At 11:37 AM 10/31/2009, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote:
Enjoyed your response. Admittedly, my preliminary thoughts on your objective
is that it is way too ambitious.
In what way? Failure modes:
1. I'm too scattered and disorganized to actually get it together.
While this is the most likely failure mode, it seems I'm sufficiently
motivated to pull this off, and I'm getting support. Donations are
starting to appear, significant ones. I still have to risk my meager
savings and my American Express credit, but ... this is fun.
2. I can't get a decent replication going. Unlikely. Alpha track
findings are, in my view, shaky, so far. However, that's not the case
with neutrons; problem with the neutron findings is that solid
replications are sparse. But not non-existent, and I intend to
rapidly up the number of cells where there is intensive monitoring
for neutrons by an order of magnitude. It's cheap and easy to do,
once one is set up to do the codeposition. I've an idea that could be
very interesting, and it's so cheap and so obviously harmless to the
effect that I'm going to do it right from the start. I'm going to
line the experimental cell, the inside, with commercial (cheap!)
CR-39. I may get fogging, but unless the fogging suppresses the LENR
reaction, I don't care. I'll etch the surface away, I'll be looking
for buried neutron evidence, and the characteristics of the tracks
will tell me what direction the particles came from.
3. I get a replication going, but nobody wants to buy the cells, so
nobody uses them for replication and so it's all useless. Also
unlikely, I think. These cells are going to be cheap. I'll be
surprised if my price for them -- which includes my margin! -- is
much over $100. It could be quite a bit less when I have a settled
design. This includes everything needed for a replication except for
fixed equipment, i.e., constant-current power supply(s), monitoring
equipment, and re-usable sensors. The Galileo protocol said "The
minimum materials cost for this experiment is about $700." I don't
get where that came from, it was drastically overstated even for now,
and the costs for the most expensive things, the platinum wire and
the deuterium oxide, have gone up in price substantially.
4. "They" shut me down. Not a failure, unless perhaps "they" manage
to make it look like some accident. And this project does not
actually depend on me. By the time that "they" would be interested,
it would be too late. It's already too late, probably. I'm not doing
anything that someone in contact with these ideas couldn't do with
moderate effort and a few thousand dollars to invest. I don't believe
in an anti-LENR conspiracy on that level. Nasty political
machinations, yes. That happened and could happen again.
5. I completely screw up, I think I have a replicable experiment, I
put together the kits, and they don't work. Never mind the fact that
the early "customers" will be, in a sense, partners in this, some
might even literally be partners. I'm not likely to sell with
substantial marketing effort kits that don't work. Definitely there
are mistakes I could make. I plan to pre-mix the chemicals, it's
easier for moderate production and avoids the need to measure small
weights, I can then dispense a known quantity of heavy water and it
will be ready for use as electrolyte for one cell, and I'll sell
containers of that size. So what if I pick a container that
contaminates the solution? Or make some other mistake? Well, the
cells I test myself are going to be *exactly* what I'd sell if I were
to start selling at that point. Down to the packaging and storage.
Something could still happen, but it's not likely.
6. Oh. By "too ambitious" you mean that it actually convinces Richard
Garwin. Well, I don't really care. Richard Garwin could not affect my
market, and if he actually were to attack the project, it would
probably increase sales. More likely, no effect.
I fear it probably wouldn't change anyone's
mind other than the already converted, not really, and particularly not the
hard-core skeptics. i.e. "...so what if the CR-39 appears to show lots of
neutron tracks."
And, then, this is confirmed with bubble detectors? And there are
copious controls? What is being described is a skeptic who would not
be convinced by *any* evidence. They exist, but they are not my
problem. Garwin wanted to see something of a certain scale. It's
obvious that this is a different question than the basic science.
Look, I could brew a cup of tea with a cold fusion cell, just crank
up the input power to make it hot enough. Trivial. "But that wouldn't
be excess energy!" Of course not. But you could drink the tea, using
the cell. Wrong question, wrong problem. Brewing a cup of tea would
require, if one insists on excess energy, an Arata-type cell, and
even then, you could brew tea from the heat of formation of palladium
deuteride. Okay, an Arata cell that stays hot enough to brew tea.
I wouldn't want one of those in my house, I think. Dangerously hot,
and incredibly expensive, probably.
Okay, a technique that produces excess power in the form of
electricity. It doesn't exist. If you could get something to do that,
you are rich. Filthy rich, probably. I'm not going to wait for it to
happen. It may never happen, that's a real possibility. And if we
don't have reliable demonstrations of the science involved, based on
my conversations with Jed, it isn't going to happen. Venture
capitalists are usually way too careful with their money. As they
should be, or they would soon lose it.
One can be sure those uppity physics graduate students
would come up with excuses to explain it all away, like "contamination."
After all, it's just a #$&*# kit being sold in stores like WALL MART!!! Not
a real science experiment! Yada-yada.
Contamination. Okay, great. What contamination? Here is a kit. So
somebody claims contamination, that I'm selling a commercial product
and it's "contaminated." My, my. I could be really nasty with that,
it's libel, with possible real financial damage. Tort liability,
easily shown in a court. But I wouldn't be nasty. Instead, I'd offer
the libelous one an opportunity and a deal: they buy a few kits, and
they use every means to analyze them that they want to use. If they
show contamination that could affect the results, I'll not only
refund the costs of the kits, but might be willing to pay -- I'd have
to think about this -- a reward for their valuable work. (I don't
expect to be flush with cash, so, unfortunately, this couldn't be a
big reward.) They would promise to release to the public the results
of any testing that they do, in sufficient detail that anyone else
could replicate their work. And if they don't accept this offer of
settlement in compromise, I'd sue them. Sometimes you gotta do what
you gotta do, I'd at that point be looking for donations to fund
legal expenses. And this would provide an opportunity for everyone
offended by what happened in this field over the last twenty years to
get a little satisfaction, to toss in a few bucks.
Besides, the kit contents will be thoroughly documented. I'll be
selling the materials for roughly what it would cost someone to buy
them themselves, not a great deal less. So someone doubts that this
works, they will have a very thorough, very detailed protocol to
follow, more detailed than the Galileo protocol was, which seems, I
believe, to have been adequate for starters.
I would never have come up with all this just by myself. Discussing
this openly, listening to all the comments, has caused me to refine
the ideas, step by step, making it much more likely, I believe, that
when I actually run a cell (I presently estimate not more than two
months from now), it's likely to work, unless the general community's
understanding of the science if way off. Even though I'm smart, and I
know it, I'm not depending on myself as anything other than a
reasonably intelligent nexus for this activity. I make my own
decisions about how to spend my own time and my own money. Krivit
points out in the Galileo report that getting a bunch of
experimenters to agree on a protocol was like herding cats. From his
mouth to my ears. I like cats, but I don't put them in charge of what
I do. You are all my watch-cats, and if you yowl, I'll look and see
what's there.
This is all actually FA/DP theory, by the way, organizational
structure is my own cup of tea, and I'm brewing some with this
project, just as I was with Wikipedia. Wikipedia *really* disliked
being experimented with, I wasn't the first to end up blocked over
harmless experimentation, a sociology professor ended up in the same position.
FA/DP theory is about how to facilitate the function of communities
to make them smarter, collectively, than any of the individual
members. Regardless of scale. It's known how to do it on a small
scale, already, though most people aren't familiar with the techniques.
That's why I wished someone could come up with a "kit" that would actually
be capable of heating a pot of tea.
I described how to do this. It's trivial, as McKubre said, and, in
fact, he claimed on the Sixty Minutes show that they could have done
it many times over. That's a bit of puffery, because, while it's
true, there would have been some cold pots of tea! And some that were
brewed. That's why Garwin added his qualification. The cup of tea is
brewed, and then another is brewed. And, presumably, he's watching
it. And somehow it's clear that this is not input power. It was
polemic from the beginning, on both sides. Cups of tea and net energy
production are both nice, but not about science itself, rather about
commercial implications other than the commercial trick I'm playing.
I'm not selling energy, I'm selling science. Not everyone wants to
buy science, but it doesn't take "everyone" to make a commercial
project successful, merely enough customers to cover the expenses and
justify the investments.
But what these kits will do is to start to create a community of
people who have seen the effects for themselves. Many of them young
people. This is for the future, not just for today, not just for the
"graybeards" who refused to shut up and go away in 1989. I'm
dedicating this to them and to their memory. Even if they were wrong
on some details, they were right to persist. In fact, even if somehow
this all turns out to be some very strange combination of coincidence
and artifact, they were still right. The repression of cold fusion
was *wrong*, it should never have happened, and that kind of thing
should never again happen; if my overall work is successful, it will
become increasingly difficult to suppress valid research. And, in
fact, increasingly easy to identify and nail down artifact.
In a sense, it's all about the SHOW. I
suspect the political statement would make more of an impact than the
scientifically precise one. IMHO, most Joe six-Pack's out there (including
our esteemed congressmen) are not likely to be capable of understanding the
significance of what all those "tracks" embedded within the CR-39 strip
signify.
Joe six-pack is obviously not my market. However, Joe may have a son
or daughter who wants to try this. That kid will explain to their dad
whatever their dad needs to know to open his wallet. The dad is not
prejudiced against cold fusion, the dad might spend the money on
zero-point energy or power-your-car-with-water or polywater or
whatever bug the kid gets stuck on, as long as it isn't *too
expensive.* Consider, if there were a ZPE kit that worked, and that
hadn't successfully been shown to be artifact, it would actually be
scientifically valuable to check it out, confirm the effect, and
maybe explore some parameters. It wouldn't be a waste, the kid would
learn something about science and the scientific method, the real
scientific method, not the bastardized version that depends on
"experts" and "established theory." Kids are going to need to learn
all that established theory, if it is in their field of interest, but
I khope that they never forget that theory is theory and is never
actually "proven," and may always be subject to exceptions or
"specification." It merely becomes a useful peg to hang your hat on.
Don't hang yourself on it!
Also, who really thinks Garwin would change his mind if everyone mailed in
their sheets of CR-39 to his offices, allegedly containing all those pesky
neutron tracks?
Good idea. I'll provide addressed envelopes for them. Seriously, as
to the results of those customers who are willing to participate, the
results will be amalgamated and published. There will be hosts of
images of CR-39 and LR-115 and other evidences. Let me dream a
little, because this is speculative: there will be videos, with
sound, showing little spots of light, maybe 10 microns across, with a
pop! when it winks on. There will be images of associated SSNTDs,
showing tracks characteristic of neutrons and of no other reasonably
likely cause. And, if I'm lucky, there will be published papers by
replicators with experience and credentials. I'll be making it easier
for them, "using the standard LENR kit number A-3 provided by Lomax
Design Associates, following protocol A3.012 as published by them and
available at [URL]." That would replace quite a few paragraphs in a
research paper, as well as replacing tons of work by them, allowing
them to focus on the details or explorations interested them. Some of
them might be able to do instantaneous helium analysis. Some might be
able to do many things that the amateurs wouldn't be capable of. Some
might explore the process space, varying D?H ratio, using depleted
deuterium water, cathode construction, any of countless possibilities.
Somehow, I get the feeling his position wouldn't budge one
iota. He would just smile and sit back with that all-knowing smile on his
face, just like he did on 60 minutes.
Lots of people saw that smile as "smug," not as "all-knowing." Truth will out.
I bet he'd reply with something
soothingly sage-like like, "Those aren't really neutron tracks... You have
to be a real physicists to understand how absurd it is to even consider the
opinion that those tracks might actually be neutron tracks. Now go along and
write a story about unicorns."
Thus offending all the young kids who tried it and saw results, not
to mention showing himself up as being stuck on a level that would be
bordering on senility. Would the media even give him more attention?
My kids (girls, 6 and 8) tell me about Unicorn Land. They tell all
kinds of stories about Ogie the Ogre who lives there and eats
unicorns, and how they have managed to frustrate Ogie in various
ways. They claim to get up in the middle of the night, when everyone
else is sleeping, and go through the secret passage into Unicorn
Land. They also say that the existence of Unicorn Land is a secret,
and the only reason they are telling me is that they know that nobody
would believe me. They don't mind if I know, because they know I'd be
nice to the unicorns and I'd never insult them, or my kids, by
claiming that "Unicorns don't exist."
Of course they exist. Somewhere. People who think they have it all
nailed, that they understand everything, except perhaps for a few
inconsequential details, understand very little, in fact. Reality is
vaster than they can possibly imagine. On the other hand, I'm not
investing in unicorns. Unless my kids write a book, I might invest in that.
