Thanks for the ping here Kevmo!
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 01/23/2010 12:28:49 PM PST by Kevmo
Freeper gets a fascinating contract listed on Intrade, bets that the experiment will be replicated, and cashes in.
In 2008, Dr. Yoshiaki Arata performed a fascinating experiment with Deuterium Gas loaded onto a Palladium matrix, and without any input power, showed that there was some excess heat. Generating excess heat in cold fusion cell wasn't a new development -- scientists had been replicating the Pons-Fleischman effect for 2 decades. What was a new development was how easily replicable this particular experiment was. It seemed to me that this would be the easiest way to replicate anomalous heat production, removing the tired old standby excuse that the energy input from electrolysis was causing this excess heat, because there was NO energy input in this experiment. So I proposed to Intrade that they open up a contract that this experiment would be replicated in a peer reviewed, scientific Journal.
I also posted a discussion thread on the Intrade forum
http://bb.intrade.com/intradeForum/posts/list/2239.page
"This week, Dr. Yoshiaki Arata demonstrated Cold Fusion in a reproducible environment. I sent in a suggestion to intrade that a contract be opened up that it would be replicated in a peer-reviewed journal by January 1, 2009. I haven't heard yet if there's any interest."
AZoNano.com Energy Breakthrough as Japanese Physicist Sucessfully and ...
http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=6472
To my surprise, Intrade opened up this contract in 2008, where it basically stagnated. Since I was not involved in the peer review process, my assessment was that the experiment would only take several weeks to make it through the grueling process, rather than several months. It was actually someone at Free Republic who set me straight on that:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2022063/posts?page=164#164
The contract closed at the end of 2008 at zero, meaning that anyone who bet that the experiment would be replicated and published had lost their bet.
I found the contract fascinating and asked Intrade to open a new contract in 2009, which they did. A few months into 2009, there started to be some replication experiments published by scientists, but the whole process was outshined by Dr. Pamela Mossier-Boss publishing her exciting results where she showed that there were Neutrons being generated in the cold fusion cell at the Navy Space Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR).
'Cold Fusion' Rebirth? New Evidence For Existence Of Controversial Energy Source
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090323110450.htm
ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2009) — [Researchers are reporting compelling new scientific evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the process once called "cold fusion" that may promise a new source of energy. One group of scientists, for instance, describes what it terms the first clear visual evidence that LENR devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists view as tell-tale signs that nuclear reactions are occurring. The report, which injects new life into this controversial field, will be presented March 23 in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the American Chemical Society's 237th National Meeting. "Our finding is very significant," says study co-author and analytical chemist Pamela Mosier-Boss, Ph.D., of the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego, Calif. "To our knowledge, this is the first scientific report of the production of highly energetic neutrons from an LENR device."]
And then the CBS TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes chimed in with their report on cold fusion on April 19, 2009, pushing the Arata replication results further into the background. The video and an article describing it are here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/17/60minutes/main4952167.shtml
I started posting references to replication of Arata's experiment in the Intrade Forum, saying such things as, "Oh, and the experiment was a replication of Arata's demonstration last May. So it was in quantitative fact proof that Arata's demonstration worked as stated. " From the PhysOrg article and discussion:
'Cold fusion' rebirth? New evidence for existence of controversial energy source
http://www.physorg.com/news157046734.html
I transferred as much money as I was willing to lose over to Intrade. This was harder that I thought it would be, because Intrade does not accept credit cards. I bought up as many contracts as I could, and posted that I would pay $5-$6 for a contract that would pay out at $100. In reality, it's paying 50-60Cents per contract, and the payout is $10, for some bizarre reasoning that Intrade uses 1/10th of the actual monetary figures. To my surprise, there were still folks at Intrade posting that I was "Mental" , or as BobbyE wrote: "I have trouble getting reality shows listed early but this crap of a contract gets listed? What was the total volume? Unreal." My response was: "Feel free to make money from my foolishness. Those 500 contract bids at $5.50 are mine. Put your money where your mouth is."
This was where I learned that there's a huge difference between what people say and what they actually do at Intrade. For all the huffing and puffing about this contract being a waste of time or effort or stupid, they still wouldn't take my money. I was forced to raise my price 5X to 7X what I originally asked before I could purchase contracts. That's when I wrote this article here on Free Republic:
The End of Snide Remarks Against Cold Fusion
Friday, June 05, 2009 5:56:08 PM · by Kevmo · 95 replies · 2,126+ views
Free Republic, Gravitronics.net and Intrade ^ | 6/5/09 | kevmo, et al
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2265914/posts
I ventured as much money on the contract as I was willing, with the expectation that the price would shoot up at any moment. I was surprised it didn't. I posted several articles showing that the experiment had been replicated and that the results were showing up in peer reviewed journals. But the price did not go up. There was one physicist at Intrade who argued against my claim, saying that the American Chemical Society wasn't a peer reviewed platform. The experiment had been published in a "symposium", and then in a peer reviewed book, which isn't a journal! I had to find other references to the replication experiments being published in at least one peer-reviewed journal and that the press had made mention of it. I found a bunch of articles and posted them, and even the hot-particle physicist know-it-all acknowledged that the experiment had been replicated in a peer reviewed journal.
After the closeout date of the contract, Carl Wolfenden at Intrade had to pick his way through all the articles and support information that I generated and he decided that the terms of the contract had been met and it was paid out at 100. It couldn't have been easy for Mr. Wolfenden, because Intrade had at one time a physicist on staff but he had gone on to greener pastures. That's probably why Intrade hasn't yet posted the follow-on contract that I requested -- that Dr. Pamela Mellier-Boss's CR-39 Triple Tracks Neutron detection experiment would be replicated in a peer-reviewed PUBLICATION.
So now I tell my friends that I'm the first layman to make money on Cold Fusion. Now I have even more trouble finding people who will take my bet. I feel that Intrade has made history, in a way. There's a parallel in scientific publication history, when Scientific American refused to publish articles that the Wright Brothers were flying, because it was supposedly impossible -- the greatest luminaries in science at the time had tried and failed ignominiously, like Dr. Langley at the Smithsonian. No one remembers who the genius was that turned down the article in Scientific American, but A.I.Root has his own unique place in history. So the lesson is that one puts forth his sincere witness of the technology in progress and lets the chips fall where they may.
Gleanings in Bee Culture, January 1, 1905
http://www.exhibits.mannlib.cornell.edu/beekeeping/atlantic/page4.html
This issue of the Medina, Ohio based beekeeping magazine has the distinction of publishing the first eyewitness account of the Wright Brothers' historic manned flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A. I. Root, the publisher of Gleanings in Bee Culture and a longtime friend of the flight pioneers, was permitted to write this first account and sent it off to "Scientific American." After nearly a year of silence on the part of the magazine, Root wrote its editor, who responded that it was difficult to believe that the event had actually occurred and that even if it had, the airplane would never have any practical application. When Root showed this response to the Wright Brothers, they suggested that he go ahead and publish it in his beekeeping magazine.
Cold Fusion ping!
Thanks Kevmo. Glad that worked out for you.
barely related sidebar:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2435201/posts
If I remember right, burning a wax candle was more efficient than this process.
Burning a wax candle is more efficient than what process?
A typical cold fusion experiment using Seebeck calorimeter
costs roughly $50,000 including all equipment, and they are run by volunteers and retired professors. Some have produced 50 to 300 megajoules in one run. They have achieved the two goals hot fusion has failed to reach for 60 years: breakeven and full ignition.
The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) at the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy cost “about a billion dollars” to construct and $70 million a year to operate. It produced 6 megajoules in one experiment, the world record run for hot fusion.
I like cold fusion but why not get a simple reproducible demo out there that can be done in a high school science project? How about this? I am very aware of Arata’s demonstration. Can you duplicate that in your garage on a cruder basis minus the $50,000 test equipment
What’s your lowest estimate for you doing a cold fusion demo in your garage?
I checked into overcoming the startup barrier, and it is at least $300k or more. I’ll take a check.
>>>self ping
Keep doing that and you’ll go blind.
huge equipment costs.....barrier to entry
$300k is a lot less than $3B — and they’ve achieved ignition already. Can’t say that about a tokomak reactor.
Thanks for the ping here Kevmo!
Your link is to an excerpt of 17 pages. Do you have a link to the full text?
It was available when I linked to it. I gather that, since that time it has become an excerpt.
EXCESS HEAT
Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed
Free Download:
http://iccf9.global.tsinghua.edu.cn/lenr%20home%20page/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf
Kevmo, WTH? Is this the first time you linked this book? I don’t have much free time but it looks like an interesting read. It also has figures of experimental cells among a lot of other things.
I like figures.
The only problem I have is that I prefer a real book in my hands and not a screen but beggars can’t be choosers. I don’t think work would appreciate me printing out four hundred pages for something not for work.
Kevmo, WTH? Is this the first time you linked this book?
***No, WW and I have both been promoting that book as the best place to start in examining the science behind cold fusion claims. I remember seeing it as a full download but lost the reference and recently recovered it. It’s a good read.
The only problem I have is that I prefer a real book in my hands and not a screen but beggars can’t be choosers. I don’t think work would appreciate me printing out four hundred pages for something not for work.
***Then buy it.
I have been aware of the free download for a while, but figured that Beaudette deserves the few cents he is likely to garner from sales. Even interlibrary loan...(virtually free to you)...gives him at least a few cents.
Only problem with Beaudette is that the book only covers up to (IIRC, 2006), and MUCH new science has been added since. But it "is" THE best source for coverage of the science (and science politics) of the early LENR period.
Also....if you do NOTHING else.....watch the last half of the last days video from the MIT Cold Fusion Short Course (the segment with Mitchell Schwartz discussing his NANOR CF cell). INCREDIBLE. Current cells are putting out 80 watts with 1 watt input, from ~100 MILLIGRAMS of nickel (and a truly insignificant amount of pre-loaded hydrogen).
Schwartz has also shown that Nickel works with deuterium (it has been the previous notion that Palladium worked with D2 and nickel with H2).
There is also a short video segment of a small Stirling engine being driven by one of his LENR cells.
I have been aware of the free download for a while, but figured that Beaudette deserves the few cents he is likely to garner from sales.
***He got his royalty from me. What I find useful is the ability to start quoting sections of his book without having to type it in myself. Also, it removes one more excuse that comes from the PTSIFOM crowd.
Good point. I hadn't thought about doing that.
Thank you for the update on “cold fusion”.
As an MIT alum I was dismayed when Eugene Mallove revealed that MIT did replicate the Pons and Fleischmann experiment, but then denied doing so, likely to protect the many millions of dollars they were receiving annually from the U.S. taxpayer, for hot fusion research.
https://jamesfetzer.org/2011/12/the-history-of-mits-blatant-suppression-of-cold-fusion/
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