Posted on 07/30/2011 1:44:23 PM PDT by Liberty1970
Brian Josephson, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, asked a question on Andrea Rossi’s blog about the quality of the 1MW demonstration in October. He has been a defender of true research in the LENR field, frequently challenging debunkers to back up their objections with logic instead of repeating the same one-sided attacks so often a signature of pseudosceptics. In answer, Rossi invited him to the test. I am assuming that the question did come from Josephson but there is no doubt that the invite is real:
Brian Josephson July 30th, 2011 at 4:17 AM
October demo Andrea,
You’ve said the 1MW E-cat due in October will be the real test, but in what way will it be more convincing than the ones done so far? Will it be done in such a way that people are sure about the amount of water/steam coming out of the reactor, and how dry the steam is (which affects the heat content)?
Andrea Rossi July 30th, 2011 at 6:11 AM
Dear Prof. Brian Josephson (Nobel Prize), First of all, thank you for your very important attention. Please read very carefully what I am writing to you: 1-The 1 MW plant that we will start up in October will be tested, on behalf of our Customer, by very, very high level world class scientists. You are in the list, so please, if you want and you can, take free the last week of October. 2- The test will be witnessed by several very, very high level world class scientific journalists 3- The E-Cats we are working with now in our factories, which will be the modules of the 1 MW plant, are producing perfectly dry steam, mostly without energy input, as you will see yourself if you will honour us with your presence. Very Warm Regards, Andrea Rossi
Done properly (and it will have to be), this public launch should provide enough proof for potential customers. At that point, and not before (no matter who calls for it) we will have some certainty about what happens next. If the launch is also attended by senior science correspondents, this is also the time we should see the story break – one way or another, depending on results. As so many people have said before, proving such a beast will not be hard and the time for preparation should help arm those like Brian Josephson (assuming he accepts) to be ready to give us a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
more like just picking your nose
Maybe you could find some scam evidence up there, too.
Anyone with an ounce of scientific education at all understands that his little box is nothing but a sham,
***So I gather this Dr. Srinivasan is all part of the scam as well?
Dr. Mahadeva Srinivasan was formerly Associate Director, Physics Group, Bhaba Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai.
“Cold Fusion”. Poised to Become an Industrial Reality!
Recent announcements of breakthroughs in the arena of cold fusion have caught the physics community worldwide by surprise. Should cold fusion research in India, dumped in the 90s following worldwide skepticism, be revived?
“COLD Fusion” is the popular term used to describe the occurrence of nuclear reactions in a metallic lattice such as Palladium, Nickel, Titanium etc when they are heavily infused with deuterium or hydrogen. The phenomenon was first revealed 22 years ago by chemistry professors Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah at a press conference held in Salt Lake City on 23 March 1989.
They claimed that during a simple test tube electrolysis experiment wherein a few centimetres long thin palladium rod was used as cathode and a platinum wire coil surrounding it as anode and which were immersed in an electrolytic solution composed of lithium deuteroxide (LiOD), nuclear “fusion” reactions took place within the rod, generating anomalous “excess heat”.
They postulated that during electrolysis deuterons impregnate the palladium rod forming Palladium deuteride (PdD) and in course of time “when the right conditions are attained”, nuclear reactions involving deuterons occur in/on the Pd rod. Temperature sensors (such as thermocouples, thermisters etc) located inside the test tube detected the onset of production of large amounts of anomalous heat, which they proposed could only be attributed to the occurrence of nuclear reactions.
Opposition to Cold Fusion
Suffice it to say that this simple announcement ignited one of the fiercest debates in the history of Physics! When most at tempts to replicate the experiment failed and majority of researchers could not find any evidence for nuclear reactions taking place, the two professors were vehemently criticized, abused, insulted and ridiculed for daring to suggest that fusion react ions occur at room temperatures inside a solid matrix!
The primary reason for the concerted criticism and non-acceptance of the claim was that according to the prevalent understanding of nuclear physics it is absolutely impossible for two deuterons, which are positively charged, to overcome the repulsive electrostatic repulsion between them before any nuclear react ion can occur. Fusion reactions are known to occur for example in the sun and the stars (and indeed also in a hydrogen bomb) when hydrogenous isotopes are raised to a temperature of over 100 million degrees, becoming an intensely hot plasma. Hence, the term “thermo-nuclear fusion” was coined to describe such reactions. So where is the question of nuclear reactions occurring at room (or “cold”) temperature inside a deuterated Palladium rod?
All this is now old story. The Internet contains enough discussion on the cold fusion “confusion”. Any “reputed” physicist will be happy and indeed enjoy explaining to the confused reader why the “cold fusion” claim is “utter nonsense” and indeed an “embarrassment” to science!
Worldwide Progress
Unfortunately for the physics pundits, the story is not over. Unexpected breakthroughs do happen in science upsetting the established “old order”! A small minority of a few hundred persistent scientists from about 10 countries have been carrying forward the flag of “cold fusion” for the past two decades. The site www.lenr.org catalogs over 2000 scientific papers that chronicle evidence for the occurrence of a variety of nuclear reactions inside metallic lattices when they are loaded with deuterium and in some cases even with hydrogen. Such reactions are now preferably referred to as “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” (LENR) and the field as a whole as “Condensed Matter Nuclear Science” (CMNS).
There is no reason why India should not jump on this 21st century “energy bandwagon” and strive to exploit it to feed an energy-hungry nation.
“LENR Transmutations”
When Fleischmann & Pons announced the discovery of the cold fusion phenomenon in 1989, the general understanding was that nuclear fusion reactions presumably occur between the deuterons loaded in the Pd lattice. It was presumed that the “host metal” nuclei themselves were merely spectators, serving only as a catalyst or facilitator. Viewed from the perspective of the generally accepted understanding of nuclear physics, the occurrence of nuclear fusion reactions between a pair of deuterons at room temperature as proposed by the discoverers was and still is considered “impossible”. The basic issue is the strong repulsion between two positively charged deuterons referred to as the “Coulomb barrier”, which has to be overcome before a nuclear reaction can take place.
However, there were some Physicists who even at that time speculated that the host metal atoms, in this case Pd, might be participating in the nuclear processes in the metal. Given the disbelief of the Nuclear Physics community of even the simple (d,d) fusion reactions implied in the cold fusion phenomenon, any suggestion or speculation of the possible occurrence of nuclear reactions between the deuterons and the nuclei of the host metal such as palladium, titanium, or nickel (or others), resulting in the transmutation of the host metal nucleus would be considered as preposterous and totally unthinkable! Obviously the magnitude of the repulsive Coulomb barrier between deuterons and the nuclei of the host metal atom is if at all enormously larger than that between a pair of deuterons!
However, over the past two decades experimental evidence has slowly been piling up, confirming the occurrence of precisely such “unbelievable” elemental transmutation reactions in a variety of simple LENR experiments. A comprehensive review paper on such LENR Transmutations is currently under publication in Chapter 43 in the forthcoming “Wiley Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia: Science, Technology, and Applications”, 2011 Edition*, Edited by Steven B. Krivit, Jay H. Lehr, and Thomas B. Kingery. (See www.newenegrytimes.com for details.) However, the quantum of such transmutations observed so far in the experiments reviewed in the Wiley paper is relatively small.
But the recent experimental demonstration of the 10 KW Ni-H Rossi reactor, described in the accompanying article, has established the massive scale of occurrence of elemental transmutations, in this case conversion of Nickel to Copper, mediated by protons! Preliminary analysis of the post run Nickel samples appears to indicate that one or more protons have been able to successfully invade the nucleus of the Nickel atom in a very simple experimental configuration, and succeed in altering its nucleonic composition, resulting in its isotopic composition changing as well as transmuting its elemental nature.
It is almost as if the age-old claim of Alchemy has been effectively validated, and assuming that all this stands up to in-depth scrutiny in the months to come, it would have to be admitted that nuclear science is witnessing a silent revolution of unprecedented proportions with deep scientific implications!
*Low Energy Nuclear Reactions: Transmutations
Mahadeva Srinivasan1, George Miley2 and Edmund Storms3
1 Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Retired), Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
2 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Fusion Studies Laboratory, Urbana, IL, USA
3 Kiva Labs, Santa Fe, NM, USA
During 1989-90, a dozen groups from BARC had entered the fray and indeed confirmed observing both neutrons and tritium, telltale signatures of the occurrence of nuclear fusion reactions. These results were first published in 1989 as BARC-1500 Report, which is now available online (see www.lenr.org). A comprehensive review paper on the early BARC work has been republished by the American Chemical Society [M. Srinivasan, “Wide-Ranging Studies on the Emission of Neutrons and Tritium by LENR Configurations: An Historical Review of the Early BARC Results”, in Low Energy Nuclear Reactions and New Energy Technologies Sourcebook, Ed. S. Krivit and J. Marwan, Amer. Chemical Society, Oxford University Press, Washington, D.C., Vol. 2 (2009)]. But sadly Cold Fusion research at BARC too was shutdown in the early 90s following global skepticism.
It must however be conceded that the theoretical aspects of the exact mechanism under lying the nuclear phenomena going on inside deuterated/hydrogenated metallic matrixes is not yet fully understood. It is apparent that the physics of nuclear reactions taking place inside a solid matrix is very different from what happens in plasma or a low-density gas. Clearly the “host metal matrix” somehow catalyzes nuclear reactions, something that was totally unexpected by physicists.
International Conference in Chennai
The city of Chennai played host to the 16th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ICCF 16) as well as three associated satellite meetings that were held during February 2011 (see www.iscmns.org/iccf16). About 60 foreign “cold fusioners” and 25 Indian observers participated in this conference.
One of the hot topics on which there were many papers was the near reproducible generation of nuclear heat in deuterium gas loaded Pd and Pd-Ni nano powders dispersed in a zirconium oxide matrix, a technique pioneered by the winner of the prestigious Imperial Prize of Japan, Prof. Arata of Osaka University. Other groups, notably from Kobe University and the Naval Research Laboratory of Washington D.C. in the USA, reported their findings in such gas-loaded systems.
There were also over a dozen papers on the theoretical approaches to understanding the LENR puzzle. The interested reader can get more information on these developments from the following websites: www. infiniteenergy.com; www.newenergytimes.com and www.coldfusionnow.org besides www.lenr.org.
Breakthrough Announcement
Those of us who have been following the development of the emerging new field of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science closely, were pleasantly surprised to learn of the public demonstration of a 10 KW “cold fusion” reactor on 14 January 2011, by Andrea Rossi and his collaborators in Italy, just weeks prior to the Chennai conference. Rossi’s websites (http://www.journal-of-nuclearrphysics.com and http://rossiportal.com/) give details of this development.
Rossi’s patent application filed in August 2008, claims that “a practical embodiment of the inventive apparatus, installed on 16 October 2007, is at present perfectly operating 24 hours every day, and provides an amount of heat sufficient to heat his small factory.” Rossi was granted an Italian patent for his “Energy Catalyzer ” on 6 April 2011. The full text of this patent is available at http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=IT2008000532&DISPLAY=DESC.
Industrialist and inventor Andrea Rossi and his mentor Physics professor Sergei Focardi of the University of Bologna have disclosed details of their invention in an article dated 22 March 2010 and titled “A new energy source from nuclear fusion” published in their website. They have indicated that in their device nuclear energy is released following proton capture in Nickel isotopes leading to the formation of various nuclides of Cu.
Rossi states:”At the end of the operations in the reactor, the percentage of copper was integrally bound to the amount of energy produced. A charge that has worked for 6 months, 24 hours per day, at the end had a percentage of Cu superior to 30%.” The Cu63 to Cu65 isotopic ratio was found to be substantially different from its natural abundance values. Likewise, the isotopic composition of Ni too was significantly different from natural.
This Rossi announcement dominated the discussions in the lobby during the ICCF- 16 conference in Chennai; Clearly Rossi seems to have stolen a march over the majority of the LENR researchers worldwide who are mostly following the deuterated Pd route to cold fusion, originally propounded by Fleischmann and Pons. The “Energy Catalyzer” or “E-Cat boiler ”, as Rossi prefers to call it, is based on the less expensive and less studied Ni-H route.
LENR literature indeed contains many scientific papers published since the mid- 90s that describe the occurrence of a variety of nuclear transmutation reactions in Nickel-hydrogen systems. For example, the earlier studies of Piantelli and his collaborators of the University of Bologna as also that of Patterson and Miley at the University of Illinois with thin-film Ni-coated plastic beads are noteworthy. (This writer himself had coauthored papers in 1995- 96 describing generation of low levels of Tritium in both Ni light water electrolytic cells as well as thin self heated Ni wires exposed to hydrogen gas, and has thus personally confirmed that nuclear reactions do take place in Ni-H systems.)
What caught the ICCF-16 participants by surprise was however the magnitude of the power output, namely in the 10 to 15 KW region, during the Rossi-Focardi reactor demonstration, as against the input heat ing power which was about 400 watts only. Two of the witnesses of the January 14 demo who were present at the Chennai conference shared thei r observations at a special ly convened session on the inaugural day of the ICCF-6 conference.
Rossi–Focardi 10 KW Reactor
A hundred grams of Ni nano powder is charged into a hydrogen filled horizontally mounted stainless steel container, about a litre in volume. (The entire reactor chamber was wrapped in Al foil to prevent revelation of the “ trade secrets” of his invention to visitors, until grant of patent to him.) A 2-cm thick lead jacket placed around the reactor vessel helps attenuate the radiation fields caused by X-rays in the 300 Kev energy band generated during reactor operation. According to Rossi, when the reactor is switched off what little remnant residual radioactivity is present in the core decays within minutes. Rossi has however revealed that there is a “secret” additive (approximately 3 gm in weight) incorporated in the Ni powder, whose nature will not be disclosed for now.
During the 14 January 2011 demo conducted in the presence of a specially invited audience of about 50 eminent persons, the thermal output measurements were carried out by Prof. Giuseppe Levi of the University of Bologna, an independent Physicist not associated with Rossi ’s invention. Levi was authorized to establish the E-cat’s performance as a “black box”. Dr. Rossi turned on the 400 W electrical resistance heater from its Controller to start heating the Nickel powder and consequently the temperature of the output water began to climb during this transient phase of operation. For about an hour and a half thereafter the generator produced 10 KW of net power. From the decrement in the weight of the hydrogen gas cylinder during this period, it was surmised that the mass of hydrogen consumed was less than a gram. The total integrated energy output during the 1.5 hr test translated to an energy equivalent of 517 kg of oil. Rossi claims that one gram of nickel powder can produce as much energy as 500 barrels of oil before it is fully consumed.
This “Revolution in Nuclear Science” warrants being welcomed and embraced as a legitimate branch of science, in this centenary year of the discovery of the nucleus.
In a follow-up test conducted during 10-11 February 2011, the reactor generated 15 KW continuously for 18 hours (touching 20 KW at times) during which only about 80 watts of input power required by the power supplies of the measuring instruments was consumed. In other words the reactor itself operated on a self-sustaining self generation mode, heat being produced only by the Ni “nuclear fuel”. However in general for ease of control Rossi prefers not to operate the device in a self mode; by having the ability to shut off heating power to the resistance heater he has better capability to shut down the nuclear reaction rate.
One of the safety concerns is whether there could be any possibility that the reaction rate could go out of control and increase beyond safe limits. Rossi has, in fact, stated that in a recent experiment the reactor power did increase to 130 KW and had to be throttled down to 15 KW. They are therefore installing elaborate electronic control systems to automatically maintain power at preset levels as in most nuclear power reactors. Another precaution required is to guard against chemical explosions caused by hydrogen combustion; Rossi himself has experienced several hydrogen leakage explosion incidents during his experimental campaigns.
The radiation fields generated around the 10 KW reactor was reportedly much less than that produced around a medical X-ray machine in a hospital diagnostic centre. Notwithstanding this, however, installation of the Rossi cold fusion reactor would likely need approval of appropriate regulatory authorities in most countries.
A yearlong R&D program has been initiated at the Physics Department of the University of Bologna, the “oldest University in the world”, to address unanswered questions and safety issues. They are also preparing a campaign of detailed analysis of the spent Nickel fuel with a Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer (SIMS) at the University of Padua.
Two additional tests were carried out with a single Rossi module in Bologna on 19 and 28 April 2011 for the benefit of representatives of the Swedish Newspaper NyTechnik who personally carried out heat output measurements. The Swedes wanted to independently verify the claims by measuring the net energy that the device generates as accurately as possible. The results of the two tests showed a net power output of between 2.3 and 2.6 kilowatts, of the order of a large stove plate. Input electric power was in the order of 300 watts. The tests lasted for two and three hours respectively and the total net energy developed was calculated to be 5.6 and 6.9 kWh.
A new company called Defkalion Green Technologies set up in Greece to exploit this breakthrough technology has acquired the world rights (except the Americas) for the invention. The first prototype 1 MWth reactor plant is to be installed at Athens and is scheduled for commissioning in October 2011 subject to obtaining the requisite clearances. This 1 MWth reactor will comprise of 300 modules of 4KW each arranged in a series – parallel fashion (as per their April 2011 announcement) – and will be used to power a factory building that is to be used for manufacturing 300,000 numbers of multi kilowatt Rossi reactor modules a year.
Cold Fusion was first revealed 22 years ago by chemistry professors Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah, on 23 March 1989.
Rossi has indicated that he is averse to increasing the power capacity of each individual module beyond the 10 KW level as he has been playing around with this size for many years and is very comfortable with it. He does not want to risk making it bigger for fear of unexpected new problems and safety issues cropping up.
The modules for the Greek power plant have already been manufactured at the Florida based plant of Rossi ’s Learnado Corporation (www.learnadocorp1996.com) that has been in the business of manufacturing electric gensets fueled by vegetable oils and animal fats. The 1 MWth plant will first be assembled and tested for a few days at the Florida factor y premises before being shipped out to Athens. So the big question is how is the US Govt Nuclear Regulatory Commission going to react to the test in Florida? Objecting to the test and requiring Rossi to apply for permits will imply they acknowledge the reality of Cold Fusion, which in itself would be a big boost to Rossi and his team.
”At the end of the operations in the reactor, the percentage of copper was integrally bound to the amount of energy produced. A charge that has worked for 6 months, 24 hours per day, at the end had a percentage of Cu superior to 30%.”
It was announced on 16 May 2011 by the Swedish Newspaper NyTeknik, which keeps a close watch of global technology developments, that Leanardo Corporation has concluded an agreement with a company called “Ampergo” formed in April 2009 and located in New Hampshire, Ohio, USA for the manufacture and marketing of Rossi Reactor modules in the Americas. (It is significant that one of the co-founders of this company, Robert Gentile, was earlier Assistant Secretary of Energy for Fossil Energy at the US Department of Energy during the early 1990’s.)
Waking up to the Reality
March 2011 marked the Centenary of the discovery of the Atomic Nucleus by Ernst Rutherford who was awarded the Nobel Prize for it. It is a fortuitous coincidence that a “third route” to tapping Nuclear Energy (besides Fission and Thermo-nuclear Fusion) has now emerged and is showing prospects of reaching the market place by the end of this year.
Obviously much more research needs to be done before this breakthrough science can make a dent on the global energy scene. Young Indian scientists have a great opportunity to enter the f ray and play an exciting role in unraveling the physics behind these atomic lattice catalyzed nuclear react ions. The curious researcher is recommended to watch the fascinating video titled “The Magic of Mr. Rossi ” available on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzL3RIlcwbY).
The Rossi Reactor breakthrough could not have come at a more opportune moment in the affairs of the world, at a time when fossil fuel as a source of energy has given rise to global warming concerns and Fukushima has awakened the ghost of Chernobyl. “Cold Fusion” or “Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (CMNS)” or “Low Energy Nuclear React ions (LENR)” or whatever else you may like to call it, has clearly attained maturity 21 years after its discovery. This “Revolution in Nuclear Science” warrants being welcomed and embraced as a legitimate branch of science, in this centenary year of the discovery of the nucleus.
Not sure what you mean by this. If you're referring to Josephson, he probably feels that, as a scientist, he should address issues that he feels are being incorrectly reported/construed. That's pretty much why "I" bother to comment on these threads...because much of what is flying around is simply and badly wrong, whether from poor understanding, or from deliberate obfuscation I don't know.
bflr
I have done so already. Sinha's so-called theories violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle amongst a lot of other problems. Clean, neat, simple. Done.
That is all it takes, which you would understand if you had any physics understanding.
And since, as you admit, you lack the education to understand that point, you blather on, and on, and on, and on, and on, full of sound a fury, saying nothing on point.
The only thing that would be on point would be a series of experiments demonstrating the the HUP can be violated by 100 orders of magnitude. Equivalently you can provide experimental data showing the measured properties of one of these so-called fictitious "locons." You do that by scattering electrons, or phonons or neutrons or radio waves off of the locon generating elementary excitations whose properties you then measure. Physicists have been doing that for a century. There are a 100,000 folks who could do those measurements, could that is, if locons existed, which they don't, since you cannot measure anything about them or someone would have by now.
But you, as you admit, are untrained and inexperienced and have no clue what anyone is talking about, yourself included, so you will blather on and on, and on, and on and on and on and say nothing on point.
***He mentions [the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle] in his paper. He claims it is modified by the fact that the atom is stuck inside a lattice, and you claim that it is not modified by anything. Based upon my interactions with you, I’m inclined to think that he knows what he’s talking about and you do not.
Yeah well, the HUP is not modified by anything. It is an underlying principle that applies to all quantum mechanical systems, and an electron in a lattice is as good an example of a quantum mechanical system as we have.
Do you even know what the HUP states: it is simple really? It states that the more you try to localize a quantum in space the higher its momentum must be: mathematically, δxδp>h/4π
When you try to confine an electron to a volume approximately the size of a nucleus, you get momenta that require energies of 100's of MeV, but there is nothing that can bind an electron with that kind of energy. For instance the bound state energy of an electron in a deuterium atom (hydrogen atom) is about 13.6eV. The bound state of an electron intermediating between two such atoms in a molecule is much lower than that (a couple of eV, which is the typical molecular binding energy).
But any simpleton who took a sophomore general physics course could run these numbers - and as you admit you cannot.
So stop blathering aboout that which is way way way over your poor little head.
Ah yes poor poor Peter. Peter was hired by the MIT physics deparment for inventing the X-ray laser (actually some other guys did that) Peter then wrote a bunch of papers on cold fusion. The Physics department then dropped him, but the electrical engineering deparment offered him tenure (associate professor - look it up). He has never been made full professor, but cannot be fired.
Another problem with Sihna's work, which Kevmo keeps screaming about, is that he plagerized much of it from those early papers of Hagelstein's, and most of Sinha's wrong ideas are actually Hagelstein's wrong ideas. But I did not mention that because Sinha published them, and so he is responsible for them, purloined errors and all.
High energy astrophysics.
And by the way, since you bring up Hagelstein, his papers start with the explicit assumption that the electron in a lattice is governed by the normal quantum mechanical equations that govern these things. He plunged off the cliff when he tried to demonstrate that phase correlations on the lattice scale would persist to nuclear dimensions (the aforementioned factor of 100,000,000 in frequency scaling. It is the argument that enough people rowing enough prams syncronously can generate enough wake to capsize a battleship foregetting that you cannot get a million of anything to do anything in such perfect syncronicity). Peter simple forgot, through his special pleading that he was also violating the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
From beginning to end everything you write is an utter distortion and turning upside-down of reality. Your first sentence here is wrogn. The physics community is not surprised. It is just saddened that this fraud continues to be perpetrated despite folks simply knowing better.
Moreover, there is no breakthrough. A breakthrough occurs when a probleme the solution of which had been eluding serious researchers for years is solved in a way generally accepted by the experts in the field who have been trying to solve it. So far there has been nothing besides "claims." No one has demonstrated a thing, as demonstration is normally taken in the physical sciences.
Or this: the two professors were vehemently criticized, abused, insulted and ridiculed for daring to suggest that fusion react ions occur at room temperatures inside a solid matrix
No. They were ridiculed for attempting to put a fast one over on the physics community. Their claims were taken at face value and folks made concerted efforts to replicate and understand their results. Doubt turned to outrage when outrageous tactics were taken in an effort to silence those who asked questions and demanded real physical proof.
Ah, yes. And why was that, pray tell. Last I heard there was this thing called "academic freedom", which supposedly lets professors explore any area they like. If they didn't agree with his papers, the proper place for that discussion is in the peer-reviewed literature, not the faculty hiring/firing desk. But no, you "classic physics" types have been running a clandestine witch hunt ever since Pons and Fleischmann. Hagelstein isn't the only one to fall victim to it.
Same tactics (and folks with the same academic roots...physicists) used by the "Climategate" team.
I could care less about the theory. Tell me why the experiments are wrong.
Rossi is claiming to be ready to demonstrate a 10kW generator. You have cited 14,000 papers claiming to have produced 100's of Megajoules of excess energy. There is nothing subtle about that much energy. It burns things down, blows things up, fries the dumb electrochemist who forgot about radiation effects (or would have if it worked).
And you and your crowd keep up this lie about the bar for hot fusion being lower than for cold fusion. It is every bit as high, but first, hot fusion has demonstrated a process that produces fusion (D+T= neutron + alpha + lots and lots of energy). Cold fusion asserts that none of the known reaction pathways operate (in defiance of every phisicl principle known to man) but cannot demonstrate that the pathway they claim to be operational actually exists.
Anyone can go to any hot fusion research facility and take a geiger counter or a neutron monitor, or whatever and measure lots of radiation. Hot fusion has not reached breakeven (except in nuclear weaponry - which does work you keep forgetting - by well understood principles and reaction pathways you keep forgettting). Indeed, you can do this measurement very simply. Take a copper (it must be copper) penny and tape it to the outside of the hotfusion facility. After a claimed event that produces neutrons take your penny to a radiation counter and plot the count rate vs time. Knowing the activation cross-section of copper, the area of the penny, and the measured decay rate you can infer the total number of neutrons produced in the system. Indeed, these measurements are done every day and the results are published and are open to scientific peer review. Such reviews happen frequently.
But no one claims that there is any credibility to any claim that hot fusion is ready to power cars or put electicity on the grid.
Pfff. I’ve been in the alternative energy field. 90% are either crooks or pie-in-the-sky, and they gladly take money from wherever the get it. In fact I know a couple that we briefly courted who do that professionally, go around peddling their bogus technology in a continuous cycle of raising money for it’s own sake.
Trust me, scammers will take money from whoever will give it.
“Nobel Prize for it. “
The same people that gave Obama the Peace Prize. The Nobel committee is a joke and is not to be taken seriously.
“Cold Fusion was first revealed 22 years ago by chemistry professors Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah, on 23 March 1989.”
And was found to be a total fraud. Yet, here you are quoting the fraud as fact.
“Tell me why the experiments are wrong.”
Why don’t you tell why his experiements are right.
Well physics isn’t my field, but I have never seen where Rossi calls this cold fusion. He calls it LENR and I have seen at least one people that proposes a pathway that releases neutrons but doesn’t involve fusion. If you want me to I’ll look for it and send you the link.
What is my field is finance/markets/economics, and to me what we have here is a drop-dead date of October, and from a business angle he will either succeed or fail spectacularly. So none of the questioning of the details of Rossi’s process particularly phase me as the proof will either be or not be paraded in front of all the world to see very soon.
Actually, I take the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine seriously. The issue here is much different.
Kevmo and his crowd continully resort to a long string of rhetorical fallacies, this one being a fallacy of composition of groups, sort of "they shall be known by the company they keep" and when they are keeping company with Nobel Prize winners there must be something there.
Well, they certainly are not keeping company with Rutherford, whose work has nothing in particular to do with this. In fact, the contrast his work offers ought to be a warning to everyone duped by this rot.
You see, Rutherford's results, that alpha particles were scattered off of matter as if off of discrete hard spheres rather than as if it were passing through jelly was a "surprise." But his experiments were meticulously performed, he did the theory to explain his results, AND his results were immediately verifiable and verified by a large number of other experimental physicists. Indeed, it would be a simple matter for most undergraduate physics students to repeat his experiment.
The fundamental point is that Rutherford's demonstration that the nuclear model of the atom was the only one consistent with particle scattering results has very little bearing on the false claims of these fraudsters. Rutherford's work today is of far more pedagogical value for the demonstration of how to improve our understanding of physics than the specific result (which was important enough in its day).
“Actually, I take the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine seriously.”
I can’t. Way too many of their recipients are connected to such things as the global warming hoax. It is easy to pick scientific work that seem important and get it right since there is so much of it out there, but the resulting connections to such things as global warming say the awards are tainted.
Cold Fusion: “You have to embrace this”
Kullander: Many people have believed and argued that it is not possible to get energy out of the Bologna-experiment (a fusion between a nickel nucleus and a proton)[we are no longer talking DD fusion in a Pt lattice, but Ni-H fusion!!], but since I at the beginning of my research career measured the separation of protons, and the binding energies of the outer shells, and matching of the protons’ momentum in nuclei up to nickel, it was easy to see that the process is quite feasible kinematically (i.e, a reaction that emits energy, if it occurs [note the qualifier - not that it occurs, but if it occurs]).
It is easy to calculate this, but we have gotten so used to schemes of how to make energy from fission and fusion that perhaps we may have difficulty accepting an energy yield from strongly bound nuclei.
NyT: Kullander here is referring to the fact that nuclear reactions that provide energy lead to iron in the periodic table because nuclear particles of iron are most heavily bound -- the binding energy per nuclear particle of iron is highest among all the elements[This is factually false - the highest binding energy is Nickel-62 ]. In nuclear reactions it is the binding energy that is extracted: When particles are bound more heavily, binding energy is released. Therefore, energy is released when you split large nuclei down to iron -- this is called fission and is used in nuclear power plants. Similarly, energy is released when you fuse small nuclei up to iron -- this is called fusion. This rule, however, is only valid for nuclei of about the same size[Mass energy relations are independent of the size of a nucleus] . In this case there is a nucleus of nickel with heavily bound particles, and a lone proton – the nucleus of the hydrogen atom -- which is completely unbound. If the proton can be captured by the nickel nucleus it will be heavily bound (whereby nickel is converted to copper) and the binding energy is released. This is what is meant by the reaction’s being kinematically possible -- if it really occurs energy will be released.[No this is wrong. This only means it might be energetically possible. Kinematic possiblity means that there is a kinematic pathway for the reaction, with a non-negligible cross section for happening and he has indicated none
Kullander: The second thought was that it is impossible -- and so it seems to nearly everyone who has worked with dynamics of nuclear reactions -- that the reaction occur between a free proton and a nickel nucleus with 28 positive charges, and therefore it must have been something else. But we need not exclude a priori that a nuclear reaction actually take place supported by any suitable catalyst.
NyT: Kullander refers here to the fact that both the proton and the nickel nucleus are positively charged and therefore repel each other by electrostatic forces. This is called the Coulomb barrier. According to most physicists temperatures of millions of degrees are required to give the proton and nickel enough kinetic energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier[this problem is 28 times worse for Ni than for DD because the coulomb barrier is proportional to the product of the charges of each nuclei. Now in tunneling the problem is exponential so whatever the situation for deuterium fusion NiH fusion is something like exp(-28)= 10^^-13 times less probable that something which already no one could measure ]. He then mentions some physical phenomena and theories, including muon-catalyzed fusion, in which the Coulumb barrier has a decreased importance.
Kullander: I think we have to consider the experimental facts and not indulge too much in speculation about what could happen in theory[but he is indulging in theory and has no experimental facts]. We must be sure that they make measurements and observations as accurately as possible, and that the experiment is able to be repeated by independent researchers -- that's not possible in this case (the catalysts in the device are secret) [I hope everyone caught this. The experiments have not been repeated independently and cannot because of the "secret sauce"]-- but you have to rely on Rossi that he is true to what he conveys, and through discussions with him we may try to conclude how reliable the measurements are {ah, so we can independently make our own judgments].
If this is true [there he goes again], it’s big, and one might have acted similarly (keeping some parts secret as Rossi has).
But the patent must be approved [which you do by filing a patent disclosure thus making the secret sauce public, which is what patent means] and there must be enough data -- all data must be published so that independent researchers can repeat the experiment [which, as he admits has not happened]. Then we can begin to sift through theoretical speculation and proceed to seek explanations.
Essén: Then it will become science [finally, they admit that this is not yet science]. When this comes out it there will be a lot of research done, and then I think we’ll understand it too, within a year or so [we have not after 12 years why after another year?.
NyT: How credible do you consider the information presented is?
Essén: It’s very hard to guard against someone who is lying in this context. It’s almost impossible for us to know [This is the defense - that it is impossible to know whether or not you are being lied to !!!]. You try to evaluate the physics and then you assume that the data is presented as honestly as possible [But he just admitted that no data has been presented, and no you don't just assume that the data is correct - without imputing honesty or dishonesty since mistakes are much more frequent - if the data matters you verify. You don't trust, ever, you verify].
As a physicist you do this. Then as a human you can always have all sorts of sociological and psychological reflections on what lies behind it all.
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