solar, wind and other renewables. 3. It will hurt the energy sector of the economy. (This is what the Japanese government told Mizuno and other researchers as the reason to turn down their funding.) 4. It will cost jobs. 5. We cannot afford to replace all automobiles and heaters. It will cost too much. (This contradicts the previous objection that it will cost jobs. If it costs too much that means it makes too many jobs.) 6. Giving humanity cold fusion is like giving a machine gun to a baby. (Rifkin) I have probably heard others but those are the main ones. The fossil fuel industry will emphasize #1 and 4 in public, and #3 when talking to Members of Congress on their payroll; i.e., if you allow this, we will not cover your re-election campaign costs. I think I have heard #5 most often. This is factually incorrect. First it will not cost anything; it will save money. cold fusion is not a free lunch. I is a lunch you are paid to eat. Second, we have to replace all cars and heaters anyway, because they wear out. We will have to replace some of the factory manufacturing equipment earlier than normal. In my opinion, the only objection listed here with any merit is #1. This problem can be rectified by extensive safety testing. This will probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars but compared to the benefits and cost savings this is a trivial sum of money. Cold fusion will say this much every hour or so for the rest of human history. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Comic gets it right
I wrote: cold fusion is not a free lunch. I is a lunch you are paid to eat. Not me! *It* is a lunch you are paid to eat. this is how experts describe compact fluorescent light bulbs in Scientific American. their point was that not only to the balls consume less electricity but they're much cheaper to install and maintain because they last so long. In an office building or factory, the main expense associated with light bulbs is electricity, followed by the cost of replacing them. Furthermore, the equipment cost of a compact fluorescent light bulb over the lifetime of the bulb is cheaper than an incandescent bulb. The same kinds of economics will apply to cold fusion. The equipment itself will eventually be cheaper than today's equipment. In my book I estimated the cost of fuel based on the present and likely future cost of heavy water. I reckoned that the cost of fuel would drop from $2,500 per person in the U.S. to around $1. The Rossi device uses hydrogen instead of deuterium, so the cost is so close to zero it is not worth considering. Rossi claims that the nickel will have to be changed out periodically, every six months or so. I doubt it. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Comic gets it right
On 2011-04-26 16:20, Jed Rothwell wrote: Rossi claims that the nickel will have to be changed out periodically, every six months or so. I doubt it. Not only the powder, it's the whole reactor vessel that has to be replaced periodically. In my opinion this is probably also a safety measure in order to avoid long-term problems due to prolonged exposure to heat, relatively high internal pressures and hydrogen embrittlement, and also to avoid potential health hazard due to nickel powder exposure. However it could also be that, disguised as a safety measure, this might be a way to replace something else in the reactor that deteriorates over time and that is fundamental for it to properly operate. Cheers, S.A.
Re: [Vo]:Comic gets it right
Akira Shirakawa shirakawa.ak...@gmail.com wrote: Not only the powder, it's the whole reactor vessel that has to be replaced periodically. In my opinion this is probably also a safety measure in order to avoid long-term problems due to prolonged exposure to heat, relatively high internal pressures and hydrogen embrittlement . . . Based on other hydrogen systems, I expect it will last a lot longer than 6 months. It will if it is engineered right. The catalyst should last longer if they put more into the cell. It may be that early versions of the device will require more frequent service and replacement, but I expect that after a while it will go for a year or two without replacement. As I recall, the very first jet aircraft engines flew for only 10 hours or so before extensive overhauls were needed. If you did not overhaul them, they exploded. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Space has no time dimention
At 10:50 PM 4/25/2011, Mark Iverson wrote: FYI: Here's an article for all you theorists... Scientists suggest spacetime has no time dimension http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-scientists-spacetime-dimension.html -Mark No problem ... progressing from one state to another is pretty much what Loop Quantum Gravity does. We already have a whole bunch of 'emergent' properties (heat ... and possibly gravity), so having time as 'emergent' isn't SUCH a big deal. Unfortunately it probably does away with one of my 'favorite' cosmologies, where we are twisting in a 4D+ space-time, so that individual dimensions can change from space-like to time-like.
Re: [Vo]:Comic gets it right
So you don't believe the Ni is transmuted to Cu? Ron --On Tuesday, April 26, 2011 10:20 AM -0400 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Rossi claims that the nickel will have to be changed out periodically, every six months or so. I doubt it. - Jed
[Vo]:Weak Winds for Brits
According to this story, wind energy in England, is not living up to expectations. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361316/250bn-wind-power-industry-gr eatest-scam-age.html attachment: winmail.dat
Re: [Vo]:21 of april 2011 test
At 11:31 AM 4/25/2011, Mattia Rizzi wrote: With 'this week' i mean between 18 april and 21 april. Carlos Perez April 25th, 2011 at 3:45 PM Dear Ing. Rossi: I would like to know if Dr. Hanno Essen and/or Dr. Sven Kullander have carried out further tests to your E-Cat device after the test conducted on March 29 in Bologna (if i remember well) or else the approximate date that those further tests are expected to happen. In addition I would also like to know the aproximate date on which they will publish a report based on those tests. Thank you very much, Mr. Rossi. Carlos. Andrea Rossi April 26th, 2011 at 1:50 AM Dear Mr Carlos Perez, Prof Sven Kullander and Orof. Hanno Essèn will test in Sweden will make more tests with our E-Cat in Sweden within this year. Warm Regards, A,R.
Re: [Vo]:21 of april 2011 test
Rossi don't discose all the truth. This is my e-mail to Mats Lewan (NyTeknik) and his response: Dear Mattia, I'm gathering info on this and will report within a week. Mats Från: Mattia Rizzi [mailto:mattia.ri...@gmail.com] Skickat: den 24 april 2011 12:35 Till: Lewan Mats Ämne: Abot Rossi's E-Cat and new experiments Dear Mats Lewan, i know that there was a new experiment with the Energy Catalyzer this week. Can You provide some information, like where the test has been done (Sweden or Italy, if it was inside an university, etc)? Thank you very much.
Re: [Vo]:Why the US will become a banana republic if we do not import or allow cold fusion
*“I do not think the Pentagon and its many friends are going to stand by and do nothing while other countries develop military technology that can destroy our entire fleet of airplanes and ships in one afternoon at no risk to the enemy.”* * * * * *You have neglected a potential very important roadblock to cold fusion development, the US military, air tight regulatory control, security classification, and the proprietary use of cold fusion technology by the military industrial complex.* * * *Nuclear fission and fusion have suffered from government management that prohibits private exploitation of these energy producing technologies because of second use fears. Even the sale of thorium is controlled because it is slightly radioactive.* * * On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: I wrote something that seems contradictory, but isn't. I said: * It is possible that vested interests may block the development of cold fusion in the US for decades. * If this happens we will soon become a banana republic that imports all important technology from other countries. If cold fusion is blocked, the way electric cars have been, that means we will not be importing it from other countries. It will not be available anywhere in the U.S. At least, not for several years, until the levees crack, and we are inundated by cold fusion powered technology from other countries. Yet even before this happens we will be forced to import just about everything from other countries, because most goods and services will be cheaper and better thanks to cold fusion. Even if you leave the energy source in France or China, and import only the widget, the embodied energy in the widget is still a major contributing factor to the cost. Cold fusion will have a large impact on all goods and services, not just technology directly related to energy. Obviously it will improve things such as automobiles and power generators and other primary sources of energy. But it will also have an impact on gadgets which have no direct relation to energy, such as spoons, food, movies, electronics, medicine and scientific research. The importance of energy to scientific research was illustrated yesterday on NHK. Many buildings and facilities at Tokyo National University are closed, and many research projects on hold because of the daily power failures and the need to conserve energy. There are signs on some of the large computer networks (parallel processor computers?) saying Do not turn on this equipment because they do not have enough electricity. Countries using cold fusion will be able to produce anything better and cheaper than we do. Nowadays, people who make traditional goods such as wooden furniture or clothing benefit from the use of electricity and computers. Cheap electricity gives them a competitive advantage. Free electricity will give them an even greater advantage. The cost of goods in the U.S. will be higher than other countries if our factories are still powered by coal, wind and uranium while they are powered by cold fusion. Companies in China manufacturing furniture for the US market pay much less for labor, and probably less for materials such as wood. The only thing standing between them and total domination of our market is the cost of transporting the goods to the US. With cold fusion, the cost of transportation will be so close to zero it will be negligible. As I said, an automobile or generator can be thought of mainly as an energy generating machine. If Ford, GM and GE are not allowed to develop cold fusion automobiles they will soon be bankrupt and we will be importing importing power generators, heaters, automobiles, tractors railroads and so on -- all primary energy producers. A large fraction of all machines fall in that category and many more soon will, as machines such as cell phones and portable computers become self powered. It is hard to imagine a situation in which GE stands passively and allows the Congress and big oil to put it out of business. I think it is more likely GE will move its manufacturing and most of its business overseas where cold fusion is allowed, to become mainly a European or Chinese company. As I said before, I think the benefits of cold fusion will be so obvious to so many people that political opposition from oil companies and others will soon crumble. The American public howls when politicians propose increasing the gasoline tax by five cents. It is hard for me to believe the public will stand by passively while politicians allow large corporations to take $2,500 out of every person's pocket indefinitely. That includes children, by the way. For a family of four we are talking about a $10,000 tax every year for life, levied by big oil coal. I cannot imagine the public will stand for it. But strange things do happen. We do sometimes allow powerful people a great deal of leeway for no good reason.
[Vo]:A Simple Assessment of Rossi Credibility
We are missing the obvious: Rossi et al have enough investors to scale-up to marketable magnitudes of power, if what they say is true. At the end of the day, the market doesn't really care where you got the electricity that you are selling. People understand electricity. At least in the US, the Laws already require the power companies to purchase privately-produced power. Even if the power companies get around that. He can still make a great deal of money generating and selling power on-site to large consumers, electricity is the biggest expense in producing aluminum. Once he sells serious amounts of electricity, people will listen, you just can't fake MW of power. I really think he can eventually scale things and automate them to the point where everyone can have their own generator for vehicles and home-use. All he has to do to avoid infringement is to keep the price of the licenses cheaper than the litigation price of stealing it. He can always start cranking up the fees gradually as he becomes more and more financially able to fight infringers with ever deeper pockets. Personally, I was more impressed with the smaller units that lacked the lead; prior to that, I wondered if it was simply an isotope reactor. ScottWm. Scott Smith
Re: [Vo]:Why the US will become a banana republic if we do not import or allow cold fusion
Axil Axil janap...@gmail.com wrote: *You have neglected a potential very important roadblock to cold fusion development, the US military, air tight regulatory control, security classification, and the proprietary use of cold fusion technology by the military industrial complex.* I do not think this will be a problem, for several reasons: Cold fusion is being developed in other countries by civilians. Nothing about cold fusion is classified now and it is too late to classify it. There are only a few proprietary uses of cold fusion by the military, such as making tritium for thermonuclear weapons. These will be of no value in the civilian market, so it will not matter if they are kept secret. Nearly all of the advantages cold fusion will give to weapon systems will be similar to those that steam engines gave to naval vessels in the Civil War. That is to say, they will be conventional civilian technology applied in ways that happen to have military value. This is discussed in my book in chapter 11. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:A Simple Assessment of Rossi Credibility
At 10:58 AM 4/26/2011, Wm. Scott Smith wrote: Personally, I was more impressed with the smaller units that lacked the lead; prior to that, I wondered if it was simply an isotope reactor. They were just nekkid eCats ... they would be enclosed in lead underwear before being used.
Re: [Vo]:Weak Winds for Brits
There are some errors in this article: The most glaring dishonesty peddled by the wind industry — and echoed by gullible politicians — is vastly to exaggerate the output of turbines by deliberately talking about them only in terms of their 'capacity', as if this was what they actually produce. Rather, it is the total amount of power they have the capability of producing. . . . The point about wind, of course, is that it is constantly varying in speed, so that the output of turbines averages out at barely a quarter of their capacity . . . No one hides the difference between nameplate and actual capacity, with wind turbines, or with nuclear reactors for that matter. Actual is closer to 32% for most land installations. If they installed them in a spot with 25%, they should not have. When you consider, too, those gas-fired power stations wastefully running 24 hours a day just to provide back-up for the intermittency of the wind, any savings will vanish altogether. A gas-turbine plant is not turned on if it is not generating electricity. If they are used provide back-up power, they are not wastefully running 24 hours a day. Then, of course, the construction of the turbines generates enormous CO2 emissions as a result of the mining and smelting of the metals used, the carbon-intensive cement needed for their huge concrete foundation. The energy payback period for wind turbines is about 3 months, which is considerably shorter than for gas fired or nuclear plants. There is no way we can hope to make up more than a fraction of the resulting energy gap solely with wind turbines, for the simple and obvious reason that wind is such an intermittent and unreliable energy source. Demand is also intermittent and unreliable. That is why the nuclear power plants are not useful above baseline (~30%). You cannot turn them off (unlike gas turbines). No one would dream of building wind turbines unless they were guaranteed a huge government subsidy. No one would dream of building a nuclear or coal-fired plant without subsidies. No one would dream of building a nuclear plant unless the government covered the entire cost of liability, for reasons which are obvious from the Brown's Ferry, Three Mile Island, Connecticut Yankee and Fukushima accidents. No one would build a coal fired plant if they were held liable for the 20,000 killed by the smoke every year in the U.S. The amount they would have to pay to victims families would make this the most expensive source of electricity by far. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:21 of april 2011 test
I don't know why but I keep feeling (Red) fish smell 2011/4/26 Mattia Rizzi mattia.ri...@gmail.com Rossi don't discose all the truth. This is my e-mail to Mats Lewan (NyTeknik) and his response: Dear Mattia, I’m gathering info on this and will report within a week. Mats *Från:* Mattia Rizzi [mailto:mattia.ri...@gmail.com] *Skickat:* den 24 april 2011 12:35 *Till:* Lewan Mats *Ämne:* Abot Rossi's E-Cat and new experiments Dear Mats Lewan, i know that there was a new experiment with the Energy Catalyzer this week. Can You provide some information, like where the test has been done (Sweden or Italy, if it was inside an university, etc)? Thank you very much.
[Vo]:I had thought E-Cat might be clandestine Fission
I was impressed by no lead, because we then knew there was no surreptitious fission going on; for example, radioactive isotopes, such as strontium. Isotope Reactors do not rely on chain reactions, like newly-spent nuclear fuel rods, it is the relatively short-lived isotopes that can produce much heat even in the absence of a chain reaction. Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:05:21 -0700 To: vortex-l@eskimo.com From: a...@well.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:A Simple Assessment of Rossi Credibility At 10:58 AM 4/26/2011, Wm. Scott Smith wrote: Personally, I was more impressed with the smaller units that lacked the lead; prior to that, I wondered if it was simply an isotope reactor. They were just nekkid eCats ... they would be enclosed in lead underwear before being used.
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
*“How confident are you about the tungsten vs nichrome question for element material? is SiC another reasonable possibility? Or is it too dangerous to have any C around?”* * * I have no confidence at all. The construction of the internal heater/cathode is the most intricate and problematic part of the Rossi Cat-E design. It is true that tungsten has been used in designs similar to the Rossi reactor, but the engineering priority is long service life of the internal heater. Very high hydrogen gas pressure complicates the question. The material heating element will deteriorate through erosion in a gas atmosphere so clever design of the internal heater is required to maximize service life. Nichrome serves very well operating in the open air as heating elements in our toasters and ovens, so in an amateur operation like Rossi’s reactor development he may well use Nichrome. An expert cathode developer might well use tungsten, since it is usually found in commercial gas filled tube products. It is my opinion, the six month service life replacement period is not caused by the need to replace the catalyst. It is needed to renew the internal heater. This heater will suffer a high level of erosion because of the high pressure hydrogen atmosphere. In addition, strain placed on the cathode imposed by power on/off cycling will take a toll on the internal heater. A SiC heating element is a possibility. There are a large number of possible heating element materials that can be used. To make reactor control easy, the key design point is to come up with a cathode design that has a linear production characteristic of electron emissions as the driving current is increased. *“Can you further explain the potential benefit of Thorium?”* * * It is critical to keep the surface of the nickel powder scrupulously clean. If the cold fusion reactions are caused by nanometer sized holes in the catalyst, it is important to keep those holes as free of gaseous poisons as possible so that few are clogged up by garbage floating around in the hydrogen atmosphere. When Thorium oxide is coated with a thin layer of carbon, its evaporation rate is low which will help keep the Cold Fusion reaction efficient over the service life of the catalyst. The lack of “secret catalyst” elements found in the Cat-E ash initially confused me. This lack of contamination leads me now to the conclusion that the “secret element” acts at a distance from the surface of the nickel powder and is not found within it or not even very near this surface. This is why Rossi feels safe in giving the ash to outsiders for spectroscopic analysis. The place where the secret catalyst lives is in the heating element of the internal heater. *“Finally, I have a question about the radiation shielding layers... if the reactor is operating between 400 and 600C optimally, how can the lead shielding remain solid? or if the borated water solution is used, won't that vaporize?”* * * The lead shielding must be insolated from the water loop by a layer of air or fiberglass. Doing a lack of coolant accident where the water coolant boils off, when the copper pipes get hot, the lead shielding will be protected from melting by this insulation layer.** To stay operational through an overheat excursion, the copper pipes can get no hotter than the melting point of the solder that fills their connections. * * * * * * * * On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 6:57 AM, .:.gotjosh ene...@begreen.nu wrote: Thanks for this post Axil, i have some comments and questions below... On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 05:25, Axil Axil janap...@gmail.com wrote: * * *“With temperature above the set the reactor is automatically stopped”* * * *It the temperature continues to rise above another set point, the control box releases the hydrogen gas into the water loop piping though the controlled opening of an electrically controlled valve. This action vents excess heat to the outside environment and serves to depress the reaction. * ** in my design i will prefer bimetal valves for solid state non-electronic control if possible. eg: http://www.emsclad.com/examples/thermal-controls.html * * *“How much would the temperature of the metal rise?”* * * *The nickel oxide powder will have a substantial amount of hydrogen stored in the lattice interstices at the surface of the nickel oxide powder where the oxygen has been depleted by the erosive action of hydrogen impingement at the surface or into the surface to some depth of the powder. * What do you say the previous question(s) about H2O production between H2 and the O from NiO ? * * * * *When the heat sink of the water coolant is removed, this nuclear reaction in the lattice interstices will continue until the temperature of at the surface of the powder reaches the melting point of nickel. The lattice interstices will begin to close as nickel migrate to these lattice interstices sites displacing
Re: [Vo]:Weak Winds for Brits
On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 12:57 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: According to this story, wind energy in England, is not living up to expectations. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361316/250bn-wind-power-industry-gr eatest-scam-age.html Of course storage technology could have a major effect on the viability of PV and Wind energy. From http://www.theeestory.com/ Six years after leading the Kleiner Perkins effort to invest in EEStor, billionaire venture capitalist Bill Joy has finally commented publicly about the investment at the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge this past Thursday evening. (see video) After the fireside chat, Joy answered questions from a small crowd of people for over an hour. Question: So, are you still hopeful about EEStor? Bill Joy: Oh yeah. I mean these things are hard so there is always a chance they won't work. But we're very uh .. We'll see. I don't know anything that isn't in the press. Question: a person team somebody that already may already have a solution that hasn't been discovered, is that something you think is possible? Like a crowdsouring ... somewhere in world that's working Bill Joy: It doesn't tend to work that way. It proceeds from somebody who has deep expertise in a domain who acquires interdisciplinary collaborators. Thats a better formula. There are no child prodigies in these fields that involve physics and chemistry. You really just have you mentioned Carl Nelson he is like 90 years old an MIT PhD material scientist, who is one of the inventors under EEStor. If you don't have someone like Carl. I mean you ask Carl, tell me something about hafnium. Carl will talk to you for 15 minutes about hafnium. He knows something about every element in the periodic table. He can tell you off the top of his head what its crystal forms are and alot of interesting properties. I mean you have to be intimate with the periodic table to do this kind of stuff. You have to know you really have to have had a career. With somebody like that, he's probably the oldest founder I ever backed. But you just have dinner with him and you realize he really understands what he is doing with materials. Now what they are proposing to do is wild. And there's lots of reasons in which some of these things could fail to be commercialized. I'm not saying whether it's worked or not and if we've announced it or not, I'm just saying it's hard. What they're trying to do ... obviously, it's took years ... to get since they first it's not easy to do these things. So ... but the worthwhile things usually are hard and they always take longer. end excerpt I love the way he stuttered. Also, there's a letter regarding an overdue FOIA request to the DoE on rumors from SNL. (no, not saturday night live) T
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
As to the question in the subject header, we don't know, without knowing the secrets he's keeping, whether his real reasons are legitimate or not. As I wrote from the beginning on this, there is no limit to human ingenuity, so fraud cannot be ruled out except by the normal process: truly independent examination and probably replication. If Rossi were selling E-Cats, that worked, it would be all over. But he's not, not yet. It is not unlawful for Rossi to lie about what he's doing, as long as he doesn't lie to investors. So it is possible for some provided information to be misleading. At this point, if he's for real, he has strong motives to distract those who *are* trying like crazy to figure out the secret. And there is no particular value to full disclosure. And, of course, if he's not for real, if this is fraud, he has even more reason to present confusing information. What we can rule out, from all the evidence, is experimental artifact, accidental error, mere misinterpretation of results. This is either for real or it is fraud, because all the reasonable error modes are ruled out, it would take seriously active deception. That's about as far as I can go, and I find, from what those I trust have been saying, deception has become pretty unlikely, as to the heat being produced. Unlikely is not impossible. But as to any details, deception is still on the table. He has very good reasons to not disclose, even to mislead or distract. If nothing else, this has smoked out some POV-pushers on Wikipedia, editors who have clearly betrayed their fixed POV, as they push for content that reflects it, on the Energy Catalyzer article.
Re: EXTERNAL: Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
Control of the Rossi reaction is a complicated thing. The energy density pumping mechanism you site may be only one mechanism of many that play into the complicated interplay of many factors in which the Cat-E might be controlled. Rossi’s revelation that the “secret catalyst” makes the Rossi reaction “go” is an argument against your theory being the sole or even the primary controlling factor. He states that without this secret element, nickel powder does not produce a sustained reaction. But he also says that the Reaction can continue without the application of external stimulus being applied. This is where the mechanism you site might come into play. I also think this is a mode that Rossi does not want the Cat-E reaction to enter. I think the “secret catalyst” is a spillover catalyst that turns H2 into H- and forces this H-into the crystal lattice of the nickel powder. In the beginning, this might have been only a “startup” mechanism. But the reactor melted down more than he would have liked where once is too much. I believe that Rossi had to somehow disable energy density pumping to positively control his reactor the way that he wants to. If energy density pumping is full blown, the reactor may sometimes enter an uncontrolled mode where it takes off on its own nickel (pun intended) and melts down. As an engineering imperative, I have a feeling that Rossi decided to centralize control of the reactor in the control box where he can adjust or shut off control power as required. He calls his Cat-E reactor an energy amplifier because the small amount of energy used to control the Cat-E is amplified greatly in the power output of the reactor. * * On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Roarty, Francis X francis.x.roa...@lmco.com wrote: On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 05:25, Axil Axil janap...@gmail.com wrote: *“With temperature above the set the reactor is automatically stopped”* Axil, We see the Mill’s powder in the Rowan confirmations totally run-away but yet we get mixed messages about the Rossi reactor which IMHO may reflect the bond state of the gas population. It seems counter-intuitive but instead of just throttling back this Rossi type of reaction we MUST remove heat, not only to store the energy gain but it seems we have to cool the disassociated atoms enough that nature takes over and they reform molecules allowing us to repeat the cycle over and over again. I am not saying the reaction stops without cooling but only that it slows itself down proportional to the population that is in molecular form. The random motion of gas relative to Casimir geometry changes the energy density being experienced by the gas molecules. Atoms are simply reoriented by this change in energy density but those atoms sharing covalent bonds (molecules) are held by the covalent bond in the same orientation they possessed when the molecule formed. This pressure the covalent bond feels when energy density changes discounts the energy needed to disassociate the molecule such that it can occur at a much lower temperature - when these atoms later re-form a new molecule they release the full energy associated with hydrogen atoms dropping to the lower molecular energy state including even the energy contributed in the previous cycle from the combination of gas motion and change in energy density. We are getting a full refund for a purchase discounted by the constant motion of gas. Fran *From:* gotjos...@gmail.com [mailto:gotjos...@gmail.com] *On Behalf Of * .:.gotjosh *Sent:* Monday, April 25, 2011 6:58 AM *To:* vortex-l@eskimo.com *Subject:* EXTERNAL: Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say. Thanks for this post Axil, i have some comments and questions below... On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 05:25, Axil Axil janap...@gmail.com wrote: *“With temperature above the set the reactor is automatically stopped”* *It the temperature continues to rise above another set point, the control box releases the hydrogen gas into the water loop piping though the controlled opening of an electrically controlled valve. This action vents excess heat to the outside environment and serves to depress the reaction. * in my design i will prefer bimetal valves for solid state non-electronic control if possible. eg: http://www.emsclad.com/examples/thermal-controls.html * * *“How much would the temperature of the metal rise?”* * * *The nickel oxide powder will have a substantial amount of hydrogen stored in the lattice interstices at the surface of the nickel oxide powder where the oxygen has been depleted by the erosive action of hydrogen impingement at the surface or into the surface to some depth of the powder.* What do you say the previous question(s) about H2O production between H2 and the O from NiO ? * * *When the heat sink of the water coolant is removed, this nuclear reaction in the lattice interstices will
[Vo]:Most objections to cold fusion will not survive commercialization
Gene Mallove and I used to say that if we only had a demonstration kit we could persuade the world that cold fusion is real. I think Rossi has shown we were wrong. Even a good demonstration does not persuade the world, at least not overnight. But there is no denying that commercial cells will eventually persuade most sane people it is real. Self-appointed experts will agree the machine is real but they will say it has no significance. These people do not matter. I remember in 1964 the day after the Chinese detonated their first atomic bomb. Our fourth grade teacher told the class about it during current events. She seemed upset. One of the students said, Don't worry. My dad says it is nothing. Hardly big enough to blow up someone's backyard. Do you think so? the teacher said, seemingly relieved. That was a U-235 bomb with a 22-kiloton yield. (China today boasts that it was the third country to make a bomb. They forgot England and France. See: http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_aboutchina/2003-09/24/content_26054.htm) I have been looking over the objections to cold fusion. I find only a handful will survive that event. Most are predicated on the notion that cold fusion does not exist or that it will never become practical, such as the ones I listed here: http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/293wikipedia.html There are a few other categories. At the 60 Minutes someone said that we have already given cold fusion plenty of funding, it had its chance and is no longer deserves attention. That was a novel objection. The Wikipedia Cold Fusion article consists of many incorrect technical assertions, such as the idea that recombination may explain many of the results, or that cold fusion might be a chemical reaction. In the Energy Catalyzer article someone asserts the machine does not work because the Patent Office rejected the patent. Another novel objection! Many say that it cannot be real because Nature and other major journals refuse to print articles on it. I suspect most of these objections will go away even before Nature prints something. There are some specific objections to Rossi which will soon go away, especially the idea that he is probably a scammer. (Unless he really is a scammer, in which case he will soon go away!) Someone in the Rossi article on Wikipedia states boldly, as if it were a matter of settled fact: The excess energy can be explained as error or fraud. Can it indeed? As far as I know no one has actually explained how this could be error or fraud. These people confuse the act of making an assertion: I can explain X with the act of actually explaining X. Saying does not make it so. The models presented by Alan Fletcher are so unrealistic they can be dismissed in my opinion. For example, any form of fluid combustion calls for regulators and burners, which cannot fit in ~1 liter. Anyway, these will vanish if customers report the machines work as advertised. People object presently because there have been no independent replications of this particular nickel catalyst. There have been other nickel catalysts but they did not produce such dramatic results. This objection has merit in my opinion, but it is a minor problem given the quality of the verifications and the magnitude of the reaction. It is a bit like quibbling that the atomic bomb might not be real in 1945, when only the US could make one. Here at Vortex, I suppose Beene will eventually give up the notion that calorimetry can fail by a factor of 1000 or 10, 5, 76 or whatever number has popped into his head most recently. In any case, he is never pointed to any specific reason why it can fail by this factor. That is, he has not show which of the four parameters are wrong by this factor (or what combination of parameters). He points only to a theory proposed by his invisible expert. If this theory is correct the calorimetry must have failed, and the theory must be right so it must have failed. This turns the scientific method upside down. There are many similar upside-down arguments. If there is continued resistance after cold fusion is commercialized, I suppose it will be based upon a smaller number of arguments. That's good. It means we will have fewer targets, and we will need fewer counter-arguments. As I said, I predict most arguments will be an appeal to fear: Fear of the unknown. Cold fusion may be dangerous. It is untested. All forms of nuclear energy are inherently dangerous. (The fact that other sources of energy are also dangerous is not considered, because people tend to discount the dangers of existing technology and exaggerate the dangers of new technology.) Fear of economic change and technological progress. People will lose jobs. The stock market may fall. Our economy cannot survive such large changes. Senator, we may not be able to pick up the tab for your reelection campaign. Fear of cold fusion's capabilities. It might be used for a bomb. It is too powerful to be used responsibly; i.e., giving
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: As I wrote from the beginning on this, there is no limit to human ingenuity, so fraud cannot be ruled out except by the normal process: truly independent examination and probably replication. There is another way to rule out fraud. You can allow experts examine the machine closely and look for the physical equipment needed to commit fraud, such as hidden wires and pipes. Rossi has done this. There is only a vanishingly small chance that a fraud might somehow be concealed in the 1 liter cell, and the experts will soon look inside of that, as well. Once they have done that, fraud will be eliminated as decisively as it would be if this were independently replicated 200 times. There is no limit to human ingenuity but there are sharp limits to the laws of physics and methods of adding energy to this system. It is simple, and the performance of it has been well understood for nearly 200 years. Fraud cannot be accomplished except by some physical means, and all such means are easily defined and checked for with this system (although not with other systems). You talk as if fraud is something magical that Rossi could accomplished by some means not known to science. The whole point of fraud is that it is something an experienced scientist or engineer will spot instantly the moment he sees the physical mechanism (the wires or hidden fuel). If Rossi can make this machine produce massive amounts of energy by some mechanism not known to science, that means it is not fraud -- by definition. Or, if he has only managed to make the machine fool conventional flow calorimetry, that is almost as miraculous. No one can do that. Levi, Essen et al. are convinced the machine is real because they understand that there are only a few limited ways to fake a reaction of this nature, and they are certain they have checked all such ways. I wasn't there, so that leaves me all-but-certain. I can't imagine a professional scientist so stupid he does not take elementary precautions such as feeling the hose or checking the performance of the thermocouples. Levi he said he spent weeks calibrating. I have spent weeks calibrating various experiments myself, and I am certain I would have discovered every proposed fraud I have seen discussed, here and elsewhere. I would have discovered these things in the first 5 minutes. Despite assertions here about how easily a scientist or a thermocouple might be fooled by sleight-of-hand techniques, no such techniques exist and there are no examples in the history of science when this was done. the examples that have been given were of tests or demonstrations actually performed by hand, not by machines. If Abd thinks that fraud is a serious possibility, I believe he has made a positive assertion and it requires that he propose a method of committing fraud and a means of falsifying his proposed method as well. In other words, a way of proving that his proposed method could not have happened, such as looking for wires or computing how much energy 1 L of fuel can produce. Arguments without any supporting evidence or a plausible real-world explanation or mechanism are not scientific. Declaring out of the blue that there must be a factor of 1000 error or a factor of 5 error in flow calorimetry, without showing which of the parameters it applies to and how it might apply to them is not a scientific assertion. It is meaningless. It is like saying I am sure that all experimental proof of special relativity must be wrong by a factor of 1000 and just because I say so that proves it's true. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
The engineering game is a difficult place to set up a successful fraud; having said that, con-men are most often the smartest men in the room. They enter banking, the board room, the stock market, hedge funds, the money management industry, The SEC regulators, or even the Federal Reserve. As Bernie Madoffhttp://www.google.com/images?rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS329q=Bernie+madoffum=1ie=UTF-8source=univsa=Xei=2FmGTaKEC-O90QG1-7nRCAved=0CEMQsAQoften purred to his billionaire con-men pals, “and the great whore will suckle us... until we are fat and happy and can suckle no more.” If you want to steal lots of money, you go were the money is. Unrelentingly, with the full throated collusion of government, Big Money remorselessly extracts the meager savings of the common working man, and these poor oblivious marks never even know it or even suspect it. So why fear fraud; it is everywhere, and of all times; it is like an ever-present all encompassing swarm of mosquitoes on the scent for blood. It is simply the cost of doing business in today’s world. Do you remember the Enron affair? Lest we forget, Enron Corporation is an energy trading, natural gas, and electric utilities company based in Houston, Texas con game that employed around 21,000 people by mid-2001, before it went bankrupt. Fraudulent accounting techniques allowed it to be listed as the seventh largest company in the United States, and it was expected to dominate the trading it had virtually invented in communications, power, and weather securities. Instead, it became the largest corporate scandal in history, and became emblematic of institutionalized and well-planned corporate fraud. Enron cynically and knowingly created the phony California electricity crisis of 2000 and 2001. There was never a shortage of power in California. Using tape recordings of Enron traders on the phone with California power plants, the film chillingly overhears them asking plant managers to get a little creative in shutting down plants for repairs. Between 30 percent and 50 percent of California's energy industry was shut down by Enron a great deal of the time, and up to 76 percent at one point, as the company drove the price of electricity higher by nine times. Energy merchants regularly tape trader conversations to keep a record of transactions. In one transcript a trader asks about all the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers of California. To which the Enron trader responds, Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to (expletive) vote on the butterfly ballot. Yeah, now she wants her (expletive) money back for all the power you've charged right up — jammed right up her (expletive) for (expletive) 250 dollars a megawatt hour, the first trader says. In another, a trader said, The magical word of the day is 'burn, baby, burn,' in reference to a fire in California under a power line that caused a transmission outage, letting Enron take advantage of an increased demand for electricity. Do you pay your taxes; do you put money in the bank; do you have a mortgage, do you give to charity; do you pay your electric bills, do you contribute to church; do you have any money in your wallet? I bet you are being defrauded this very minute; don’t know about it; and are not concerned about it in the least. The only protection we have against fraud is the unceasing application of clear thinking against all the information we can get our hands on. So far from my perspective Rossi is holding up amazingly well to all analytic cynicism out there. But we must never let our guard down; where the strong must always protect the weak; for fraud walks eternal among us. On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.comwrote: As to the question in the subject header, we don't know, without knowing the secrets he's keeping, whether his real reasons are legitimate or not. As I wrote from the beginning on this, there is no limit to human ingenuity, so fraud cannot be ruled out except by the normal process: truly independent examination and probably replication. If Rossi were selling E-Cats, that worked, it would be all over. But he's not, not yet. It is not unlawful for Rossi to lie about what he's doing, as long as he doesn't lie to investors. So it is possible for some provided information to be misleading. At this point, if he's for real, he has strong motives to distract those who *are* trying like crazy to figure out the secret. And there is no particular value to full disclosure. And, of course, if he's not for real, if this is fraud, he has even more reason to present confusing information. What we can rule out, from all the evidence, is experimental artifact, accidental error, mere misinterpretation of results. This is either for real or it is fraud, because all the reasonable error modes are ruled out, it would take seriously active deception. That's about
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
Axil Axil janap...@gmail.com wrote: The engineering game is a difficult place to set up a successful fraud; having said that, con-men are most often the smartest men in the room. McKubre is brilliant and he has 22 years of experience working with flow calorimetry, but he could not devise a method of faking a result with a flow calorimeter that I would not spot in the first five minutes. I mean that. The whole point of a calorimeter is to lay bare all energy inputs and output. It is to simplify the equation and narrow down the possibilities so that there can be no significant undetected source of heat. This is done to make the results accurate, but it also has the effect of making the machine very easy to check for legerdemain. A person could design a complex machine with many inputs and outputs, and wires and hoses running every which direction. This machine probably could fool me. It would take me a while to trace down inputs and outputs. I doubt such a thing could fool McKubre or EK, but it could fool me. However, a flow calorimeter DOES NOT HAVE wires and hoses running everywhere. It has ONE input and ONE output and exactly 4 parameters. If there is another input, it stands out like a sore thumb. A calorimeter is as simple as an energy system can be. That is the whole point of it. If they could make it even simpler, and eliminate other possible sources of error (or fraud -- it amounts to the same thing) they would make it simpler. No one is so smart he knows a way to defeat industry standard machines and techniques used worldwide for a century. Do you remember the Enron affair? Lest we forget, Enron Corporation is an energy trading, natural gas, and electric utilities company based in Houston, Texas con game that employed around 21,000 people by mid-2001, before it went bankrupt. Fraudulent accounting techniques allowed it to be listed as the seventh largest company in the United States . . . Accounting techniques and like cannot be compared to a machine such as a calorimeter. Machines must obey the laws of physics. An accounting system can have any value stuffed into memory by the programmer at any stage in the process. For this reason, a computerized voting system is permanently suspect. There is no such thing, even in principle, as a computerized voting system that cannot be corrupted. (Granted, some are a lot easier to corrupt than others. They used to make voting systems with Data General Nova computers, which I used to program. They had zero security. Any programmer who read the manual would know how to sign on via modem, find, and change any number or ASCII value in the 64 KB memory without leaving a trace. They now make them with Microsoft Win-CE, a.k.a. wince, which is like constructing a maximum security prison with nothing more than three feet of chickenwire fencing around the perimeter.) - Jed
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 5:06 PM, Axil Axil janap...@gmail.com wrote: The engineering game is a difficult place to set up a successful fraud; having said that, con-men are most often the smartest men in the room. Enron http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016268/ The Smartest Guys in the Room was chump change compared to the mortgage swindle http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/ Inside Job which could take down the world economy still. T
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
I wrote: Levi, Essen et al. are convinced the machine is real because they understand that there are only a few limited ways to fake a reaction of this nature, and they are certain they have checked all such ways. I wasn't there, so that leaves me all-but-certain. I can't imagine a professional scientist so stupid he does not take elementary precautions such as feeling the hose or checking the performance of the thermocouples. Levi he said he spent weeks calibrating. . . . If it turns out Levi is really, really stupid then I can imagine some ways Rossi could commit a fraud. For example, if Levi shows up and Rossi gives him the power meter, thermocouples and other equipment and insists he use that equipment only, not his own, it would be easy to fool him. Or, as I said, when the outlet temperature registers 40°C if Levi did not have the sense to check the outlet hose to see if it is hot, he might be fooled. It is even possible that an innocent thermocouple malfunction could produce spurious data in that instance. An experienced person would know how to spot this sort of thing and eliminate it. Thermocouples are very reliable, in any case. I will grant, I have met a few university professors who were as dumb as a bag of hammers, and might have made mistakes on this scale. I do not get the impression that Levi et al. are stupid. On the contrary, based on their reports they seem to know exactly what they are doing -- better than I would know. But as I said, I wasn't there, I do not have a video or a multipage detailed report describing every action they took. So I cannot be as certain of the results as they themselves are. This stupid professor hypothesis can only be ruled out by having dozens of professors examine the machine or better yet replicate it from scratch. But replication is not quite as essential as it is for small devices. This is quite a lot like watching the Wright brothers fly in 1908. People who understood the problems of aviation, such as Bleriot and Archdecon, instantly saw that this was controlled fight, not a circus trick like a man shot out of a cannon, or a machine hanging from hidden wires. By the way, I have said repeatedly that I could spot a fake in 5 minutes. I am not boasting at how wonderfully skilled I am at spotting fakes. That is not the point. Anyone reading these messages could probably spot a fake as easily as I could. As I said, this ability in inherent to what a flow calorimeter is, and what it does, and what its purpose is. It is a machine designed to be easily understood. The function is designed to be transparent. It resembles a middle-school laboratory demonstration of a machine such as a lever, balance weight scale, a worm-gear, or a bimetallic strip that bends in response to heat. To be exact, it is designed to eliminate all inputs and outputs but one, and the way it accomplishes this is to make it supremely simple. There are calorimeter types such as the Seebeck which accomplish this goal of isolating inputs and outputs not with inherent simplicity, but with high performance, high tech electronic components. It would easy for Rossi to set up a fake demonstration with a Seebeck calorimeter, as long as it was his calorimeter, and not one that belongs to U. Bologna and remains under Levi's control. You can compare a flow calorimeter to a balance weight scale. Such scales have been in use since ancient times. They have utterly transparent operation. No expert can fool one. No expert could have fooled one used in Edo Japan in the marketplace, or in ancient Egypt. A Seebeck is comparable to an electronic weight scale, with hidden, black-box components and programming. An expert could fool one of these by replacing parts or reprogramming. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Most objections to cold fusion will not survive commercialization
Nice. Natural gas: We couldn't possibly allow natural gas to be piped into urban areas -- it would be way too dangerous -- people could blow up their neighborhood if there were a leak, or kill themselves by asphixiation or carbon monoxide poisoning.. Electricity: We couldn't possibly allow electricity to be used by consumers -- they could be instantly killed in a few milliseconds on contact with it, and short circuits could ignite entire neighborhoods, plus it probably causes cancer. Gasoline: The energy contained in a tank of gasoline is so great that in the event of an accident, whole neighborhoods could be decimated, therefore its handling must be left to professionals. Unfenced roads and subway trains: All roads and train tracks must be fenced off as people could inadvertantly step or fall into the rights of way and be squashed. ... -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 1:18 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: [Vo]:Most objections to cold fusion will not survive commercialization Gene Mallove and I used to say that if we [Hoyt A. Stearns Jr.] ... Fear of the unknown. Cold fusion may be dangerous. It is untested. All forms of nuclear energy are inherently dangerous. (The fact that other sources of energy are also dangerous is not considered, because people tend to discount the dangers of existing technology and exaggerate the dangers of new technology.) Fear of economic change and technological progress. People will lose jobs. The stock market may fall. Our economy cannot survive such large changes. Senator, we may not be able to pick up the tab for your reelection campaign. Fear of cold fusion's capabilities. It might be used for a bomb. It is too powerful to be used responsibly; i.e., giving humanity cold fusion is like giving a machine gun to a baby. (Rifkin) Fear of other countries. If the Chinese get this they will rule us. (I've heard this proposed as a reason to prevent RD, as if we can stop the Chinese by not developing it ourselves.) A strange modern fear of using machines that experts do not fully understand. There is no theory to explain how it works, so it might stop working or explode. (Actually, the experts do not fully understand how anything works, but they don't admit that to the public.) Fear that cold fusion may make things worse. I share this fear. See chapter 19 of my book. The fact that something might be misused is seldom a good reason not to use it at all. Usually, advantages outweigh disadvantages. (Some new weapon systems, and some unstable, dangerous and unreliable machines cause more harm than good.) Fear of authority, and science. This is fashionable these days, with campaigns against vaccinations and global warming. A few other objections can be anticipated: It will cost too much. We cannot afford to replace all automobiles and heaters. It will take too long. It will be too little, too late. By the time we implement it global warming will be upon us. (This is Bjorn Lomborg's one-size-fits all argument against all solutions to all technical problems. He always ends up recommending we sit and do nothing.) [Hoyt A. Stearns Jr.] ... than good from a PR point of view. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
Here are some Edo-period hanging marketplace weight scales: http://www4.airnet.ne.jp/sakura/hakari/hakari_fr07.html They are ingenious and perhaps more complicated than you might think. I have seen people use them in recent times. Naturally there were ways to hide weights in these things to cheat customers. My point is, if you handed one of these over to a modern professor of physics, not only would she understand how it works, she would quickly find it is loaded. The last sentence of this essay says that even though there were strict weights and measures laws during the Edo period, the reliability of the scales was poor. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Comic gets it right
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:20:36 -0400: Hi, [snip] Rossi claims that the nickel will have to be changed out periodically, every six months or so. I doubt it. If 50 cc is filled with Ni powder, and the density is half that of the solid metal, then there is enough Ni62 Ni64 present to supply 5 kW for 207 days, assuming 5 MeV / reaction. By replacing it every 6 months, he ensures that he doesn't run out. (Of course if 30% of Ni was initially converted to Cu then it would last much longer.) Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:Weak Winds for Brits
There is something that is inherently risky about staking your energy and economic future on the whether. Farmers have known this since the dawn of civilization. Wind and solar energy production may be dramatically affected by climate change. When the north and south Polar Regions heat up and all the polar ice melts, then the thermal differences between the polar and temperate zones will become more equalized and the ocean currents will decline. The winds that now equalize these regional temperatures will becalm and the skies more cloudy. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the butt if the world installed 10,000,000 wind mills and the winds stop blowing? quote Three Iowa State researchers contributed their expertise in modeling North America's climate to a study to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres. The study – led by Sara C. Pryor, a professor of atmospheric science at Indiana University Bloomington – found that wind speeds across the country have decreased by an average of .5 percent to 1 percent per year since 1973. The study found that across the country wind speeds were decreasing – more in the East than in the West, and more in the Northeast and the Great Lakes, said Gene Takle, an Iowa State professor of geological and atmospheric sciences and agronomy. In Iowa, a state that ranks second in the country for installed wind power capacity, Takle said the study found annual wind speed declines that matched the average for the rest of the country. The study's findings made headlines across the country. Most of those stories focused on the potential implications for the wind power industry. end quote Read more…. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090625202010.htm On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 12:57 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: According to this story, wind energy in England, is not living up to expectations. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361316/250bn-wind-power-industry-gr eatest-scam-age.html Of course storage technology could have a major effect on the viability of PV and Wind energy. From http://www.theeestory.com/ Six years after leading the Kleiner Perkins effort to invest in EEStor, billionaire venture capitalist Bill Joy has finally commented publicly about the investment at the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge this past Thursday evening. (see video) After the fireside chat, Joy answered questions from a small crowd of people for over an hour. Question: So, are you still hopeful about EEStor? Bill Joy: Oh yeah. I mean these things are hard so there is always a chance they won't work. But we're very uh .. We'll see. I don't know anything that isn't in the press. Question: a person team somebody that already may already have a solution that hasn't been discovered, is that something you think is possible? Like a crowdsouring ... somewhere in world that's working Bill Joy: It doesn't tend to work that way. It proceeds from somebody who has deep expertise in a domain who acquires interdisciplinary collaborators. Thats a better formula. There are no child prodigies in these fields that involve physics and chemistry. You really just have you mentioned Carl Nelson he is like 90 years old an MIT PhD material scientist, who is one of the inventors under EEStor. If you don't have someone like Carl. I mean you ask Carl, tell me something about hafnium. Carl will talk to you for 15 minutes about hafnium. He knows something about every element in the periodic table. He can tell you off the top of his head what its crystal forms are and alot of interesting properties. I mean you have to be intimate with the periodic table to do this kind of stuff. You have to know you really have to have had a career. With somebody like that, he's probably the oldest founder I ever backed. But you just have dinner with him and you realize he really understands what he is doing with materials. Now what they are proposing to do is wild. And there's lots of reasons in which some of these things could fail to be commercialized. I'm not saying whether it's worked or not and if we've announced it or not, I'm just saying it's hard. What they're trying to do ... obviously, it's took years ... to get since they first it's not easy to do these things. So ... but the worthwhile things usually are hard and they always take longer. end excerpt I love the way he stuttered. Also, there's a letter regarding an overdue FOIA request to the DoE on rumors from SNL. (no, not saturday night live) T
Re: EXTERNAL: Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:14 Axil wrote Control of the Rossi reaction is a complicated thing. The energy density pumping mechanism you site may be only one mechanism of many that play into the complicated interplay of many factors in which the Cat-E might be controlled. Reply --Agreed and it may be only a small fraction but I am convinced it is the INITIATING mechanism for otherwise improbable reactions./// Rossi's revelation that the secret catalyst makes the Rossi reaction go is an argument against your theory being the sole or even the primary controlling factor. He states that without this secret element, nickel powder does not produce a sustained reaction. Reply --- It is complicated but the secret catalyst whether spill over or an ultrafine back fill that simply divides the nano cavities into even smaller more powerful geometries doesn't negate the need to control the movement of the gas population above and below the disassociation threshold, it just gives you more opportunity on a larger scale where fractional molecules are spread over a larger volume or loading into ever smaller relativistic fractional states down to 1/137 - my point is the covalent bond can act like a rectifier when gas motion pushes the molecule too far from the fractional value at which it formed in either direction like going from 1/60 h2 to a geometry that wants to reform the atoms of the molecule to a 1/70 th or a 1/50 th fractional state -if the atoms are cool enough to reform a molecule they will do so at whatever fractional level the geometry dictates with no stress on the new covalent bond until gas motion pushes it to a different Casimir geometry./// But he also says that the Reaction can continue without the application of external stimulus being applied. This is where the mechanism you site might come into play. I also think this is a mode that Rossi does not want the Cat-E reaction to enter. Reply --- OK if you wish to call lack of control a mode vs the PWM controlled mode but it is the same initial process before we get into any possible nuclear reactions. I think the danger is that the cooling loop slowly builds an army of fractionalized molecules as the system is spun up which are ready to run away and melt down the geometry in an instant like we saw with Mills powder in the Rowan confirmations but the quantity of fractionalized gas would be at a far more dangerous level./// I think the secret catalyst is a spillover catalyst that turns H2 into H- and forces this H-into the crystal lattice of the nickel powder. In the beginning, this might have been only a startup mechanism. Reply --- I think loading is always an ongoing requirement or the reaction will die. But the reactor melted down more than he would have liked where once is too much. I believe that Rossi had to somehow disable energy density pumping to positively control his reactor the way that he wants to. REPLY --- I would disagree, He certainly has to throttle it but not disable it./// If energy density pumping is full blown, the reactor may sometimes enter an uncontrolled mode where it takes off on its own nickel (pun intended) and melts down. REPLY---Agreed!// As an engineering imperative, I have a feeling that Rossi decided to centralize control of the reactor in the control box where he can adjust or shut off control power as required. He calls his Cat-E reactor an energy amplifier because the small amount of energy used to control the Cat-E is amplified greatly in the power output of the reactor.
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
At 04:46 PM 4/26/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: There is another way to rule out fraud. You can allow experts examine the machine closely and look for the physical equipment needed to commit fraud, such as hidden wires and pipes. Rossi has done this. There is only a vanishingly small chance that a fraud might somehow be concealed in the 1 liter cell, and the experts will soon look inside of that, as well. Once they have done that, fraud will be eliminated as decisively as it would be if this were independently replicated 200 times. Depends. Jed. Look, fraud is *extremely unlikely,* my opinion. However, if any group of people should be suspicious of impossibility proofs for unknown mechanism, it should be those familiar with cold fusion. Impossibility proofs are all suspect. And that includes a proof that fraud by unknown mechanism is impossible. How many experts does it take, doing an examination like that? Suppose that it's possible to walk off with a few hundred million euros with a sophisticated fraud? Would it be impossible to buy an expert who looks the other way, he can later say, Gee, I didn't think of *that* possibility! Don't mistake this for an accusation of anyone. Like I said, I think fraud is extremely unlikely. There are possible mechanisms. Each one is highly unlikely, but highly unlikely does not mean impossible. *How many mechanisms are possible?* There isn't any particular limit, Jed. But once there is serious and multiply-independent examination, and especially full internal examination, it does become very, very ridiculously impossible. Quite simply, it's not there yet, it's not beyond the point of some very sophisticated fraud, unknown mechanism, with or without some kind of collusion from apparently independent experts. But what is really ludicrous at this point is the skeptics -- say, on Wikipedia -- quite ready to confidently pronounced that this is, indeed, bogus, that they expect, any day now, to hear that Rossi isn't going to meet his deadline. That, in fact, is quite possible even if Rossi is fully and completely legitimate. What strikes me is the *belief* behond this. They believe in their old, very tired, and clearly bogus impossibility proof, cold fusion is, for them, simply impossible, *therefore no matter what you say or do, they are certain it's error or fraud.* Doesn't matter what evidence exists. Now, will they be convinced by a commercial product? Probably eventually, but certainly not immediately. They will hold on to whatever shred of pseudo-skeptical reserve they can muster. It's not about science at all. It's about *belief*. Almost the opposite of science. There is no limit to human ingenuity but there are sharp limits to the laws of physics and methods of adding energy to this system. It is simple, and the performance of it has been well understood for nearly 200 years. Jed, you are making exactly the error the skeptics made in 1989. You just contradicted yourself. There are, indeed, limits to the laws of physics, but suppose this: Suppose Rossi has discovered a way to create a short term appearance of lots of heat, perhaps a really extreme chemical reaction, not previously known. Perhaps he figures out how to conceal fuel, but suppose this is basically useless for some reason, say, it's not practical, it's too expansive, etc. But could he do something with it? Sure. Use it for a demonstration, capture investment money, and then disappear. Perhaps a combination of methods are used, each one contributing energy. Several suggestions have been made that might manage part of it. What would someone do for a few hundred million euros? You've stated no limit, but then you supposed that you could understand the sharp limits to the laws of physics, and this is exactly the argument that was made against cold fusion. It was a failure of the imagination, a belief that we already understood what was possible, and therefore what was not; the belief was that if there was a nuclear reaction in palladium deuteride, it must be d-d fusion, and since that reaction was believed *for very good reasons* to produce neutrons and tritium, copiously, yet they were not observed, or not observed at anything like the necessary levels to explain the heat, and since the rare helium branch *for very good reasons* must produce a gamma, they thought they had it nailed. Impossible. And if it's impossible, then the obvious conclusion: there *must* be some error, even if we don't know what it is. Fraud cannot be accomplished except by some physical means, and all such means are easily defined and checked for with this system (although not with other systems). There are many kinds of fraud, Jed, fraud can exist through very sophisticated ways of fooling observers, stuff that wouldn't be called physical. Instruments can be substituted, and I've heard quite a number of such suggestions. Proposed as it must be this,
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
At 05:31 PM 4/26/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: McKubre is brilliant and he has 22 years of experience working with flow calorimetry, but he could not devise a method of faking a result with a flow calorimeter that I would not spot in the first five minutes. I mean that. I know you mean it, but I also am quite sure that he could, if he wanted to. He doesn't, I'm sure. That's what protects you against being fooled by him, not your brilliant, incisive, and completely understanding of all possible frauds. You've seen the digital oscilloscope displays showing all relevant parameters, right? That is a computer display, and it could show anything that a fraud wanted it to show. So could any kind of meter. If the fraud has reasonably close control of the environment and what is brought into a test, it could be done. The whole point of a calorimeter is to lay bare all energy inputs and output. That's a real calorimeter, Jed. What if it isn't a real calorimeter, but something carefully constructed to resemble one? It is to simplify the equation and narrow down the possibilities so that there can be no significant undetected source of heat. This is done to make the results accurate, but it also has the effect of making the machine very easy to check for legerdemain. You say so. Proof? More to the point -- since flow calorimetry is indeed pretty simple -- that most imagined legerdemain could be easily seen, close up, this does not prove that all forms would be so. A person could design a complex machine with many inputs and outputs, and wires and hoses running every which direction. This machine probably could fool me. It would take me a while to trace down inputs and outputs. I doubt such a thing could fool McKubre or EK, but it could fool me. However, a flow calorimeter DOES NOT HAVE wires and hoses running everywhere. It has ONE input and ONE output and exactly 4 parameters. If there is another input, it stands out like a sore thumb. Tube concealed within a tube. You would not see it. Wires within wires, carrying high voltage, that look like wires that could not carry high power, because you assume the voltage is line voltage. Etc. It may well be that any given fraud mechanism can be ruled out, but, Jed, there is no limit to the number of possible mechanisms. A calorimeter is as simple as an energy system can be. You are assuming it's a calorimeter! Further, any temperature measurement can be fooled. You tried to make these arguments, when others advanced them, into an argument that thermometers did not work! No, they work, but, first of all, is it really a thermometer, and, second, what is it measuring. It might appear to be measuring the outlet water temperature, but be, in fact, measuring a confined stream, arranged to preferentially heat the thermometer. Again, likely? No. My position rapidly become on this that this was either real or it was a *very* sophisticated fraud. Not an error. All the arguments you have given do, heavily, militate against error. That is the whole point of it. If they could make it even simpler, and eliminate other possible sources of error (or fraud -- it amounts to the same thing) they would make it simpler. But nothing would be simpler than a fat payoff. No one is so smart he knows a way to defeat industry standard machines and techniques used worldwide for a century. You assume these machines run themselves, that they produce the results. Jed, that's naive. You are probably right, in this case, i.e., this is very unlikely to be fraud. But that's like someone who believes he can't lose, and the proof is that he didn't lose in this or that case. You know, there is this scheme for making money with roulette. You double your bet each time, if you lose. People who believe this trick actually do make money. Most of the time. A little money. Then they lose their shirts. Maybe. It's unlikely enough that they might go on for a long time, making a small amount of money. Then the amount they need to bet turns out to be more than they can raise. Or if they raise it, they lose it. The odds don't change. Fraudulent accounting techniques allowed it to be listed as the seventh largest company in the United States . . . Accounting techniques and like cannot be compared to a machine such as a calorimeter. Jed, you are completely missing the point. Machines don't set up measurements and report them, people do. Fool or corrupt the people, you can report anything. People believed that a fraud on the scale of Enron was impossible, surely it would be noticed, how could the numbers in accounting reports be wrong, surely someone would blow the whistle? Machines must obey the laws of physics. that's what they said about cold fusion. An accounting system can have any value stuffed into memory by the programmer at any stage in the process. For this reason, a computerized voting system is permanently suspect.
Re: [Vo]:If Rossi could speak freely, what would he say.
At 06:29 PM 4/26/2011, you wrote: If it turns out Levi is really, really stupid then I can imagine some ways Rossi could commit a fraud. For example, if Levi shows up and Rossi gives him the power meter, thermocouples and other equipment and insists he use that equipment only, not his own, it would be easy to fool him. Sure. But once you realize that any human being might possibly be, for enough money, corrupted, it's very simple. [...] You can compare a flow calorimeter to a balance weight scale. Such scales have been in use since ancient times. They have utterly transparent operation. No expert can fool one. No expert could have fooled one used in Edo Japan in the marketplace, or in ancient Egypt. I bet experts could, and did. Some were caught and died, I'm also sure. Some were not caught. Jed, it's not the scale that would be fooled, but the customer, who is supposedly observing the weighing process. Perhaps an extra weight is palmed, can be added surreptitiously. The details would depend on the transaction. Magicians are highly skilled at this kind of thing, creating a false appearance, and con artists can use the same kinds of tricks.