A NEW ANALOGY FOR LENR?

Motto

Stop the habit of wishful thinking and start the habit of thoughtful wishes. (Mary Martin)

LENR itself- at birth was considered kind of analogy of hot fusion, paradoxically taking place in impossible mild conditions. The history of the field has generated other analogies too.

It is true however not directly useful or inspiring or relevant that “cold fusion is for hot fusion what biochemistry is to chemistry” as Chris Tinsley has wisely stated- not always a reason to happiness.

LENR was compared with very successful technologies having

difficult start-up periods as aviation or transistors, a noble, over-optimistic and inspiring idea that also has not helped much, realistically speaking. Success was not contagious.

Pragmatically and philosophically LENR is very similar with High Temperature Super-Conductivity; however HTSC is successful and prosperous, while LENR is- the contrary.

Who dares to state that LENR is understood, is under control and the best way to convert it in an important energy source is already known? Painfully rhetorical question having only fragments of answers...

One morning, last week, during processing my e-mails, I found this paper:

https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-7-laws-of-regenerative-enterprises

and I suddenly realized- “but this is about LENR!” The authors speak about management, more specifically management in trouble; however the obstacles, barriers and problems are those

of LENR, this is a new, inspiring analogy for LENR. Surely you remember that I have stated many times that technology, management and leadership are the best sources for the modern philosophy, realistic and pragmatic.

See the introductory, PROBLEM, part of the paper:

Managing baffles us with its complexity. Leaders looking to improve managing do not know where to start, much less where to finish. So even though the gales of creative destruction continually threaten their enterprises, they do not necessarily see radically revising their managing as the obvious solution. But that’s exactly what their enterprises need.

Let’s translate this in LENR-ese, not very rigorously, following the original text, but emphasizing our situation and mentality:

“LENR baffles us with its complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty

and volatility. It is slippery like an eel. Scientists, after- soon 26- years of intensive and creative efforts, still do not know the basics of this seemingly unmanageable process and are far from knowing how it can be tamed and put to useful work. So even if the threat of extinction or of degeneration in a lab curiosity is serious, but not immediate, the theories and approaches considered are not changing in a really radical manner, old myths and anecdotes and gurus remain dominant and authoritative. Changes coming from outside the community are accepted with difficulty.”

The leadership paper continues with:

“In his recent HBR article, Gary Hamel described traditional-enterprise ailments as being inertial, incremental, and insipid. He goes on to point out, “Until we challenge our foundational beliefs, we won’t be able to build organizations that are substantially more capable than the ones we have today.” How true! But it’s hard to challenge current beliefs when managing itself remains a bit of a mystery.”

I am amazed by adequate words as this “inertial, incremental, and insipid” – in the case of LENR being so valid for, respectively, approach-, progress- and group mentality.

Or for the “foundational beliefs” – never seriously questioned.

The HBR paper continues to describe the weaknesses of the management and of the enterprises when “managing itself remains a bit of a mystery.”  LENR is even more a mystery.

I am enchanted (but not happy) to see that the paper speaks about “an actionable framework for managing” exactly as I have shown that for LENR we lack but need a new “actionable system of parameters” http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2014/09/lenr-needs-actionable-parameters.html

The HBR opus also asks for “vitalization rather than optimization”; for LENR this is even more radical –it needs “resurrection not systematic improvement, that does not work”.

Creative destruction – in the case of LENR is a pre-condition of change and survival. Management needs a good framework to make sense of it; LENR is in a very similar situation. The existing explanations – ambitiously called theories do not make sense of it.

Read please the details specific for management in the paper

The Problem part is easier to understand and the management-in-trouble/ LENR similarity is sound and sure. The Solution part needs more effort – it is more about inspiration than of direct learning and application.

THE SOLUTION FOR MANAGEMENT

The solution for management is based on  (1) economic value creation – (2) accepting the challenge that an enterprise ought to be able to thrive forever, if it chooses to. The true Solution for LENR is 1) intense and reliable energy creation 2) conquering a great segment of the world’s energy market, replacing fossils and dwarfing the price of energy.

For achieving the desired solution for management the following laws must be applied – all of them, laws of: Potential, Meaning, Creativity, Learning, Humanity, Vitality, Coherence

Short description of the laws- from the HBR paper:

The Law of Potential: Only the enterprise that unleashes potential, through meeting its workers’ innate needs, induces human engagement to its fullest.

The Law of Meaning: Only the enterprise that infuses meaning, through a shared purpose, effects alignment among fully engaged workers.

The Law of Creativity: Only the enterprise that liberates creativity, through applying intuition and exercising free will, regularly discovers opportunities for surprising wealth-producing innovations.

The Law of Learning: Only the enterprise that invigorates learning – through exploring, exploiting, and orchestrating – generates the knowledge necessary to persistently create new value among infinite possibilities.

The Law of Humanity: Only the enterprise that enriches humanity, through the knowledge embedded in its business activities, creates offerings of unquestionable economic value.

The Law of Vitality: Only the enterprise that attains vitality, through its incessant destructive recreation, produces the wealth necessary to survive.

The Law of Coherence: Only the enterprise that sustains coherence in all its aspects, through ongoing orchestration, regenerates itself to thrive indefinitely.

This is a complete set of laws.

THE SOLUTION FOR LENR

In my opinion/thinking/LENR philosophy, our field needs other laws, namely of:  Otherness, Diversity. Complexity, Metamorphosis, Creativity, Dynamicity- with some unavoidable superposition and repetitions in the definitions and descriptions.

The Law of Otherness.

Only by understanding that LENR is an unprecedented case of a brand new (newly discovered, in urgent need to be recognized) science that adds to the established science and does not contradicts it- can be elaborated an efficient development strategy for it.

It is necessary to build a realistic vision of the field, how it was born in the most unfortunate conditions and has grown rather old (but not grown up) in a very hostile environment. It is oppressed but also self-limited science that has to be re-written from the basics.

LENR is a new branch of science and technology that has been completely misunderstood from its very start. It was discussed if it does respect or not the existing laws of physics when actually it goes much beyond this to a lot of new laws of not only physics but also materials science and technology. The most adequate metaphor of LENR was created in its 18^th year of existence: Black Swan (N.N. Taleb’s book published in 2007) - something surprisingly, unpredictably and uniquely new, very different from anything known before. See please the guest editorial by Alain Coetmeur: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2013/09/nassim-nicholas-taleb-and-cold-fusion_5.html

Bad luck- the Black Swan was seen just as a new type of Nuclear Goose and this is not true.

LENR can appear in many places, in diverse forms but it has been found in the worst circumstances possible most inadequate for technological progress- without radical changes.

It exists a very simple but inexorable rule:

wet or not fully degassed metallic surfaces cannot work reliably in LENR and therefore the cradle of it, the electrolytic PdD cell cannot solve the vital problems of reproducibility and scale up. The F&P Cell’s great historical merit is that it has demonstrated the very existence of LENR (excess heat) but it cannot be used for developing any kind of practical applications. [For the time given this is not more than my personal opinion, shared by few friends however Ego Out is my own porta-voce]

The skeptics and dogmatics have attacked LENR for violating of the sacrosanct Laws of Physics and because it pretends to be a nuclear phenomenon while the “believers” have defended it trying to show that the standard Laws of Physics are respected; this war had very destructive consequences for the field- bad reputation, reduced funding, ostracization from the high impact journals. Within the initially developed paradigm, LENR’s situation is hopeless despite the immense still unexplored potential.

Essence of the Law of Otherness:

LENR IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE.

The Law of Complexity.

Only by accepting the exceptional, broad and deep complexity of LENR, progress in the field becomes a reality.

LENR is a matter too complex to be let to the physicists alone. It needs very broad multi- and trans-disciplinarity. It belongs to chemistry, physics, materials science, nanotechnology, engineering, all largo sensu and in very intricate ways No single theory can explain LENR that is a multi-stage, multi-step, non-linear combination of phenomena – it needs a bunch of diverse theories to be understood. The single-theory, search for a simplistic LENR solution was/is doing a lot of harm; simplicity is a sure recipe for disaster in the VUCA World of LENR: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2014/07/the-vuca-world-of-lenr-how-long-it-will.html  Simplicity is the most toxic label that can be applied to LENR.

One of the sources of complexity of LENR is that it is not only, not entirely, not ‘as usual’- nuclear. The skeptics are right in the sense that it is not fusion. The phenomena are: pre-nuclear, nuclear-and post-nuclear; soon many institutes will develop long range research plans for all these subdivisions of LENR.

Essence of the Law of complexity:

LENR IS MUCH MORE THAN IT SEEMS TO BE.

The Law of Diversity.

Only by systematic discovery and exploration of the numerous variants and forms of LENR via experimental work will we able to construct the most useful forms of LENR and (after solving the existential problems) will we get access to a richness of new scientific data and ideas.

LENR is actually HMDI – Hydrogen –Metal Deep Interaction

and, as Francesco Piantelli has stated it in practice, the process does work not only with nickel, but with all transition metals.

Specific results will be obtained for example with W having very high melting temperature, with Fe- the cheapest, Ti- very light one, Cr- the “faiblesse” of our friend Stoyan Sargoytchev.

The least “nuclear” metals- no dangerous radiation will prevail

for domestic applications. Think about metal mixtures and alloys- how many possibilities! Take in consideration the metal-support interaction well known from catalysis.

The Defkalion Principle: “make hydrogen more reactive and the metal more receptive” will be applied in various forms.

We already know that LENR has a broad range of working temperatures- a new factor of diversity, and of exclusion of the

wet cells, too cold for reliable results.

I bet that there will be a lot of different species of LENR

with a splendid taxonomy: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/08/taxonomy-mon-amour.html

 I am very curious to see it so I will take care to connect my grave to the Internet.  

The essence of the Law of Diversity:

LENR APPEARS IN A PLURALITY OF FORMS
 

The Law of Metamorphosis.

Only by profound transformative changes, the initially discovered form of LENR can be converted in an useful source of energy.

The field does not grow by maturation, slow systematic improvements but by very sudden, radical changes (for management it is about creative destruction- here it is better to use “metamorphosis”0. Thus the weak and unreliable LENR process is converted in a powerful massive excess heat release>

It is a 2-4 orders of magnitude difference between the faint LENR and the intense form I named LENR+.

Everything we have learned about Pd D cold fusion LENR is not applicable to LENR+ that is a different species. It is the great merit of Andrea Rossi to have discovered and demonstrated the possibility of LENR+- a decisive step to a commercial energy generator. If LENR classic is the Fleischmann-Pons Effect, LENR+ is the Andrea Rossi Effect.

Hundred years from now it will be forgotten that Rossi was rather hesitant and slow in achieving control over that massive heat release an overly difficult task of engineering, in case you do not use the best method to trigger and stimulate LENR+.

(I am well aware that the dichotomy LENR/LENR+ again belongs, for the time given- to my personal opinion; in the LENR community the LENR+ deniers still dominate)

 The essence of Law of Metamorphosis:

LENR BECOMES USEFUL ONLY VIA A GREAT QYUALITATIVE LEAP TO LENR+.

The Law of Creativity.

Only by invention, advanced engineering and innovation can be metamorphosed the initial LENR in the energy source based on LENR+.

LENR was discovered, LENR+ has to be invented, in multiple forms.

The initially discovered form of LENR is not adequate neither for scientific study in depth nor for technological development; a new one had to be created and this is LENR+.

LENR is studied with the scientific method, LENR+ is solved by combining science and technology- engineering is the key.

The theories of LENR+ are not only descriptive, explicative, prohibitive or even predictive- they are also productive telling what and how must we do to put LENR+ to work for us as a useful source of energy.

The essence of the Law of Creativity.

THE USEFUL FORMS OF LENR+ ARE PRODUCTS OF HUMAN CREATIVITY.

The Law of Dynamicity.

Only by creating intensively dynamic systems can we build LENR+ energy sources.

LENR is based on static preformed active sites at low (<100C) temperatures, LENR+ happens in dynamic continuously formed active sites at high (>200 C) temperatures.

LENR+ is an application of Nanoplasmonics- a very dynamic new science in multiple senses. It is about dynamics on the metal surfaces and about the dynamics of these surfaces, themselves...

This dynamics generates and adds to complexity, diversity, creativity, makes the technological metamorphosis possible.

See please a simple description here:

http://www.e-catworld.com/2014/07/29/peter-gluck-on-the-differences-between-lenr-and-lenr/

Two final predictions:

a) Probably the fine paper re Management will be more successful, popular and applied in practice then my adaptation of it for LENR- smelling of speculation and dissent. LENR has only minor and transient problems, LENR+ is just a myth. Time to sharpen the tools in my box as NY would say. Advancing boldly from “errare humanum est” to “perseverare diabolicum.”

b) LENR is only a provisional name; the useful form of the deep interaction of hydrogen with transition metals is a group of phenomena very different from what we think now about PdD generated LENR.

This could be named the Law of Otherness+ of LENR+

Peter