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A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax
In the past few days, several readers have submitted word of a paper published on Arxiv allegedly confirming the efficacy of Andrea Rossi's "E-Cat," a device Rossi says transmutes nickel into copper, producing cheap energy in the process. (Mentioned before on Slashdot.) Ethan Siegel of ScienceBlogs takes a skeptical look at the buzz surrounding this paper, and asks some seemingly obvious questions, pointing out various ways in which the cold-fusion / cheap-energy claims could be either confirmed or debunked. First time accepted submitter CdXiminez writes with a capsule of Siegel's points: "What would it take to convince a reasonable observer that you've got a controlled nuclear reaction going on here? Things not shown in the earlier report: Show that nuclear transmutation has in fact taken place; Start the device operating by whatever means you want, then disconnect all external power to it, and allow it to run; Place a gamma-ray detector around the device; Accurately monitor the power drawn from all sources to the device at all times, while also monitoring the energy output from the device at all times."
That quote is P.T. Barnum. If you are looking for a W.C. Fields quote for this article, I suggest "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull."
What I feel sorry for is any researcher who wants to do some genuine research into cold fusion. To me it would cause rate up there with inventions such as fire/math/smelting ore/cooking food/clothing.
If cold fusion were invented tomorrow everything changes, world politics, anything involving oil or energy production, the environment, space travel, food production, basically everything. So while it attracts cranks by the boatload I would be happy to see huge amounts of funding going to CF. Yet I suspect that if you are a legitimate researcher and you mention cold fusion that there is stunned silence in the room. You might as well bookend it with paranormal research.
NASA is "looking into this": don't misinterpret investigation as validation. If it's not reproducible, more work needs to be done. If the process appears to violate the laws of thermodynamics, your first reaction should be "scam", not "how do I get in on this?". Your second reaction should be "how do they do it"? It's been many years since cold fusion and while there have been tantalizing hints that there may be something to it, nobody has been able to reliably reproduce the phenomenon for objective observers.
NASA looks into all sorts of silly things from time to time on the off chance that perhaps one of those wacky ideas might pan out... and because some congressman or senator has made a gentle inquiry wondering if it is bullshit or not. That has nothing to do with the validity of what it is that may be claimed and sadly tax dollars are still being wasted on utter garbage that has nothing to do with science.
Besides, even this crazy theory you are quoting here doesn't seem to have anything to do with the e-Cat other than it is what Ross claims the device is doing without any real proof that anything is happening at all. That isn't happening, and no real 3rd party investigations into the device have happened. Heck, the guy can't even get patents accepted much less prove that anything is going on.
Rossi even claims to have a factory making these things somewhere in Florida, but when the State of Florida decided to go in and check out what was going on (after a "concerned citizen" made a complaint about a nuclear reactor being built in the state without permits and such) Rossi and his agents had to back off and assert that no manufacturing was even taking place in the state. Yeah, funny how that works out when your bluff is called.
I've made my own private inquiries about the device, and the more I push the more I am firmly convinced this is a hoax of the worst possible kind. I don't know what Rossi's end game is, but he doesn't even merit being a good charlatan as well.
If they want to know if the E-Cat works, why don't they just measure it with an E-meter?
Ezekiel 23:20
I'll settle for less: let the same people perform the experiment again, but don't have Rossi setting up the experiments in his lab on his terms. You don't invite Yuri Geller into the lab then let him set up the spoon-bending experiment.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
There were two experiments. In one, 360W was applied continuously, and in the other, 930W was applied on a 35% duty cycle. Of course, that's assuming there's no trick wiring. The other assumption is that their baffling method of estimating the power output was working properly. It certainly looks fine (assuming the IR camera didn't go over 50C, which is all it's rated to without active cooling) but Rossi doesn't like people to do actual calorimetry and I can't help but read that as an indication that the positive results would immediatley disappear.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
What I feel sorry for is any researcher who wants to do some genuine research into cold fusion.
The trick is that you don't put your conclusion before your hypothesis. "Cold fusion" is the conclusion, or the result, of the whole process that would result in your utopian revolutions (again, something that is post conclusion or desired symptoms of the result of this sort of research). When your research begins by you working backwards, that's when the red flags should go up because there is no logical way to work backwards. Sometimes a sci-fi author will imagine something but it takes a very talented scientist/research/inventor/engineer/whatever to go from hypothesis to that end construct -- even then there's often a slight catch or permutation of nonfiction idea.
... which is great (any more transparency is always welcomed). But it's also curious, wouldn't you say? We've been hearing about this for years now and no one can tell me what, exactly, is going on in this solution filled chamber. The critics are rightly asking questions about why the next steps aren't being taken (like getting real world measurements on its power draw versus its power emission). And are suspicious not of the data that is provided by this paper but of the data that aren't provided and would be obviously interesting.
What this paper appears to do is formalize observations
The fear is that Rossi stumbled upon a neat trick that is just not sustainable but he realizes that if he controls the parameters on the experiments, he can make it look like this thing works. Then he rakes in billions and walks away from any involvement in it. It is suspicious because it's being conducted at a university that should be making obvious logical steps forward. Yet we continually only see "demonstrations" like his "public displays" and "observations" like this paper.
My charges are still borderline character assassination/ad hominem and this could very well work. But I've had enough talk of what is "perceived to happen" and I'm afraid that someone has a really neat trick that they've already thoroughly investigated and figured out why it works. And maybe it even fooled them in the beginning. But truly there is no good way to monetize this trick. So they give everyone else only enough information to make them think that it works. Then they capitalize on this public interest and walk away from it just before the reveal.
If not, I apologize but I also wouldn't be buying into this idea until we start with a hypothesis and tests are reproduced around the world and the true reason behind this anomaly is well understood and indeed a good energy answer. It's totally possible he doesn't know yet and his greed is the reason we only get tastes of this device. If that's true, however, we still don't know if it's a good answer to our energy addiction.
I only hope there are enough details in this paper for other researchers around the world to better reproduce and analyze these results. I'm sorry if this is just a matter of an ill-equipped laboratory at Bologna University but with all the interest this has generated, I would be surprised if that was reason.
In conclusion, start with a hypothesis, openly publish your methods and results. Wait for others to reproduce. Your rigor and its results will be your vindication if you fear being attacked for doing research. Just don't start your research by saying, "I'm going to make cold fusion and cheap energy is just ten years away." That's when you're openly attacked for good reason -- that's not science, those are words that you spout to get money.
My work here is dung.
Largely because it's all been demonstrated to be either fake, a gross misunderstanding of what's happening, or so totally un-repeatable by anyone else as to be suspect.
Right, all those people who still think we live on a flat earth or that the world is only 6000 years old are the victim of groupthink.
Or, you know, if you make an extraordinary claim, you're gonna need proof.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Actually it's not PT Barnum either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute
Your URL makes it sound like the quote is "There's 27 suckers born every minute."
Must be due to inflation.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
goes out of his way to make it look like it's a hoax.
Or, much more likely, that they're simply measuring the current incorrectly.
The paper clearly states that power was delivered to the system in surges, or pulses. Clamp-on ammeters *deliberately* smooth out measurements. Small pulses of power are simply not reported by the device, so if their is a shorter-duty-cycle delivery to the E-Cat, then this will disappear from the measurement. I believe this can explain 100% of the phenomenon being reported.
This problem with power measurement is extremely well known, and is the same basis of "proof" that many similar devices have put forth in the past. Newmann's machine was perhaps the most celebrated example, where simply hooking it up to an oscilloscope demonstrated the total area under the curve was less on the output than the input. The same is true of Naudin's version of the MEG, but in this case Naudin *did* capture the pulses on an oscilloscope, but then applied incorrect math to extract the resulting power figure. Once again, simply applying the correct formula demonstrated that the output was less than the input.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity - Hanlon's razor
Or, much more likely, that they're simply measuring the current incorrectly.
Mod parent up. Bear in mind how this thing works. There's a resistance heater inside, and it is never completely off for long periods. The claim is that the heat given off by the device is greater than that being pumped in by the resistance heater. The heater is fed with a "proprietary waveform" from a control box the watchers were not allowed to examine. All they could do was put clamp-around current sensors on the leads to the device, voltage probes on the inputs, and feed those to a current meter. I strongly suspect problems with the current measurement.
And mass is energy, in the amount of mass times the speed of light squared. This is what all nuclear science is based upon and why fission plants, nuclear warheads, and fusion bombs work. The system energy is not being increased, because the mass defect in the nuclear reaction is converting mass to energy.
When I read the original E-Cat stuff is sounded like total bullshit. The process I saw NASA examine and the new Rossi reactor that has been independently verified by half a dozen scientists from across Europe is actually pretty sound science wise.
In this case, the experiment puts hydrogen atoms into a tight nickle lattice, with hydrogen in the interstitial positions, then radiates it with terrahertz radiation, which forces inverse beta decay of the hydrogen due to the lattice pressures and radiation, the neutrons are then forced into the nickle atoms, which then beta decay to become copper. The beauty of this is that you don't have to overcome the coulomb barrier, but still have a nuclear reaction taking place. In fact, the reverse beta decay of hydrogen is much lower energy than the beta decay of nickle.
A while back I, as a total noob, looked at fusion and said "well, how would I get around the coulomb barrier?" instead of trying to get through it. I calculated that radiation in a swath of Terahertz range that is difficult to produce would make it possible to induce reverse beta decay in hydrogen. If this guy got it to work, the only surprising development is that he was able to produce the right kind of radiation easily. There is literally no other surprise.
You obviously have no experience in the realm of charlatans.
In every single case of too-good-to-be-true power sources, there is a gimmick to make the results seem legitimate to the untrained.
It's little more than an magician's trick of misdirection, and ignorance of the audience. There's no real magic in a magician's act; misdirection and suspension of disbelief are their breadwinners.
There's a reason charlatans won't allow people who know what they're doing to examine their apparatus. It has nothing to do with "trade secrets", and everything to do with the fact that experienced chemists, engineers, and physicists generally find the gimmick and expose their fraud in minutes.
There are a lot of ways to heat up the reactor chemically. If you honestly believe that "it can't be done conventionally," then you've utterly failed chemistry.
Simply heating a lithium-ion battery pack over 185 C starts an unstoppable chain-reaction that quickly reaches a couple thousand degrees. Surround a LiPo battery with a chunk of steel, short circuit it, and it it will reach a temp over 185 C. Now you just wait for the steel to slowly heat up. Create an array of a few of these, add copper to equalize the heat in your bank of LiPo batteries, and voila, you've got a heat source of well over 500 watts that can last for hours - days even, if you set it up right.
As much as the /. crowd hates to admit it, there are reasons for most intellectual property law, NDA's, patents, and so forth: one of them is to protect a in inventor - so he can have outside experts verify his apparatus, and can publish how it works for expert scrutiny, yet still retain the rights to profit from his work.
I'd like to believe that Rossi has somehow found out how to generate abundant, clean, and cheap energy. His actions, however, are identical to a garden-variety charlatan. Activities such as grandstanding before customers or the press, "demonstrations", and refusal to let experienced and external experts examine his device.
Rossi does none of this. The smell of charlatan coming from the guy is overpowering. His behavior is identical to a classic con/charlatan. As the saying goes, you don't have to eat the whole turd to know it isn't chocolate.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Read the actual report and see if you really think a few chemicals could really do what you suggest -- keep the temperature steady and glowing hot for 100 hours. If so, that would be amazing.. especially since the weight of the reactor did not change!
I don't only think a few chemical could really do what I'm suggesting, I know they can.
The "Glowing hot" reaction was, by their own admission, a very short term reaction, to "prove' that it can generate a lot of heat - in fact, enough to melt the steel and ceramic device. This was an earlier test, and had no part in either of the tests that lasted around 100 hours. In fact, there's no indication in the paper of the duration of the "glowing hot" test at all.
The 100 hour "long term" test in their report is an entirely different device, "purposely" running the device cooler. There's no evidence it's even the same design.
Chemical reactions can easily be used to melt the steel and ceramics used in the E-Cat. Thermite will melt through steel, concrete, and a few feet of dirt underneath. Thermite is self-oxidizing, the reaction is Fe2O3 + 2 Al 2 Fe + Al2O3 -- note that the resulting compounds aren't gaseous and therefore won't exhaust into the atmosphere - so the weight before and after the reaction is the same. That's only one of many reactions that can produce the same effect.
When the test is prepared beforehand, and/or you're not allowed to monitor the whole process, it's quite easy for a charlatan to adulterate the test.
Generating a lower level of heat for 100 hours isn't particularly difficult either, though not necessarily by chemical means this time.
Notable is the fact that Rossi would not let anyone disconnect the power cables, instead demanding they use an ammeter to "prove' the cables weren't drawing any power.
I've seen such a demonstration by an EE professor - the working meter read zero current. The purpose was to demonstrate that you really should understand how the meters work before infer anything from their readings. Otherwise, you end up with a meter reading zero on a circuit with enough electricity flowing to kill. Rossi could easily be using one of several methods to deliver power through the wire such that an ammeter still shows zero.
Putting too much trust in a measuring instrument you don't understand has been the source of a lot of scientific embarrassment over the centuries.
Similarly, Rossi will not allow any chemical analysis after the fact that would prove his claims (such as analysis for the type of copper isotopes that would result from the proposed reaction). Trying to claim that it would give away his "trade secret" catalyst is a joke: If he ever plans on selling this thing commercially, he will be required by law to provide an MSDS which details exactly what is in the catalyst.
Even Coca-Cola has to list its ingredients on the can. The difference is the laws are a bit more lenient towards "natural and artificial flavorings" in foods than they are towards industrial reagents.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
One of the sure signs of pseudoscience is that the "inventor" cannot do anything useful with his creation, no matter how long he "refines" it.
If I could build a free energy generator, I wouldn't need to prove anything to anyone. If nothing else, I would unplug myself from the grid, and stop buying gasoline. On a larger scale, I could (for example) perform electrolysis of water and sell hydrogen in bulk quantities at a price no one else could touch. I wouldn't need true believers to worship me as a genius. I wouldn't need to put on ridiculous demonstrations. I would just make money, and lots of it.
That fact that Rossi and others of his ilk seem incapable of doing anything practical with their devices except try to solicit money from victims ... er, investors, should tell you everything you need to know about their validity.