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The E-Cat has been replicated?

animpossibleinvention.com

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Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#31

Post by tetraverse »

So, what happens if you disconnect the electrical power input and connect the output back into the input. The device should continue to run for a measurably period until the 'cold-fusion' fuel is expended.

"The measurements of electrical power input were performed with a large bandwidth three-phase power analyzer. Data were collected during 32 days of running in March 2014. The reactor operating point was set to about 1260 oC in the first half of the run, and at about 1400 °C in the second half. The measured energy balance between input and output heat yielded a COP factor of about 3.2 and 3.6 for the 1260 oC and 1400 oC runs, respectively."

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reacto...

Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#32

Post by wcoenen »

api wrote: post #21
guscost wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe all of those are a factor. Personally, while I try to maintain skepticism about big claims like this, I don't like to dismiss an idea offhand just because most other people have previously dismissed it. Others are probably willing to extend the same courtesy even if the particular claim is unlikely to hold. Just curious, would you put the EM drive[0] in the same category? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_re…

The EmDrive is actually less physically plausible than the E-Cat if you get into it, since reactionless propulsion is identical to perpetual motion and/or infinite energy. Someone had a nice explanation of this over on Reddit but I don't have a link handy. Basically if momentum is not conserved then you can build kinetic energy without bound on finite power or something like that. The only way the EmDrive could work…

> Someone had a nice explanation of this over on Reddit but I don't have a link handy. Basically if momentum is not conserved then you can build kinetic energy without bound on finite power or something like that.

Are you referring to this reddit comment by myself?

https://reddit.com/r/spaceflight/comments/34ay1c/nasa_resear...

Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#33

Post by extrapickles »

guscost wrote: post #20
aetherson wrote: post #12

I'm genuinely curious as to why HN so regularly has articles about various "wouldn't it be great if this worked but obviously it never will" scams/inventions/measurement errors on the front page. Is it because there is a contingent of HN voters who are true believers in this stuff? Is it "point at the silly people and laugh"? Is it some kind of attempt to make a meta point about credulity or discuss scams or somethin…

Maybe all of those are a factor. Personally, while I try to maintain skepticism about big claims like this, I don't like to dismiss an idea offhand just because most other people have previously dismissed it. Others are probably willing to extend the same courtesy even if the particular claim is unlikely to hold. Just curious, would you put the EM drive[0] in the same category? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_re…

The biggest problem I have with all of these claims is the rigor of the tests they conduct. They never seem to use standard equipment that is appropriate for the effect they are trying to measure. Always they have a device that needs 1kW that has a 50kW 3phase power meter hooked up to it, or other techniques that are odd and make you wonder what they are trying to hide (thermal camera measuring temp of 1 side, nothing for the other to ensure heating is uniform). If you can afford to point a thermal camera at it, you can afford the cheapest of thermocouples to help prove the other side isn't room temperature.

For the EM drive, I would be surprised if they didn't report some trust after dumping large amounts of power into a box due to the million different things that can produce a misleading result (metallurgical defect in cavity causes heating to not match model, etc). If they can convince someone to try it in orbit, it would be a different story. Thanks to cube sats, this wouldn't be that expensive, <$500k to give it a go (launch 2 1U cube sats, one with drive and one without, see if separation changes). The bonus for the EM Drive folks is that several Nasa sites offered to independently test it when they can produce enough thrust for them to measure accurately, so if they do see something, its worth it to give it a go in orbit. They have yet to deliver such a device though.

Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#34

Post by leaveyou »

tankenmate wrote: post #6
readams wrote: post #3

Note that the "replication" seems to have been done by an organization that had set out specifically to produce this result and not by any sort of reputable scientists or lab. The announcement here is on the web site of a pro-E-cat book. Needless to say, don't start celebrating the birth of the overunity era quite yet.

What makes me most happy here is that they are releasing what they claim is a rather complete "recipe"; this should hopefully lead to independent replication, hopefully by sceptics and hopefully many more replications.

"It's impossible to replicate" especially if you don't want to. There always was and still is a very strange negative fervor around this topic on hacker news and if everything goes well I think we should probably dig up all those excessively negative and accusative posts and ask for a follow up. I still remember those "This is a scam ! Rossi is a fraud !" even if no one was asked to invest and no one complained of being defrauded and all the public demonstrations were "obviously flawed" and everyone knew how to measure excess heat better than Rossi.

Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#35

Post by guscost »

extrapickles wrote: post #33
guscost wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe all of those are a factor. Personally, while I try to maintain skepticism about big claims like this, I don't like to dismiss an idea offhand just because most other people have previously dismissed it. Others are probably willing to extend the same courtesy even if the particular claim is unlikely to hold. Just curious, would you put the EM drive[0] in the same category? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_re…

The biggest problem I have with all of these claims is the rigor of the tests they conduct. They never seem to use standard equipment that is appropriate for the effect they are trying to measure. Always they have a device that needs 1kW that has a 50kW 3phase power meter hooked up to it, or other techniques that are odd and make you wonder what they are trying to hide (thermal camera measuring temp of 1 side, nothin…

OK that makes sense. Probably this reaction is common among people who know a lot about the domain and have criticized research with less serious problems before?

But to be fair, I see a lot of far-out claims about the capabilities of computers, the NSA, and so on. While I'm not going to encourage unfounded speculation about the stuff I'm more familiar with, it isn't unexpected and I guess it can make for a lively discussion.

I do want to see someone try the EmDrive in orbit.

Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#36

Post by xenophonf »

pknight wrote: post #22
api wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they have patents, why don't they publish a real scientific article on this with all the information needed to replicate? This stuff is permanently in my 'put up or shut up' category, and putting up means true independent open replication by more than one party.

A 'real scientific' article wouldn't do anything to convince people - it would be picked apart and doubted. Which is kind of an interesting thing in an of itself. I think for controversial stuff, you simply won't get scientists to budge no matter how transparent or rigorious the reporting. If the stuff turns out to be true, there will be a long delay before acceptance. I no longer believe that open replications make…

  A 'real scientific' article wouldn't do anything to
  convince people - it would be picked apart and doubted
A/K/A the scientific process, which is why experimental scientists publishing results with 5-sigma confidence intervals also painstakingly account for all of the different ways they could have screwed up, e.g., the recent gravitational waves paper, the Higgs boson discovery, etc. It goes the other way, like those guys who thought they might have discovered FTL neutrinos (but it turned out to be errors in either the apparatus or their analysis, I can't remember which).

And there being a real-world production with industrial and customer installations doesn't guarantee the absence of snake oil. How many millions of dollars were squandered on the ADE 651?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651

Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#37

Post by mikeash »

admax88q wrote: post #19
mikeash wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thing is supposedly a fusion device. Run it until you've drawn more energy than could possibly be provided by burning an equivalent mass of hydrogen, and then you know it must be a nuclear effect. If it can't provide that much energy, then it's a worthless fusion device. I can accept that such a test may not be totally 100% definitive. But if the device is real then it could definitely pass. The fact that they'r…

Yes, random internet guy has the answer. > If it can't provide that much energy, then it's a worthless fusion device. A fusion device that produces more energy than you put in but doesn't produce a shit ton of energy right now is a useful breakthough in fusion.

It's not about speed, it's about quantity. A real nuclear power source will be able to produce far more energy than any chemical system of the same mass. If you want to see if supposed nuclear power source works, run it and see if it actually does so.

If you believe there's something wrong with what I'm saying, please explain, random internet guy.

Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#38

Post by mikeash »

pjkundert wrote: post #17
mikeash wrote: post #8

Why is this so difficult? Isolate the machine in a box where the only connection to the outside world is two wires. Draw power from those wires until you've pulled more energy than any known storage system could possibly provide. Boom, done. Of course, my question is rhetorical. The answer is obvious: it doesn't work. If it worked, it would be easy to demonstrate.

They weren't actually performing calorimetry or energy extraction/measurement; the interesting effect was the repeatable, sustained burst of low-energy Gamma radiation at table-top temperatures and pressures.

Right. My point is that if the device really works then they wouldn't need to screw around with all that. Just see if it produces more power than a chemical system could hold. If it actually worked, it could do this easily and would more or less prove that it works. That they have not done this screams "scam."

Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#39

Post by maxxxxx »

The E-cat definitely triggers all my bullshit detectors. Has there ever been a case where somebody had this fantastic invention but never let anybody take a close look but the invention was actually legitimate?

The only one I can think of is the Wright brothers who didn't show their flyer for years until the patents were finished.

Re: The E-Cat has been replicated?

#40

Post by marshray »

aetherson wrote: post #12

I'm genuinely curious as to why HN so regularly has articles about various "wouldn't it be great if this worked but obviously it never will" scams/inventions/measurement errors on the front page. Is it because there is a contingent of HN voters who are true believers in this stuff? Is it "point at the silly people and laugh"? Is it some kind of attempt to make a meta point about credulity or discuss scams or somethin…

> Is it because there is a contingent of HN voters who are true believers in this stuff?

Why does the world have to be divided between "skeptics" and "true believers"?

I think a lot of us are in the "open minded but very cautious" category.

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