The number of
successful theories in LENR is- for the
time given-is non-negative but also non-positive.
"Successful"
means it is efectively helping the experimentalists to
understand
(deeply) the LENR phenomena, to scale-up
heat release at
a reasonable speed and eventually to develop working LENR based energy generators.
Actually there
are many different and non-combinable LENR
theories that
explain some partial aspects of an actually very
broad range of
phenomena- components of LENR, all necessary
in order to make
it productive.
We have the
habit to think in absolute scientific truths, but reality
is in terms of
Pareto truths- as I have described it in a note with
zero
impact:
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/11/80-of-all-truths-are-pareto-truths.html
Actually this is a an essential idea, bright and
not I am its
first author. Without it, you cannot understand reality.
Therefore
theoretical disputes in LENR are more religious than scientific and only
experiments can and have to! decide. In the real word imagination is more
powerful than reality and the disputes are more intense than it can be
justified with data coming from planned and organized
experimental investigations.
Unfortunately
the experimental situation in the field is highly unreliable. No paper without
a metaphor- LENR is in a deep hole, stubbornly digging with shovels made of
palladium.
One star in the
constellation of LENR theories is the Widom Larsen theory; it is in a special
situation being under ferocious attacks of the other, say, mainstream, LENR
theorists.
For politicians
and parties I have found the correct inequation:
“If B is
worse than A, this does NOT mean that A is better than B”
More
symbolically; [B<A ≠ A>B]
Can you deny that this relation has elements of truth for LENR
theories too?
We have lists of LENR theories but no classifications from
the best to the worst. Some try to be as conformist possible some are more exotic but no one till now is the True One accepted
by everybody and applied in practice...
I have met Lew Larsen at the Marseille ICCF we both are shortsighted
and not hearing very well, so we had our places in the first row. My impression
about him was positive; anyway we have not discussed much. However I definitely
remember Lew was rather discontented with the situation of LENR- like me.
Discontent is the engine of problem solving and Lew has tried to explain the
problem in his own way...
Later I have learned he has a LENR company and that his collaboration
with Ed Storms did not went well- they know why.
Then the W-L theory has come with some new concepts but
quite
familiar for me because my good friend Hideo Kozima has
written many papers and two books about the role of neutrons in Cold Fusion.
Anyway I am not a theorist and not inerrant. (Who is?).
In my humble (really so) opinion the LENR community had an
exaggerated negative over-reaction to this theory. However some scientists and
researchers seem to like it and use develop and diversify it.
The journalist Steve Krivit became a convinced supporter of
the theory. Unfortunately he is a man with strong certainties and he seems to
consider the opponents of this theory (or even those who do not manifest
enthusiasm for it) as his personal enemies. Krivit’s radicalism is not useful
for the W-L theory. The same form of intolerance has damaged my 6+ years
friendship and excellent collaboration with Krivit because I am not convinced
that Andrea Rossi is just a total fraud who has invented nothing and his dozen
demos were complete fakes engineered for inactive Ni cores. He cannot accept my
doubts. The last thing LENR needs is internal conflicts. I have told this many
times, we are in trouble we need solidarity not hostility...
If the Widom Larsen theory is the worst of all, history will
show it and it will be forgotten. My guess is that it actually has its place in the complex sequence of phenomena that is LENR+ or New
Wave LENR.
Our community of theorists will publish a special issue of
Infinite Energy dedicated to LENR theories. I hope Jean-Paul Biberian the coordinator of this issue will invite Lew Larsen to tell
what
he thinks about how LENR works- especially when it works as
expected- expected for a very long time.
Peter
Good point Peter.
ReplyDeleteToo early to make a religion about theories...
Even if since I'm kid I support theories, like I love chocolate, now with age, I realise that like chocolate you have to stay careful and reasonable.
Mains course is experiments, and chocolate is just at the end.
And notice that some love chocolate, some vanilla, some bretzel with cofee, and often a mix of all please the guest.
LENR have been plagued by theoretical preceding experiences.
W-L, like BC, like TSC, like axil, Brillouin, are interesting and premature.
The media global rally which hapened to one of the worst article on LENR by NASA, proposing theory without refering to enough experiments, proposing hope withous substance, is showing how big names and theoris attracts then bus, like experiments of ENEA, NASA, are ignored...
of course with such premature discussion, the denialist of LENR are happy, carefully not looking beside that loose premature discussion.
Theories will be useful soon, but now we are living in an open air psychiatric azylum, and the most important is to stick to the facts.
There are enough, since decades, but not enough for collectively delusioned community.
And LENR is one of the most easy psychiatric tragedy of our time, to solve...
Getting tired.
Only a working reactor on my table can solve the problem. that is our chance.
Dear Alain,
Deleteyou are right and I thank you for the support.
I understand well your ideas except what you say
about chocolate, some 35 years ago I have
decided to NOT eat anything sweet; but anything else
from red meat to cracklings - no problem it was something
instinctive.My grandchildren are contributing actively to shopping in the CORA hypermarget, they know thw good kind of sweeties
LENR needs a New Wave composed theory not a simple one.
If W L will be a component of the meta-theory only the future experiments can say.
I hope the main problems will be solved soon,
Peter
We endorse Peter's position 100%.
ReplyDeleteWe do not know if Be or B appearing within Hyperion reactors is the result of nucleosynthesis as per W-L theory or a result of Cluster Decay or something else, and it is very difficult to check which theoretical hypothesis is correct to explain their presence with existing conventional instrumentation. There is only one way to find out "what is really going on" in there: built better instruments (such for example as a real time mass spectrometer around a working reactor) and to cooperate. Then better theories may arise.
Absolute truths are a painful illusion for modern physics. This stands for "LENR" too.
John Hadjichristos
Thsnk you dear Yiannis!
DeleteIt will be profoundly interesting to discover the
very nature of the productive HENI process.
The W L problem has an other human aspect, too- we
do not need Polemics here in the LENRland.
Peter
Mr. Hadjichristos I see you have not presence in the U.S. Why is that?
DeleteDear "Anonymous"
DeleteThere is a very nice song by Leonard Cohen, a real poem from Canada (who spent many years creatively in Hydra/ Greece) singing " First we take Manhattan then we take Berlin".
He could assure you also that the world is extending much more than the area of Manhattan or Berlin as many people think.
John Hadjichristos
Well my only point was that American companies have a tougher time engaging with you outside the U.S., specially with annoying ITAR restrictions.
DeleteOur only other alternative is the whacky Mr. Rossi. Need I say more?
Mr. Hadjichristos it's very nice of you to share that you observe B and Be. That's a valuable piece of information. I certainly appreciate that. Wish there could be more open discussion about it in collaboration with DGT so I can study it more at my university.
DeleteDo you guys observe Gammas at the beginning of the reaction, during, and/or when you shut down? At all?
Thanks
:)
Dear Anonymous
DeleteI can not make serious public or private discussion with someone that keeps on hiding under anonymity. The answers to your questions have been highlighted in the paper we presented in ICCF17.
John Hadjichristos
In their report, DEFKALION said they did no isotope analysis, yet they said there was no transmutation of Ni.
DeleteAlso, they did not find Tritium, He3 or He4 among the light elements. They found lithium, beryllium and boron, though.
It seems that each LENR reactor reflects a unique transmutation profile based on the degree of coulomb barrier lowering that the reactor achieves.
This result is a huge demarcation line in theories about the Ni/H reaction in Rossi type reactors.
The reaction should be called cold fission. It is near impossible for fusion to build up this light transmutation profile of these light elements one neutron or proton at a time in a stepwise repetitive fusion process.
Getting past Helium 4 is not possible because it is in an island of inaccessibility. He4 being a gas will escape the nuclear active zone before a fusion process can build on it so that a step based transmutation process can get to the next higher element in the transmutation chain.
In these Rossi type reactors, the coulomb barrier is lowered not all the way but just enough for some light nuclear materials to leak out of the Nickel nucleus to form light elements.
Rossi reported the same thing. With many of the first 19 lightest elements found in his transmutation products; even though there were many gases in that list of elements.
It is fission dear fellows; clear your minds of confusion so forget about fusion and neutron formation.
if it's fission it's very crafty not to create long lived radioactive isotopes.
DeleteFor every argument there is a strong counter. This is the world of LENR theory.
Thanks Mr. Hadjichristos I realize now you were just quoting the presentation you gave.
DeleteSo what do you think of the recent news from the Rossi camp? Care to venture a guess at who the "testers" might be.
I have no idea what Andrea Rossi's "camp" is doing. I hope the campers do.
DeleteJohn Hadjichristos
By the way how thing are evolving for defkalion, Hyperion, and Möse SRL/Defkalion EU?
DeleteDear Alain,
DeleteSmooth and as planned.
Thank you for your interest, even expressed off topic and thanks to Peter's hospitality.
John Hadjichristos
Don Peter , you have right with two inequqlity ! Wery smart !
ReplyDeleteThank you, old friend. In politics it is
Deletedemonstrated beyond any doubt!
Peter
Peter, you asked a question that assumes a condition, "hostility toward the Widom-Larsen Theory."
ReplyDeleteIf a theory is promoted using misleading arguments, is it "hostility" to point this out?
Hostility toward arguments is a symptom of pseudoskepticism, but criticism of arguments can be ordinary -- necessary -- skepticism.
Criticism of the actions of *people*, is that "hostility"? Maybe, certainly it can be expressed in a hostile manner.
I have called W-L theory a "hoax." That has to do with how it is being promoted, not so much with the theory itself, which is largely undeveloped. Yes, there has been a great deal of work on using the theory to "explain" certain phenomena, but the next step for a theory is not taken. The theory reasonably predicts certain outcomes, but only circumstantial evidence is presented for *some* of the predictable outcomes, others are ignored, and a crucial one, activation gammas, is waved away with *another* entirely new theory, the gamma screen.
And then, the defenders of the theory have claimed that the gamma screen is untestable, with wholly specious arguments designed to simply wave away the question.
W-L theory is just as "surprising" as cold fusion itself. But because it can pretend that it isn't about "fusion," it has gained some popularity.
A major involvement of neutrons with cold fusion (i.e., the FP Heat Effect with PdD) is highly unlikely. However, minor reactions *are* possible, but these clearly have little or nothing to do with the main reaction.
Hence W-L theory *in this context* is almost certainly inapplicable. It has not led to verifiable results. Yet, serving W-L theory, and promoting it, there have been major, highly publicized, and very personal attacks on cold fusion researchers.
If you want to know where the hostility is coming from, look at these. I've been documenting them on newvortex@yahoogroups.com.
This has noting to do with the actual cogency of the theory.
Dear Abd,
Deletea) Can you please translte in plain English "misleading arguments" specifically for this case?
b) Realistic or less realistic, I think it is not OK to consider a theory a HOAX. Take alook please to the Hoaxslayers site and you will get the difference.
C) I think such judgments have to be made only comparatively, take a lokk how virtuous is, say the
Schickelgruber-Dzhugashvili LENR theory and how vicious is the Widom Larsen theory. To be compared with a standard, i think.
Peter
"a) Can you please [translate] in plain English 'misleading arguments' specifically for this case?"
Delete"Misleading arguments" is plain English. However, I have posted page after page of examination of W-L arguments on newVortex@yahoogroups.com, I'm not about to summarize them in a few words here. But I will give one example.
Just the other day, Larsen repeated a previous Krivit argument that the gamma shield could not be tested because present LENR experiments do not create large enough, persistent, "heavy electron patches" to allow the reduction in gamma intensity to be detected.
Remember, he's claiming major secret advances in LENR and he's claiming a 100% efficient gamma shield, and he has *patented* it.
His argument is equivalent to saying that stars cannot be detected because the amount of light will only be in the noise in a light detector. He refers to experts who have given the opinion.
The answers you get depend on the questions you ask. Gammas are high-frequency, which can allow them to be used for very precise imaging. As one approach to detect active gamma shielding patches, one could image the surface, edge-on, irradiating it with tight-source gammas that travel along the surface, then through a slit, and a moving film could be used to record the slit brightness. So the whole surface would be examined, continuously, edge-on, and active sites would be visible on the film as points of no exposure.
(This would be a fun experiment ... but I wouldn't try it, because it's very likely there is no gamma shield, unless there is a credible report with evidence that there is. Someone inclined to accept W-L theory might try it.)
(He's claiming that patches are as large as 100 microns.)
There are *many* such arguments combined in the Lattice Energy documents. They only look at what might seem to confirm the theory, and ignore many obvious problems.
b) Realistic or less realistic, I think it is not OK to consider a theory a HOAX. Take alook please to the Hoaxslayers site and you will get the difference.
There are different kinds of hoaxes. "Hoax" is indeed a strong word, but I've not been implying "fraud," which is stronger.
"C) I think such judgments have to be made only comparatively, take a lokk how virtuous is, say the
Schickelgruber-Dzhugashvili LENR theory and how vicious is the Widom Larsen theory. To be compared with a standard, i think."
The theory is not vicious. However, I've been responding to vicious attacks on the integrity of many scientific researchers by a promoter of W-L theory, combined with fawning approval of the theory.
W-L theory is highly unlikely to be significant in the FP Heat Effect. My position has become that there may be many low-level effects in certain environments, and neutron production and effects cannot be completely ruled out, there *are* low-level effects observed that might be explained that way. At the low levels, the gamma shield might not be necessary, or it might be less efficient.
But as a purported explanation of the F-P Heat Effect, as it is being used, it's a hoax.
Mr. Lomax I have to agree with you on some of your observations and disagree with others.
DeleteI would not call the theory a Hoax but I understand why you did so.
The theory is a patchwork of hard-to-believe events that as a whole seem to be harder to believe than low temperature high rate Coulomb barrier penetration.
I'm examining these right now as I get time and besides the gamma shield you are right, there are many other issues.
I think Lew's high confidence that his theory is right as is is probably the theory's biggest problem.
If WL had simply said look SPPs in metal hydrides may cause ULM neutrons then people would look for decay gammas and find the answer to be NO. So WL postulates the gamma shield. The gamma shield is not a horrible idea, it's not the most horrible idea for condensed matter physics, but hard to swallow.
Well okay maybe we can look for thermalized Neutrons,... no sorry the neutrons are completely absorbed before they are thermalized and escape. Again that is not the most horrible idea but again hard to swallow.
Two simple experiments as Mr. Lomax alluded to would be try to penetrate the gamma shield with manufactured gammas, certainly that's plausible. And of course create ULM neutrons in a Metal Hydride and see if they get thermalized and escape because lest we forget the statistical probability for a ULM to "bounce and gain energy" from most of the isotopes of Ni is higher than the probability it will get absorbed and as far as we know it's still the case regardless of their kinetic energy.
Mr. Lomax is right people haven't done these experiments because when you mathematically try this on a very simple mathematical simulation they don't hold up.
Here is another oddity. At say 1000K there is not enough free energy in the entire cache of Ni powder at the weights we've heard to cause a single electron to join a proton. So the necessary energy has to come from the SPPs which by the way do not go around the Ni particle without "friction" thus heating up the particle which would be easily detected. So any energy to form a "Neutron" has to come from the SPP, but that's a lot of energy on a thin film of surface polaritons flowing around Ni particles and virtually isolated from the Ni particle itself. So if it happens it's likely very local and resonance is involved. But if it's local then how is the gamma shield working? Surely the gammas aren't constrained to go only in the direction of the heavy electron which no longer exists because it's a neutron right?
It's just a tough sell. In the end WL does not have a theory, just an example of what one might look like.
But Hagelstein and others have theories that may help explain the inadequacies of WL. For example multibody nuclear reactions do not need to produce Gammas.
Anyways this post is long enough, you get my point.
Thermalization of fusion energy.
DeleteBcause of the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard (JCH) model, the polariton exists in a state of Quantum Mechanical superposition with the other members of its ensemble in a Nano-cavity.
This is critical for the thermalization of fusion energy because the polariton will share its energy between all its entangled ensemble members when the fusion event occurs. This transfer of energy results in decoherence of the entangled states. The nano-cavity will rapidly reinitiate the BEC and the next fusion of a polariton can occur.
Quantum complementarity is the essential feature distinguishing quantum from classical physics.
When two physical observables are complementary, the precise knowledge of one of them makes the other unpredictable. The most known manifestation of this principle is the property of quantum-mechanical entities to behave either as particles or as waves under different experimental conditions. The link between quantum correlations, quantum nonlocality and Bohr’s complementarity principle was established in a series of “which-way” experiments, in which the underlying idea is the same as in Young’s double-slit experiment.
Due to its wave-like nature, a particle can be set up to travel along a quantum superposition of two different paths, resulting in an interference pattern. If however a “which-way” detector is employed to determine the particle’s path, the particle like behavior takes over and an interference pattern is no longer observed.
These experiments have brought evidence that the loss of interference is not necessarily a consequence of the back action of a measurement process. Quantum complementarity is rather an inherent property of a system, enforced by quantum correlations. This manifestation of quantum mechanics enables random fusion energy distribution for cavity polaritons. Polaritons in micro-cavities are hybrid quasiparticles consisting of a superposition of cavity photons and two-dimensional collective electronic excitations (excitons) in an embedded quantum well. Owing to their mutual Coulomb interaction, pump polaritons generated by a resonant optical excitation can scatter resonantly into pairs of polaritons (signal and idler).
In the low excitation limit, the polariton parametric scattering is a spontaneous process driven by vacuum-field fluctuations whereas, already at moderate excitation intensity, it displays self-stimulation.
In either of these two cases where the fusion energy goes is directed by the luck of the draw and the randomness of the vacuum energy within the nano-cavity.
Thermalization of fusion energy is all important in LENR because it preserves the structure of the NAE. If the energy produced by fusion was not moderated it would rapidly destroy the cavities that contained the reaction.
This sometimes happens in LENR where water is present as the source of the dielectric. In this situation, the fusion energy produced by the reaction destroys the vessel of its creation and a crater erupts in the cathode of the LENR device.
BEC?
DeleteJaynes-Cummings-Hubbard (JCH) model
DeleteBoss Einstein Condensate (BEC) comes from the the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard (JCH) model.
Because there are millions of these hot-spots covering the combined surfaces of all the micro-particles, the JCH model is a combination of the Jaynes–Cummings model and the coupled cavities. The one-dimensional JCH model consists of a chain of N-coupled single-mode cavities and each cavity contains two-level atoms.
The tunneling effect comes from the junction between cavities which are an analogy of the Josephson Effect.
The eigenstates of the JCH Hamiltonian in the two-excitation subspace for the N-cavity system are examined in current nano research. This research focuses on the existence of bound states as well as their features. It is interesting to note that two repulsive bosonic atoms can form a bound pair in an optical lattice. By analogy, the same will be true for polaritons.
The JCH Hamiltonian also supports two-polariton bound states when the photon-atom interaction is sufficiently strong.
In the LENR case, the coupling between photons and dipoles are very strong. In particular, the two polaritons associated with the bound states exhibit a strong correlation such that they stay close to each other in position space. The results discussed have been published in "Two-polariton bound states in the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model".
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1101.1366v1
If you’re up to it, the analytic solution of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors in the strong coupling regime is also developed in this paper. The time evolution of such a system is also considered for the cases of different initial conditions.
Now that we have justified the development of a generalized condition of Bose-Einstein condensation all over the surfaces of the micro-particles, we can now roll in Kim’s BEC theory of LENR.
The fusion probability cross section produced by the ionic BEC is intensified by the screening effects of all the electrons around this ionic condensate in the walls of the NAE.
This screening effect is amplified because the electron members of the dipole are coherent and entangled. This large electron composite waveform presents a single screening waveform to the associated mirrored ionic condensate.
"Krivit’s radicalism is not useful for the W-L theory. The same form of intolerance has damaged my 6+ years friendship and excellent collaboration with Krivit because I am not convinced that Andrea Rossi is just a total fraud who has invented nothing and his dozen demos were complete fakes engineered for inactive Ni cores. He cannot accept my doubts."
ReplyDeleteThese two threads come together. In a recent post, I point out how Krivit has deprecated Vysotskii's mathematical critique of W-L theory because Vysotskii mentioned "important Rossi-Focardi results" in introducing the paper, which was really not about those results at all, but simply about W-L theory as applied to metal hydrides. Krivit demanded that Vysotskii provide evidence for "important results," whereas Vysotskii was really referring only to *claims*. Vysotskii had already pointed to such a claim, and to a patent, and that was enough for his purposes. But Krivit is obsessed about W-L theory, rejects major publications on LENR because they contain minor criticisms of W-L theory, and here rejects a mathematical analysis of the theory based on something totally irrelevant.
Krivit is presenting himself as the world's foremost expert on LENR, when he doesn't understand many basic issues, he only understands scandal that he invents.
And he's refused to listen to many friends, like yourself, who have tried to point that out; he rejects them as friends. If he's rejected you, know that you are far from the first.
This is a painful problem for me. I have invested great expectations in Steve, I have admired his writings and style and work he is very talented. But very irrational sometimes.
DeletePeter
But you're not the only one Peter. I and probably many others admired and supported him as a poster and reader on his site. He abused his journalistic privilege with Rossi.
DeleteI no longer talk or post on his blog or read anything he says about Rossi. It's absolute garbage. He's blinded by his hatred of the man.
OK, I also I have a part of the fault, I am not
Deleteso meek and nice as I could seem to those who know me only from my blog. I have told him to promise to make seppuku IF Rossi comea out on the market with an real heat generator.
A certainty is a certainty.
In reality this would be a very risky promise. Not to be asked from a friend, even if he is deeply in error.
Peter
lol. Yes I agree that stock in New Energy Times will drop to zilch the moment Rossi throws egg into Krivit's face.
DeleteBut Krivit painted himself in that corner all by himself and deserves whatever he gets.
Recent experiments in superconductivity should concern the people who want to understand what is happening in a LENR lattice.
ReplyDeletehttp://phys.org/news/2013-03-electrons-cuprate-superconductors-defy-convention.html#ajTabs
Since superconductivity and LENR have much in common, this new discovery could make life for the LENR theorist very difficult.
In superconductivity, the Luttinger theorem is being violated.
In physics, the Luttinger's theorem states that the number of electrons in a material is the same as the number of electrons in all of its atoms added together. Electrons are the sub-atomic particles that carry the current in a conductive material. Much-studied conducting materials, such as metals and semiconductors, hold true to the theorem.
From the superconductor experimental data, the experimenters tested it and indeed found discrepancies between the measured charge and the number of mobile electrons in cuprate superconductors, defying Luttinger.
This discrepancy increased in proportion to the density of the measured charge.
"This result is telling us that the physics cannot be described by electrons alone," the experimenter said. "This means that the cuprates are even weirder than previously thought: Something other than electrons carries the current."
Now the researchers are exploring possible candidates for current-carriers, particularly a novel kind of excitation called unparticles.
There are a growing number of physicists that believe that unparticles could be real.
In addition, a new math to describe unparticles is being developed.
Now, these physicists have tried to place constraints on what unparticles might be so that physicists might have an idea of where to look for them in new experiments, notably in the Large Hadron Collider.
In LENR, in some systems including the Rossi type reactor, the Papp engine, the Plasmatron, and the Keshe reactor. All show signs that more electrons come out of the system then go into them.
This production of extra electrons out of the vacuum energy has concerned me greatly.
Where are these extra electrons coming from?
There also seems to be a decoupling (delocalization) of charge, spin, and mass in the waves of electrons as these waves flow around on the surface of the lattice.
It just may be that when the vacuum energy is tapped in these systems, the heavy concentration of free electrons operating in a lattice taps into the unparticle generation mechanism and creates unparticles that decay into electrons.
The Unparticle for the electron (unelectron) is not all that different from the electron, except that it demonstrates unparticle behavior and, subsequently, does not fit in with the Standard Model of particle physics. While a particle has discrete parameters, the Unelectrons’ parameters are continuous. In this sense, the unelectron is itself a continuum, and can be thought of as a collection of many parts of electrons, each carrying a fraction of the electrons total value.
It is like electrons condense out of the vacuum energy from an electron vapor of a superposition of electron states made real by the presence of other electrons.
According to theory, these unparticles are scale invariant. This means that unparticles look the same at high energies and charge as they do at low energies and charge.
This means that they have factional electron parameters like mass, charge and spin; this fractal dimensionality to describe unparticles.
If unparticles are happening in LENR, the LENR theories have a hard row to hoe.
So far in the world of the standard model of particle physics, unparticle physics does not seem to address any urgent problems, and as such its discovery is not generally anticipated. However, these novel happenings in superconductivity and these other various LENR systems might make considering novel possibilities worthwhile when you are searching for the unknown.
To quote Louis Pasteur, ‘Chance favors the prepared mind.’
When will the people start to realize that LENR is so different from the image accepted today?
DeleteWhen will the first converts appear?
Peter
Once the experimental record is better and repeatabililty is improved.
DeleteJust my two cents ...
The key mechanism of the W&L theory is defined in a way to make it very hard or impossible to verify.
ReplyDeleteThe specification of the ultra-low energy neutron was engineered to make it virtually undetectable because it doesn’t move far from the nucleus before its immense nuclear absorption cross section results in its almost immediate incorporation into the nucleus immediately after its creation.
The ultra-low energy neutron is a political windfall for LENR since it purportedly explains coulomb barrier penetration without the need to detect this particle.
In my biased opinion, my plexciton theory is more experimentally practical.
It is centered on an experimentally verified miracle called the hot spot.
The hot spot in a lattice has been detected to concentrate input energy up to 500,000,000 times that into output energy levels.
Other optimizations could push this concentration level into the trillions.
The nice feature of my theory is that it can be experimentally verified. That means a lot.
It seems natural to me that people interested in LENR should be interested in finding out more about these hot spots because such huge concentrations of energy are uncommon in nature especially since there is so much commonality between W&L theory and Plexciton theory. NASA even calls their version of W&L theory, Plexciton theory.
Axil, the problem is whether or not the hot spots -- which almost certainly exist -- are a result of heating, or the heating is the cause of the reaction. The reaction is, in the FP Heat Effect, some kind of fusion of deuterium. Very hot spots would produce plasma fusion, with very well known behavior and products. Cold fusion is quite different, and for the FPHE, *only helium is produced.* There are many nascent theories, and the saner ones require the complex conditions of condensed matter for alternate conditions to allow a nuclear reaction.
DeleteNeutrons, as well, produce very well-known effects, and W-L theory does not deny this. Rather it claims an amazing gamma shield, glossing over that some of the gammas are delayed by substantial times, the gamma shield must persist long after the transmutations have shut down. That's another aspect of the "hoax."
I'm getting some flak over the word "hoax."
1. An act intended to deceive or trick.
2. Something that has been established or accepted by fraudulent means.
I'm using the word in the second sense, without implying intention to deceive. It is possible to use wildly bogus arguments, that mislead by misdirection, without intention, though one might in some way be culpable by not being careful about one's own arguments.
I'm using the term for shock value, deliberately, because W-L theory is being accepted without careful examination, in many places, whereas more careful theoreticians get little attention.
Yeah but things like gamma ray bursters that originated from deep outside the galaxy were regarded as a horrible idea because it required E to be > mc^2, that is until we realized they could be confined directed beams.
DeleteSo Hoax is a bit strong still. Plenty of room in condensed matter physics for wacky non-intuitive stuff.
Axil wouldn't the scattering cross section remain larger than the absorption cross section?
DeleteTo keep all the neutrons inside the nuclear active area, the absorption cross section must be overwhelming.
DeleteBecause the reactor is hot at more than 400C, the neutrons can’t be cool enough to absolutely guaranty confinement to the nuclear active area. A good deal of neutron radiation should be seen because of a healthy neutron scattering cross section caused by the energy of the reactors heat.
I discount neutron production as a cause of LENR because the neutron scattering cross section should be larger than the neutron absorption cross section in a hot reactor. Because of this, neutron radiation should be detectable.
It just doesn’t make sense for a hot neutron reactor to not radiate some neutrons.