I tend to write about what is in front of my face. On LENR Forum, digressions on the thread, Rossi v. Darden developments Part 2, were finally split to new threads. So the following appears as if it were a new post. I will get to the topic at #Validity, after looking at the administrative aspects. Continue reading “Validity of LENR Science”
Month: March 2017
Bob Greenyer and the Temple of Doom
A topic appeared on LENR Forum, MFMP preparing some big announcement? In fact, the Facebook user, “Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project” is Bob Greenyer, and my training has strongly discouraged confusing individual actions and beliefs with those of a community, which MFMP is.
As is being pointed out, Greenyer has become manic. Continue reading “Bob Greenyer and the Temple of Doom”
Conversations: THH
[My comments are in indented italics. I have done some minor copy editing of THH’s original.)
Under Pseudoskepticism vs Skepticism: Case studies:
As a borderline pseudoskeptic I should have interesting personal experience to bear on this topic!
Sharing personal experience is always welcome. Continue reading “Conversations: THH”
Is cold fusion possible? Myths and facts with Bill Nye
Emphasis on myths, or, even simpler, just plain nonsense. The video.
Bill Nye is asked about cold fusion. What does he come up with? It’s fairly obvious that Nye has no fact checker. The blurb on this video:
In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons reported that their apparatus could produce anomalous heat by fusing neutrons at room temperature. Essentially, this was a demonstration of cold fusion. Though hyped by the press, the experiment proved faulty because of bad measurement, but to this day cold fusion excites our imagination. In a Big Think production, science communicator Bill Nye explained what’s the deal with ‘cold fusion’ and whether or not it could be possible to reach the same kind of nuclear reactions seen in the core of stars in a device that works at room temperature.
“Neutrons.” No. They did not report fusing neutrons. They actually did not report fusion, but rather anomalous heat, and speculated that it might be an “unknown nuclear reaction.” Fusion was simply a candidate.
“Proved faulty.” No. That never happened as to their heat measurements. Generally, their calorimetry was sound. It should be realized that hundreds of scientists have confirmed the basic finding. In 2004, there was a panel to consider the phenomenon, and the panel was evenly split, half of the 18 experts considering that the evidence for a heat anomaly was was “conclusive,” and the other half, not conclusive. Yet a general and very common opinion is like that of Nye: that this was all a mistake.
With N-rays and polywater, the artifacts were identified through replication in controlled experiment. With cold fusion, replication failure — this was actually a very difficult experiment — combined with speculation, was thought by some to be conclusive, but that was not a scientific conclusion, just a guess. There never was a replication with controls that demonstrated artifact in the original work.
Later work identified the ash, the fusion product, helium, and many experiments, done by many research groups, have correlated the anomalous heat with helium production, see my 2015 paper in Current Science. Cold fusion itself is a mystery. There is no theory of mechanism that can, as yet, claim success. However, the phenomenon is real. Let’s look at Nye’s video. Continue reading “Is cold fusion possible? Myths and facts with Bill Nye”