Posts by AlB

COLD FUSION is BACK with 'anomalous heat' claim

Re: Having read the paper...

Yes, but power was only on 35% of the time rather than 100% of the time in the dummy run. The plots show the on/off cycles very clearly.

Re: Has anyone actually read the paper?

A couple of points that make it look real:

The dummy run pretty well establishes that with the same instruments and cabling no gain was achieved and the emissivity was established. This was in the March experiment, which must have been a result to feedback on a relatively relatively poor setup in the first December run.

The electric wires in the first burn-out test actually casting a dark shadow, meaning they are cooler than the rest of the device

Supplying power through the ground wire in the active test but not the dummy test past the equipment and when they have full control of the room is only a very remote possibility.

The heating/cooling curve that looks different to a generic resistor

The heat inside the device will make it hard to hide and operate advanced mimicking equipment

The magnitude of the gain

The very very long game that Rossi is playing, the personal committed capital and very awkward PR that's not helping his cause make it very hard to believe it's a con

Last but not least two decades worth of experiments that establish some effect in over 100 papers (see lenr-canr.org)

This is not going to convince the hardcore skeptics but I suspect that many will look at this with cautious optimism even if they withhold final judgment until more data is available.

Re: Finance?

Reg reader since the 90s but never felt strongly about anything before to post: I'm not plugging it but I would like to see a serious discussion about potential flaws in the setup rather than personal accusations and blanket dismissals.

I do think that the blank test puts a lot of those concerns to rest but maybe the authors could have done a little more to totally squash them. There are at least 18 theories around that try to explain what's going on, not all of them ludicrous. Experimental data should help settle this in years to come.

On investing I have no personal stake or involvement. If I were an investor I wouldn't bank everything on one guy and of course if you were seriously thinking about investing you'd want a lot of access but there are many promising new energy startups around and I think this is one of them, even if their PR and their way of doing business puts some people off. Rossi ploughed a lot of his own money into this and looks like he's put it all into the warehouse and equipment so doesn't have the hallmarks of a typical scammer like for example Keshe.

Re: Finance?

Let me put it another way: would you rather put 5% of your assets in a portfolio of coal, gas, oil, wind and solar companies or would you rather put it into a dozen outfits that try different new approaches to energy generation, from Rossi to Flibe, from TerraPower to TriAlpha in the hope that one hits the jackpot at some point? Sophisticated investors have backed much more idiotic ventures than these before.

Re: Has anyone actually read the paper?

> Nonsense. There's nothing like enough energy there to rule out chemical processes.

There IS enough energy to rule out chemical processes, even if you allow for some pretty major measurements errors. Have a look at the plot (in logs) here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2013/05/20/finally-independent-testing-of-rossis-e-cat-cold-fusion-device-maybe-the-world-will-change-after-all/

At this stage of development 3 runs is all we can reasonably expect. Over the coming months and years there will be plenty more tests and data from customers to verify further.

Re: Finance?

After being burned in 89 everyone is ultra-cautious, hence no headlines. No household name company would want the public ridicule from people like you either but behind closed doors I'm sure they're taking a serious look. Until they have products in the market there's nothing to talk about anyway and it would just set off the competition. No other "perpetual motion machine" has received this degree of independent testing by the way, from Papp engines to magnetic motors so these are much easier to dismiss than this effort.

On investing there's nothing wrong with being optimistic: without some people taking a risk we'd still live in the stone age. There's also nothing wrong with sophisticated investors putting some money to work here either as long as the founders are totally committed with their own money and you have some legal safeguards. It's really no different to putting your money in a biotech or offshore oil driller: it's a binary, often low probability outcome and still there are investors that accept the risks. These companies by the way also take many years to have anything to show for their work so the achievements to date are pretty solid.

Re: Has anyone actually read the paper?

These are valid concerns but the dummy run confirms both emissivity to be roughly as estimated and power in roughly equaling power out when there's no active element present. The gain with the active element is so large that minor measurement errors don't really affect the overall result.

Re: Has anyone actually read the paper?

Yes: he supplies the box, I measure input and output and after a certain period it's clear that it can't be a chemical process.

The workings of the device are closed source but it's the same as with Lotus 1-2-3 in the early days: I type =1+1 and I see 2 on the screen: I can't see the source code but I can verify that it works without knowing the detail. Over the following years people figured out how to build it themselves and along came Excel, then Open Office - the same is happening here with commercial and open source competitors who are trying to figure out the secret sauce, which I think will happen in pretty short order.

Re: Finance?

We've gone from pretty much nothing in early 2011 to an independent report in mid-2013 and several competing companies (some of which by the way have already reported and successfully demoed their stuff): that's pretty rapid progress in my book. Maybe the most aggressive projections did not come through but do they ever? I'm not willing to wait until 2050 for some super expensive laser fusion or Tokakaks so I AM getting my hopes up and anyway he hasn't harmed anyone in the process or cost me a cent in taxes so I don't understand the hate.

Re: Has anyone actually read the paper?

If you have a look at the Ragone plot in the paper fuel cell energy density is WAY lower than what was measured so if the measurements are anywhere near correct the process happening inside the black box was not chemical, mechanical or a fuel cell.

The how it works is for others to figure out, this is a commercial setup and therefore it's his prerogative not to share the inner workings so he can reap the benefits. Mainstream science with billions of funding haven't brought us much closer to cheap abundant energy. Commercial efforts with the right business incentives I think will do a far better job of getting us there, be it Rossi or the many other players in hot/cold fusion and fission field.

Has anyone actually read the paper?

I have and I can't find many flaws with it. Sure it doesn't establish a theory but then it doesn't set out to do so, just measure input and output. He's financed this research himself without a penny of government money, unlike NIF, ITER and other multi-billion dollar outfits that are still decades away from anything meaningful. He wants to sell it to the world for profit - it's what motivated him to keep at it for many years and it's a justified reward. He doesn't need to share trade secrets with anyone, he just needs to comprehensively establish that it works reliably and safely.

The report, written by scientists who are putting their reputation on the line, is pretty clear in that it works - all assumptions are very conservative. You can debate mW and W results of other cold fusion experiments in the past decades endlessly but once you reach kW of energy as in this case it's just too big to fake.

There was a dry run without the charge and that established a base line showing no gain.

360W in over a such a large surface area should not result in hundreds of degrees of heat if it was purely driven by electrics - compare that to a kettle that consumes 2000-3000W on a much smaller surface.

There were three separate tests over extended periods, in the first burn-out test the electric wires are actually colder on the thermal camera than the rest of the unit.

The density of heat generation over such an extended period from a 2kg unit does rule out any chemical reaction. The true density is much higher as the active nuclear charge is only grams and can last for months, which by the way will be tested next.

On Rossi, the person: he's enigmatic and has been screwed over by the tax authorities (by the way he was fully acquitted). He may exaggerate at times but his progress over the years is undeniable so I'd put him in the mad scientist category.

I'd also be more skeptical if nobody else was claiming success but there's also Defkalion and Brillouin, both of which are going to demo and share results in August so it's an exciting race to watch. On top of that there's NASA, CERN and others that are very seriously looking into this field without prejudice.

Seriously, what is it with people that font choices and Word vs. LaTeX are the subject of great debate when we're potentially at the precipice of an energy revolution that solar and wind could never deliver?