Touch and go at the Planet Rossi spaceport

Touch and go.

Nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

On LENR Forum, Argon wrote:

There is not much new facts anymore to dig from court documents. Re-circling around pipe diameter (it was first claimed to be 5″ , remember), pressure and window frame paints and reflections, marks on the floor etc. is waste of time at this point. There is no clear evidence did Rossis container produce extra heat or not no matter how much we dig photo details and stains on floor.

Argon has noticed that much. But what it seems he is doing is looking for “new facts,” as if most everything is already known. Distinguishing between fact and fantasy can be … difficult. Most of us walk around in illusion and fantasy, starting with our sensory experience, which is heavily filtered and processed so that we don’t notice the artifacts, such as entoptic phenomena. We have Motions for Summary Judgment pending. These will depend on fact, not fantasy and speculative judgment. And my guess is that Argon does not discriminate, and confuses the two, routinely. It would not be surprising. In many ways, that is how most of us live, until we die and the illusions fall apart. Maybe. “Nice place to visit.”

In any case, thanks to Argon for the work involved in putting together a series of Planet Rossi tropes.

What instead has been shown plain clear in documents is that:
-Ross become suspicious on IH:s agenda, and is now proven, for a good reason.

No surprise, Planet Rossi thinks like Rossi. This is well-known in sophisticated circles: treat people with suspicion, they will come to merit the suspicion. Argon is, here, asserting “proof” for a claim of agenda. What stands as “proof” for Argon?

-IH was trying to rule LENR markets by trying to capture all relevant LENR IPR. IH business plan is so revealing and clear on this.

Argon doesn’t cite the sources. I’ve been going over and over those sources. I don’t see what he sees, what he thinks is “so revealing and clear.” IH clearly wants to be a major player with LENR. They are not, however, attempting to control the entire field, but rather to cooperate and collaborate with very much of it. They do not see LENR as a zero-sum game, unlike, say, Andrea Rossi, who has been explicitly attempting to dominate the market, to own it, he’s been very open about it.

What IH obviously wants to do is to, first, stimulate LENR progress (including by funding basic research without commercial potential in itself), and, second, to be in a position to recognize and participate in genuine commercial opportunities, if those arise. Right now, I don’t know of any, but they might know more and it is their business to know more. If they operate with lies and deception, they could easily trash their relationship with the field.

-Funding rest of the researchers they tried to control how LENR comes to market – if ever. (any research community members want to speak up?)

Most CMNS researchers will not come close to fora like LENR-Forum. This is meaningless. “Coming to market” is way premature for the field. Rossi was the only game even asserted to be close. Brillouin Energy makes some claims, but if one reads them closely, they are not close. They are merely promising, if that. Nobody really understands how LENR works, it is, at this point, a lab curiosity, unreliable, difficult to control. There are some experimental approaches working on that, but the best work at this point is fundamental science, particularly confirming and measuring with increased precision the heat/helium correlation in palladium deuteride work. This has no commercial implications and is being funded, effectively, through charitable contribution and state matching funds. IH is, of course, quite aware of this. I was told first by someone from IH that the effort in this regard was well-funded, and only discovered the source of that funding later.

What I do know is that IH has good relations with most of the established researchers in the field, if not all, and there is no sign of discontent or opposition to IH there.

-It become as big surprise to IH that Mr Rossi choose rather to fall with IH in court than let them steal and control the LENR market. For example mr Weaver learnd about problems just late February just before IH published their press release. Until that he was going full ahead on expanding IH:s smelly reach.

This is incoherent. Rossi’s action filing the lawsuit has demolished his own fundraising possibilities. Weaver knew about issues with Rossi long before last February, but held his water.

-Hiring israeli partners to do the dirty work to invalidate test report by seemingly unethical means – no matter was court sealing the doc or not. The proof is there in black on white,

There is no evidence of “hired Israeli partners.” This was Levi’s fantasy. There is no “proof,” but not only is there no proof, there is no evidence other than Levi’s rant. There is no evidence that the private investigator was working for IH, and no evidence that the investigator attempted to “invalidate” the Lugano report. Essentially, it takes a paranoid mind to read the documents that way. Argon is claiming “proof” in “black and white,” but does not actually point to it. Game on, Argon. Put up or shut up.

In some of the court pleadings, attorneys claim proof, and point to documents as evidence, and those documents don’t support the claims, and sometimes even the opposite. In some circles, that would be called “lying.” Claims in pleadings, though, are not subject to perjury for false representations, though sometimes there can be sanctions.

– Mr Weaver sending very nasty mail to Swedish professors should be glowing warning sign for any current and future business partners to stay far away from any IH-initiatives. I’m very delighted to see that Swedish companies are much more far sighting.

I didn’t find that mail nasty at all, nor did the recipient claim it was nasty. It was Levi who reacted that way, hysterically, and then Rossi claimed that this was an attempt to damage his Nobel Prize prospects. Yeah, right.

-Not signing amendment paper is just lawyer juggling and spells out loud and clear real IH skin.

It is not just a lack of signature, and it was not IH who did not sign. It was Ampenergo, Rossi’s long-term supporters, and this was not some merely technical oversight, it was deliberate. The Second Amendment, that allowed the GPT to be postponed, was invalid, and Rossi knew it. IH then said that Rossi could still earn the money, if he fulfilled the underlying purposes of the Agreement. Rossi took this as allowing him to set up a fake GPT (creating resemblances) without ever obtaining the written agreement that the Second Amendment required, if it had been valid. Rossi, being paranoid, never understood that in business, one must actually satisfy customers and investors, not merely fulfill some technical requirement. When he refused to allow Murray to visit the Doral plant, that was a bridge too far, way too far. This violated not only the Term Sheet, but also the clear intentions of the Agreement that IH would have the ability to fully observe the required tests. Rossi did not have the right to choose who would represent them, they had that right. Rossi, in his answer, explained that he believed that Murray was a spy. Spy for whom?’

And why would there be Rossi secrets at Doral, other than the Plant operation itself, which Rossi had supposedly fully disclosed to IH already?

Well, he was doing his own research there. Doral, instead of being what he had represented, a chemical manufacturing company, was entirely Rossi created, designed, controlled, and paid for. He rented the warehouse and only subleased part of it to “JMP” and all this really existed only on paper and in his mind. And he lied about it again and again.

-Big resources of Planet IH here is repeatedly and consistently redirecting discussion to some irrelevant details every time some one tries to touch some relevant subject. That is so clear pattern that this thread is very fruitful source for lots of manipulation studies to come. (see what happens quickly after this posting)

There are no “big resources of Planet IH” on LENR Forum. The closest is Jed Rothwell, who was at one time listed as a possible advisor. Jed has claimed he has not received any payments from IH; and I know Jed, for a long time, as a source of funding and support for LENR. He is not in IH’s pocket, he doesn’t need IH, but Jed supports LENR and anyone who supports LENR is, as the science, would be likely to have some friendly connection with IH. He’s visited them in North Carolina, which is not far from where he lives.

Then there is Dewey Weaver, who is not positing on LF any more and who might not go back. IH doesn’t need LF, for anything. I can guarantee that IH is not supporting coverage of Rossi v. Darden, at least not so far! I think I’d know about it!

– Have you ever wondered that IH was not willing to arrange test customers.

Liar, liar, pants on fire! Okay, he probably believes this carp. IH had a customer ready and willing, and Rossi rejected it, and this is clear not only from IH testimony, but from the Rossi email proposing the move of the Plant to Florida. Basically, Argon has believed Rossi Says, but has not modified his impressions by studying the case documents. And if he does, he will likely be searching for proof of what he already believes. That is the major way that we fool ourselves.

-Have you ever wondered why IH is not willing to give back the license if they think that Rossis conainer is expensive water boiler with COP of 1.

Why should they “give back” what they paid for? We do not know that IH has refused to return the license, nor on what conditions. This is all Rossi Says. One of the possibilities here, it is explicitly suggested by IH as one of two major possibilities is that Rossi actually has a real technology but is creating a breakdown of the IH Agreement in order to get them to return the license — as he did with Hydro Fusion before.

(Annesser ridiculed the “two alternatives,” ofensively, in my mind, as logically inaccurate. I.e., of course there are more than two possibilities, but some of them will not be ones that would be asserted by IH, such as “IH is lying through their teeth.” Logical possibility, to be sure. Not a practical one.)

As long as there is even a small possibility, I would expect IH to hold on to the license. However, if there is some consideration for return, such as a refund of their investment, they might let it go. That investment at this point is north of $20 million, I expect. Would they take less? I don’t know.

All this would be considered in settlement negotiations, if there are any, or in a court decision, if it comes to that.

Argon is thinking in black and white terms. I.e. if the technology is worthless, which he probably believes IH is claiming — I haven’t noticed that — then the license is worthless, but the value of a license like this, to a venture capitalist — and that is IH — is the probability of value in the future times the benefit if that value matures. In this case, the benefit could be a trillion dollars. What has been shown (from the IH point of view) is that Rossi did not transfer the technology to them, if it is real. So what is the probability that it is real? In this scenario, Rossi is withholding the secret, and he has done the like of this before. Rossi seems to understand that, with the License Agreement, he was not only selling the “E-cat,” but all related future development, such as Quark-X. And easily he might believe he sold it too cheaply.

But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If there is enough cash on the barrel, IH might decide it would be better to invest that elsewhere. These are complex decisions, not the mindless “real or not” calculations of Argon. I know a lot, and I still don’t know which I would choose. To pay IH what it would take, though, would probably be more than Rossi has, so he’d need to find a new investor, if there are any left on Planet Earth who would trust him. Mostly Planet Rossi is a collection of losers, with big mouths and small pocketbooks. Still, you never can tell. How about Magnus and Hydro Fusion? Have they forgiven Rossi for what he did to them — by his account — in 2012? Hope springs eternal.

Disclaimer: No I don’t believe Rossi had anything produced in ‘customer’ container nor that ERV would be reliable, but I’m thankful for him to reveal true colors of IH:s LENR job. Someone will it as viable technology and LENR now escapes from IH:s hands – for the better of us all.

What I’ve seen of IH operations, in the court documents, actually gives me high faith in them as angel investors. I know some researchers that they have supported. Nobody is complaining, but Rossi, the one who received the most support, and IH did not stop Rossi from developing and promoting his technology, there is no evidence of that. They had a right of first offer as to licenses elsewhere, but this could not harm him, it would give him more money if they exercised it. He could have installed a high-power reactor in Sweden, years ago, if he had one. The one who has stopped Rossi, if he has anything real, is Rossi.

Rossi created the Doral test that he slaved away at. He is now claiming that it was uncomfortably hot. Did he claim that during the year? Did anyone else report that? The entire idea of a 1 MW test was Rossi’s, this is not what any engineer would want. Apparently IH offered to pay him to not do it. He refused. Rossi did not use lawyers for what they are good for, negotiations. He only used Annesser to threaten and then to sue. My guess is that Annesser encouraged that, leading his client down the road to ruin.

PS. Just wish me356 has taken a good read on this case and keep cool and stay far away of such business partners.

I see no evidence other than “me356 Says” that me356 has anything real. Maybe he does. Maybe not. I decided, by 2011 or 2012, that the future of LENR could not depend on speculations and secret commercial ventures (like Rossi), that we needed a “Plan B,” which I identified as encouraging basic scientific research.

I see IH as a partner in that effort, willing to work with other players, so far, at least. I expect genuine commercial efforts to be secret, and I expect science to be open. The two, mixed, become mixed-up, because there arise conflicts of interest. LENRIA, Nagel’s organization, may have a role to play here.

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

See http://coldfusioncommunity.net/biography-abd-ul-rahman-lomax/

30 thoughts on “Touch and go at the Planet Rossi spaceport”

      1. Well, Sam, that qualifies as spam. This could even be from your computer being hacked. I have not read the last part. The link reveals your email, so I am removing the URL from your post. If anyone wants to see it, contact me.

        1. Hi Abd
          This computer stuff is
          Greek to me.
          Something my previous
          Post was about WW2
          and you mention Spam
          part of a soldiers meal ration.
          Thanks for giving others a
          chance to watch the video.
          It is an hour long and talks
          about the situation in the
          South China Sea and
          new War technology the
          U.S. needs and how to
          invest in the technology.

          Regards
          Sam

          1. This is too far from the interest area of this blog. Please do not bring such material here. Please do not use this blog to promote some political position. Thanks.

  1. Simon,

    The science here is not simple. I’ll agree with you there are possible lattice effects that might lead to greatly enhanced nuclear reaction probabilities. They have a tough barrier to overcome – not so much the Coulomb barrier – as the difficulty in keeping quantum coherence over a large number of particles in an atomic lattice at normal temperatures. Proving stuff about quantum decoherence is not easy – you have in that case to distinguish between pseudo-particles and particles, and show that pseudo-particle coherence cannot be relevant here. And then you need to bound coherence based on electrostatic coupling.

    For me my gut no here comes from the nature of the experimental evidence. But I’m not quick to have certainty and gut feelings are not proof, and often wrong.

    Regards, THH

    1. Tom – for a long time, ball lightning was regarded as an old wives’ tale, and was not considered as a scientific reality. It can now be created by using the correct conditions, though not reliably and we don’t yet have full knowledge. This is by way of an example that dismissing something, because our current theory says it can’t happen, is maybe not the best strategy. I hope that Plan B nails it well-enough that you can accept that LENR is real, even though we don’t have a theory that explains it. Once it becomes something that really happens and there can be no quibbles on the experimental reality, then I’d hope that more people (including you) try to work out why it happens. We really need the brain-power of the sceptics to solve this. I suspect a lot of bright people, like you, have the gut-feeling that this is another N-ray experience and that it will sputter out to a footnote in history if given sufficient time and enough failed experiments. This is the real value of Plan B, after all, since in other ways it’s simply repeating an earlier experiment that was also carefully-done. It was however not sufficient to convince the sceptical majority. Maybe this time it will be rigorous-enough to satisfy them.

      These days there are a whole zoo of pseudo-particles, quasi-particles, superpositions, and the like, and this whole subject is to my mind far too complex to be truth. I think we’re just not seeing the reality yet, and we need some new concept to simplify the interactions. There’s no way a simple particle can do all the maths required to decide on what happens and where it needs to be, so what we see and measure must be the result of a lot of simple interactions that we haven’t yet worked out – the seeming-complexity is probably an emergent property of something far simpler.

      For me, for a long time I’ve reduced the amount of stuff I need to remember by reducing to basic principles and thus working out properties from those first principles when needed rather than needing to remember all the consequences. Getting down to simpler principles is thus useful. I think such a simplification is overdue in nuclear physics, and that it’s likely that once such a revolution happens then we’ll find a lot more things are possible than we currently think when using the structures we have now. Our maps are incomplete at the moment.

      I thus tend to not say that things are theoretically impossible, and try to not think that either. Theories are produced in order to structure the experimental observations and to thus predict what will happen when we do something else. We may find that, once we do something that hasn’t been done before, the results won’t be as theory predicts, and that is very interesting. Theory will need fixing to once-again match the reality of the experimental data.

  2. Abd,

    It is virtuous that you take the time to reply here to Argon’s post. I noticed it, thought same again and decided not to feed the trolls.

    The different viewpoints here are interesting. As a skeptic, looking at Rossi’s tests from the start, it never seemed to me at all likely that he had anything real. I had no prior expectation (Ni-H work interesting, Piantelli etc, scientific plausibility). So the logical possibility that Rossi has something real but for his own (weird) reasons hides it seems to me very low probability.

    However, I’ve always realised that different people have different views. In science this is valuable – it means you get a diversity of effort and the creativity that comes from some people exploring low probability cases. IH, in particular, are set up with the premise that LENR might be real and if so they want to find it. Even if low probability that can be justified as very high reward and of social utility.

    I’m in favour of such valiant actions – even though I’m not inclined to look at them with rose-tinted glasses.

    In this case, from IH’s point of view, they can never know whether Rossi has something or not. They must keep open as far as possible that for his own reasons Rossi is pretending to have non-commercial product in a spectacular bluff. And they will certainly keep open the much more likely possibility that Rossi’s work has some initial basis in a valuable effect which was then amplified by Rossi’s deceit but could still be of value to IH.

    Planet Rossi here has an unfortunate analysis of the possibilities. If you start with a false premise that will always be. That they treat IH as evil is particularly ungrateful when both from Court documents and from their previous open statements IH are more on the side of supporting LENR (even Rossi’s claimed LENR) than anyone else.

    One good that does come from the Rossi affair is that IH now see the need for very great rigor in how they evaluate potential LENR effects: remember that key expectation-resetting PR about how great care is needed! That rigor benefits both them and the scientists it is applied to.

    1. THH – I considered Piantelli to be careful in his experiments, and there’s also the Thermacore meltdown, so there is a possibility of Ni/H LENR. The Miles heat/Helium correlation shows pretty definitively that Pd/D is a nuclear reaction, and of course Abd’s Plan B should nail that in a way that everyone can accept. There is no good reason why the well-known rules for nuclear reactions in a plasma (where we have two particles colliding and three-particle events are rare) should also apply to what happens inside a lattice where multiple-body reactions can happen.

      Even at this late stage I can’t discount the possibility that Rossi may have had some success, even though he probably mis-measured it and misinterpreted the results as well. I can speculate that Rossi used the Doral test as cover for the Quark-X experiments, since he knew that the Big Frankies did not work before he started but thought that, given another year, he could get something that did actually work. Maybe some of the unpublished comments at JONP gave him an idea that seemed workable to him – crowd-sourcing ideas is a pretty good strategy after all. If electrolysis at a couple of volts or so can implant Hydrogen into Palladium (or Nickel) and people found that some excess heat was measured (though maybe the measurements were often in error) then using a plasma and several hundred volts (or even 5MV) would do so deeper and faster and may produce a bigger effect while getting through the surface oxide problem and the H2 dissociation problem at the same time. Something like the Quark-X is thus a logical system to test out, though maybe using a better target structure than the mixture of NI and LiAlH4 that Rossi appears to have used. Just measure things correctly, which of course is not Rossi’s strong point.

      Given the possible monetary gains if IH’s investments pay off and they get a workable LENR, that 1% probability they were chasing is reasonable. IH are not only looking for Rossi to come good (luckily) but are also talking to everyone in the LENR community who will talk to them. I’ve seen no complaints from those people, either.

      It is possible that somewhere within the Rossi patents is a key point that will be needed later, so it would be foolish (again that 1% probability) for IH to not keep them. Here I’m speculating that Rossi used JONP for crowd-sourcing ideas, and that some of them may be useful. IH will no doubt be well-aware of the rigour needed in the tests and of the need for replications by a trusted third-party, but they seem to have the majority of the known experimenters on their list of advisers. Apart from the possibility of a lone experimenter finding the Grail, it looks like they’ll corner the market. Though that could be a problem, it seems that Tom Darden is doing this in order to improve the world and that making a lot of money is secondary. It still looks like we all win if he does, though, so I’m not that worried about him gouging the market if he succeeds. If the resultant energy isn’t cheaper than fracked natural gas he won’t sell devices anyway, so we all get cheaper power bills.

      As I see it, there’s enough evidence that LENR is real, so at some point it will be solved and will be useful. The more people experimenting, the higher the chances we’ll see it in our lifetime. The better the funding, the more chances too – lab kit is somewhat expensive and having good kit normally helps. Having good ideas is however even more helpful, so getting more respectability for the science and attracting more grad-students is maybe the biggest chance for advances. Plan B may turn out to be the most-useful event of this year for that reason.

    2. I do not see you as a pseudoskeptic, THH, and, in particular, here, you are recognizing how and why Rossi did have some appeal and support within the CMNS community. I knew and warned about the danger. I could not know if the Rossi Effect was real or not, the lack of coherent, cautious, confirmed independent validation was quite obvious, but this did not demonstrate reality one way or another. To those convinced that there are real LENR effects, Rossi’s claims seemed to be within the bounds of possibility, even if they were outside the envelope of normal expectation. NiH work had never been clearly established, there were merely many claims that generally remained unconfirmed. There are many LENR effects like that, and my conclusion that there are real effects does not indicate or require that all the reports represent other than artifact. There are many possible artifacts. We will, I hope, be going over the evidence that there are real LENR effects, you are aware of what I consider direct evidence, as distinct from the indirect and circumstantial evidence (such as the number of reports of heat, or tritium, or X-rays, or transmutations, but without clear correlations).

      What I’ve claimed about the direct evidence is not that it is utterly probative, but that it has entered a territory where the burden of proof shifts. I know of no artifact that could explain the confirmed results. That is, obviously, rebuttable, but it has not been rebutted. Shanahan, so far, has not actually tried, beyond presenting some badly defective analysis in his JEM letter. The goal in science is not ultimate certainty, but assessment of probabilities and the development of ways to test observed correlations. The evidence, I concluded, was easily enough to justify what both US DoE reviews agreed upon: the funding of further research, and they wanted that research to be focused on fundamental issues. Instead, most research in the field kept looking to find ways to improve reliability. Without understanding the effect, this could consume billions of dollars in research without results. Where I have found easy agreement from skeptics is that this basic research is worth doing, and I identified the confirmation with increased precision of the heat/helium ratio in palladium deuteride experiments as the prime candidate. This is pure science. It has no real commercial implications, in itself. I do not know if LENR will ever be commercially practical, though human ingenuity is strong, so … we can assign that a probability that could justify even quite large investments, but prudently these will not be scattershot and will be step-by-step explorations, initially of already known and confirmed, or at least clear, effects.

  3. About need to go back to the lab for fundamental reserach, so that a working (upfront or phenomenological) theory emerge with capacity to predict what wil, may and cannot work, what can, will, and will never explode.

    My vision is that we need the tools of nanotechnology, like the one used for accumulators and superconductors :
    https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14020
    http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v11/n12/abs/nnano.2016.207.html
    http://ns.umich.edu/new/multimedia/videos/24295-a-window-into-battery-life-for-next-gen-lithium-cells

    From the experience of people here, what should be the budget, and delay, for investigating on the LENR NAE, assuming it is a nanostructure near the surface, producing mild-energy quanta ?
    No shoestring allowed.

    Some said 5M$/y for 5 y?

    1. At ICCF-18, we visited the labs of SKINR, and most of the work there was nanotechnology, and there were extensive resources being applied. This work is very difficult and very expensive. The Plan B priority is basic science, and making the effect reliable as to heat production — fortunately — is not necessary. It is enough that correlation of heat with ash be reliable, because the “ash” proves nuclear reaction and reality. Once this is established, it is then possible to justify large research budgets; without it, it’s probably impossible. At this point, I have not yet seen the Texas work, I merely have positive reports without detail. I’m hoping to see more soon, but this is clear: that work has been adequately funded, and is being conducted with the full participation of experts who are not likely to fail. So I’m very, very hopeful to see Plan B completed in not long. Plan B then leads to extensive consequences, it creates a solid foundation for research. At this point, it is only about PdD, but an NiH Plan B could be developed, once there is substantial evidence for repeatable experiments or correlations. At this point, NiH is quite fuzzy compared to PdD. Long term, yes, obviously, if NiH LENR is real, it could be very, very attractive, and some level of NiH research was explicitly part of the Texas Tech project.

      1. Abd,

        I’m interested in the U of Texas work. But there are many subtleties about how to eliminate mundane explanations. How sure are you that they are looking at this more rigorously than LENR typical?

        For example, you will say that the key issue here is predictivity – the He/excess heat ratio can be a priori predicted. That relies on accurate techniques to ensure that all He generated is captured.

        I don’t think secrecy is helpful in this respect. A clear protocol examined for bomb-proof qualities which is then followed has advantages because it proves no cherry-picking. For me the advantage of He/excess heat correlation is that it potentially separates the we don’t know what makes this effect happen, it is very subtle variability from the results. The disadvantage is that mundane correlations between detected He at very low levels and almost any experiment parameter are possible.

        1. I would encourage Texas Tech to be more open. However, that is their choice, and Duncan is not some naive noob. Prior work by SRI (M4) was adequate to establish a ratio, McKubre claiming a precision of about ten percent. But that was one experiment. As well, Violante found the same results; confirming with Laser-2 and Laser-4, the standard partial release ratio of roughly 60% of the helium expected from the heat at 23.8 MeV/4He. And Laser-3 used anodic reversal, the same as SRI M4. There are many other results as reported by Storms, from roughly a dozen research groups, confirming the partial release figure. So a more precise measurement will require measuring all the helium. What I have been told is that my suggestion of using anodic reversal to release the helium has been accepted, and that I’m to be credited for it. (Basically, for noticing it. It still amazes me, but it had not been noticed, when I raised this with McKubre and Violante, they confirmed it, but it appears to have been a new idea.)

          I hope that they also do thorough analysis of all materials before and after the hypothesized reaction. Anodic reversal is simple and cheap and requires only gas analysis. They would not need to always analyze the entire cell, just enough to verify that helium not released by reversal is small. Or, as always, the reverse. The experimental work will involve many cells, I understand. This will not be merely some anecdote, this will be systematic, and it’s being done by Violante (at ENEA) and McKubre or under his direction at Texas Tech, and they were looking for another research group. They are doing what should have been done over 25 years ago, or at least as confirmation of the Miles effect started to arise.

          Miles demonstrated techniques adequate for purpose, particularly in his later work. Texas Tech and ENEA have the advantage of better mass spectrometry, and if the anodic erosion practice is as it appears to be, they will capture all the helium, with little escaping, that is the indication from M4 and Laser-3, and it is totally plausible. I.e., if the FP Heat Effect is surface, we would expect that any retained helium would be close to the surface, not deep in the lattice, and so even a little anodic erosion could be expected to release it. Otherwise helium (even quite near the surface) is stable, the Morrey collaboration (1990) showed that. McKubre, in M4, was attempting to flush the helium out by “sloshing” deuterium back and forth. Nice idea, but it apparently doesn’t work. However, part of that attempt was a little anodic erosion, which was known to accelerate deloading. Not a lot, just a little. Apparently enough to move M4 results from the standard, roughly 60% value, to 104% +/- 10%.

          I actually found all this by reviewing Krivit’s critiques of M4 and Violante’s work. To him, this was all part of a plot to promote d+d -> 4He.

        2. THH wrote: “But there are many subtleties about how to eliminate mundane explanations.”

          Not really. When the cell produces significantly high excess heat (with a high signal to noise ratio), and it produces thousands of times more energy than any chemical cell could, with no chemical changes, you can be certain all mundane explanations are eliminated. That was the first point Fleischmann made, and it still stands.

          Many cells have produced power ranging from 1 to 100 W, with little or no input power. That can measured with high confidence. Calorimetry only becomes difficult below 100 mW or so. Some cells have produced more net energy continuously than you would get if you burned all of the papers and furniture in the lab. That cannot be a mundane effect.

          There are indeed some subtle effects and tricky errors in some cold fusion experiments, in things like mass spectroscopy or milliwatt level excess heat. But there are no subtle problems in other experiments. You seem to insist that they are all ambiguous. All tricky. That is not the case.

          1. My point is a bit more nuanced. It is that they all potentially have subtle effects and errors, and therefore any positive results must be checked for this. In some cases the checking will be much less work than others.

            1. My general view is that, as far as is possible, and it is now very possible, all results should be reported. Not just positive ones. Indeed, treating results as “positive” and “negative’ creates a kind of bias that is better avoided. For heat/helium studies, in particular, all results are of value, if they are results from a defined protocol, adequate to create useful information.

          2. Jed, it would be useful for the claims you make here could be validated quantitatively. We know that it is possible even for high levels of apparent excess heat to be artifact, under some conditions. We know that a relatively small systematic error, if it can accumulate, can appear to be high energy production. I know of some counterexamples, but the big problem with all these reports is generally of confirmation. Again, we could adduce some specific examples where that is addressed. Perhaps the ET work, examined by Duncan, and confirmed by SRI and ENEA. However, I turned to the heat/helium correlation because this does not depend — at all — on reliability of heat production. With heat/helium, the variability of material that is the likely cause for the unreliability actually turns into an asset, “dead cathodes” become controls, otherwise identical, if the experiments are run that way. Your argument is quite understandable, to me. It is not necessarily so understandable to THH, nor to other skeptics, unless they become highly involved. How can we convince them sufficiently that some of them do become highly involved?

            Heat/helium can be easily understood. I can explain it to people easily, and they understand that a strong correlation is prima facie evidence of a real effect. It is similar to dose/response correlation in medicine. When it is missing, evidence of efficacy can be suspect. I will be creating pages here to look at the heat/helium evidence. The same could be done for what might be called high-heat evidence. However, high-heat, by itself, if it remains unreliable, if you cannot buy a reliable demonstration kit, will never be as convincing as showing correlation of heat and a nuclear ash. If NiH heat, as another example, is actually isotopic conversion of nickel, as seems to have been claimed, quantitative correlation of the transmutation with heat should be conclusive. It would be even more conclusive if the ratio matches the expectation from mass conversion.

          3. THH wrote: “My point is a bit more nuanced. It is that they all potentially have subtle effects and errors . . .”

            No, they do not. Laviosier and Laplace made the first modern calorimeter in 1781. They measured the metabolism of a guinea pig. That is around 3 W as recall. I estimated the sensitivity of that instrument was around 1.5 W. The results were remarkably uniform and close to the modern value. That was an ice calorimeter. The people at Shell Oil in Paris made an instrument very similar to it, only a little more sensitive, and they detected a cold fusion reaction with it.

            J. P. Joule made thermometers with 0.05 deg F precision, and calorimeters that could easily measure a fraction of a watt. He could have confirmed the excess heat in any major cold fusion experiment with absolute confidence.

            Experiments at Toyota and in Mizuno’s lab that produced 100 W for days at a time could have been confirmed by anyone in the last 250,000 years. Cave men understood the limits of chemical fuel as well as we do. They understood that a log is consumed by fire in an hour, and it will not continue burning for weeks. That is why the Miracle of the Maccabees was considered a miracle.

            A reaction that produces 100 W with no input power is not difficult to detect. When a cathode in that cell the size of a coin produces as much energy as 7 kg of petroleum – or more energy than you would get from burning every item in the lab – with absolutely no chemical transformations, that cannot be a chemical effect. It is absurd to claim that such phenomena might be subtle effect, or difficult to detect, or errors. You distort the situation by making this claim. What you say applies to some aspects of some experiments, but it does not begin to apply to the most convincing calorimetry.

            Along the same lines, Abd’s insistence that the helium to heat correlation is the only certain proof that cold fusion is real, and not a chemical effect, is a distortion. The heat alone proves the issue. The helium proves it is fusion and not some other effect, but chemistry is decisively ruled out for exactly the same reason with the same methods the Curies ruled it when when they discovered heat from radium (as Fleischmann pointed out). You do a disservice to 19th century physics when you insist that only 20th century mass spectroscopy can prove this.

          4. Abd wrote: “Jed, it would be useful for the claims you make here could be validated quantitatively. We know that it is possible even for high levels of apparent excess heat to be artifact, under some conditions.”

            No, it is not possible. Not with a conventional calorimeter designed and used by an expert, in experiments that have been repeated many times. Hundreds of times in the case of Toyota. Not with experiments that have been independently replicated elsewhere by Lonchampt and others. If that could be an error, experimental science would not work, and we would still be living in caves.

            Experiments with subtle errors might be wrong in more than one lab. But subtle errors are ruled out in the high powered experiments, and the boil-off experiments. That could only be a gross error. A gigantic error! Gigantic errors are not widely replicated. That has never happened in the history of science, as far as I know. Someone sees the problem.

            Note that the gigantic errors made by Rossi in the 1-year test and reported by Penon were instantly obvious to the experts who looked at the data, and to non-experts including me. We saw many problems immediately. The problems at Lugano were not obvious to me, because I know little about IR cameras. However, the fact that they did not calibrate was obvious to me, and I saw that was a problem. I quickly thought to ask them what color the incandescent light was. I am sure they got that question from me. They didn’t respond, which I assume is bad news. I suppose the color was orange, as shown in the photos, which means they measured the temperature wrong. (This is not a sure thing. People who know about electronic cameras tell me they sometimes show white light as orange.)

            “We know that a relatively small systematic error, if it can accumulate, can appear to be high energy production.”

            I am not talking about small systematic errors. I described high powered experiments, with 10 to 100 W of excess heat and in some cases no input power.

            It is true that small systematic errors measuring power might be interpreted as a lot of excess heat over time, but that is not what was reported at Toyota and elsewhere.

            1. Jed, how is this line of argument working for you? Do skeptics fall over and apologize for ever doubting LENR? We agree on much, but … telling skeptics that artifact is impossible in so many experiments is no more effective than pseudoskeptics claiming that LENR is impossible. I am highly recommending backing off on the loud certainty, and it does not matter if you are right or wrong. It simply is not an argument with legs, rather obviously — unless there is a reliable protocol, readily accessible.

              You are convinced enough to pour much of your life into serving the LENR community. Hey, me too! However, my goal is to engage the mainstream, because developing LENR will likely require that, both for theory and for the massive funding that many have thought necessary for commercial breakthrough. Engaging the mainstream requires sympathy, and outrage at the stupidity of it all does not generate sympathy.

          5. Abd wrote: “Jed, how is this line of argument working for you? Do skeptics fall over and apologize for ever doubting LENR?”

            I do not care about the political effectiveness of this argument, or whether it convinces skeptics. This argument was first made by Francis Bacon in Novum Organum. It is described in one form or another in every textbook on the scientific method, and in books by people such as T. H. Huxley and James Conant. In short, this is the bedrock basis of the experimental scientific method. (It is not the basis of theoretical or observational science – only the experimental branch.)

            If skeptics do not accept the authority of replicated experiments, they are not scientists. That is not my problem. There is nothing I can say to disenthrall them. I don’t see that as my job. I upload papers and I write for an audience or rational scientists, not irrational people, or uneducated people.

            There is no particular need to reach a large audience. If we reach people such as Bill Gates or Obama, that’s all we need. Elitism works in science. Most people do not understand science and technology. Most people have no need to understand science, any more than they need to know what an instruction set in a computer is.

            “We agree on much, but … telling skeptics that artifact is impossible in so many experiments is no more effective than pseudoskeptics claiming that LENR is impossible.”

            If replicated high sigma experiments do not convince a person, he is no scientist and nothing short of a commercial product or an editorial in Nature will convince him. Such people cannot be taught. They have no mental framework to evaluate or judge the issues. They have no basis to understand what experimental science is, or how it works. Trying to explain to them why replication proves the issue is like trying to explain evolution to a creationist, or logic to someone who makes elementary mistakes such as an appeal to the consequences of a belief.

            http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-consequences.html

            (The scientific method is closely related to logical fallacies.)

            If you explain why this is a logical fallacy, and the person does not agree, or he does not understand what you mean, that person was never trained in logic. He is like someone who lived before Greek and Roman philosophers developed logic. You can’t blame him for not knowing these things, but you cannot expect a person with a 3000-year-old world view to understand 2500-year-old concepts. You cannot expect a person who has no knowledge of biology or genetics to understand evolution. These things are difficult to grasp. Darwin was a genius. Ordinary people without education cannot on their own grasp what took Darwin decades to work out. (I do not mean they need formal education in school; they might read books and educate themselves.)

            Oddly enough, there are professional scientists who have no idea how the scientific method works, or what logical fallacies are. This may sound like a musician who cannot read music, but I have encountered such people.

          6. “Engaging the mainstream requires sympathy, and outrage at the stupidity of it all does not generate sympathy.”

            I have no desire to engage the mainstream. As I said, I am an elitist. Ordinary mainstream folks are incapable of understanding science or technology. I developed software, wrote manuals and trained ordinary folks for many years. I know their limitations. I went to elite universities in the U.S. and Japan. I have met many smart, influential people, captains of industry, high government officials, professors and economists etc. Most of these people no practical knowledge of science or the physics of daily life. They have no idea how an arch works, or the difference between weight and density. They do not know that objects of different weight fall at the same acceleration, or why you cannot make energy vanish away with a sauna. In short, they are as ignorant as peasants were before Galileo.

            Despite this, things work pretty well. Those of us who need to know how computers work can get the job done. The fact that most people consider computers black magic and have absolutely no idea how they work does not impede progress.

            I am not a bit “outraged” at ignorance. That would be like being outraged at rabbits that get into your vegetable garden garden and eat the carrots. That’s what they do. Ignorance and incuriosity are the normal human condition. Probably the normal primate condition. People don’t want to know – and why should they want to know? If the world were filled with people like me, with insatiable curiosity, it would be chaos. Nothing would work right. Every machine and every NIST standard would be replaced faster than computers were in 1982.

          7. Let me just list three examples of common ignorance, to illustrate my point.

            ~25% of the U.S. public does not realize the earth orbits the sun. 30% of Russians do not know this. I don’t recall the percent in Japan but it is higher than you might think, despite their excellent public education.

            I was once driving with a college-educated, knowledgeable person. At a red light I said, “let’s pull up closer to the light or we won’t get a left hand turn signal.” He said, “what do you mean?” I explained there is a metal detector under the pavement that triggers the light. It never occurred to him to wonder why a turn signal comes on sometimes but not at other times.

            During Rossi’s 1-year test, when he reported 1 MW of output, many people, including me, immediately asked: “Why isn’t it hot in there? You have no ventilation equipment.” (As you now know, most of the warehouse is visible even with the walled-off pretend customer site.) Rossi had no answer. I do not think he addressed the question, except with blather. When he could no longer evade the issue in the deposition, he made up the nonsense about the mezzanine heat exchanger with invisible pipes. It seems he never anticipated that people would ask about this. It never occurred to him this is a major problem that negates the claims. When I heard about this, I finally realized that Rossi is a technical ignoramus.

            To summarize, most people today are nearly as ignorant as medieval peasants were. At least 25% of them have no knowledge of discoveries made by Galileo or Newton, never mind Darwin or Einstein. And yet our civilization gets along perfectly well. People do not need to know things. There is no advantage to knowing about the solar system, the conservation of energy, or that metal detectors are under the street. Most people intuitively know you should move your car close to a red light, from experience. For most of history, most people were not a bit curious about such things; they are not curious now, and I doubt they will be in the future. That’s okay. It is human nature. It does not make me “outraged.” I am not outraged, but I know from experience that you cannot explain to such people how a computer works, why the earth orbits the sun, why cold fusion is real, or why replicated high-sigma experiments are the only standard of truth in experimental science. Such things are totally over their heads. I might as well lecture in Japanese and expect them to know what I am saying.

            A great many things are over my head, such as music and IR cameras, so I don’t feel any sense of superiority.

          8. Not to beat a dead horse . . . but the other reason I use the argument that widely replicated high Sigma experiments are the only standard of truth in experimental science is because I do not have any other arguments. If, as you say, this is not “working” because skeptics do not “fall over and apologize for ever doubting LENR,” then I am stuck. I have nothing more to convince them with.

            Along the same lines, I cannot come up with any argument that will convince crackpots such as Shanahan, or people who believe the medieval notion that theory overrides experiments.

            I think you have claimed that the correlation between heat and helium is somehow more convincing than the excess heat alone. I don’t buy that. The excess heat is correlated with material conditions. The effect is only seen with Pd-D, not Pt-D or Pd-H. It is correlated with various other things, as you know. These correlations are just as strong as the correlation to helium, and they reduces the likelihood of instrument artifact just as much. A calorimeter cannot be affected by the choice of Pd versus Pt.

            The helium correlation is important because it sheds light on the mechanism. It shows this must be some form of nuclear fusion, at least with PdD. However, it is not more inherently convincing than other correlations or than the fact that cold fusion produces heat far beyond the limits of chemistry with no chemical changes.

            The other objections to my hypothesis that you offer such as “there are many subtleties about how to eliminate mundane explanations” apply just as much to the helium-heat correlation as any other. As far as I know, there are no subtleties or mundane explanations for the ~100 W reactions that continued for weeks, but if you (or someone else) thinks there are such mundane explanations, nothing I can say will dissuade you.

        3. Let me more directly answer. Yes, I’m sure. This is the first time this work is being done with fully adequate funding, and these aren’t noobs. If it was only Duncan and his grad student, sure, they could make the same mistakes many others have made.

          As to cherry-picking, Miles apparently reported all his results — including outliers. I certainly hope for that. In determining correlations, it is important for the protocols and analytical criteria to be established in advance, or cherry-picking can warp results. McKubre has generally done that. Violante, not always. There is a great temptation to report only “positive” results, but for correlations, all results are of value. Post-hoc analysis, discovering new correlations in data, is useful only for suggesting future research avenues, not for coming to clear conclusions about the correlations found.

        4. Your last sentence about “mundane correlatsion” is vague; that the levels are low is not relevant. Yes, it creates the possibility of leakage, but that is why this work is done with many tests and under varying conditions. Leakage would not vary with excess heat. (It’s an easy idea to think of, heat could affect seals, but … in CF experiments, the “heat” is not necessarily any change in temperature, and the levels of temperature change, when it is seen, are small, a few degrees at most. Within that, the levels of detected anomalous heat can vary over a few orders of magnitude; that leakage would track that seems extraordinarily unlikely. But if you have ideas, let’s see them! I will be asking them to reveal more of the work, but I have no power to force this, nor should I have that power. This is really up to them, as scientists, working with established and reputable institutions that have policies, etc.

          1. Yes Abd. This is not quite the right place for a detailed discussion, and I’m vague because this is hypothetical: we do not have the methodology or results for these experiments. I agree – ideally you have varying excess heat with similar temperature and times, and He correlates with excess heat. That would then be very interesting, and be a stronger result than just the excess heat result, although still would need more details and analysis to check any mundane cause for the excess heat that could also be correlated with He. The more predicted the He/excess heat relationship, the stronger is such evidence.

            Normally you would not expect work to be published until after it was done and analysed. In this specific case there might be a case for publishing protocols in advance as some protection against the accusation that protocols and conditions are cherry-picked to make results good. I’m not saying that this is in any way sinister, just that adjusting experimental conditions to make experiments work can be difficult to distinguish from cherry-picking and therefore making correlations post hoc.

            1. The cherry-picking problem is generally one of incomplete reporting. If all the data is reported, then cherry-picking in analysis can be seen and quantified. As I mentioned, for correlation studies, it is essential to define protocols in advance. If one then finds something else interesting, if one decides that there is some basis for segregating results, that can still be reported, but would be explicitly acknowledged as data selection. Miles did not define in advance how to handle calorimetry failure, that happened with one experiment. So he reported the defective work, it became an outlier. He played with different cathode compositions, and the Pd-Ce cathode showed heat and no helium. What happened, we don’t know, but Miles reported that cathode. from my memory, we may then notice that with straight PdD and normal calorimetry, 12 experiments showed no heat and no helium. (i.e., only background helium. With 18 experiments similarly, there was helium proportional to the heat. And, then, of course, there were three outliers with some ostensible heat but no helium). This is a strong experimental series. While we can claim that there might be some cause for the correlation other than a nuclear reaction, the ratio of heat to helium would not be expected to match the mass conversion energy ratio for deuterium to helium, as closely as it does (requiring only an adjustment for presumed retained helium of roughly 40%. Huizenga thought that the ratio being within an order of magnitude of the theoretical value was spectacular. He was right. It was. Then he remained skeptical because “no gammas.” But that assumed a particular reaction, whereas possible pathways exist that would not generate the gamma.

              What I came to was that if these results are not at least of interest, the person is simply disinterested or attached to theory, when, in fact, there is no theory that requires LENR be impossible. There were only expectations; it is obvious that LENR, if it exists, is a rare phenomenon. I am not surprised to find skeptics wanting to see more evidence, and Plan B was designed to create that, to nail it. Welcome to the future.

          2. Abd wrote: “It’s an easy idea to think of, heat could affect seals, but … in CF experiments, the “heat” is not necessarily any change in temperature, and the levels of temperature change, when it is seen, are small, a few degrees at most.”

            As Miles pointed out, some of the cells that produced no excess heat were hotter than the ones that produced excess heat. In other words, with some of the cells that produced no excess heat, electrolysis was run at high power, and the overall power was sometimes higher than tests with electrolysis + cold fusion. There was no correlation between the temperature and the amount of helium found in the cell.

            There were several other reasons to rule out leaks as the source of helium. See:

            http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJintroducti.pdf

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