johnnd

"I think the delete button should be at the bottom of the post about ..................................................................................here." I don't see one. Maybe it's because I'm a new member? Anyway... Latest Rossi quotes from his site: Q: Have you had the opportunity to connect several ECATS (such as 5) in parallel for a modest sized test before you prepare to fire up the "BIG CAT"? I am curious as to the proceedure required to reach operational conditions. Will you enable one ECAT at a time and verify that it is starting as expected or activate all as close to simultaneous as possible? How many helpers will be around to fire up the system? I noticed the large pump you have on the exterior of the cargo container. Can it supply water flow to only a few ECATS at a time? Does your power design allow water to exit the system into the steam duct during the heating up period? We are all sitting on the edges of our chairs hoping for your success. Please by careful and stay safe. A: 1- yes 2- we turn on series of 6 3- there are 2 pumps, one for each 500 kW system. We have divided the plant in 2 sections, each of 500 kW, each with its own dissipator. 4- yes 5- safety first Warm Regards, A.R. Dear Sean Parker: Yes, after the 28th no more public tests, we will be too engaged to manufacture and test for our Customers. We will continue R&D work with Bologna University and Uppsala University, but the work will not be public. Actually, also the test of the 28th will not be public, being a test made by the Customer, with his experts, along a contractual protocol. Anyway it will be the last work with a public report made upon the resulting numbers. Warm Regards, A.R. Q: Dear Mr. Rossi, When you say that the test will not be "public", will "high-level scientists" and "prominent scientific journalists" still be attending like you have indicated? In other words, will this test be the one that finally makes the E-Cat known to the larger public through mass media reports? A: 1- yes 2- yes Warm Regards, A.R. Q: "Dear Mr. Rossi, On September 11th, regarding the 1 MW Plant demonstration, you confirmed that you will have a webcam and real-time power meters of your plant to be shown on this site. Is this still planned for?" A: Our Customer, who will make the test, is still planning for this. Warm Regards, A.R. Dear Marco: The 1 MW plants will be for sale starting November. We did not decide, yet, about the smaller units. Warm Regards, A.R.

I see where you're coming from, but the only problem with the fireworks example is that... well, let me use another example: 40 lbs of TNT could produce that much energy, but not in that volume - and it has a nasty little habit of releasing it much too quickly for peaceful purposes.

Okay, maybe you can help me out here, because I'm slightly confused. If you're talking about linking to a certain Swedish-site-which-must-not-be-named, it just so happens that this particular magazine is the only mainstream source that reports and conducts experiments on the E-Cat. Rossi gave them exclusive publishing rights on the October 6th test data. When your policies get in the way of informing fellow forum-dwellers through relevant links, maybe it's time to rethink them. Just a suggestion. EDIT: Ah, I see. You thought I wrote the Forbes article. I just copy-pasted it over, which is why the links remained. Won't happen again.

An analysis of the NyTeknik data by Bob Higgins of Motorola Solutions: http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg52921.html "It is interesting now how the skeptical criticism on the net seems to be switching from doesnt work at all to doesnt work with acceptable commercial COP. Are the skeptics now convinced there was large scale excess energy? In and of itself, this is a physics shattering breakthrough. It is clear from the data that the COP would have been much higher if the test had been run for a longer period. I am personally excited by the results and data from the experiment."

Very reasonable. If we are to believe Rossi, and he has been consistently saying this for the past few months, the commercial strategy will begin in November. Meaning these LENR devices will be on the market. Rossi does have a penchant for theatrics: "About the snakes: the time of the snakes is over. The start up of the 1 MW plant is the end of the mental masturbations of envious, wannabe theorists, lecturers of calorimetry and engineering. Now LENR goes to the market. The test will not be made by me, but by the Customers’ consultants. Time of chatters is over. Maybe the test will not be good, maybe: it will be the first time I will start up a plant of that dimension, but in this case the problem will be the Customer, not the bunch of imbeciles that instead of understanding that we actually made LENR a reality lose their time digging holes on the surface the water in the middle of the ocean to find the wine. And in the case this test will go not well, we will learn and remake another, and another, and another, but, be sure, we will arrive to the target. At any cost." "Snakes are the paradigmatic example of how corruption can expose a journalist to pathetic situations. Anyway, the times of snakes are over, after the start up of our 1 MW plant the market will sweep them away. They have been paid from competitors who tried all they could to forbid us to arrive at this point, but, as you see, they failed." http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=510&cpage=22#comments

While it's categorically true that those factors would point to a scam, how do you explain this: http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece "In a detailed report, two Swedish physicists exclude chemical reactions as the energy source in the Italian ‘energy catalyzer’. The two physicists recently supervised a new test of the device in Bologna, Italy." “Any chemical process should be ruled out for producing 25 kWh from whatever is in a 50 cubic centimeter container. The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production.” “In some way a new kind of physics is taking place. It’s enigmatic, but probably no new laws of nature are involved. We believe it is possible to explain the process with known laws of nature,” said Hanno Essén, associate professor of theoretical physics and a lecturer at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and member of the board. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt2JqEmaUGc (video interview) “This is capable of, by itself, completely changing geo-economics, geopolitics of solving quite a bit of the energy problem. – Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist of NASA Langley. http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3108242.ece In a new experiment, the Italian “energy catalyzer” has been run at Bologna University for 18 hours. “In my opinion, all chemical sources are now excluded,” physicist Giuseppe Levi told Ny Teknik. Prof. Roland Petterson: "More experiment must be done to be convinced - or the opposite. Is it wrong or is it right? At the moment, I think it's correct. But we will make more experiment. It's a wonderful energy source, clean energy source - if it's right, when we have convinced the world that it is not any chemical reaction behind it, that it is some kind of a nuclear reaction, fusion reactions. The theory about it, or the details, we don't know. But I guess we quite soon will know it." (Question about Uppsala test, will it be the same?) "Roughly the same, we will change some part of the equipment, some parts of the detectors, the thermometers and so on, and make at least two different change in the equipment." (Prof. Christos Stremmenos)Rossi must be quite the con man to have convinced all of these and other scientists and not through his powers of persuasion, but from observing the workings of the apparatus and actual verifiable data.

http://www.forbes.co...rave-new-world/ "Over on Network World where I've had a gig as a columnist for about 18 years, my Backspin column I wrote this week about a power generation system called E-Cat that is to be tested on October 28th. If you've missed the recent brouhaha over the E-Cat (which stands for Energy Catalyzer), you're missing out on a three ring circus over a technology that will either change everything or change nothing because what is promised is, in theory, power too cheap to be worth metering. The E-Cat is a simple device albeit with functioning that defies all known explanations. In summary, the E-Cat is a cold fusion (CF) device (the inventor, Andrea Rossi, prefers to term the technology "Low Energy Nuclear Reaction" (which appears to be the same thing as CF but a less contentious phrasing). I'll refer you to my Network World column for a more long-winded explanation of the background and theories about the device. The problem with Rossi's system is that it is too good to be true. It is claimed that the E-Cat only requires some initial heating to start after which the reaction is self-sustaining. The reaction uses a secret catalyst to transform nickel into copper with heat being produced which can be used to make steam, drive a Stirling engine, or be used for whatever you please. If this device works as claimed, the world will change and not just a little but hugely and at every level of how we're organized, how we make stuff, how we travel, and how wealth is distributed. And those changes won't just impact the US or the Western hemisphere; they well transform the entire world because incredibly cheap energy is the ultimate game changer. So, here's what I'm wondering: If the E-Cat does work, how will ultra-cheap energy transform your world? Imagine the following: Where today you use petroleum products for motive energy (for example, to propel cars, trucks, and planes) you will be using steam engines or Stirling engines. In theory you'll be able to drive across the country for cents. What will that do to the trucking industry? The shipping industry? Aviation? With the demand for gasoline falling overnight and petroleum becoming needed primarily as feedstock for plastics, the US would immediately become self-sufficient in crude oil. What will happen in the Middle East without the huge flow of cash from the Western hemisphere? How will world politics be changed? An E-Cat system could power your house or office making the existing grid obsolete. What would it mean to make your personal and corporate electricity and gas bills nearly zero? The cost of manufacturing would fall very quickly with energy removed from the equation. If you are in manufacturing of any kind, this will affect you enormously. How fast could and how would you rework your corporate strategy to become competitive in a market where prices suddenly plummeted (note that the suddenly reduced cash flows would play havoc with the finance structures of many corporations). So, the E-Cat will be demonstrated on the 28th of this month and I, for one, will be watching with great interest and enormous hope because if Rossi's E-Cat system works, it will be goodbye recession and hello, brave new world."

Thanks Virtual Brain, I've seen most of those links already. Here are a couple more: Blue Brain: Year One Blue Brain: Year Two It's a ten-year film in the making.

I did not say 'single neuron', I said 'simple neuron'. Certainly in 1985, the complexity of such neurons was nowhere near the level of complexity in Markram's simulations. Back then, we couldn't really peer into neurons the way we do today. I'm sure your colleague wasn't mathematically modelling the morphologies of hundreds of types of neurons, ion channels, etc. Complexity DOES matter. Consider this: It took Markram's team an IBM supercomputer to simulate a single cortical column with 10,000 neurons. In 1985, a similar machine would have had on the order of tens of millions of times less computing power, not enough to simulate a single neuron.

I don't think there is any question that computers operate at tens of millions times the speed of biological neurons. Also, they can instantly remember billions of facts, something that humans would be hard-pressed to do. Where humans excel is at massively parallel processing, which is good for things like language or recognizing faces, or a song, or a complex idea. The argument which I don't buy is that because computers are below human levels today (by virtue of not having designed to work like humans up to this point), they will never reach or soar past that level. The jury is still out.

It really hasn't. If you're talking about simple point neuron simulations, then fine. But the goal of the Blue Brain Project is to faitfully follow real biology, not make theories and models. Besides, we haven't even had the requisite computing power up to this point to simulate the brain. Even assuming relatively simple neural complexity, we can estimate the computing power of the brain to equal 10 ^ 12 neurons * 1000 synapses/neuron * 100 Hz operation/neuron = 10 ^ 16 operations per second. The most powerful supercomputer in the world has about this power. However, Markram estimates that a one exaflop machine is needed for full-brain simulation, which will not be available until 2018 at the earliest. That's why the deadline for the project is in 2023.

Henry Markram: Simulating the Brain — The Next Decisive Years [1/3] Henry Markram: Simulating the Brain — The Next Decisive Years [2/3] Henry Markram: Simulating the Brain — The Next Decisive Years [3/3] Henry Markram, Ph.D., Director of the Blue Brain Project at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, speaks at the International Supercomputing Conference 2011. Not sure where to post this, but this is a giant engineering project, is it not?