On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>wrote:
Part 1A Cude >>So far, claimed evidence for excess heat in a Rossi apparatus has been observed directly only by people vetted by Rossi. First Levi, who was on Rossi’s editorial board, and the recipient of research funding from Rossi. Then Essen & Kallander who were on record as being sympathetic to the Rossi device. And lastly journalist/blogger Lewan, who was on record as being an uncritical Rossi groupie. Lomax > Cude is correct as to observers. […] This isn't like ordinary cold fusion, where the experiment was very difficult to set up. If this thing works or doesn't work, it will be obvious. Exactly. And yet it still isn't. If it were obvious, the media and scientists would be all over it. The royal wedding would look like a small media event by comparison. Rossi would have Bob Park, Steve Koonin, Oprah, and Tom Brokaw all breathing down his neck. But no, it's not obvious at all. And if real, it would be dead easy to make it obvious. If you really need input electricity, run a Stirling engine to power a generator. With a 30x energy gain, and an 80C temperature difference, the efficiency would be plenty high enough. Then without any input power at all, use the device (including the waste heat from powering the Stirling engine) to heat a 1000L tub of water to boiling. This would be completely visual, requiring no expert observers. Some vigilance would be required because it might take some time, especially if you want to run it long enough to rule out chemical fuel by an order of magnitude or more. The need for this sort of standalone cold fusion device has been admitted by Rothwell, and it is very clear that Rossi's device does not meet the standard. The fact that it still isn't obvious, months after the first "public" demo, means it almost certainly doesn't work. 10 kW and a million times the energy density of gasoline! Allegedly reproducible and stable. How can that be so hard to demonstrate? > It is to the point, already, where "fraud" is, first of all, the only possibility besides "it's real," and "fraud" has become so remote that *believing* it is a fraud is insane, hanging one's hat on something quite unlikely. Whether it's fraud or incompetence or something else is irrelevant to me. Until good evidence for a new energy source is freely available, I will remain skeptical. But surely cold fusion advocates should not be dissuaded by something because it's likelihood is remote. After all, physicists have been dismissing nuclear reactions with more or less the same language: the chance of nuclear reactions is so remote that believing it is insane, hanging one's hat on something quite unlikely. Of the two, fraud or nuclear reactions in a Rossi ecat, most physicists, and evidently most media, regard fraud as a far less remote possibility. > This is an invention, not yet clearly well protected by patent, and Rossi, if we assume this is real, has many sound reasons to keep it very private. Whatever. He could make an obvious demonstration while keeping his black box private. > As far as we can tell, so far, he hasn't solicited funding, except from Ampenergo, a reputable company in the U.S., formed by people who have long worked with Rossi, they know him well. Well, the problem is we can't tell very far, can we? Until a week or so ago, we didn't know about Ampenergo, and Rossi's lack of funding was held up as evidence against fraud. Then Ampenergo money shows up, and that is held up as evidence against fraud, because the investors musta checked it carefully. So, no matter if he's gotten money or he hasn't, the believers use it as proof that it's real. Kinda sad. Mills has been milking H-Ni exotherms for millions of dollars for years, with only a series of failed promises to show for it. Now, maybe Rossi figures he wants a piece of the action.
