At 11:38 AM 12/29/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Mark Gibbs <<mailto:mgi...@gibbs.com>mgi...@gibbs.com> wrote:
but it raises the question if/when will enter LENR such lists?
When there is a testable theory or a demonstrably practical device.
So far, LENR is, to be perhaps somewhat poetic, no more than a
willow-the-wisp ...
Ah, Mark, I'm afradi the court may revoke your poetic license, you
were speeding.
Testable theory was, as I've explained before, not directly relevant
to the question. There are testable theories.
But it's this "willow-the-wisp" thing that went over the edge. First
of all, Jed Rothwell is an editor. Surely you would not deliberately
present him with such a horribly mispelled word. It's
"will-o'the-wisp." Ignis fatuus. It is legitimately controversial if
that phenomenon, though widely reported, is real, because it has not
been captured or measured. LENR is nothing like that.
The most-verified LENR is the conversion of deuterium to helium,
using palladium as a catalyst, as discovered by Pons and Fleischmann,
and popularly called "cold fusion." The reaction is known to produce
two correlated products, heat and helium, and the heat produced is
consistent with the heat expected from deuterium fusion. This has
been confirmed by twelve research groups; the correlation was
discovered and published by Miles in 1993.
Every group which has attempted to confirm this, as far as we know,
has come up with consistent results. It is simply not a scientific
controversy any more.
But what remains controversial, and what may have begun to afflict
scientific consideration of cold fusion by 1990 or so, is whether or
not cold fusion could ever be a useful power source. In theory, yes.
However we don't know the mechanism, and it is possible that the
mechanism is inherently chaotic.
What it will take to determine this is research. Research that
includes what was recommended by both U.S. Department of Energy
reviews. And more.
It became clear by 1990 that the phenomenon was, as far as anything
demonstrated, "difficult to reproduce." The same cell, everything
outwardly the same, would produce different results at different
times. Of course, the cell materials were *not* the same. The process
was changing them. We now know a lot of what happens in, say, a
Fleichmann-Pons cathode, the material cracks, oxides form on the
surface, what may have started as a simple palladium rod becomes
extremely complex. Pure palladium, perfectly refined, doesn't show
the effect. If the palladium cracks grow too large, the high loading
ratio necessary for the effect cannot be maintained, it leaks out too rapidly.
It is literally a mess.
Further, as more and more people started looking where nobody had
looked before, lots of odd phenomena were observed. Some LENR reports
are probably artifact. Some things have been reported and were never
seen again. In this environment, skepticism is understandable.
I am sorry to be abrasive, but this is ignorant nonsense. Cold
fusion is far closer to being a practical device than things like
plasma fusion or HTSC, and -- needless to say -- the Top Quark and
the Higgs boson will never have any practical use. Yet no journalist
would say these are "will-o-the-wisp" findings. Everyone knows they
are real, even though they are of no practical use.
Jed does know how to spell the word.
Mark, what Jed is claiming is basically true. That is, he's probably
right. We will probably see a practical LENR device before we will
see hot fusion power. (There are already hot fusion practical
devices, for example, a nifty handheld neutron generator. I'd love to
have one.) *However*, this is by no means a slam-dunk.
I urge you to stay on task. You've said you want to know what's real.
That's great. What is real is the body of experimental work that has
been published. That includes, by the way, the famous "negative
replications." Those establish, in fact, what *not* to do if you want
to see the effect! Don't be content with a loading ratio of 70%,
merely because you don't know how to go higher than that -- it wasn't
easy and before Pons and Fleischmann, it was even considered
impossible -- because it is now known that the effect begins around
90%. Don't assume that pure, super-clean palladium will be better
than worked palladium. Dennis Letts has developed a protocol that
worked for him for many experiments, reliably, then stopped working.
He hasn't identified why, yet, but he will. The Italians have
developed methods of preparing palladium that are reasonably
effective, and they are starting to understand through the study of
the nanostructure, why.
Cold fusion research is *difficult*. That's what everyone told me
when I started to think about doing experimental work. But ... it can
be done. As you learn about the field, Mark, part of what is real is
the expertise of people like Michael McKubre, a true professional.
Don't confuse people like him with flamboyant entrepreneurs like
Rossi. Rossi might have something, and, then again, he might have a
set of techniques for imitating heat generation. We actually don't
know. All the demonstrations that were witnessed by people like Essen
and Kullander, the Swedish physicists, were flawed.
Problem is, Essen and Kullander were *physicists*, and not accustomed
to doing practical calorimetry. Jed Rothwell is not a scientist, as
such, but has an enormous well of experience in this field, he knows
all the players, and he could easily have advised how to do much
better calorimetry, for a truly convincing demonstration. Rossi
declined all such assistance, and some of us conclude from that, that
he didn't want a real, accurate demonstration. Which could mean this
or that, and if you want to know what's real, stay away from what
cannot be confirmed.
On the other hand, if you want to know the Next Big Thing, maybe you
need to look at what's unclear. It's up to you!
On Vortex, you will see many reports of this or that amazing and
likely preposterous claim. That's largely what Vortex is about. But
many people who are involved with cold fusion read Vortex, it's kind
of a tradition. Most of the active scientists stay away, however, or
if they read it, they won't post.
Nearly every breakthrough in the history of science and technology
has gone through a long period of gestation as a useless laboratory
curiosity. Sometimes this lasts for years, sometimes for decades.
You see this in the history of steam engines, telegraphy,
photography, electric motors, incandescent lighting, Diesel engines,
aviation, rocketry, DNA, computers, the laser, and countless others.
Oersted demonstrated the principle of induction and electromagnets
in 1820. Electric telegraphs had to wait for Henry to improve the
electromagnet. Edison made the first practical electric motors in
1880. It took biologists 50 years to figure out that the genome is
in nucleic acid, and not protein. Fifty years!
The Curies discovered radioactivity in 1898. The first practical use
of this was in the atomic bomb in 1945, and the first commercial
nuclear reactor was made in 1950.
If people had ignored or dismissed these subjects because they were
unfinished scientific research, we would still be living with 18th
century technology.
It is the height of arrogance, and gross ignorance of history, to
dismiss a laboratory finding because it seems to have no immediate,
short-term practical use. Frankly, it is incredible to me that a
science journalist such as Gibbs does not realize this. Have you
read nothing about history?!?
Mark, are you a "science journalist"? If so, I'd expect some
familiarity with what Jed is talking about. Jed can be abrasive, but
he also, quite often, knows what he's talking about. He can be a
valuable source. Naturally, as a journalist, you will check everything.
Are you actually dismissing laboratory findings? That is not how I read you.
