Cont: Brilliant Light Power Going To Market - Free Energy Generator Part 3

[bruto]

Apparently, yes. So far, nobody has got to the bottom of this bizarre claim.

As usual in such cases it seems that the claim has been disputed because although "watts of heat" were enumerated, the statement "watts are a unit of heat" was not literally made.

Sometimes the way a dancer feels and the way a dancer looks do not entirely match.

 

[jsfisher]

As usual in such cases it seems that the claim has been disputed because although "watts of heat" were enumerated, the statement "watts are a unit of heat" was not literally made.

Sometimes the way a dancer feels and the way a dancer looks do not entirely match.

A tap dancer, apparently.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Well they wouldn't plunk diagrams from their previous experiment on page 5 without any context.

I'd have thought that any competent/honest researchers wouldn't leave the reader to have to assume anything in order to make sense of the experiment, yet here we are. I don't think we should assume what they would or would not do, given the evidence.

 

[halleyscomet]

Well they wouldn't plunk diagrams from their previous experiment on page 5 without any context.

Why not?

Given the looooong list of excuses and rationalizations needed to make the paper seem even vaguely plausible they’re either faking their data or incompetent, possibly both. I wouldn’t put any boneheaded move past them.

 

[Darat]

Why not?

Given the looooong list of excuses and rationalizations needed to make the paper seem even vaguely plausible they’re either faking their data or incompetent, possibly both. I wouldn’t put any boneheaded move past them.

I think I've found the missing page.

 

[UncertainH]

Researchers have continued with cold fusion research for almost 30 years with no convincing results. No definitive, actual fusion products detected. Mixed extra heat results.

Widom-Larsen theory is almost pseudoscience supposed to explain this. Their 2006 paper has been cited 11 times and some of those citations present evidence against it.

The Scientific American newsletter is dubious. It uses cherry picked anecdotes, e.g. an uncited comment by Edward Teller in 1989, a story (rumor?) of tables of tritium production and low-levels of neutrons being removed from a paper. This is not a surprise because the authors are biased. Steven B. Krivit and Michael J. Ravnitzky are LENR advocates. Krivit wrote 3 books about LENR and Ravnitzky was the developmental editor of the books.

Fair enough. Debates about cold fusion probably don't really belong here but I post this here simply to point out bias. Mills has been criticized in this forum as either an outright fraud or bringing bias into his experiments because he wants to be right. Markie is biased in his defense of Mills and everyone else is biased in their responses to Markie.

Perhaps Julian Schwinger just went insane?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Schwinger

After 1989 Schwinger took a keen interest in the non-mainstream research of cold fusion. He wrote eight theory papers about it. He resigned from the American Physical Society after their refusal to publish his papers.[4] He felt that cold fusion research was being suppressed and academic freedom violated. He wrote: "The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors' rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science."

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Fair enough. Debates about cold fusion probably don't really belong here but I post this here simply to point out bias. Mills has been criticized in this forum as either an outright fraud or bringing bias into his experiments because he wants to be right. Markie is biased in his defense of Mills and everyone else is biased in their responses to Markie.

It's not biased to point out a lack of validity in experiments, or falsehoods in theories, or a lack of publishing in reputable peer-reviewed journals, or a habit of erasing past company records and renaming the company, or false claims of independent validation, or false claims of endorsements by independent entities, or constantly receding claims of commercial products, or excuses for not commercialising that don't hold up, etc.

Honestly, if there were actual valid science backing this up, most of the people posting in this thread would be unbelievably excited by it. A whole new science that could usher in an age of pollution and cost-free energy? That's not only exciting on its own terms, it could potentially save the majority of the human race, given the recent dire warnings about AGW.

I'd be prepared to bet that everybody who has posted something in this thread critical of Mills or his claims would absolutely love for this to be true. I bet that many would invest in it themselves.

That's where the bias is. The problem is, well, all the things I posted in the first sentence of this post.

 

[markie]

You are consistently inconsistent.

A (possible) blunder in a calculation may or may not have have a significant practical consequence. This distinction should not be difficult.

 

[markie]

It's not biased to point out a lack of validity in experiments, or falsehoods in theories, or a lack of publishing in reputable peer-reviewed journals, or a habit of erasing past company records and renaming the company, or false claims of independent validation, or false claims of endorsements by independent entities, or constantly receding claims of commercial products, or excuses for not commercialising that don't hold up, etc.

Honestly, if there were actual valid science backing this up, most of the people posting in this thread would be unbelievably excited by it. A whole new science that could usher in an age of pollution and cost-free energy? That's not only exciting on its own terms, it could potentially save the majority of the human race, given the recent dire warnings about AGW.

I'd be prepared to bet that everybody who has posted something in this thread critical of Mills or his claims would absolutely love for this to be true. I bet that many would invest in it themselves.

That's where the bias is. The problem is, well, all the things I posted in the first sentence of this post.

Oh yes, everybody here would just love for Mills' claims to be true. That is why, despite no one offering a plausible scientific explanation for the excess heat in this one simple, early experiment from 1994, the only response from pseudoskeptics is to assume that the excess heat observed is somehow a mistake or a result of fraud.

 

[Dancing David]

A (possible) blunder in a calculation may or may not have have a significant practical consequence. This distinction should not be difficult.

It shoun't have to be done by us that is the goal of a researcher

 

[Kid Eager]

Oh yes, everybody here would just love for Mills' claims to be true. That is why, despite no one offering a plausible scientific explanation for the excess heat in this one simple, early experiment from 1994, the only response from pseudoskeptics is to assume that the excess heat observed is somehow a mistake or a result of fraud.

O rly? None of the simple plausible explanations provided multiple times in this and predecessor threads are to your taste?

With so much time on your hands to do this intense analysis, please list the reason why each of the explanations provided thus far are unacceptable.

Take your time. No rush.

 

[jsfisher]

A (possible) blunder in a calculation may or may not have have a significant practical consequence. This distinction should not be difficult.

That is an approach to dismiss the blunder, but it does not address your own inconsistency.

 

[CORed]

I think it bears pointing out, that if either hydrinos or cold fusion/LENR were really producing significant amounts of energy, there would be lots of money to be made (and not just by fleecing investors) regardless of whether the scientific community accepted their reality or not. If nothing else, you could come up with a cheap way to heat buildings, or you put your apparatus in a pressure vessel, make some steam, and produce electricity. Many areas allow co-generation, and even if you can't get on the grid, you can provide power to any kind of industrial facility cheaper than the local utility.

Business people aren't going to care whether scientists support your theory or not, if you can keep the lights on, the wheels turning and the building at the right temperature cheaper than the local power company.

The fact that none of the avocates of either hydrinos or cold fusion have managed to do this is a pretty good indication that either their theories are nonsense, or that neither hydrinos nor LENR are capable of producing significant amounts of energy on any kind of consistent or economically viable basis. My money is on nonsense.

 

[jonesdave116]

......or you put your apparatus in a pressure vessel, make some steam,......

 

[Myriad]

Oh yes, everybody here would just love for Mills' claims to be true. That is why, despite no one offering a plausible scientific explanation for the excess heat in this one simple, early experiment from 1994, the only response from pseudoskeptics is to assume that the excess heat observed is somehow a mistake or a result of fraud.

Experimental error and sloppy inaccurate calorimetry is consistent with the inconsistent results between trials. along with the absence of any attempt to explain the variability between runs on the basis of the concluded hypothesis (hydrino transition), and no results subsequently reported for any attempt to replicate the "successful" runs.

For instance, how does hydrino theory explain why the same test conditions with a 250 foot coil failed to produce half the excess heat of the 500 foot coil, or any excess heat at all?

 

[hgus]

Oh yes, everybody here would just love for Mills' claims to be true. That is why, despite no one offering a plausible scientific explanation for the excess heat in this one simple, early experiment from 1994, the only response from pseudoskeptics is to assume that the excess heat observed is somehow a mistake or a result of fraud.

Why do you think we can not be sceptical about it all and yet be happy if proven wrong? I certainly would be.

I would say that it is up to Mills to show beyond doubt that it is working. If Mills hype of hydrinos is true then why is that so hard to accomplice?

And as a side note. It is a good thing for Mills that no one is taking hydrinos seriously. A competent competing research company would already have products on the market by now. If hydrinos exist that is.

 

[markie]

Experimental error and sloppy inaccurate calorimetry is consistent with the inconsistent results between trials. along with the absence of any attempt to explain the variability between runs on the basis of the concluded hypothesis (hydrino transition), and no results subsequently reported for any attempt to replicate the "successful" runs.

The experimental error was quite well defined. For instance the higher temperature runs which had to use water cooling had much larger error bars. You call this water cooling method "sloppy calorimetry." It didn't have the largest resolution, but calling it 'sloppy' is ... sloppy. Again, the margins of error were well defined.

It is self evident that this experiment's goal was to explore a large parameter space and that subsequent experiments would follow. So it is not surprising they didn't spend too much time in discussing or conjecturing at this preliminary stage why one procedure would produce much more heat than another, just that it did. You can't seem to accept that variations in materials or procedure - like the temper of the nickel or how the tubes were cleaned - can markedly effect the excess heat results.

For instance, how does hydrino theory explain why the same test conditions with a 250 foot coil failed to produce half the excess heat of the 500 foot coil, or any excess heat at all?

It's a lot more complicated than hydrino theory per se. As much as Mills has a penchant for predicting things with theory, the fact is that very much is still lab bench trial and error. This one experiment alone demonstrates that changes in just one parameter can have marked, even unexpected effects. For instance, ignoring the error bars for a moment, raising H2 tube pressure in one environment can help the excess heat, while in another it hinders it. Raising the concentration of KCO3 in one environment will help, while in another will hinder.

Regarding the 500 foot coil, one might expect a doubling of the excess heat produced from the 250 foot coil. The experiment suggested (ignoring the error bars) that the 500 foot coil was more than twice as effective as the 250 foot coil. But theory would suggest it should actually be the opposite. Why? Because the shorter coil had about twice the inner and outer diameter of the longer coil. That means a tube circumference about four times larger. The result would be that the shorter coil would have close to double the surface area (inside and out) than the longer coil. One would think then that the shorter coil would be more effective. A major problem however is that all the short coil runs were water cooled and so had large error bars. Only the one run with the longer coil that was not water cooled had error bars that were relatively small and which were no doubt the reason it was featured in the conclusion.

 

[markie]

Why do you think we can not be sceptical about it all and yet be happy if proven wrong? I certainly would be.

Given you are only skeptical as opposed to biased, you are probably in the minority.

I would say that it is up to Mills to show beyond doubt that it is working. If Mills hype of hydrinos is true then why is that so hard to accomplice?

For sure it is up to Mills to show a device that is clearly working and producing useful amounts of excess energy. But for people like me who take over over two decades of experimental evidence at face value, a device doesn't have to be close to market in order to believe in a lower energy state of hydrogen.

And as a side note. It is a good thing for Mills that no one is taking hydrinos seriously. A competent competing research company would already have products on the market by now. If hydrinos exist that is.

I highly doubt that another company would have succeeded. They would have given up long ago, as did Thermacore. Mills is uniquely positioned as a driven theoretician, experimentalist and business owner.

 

[jsfisher]

Regarding the 500 foot coil, one might expect a doubling of the excess heat produced from the 250 foot coil. The experiment suggested (ignoring the error bars) that the 500 foot coil was more than twice as effective as the 250 foot coil. But theory would suggest it should actually be the opposite. Why? Because the shorter coil had about twice the inner and outer diameter of the longer coil. That means a tube circumference about four times larger. The result would be that the shorter coil would have close to double the surface area (inside and out) than the longer coil. One would think then that the shorter coil would be more effective. A major problem however is that all the short coil runs were water cooled and so had large error bars. Only the one run with the longer coil that was not water cooled had error bars that were relatively small and which were no doubt the reason it was featured in the conclusion.

You gonna stand by that?

 

[jsfisher]

Here's something curious.

Figure 4 in Anomalous Head from Atomic Hydrogen in Contact with Potassium Carbonate is identical to Figure 2 in Nascent Hydrogen: An Energy Source.

Didn't Markie tell us that those were completely different experiments and that the former was just a preliminary trial to the more comprehensive latter?