The fusion age has begun.

JoshNH4H · 2011-12-12 12:38:40

Adaptation wrote:

The guy says that fusion happens even with out his fancy catalyst, I don't just want to be on the sidelines for something this big; I'm going to put it to the test.
I found a makeshift schematic from a NASA paper on the subject, bought some nickle powder. I have a well suited machine shop for the metal fab and have more than adequate vacuum pumps for degassing and I'm bidding on a guiger counter.
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government … rkshop.pdf
Josh when I turn it on and detect elevated gamma radiation will you eat a hat I give you?

Well, actually I said I would supply the hat. And if you can get your excess gamma ray production validated by a scientist of standing and endorsed by the scientific community, yes, I will eat my hat. Short of that, it does not seem that you are not a scientist by trade given that you don't work for a university (else you would have access to any and all papers published on the topic, instead of a NASA publication which is of course available to the public). So, get it verified, I'll eat my hat. I'll even give you pictures of the hats I own for you to choose from.

It'll take me a while, though.

GW Johnson · 2011-12-12 22:34:17

And, no, I'm not asking anyone to eat a hat. Funny as that might be.

GW

JoshNH4H · 2011-12-13 00:47:19

GW, I agree with you that if Cold Fusion works it would be quite beneficial and all that. But the facts are that thus far essentially all of the reports of Cold Fusion can be ascribed to crooks or bad science.

The comment about me eating my hat was in reference to a post that I made earlier in the topic:

I wrote:

If this e-cat ends up providing net power to the grid I will eat my hat, and you can quote me on this (and choose from all of the hats I own which one I would eat).

Terraformer · 2011-12-13 02:58:48

Josh - is it possible to be a scientist by trade? A scientist is not a job title, it's part of who you are...

JoshNH4H · 2011-12-13 12:39:13

A person who is a scientist by trade would be a person who makes their living working as a scientist for a research university, government agency, etc. In other words, a professional academic who has a reputation. Science is obviously not limited to these people, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and given that there is a credibility issue here I would like to see someone who is credible endorse results before I accept them.

Terraformer · 2011-12-13 17:31:29

However, that cuts both ways - they now have a reputation to protect, which can hinder them from going after far out ideas...

louis · 2011-12-13 20:41:30

JoshNH4H wrote:

A person who is a scientist by trade would be a person who makes their living working as a scientist for a research university, government agency, etc. In other words, a professional academic who has a reputation. Science is obviously not limited to these people, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and given that there is a credibility issue here I would like to see someone who is credible endorse results before I accept them.

That's an irrational viewpoint. Extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence. I remember when Michael Jackson married Lisa Presley no one could believe it - for a variety of reasons. It was an extraordinary claim. But it didn't require extraordinary evidence. It just required the usual sort of evidence - a Dominican Republic marriage certificate, a press release, confirmatory statements from bride and groom etc etc.

Similarly with LENR/cold fusion. What is required is the usual replication (which has been achieved). Who is the arbiter by the way of what "bad science" is. LENR has been confirmed in peer review papers. What more do you want?

It seems to me that all that is required of the LENR advocates is to live up to the experiments - produce a working device. Rossi claims he is doing just that. I think we can at least give him a year to produce good evidence that he has achieved that.

JoshNH4H · 2011-12-16 15:49:55

The normal standard for evidence within the scientific community does entail extraordinary evidence. The current standard for claiming a discovery in particle physics is 5 sigma- that is to say 5 standard deviations from the mean, which is another way of saying 1 chance in a million (literally!) that the discovery is a result of random chance or measurement error. I do not believe that that standard has been met to date by the people experimenting with cold fusion.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Evidence that is piecemeal and patchy at best certainly won't do.

louis · 2011-12-16 17:08:46

Josh -

Take a look at this - I think the scientific evidence for LENR is really persuasive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VymhJCcNBBc

JoshNH4H · 2011-12-16 17:24:10

I don't have an hour to watch that entire video. But I am familiar with the evidence that is generally used in support of Cold Fusion. The three primary claims are excess heat production, Helium Production, and Gamma Production. None of these effects have been confirmed in a reproducible manner.

Terraformer · 2011-12-16 18:08:08

He's not claiming Helium production, though - he's claiming Iron and Copper production (from Nickle )...

louis · 2011-12-16 19:02:01

Josh -

The film refers to 21 peer reviewed papers published in scientific journals confirming LENR.

When you get the time do have a look - it's one of the best presentations on LENRcold fusion I've ever seen.

GW Johnson · 2011-12-17 16:28:55

Like I said before, I hope the guy is right. We could use some clean fusion power.

This E-cat stuff would be outside the realm of "accepted science", if it is true, not a fraud. That doesn't bother me a bit. When the universe doesn't conform to our precious theories, it's time for some new theories, I always say.

But then, I'm an engineer.

GW

JoshNH4H · 2012-01-19 13:08:52

louis- How about all of the peer-reviewed studies which have looked into "Cold Fusion" and concluded that it was a hoax or a scam? I would imagine that there are much more than 21 of them. Further, is it a fair bet that you have not actually read a single one of these studies?

GW- I have no issue with replacing theories when new evidence comes along. However, when the theories are so fundamental (If valid, Rossi's claims might require a re-evaluation of both Relativity and Quantum Physics), you need some pretty conclusive and well-validated evidence to actually merit such a re-evaluation. Given the fact that it has proven nearly impossible to reproduce the results of any cold fusion experiment claims independently, as well as the low quality of the research which has been conducted on this topic and the lack of transparency shown by cold fusion proponents, I don't believe that evidence to exist at present.

When the state of the art in science changes, you know the scientific method is working. But to change the theories when the evidence is against the need for such a change is just as wrong as keeping them the same when they no longer encompass the available facts.

louis · 2012-01-19 13:17:48

JoshNH4H wrote:

louis- How about all of the peer-reviewed studies which have looked into "Cold Fusion" and concluded that it was a hoax or a scam? I would imagine that there are much more than 21 of them. Further, is it a fair bet that you have not actually read a single one of these studies?
.

Josh -

I am afraid you have a naive view of science. It isn't some ideal disinterested search for the truth - it's more often a snakepit of competing interests, grubbing for money, commercial corruption and dirty tricks. This link tells the real story about how MIT and others suppressed the truth: that cold fusion was replicated after Pons and Fleischmann's initial experiments.

http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/p … report.pdf

Read up on what's been going on!

JoshNH4H · 2012-01-19 14:31:24

"www.infinite-energy.com"- The height of credible sources.

Have the experiments been repeatedly and successfully replicated or have they not? If so, please provide credible sources demonstrating this assertion.

Last edited by JoshNH4H (2012-01-19 14:31:51)

louis · 2012-01-19 15:22:58

JoshNH4H wrote:

"www.infinite-energy.com"- The height of credible sources.
Have the experiments been repeatedly and successfully replicated or have they not? If so, please provide credible sources demonstrating this assertion.

Not sure how one can have a sensible debate if you are going to judge a wealth of evidence on your view of the journal where it appears.

You've had a list of peer-reviewed papers. This article explains there were a number of replications or partial replications with those backing orthodoxy refused to recognise. The whole point about LENR is that it is not easily reproducible as there are a number of crucial parameters. But it is now evident - as NASA confirms -that LENR is real. You can be a compulsive denier if you wish -but don't confuse it with scepticism.

Terraformer · 2012-01-19 16:53:14

Ahem. To talk about a different kind of somewhat cold fusion, my copy of JBIS came yesterday. There's a paper in it about fusion using beams of Ions colliding with a neutral target to induce fusion - while only 1/10 of the ions will actually result in a fusion event at most, they'll scatter and still have kinetic energy which can be recovered, raising the efficiency of the device potentially high enough to produce Q>1. They were suggesting bubbles of Tritium, but I'm thinking it would be better to use Lithium, for several reasons. It's aneutronic, so energy recovery is a lot easier (you'd end up with a lot of positive ions with high kinetic energy which can be decelerated to produce electricity directly) and there's a lot less transmutation of the reactor (there'll be some neutrons produced from side reactions I think), the fuel is more abundant, and it's solid (so you can have a rod feeding into the reaction chamber). I'm probably going to send them a message some time asking about it - the thing is, it might be possible to build one at home, given the simplicity of the design...

JoshNH4H · 2012-01-19 21:09:54

Terraformer- That's hardly "Cold Fusion," seeing as the ions are moving with a very high kinetic energy. I always thought that was a viable solution, but I was under the impression that there was no way to get the proportion of bombardments which actually leads to fusion to high enough levels to make it practical. Is there any specific advance which makes this more practical than previous attempts.

I don't quite know why you are such a big fan of doing things at home, but experimenting with nuclear technology without proper facilities is quite dangerous and possibly deadly to you and others in the immediate vicinity.

Terraformer · 2012-01-20 03:32:12

I've nowhere else to experiment? Besides, people build fusion reactors all the time for science projects - I believe that a D-D Farnsworth-Hirsch reactor is quite common? We're not talking about massive temperatures here - temperature is dependent upon the *random* kinetic energy of the particles, and the ions don't have random motions. Granted, the resulting plasma will have a high temperature, but...

The proposal was, quite simply, to recover the energy that would otherwise be wasted. Using the example of aneutronic fusion, the protons would still have kinetic energy which can be recovered - not possible in a Tokamak (though who actually believes they're the way forward anymore?).

JoshNH4H · 2012-01-20 14:24:41

As I said before, experimenting with fusion reactors is potentially quite dangerous; If you have nowhere to experiment but at home then perhaps some of these experiments ought not to be carried out at all.

This is potentially different than a fusor because fusors are limited both in size and in energy input. In combination with the fact that their Q is minimal, this results in very low neutron production. This is not necessarily so if you're talking about a device with Q>1.

The fast-moving ions can be viewed as a way to create a very hot plasma locally. And by recovering the energy, are you talking about in the form of converting the heat from the impact back into usable energy? Doable I suppose.

By the way, given that for all its other flaws ITER will probably achieve Q>1, that seems to be the way forwards in the fusion field these days.

Terraformer · 2012-01-20 18:26:01

Tokamaks are far too big to be viable economically - the high cost of entry will serve to ensure that there is no revolution in energy costs.

I like how often you use the word potentially. Presumably, the rate of neutrons could be varied (though they'd be produced by a side reaction, since I'm talking about aneutronic fusion) as can the rate of gamma radiation, by varying the fusion rate.

The idea is to recapture the ions to recover their kinetic energy. Since they'll be positively charged, it's relatively easy, especially if the products are also positively charged. I'll have to read the paper that's got the details of how they intend to do it. I'm not sure what the best shape of the rod would be - probably best to have the ions impacting from the sides to minimise the impact of the ions on the wall of the reactor. Perhaps we can generate a plasma from the Lithium by running a sufficient voltage across it?

JoshNH4H · 2012-01-20 19:48:18

Energy in general involves big machines these days. High investment costs aren't a huge impediment to switching out our energy production system, and in first world nations, at least, there will probably be significant government subsidies forthcoming as soon as a non-fission based practical alternative to fossil fuels is discovered.

I should be clear, by the way: I don't think that any of the current methods of generating power from fusion energy will turn out to be practical. I actually agree that the costs of tokamaks, as currently produced are far too high to make them viable, even if they do generate sufficient net power (and in this case, I think we're looking for Q>100 ideally). It is my opinion that our energy issues can best be solved through a transition to Molten Salt Reactors using U-233 fuel, transmuted from Thorium. The reactor could be mass-produced, completely closed, and computer controlled. Perhaps generate power using MHD generators or even thermoelectrics (which need more research IMO), to reduce the number of moving parts. Let the fluoride salts of the other elements boil away or precipitate out and collect them.

In a more direct response to your post, varying the fusion rate would be a wonderful way to vary the amount of radiation produced. Doing that (and remember, you have to do it from the very first time) is quite difficult in a homemade device.

If you're pointing your ions at a solid target, it will be quite difficult to recover the energy from the ion beam efficiently. If you think about it, the likelihood of fusion (which is directly proportional to the likelihood of the ion hitting anything) is inversely proportional to the extent to which you can recover energy from the ion beam when fusion does not occur. Re-reading that sentence, it might not make sense. Basically, I'm saying that if the target is dense enough that the ions actually hit it, then it will be very difficult to recover the energy of the collisions which do not lead to fusion.

Terraformer · 2012-01-21 05:56:57

Well, obviously I wouldn't be trying to go for net power generation from the start, even if I had to resources to build a fusor. First order of business would be to make sure the energy capture system worked, then to make sure the non-fusing ions could be recaptured, and only then would I even attempt fusion (hmmm, I should be able to build an ion gun, though, and what I'd need to decelerate it).

louis · 2012-01-21 11:55:29

Latest news from Rossi is that he will be releasing within the next two weeks a timetable on establishment of a factory to manufacture the E cat heaters. We should have a clearer fix then on what is proposed in terms of getting this device on the market.

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#26 2011-12-12 12:38:40

Re: The fusion age has begun.

#27 2011-12-12 22:34:17

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#28 2011-12-13 00:47:19

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#29 2011-12-13 02:58:48

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#30 2011-12-13 12:39:13

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#31 2011-12-13 17:31:29

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#32 2011-12-13 20:41:30

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#33 2011-12-16 15:49:55

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#34 2011-12-16 17:08:46

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#36 2011-12-16 18:08:08

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#37 2011-12-16 19:02:01

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#38 2011-12-17 16:28:55

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#39 2012-01-19 13:08:52

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#40 2012-01-19 13:17:48

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#41 2012-01-19 14:31:24

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#42 2012-01-19 15:22:58

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#43 2012-01-19 16:53:14

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#44 2012-01-19 21:09:54

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#45 2012-01-20 03:32:12

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