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]

<snip>
and on and on....
<snip>

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!

[GlassBeadGame]

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!

Good to know there is only one known fatality from DIY kitchen fusion. But just await until its out of beta.

[Abd]

Good to know there is only one known fatality from DIY kitchen fusion. But just await until its out of beta.

Actually, this accident was at SRI International. Major research facility. Not a kitchen. However, there is a report on-line about a guy who did run a cell in his living room. Had the bright idea to have a closed cell with a spark gap. To cause immediate recombination. It ended up plastered on his ceiling. Not a great idea. I'm telling lots of people about what I'm doing. Some of these have lots of experience.

I have a history of doing weird stuff, outside the norms. Like delivering babies. Didn't lose any, nor any mothers. The rule was, if it wasn't familar, we consulted immediately.

Actually, that's like my WP work. I only did twenty deliveries, but set up a midwifery school and the students, I believe, have done thousands. By now, those babies are having their own babies....

[GlassBeadGame]

Good to know there is only one known fatality from DIY kitchen fusion. But just await until its out of beta.

Actually, this accident was at SRI International. Major research facility. Not a kitchen. However, there is a report on-line about a guy who did run a cell in his living room. Had the bright idea to have a closed cell with a spark gap. To cause immediate recombination. It ended up plastered on his ceiling. Not a great idea. I'm telling lots of people about what I'm doing. Some of these have lots of experience.

I have a history of doing weird stuff, outside the norms. Like delivering babies. Didn't lose any, nor any mothers. The rule was, if it wasn't familar, we consulted immediately.

Actually, that's like my WP work. I only did twenty deliveries, but set up a midwifery school and the students, I believe, have done thousands. By now, those babies are having their own babies....

Well I'm sure the kitchen stuff is much safer. Ever hear of "Cult of the Amateur?" Good to know about the midwifery.

[Abd]

I have a history of doing weird stuff, outside the norms. Like delivering babies. Didn't lose any, nor any mothers. The rule was, if it wasn't familar, we consulted immediately.

Actually, that's like my WP work. I only did twenty deliveries, but set up a midwifery school and the students, I believe, have done thousands. By now, those babies are having their own babies....

Well I'm sure the kitchen stuff is much safer.

Than Wikipedia? Definitely. Far more profitable, I'm predicting, as well. On paper, I've already made $100. I assume I can sell this stuff. The internet is good for weird things, you can now sell things that only a few people need, and reach them. I sell other weird stuff, like stainless steel yarn and shredded iridescent polyester.

Ever hear of "Cult of the Amateur?"

Not until today. Interesting.

Good to know about the midwifery.

Key to being successful as an amateur:

1. Remember that you are an amateur, that there are people who have devoted their lives to the topic or activity, and some of them know more than you ever will, unless you do this for a long, long time.

2. You may happen to learn more about some small area, don't be intimidated by experts. But listen to them. More often that not, they are right. Good ones will tell you exactly why and how you are wrong. Or, sometimes, will even admit that your idea is interesting. If it is.

3. Sometimes experts are wrong. Hardly ever, however, are all experts wrong.

4. Being wrong is the fastest way to learn, if you don't get stuck on being right. So don't give up until you've been shown why you're wrong, in a way you can understand. Otherwise it was all a waste. The value of the knowledge far exceeds any minor embarrassment over error.

5. Have fun. If you have enough fun, you might be able to turn it into a business, and you are no longer strictly an amateur!

[Abd]

The editing of the article is as silly as ever. Hipocrite objected to the use of a source because it didn't refer to "cold fusion," but probably to the "anomalous phenomena in the palladium deuteride system" or "low energy nuclear reactions." Of course, the article points out that researchers in the field don't use the term "cold fusion," it's a media term and a colloquialism. Hipocrite, of course, called the edit which he'd reverted "original research" and "synthesis."

The new editor is an expert, an academic, I know because I checked. He was arguing with idiots.

Meanwhile, on the cold fusion kitchen kit project, it's coming along swimmingly. I've spent about $4,000 buying materials in quantities large enough that I can make a profit selling them at "retail," and the stuff is expensive: platinum and gold wire, and palladium chloride. And since I had nothing, I've needed to outfit a lab, essentially, plus prepare for production of kits. Given that the standard advice was that to enter this field, you'd need at least $8,000 or so, I'm not doing badly at all, I'm under budget, and the Galileo project told experimenters to spend about $800 to set up perhaps two cells. I've bought enough for maybe 200. And I've developed a technique for utilizing CR-39 and other radiation detectors, optimized for neutron detection, that should have an impact on the field by almost completely eliminating the influence of background radiation on stored CR-39.

I've been given $1000 by a Wikipedia editor, a scientist, as a donation to help me set up, and I'm getting another $2000 as a loan with generous terms, plus this same person is likely to buy stock from me, as a way to loan me further money with security, so, altogether, the financing has exceeded the actual expenses. I didn't expect that.

Meanwhile, simply discussing the project has had an effect on experts in the field. One, who had been quite upset with me over another matter, wrote me, "I'm still angry about ...., but, I have to admit, you know what you are talking about, so, if I FedEx you [some supplies], would you accept them?" And that's about $300 worth of supplies, useful stuff. And a professor in India has written and wants to have kits by the middle of January to take back to India for graduate student projects. My guess is, at least four kits, maybe more.

All in all, it's been great. Thanks, ArbComm, without your assistance I would merely be an editor, reliant upon secondary sources. Soon I'll be a source or supporting sources; the Indians would be doing work for publication under peer review as confirmations of the SPAWAR work.

In spite of all the brou-ha-ha about this project, and its supposed fringe character, the actual experimental protocol has been published more than once, in major mainstream publications, and is highly likely to demonstrate the production of neutrons (in modest quantities, but way, way above background) from palladium deuteride at room temperature.

To paraphrase an old saw, "A few months ago I couldn't even spell sinetist, now I are one." Except, of course, I could spell.

I wasn't about to risk my slender savings and my credit on some stupid nonsense. If you have a power supply capable of supplying current at a range of values between 100 microamps and 100 milliamps, I'll be selling, within a month, single cells with all materials ready to move the supplied CR-39 detectors into position, hook up the leads to the power supply, pour in the electrolyte (supplied with the cell), and run the current protocol, which takes 10-14 days for the first phase, low current until the palladium chloride plates out, and then another week at progressively higher currents. Then you remove the CR-39 detectors from the cell (there are four) and develop them in hot 6.5N sodium hydroxide solution. For the faint of heart, I believe I'll be offering an etching service. A single cell with heavy water electrolyte will cost $95, and the exact same cell with light water will cost $66. So, for a measly $161, plus a little hot lye, you can do a cutting edge experiment and a light water control, generating neutrons in your kitchen, garage, basement, or wherever. It's safe, the cells are open, no explosions expected, the evolution of deuterium gas is very slow. From prior work, if you see any neutron tracks with the light water, it will only be very few, three orders of magnitude down.

(At best, I expect to see less than 1 neutron track (knock-on protons, mostly) per minute, on a detector that is up close and personal with the cathode wire. These tracks will be seen on the back of the CR-39, not on the face toward the cathode; the back is about 100 microns ,the thickness of the CR-39, away from the cathode, so intensities much further away would be so low as to be undetectable, by the inverse square law. Background might be less than a track a day, I'm not sure. I'll know, because there will be control detectors).

I won't have the results of my own trial for about a month and a half, I estimate, so the *exact* configuration hasn't been tested, and "cold fusion" experiments have a way of being highly sensitive to unexpected variables, but the particular protocol I'm following is very close to the SPAWAR-recommended protocol and I don't expect it to fail. If it does, I'll have to announce that, consult, and try to find out why. (I'm using slightly different material for the CR-39,. for example, it's unlikely to cause a problem unless it interacts chemically with the electrolyte, in which case it would show hazing. I may be using less palladium chloride and a correspondingly shorter cathode wire, and that's about the only difference I can think of. Chemicals are the same grade of purity.)

How long is it going to take before all this hits reliable source? Any bets?

This post has been edited by Abd: Tue 10th November 2009, 12:52am

[Peter Damian]

Meanwhile, on the cold fusion kitchen kit project, it's coming along swimmingly.

Can you assure me you live nowhere near SW London?