MOTTO.
Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit. (M. Scott Peck)
In the realm of Cold Fusion, the spirit of Inquisition is dead or in trans-seasonal hibernation: my former heretical paper re Barriers went unpunished or unread or ignored by the verbally active players. I have described the route from Cold Fusion to the Energy Source via Excess Heat and – this is the point! -Enhanced Excess Heat (call it Excess Heat)2 if you wish and eventually to the terminal, the Source- which will be in eternal reconstruction and expansion. Again, I have explained that it is about an “obstacled way” the antonym of “shortcut”
Yannis Hadjichristos CTO of Defkalion, the most clairvoyant (in non-mystical sense) and far advanced traveler on this Way has sent a significant comment to my Blog. See it commented by our friend Alain at:
http://www.lenr-forum.com/showthread.php?1035-Defkalion-John-Hadjichistos-comments-on-Peter-Gluck-blog&p=3652#post3652
The essence of Yannis’s message: is
"We all have to realize that any effort to introduce to the market a product in this area is not as simple as introducing a new hybrid car."
Yannis also gives a short description of some frightening non-technical obstacles/barriers on the Way.
It is well known that effective players and the omniscient spectators usually disagree about the concept “impossible” and also differ regarding the best problem solving methods. Actually the spectators mainly know, the players usually try to learn.
Enhanced Excess Heat- is that for real?
This quote is well known by all the scientists:
“The great tragedy of Science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact” (Thomas Henry Huxley)
In the practice of research the situation is not so bad; instead of being defenseless victims of the sadist unaesthetic facts, the hypotheses and their offspring, the theories have developed efficient methods to remove, distort, ignore or kill the inconvenient facts and to replace them with friendly ones.
In case my Enhanced Excess Heat hypothesis is pure low IQ imagination and even the Pd-D system will be able to “deliver” decent energy sources, then I will have great battles with the facts.
But if we, suppose ad absurdum that Enhanced Excess Heat is a must, a stage that comes before –and has to!- the Energy Source, in this very unpopular case the technological history of the first 23 something years of Cold Fusion LENR can be described as:
We were actually barking not at the wrong tree, we were barking at a dwarf, weakling bush….
Zero risk that this idea itself will be popular or make me popular.
I have a desire to be right, not popular.
Now I want to continue the discussion regarding the obstacles and barriers- first we have to build a good, logically consistent taxonomy of them. The situation is complex, but perhaps good Metaphors will help us to grasp the basic elements of it. Let’s consider the following three metaphors for a start.
MESSINESS MISSINGNESS, MESSIANISM as BARRIERS!
1. MESSINESS
Mess is a so rich, fine English word see: please: http://thesaurus.com/browse/mess has some 30 synonyms and only 3 antonyms- the best description of it being a low quality harmful chaos.
One of my oldest Septoes states:
3. The world is simultaneously chaotic and ordered
Entropically thinking, chaos is much more “natural” than order and therefore it is easy to remove order and to enhance chaos in the real systems. But, take notice; if you want that a system should work for you, some order has to be brought back in it!
First principle of messiology:
The simplest and most effective method to create a mess is mixing apples and oranges i.e. dissimilar things, issues or ideas- (people too!!!) then it goes quite automatically and an almost perfect chaos is created. This is true for all human affairs, from science to politics. Just mix widely disparate things etc. in the most aleatory way. Some fields have great doses of inborn messiness.
Cold Fusion was ab ovo imagined as a rich, cheap, harmless unlimited energy source as something noble, pure, idealistic the Holy Grail of Energy was used and abused for it Holy Grail- how fine it sounds! But stop! Recently for some cultural reason I had to study the opera Parsifal of Richard Wagner- it is about the Holy Grail and it is very, very messy a hodgepodge of holiness and sin, purity and dirt, love and hate. (my favorite opera composer and model of creativity is Giuseppe Verdi.)
In Parsifal there is a lot of strange mysticism, my guess is that even the author of the libretto and of the music did not know exactly what messages he wanted to convey to the future. Surely it is not love for humans. Common sense says holy is something for which you are allowed to kill and sacred is something you have to kill if it is offended by the bad people. Repeating ugly scenes here where I live at religious feasts is crowds of believers fiercely fighting for glasses of holy water. You know in some places this 21st Century is actually the 12th in disguise.
OK, Parsifal shows a mixed complicated existence with witchcraft and wounds that cannot be healed, bad deeds, intrigues an ugly story even if the Good eventually wins and the music is great in places... The Holy Grail does not inspire virtues, so I will never call Cold Fusion the Holy Grail of Energy... On the contrary, Cold Fusion has attracted many very good and idealistic, altruistic skilled people. - lovers of truth, potential benefactors of Mankind, good scientists. However the start and the continuation were awfully messy: surprisingly stubborn bad experimental results, successes alternating unpredictably with depressing failures and no rules or causes can be found for this mix. The recurrent malefic word became “irreproducible” as such or in the form of its euphemism as unreliable. The effect was certain but difficultly measurable and this had the effect to focus the efforts on the measuring systems and not on intensification. Scale-up was and is like fata morgana.
Then a real Babel-mix of theories, uncombinable, incompatible, contradictory. metaphorically speaking- the entire long way is in a very dense theoretical fog, impenetrable visual barrier. Messy3!
And I have not told a single word about the terrible mess created in this case by the mass media.
The mess created by Andrea Rossi
When the historical (above any considerations) day of January 14 2011 has arrived with the Bologna demo, for a very short time we have hoped that the energy savior Andrea Rossi is kind of knight without fear and beyond reproach, however the reality was quite different you all know or believe to know how different it was. Rossi has very probably enhanced the excess heat effect however has very successfully enhanced the chaos of LENR. He has mixed real heat enhancement with further enhancement by manipulating the measuring instruments and the results obtained. A confusing mixture of truths, half-truths and outright lies, an expert mode to make and to not make the same things in the same time. The most probably is that Rossi has some technical difficulties to stabilize
the enhanced excess heat and his problem solving program is a real mess- we have seen many breeds of his E-cats- thin, fat, hot whatever. The outcome of this mess is not knowable yet.
It is here the place to emphasize that if I disagree 80% with the deeds of Rossi, I disagree 115% with the dedicated Rossi killers.
Mess is a traveling companion on the way to the new energy source, there is a quite terrifying bureaucratic-legal mess on the last portion of the Way- as Yannis had shown it and Rossi has also alluded to. LENR needs a decent new name and good reputation management possibly a bit of plastic surgery.
2. MISSINGNESS.
Missingness is the idea; usually hiding in the dark that something essential is missing for solving of the problem of LENR. The theoretical mega-mess makes this idea quite plausible.
At first sight, this barely could be considered a barrier because it is about something that is missing not staying in way. It is one of really vital questions- are we humans intelligent enough, sufficiently smart, creative as necessary to understand what happens and are we inventive enough in order to develop a commercial system based on LENR? Or are these tasks over the limits of our possibilities? It is considered an axiom that we are not able, we are allowed to use- something if we do not understand it deeply, theoretically, up to the essential details I do not agree completely, see please: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/12/a-hybrid-approach-for-solving-lenr.html
Therefore, I dare to think that even it will be seen that we need higher degrees of intelligence than we have- the best of us included, we will use quite soon the new energy sources and in 15 years there will be more than 1 billion of these sources worldwide.
It is interesting that the limits of our intellect are considered to be due to genetic barriers, see for example:
http://infoproc.blogspot.se/2012/07/chomsky-genetic-barriers-to-scientific.html
This is a painful problem/question even more for me- I have confessed that I owe all my professional successes to an excellent memory, only slowly eroded by aging, much more than to any other mental quality. I may add in my defense that I have the ability to listen both to people (with empathy) and to facts (without prejudgment). I will not discuss here if commercial
Cold Fusion could be only a post-singularity event see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
We cannot wait so much!
A separate discussion will be necessary to establish if we, as species are not smart or intelligent or wise enough to solve the
fundamental questions of Physics, Biology and Psychology plus all the Social Problems. And how this applies to LENR. Or, is will more important than skill and we can solve the problem in practice with a non-total up-to-the-smallest detail understanding of what happens- but with a perfect control and elimination of all the possible risks.
I think major discoveries and significant progress are still possible and do happen with hybrid scientific and empirical methods being used in synergy.
You have observed from my informative blog publications that I am following with great attentions everything written about human brains and I know that our brains are still developing as the local spearhead of Evolution and new mental possibilities appear all the time. Do not worry for LENR, please!
The bisencephalians -see Bisinis on my Blog- are with you.
3. MESSIANISM.
Messianism in our case is about a savior who will solve the problem, the most probable come with a perfect theory that will allow us to go from the test tube to the industrial generator in few simple steps. Along the 24 years of Cold Fusion history we wished to believe and have usually succeeded- that the last discovery, the newest system, the most recent smart trick will solve the CF/LENR soon and very soon the traditional energy sources will disappear- it is the genuine solution. Then we have lost our illusions of a fast and complete victory.
But soon we started to wait for the next Messiah discovery. Do not forget the other source of despair- the theories that will bring our salvation are also not coming.
Messianism is also about waiting too passively, about connecting hopes to myths and miracles, about thinking other people will do it. Or on the contrary thinking that you will be able to get the great solution working in your garage with simple means, perhaps by serendipity- because you are so special and unique.
The solution needs very new creative ideas and what is called paradigm shift, nothing mystical can help.
I started this paper saying there is no active Cold Fusion Inquisition. and too many ideas are circulating much too freely, including my Enhanced Excess Heat heresy. I can imagine that the Inquisition is real; I am forced to retract this idea. I will sign the document but I will whisper angrily:
“Eppur si ha aumentato il eccesso di calore!” (And yet it had enhanced the excess heat!)
I am contented because here I have succeeded to tell now more than 5% of the absolutely necessary about the barriers in the way of LENR
Peter
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