Merged Cold Fusion Claims

[excaza]

Wait, what is the existence of a patent supposed to prove? There's patents for all sorts of stuff that doesn't actually work.

 

[Horatius]

The problem is that patents can change between application and issue, depending on rulings by the patent examiner. So until we see the actual Italian patent, we can't be sure of what's in it.

While they can change, those changes (almost always) will reduce the scope of the patent, rather than add it. Most jurisdictions I'm familiar with have rules against adding "new matter" to a patent application after the original filing. Everything that could eventually be covered by the issued patent must have been disclosed in the original application.

The biggest changes usually occur in the scope of the claims. As the examiner finds relevant prior art that reads on the originally filed claims (or makes other, non-prior art related objections), the applicant amends the claims to add more details to distinguish the claims from the prior art, usually by reducing the scope of the claims, or adds details to clarify the intent of the claims. However, all such details added to the claims would have to be found in the originally filed description of the technology.

So even if the claims of the Italian patent are much narrower in scope than those of the applications we've seen, they still won't contain anything new, that we can't see in other parts of the application.

That's assuming the Italian patent issued on the basis of the International application we've seen. If he filed an entirely different application, all bets are off.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

The biggest changes usually occur in the scope of the claims. As the examiner finds relevant prior art that reads on the originally filed claims (or makes other, non-prior art related objections), the applicant amends the claims to add more details to distinguish the claims from the prior art, usually by reducing the scope of the claims, or adds details to clarify the intent of the claims. However, all such details added to the claims would have to be found in the originally filed description of the technology.

Horatius,

I was unclear, and apologise. Your statement coincided with my own understanding. The point I had intended to make was that you have to be careful about discussing any particular part of the application, and not assume it reflects the patent itself, since it may not appear in the issued patent. Fedora was correct when he wrote

Yes, it is a US patent app. Either way, it is his theory, so I figured it would be relevant to the discussion.

but the application is not the final version, and the issued patent is what interests me. That's all I meant.

 

[Aepervius]

One might even surmise that proponents of FE devices only have the one dollar to work with.

point taken

 

[Horatius]

Horatius,

I was unclear, and apologise. Your statement coincided with my own understanding. The point I had intended to make was that you have to be careful about discussing any particular part of the application, and not assume it reflects the patent itself, since it may not appear in the issued patent. Fedora was correct when he wrote


but the application is not the final version, and the issued patent is what interests me. That's all I meant.

Fair enough. I've dealt with a lot of people who don't understand all that, though, so it's worth repeating for others who will be reading.

I actually gave a talk at TAM 5 on this issue, making the point that a lot of the "free energy/PPM" patents that people claim have issued, actually aren't anything of the sort, when you look at what the issued claims actually say.

Jurisdictions like Canada and the US are pretty liberal about allowing people to say pretty much whatever they want to say in the description, but what gets into the issued claims is a bit more restrictive. Far too often, when you hear someone say, "They patented XYZ!", it ends up that they patented ABC instead.

A classic example was the outcry over the patent issued to the peanut butter sandwich. People acted as if they got a patent on just bread with peanut butter and jelly on it, but the actual claim was for a very specific type of sandwich.

 

[Aepervius]

And still the patent was finally rejected

The BPAI reversed the examiner's reasons for rejecting the claims, but found new reasons for rejecting them. They found that the wording in the narrowed claims was too vague to clearly identify exactly what Smucker's is trying to patent. Because Smucker's failed to respond to the BPAI's rejections within the two month deadline, the PTO mailed a Notice of Intent to Issue a Reexamination Certificate (NIIRC) in December 2006 cancelling all claims. The reexamination certificate was issued on Sept. 25, 2007.

 

[Cuddles]

This thread is so incredibly one sided

See, here's the thing - on matters of fact, one side is right and the other is wrong. If one side has no evidence to support their case, then it should not be at all surprising to find most sane people on the other side. For example, if someone came here and started a thread about their theory of a banana-shaped Earth. In all likelihood, there would be exactly one person on the pro-banana side, while everyone else would be on the other side. Yes, the debate would be extremely one-sided, but that would not be a bad thing because the other side is just plain wrong.

This thread is really no different. Almost everyone here falls on the side of cold fusion not being real, because there is still no evidence that cold fusion is actually real. In threads where there is actual evidence and reason on both sides, we often end up with similarly sized sides happily arguing for years. But that's just not the case here, so the argument is rightly one-sided, just as the arguments about bigfoot, UFOs, iron Suns, and all the rest are. There are always a few believers, just like yourself, who will pretend all the points made against their beliefs don't actually exist, but no-one is ever convinced by them because, contrary to popular belief, ignoring something won't make it stop existing.

 

[Horatius]

And still the patent was finally rejected

Well, yeah, but that was for a completely different reason!

Of course, it still highlights the point I made earlier. They had described and claimed their sandwich structure in one particular way, but the re-examination board decided that they had worded things too vaguely to be able to clearly define what was protected by the patent. They could have tried to amend the claims to be more specific, but they were restricted to only using that information which appeared in the original application.

Apparently, they decided they couldn't be more specific, based on that original filing, and so had to let it go. Being more specific would have introduced new matter, which would have been rejected. I've seen similar things happen in my own work.

 

[BenBurch]

I now have a patent from Cote D'Ivore on the letter "e." I trust I will not have to send any of you dunning letters?

 

[Christian Klippel]

I now have a patent from Cote D'Ivore on the letter "e." I trust I will not have to send any of you dunning letters?

Once i saw an actual granted patent that had a passage somewhere that read something like:

"This patent is garbage. This text shouldn't be here, etc, etc, etc" Of course it did not say exactly that, but did so in the usual, extremely convoluted language that patents use. Too bad that i lost the link to it long ago. I passed it along quite frequently, and everyone had a good laugh. Maybe i will find it again some day.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

I now have a patent from Cote D'Ivore on the letter "e." I trust I will not have to send any of you dunning letters?

And let's not forget the abortive effort some years ago by Haagen-Daz to copyright the umlaut.

 

[Horatius]

Once i saw an actual granted patent that had a passage somewhere that read something like:

"This patent is garbage. This text shouldn't be here, etc, etc, etc" Of course it did not say exactly that, but did so in the usual, extremely convoluted language that patents use. Too bad that i lost the link to it long ago. I passed it along quite frequently, and everyone had a good laugh. Maybe i will find it again some day.

Greetings,

Chris

I've heard about a patent application that had a claim like this, but it was caught by the examiner. I've never heard about it in an issued patent.

 

[McFate]

You don't care about the actual isotope distributions of nickel and copper?

To me that is the most important bit of evidence to date. It would be interesting to hear crawdaddy or one of the other proponents discuss this particular bit of data, resulting from "used" nickel powder being analyzed.

Background: All nickel found in nature is a mix of five stable isotopes: 68.077% Ni-58, 26.223% Ni-60, 3.634% Ni-62, 1.140% Ni-61, and 0.926% Ni-64. Anywhere you dig it up, those are the isotope ratios you'll find. Similarly, all copper found in nature is a mix of two stable isotopes: 69.17% Cu-63 and 30.83% Cu-65.

In a link provided by emet in post 7055408, page 11 of this thread (xxx.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece) it is noted that (emphasis added by me):

Kullander: Both measurements show that the pure nickel powder contains mainly nickel, and the used powder is different in that several elements are present, mainly 10 percent copper and 11 percent iron. The isotopic analysis through ICP-MS doesn’t show any deviation from the natural isotopic composition of nickel and copper.

The second sample that Kullander discusses, is supposedly from the nickel powder in an eCat that had run for more than 2 months. There, 10% of the nickel was supposedly transmuted to copper. However, the isotopic analysis showed that both the nickel and copper maintained exactly the natural abundance. This is really significant.

It means that if 10% of the Ni-58 had been transmuted, then also exactly 10% of the Ni-60, Ni-61, Ni-62, and Ni-64 had necessarily been transmuted as well. That's the only way that the isotope ratios of the leftover nickel would be the same as the original. This requires that whatever process is going on must impact those five different isotopes all with identical efficiency. And yet, that seems highly unlikely for nuclear reactions -- for example, the neutron-capture cross-sections of the five stable isotopes of Ni vary widely.

It also means that 69.17% of the resulting created copper must have been Cu-63 and the remainder Cu-65. Rossi's process is very much unlike the stellar nucleosynthesis which produced the Cu-63/Cu-65 ratios that we observe in nature today. It seems like an impossibly huge coincidence that the output Cu isotope ratios of his reactor would somehow exactly match the Cu isotope ratios found in nature.

It seems to me that we have two possibilities: (1) If one were going to fake up the "used" powder by mixing Cu and Ni, one would be stuck with the exact abundances that are observed. (2) If the samples are legit, it is an amazingly unlikely coincidence that we'd get the exact same abundance as in nature.

Bayesian analysis, anyone? I'd like to know the contortions that one must go through in order to end up at 25% likelihood of authenticity, from this data.

It would be great if Rossi were on the level. Abundant and cheap energy is the number one reason why we are not all serfs today, and a nearly limitless source of energy will change everything. But as much as I would like it to be true, there are just too many things that smell bad to me (fake journal, bogus list of advisors, history of fraud, etc.) which raise my skepticism level going in. And, IMO, the isotope ratios are a huge data point against authenticity, to anyone who understands what the measurements imply.

 

[Belz...]

Ah, but you can't PROVE that it's not true, can you ?


Very thorough post, McFate. Very interesting.

 

[ben m]

It means that if 10% of the Ni-58 had been transmuted, then also exactly 10% of the Ni-60, Ni-61, Ni-62, and Ni-64 had necessarily been transmuted as well. That's the only way that the isotope ratios of the leftover nickel would be the same as the original. This requires that whatever process is going on must impact those five different isotopes all with identical efficiency. And yet, that seems highly unlikely for nuclear reactions -- for example, the neutron-capture cross-sections of the five stable isotopes of Ni vary widely.

It also means that 69% of the resulting copper must have been Cu-63 and the remainder Cu-65. Rossi's process is very much unlike the stellar nucleosynthesis which resulted in the Cu-63/Cu-65 ratios that we observe in nature today. It seems like an impossibly huge coincidence that the output ratios of his reactor would somehow exactly match the isotopes found in nature.

Not even that. You see, neutron capture on 58Ni doesn't make Cu, it makes radioactive 59Ni. So "10% of the 58Ni disappeared" would mean that your brick of nickel is now 0.1x0.68 = 6.8% 59Ni, i.e. it's hideously radioactive. (0.7 millicuries per gram.)

The actual claim must be that 10% of the 58Ni disappeared AND 99.9999 ... (etc.) % of the 59Ni disappeared as well. Huh. Lucky coincidence there. Where did the 59Ni go? Capture another neutron to make 60Ni? No, because that would *increase* the amount of 60Ni---if Rossi reports an unchanged isotope composition, he means that the 60Ni also went down from 26% to 23.4%. Oh, wait, no, it went up from 26% to 33% (from 58->59->60) and THEN went down to 23.4%. Well, we can imagine that Nature chose the cross sections just right so that these are the numbers. So 9.6% of the total nickel went from 60 to 61. But 61 is only 1%, and needs to go down to 0.8%, so 61Ni must have exactly the right cross sections so that one process bumped it up from 1% to 9.6%, and another process bumped it down from 9.6 to 0.8. Keep on picking those cross sections---to eight or so digits of precision in the radioactive cases, I think---all the way up the chain, and that's what Rossi's "isotope composition stayed the same" claim actually means.

Nice coincidences, huh? Of course, if that's what the cross sections actually look like, then the nickel distribution DOES change over the course of the run. It must be an unlucky coincidence that Rossi's experiment ran for *exactly* the right, magic length of time to "hide" the isotope composition change. If they'd run longer they'd have seen depletion of 58Ni. If they'd run shorter they'd have seen an initial depletion of 61Ni. What bizarre luck, eh?

Let's not even get into the copper. The only way to make Cu from Ni is via neutron capture *and* beta decay. The only way to make 30% abundant 65Cu is by 64Ni(n,gamma)65Ni, and 65Ni beta decay---a really violently high-energy beta/gamma emitter. Too bad that 64Ni is only 0.9% of natural nickel; how do you make 0.1x0.3 = 0.03 grams 65Cu per gram of Ni, when the parent gram of nickel only starts with 0.009 grams of 64Ni to begin with? And when isotope analysis said that only 0.001 grams of the 64Ni had been used up?

(Because it's nonsense. They're making it up and they're not doing it very well. Herb Kroemer said this once about the Jan Henrik Schoen case: it's hard to lie about physics. Physics is very tightly constrained, and anything you make up is unlikely to be consistent with *itself*.)

 

[Aepervius]

Oh but there is processus which make the cross section of all the various isotope looks similarly and have the same probability of consumption

A chemical reaction. Like in a Ni-H battery. Ox-red.

But hey, I am sure rossi has a wonderful protocol to eliminate that possibility.

Not.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

Background: All nickel found in nature is a mix of five stable isotopes: 68.077% Ni-58, 26.223% Ni-60, 3.634% Ni-62, 1.140% Ni-61, and 0.926% Ni-64. Anywhere you dig it up, those are the isotope ratios you'll find. Similarly, all copper found in nature is a mix of two stable isotopes: 69.17% Cu-63 and 30.83% Cu-65.

The second sample that Kullander discusses, is supposedly from the nickel powder in an eCat that had run for more than 2 months. There, 10% of the nickel was supposedly transmuted to copper. However, the isotopic analysis showed that both the nickel and copper maintained exactly the natural abundance. This is really significant.

It means that if 10% of the Ni-58 had been transmuted, then also exactly 10% of the Ni-60, Ni-61, Ni-62, and Ni-64 had necessarily been transmuted as well. That's the only way that the isotope ratios of the leftover nickel would be the same as the original. This requires that whatever process is going on must impact those five different isotopes all with identical efficiency. And yet, that seems highly unlikely for nuclear reactions -- for example, the neutron-capture cross-sections of the five stable isotopes of Ni vary widely.

It also means that 69.17% of the resulting created copper must have been Cu-63 and the remainder Cu-65. Rossi's process is very much unlike the stellar nucleosynthesis which produced the Cu-63/Cu-65 ratios that we observe in nature today. It seems like an impossibly huge coincidence that the output Cu isotope ratios of his reactor would somehow exactly match the Cu isotope ratios found in nature.

Guys,

It should come as no surprise that I share your level of skepticism. But let's be fair. Don't take the claim of isotope levels too far. The statement in the interview doesn't specify measurement accuracy levels, and later in the interview he states, "If it’s possible to refine the isotopic measurements, further isotopic measurements would be important mainly to get a better accuracy in the field of 60 to 65 atomic mass units." Analyzing to 4 significant figures may not be appropriate. Although, then again, I don't know what the accuracy of a "simple, quick" isotopic analysis is. If it's 5 significant figures, of course, my caution can be dismissed.

Also, for what it's worth, Rossi claims that the nickel fuel gets its isotope mixture modified. From http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=473&cpage=6#comment-35773

"Dr Mr. Rossi,

Concerning the Nickel input in the experiment, do you deplete it of Ni58?"

'Dear Mr Daniel De Francia:
Yes"

He's a slippery one, he is.

 

[ben m]

"Dr Mr. Rossi,

Concerning the Nickel input in the experiment, do you deplete it of Ni58?"

'Dear Mr Daniel De Francia:
Yes"

(facepalm)

So we're supposed to believe that Rossi has a supply of, and data on, isotopically-weird nickel ... but also that his best evidence for nuclear reactions is still the tinfoil-and-thermometers dog and pony show? Right. Imagine the same thing in other scam fields:

"Concerning the blurry trail-camera photos you claim are evidence for Bigfoot, do you also have a live sasquatch in captivity in your garage?

Dear sir,
Yes."

"Your claimed psychic power---the ability to diagnose colon cancer with 55% accuracy---is hard to test. Have you ever been tested with Zener card identification?

Dear sir,
I get Zener cards correct at the 95% level.

"Your magneto-ionic crystal healing bracelet claims to cure headaches, fatigue, and misaligned chakras. Can it cure an amputated limb?

Dear sir,
Yes."

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

(facepalm)

So we're supposed to believe that Rossi has a supply of, and data on, isotopically-weird nickel ...

I told you he's slippery.

Did you know he's also run his reactors at 1600 deg C? Just ask him.

And, yes, the melting point of nickel is 1450. Must be the secret catalyst.

 

[Cuddles]

It should come as no surprise that I share your level of skepticism. But let's be fair. Don't take the claim of isotope levels too far. The statement in the interview doesn't specify measurement accuracy levels, and later in the interview he states, "If it’s possible to refine the isotopic measurements, further isotopic measurements would be important mainly to get a better accuracy in the field of 60 to 65 atomic mass units." Analyzing to 4 significant figures may not be appropriate.

But the problem with the isotopic analysis goes far beyond just low accuracy. The problem is essentially that there is not a one-to-one mapping between nickel and copper isotopes. Even if we assume some entirely new physics that would allow all the nickel isotopes to undergo neutron capture and beta decay to form copper, you should end up with a distribution of copper isotopes so utterly different from natural that no amount of low accuracy could hide it.

Most obviously, nickel has five stable isotopes, while copper only has two. Even if you can't measure the masses in your sample down to several significant figures, you should always be able to tell whether you have two or five different masses present.

This isn't just asking us to believe that some impossible nuclear reaction is occurring, it's asking to believe that multiple different impossible nuclear reactions are actively varying their effects based on what the expected outcome should be in order to match the isotopic ratios produced by an entirely unrelated source. That's not low accuracy, it's sheer, unadulterated fantasy.