Saturday, January 25, 2014

WHY COMPLEXITY IS SO SIMILAR TO CHOLESTEROL?



Motto
“Contradictory news circulate about Count X. Some say he is dead, others say he is still alive. The truth, as almost always, is in the middle.
(Source went in oblivion but I suspect it was “La rire” (The Laughter) by Henri Bergson the first ‘serious’ book I have ever read)

A remarkable statement in my former blog publication was: “Complexity is the keyword in the cold fusion phenomena”
It was written by my good friend Hideo Kozima and was approved
by many commenters including one of the giants on whose shoulders I am staying and looking for the future of the field. (take this symbolically please).
So, the statement is true, is absolutely true- but a great question appears here; HOW, in which sense is it true that complexity is the
key to cold fusion? Is complexity mainly good or predominantly bad; is it on the side of the problem or on the side of the solution?
What is certain: complexity IS!  Everywhere in Nature and also in human bodies, souls and societies.

Note: everything that follows is true; however it is a special kind of truth, omnipresent for cold fusion and described precisely in my best, but completely ignored essay – as my biographers will state it: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/11/80-of-all-truths-are-pareto-truths.html Is this too complex and strange an idea to be understood?

It is also certain that complexity leads to problems, see this classical quotation:

Three reasons problems are inevitable; first, we live in a world of growing complexity and diversity; second, we interact with people; and third, we cannot control the entire situation we face.” (John C. Maxwell)


Thinking at the highest intensity I am able to now, I had a revelation: complexity is very similar to cholesterol- i.e. to something that is more familiar, part of everyday life and of standard thinking. Apart from a systematic comparison, the most powerful similarity is that we are systematically educated to hate both cholesterol and complexity. See please Dave Pollard’s bright essay: http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2006/06/16/why-we-hate-complexity/

A more recent smart publication about the subject is:

“Understanding complexity”:


For cholesterol see please:

I consider that complexity is very much like cholesterol- it is unavoidable and ubiquitous, both are clearly considered of two sorts one good and one bad.
The role of the bad sort is much exaggerated:

 -for cholesterol by Big Pharma (that wants to make billions by selling dangerous Statins),

-for complexity by those who are not able to understand the roles of the critical parameters.

I will not tell you more about the cholesterol mythology because the Big Pharma’s effective propaganda – it spends more money for marketing than for research and it is difficult to confront its strong memes.
Complexity is complex per se and has a natural trend to become increasingly complex structurally, quantitatively, qualitatively, functionally, causally, and LENR is an extreme case- multi-stage, multi-phase, multi-disciplinary. To this adds diversity and dynamics and strongly non-linear effects. Systems thinking is a must. The system has to be described by many parameters and its evolution from the initial state to the final one is quite difficult to predict. However- LENR’s complexity is manageable – as the coming-soon commercial applications will demonstrate it. 
There is no simple way to success therefore this old CF simplicity myth promoted by a recent paper:  

“The dream of cold fusion is that it brings cheap, unlimited energy from devices that can be built in a garage.”
is false, counter-productive and harmful. THe solutions need good engineering, science and serious professionalism.

We will understand that complexity is actually good, is the gateway to many possibilities.

 Acknowledgment
My gratitude goes- in reverse alphabetical order-  to F. Piantelli, H. Kozima, J Hadjichristos who have helped me a lot to believe that I am on the best way to  understand the essence of  LENR complexity.

Peter

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

ENGINEERING IS THE WAY TO MAKE LENR USEFUL. (First part)


MOTTOS

Scientists study the world as it is; engineers create the world that has never been. (Theodore von Kármán)

Cold Fusion was discovered in a form, place, and time generating severe inborn problems to it. To solve these problems, it has to be re-invented. (Peter Gluck)

This is not a Motto; however I think that the optimal mode to learn from good and smart people is when and by disagreeing with them. Really, many errors are made by mixing differing things as friendship and admiration for somebody with not using critical, independent thinking – mercilessly, for his ideas. Obviously to be fair, you have to accept the same brutal treatment for your own, dearest ideas. If ideas are valuable and true, they will eventually win. Perhaps, sometimes after a painful process of evolution.

Recently (http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2013/12/cold-fusion-what-now.html) I have tried to find out what has concluded a Japanese paper about the most evil problem tormenting our field from its early childhood up to now- bad reproducibility. From the lacunar
information I got, it seems that the Igari-Mizuno paper has no conclusions of the good sort, neither positive (telling what you have to do) nor negative (justifying deep desperation)
However my friends are trying to help me. Their ideas and suggestions are diverse- but have in common the very stimulating
feature that I disagree actually with all. I have a simple explanation
for this situation- I consider they judge the situation from the side of the Problem, while I am already on the side of the Solution as promised for 2014. The name of solution is Engineering.  It would be naivety thinking they see it in the same way, but time will judge.

Hideo Kozima whom I consider as a brother after his visit at us in
1994 and whom I remember inter alia singing Mozart and this beautiful Japanese song with a splendid, cultured voice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKTRnO7SV68 wrote:

I would like to give you my opinion on the problem of reproducibility in the cold fusion phenomenon (CFP).
In my opinion, the CFP is a phenomenon of complexity and has no quantitative reproducibility but a qualitative reproducibility like the earthquake, typhoon, and so forth. It is enough to have a qualitative reproducibility to investigate a phenomenon. Your have to remember that almost all nuclear reactions in nuclear physics have only qualitative reproducibility. The simplest example of them is the alpha decay; we do not know which Ra nucleus decays at what time but we know the statistical law of alpha decay.
It is my pleasure if this letter is useful for your consideration of the problem of the reproducibility in the CFP. Complexity is the key word in the CFP.

Hideo is a scientist; if I translate his message in the language of technology- it says CFP cannot give anything of practical use. Qualitative reproducibility is, IMHO, a partial oxymoron. It is reproduced but when, how, if something occult, unknowable wishes.
I wouldn’t enjoy explaining this paradoxical concept to students.
Cold Fusion is and isn’t a natural phenomenon. In its potentially useful form it is man-made and has to be controlled, developed and used by humans. Earthquakes are studied not because they are interesting per se, but because they do a lot of harm to people and their assets. I dislike this association for CFP. In Romania we have a major catastrophic earthquake approximately each 40 years – the most recent ones being in 1977 and 1940. Time to be worried.
Hideo says complexity is the keyword in CFP. Very true but it has to be a complexity of the bad sort, a very chaotic one. Why should CFP be of so much higher complexity than many similar phenomena in Materials Science? I have concluded long time ago that cold fusion’s complexity is a toxic one, the presence of any gases that compete with deuterium/hydrogen is the cause of bad quality reproducibility. This simplistic, dirty idea was not accepted by my scientist friends because it is not scientific enough.

Then Ed Storms who was so helpful and generous during my visit at LANL in 1995 and who is trying so hard to explain the very basics of LENR up to now- Ed has also joined the discussion.

Cold fusion will be completely reproducible once it is understood. This is a phenomenon of nature that we presently do not understand. In addition, this understanding requires knowledge about both chemistry and physics, which is an unusual combination of skills.  People with a chemical background ignore basic rules of nuclear physics and the physicists ignore the basic rules of chemistry.  A time will come when properly trained people have the incentive to read the extensive literature and put the pieces together in a proper way. Only then will the effect be reproducible. Hopefully once Rossi puts a generator on the market, the system will wake up and give people the incentive to properly study the effect.

Now even if I well know Ed’s great merits and achievement and wisdom in the field, I also have almost formed a habit to –as respectfully as possible- to disagree with his ideas aimed to be part of solution.
As regarding his first sentence here, the reverse is also true, cold fusion must be made reproducible before it is completely understood. If cold fusion takes place in cracks as Ed tries to convince us then CF depends on a destructive process by definition, it is possible it can be understood quite well but not really controlled.
CF is too complex a matter for both physicists and chemists because the Solution is based on many engineering disciplines.
Ed calls cold fusion a “phenomenon of nature” however for us it is a human creation; take in consideration that Nature has only Solutions while we, humans have Problems too and these have to be solved,
I agree with Ed that only a commercial energy generator on the market can give back the lost reputation to CF and lead to the renaissance of the field. However I have strong doubts that Pd based wet systems will be ever more than a lab curiosity. 

(Hideo and Ed have then started a discussion about reproducibility and statistics, a bit apart from the main line of this discussion.)

Now a third friend, Mitchell Swartz enters the discussion. I have met Mitch in 1998 at Cambridge, Mass at a cold fusion meeting and I am reading with pleasure his excellent Cold Fusion Times. However, what he does say here happens to be for me like the  red color for the bull:
Alleged 'non-reproducibility' is not applicable to cold fusion for several reasons.  
First, the heart of the issue is that "reproducibility" is nothing but a euphemism for failure, used by those who are against the 25 year successful science and engineering of cold fusion.

   Second, for cold fusion, reproducibility obviously exists. As but one example, there were three (3) demonstrations of cold fusion at ICCF10 by John Dash, Dennis Cravens and Letts, 
and myself.  Three groups independently elected to begin experiments at a specified time (Tuesday) at MIT in 2003, and all got successful results.  That is reproducibility. Q.E.D.
   Third, another problem is that this is more complicated because reproducibility depends upon who does it and how.
Consider the art of glass making, or making cat-whiskers, or souffles, or bearnase or baked
alaska.
Not everyone can do it. Are they reproducible?
   It depends who does it, and how much experience they have.
How about a kidney transplant?  or curing even an early Stage Hodgkin's disease by ionizing penetrating radiation.  Does anyone really believe that any and all readers of CMNS would get the same success for their attempting a kidney transplant into the pelvis of a 12 year old?  or that they would achieve the same 20 year disease-free survival if they had access to the machines (6 MeV linacs and the like) to treat the tumor cited above (which requires licensing and certification, of course, therefore).

  Fourth, analysis of 'reproducibility' is even more interesting showing how illogical it is, as a 'straw man' argument.
Consider that as regards 'reproducibility' there is even a possibly spatially varying activity for some systems.
  As an example, penicillin VK (an antibiotic used since WW1 against gram + bacteraciae when it replaced proflavine)
works successfully outside of the hospitals today in about 96 of every 100 infections.
It is very curative, whereas the untreated infections might have killed many of the patients as they did when they were the major cause of death in the early 1900's.
  There is much clinical significance because each of these cures are very significant to the people involved.
  But it is not completely reproducible at ~96%.     [ So is there utility?   I say yes. ]

  But consider, inside hospitals where nosocomial infections today are "winning" all too often, penicillin VK may only be effective against a very small fraction (maybe 1 in 3 or less), 
and at those locations infected patients die if not given superlative therapy(ies) to PVK.
  In one location, the antibiotic's effect is almost reproducible (although 'not completely' is it?), and elsewhere, in the hospitals festooned with nosocomial drug insensitive strains, it is a failure and not reproducible.
  So the drug's effectiveness is ---> spatially varying with respect to 'reproduciblility'.

  In summary, allegations of non-reproducibility in cold fusion (lattice assisted nuclear reactions) are today not logical, and are disingenuous because reproducibility has already long existed
 in several types of cold fusion systems (using probably similar types of CFP) for years.

I am completely unable to accept Mitch’s arguments or to synchronize with his mode of thinking; my impression is that he tries to kill the problem before and instead of solving it.

First he says (very correctly) that non-reproducibility is just an other name for failed experiments – and adds that this is just a hostile action of those (bad and stupid people) who are able to ignore the great and valuable achievements of cold fusion from its 25 years glorious history. How should call a correct, faithful CF researcher the same situation, say a series of experiments with 5 to 20% reproducibility? What is the connection between blaming the others and genuine failure?

Second argument very strange- episodes of reproducibility obviously existed once, then they exist today. Listen to this aria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fccdGBi9JUs
It happened that Don Giovanni was faithful to a woman for three days, but if cold fusion can be called reproducible due to some short episodes of reproducibility, than Don Giovanni is really faithful, I think. As “winning” in the well known quotation by Vince Lombardi, reproducibility is not a sometimes thing, it is an all-time thing.
Third, reproducibility seems to be very subjective, needs special skills- OK, the truth is that even very most skilled people cannot achieve real reproducibility. The many examples from the medical domain are interesting but of no use, as long as experimental geniuses have not achieved high reproducibility
And fourth, an argument far over my head, variable reproducibility is not true reproducibility and the numerous examples from medicine have not much to do with the cases of cold fusion. Why should the demand for reproducibility be illogical today?  We want good heaters working reproducibly.

It is not polite and not productive to just negate others’ ideas.
It is not the first time and hopefully not the last time when I state
that engineering is the key to usable/useful cold fusion. Take in consideration that during this process of development it will be transformed in such an extent and deepness that the name of the field will change.

Hideo will be right then: complexity- just smartly organized will be
the keyword.
Ed will be right then, the phenomena will be well understood and controlled in a perfectly reproducible way.
Mitch will be also right then it will be illogical and unjust to call the phenomena irreproducible.
I bet with you that after the triumph of engineering in our field the ab ovo erronated name of cold fusion will evanesce surprisingly fast.

Peter

PS This paper was published on my Blog with the explicit approval
of two of my co/counter-authors and lack of protest of the third. My gratitude- the dialogs come from a closed Forum.


Saturday, January 4, 2014

AXIL-ABOUT THE LENR DAYS TO COME


In this New Year that marks the silver jubilee of LENR, it is time to both look back and to look forward, to assess where we have been and were we are moving toward.
In this long 25 years of effort and toil, the faithful of this movement have spent their youth with stubborn determination to overcome and prevail. Now in the twilight of their years they must marshal their waning strength anew, when their great goal is in sight, they must now do one last thing in tribute and remembrance of their great efforts.
It is now only a matter of days and with the dawning of the new age so close at hand, it’s time for those privileged insiders; the people who performed the experiments, who wrote the papers, those who kept the dream alive, those who lived the adventure and felt the pain, it is now their duty to awaken to their duty again and do one last thing…to begin the authoring of the: “inside LENR” type books about the true and unvarnished  goings on in cold fusion.
Over these many years, it is from numberless, diverse, and self-sacrificing acts demonstrating their courage and in their belief that human history would be well served by achieving their common goal.  Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to selflessly improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice and ignorance, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.
To document this birth of a new epoch of human achievement, future historians need accurate and well informed material to bear witness to one of the most momentous events in the history of humankind. This witness of first hand observers is absolutely required to detail the mistakes, the trials, the tribulations and the eventual triumphs of the key workers in the field of LENR from those journalist privileged to observe the shadowy processes before all the rest.
Few of us will have the greatness to bend the course of history itself; but those of us who have cannot let their memory be unsung and their deeds be lost to the dark and murky currents of history. They must now work to lay down for the record each in an honest way the small portion of events that they rendered, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this greatest generation.
It was not enough to understand, or to see clearly; the accomplishment was in the doing. The dawning of this shining future has not happened by chance. It was shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task. That adventure must now be told in a forthright way by those who participated in the great mission.
Unlike their critics, this new future was not won by those who are content with today, with apathy toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, this bold advance belongs to those who bent to purpose and reason the arrogant self-importance of their detractors.

They did the work not because the work was easy, but because it was hard.  And those who made this peaceful revolution more difficult then it needed to be should not be left unmentioned. Their infamous deeds and calumnies need to be truthfully exposed to the righteous judgment of history.

Later AXIL has written a new comment, and I add it here. You will agree I had to do this: 

ADD

If the past is prolog, China will be the major mover and the first adopter of the green LENR technology. Controls and regulation on the LENR reactor design, production and sales will not exist and the production of reactors will be spread far and wide throughout the Chinese industrial base. China will attempt to corner the LERN reactor market though a well-designed and heavily financed government inspired dumping strategy but the west will block the adoption of Chinese reactors in their industrial base through high tariffs and regulations restrictions under heavy political pressure from the fossil fuel energy sector lobby.

As a reaction to the western LENR blocking strategy, China will convert the cheap energy costs for LENR power into low cost products far below what those products would cost when produced using fossil fuels.

Eventually, the west will be forced to adopt LENR reactors as a counter strategy to China’s dumping of reactors and low cost products into the global market place.

The speed of deployment of LENR reactors in China will be amazing having been encouraged and financed by the huge capital reserves of the Chinese government.

The Chinese environment will clear rapidly and the LERNerization of the Chinese economy will be abrupt and unstoppable. The standard of living of the Chinese population will rise rapidly causing catastrophic political upheaval and rapid political evolution of the Chinese system.

Eventually, to remain completive in the worldwide marketplace, western governments will slowly adopt LENR as a counter strategy to the Chinese LENR industrial offensive. Here too, the west will suffer a profound decline of the standard of living among their populations which will force major political and economic upheaval and dislocations.

In just a more few days, we will be entering into interesting times. The time is growing short; take the time now to make sure your bunker is well provisioned.

ADD 2-AXIL continues describing the scenario(s)

As the U.S. will soon become the world leader in fossil fuel development and worldwide sales well into this century, it is not in the interest of Russia, the U.S. or its other energy producing allies to sponsor a competitive or more rightly a superior energy source. If the past is prolog, the U.S. will attempt to restrict LENR to secret military operations like Drone power, small naval vessel power plants, and remote base power sources. By proclaiming that the LENR technology is top secret and a dangerous nuclear application with weapons of mass destruction potential (remember when they want to mobilize popular opinion: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."), they can maintain their worldwide advantage in fossil fuel sales of coal, oil and especially liquefied natural gas. The NRC will proclaim that LENR is highly dangerous as a responsive tool of the administration and Congress.

The current nuclear power plant vendors will not change their technology and leave LENR to die on the vine. International commercial competition among nations is one leverage point that will change the attitude of the current and future U.S. decision makers visa vie this LENR blocking policy.


ADD- 3 :
LENR has a huge political as well as an economic footprint in the U.S were upwards of five million very high paying jobs are at stake in the energy production segments and the allied fuel transportation and distribution economy.

That does not consider the peripheral jobs that depend on that employment base to survive.

In the immediate first pass, all those jobs whose average salary is about double the national average would easily shipped off shore to Chinese LENR factory production facilities.

The American population could not stand such an economic and political shock. Letting the American car industry to go under is only a mere shadow of what will happen when Chinese LENR is in full swing.

America will enter a deep depression with little prospects of competing in world markets. Plutocracy controlled Capital flow worldwide will be redirected to LENR production in China where most of the future LENR R&D will take place.

America will pay a heavy price for the contempt that they have shown to LENR and those who have worked on it over these many years.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

HAPPY NEW YEAR; 2014- YEAR OF THE SOLUTION(S).

HAPPY NEW YEAR; 2014- YEAR OF THE SOLUTION(S).

My dear Readers,

Very best wishes to you all for the year that has started today; 2014 will be more than interesting for New Energy. You will see and the history of Technology will mark the very start of a new energy era. There are only 82 days left till the Start.
2013 was a year of ordeal for me because I was focused on and captivated by LENR and what was sad to me, one of the most faithful cold fusionists has lead to a kind of exercises in masochism. I have shared with you my discoveries which have almost forced me to depression. However my ideas had very limited success, at least
as measured by the written reaction to them. Recently I have asked
more CF journals and sites- if they will publish a heretical paper as  my one saying that everything I knew about CF was not true. I got no answers at all.
My biographers will show that I was very tolerant toward differing or even opposite opinions (if not concerning ethical issues) However
I still think that these standard quotations can be applied here.


Despite the mass destruction of many ideas, memes and sacred cows of cold fusion I did not became sad because I had many
unique opportunities to see how bright is the Light at the end of the tunnel. As usual and human, due to the huge contrast between the
status of the problem and the greatness of the solution, the majority of the people still are on the side of the problem and will need heroic efforts to accept the solution.
I hope to witness this mass conversion in 2014.

Till then, I have decided to contribute to your specialization in solutions by giving you examples of good solutions from many fields.
For today please take a look to:

Please take in consideration the history of this problem and the ferocity of GMO skeptics, perhaps worse than the most active enemies of cold fusion.

Peter