LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions).

LENR is still going strong on over 20 fronts (can you name a dozen?)

I will not be here to rub it in, but I thought I best sign off on a LENR thread.

I have asked James R for a lifetime ban for KWHILBORN.. (ME)..

so long..

 

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That doesn't parse: in order for it to still be going strong, it would have had to have been going strong at some point.

 

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So he's banned. I wonder why. Although he had this idee fixe about LENR, he seemed otherwise innocuous to me. I must have missed something.

 

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That's two posters gone this week
Russell Crawford and Kwhillborn.
No wonder the posts on here have got so sparse and lacklustre.
Anyone with strong opinions which don't suit, gets banned.
See you Kwhillborn. I almost always disagreed with you, but you were a good adversary, and defended your corner very well.
Your politics didn't suit the thought police unfortunately.

 

Well Crawford was pretty close to being both bonkers and a troll so I'm not surprised about him.

I have now learnt the problem with Kwilborn was him being deliberately offensive in a thread about religion. It's arguably a bit harsh, but I can see the Mods' point of view. Tolerating it might invite a wholesale flame-fest in the Religion section.

 

Re Kwhill.
They are ALL trolls in that religion section.
One more made little difference.

 

I have been closely following the admittedly weird but not so impossible machinations of companies researching so-called LENR (low energy nuclear reactions,) although this definition is becoming more ill-fitting every day.
Since I see tangible evidence; serious, respectable companies sinking resources into this field, as well as the US Government now offering research grants, I am now of the opinion that it is fertile ground and am intrigued...but I apparently such information on this site is censored.
I urge the admins not to ban this subject, if for no other reason that the not-so-far future may make them look exceedingly foolish. However, if the admins are determined to censor, then at least as far as this topic goes, I shall have to find intelligent and reasoned discussions of this subject elsewhere.

There is precedent, mistakes like this have been made before. In the 1800's, various academies of sciences urged museums and collectors to discard their meteor rocks, because things don't fall from space.
Please reconsider.

 

Kwhillborn would have loved talking to you, but sadly he is here no more.

 

I don't think the subject per se is censored. In fact you will see Kwhilborn kept a ginormous thread going on that very subject with no intervention whatever from the Mods.

True he got a rough ride from a lot of us, me included, over his arguments, but that was because he had a habit of extrapolating optimistically, from very limited and doubtful evidence, in our opinion. But the subject has never been censored, so far as I can see.

I'm sure a number of us would be prepared to entertain a sensible discussion on the subject with someone who can put forward a case calmly, without extravagant claims, and who acknowledges the enormous difficulties there are in reconciling the notion with current physics.

 

Not at all. It is indeed an interesting field, and several discussions have sprung up around it. Feel free to discuss.

 

Goom bye KWHILBORN. With your departure you are leaving some mighty big pseudoscience shoes to fill. I am sure someone from the pseudoscience subculture is up to the task.

Hope you find a forum that is more to your liking.

 

While I often disagreed with Kwhilborn, I will miss him.

It would be boring if all at SciForums had the same POV as I on all subjects. It would also provide unwarranted support for the (few I hope) erroneous notions believed in by me.

 

SciForums isn't a science forum if it accepts unscientific POVs.

 

Russ Watters: Following is true

However, it is often the crackpot views & the not obviously invalid views which result in interesting Threads.

 

There is no serious scientific research going on in the area of cold fusion.

 

I wouldn't say that at all. There is a tremendous amount of research. Just no definitive results.

 

There is a long Thread on this subject.

The advocates remind me of the Creationists who introduced Intelligent Design to disguise themselves & push their views from another direction.

What is now called LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) used to be called Cold Fusion.

For those with little knowledge of the pertinent physics:

Electromagnetic forces are circa 10[sup]37[/sup] greater than gravitational forces. For those who do not grok 10[sup]37[/sup], note that a small magnet can cause a steel pin to jump off the surface of the earth.

The repulsive force between positive nuclei is so strong that it is hard to visualize.

Nuclear fusion occurs in stellar cores where there are extreme temperatures & pressures.

Note that temperature is a measure of average particle speed. In stellar cores atoms & nuclei have very high speeds. The extreme pressure makes the core dense, increasing the probability of collisions.

The environment in a stellar core is required for nuclear fusion. It is not possible in other envorments. For decades there have been attempts to cause fusion by laser implosion. There has been little success, although recently the experiments have come close to breaking even (energy input close to energy output). I do not think the process is close to being commercially viable.
​

The notion of Cold Fusion is considered nonsense by anyone with a knowledge of nuclear physics. Advocates of it have a belief based on faith, but do not have much knowledge of nuclear physics.

Before somebody else mentions it: There is the possibility of quantum tunneling which might result in one fusion event per century in a one kilogram mass. This is a SWAG (Sophisticated Wild Ass Guess), which is a lot better than a WAG. It is suggestive of the real frequency.

 

Yup, you're preaching to the converted. The LENR proponents, of course, say that they have observed real phenomena that imply the theory you recite may be defective or incomplete. But the problem they have is the apparent difficulty in making such results reproducible, which leads to the strong suspicion that what they think they observe is flawed, subjective or otherwise not to be relied on.

 

what happened to the old cold fusion/LENR thread, I can't find it anymore, has it been deleted ? If so, why ?

 

Seems to have disappeared.
Surely it hasn't been erased to annoy kwhilborn?
I'll ask JamesR.