LENR Is Real

[Giorgio]

Ah finally an explanation I understand.
https://www.facebook.com/16260767043358 ... 904889444/

[tomclarke]

Logically, the fact that Rosi's high-profile LENR devices don't work does not prove LENR is not real. And few here after Ladajo's magnificent trawl through Rossi's self-contradicting statements can have thought they do work.

Still, I continue to be fascinated by the very well documented Swede Professor's Lugano Report on extended tests of Rossi's "hot-cat". These tests are unusual in being (almost) independent and very well described. They are still used by Rossi as validation that his stuff works and he has recently obtained > $10M funding from Neil Woodford of all people . A shocking matter given Neil's normal rather conservative approach to his multi-billion investment funds. It just goes to show how badly financial types fall down well evalauting junk science.

The Lugano tests show (headline):
COP of >3 in extended test well above possible chemical enthalpy.
COP "acceleration" from 3.2 to 3.6 for tests of the same setup at claimed temperatures of 1250C and 1400C.

A while ago (posted here) I showed that due to a (quite subtle) calculation error the actual COP was 1.07 (but with uncertainty +/- 30%, so this figure is pretty arbitrary) and that, independent of this uncertainty, the COP for the two different tests was identical. The "acceleration" was an artifact of the calculation error.

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

What I find wonderful is how the little things that still were unexplained about the data slot into place when carefully examined. Two internet criticisms of the work were:

(1) This error mechanism does not explain the "dummy" test, which shows lower output relative to the active tests than is easily explained
(2) This error mechanism does not explain the acceleration.

I have neat answers for both now. (2) is because my write-up was maths that most people don't read + detailed numerical calculations in python that most people were too lazy to run and validate for themselves. I have now an "easy-read" explanation.

(1) is blown out of the water by a small comment on page 4 of the Lugano report where the authors say that they adjusted their emissivity "book" data against real temperature data at low temperatures only. That will remove the error for the low temperature dummy tests. The high temperature "active" data then relies on the book data which, it turns out, is wrong because the use total emissivity and not band emissivity. But close reading shows that they knew it was wrong: when they cross-checked at low temperatures they found this out. Yet they still used this bad data at high temperatures where, it turns out, the error is much larger. The bad omission is any sort of temperature cross-check at higher temperatures.


For (2) see here:

http://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.p ... 8#post9348

And other posts on that thread.

[parallel]

Tom, I agree that the Lugano test left much to be desired regarding temperature measurement. As I wrote earlier I don't think even a better replication will convince skeptics like you. You will have to wait for the results of the 350 day trial of the 1 MW plant in Feb/Mar before you will admit Rossi has something. As the plant has now been operating (well according to Aftenposten and others) for eight months, there is not long to wait. With an independent customer and a referee the results should be more certain. It wasn't long ago that you refused to admit LENR was possible at all.

The only real news is that the new E-Cat X apparently has an operating temperature of 1400C. If this is proven to be reliable it will open the door to a number of other applications.

Adrian Ashfield

[tomclarke]

My position on LENR has always been that like everyone I'd like it to be true. But:

(1) There is currently no LENR theory that explains the claimed experimental data
(2) The claimed experimental data is incoherent and well fits varied experimental error, bad methodology, and very occasional fraud.
(3) Any LENR theory would be extraordinary - in the sense that it has no fingerprints elsewhere in observational science and has big problems to overcome (high energy product normalisation being the worst one).

These things together make LENR highly unlikely. It is a real shame that the behaviour of most though not all groups involved in LENR, and particularly of Rossi, only confirms such a "highly unlikely" judgement.

Rossi continues to claim that the Lugano test has proved his device works, and many people have been convinced by this.

Of Rossi's most recent test "long-term" consider:
(1) Why, after 9 months, does he still claim to not know whether the testes device works?
(2) The parameters here are vague. What are the chances, whetehr it is declared successful or no, that data from this test will be any more spoof-free than the 17 (?) previous demos and tests?
(3) You must admit at least that this very long test is a brilliant move for someone wanting to perpetuate funding for devices none of which work.
(4) What is the likelihood Rossi will state after this test that current e-cats are deficient and he must have an extended development period in the new ecat-x?
(5) How did the 100 e-cats each of 10kW transform, in the middle of the test, into 4 e-cats each of 250kW? Does that make sense?
(6) Why does he stay camped out in his shipping container answering questions on his internet blog?

Rossi has remained miraculously good at finding new supporters, some with deep pockets, even as old ones become disillusioned. He is easily the match for Mills when it comes to free energy scams though I guess Mills has better staying power. This in spite of his continual self-contradiction.

[parallel]

Tom,
There are dozens of theories. One of the better ones here.
http://www.e-catworld.com/2015/10/06/lo ... eischmann/

Rossi says he cannot state the trial is successful until it is over. Probably as a result of Industrial Heat’s insistence. Also safer.
Rossi is under no financial pressure now. Woodford Equity have added another $49 million after extensive due diligence. This legal statement means they must have had someone technical crawl all over the operating plant.

Rossi NEVER said the plant was 100 small E-Cats. He said the ~50 small E-Cats were on standby and have never been used. It was later that he added that the operating plant used four 250 kW E-Cat units and I have reason to believe each of those has three E-Cats inside, probably like what is shown in the patent. I’m guessing they operate with synergy to provide the very high COP reported by others.

Nothing will convince you short of commercial sales. Saying you "hope" LENR is successful is a slick way of answering the point that you earlier SAID you thought was impossible.

[tomclarke]

Nothing will convince you short of commercial sales.

There have been two independent tests I know about away from Rossi's factory. Both conducted by people who had a strong interest in getting positive results - so not that independent. Other offered independent tests (e.g. NASA who also strongly hoped for positive results, UoB who equally wanted to test properly) were refused by Rossi.

You'd think that if his stuff works at least one of them would give positive results? Both (Hydrofusion and Lugano) show an electric heater.

What would convince me is what is normally required for such an extraordinary claim. An independent proof of principle test.

All that can be ever said of some scientific proposition is that it is highly unlikely. Impossible is an inaccurate word to use. But were my judgement of LENR as a whole "well, maybe there is something" then my judgement of Rossi would still be highly unlikely. The Rossi evidence is very clear.

[tomclarke]

Originally, I found this idea in the Ukrainian literature and was skeptical. So, we verified it by doing a direct numerical solution of the time-dependent Schrodinger Equation for a single nuclear particle in a parabolic energy well. These oscillations in spatial spread will periodically delocalize the nucleus and facilitate the tunneling of adjacent nuclei into the Strong Force attractive nuclear potential well, giving rise to nuclear fusion at rates that are several tens of orders of magnitude larger than what one calculates via the usual Gamow Factor integral relationship.

Parallel's "good theory".

leaving aside that this good theory is a set of bullet points in a post on the highly censored ECW website....

There is enough technical detail here to guess at why this guy is misled.

It is true that protons could be delocalised by oscillations. That is the single particle wavefunction:
psi(x,t) gets spread out over x.

It is also true that adjacent nuclei could have overlapping wave functions due to this delocalisation.

However Coulomb, and the virtual energy required to get two nuclei close to each other, remain. If you look at the joint PDF of the two nuclei being in positions x1, x2 you will find that Coulomb repulsion still does its job. The joint wave function goes very small as x1 and x2 get close, even though the single nucleus wave functions overlap.

psi1_2(x1, x2, t)

That is not apparent from the formalism used by this guy - as far as I can tell from this "table napkin" exposition. And it explains the enthusiasm though it requires someone who is a bit clueless.

I of course may be misunderstanding this guy. But to find that out, he'd need to publish a decent paper. CF has been going on for 20 years and I'd guess that any feasible idea will have been thought of before now. But maybe parallel is right and this is an informal version of something more rigorous than appears from the ECW write-up and it will be a real LENR theory.

Can't say i'm holding my breath though.

[parallel]

Tom,
You mean there is no theory that you agree with, not what you said, there was no theory. Hardly a surprise as you think LENR impossible.

You wrote:

There have been two independent tests I know about away from Rossi's factory. Both conducted by people who had a strong interest in getting positive results - so not that independent

.
I suppose you think Parkhomov in Russia is not independent.

What no comment on Woodford Equity doing due diligence before investing $49 million? Obviously we should take your opinion over someone that has actually examined the plant. Even though you have never been near it. BY the way, the investment was in Tom Darden's Industrial Heat, so it seems he has not tired of it, as you wrote.

As I repeat again, nothing will persuade you short of commercial sales.

[Giorgio]

Tom,
You mean there is no theory that you agree with, not what you said, there was no theory. Hardly a surprise as you think LENR impossible.

What actually Tom said is that there is no "logic" nor "a sound math" proof for a LENR theory, and he illustrated you a quick example of one of his concerns regarding your "best theory out there"
I know that you are not concerned by anything that involves "logic" or "math", but luckily for humanity most people do care about them.

What no comment on Woodford Equity doing due diligence before investing $49 million?

Getting investment money is not same as having a viable product. History is full of such examples, so full that I wonder how come that there are still people like you who can't understand this basic rule.
IH could have placed their math, their proofs and their prototypes on the investor market like everyone else does when looking for funds, and if they had something convincing than there would have been plenty of money flooding their accounts.
The way it has been done, Woodford investment does not add any support to IH claims.

As I repeat again, nothing will persuade you short of commercial sales.

That's because nothing has been shown till now except empty words and meaningless reports/papers. What other criteria we can use to evaluate Mr. Rossi claims? Hope? Trust? Belief?
You seem to consider LENR and Rossi claims to be on the same level as a religion, all what they say HAS to be true.


Let me point you out just another one of the many fallacies that you and most of the LENR website daily show:

Ecat world: "Woodford Equity Income Fund Invested in Industrial Heat after 2.5 Years of Due Diligence "
All sounds very nice, if not for the small issue that Woodford Equity LLP was incorporated only in May 2014......

So, a company less than 1.5 years old has made 2.5 years of due diligence on IH...... Logic indeed!
Or maybe they have also an investment in a Time Machine company. Go wonder....

[KitemanSA]

Ah finally an explanation I understand.

If you can't debate it, mock it?

[tomclarke]

I suppose you think Parkhomov in Russia is not independent.

Parkhomov claimed to have positive results on testing something like Rossi's Lugano device. Ironically, the Lugano device did not work even from its own data, so this is not a very good start.

Unfortunately the history of Parkhomov's experimental work does not deliver confidence:

(1) First test COP=2 from potentially good calorimetry, but badly documented experiment. (Potentially good because if it allows liquid water or steam to come from the device it will dramatically overread COP, if it is doene competently, with no steam or splashing, it is bomb-proof).

(2) No replication of original experiment. Next results comes from much less secure calorimetry. The data from these is also later shown (and then admitted by Parkhomov) to be photo-shopped over a section that P claimed validated "heat after death".

(3) Since then P has vanished from the scientific debate.

What no comment on Woodford Equity doing due diligence before investing $49 million? Obviously we should take your opinion over someone that has actually examined the plant. Even though you have never been near it.

The problem is that you do not know what is the DD that the Woodford fund actually did. They are not scientists, and I'd guess they relied on the scientific evidence as presented to them by Rossi. In this case there is no published data other than arxiv (Ferrara) and UoB (Lugano). They probably take these test results together with Rossi's year long test as good DD. We now know now that the second and most careful of these two tests has a null result, but that information was not available to them when they made their decision.

Your assumption here is that the fund has done better DD than exists elsewhere, but you have no evidence for this. Remember, their remit is not for proof of LENR. They will bet on a 10% chance that LENR might be the next big thing. Very different. And they are not competent to make scientific judgements, so the quality of their judgement will depend on who is their advisor. There are even cases where funds make such investment with no independent scientific advice! Generally investing is about people and business prospects not science.

Your reasoning here suffers from the "selected positive" fallacy. That is, Rossi will no doubt try to get funding from many financial institutions, all of whom have different methods of evaluation. One of these invests, we naturally do not hear from the others. So even if financial institution high risk investment is your method of evaluating science you do not have a fair sample.

BY the way, the investment was in Tom Darden's Industrial Heat, so it seems he has not tired of it, as you wrote.

Did you listen to Darden's recent speech? He says that IH is one of his many long-term investments in LENR.That he adopts a hands-off stance. He is a true LENR believer and he backs people to come up with the goods eventually, with no timeframe.

Given this stance under what circumstance will he disown Rossi? Certainly not when Rossi (with his support) has managed to secure (you say) £40M extra funding for LENR.

From Darden's POV it is not about working product. It is about pushing for funding into an area he believes will save mankind long-term. All understandable and Darden as someone non-technical is an ideal Rossi supporter. Whether or not Darden is tired of Rossi he will never tire of LENR. Believers don't, and the LENR proposition is logically undisprovable.

Do you think there is any possible evidence that could disprove LENR? If so, say what it is... I can't think of anything myself because the hypothesis does not make any concrete predictions.

[parallel]

Tom,
As nothing short of commercial sales will persuade you it is a waste of time to give other examples.
Wait until Feb/Mar 2016 and then we will see who is right.

[Giorgio]

Ah finally an explanation I understand.

If you can't debate it, mock it?

Well seriously speaking, if you can debate it with a valid technical or logic argument I will be happy and curious to hear it.
Provided it not the usual "We can't be sure that LENR does not exist" argument, as everyone agrees on that in general terms.

[tomclarke]

Wait until Feb/Mar 2016 and then we will see who is right.

Very well. Here is what will happen then (I'm making a prediction)

(1) (likely) Rossi will announce test results (either positive or negative, LOL).

(2) (certain) There will be still no evidence that Rossi's devices work. There will be no working devices available. If, for example Rossi ever sold a kit etc for hobbyists you might except fragmentary results similar to those seen in the rash of "replications" with no positives that are replicable and remain when properly instrumented. There will be no proper independent test with positive results.

(3)(probable) Rossi will announce all sorts of nebulous activity on basis of the completed test, licensees, contingent contracts to manufacture, pro-duck-shun (sorry - I'm getting mixed up) line development, none of which means anything.

(4) (probable) Rossi will announce tests of the ecat-x which will delay things another 6-12 months and divert everyone's attention from the fact that the previous e-cat, after extensive tests, has still not seen the light of day.

As I've stated before what would persuade me is any proper independent positive test. Commercial sales would presumably allow that to be conducted but looking at the poor quality of the "replication" testing you can imagine quite a few false and unreplicable positives from hobbyists. Commercial sales are no guarantee that it works - many free nergy scams have sold kits or even full devices for experimenters to play with.

[parallel]

Tom,
Well we shall see won't we.
I predict the COP>6 and the proof will be from the customer, who has to pay the energy bills.
Also from the appointed independent referee who is monitoring the operation..

I predict you will not believe it and try to change the subject to production dates, or something else in the future.