Posted on 11/02/2013 7:44:26 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
Yes, but that's not the important thing, IMHO.
The important thing is repeatable evidence that nuclear reactions can be catalyzed by surface effects on a material substrate. This is what Pons and Fleischmann were claiming as the explanation for "cold fusion." Their claims were challenged by the traditional nuclear physics world, which rose up as one to deride their claims a poppycock.
P&F were electrochemists, and if their results were accepted, it would jeopardize multiple billions of annual dollars being spent to keep the nuclear physics world on the government gravy train.
These results appear - to my layman's eye anyway - that something nuclear is going on at the surface level, and the mere possibility of that is exactly what the established scientific community - led by MIT - attacked with all their might back in 1989. I remember it very clearly because I was in graduate school in the spring and fall of 1989, and I remember hearing that members of the Physics Department at the institution I was attending had been directly lobbied to get with the program and attack P&F, which they did.
One of the individuals involved passed away in January 2012; I attended his funeral. The topic of his involvement in the P&F matter was part of his professional epitaph, delivered by a close colleague, and was discussed energetically at the funeral reception he was buried.
Seems like if it was producing that much energy it there wouldn’t have been this much disagreement of whether or not it’s actually producing any energy.
Yeah that's a good bet, but moving up the process stream in petro involves some very big investments in gigantic exposed assets that will become a magnet for every fringe group that can set up a mortar in an alleyway within five miles of it.
With UAVs, GPS, and Google Earth, those facilities will attract every crazy from the entire Muslim world. One single mortar shell and the whole thing turns into a giant flaming tribute to the power of Allah.
Mitsubiushi - advancements in science from the people that brought you Pearl Harbor™.
Neil Armstrong walking on the moon was made possible by the people that brought you the V1 and V2 missiles.
One of the individuals involved passed away in January 2012; I attended his funeral. The topic of his involvement in the P&F matter was part of his professional epitaph, delivered by a close colleague, and was discussed energetically at the funeral reception he was buried.
***Science progresses one funeral at a time.
Unfortunately, the disagreements arise from differences in science sociology between physicists and chemists. Charles Beaudette's book "Excess Heat" covers this the best I have thus far read.
But at bottom it is this......while Pons and Fleischmann deserve huge credit for having the guts to pursue the question at all, the fact that they were both electrochemists was of major long-term negative consequence for rapid progress.
Approaching the experiments from the perspective and using the tools of electrochemistry is hugely difficult. I'm a chemist, and I approach electrochemistry with "fear and trembling", because it is very difficult to control all the possible variables. Only a world-class electrochemist has a good shot at making it work, and then only if the phase of the moon is right.
The physicists thought that because the apparatus was simple, that the experiment was therefore "easy". They were wrong (and it is not surprising that early electrochemical attempts by physicists mostly failed). The early successful replications were done by electrochemists.
But by that time, the physicist vs. chemist antipathy had set in cement, with the physicists writing off ALL experimental results as "experimental errors", charlatanry, etc.
The HUGE further advance was the development (by the Japanese) of gas-loaded experiments. This cuts the number of variables WAY down, and pushes the probability of success up. Still not easy, and still not well understood, but much easier than the electrochemical approach.
WWII was a LONG time ago. I seriously doubt that anyone now working for Mitsubishi was involved, and in most cases, not even born yet.
I was joking ....
Even at that, if the thing is producing any substantial amount of energy that should be apparent beyond any arguable margin of error.
On LENR threads, it is sometimes hard to separate the humor.
And make no mistake, there are still plenty of Americans of the WWII generation who still think we should have bombed Japan into the Stone Age and kept them there.
Many experiments have shown precisely that. One early P & F experiment "succeeded" by self-destructing. It had gotten so hot that it boiled off all the electrolyte, melted the glass vessel, burned a hole in the top of a chemical lab bench, and then made a crater in the floor. There simply was no possible set of chemicals present that could have done that. Thermite "might" have done so.....but there was no thermite present.
But it was precisely incidents like that that caused LENR researchers to work with small quantities. Rossi was a major exception.....he started working with fairly large reactors compared to "the usual".
Except in countries like China, where the senior Party effectively own the country, and where China's long-term economic viability requires a source of energy independent of the Muslim world.
That said, I would really like it if there was mention of this on either the Toyota or Mitsubishi web site.
There’s a whole bunch of transmutation goin’ on here!
Where are the alchemists when we need them?
Whatever for?? It's published in a major Japanese peer-reviewed journal. How is having it on the company website "superior" to that?
You certainly know that as soon as it was posted there, some of the skeptopaths would say "well, it's only a website....not a peer reviewed journal" (of course they would never bother to check whether it was published by both mechanisms......skeptopaths are nothing if not lazy).
Measurement error
Asked & Answered by the authorities in MEASurement
-———————www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg85735.html————————
Seriously? As an autoritative source, an unauthenticated email from a third-party archive is about as dubious as you can get.
Seriously? You don’t hold National Instruments to be an authority on MEASUREment?
You keep pushing your own anti-LENR definitions so far that they fall into the ocean of stupidity.
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