Merged Cold Fusion Claims

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Please have a look at this fascinating "I'm not a scammer" free energy claim.

http://www.freelectricity.com/NotAScam.html

It can't be a scam. He's only charging 1.6 million people $7.50 to sign up for "free", and

Whatever the person has to do to get signed up is their total risk! So they spend $7.50 S&H to sign up. What does such a person have to gain? The possibility of all the energy they could use to heat, cool and electrify their home for the rest of their life! What do they have to lose? The cost of a meal!
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Where have I seen that argument before?

This Dennis Lee could each Rossi a thing or two!

Except how to stay out of the calaboose. They've both been locked up by the ungrateful authorities at one time or another.
 
Nice link uncle2pk.

Now we are up to 8 professors and one MIT PhD that decided, after decades of honest scientific work, to throw it all away and become con artists overnight.

What a bunch of scammers!
 
I guess the Brian Ahren link is a bit different. He didn't just observe and test, he replicated. I agree this initial release isn't very scientific. Brian is an experienced scientist, published many times and with several patents, and so I'm hoping he follows through with a good scientific paper on this.
 
Aepervius

Where did i see that argument before ? Oh yes in the steorn thread
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Really? Every scientist that ever witnessed a steorn demonstration has been convinced enough to lay their career on the line to endorse the claim of excess energy?

Oh that's right steorn has failed to convince almost every observer they have ever demonstrated their device to.

Excellent example of rational skepticism there. Very solid, well reasoned argument against the e-cat you just presented, you should be very proud. Do you drive by looking in the rear view mirror as well?
 
Crawdaddy said:
Aepervius

.

Really? Every scientist that ever witnessed a steorn demonstration has been convinced enough to lay their career on the line to endorse the claim of excess energy?

Oh that's right steorn has failed to convince almost every observer they have ever demonstrated their device to.

Excellent example of rational skepticism there. Very solid, well reasoned argument against the e-cat you just presented, you should be very proud. Do you drive by looking in the rear view mirror as well?
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They convinced *3* engineer enough for them to blog.

That is essentially the same argument pushed.

Rationally one should always reject the argument ad populum or argument by authority and concetrate on fact on the eCAt. Good luck on that one because the 8 professor+1 PhD is not an argument on eCAt.

As for the well reasonned argunment they were already presented 230 times over this thread. And ignored all the like by your kind.
 
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Indeed. And you know what Ahern's email never mentions? Testing what's left in the reaction chamber afterward. That's another pretty basic step missing from these "tests".
 
phunk said:
Indeed. And you know what Ahern's email never mentions? Testing what's left in the reaction chamber afterward. That's another pretty basic step missing from these "tests".
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Indeed, it's typical of these cold fusion "experiments". You see something that (you think) mainstream physics doen't understand. But rather than trying to understand it you dismantle it to tinker. Analyzing the sample would tell you something about what happened, but cold fusionists never seem to care about that.

The "... but I'm an engineer, not a physicist, Jim" excuse is nonsense. From that perspective, if Ahern's system *actually* generates the 8 watts that he claims it does, then it's ready to commercialize right now. Green energy is worth something like $1 per watt-year. His email claims to get a watt, continuously, out of $0.2 worth of nickel. That's plenty of power density. If you really think of yourself as a practical I-want-to-save-the-world-not-win-Nobel-prizes engineer, make a kilogram of the magic powder and start boiling some water. Right now. Go go go! Stop tinkering!

If you want to study rather than tinkering ... well, there's been lots of advice on that already. But I've never seen a cold-fusion-advocate who was capable of studying their own effect carefully. It's always "I ran the experiment until my confirmation bias told me I was done. At the end of the experiment I eyeballed the temperature off of a thermometer I bought at CVS, and I wrote it down somewhere but the dog ate my notes. Then I baked out the substrate and tried again!"

For what it's worth, I see no evidence that Ahern is a scammer. From his email, he sounds a lot like the usual sincere perpetual-motion crank: not very good at instrumentation, experimental design, or data analysis; enjoys tinkering; easily confused by small experimental errors that trigger confirmation bias.
 
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Yes, if I had a simple device that made 8 watts for an indefinite period of time with only some H2 added occasionally, I could have a power plant running in 30-60 days from approval.

I wouldn't even boil water.

I would set up a Stirling Cycle engine and an heat exchanger.

I would buy the Stirling engine and the generator and phase sync equipment off the shelf, and the design work would be mostly the plumbing for the heat exchanger. The alternative would be a Brayton cycle turbine. Super-critical CO2 would be my first choice for a heat exchange medium, but treated water would work at least in the Stirling case.

All this is really elementary power engineering, the only significant factor involving the novel heat source is the low energy density, which drives the decision to not attempt to use a steam engine.
 
Clearly Brian isn't finished with this. He has spent quite a bit of time and money. Not sure if his intent is pure science or a competing product. Time will tell. I am sure we haven't heard the last of this.
 
Dancing David said:
http//blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/06/14/solving-the-mystery-of-the-energy-catalzyer/

Just words no data in upcoming interviews.
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At least it looks like he might be honest:

http//newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35903tangledtale.shtml

This account documents how numerous scientific data points and values were gradually changed, added and deleted during a 10-year period by electrochemist Michael McKubre at SRI International – all without scientific explanation, most without notification.
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Again, sorry about the link.
 
Aam

Yet again the name of Michael McKubre, of Menlo Park CA crops up. It was mentioned with approval by Attaboy.

The main thing about McKubre is that he's a martyr to truth, just like Galileo, in his own estimation. We learn this from

Radio interview with researcher Michael McKubre and author Charles G. Beaudette*November 27, 2002 on station KUER, University of Utah.
http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/KUERinterview.htm

Charles Beaudette: I get the impression that (the physicists') position is that mankind does not know how to measure heat. ( ... ) The outspoken physicists who have continually berated this field will not go into the laboratory. It is very reminiscent of Galileo's problem in 1610 when his associates at Padua would not bend over to look through his telescope to see what he was seeing. It's very similar to that in my mind.
Doug Fubbrezio: Dr. McKubre, talk about that. It must be frustrating, I suppose?
Michael McKubre: Yes, it is very frustrating.
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So McKubre accepts being "similar" to Galileo; but Galileo certainly wasn't "frustrated" in 1610:

http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/galileo/section5.rhtml

(I)n June of 1610, he gained appointment as "First Mathematician of the University of Pisa, and First Mathematician and Philosopher to the Grand Duke," ( ... ) Siderius Nuncius (his printed account of his telescopic discoveries) had gained fame as the wonder of Europe, as philosophers and scientists marveled at the new vistas opened by Galileo's telescope, and kings and princes clamored to have the Italian astronomer name his ever-increasing discoveries after them. And the discoveries kept coming.
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Alas, McKubre's discoveries don't keep coming.

Other martyrdoms appear in McKubre's reminiscences. One of them is very real - it killed a co-worker.

Dr. Michael McKubre Director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International, (New Energy Times August 8, 2003)

... We were able to pursue this [cold fusion] field, we were well-positioned. We had achieved a positive result in a controversial environment.*The time of decision for me came with the explosion that killed Andy Riley. So we had at that point a perfect opportunity to say "its too dangerous, its too risky." We had perfect time to bail out and say, "This is not for us."
-When did this occur?
January 2, 1992. It was a shock to us all and a terrible tragedy.
- And that was the result of a cold fusion experiment?
Right. At the time, we were struggling with critics, we were struggling with the experiments.*But we had a moral duty to continue ...
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A naive reader might suppose that the explosion was somehow evidence that fusion had taken place.

But see, Sharon Weinberger,The Washington Post (2004-11-21): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54964-2004Nov16_2.html

For years the experiments took place behind bulletproof glass, the result of a 1992 accident that killed one of his colleagues. McKubre still has bits of glass embedded in his side from the cold fusion experiment that exploded that day in his lab (the blast had nothing to do with fusion; hydrogen mixed with oxygen, creating the equivalent of rocket fuel).
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Sharon Weinberger sounds like what the cryofusionists call a "pathological sceptic" to me.

I suppose people who work with hydrogen (for whatever purpose) are at risk from chemical explosions. I can find no evidence that McKubre has ever achieved cold fusion, explosion or not.
 
Yevgen,

This sounds to me like a slow reaction of H2 with metal oxides. They stated
that Zr is turning into ZrO2 during baking. Then they are filling the tube
with hydrogen and heating it to temperatures where H2 + ZrO2 --> H2O + Zr
reaction would become significant:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...69433295000321
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1) The reduction of zirconium oxide in hydrogen is an endothermic reaction.

2) It has never been observed at the temperatures in the ahern experiment.

3) the paper you cited only shows a partial reduction of the oxide to ZrO1.x and then only after the extremely thin film (2.6nm) has been bombarded with ions from a hydrogen plasma (typically these ions can have energies in the keV range).

4) I delayed pointing out these obvious problems with your argument to see if any other contributors might take five minutes to actually correct your errors. However it appears that well reasoned arguments are only required on one side of this discussion.
 
unclep2k said:
I guess the Brian Ahren link is a bit different. He didn't just observe and test, he replicated. I agree this initial release isn't very scientific. Brian is an experienced scientist, published many times and with several patents, and so I'm hoping he follows through with a good scientific paper on this.
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But he did not replicate the heat out put that Rossi claims.
 
Craig B said:
So McKubre accepts being "similar" to Galileo; but Galileo certainly wasn't "frustrated" in 1610:
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Okay. That earns him 40 points on the crackpot index.

Your post has me hearing an old Sam Cooke song in my head:

Don’t know much about history
Don’t know why-it’s a mystery
Don’t know much about how science works
Or why folks think I’m a big dumb jerk

But I do know I’m a pioneer
Invest right now and I will buy the beer
What a wonderful world this can be

Now I don’t claim to know any physics
I’m not trying to learn
But maybe by faking some physics, well baby
I can have some cash that I’ll earn
 
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