From: Terry Blanton * This is not a trivial question - when errors are exponentially multiplied by a fourth power.
* I'm sure I don't have to remind you that error bars usually extend on both sides of the data plot. Merry Christmas! Yes, there is the possibility that the claimed gain could have been underestimated by temperature calculations which did not properly account for all of the far IR radiation – just as having been overestimated due to photon leakage on the high end… by any IR device which was not properly calibrated. Calibration is the name of the game. For instance, since alumina is a “gray body” radiator - not blackbody – then full calibration of the camera should have been made with heated alumina in Lugano - at the highest expected temperature, but this was not done under direct order. Thus, the data from Lugano is compromised. That is all that can be said – the data is worthless, but the temperature could indeed have been grossly underestimated as well as grossly overestimated. 4th power will do that. In short, when everything depends on the accuracy of the low pass filter on the camera, then the “extra” flux of high frequency light passing through the alumina and being filtered by the camera, could in principle also diminish the longer wavelengths, so that temperature is being underestimated ! This is a detail that has not been voiced, and no one knows the answer. However, the overriding point is that calibration of this kind of instrument is all-important, and since Levi should have realized this (after all, this is supposedly his field of expertise) then we have to ask why he allowed Rossi stop the calibration run at 500 C. Clearly, Levi and the Swedes were being manipulated. Thus we have a Lugano report that resolves nothing. The field of LENR would be better off if this report never surfaced, due to shoddy measurements. Although the error could have gone either way, the common sense implication from Rossi’s action is that he knew from his own past experience - that proper calibration of the camera would not help his cause. Which puts us in this strange predicament. If further MFMP testing concludes that the real temperature of the reactor, based on a more accurate reading using the thermocouple, is actually higher than the camera computation of temperature in the range above 1000C – then two radically different conclusions (interpretations) are possible. One … Rossi actually underestimated the net gain in Lugano. Two … which is more provocative, is that there is net gain from SPP formation alone ! …which happens in a porous alumina reactor, even without the need for added fuel (other than the water vapor in air). This gain is due to DCE. (yes, there are other interpretations besides these, but these two are in stark contrast to general expectations now floating around cyberspace)
