Sunday, October 19, 2014

ETHAN SIEGEL’S THIRD BOMB THROWN ON COLD FUSION.



Motto:
“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously”
                                                                  (Henry Kissinger)

As a former citizen (captive) of a communist regime I am very indebted to the author of this popular quote for his political activity. The authoritarian regimes have collapsed and I am free today and he has contributed to this.
The Kissinger quote is appreciated as something wise – and, in many circumstances- as life or death situations it indeed is.
However in more normal and less stringent situations, exactly the contrary of what he has told is true:

The absence of alternatives blocks the mind completely”
                                                             (Hostile Pragmatic Reality)

Later in retrospective, after the disaster, many times, you will see that actually there were alternatives but you had no idea about their existence. You had no proper information about the possibilities, about the ways to escape, the saving solution or, simply the correct explanation; the circumstances have forced you to act or answer what you could - and you lost or failed. The response was a forced error due to lack of information- or knowledge, wisdom.

This has happened in 1989 with the Fleischmann Pons discovery: lots of excess energy- it cannot be chemical being too great – than it MUST BE nuclear. Due to our inherited love of certainty and simplicity- we (the collective mind, a splinter of Zeitgeist actually) have called the new source of energy Cold Fusion. In a sense it was both a blessed and a cursed moment of the history of science and technology. I still consider justified calling Cold Fusion a “miscovery” http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/05/concept-of-miscovery-and-what-it-means.htm - and a misname. Only now so many years later we start to see and understand that the process is nuclear only partially and it is nuclear of a special kind- a new reality appears, it is much more than a new theory.

However Cold Fusion gave the creative opportunity to Ethan Siegel to write a third cold fusion paper- I have dis/miscovered it today:
Throwback Thursday: the Foolish Fallacy of Cold fusion

Nasty, aggressive title the content is very similar with the other two Siegel papers presented here recently…
Probably to suggest that Rossi is a scammer, Siegel re-tells us the story of the chess automaton of Kempelen  Farkas (1734-1804) Hungarian inventor and scientist, kind of Dean Kamen of his age. The chess automaton- with a very talented dwarf player inside was more a joke, a challenge however this player inside was a formidable talent. See his games: http://www.chessgames.com/player/the_turk.html

 Siegel re-demonstrates that Cold Fusion cannot be fusion.
I don’t remember when exactly has told Arthur C Clarke “it is probably not cold and not fusion” The founding fathers have also spoken about an “unknown nuclear process” quite early.

Speaking about the Sun- as a model for fusion energy we are not warned that it is a lousy weak source of energy- very low energy density- we cannot use such weaklings. Our patent specialist, David French has written an intellectually enchanting paper about this:

Our Universe is the most interesting of all possible Universes but it is not a model of efficiency. For long time I have complained that the speed of light, the absolute maximum is snail-like if we take in consideration the huge distances between the material formations, galaxies stars, whatever. Not a model of promptness, not in the spirit of “bis dat qui cito dat”
But Siegel will not give; in the name of Science he will take our new source of energy away. Dear Ethan, you are right that cold fusion of the productive sort is not fusion, so please join the efforts to find out what it is. Learn together with those who have started the job.


Peter 

6 comments:

  1. Russian LENR researchers (D.V. FILIPPOV) have developed a phenomenological model for interpreting the low-energy nuclear transformations seen in LENR experiments and have embodied that model in a computer program that matches resident input and output LERN reaction products against all applicable conservation laws so that the production of excess energy produced by the reaction is minimized.

    The product of this model and its associated computer program was verified against experimental transmutation results observed in the outcomes of the experiments on the electric explosion of metallic foils in liquids.

    In these extensive series of exploding foil experiments, the atomic composition of both the foils and the liquids were systematically varied over a wide range of materials. The phenomenological model that produced the resultant transmutation predictions was adjusted until the program described perfectly the entire extensive experimental data set.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Axil, thanks once again for your insightful posts.

    DSM

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Is that the same DSM who liked the Papp machine? How come you're no longer arguing Defkalion's case? Is it because they are nowhere to be found?

      Delete
  3. 30 years back known as GuruOctober 21, 2014 at 11:08 PM

    One small info for folks, who mdon't understand a creature Heinrich "Henry" Kissinger: Anything that flies on anything that moves

    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-091014.html


    ReplyDelete
  4. AC Burst Noise Model

    "The worst error you can make is an unexamined assumption." ~Jed Rothwell, Lessons from Cold Fusion

    About a year after CBS 60 Minutes aired their episode on Cold Fusion, I followed up with Rob Duncan to explore Richard Garwin's thesis that McKubre was measuring the input electric power incorrectly.

    It turns out that McKubre was reckoning only the DC power going into his cells, and assuming (for arcane technical reasons) there could not be any AC power going in, and therefore he didn't need to measure or include any AC power term in his energy budget model.

    Together with several other people, I helped work out a model for the omitted AC power term in McKubre's experimental design. Our model showed that there was measurable and significant AC power, arising from the fluctuations in ohmic resistance as bubbles formed and sloughed off the surface of the palladium electrodes. Our model jibed with both the qualitative and quantitative evidence from McKubre's reports:
    1) McKubre (and others) noted that the excess heat only appeared after the palladium lattice was fully loaded. And that's precisely when the Faradaic current no longer charges up the lattice, but begins producing gas bubbles on the surfaces of the electrodes.

    2) The excess heat in McKubre's cells was only apparent, significant, and sizable when the Faradaic drive current was elevated to dramatically high levels, thereby increasing the rate at which bubbles were forming and sloughing off the electrodes.

    3) The effect was enhanced if the surface of the electrodes was rough rather than polished smooth, so that larger bubbles could form and cling to the rough surface before sloughing off, thereby alternately occluding and exposing somewhat larger fractions of surface area for each bubble.
    The time-varying resistance arising from the bubbles forming and sloughing off the surface of the electrodes — after the cell was fully loaded, enhanced by elevated Faradaic drive currents and further enhanced by a rough electrode surface — produced measurable and significant AC noise power into the energy budget model that went as the square of the magnitude of the fluctuations in the cell resistance.

    Specifically, if the ohmic resistance is fluctuating R±r, then PAC ≈ α²PDC, where α = r/R.

    To a first approximation, a 17% fluctuation in resistance would nominally produce a 3% increase in power, over and above the baseline DC power term. Garwin and Lewis had found that McKubre's cells were producing about 3% more heat than could be accounted for with his energy measurements, where McKubre was reckoning only the DC power going into his cells, and (incorrectly) assuming there was no AC power that needed to be measured or included in his energy budget model.

    I suggest slapping an audio VU meter across McKubre's cell to measure the AC burst noise from the fluctuating resistance. Alternatively use one of McKubre's constant current power supplies to drive an old style desk telephone with a carbon button microphone. I predict the handset will still function: if you blow into the mouthpiece, you'll hear it in the earpiece, thereby proving the reality of an AC audio signal riding on top of the DC current.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For you and the readers, I relay the answer of Jed Rothwell who know ell the results of McKubre

      https://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg99331.html

      "McKubre never reported a 3% gain. Even with his calorimeter that would be in the margin of error at the bottom of the scale, although he can detect the difference between, say, 40% and 43%. As I recall, McKubre reported gains ranging from 20% to 300% with input power, and infinity without input power, in heat after death. He once remarked that for the entire run, the gain was ~3%. I wish he had not said that. It is a meaningless number. It is like reporting the average speed of your car including the times it is parked, or waiting at a red light. The only meaningful number for "gain" or "COP" is when excess heat is clearly present.

      The effect of bubbles in electrochemical cells is well understood and it has been easy to observe at least since oscilloscopes were invented. It cannot possibly produce an error on this scale. Not even 1%. People who speculate about such things have read nothing and know nothing.

      This notion is somewhat similar to the claim that cells might be "storing" chemical energy and releasing it. Ignorant skeptics come up with this several times a year. You need only glance at the data to establish that: 1. Nothing is being stored; there are no endothermic phases, and 2. Continuous, uninterrupted bursts of heat far exceed the limits of chemistry. A calorimeter can detect an endothermic reaction as well as it can detect an exothermic reaction. If this was chemical storage, the endothermic phases would show up as clearly as the exothermic phases that follow them, and the two would balance. This is exactly what you see for the small amount of energy that is stored and release by palladium hydrides."

      Delete