Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" (LENR): What Do People Think?

[david1443]

General consensus on Cold Fusion better known as "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" LENR?

I was wondering for those that know. What is the general consensus on Cold Fusion which is actually not cold fusion at all but "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" LENR? The term cold fusion was made by the media. What do most people think? Give me some percentages or something.
Are people skeptical but open?
Absolutely can't be?
Has this idea opened up as a good possibly or what?

 

[russ_watters]

Welcome to PF.

At this time, there is little or nothing that suggests to the scientific community that "low energy nuclear reactions" are possible. No verified evidence or theoretical basis.

 

[rubycarat]

Cold fusion, also called low-energy nuclear reactions has been verified hundreds of times all around the world.

The status of LENR by Dr. Edmund Storms and published in Naturwissenschaften, 97 (2010) 861
(available at www.springerlink.com)
can be read in its pre-print form here
(link removed).

Go to (link removed) for thousands of papers detailing the science results over the past two decades.

 

[bcrowell]

FAQ: Is cold fusion real?

No.

Pons and Fleischmann originally reported in 1989 that their chemical cells had produced excess heat, neutrons, and tritium. Their interpretation was that deuterium nuclei were fusing to produce 4He. The branching ratios in this process are known: 50% n+3He, 50% p+3H, and 10^-6 4He+gamma. If the claimed excess heat had been produced by fusion, then the experimenters would have been killed by the neutrons coming from the 50% of the decays that proceeded by neutron emission. Neutron detectors are infamous among nuclear physicists for being difficult to use, and for having a tendency to produce spurious signals. Even if all the neutron counts claimed by Pons and Fleischmann had been real, the observed flux of neutrons would have been many orders of magnitude too small in relation to the amount of excess heat claimed. Subsequent measurements by nuclear physicists using state-of-the-art neutron detection techniques demonstrated that no neutrons above background level are produced by chemical cells of the type used by Pons and Fleischmann.[Gai 1989] There has also been no plausible evidence for production of 3He, 3H, or gamma rays, all of which would have been copiously produced in d-d fusion reactions that produced measurable amounts of energy through nuclear reactions.

As of 2010, the consensus among scientists is that cold fusion was an example of pathological science. However, a few true believers continue to do experiments and make claims of positive results. A 2010 review by a prominent believer[Storms 2010] says that "Many people feel that the correlation between heat and helium is the strongest evidence for cold fusion." The trouble is that heat is produced by chemical reactions in any case, and the levels of helium claimed are not high enough to show a convincing excess relative to background. If these claims were correct, they would also require a fundamental rewriting of the laws of physics. They would require that the branching ratio in d-d fusion be drastically altered by the chemical environment, but this is impossible because in a nuclear reaction, the electrons are mere spectators. In order to conserve energy and momentum, d-d fusion also requires the emission of two particles in the final state. To get around the nonexistence of the second particle, cold fusion enthusiasts suppose that energy from the reaction is transmitted to the electronic lattice. No known mechanism exists by which such transmission could occur.

In summary, claims of cold fusion cannot be correct unless they overturn firmly established knowledge of nuclear physics. This would be an extraordinary claim, and it would require extraordinary proof. After two decades, no such extraordinary proof has emerged.

Gai et al., "Upper limits on neutron and gamma-ray emission from cold fusion", Nature 340 (1989) 29–34.

Storms, "Status of cold fusion (2010)", Naturwissenschaften (online) 97 (10): 861–881

 

[rubycarat]

Yes, low-energy nuclear reactions do not produce the same radiation as hot fusion.

The conditions in 0.3 grams of palladium, where fusion-sized energy has been produced, are not the same conditions in the center of the sun.

Please read Dr. David J. Nagel's summary of the 14th International Conference on Condensed Matter Science conference here:
Volume I papers (link removed)
Volume II papers (link removed)

The Navy has positive results. A cursory search will give your their latest.

Less publicized, the Army Research Lab had a workshop this past July to brief researchers there on the most recent results. See the slides here: http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2010/ARL/ARL-Agenda.shtml"

Please look at the data before responding. Don't rely on "word of mouth" from others who have not looked at any data for the past two decades. Good science follows the facts, not beliefs.

This science of low-energy nuclear reactions is probing the energy of our future, one that we need right now. Please, please look at the results.

 

[bcrowell]

This science of low-energy nuclear reactions is probing the energy of our future, one that we need right now. Please, please look at the results.

I have looked at the results. Actually my office-mates when I was in grad school both worked on the 1989 Gai experiment, and their setup was in the target room next to the one where I worked. I followed the whole saga.

The OP may want to read the Wikipedia article on cold fusion, which I thought looked pretty accurate and well documented.

 

[humanino]

Don't rely on "word of mouth" from others who have not looked at any data for the past two decades. Good science follows the facts, not beliefs.

Good science communication relies on the process of peer review and publication. Oddly enough, the author of your reference in "Naturwissenschaften" is also in the editorial board of the journal. Besides, "Naturwissenschaften" is not as prestigious as the claims deserve. Do you have any comment on these aspects ?

 

[Borek]

Cold fusion does exist (although not in the Fleischmann–Pons version). There is no problem with forcing nuclear fusion at room temperature. But it doesn't mean process can be used to produce energy.

 

[CECR]

You can take dogma, or you can look at serious work performed by top-level scientists at SPAWARS, naval weapons centers, and Nobel Laureates like Julian Schwinger and make your own informed decision. I see others here have already recommended (link removed). I recommend you click on the (link removed) link and look at some papers from the likes of (link removed) Schwinger, a Nobel Laureate, perhaps (link removed) Szpak from the Office of Naval Research or (link removed) Mosier-Boss with Navy Laboratories SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego. If you prefer people from industry you might look up some of the papers by (link removed) McKubre from SRI. There are over 250 authors, many if not most with PhD’s. All doing serious work that proves the phenomena is real.

 

[humanino]

You can take dogma [...] top-level scientists [...] Nobel Laureates [...] Nobel Laureate [...] with PhD’s

It's funny how you oppose "take dogma" with "just believe it since it comes from Nobel laureates and PhDs". You know how Josephson directed the "Mind–Matter Unification Project" ?

The idea of cold fusion was taken very seriously at first. A lot of time and money has been spent on trying to reproduce the phenomenon, it failed, and the case is closed.

 

[ZapperZ]

You can take dogma, or you can look at serious work performed by top-level scientists at SPAWARS, naval weapons centers, and Nobel Laureates like Julian Schwinger and make your own informed decision. I see others here have already recommended (link removed). I recommend you click on the (link removed) link and look at some papers from the likes of (link removed) Schwinger, a Nobel Laureate, perhaps (link removed) Szpak from the Office of Naval Research or (link removed) Mosier-Boss with Navy Laboratories SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego. If you prefer people from industry you might look up some of the papers by (link removed) McKubre from SRI. There are over 250 authors, many if not most with PhD’s. All doing serious work that proves the phenomena is real.

But I could also accuse you of ignoring other contradictory results and reports. With all due respect to Schwinger, he isn't an experimentalist and he did not do a single experiment to show that such a thing can happen. You are also ignoring bcrowell's references, one of them from 2010, that reviewed the state of the field as it stands NOW.

One also needs to separate out "neutron sources" from actual "cold fusion". The latter requires a lot more criteria to be fulfilled than the former.

Zz.

 

[Abd Lomax]

I was wondering for those that know. What is the general consensus on Cold Fusion which is actually not cold fusion at all but "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" LENR? The term cold fusion was made by the media. What do most people think? Give me some percentages or something.

What does "most people think"? Most people on the street? Most scientists in general? Most physicists? Most chemists? (Cold fusion is found in chemistry experiments, using techniques that physicists are not generally familiar with.) Most reviewers in review panels? Most peer reviewers at mainstream publications? When?

Okay, some answers: Most people who are aware of the field at all probably believe what's been said about it for twenty years. "Pathological science." "Junk science." Even "fraud" is commonly alleged. Most physicists, probably the same, but there are some notable exceptions. Most physicists have ignored the literature on cold fusion for many years. It takes time to keep up on a field, and if the field is bogus, why bother?

Most chemists, well, we don't know, all we know is that for the last few years, the American Chemical Society, the largest scientific society in the world, has treated cold fusion very seriously, and has published two volumes of "The Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook," consisting of peer-reviewed articles in the field, copublished with Oxford University Press. That should be some kind of clue.

As to review panels, I know of two. 1989, there were about 15 members of the ERAB panel. All but 2 were apparently highly negative, but the conclusion was relatively neutral because one of the 2 was the Nobel prize-winning co-chair, who threatened to resign if the report wasn't more neutral.

In 2004, there were 18 reviewers. One-half considered the evidence for excess heat to be "conclusive." One third considered the evidence for a nuclear origin to be "somewhat convincing." One of these thought it just plain convincing. From the individual reviews, we can tell that there were some who wouldn't approve any such conclusion no matter how strong the evidence, unless there were a theory that explained it, who openly believed that the whole field was bogus and, really, why are we wasting our time with this Bad Science?

In spite of that, the recommendation of the report (same as in 1989!), for more research and publication, was unanimous. They simply did not recommend, same as 1989, a major funding program, which makes sense to this observer. If it is not known what the effect is, as to mechanism, it cannot be predicted if commercial application will ever be practical, so what's needed is basic research on the science.

As to peer review in mainstream publications, publication reached a nadir of about one paper every two months in 2004-2005. It has gone up to about two per month since then. There are over 16 peer-reviewed secondary sources, i.e., reviews of the field, positive, since 2005. There are no negative reviews in that time, passing peer review. There is one negative letter published a few months ago, clearly treated by the editors as fringe.

The field has flipped, and the recent Naturwissenschaften review is the strongest evidence of that.

 

[JustinLevy]

I was wondering for those that know. What is the general consensus on Cold Fusion which is actually not cold fusion at all but "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" LENR? The term cold fusion was made by the media. What do most people think? Give me some percentages or something.
Are people skeptical but open?
Absolutely can't be?
Has this idea opened up as a good possibly or what?

The only cold fusion I know of that is well agreed on is muon catalyzed fusion. Yes, fusion occurs. Yes, energy is released. No, it is not possible to make a useful energy source from this because you either need to wait for the random muon to come by (for example, from interactions in the upper atmosphere), or create them yourself which requires more energy than you'll get out of the fusion reactions.

I doubt a "lattice" in a condensed matter approach or whatever will somehow shield protons or deuterons from each other well enough to provide a similar effect as from muons. This doesn't mean I am close minded, or not "open" as you word it, but it means I'd want proof that is as extraordinary as the claim.

No one here is close minded on the subject. They are just requesting the same level of proof as the claim. Sure there may be results that are not very effected by statistical noise ... but you can take all the measurements you want and if you don't have a hold on your systematic errors (as bcrowell mentioned), it is not very convincing of a result.

 

[Abd Lomax]

FAQ: Is cold fusion real? No.

Classic problem What is it that is not real?

This writer assumes that if there is cold fusion, it would be a particular reaction that is known to produce neutrons (and tritium), and, just in case that something goes crazy with the branching ratio, if it produces helium, it will produce a gamma ray.

That is only one reaction. Is that the only possible nuclear reaction? Using this kind of deficient application of theory was Bad Science in 1989, and this is widely known, and it still is. Some real questions were asked, and the answers were presumed.

Is the excess heat real? Excess heat is a measured (and calculated) quantity. It exists or it does not exist, regardless of theory. If it does not exist, there is no reason to look for a theory. But if it exists, and if that can be shown, it really doesn't matter what theory says, unless theory can be found to predict the heat that is measured, or experiment can be done to show that it is artifact. The latter was never done. What happened in 1989-1990 was that there were a series of replication failures. Not replications that showed the original results, with, then, controlled variables that showed some prosaic explanation for the heat.

Had there been no replications at all, this would have been enough. But Pons and Fleischmann had worked for five years to get their work to the point that something like one-sixth of cells showed excess heat. This was not a "simple table-top experiment," as thought. When they ran out of their original batch of palladium, they couldn't get heat themselves for a time, until they figured out how to get palladium to work, as did other researchers. Other researchers, even before the 1989 ERAB panel report, but not cited in it, started to find positive results, and that continued. That's why, even with clearly biased reviewers on the 2004 panel, half the panel considered the evidence for excess heat to be "conclusive." If it is not conclusive, does this mean it's bogus? No, it means that the reviewer isn't yet convinced! Answers depend on questions!

If the question had been, is the evidence "conclusive" or "somewhat convincing, interesting, worthy of investigation," it's possible that a strong majority of the 2004 panel would have answered Yes. Their unanimous recommendation for further research to resolve issues indicates that.

The other question that was quite legitimately asked in 1989 was, "If this is a nuclear reaction, what is the ash? If there is a nuclear reaction, there must be some kind of ash!"

The ash was known by the early 1990s, and subsequent research nailed this down to the point that the heat/helium ratio, which is a characteristic of the fuel and the ash, not of a particular process to get from one to the other, was shown to be consistent with deuterium fusion. That's what the recent Naturwissenschaften review is mostly about. The evidence is overwhelming.

Except, of course, to those who won't even read it because "it's impossible."

And who then make up explanations for the findings that are preposterous, given the actual evidence. These explanations cannot survive peer review, that's why they are absent from the recent peer-reviewed literature. Heat can be questioned, and helium can be questioned (it's very difficult to measure helium and avoid all artifact), but critics have avoided addressing the true evidence: correlation of heat and helium, and not just any correlation, but one found through analysis of every published experiment that reported both heat and helium, having measured them both, and clearly consistent with deuterium fusion.

Consistent with pseudoskepticism, critics of this show no curiosity at all about what could possibly be causing this widely-reported anomaly, an anomaly not questioned by any experimental findings at all. The early "negative replications" that looked for heat and helium found neither, which is consistent with the heat being caused by fusion producing helium. In lengthy series of experiments, if there is no excess heat, there is no helium, it's a universal finding. It is almost universal that if heat is found, helium is found consistent with the heat.

For years, the pseudoskeptics have assumed that they had the high ground, demanding proof and acceptable theoretical explanation. But they neglected the foundations of science: theory never trumps experiment. That doesn't mean that one should throw scarce resources to investigate isolated experiments that seem to contradict well-established theory, but only that when evidence for an "effect" -- accumulates, with independent reports, it's worth starting to look for a cause other than "artifact." Or if it is artifact, to clearly identify it so that others don't waste their time with it.

With N-rays and polywater, favorite examples of the pseudoskeptics, actual causes for the reported effects were identified by experiment. With cold fusion, all that happened was that some "prestigious" researchers failed to replicate (and that the original researchers made some mistakes about neutrons, most notably). And from this was derived the myth that cold fusion had been conclusively rejected.

 

[Abd Lomax]

The only cold fusion I know of that is well agreed on is muon catalyzed fusion.

Yes. However, cold fusion isn't muon-catalyzed fusion. There were some original ideas that maybe the lattice somehow caused a muon-conservation effect that allowed cosmic ray muons to catalyze many more reactions before becoming stuck, but this was contrary to experimental observations.

"Cold fusion" is not "well-agreed on," among scientists in general. Among those familiar with the evidence, though, and peer-reviewers of articles need to become familiar, it flips. There are still journals with blanket policies against considering any article relating to cold fusion, and it's a multidisciplinary field (the experiments are chemistry experiments, but sometimes add techniques to measure radiation), but among journals that do consider papers in the field, publication is increasing, and negative papers are completely absent of late, the last five years. This has gone on long enough, with enough positive reports in the literature, to not be merely some quirk.

There was a famous "conversion" last year, where CBS Sixty Minutes engaged a prominent physicist to investigate the field. He claims he was skeptical, and he probably was, most physicists are, to this day. He came away convinced that there was something real involved, and he's been promoting cold fusion research at his university. Robert Duncan.

Muon-catalyzed fusion is not relevant to what's called cold fusion, though it is indeed a form of cold fusion. (Very cold!) What MCF does show is that blanket statements about impossibility, if you have not considered all the possibilities, are generally foolish.

MCF, though, is the same reaction as hot fusion, it has the same branching ratio, it produces the same products.

The main reaction in cold fusion, by contrast, produces helium, that's known and effectively certain. But no gamma ray. This is not d-d fusion, almost certainly. (But there is still the possibility that someone will pull a rabbit out of a hat, i.e., figure out some way that d-d fusion is catalyzed but produces different branching and suppresses the gamma by transferring the momentum to the lattice. I doubt it, and so do many in the field. Cluster fusion is currently the favorite theory, I'd say, with lots of experimental work focusing on how to enhance it.)

I doubt a "lattice" in a condensed matter approach or whatever will somehow shield protons or deuterons from each other well enough to provide a similar effect as from muons. This doesn't mean I am close minded, or not "open" as you word it, but it means I'd want proof that is as extraordinary as the claim.

Good. The reaction is not a "similar effect from muons."

How about looking at the proof? (I.e., "strong evidence.") You'll have to do more than make armchair, off-the-cuff criticisms, you'll have to actually stretch yourself to read the literature. Start with Storms (2010).

No one here is close minded on the subject. They are just requesting the same level of proof as the claim.

That is a starry-eyed delusion. I'm not making accusations about any individual, but it is quite common that pseudoskeptics demand far higher evidence for cold fusion than exists for the theory they believe predicts impossibility.

What is the theory? Everything I have seen is theoretical reason to expect that d-d fusion does not explain the cold fusion phenomena.

How do we know that fusion is impossible at low temperatures, by any reaction? Theory predicts reaction rates of a proposed reaction, under proposed conditions. What's the proposed reaction? If you imagine that it is two deuterons being smashed together, overcoming the Coulomb barrier by brute force, of course, that's a simple problem in two-body physics, where theory is very accurate. If you can keep the pesky additional bodies away!

This is what I was taught by Feynman in 1962, and it's still true. The math of quantum field theory, applied to multibody problems, is horrific. But believing that 2-body quantum mechanical theory prohibits any sort of fusion in the complex environment of highly loaded palladium deuteride is believing that an unconfirmed theory is true. It's not science! And this is why the initial reaction from at least three Nobel-prize winners to cold fusion was not "Impossible!" but rather, "How could this happen?" And they put effort into that.

There is an error involved here. Among the real scientists, experiment comes first. Is there excess heat? Is there helium? Are there other signs associated with nuclear reactions? The answers to those questions is not related to theory. That experimental evidence seems to contradict theory is no concern of experimental scientists, though sometimes they mention it.

Sure there may be results that are not very effected by statistical noise ... but you can take all the measurements you want and if you don't have a hold on your systematic errors (as bcrowell mentioned), it is not very convincing of a result.

The work has been done, by experts. The assertion of "systematic error" is simply a claim without evidence. Show the errors, if they are there!

What pseudoskeptics essentially assert is that unless every made-up scenario for "artifact" can be conclusively refuted, no positive operating hypothesis can be asserted. Many times, these people, when experimental evidence is asserted, retreat into the trump card: "Fraud." Or perhaps more charitably, "Delusion!"

In this case, Storms notes that there is no accepted theory that explains all the results. There are plausible explanations, he says, by which he means that there are partial explanations. At least one of these works with standard quantum field theory and predicts fusion from what might be a possible physical configuration that could occur in palladium deuteride, probably at the surface. It has been widely published under peer review. There has been no refutation. True theory? Not known, and experimental verification, to the degree to which the theory has been elaborated, will be difficult.

The proposed reaction (which is just one of a family of proposed multibody reactions) is that of two deuterium molecules, or four deuterons with their electrons, confined to a single lattice cell -- this is very unusual at best! -- predicted to collapse under the right conditions to a Bose-Einstein condensate, which then fuses, he calculates, with 100% cross-section within a femtosecond. The Be-8 radiates photons at frequencies which would be absorbed in the cell, until the Be-8 fissions to two helium nuclei.

The theory is not complete, but if this is the reaction, that state (called the Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate) only lasts for a femtosecond. It is not known how such a phenomenon occurring withing a BEC would behave. This is new physics, not overturning old physics. It's an extension into previously unexplored territory.

Cold fusion does not contradict established theory, but only certain approximations that were assumed to be accurate but never adequately verified.

But there is heat and there is helium, correlated. Get over it!

 

[Abd Lomax]

But I could also accuse you of ignoring other contradictory results and reports. With all due respect to Schwinger, he isn't an experimentalist and he did not do a single experiment to show that such a thing can happen. You are also ignoring bcrowell's references, one of them from 2010, that reviewed the state of the field as it stands NOW.

One also needs to separate out "neutron sources" from actual "cold fusion". The latter requires a lot more criteria to be fulfilled than the former.

Zz.

Uh, have you read that Storms review? The title is a clue: "Status of cold fusion (2010)" The abstract:

The phenomenon called cold fusion has been studied for the last 21 years since its discovery by Profs. Fleischmann and Pons in 1989. The discovery was met with considerable skepticism, but supporting evidence has accumulated, plausible theories have been suggested, and research is continuing in at least eight countries. This paper provides a brief overview of the major discoveries and some of the attempts at an explanation. The evidence supports the claim that a nuclear reaction between deuterons to produce helium can occur in special materials without application of high energy. This reaction is found to produce clean energy at potentially useful levels without the harmful byproducts normally associated with a nuclear process. Various requirements of a model are examined.

Storms is quite conservative. The "evidence supports the claim." That understates the strength of the evidence. It is not marginal.

That, by the way, doesn't prove that cold fusion can provide any practical benefits. It's quite difficult to set up the conditions, and they seem to be fragile. But first things first! Is this thing real? That's the question that has been conclusively answered. Yes, it is.

But if someone comes up to you at a party and suggests investing in their hot "cold fusion investment opportunity", check your wallet! Many millions of dollars have been spent trying to make this work reliably and on a scale that could generate power, mostly with failure, but enough success that many are still working. The most reputable researchers say that we need to know what the mechanism is before engineering better processes becomes reasonably efficient. Until then, huge amounts of money could be tossed at the problem with no benefit.

 

[bcrowell]

Storms is quite conservative.

I don't think the following quote from his 2010 review paper can be called "conservative:"

Starting in 1963, L.C. Kervran (1963, 1972, 1980) proposed that living organisms could create elements they needed by transmuting available elements. This idea was widely rejected for lack of believable data and because it seemed impossible. In 1993, Thompkins and Byrd (1993) expanded on the idea in the book “The Secret Life of Plants”. In 1992, Komaki (1992, 1993) at the Biological and Agricultural Research Institute in Shiga-ken, Japan undertook a study of molds and yeasts when the organisms were denied essential elements in their culture. They attempted to determine if the necessary elements could be created by transmutation. Using modern analytical tools, these living organisms were shown to increase the concentrations of potassium, magnesium, iron, and calcium in their cells over the amounts available. Vysotskii and coworkers at Kiev Shevchenko University, Ukraine (Vysotskii, Kornilova et al 1996; Vysotskii and Kornilova 2003; Vysotskii, Kornilova et al 1996; Vysotskii, Kornilova et al 2001; Vysotskii, Tashyrev et al 2008) carried the work further by making Fe57 from Mn55 when a collection of bacteria were grown in D2O. The Fe57 was detected using the Mossbauer effect, which is uniquely sensitive to this one isotope and could be used to monitor the reaction rate. The process also has been found to accelerate radioactive decay of some elements. Consequently, bacteria are being explored as a way to rapidly decontaminate soil. While such claims are hard to accept, evidence for them is mounting. If real, the claim adds one more process an explanation must address. In particular, an explanation must account for how the resulting large nuclear energy is released without killing the organism; otherwise the claimed ability obviously could not have been developed by evolution. Further simplification of an explanation can be achieved by assuming the initiation process and the method of energy release used by life-forms applies to all cold-fusion reactions regardless of the products or experimental conditions.
The author realizes that many people find a claim for occurrence of nuclear reactions in living cells hard to accept and that many more replications are required before the claim can be fully justified. Nevertheless, the evidence is growing and needs to be debated in the context of cold-fusion.

 

[Abd Lomax]

A lot of time and money has been spent on trying to reproduce the phenomenon, it failed, and the case is closed.

That's what's so remarkable about this field. The phenomenon has been documented in about a thousand papers published in peer-reviewed journals, not to mention thousands more presented at conferences. There were, as of about a year ago, 153 peer-reviewed papers published similarly, showing excess heat in palladium deuteride.

There is a single reproducible experiment that has been performed by dozens of researchers, with what Storms calls four particularly careful experiments with good quantitative data.

Very simple to state, but also difficult to perform, like lots of experiments.

1. Set up cold fusion conditions in a cell or series of cells such that if excess heat is generated, it can be measured, and if helium is generated, it can be measured. (The original person to report this, Miles, has reported 21 cells with heat out of 33, covered by Storms.)

2. Use the state of the art, i.e., techniques known by those experienced in the field, known to generate apparent excess heat. It is not at all necessary that every cell generate excess heat. This approach works with even a relatively small number of "successes."

3. Record and report the excess heat and the helium. (as well as, of course, experimental details.)

That's it! It's been done by many researchers, including some of the early "negative replicators." It bypasses the problem of erratic "success." It doesn't require "exact replication," though if many cells are the same, it's better. However, in this field, people have been continually motivated to try to improve reliability and the magnitude of the effect, so experiments differ in approach, as well as in methods of measuring heat and helium. That variety, from this approach, strengthens the results, making it less like that there is some systematic error.

(The erratic results may be due to unknown variables -- that's known for the early negative replications, i.e., the variables have been identified -- or they may be due to some chaotic nature of the phenomenon itself, as would be the case with some kinds of experiments even with known and understood phenomena.)

The results have been uniform, differing only in accuracy of the measurements. Storms estimates, from the four most detailed studies, 25 +/- 5 MeV for the heat/helium ratio. This, in fact, roughly confirms both the calorimetry and the helium. This value is consistent with the expected value for deuterium fusion of 23.8 MeV. It does not, as Storms points out, prove that the reaction is "d-d fusion," but only provides strong evidence that the fuel is, as expected from other experimental characteristics, deuterium, and the ash is helium, which was very much not expected, because of the absence of gammas. But gammas come from d-d fusion, they don't come from, for example, a multibody fusion process that produces Be-8 and thus only helium plus energy as a product.

Multibody fusion seems ridiculous at first, because if d-d is rare, d-d-d would seem to be very rare, even insanely rare, and d-d-d-d, impossible uoon impossible. So, fine. Come up with some other theory! However, Takahashi showed that 3D fusion was enhanced over naive expectation, in bombardment experiments, by a factor of 10²⁶ over expectation. It is possible that lattice confinement particularly enhances the reaction of four deuterons, they may fit some "niche," so to speak.

But theory is really not the point. Helium is being produced commensurate with the heat, and there are many confirmations of this, and no contrary experimental results at all.

What's Occam's Razor here?

 

[bcrowell]

(The erratic results may be due to unknown variables -- that's known for the early negative replications, i.e., the variables have been identified -- or they may be due to some chaotic nature of the phenomenon itself, as would be the case with some kinds of experiments even with known and understood phenomena.)

I think the erratic results are due to different levels of competence and incompetence, skepticism and credulity.

 

[Abd Lomax]

How come so many people with new accounts participate in this thread ?

Because this one, at least, sometimes searches for the Storms paper, and saw this high on the results today. And I've studied the field intensively for most of the last two years, being originally quite skeptical.

I was a Wikipedia editor who saw some administrative abuse, where evidence contrary to what seemed to have become the "official" view at the article was being suppressed, and the major website that legally provides access to preprints and similar copies of published papers was blacklisted -- which was against Wikipedia policy. I wondered what was going on, if policy violations were necessary to keep the article neutral. So I began reading the evidence in the field, I bought the books -- especially the skeptical ones! -- and became familiar with the history and the science, and I had the background -- Cal Tech, my original interest was nuclear physics -- to understand it.

And like others who have done the same thing, I realized that this had left the realm of legitimate controversy -- over the basic reality -- probably more than ten years ago.

So I decided to work in the field. And I write about it. I'm not anonymous, you can easily find out who I am.

 

[Doc Al]

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