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]

Whenever anyone would try to discuss cold fusion rather than the text of the article, the pseudoskeptics would clamp down, blocks and topic bans were frequently based on this. However, when the tide turns against them, discussing the topic is then the only way to prevail, they think.

TenOfAllTrades is, I think, a physicist. He should really know better. Here's his latest comment.

For a device that Rossi has claimed can operate continuously for months or years at a time (in his patent application, which you have striven to emphasize is based on preliminary work—and surely his technology shouldn't have regressed since then?), 18 hours as his ''best'' showing – and done only once, before a selected, limited audience – is very poor indeed. I stand by my characterization of it as a 'few' hours, as the device purportedly should be able to do 180, or 1800, or 18000 hours without difficulty.

He wrote "a few" and Brian Josephson properly whacked him with 18 hours. Given the economic context, an 18 hour demonstration is already difficult. Who monitors it continuously? Rossi claims that, indeed, these things have run for months, and Defkalion is downright lying if they haven't. But this isn't a science article, it's an article about a product, and TOAT is making an argument from Original Research. Whenever this kind of thing comes from the other side, they are all over it, seeking to ban the "POV pushers."

18 hours is already enough to totally blow the idea of ordinary chemical storage out totally out of the water, practically out of the atmosphere! An hour is actually enough, at the levels of heat being generated, to rule out chemistry. All that is left would be some mechanism for either fooling the instrumentation or supplying fuel or energy. Believe me, skeptics have been over this with a fine-tooth comb, since January, proposing fraud mechanisms, and the later demonstrations were often designed to address the possibilities raised. For example, if energy is measure by the quantity of water evaporated, what about wet steam? (which involves far less energy than complete evaporation). So the March demo used far higher water flow, so that the water temperature was only routinely raised by 5 degrees C. No steam at all, just a known flow rate for the water. And at one point, however the thing peaked at about a 30 degree rise. Over 100 kW, that works out to.

I'd be queasy being in the same room with one of these, given that. These things better be thoroughly tested before being used!

If this is a fraud, it is a very interesting one..

::Interestingly, the experiments which would "take into account what has been learnt, or has remained unclear" have not been performed, and Rossi has refused to allow them to be conducted. He has declined to allow additional, more precise measurements of gamma ray or neutron output from the device after the first negative report, and he has refused to provide any additional samples of his 'used' fuel for isotopic analysis by an independent laboratory. I accept that Rossi has conclusively demonstrated a black box which accepts cold water as one input and delivers hot water (or steam) as output, at least for a few hours (or 'less than a day', if you prefer). What he has failed to do (and has actively resisted efforts to investigate) is demonstrate that what goes on inside that black box is on the level. [[User:TenOfAllTrades|TenOfAllTrades]]([[User_talk:TenOfAllTrades|talk]]) 15:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

TenOfAllTrades is responding as if the article were on Cold fusion. Nope, it's on the Energy Catalyzer. What TOAT has "accepted" is stunning. It's beyond chemistry.

What does "on the level" mean? The laws of thermodynamics deal with "black boxes." It is not known if the E-Cat produces any detectable radiation; there is a hint that it might, very unclear. Rossi is not "on the level" about what's inside the E-Cat, he's explicitly keeping it secret, beyond "Nickel and hydrogen and a secret ingredient." Yes, he's resisted efforts to investigate, and for disclosed and economically sensible reasons.

It's been impossible to patent anything related to Cold fusion, in the U.S., almost completely, because of the belief of people like TOAT that it's impossible, that it's like perpetual motion -- which it is not. It's merely based on an unknown reaction, not on an impossible one. The fuel and ash do, with prior cold fusion findings, correlate at the right level with the heat observed. No violation of physical laws, the only mystery being how the hell it's happening.

TOAT expects radiation if the origin of the heat is nuclear. That's an old, discredited claim. Most nuclear reactions would produce radiation, but not all, and lack of radiation is typical of Cold fusion though you would never get that from the WP article. Read Storms, Naturwissenschaften, "Status of Cold fusion (2010)" for the real view of a real scientist under real peer review. Notice that the preview includes a link to lenr-canr.org, which has a preprint of the paper that's the same as the published version. A link to that was, by the way, included as evidence of lack of copyvio in what was just revision-deleted at the WP Cold fusion article. They do *not* want readers to decide for themselves. I see why Josephson originally thought there was a conspiracy.

My opinion, though, is that it is just institutionalized stupidity.

So, what if it is not a nuclear reaction? What in the world is it, then? The article should not state that a nuclear reaction is involved, but it should cite the opinions of experts on that, attributing them. For cold fusion, the article should, in fact, state that a nuclear reaction is involved, because that is now consensus among those who know the research, the original objections have been answered, amply. A nuclear reaction that converts deuterium to helium (there really is no other plausible explanation for the effects and experimental results, and this is quantitatively verified), by an unknown mechanism. For the Rossi cell, experts who know the evidence are "puzzled." As they should be.

Rossi won't allow detailed examination, precisely because that examination would result in the disclosure of what he's been doing, and the patent situation could make that very costly for him. That's if it's real!

Some people detest puzzles. The same people love being Wikipedia administrators, because it allows them to ban anything that puzzles them.