This smells like a con in so many ways. I'm less curious about how it supposedly works than I am about how he managed to trick those researchers. He was on site, so presumably he could of had the opportunity for meddling with the experiment.
The claims of cold fusion still seem quite dubious. I remember having a lot of doubts about that paper claiming "verification" of cold fusion, and given the behavior of a number of members of academic community, it isn't too surprising that you might find some academic somewhere that would be willing write sketchy papers just to get published. Until a big national lab gets behind this you may as well file this with N-rays: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray
>Scientists have never been allowed to examine the E-Cat, details of the supposed physics have never been revealed, and even the identities of his US business partners were only discovered by online sleuthing.
for fucks sake, why even publish such a bogus article
Because it's not all about the E-Cat. "Parkhomov has openly revealed his reactor design, ingredients used and experimental process, which is not terribly complex, and this allows for further experimentation to take place in the public domain, not under a cloak of secrecy"
I'm still a skeptic until plenty other people replicate it, but it's nice to see that some cold fusion researchers are acting like scientists now.
On the face of it, it does sound really bad, yes. However, the E-Cat is a longstanding project and whatever the nature of the process behind the anomolous results, it is gaining an increased amount of attention from groups working around the world, including NASA. If the independent replication attempt is the real deal any group of scientists will be able to investigate and verify it now, because the details are provided out in the open.
And the implications are enormous. If the process is real and robust it will mark the start of a new era in energy generation. It's a total game changer.
I have been following the E-Cat for a while and it has all the hallmarks of a scam, an incredibly elaborate scam if it proves the case. But it also could be a real revolution in the making. I think that makes it worth reporting on. Especially if this replication turns out to be valid.
Everybody says it's a fraud. But you have to admit it's a very long fraud (5 years?) and nobody complained about loses yet. It's not a fullfilled fraud therefore it's not a fraud yet. To me Rossi looks more like a good entertainer performing a magic routine: he pretends to pull energy out of nowhere, the energy seems to appear, nobody loses money and nobody can use that energy (at least not yet) and the enthusiastic public screams "it's a fraud !!!"
The point being that longevity of a fraud doesn't make it less likely to be a fraud. Rossi as been pushing this thing for a long time but his inability to actually use it to make excess energy he could use to sell to the grid is a huge red flag for anyone who has looked at it.
Well, the attention it generates and the amount of people fooled make it something that shouldn't be there. When people who do not know the e-cat is a fraud read this and get interested they could have spent their energy on something more useful.
Plus, nobody might have complained, but damage can be done without complaining.
It doesn't matter if it's a fraud, a con, or even real; this article is terrible and should never have been published in any reputable news source. These claims of being "verified" or "replicated" are completely false, not least of which because there aren't any claims as to what is going on the first place.
The claim "I have a magic box" isn't science, it's ... well, magic.
Why are you assuming that this is in fact a new discovery? We don't know what the hell it is because the inventor won't tell us. Until someone can attempt to replicate the results it should be viewed as a scan.
I'm merely responding the parent comment who is basically saying don't report anything that hasn't been fully understood yet. It's bizarre.
In this case, if the effect involved is real, it is real without being understood. Just like electricity was not understood. Just because all the answers aren't there doesn't make the effect any less valid or newsworthy. It's a narrow view to take.
And as far as what the inventor won't tell us, sure. But the story is that someone else has recreated similar measurements using what is known about the setup. Potentially a big deal.
except he didn't quite say that. What he said was:
"this article is terrible and should never have been published in any reputable news source. These claims of being "verified" or "replicated" are completely false, not least of which because there aren't any claims as to what is going on the first place."
Now, that last bit could be interpreted as you interpreted it, but I think he was commenting specifically on this claim. This claim which has been out there for years.
This is not like electricity or some other phenomenon which is not yet understand, but whose effects can be replicated in laboratories around this globe. This is a snake oil peddler with a secret black box. No one can replicate it, no one can study it.
The specifics of Rossi's contraptions may be kept private and shady, but the process involved is not something that only Rossi has been working on. Lenr itself is contentious still but there are so many groups working on it now, including Nasa. If some Russian scientist can independently reproduce an effect and he publicizes all the methods used it may be the start of acknowledging the effect as something that is no longer magical because more groups can start to replicate. That is newsworthy to me. Is that fair? I think so.
> This is a snake oil peddler with a secret black box
Perhaps, but you say that with no actual proof other than speculation and an a priori belief that it cannot be true. Is that much better than reporting on a phenomenon that is not yet understood.
Personally I think if there's a scam it may be that Rossi overstates how stable or viable his technology is. I think the phenomenon is probably real and not yet explained, just based on the number of groups that are working on this for considerable time now. Instead of blowing over, there are more and more groups starting work on it as the years have gone by.
It's true that you cannot replicate Rossi's allegations independently because he refuses to reveal the way his alleged reactor works. However, the "independent report" mentioned in the article basically tested this thing as a black box for more than a month; Rossi was present at the start and at the end, but not during the test, and all the equipment and so on was not his but procured independently. Even if Rossi did some screwy stuff, it cannot explain the 1.5 MWh gain for more than 32 days - the only thing that could explain this, assuming it indeed is a con, is unreliable heat measurement. While it is true that there has been some doubts expressed on that subject, the researchers have a lot of experience performing such measurements; and they are far from being disreputable researchers or shady characters. One of the authors of the subsequent paper is also, by the way, the previous head of the Swedish skeptics society - someone that does have some experience in debunking bullshit claims.
I'm not saying this thing is working as advertised, mind you; but this report is troubling and warrants further research. And the article isn't only about the e-cat: it's about another researcher, Parkhomov, having set up a similar experiment based on what he could glean from Rossi's alleged reactor, and witnessing similar excess energy production. This other experiment is, by contrast, completely open and can be verified/replicated/debunked, so I suppose it's just a matter of time before someone attempts such a replication and confirm or infirm this new experiment.
> the researchers have a lot of experience performing such measurements
If that is the case I'd hate to see their work in an area where they aren't experienced. Their experiment is amateurish in the extreme, and if an undergrad designed a "measurement" of the kind they performed and "calibrated" it at a fraction of the full power I would fail them.
The quality of the work is cartoonishly bad, to the extent that it would have been less work to do a better job.
That's not independent verification; it's not even vaguely close to independent verification.
"Even if Rossi did some screwy stuff, it cannot explain the 1.5 MWh gain for more than 32 days"
Sure, he could have literally hacked the instruments. But, 1.5 MWh over 32 days is a fairly small amount of energy as in 2kW * 32 days a lot of chemical processes can get you there. Also, measuring heat output is really easy to mess up. Something as simple as putting an insulating blanket under the device could significantly alter the measurements. The point is he was there when they were setting up the experiment so he could have easily lead them astray.
PS: As to warrants further research nope, sorry the correct response is to declare this a clear scam.
Agreed. It is what it is: a black box testing of a proprietary technology that cannot be easily replicated by other researchers.
As for "hacking the instruments", read the paper; Rossi was never left alone with the instruments, and was only present twice: at the start, where he inserted his "secret sauce" into the device under monitoring, and at the end, where he retrieved it under similar conditions. He might be a con artist, but "hacking the instruments" under those conditions would require him to be something closer to a wizard.
"1.5 MWh over 32 days is a fairly small amount of energy as in 2kW * 32 days a lot of chemical processes can get you there"
No. That's more than 5800 MJ over the period, the equivalent of burning 140 kg of gasoline, produced by a ~20cm long cylinder. No known chemical process can get you there (by far). I should also add that the 1.5 MWh number is the lowest estimate of the authors, taking into account all margins of error. Agreed on the difficulty of measuring heat; experts far more knowledgeable than I have been reading the report and cannot explain such a high discrepancy.
"As to warrants further research nope, sorry the correct responce is to declare this a clear scam."
So, following the publication of another paper with an open experimental protocol & set up having reported similar findings, it isn't worth spending the few thousands of dollars required to actually verify this ? given the potential benefits and relatively low resources required, I have to disagree. Saying "it's just a clear scam" without even checking this doesn't sound like science to me.
Black swans do happen from time to time; if this effect is indeed real (and I agree that's a huge if), it could lead to unimaginable benefits and - given the fact that current science cannot explain such an effect - could also lead to genuine new science and discoveries in physics. This alone should make it worthwhile to try and replicate this new experiment, no matter how unlikely it seems.
It's not the few thousands of dollars it is N scams * cost to verify. Worse it's your time writing that post and my time reading it.
Science is not following some magic formula black box experiment that someone hands you. It's going hmm there are at least 50 ways to fake this, and I am going to try and test each and every one of them. Does the device work in a vacuum, what if we seal off the air supply, what about replacing the water with brine, what if we run the water though a mass spectrometer, how about ...
Then when you’re done and your still scratching you head then you get to write a paper, until then you’re wasting everyone’s time.
If you did not actually test each and every one of those options you say: "Most likely still a scam, but we ran test X. Still need to..."
Nope, the default assumption is always there running a scam. You need to prove you’re not running a scam.
EX1: All those reporting requirements for public companies.
EX2: Credit checks before you get phone / internet service / rent an apartment etc.
EX3: Passport check at the border.
EX4: Metal detectors at sensitive locations.
EX5: Professional certification requirements for Doctors etc.
EX6: FDA
ect ect.
PS: There are also a lot of hidden ones such as the dress code at many nice restaurants which significantly reduces people dine and dashing. And camera’s at gas stations. Or even just locked doors.
Why isn't this bootstrapping itself? That is, if it's generating a substantial amount of excess heat, why can't that heat be used to drive a generator to power the device? I'd love to see a long-running E-Cat that's plugged into itself.
That would convince me. The fact that it isn't done is telling.
I'm sure steam-turbine generators are neither cheap nor easy, so up to a certain point I can see skipping the expense and the hassle. But were I strongly suspected of being a fraud, I'd put a self-sustaining setup high on my list. I think the (incredibly high) interest in the device after such a demonstration would make the effort worthwhile.
Oh, the E-Cat again. The E-cat takes in electric power, and supposedly puts out more heat than would be expected. The electric power to resistance heaters is input in a "proprietary waveform", and is measured with a wattmeter.
This is a typical thing with "free energy" scams. The same thing was tried back in the "piezos" era, when putting resonant piezoelectric devices in an oscillating tank circuit was supposed to produce more power than went in. (But it did not, of course, run self-sustaining, without outside power).
Measuring wattage of unusual waveforms is hard. W = E*I, or watts equals current times voltage, but you have to integrate the instantaneous product over time. Many wattmeters don't do a full integration; they're mostly for sine waves, and may have frequency limitations. The E-Cat guy won't let observers use a scope to see that "proprietary waveform". All it's doing is driving a resistance heater, so the waveform should not matter to the heater.
A simple RF wattmeter, which has a resistor whose heat output is measured, would clear this up.
A better experiment is a double blind trial. Fill one hydrogen tank with standard hydrogen and another tank with deuterium. Code both of them with a scramble. The e-cat should fail with deuterium and should work with hydrogen.
This does not require any access to internals, and could even be done on the sly without alerting rossi.
Here's the one true test for any new generator: If there's a working prototype, they could be selling power to the grid.
There is no need for publicity, investments, or shows. It doesn't matter if someone can replicate your device. If it works, sell the power and build more of them.
If it doesn't work, I guess just keep on trying to get money from other people.
Your measurement for "what is true cold fusion" only works for devices that are extremely showy and easy to put together (aka, Hollywood cold-fusion reactors). For everything else, I see three problems with your statement:
Firstly, is it only cold fusion if you can build and operate your reactor for cheaper than the price of your local utility? Would it not be a scientific breakthrough if it were not immediately economically viable? Hard to make money to build money for your proof when it costs you money to sell to the grid.
Or, if it does manage to output energy cheaper than the local utility can produce it, you have to factor in return on investment as well. If your device costs $100,000 to create (which I think could easily be a low-ball estimate) and generates $1 of energy a day for the grid, you're looking at a long time for your return on investment, and your proof.
And the above is only for devices that just magically output AC/DC power with no extra infrastructure. If your device only generates waste heat, then you're looking at building steam turbines, high pressure pipes, holding tanks, and all the other expensive stuff a traditional energy plant takes. In order to do that, you need a large investment.
The con is not on us. He is not conning the public. He is not trying to get a science foundation grant.
The targets are aging millionaires who lack science education. The US (Florida) is full of people who made millions on the rise real estate and are looking for a new investment. They are old enough to have seen the rise of the internet and think they can get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. They can believe in magic boxes because, for people who haven't seen a classroom in 40 years, Google looks like magic.
Who knows how many "investors" this guy has fooled into handing over their retirement savings. No doubt they are bound by scary non-disclosure agreements and are afraid of speak out. The best person to con is one who, upon realizing they are conned, will not have the resources to fight back. This guy doesn't want Elon Musk's money. He wants you grandmother's.
I remember another jackass from the 1990s who made outrageous video compression claims. He would give demos of his super-secret technology showing wonderfully high def video...
Turns out he was running a coax cable underground to the table on which the monitor sat.
Scientists are often good at determining what flaws of logic are causing anomalous results, or teasing out subtle unknown processes.
However, they do poorly at debunking conmen because conmen are quite literally trying to game all the tools that scientists use. Unless they slept in the lab in sleeping bags, who is to say that there wasn't someone coming in the middle of the night to give it a little boost?
All we have now is one crank from some backwater university in Russia who claims to have reproduced the effect.
43 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 91.1 ms ] threadIf Rossi has found a way to hide that much energy in his rod and/or materials, then let's just go with that and skip researching all the fusion stuff.
If he manipulated the sensors to show a higher energy output then was actually the case, it is considerably less impressive.
for fucks sake, why even publish such a bogus article
I'm still a skeptic until plenty other people replicate it, but it's nice to see that some cold fusion researchers are acting like scientists now.
And the implications are enormous. If the process is real and robust it will mark the start of a new era in energy generation. It's a total game changer.
I have been following the E-Cat for a while and it has all the hallmarks of a scam, an incredibly elaborate scam if it proves the case. But it also could be a real revolution in the making. I think that makes it worth reporting on. Especially if this replication turns out to be valid.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8435322
I mean I've read books where the majority of some pages consisted of footnotes, so I don't get the hostility.
The point being that longevity of a fraud doesn't make it less likely to be a fraud. Rossi as been pushing this thing for a long time but his inability to actually use it to make excess energy he could use to sell to the grid is a huge red flag for anyone who has looked at it.
Plus, nobody might have complained, but damage can be done without complaining.
The claim "I have a magic box" isn't science, it's ... well, magic.
In this case, if the effect involved is real, it is real without being understood. Just like electricity was not understood. Just because all the answers aren't there doesn't make the effect any less valid or newsworthy. It's a narrow view to take.
And as far as what the inventor won't tell us, sure. But the story is that someone else has recreated similar measurements using what is known about the setup. Potentially a big deal.
"this article is terrible and should never have been published in any reputable news source. These claims of being "verified" or "replicated" are completely false, not least of which because there aren't any claims as to what is going on the first place."
Now, that last bit could be interpreted as you interpreted it, but I think he was commenting specifically on this claim. This claim which has been out there for years.
This is not like electricity or some other phenomenon which is not yet understand, but whose effects can be replicated in laboratories around this globe. This is a snake oil peddler with a secret black box. No one can replicate it, no one can study it.
> This is a snake oil peddler with a secret black box
Perhaps, but you say that with no actual proof other than speculation and an a priori belief that it cannot be true. Is that much better than reporting on a phenomenon that is not yet understood.
Personally I think if there's a scam it may be that Rossi overstates how stable or viable his technology is. I think the phenomenon is probably real and not yet explained, just based on the number of groups that are working on this for considerable time now. Instead of blowing over, there are more and more groups starting work on it as the years have gone by.
It's true that you cannot replicate Rossi's allegations independently because he refuses to reveal the way his alleged reactor works. However, the "independent report" mentioned in the article basically tested this thing as a black box for more than a month; Rossi was present at the start and at the end, but not during the test, and all the equipment and so on was not his but procured independently. Even if Rossi did some screwy stuff, it cannot explain the 1.5 MWh gain for more than 32 days - the only thing that could explain this, assuming it indeed is a con, is unreliable heat measurement. While it is true that there has been some doubts expressed on that subject, the researchers have a lot of experience performing such measurements; and they are far from being disreputable researchers or shady characters. One of the authors of the subsequent paper is also, by the way, the previous head of the Swedish skeptics society - someone that does have some experience in debunking bullshit claims.
I'm not saying this thing is working as advertised, mind you; but this report is troubling and warrants further research. And the article isn't only about the e-cat: it's about another researcher, Parkhomov, having set up a similar experiment based on what he could glean from Rossi's alleged reactor, and witnessing similar excess energy production. This other experiment is, by contrast, completely open and can be verified/replicated/debunked, so I suppose it's just a matter of time before someone attempts such a replication and confirm or infirm this new experiment.
If that is the case I'd hate to see their work in an area where they aren't experienced. Their experiment is amateurish in the extreme, and if an undergrad designed a "measurement" of the kind they performed and "calibrated" it at a fraction of the full power I would fail them.
The quality of the work is cartoonishly bad, to the extent that it would have been less work to do a better job.
"Even if Rossi did some screwy stuff, it cannot explain the 1.5 MWh gain for more than 32 days"
Sure, he could have literally hacked the instruments. But, 1.5 MWh over 32 days is a fairly small amount of energy as in 2kW * 32 days a lot of chemical processes can get you there. Also, measuring heat output is really easy to mess up. Something as simple as putting an insulating blanket under the device could significantly alter the measurements. The point is he was there when they were setting up the experiment so he could have easily lead them astray.
PS: As to warrants further research nope, sorry the correct response is to declare this a clear scam.
Agreed. It is what it is: a black box testing of a proprietary technology that cannot be easily replicated by other researchers. As for "hacking the instruments", read the paper; Rossi was never left alone with the instruments, and was only present twice: at the start, where he inserted his "secret sauce" into the device under monitoring, and at the end, where he retrieved it under similar conditions. He might be a con artist, but "hacking the instruments" under those conditions would require him to be something closer to a wizard.
"1.5 MWh over 32 days is a fairly small amount of energy as in 2kW * 32 days a lot of chemical processes can get you there"
No. That's more than 5800 MJ over the period, the equivalent of burning 140 kg of gasoline, produced by a ~20cm long cylinder. No known chemical process can get you there (by far). I should also add that the 1.5 MWh number is the lowest estimate of the authors, taking into account all margins of error. Agreed on the difficulty of measuring heat; experts far more knowledgeable than I have been reading the report and cannot explain such a high discrepancy.
"As to warrants further research nope, sorry the correct responce is to declare this a clear scam."
So, following the publication of another paper with an open experimental protocol & set up having reported similar findings, it isn't worth spending the few thousands of dollars required to actually verify this ? given the potential benefits and relatively low resources required, I have to disagree. Saying "it's just a clear scam" without even checking this doesn't sound like science to me.
Black swans do happen from time to time; if this effect is indeed real (and I agree that's a huge if), it could lead to unimaginable benefits and - given the fact that current science cannot explain such an effect - could also lead to genuine new science and discoveries in physics. This alone should make it worthwhile to try and replicate this new experiment, no matter how unlikely it seems.
Science is not following some magic formula black box experiment that someone hands you. It's going hmm there are at least 50 ways to fake this, and I am going to try and test each and every one of them. Does the device work in a vacuum, what if we seal off the air supply, what about replacing the water with brine, what if we run the water though a mass spectrometer, how about ...
Then when you’re done and your still scratching you head then you get to write a paper, until then you’re wasting everyone’s time.
If you did not actually test each and every one of those options you say: "Most likely still a scam, but we ran test X. Still need to..."
He has clearly succeeded at that.
EX1: All those reporting requirements for public companies.
EX2: Credit checks before you get phone / internet service / rent an apartment etc.
EX3: Passport check at the border.
EX4: Metal detectors at sensitive locations.
EX5: Professional certification requirements for Doctors etc.
EX6: FDA
ect ect.
PS: There are also a lot of hidden ones such as the dress code at many nice restaurants which significantly reduces people dine and dashing. And camera’s at gas stations. Or even just locked doors.
I'm sure steam-turbine generators are neither cheap nor easy, so up to a certain point I can see skipping the expense and the hassle. But were I strongly suspected of being a fraud, I'd put a self-sustaining setup high on my list. I think the (incredibly high) interest in the device after such a demonstration would make the effort worthwhile.
This is a typical thing with "free energy" scams. The same thing was tried back in the "piezos" era, when putting resonant piezoelectric devices in an oscillating tank circuit was supposed to produce more power than went in. (But it did not, of course, run self-sustaining, without outside power).
Measuring wattage of unusual waveforms is hard. W = E*I, or watts equals current times voltage, but you have to integrate the instantaneous product over time. Many wattmeters don't do a full integration; they're mostly for sine waves, and may have frequency limitations. The E-Cat guy won't let observers use a scope to see that "proprietary waveform". All it's doing is driving a resistance heater, so the waveform should not matter to the heater.
A simple RF wattmeter, which has a resistor whose heat output is measured, would clear this up.
This does not require any access to internals, and could even be done on the sly without alerting rossi.
There is no need for publicity, investments, or shows. It doesn't matter if someone can replicate your device. If it works, sell the power and build more of them.
If it doesn't work, I guess just keep on trying to get money from other people.
Firstly, is it only cold fusion if you can build and operate your reactor for cheaper than the price of your local utility? Would it not be a scientific breakthrough if it were not immediately economically viable? Hard to make money to build money for your proof when it costs you money to sell to the grid.
Or, if it does manage to output energy cheaper than the local utility can produce it, you have to factor in return on investment as well. If your device costs $100,000 to create (which I think could easily be a low-ball estimate) and generates $1 of energy a day for the grid, you're looking at a long time for your return on investment, and your proof.
And the above is only for devices that just magically output AC/DC power with no extra infrastructure. If your device only generates waste heat, then you're looking at building steam turbines, high pressure pipes, holding tanks, and all the other expensive stuff a traditional energy plant takes. In order to do that, you need a large investment.
The targets are aging millionaires who lack science education. The US (Florida) is full of people who made millions on the rise real estate and are looking for a new investment. They are old enough to have seen the rise of the internet and think they can get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. They can believe in magic boxes because, for people who haven't seen a classroom in 40 years, Google looks like magic.
Who knows how many "investors" this guy has fooled into handing over their retirement savings. No doubt they are bound by scary non-disclosure agreements and are afraid of speak out. The best person to con is one who, upon realizing they are conned, will not have the resources to fight back. This guy doesn't want Elon Musk's money. He wants you grandmother's.
Turns out he was running a coax cable underground to the table on which the monitor sat.
Scientists are often good at determining what flaws of logic are causing anomalous results, or teasing out subtle unknown processes.
However, they do poorly at debunking conmen because conmen are quite literally trying to game all the tools that scientists use. Unless they slept in the lab in sleeping bags, who is to say that there wasn't someone coming in the middle of the night to give it a little boost?
All we have now is one crank from some backwater university in Russia who claims to have reproduced the effect.