Believing in Cold Fusion and the E-Cat

Mark Gibbs, Forbes.com

excerpts

•  Rossi has previously conducted several demonstrations of the E-Cat
• revealed results have done little to convince the skeptics
• A subgroup of the Believers which I shall call the “Suppresists”, appear to be firmly convinced that there is a conspiracy by commercial interests and or the government to prevent any device that upsets the energy economy status quo from being developed and made public. [ comment:  I can believe this, yes sir.  It is naive to believe that with so much on the line in terms of money and power, that those affected would stand by and do nothing to stop it.]
• So, if Rossi isn’t in it for the money, then what else could he be in it for? If his goal was the betterment of mankind, he’s going about it in a very strange way. If it’s for fame and glory, his current way of promoting the E-Cat makes no sense. [comment:  Yes, of course.  Don't underestimate the power of incompetence.]
• So, as with the other E-Cat tests, we’re really not much better off than we were prior to the 28th.[ comment: Yes, but that can be corrected to a certain extent.  Not necessarily the way this guy says, but in a way that can satisfy reasonable people.  Rossi isn't going to allow third parties to check it out.  But maybe he doesn't have to.  Or he could do it in a novel way, like by demo on the internet or something like that.]

Rebuttal to Krivit's Accusation that Andrea Rossi is a Fraudster

FreeRepublic

Well, I guess people may be persuaded by this, but not me.

Hard data please.

With respect to the Rossi Test today, 10/28/11

Not much to say.  I got Rossi's report off his website.  There are a few jpg pics and a spreadsheet file.  So, I checked out the spreadsheet.  My computer can't handle the data, evidently.  Or not all of it.  At any rate, all I can tell is that the temperature went up to boiling point and slightly above and stayed there for several hours.  This doesn't yield much data for analysis.  There may have been more though, but this is all I can get.  I am waiting to see if anybody out there has more to say.  So far, nothing.

Update: 10/29/11  7:48 am

There are now plenty of reports of the test.  It appears from the reports that it has been successful.  However, the data is still not in a form that my computer will accept totally.  It is giving me an error report.  Evidently, I need Excel, which I don't have.  Microsoft's Works won't get it all.

Unless there's something in the data which I can't access as of now, I don't believe this is going to shut up the "seagulls".   They will still squawk about this.  From where I'm standing, I can't say anything to answer them.  There's not enough data.

A sale was made.  I suppose congratulations are in order.  But, as an independent person, I am not convinced of much by this test.  Sorry.

Update 2: 10/29/11 11:45 am

I've managed to find an Excel viewer and this is what I couldn't load up.

Again, there's nothing here.  The only thing that appears to have been accomplished is that Rossi has sold this unit.  It is not scientific proof at all.  But, that is probably no concern to Rossi.  Just the same, I'd like to have more data.

1MW TEST: E-DAY or T-DAY for ROSSI?

EGO OUT: 1MW TEST: E-DAY or T-DAY for ROSSI? October 28. 2011- the much hyped and waited 1MW E-cats test takes place in Bologna, after being planned...


Update:

Video via ColdFusionNow YouTube page

Race to Mine the Moon Heats Up

Didn't know that there was a race. I've been in favor of this idea since I first learned about the opportunity.

Rush Limbaugh likes to say that he is on the cutting edge of societal evolution.  If I may brag a little, I think I know what that must feel like now.  Mining the moon is cutting edge stuff.  So is the E-cat.  And I am in on the cutting edge.

How 'bout that?

Enhanced Dragon capsule begins launch preparations

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News

excerpts:

• The gumdrop-shaped capsule was trucked cross-country from Hawthorne, Calif
• It arrived Sunday at the SpaceX hangar in Cape Canaveral.
• Other new systems on the upcoming flight include the hatch, a bay door housing the craft's grapple fixture, and a claw that provides electrical and data connections between the capsule and its trunk, or service module, Musk told Congress on Wednesday.
• Liftoff of the next Dragon is scheduled aboard a Falcon 9 rocket for no earlier than Dec. 19
• officials agreed to combine the second and third demos, known as Dragon C2 and C3, into a single mission

Other news for SpaceX:

SpaceX: We Need NASA to Change Crew Contracts

excerpts:

• "We may not bid on it," SpaceX founder Elon Musk said. However he is increasingly optimistic that the agency will change some of the rules that dictate the design.
• As Popular Mechanics reported last week, this early version of the contract allows NASA to exert more control over the hardware design than many in the industry are comfortable with.
• That is a big deal, considering the contract is fixed-price.
• What is clear, the companies say, is that the timeline in NASA’s contract is too slow—all the players told Congress they could launch by 2015, while the NASA contract states a 2017 flight date.

Comment:

Could NASA be sabotaging commercial crew in order to protect their turf?

Znidarsic's lecture at "The Third International Conference for Future Energy"

Mentions Rossi's work.  BEC's once again?  I think so.  My impression is that it seems to be once again about the nature of waves.

The quality of the video is not really too good. Here's a YouTube video that you can see the ideas, perhaps a bit better.

AlienScientist Interview with Frank Znidarsic Part 1 of 2

The SuperWave™ Fusion Process

Uploaded by nofunclub Apr 23, 2009

Not exactly a new video, but I wanted to point out the "Wave" aspect of this process. It seems that waves have a significance in cold fusion. As a collective excitation, could they become bosons and form a BEC?

This video doesn't claim that, however.  Now, if the collective excitation does become a BEC, it could explain the ability to cross the coulomb barrier and fuse.

BMW Turbosteamer and Thermoelectric Generator are close to commercialization

Next Big Future

excerpt:

the latest generation of TEGs installed in the exhaust are capable of generating 600 watts of electrical power, and it will not be long before the goal of 1,000 watts is reached as research progresses

Comment:

Given that the E-cat produces heat, but not electricity, wouldn't it be useful to make use of that heat in some way?  Perhaps this automotive technology could be adapted to work with the E-cat, or some other method could be employed.  The point is, with the heat production now generated by the E-cat, some electricity can be generated with technology now available.

But I'm seeing numbers like 5 to 10 percent, which is not so great.  For example, if the E-cat produces 1 MW of heat, you could only get 100 kilowatts of electricity out of it.  This needs to get a lot better.

A Stirling solar dish can get about 30%.   But that uses concentrated solar power with temperatures over 1000 degrees Centigrade.  The E-cat doesn't get that hot.
 

Cold Fusion Enigma, Secrets Remain--- Fleischmann Pons IV

In the last post of this series, I mentioned the fact that the video Fire from Water was worth watching again and again.  It so happens that Miley was in that video, in which is shown from a screenshot here:

As before, you can learn a lot from that video by watching.  Anyway, since Miley recently mentions Patterson in connection with Rossi- while Patterson's work was also mentioned in the video as well.

CETI power cell

But my most recent post, Dr. Les Case figures in this.  It seems that Case had a way to sustain a certain temperature, but what if that device could be improved upon somehow?  That's the idea I got by watching this video again.  Case says in the video that his device could hold 215 degree Centigrade.  Is that hot enough? What if you could make it hotter?

If you were to have Case's device plus a nickel hydrogen device combined, the cell could get hotter than this, or so I postulate.

I recall the Brillouin Energy device described by Godes.  This obviously produces energy, but what if it isn't enough to keep it self sustaining.  Now, if you were to combine both, they could both sustain each other.

Another thing I found was mentioned by Edmund Storms where he says that the sonic device will load the hydrogen in the metal better.

And that one of the cold fusion techniques used involves the use of ultra sound.  That could be the "Q" that Godes refers to.

Now, if you were to combine all these, you can get a device that produces enough heat to sustain itself.

There's but one more thing to be mastered, if my hypothesis is correct.  Rossi needs to produce just enough electricity to run his "frequency" input so as to have absolutely no energy input while producing the heat output demonstrated on Oct 6th.

Furthermore, Rossi's device could produce enough electricity to run something like a light bulb continuously for days on end, that should remove all doubt that may remain about its efficacy.

Advances in Dense Plasma for Fusion Power and Space Propulsion

via Next Big Future post

Followup post here.

ADVANCES IN DENSE PLASMA FOR FUSION POWER AND SPACE PROPULSION, with George Miley, Ph.D.

Dr. George Miley Replicates Patterson, Names Rossi

Next Big Future and eCat Site

excerpts (eCat site):

• Dr. Miley feels that the work of Mr. Patterson and Andrea Rossi have many similarities and has offered a theory that is felt to cover both.
•  I have included a slide show of this presentation below.
• Previously Dr. Miley has explored the use of fusion for rockets and space planes and a presentation covering that subject can be viewed here.

Comment:
The slide show is fast, so you have to read really fast. Tip: hit the pause button. The link to fusion rocketry is interesting in itself.

Update: 10/23

I revisited the post since I overlooked this snippet:

There is some discussion that he not getting the kilowatts that Patterson was claiming I hear from attendees that Miley is getting about 300 watts of thermal power without inputting any energy. ¹[emphasis mine]

George Miley has worked on all kinds of nuclear fusion and headed the nuclear fusion department at the University of Illinois. He is a far more respectable source and researcher than Rossi. ²[emphasis mine]

Comments:
¹ That's quite a significant finding. Thermal power without input of energy.

² There you go again.  But what does politics have to do with it?  I say everything!  Politics and Science are linked.  Scientists can play the political game, just like the politicians.  Money is at stake, as well as power.

"Private" 1MW eCat Test Will Feature Live Webcam

Free Energy Truth

I didn't see an address so that I can watch it.  I will look for it, and post it here if I find it.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics produced 150 billion neutrons in each of two shots on October 10

Next Big Future


In the comments section, BW says that they need 300,000 times as much as they are getting now in order to reach break even.


It sounded like good progress until he wrote that.

Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) would be useful for the moon too

Actually, this problem was solved during the Apollo years. The tiny ascent stage on the Lunar Module, which weighed only a little over 10,000 pounds, was a SSTO vehicle. The problem is that you need to double up on it, so that it can do both ascent and descent in the same vehicle. Which it did, but at the cost of 32,399 pounds of hardware. The downside is that it could not be reused. Still got a launch problem, as with the Earth.

I've been researching the topic, and found some interesting stuff. A single VASIMR engine can tow 7 metric tons to a low lunar orbit. If you can keep the weight of a theoretically reusable Lunar Module under that, you can get your Lunar Module into place for a sortie on the lunar surface. The ascent stage for the Apollo programs was less than 5 metric tons. So, if you can do this, you can have the lion's share of an architecture that can do this type of job, and it could all be fully reusable. One more thing is that the VASIMR can't take the astronauts. Some other means needs to be found for that.

I'll stop here and post this as an introduction. I'll update it as the day goes along. Keep tuned.

Update:

The original post on this subject, I assumed 10,000 kg.  There were some errors in the spreadsheet, so I calibrated it, so to speak, by filling in the spreadsheet using Apollo data:

Gives us our baseline spacecraft

From there, I re worked the spreadsheet to get back to a 900 ISP monopropellant propulsion (assuming this is possible).  Mass savings were achieved for propellant, but came at the cost of extra hardware.  Hopefully, the hardware can fit on the spacecraft and not be too heavy.

Does saving 1350 kg in fuel help us?

It may be possible to add additional mass, since the VASIMR can get it to LLO (low lunar orbit) from LEO (low Earth orbit).  So, I added the extra mass, which brings it back up to 7000 kg.  This is less than the original 10,000 kg, but within the capability of the VASIMR from LEO.

Maxxed out at 7000 kg, but this is too heavy for my taste.  Can we lighten it up a little?

It is heavy, so let's lighten it up a little and assume only oxygen monopropellant.  Why oxygen?  Because the moon is loaded with it.  You can harvest it directly from the lunar surface at just about any location.  This gives us the capability to set up "filling stations" all over the lunar surface and get to any part of it.

I found that by using oxygen, it got too heavy, so I deleted some mass.  Hopefully, the configuration is feasible.

Mono propellant reaction mass using oxygen, with ISP of 460, the same as for hydrogen combustion

I think that it isn't assuming too much that an oxygen only propellant can achieve an ISP at the upper range of a conventional hydrogen oxygen combustion engine.  Thus, we are adding 1500 kg in wet mass without needing more fuel.  We can replace the existing rocket engines and add our new hardware, while hopefully remaining under the weight limit.  (cross your fingers)

If this can be achieved, the entire lunar surface is available to us.

Update:

It looks like getting oxygen out of moon rocks may be more of a challenge that I thought.  ( What else is new?)  Anyway, it would be a great idea to go to the lunar poles first, and get situated there.

It turns out that you can obtain your oxygen from the iron oxides on the moon, but you have to beneficiate them first, then use a redox reaction to get the oxygen out.  You get the oxygen out in the form of water or carbon dioxide, depending upon what reducing agent you use- hydrogen or carbon monoxide.  You will at least need a source of hydrogen, and also carbon, which may be available at the poles as well.

I was thinking at some point, you'll want to move from the polar regions to get towards all of the lunar surface area.  You can use lunar oxygen as the reaction mass, you can hop across the surface using nothing more than that as a transportation fuel.  Technically, it would use hydrogen and oxygen in fuel cells, but these elements can be regenerated from the water that the fuel cell produces.  The sun would then be powering your machine, as the energy will be stored in the hydrogen, and thus making hydrogen as the energy carrier for solar power.

Once you have spread out from the polar regions, you can mine the surface for platinum group metals (pgms). Those can be exported to Earth and used there for the hydrogen economy.

Oh, by the way.  You may wonder: why oxygen?  Doesn't that present a problem with oxidizing everything? It turns out that the Space Shuttle's thermal protection used a material that wouldn't oxidize even during the heat of reentry.  You can use that for your heat exchanger.  Parkin's microwave thruster, upon which this idea is based, does the same.

Update: 10/23/11

It looks as if my idea has a serious flaw.  Or at least one serious flaw that I now know about.  The energy calculations are off.  So this idea appears to be off the table.  &^*$!!!!.

E-cat can't get any respect

What do you say to people who reject something without honestly looking at it?

I doubt that many of the critics at that link have even bothered to examine it with an open mind.  They pronounce their judgments like it was an edict from above.  So confident they are!  To these people, there could never have been a surprise in the history of man, could never have been a thing that was discovered that was not already anticipated.

All things are understood, and foretold before it ever happens, amen.

Balderdash!

Who said the moon isn't made of cheese? "Green" cheese, that is.

I making puns out the wazoo here.  You don't get it?  The kind of cheese I'm talking about is green.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cheese

But it is also green because of this

http://instesre.org/Solar/ApolloEarthRise.jpg

All I'm saying is that you can make money off the moon and promote "greener" policies on Earth.  And it doesn't have to cost too much money.

You can mine lunar platinum, for example.  That can be used for fuel cells on Earth.  You can make solar power satellites and launch them from the moon into Earth orbit.  From there it can provide energy to the Earth.

It takes less energy to get from the Moon to Earth orbit, so it will be more economical.

Hydrogen can be obtained from seawater and made into methanol and shipped to wherever it is needed. Methanol can be electrolyzed back into hydrogen, while saving the carbon dioxide, making it carbon neutral.

The solar power satellites and the platinum can sustain a lunar colony, which saves the expense of getting there because someone is already there.  Their being there has to be sustained and the reason for being there will be sustained because there are resources on the moon which can be exploited.  The economic activity can expand further into deeper space, yielding additional returns.

You can also fashion new worlds from lunar materials.  Getting to and from an Earth Moon Lagragian point to another point in space is a lot easier and cheaper than launching rockets from the ground- even if launch costs come way down.  Space exploration and settlement becomes all the more economically feasible and profitable.  This will yield benefits on the ground, making everyone better off.

Floating airship could radically reduce the cost of space access

Sander Olson interviews John Powell of JP Aerospace ---Next Big Future

excerpt (from the comment section):

Here are the 3 remaining potential showstoppers:

1. Scaling active drag reduction.
Active hypersonic drag reduction has been demonstrated in the lab for 30 years. Can we take it out in the real world and scale it up to the airship to orbit requirement?

2. Power density.
Can we achieve the necessary electrical power to mass ratio? The current trend in industry says it will happen in 5 to 7 years, but it's out of our hands.

3. Can you really build two mile long lightweight structures at the edge of space? Working on it, we will let you know.

JP
President
JP Aerospace
America's OTHER Space Program

Comment:
It would be highly ironic and amusing if this can be made to work before NASA can get their big rocket to work.  It won't cost the taxpayer a dime.

Update:

Just noticed the date:  October 6th.  No wonder I missed it.  I was watching the E-cat news very closely that day.

A lot of Nuclear energy could enable an Ammonia as a sustainable fuel

Next Big Future

I wrote about ammonia and methanol synthesis as a hydrogen sources for fuel cells.  I noticed Kirk Sorensen is a contributor to this idea as well.  I've written about thorium too.  Got it covered!

Forbes! Hello Cheap Energy, Hello Brave New World

via Free Energy Truth about the E-cat.

Not an endorsement, but it does speculate a bit about the benefits that could come from this technology.

Toward a Type 1 civilization

LA Times

July 22, 2008|Michael Shermer | Michael Shermer is an adjunct professor in the School of Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate University, the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a monthly columnist for Scientific American. His latest book is "The Mind of the Market."

Someone beat me to the punch.  Shermer is talking about Kardashevian Aspirations several years ago.

 

Cheap power: An overnight revolution -- Commentary

By Sterling D. Allan, Pure Energy Systems News

excerpts:

• When considering the logarithmically diminished time it takes to achieve 25% market penetration since the automobile was introduced a century ago (it took a century for it to reach 25%), and more recently the mobile phone took just 13 years, and the web took 7 years; it's conceivable that free energy, starting with Rossi's E-Cat, could take just 3 years.  "Note: I've added a projection for the appearance of "Free Energy" technologies into the marketplace, and how long it will take to reach use by 1/4 of the U.S. Population".
• Mark Gibbs, a columnist for NetworkWorld, has published an excellent article about Andrea Rossi's E-Cat technology, portraying how it could impact the world, if it is for real. It was picked up by ComputerWorld in Norway. 
•  But hot fusion is not what the E-Cat does[;] and, while much of the commentary on this device characterizes it as "cold fusion," Rossi claims that it isn't actually cold fusion at all but involves a Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (I can't figure out what the difference between cold fusion and LENR might be from the research I've done). [ Comment: the difference between cold fusion and LENR may be the difference between protons and neutrons.  But don't quote me on that.]
• So, here's the question: Let's assume Rossi's E-Cat works. What then?
• Production costs for anything would fall. The power grid would become obsolete. Power stations of all kinds would no longer be an environmental problem. The balance of economic power worldwide would change and, for example, OPEC would become a historical footnote. [ Comment:  This goes a bit too far.  But the change would be noticeable.]
• You thought the adoption of the Web was fast? This could change everything overnight.

Comment:

I can see where some may think of this as a bit of hype.  However, the pace of change is quickening.  Some folks have called that the Singularity.

• 
  

Bread and Circuses

Carnival of Space 219

Comment: Sorry to have to put it this way, but this shouldn't be a spectacle for people's amusement. We've got some real problems here to solve, and I think that space can help us with that. I get the feeling from looking at these sites, that the main interest seems to be in entertainment.

Discovery?

This is your chance to share your original, out-of-this-world take on the future of space exploration—in three minutes or less. Where will we go? What will we discover? Submit your video by November 3, 2011 and we’ll choose ONE winner. [comment: emphasis mine]

How about problem solving?  These people have got it wrong.  But what else is new?  That's how we get the kind of messes we have these days.

Seven Skinny E-Cats Eating Seven Fat Cats

EGO OUT: (comments regarding the Oct.6 Fat Cat experiment) Quoting from Ni-H LENR Genesis 40:21 (a chapter of the Transition Metal LENR Great B...

Comment:  Not a good review of the e-cat demo of Oct 6th.  Quote:

It has happened again- not the ugly facts were slaying beautiful hypotheses but bad experiments have ruined good ideas. 

He may have a point, there.  Anything good could get lost in a maze if improperly executed.  People will get hung up on the process, not the product.

Unofficial says "Andy the Grump"

I got the link to this video from the Talk:Energy Catalyzer page on Wikipedia.

Someone (ip address only) put the video up and the above title was the response to it.  It wasn't given much respect.  I would hope that they would take down such posts as abusive.  If it isn't relevant as Grump also said, the post should be deleted.

If you were to look at this as a court case, would Mats Lewan be considered as a reliable witness to what he saw?  His opinions would probably not be accepted as expert testimony.  Would a scientist from Upsalla be considered reliable?  His opinions may have some weight.  Given his opinion and what Lewan saw, I don't think that it should be considered unreliable as to what they saw and the one scientists' opinion.  If it was put before a court, and I was in a jury asked to decide upon it, I would need more than what I've read in criticism about it in order to give the criticisms any importance.  Those who were there are to be given more credibility.

Krivit inspected the device once before, but what he said this time is not to be taken seriously.  That was a different demonstration.  And Krivit is not a scientist, so I have noticed.  If he is, he is not mentioning it on the website he contributes to.  This means that his words carry less weight than Lewan's and definitely less weight than the scientist.

You may disagree as to the significance of what the video represents, but treating it with disrespect is a bit out of bounds.

Space Companies Hatch Plans for Reusable Rockets

Technology Review

• In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in late September, Elon Musk, the CEO and chief technology officer of SpaceX, announced plans to develop a fully reusable version of the company's Falcon 9 rocket.  ...I've come to the conclusion that it can be solved, and SpaceX is going to try and do it."
• Musk is backing up his speech with development work. 
• SpaceX is not the only company actively working on an orbital reusable launch vehicle. Blue Origin, the secretive aerospace company founded by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, has NASA funding to mature the design of a space vehicle that could be launched on existing expendable rockets, such as the Atlas V.

Comment:  Don't forget Skylon, the first Single Stage to Orbit spacecraft, which is due in the next 10 years, according to plans.   Also, XCor wants to develop a fully reusable spacecraft.

Sonarluminescence- is this nuclear fusion? (video)

I wonder if there's a connection between this phenomenon and Rossi's device. The reason is that the experiment of October 6th mentioned a "frequency" being produced, and this coincides with a significant increase in the energy production.  This event of a frequency occurs just as the device goes into self sustain mode.  This increase in energy also reminds me of Godes' demonstration video.  Godes refers to it as "Q".
When "Q" is applied to the device, the reaction became much more energetic.  So much so, it was easily observed.  Watch the videos and see for yourself.  The one below and the ones indicated to in the links above.

Are we on the Brink of an Energy Revolution?

Andrea Rossi to Build 1MW Power Plant --- by Al Fin, Oil Price.com via Real Clear Energy

Key quote:

...want to know if an entire new branch of physics is about to be opened, with all the possibilities for new scientific knowledge and technology which that might mean

Comment:

Cold Fusion is going to cause a lot of people's heads to explode.  Professors hate to rewrite their textbooks.

Nissan fuel cell stack with 250% of the energy density versus 2005 version

Next Big Future

The Nissan Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) is ready to go. They just need the hydrogen distribution network.

Comment:  But that shouldn't be a show stopper.  You can reform hydrocarbons for the hydrogen.  Someone mentioned sulfur poisoning.  If that's the last remaining hurdle, we may see hydrogen powered vehicles soon.

 

Is Mining Rare Minerals on the Moon Vital to National Security?

Space.com

• "Yes, we know there are local concentrations of REE on the moon," Pieters told SPACE.com, referring to rare earth elements by their acronym REE.
• KREEP is an acronym based on element symbols for the geochemical component in lunar rocks rich in potassium (K), rare-earth elements (REE), phosphorus (P), thorium, and other incompatible elements, Gertsch explained.
• KREEP is exposed on the lunar surface in certain areas, Gertsch said. Although rare earth elements are not themselves presently detectable by remote instruments, spotting thorium sharpens the ability to spot associated rare-earth elements on the moon's surface due to similar geochemical properties that caused them to crystallize under the same conditions, she added. 
• "For rare earths, they are called rare for their low abundance, not economic value. However, some do have practical use in manufacturing, as in superconducting magnets," said Paul Spudis, a planetary scientist and leading advocate for exploring the moon at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
• "The only possible use of such I have heard of is the possibility of mining lunar thorium not a rare earth, strictly speaking, but associated with them to fuel nuclear reactors for power generation at a lunar base. Quite a distant prospect, I suspect," Spudis advised.
• For Spudis, the real strategic lunar commodity is water.

If all we want from the moon is water, we may as well not go.

Morning Summary, 10/14

Good morning.  A short post to let you know that I'm still out here.

First thing, I did a little housekeeping. The blog is getting a lot of posts, so there's a continual need to improve navigation of this thing.  Well over 2000 posts.

I created a new category so as to break up the Space Colonization category into a sub category called "Moon Madness".  Why use that as a label?  I try to have a sense of humor here.  People probably think colonizing the moon is insane, hence the self deprecating humor.  Perhaps it really is crazy for me to spend my time on something that I will never do.  But it is interesting to me, even if nobody else seems to be interested in it.

Here's some discussion of mild interest to me about the E-cat.   No need to belabor the obvious.  There needs to be more tests, but will Rossi do it?  His mistake may be in trying to cast his skeptics as evil.  He gives that impression because he uses the term "snakes" in order to describe his skeptics.  Sometimes people are just incompetent, not evil.  To his skeptics, Rossi may be the one who is evil.  Some of what they are accusing him of doing would mean that he would be evil indeed, if they were right.  But, I don't see Rossi as evil, nor his opponents.  We need to be more dispassionate about these things.  Science should be about reason, not emotion.

Can people be more reasonable?  Or is that asking too much?  Maybe comparable to expect that cats should bark, and dogs should go "meow".

Solar thruster calcs

Given that 25 kw of electrical power can be created and, assuming that this will lift 25 times 100 kg/kw equals 2500 kg giving a thrust to mass ratio of 1 to 1:

Let's break down the various components to see what we can come up with:

Allow 500 gallon tank, stainless steel for hydrogen storage, plus insulation 1000 lbs or 454 kg,  400 kg hydrogen fuel equals 854 kg for fuel and tank, 35 kg for a suncube 1 square meter times 64 suncubes to generate 25 kwh of electrical power in space.  We don't need as much mass, because it is in space, no weather issues.  So let's assume that you can cut the cubes weight down by 75%.  That gives 560 kg. for the cubes.  Together, the fuel and the power takes up 1414 kg.
 
Need a heat exchanger and a nozzle, pumps and plumbing.  I am wondering if the heat exchanger and the nozzle can be combined.  That would save mass, hopefully.  Some of the plumbing will be inside the heat exchangers.   This may not be comparable in weight, but this engine here would probably be powerful enough to lift off the moon.   It's mass is 242 kg.  If that is all it weighs, we don't need to worry about exotic new combination of heat exchange and nozzle.  Double the mass for those two.  That gives another 242 kg.

Summing up the two above paragraphs, we arrive at  1898 kg.

That leaves 602 kg.  for all of the rest of your equipment before you even get to crew and crew hab.

But not to worry.  The moon's gravitation is but 1/6 of Earth's, so the thrust to mass ratio can be less than 1 and still lift off.  Perhaps it can be as low as 1/4 to 1.  The Shuttle's thrust to mass at liftoff was 1.5 to 1, so  if you take 1/6th of that, you get about 1/4.  So, we have a lot of room left.  Even if I underestimated by a factor of 2, it would still leave a ratio of 1/2, which is twice 1/4.

This exercise is speculative of course.  I'm not qualified to do a thorough enough and accurate enough job for this, but given the possibility of not being too far off, it would appear that a lunar module could be constructed that would allow you to launch missions off the moon into lunar orbit and beyond.  That could be back to Earth, or to a Lagrangian point where a more capable machine could take you to ???  Mars, maybe?

Lunar launch system

This is the brainstorm that I was thinking about.  The idea was to use Fresnel lenses in order to heat up a reaction mass for thrust.  The reaction mass would be hydrogen obtained from lunar water, presumed to be found in permanently shadowed craters near the polar regions.

After considering this for a little while, cold reality began to make its presence known.  The question arose: what is the maximum temperature that can be reached by such a device?  I'm not sure.  It seems apparent from the video link above that temperatures of over 1000 Farenheit are possible.  But is this enough and is this the limit?

That's a question I can't get an answer to very quickly.  So, I am dropping that idea in favor of another proposition, which would include heating the reaction mass.  There doesn't appear to be much doubt that you could get sufficient power to a device that could heat up some hydrogen to levels of a nuclear thermal rocket.  If you could do that, you could get an Isp of around 800 or 900, which is nearly twice that of the recently retired Space Shuttles' main engines.  Not bad for a compact device, and it would take no nukes to do it.

I recalled Parkins' device, which I covered previously here.  

In the comments section, there's a mention of the NERVA nuclear thermal rocket, which was scheduled to be tested on Apollo 20, which was canceled.  It was space ready.

Back to Parkins: It appears that his device used what is called gyrotrons in order to produce the microwave energy which heats up a heat exchanger.  Hydrogen is passed through it and expelled through a nozzle for thrust.

What if a gyrotron could be made small enough so that it could heat up hydrogen in this manner so that it could be used for thrust in a spacecraft?  I looked up gyrotrons on the wikipedia.  On portable application for these devices is in the Active Denial System for the military.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Active_Denial_System_Humvee.jpg

Could such a device could be modified to make it useful for rocket propulsion?  I think the answer could be yes.  Another question is its mass and how much energy does it take and how much does it make?

Mass is important because it imposes great penalties on a rocket.  Another question is the loss in that penalty worth it in terms of performance?  If a rocket could get a 900 Isp with a thing like this, you may be willing to pay for that performance especially since you won't have the mass penalty of having to carry oxygen on board.

Parkins device kept the gyrotrons on the ground, but that imposes its own limits.  If you had a portable one onboard, you could generate your own thrust from solar power and by using hydrogen as a reaction mass. The advantage of hydrogen is that it can enable rocket engines of high Isp to be constructed.   With the gyrotrons, you eliminate the nuclear power component, which has the advantage in that that you won't need radiation shielding.

Could a device such a this have enough thrust to get off the moon?  I'm still thinking about the subject.  Back to that later.

Update:

I'm not sure about the Apollo 20 reference.  But the Nerva nuclear thermal rocket was deemed space worthy.  It could have flown.   It was canceled because it was feared that it would be a commitment to an expensive foray to Mars.  Therefore, it was not due to a failure, but to its success.  The government was afraid of it, in other words.

Morning Summary, 10/13/11

Good morning.

There's not too much more to say about Krivit. After that post, I can't take the dude seriously anymore.

But there's no guarantee that the E-cat will be successful in the long run. Mazda stopped making its rotary engines. A successful concept, but doesn't fit the current market demand. How the E-cat does in the market largely depends upon finding a market for it. I think we are getting to the point where the doubts about its viability are going to be resolved one way or another. Even if it's conceptually viable, it needs to find its market. Or like the rotary engine, it may not make it.


Changing the subject a bit, I've got another brainstorm that I thinking about. It is related to space and it is starting to consume a lot of my thinking. One problem about spaceflight is getting to space economically. Once you get to LEO, you've still got a problem to solve. How to get out of the Earth's gravitation is still a problem. You need a way to do that too. Basically, that is what I am thinking about right now. If I have anything else to post on it, I'll put it up here.

So I'll be keeping my noses in books and such. Posting may be light for awhile. I'll keep up with the usual stuff. Markets and politics and so forth. Just letting you know I'm still out here. So, stay tuned.

Titanium deposits on the moon discovered that are ten times the best concentration on Earth

Next Big Future

Comment:  I looked up what John S. Lewis had to say about the moon in his book Mining the Sky.  You can make your own oxygen and iron from materials close at hand.  With any water available in lunar polar regions, you will then have water, oxygen, and a building material.  It is possible to see how one can begin to put together permanent structures and live there.

Krivit's claims of failure of the E-cat

I haven't bothered to read Krivit until this very morning.  I have to say that I am shocked.

He claims failure, but I really don't buy what he says.  I'm sure Krivit has far more credentials than I do. What he says may be believed by those who would weigh what one says against the other.  But I think that he is wrong- on the basis of what he says himself.

It appears to me that he is ignoring the energy that is going out continuously during the heat up phase.  Does he not understand the basic set up?  The set up, as I understand it, was to measure the heat exchanged from the E-cat via a heat exchanger away from the E-cat.  It doesn't matter how the water got heated, the heat exchanger at that point would measure any heat source regardless of how it got there.

Krivit assumes a heat buildup which runs the E-cat in self sustain mode. Hah! This is either a deliberate distortion or he simply doesn't get the set up.  Energy is always flowing out.  Always.

So, during the buildup phase, energy is flowing out of the E-cat into the secondary heat exchanger.  The evidence of this is provided by the data.

Therefore, you can measure energy production which was occurring during the buildup.   It appeared to me that the E-cat was already producing more energy than it was consuming.  Again, this is based upon the continuous flow of energy that was being measured throughout the test.

The electrical energy measured going into the heater was being measured by a device. You can calculate the energy there as input.  The steam output was measured at the E-cat, and once again at the secondary heat exchanger.  You can watch the heat buildup phase and, then as it got to 100 degree Centigrade, the boiling point of water, the secondary temperatures begin to rise.  This indicates a heat exchange taking place at that location.  This is how the output energy was calculated.  The delta t's ( change in temperature) allowed you to calculate the output energy based upon the assumption that you were dealing with water.  Given the fact that it began to record heat exchange at the boiling point of water, it would seem to confirm that it was indeed, water.

People seem to be throwing crap against the wall and hope that something sticks.

Get real.

Rash judgment?

A little about what I've been doing today.

After writing about Moonrush, I listened to the Space Show when the guest was Dr. Robert (Bob) Richards, who has an entry in the Lunar X prize competition.

After that, I went back and looked at the E-cat news on Peswiki. I downloaded a copy of the spreadsheet data file and was going to make a graph of the results, but it was too difficult to work with. I gave up on that.

There was a pretty negative quote on Peswiki which claimed that the thermocouples were in the wrong place and so forth.

It begins to appear that there are questions which weren't apparent to me before. If the data is in any way questionable, there's a problem.  Those who were there say that the machine was producing energy, though. Then I looked at the list of people who were there.  I didn't recognize many of the names.

I'm stepping back a bit from this as it appears that I may have made a rash judgment.

Update:

One more thing:  the energy output after the E-cat was put on self sustain- that was too impressive to be ignored or discounted.  There should be another test.  But Rossi had better silence all the doubters, or they'll win.  Belief alone can't win- you need incontrovertible evidence.

Moon 2.0: Join the Revolution - HD High Definition

Good morning.

I am perusing the Lunar X Prize site to see who's out there and what they intend to do on the moon. This is in connection to the Moonrush post, which may be a useful proposition to colonize the moon without costing the taxpayers a dime.



Update:

LCROSS mission may have struck silver on the moon - space - 21 October 2010 - New Scientist

I had forgotten about this.  You could make coins out of the silver deposits where you also find water.  Cool!

Update:

You could make 1/10 oz. silver coins and have a face value of 1000 dollars.  That would mean that you could mine 100 metric tons for 35 billion.  The coins' face value would be about 300 times its constituent metal's value.  This would be a premium of about 10 to 1.  Too expensive?  That would be a lot of coins too- 352000 per ton.  You could mine less of the stuff and mine other things later.  Silver could be the lowest hanging fruit, though.

Moonrush

In case you are not familiar, this is Dennis Wingo's book about In Situ Resourcing on the moon.  It was an inspiration for the book, Platinum Moon, discussed previously on this blog with respect to LENR.

It isn't new material, so there's not a lot to say.  Something occurred to me in connection with the recent debt negotiations.  There was an idea to use a coin to retire debt, then to raise new debt so as to fund the government.  Why not fund Wingo's idea to fund a concept to mine pgms and then use those pgms to finance the enterprise?

It would work like this:  the mission would finance it with bonds purchased by the Fed.  That's like Quantitative Easing, but the twist is to retire the debt when the platinum comes back from the moon.  That is, to make coins from the platinum mined from the moon.  How many coins?  That would depend upon the denomination that you need to choose.

For example, if you were to bring back 1 metric ton, it would raise 39 billion dollars if the coins were denominated at a million apiece.  If 10 tons were to be brought back, it would be reduced to 100k, and so forth.

Wingo's ideas wouldn't require that much money, according to his book.  So, $39 billion would give plenty of wiggle room.   He believes there could be a lot of pgms on the moon due to asteroidal impacts.  He says that rich deposits of pgms on Earth are of the same type.  In fact, if this theory is correct, and it appears to be good reason to believe that it is, we are already using asteroidal metals.  That explains the logic of his proposal.   So, if the pgms came to Earth by way of asteroidal impacts, it should be true for the moon as well.

There is some iffy parts to this, of which the presence of pgms is one.  Another is the financing scheme just outlined.  There are those who would find fault with this idea, I'm sure.  But it would be legal, as far as I know.

Technically, it appears quite doable, as Wingo lays it out in detail.  On the Space Show recently, he said he doubted that the government would do his type of proposal. ( By conventional financing, not like this financing proposal I just mentioned, which is shall we say, "creative".)

That means that private industry would have to undertake the project, but are the amounts of money he discusses "a bridge too far"?  He doesn't think so, but the speculative part about the pgms would possibly make it so.  In that case, somebody would have to do a prospecting mission to look for pgms, and that may not be too far outside of the realm of possibilities.

Yet, if the government did it, that part wouldn't be too ambitious.  But is the government interested?  He seems to be doubtful on this point.

If the government is not, it may take the private sector to do it all, just like in the book Platinum Moon.  But there ought to be a way to do these things, because money should not be an issue, provided that the proposition is sound.

Update:

I did some checking on the internet with respect to the metal value of a coin.  A Sacajawea coin is worth about 3 cents for its metal.  That's a 30 to 1 ratio.  For collectible coins, the market value can be a multiple of its face value.  Let's say another 30 to 1 ratio.  In other words, a coin that costs the government 3 cents to make can be sold for nearly 1000 times what it cost to obtain the metal to make it.

Now, let's look at platinum.  It can be bought on the open market now for about the price of gold - 1600 an ounce.  If you multiply 1600 times 1000 you get 1.6 million dollars for each coin.  So, asking putting a face value of 1 million on each coin is not out of the question.  Most likely, people will not want to collect it though.

If you were to coin 35,200 of them at 1 million apiece, you would obtain the 35 billion dollars.  This would take 1 metric ton of the metal to do it.  Would there be 35,200 "purchases" of a coin struck of lunar platinum? Making it legal tender would obviate the need to sell it.   If you coined 35,000 of  them at 100k, you would only raise $3.5 billion.  But at 100k, you get closer to the same ratio that you have with the ordinary currency.

Lunar platinum coins would be worth more than an ordinary coin because of its novelty.  Plus if it was a limited edition coin such as this, it would have even greater value.  You could probably give it a 100k denomination and then sell it on the market for whatever it could bring.  Hopefully, it could fetch a premium on the face value, comparable to the Susan B Anthony dollar, thus recovering all of the debt and retiring it without costing the government a dime.

All of this from mining and refining on the lunar surface 1 metric ton of platinum.  The 2002 output of platinum in the USA was about 4 times that number, according to Wingo's book.   If they got really lucky, they may find a motherload worth a lot more than that.

It's worth looking into, don't you think?

Update:
The Sacajawea coin costs about 6 cents.  That is a bit different, but it could still work.

Update:
I tweeted and Facebooked this post.  I welcome any criticism of the idea.  Tell me where this is wrong.

Occam's Razor and the E-cat Test of Oct 6th

Occam's Razor is, as I understand it, a simplicity principle.  With respect to explaining something, the principle asserts that the simplest explanation is most likely correct.  After writing that, my understanding turns out to be incorrect.  Here's what Wikipedia says:

is a principle that generally recommends, when faced with competing hypotheses that are equal in other respects, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions.

In the case of the Oct 6th test, what are the competing hypotheses?  I think that there can be only two: it works or it doesn't.

We have to assume that the conditions are what they are represented as being.  In short, there is no secret energy source that can escape the notice of the observers.  To postulate that there is one makes the assumption that this secret energy source can escape detection.  Therefore, the energy produced must come from the E-cat apparatus itself.

Secondly, the measurement apparatus is reasonably accurate for the purposes of this test.  This reason is self evident: if it was too inaccurate, this too would have been detected by the observers.  To assume otherwise violates Occam's Razor because it introduces a new assumption once again.

Finally, it has to be the case that nothing is up the sleeves of some tricksters.  This would require the assumption of some conspiracy amongst the observers to deceive everybody.  Such a conspiracy would entail a large group of people present to be able to keep the tricks a secret.  It seems unlikely to me.  The larger the number of observers, the harder it is to keep a conspiracy secret.  The more observers there are, the more likely that everything is as it appears to be.  To say otherwise would violate the principle of Occam's Razor, as it would add a new assumption of a conspiracy.

Unless the naysayers can come up with an explanation that doesn't require these new assumptions, or does not require some form of another assumption not mentioned here, then the test is as represented.

From where I stand, the test looks like a success.  The E-cat produces more energy than it consumes.  That makes it a successful test.  By the way, that is the simplest explanation too.  In other words, it is as it appears to be.

It’s a gas, man!

Paul D. Spudis, The Once and Future Moon


We really do need to take a closer look at the Moon.

Update:

I think this will be the last post of the day.  Thanks for coming by, I appreciate your support.  Tomorrow, I may have something to say about Wingo's book.  I have some more thoughts about the E-cat, too.  

Better graph showing net energy from E-cat test of Oct. 6, 2011

Peswiki

You can see that the area under the curve for the "Potenza OUT"  ( output power) is greater than the area under the "Potenza Resistore" ( power resistor, input power to run the heater)  Or input power vs output power.  Time shift it toward the right and the whole curve will fit under the output curve.

http://imgur.com/a/iwZQ8

Update:
This video shows the apparatus in detail. It is now on YouTube. I saw this on Ny Teknik already, but it is also handy on YouTube now.

Basically, you can see where and how the delta t's were obtained for the graph above. Delta t, or change in temperature, is one of the data points needed to calculate the power. The other is the water flow, also shown as 600 liters per hr.

Rossi's appeal- a design "for the People"

Just saw this on Peswiki

http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=510#comments

Moonrush arrives

The latest book that I ordered. I want to read about it because it may have something about resources on the moon. I know all the rage in the E-cat world is the, er, E-cat, but I write about other things too. Thanks to all for your support. Time for me to go read my book. See you tomorrow!

Morning Summary, 10/7

Good morning.

An early scan of the E-cat news sources reveals nothing new yet.  Evidently, the excitement wore everybody out, eh?  Well, somebody is awake early.   I was expecting a flood of pictures, interviews, and the like. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place?  I will check back later, other things to do.

The Plan to Bring an Asteroid to Earth

Wired Science

Stephen Hawking: The final frontier

COSMOS magazine September 2008

The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilisation began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. But, if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Or, you can build your own new world at the Earth Moon Lagrangian points - L4 and L5. This reminds me of my series of posts on O'Neil Colonies.  The weakness in that idea was that it depended upon the Shuttle living up to its billing, which it didn't.  Let us hope that the Skylon can do what the Shuttle couldn't, as well as SpaceX's reusable rocket technologies.  If there was a way to get people and cargo into space at a reasonable rate and a reasonable price, O'Neill's ideas could become feasible.

Why look for worlds far away when you could build them close to home?  This does not preclude travel to other worlds, but could enable them by creating an economic beach head in space.  If the economics can't be made to work, it will never happen.  On the other hand, if the economics can be made to work, what could stop it?  Then Hawking's vision could be made into reality.

Ohio the next boom state?

American Thinker

But a renaissance of prosperity and revival of manufacturing may be at hand, thanks to a happy combination of technology and natural resources.

The left doesn't want prosperity. They want to "spread the wealth". They will oppose anything like this with all their might.

Morning Summary, 10/4

Good morning.

What to write about today?  Well, it may instructive to study magnetism with respect to the Fleischmann Pons cold fusion experiment.  It appears that Bose Einstein condensate theory may be applicable to the F&P apparatus.  Let's say that I'm willing to look at the idea for now.

The stock market was down yesterday.  Let's take a look at that too.

And politics is always with us.

Stay tuned, it could get interesting.

As cold fusion events demonstrate, modern science is ruled by conformity, not the search for scientific truth

Posted by aksell on August 29, 2011

Outline

• The systematic discrediting of cold fusion
• A 30 percent success rate means it’s real
• Modern science seeks to protect its interests, not to reveal truth
• Ego is the enemy of science innovation

Too many people dropping the ball, so to speak.

How to enrich Uranium - Periodic Table of Videos

I'm putting this up because I want to understand how enrichment works. If that can be used for palladium. Now that I've looked, the answer is probably no. If it is possible, it isn't worth the effort.

Fleischmann Pons, II

It appears that I was on the right track yesterday in one regard.  I put together this chart, which summarizes the reactions in a more succinct manner:

The reaction product is an unstable isotope of silver, it beta decays and transmutes back into palladium at 102, 104.  At 105, silver is stable, at higher masses, it transmutes into cadmium.

It appears that the reactions get more vigorous as you go down the chain.  That is to say, the energy produced per minute is higher because of the increasingly shorter half lives.

The calculation is derived by taking MeV per minute of the half life.   When less than a minute, it was converted to a fraction.  When greater than an hour, it was multiplied by 60 minutes to the hour.

As you can see, once we get to palladium 110, the energy production rapidly diminishes from the peak.  The peak is at 108, just before it.    You could still take out the 105 and 110 isotopes, and just use the rest.

It may well be that I was mistaken about the first isotope.  It it too slow and there isn't enough of it to make a difference.  However, if the best reaction at 108 is underrepresented, it could slow down the overall reaction (maybe).

This discussion leaves off the mechanism of how the fusion takes place, as well as many other details.  It is written as a thought experiment.  Perhaps a real one could be devised to test it.

Morning Summary, 10/3

Good morning. The discussion yesterday about Fleischmann-Pons was missing a few more details. Firstly, palladium is a noble metal, in the platinum group (pgm).  It is expensive.  Separating the many isotopes may be even more expensive.  Perhaps the additional costs and complexity may have discouraged this line of experiment.

I will post a little more on this subject today. Currently, I am reading a little about their experiment to see if I can confirm anything I've written so far.

Also, today, I may write a little more about Skylon.

The day is rapidly approaching for the E-cat's big test. I will keep up to speed on that.

As usual, it will be a busy day.

Fleischmann Pons: What might have gone wrong

This is mostly a wild guess because I am not studying their work.  Instead, I'm speculating upon a few possibilities.  From what little I've read about their work, it looks like they may not have considered the possibility that the deuterons could be fusing with the palladium.  Secondly, the quality of the reactions may depend upon what isotopes were in the sample.  Thirdly, if they weren't looking for this, they may have been overlooking the evidence of this, as there should have been cadmium, if the fusions were taking place.

Let's look at the normal concentrations of palladium:

http://www.ncnr.nist.gov/resources/n-lengths/elements/pd.html

Over 50% of the palladium is the isotopes of 102 and 104 through 106.  Since a deuteron is of atomic mass approximately equal to 2, each fusion will move the atomic weight up by 2.  For example, a fusion of palladium 102 will yield silver 104, which can be seen as beta plus decaying below:

http://www.kcvs.ca/site/projects/physics_files/nucleus/decays.swf

 But this is only 1 percent of the palladium.  What about the rest?  It so happens that the rest of the chain does not proceed as well if you start with an isotope of greater mass.  Palladium 104 fused with deuterium yields the following:

slightly less energy from this beta plus decay

 Now, you are up to palladium 106, which is stable.   What happens if another fusion takes place? You will get mostly cadmium via beta minus decay, as follows:

This is still good, but cadmium doesn't like to cooperate any further, the chain stops here

We get no further benefit, as we can see from the isotopes of cadmium chart, no further beta decays are going to be available.  Cadmium 112, 114, and 116 just aren't going to be useful because they are stable, and the one isotope, 116 that isn't has a very long half life.

If we follow this chain, we get several good reactions, but it will have to stop with the production of cadmium.  However, this chain starts with an isotope that makes up only 1% of the total amount of palladium.  What happens if we start at some other isotope.  If we start at 104 and 106, we get a shorter version of this chain.

If we start with palladium 105, which makes up a significant portion of the sample, the reaction stops with the production of silver.  If palladium 105 is overrepresentative in the sample, the potential is reduced.  Likewise, if palladium 102 is underrepresentative, the potential is also reduced.

Palladium 110 doesn't do much good since it will end there at cadmium, as indicated above.  Very short chain.  That leaves palladium 108, which is shown below:

Back to cadmium, it the chain will end here

In summary, 102, 104, 106, and 108 all work, but you should start with 102, which is the most rare isotope.  I think that is the whole point.  The other chains are too short and most of the palladium isn't all that useful.  If you just start with 102, you will generate the rest of the chain in sequence.  Most of it isn't very good.  You can use it, but not for as much energy production as you may have wished for.

You could remove palladium 105 and 110 altogether since they don't help.  This makes up almost a third of the palladium in a normal sample.   Over 1/2 of the palladium gives short chains.

Morning Summary, 10/2

Good morning.  It seems like a good time to study Pons and Fleischmann a bit to see if there can be an explanation for why it gives inconsistent results.  Posting will be light until or if one can be found.  If there is, I will post it as an update.

Update:

I will have a post on this later, for sure.  Maybe today, or by tomorrow.

Test on E-Cat Will Be Conducted on Oct 6th in Bologna, Italy with Invited Academics

Daniele Passarini has posted a copy of a letter sent by Dr. Franco Sicogna to the European Patent Office inviting representatives to attend a demonstration of one of Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat modules. The letter reads in part:

"There is certainly an air of confidence about this whole event" 

Knock 'em dead!

Falcon rockets to land on their toes

Short Sharp Science

Commentary about SpaceX's new strategy of reusable rocketry.

How can 30% of nickel in Rossi’s reactor be transmuted into copper?

by Dott. Giuliano Bettini Retired. Earlier: Selenia SpA, Rome and IDS SpA, Pisa Also Adjunct Professor at the University of PisaAdjunct Professor at Naval Academy, Leghorn (Italian Navy) link via Rossi's site or blog

This is as good of a post that can describe in as simple a fashion as possible how the E-cat may work.  It depends upon one of the many theories that attempts to explain cold fusion.  Frankly, I like the BECNF theory a bit better.  Why?

Simple, really.  I read about Bose Einstein condensates many years ago.  I think it is fair to say that you favor that which you are most familiar.  I am not familiar with Stremmenos' theory.  It is as simple as that.  It would be incorrect to say that I think one theory is better than another.  I do not know the answer to that question.

It is, after all, a post that I categorize as "armchair physics".  Not professional.  I make no such claims.  It is an attempt by yours truly to understand something that is difficult, and to try to discuss it in an intelligent manner. Hopefully, I don't botch it too badly.

Now, for Stremmenos' theory. Again, not trying to botch it too badly, so here goes a little ditty on that.

There is such a thing as muon catalyzed fusion.  Muons exist and are, for want of a better explanation, are like "heavy" electrons.  They are negatively charged, like electrons, but aren't electrons.  So, they can balance out the electrical charge of a proton, which is the nucleus of a hydrogen atom.  The heaviness of the muon shrinks the size of the hydrogen atom.  It then becomes something like Stremmenos' mini atom.  The mini atom (muon proton combo) tunnels through the Coulomb barrier and fuses with the nucleus.  Ta da!  You have fusion. That's muon catalyzed fusion.

But Stremmenos doesn't depend upon muons, but some other mechanism for making mini atoms.  Let's look at a quote from that post:

it is conceivable that, for a very short time period (e.g. 10ˆ-18 sec), a series of neutral mini atoms of hydrogen could be formed, in an unstable state, of various size and energy level, distributed within the Fermi band, which is enlarged due to the very short time (Heisenberg).

The neutral mini-atoms of high energy and very short wave length – which is in phase with the “cyclic” orbit (de Broglie) – are statistically captured be the nickel nuclei of the crystal structure with the speed of nuclear reactions (10ˆ-20 sec).

It appears that the mini atoms can exist for a long enough period to be captured.  That's because 10 ^-18 is a bigger number than 10 ^-20 . The mini atoms exist long enough for the nuclear reaction to take place. I think that may be the key understanding here. That is, if I didn't botch it.

Update:

You get steam heat from that reaction