From: Jack Cole Steven, Good post in my opinion…. Very respectful to all…. It is a painful thing to come to the realization that the hope you place in a person for changing the world is now lost (not to mention all the hours and work spent following the topic). It is a good and painful life lesson.
Will there be a silver lining to this drama? Probably. The field will continue inching forward, despite Rossi-gate. The fundamental problem with LENR/cold fusion from day one, assuming that even a fraction of the successful experiments are accurate - is that it represents the first time in the history of science where a result (and a very desirable and needed result) cannot be replicated 100% of the time by someone other than the claimant, based on a good theory. There is no accurate theory. When you get to the watt level, it seems that LENR can be replicated some of the time but not all of the time. It is simply not understood well enough to make it reliable. Trace reactants could be involved or an unknown variable or parameter. Since there is no real precedent for that situation in science, where an experiment resists all attempts at understanding for so long in time- many observers are content to write the whole thing off as experimental error. Notably, little more than a decade from Fermi’s discover of neutron induced fission in 1934, a working weapon was produced. I think that short time-line is why the mention of the Thermacore runaway reaction hit a nerve. What the LENR field needs is a simple, robust experiment that can be reproduced by anyone, all of the time, even if the result is a molten mass of scrap metal. Caveat: there is no evidence that the Thermacore runaway can be replicated at all, much less all the time, but this is clearly the *type* of experiment which should be reproducible if the technology is real… and we have this comprehension of the nature of “critical mass” which fits well with prior expectations.
