THE ROOT OF THE LENR PROBLEM and THE STEM OF THE SOLUTION.

Motto:

 “ I, like everyone, look at Nature and try to figure out how it works.” (Edmund Storms)

I think over 99.99% of the scientists agree completely with  Ed- this is their mission and mode of action. This is the essential scientific approach, the way to discoveries and to knowledge. It is about the scientific mentality and culture. A fast search will give definitions of the scientific mentality as the following:

“Science is a body of knowledge wherein the truths of physical world is ascertained or established on the basis of verifiable and testable methods. Authority and beliefs have no place in science. Scientific mentality is the mental process of thinking based on science as defined above. Scientific methods are strictly objective.”

However, the real relationship between Mother Nature and Homo discontentus ( a better name for Homo sapiens) is more complicated and it always was much initiative coming from us humans. We have survived not only because we are “wise”- “sapiens” without “faber” does not work.

Too long an introduction, you already knew this for ages at least outside LENR.

Back to LENR.  In: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/12/is-cold-fusion-natural-essay-in.html perhaps I have misunderstood a bit my own ideas perhaps under the pressure of the compulsory scientific approach. But I have opted for a hybrid approach in solving the problem of LENR:

http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/12/a-hybrid-approach-for-solving-lenr.html

And I have defined the problem here:

http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2013/02/strategic-principles-of-lenr-and-their.html as a kind of counter-axiom complementing the scientific mentality:

LENR is in essence technology, a practical energy source.

The decisive factors for success include wisdom – understanding the phenomena but perhaps even more boldness, skill, creativity, patience, inventiveness, determination. Radical changes

LENR –the useful one, has to be invented, not discovered.

Here I remembered my favorite Bulgarian proverb, short in its original language “ne pitai starilo, pitai patilo”- but a bit longer in translation: “Don’t ask the old, but the one that has endured bad times.” Usually old people can give you good advise, but young people who have experienced the same difficulties as you may help better It is about real experts and authorities. If you want to solve a problem ask those who are solving it. It happens that yesterday somebody has told me that “senior” means more ‘authority’ than ‘old’.

We still are at home in the Balkan Peninsula; I have asked the opinion of Yiannis Hadjichristos the leading scientist of Defkalion. He has told about a  saying coming from ancient Greece  "Συν Αθηνά και χείρα κείνει"  do not expect everything from Athina (the goddess of wisdom) -the theory in our case- move your hands also. Wisdom and hard work go together’

Yiannis also has emphasized that they have highlighted natural HENI-like phenomena in their NIWeek and ICCF17 papers. However, all these natural phenomena- that have inspired them are not controllable! They had to use inventions (plural!) to create the controlled conditions within a specific limited space and its environment.

“So we have to trick (cheat) nature to harvest the benefits.  This is what engineering (μηχανικη)  literally means: trick the nature (or the gods in ancient tragedy) to reach a desired outcome (the catharsis).”

What impresses me is the broadness of the real problem, Nature has to be changed with due respect because we know Her bad temper and force, but without mercy. BTW, pantheist thinking: I had the privilege to make two interviews with my favorite Greek goddess  Athena, one of them is already published on this blog- it is about the causes of the Crisis. I also had the unique privilege to discuss by e-mail with Cold Fusion’s greatest supporter, Arthur C. Clarke his saying:”It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.” Perhaps the creative powers of the humans are not limited directly by their wisdom. In the case of LENR, this would be our salvation.

One issue more- if so many different inventions are necessary to make the system work, then it is the time to remember the Latin saying: “"hominem unius libri timeo" meaning "I fear the man of a single book” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_unius_libri

Now I fear the man of a single LENR theory if he/she thinks it is a complete explanation. Even the best theory explains only a part of the tamed process. Nature and technology alike will punish the crimes against complexity and interestingness.

In the very first issue of “Infinite Energy” (March-April 1995) I have published a paper entitled inquisitively “Why Technology First?” The answer is simple now: because there is no other way

for LENR.

My obituary will say, i.a.: “he had few ideas and limited answers, but he was consistent, the answers were always the same”.

Peter 

24 YEARS OF HEROIC HISTORY, MANY YEARS OF GLORIOUS FUTURE

The existence, world, nature, destiny, call it as you wish in the secular language or in the languages of religions wants mainly or even exclusively to be just interesting. In some cases, interesting is combined with what is good for us humans, in other cases it is obvious that all those super-entities do not care a bit about us.

Cold Fusion that celebrates today its 24^th birthday is a rather unhappy case and I have written really much about its negative side and unlucky birth recently. Therefore I will not write a state of the field report now I will just make a small exercise in positive thinking- asking you to join and support me with your ideas.

My leading axiom that will generate km³ of repulsion from many colleagues is this: the past and the future of LENR are very disconnected (and have to be so!); the future cannot learn much from the past and has to elaborate its own creative new solutions that do not appear in the experience of the past. We have to separate from the past not cheerfully as Karl Marx has suggested but professionally.

The correct vision of the field is mild myopia toward the past and to be long-sighted toward the future. I predict we will go on new ways soon. The past was great but sad; the future has to be pragmatic and very inventive and happy. I honor, admire and respect the heroes of yesterday, our martyrs, their wonderful altruism and idealism, the sacrifices, the great efforts the sometimes superhuman resistance in very hostile circumstances. But I also think that deep changes are necessary.

No more uphill battles! And, please no more infighting, we had seen enough of bald men fighting for an old comb.

I confess that when I wanted to listen to a musical illustration of the situation of our LENR usually I have used http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL4HuUUenoQ  In 1989 I could not imagine it will last so much and it will go so badly and the dreams created by Fleischmann and Pons will not be converted in an exiting reality in, say, 5-7 turbulent years.

The refrain of this “bye, dreams of glory, bye castles (built) in air” makes me very sad. The idea of castles built in air is a kind of metaphor of something that scares me, a dangerous departing

from of reality. But now, I know the dream of glory will come back. It’s true it will come back for a true generation of readers.

It is not about forgetting our past, it is about re-thinking it and adds to it what it was missing and to extract from it the values we have not well understood.

What has started as Cold Fusion and it is today LENR – mainly- has to suffer some metamorphoses in order to be viable indeed and to fulfill,, achieve its historical aim to be a standard source of energy for Mankind- perhaps the dominant one in, say, 15-20 years.

Let’s start a list of actions we have to make with courage and determination if we want that the future should be quite different from the past. I will ask you to add your ideas; this writing will remain open and will be completed. Please help poor little LENR to grow up and become a giant! Thank you!

Be very discontented with the situation of LENR, both the outer and the inner state of facts. Convert this discontent in changes.

Convert LENR in a total problem

Only problems get solutions, troubles generate just complains

and compromises.

Think about LENR as a technology not as a scientific curiosity

Focus on useful LENR+

Accept newness, reality, complexity, difficulty, diversity, conceptual broadness of LENR

Accept that LENR needs a meta-theory not a simple theory.

Eradicate harmful LENR memes from your thinking.

Use complete hybrid scientific and technological approach for solving the problems of development, scale-up, and control problems.

Apply Scipiology to LENR: convert the disaster(s) in triumph(s) by thinking actively and differently

The list is open for you!

Peter

WHY SO MUCH HOSTILITY AGAINST THE WIDOM LARSEN THEORY?

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

FIFTH LESSON FOR YOUNG LENR RESEARCHERS

My dear young friends,

Things change, that can be both excellent (e.g. when it is about progress (it is pleonastic to say “technological progress”; do you know other kind of real progress?) and a catastrophe e.g. when you realize that aging is not reversible. This time it is a change that simply makes me a bit sad.

My intention was to tell you about “reverse motivation” You are going to work in an awfully difficult field of research, I cannot convince you it will be fine and glory is waiting for you. On the contrary, just because it will be so bas, you who are special, a great personality in becoming, you will insist to work for LENR.

Please discover yourself reverse motivation. The best tools to explain this are the demotivational posters from http://www.despair.com really good managerial black humor and this site which I have used and admired for more than 10 years needs subscription now. I hope you will manage to do it.

I wanted to ask you, young colleague, to read first of all, the two most recent writings at this Blog. I am complaining about the past, but Axil shows the way to the future, your way.

I am also sending you three lists all coming from the fine Cultural Offering Blog to which I have subscribed with enthusiasm- it is really cultural in the best sense of this word. The author/owner Kurt Harden was so generous that he included Ego Out to the list of “25 Blogs Guaranteed to Make You Smarter” and I am reading the other 24 as much as I can. (I almost hear a whisper: “Alzheimer retardant, does it work?”

I advice you to discover the author of this writings, Nicholas Bate. The word excellent was created for him too.

Be bold 101: 

http://culturaloffering.com/files/93688-86434/Be_Bold_101_Poster.pdf

You need to be VERY bold!

Professionalism 101:

http://culturaloffering.com/files/93688-86434/Professionalism_101_Poster.pdf

Good professionals are the real noblemen of meritocracy!

The architects of progress.

Get Lucky:

http://culturaloffering.com/files/93688-86434/Get_Lucky_Poster.pdf

You will need plenty of luck too! Do you know it?

But I offer you a somewhat smaller supplement, too, in the spirit of reverse motivation:

51 ways to fail:

http://www.execupundit.com/2013/03/51-ways-to-fail.html#links

For LENR, No 19 and 10 are perhaps the most efficient

GUEST EDITORIAL: AXIL ABOUT HOW LENR WILL PREVAIL

Now is the right time for LENR to emerge as a cutting edge nano-technology application that can be supported by an upcoming robust research and development nano-toolset.

Unfortunately, cold fusion has arrived decades too early when science and its practitioners were not ready or disposed to either explain or understand such a complex nano-process.

LENR has to dig itself out of a deep hole of public ridicule that this early discovery, ill-timed over-hyping, and underperformance as caused.

Furthermore, there is another unfortunate situation that also should be mentioned which has greatly retarded any progress in LENR research and its acceptance by the general public.

This inopportune happenstance is the ill-fated sense of competitive threat that LENR poses for the people who make their living from R&D and production of nuclear energy as well as the people who work to research the standard model of particle physics.

Their ultraconservative approach to their work lends them to apply to LENR the same sclerotic principles that block any progress in their own technology.

When the general public looks for an opinion from the nuclear or plasma physics community to help them formulate their judgment on the feasibility and the promise of LENR, this myopic public resource is ill-informed way beyond their expertise level to do so.

What LENR has lacked since it first emerged onto the scene in 1989 is the precise control required to make it understandable, reproducible, testable, reliable, powerful, and useful.

The emerging   first generation of LENR pioneering applications have revealed that fabrication and control of nickel nano-structures are basic to these rudimentary reactor systems to advance onto the threshold of industrial process heat applications.

LENR is recently proven to be more rightly a nano-technology rather than a nuclear one.

There has been an accelerating development of allied nano-technologies that can be applied to move LENR into the mainstream of robust industrial application.

Among these latest developments is the mastery of optical meta-surfaces that comprise a class of optical Meta-materials with a reduced dimensionality that is exhibiting exceptional abilities for controlling the flow and manipulation of heat and electrons at the nano-level. These new capabilities achieve the anomalously large photonic density of quantum mechanical states that underlie the industrial LENR process.

Illustrative of this point, I have just run across an article that explains some of the new nano-technologies that can be applied to advance process in LENR.

http://phys.org/news/2013-03-metasurfaces-usher-optical-technologies.html

This article explains how optical nanophotonic circuits might harness clouds of electrons called "surface plasmons" to manipulate and control the routing of heat and light in devices far too tiny for conventional lasers.

Such a planar photonics technology is expected to facilitate new physics and enhanced functionality for devices that are distinctly different from those observed in their three-dimensional Meta Material counterparts.

As a result, this technology will enable new applications in imaging, sensing, data storage, quantum information processing, and solar energy harvesting and energy LENR production/harvesting.

New optical technologies using "meta-surfaces" capable of the ultra-efficient control of electromagnetic radiation at the sub-wavelength levels are nearing commercialization, with potential applications including advanced solar cells, thermo-electric generation, quantum computers, telecommunications, sensors and microscopes.

The recent progress in optical meta-surfaces can address the major issues hampering the full-scale development of Meta-Material technology, a technology that is central to the advancement of LENR to the next level. This capability includes cost-effective fabrication, and facilitation of challenging system integration issues.

The studies of new, low-loss, tunable plasmonic materials—such as transparent conducting oxides, nano-fibers, and inter-metallics—that can be used as building blocks for meta-surfaces will complement the exploration of smart designs and advanced energy and charge collection and switching capabilities.

This progress in meta-surface design and realization will lead to novel functionalities and improved performance and may result in the development of new types of ultrathin meta-surface LENR designs with unparalleled nano-properties and efficiencies.

These new designs would also be compatible with planar, low-cost manufacturing. In turn, these advances will lead to ultrathin devices over a wide range of sizes and capacities with unprecedented functionalities.

The next generation of LENR devices will extract energy from the depths of the atom and directly convert it into electricity at high efficiency without the encumbrance and constraints of thermodynamics needed when producing power from steam.

More like a battery then a reactor, the size of a LENR power module will be scalable over a wide range to power devices as small as cellphones and tablets to building toward very large reactors that can power apartment blocks and sports stadiums.

The future of LENR is ever brightening as the new nano-technologies burst onto the scene.  All that is required to make this future possible is a rethinking of the old timeworn attitudes, prejudices and misapplications that have plagued LENR from the day of its birth.

Early History of Cold Fusion, Three Miracles and Three Marks.

1. What history teaches us (and what it doesn’t?)

I will ask the readers who love history to go directly to 2.

During my 75+ years of life I have developed a form of phobia from history, a fear that it will repeat what it was the worst of it, and I consider that trying too hard to use some historical data for problem solving, is actually delaying or killing the Solution. The bad memes of history never die.  The invisible strings with which the “leaders” are manipulating us are coming from the past. Thinking and feeling as somebody who lived in a small country: “Geography is destiny, history is a prison” Thinking about many irrational things from the present: “The 21st Century is the 12th, resurrected” At least for and due to billions of human beings. The cult of History is used mainly for doing harm, for kindling the fires of hatred and violence, for demonstrating superiority above the enemies i.e. those who have an opposite view of the shared history or just are different...

Old books, old ideas, old stories have some value for solving the problems of the present/future but a rather limited value. Why? It is an unavoidable, cruel Law of Nature and of knowledge that says: “NOT what we know, but what we don’t know is more important for solving the problem.” The validity of this law is proportional, not with the importance of the problem, but with the extent of damage made by NOT solving it. Surely, you will find examples for this rule in your own professional experience.

Plus, due to the world’s inherent interestingness, historical analogies are interesting but of limited use and persuasion power.

OK, if you still invest hopes in history instead of looking it with objectivity and with realistic sympathy and gratitude for some exceptional positive personalities who individually have failed but have contributed to the general progress- yes, in this case feel free to read and meditate upon these quotations:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/history

2. The bad start of Cold fusion’s history.

The discovery of Cold Fusion that was announced on March 23, 1989 has happened in such bad circumstances that have justified a new word, miscovery, for it: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/05/concept-of-miscovery-and-what-it-means.html

Its very existence was aggressively denied, on theoretical basis. One of Cold Fusion’s archenemies, Prof John Huizenga said about the Three Miracles necessary to be explained if Cold Fusion does exist: Coulomb barrier penetrated, no neutrons and no gammas or X-ray resulting from fusion. Obviously miracle is just a mild euphemism for impossible. Huizenga was unable to realize that Cold Fusion is different. History will pardon him because Cold Fusion, now LENR is very, very different from Hot Fusion- some of us have started just now to understand its newness.

Miracle was a euphemism, but so are the Three Marks of Cold Fusion. The field had an especially bad luck- it is about curses, stigmata, uninvited fairies. We have already told about two of these bad marks:

First, Cold Fusion was discovered by geniuses having perhaps the worst profession/specialty- electrochemists and actually electrochemistry actually has not much to do with these new phenomena

Second, Cold Fusion was discovered in the worst possible place, with such parents its cradle was an electrolytic cell, i.e a collection of impurities in water, working at low temperatures. The metal chosen, palladium is the one in which bulk and surface compete desperately for deuterium; I have written many negative CF odes to it.

Third - everybody knows that:”There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come."  Victor Hugo CF has obtained a lot of interesting scientific results but nothing good for a technology, it can be characterized more by an antinomy of “powerful” I have seen tens of bright theories failing to explain LENR. Neither theory, nor experiments were able to make the process reproducible or to scale it up. I have learned from Piantelli about the decisive role of nanotechnology- that was not well developed in 1989. Defkalion has demonstrated the magnificent complexity of the useful (HENI) process. Recently, my friend Axil has revealed clearly the third bad mark- CF was discovered before its time, when both the understanding and the tools for solving its development problem were available.

Very soon we will get answers, hopefully positive to the two trillion dollars question: is LENR an idea whose time has come?

Let’s re-think the history of Cold Fusion and open a new, productive chapter of it.

Peter

A MOTTO FOR ICCF-19

Please consider the following just a strictly personal opinion and as an idea pushing t extension of freedom of expression near to its limit.

It is about the mottos of the coming International Conferences on Cold Fusion; a critique of the motto chosen for ICCF-18 and a proposal for the next conference.

ICCF-18 Conference, http://iccf18.research.missouri.edu/ describes its raison d’etre in this way:

“Applying the Scientific Method to Understanding Anomalous Heat Effects: Opportunities and Challenges.”

I find this as self-limiting, out-focused, even “thinking in a box” in some extent. Some reasons:

a) the Scientific Method can be applied well only when the experimental results are of high quality and reliable; the organizer of the Conference has spoken recently about a success rate of 20% the lower Pareto number- in PdD experiments,

b) recent studies as well as information coming from neighboring fields as HTSC, ZPE etc. are suggesting that not all scientific concepts necessary for a science of the phenomena had been discovered or developed up to the level of scientific explanations; see e.g. Nanoplasmonics.

c) the problems cannot be solved by a purely scientific approach (this has to be wisely defined, anyway!) and the contributions of technology – engineering, materials science, and control science. A hybrid approach is a must, being given the weaknesses of LENR: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/12/a-hybrid-approach-for-solving-lenr.html

d) We need to accept that the complexity, dynamicity, multiplicity, diversity of the LENR phenomena are much greater than we usually think. Specifically, we have to distinguish between LENR (weak, sporadic, ephemeral, unusable because it cannot be scaled up) and LENR+ (high intensity, high energetic density, long duration, controllable via high quality know-how.

e) UNDERSTANDING is actually a means not an aim, the great original promise of Cold Fusion was a source of energy not some exotic phenomena;

f) ANOMALOUS is a dangerous, false self-defeating word- to be avoided! The anomalous of today is the basic science of tomorrow; however this should not happen in the same way as how time converts paradoxes in dogmas.

The last 4 words from the motto are OK, I think;

Something has to be changed, after a dozen days we will enter the 25^th year of technological stagnation of our field.

ICCF-19

ICCF-19 will take probably in Europe, perhaps in Italy. If it will be the conference of paradigm change, a good motto will be:

”Solving the useful heat source problem.”

But perhaps the best motto will be no motto at all, just good, serious professional experimental results reported and clearly explained on a causal basis...

Peter

FOURTH LESSON FOR YOUNG LENR WORKERS. MAINLY ABOUT METAPHORS.

MOTTO

Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back!” Piet Hein

Cold Fusion/LENR is of very high worth, is the very key of the Energetic Renaissance, therefore- it is clear as day- that It has beaten us with the force of an 800 pound gorilla. The result is that 24 years after the advent of the problem, we do not understand it well and we are not able to scale it up to the commercial level of an energy source. Actually, the situation is much more complicated than that, both in the negative and the positive sense. We are at the border of a new world, we do not understand our situation well and we must RE-THINK everything we believed we know. You must learn that the ability to re-think is vital (at least in the realm of LENR). We must re-think – with respect but with no mercy for the old data, facts, ideas and memes.

Actually, why are we in this rather bad situation? I have told it many times clearly, this is my personal opinion, because we are trying the impossible, squaring the circle, walk on air, bending the steel with our hand- finding a simple short actionable explanation for a complex, long sequence of events. Worse than introducing a square peg in a round hole. Who, except humble reality will believe me that this is the crux of the problem? A theorist who is not in love with his own theory, created by himself, is not a pur-sang, genuine theorist.

For a radical, deep, bold re-thinking of LENR we need powerful tools and an especially strong willpower...

Now I will tell you about one of these tools, one very efficient

and immensely popular- the METAPHOR. As everybody, I was searching, using and abusing metaphors all my life, however more instinctively and not taking them too seriously. Then I had a revelation.

It has happened before the Internet era; at our local library I came upon this PhD Thesis: "Hyperknowledge and Continuous Strategy in Executive Support Systems” by Hannu Vanharanta, Abo University. Finland 1995.

This Thesis, a high level strategic management opus has a short but crucial part about the functions of the metaphor in management.

“To describe an infinitely complex reality (only) by words is a difficult task and therefore the metaphor plays an essential role in thinking. A successful metaphor as “windows” for computers is a powerful means for communication and understanding.

 In management, the metaphors have 4 functions, they are:

- expressive, throwing a new light on the target domain;

- exegetic, trying to describe and to interpret complexity;

- explanatory, explaining for predicting

- exploratory, suggesting new directions and activities for search.

I was very impressed and this fragment of the thesis became a

strong personal meme for me. The effect was enhanced by a beautiful metaphor authored by Piet Hein that I have read the same day, this one:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

The Paradox of Life

a bit beyond perception's reach

I sometimes believe I see

that life is two locked boxes, each

containing the other's key.

I have started to use consciously metaphors as a tool for problem solving and for deep understanding, as an antidote of the sometimes overwhelming complexity I met in many places. I included them in my life long learning programs. I have collected them and I have subscribed to some newsletters dedicated to metaphor as http://www.annemiller.com/archives.asp

You, my dear young friend have to discover the richness and enormous potential of the metaphors, starting with their definition and basic features- for example in the Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_language_metaphors

Expand your thinking and change your life (if you can) with Metaphorology: http://www.metaphorology.com/  I wish to change my life, to be fifty again and to join the team of Defkalion but I have doubts that even myriads of smart metaphors can help me. My last personal metaphor will be: smelling the flowers from the side of the roots. But this is not urgent.

This is a great list of lists of metaphors: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~lharris/metalist.htm

I have collected metaphors for subjects as: life, death, brain, learning, Internet, business, the Crisis, blog(s) etc. But in meantime the Web has grown tremendously and now you can find the best metaphors for all concepts instantly.

Just for fun I will show you a site with stupidity metaphors, my trolls have used for characterizing me: http://www.ironmagazineforums.com/open-chat/41936-43-metaphors-stupidity.html

You will discover step by step the world of metaphors, old and new, popular and abused (as the light at the end of the tunnel) and you will have the vision of an enormous swarm of useful, helpful locusts.

However let’s “return to our muttons”, that is to LENR, I try to teach you applied metaphorology for problem solving not theoretical just for PKM. I have already published an entire metaphor story when I understood the general situation in the field, its real history and the most probable perspective. http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/03/metaphor-story-of-lenr.html                                                                                       This is a 1 year old paper but I would not retract anything from it.

Recently I have used a new metaphor for LENR: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2013/03/lenr-is-not-asong-it-is-opera-advent-of.html

This came in combination with the Pdisaster idea actually hitting two sacred cows of LENR between the horns- i.e the possibility of creating an elegant simple, highly mathematical theory of the phenomenon and the idea that the cradle and the car of LENR will be made from the same noble metal palladium.

Opera as metaphor of LENR

This is a first attempt to use the functions of the metaphors in management (and in life and in science) to deduce some truths and to build a strategy for LENR. Please consider it what it is- a start.

Expressive:

Being an opera means being complex, composed of parts, multi-sequential, a difficult teamwork. Opera has action and needs a leader- LENR happens at useful levels and in controlled modes only in a very well adjusted combination of parameters (a lot of them) by strictly respecting some rules that have to be discovered and known by the participants. Once learned this lesson and rehearsed with intelligence and skill, the efforts become invisible and everything seems easy, simple at the surface and:”flowing” naturally. The opera is as the motto and the title of: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/03/explaining-opera-music-of-all-noises.html says it is very expensive; LENR on its turn is will consume huge quantities of intellectual and creative energy before being everyday global technological reality, a great source of energy...

An opera is the result of cooperation, but its action is based on confrontation between Good and Evil (or two evils), love and hatred, past and future. It is trial and error. It is un-moderated cruel fighting, death, murder and suicide are used and abused. This does not fit well for LENR, however a prioritary task is to discover the hidden enemies that can kill or diminish the functionality of the LENR generators.

The opera has acts and scenes and all are components of an artistic Whole; it is not possible to reduce the opera to the most dramatic scene or the most popular aria as “I have broken through the Coulomb Barrier” because there is much more at the stake. It seems any LENR opera has three acts: the first- pre-nuclear, the second nuclear but in a very special and strange way and the third post-nuclear when good and warm things happen.

The success of LENR depends on deep understanding and wise action i.e. much more than a theory.

Exegetic:

The opera metaphor has the potential to describe better than any collection of facts and ideas- the reality of LENR. When you understand the real role of metaphors in thinking you are aware of the “metaphor of the metaphor”. The metaphor of a healthy good metaphor is a living, changing, growing, improving, learning, developing entity not a static, invariable bureaucratic one. The relation between the subject of the metaphor and the object to which is compared cannot be standardized for all cases, being a relation in multi-layers form, more layers both in space and in time comprising the problems, the solutions, the history of the composition, the world-wide debut, the best performances. At first sight, the opera metaphor has three inherent seemingly destructive drawbacks that would make anybody less stubborn than me to abandon it immediately:                                                                                   

a)there are many operas but very few are successful see please a list of some 25,000 operas of 2500 composers at OperaGlass http://opera.stanford.edu, a much shorter list of important operas here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_important_operas and some data about popular operas http://iopera.www9.50megs.com/opera1.html, a really extremistan-ic distribution- but a merciless selection process. Conclusion we have to associate LENR with a really good opera!                                  

b) serious opera is a highly pessimistic, negative and depressive art, most operas are tragedies death is always there and its victims are young, lovable people. It seems some Twin Peaks principle (the Evil is indestructible and always wins) rules in the world of operas. There are a few cases where the opera is not so damned realistic and has a happy ending for the main heroes, usually after removing or sacrificing some victims; Conclusion: we have to find an opera with happy end!

c) for the actual LENR opera (or operas?)  there are only separate and mutually incompatible fragments of the libretto and the entire music still has to be composed. There is information about some rather simple primitive LENR melodies composed by Nature. However music is the highest form of art, while sculpture (as Michelangelo teaches us, works  by removing the unnecessary parts of the marble, music cannot be created by removing noise, it has to be created from scratch. Much more work than for a single song. Conclusion: the genuine opera metaphor of LENR has to be created!

These are difficult problems, and we have to use a lot of scipiology, the high art of converting disasters in triumphs and drawbacks in competitive advantages- in order to keep and develop our favorite metaphor.

Explanatory

As you could see, there are many unknown unknowns regarding the LENR opera. It is about love that’s certain and the lovers need a very strong love potion that’s also for sure. However, amazingly we don’t know who the lovers are! There are two popular operas centered on love potions: “L’elisir d’amore” by Gaetano Donizetti and “Tristan and Isolde” by Richard Wagner. Both are useless for our metaphor. In the first the potion is manufactured by a Dr Dulcamara, an itinerant snake oil merchant and such persons are “non-grata” in the LENR opera. The second, described in one sentence as: “They love each other and they both die." is eliminated due its bad ending. LENR will have no ending at all, but will become an opera seria in endless series, I predict. You have to remember that Defkalion, which has the best LENR (they call it HENI) scenario has stated that even a ternary love potion is not sufficient to “make hydrogen more reactive and nickel more receptive”. I can accept that in the original Pd based system it is about a deuterium loves deuterium non-straight system because this will not become a technology. (I bet!) However Defkalion’s results show that something very complex happens- lets it express with open-mindedness- kind of GruppenSex of the chemical elements. I think that everything is better than some form of the H + H reactions predicted e.g. by Ed Storms theory, Beyond any operas I think that Nature does not admit constrains and in different systems behaves very differently. On the technological level, I hope there will be tested successfully many precious transition metals besides nickel and Defkalion et al will be able to convert complexity to completeness, dynamicity to immediacy, diversity to diversification

Exploratory 

As in so many occasions in R & D we must accept a compromise, a non-ideal opera as more proximal metaphor for LENR as it is today. It has to be. as already shown a popular opera with a happy ending. I don’t understand much of Mozart\s Magic Flute (“Protege of mad Freemasonry sect marries abducted Princess”). Liberation operas as Beethoven’s Fidelio or Mozart’s “Abduction of the Seraglo” do not fit at all to LENR and carry too simple messages.

Then I have eventually found the “solution”: Turandot by Giaccomo Puccini. The story is very idiotic but much better than, say, Edgar by the same author or Verdi’s “Il trovatore” having librettos wit negative IQ... Turandot, in one sentence “In ancient China, a princess challenges suitors with riddles until a mysterious prince arrives and offers her a challenge to guess his true name.”

This opera is a good metaphor and the crazy, frigid, revengeful princes is a sub-metaphor of LENR’s basic problem... Turandot has asked only 3 riddles, our Calafs have to answer much more, all the time. The finale of the opera is wonderful exactly what will happen to LENR. Turandot (problem) is brought back to normality; Turandot the symbol of one main component learns the infinite power of love. Calaf, the genuine researcher is triumphant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VATmgtmR5o4 He says: "Vanish, o night! Fade, you stars! Fade, you stars! At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win! "

 Something like this will happen with LENR soon. However, as you know, when life imitates art, it always adds some interesting complications.

Peter

WORRIES

Motto: The past is the future which already happened
Georgina Popescu


One thing I love about my closest friends is that they always prove to know things about me which are obviously true, no matter how much I believe that I manage to keep them locked and hidden deep inside my soul. Whenever I hear them saying those things to me, it reminds me of my childhood, getting caught snooping around in a special place where my parents used to hide the "goodies". Usually my mother somehow knew when I was checking on the 'treasure place', and she always had a special smile when looking away, allowing me to save face...

I knew where delightful surprises were hidden and liked to check on them regularly. I would just take them out, make sure of their integrity and put them back. I knew that I could not subtract and eat any of them until they were officially and lovingly given to me. Still, the knowledge of them being stashed in a safe place, as well as the anticipation of the moment when they will be given to me, always gave me comfort and a sense of security. The reward was safely deposited within my reach, all I had to do is have patience and behave properly, in order to gain access to the goodies when the time was right.

What my friends have revealed to me recently is that fear is a natural part of someone's life - mine in particular was the topic. I often think of myself as being rather fearless, as I do not have a problem with tackling conflict and getting to the root of what I believe is truthfull and reasonable to tackle.

What came as a surprise to me was however the understading that I tend to put my worries to silence exactly by this active way of approaching problems heads on. I believe the idea that 'the best cure is prevention' is familiar to most people. I seem to live by this phrase, respectively feel a need to asses potential future problems in order to address them before they actually pop up. Sometime this translates into literally preventing the future to happen, whenever I believe a bad turn is about to hit. However it may happen that bad things need to be allowed for a while, just as an intermediary way towards improvement. Therefore, one may also stop nice things from coming true in the process of preventing bad things to happen.

I am definitely not alone with this dillema. This is a basic survival and self-protection instinct, but this does not mean that change cannot be triggered in one's life. Would it be a better way to live? Accept the worries and just alternate the reaction to them? Sometimes act and prevent, other times react and correct, and others just ignore and go on with the flow.

I have no answer for you tonight. Worries are natural, therefore we should welcome them in our life, just as we welcome hunger, thirst, nervousness or hope. Worries are a mix between state of mind, soul and stomach, helping us staying aware of how smallish is the part we play in the general order of our universe.

Our future is becoming our past, with every present moment which we experience. And thus our worries, hopes, dreams and fears are gradually turning into feelings, events and reactions, and then become experience, with a reasonable mix of nice memories and regrets. Those become then the basis for our new worries, hopes, dreams and fears and so on ... It seems that we keep on experiencing similar challenges until we find a way to turn regrets into memories and fears into hopes.

Let's look upon the future with a mix of worry, anticipation and faith in our ability to deal with whatever tomorrow will bring, either by ourselves or together with our true friends.

Let's learn to appreciate our past, love our present and welcome our future! Every day.

Georgina Popescu

LENR+ IS NOT A SONG, IT IS AN OPERA!

The advent of LENR+ has caused a cognitive earth-quake in the world of LENR. This reaction may seem slow for the witness but history, which has learned many strange things from itself, will judge it probably as normal. It depends on who will write this history.

This week for example, Ed Storms who wrote the best LENR reviews ever, has presented an up-to-date variant of his own theory and has emphasized the holistic nature of the process:

“All parts of the model must work together as a logical whole.  Each part is essential for the process to be consistent with what is observed.”

Here comes a great question: how many parts?  We are steadily learning that there are more parts we have imagined. In 1991, I was thinking about 3 features topology, nature, mechanism of Cold Fusion, however admitting recognizing that each of these are actually not simple at all and have to be sub-divided in space and in time. I was taught lessons of complexity by Piantelli, Defkalion and recently by our colleague Axil who knows a lot about domains of physics and nanosciences that I am not able to grasp, to evaluate, to think professionally about, to work with, Anyway, the hard study of Axil’s writing and comments on my blog have helped me to understand that LENR is NOT like a song with say, melody, lyrics, rhythm. Take my all favorite song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c3_o_Rqwrg

or so many other wonderful songs from all the corners of this small planet, I confess I have tried to make a list but I could not stop so I had to apply the cut-the-Gordian-Knot method but at least I have enjoyed a portion of good music.

LENR+ (the kind that works) is more “longer” and complicated than a song, and it has action, therefore it is as complex as an opera- see please: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera or my own classical writing which I have not named “Opera Music, mon amour” from forgotten reasons: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/03/explaining-opera-music-of-all-noises.html

Actually how many LENR operas exist? Some of our colleagues believe it is de facto only one basic opera with the same libretto and the same music only the cast (names) is changed.

Simplifications are known in the world of opera see e.g. this definition: Opera is when... 'a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone.' Even over-simplifications have been tried as opera plots in One Sentence:                                                             http://www.brightcecilia.com/features/opera-plots-in-one-sentence.html

But these do not work and in the mirroring metaphor LENR+ is much more than the love story of Hydrogen and Nickel with no baritone interfering. It is a basso, Rydberg helping and lots of other roles decisive, secondary, positive, negative moving around singing

their mode. A good conductor, a creative opera director, first class

orchestra- all have to help the talented singers. It is useless to try to deepen this analogy. We will listen to some very good LENR operas soon. One of them is about a hero named Plexciton and the action (wild!) takes place in a country named Nanoplasmonics, we will see resonances, amplifiers other interesting things.

Not more simple songs as “Break through the Barrier” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsgFl-x0ZZo this could be just an aria in the grand opera.

It is possible the last act of the opera will be about something weird

as zero-point energy, space-squeezing or vacuum mining. This morning I have received very interesting news from LENR’s cousin

who has written an opera entitled “Extreme Cavitation”

I think it will be very useful to discuss with this cousin about operas, his libretti are different, his music is perhaps too noisy, but he has ideas. Some reasons to seriously discuss with Nanospire- see below.

The Google of Nanotech cracks Cold Fusion:

http://jinnwe.com/quest.php?id=512&goback=%2Egde_1807453_member_219232586

Energy News

http://www.powermanagementco.com/powernews/powernews-5-21-12/energynews.html?goback=%2Egde_1807453_member_219232304

Nanospire on Harnessing Cavitation Zero Point Energy.

http://pesn.com/2012/04/28/9602083_NanoSpire_Inc_on_Harnessing_Cavitation_Zero_Point_Energy_to_Produce_Fusion_and_Transmutation_in_Water/?goback=%2Egde_1807453_member_219231774

Cavitation Competition in LENR:

http://cleantechauthority.com/is-cavitation-the-competition-of-lenr/?goback=%2Egde_1807453_member_219232521

California Company working on Small Scale Hot Fusion for US Department of defense:

http://coldfusion3.com/blog/california-company-working-on-small-scale-hot-fusion-for-us-department-of-defense?goback=%2Egde_1807453_member_219231138

Will Mark and Serge come to ICCF-18?

LENR composers- unite and write good operas!

Peter

ADVISES FOR THE YOUNG LENR WORKERS, SOME RELEVANT PAPERS. THE SECOND LESSON

 

These writings are about what young LENR researchers have to learn- in my opinion- on a meta-professional level i.e. beyond physics chemistry, materials science, nano-science and nanotechnology in order to effectively contribute to the flourishing of the coming New Energy Era.

There are many vital things you are not taught in the school, but you will need in life- forms of contact with reality and I am starting with managerial culture the pragmatic philosophy of the present.

Due to lack of massive feedback I have not started to build and adequate taxonomy yet, see please: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/08/taxonomy-mon-amour.html I think a good researcher must be excellent in doing

classifications; this is a very necessary but not sufficient tool. The taxonomic skill becomes very visible via the logical structure and fluency of publications papers, reports, books. It gives the decisive first impression.

Two essential concepts.

Team Building

Based on his personal experience, especially at Defkalion Green Technologies, Yiannis Hadjichristos has called our attention to the fact that in such an extreme case of difficulty, even the greatest genius cannot make much without an excellent, harmonious efficient team .LENR is a peak of inter- and trans-disciplinarity, it needs first class experts in very diverse domain,

Lots of people able to work fine together. This idea has to be a recurrent leit-motif of our Course!

Personal Knowledge Management

This paragraph is not contradicting but complementing the fo5mer: individuals are more concrete and quantifiable and measurable and controllable than teams, at least in principle. Exactly as Monsieur Jourdain makes prose without knowing it, we all make knowledge management, a great generous concept that includes management of ignorance, too. PKM has an advanced. superior form, personal branding, a sign and measure of your personality and greatness, see for example:

Bite Sized Insights on Personal Branding #IndiaHRChat http://qaspire.com/2013/02/28/bite-sized-insights-on-personal-branding-indiahrchat/

Do not forget about your basic aim to become a human brand!

A special advantage is to be a genius: 

At least to seem, or to be considered one as a justification why you are working for this super-challenging problem. It is really not so difficult. See please this:

What does the most comprehensive study of geniuses tell us about creativity?

http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/10/what-does-the-most-comprehensive-study-of-gen/

It tells very interesting thing things, it speaks about FLOW a concept introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the superior, almost ecstatic pleasure of superior intellectual work. The ancient Greeks have used KAIROS, time with high value as opposed to CHRONOS for this state of spirit. Please do a serious search for FLOW and KAIROS. Geniuses are happy and their work makes them so.

What might young Einstein ponder today:                                                                                          http://www.quora.com/Physics/What-might-young-Einstein-ponder-today

I don’t think anybody has the slightest doubt that young Einstein would be the leader of LENR research today; theory of relativity and his other discoveries being already here he would solve our problems brilliantly. We are missing him, it will last a bit more, however LENR is good hands, you will see. Uncle Albert, sleep well and dream about infinite energy!

Now suppose, my young reader is a fine talented researcher however not able to go over 6.5 on the Richter scale of intellectual earth-quakes; he still can become a fine expert by hard work. Here are the instructions:

What does it take to become an expert at anything?

http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/08/what-does-it-take-to-become-an-expert-at-anyt/

Two fables and a paper

The first one is

The Solution- a business fable: ,

http://culturaloffering.com/2013/02/26/the-solution---a-business-fable.aspx

The solution is here and it remains invisible for those who take the decisions; this happens many times. Read please my Pdisaster paper, the poisoning hypothesis is here, it explains why PdD is unmanageable and despite this the idea is ignored.  

In 100 Words Nurturing the Roots for Growth: https://mail.google.com/mail/?tab=wm#inbox/13d1aae5584b9ac6                                                                                                 It is a subtle idea about Growth, about what we see and what is hidden.

11 Emerging Scientific Fields That Everyone Should Know About by George Dvorsky: http://io9.com/5987296

 The theory in statu nascendi of our wise colleague AxilAxil shows very convincingly that LENR+ is addicted to such emerging scientific fields.

Eventually something unbelievably useful, a contribution to the high art of questions:

To Have the Most Impact, Ask the Right Questions http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/to_have_the_most_impact_ask_qu.html

Feedback, initiatives, new ideas will be welcome for this course.

Peter