Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> The nickel-hydrogen claims are exciting, but, so far, not adequately > demonstrated or independently verified. Based on today's presentations at ICCF17, I would say that Brillouin has done excellent calorimetry. The best of any Ni-H claim I know of. Piantelli was not bad but this is better. The reaction is large enough that a calorimetric error is extremely unlikely, with anomalous heat such as 40 W and 100 W. A very stable, controllable reaction. The only thing they are missing is the "independently verified" part. They are now setting up experiments at SRI that will be completely independent. They have already begun operating the equipment. I think it is very likely SRI will confirm this within a few months, and that will be the last hurdle for this claim. I think when that happens we will be able to say that Ni-H has as much credibility as Pd-D has, albeit many fewer replications. It is unfortunate that Piantelli is clamming up, but in the past he has not shared information much, and he is now obligated to people providing venture capital. Ni-H has been *very, very* difficult to confirm. It has been marginal for years, with enough credibility that it had to be taken seriously, yet it seemed even more uncontrollable than Pd, and in most cases with extremely low power density. It was always tantalizing yet somehow out of reach. Some people, such as Krivit, have the notion that there was some kind of organized opposition to Ni by mainstream researchers. That is absurd. For as long as I have been following this field, people such as McKubre and Fleischmann have been yearning to make Ni or Ti work, for the obvious reason that they are cheap and abundant compared to Pd. The idea that light water might work was puzzling, to such an extent that I left it out of my book so as not to confuse the readers. (It isn't a textbook after all.) But most cold fusion researchers I know shrugged their shoulders and said, "well, if it works, it works." That was my attitude all along, after I saw positive Mills results at MIT. By the way, Hagelstein explained Swartz's experiments today. They are impressive. It is a shame Schwart himself cannot explain them in a way that most people understand. Hagelstein may be a theorists but he knows how to explain data and graphs as well as any engineer does. That is high praise coming from me. - Jed
