Evening Wrap, 5/31

Hard to believe it. May is nearly gone. June is the month in which summer officially begins. Around Houston, it gets hot before the summer becomes official. Come to think of it, hurricane season begins tomorrow, if I am not mistaken. There have been early season hurricanes before that have come near Houston. The one I can recall was back in 85-87, but don't recall exactly which year. It didn't amount to much. The last one was Ike, which was as bad as I've ever seen it. And I've lived in this town for 50 years. Something to keep in mind as we go forward into the season.

The hurricane seems to be a dividing point in time. About that same time, there was the big economic collapse which is ongoing. There was a death in the family not long afterward. Then my own problems at work began as well as some health concerns of my own. Lots of stuff happening in so short of a time period.

I began the blog hoping for the best, but also fearing the worst. I knew before going in how hard it is to get an audience- I experienced that before with my first blog. This time was even harder than that time. The best that this blog has done is not too much better than what that one did. This is after 8 1/2 months of steady blogging and throwing all I could think of into it.

I am very grateful for what I've been able to achieve in terms of audience, but that is all that I've been able to achieve. It needs to do much more than that. Each month that goes by leaves me with one less month to figure this out. My time is limited. It isn't urgent, but the trajectory is downward. And that worries me.

Aside from that, I've been pleased with what I've been writing. At times, I've been quite proud of my work. Today was such a day. That post about the final piece of the puzzle was a doozy. I don't care if it never sees the light of day anywhere. That bit of thinking was inspired.

I hope this kind of thing can be interesting enough to hold an audience. I am always interested in improving it. Sometimes I wonder what else there is to do.

Thanks for coming by and have a great evening.

Jeff Greason on a Settlement Strategy For NASA

Link via NEW PAPYRUS  (note: repaired link)

A discussion of strategy and tactics vis a vis current national space policy, which appears to be human settlement, but that is not openly stated.  Greason identifies the main problem, which is policy drift- nobody knows a credible way of implementing the implied policy.  There is a lot of confusion, about the meaning of strategies and tactics, and not much leadership.  Current policy drift risks ending human space exploration by default, because there is no strategy.  Greason proposes one, while maintaining that his is only one of many possible strategies that could be employed.

The last piece of the puzzle

Like everybody else, it seems, I was skeptical of "cold fusion". After having investigated it enough over the last several weeks, I have reached about 90% level of being convinced that it is real. To me, 90% is good enough. That leaves some room for error, but not too big of one.

First of all, before I go too much further, my word doesn't carry much weight. I'm not a professional in the field, much less an authority. I am writing from the personal point of view. These are my own opinions, independently reached, for what that is worth.

Now, as I wrote before, there seems to me to be two conditions for fusion. One, is a sufficient energy level. Two, there needs to be a confinement strategy. Having enough energy alone isn't enough. Two atoms must be close enough so that the opportunity exists for fusion to take place. Hence, a confinement strategy. In stars, this is accomplished by gravity. Man made fusion strategies utilize different matter interaction forces in order to obtain sufficient confinement.

At this point of the search for fusion energy, the confinement methods appear to be insufficient. The confinement strategy I'm thinking of doesn't involve the fundamental interactions, so far as I know. If it does, it may be electromagnetism at the nanoscale.

Now, allow me to quote from Mallove's Fire from Ice

... Research was aimed at achieving in any of a number of competing configurations of magnetic bottles, a combination of temperature, density, and duration that would make hot fusion work. A plasma with a density of 3 x 10 ^ 14 particles per cubic centimeter would have to be held for one second at about 100 million degrees K to reach energy breakeven.

One mole of particles is 6.02 x 10 ^ 23.   Thus, the amount of particles needed to be energized at one time ( 1 second ) would be the electron volt potential spread out over the percentage of 1 mole of particles mentioned in the above quote.   This would be (3 x 10 ^ 14)  x 10^ 4 electron volts per atom.  Note: 10,000 electron volts is equivalent to 100,000,000 degrees Kelvin.   That would be 3 x 10 ^ 18 eV for the mass in question.   Since the calculation of conversion of electron volts to watts from the link ( in bold above) we obtain:

1 electron volts =  1.6 x 10 ^-19 joules, which equals only 1.6 x 10^-19 watts

substituting 1.6 x 10 ^ -19 watts for eV above gives 3x10^18 x 1.6 x10^-19 watts for all the particles collectively.   For the entire mass, that's 4.8 x 10 ^-1 watts for each second.  Not that much energy for what is a small mass.

The key is that it must all be in one spot at one time.  The way to do that is with a confinement strategy as mentioned above.  However, instead of a magnetic bottle, what if the lattice structure of atoms of a solid substance -such as palladium or nickel- was substituted?  The volume constraint should be easy enough.

Now 3 x 10 ^ 14 particles are needed to be confined in a cubic centimeter in a second.  In molar quantity, that would be 3x10^14 divided by 6.02 x 10^23 particles in a mole of any substance.  For light hydrogen, the atomic weight is approx 1 g per mole.  That would therefore be less than a billionth of a gram.  But that's not the problem.  The problem is that for any gas at standard pressure, the molar quantity of atoms take up a much larger volume.  Hence, we need to confine the gas.

For nickel, multiply by 60 grams per mole atomic weight, and the number is still small.  The volume required is tiny in terms of the solid nickel.  Billionths of a gram of nickel?  Not much, clearly.  If the hydrogen gets caught up in the nickel's solid structure, confinement is obtained.  If the required energy is applied over the duration shown above, fusion is possible.  The confinement makes the probability of fusion feasible, by definition above.

Admittedly, this is from an amateur.  There could be errors.  This is my personal view.  Anybody is welcome to make a comment.  I throw it open for discussion.  Tell me I'm wrong.  I'm all ears.

The Morning Summary, 5/31

Blogger pageviews are within reach of 3,000 for the month of May.  This would be a first, but even if that isn't reached, it is still a record.  Audience growth has moderated, however.  New avenues for growth need to be found.  It looks like people liked the Ted Turner/ T. Boone Pickens CSPAN video.  That's may be what you would call a hint.

I will have more to say about Mallove's book, Fire From Ice, later today.  There are a few facts that I am putting together for a theory about "cold fusion".  For anybody new here, "cold fusion" could become a reality in the near future.  I have come to the conclusion that it is very, very likely to be a real phenomenon.  I will continue to discuss why I think so.  Keep tuned.

The Evening Wrap, 5/30

Well, here we are, another day in the can.  The market was closed today, and the news day appeared to be rather slow due to the holiday.

Today featured a quasi review of Mallove's book, a bit about the blog, plus a few videos.   One more thing about the book, before I go today.  The author points out that anomalous events have been overlooked in the past, which if it hadn't been overlooked, would have credited the individual with a discovery that was eventually made by someone else.  One example was the X-ray.  The individual who discovered the X-ray got a Nobel Prize.  The individual who overlooked it did not.  There's a lesson in that somewhere.  In addition to that, people have a tendency to deny the reality of an event.  In the case of so-called "cold fusion", it appears that people are overlooking something important, such as excess heat; and when they don't overlook the excess heat, they deny its significance.  Another lesson, if you care to take note.

I hope you found today's posts interesting.  Thanks for coming by and have a great evening.

Morning Summary, 5/30

The plateau feature which describes the number of pageviews plotted over time seems still to be in effect.  Fancy way of saying, not any growth in audience.  The Rossi Focardi audience needs to be expanded.  Same problem, different manifestation.  Whereas Fossi Focardi needs new supporters, so does this blog.

The strategy of broadening the audience base is valid and will continue.  But there's the problem.  You have different kinds of people with different interests.

Take those who follow Rossi Focardi- they are probably scientifically oriented.  But those who are musically inclined are probably not.  This may not always be true, but it is true often enough for it to be somewhat of a problem.  The problem is how do you reach those kinds of people who aren't interested in science?   I am one of those people who can be interested in music and science, but that is probably not universally true.

Therefore, I like to write about both, but my readers may prefer that I write about one or the other exclusively.  The challenge may be in keeping both parties happy while being able to write what I want to write about.  If both can see the advantage of helping each other, maybe they will tolerate each other better.

That's the idea here.  I hope I can get some patience with that.

In any case, if you want to succeed at something that requires a lot of people, you will need to broaden the base of potential supporters.  You can't do it if you start excluding people.

After a bit of reflection, that last sentence sounds pretty "liberal".  But I am not a liberal, in the American political definition.  It reminds me of the hit song of the sixties, an era in which I remember well.  If I put that up here, any conservative readers may think I going "squishy".  But there is truth in this song.  I respect truth. Here it is, "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone

The Evening Wrap, 5/29

The posts were evenly spaced apart from each other throughout the day.  That would be a good habit to get into, so I'm going to remember to do this for now on.  It is more disciplined.   Didn't post anything on markets today, but markets are closed today and tomorrow.  The other basic themes got covered, meaning arts, sciences and politics.   How did the Kardashevian Aspirations get covered?  The one post that addressed that was about the amazing properties of carbon.  The daily plan was to decide what to do about my truck.  I put it up for sale on Ebay, with a definite price.

While I was writing this post, I listened to the Space Show from this past Friday.  It was about satellites, how they help us and can hurt us. Pearls of Wisdom- satellites are a good thing.

Need to catch up on the shows, I'm falling behind.  Lots of stuff on my plate.

I'm reading through the table of contents of Mallove's book, and skimming through a chapter of interest.  It mentions "electron capture" which I came across in an earlier post with the calculator.

It has been a good day posting.  I'm very happy with it.  I hope my readers were.  Thanks for coming by and have a great evening.

12 Space Shuttle Missions That Weren't

"The U.S. space shuttle fleet is set for retirement following the launch of Atlantis, scheduled for mid-July. In all, the fleet will have flown 135 missions, the first in 1981, but there were many more on the drawing board. With scrubbed missions that included daring rescues, in-orbit satellite snatches, and dangerous explosives, you can see why some of these didn't make the cut. But just imagine if they had."

The hairiest one looks like this one here:

1981 RETURN TO LAUNCH SITE

In the event of engine problems during launch, one emergency procedure involved flipping over in mid ascent and thrusting back to Florida for a runway landing. It worked in the simulator, but it was so dangerous that astronauts considered it barely preferable to crashing into the ocean.

The first one would have saved SkyLab if they could have launched in time

1979 REBOOST SKYLAB

As America's first space station (1973–4) slipped steadily from orbit, NASA built a small booster rocket to be attached to it by a two-man crew (Fred Haise and Jack Lousma) on an urgent early flight. But launch schedules slipped, and Skylab fell on Australia.

In other news on NASA Watch, check out these spectacular pics from the ISS during spacewalks

Properties of carbon useful in connection with "cold fusion"?

In any context, the chemical properties of carbon are amazing.  One use of carbon, as activated carbon, or charcoal, was mentioned in the "cold fusion" video discussed yesterday.   I highly recommend that video, by the way. Let's look at the advantages of carbon with respect to "cold fusion".

It is useful for absorption because of its surface area.  It can adsorb hydrogen, which may be useful in the nickel "cold fusion" reactions.  In the video, it was indeed useful, even necessary, in the palladium-deuterium reactions.  It is not clear that it is being used in the Rossi Focardi device, but the video could be hinting at this as a possibility.

Here are some advantages of carbon nanotubes that everyone may have heard about:

Carbon Nanotubes Are Superior To Metals For Electronics, According to Engineers

Questions:
Does this mean that it can be better used to store electrons, like a capacitor?  Can you "flick a switch" so that when the electron volts accumulate up to a certain point, then release the electrons to where you want them to go?  Would that be useful in "cold fusion" reactions? [ I think it could.]

Carbon Nanotubes can carry more current without deterioration.

They can conduct electricity as well as copper, conduct heat as well as a diamond, and are a hundred times stronger than steel at the same dimension.

Currently, more than 10 million amperes in a square centimeter area can be passed through a MWCNT continuously over six days without any deterioration. [emphasis added]

Question:

More current means more energy potential- would that be useful for "cold fusion"? [Yes, I think so.]

Speculation:

Here's what I am getting at: the current Rossi Focardi machine may be seen as crude, yet effective method of generating energy- as it may be seen from the future historical perspective.  It could be optimized in the future in order to produce even greater energy in smaller devices.

This is not to say that the current 1 MW design is inefficient.  Keep in mind that the first automobiles were effective in doing the job of moving people and goods, but they got more sophisticated as time went by.  The same is true of all new technologies.  This could be no exception.

I offer this speculation on the one hand to show how Rossi Focardi E-cat can work, but also to show how it might look in the future.

While I am at it, the following question could arise?  Who cares?  As long as it can produce energy for only 1 cent per kilowatt hour, what difference would it make?  I am thinking in terms of optimizing in size.  This would have advantages for spacecraft- inasmuch as any hardware can enforce mass penalties, the objective will be to minimize mass.

Note:  My book has arrived.  I will pick it up shortly.  The video mentioned above was made by the same man who authored the book- Eugene Mallove.

Daily Plan 5/29

The plan for the day is to make plans for the future.  I am beginning to run out of time to make some decisions, and these decisions are important.  One of those decisions is whether or not to sell my truck.  So far, the effort has been non serious.  If I get serious about it, I could probably have it sold in about 10 days, or less.  But, I don't know if I want to do this.

The blog figures into this.  Since the blog has not helped me sell anything at all, it doesn't look like it can monetized anytime soon.  Getting more audience can help, but that is a slow, painful process which I don't know if I'll have time to achieve at this rate.

Update:

I've listed the truck on Ebay.  Asking price is on the ad.

Morning Summary, 5/29

Looks like pageviews hit a plateau.  It couldn't keep rising forever.  Briefly yesterday, it appeared that it may go back into a downtrend.  If you were to feel for the pulse of this blog, you'd say it has peaked.  At least for now.  Most of the traffic is coming via E-cat, but there is just so much you can write about something that you really don't understand very well, nor have you even seen.  Consequently, the need is to look for audience in many other ways.  E-cat alone can't carry this blog very far.  The other side of that argument may be that the big audience may come later if E-cat tests are successful.  They may come here, or go elsewhere. You can not count on that one way or another.

I'll cover it as best I can, but I have to keep up with the other stuff.

These other topics can broaden the audience base and maybe they will read some of the E-cat material.  Not everybody is interested in the same things, you see.  But you may get a few people who are curious enough to check it out a little more.

The Evening Wrap 5/28

Politics, music, a little about me, and cold fusion on the menu today.  I hope I cooked up some interesting stuff for you.  Be back again tomorrow.  Have a great evening, and thanks for coming by.

"Cold Fusion" Facts Page

Frequently Asked Questions About Low Energy Nuclear Reactions(part of the field of condensed matter nuclear science historically known as "cold fusion")

Pretty good summary of what is known.  However, it hasn't been updated since 2009.

If I have Volts, and I need eV, how do I get that?

eV is a unit of energy. It is exactly the amount of kineitic energy that one electron would obtain if it accelerated across one volt of potential difference. You do not convert eV to volts. You convert eV to joules.Since potential difference is defined as the energy per unit charge ratio you will get a unit of energy when you multiply a unit of charge times a unit of potential, hence "electron-Volt"; here the charge is the fundamental charge of the electron. A joule (unit of energy) is equivalent to a "coulomb-volt." Since 1.602 x 10^-19 coulombs is the charge of an electron, then 1eV = 1.602x10^-19 joules.

Assuming the above is correct, let's make some calculations, shall we?

A typical nuclear reaction releases millions of electron volts.  This sounds impressive, and is, but consider this on an atom by atom basis.  If only 1 atom has a nuclear event and releases about 1 million electron volts, how many watts is that?  Well, 1 joule equals 1 watt.  1 million electron volts = 10 ^6 times 1.6 x 10 ^-19 which equals only 1.6 x 10^-13 watts.  Not much energy from just one atom.  But there are many atoms.  How many?

Since there are 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd power atoms in one mole of any substance, and in the case of nickel, about 60 grams.   This reaction if carried through all of the atoms in 1 mole or 60 grams (approx) would yield approx 10 ^11 watts of energy.   Now that's a lot.

The foregoing discussion was not intended to show that a lot of energy can be obtained from a nuclear reaction.  That isn't new.  What is intended is to show that not that much energy is required to make a fusion happen on the atomic level.  Since fusion takes place in the stars at 100,000,000 million degrees Kelvin, this is equivalent to about 10,000 electron volts per atom.   If you had the control to deliver 10,000 electron volts to individual atoms, you can have enough energy for fusion.  The key word is control.  This is the key word in all fusion research, whether it is in a tokomak or a polywell or a deep plasma focus, or a star.  The method of control varies from system to system.  In stars, it is gravitation.  In most fusion devices, plasma is controlled by magnetism.  In a polywell, electrons are controlled with magnetism and the reactants are introduced after the energy potential has been achieved.  In "cold fusion", where's the control?  Is it chemical, or is it bypassed by quantum effects?  That's the question, I think.

Update:

This discussion is a lot like something I said before.

While I am at it, I want to link to other posts that were similar in some concept.

While I was looking for that, I found a video with this young lady saying that a gallon of water has the energy of 55 million miles.  And I thought it was only 25 million miles a gallon.

cold fusion: fire from water

" 'cold fusion' is a surface effect phenomenon"

Comment:  Surface effect phenomenon: how interesting.  Could there be spark gaps as in lightning or spark plugs, in which electrons build up, then leap across the gap after building up energy?  Enough energy for fusion?

catalysts for "cold fusion".  Is it a chemical process?

"palladium on activated carbon"

Without the catalyst, it doesn't work, says Dr. Les Case, retired chemical engineer.

Sir Arthur Clarke refers to it as "so called cold fusion"

discusses the history of the wright brothers and how their discovery was not believed for years.

 This is a "must see" video.  Don't miss it.

Evening Wrap 5/27

I think I've done enough posts for one day.  Thanks for coming by and have a good evening.

Staying at this later than usual

And frankly not finding much to write about.

One thing I'm looking at is this.  I'm not too familiar with this as I do not contribute anything to Wikipedia.  This kind of back and forth isn't very interesting to me.  They are all comparing credentials.  I could make a crude remark, but I'll keep that to myself.  I have offered some ideas on how E-cat might work, but that is based upon rampant speculation.  I haven't seen the device, nor if I was there to witness it, could I see inside of it.  Even if I see inside of it, I couldn't tell much.

All I'm doing is making some comparisons and some speculations.  But I won't become a Kool Aid drinker as I wrote before.  It seems plausible to me, for what it's worth.

Update:
Here's a discussion posted fairly recently.  If you're interested in the theoretical aspect of this, there it is.  What looks to me like a full discussion of what's going on that causes this fusion reaction.  It differs from my discussion, but my discussion is dismissed, most likely.  His is a quantum mechanical model, it seems.

Update:
Well, there somebody goes again.  It says that the journal in which this is posted isn't legitimate.  So, who's legitimate and who isn't?  People waving their credentials around again.

Interesting question

I am curious about fusion reaction cross sections

He wanted to know if there was an equation that he could use to calculate this and the answer was that there wasn't one.

I was wondering myself about this, that is why I googled it and came up with this. Just wondering how much energy it takes to cause fusion between nickel and hydrogen. And whether of not internal sparking ( like this) can be set up hot enough to cause fusion.

Green and Lean: Secreting Bacteria Eliminate Cost Barriers for Renewable Biofuel Production

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2011) — A Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University research team has developed a process that removes a key obstacle to producing low-cost, renewable biofuels from bacteria.

More than one way to skin the energy cat.

Intel to build fab for 14-nm chips--- what does this have to do with fusion?

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Continuing its aggressive fab expansion efforts, Intel Corp. on Friday (Feb. 18) announced plans to invest more than $5 billion to build a new chip manufacturing facility at its site in Chandler, Ariz.

Maybe nothing.  But, as usual, I think about things.  So, I wonder about this:  what if you could replicate what polywell attempts to do by confining electrons and do it on the nanoscale?  Chipmakers routinely design chips with features in the nanometer scale.  Why not use this technology to make something that could enable fusion on the nanometer scale?  Impossible?  Maybe.

I was thinking if there was a way to bring enough energy to bear on one small point at one time and if that energy would be enough to cause fusion.  Duplicate that over an entire "chip" and maybe you can design a fusion chip.

This idea isn't Rossi Focardi's idea, I'm sure.  Relatively speaking, Rossi's device may be crude in comparison to what it may become in the future.

25 million miles a gallon, are you interested?

Not yet available.  Maybe never, but wait!  Did you know that a basketball size of uranium has the energy equivalent of a million gallons of gasoline?  Don't like uranium?  How about fusion power?  Fusion power is even more powerful than fission based uranium power, much more powerful.  If, and admittedly this is a big if  -if you can master clean fusion, you can get a vehicle that can get some extreme gas mileage.

How to get to this point is the big problem.  Interestingly, fusion itself is not that difficult.  What makes fusion power difficult is getting useful energy out of it.  Fusion is so powerful that controlling it is a big challenge.  That is the challenge before us.  But the challenge is so great that it may be considered far beyond our capabilities for decades to come.  But such a dismal scenario may not be the case.

What would it take?  Just throwing money at the problem won't necessarily reach a solution.  The ITER project, which uses tokomaks in order to control the fusion process, hasn't been very successful.  Some have called it "Eater" because it eats up so much money.  Is there a better way?  A new way will be necessary, as opposed to "the way" which is what ITER means in Latin.  This blog has explored other ways to generate energy more cheaply and more abundantly.  I invite you to click on the Energy label at the end of this post and follow the posts for some of the new ideas out there.

Morning Summary, 5/27

No doubt about it, this has become an E-cat blog.  Far and away, the most popular posts are about this emerging technology.  By popular demand, that's what I'll be serving up.  I'll do my best to keep the interest going and to build it up.

This may seem like a sell out, but no.  I've managed to become convinced that there is a real possibility that this could work.  That's been true for several days now.  But yesterday, I think it changed from possibility to probability.  This went from 50-50 to something well north of that.  I wouldn't say 100% probability of success just yet, but it is getting there.  Let's put it this way, it has a chance of success because the principles involved are sound, in my opinion.  I stated those yesterday, and I'll state here again for emphasis:  you need two conditions for fusion 1) sufficient energy and 2) confinement of the reactants.   I think "cold fusion" can meet those conditions just as well or better than any other method.  Secondly, there need not be any violation of known physics.

Note: I've changed the header to the blog.  It now has something of a mission statement quality to it.  You can say this blog has passed a milestone on the way to its destiny, whatever that might be.

Evening Wrap 5/26

I'm pretty happy with my posts today.  If there was a thing that I feel that could be better, it would be in productivity.  I'd like to produce quantity as well as quality.  It should be a goal going forward.  Thanks for coming by and have a good evening.

We have met the enemy...

Probably the most famous Pogo quotation is "We have met the enemy and he is us." Perhaps more than any other words written by Kelly, it perfectly sums up his attitude towards the foibles of mankind and the nature of the human condition.

E-cat is being treated with so much skepticism and outright hostility because of the way it is being marketed by its own supporters.  There is no need to rewrite the physics textbooks.  Nobody treats polywell and focus fusion with so much skepticism.  Why is that the case with e-cat?  Only because too many people are insisting on treating this like it is mysterious and over the top.  What if it isn't so?  Just asking.

This is a joke, right?

Why you should love $5 gas

 The reasons are listed here:

1. Fewer people would die on the road  [ fewer people would die on the road if we went back to the horse and buggy days but that doesn't make it a good idea]

2. Demand for high-mileage cars could grow [ if high mileage cars mean smaller cars, more people will die on the road]

3. Shorter security lines [ if all the airlines went out of business, security lines would be smaller too.  does that make it a good idea?]

4. Less pollution [ see #1]
5. Less congestion. [ditto]
6. High prices lead to lower prices.[ huh?  if Obama says no to this idea, not necessarily]
7. More exercise. [ cavemen got more exercise, see #1]
8. End of wars [ wishful thinking, wars preceded the automobile, and may well continue when cars are obsolete]
9. Local businesses could profit. [ maybe, they could go out of business too. ]
10. It's all about democracy. [ more wishful thinking]

This article is so dumb it has to be a joke.

Comparative fusion techniques

This may seem a bit repetitive, sorry if I am boring anyone.  Let's compare and contrast fusion techniques

technique      reactants                 energy                                     confinement
sun               hydrogen                 self sustaining fusion reactions    gravity plasma
ITER            hydrogen                 externally started, sustained       magnetic plasma
polywell        hydrogen boron       externally started, sustained      magnetic electrons
focus fusion   hydrogen boron       externally started pulsed           magnetic plasma
e-cat             nickel hydrogen       externally started, sustained     ????? chemical???

The difference with e-cat is that the confinement may be chemical in nature.  The reactants are held in place not by gravity nor by magnetism, but being chemically incapable of escaping each other when energized sufficiently for fusion to take place.   The metal is a solid, which makes it more dense than a gas.  The hydrogen saturates the nickel and cannot go anywhere but into the nickel's nucleus where it fuses with the nickel's nucleus.  All this depends upon enough energy being brought to where the hydrogen and nickel are so that they can fuse.  That is what I think is happening.

It must be something like this, or it breaks the known laws of physics.  What I am suggesting is that e-cat can work without breaking any known law of physics.

Morning Summary, 5/26

Funny how you get used to things.  Yesterday's numbers would have seemed great just a week ago, now it seems disappointing.  What goes up must come down.

This is becoming an E-cat blog, which is something of a change.  Before the E-cat can change the world, it will have to change people one at at time.  Evidently, it has already changed my blog.  But change is often resisted- and I'm not swallowing the Kool Aid, remember that.  I'm not any different.

People may find it profitable to study other methods of fusion.  I've done that.  It may well be the case that in order to understand how E-cat works, you will need to understand how other fusion techniques work.

Fusion is not hard to do technically, students have made table top devices for polywell fusion.  These are "cold fusion" as well because they aren't huge tokomak machines which take enormous energy just to get them started.  Not only polywell, but focus fusion is also relatively small.  You may as well call it "cold fusion" as well.  As I wrote yesterday, "cold fusion" is just a semantic argument.  Fusion is fusion, it happens or it doesn't.  If you get fusion products, you have got fusion.  People argue about the silliest things.  I know, I have done it many times myself.

Evening Wrap 5/25

A quiet day.  I thought I might find something scandalous in the history of "cold fusion", but it didn't develop.  Looks like a semantic issue that people insist upon having.

"Cold fusion" may spring up and surprise people.  Why the surprise?  Over a technical argument?  There must be something there and we may see something interesting soon.  There are plenty of folks who have been working on it since the beginning back in 1989.    It is hard to believe that this will just go away after all this time.

There's a lot of interest in the topic.  I'll do what I can to keep up.  Thanks for coming by and have a good evening.

Free Energy 400 Billion Dollar Secret

I have heard of this before.  Looks like this was uploaded in 2008.  Thermal depolymerization is what the process is called.

That reminds me of what I was writing about a couple months ago.  The idea then was fuel cells.  You could use this process to obtain hydrogen for fuel cells.   I had a lot of posts on that.  You can access them from the Energy label at then end of this post.

VASIMR with 200 megawatts nuclear electric generator?

Some discussion of fusion electric propulsion there.  Still think that the Dense Plasma Focus is the way to go with that, especially if it becomes net energy soon.

Obama Grounding Space Program, Astronauts Say

The American voyage into the unknown territories of space is over with President Obama’s failure to fund the space program, according to an USA Today opinion piece by astronauts Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Gene Cernan.

From the USA Today editorial:

But today, America's leadership in space is slipping. NASA's human spaceflight program is in substantial disarray with no clear-cut mission in the offing. We will have no rockets to carry humans to low-Earth orbit and beyond for an indeterminate number of years.

Are they forgetting the Falcon 9?

 

Edmund Storms on "cold fusion"

Has another perspective that I hadn't looked at. He thinks that it may be chemically assisted in some way.

Well it was called cold fusion by Steve Jones, and that stuck. And then later people said, you know, that’s not very accurate because you get transmutations, and it may not be fusion directly, so let’s make it describe a bigger area, so we’ll call it low-energy nuclear reactions [LENR]. I like the chemically-assisted nuclear reactions [CANR] description myself, but nevertheless, it’s all the same thing.

The following video covers this and more (about 45 minutes)



Update:
Edmund Storms' bio here, plus his book The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction.

Thinking is hard work

It is one of my conceits to view myself as a thinker.  In my more humble moments, I realize that I am often too lazy to really think as well as I ought.

I wanted to write something in connection to that last post about the language that was being used in the cold fusion controversy.  It was about semantics and then I recalled that I wrote something about that once.

That post is contaminated with conceit.  The truth is that I am not that sharp with the language.  It is also true that I make the effort to improve it, though.  So, here I am about to embark upon the discussion of language. If it is littered with more of the same conceit, well, I am only human, and a bit lazy.

This brings me to this notion of "cold fusion".  Martin Fleishmann denies that he ever used the term.  It appears that the term was invented by the media.  The media, for its part, is in business to sell itself to the public.  One way of doing that is to sensationalize an event.  Cold fusion became more of a media contraption designed to sell the public than a scientific discussion to enlighten the public.  The unfortunate part about this is that the media is the interface between such events and the public. If the media won't use the appropriate terminology, the public's right to know is being ill served. Now this term is forever fixed in the public mind as something that it never was from the beginning. This makes it difficult to go forward with an intelligent discussion when your viewpoint can be ridiculed from the start.

It has struck me that there can be no such thing as cold fusion.  The terminology is faulty from the beginning. The misconception may arise as to what is the nature of heat.  Heat is the opposite of cold, and most everybody knows that fusion is hot.  Therefore, the term "cold fusion" invites controversy.  It is a self contradiction.  An oxymoron.  But what is heat, and what is cold?  The terms are not well defined in this context, and were most likely, not supposed to be.  They were supposed to attract attention in order to sell newspapers.  Such an oxymoronic term certainly achieved that effect.  The term "cold fusion" will live in infamy.  So will the true ideas behind it, which are forever linked to the term.

People don't think about these things.  I know I didn't.  After listening to Dr. Robert Bussard's discussion of Polywell fusion, I didn't get it.  The part that was giving me trouble was that very notion of heat.  I just didn't understand, couldn't wrap my mind around the notion that he could fuse anything in such a small device because it wasn't as hot as the sun.  For if it were, it would melt.  The misconception I was having was about heat.  How it is measured.  I never did get Polywell until I heard another discussion of it from Tom Ligon, Bussard's assistant, who explained the equivalent way of expressing heat was in electron volts.  Bingo!

It turns out that the old TV sets used electricity in thousands of electron volts, which should have been enough to melt them into a useless slag.  Why doesn't that happen?  This requires an explanation that I may botch pretty badly, so I won't go too much into that.  Let's put it this way: "heat" isn't always what we think it is.  It can be manifested as electricity, or as infrared radiation, which we feel as heat.  In the end, it is energy, which can be expressed in a different way than with a thermometer. It is still energy, whatever its manifestation.

So, "cold fusion" was never cold at all.  The process used energy in order to accomplish a task.  Therefore, it was hot.  It was called "cold fusion" not to help understand what was going on with this device, but to sell newspapers.  It made it difficult to discuss the subject with intelligence.  And we are all a lot worse off now because of it.  Not necessarily because it was valid, or not.  No, because some basic ideas have been relegated to the equivalent of a taboo, just because of way some media people reported the event.

It is the product of laziness.  The public is too lazy to think for themselves, so they can be easily misled.  The media is too lazy to learn a little of the science behind it and report it honestly, as opposed to sensationalizing it.  Those who should know better are too lazy to educate us as to why this was an error.  It is hard work and thinking is hard work.

Update:

It will no longer be called cold fusion on this blog.  Instead, it will be called "cold fusion", to emphasize the inappropriate use of the term.  Other terms may be adopted as they are found, such as LENR.  Since there are no appropriate theory available to explain the phenomenon, there seems to be an inadequate way of expressing it.

Cold Fusion Controversy

I came across this website and thought it may be worth linking to:

293) Jed Rothwell comments on some accusations

Some of this discussion can get rather tedious, but the last part sums it up pretty well, I think:

Lindley [ibid.] and many other skeptics have said that before they believe the experimental results, cold fusion researchers must first provide a complete theory to explain the phenomenon. This also violates a fundamental tenet of the scientific method, since there are and always have been countless unexplained phenomena which are unquestionably real (such as high temperature superconductivity and radium fission, as noted above). Cold fusion researchers feel that it is the job of science to explain anomalies rather than to dismiss them.

If anomalies are being dismissed, it is worse than a violation of scientific method.  There can be no science at all if anomalies are dismissed.  How can science even exist if someone won't even ask a question about a puzzling phenomenon?  A puzzling phenomenon is an opportunity for someone to make a discovery.  To turn your back on it is turning your back on science itself.   If science is about anything, it is about discovery. Those who turn their backs this way are not defending science, they are attacking it.

Update:

Here is an analysis of the cold fusion controversy in terms of rhetoric employed by the participants.  It concludes as follows:

The study concludes that Fleischmann and Pons followed an unsuccessful rhetorical strategy in their initial published paper, one that addresses of issue of existence, but their evidence was insufficient to convince as to the scientific reasonableness of the cold fusion claim. An alternative rhetorical strategy was available to Fleischmann and Pons, one in which they could have interpreted, rather than asserted, their evidence, thereby evoking a less confrontational response from the scientific community. 

Mistakes were made on both sides.  Rigid positions get taken.  Battle lines get drawn.  The first casualty of war is the truth.

Seven Reasons to Embrace Rossi's Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat)

There are many reasons to support the adoption and proliferation of Andrea Rossi's "cold fusion" E-Cat technology, including hope for a solution to our energy problems, cleaning up the environment, restoring the global economy, and more.

I'll add an eighth reason.  It is Kardashevian, meaning it will take civilization to the next level.

Oil speculators charged with price manipulation

Federal regulators charged five oil speculators Tuesday with manipulating the price of crude and making a $50 million profit from the scheme.

I suspect that the Obama Administration is doing this for political reasons.  They are feeling the heat for the high gasoline prices and are attempting to deflect attention away from their own policies.

Their own policies are to get higher energy prices so that uneconomical "green" energy will be more competitive with oil.  A better strategy would be to make so called "green" energy more competitively priced than oil is now. Then there would be no need for subsidies.  In my opinion, it is a mistake to make war on oil just because you believe that it is the energy of the past.  It is still the energy of the present until something better comes along. Obama should just leave it alone.  The problem will take care of itself.

Talking a little business

Starting to look at the business side of this fusion device. There's a lively discussion over at NextBigFuture (NBF).

I think the skeptic there is a bit too harsh. If the E-cat can produce the amount of heat that is claimed, it can be exploited for energy. That's a non expert opinion. The rest is a discussion of how to do it profitably.

Here's a link to a company that makes Stirling engines.

If this is accurate, it is good enough for a Stirling engine. (very informative link, highly recommended)

In private testing, the temperature inside of the reactor can reach 1,600 C which is hot enough to melt the nickel powder (probably not desirable). 

How the E-cat generates energy and the significance

While looking for additional insights about how the E-cat works, I visited this page, which I have visited before. Although I found nothing new there, it did answer another question that arose of late- how does the energy manifest itself?

In conclusion, it should be underlined that the copper nucleus thermal perturbation, as a result of its mechanical backlash(heat), is transferred to its encompassing nickel lattice and propagated, by in phase phonons (G. Preparata), through the entire nano-crystal. This could explain why in cold fusion the released energy is mainly in the form of heat and the produced (low) γ radiation can be easily shielded.[emphasis added]

Heat as an energy source isn't exactly what we want.  It needs to be converted into electricity.  Therefore, as a useful energy device, it needs to do just that.  A Stirling Engine can do this, for example.  Or, you could make steam and that would turn a turbine that produces the electricity.  The significance of this is that, even though it produces energy, we won't be able to use all of it.  There will be energy losses.

By the way, this paper gives more detail about how the E-cat works.  As for me, it goes over my head a bit, as it is a bit technical.  Andrea Rossi is also a frequent commenter on this page.

Morning Summary 5/24

Good morning all, and I do mean all.  It looks like I've managed to get an audience here.  It has been a long time struggling here just to get a few people.  Now, it seems I've got more than a few, but less than a lot. Thank you all for your support.

Enough with the boasting.  Now that I have an audience, I need to keep it.  What brings everyone here?  It appears that the Rossi Focardi Ecat device is doing that.  It is a hot topic amongst some, but it isn't getting that much coverage out there.  People have to have somewhere to go for this news, and I guess some of them are coming here.  Just one problem with that, though.  I don't have much news to report.  But I'd like to keep that audience, so I'll do my best to find stuff when I can.

I think I should add another comment here.  I've written about the need to believe in things and the downside of that.  The downside is that it may blind you to some important truths.  But, let's consider the upside for a moment.  If you believe in something enough, it will fortify you against a lot of discouragement.  It so happens that this fortification will be needed, because it is a tough world out there.  Believing in something deeply will give you that strength to carry on in the face of discouragement.  Since I can see a downside to this, I can't be like the pastor in a church.  I tend to want to look in other "churches" from time to time.  This may be looked upon as a bit of betrayal by the true believers, but I regret to say that I can't be that pastor that some people might be looking for.  Instead, I will try to bring a realistic appraisal of it within my limitations.

Cold Fusion

This post isn't about E-cat.  It is about Pons Fleischmann work of the eighties.  In the post on the 21st, I wrote that it appeared to be a mistake that it was referring to a deuterium deuterium fusion reaction, as opposed to a palladium hydrogen reaction.  It has occurred to me that this could have been what they were looking for, and not finding, decided that it was bogus.

If I'm right, then they may have overlooked something.  If they weren't looking for any other reactions, they may not have checked to see what other materials could have been present.  This means that something could have been produced, and they weren't looking for it, so they didn't find it.  Thinking that nothing was there, they could have concluded that there was some kind of mistake and stopped looking for an explanation.

It could explain a few things.  Looking for something, but not in the right place.

I fiddled around with the calculator again, the one I mentioned here.   I stopped after a short while.  That's when the thought hit me that something like this could have happened.  No need to keep fooling around with it.  It's ancient history now, anyway.

This will be my last post of the day.  I feel a little strange after that last thought.  Maybe a little sick at heart.
It was another good day, thanks for coming by.  See you in the morning.

Rossi Focardi E-cat

This is obviously a hot topic.  For those who are new to this blog, you could probably find everything relating to Rossi Focardi under Energy.  But this topic has become so hot, that I am giving it it's own label.  Now, if you want to read everything that I've written about Rossi Focardi, just click on the Rossi Focardi E-cat label at the end of this post. ( or any such post)  The blog will bring up all posts with that label.  I hope this is helpful.

Video link

Update:

Here's the 60 Minutes Broadcast on "Cold Fusion", which is not technically the same thing as the E-cat.  It is fusion, even though Fleishmann says in the video that it was a mistake to say that it was.



Update:

One more thing before I leave this post. In an earlier post, I couldn't understand where the iron was coming from. Well, here's an explanation.

Naturally occurring nickel (Ni) is composed of five stable isotopes; 58Ni,
60Ni,
61Ni,
62Ni and
64Ni with
58Ni being the most abundant
(68.077% natural abundance). 58Ni may decay by double beta-plus decay to 58Fe.

Majestic Muck: Can Pond Scum Revive Airlines?

Algal fuel currently sells in the range of $4 to $5 a gallon, or $150 to $200 a barrel, according to Sayre. But once industrial scale production facilities are running at full capacity, and emerging technologies make algae more efficient, the price could drop to $2 a gallon, he said.

One way or another, the problem looks like it can be solved. It is just a matter of what way works the best.

Real Clear Science

A plug for Thorium reactors: Safe, Cheap Nuclear: Thorium Fluoride Reactors

And fusion power: Dreams of Fusion Power: I'm Not the Only One
In this one, he doesn't seem to be familiar with Focus Fusion nor Polywell.  Not to mention the Ecat. Conventional thinking here.  He praises the Tokomak research, which may turn out to be one the greatest white elephants of all time.

Currently, there exist two main roadblocks to creating and maintaining the fusion reaction. First, it requires immense heat (150 million degrees Celsius, to be exact). Second, it demands a massive magnetic force, like the one found in the center of a star.

Saving the ET's

A little late for this idea, since the Shutle is being retired.  I bandied about recycling the ET's a few months ago. There was a short story written by David Brin along these lines which you can read here.

It came to my attention while I was looking for information about electrodynamic tethers.  This is covered in the short story.

Evening Wrap 5/22

A lot about fusion again, particular Rossi Focardi.  There appears to be three strong candidates for a breakthrough announcement this year- Rossi Focardi, Polywell, and Focus Fusion.  Those are the ones I know of.  Energy could become more and more important as the Mideast becomes more unstable.  A supply disruption could send prices much higher.  Inasmuch as thorium is already feasible, it would seem that a prudent policy would be to start developing that capability.  If fusion turns out to be viable, that could be scaled back, but it should start now anyway.  Better have a backup plan in case the original plan doesn't work out.

This year is pivotal for energy as well as economically.  Debt is an issue in the US as well as Europe.  It remains to be seen whether each of them will actually take steps to deal with it.  We should now that before the summer is over in the US, perhaps sooner than that in Europe.

As for my blog, today looks like another good day.  I will go over that in the morning.  Thanks for your support, and have a great evening.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu in The Wall Street Journal:

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the prices of gasoline to the levels in Europe." The current gasoline price is about $8.50 a gallon in England and $8.80 in France and Germany.

Question:  Is he nuts?

Focus Fusion Update

Meanwhile, back at NextBigFuture a few days ago, there was an update from Focus Fusion.  They are working on improving the switches.  Bigger switches mean more power, which means better performance.  From there, it is on to studying the flickr pics that they have available.  I'd like to look these over thoroughly, just to get a better idea of what they are doing.

Update:

Looks like I spent an hour looking at all these pics.  This is one complicated machine.

Update:

If all goes well, they may be able to demonstrate feasibility before the end of the year.  That's two things to look for this year with respect to fusion news.  

Could you escape earth gravity without going 25000 mph?

I put that question in the google search and came up with this as an answer.  Basically, the answer is yes, but you need to have enough fuel to keep the rocket going up away from the Earth's gravity.

I thought of this question in terms of what everyone thinks about how to get to space.  You got to go really fast.  Maybe not.  What you really need is the ability to overcome gravity long enough to escape the Earth's gravitation.   You can do that by getting your speed up fast enough, or you can do that by continually firing your rocket long enough to escape gravity.  The first is preferred, most likely due to the shortcomings of rockets.

No clear theory for ECat, this says

I've been browsing the suggested reading at the end of this article , which is titled "The Fusion Revolution".  In the third article that I came to, which is titled "Cold fusion may provide one megawatt in Athens", I came across this and I quote:

The problem was that the observers were not allowed to examine the reactor. Yet Giuseppe Levi considers combustion as a hidden energy source to be unlikely. One possible explanation is a kind of cold fusion between nickel and hydrogen, though the inventor Rossi and his advisor Professor Sergio Focardi until now have said that they lack a clear theory, at least officially.

And,

“The truth is a little different. I have very specific ideas about the theoretical aspects. But they are so closely related to an industrial secret that I prefer to keep them secret,” Rossi explained.

There was a theory offered here that is quite different than my armchair physics.  I downloaded the pdf and read it.  It was written in the nineties and it doesn't directly address the ecat.  Instead, it focuses in on a way to achieve fusion that seems to be directed toward hydrogen fusion, which is a different case than what we have here.  It is impossible to say if this process is useful in this context.

Update:

I've moved on to the next article, which is titled Swedish physicists on the E-cat: “It’s a nuclear reaction”
What caught my attention was an apparent before and after comparison between the stuff going in and the stuff coming out as follows:

At a first meeting with Rossi at the end of February they were given access to a sample of the pure nickel powder, intended for use in the energy catalyzer, and another sample of nickel powder which, according to Rossi, had been used in the reactor for 2.5 months.

Their analyses showed that the pure powder consists of essentially pure nickel, while the used powder contains several other substances, mainly 10 percent copper and 11 percent iron.

The iron part is curious.  This would mean some other kind of decay, than I wrote about yesterday.

Update:
From E-cat inventor in live chat with the readers---  Here is a transcript of a chat in which Rossi said the following:

We have to calculate also the recoil energy, integrated with the kinetic energy we produce. We want to correlate the thermal effect with the gamma specter we will define. We also are continuing to analyze the atomic and isotopical transmutation, to correlate it to the gamma and to the thermal effect. I want to know if Cu 59, 60, 61, 62 decay by electron capture, instead of beta plus emission; if so a very interesting consideration can be derived.

I must have been on the right track.

I've been doing some more work on the calculator.  Can't find any reason for the iron being in the residue left behind, noted above.  But I did find some reactions that suggest cobalt- but after that, nothing.  Something came pretty close, so it may be doing an endothermic decay, if that's possible.

One more thing, and I'll leave this post:  Rossi did say that his invention breaks some rules of physics.  That's not a direct quote, though.  Anyway, there is an air of mystery around the device.  To know for sure, we'll have to see a fool proof demonstration.  That is supposed to happen in October.

Morning Summary 5/22

Things are looking up.  As you can see, back to back viewing records.  Yesterday was even more impressive than the day before.  All relatively speaking, of course.  This is still an obscure blog.  To see it grow is a pleasure though.  It is doubtful that I can keep up with this rate of growth for long.  It may come to an end today.  It could plateau for awhile, waiting for something new to develop, which could start the growth again.
Once again, thanks for your support.

Evening Wrap 5/21

Today was armchair physicist day as I pondered over the feasibility of hydrogen nickel fusion. In my own inexpert and totally untrained unprofessional opinion, it looks like it could work. Seriously. After going through this, I think the odds are now better than 50-50 that this thing will be what Rossi says it is. In that case, I don't think I'll be a buyer of oil company stock anytime soon. It would be great to get in on the ground floor of this thing, but I think that may be covered already. By the time an average schmuck like me could get in, it will be too late.  In the meantime, back to the blog.

It looks like I had a pretty good day in pageviews, but I'll discuss that in the morning. Thanks for coming by, and have a great evening.

Continuation of how to fuse hydrogen to nickel- Rossi Focardi

Well, that is rather presumptuous of me. The previous post with the calculator showed that a series of proton decay reactions can get you from nickel58 to copper63. Each of these appear to release energy. Now, what kind of energy does it take to attach these protons to the nickel nucleus?

I don't find that, but I found a process in which this might occur. It seems that you need very high temperatures to achieve this. How might this be done?

We know that energy is required to start the process. What kind? Electrical energy? Now if we were to have enough of a voltage here, we may achieve the kind of temperature equivalent according to this equation for electron volt to kelvin:

100,000 times 11,605 equals 1.16 times 10 to the ninth degrees Kelvin.

Therefore, from this 100,000 electron volts would be greater than 1 billion degrees Kelvin. This does not seem out of the question.

Spring is Here, and So are the Airships

Deltoid Pumpkinseed anyone?  Well, not exactly.   But it is something like that.  These are airships.  The DP was an aerobody, which had the characteristics of an airship and an airplane.  It could land and take off like an airplane, but it had the lifting capabilities of a large airship.  The plan was to be able to lift huge amounts of payload and deliver them almost anywhere for the fraction of the cost of conventional transportation.

Playing around with this calculator

It is called the Semi Empirical Binding Energy Calculator.  Frankly, I don't know how to use it, nor do I know how to properly describe it.  The thing I did was to plug in some numbers corresponding to what I think is happening with the transmutation from copper back into nickel by one of two processes 1) beta decay and 2) electron capture.  These processes will get you back from an unstable isotope of copper to a stable isotope of nickel.  Then another proton is added which sends you up the chain again to copper and back down again to nickel.  This repeats until you reach a stable isotope of copper.  I calculated it for four protons.  I didn't calculate the fifth for copper because I don't know what happens at that point in terms of energy.  This also doesn't take into consideration the energy requirements to get the proton to fuse with the nickel nucleus at each step.

First, let's look at beta decay

add proton to nickel yields copper, beta decays back to nickel

add 2nd proton to nickel yields copper, beta decays back to nickel again

add 3rd proton to nickel yields copper and back to nickel again

add 4th proton to nickel yields copper and back to nickel again

The next proton yields stable copper.

Update:  I had some company so I set this post aside for awhile.  Now I am back.  I'll finish this up in just a minute.

Okay, now I've loaded the ones I did for electron capture.

Electron capture means it takes an electron close to the nucleus.  This converts the proton into a neutron and releases energy.  This happens with proton rich nuclei.  The opposite occurs with neutron rich nucleii.

Just work through the same process as with beta decay, but don't know which one would occur before the other would.  Perhaps the rule would be which takes the least energy.

In these pics, I am speculating that these reactions are feasible.  If there is any info here that suggests otherwise, well, please excuse the amateurishness.  I am after all, an amateur.

It looks like electron capture releases more energy.  

 And there it is.  Maybe it happens this way, or perhaps I am full of it.  Anybody who is trained up on this stuff, feel free to comment.