Merged Cold Fusion Claims

[leonAzul]

Sorry, accidental double post.

 

[Aepervius]

No. I meant "rebutted" as in proven wrong. You disagree?

You do not need to prove a paper wrong to rebutt it,. You just need to show that a potential source of error or noise was not taken into account and discarded by control by the original paper.

We are discussing the biggest scientific controversy in modern time, still raging.

Not really. It would be the greatest discovery if it was producing usable energy. At the moment all it produces is paper and forums posts.

The common knowledge is that cold fusion got thoroughly "debunked" as early as 2 months after the announcement. That's the historical context.

Who cares about common knowledge. *evidenced and verified specifics* are important. I don't care what crawdaddy , you, or my neighbor think about cold fusion, beside it being in a outter limit episode.

Yes, and we are still waiting for the same to happen with LENR/cold fusion, don't we?

Not holding my breath seeing the progress in the last 1/4 of century.

 

[Aepervius]

b) The Ephraim Fischbach beta/sunspot correlation

Now that is a good one I would have liked to have details on. That would be shall i say amusing :

Y
There is nothing more amusing than a nuclear physicist blathering about what is "categorically impossible". Until a few years ago, you people didn't even notice that certain beta emitters are influenced by sunspot activity.

 

[Belz...]

I asked what is wrong with it, in singularis. And yes, different experiments focus on different measurements, depending on expertise, funding etc. However, they all show indications of LENR.

So, not "wrong paper" ?

 

[ben m]

Now that is a good one I would have liked to have details on. That would be shall i say amusing :

Well, Fischbach and collaborators claim to see nuclear decay rates that vary by 10^-3 on monthlong-ish cycles. They seem to be claiming that this sort of variation is *commonplace*, as they report discoveries in 22Na, 36Cl, 137Cs, 226Ra, you name it. They are the only group reporting any non-null results along these lines. Informally, I'd report that their early papers were *terrible* and did not give me confidence that this was a group with good systematic-error-analysis skills. (I have not kept up with their ongoing output in any great detail. Not enough hours in the day.)

Meanwhile, at least three or four independent groups with their own datasets report that they looked for these variations and (in published papers) say they can't see any such thing. A non-Fischbach measurement (i.e. an independent confirmation) would change things, but in the meantime it smells like an uncorrected systematic error in Fischbach's data. ETA: Which is not a stretch of the imagination, given what we know about how hard it is to stabilize a detector's efficiency below the 1% level.

 

[catsmate]

Now that is a good one I would have liked to have details on. That would be shall i say amusing :

Try here and here. It gets dragged up every couple of years.
The thing is, if it was correct this should be easily replicable, and yet this hasn't happened.
FYI Fischbach was involved in the "fifth force" fiasco.

Well, Fischbach and collaborators claim to see nuclear decay rates that vary by 10^-3 on monthlong-ish cycles. They seem to be claiming that this sort of variation is *commonplace*, as they report discoveries in 22Na, 36Cl, 137Cs, 226Ra, you name it. They are the only group reporting any non-null results along these lines. Informally, I'd report that their early papers were *terrible* and did not give me confidence that this was a group with good systematic-error-analysis skills. (I have not kept up with their ongoing output in any great detail. Not enough hours in the day.)

Meanwhile, at least three or four independent groups with their own datasets report that they looked for these variations and (in published papers) say they can't see any such thing. A non-Fischbach measurement (i.e. an independent confirmation) would change things, but in the meantime it smells like an uncorrected systematic error in Fischbach's data. ETA: Which is not a stretch of the imagination, given what we know about how hard it is to stabilize a detector's efficiency below the 1% level.

Exactly.

 

[dlorde]

Y.. It would be the greatest discovery if it was producing usable energy. At the moment all it produces is paper and forums posts.

But it is incredibly efficient at doing this - producing a vast amount of paper, forum posts, and hot air with virtually no input at all.

The civil service and local authorities, not to mention the European Commission, must be jealous...

 

[HighRiser]

And as soon as P&F's claims were known everyone attempted to replicate their alleged fusion. There were literally hundreds of groups working on this (I was an undergrad and involved with one) all over the planet. The only result was a few accidents and a couple of people killed.

Wow! Overpressure of test equipment?

 

[bruto]

But it is incredibly efficient at doing this - producing a vast amount of paper, forum posts, and hot air with virtually no input at all.

The civil service and local authorities, not to mention the European Commission, must be jealous...

But not enough to brew a cup of tea.

 

[Craig B]

Wow! Overpressure of test equipment?

That, or accidental ignition of high pressure hydrogen being stuffed into palladium rods. What did NOT cause any explosions, though it has been hinted at by CF enthusiasts, was runaway nuclear reactions.

 

[tsig]

Indeed. As opposed to evidence.


Evasion.


Where are all those peer-reviewed paper you promised?



More evasion. And demonstration of continuing lack of understanding of science.


Your unwillingness to accept reality? Indeed.


That's nice dear. Now where's the evidence? Surely after all these decades you should have something to show.


And you're evading the question.


Deliberately I suspect.

Indeed. Nor does he seem to have read the "papers" he cites.

I'm sure he read the papers they said J<>B.

 

[HighRiser]

That, or accidental ignition of high pressure hydrogen being stuffed into palladium rods. What did NOT cause any explosions, though it has been hinted at by CF enthusiasts, was runaway nuclear reactions.

I don't have enough education to critique LENR claims, but I don't doubt that for a moment.

 

[catsmate]

Wow! Overpressure of test equipment?

Some people forgot that deuterium is still chemically hydrogen, with the same propensity for exploding when mixed with oxygen.....
Also palladium makes good, if expensive, shrapnel.

In fact there have been five known detonations in "cold fusion" experiments (Standford, Hokkaido, Marseille, Tokyo and Moscow) leaving one (Andrew Riley) dead and six needing hospital treatment. Three are known to be hydrogen explosions, one a steam explosion and the last is cause unknown (but probably leaking hydrogen detonating). Like everyting else to do with cold fusion there's no sign of actual nuclear energy.

I don't have enough education to critique LENR claims, but I don't doubt that for a moment.

Yep. If they were true the claimed mechanisms of cold fusion would have shown effects elsewhere long before now.

 

[Klimax]

Some people forgot that deuterium is still chemically hydrogen, with the same propensity for exploding when mixed with oxygen.....
Also palladium makes good, if expensive, shrapnel.

In fact there have been five known detonations in "cold fusion" experiments (Standford, Hokkaido, Marseille, Tokyo and Moscow) leaving one (Andrew Riley) dead and six needing hospital treatment. Three are known to be hydrogen explosions, one a steam explosion and the last is cause unknown (but probably leaking hydrogen detonating). Like everyting else to do with cold fusion there's no sign of actual nuclear energy.


Yep. If they were true the claimed mechanisms of cold fusion would have shown effects elsewhere long before now.

I think it would be self-evident there...

 

[McHell]

Has anyone seen this recent TED talk on nuclear fusion, and if so what are your thoughts? Is there anything promising here, or not?

Michel Laberge: How synchronized hammer strikes could generate nuclear fusion

 

[ben m]

Has anyone seen this recent TED talk on nuclear fusion, and if so what are your thoughts? Is there anything promising here, or not?

Michel Laberge: How synchronized hammer strikes could generate nuclear fusion

(Not gonna watch the video, but read a bit of their written materials.) I'll believe it when I see it work. At first glance it seems like their hot plasma is going to escape through Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities long, long before it reaches fusion-friendly pressures.

 

[dlorde]

(Not gonna watch the video, but read a bit of their written materials.) I'll believe it when I see it work. At first glance it seems like their hot plasma is going to escape through Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities long, long before it reaches fusion-friendly pressures.

He claims they got some neutrons out of their proof-of-concept prototype...

 

[acementhead]

It seems that Rossi has made a great leap forward in his ecat development. It appears that he no longer needs hydrogen.

First he had the Ecat, which required hydrogen that was supplied from a cylinder of compressed natural hydrogen. The Ecat allegedly put out circa 10 KW of low grade thermal energy.

Next came the Big Cat which was about one hundred of the standard Ecats hooked together. For some unknown reason the Big Cat's output was only half a MW rather than the expected one MW.

Next was the Hotcat in which instead of the thermal energy being carried away by water cooling it escaped by only radiation plus unforced convection.

The next iteration was the NoCat that no longer required Rossi's secret sauce (™ Rossi), which was a catalyst that made the nuclear reaction work in the previous versions.

The latest and greatest is the Lithium Cat which now doesn't require hydrogen or secret sauce but does use lithium as well as natural nickel(previous versions used nickel vastly enriched in 61Ni).

An indipendent(Ⓒ Rossi) report available at

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline#

I haven't read the report as I prefer fairy tales written by people of greater literary ability than the half witted Swedes who wrote it. Maybe Rossi should have commissioned Germans instead.

 

[Craig B]

It seems that Rossi has made a great leap forward in his ecat development. It appears that he no longer needs hydrogen.
...

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline#

I haven't read the report as I prefer fairy tales written by people of greater literary ability than the half witted Swedes who wrote it. Maybe Rossi should have commissioned Germans instead.

Here's a Rossi fanboy site with an article on the "report". http://nickelpower.org/2014/10/08/3rd-party-report-prerelease/#comment-72110

 

[Horatius]

Hey, I was thinking about bumping this one as well today. I had reasons to look up Blacklight Power earlier, and noticed something cute:

Using readily-available components, BlackLight has developed a system engineering design of an electric generator that is closed except for the addition of H2O fuel and generates 10 MW of electricity, enough to power ten thousand homes.

Optical power is converted directly into electricity using mass-produced commercial photovoltaic cells (solar cells).

Simply replacing the consumed H2O regenerates the fuel.

Remarkably, the cell of the concept device is less than a cubic foot in volume.

Applications and markets for the SunCell™ extend across the global power spectrum, including thermal, stationary electrical power, motive, and defense.

SunCell™ power is independent from existing infrastructure:

grid and fuels in the case of electricity, and
fuels in the case of motive power

10 MW from a power cell that's one cubic foot? Hey, Rossi, this guy is horning in on your schtick!