Cold fusion, Why not? Options

[Abd]

I'll just start this with a whimper, not a bang. JzG, the big meanie, just removed Yet Another Link to lenr-canr.org from Cold fusion. Waaa! Teacher told him not to do that! I'm going to take my marbles home! Now that I'm banned, I get to whine all I want! It's kinda fun!

No discussion, he gave the same argument that was discussed to death at Martin Fleischmann (T-H-L-K-D), that was discussed to death at MediaWiki talk:Whitelist, and always, in the end, rejected.

Pure wikilawyering: there is zero legal risk to Wikipedia from linking to that paper, the web site claims permission for all that it hosts, and if there is a defect with a couple of pages, it's basically irrelevant. (Very different situation with newenergytimes.com, they host under a claim of fair use, which they can get away with as a nonprofit until the publisher squawks.) The specific paper he delinked was approved by Beetstra at the whitelist page, after all the objections had been raised about copyright.

Ban the cat, the place is overrun with mice. Kind of cute, aren't they?

Wikipedia, you traded Abd and WMC's bit for JzG and Hipocrite. Enjoy.

[Abd]

In a thread where it's irrelevant, Mathsci posted this:

Mr. Abd's difficulties are largely self-inflicted. He needs no help from anybody else:

NORTHAMPTON, MA: Friday, October 3, 2009
Lomax Design Associates (LDA) announced today that it is developing kits for home demonstration of low energy nuclear reaction effects...

Dude, what was that for? Whether or not Mr. Abd's "difficulties" are "self-inflicted" isn't relevant to this conversation. If you're just trying to "out" him in some way (not that his identity is particularly hidden), or point out the various flaws you perceive in his business plan, could you maybe do that somewhere else? Like Wikipedia, maybe? They seem to be into that sort of thing.

This thread is munged up enough as it is!

Didn't you mention my username and then hinted at one of your own conspiracy theories concerning Abd's difficulties and me?

Of course this wasn't "outing", since Abd's RL name is on wikipedia. This particular topic was first mentioned on the ArbCom pages. Abd believes that people can check the claims of cold fusion (or LENR) in their homes with his kit. That seems unrealistic to me. [...]

Mathsci's opinion here shows exactly why he was such an idiot about this on WP. He has no idea of the state of the art. Because his primitive knowledge of the field has led him to a conclusion that the whole research effort, including hundreds of nuclear physicists, chemists, government agencies, and those usual naive dupes, peer-reviewers at, say, Naturwissenschaften and other journals, with thousands of published papers, not even counting conference papers, is pseudoscience, he has advocated for that position, based only on his own opinion and not reliable sources, or, for that matter, any primary sources actually conversant with the research, but only on fond memories of twenty years ago, when it seemed that the threat to established opinion, and careers built on that, had been comfortably crushed. I asked Mathsci for his opinion about the math in one paper by Takahashi, he ignored it, because he'd actually have to stretch his brain, and apparently that would likely break it, that happens when what would functionally be flexible becomes hard and brittle.

I have no difficulty with Wikipedia, because where there is no frustrated effort, there is no difficulty. It could be said that I had a difficulty at one time, because I did test to see if reliable source guidelines would prevail over cabal opinion. Like all tests, the result is valuable, and the only failure would be if no attention is paid to the actual results, as distinct from wishful thinking about what the answers should be.

Now, as to the LDA project. It's initially based on the published Galileo project, which was itself based on the published results (many publications, peer-reviewed journals, over the years) of the U.S. Navy SPAWAR group, as well as on specific recommendations from the SPAWAR researchers. Galileo results, from 2007 and maybe 2008, haven't made their way into Wikipedia-defined RS yet, but that doesn't matter to me, because I trust them sufficiently to make modest investments based on them. My work does not depend on the reality of cold fusion; rather, it depends on what has been confirmed by many, many observers, including skeptics who, unlike Mathsci, have actually reviewed some of the results in the field: there are unexplained phenomena being reliably reported, and my belief is that there is a market involved in assisting those who'd like to see some of these phenomena for themselves. It's standard business: buy in quantities (not exactly 'wholesale' yet, but still larger quantities than individual researchers will need), sell at retail, making a profit based on the price differentials as well as convenience. (So you could buy a part a little cheaper directly, but, if that's all you are buying, you'll pay shipping and it will be much less convenient than if you can buy it all at one place with one purchase.)

Because my approach is so different from that of most researchers in the field, it seems that it's opening up new possibilities. Developing and making easily accessible a standard experiment that can then, itself, be studied in detail by many investigators, exploring the parameter space, could answer many of the unanswered questions in the field. Some of what is necessary to develop and test theories of what's happening in so-called cold fusion cells isn't accessible to "home experiments." The most conclusive experimental results so far, showing a correlation between excess heat and helium production, involve double difficulties. To get really accurate calorimetry, SRI spent millions of dollars on sophisticated calorimeter development. Measuring helium is probably out of reach for home experimenters. But this work has all been done, with stunning results, published in peer-reviewed secondary source, though you would never know this from the Wikipedia article which, on the topic of helium/excess heat correlation, only the blatant error of the U.S. DoE anonymous bureaucrat is repeated, using a less reliable source to reject more reliable sources. A blatant error in a less reliable source, and my expose of this in Talk:Cold fusion was part of the evidence against me.... Too much talk, too confusing for some of the editors, tendentious, original research, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, original research: the kind that is directly verifiable by simply reading the already-accepted sources!

So what could be seen at home? Well, the Galileo protocol, first of all, seems to involved well under $100 worth of materials and, while caution is required in following the directions, with care to avoid contamination, nothing seems particularly difficult. No complex instrumentation is required; the biggest obstacle I'd see, right away, is that an analytical balance is required to weigh the materials; however, first of all, the exact quantities probably are not critical, and, secondly, that's something I can provide! I'll either provide pre-weighed packages with per-cell quantities, or complete mixtures, ready to roll. Pour it in, close the cell, attach the power supply and computer control, turn it on and watch.

What will the experimenters see? Well, I'm currently assembling the first cells and will be testing it myself, but this is what I expect. There will be two kinds of radiation detectors incorporated. Inside the cell, immersed in the electrolyte, immediately next to the cathode wire, will be a piece of CR-39 plastic, which is the same material, and which will be from the same source, as successfully used already by many groups. While experimenters, with perhaps two weeks of electrolysis, will see a little cloudiness appearing on this plastic, the real evidence will come when the plastic is etched in a hot sodium hydroxide solution. What's been widely reported is that pits in the plastic, characteristic of charged particle radiation damage to the plastic, and associated in physical position with the cathode wire, will appear. What's even more interesting is that, if enough reaction has been developed, triple-tracks characteristic of energetic neutron breakup of carbon into three alpha particles may be found. However, I'm adding something in addition.

Outside the cell, I will place a stack of LR-115 radiation detectors, and, in the middle of the stack, there will be a Boron-10 "neutron converter screen." There may also be various thicknesses of hydrogen-rich plastic as a neutron moderator; my hope is to capture evidence of more neutrons. And this is all terribly cheap, the most expensive thing is the Boron-10 material, which I'll be selling for about $20 per 1x2 cm piece. Only one is needed per neutron detector stack. The LR-115 detectors are very cheap: they consist of a 6 u layer of red cellulose nitrate on a 100 u clear polyester base. They are also developed in a sodium hydroxide solution, but the handling is easier and apparently they can handle much higher track density than CR-39.

From prior results by other researchers and teams, I expect that home experimenters will see charged particle radiation evidence on the internal CR-39, and little or no such tracks on the external detectors. However, this isn't particularly dramatic, except conceptually. (What is a little low-voltage electrolysis doing generating charged-particle radiation? That's been reported since 1990, covered in reliable secondary source.) The charged-particle radiation, even though it may have energy over 20 MeV, can't penetrate the cell walls, nor more than a centimeter or so of air. Neutrons, though, are, of course, penetrating. The Galileo replicators did see some triple tracks; however, a very low level of triple tracks are normal from background cosmic radiation. The SPAWAR group consistently found significant levels of triple tracks, roughly ten times background, as compared with controls. So this part of my effort is truly experimental; I'm trying to amplify the neutron signal so that more neutrons are detected.

But there are other, more dramatic, effects that may be associated with the radiation. I'll be monitoring cell temperature; I expect that I may see some anomalous elevation of cell temperature under some conditions. The Galileo protocol didn't even look for temperature increases. These increases won't, by themselves, prove nuclear processes are involved, because no precise calorimetry will be done. However, if they are associated with radiation detection, they become a correlation factor that adds weight.

Then there will be another replication: the SPAWAR group, in one experimental report, used a piezo microphone as the cathode substrate. (These are codeposition experiments. Bulk palladium isn't used, nor even palladium wire; rather, the Galileo cathode was silver, and a small amount of palladium chloride is used in the electrolyte, which is heavy water with, also, a little lithium chloride as well.) Codeposition is known in the field for high reliability, because, apparently, it creates fully-loaded palladium deuteride on the cathode, almost immediately; bulk palladium experiments, which only recently have become relatively reliable, and with great complexity, can take weeks of electrolysis before the palladium is sufficiently loaded to even begin the process.) Those microphones show the presence of shocks, compression waves. So experimenters will be able to see -- or hear -- these.

In addition, the SPAWAR and other groups have shown microphotographs of the electrodes, showing small spots where the cathode material has apparently melted and erupted, appearing to have been vaporized. These spots are small, on the order of 10 u. Has anyone looked for visible light emissions using a microscope during the experiment? I've asked. No response. Attempts were made to look for such emissions, including Cerenkov radiation, in the dark, with no results. Has anyone placed a spinthariscope screen inside a cell to look for charged particle flashes? Not that I'm aware of.

These are all effects that, if they exist, could be cheaply observed. By themselves, they don't prove, beyond doubt, nuclear reactions, but, collectively, they would make for an interesting demonstration, don't you think? I know I'm having fun. And if I can make a fair return on my investment and time, isn't that the holy grail for livelihood.

Cold fusion for fun and profit. Fabulous dreams of wealth based on finally figuring out how to scale up the effect for practical power generation? Those are for someone else to pursue, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in the effort, and you may have noticed that there isn't a home cold fusion hot water heater on the market.... But that means nothing about the science, only about the engineering difficulty of scaling up what turns out to be a quite fragile effect in certain ways. If I'm lucky, these cells will put out a few percent more power than is put into them in electrolysis current, and I won't be doing calorimetry adequate to show that.

It's amusing, now, to read skeptical responses to what is overwhelmingly established in the peer-reviewed literature. On physics blogs, writers will raise objections, with great pride in their brilliance at suggesting them, that were answered more than fifteen years ago, conclusively, in the literature.

("Where's the ash? How come there isn't any ash, Huh? Huh? Why don't these idiots look for ash?" Helium, of course, and, yes correlated with excess heat at the expected Q value for deuterium fusion. But the reaction almost certainly isn't direct deuterium fusion, rather, it may end up with helium, having done something more complex with the deuterium than simply mashing it together as in hot fusion.)

("How come nobody could replicate the experiments?" Well, experiments have been replicated, many times. Most of the replications are not "exact" replications, but reviews of the literature have shown that when a simple set of experimental conditions are obtained, excess heat is reliably found. 153 of the excess heat reports have been published under peer review. Actually, more than that, the 2008 ACS LENR Sourcebook reports aren't included....)

and on and on....

"Wishful thinking" has been turned on its head. Wishful thinking that leads people to investigate anomalies is quite useful, as long as everyone isn't pursuing a will-o-the-wisp, and just a few. When it leads people to stick their heads in the sand to avoid questioning their established beliefs, as the evidence becomes overwhelming, it's another matter.

[Mathsci]

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and on and on....
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I hope Abd's kitchen is properly insured against exploding jamjars.

[Abd]

I hope Abd's kitchen is properly insured against exploding jamjars.

Well, I do have to be careful. Basic risk: the cell is electrolytic, and will be generating a small amount of deuterium and oxygen. The only CF fatality was from a closed cell where they were using a recombination catalyst, and it stopped working. The scientist picked up the cell and jarred it. The recomb started working. All at once.

I'll have probably less than 25 ml of D2O in the cell. I may use a fuel cell as a recombiner but really to recover the small amount of deuterium gas evolved, and I'm not sure about that. The cell may be purely open. The Galileo protocol is an open cell. No explosion risk. Meltdown has happened with CF cells, but I've never heard of such with codeposition cells.

Not in glass. Small com'l acrylic box. Detailed design not done yet. Galileo protocol is very simple, may just do that first except for more instrumentation. I'll be looking for phenomena that should be there from what is in the literature, but which may not have been seen together. Lights, camera, action!