vacuum
3rd June 2013, 12:22 AM
Go to the original site for much more pleasant formatting:
https://sites.google.com/site/lenrforthewin/home/are-low-energy-nuclear-reaction-devices-real
Pasting it here to copy the article and for those who don't click links
Are Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Devices Real?
Why should one believe that Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) devices and the E-Cat in particular are real and not a scam, hoax, delusion, mistake or some other manifestation of malevolence or ignorance? To best answer that question one must explore it in multiple dimensions: science, engineering, business and social. There will be points and counterpoints and you must weigh the evidence yourself. But let’s start off with a few key definitions.
Definitions
COP (or coefficient of performance) - simply means energy out divided by energy in. Conventional hot fusion research has struggled to achieve a COP of 1.0 despite decades of work and hundreds of billions of dollars. The idea is that when you get a COP of more than one you have an endless supply of energy (ignoring engineering limitations and conversion losses). The term is overloaded a bit; it is also used in the heating/cooling industry to describe devices that can extract or transfer energy from their environment like heat pumps, which can have a COP of over 3. But when talking about fundamental energy release from nuclear reactions, COP > 1.0 is the holy grail.
Many who observe this field make a distinction between LENR and LENR+, where the plus signifies massive energy gains. LENR is garden variety anomalous energy, tricky to measure and often hard to reliably reproduce (think COP some small percentage over 1). LENR+ describes healthy multiples of energy out over energy in (e.g., COP = 6).
E-Cat: the device created by Andrea Rossi of Leonardo Corp. that is purported to have a COP of at least 6. We are told it works with nickel powder, some hydrogen, an undisclosed catalyst and an electrical waveform input to drive the reaction and help control its stability.
Science
It makes sense to start with the science dimension because that will be the bottom line for many. However, while LENR can be best understood as a scientific endeavor, LENR+ cannot. The reason for this is that the organizations and individuals claiming to be achieving LENR+ are not scientists or academics and are not mainly concerned with scientific proof. So if the bottom line for you is repeatable scientific proof of LENR+ phenomena with precise data, we are not there yet due to protection of intellectual property (IP). We must settle instead for its poor cousin: 3rd party black box validation under controlled conditions. If that settles the issue for you for now and you are content to wait for such undeniable scientific validation you can stop reading here. That is a respectable and understandable approach. It is a conservative, “prove it” approach that is warranted when evaluating such extraordinary claims that, if true, will have extraordinary consequences. However, we appear to be in a situation where products are likely to precede detailed scientific replication and understanding, so taking such a wait and see approach may be prudent, but you might also be missing the story of the century. Your choice whether to read on or not.
Science - LENR
The scientific case for LENR is actually quite strong. There are hundreds of scientific, peer-reviewed papers from reputable organizations and individuals that document anomalous heat -- and some even report transmutation (http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYobservatiob.pdf). Starting with Pons and Fleischmann (P&F) in 1989, two highly respected scientists at the time, and continuing past the maelstrom of accusations and under the radar, thousands of “cold fusion” type experiments have been going on that you likely knew nothing about. Because P&F raised hopes so high and the science turned out to be hard (note, not impossible) to repeat, the whole field of “cold fusion” was discredited... termed “pseudoscience.” But some curious scientists and companies, many outside the United States, kept at it. Due to the pseudoscience stigma of the field, all of these researchers were exposing themselves to ridicule and jeopardizing their careers. The best resource for these papers is lenr-canr.org (http://lenr-canr.org/). To drive the point home that we may all have been under a rock about this issue, here is a blurb from a 2009 report (http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BarnhartBtechnology.pdf) from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency:
“In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced that their electrochemical experiments had produced excess energy under standard temperature and pressure conditions. Because they could not explain this physical phenomenon based on known chemical reactions, they suggested the excess heat could be nuclear in origin. However, their experiments did not show the radiation or radioactivity expected from a nuclear reaction. Many researchers attempted to replicate the results and failed, As a result, the physics community disparaged their work as lacking credibility, and the press mistakenly dubbed it "cold fusion." Related research also suffered from the negative publicity of cold fusion for the past 20 years, but many scientists believed something important was occurring and continued their research with little or no visibility. For years, scientists were intrigued by the possibility of producing large amounts of clean energy through LENR, and now this research has begun to be accepted in the scientific community as reproducible and legitimate.“
So it needs to be said that if LENR is real then LENR+ gains credibility. In the online community that follows LENR and LENR+, LENR is considered a given and seldom debated. If that is the case, LENR+ doesn’t need to be something entirely new it just has to be something optimized. Can LENR still be debated? Sure. Some people dismiss it out of hand because a solid theoretical explanation for it is missing, or because they distrust all of the people and organizations involved, or as a case study in pathological science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_science) or a way for fringe scientists to get money and notoriety. There are several truths worth keeping in mind though: observation trumps theory; conspiracies, scams and hoaxes become less likely as the number of participants and observers rises; and pathological skepticism is not the same as healthy skepticism.
Point: With solid scientific evidence for LENR, claims of LENR+ gain credibility as a matter of magnitude of a known phenomenon.
Counterpoint: Fraudulent, sloppy and/or pathological science cannot be dismissed as the underlying causes for the many papers supporting anomalous heat and transmutation. If evidence for LENR is suspect then LENR+ gains no credibility.
Science - LENR+
On the other hand we have no peer-reviewed scientific papers on LENR+ and probably won’t anytime soon. Why? Because the few organizations claiming to have prototype products based on LENR+ want to protect their Intellectual Property (IP). They do not wish to submit their devices to unfettered scrutiny nor disclose the exact engineering techniques or reactants that make the things work. Such information, as you might imagine, is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Once the technologies are patented, the industrial secrecy might disappear quickly, but the USPTO has had a de facto policy against issuing any patents related to cold fusion claims since the 1989 stigmatization. These organizations are caught in a Catch-22 where they cannot simultaneously protect their investment and submit to the rigors of scientific proof. Their solution to this dilemma has been to proceed to market directly, hoping to achieve a massive first mover advantage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage), knowing that their technology is likely to be reverse engineered and deep-pocketed competitors quickly emerge.
But we have been thrown some scientific-type bones in the form of four significant semi-independent certifications/validations over the past 3 years.
An October 2011 demonstration of the E-Cat for “customer” acceptance, with published data. The customer was widely reportedly as being a U.S. military organization that had shepherded Rossi’s R&D efforts but they remained behind the scenes, sending instead an independent consultant, NATO thermodynamics expert Colonel-Engineer Domenico Fioravanti, to kick the tires. He signed a test report vouching for the results, which are summarized in an e-catworld.com article (http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/10/taken-at-face-value-rossis-october-6th-e-cat-event-demonstrates-nuclear-reaction/):
“...data collected indicates that unless Rossi has been able to rig an extremely sophisticated trick (which no one who attended the demo has accused him of) he indeed managed to show that he has discovered a new source of nuclear power...”
An internal Leonardo Corp. August 2012 report (http://www.scribd.com/doc/105322688/Penon4-1) of a test of the E-Cat by Nuclear Engineering Specialist Fabio Penon:
“...The E-Cat energy source is not conventional. In the Ragone diagram, its energy density places it very far from any conventional source.”
A September 2012 Test of Defkalion’s Hyperion LENR+ prototype reactor by independent 3rd parties. Dr. Michael Melich of the Naval Postgraduate School sent a representative, Michael Nelson, who witnessed the test and signed the report (http://ecatnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2012-09-07_Test-protocol-signed.pdf) on his behalf.
“...DGT system successfully produced more energy out than input giving a coefficient of performance (COP) in excess of one...”
The May 2013 paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3913) (published on arXiv) describing 3rd party independent testing of the latest generation E-Cat included 3 tests. The first one melted its steel and ceramic cylinders due to a runaway reaction. The second one produced a COP of 5.6 +/- 0.8. The final one produced a COP of 2.9 +/- 0.3. The reduction in COP was due to an altered E-Cat optimized for stability and safety at a lower temperature compared to the second test.
“...the results obtained place both devices several orders of magnitude outside the bounds of the Ragone plot region for chemical sources...”
The Ragone plot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragone_chart), in case you’re wondering, shows the specific energy (energy density) and peak power (power density) of various energy sources. The reason LENR+ has everyone so excited is that it blows chemical energy sources away, rivaling “conventional” nuclear sources while being much less expensive or problematic. A version of the chart (http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2013/05/20/finally-independent-testing-of-rossis-e-cat-cold-fusion-device-maybe-the-world-will-change-after-all/) that includes the findings of the May 2013 E-Cat test report is available in an article on Forbes.com.
The three E-Cat tests and one Hyperion test are increasingly convincing. There are shortcomings in all of them to be sure, especially when viewed through the lens of ironclad science or preventing any type of conceivable fraud. All of the tests were conducted at facilities of the device creator, with some level of owner participation ranging from running the show to just having a representative present for assistance and IP security. Measuring heat and electrical energy can be complicated too so there is never any shortage of criticism about the calorimetry and other energy measuring devices in any given test. Often the “independent” testers have been involved one way or another leading up to the tests, raising doubts about their impartiality. Importantly, the devices were offered up as black boxes only in order to protect IP, so there was no disassembly down to the nuts and bolts to search for any hidden tricks.
Still, the tests are compelling -- not absolute proof, but convincing if one discounts elaborate fraud. None of the four tests involve the same people, who are clearly putting their reputations on the line publishing results “in violation of accepted science.” Moreover, there are two companies involved, not just Rossi’s Leonardo Corp.
The independent tests of the E-Cats performed between November 2012 and March 2013 are the most convincing of all. They involved scientists from several different respected European Universities who persuaded Rossi to let them test the devices (not the other way around) and who were given complete freedom to perform any measurements they wanted. One of the scientists signing his name to the results is Dr. Hanno Essen of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology and recently Chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, which ate scammers for lunch. Their measurements were thorough, their energy analysis was conservative, there was little opportunity to game the tests and they found massive excess heat. They intend to follow up those tests with a much longer six month test beginning in summer 2013 in an effort to better understand what’s happening and eliminate any possible fraud. Their official position is that the extraordinary results warrant further investigation and they have not proven anything yet. Skeptics have pointed out some potentially feasible ways of smuggling extra energy through hidden electrical wires or frequencies. These need to be checked out even though Rossi would have had to be prescient to know what measuring devices the testers would use or what exactly they would look at.
Conversely, the possible alternative explanations for the positive test results are not compelling at all:
Trickery - the testers were duped. Rossi is a scam artist extraordinaire and has figured out on multiple occasions how to fool 3rd party testers, with increasing difficulty, to leverage his scam to new heights... and oh yeah, Defkalion is trying the same thing. Trickery seems to be the prevailing theory voiced by the many remaining LENR+ skeptics, pointing out that the testers in each case did not eliminate the possibility of fraud through hidden power input to the device.
Incompetence - everybody is being forthright and honest but they've overlooked something important. Their measurements contain egregious errors because they forgot to factor in a significant source of energy input or the air conditioning... or something, despite three years of experience with the systems. The likelihood of this seems vanishingly small.
Conspiracy - the testers are in on it, helping Rossi and Defkalion perpetuate a scam for riches or perhaps as an elaborate hoax for some kind of ego trip, or on behalf of nefarious forces. Frankly the circle has grown too wide and the people involved are too respected for conspiracy to be a viable theory any more. But it’s still out there, so it is included here.
Point: Published results from multiple tests from about a dozen semi-independent reputable authors do not offer conclusive scientific proof of LENR+ but do provide compelling evidence for it.
Counterpoint: The “Free Energy” space has no shortage of scammers. Rossi and Defkalion are just better than most and have figured out some tricks that have so far escaped detection, but they will eventually be discredited. Until every possible trick and every possible measurement error has been accounted for by truly independent scientists worldwide, the fact that LENR+ contradicts well-established science suggests that fraud, hoax, scam, incompetence or simple measurement errors are a much more likely explanation than new physics.
Science - Theory
Some skeptics go straight to disbelief and ridicule because the results do not comport with established scientific laws and theories. There is also a strong “too good to be true” reflex many people have. In their minds, having an open mind does not include allowing information that contradicts well known and studied physics or smells like pure BS. They say “where are the neutrons?!” or more colorfully “where are the dead grad students?” But science is fundamentally about observations and deducing laws and theories from those observations and testing them with new observations, not the other way around. It’s usually when we make unexpected observations that science moves forward. Well the switchboard is lighting up with unexpected observations of anomalous heat in metal-hydrogen systems under various stimuli since 1989. Just read through the scientific papers (http://lenr-canr.org/index/DownloadOnly/DownloadOnly.php) to see that is true.
If real, how to explain this mysterious phenomenon? The answer likely lies in highly energetic local conditions at the nanoscale with specific geometrical constraints, plus the Weak Force, plus perhaps some quantum effects. We know that the Strong Force and Electromagnetic Force keep protons well separated except under Sun-like temperatures and pressures. But we also know that nature is always seeking lower, more stable energy states and that neutrons have an easier go of getting into a nucleus because they lack charge. In these LENR systems we have a metal lattice, vibrating at higher frequencies as they are heated, lots of free roaming surface electrons, nano- or micro-scale nickel powders and hydrogen saturating any surface defects in the metal lattice, coupled with electromagnetic pulses. We know that transmutation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation) and resulting energy release can be triggered by the introduction of sufficiently energetic neutrons. That’s established science. Perhaps LENR+ involves the spontaneous creation of a sufficiently energetic neutron, or “effective neutron” (an electron and hydrogen with quantum states that make them look like a neutron to nearly a nearby nucleus) for long enough to trigger its absorption. This new isotope of the absorbing element may be unstable and subsequently release an electron, causing both energy release and transmutation of the absorbing element to next one up on the periodic table (thus matching some observed results). With so many particles and their quantum states overlapping and rapidly changing in such a confined space, the LENR reaction may be exploiting a complex quantum pathway to a lower energy state.
Of course, nobody knows exactly what’s happening yet and the above are only an educated guesses. Diligent scientific experiments will be needed to figure out what’s really happening. With LENR though we assert that we might have the ingredients and environment to create extreme nanoscale conditions that make some particle interactions possible that usually aren’t. So LENR may involve new physics, but it also may not. It may just be a set of conditions we haven’t thought of or didn't understand all the subtleties of.
There is a Wikiversity page (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cold_fusion/Theory) that contains summaries of many of the theories that LENR scientists have proposed as possible explanations, the most widely cited of which is probably Widom-Larsen.
Point: While no commonly-accepted scientific theory exists to explain LENR phenomena there are some worth considering, and the nature of the ingredients feels right for generating localized energy hot spots that could conceivably trigger complex nuclear interactions.
Counterpoint: Nuclear physics and quantum physics have been thoroughly studied and are well understood, established science. LENR observations contradict this known body of nuclear and quantum physics and therefore must be false.
Science - Gammas and Neutrons
Nuclear physicists or those familiar with nuclear science often assert that unless there is detectable gamma radiation or high-energy neutrons then what is happening cannot possibly be nuclear in origin. Given that the observations show more energy than explicable by known chemical reactions, their confident assertion that nuclear reactions are also not possible, leaves LENR nowhere to go. This explains a large part of the scientific establishment’s hostility to LENR and LENR+ claims.
You may be interested to know then that although neutrons have never been detected there is some ambiguity around gammas. Two things:
An Italian scientist, Francesco Celani, claims (http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg80448.html) to have detected a brief burst of gamma radiation at one of Rossi’s tests in 2011.
Rossi himself has claimed that gamma radiation is produced by the E-Cat, but only lower frequency gammas and that they are absorbed by the device shielding (and thus one source of heat energy). No gamma radiation has been detected outside the device during formal semi-independent testing.
Point: Detection of gammas radiation is a definite hint that something very energetic, maybe nuclear, might be taking place in the E-Cat reactor.
Counterpoint: Hearsay and more “Rossi says” don’t amount to science. Moreover, the energies of the alleged gammas still don’t match nuclear theory, so there can be nothing to this.
Engineering
Engineering sits on the foundation of science but must deal with the realities of designing complex systems, applying control theory and the inevitability of the prototype-test-revise spiral. Viewing the E-Cat and LENR+ in the engineering dimension is instructive.
Engineering - E-Cat Prototype Development
We are fortunate that this technology drama is occurring in the age of the Internet and we have a window into Rossi’s activities. Almost daily he answers questions in his online “journal (http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/)”. Now, the journal itself is pure wild west... although it has a modicum of peer review, just about anything goes... it accepts papers from anywhere and just says that the authors are responsible for their content. But the most important aspect of the journal to date is that he accepts questions in the associated forums and routinely answers them, as well as interjects sometimes with important announcements. So we have had unique access to the ongoing activities of Andrea Rossi and the development of his E-Cats.
These communications have been enlightening, exciting, confusing, frustrating and sometimes maddening. Rossi is an Italian with a functional but far from perfect command of English. As a result virtually every comment he makes is subject to interpretation. People try to nail him down with specific questions and sometimes that works, but other times the imprecision or vagueness never gets settled completely. Sometimes his remarks seem intentionally misleading and promised timelines aren't realized. Sometimes he shuts a thread down with a terse “confidential.” He won’t talk about what’s happening inside the reactor and some avenues of inquiry run into claims of non-disclosure agreements with entities he can’t even name. You can go through and read all of his comments. They birthed a new Internet phenomenon termed “Rossi Says,” because following the E-Cat story meant most of the debate was about things Rossi had said in his journal that were not verifiable (at least not immediately).
But take a step back from the minutiae and you see a man who follows through on his word about the big things and is tremendously excited by his work. He promised a product acceptance test in October 2011. It happened (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc5K090SZFg). He promised independent validation in 2012. We got validation, but independent was an overstatement. He said more independent testing was happening in late 2012 and early 2013 by university professors. That report, which many skeptics felt would never see the light of day, was published in May 2013 and that report is clearly not a “Rossi Says.”
The reason Rossi’s journal communications are interesting is because they also offer a window into the continued engineering and evolution of these E-Cat prototypes. Whenever an exciting advance was made he shared it with his journal readers. Readers have been privy to details about Warm Cats, valve malfunctions, frustrations with demands for endless demonstrations that never convinced the skeptics anyway, heat transfer and energy conversion technologies, Hot Cats, Mouse activators, COP and myriad other details. We shared his nervousness during the latest independent testing. We heard his anger when somebody leaked unauthorized pictures of Hot Cat testing. We have heard a lot about control issues. He can be more reserved about these control issues and other problems, but it was clear he was confronted by a slew of them and happy as a clam whenever he overcame one of them.
Sure, it’s possible that for over three years Rossi has performed an improv to end all improvs and nailed the role of eccentric engineer with a major discovery. But more likely, he is what he seems to be: an engineer struggling with setbacks and complexity as he builds prototypes of a new kind of device.
Point: Rossi’s engineering activities over the past 3 years fit expectations of what real world prototype/product development looks like.
Counterpoint: Plausibility and realism are hallmarks of the long con. Just because he acts and communicates like a real engineer doesn't mean he is one.
Engineering - LENR+ Discovery
Another point to be made from the engineering angle is about the initial discovery of the “catalyst” that turns LENR into LENR+. Rossi is not a scientist, he is an engineer. He had previously worked in the energy industry and was familiar with the LENR findings (specifically those of Italian scientists Piantelli and Focardi). Rather than leave it to the scientists to figure out exactly what was happening he decided to see if he could build a better mousetrap by systematically testing different materials and configurations. He claims to have tried over a thousand different materials to increase the heat generation over a number of years, and one lucky day had success.
This is different than claiming that he and he alone knows what the science is. He is more modestly claiming that he tried a bunch of stuff, hit on something that worked and has since been refining the device for better output, better control and better safety in a race to get it to market as fast as possible.
Rossi’s approach mirrors that of Thomas Edison who tried many different materials before he hit on a carbon filament for electric light bulbs that lasted long enough to be practical, and later a carbonated bamboo filament that lasted very long. He didn't invent the light bulb, he just invented the one that worked well enough to actually commercialize by trying a bunch of materials for the key light-producing component. Rossi didn't invent LENR devices but he may have discovered a way to make LENR commercially viable.
It’s quite a stretch to think Rossi spent such an amount of time and effort just to lay the foundation for a future scam.
Point: The discovery of LENR+ through brute force trial and error over a number of years on top of a foundation of existing LENR results, despite limited knowledge of the underlying scientific processes, is completely plausible.
Counterpoint: Rossi needed to make his long con look believable, so he started out by crafting a plausible creation story. This would be step 1 in generating a cadre of true believers that he could leverage into investments and eventually walk away rich and laughing.
https://sites.google.com/site/lenrforthewin/home/are-low-energy-nuclear-reaction-devices-real
Pasting it here to copy the article and for those who don't click links
Are Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Devices Real?
Why should one believe that Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) devices and the E-Cat in particular are real and not a scam, hoax, delusion, mistake or some other manifestation of malevolence or ignorance? To best answer that question one must explore it in multiple dimensions: science, engineering, business and social. There will be points and counterpoints and you must weigh the evidence yourself. But let’s start off with a few key definitions.
Definitions
COP (or coefficient of performance) - simply means energy out divided by energy in. Conventional hot fusion research has struggled to achieve a COP of 1.0 despite decades of work and hundreds of billions of dollars. The idea is that when you get a COP of more than one you have an endless supply of energy (ignoring engineering limitations and conversion losses). The term is overloaded a bit; it is also used in the heating/cooling industry to describe devices that can extract or transfer energy from their environment like heat pumps, which can have a COP of over 3. But when talking about fundamental energy release from nuclear reactions, COP > 1.0 is the holy grail.
Many who observe this field make a distinction between LENR and LENR+, where the plus signifies massive energy gains. LENR is garden variety anomalous energy, tricky to measure and often hard to reliably reproduce (think COP some small percentage over 1). LENR+ describes healthy multiples of energy out over energy in (e.g., COP = 6).
E-Cat: the device created by Andrea Rossi of Leonardo Corp. that is purported to have a COP of at least 6. We are told it works with nickel powder, some hydrogen, an undisclosed catalyst and an electrical waveform input to drive the reaction and help control its stability.
Science
It makes sense to start with the science dimension because that will be the bottom line for many. However, while LENR can be best understood as a scientific endeavor, LENR+ cannot. The reason for this is that the organizations and individuals claiming to be achieving LENR+ are not scientists or academics and are not mainly concerned with scientific proof. So if the bottom line for you is repeatable scientific proof of LENR+ phenomena with precise data, we are not there yet due to protection of intellectual property (IP). We must settle instead for its poor cousin: 3rd party black box validation under controlled conditions. If that settles the issue for you for now and you are content to wait for such undeniable scientific validation you can stop reading here. That is a respectable and understandable approach. It is a conservative, “prove it” approach that is warranted when evaluating such extraordinary claims that, if true, will have extraordinary consequences. However, we appear to be in a situation where products are likely to precede detailed scientific replication and understanding, so taking such a wait and see approach may be prudent, but you might also be missing the story of the century. Your choice whether to read on or not.
Science - LENR
The scientific case for LENR is actually quite strong. There are hundreds of scientific, peer-reviewed papers from reputable organizations and individuals that document anomalous heat -- and some even report transmutation (http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYobservatiob.pdf). Starting with Pons and Fleischmann (P&F) in 1989, two highly respected scientists at the time, and continuing past the maelstrom of accusations and under the radar, thousands of “cold fusion” type experiments have been going on that you likely knew nothing about. Because P&F raised hopes so high and the science turned out to be hard (note, not impossible) to repeat, the whole field of “cold fusion” was discredited... termed “pseudoscience.” But some curious scientists and companies, many outside the United States, kept at it. Due to the pseudoscience stigma of the field, all of these researchers were exposing themselves to ridicule and jeopardizing their careers. The best resource for these papers is lenr-canr.org (http://lenr-canr.org/). To drive the point home that we may all have been under a rock about this issue, here is a blurb from a 2009 report (http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BarnhartBtechnology.pdf) from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency:
“In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced that their electrochemical experiments had produced excess energy under standard temperature and pressure conditions. Because they could not explain this physical phenomenon based on known chemical reactions, they suggested the excess heat could be nuclear in origin. However, their experiments did not show the radiation or radioactivity expected from a nuclear reaction. Many researchers attempted to replicate the results and failed, As a result, the physics community disparaged their work as lacking credibility, and the press mistakenly dubbed it "cold fusion." Related research also suffered from the negative publicity of cold fusion for the past 20 years, but many scientists believed something important was occurring and continued their research with little or no visibility. For years, scientists were intrigued by the possibility of producing large amounts of clean energy through LENR, and now this research has begun to be accepted in the scientific community as reproducible and legitimate.“
So it needs to be said that if LENR is real then LENR+ gains credibility. In the online community that follows LENR and LENR+, LENR is considered a given and seldom debated. If that is the case, LENR+ doesn’t need to be something entirely new it just has to be something optimized. Can LENR still be debated? Sure. Some people dismiss it out of hand because a solid theoretical explanation for it is missing, or because they distrust all of the people and organizations involved, or as a case study in pathological science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_science) or a way for fringe scientists to get money and notoriety. There are several truths worth keeping in mind though: observation trumps theory; conspiracies, scams and hoaxes become less likely as the number of participants and observers rises; and pathological skepticism is not the same as healthy skepticism.
Point: With solid scientific evidence for LENR, claims of LENR+ gain credibility as a matter of magnitude of a known phenomenon.
Counterpoint: Fraudulent, sloppy and/or pathological science cannot be dismissed as the underlying causes for the many papers supporting anomalous heat and transmutation. If evidence for LENR is suspect then LENR+ gains no credibility.
Science - LENR+
On the other hand we have no peer-reviewed scientific papers on LENR+ and probably won’t anytime soon. Why? Because the few organizations claiming to have prototype products based on LENR+ want to protect their Intellectual Property (IP). They do not wish to submit their devices to unfettered scrutiny nor disclose the exact engineering techniques or reactants that make the things work. Such information, as you might imagine, is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Once the technologies are patented, the industrial secrecy might disappear quickly, but the USPTO has had a de facto policy against issuing any patents related to cold fusion claims since the 1989 stigmatization. These organizations are caught in a Catch-22 where they cannot simultaneously protect their investment and submit to the rigors of scientific proof. Their solution to this dilemma has been to proceed to market directly, hoping to achieve a massive first mover advantage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage), knowing that their technology is likely to be reverse engineered and deep-pocketed competitors quickly emerge.
But we have been thrown some scientific-type bones in the form of four significant semi-independent certifications/validations over the past 3 years.
An October 2011 demonstration of the E-Cat for “customer” acceptance, with published data. The customer was widely reportedly as being a U.S. military organization that had shepherded Rossi’s R&D efforts but they remained behind the scenes, sending instead an independent consultant, NATO thermodynamics expert Colonel-Engineer Domenico Fioravanti, to kick the tires. He signed a test report vouching for the results, which are summarized in an e-catworld.com article (http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/10/taken-at-face-value-rossis-october-6th-e-cat-event-demonstrates-nuclear-reaction/):
“...data collected indicates that unless Rossi has been able to rig an extremely sophisticated trick (which no one who attended the demo has accused him of) he indeed managed to show that he has discovered a new source of nuclear power...”
An internal Leonardo Corp. August 2012 report (http://www.scribd.com/doc/105322688/Penon4-1) of a test of the E-Cat by Nuclear Engineering Specialist Fabio Penon:
“...The E-Cat energy source is not conventional. In the Ragone diagram, its energy density places it very far from any conventional source.”
A September 2012 Test of Defkalion’s Hyperion LENR+ prototype reactor by independent 3rd parties. Dr. Michael Melich of the Naval Postgraduate School sent a representative, Michael Nelson, who witnessed the test and signed the report (http://ecatnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2012-09-07_Test-protocol-signed.pdf) on his behalf.
“...DGT system successfully produced more energy out than input giving a coefficient of performance (COP) in excess of one...”
The May 2013 paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3913) (published on arXiv) describing 3rd party independent testing of the latest generation E-Cat included 3 tests. The first one melted its steel and ceramic cylinders due to a runaway reaction. The second one produced a COP of 5.6 +/- 0.8. The final one produced a COP of 2.9 +/- 0.3. The reduction in COP was due to an altered E-Cat optimized for stability and safety at a lower temperature compared to the second test.
“...the results obtained place both devices several orders of magnitude outside the bounds of the Ragone plot region for chemical sources...”
The Ragone plot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragone_chart), in case you’re wondering, shows the specific energy (energy density) and peak power (power density) of various energy sources. The reason LENR+ has everyone so excited is that it blows chemical energy sources away, rivaling “conventional” nuclear sources while being much less expensive or problematic. A version of the chart (http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2013/05/20/finally-independent-testing-of-rossis-e-cat-cold-fusion-device-maybe-the-world-will-change-after-all/) that includes the findings of the May 2013 E-Cat test report is available in an article on Forbes.com.
The three E-Cat tests and one Hyperion test are increasingly convincing. There are shortcomings in all of them to be sure, especially when viewed through the lens of ironclad science or preventing any type of conceivable fraud. All of the tests were conducted at facilities of the device creator, with some level of owner participation ranging from running the show to just having a representative present for assistance and IP security. Measuring heat and electrical energy can be complicated too so there is never any shortage of criticism about the calorimetry and other energy measuring devices in any given test. Often the “independent” testers have been involved one way or another leading up to the tests, raising doubts about their impartiality. Importantly, the devices were offered up as black boxes only in order to protect IP, so there was no disassembly down to the nuts and bolts to search for any hidden tricks.
Still, the tests are compelling -- not absolute proof, but convincing if one discounts elaborate fraud. None of the four tests involve the same people, who are clearly putting their reputations on the line publishing results “in violation of accepted science.” Moreover, there are two companies involved, not just Rossi’s Leonardo Corp.
The independent tests of the E-Cats performed between November 2012 and March 2013 are the most convincing of all. They involved scientists from several different respected European Universities who persuaded Rossi to let them test the devices (not the other way around) and who were given complete freedom to perform any measurements they wanted. One of the scientists signing his name to the results is Dr. Hanno Essen of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology and recently Chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, which ate scammers for lunch. Their measurements were thorough, their energy analysis was conservative, there was little opportunity to game the tests and they found massive excess heat. They intend to follow up those tests with a much longer six month test beginning in summer 2013 in an effort to better understand what’s happening and eliminate any possible fraud. Their official position is that the extraordinary results warrant further investigation and they have not proven anything yet. Skeptics have pointed out some potentially feasible ways of smuggling extra energy through hidden electrical wires or frequencies. These need to be checked out even though Rossi would have had to be prescient to know what measuring devices the testers would use or what exactly they would look at.
Conversely, the possible alternative explanations for the positive test results are not compelling at all:
Trickery - the testers were duped. Rossi is a scam artist extraordinaire and has figured out on multiple occasions how to fool 3rd party testers, with increasing difficulty, to leverage his scam to new heights... and oh yeah, Defkalion is trying the same thing. Trickery seems to be the prevailing theory voiced by the many remaining LENR+ skeptics, pointing out that the testers in each case did not eliminate the possibility of fraud through hidden power input to the device.
Incompetence - everybody is being forthright and honest but they've overlooked something important. Their measurements contain egregious errors because they forgot to factor in a significant source of energy input or the air conditioning... or something, despite three years of experience with the systems. The likelihood of this seems vanishingly small.
Conspiracy - the testers are in on it, helping Rossi and Defkalion perpetuate a scam for riches or perhaps as an elaborate hoax for some kind of ego trip, or on behalf of nefarious forces. Frankly the circle has grown too wide and the people involved are too respected for conspiracy to be a viable theory any more. But it’s still out there, so it is included here.
Point: Published results from multiple tests from about a dozen semi-independent reputable authors do not offer conclusive scientific proof of LENR+ but do provide compelling evidence for it.
Counterpoint: The “Free Energy” space has no shortage of scammers. Rossi and Defkalion are just better than most and have figured out some tricks that have so far escaped detection, but they will eventually be discredited. Until every possible trick and every possible measurement error has been accounted for by truly independent scientists worldwide, the fact that LENR+ contradicts well-established science suggests that fraud, hoax, scam, incompetence or simple measurement errors are a much more likely explanation than new physics.
Science - Theory
Some skeptics go straight to disbelief and ridicule because the results do not comport with established scientific laws and theories. There is also a strong “too good to be true” reflex many people have. In their minds, having an open mind does not include allowing information that contradicts well known and studied physics or smells like pure BS. They say “where are the neutrons?!” or more colorfully “where are the dead grad students?” But science is fundamentally about observations and deducing laws and theories from those observations and testing them with new observations, not the other way around. It’s usually when we make unexpected observations that science moves forward. Well the switchboard is lighting up with unexpected observations of anomalous heat in metal-hydrogen systems under various stimuli since 1989. Just read through the scientific papers (http://lenr-canr.org/index/DownloadOnly/DownloadOnly.php) to see that is true.
If real, how to explain this mysterious phenomenon? The answer likely lies in highly energetic local conditions at the nanoscale with specific geometrical constraints, plus the Weak Force, plus perhaps some quantum effects. We know that the Strong Force and Electromagnetic Force keep protons well separated except under Sun-like temperatures and pressures. But we also know that nature is always seeking lower, more stable energy states and that neutrons have an easier go of getting into a nucleus because they lack charge. In these LENR systems we have a metal lattice, vibrating at higher frequencies as they are heated, lots of free roaming surface electrons, nano- or micro-scale nickel powders and hydrogen saturating any surface defects in the metal lattice, coupled with electromagnetic pulses. We know that transmutation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation) and resulting energy release can be triggered by the introduction of sufficiently energetic neutrons. That’s established science. Perhaps LENR+ involves the spontaneous creation of a sufficiently energetic neutron, or “effective neutron” (an electron and hydrogen with quantum states that make them look like a neutron to nearly a nearby nucleus) for long enough to trigger its absorption. This new isotope of the absorbing element may be unstable and subsequently release an electron, causing both energy release and transmutation of the absorbing element to next one up on the periodic table (thus matching some observed results). With so many particles and their quantum states overlapping and rapidly changing in such a confined space, the LENR reaction may be exploiting a complex quantum pathway to a lower energy state.
Of course, nobody knows exactly what’s happening yet and the above are only an educated guesses. Diligent scientific experiments will be needed to figure out what’s really happening. With LENR though we assert that we might have the ingredients and environment to create extreme nanoscale conditions that make some particle interactions possible that usually aren’t. So LENR may involve new physics, but it also may not. It may just be a set of conditions we haven’t thought of or didn't understand all the subtleties of.
There is a Wikiversity page (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cold_fusion/Theory) that contains summaries of many of the theories that LENR scientists have proposed as possible explanations, the most widely cited of which is probably Widom-Larsen.
Point: While no commonly-accepted scientific theory exists to explain LENR phenomena there are some worth considering, and the nature of the ingredients feels right for generating localized energy hot spots that could conceivably trigger complex nuclear interactions.
Counterpoint: Nuclear physics and quantum physics have been thoroughly studied and are well understood, established science. LENR observations contradict this known body of nuclear and quantum physics and therefore must be false.
Science - Gammas and Neutrons
Nuclear physicists or those familiar with nuclear science often assert that unless there is detectable gamma radiation or high-energy neutrons then what is happening cannot possibly be nuclear in origin. Given that the observations show more energy than explicable by known chemical reactions, their confident assertion that nuclear reactions are also not possible, leaves LENR nowhere to go. This explains a large part of the scientific establishment’s hostility to LENR and LENR+ claims.
You may be interested to know then that although neutrons have never been detected there is some ambiguity around gammas. Two things:
An Italian scientist, Francesco Celani, claims (http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg80448.html) to have detected a brief burst of gamma radiation at one of Rossi’s tests in 2011.
Rossi himself has claimed that gamma radiation is produced by the E-Cat, but only lower frequency gammas and that they are absorbed by the device shielding (and thus one source of heat energy). No gamma radiation has been detected outside the device during formal semi-independent testing.
Point: Detection of gammas radiation is a definite hint that something very energetic, maybe nuclear, might be taking place in the E-Cat reactor.
Counterpoint: Hearsay and more “Rossi says” don’t amount to science. Moreover, the energies of the alleged gammas still don’t match nuclear theory, so there can be nothing to this.
Engineering
Engineering sits on the foundation of science but must deal with the realities of designing complex systems, applying control theory and the inevitability of the prototype-test-revise spiral. Viewing the E-Cat and LENR+ in the engineering dimension is instructive.
Engineering - E-Cat Prototype Development
We are fortunate that this technology drama is occurring in the age of the Internet and we have a window into Rossi’s activities. Almost daily he answers questions in his online “journal (http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/)”. Now, the journal itself is pure wild west... although it has a modicum of peer review, just about anything goes... it accepts papers from anywhere and just says that the authors are responsible for their content. But the most important aspect of the journal to date is that he accepts questions in the associated forums and routinely answers them, as well as interjects sometimes with important announcements. So we have had unique access to the ongoing activities of Andrea Rossi and the development of his E-Cats.
These communications have been enlightening, exciting, confusing, frustrating and sometimes maddening. Rossi is an Italian with a functional but far from perfect command of English. As a result virtually every comment he makes is subject to interpretation. People try to nail him down with specific questions and sometimes that works, but other times the imprecision or vagueness never gets settled completely. Sometimes his remarks seem intentionally misleading and promised timelines aren't realized. Sometimes he shuts a thread down with a terse “confidential.” He won’t talk about what’s happening inside the reactor and some avenues of inquiry run into claims of non-disclosure agreements with entities he can’t even name. You can go through and read all of his comments. They birthed a new Internet phenomenon termed “Rossi Says,” because following the E-Cat story meant most of the debate was about things Rossi had said in his journal that were not verifiable (at least not immediately).
But take a step back from the minutiae and you see a man who follows through on his word about the big things and is tremendously excited by his work. He promised a product acceptance test in October 2011. It happened (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc5K090SZFg). He promised independent validation in 2012. We got validation, but independent was an overstatement. He said more independent testing was happening in late 2012 and early 2013 by university professors. That report, which many skeptics felt would never see the light of day, was published in May 2013 and that report is clearly not a “Rossi Says.”
The reason Rossi’s journal communications are interesting is because they also offer a window into the continued engineering and evolution of these E-Cat prototypes. Whenever an exciting advance was made he shared it with his journal readers. Readers have been privy to details about Warm Cats, valve malfunctions, frustrations with demands for endless demonstrations that never convinced the skeptics anyway, heat transfer and energy conversion technologies, Hot Cats, Mouse activators, COP and myriad other details. We shared his nervousness during the latest independent testing. We heard his anger when somebody leaked unauthorized pictures of Hot Cat testing. We have heard a lot about control issues. He can be more reserved about these control issues and other problems, but it was clear he was confronted by a slew of them and happy as a clam whenever he overcame one of them.
Sure, it’s possible that for over three years Rossi has performed an improv to end all improvs and nailed the role of eccentric engineer with a major discovery. But more likely, he is what he seems to be: an engineer struggling with setbacks and complexity as he builds prototypes of a new kind of device.
Point: Rossi’s engineering activities over the past 3 years fit expectations of what real world prototype/product development looks like.
Counterpoint: Plausibility and realism are hallmarks of the long con. Just because he acts and communicates like a real engineer doesn't mean he is one.
Engineering - LENR+ Discovery
Another point to be made from the engineering angle is about the initial discovery of the “catalyst” that turns LENR into LENR+. Rossi is not a scientist, he is an engineer. He had previously worked in the energy industry and was familiar with the LENR findings (specifically those of Italian scientists Piantelli and Focardi). Rather than leave it to the scientists to figure out exactly what was happening he decided to see if he could build a better mousetrap by systematically testing different materials and configurations. He claims to have tried over a thousand different materials to increase the heat generation over a number of years, and one lucky day had success.
This is different than claiming that he and he alone knows what the science is. He is more modestly claiming that he tried a bunch of stuff, hit on something that worked and has since been refining the device for better output, better control and better safety in a race to get it to market as fast as possible.
Rossi’s approach mirrors that of Thomas Edison who tried many different materials before he hit on a carbon filament for electric light bulbs that lasted long enough to be practical, and later a carbonated bamboo filament that lasted very long. He didn't invent the light bulb, he just invented the one that worked well enough to actually commercialize by trying a bunch of materials for the key light-producing component. Rossi didn't invent LENR devices but he may have discovered a way to make LENR commercially viable.
It’s quite a stretch to think Rossi spent such an amount of time and effort just to lay the foundation for a future scam.
Point: The discovery of LENR+ through brute force trial and error over a number of years on top of a foundation of existing LENR results, despite limited knowledge of the underlying scientific processes, is completely plausible.
Counterpoint: Rossi needed to make his long con look believable, so he started out by crafting a plausible creation story. This would be step 1 in generating a cadre of true believers that he could leverage into investments and eventually walk away rich and laughing.