Giorgio wrote:Kahuna wrote:OTOH, you can never conclusively say you have ruled "out ALL possible FAKES" as that is unkowable.
Consider also that the lower the Q the more difficult to test the system to remove any type of doubt.
If he kept his old system with a Q of 200 it could have been tested in an easy way and in few hours.
I agree completely. It would appear that safety and stability concerns have led him to the smaller Q device for the commericial application, but the closer he gets to breakeven Q, the harder it is to conclude that the reaction is real and nuclear. Its the commercial demonstration versus scientific investigation thing again. OTOH, all the devices demoed appear to perform I would certainly not keep doing them in front of the audiance he has chosen if I were running a scam. So I think he is most likley sincere in thinking he has something real. At the very least it is interesting to watch it unfold.
The skeptics seem to fall into camps:
(1) The reaction cannot be explained with existing scientific knowledge so it cannot actually be happening (e.g. there is no suitable Theory behind the E-Cat).
(2) This is "Cold Fusion" and everybody knows that Cold Fusion has been totally discredited.
(3) This is "Free Energy (or nearly so)" and there have been many Free Energy scams in the past and this is just one more.
(4) The demonstrations were (or could have) been rigged to trick the observers with hidden devices, wires, batteries, tubes, etc.
(5) The demonstrations used deficient setup, recording methods, and/or instrumentation which cold lead to measurment errors of magnitude to lead to false conclusions.
In my mind, only #5 is worth looking into at this point. And if the Q were higher, it would make measurement errors sufficient to discount the results much less likely.