[extropy-chat] Cold fusion research

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Feb 11, 2007 at 10:39:46AM -0500, Benjamin Goertzel wrote:

> As discussed in the CF literature, there are many different kinds of

Not just as discussed in the CF literature, but as in common
electrochemistry. Just because you're into cold fusion it
doesn't absolve you from getting your experiments right.

The very opposite, in fact. Because your claims are so
outrageous you've got to get your ass armor-plated, because
everyone will attempt to shoot you down. And you better not
be apologetic about it, because reality doesn't care about
blame assignment. 

> control experiments you can run in this setting.

There are many controls, but if you've missed the light water
control your experiment is crap. You blew it. You need to throw
it out your window, and start from scratch. I'm not sure I'm
making myself understood, perhaps I should be starting using
more CAPS or !!!!!!!1s.

Take it from an experimental scientist, and a bad one at that.
 
> A control experiment using light water is only one of the options.

No, no, no, no. You need to do as many controls as possible,
starting with the obvious (light water), and then progress
to increasingly outlandish, if you have resources for that left.

Hitherto I avoided saying it, but you don't sound like you're
experimentalist enough in order to be qualifed to review the experiments. Not
just because you're not a electrochemist, or a cold fusion researcher,
because you're lacking the basic understanding of how to plan
an experiment in natural sciences. The whole apparatus which
prevents you from goofing up your results, and catch your mistakes
well before you've start analyzing your results. Well before
you talk to your peers and then sent up your writeup to a peer reviewed
publication.
 
> For instance, you can run a control experiment using a dead palladium
> cathode, which is what some experimenters did.

This doesn't address fracture when loading palladium with hydrogen
or deuterium (or tritium, but you don't want to do that unless
you have to).
 
> As Julian Schwinger pointed out, a light water control experiment is a
> bit suspicious because the underlying mechanisms of CF are not known.

It is not at all suspicious if you want to rule out dirt effects.
Nothing is off-limits, a priori, because you want to find an experiment
variation with a negative result.

> Schwinger suspected that, if his theoretical understanding was
> correct, a small amount of excess heat might correctly be observed in
> a light water experiment because

If other claims on LENR-CANR are correct it doesn't even matter (much)
which electrode material you take. Gold does just fine. Isn't it
remarkable? This means it's purely a surface effect. And other results
say it works in plasma, too. In fact, if you believe all the claims
on LENR-CANR -- and there is no reason to be picky here -- it's
a giant effect, easily reproducible, works across a large class of
systems, and produces radiation and fusion products, sometimes in
considerable amounts (but not enough to kill the experimenters by
radiation sickness, which is what one would expect from kW/cm^3
power densities).
 
> "Through the natural presence of D20 in ordinary water, such control

Natural abundance of deuterium is 1:6500 (154 ppm), and it loads
about the same into palladium, and of course you could easily buy
or prepare (if you recombine hydrogen/oxygen from a light-water
electrolytic cells you'd get a considerably D-depleted water) 
further D-depleted light water for controls.

Did they do that elementary thing? In every single experiment
involving heavy water?

> experiments might produce an otherwise puzzling amount of heat."
> 
> So, arguably, a control with a dead palladium cathode is just as
> meaningful, or more so.

Sorry, but this is completely incorrect. You're unqualified to review
CF experiments, if you honestly believe that.
 
> However, when light water controls have been run, the results have
> been as expected.

Meaning, what? I recall that some experiments on LENR-CANR claimed
light water works just as well as heavy water. So which is it? You
can't have it both ways.
 
> One thing you should be clear about is that CF really does not violate
> known physical law (to use an expression I don't like, since they

So it's fusion, but not fusion as we know it? There's a world of
a difference between mass defect in chemical reactions, and nuclear
reactions, and if you fuse two nuclei, then the recoil won't be
conveniently and magickaly be absorbed by the lattice, the reaction
results are so energetic they don't see the lattice at all.
They will plow across it, and in fact emerge in the open space,
where they're not difficult to detect (and be it by loss of hair, 
teeth, and bloody stool, which is what one should expect from
power densities of a nuclear reactor's core).

> really are not laws, just observed regularities); as Schwinger,
> Hagelstein and others have argued, it is apparently a manifestation of
> known physics operating in a regime that was very little studied
> before.  It's not as though there is some analytical theory of the
> production of heat in the atomic lattice inside palladium under heavy

You have no idea how far into hot water you're putting yourself with
that statement. It's like expecting your program would run completely 
differently if you painted your computer case a different color. Because,
you know, it's all complicated and mysterious, and we've never ran
that particular program on that particular computer, and have painted
the case with the particular color. And did we accont for the moon phase,
and is the room feng shui right? Puh-leeze.

> deuterium loading, and the CF results violate this analytical theory.
> Rather, this is a complex physical situation for which the laws of
> physics yield no analytical solution by any known means.  CF violates
> nuclear physicists' hand-wavy analyses of the physics of these
> lattices, but, so what?

So E=mc^2 is incorrect, but, so what? And white is black, and my
car runs on coppertops, and a "form of fusion" (you haven't missed
that the hydrino guy was present and cited at those conferences?)
 
> It is not obvious to me that ESP would violate known physical law, but
> reconciling it with known physics would certainly be a hell of a lot
> trickier.

I'm glad you went into computer science.
 
> McKubre has published many journal papers in other areas during the
> last 17 years.  He says he gave up on submitting his CF papers because
> dealing with editors and referees was such a pain due to their
> irrational bias against the area.  Sounds like a reasonable story to
> me.

It doesn't to me. If I had a real effect, I would have no trouble whatsoever
in getting other people to notice and to reproduce, which would allow me
to publish it anywhere.
 
> Unfortunately, one consequence of the marginalization of CF by the
> physics establishment has been that it has attracted a certain number

You mean the CF people are too slacky to do a little self policing?
If I can see a paper is crap, why can't they? If that would trim down
the amount of papers down to 5-10%, wouldn't it be a good thing?

> Well, for that matter, peer review is not a protection against fraud
> either, as has been repeatedly shown by experience.

It is the only way to find fraud, and in practice it works very well.
If you fail to do peer review you're *guaranteed* to have fraud. And
if you tolerate fraud among your peers, I really really wonder about
what's wrong with your head.
 
> As McKubre himself has pointed out, there is really no way to know
> whether a complex experimental result like this is correct or not
> except by situating oneself in the lab in question for several months
> and very carefully monitoring all procedures.

Months is good, but I bet a few days would be enough.
 
> I have not done that, so I have to make do with secondary indications...

When I was interested about whether a particular thing might work (cryonics),
I've spent two years of my life, and came away with a conditional "yes, it
might, provided...".
 
> I don't understand the "transcendental experience" joke, sorry.   I
> have not (yet!) had any transcendental experiences regarding CF.  It
> is not my area of research, and is not particularly important to me.
> I have simply read the available information and come to the opinion
> that the phenomenon most likely does exist.  Schwinger, McKubre,
> Fleischmann, and many of the other researchers in the area seem
> credible to me.
> 
> Time will tell which one of us is correct.

I think the time already did. You're not.
 
> If you knew me better you would know that I'm actually a highly
> skeptical individual.  It is not the case that I'm credulous and
> accept any information I read that looks exciting.  I understand the
> dangers of wishful thinking.  However, I also understand the dangers
> of overly conservative thinking -- of rejecting new information
> because it doesn't fit one's preconceived theoretical models; and of
> believing something is true just because the official societal "owners
> of the truth" say it is.

If the bulk of science would operate under such conditions we never
could get anywhere done. FWIW, there are enough individuals which would
investigate about anything, and in fact this is what has happened with
CF. All that work so far hasn't produced anything. I very much doubt
there will be any CF die-hards at all 10-15 years from now.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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