Guest post by Ric Werme
Today is the customer test of Andrea Rossi’s 1 MW fusion reactor in his facility in Bologna, Italy. While Rossi initially expected to provide streaming video of the test, the customer nixed that because they didn’t want their people on a public video. (The customer has still not been identified.) Rossi also promised hourly updates during the test, but that didn’t happen, nor did I expect it too. In any major customer attending test, you just don’t take time off for that – the customer is far more important today than is the rest of the world!
I did promise in Tips & Notes to create this post this evening to provide a discussion forum, and a few details have made it out to warrant this post.
Bottom line – the customer will buy the reactor. The only thing that looks like a data point is that it was producing 470kW with zero heating power in (self-sustain mode). Given that one metric for a successful test was to produce at least 6X the input power, it certainly passes that test!
Rossi did get one blog post up (edited to convert all-caps to proper-caps and fix an obvious typo):
Andrea Rossi
October <28th, 2011 at 10:37 AM
First information regarding the 1 MW plant test:
We started regularly the test this morning . Everything is going well so far. The 1 MW E-Cat is working in self sustaining.
Tonight I will publish the non secret report that the customer will release.
Warm regards, I have to return to the plant. Sorry, I cannot answer to the many comments I am receiving. I will publish them probably I will never find the time to answer.
Warmest regards to all,
Andrea Rossi
That’s pretty much all there is from Italy so far. I don’t know if people measured 1 MW in powered mode, I assume somewhat more information will be released later this evening.
The naysayers are going strong, with comments like suggesting the customers consultants are in on the scam, and many calls to denounce the secrecy behind this test. Hey guys, this is a sales test, not a public event.
Even Jed Rothwell is upset:
[Vo]:Dismaying rumors about October 28 test
Jed Rothwell Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:34:00 -0700
I have heard that observers of today’s tests are only being allowed to look at the equipment for a few minutes at a time, and they are not being introduced to the engineers who are taking the data. They are not being given a chance to establish the bona fides of these engineers, or to confirm that they are fully independent from Rossi.
If this is true then it goes without saying these results will have zero credibility.
If this is true then Rossi has once again taken a golden opportunity to convince the world his claims are true, and used it to make himself look like a crook.
I hope this is not true.
Whatever happens, I am sure we will get the full story. The reporters there can be relied upon to tell us the truth. If they are not allowed to interview the engineers and they cannot independently confirm the data, they will say so. I am sure Rossi knows they will tell the truth, so it seems unlikely he would impose such outrageous conditions. Unfortunately, he has often done outrageous things, such as telling people they are not allowed to measure the temperature with their own instruments.
– Jed
I’ll update this later tonight. In the meantime, discuss away, but please keep in mind this was not a science demonstration, not a public demonstration, but a step along the path to the first sale.
Also, keep in mind what this isn’t – it’s not an efficient electrical power system. The output is hot water or low pressure steam. While that can be turned into electricity, thermodynamics says it can’t be very efficient. There are plenty of applications for this sort of process heat, and that makes a fine initial target market.
Other sources of information include:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of_the_One_Megawatt_E-Cat
Sterling Allan from PES is on site.
http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/10/e-day-thread-rossis-1-mw-e-cat-plant-tested-by-first-customer/
One of the first independent blogs on the E-Cat.
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=516#comments
This is Rossi’s blog, where he expected to post hourly updates. He approves posts there, and he’s been too busy to do that.
Updates
Here are links to reports from two people who were observed the test:
Sterling D. Allan (who was present), with Hank Mills from Pure Energy Systems News reported:
It ran for 5.5 hours producing 470 kW, while in self-looped mode. That means no substantial external energy was required to make it run, because it kept itself running, even while producing an excess of nearly half a megawatt. Rossi explained the reasons for this in the presentation he gave, which I videotaped and will be posting later.
Early in the day with a glitch showing up, Rossi said that they had to make a decision about whether to go for 1 MW output, not in self-sustain mode, or with self-sustain mode at a lower power level. The customer opted to go for the self-sustain mode.
Mats Lewan of NyTeknik reported:
According to the customer’s controller, Domenico Fioravanti, the plant released 2,635 kWh during five and a half hours of self sustained mode, which is equivalent to an average power of 479 kilowatts – just under half the promised power of one megawatt.
Rossi explained this with the customer’s priority to achieve self sustained mode, which supposedly makes the process more difficult to control than when electrical power is supplied to support the reaction.
“We had to decrease the power during self sustained mode as the temperature rose too much”, Rossi said after the test.
UPDATE: I’ve allowed Ric Werme to post articles on this, with trepidation (as he noted in his first and second article on it), on the outside chance that there’s something of value here. I wrote in the first article:
Foreword: I gave Ric Werme permission to do this essay. I don’t have any doubt that the original Cold Fusion research was seriously flawed. That said, this recent new development using a different process is getting some interest, so let’s approach it skeptically to see what merit it has, if any. – Anthony
After learning of some background on the inventor (which I wasn’t aware of before today h/t to Lubos)I have very large doubts now. While Wikipedia isn’t the best reference, if there wasn’t some truth here in this reference, I expect it would be removed as libelous:
Petroldragon was an environmental technology company, which through the 90’s aimed to develop oil, coal, and gas from organic waste. It was founded by, and used patents of Andrea Rossi, and Sergio Focardi. In the late 90’s the company was found guilty of dumping environmental toxins, as well as tax fraud. Its assets were seized. [1]
News of the Rossi procedure, patented in Italy, was reported by major newspapers. Jimmy Carter showed his interest in the technology, and offered Rossi a permanent entry visa to the United States.[1] After ten months’ work and a financial investment of half a billion Lire, Petroldragon had a facility that produced twenty tons of fuel oil a day, transforming one hundred tons of organic waste.
In 1993, the company created the Petroldragon Formula 3 racing team – racecars powered by waste-derived fuel that were able to compete with cars powered by the most common petroleum products.
In the late 90’s the company was found guilty of dumping environmental toxins, as well as tax fraud. Its assets were seized, as well as Rossi’s personal assets, and Rossi was arrested and imprisoned.
The track record of the man (combined with the current cloak of secrecy) suggests that this may very well be a scam. Unless there’s some open access and independent documentation of success, I’m going to prohibit any further articles. As I’ve said in comments, we try out ideas here. Based on what I know now, I think this one needs to be put aside as unworkable, and very possibly a scam until such time it is proven. When/if it is proven as scam or factual, we’ll have another report. -Anthony
Update by Ric:
I told Anthony I’d pull some stuff together looking at the allegations in better detail. It appears the only decent source of information is from a web site Rossi created a couple years ago to address the Petroldragon saga. The events in question mostly occurred before the Internet, so there isn’t as much out there as I thought. If you believe Rossi stuck Italy with huge amount of abandoned waste, you won’t believe Rossi’s explanation. If any Italian readers can comment on the events from their memory, please do.
Rossi’s web site is http://ingandrearossi.com/ . While there is an English translation there, a better one is at Steve Krivit’s http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/RossiPetroldragonStory.shtml
A timeline seems to be the best way to summarize things:
1971 to 1996: Created Dragon, a division of his family’s business and
manufactured waste incineration and smoke purification plants.
1978: Awarded patent for a process to convert organic waste material to oil.
Started Petroldragon to commercialize it.
198?: US President Jimmy Carter offered Rossi a permanent entry visa to the
United States to develop the process in the US.
1990 (this year doesn’t make sense): Bought Omar Refinery to process oil from Petroldragon into products for
sale.
1987: Raw materials for Petroldragon had been considered “secondary refuse matter” They were reclassified “toxic waste” as were all products derived from them. “In a very short time, all equipment was sequestered. The government then determined that tanks used for storing incoming raw materials were illegal dumps of toxic waste.”
“What followed was Rossi’s arrest and imprisonment, without any possibility to save the companies. The massive media smear campaign was successful in suddenly wiping out companies whose brand value was estimated at 50 billion lire (around 30-35 million USD in 1987) and which employed 150 people.”
The saga continues on with references to infringing on petroleum based producers and crime organizations entering the waste management business.
He continues “In the past 17 years, Rossi has been in 56 trials, forcing him into deep debt because of the financial disaster, and it is still not completely paid off.
Of all 56 prosecutions, the ones which led to imprisonment ended with acquittals; only 5 of the prosecutions for tax crime ended with convictions (with some custody imprisonments). All of the other prosecutions ended with acquittal or for statute of limitation. The same Petroldragon and Omar customers, even those who suffered factory seizures or prosecutions because of involvement with Rossi’s companies, testified as witnesses in favor of the defendant.” (The customers had products derived from “toxic waste” and those without waste handling permits were now in violation of the 1987 law.)
2000: During a journey back to Italy from the U.S., when he landing at Rome airport, he was served an arrest warrant for bankruptcy of Omar company and immediately imprisoned.
2009: Went back to the U.S. permanently and he directed the development of a new energy source. (I don’t think this refers to the E-Cat.)
As for the gold trafficking, all I can find points to an ingandrearossi.com page that is only in Italian. The Google translation is as difficult to read as any, but Rossi says the gold was recovered in the Petroldragon effort and claims “And documents deemed illegal sales of gold? All regular! Documents for import and export of precious? All regular! Cash payments? The money laundering? No trace of irregularity, because all economic transactions were made with credit and non-transferable checks, never cash!
The prosecution of Ariano Irpino, even myself, and acquitted all defendants in the investigation, not even get to trial on the grounds that: ‘… lack the evidence necessary to sustain the allegations in a process …’.”
So, was Rossi imprisoned? Yes. Did he break the law? Yes, but mainly because the law changed out from under him. Was he convicted? Yes, on less than 10% of the charges, and they were tax law violations, not a confidence scheme. Is he an evil person out to pull off the scam of the century? Probably not, as he seems to have not run afoul of the law before 1987. Does all this mean we should throw up our hands and write off Rossi’s LENR invention. I don’t think so, though it certainly adds a red flag. How about all the other evidence supporting LENR? I don’t think so. Does Lubos Motl know more about LENR than any of us? Probably, but I’m not convinced he’s right. Is Rossi or LENR too controversial for WUWT? Possibly, but I think it should remain because there are too many experiments with interesting results to be able to dismiss it.
-Ric
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If scientists would be really interested about this technology, they would attempted to test it already and published in peer-reviewed journals. Because the original experiments weren’t published with A. Rossi in January 2011, but before twenty years already in quite standard scientific way in official journal of Italian Academy of Science.
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/FocardiSlargeexces.pdf
The person of A. Rossi is significant for acceptation of cold fusion in the same way, like the manufacturer of GPS satellites for acceptation of general relativity.
acementhead says:
October 28, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Roger Knights says:
October 28, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Maybe, just maybe, he WANTS to convey that impression…
Yeah of course, only the true Messiah denies his divinity. Riiiiiiiight
This is a scam but it has shown one interesting thing; that the majority of “sceptics” who post on WUWT aren’t in fact sceptics at all but in reality are credulous believers. This is a sad day for truth.
____________________________________
Credulous believers??????
That is not what I am reading. I see mostly open minds with a bit of cynic thrown in and a wait and see attitude.
This is the exact attitude I would want to see, open minds while looking for the scam.
I would put this is pretty much on par with someone trying to sell me a perpetual motion machine.
no i don’t believe it.
I urge you to be as skeptical as you are about the hockey team: first verify, then trust.
A very interesting discussion.
IMO, a lot of the scepticism is misdirected, because Rossi isn’t performing a series of scientific experiments, he is trying to sell/commercialize a ground-breaking product. And you have to view his actions in that context.
He has to generate interest and publicity while keeping the ‘secret sauce’ secret as long as possible.
None of us has enough information to say for sure whether this works or not.
And Rossi’s best interest is in maintaining that uncertainty, because once it is clear it does work, dozens of competitors will spring up and he will lose a very significant commercial advantage. Not to mention a large amount of money.
Philip Bradley;
And Rossi’s best interest is in maintaining that uncertainty, because once it is clear it does work, dozens of competitors will spring up >>>
Exactly. Without big bucks behind him, there’s no way he could possibly defend the patent. Nor could he enter the market on a shoe string budget hoping to build revenue fast enough that he was well positioned in the market with lotsa cash flow to fund legal actions. He’d be barely off the ground from a manufacturing perspective when one of the units he sells turns out to be sold to a customer who is a front for one of the big manufacturers out there…or maybe two, or five or ten. Energy generation is BIG business. Once the major players get their hands on one its only a matter of time before they reverse engineer it, come up with a slightly different version, and then Rossi is out of business because he can’t possibly compete with the sheer scale the big boys bring to the market nor defend his patent in court, that would take millions upon millions.
Those issues are probably on his mind (assuming that it isn’t a scam which it may well be) and would explain in part his mysterious behaviour. Is that the right way to handle it? Well, I’d certainly suggest his “sales and marketing” efforts leave something to be desired. Heck, if it is a deliberate scam his sales and marketing leave a LOT of room for improvment! I’d certainly go about it in a different way, but I can also see (assuming that it is not a scam) why someone like Rossi with insufficient funding and a monster market opportunity would go about it the way Rossi has.
RockyRoad says:
October 29, 2011 at 12:29 pm
John B says:
October 29, 2011 at 11:12 am
Septic Matthew says:
October 29, 2011 at 10:57 am
…
low energy fusion has been reliably demonstrated
…
Where? When? By whom?
In case you missed it, here’s an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNn_Z6wCIk
————————–
Oh, for goodness sake!
I’m actually surprised that people who are skeptical of AGW are so willing to believe someone producing a Cold Fusion reactor. Even if you knew nothing on the subject, it smacks of SCAM. Do you really believe someone would sell a commercial version of something this controversial WITHOUT having it proved first? Unbelievable people.
As for Jim and his 1,000:1 bet… can anyone get in on this? I would also like to know what limit you could cover and then I would like to bet up to that limit.
Rocky Road: Nor did I. I simply referenced that as confirmation of the process being nuclear fusion and not a chemical reaction. Rossi hasn’t divulged what he uses as the catalyst to leverage the reaction to achieve over unity.
Rossi isn’t selling a process, he is selling a power generator.
My bet is that he will have a 10MW demonstration and another customer in about February. And still nobody will be using one of his devices of any size to produce power for any purpose. That is, if he hasn’t banked a big investment. I doubt that he’d settle for a license and royalties on the sales.
This has been fun. The whole world is watching.
Explanation of the physical model no. Explanation of the technical nature does not. Actual results do not. This is not the fusion process. It looks like a nuclear process, but the isotopes were detected. For a nuclear process, there are no physical conditions. Rossi’s hard to believe. Certification of no effect.
Note – I added an update to the main article addressing some of the concerns.
It’s bigger than I wanted and doesn’t refer to the sources I wanted, most of what’s on the web seems to be either directly from Rossi or short claims missing the context that’s needed.
One thing I didn’t include was an attempt to sell the US military some high efficiency thermocouples that fell well short in testing done at the University of New Hampshire. That may be important, as it closer to what Rossi is trying to sell now. However, I wasn’t satisfied with any of the data I found for that.
Anthony notes “When/if it is proven as scam or factual, we’ll have another report.”
I don’t know, from some of the comments here and from my August post, I think there are people who could live a house heated by an E-Cat module and still claim it doesn’t work.
I’m personally grateful for Ric’s efforts and Anthony making his site available. A science blog worth it’s name ought to demonstrate exactly how restrained commentary about cutting edge science ought to be conducted.
Dr Bushnell NASA Chief Scientist (quoted numerous times), and Dr Miley Prof. of Nuclear Engineering (recent powerpoint linked to numerous times) PattersonPowercell (TM) etc etc provide a reasonable basis for me as an amateur to listen to claims for and against. Unless those who claim expertise equivalent to these gentlemen provide demonstrable evidence against their claims a considered neutrality is warranted. Which, to Mr Werme credit is exactly the psychological balance he gives his readers credit for. I take it as an insult to my intelligence to be told, prior to refutation of Dr Miley et al, that it is too dangerous for me to read speech related to LENR.
No public money is being appropriated, nor enthusiastic culture war in the e-Cat’s name is being prosecuted. If the customer is foolish enough to be seperated from their money without proof then these posts serve another function – one that is WUWT’s raison d’etre. WUWT contributors are just the people to trust given their temperamental and intellectual ability to proportion scientific claims to the evidence.
As purely an exercise in the sociology of science it is of value, and given the very large vested interests in seeing no product come to market, especially various climate change carpet bagger, green energy schemers and the political class in general. I’m relying on WUWT to continue to treat me like a full fledged rational adult and allow me to make my own assessments.
So can I ask, is their any in principle reason for me to reject Dr Bushnell and Dr Miley regarding LENR? If not then it is an abuse of Anthony’s forum to attack speculative discussions about the phenomenon and how it relates to Rossi’s proposed invention.
It is of political interest, internationally recognised scientists are involved, reputable science and engineering publications, and world media including the Associated Press’ Peter Svensson. It is incumbent upon such an influential science blog to at least provide trusted information, especially the negative kind.
My hopeful spin: http://fruit-of-lips.tumblr.com/post/12094910322/cold-fusion-is-hot-again-rossis-e-cat
Ric Werme says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:18 pm
I don’t know, from some of the comments here and from my August post, I think there are people who could live in a house heated by an E-Cat module and still claim it doesn’t work.
===========
Ric,
Thanks for posting the follow-up. This is a very exciting event and it will be interesting to see who the mystery US investor is. If its GE, everyones tune is likely to change in a hurry.
The Rossi design is clearly in need of engineering for larger industrial applications, GE would be an ideal partner and in a position to mass produce for North America.
The units are being manufactured in Greece for the rest of the world. That should be interesting.
Ric Werme says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:15 am
Actually, you’ve make it rather easy to improve upon.
Not only do you not have any clue about the subject you’re posting about, it’s painfully clear that you don’t have a clue that you don’t have a clue.
Furthermore, having been informed of your situation,
you still can’t be bothered to make even a minimal effort to educate yourself regarding the basic physics of the claimed process, and continue instead to promote this obvious scam.
___
The process that Rossi claims is occurring in the device::
Ni58 + p → Cu59
Copper nucleus Cu59 decays with positron (e+) and neutrino (ν) emission in Ni59 nucleus according to
Cu59 → Ni59 + ν + e+
Then (e+) annichilates with (e-) in two gamma-rays
e- + e+ → γ + γ
1/ Clear unambiguous evidence the above claimed process is occurring would be the detection of back-to-back [by conservation of momentum] emission of 511keV gamma photons.
Why has this not been done? It is not a difficult experimental measurement to perform.
Until this experimental test is performed, all other claims of energy production are irrelevant.
2/ The device require a temperature of 40C or 313.15K to operate according to one report. The Rossi patent states 150C to 5000 C or 423.15K to 5273.15K.
Let’s try to give Rossi the benefit of the doubt and take the upper value of 5273K.
The mean kinetic energy of a gas as a function of temperature is 3/2kT,
where k is Boltzmann’s constant: 8.6173324 x 10^-5 eV K-1
Thus at a temperature of 5273K the kinetic energy of the hydrogen gas, the source of the protons in the above nuclear reaction, is
KE = 5273K x 8.6173324 x 10^-5 eV K-1 = 0.45 eV
However, the cross-section for the process Ni58 + p → Cu59 has been measured
http://postimage.org/image/aja3jf2if/
[Nuclear cross-section: http://goo.gl/DdKx8 ]
The lower energy cutoff for the nuclear reaction Ni58 + p → Cu59 is about 1MeV or 1,000,000eV [electron volts]
Thus the kinetic energy of the protons, of the hydrogen atoms, is about 7 orders of magnitude [a factor of 10^7] too low for the claimed nuclear reaction to have occurred in the device.
Conclusion: the claims of Rossi and his co-conspirators in this scam are not even wrong.
Lucy Skywalker writes “You cannot just handwave a team like this away.”
You can you know. It effectively an appeal to authority and carries no weight.
Rossi set out to show the world his creation works and failed. If he’d run it for a week as a fully self sustaining process then he would have been up next for a nobel prize and had investors beating down his door.
Sometimes you dont need to look beyond the behaviour to understand whats happening.
You have to love this story as it plays out so painfully slowly. (Thanks Ric for having the cahunas)
AKA Climate change we see skeptics and believers of this newly claimed, yet unknow process.
Ironically, if the ROSSI device is indeed real and can be engineered to make cheap electricty it would probably end the climate change debate quite rapidly. It would also kill off much government funding for climate change related studies including the IPCC. Most western governments which currently have strong socialist agendas would also need to re-think their money raising strategy of using energy taxes to redistribute wealth.
If the device is a fake, then ROSSI will go down in history as the dumbest scam artist in history by creating the worlds biggest scam and then failing to make any money in the process. And by selling a commercial device paid for by himself, he actually leaves himself open to a potentially expensive lawsuit.
My own thoughts on this whole saga is that ROSSI is probably onto something as I really can’t believe anyone can be so stupid to try a scam in this manner. His actions create an impression that he has possibly used another inventor’s LENR process/patent in his device which is why he is closed to scientific scrutiny. He is probably hoping that he can manufacture a large number of units and pocket the money before the secret is out and the real inventer wants a piece of the pie.
The big difference between this and climate change seems to be the media reporting. Real or scam, this should be BIG news on CNN, BBC, FOX, etc. Perhaps the big media outlets are against running any story for fear it will gain huge momentum in the community regardless of which side of the story they report on due to the ‘hope it’s true’ factor. If this did occur it could destabilise the stock markets while the whole saga played out over a possibly extended period.
@davidmhoffer
I’m not sure about the whole patent/buyer/big business conspiracy you have outlined.
Instead of accurately demonstrating one individual single kW unit and getting all the patent legal protection solidly behind him, he has now made 50+ individual units and connected them together.
Given that access has been granted to a couple of low quality reporters, (or interested persons who as far as we know met him over the internet), if people really wanted to know where this location is and steal one of the e-cats I’m sure it would be ridiculously easy for them to have followed them there. Especially considering these same ‘reporters’ were basically posting all the details of where they were going on the internet weeks in advance.
We live in a world where (alledgedly) governments can deliver customized computer virus’s to cripple specific Iranian nuclear plant equipment.
A team of a few people could go and steal one unit, particularly now he has manufactured 50+ and have it in a lab somewhere before anyone even notices it’s gone.
You can’t claim to worried about protecting secrets while doing precisely the opposite.
In my opinion it would be easier to protect a single device rather than a shipping container full of them, where if a rogue obtained one they could reverse engineer the ‘secret’.
“So, was Rossi imprisoned? Yes. Did he break the law? Yes, but mainly because the law changed out from under him. Was he convicted? Yes, on less than 10% of the charges, and they were tax law violations, not a confidence scheme. Is he an evil person out to pull off the scam of the century? Probably not, as he seems to have not run afoul of the law before 1987. Does all this mean we should throw up our hands and write off Rossi’s LENR invention. I don’t think so, though it certainly adds a red flag. How about all the other evidence supporting LENR? I don’t think so. Does Lubos Motl know more about LENR than any of us? Probably, but I’m not convinced he’s right.”
What WOULD convince you? If you subtract Rossis own claims from what is known about his “research”, the Petroldragon story or even LENR in general – what is there in terms of actual, proven fact, known laws of physics and plain common sense that doesn’t cry out “its a scam”?
TimTheToolMan says: October 30, 2011 at 1:56 am
Lucy Skywalker writes “You cannot just handwave a team like this away.”
You can you know. It effectively an appeal to authority and carries no weight…
Agreed, that list by itself is an appeal to authority. And therefore you cannot just handwave it away. Warmists appeal to authority constantly but such appeals require answering, not handwaving. That’s why McIntyre and McKitrick’s work, and the work here, is needed.
But there’s more. We know that authority is suspect in Climate Science. So why not in LENR / Cold Fusion too? What I’ve examined re LENR, as a result of this thread, makes it very clear to me that a similar cloud of dark suspicion is hanging over “authority” regarding the dismissal of Fleischman-Pons and the ignoring of LENR. Follow The Money again.
It’s no good jumping up and down over the corruption in Climate Science and then passing over the weighty evidence of corruption over Cold Fusion. Why be skeptical in one and not the other? I wonder if it has to do with the presence in LENR of factors that overturn the current paradigms of physics, that allow the “denier”-like term “pseudoscience” to be thrown around.
Perhaps it’s this long shadow over Cold Fusion that makes a show-person like Rossi jump into the limelight first. But this fact should not deter the diligent pursuit of evidence. Search my name and RockyRoad, to find a lot of evidence-bearing references. It was new to me, this evidence for another area of money-led abuse of scientific authority. What was not new was the now-familiar pattern of tactics.
“I wonder if it has to do with the presence in LENR of factors that overturn the current paradigms of physics, that allow the “denier”-like term “pseudoscience” to be thrown around.”
For me its the lack of explaination that makes LENR and the AGW sides similarly “pseudescience” – not the paradigm or authority side of the game. AGW at least points to some sort of evidence – even if its just seriously flawed models – and provides some sort of rational and an unrefutable, basic claim (CO2 is a greenhouse gas – nobody doubts that). Rossi doesn’t do that. Or can he conclusively explain how or based on what principle his machine is supposed to work? If so, I must have missed it.
Lucy Skywalker says:
October 30, 2011 at 4:08 am
But there’s more. We know that authority is suspect in Climate Science. So why not in LENR / Cold Fusion too? What I’ve examined re LENR, as a result of this thread, makes it very clear to me that a similar cloud of dark suspicion is hanging over “authority” regarding the dismissal of Fleischman-Pons and the ignoring of LENR. Follow The Money again.
Hi Lucy,
Try not to make the logical mistake of “if A then B” means also that “if B then A”. The majority of people under a cloud have self generated it, and you cannot assume that because some are wrongly under a cloud, the same holds true for all.
When cold fusion came out every physicist I knew was following it avidly. The reason it went below the horizon, for me, is that the energies they were talking about were of the order of chemical energies attained in batteries etc. , not nuclear ones. That is when I stopped following the story. The fact that nobody is selling a cold fusion generator is indicative that the story does not work.
Now the energies claimed by Rossi are of megawat size, and that is another story.
As I said in my contributions to the previous thread, as an experimentalist I do not throw to the fire claims like this. It might be that they have stumbled by serendipity on a collective mode of crystal interactions that nobody else has seen. I know that one can use crystals to bend high energy muon beams, for example, where the particles follow the crystal axis. More outlandish, they might be milking gravitational waves, found access to a different vacuum, and who knows what: If the effect exists the theory will be constructed.
That is what is the crux. Does the effect exist? The flamboyance and secrecy of Rossi makes one doubt it, but they seem to be on schedule, There is also Defkalion in Greece and they also are on their schedule. We do not have long to wait. As we say in Greece, there will be either chickens or eggs ( on their face 🙂 ).
When they start selling the generators will be the time to see whether it is a frau$d or not.
After watching the video of his earlier demonstration and seeing the glaring flaws in it….. His experiment relied on measuring the condensed steam to calculate energy output, but he had no valve to stop pumped water overflowing into the outlet and being pushed up into the condenser and collection point… The whole thing was embarrassingly stupid…… since then I am not interested in what Rossi says, unless someone else independently backs up Rossi’s claims, I’ll call this a scam in progress…. and not science.
I’m happy to be pleasantly surprised….. but in this case nothing is going to happen beyond money disappearing into thin air.
@Lucy
There is certainly a parallel here between cold fusion and AGW, but I think you have got it the wrong way round. The cold fusion folk are making extraordinary claims that go against mainstream physics, those claims are made by a few “lone geniuses” who claim they are being ignored and/or supressed by the mainstream. Furthermore, they claim that there is a conspiracy to suppress their work and that all of a mainstream science is in on it. Quite why that would be is never made clear (most scientists do not work for energy companies).
In the climate world, AGW is the mainstream, the contrarians are the one who make claims contrary to known physics (e.g. greenhouse effect is bunk), hold up the work of lone geniuses (Svensmark for instance), claim their work is ignored or suppressed and see a global conspiracy against them.
Don’t ya think?
Typhoon says:
October 29, 2011 at 11:05 pm
Don’t be so hasty. Nobody thought quantum tunneling of electrons was going to become a cheap widespread technology but you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a flash memory device these days.
Protons can tunnel too. It’s just a lot less likely because of the greater mass. But one must consider that the nickel in this e-cat gizmo is nano-particles. The surface area exposed in a tiny volume is thus enormous. Now say you have some estoreric effects from exotic lattice structures (which, by the way, we don’t understand otherwise we could design high-temp superconductors instead of finding them by luck) that are bringing the nuclei into some kind of critical alignment everywhere with tunnel length minimized, which maximizes the probability of a tunnel event. So, you got some lattice work going on that you don’t understand that minimizes the barrier potential for proton tunneling and at the same time you increase the ratio of surface area to volume where the tunneling can potentially happen. What you’d expect to get from this is heat.
I’m no physicist but it appears to me the equations you’ve laid out is conventional hot fusion which uses brute force to shove a proton so close another proton that strong force overwhelms electromagnetic repulsion of like charges and they fuse. Tunneling does an end run around the need to input enough energy to overcome electromagnetic repulsion by brute force so those conventional fusion energy equations no longer apply.
Typhoon says:
October 29, 2011 at 11:05 pm
Thus the kinetic energy of the protons, of the hydrogen atoms, is about 7 orders of magnitude [a factor of 10^7] too low for the claimed nuclear reaction to have occurred in the device.
I am not saying that their claims are true. I am also skeptical. But they are aware of the numbers you are using. Various people have attempted to explain the reaction as a sort of “total crystal” reaction, not individual hydrogen+nickel. A number of explanations are posted on the blog. As I said in my previous post there are unusual quantum behaviors in crystals that cannot be ruled out a priori.
The important question is the experimental results: Solid or scam?
In another six months the cat will be out of the bag, according to their timetables.
Calculations will follow if there exists a true effect.