Talk-Polywell.org

A gentleman wants to build a fusor with RF drive:

http://www.fusor.net/board/download_thr ... 1151357227

on that thread I came across this link:

http://www.ensmp.fr/aflb/AFLB-297/table297.htm

which lead to this paper:

http://www.ensmp.fr/aflb/AFLB-297/aflb297m326.pdf

which deals with Cold Fusion. Don't laugh. It is now a respectable discipline although experiment is way ahead of theory.

MSimon wrote:which deals with Cold Fusion. Don't laugh. It is now a respectable discipline although experiment is way ahead of theory.

IIRC there have been several repeatable experiments funded by the USN Naval Research Lab. If true, they're showing anomalous nuclear reactions that standard theory claims are impossible. Anomalous fusion most likely, given the nature of the contaminants detected in the working fluid.

Pons & Fleischman are the poster children for how not to turn your area of inquiry into a pariah field associated with "Tesla tech."

Duane

Funny how "Tesla Tech" actually usuall works at some level when you really examine it. My favorite example is that of Tesla's "Earthquake Generator." He claimed that by using resonant frequencies of, say, a building, you could shake it to the ground using a small piston engine that cycled in harmony with the building. He claimed to have had to abort such an experiment, in fact, as the building he was testing it on seemed to shake so hard that he worried that it would, in fact, collapse.

This claim is often discredited. Recently they did a Mythbusters episode testing the claim. The Mythbusters claimed to have busted this as a myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBuster ... Machine.22

But if you've ever seen the show, you know that their scientific method is quite fuzzy. What's interesting is that their little machine caused a modern truss bridge to vibrate in a way they could feel 100 feet away, a bridge designed to avoid disasters like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angers_Bridge
An issue that even Roman soldiers understood.

And one you've probably seen the film footage for:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Nar ... ing_Gertie

So if a poorly conducted scientific test, on a structure designed to resist such effects, produced a significant effect... as opposed to Tesla doing the experiement with all his genius, on a building that was constructed prior to understanding the phenomenon...

I think it's quite likely that the Tesla machine worked. At least to some extent.

Broadcast power works.

AC... well he beat Edison with that one.

And his greatest contribution to mankind, the Tesla Coil, without which Les Paul would not have been able to construct the first electric guitar...

Tesla was full of win. As the kids say these days. I think people are only lately figuring this out.


So... LENR? Yeah, their experiments clearly show results. Anyone laughing at them at this point is willfully ignorant. They've a bit of Tesla in them, and they should be proud for that.

There was more than a little Tesla in Dr. Bussard, from what I've seen. It's called being visionary. A method of invention > 1% Inspiration.

Mike

Here is something interesting for those still following cold fusion.

http://gizmodo.com/393119/scientist-cre ... in-decades

Arata used pressure to force deuterium gas into an evacuated cell that contained a palladium and zirconium oxide mix (ZrO2-Pd). Arata said that the mix caused the deuterium's nuclei to fuse, raising the temperature in the cell and keeping the center of the cell warm for 50 hours.

According the the physicsworld posting there was supposed to have been He4 products measured although that post seems to have vanished to me.

And here is his patent on what seems to be the same the process.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP1551032.html

Yoshiaki Arata is supposed to be a pioneer of nuclear fusion research in Japan - both the traditional kind and the seemingly outlandish.

For what it is worth...

regards

Broadcast power works. If it didn't my radio wouldn't work.

It has drawbacks in terms of power delivery (watts, kilowatts, megawatts, gigawatts, terawatts). The inverse square law gets you every time. Now if you could keep the beams from spreading......

It's called a laser.

I started a thread under Implications, specifically to discuss that one, guys.

I've read of LENR processes that supposedly give excess power. With scaling up being the only current problem. Could be charlatans, I suppose.

I like Polywell. I like ITER, too. I like LENR. I like any energy source that might, someday, be the solutions to mankind's most important problems.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote:I started a thread under Implications, specifically to discuss that one, guys.

I've read of LENR processes that supposedly give excess power. With scaling up being the only current problem. Could be charlatans, I suppose.

I like Polywell. I like ITER, too. I like LENR. I like any energy source that might, someday, be the solutions to mankind's most important problems.

Mike

I SEVERELY doubt that LENR mechanisms as currently described ever produce net power. At best they're probably like sonofusion or original- concept IEC. Quaint and amusing nuclear mechanisms for secondary school science projects.

The interesting bit is that they are apparently creating a seriously anomalous situation. The excess heat cannot be accounted for by electrochemical means, particle tracks indicate high energy charged particles, and the composition of ashes and contaminants in the electrolyte strongly indicate DD fusion. But no neutrons. If this is fusion as it looks to be, something is very wrong with standard theory.

And THAT, not the minuscule levels of energy output, is very, VERY interesting.

Duane

Duane,

They claim outputs in the 30W range for 50 hour runs.

That should be a LOT of neutrons given that .001 W of D-D fusion produces easily (if you are moderately careful) measured neutrons.

MSimon wrote:Duane,

They claim outputs in the 30W range for 50 hour runs.

That should be a LOT of neutrons given that .001 W of D-D fusion produces easily (if you are moderately careful) measured neutrons.

Yup.

And yet there are not, according to the sources I read some time back.

The ashes and excess energy strongly indicate a nuclear process of some sort. The electrolyte contaminants (He and T, IIRC) strongly indicate that said process is DD fusion.

Yet no neutrons.

The reflex reaction is "its not fusion and not nuclear. You've screwed up, the heat is electrochemical and the contaminants are due to environmental leaks." But there's been ~20 years of double checking for that, to no avail. All mechanisms that can be imagined for the excess heat have been controlled for. Environmental contamination of the electrolyte has been controlled for, and still the He, T and heat show up.

Experiment trumps theory. Always. Those who disagree should move to Medina and spend the rest of their lives contemplating the metaphysics of al-Ghazali, because they have no place intruding their persons into empirical science.

IMO the reflex reaction needs to stop and the century old and highly verified basic theory needs to be looked at. The people insisting that current theory is absolutely correct have a decent chance of being the next Lord Rutherfords, i.e. Mr. "break down of the atoms is impossible."

If the LENR cells are producing a nuclear reaction of some sort, and further if that reaction is fusion as it appears to be, then something is seriously wrong with current nuclear theory.

Duane

One thing that is possible is that the reactor strongly prefers the D-D --> He4 reaction and the D-D --> T + n is suppressed.

I have read that neutrons are detected in some runs but no where near the quantities expected from hot D-D reactions.

It is a puzzle. BTW the Navy is looking into that as well at the rate of about $1 to $2 mn a year.

How much energy in for how much heat out and how much other energy out (electrolysis, etc.) not directly measured but assumed in analysis?

When I stopped following cold fusion, there was a minor scandal of experiments claiming repeatable excess energy but not clearly measuring all forms of assumed energy out.

djolds1 wrote:

MSimon wrote:Duane,

They claim outputs in the 30W range for 50 hour runs.

That should be a LOT of neutrons given that .001 W of D-D fusion produces easily (if you are moderately careful) measured neutrons.

Yup.

And yet there are not, according to the sources I read some time back.

The ashes and excess energy strongly indicate a nuclear process of some sort. The electrolyte contaminants (He and T, IIRC) strongly indicate that said process is DD fusion.

Yet no neutrons.

The reflex reaction is "its not fusion and not nuclear. You've screwed up, the heat is electrochemical and the contaminants are due to environmental leaks." But there's been ~20 years of double checking for that, to no avail. All mechanisms that can be imagined for the excess heat have been controlled for. Environmental contamination of the electrolyte has been controlled for, and still the He, T and heat show up.

Experiment trumps theory. Always. Those who disagree should move to Medina and spend the rest of their lives contemplating the metaphysics of al-Ghazali, because they have no place intruding their persons into empirical science.

IMO the reflex reaction needs to stop and the century old and highly verified basic theory needs to be looked at. The people insisting that current theory is absolutely correct have a decent chance of being the next Lord Rutherfords, i.e. Mr. "break down of the atoms is impossible."

If the LENR cells are producing a nuclear reaction of some sort, and further if that reaction is fusion as it appears to be, then something is seriously wrong with current nuclear theory.

Duane

Current theory need not be wrong. They may simply be applying the wrong aspect of it in the case of LENR. As with superconductivity, there simply may be a mechanism at work which we do not yet understand. I have read that some LENR experiments produce neutron tracks in plastic that are completely unfakeable, but for some strange reason the quantities are small. As a matter of fact, it is my recollection that the absence of neutrons from the process is the main reason why the scientific community so badly slammed Pons and Fleischman .

I would very much like to see Pons and Fleischman vindicated and the High and Mighty mainstream of science once again receive it's comeuppance.

In any case, once an explanation is found, I suspect it will not conflict with current theory, but may in fact augment it. There is still a lot of stuff we still don't know.


Now that I think of it, perhaps the cold fusion experiment produces something like cooper pairing with protons, in the manner that Superconductivity is believed to produce cooper pairing with electrons ?

Protons have the same strength of charge as electrons, just opposite polarity. We already know that somehow electrons lose their mutual repulsion and form cooper pairs in some superconductors, if hydrogen atoms did the same thing, there might be a chance that as they get closer together they fuse, releasing energy. Perhaps they do it in sets of four, producing two neutrons of equal and opposite energy aimed at each other, and the resulting collision between the two reduces the neutron's velocity to zero thereby producing a pair of neutrons drifting around in the material. Slow moving neutrons wouldn't even be detectable.

I dunno... just thinking out loud.



David

MSimon wrote:One thing that is possible is that the reactor strongly prefers the D-D --> He4 reaction and the D-D --> T + n is suppressed.

I have read that neutrons are detected in some runs but no where near the quantities expected from hot D-D reactions.

I've seen references to charged particle tracks, but not neuts.

Tho I certainly may have missed things. Detailed LENR info is Richard Hull's baby (frequent cognisenti poster at fusor.net).

MSimon wrote:It is a puzzle. BTW the Navy is looking into that as well at the rate of about $1 to $2 mn a year.

USN has proven to be a generous funder for those trying to work around DOE's various psychoses.

Duane

hanelyp wrote:How much energy in for how much heat out and how much other energy out (electrolysis, etc.) not directly measured but assumed in analysis?

When I stopped following cold fusion, there was a minor scandal of experiments claiming repeatable excess energy but not clearly measuring all forms of assumed energy out.

I read some of the papers at LENR-CANR about 2 years ago or so, when the SPAWAR results were announced. Due to storage space limitations, the detail knowledge you want is no longer present in my wetware's DRAM.

How old is your cited scandal?

Duane