10KW LENR Demonstrator?

[marvin57]

It is about priors.

Cold fusion does not fit into any experimentally supported framework. Not just the Coulomb barrier, but that all the other stuff you'd expect is not observed. The experimental data for it (incl Rossi) is fragmentary and incoherent. (I'm including W-L - which has its own issues and is also not consistent with Rossi befor/after isotopic ratio experimental results).

Put that with the extreme difficulty of finding any theory to get over Coulomb Barrier and that is a very high improbability.

To make any CF likely you need some combination of cast-iron experimental evidence & plausible theory (if you had a plausible theory the experimental evidence could be less strong).

I have a "prior" for you. The Coulomb Barrier has already been overcome. The means to do this was first predicted on theoretical grounds before 1950. Nuclear fusion resulting from overcoming the Coulomb Barrier was first observed at Berkeley in 1956. The experimental results were published in the first comprehensive theoretical studies of this kind of fusion in a ground-breaking 1957 paper.

You might just be very surprised to read about muon-catalyzed fusion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion

"Muon-catalyzed fusion (uCF) is a process allowing nuclear fusion to take place at temperatures significantly lower than the temperatures required for thermonuclear fusion, even at room temperature or lower. Although it can be produced reliably with the right equipment and has been much studied, it is believed that the poor energy balance will prevent it from ever becoming a practical power source."

This article wasn't hard to find at all. This is even a repeatable and much-studied phenomena, there are many books and papers about it.

A muon with a unit negative charge can substitute for the single electron of a hydrogen atom. The muon, 207 times more massive than the electron, effectively shields and reduces the electromagnetic resistance between two nuclei and draws them much closer into a covalent bond than an electron can. The effective radius of the modified hydrogen is 207 times smaller than a normal hydrogen atom. Because the nuclei are so close, the strong nuclear force is able to kick in and bind both nuclei together.

It makes sense and is even relatively easy to explain.

As they say, life is often stranger than fiction ...

[Giorgio]

Are you suggesting that Rossi has found a way to create Leptons on demand?

Last time I checked Muons requested energy in excess of 100 MeV to be created in lab.
And that's a lot of energy.

[AcesHigh]

Incidentally, Wright Bros. flights were public for a long while, but they just kept quiet about it. IIRC: They rented a farmer's field to do development work in, and folks would idle on by and take a look. I recall seeing a NYT article of around 1905 [obviously - a reproduction of original publication!] where the reporter went to take a look himself after hearing reports that they were 'flying'. He reported that the reports were false because all they did is pull a kite off the ground and circle around a field a few times.

So what they were doing wasn't even recognised as 'flying' at the time! This'll be the same for Rossi; if he does get commercial power installed [hey - I have a powerful imagination, guys!!!] then people will still be doubting it for years to come even if they visit the power station. This is why even a working reactor pumping out kWh isn't enough for it to become 'accepted', it must be a fully disclosed idea that anyone can try to reproduce.

My own work parallels the Wright Bros approach; I, like they, found a very cool initial reception and consequently took a path of just not shouting about it. The point/motivation for doing this is that when it comes time to describe the work, there will [hopefully] be no need for fudging nor hiding anything at all because the issues will have already been explored and [patented] solutions explained. That's not being secretive - like Wright Bros, the work could be found but it just wasn't pushed down the public gullet, like Rossi is doing. What's the benefit of the way he is going about this, if he already has his backers? He should get on with it, and shut up about it unless he's ready to discuss it.

the Wright Brother´s flights were as public as Rossi´s experiments. Just a bunch of farm folk without any knowledge to judge if they were flying or gliding... in a small community where everyone was a friend of each other or probably 3rd degree cousins!


the first REAL public flight was made by Alberto Santos Dumont, in Paris, in front of hundreds/thousands of spectators, and the Aeroclube de France, which had set down prizes for aviation marks (first 100m or more flight, etc)

What historical sources prove that the Wright flew for hours before 1908? Which newspapers, magazines or scientific community verified this flights at Kitty Hawk, alledged by the Wright themselves? Besides, why in 1908 have not the Wright Brothers alledged having flown in a motorized craft, but requested a patent in England for an unmotorized GLIDER?

If the Flyer I could fly for hours, why couldnt them in 1904 in Ohio, in front of the reporters they invited and Octave Chanute? Why nobody took photos of an airplane flying for hours at 50 m high in such a busy place? (there was a telegraph station installed there where reporters, military and tourists usually went.)

If the Wright flew in 1903, why the US Patent and Trademark Office refused in giving them the patent at this year, giving it only in 1906 (same year Santos Dumont flew)? If they flew in 1903 with a motorized airship, why they only got the patent 821393 in may 22, 1906, but this is not even a patent for a motorized craft, but for a glider?


You see, the standarts are NOT the same. We would be mocking and doubting the Wright Brothers if today was any day in 1903, 1904... etc

ps: speaking of patents, Santos Dumont not only did not patent his airplanes, but he even gave for free all the drawings of his second airplane, the Demoiselle, who were published at Popular Mechanics so ANYONE could mount their own airplane.

[MSimon]

parallel,

An .8 deg C anomaly is hardly enough to run a power plant. Typically anomalies in the 250 C to 500 C are what engineers look for when designing heat engines.

Of course 0.8C is not enough. Not clear why you picked that figure unless you were being funny about the AGW graph. I am an engineer so I understand what is required.

I misread the graph. My apologies.

The current anomaly btw is .12 deg. C and the number has been flat for about 10 to 15 years.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/widget/ - they use UAH numbers. Nice graph.

Nice chart of CO2 as well.

[AcesHigh]

Incidentally, Wright Bros. flights were public for a long while, but they just kept quiet about it. IIRC: They rented a farmer's field to do development work in, and folks would idle on by and take a look. I recall seeing a NYT article of around 1905 [obviously - a reproduction of original publication!] where the reporter went to take a look himself after hearing reports that they were 'flying'. He reported that the reports were false because all they did is pull a kite off the ground and circle around a field a few times.

because that is probably exactly what they did... used a glider, not a motorized plane. That was their patent in 1906... a GLIDER. There is no way to prove they flied before Santos Dumont, besides the fact they are the heroes of the richest country in the world.

[MSimon]

marvin,

You are aware that there are some problems with muon catalyzed fusion? Like the limited lifetime of muons. Not to mention the energy required to create them.

Or maybe Rossi has figured out how to summon Maxwell's Demons. That could work. If they were devoted to producing nuclear reactions by concentrating the locally available thermal energy.

[cg66]

Windom & Larsen discuss an alternative and mention muon assisted.

Note the absence of a Coulomb barrier to such a weak interaction
nuclear process. It is this feature that makes the
neutron induced nuclear transmutations more likely than
other nuclear reactions that are impeded by Coulomb barriers.
In fact, a strong Coulomb attraction that can exist
between an electron and a nucleus helps the nuclear transmutation
(2) proceed. While the process (1) is experimentally
known to occur when muons are mixed into hydrogen
systems [4–6], i.e. μ−+p+ →n+νμ, it is regarded as difficult
for nature to play the same trick with electrons and
protons at virtual rest. For (1) to spontaneously occur it is
required that the lepton mass obey a threshold condition,
Mlc2 >Mnc2−Mpc2 ≈ 1.293MeV ≈ 2.531Mec2 , (3)
which holds true by a large margin for the muon, but is
certainly not true for the vacuum mass of the electron.
On the other hand, the electron mass in condensed matter
can be modified by local electromagnetic field fluctuations.

Sadly most of this paper makes me feel bad about how much math I have forgotten since college…

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/library/20 ... alyzed.pdf

[chrismb]

because that is probably exactly what they did... used a glider, not a motorized plane. That was their patent in 1906... a GLIDER. There is no way to prove they flied before Santos Dumont, besides the fact they are the heroes of the richest country in the world.

You've lost me. What's your point? Are you attempting to make a non-sequitur that because the Wright Bros weren't recognised then this is evidence that Rossi is not being properly recognised?

Incidentally, the patent they did get, for 3 axis control, was totally ground breaking in whatever form of man-made flight you might pick. The very fact that they picked a key aspect of the invention, rather than trying to conjour up an around-a-bout patent smothering a whole 'aeroplane' defintion, cuts to the heart of what they knew was the key missing part of previous attempts. In the same way, Rossi should be patenting the nickel powder formulation, not the ludicrous 'I claim a metal tube with nickel powder in it' claim.

To cut the shyte and make a claim directly, elegantly and only for the key, and essential, aspect of a larger device shows true understanding of your technology. For me, their patent shows they were the true pioneers of manned flight, even if there are denialists around that seek to belittle their understanding of the technolgy. Their work was controlled, carefully and painstakingly executed, patented brilliantly, and released into the public only when they had all the details to give, and when the public was ready to receive it and comprehend what they had actually done.

[KitemanSA]

Unless he keeps tight control of ownership and has means to enforce it.

What he needs is a death ray that will kill all occupants of the vehicle and any one who gets near it if tampering is SUSPECTED or there are any deviations from a filed itinerary.

I was thinking more along the line of automatically administered Rohypnol and an auto-suggestion tape to forget what you've seen in the past hour and an urge to never think about this subject again...

[Giorgio]

Windom & Larsen discuss an alternative and mention muon assisted.

Forget muon assisted fusion in a machine like the one of Rossi.
It really makes no sense.

[tomclarke]

It is about priors.

Cold fusion does not fit into any experimentally supported framework. Not just the Coulomb barrier, but that all the other stuff you'd expect is not observed. The experimental data for it (incl Rossi) is fragmentary and incoherent. (I'm including W-L - which has its own issues and is also not consistent with Rossi befor/after isotopic ratio experimental results).

Put that with the extreme difficulty of finding any theory to get over Coulomb Barrier and that is a very high improbability.

To make any CF likely you need some combination of cast-iron experimental evidence & plausible theory (if you had a plausible theory the experimental evidence could be less strong).

I have a "prior" for you. The Coulomb Barrier has already been overcome. The means to do this was first predicted on theoretical grounds before 1950. Nuclear fusion resulting from overcoming the Coulomb Barrier was first observed at Berkeley in 1956. The experimental results were published in the first comprehensive theoretical studies of this kind of fusion in a ground-breaking 1957 paper.

You might just be very surprised to read about muon-catalyzed fusion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion

"Muon-catalyzed fusion (uCF) is a process allowing nuclear fusion to take place at temperatures significantly lower than the temperatures required for thermonuclear fusion, even at room temperature or lower. Although it can be produced reliably with the right equipment and has been much studied, it is believed that the poor energy balance will prevent it from ever becoming a practical power source."

This article wasn't hard to find at all. This is even a repeatable and much-studied phenomena, there are many books and papers about it.

A muon with a unit negative charge can substitute for the single electron of a hydrogen atom. The muon, 207 times more massive than the electron, effectively shields and reduces the electromagnetic resistance between two nuclei and draws them much closer into a covalent bond than an electron can. The effective radius of the modified hydrogen is 207 times smaller than a normal hydrogen atom. Because the nuclei are so close, the strong nuclear force is able to kick in and bind both nuclei together.

It makes sense and is even relatively easy to explain.

As they say, life is often stranger than fiction ...

Indeed, muon catalysis works. But since muons are difficult (lots of energy) to make and have v short lietime this does not help matters.

It is rather like saying that slow neutrons can catalyse fusion - the difficulty is making them at low enough energy cost. (We can make slow neutrons BTW - but it is not cheap).

[seedload]

You might just be very surprised to read about muon-catalyzed fusion:

It is surprising that you could possibly think that he, or anyone here, would not know about muon catalyzed fusion.

People on this board generally are here because of an interest in fusion and less conventional potential ways to get there - such as polywell. You would think, with that interest in mind, that they have probably read and studied about muon catalyzed fusion before - no?

Anyway, welcome to the forum. There are lots of smart people here. Way smarter than me. You may want to listen to them for a little while before trying to do too much educating.

In regards to muon catalyzed fusion, you still get things like neutrons and gammas out, which is totally conventional. Also note that, as you point out, the theory came before the confirmation. This is what you would expect with something that is in conformance with known physics.

With Rossi, we are expected to believe a result with no theory, no relationship to known physics, and no evidence of nuclear products or radiation - except some claim of 'transmuted" nickel. The suggestion is that known physics are incomplete, but there is no extension of known physics to explain it. There is nothing to make a reasonably knowledgeable person think this anything more than a modern day version of Alchemy.

regards

[cg66]

Windom & Larsen discuss an alternative and mention muon assisted.

Forget muon assisted fusion in a machine like the one of Rossi.
It really makes no sense.

W&L describe a theory for LERN not relying on muon assisted. I was just pointing out they mention muon assisted (and how impractical it is) in their paper. Whether or not it applies to Rossi’s device is beyond my ability to assess.

[Axil]

This quote from Edmund Storms has always intrigued me. I always test and compare any new prospective Rossi reaction theory that comes up against it.

Edmund Storms: Rossi hit upon this somewhat by accident. He was using a nickel catalyst to explore ways of making a fuel by combining hydrogen and carbon monoxide and apparently, observed quite by accident, that his [?????] was making extra energy. So then he explored it from that point of view and, apparently, over a year or two, amplified the effect.

He’s exploring the gas loading area of the field. This is also a region, a method used in the heavy water, or the heavy hydrogen, system. But in this case, it was light hydrogen, ordinary hydrogen and nickel and what happens is quite amazing.

You create the right conditions in the nickel, and he has a secret method for doing that, and all you do is add hydrogen to it and it makes huge amounts of energy based upon a nuclear reaction.”

The excess heat formed in nickel catalyst tests of CH4 production may be instrumental in the production of High-Rydburg(HR) states of hydrogen when excited CH4 decomposes and interacts with lattice faults in nickel. Let me explain as follows:

A muon with a unit negative charge can substitute for the single electron of a hydrogen atom. The muon, 207 times more massive than the electron, effectively shields and reduces the electromagnetic resistance between two nuclei and draws them much closer into a covalent bond than an electron can. The effective radius of the modified hydrogen is 207 times smaller than a normal hydrogen atom. Because the nuclei are so close, the strong nuclear force is able to kick in and bind both nuclei together.

A muon is something that is massive and has a negative charge. A High-Rydburg(HR) state of hydrogen can build a compound virtual particle that is very heavy and has a large negative charge. Because the group of negative hydrogen ions is coherent, they behave as a single quantum mechanical particle. I think a coherent cluster of hydrogen ions can build a compound virtual particle that can catalyze fusion reactions just like a muon can but only better.

The High-Rydburg negitive hydrogen ion theory of the Rossi reaction.

When hot high pressure hydrogen is bombarded with thermal electrons, long lived clumps of negative hydrogen ions form. High-Rydburg (HR) states produced by electron impact have been observed with lifetimes of about 100 microseconds to seconds based on their quantum excitation states.

High-Rydberg states of H2 produced via electron impact have been observed with long lifetimes. Such long-lived HR states are thought to be high orbital angular momentum (high-C) states populated via electron impact near ion threshold energies.

Preliminary measurements 'using a new experimental technique’ (Pinnaduwage, L. A., and Datskos,) show that the effective lifetimes may be Lengthened at high ambient pressures; this could be due to the collisional stabilization of vibrationally-excited core of the HR state.

In more detail, the HR clump is coherent with orbital electrons moving in circular orbits far from the ion cores. These clumps are effectively super-atoms that don’t readily react with ordinary H2 chemically. There are many ion cores enclosed within the huge orbits of HR atoms with very large quantum excitation states.

These quantum excitation states get really large as kinetic energy is added by continued atomic and further electron impacts on these clumps of negative hydrogen ions. As the quantum level of ionization grows larger, the lifetime of the ion clump increases.

These ion cores are comprised of hundreds of hydrogen nuclei with their electrons orbiting at extreme distances. When these ion core complexes find their way into the lattice defects of nickel, a catalyzed fusion process occurs.

I think that the this High-Rydberg state process is the fusion mechanism that is universal to all cold fusion processes observed in many years of countless cold fusion experiments. It operates in a way similar to muon catalyzed fusion.

On the practical side, this coherent ion state of hydrogen can be produced by dissociation of CH4 by glow discharge electron emissions. In turn this CH4 can be produced when carbon is heated and evaporates in a hydrogen atmosphere. Graphite heated in a high pressure hydrogen atmosphere will generate CH4.

The secret element in the Rossi reactor could well be carbon.

[Gandalf]

Mr. Simon, you as well as many here know the important thing is that muon catalyzed fusion is possible - and that this fact is a very clear demonstration of overcoming the coulomb barrier. The fact that making and keeping muons in an economical fashion is not currently possible is not the point. (Pons & Fleishman were very aware of μCF when they went public with their claims, it is quite reasonable to assume their knowledge of μCF influenced their actions)

You've used a straw-man fallacy to attack Rossi. When such tactics are used, sophistry ensues and dialectic is impossible. Unfortunately neither this discussion or Rossi's methods have been a bastion of high principles and philosophy, so I can hardly blame you for slinging some mud. However, I can point to the nature and consistency of said mud, and suggest you add some fiber. You know, for more structural properties, as in good English Cobb.

I find the comparison of Rossi to the Wright brothers to be weak. The Wright's contributions were immediately observable, testable, and quite understandable. Rossi doesn't claim to know what's going, but he is trying to make use of what he thinks he's observed. I think he's more of a Tycho Brahe - flawed measurements, that may (hopefully) lead to a more sincere and thorough investigation of the observed phenomenon.

~Gandalf~

marvin,

You are aware that there are some problems with muon catalyzed fusion? Like the limited lifetime of muons. Not to mention the energy required to create them.

Or maybe Rossi has figured out how to summon Maxwell's Demons. That could work. If they were devoted to producing nuclear reactions by concentrating the locally available thermal energy.