It is no secret that we are fortunate enough to have a close relationship with Celani as we work on replicating variations of his experiments using his treated wire to try and find an incontrovertible New Fire experiment. We are very much independent though.

We are also aware that he and people that know him follow our site closely – we can see this from, amongst other things, our YouTube channel and the amount of hits from Italy. That means that he has had to address many of the challenges regularly made by the great minds actively analysing our work on and off this site. We think he has excelled himself in the past few weeks, but before we explain why, we should take stock of where we are:

Confidence is high in the team, we have seen good indications of Pxs in:

• US & EU MFMP experiments
  
• Celani's regular reporting to us of successful new experiment iterations
  
• ST Microelectronics
• At least 2 other independent experimental groups that have seen PXs with Celani wire in very different apparatus.

Either what Celani showed at ICCF was excess heat from his wire, or we have all made the same mistakes!

What we are aware of but that is not publically known to date, is that the wire he used in NI Week and ICCF-17 was 700 layers. We have discovered that the higher the number of layers, the faster the loading, the greater the R/R0 indicating hydrogen absorption and the higher the excess power. So why are we not using 700 layers? The simple answer is that there is not any, that wire was made with some old stock of ISOTAN44 - “Isabellehutte” from the 1970s who’s coating allowed 700 layers to be built on the wire as substrate. Modern stock does not allow this because the process that was making the material changed, with around 450 layers being the upper limit. It is our understanding that, since wires with around 400 layers is reproducible, appear to produce significant effects and there has not been the resources to explore what made the old stock so special, pursuit of recreating 700 layer wires on tight budgets has been unjustifiable.

In addition, intuitively there is a fall off in the gain that further layers provides as the inner layers are less able to be active. Also, wires with more layers are brittle and prone to delamination which then impairs their potential capability, they are also less able to withstand high current and potentially less able to take high transients, so there is a trade-off. We have seen and showed on our blog how the 350 layer wire flakes and the 2 layer wire is very stable. As we want to ship final experiments around the world, it is desirable to have a wire that is good enough and physically resilient to the rigours of transportation and experimentation.

In addition to the lower output seen from 350 layer wires and below, the experiment showed at ICCF-17 has proven too difficult to reliably reach high temperatures with low input power. Principally, it had many problems associated with gas use and related issues such as convective losses and variation, other calibration gases loading into the wires, leak rate effects, atomic and molecular gas effects and potential for chemical energy etc.

Our aim from the outset has been to make an affordable easy to replicate, incontrovertible experiment. Celani's original design was a good starting point and everyone has learnt a lot in the past few months but we both needed to address the challenges to our cumulative results.

We have been trying to find a way to make the signal large in relation to the noise, ie, less power in to reach trigger temperature, ST Microelectronics achieved that - however they did not publish their experiment design so we have been working towards the insulated steel cell with Hydrogen gas in the active runs. This will meet the goal of reaching far higher temperatures with low input power as has been amply demonstrated by the failure in initial testing! We are keen to press ahead with this valuable advancement in our experimental journey.

Then, 10 days ago, Celani sent us an email that got our minds racing...

It was a very unexpected communication, but we think that available data points for 1m sections of Celani wire with varying numbers of layers are starting to tell us a story.

ST Microelectronics - 1.16W over 16W = 7.25% : 2 Layers (only 20cm)

Celani (new protocol) - 4W over 15W = 26.7% : 450 Layers

MFMP has "seen"

• 5-6W over 48W in EU 350 Layers (Mathieu, France)
• 3-4W over 59W in EU 2 Layers (Nicolas, Switzerland/Germany)
• 3-5W over 106+W in US 14 Layers and 2 Layers wires (Ryan, US)

See how everything is converging? 

When a loaded wire temperature is in the right range to trigger the effect, a 3+ W gain is seen. Building a simple experiment that has a minimum number of variables to achieve a high wire temperature with low input power is key to seeing a bigger signal to noise.

We had been working towards this in the US with the all steel cell and in the EU we are building two advanced new cells that have a Quartz inner and a steel outer. Why?, well, very early on, we sent out a survey to the scientists that attended ICCF-17, one of the questions was “ What kind of calorimeter would you recommend most to detect excess heat in a Celani inspired cell.” the top response was “mass flow type” so we knew we would have to build one, now we understand the process - we are.

New glass and steel cells

These apparatus will be able to be submersed in a fluid based mass flow calorimeter and will work as an active and control in a differential experiment. The inner quartz tube can contain hydrogen under pressure, or vacuum, and between the outside of the quartz and the inside of the steel outer, a vacuum can be applied. This will allow high temperatures to be achieved from low power input and allow the whole thing to be immersed for extremely accurate calorimetry.

It does require us to build or gain access to a calorimeter. Mathieu is more than capable of building the calorimeter if we can’t get access to one, but it is a matter of time and money!

Renderings of preliminary glass/steel fusion cell for accurate calorimetry,
thanks Nicolas!
Also a few shots of the instrument package for it, thanks Ryan!

UPDATE#1 - EU Glass/Steel cell components

Things are happening thick and fast - the donations we have received in the past few days are really spurring us forward, thanks people!

Nicolas has been working hard at his end to get the kit and the parts together for the EU active and control cells for highly accurate fluid based calorimetry. In the photos below, you can see the US manufactured flanges and gaskets, the EU made glass, the UK made TTi top specification power supplies and the CNC in Switzerland that has been working to modify and make some of the other components.

So in the coming months we will be testing a steel cell in an air flow calorimeter and an active and control steel and quartz cell pair in a fluid based mass flow calorimeter. These should give us really high quality data with confidence, but they are complicated and expensive and that is where the genius of Celani’s new protocol comes in.  

Within hours of receiving the email, we had already started building the plan and the apparatus which is now well advanced.

Here is the big takeaway for this key blog post in our journey...

The US and EU will run
differential cell experiments with
Celani’s new protocol...
...expected to be the smoking gun!

In both US and the EU, we will have 2 cells running a new protocol as described below. One will be essentially the active cell and the other will be the control. They will operate in the same environment to allow for differential comparison. 

In each case, after a few cycles of testing is complete (this might take few weeks), we will make the control active and see if it produces a similar effect. After a few cycles again we will attempt to damage the ability of one of the active cells and run some cycles again, lastly, we might pull the active wires from the cells and see if the calibrated heater wires show anything like the Celani wires. 

Expectations

It is expected that we will only see PXs for the period until the loaded wire has either “burnt” all the hydrogen in the New Fire, or the dynamic vacuum and active wire heating has resulted in loss of hydrogen from the wire. When the wire passes a critical loading threshold, we will need to load the wire again and run the experiment another time, this constitutes a load and “burn” cycle. This will repeatedly show that loading with Hydrogen is required to create excess heat, but our version of this protocol goes a lot further.

Geography 

The two cells in the EU will be run in Southern France and be managed by Mathieu Valat

Cell EU1.3A : PRIMARY
Cell EU1.3B : CONTROL

The two cells in US will be run in Minnesota, USA and be managed by Ryan Hunt

Cell US1.3A : PRIMARY
Cell US1.3B : CONTROL

Terminology

Heater wire

This could be a 2L Celani wire and this would give us the chance to test it also and it may add to the PXs or it could be a NiChrome wire of similar resistance to the 2L Celani wire.

Main wire

400+ layer Celani wire.

Dynamic vacuum

The cell is put under a continuous vacuum by leaving the vacuum pump on.

Primary

The first cell to have its main wire loaded with Hydrogen 

Control

This is the cell that is last to be activated and acts as a control allowing us to differentially compare the two cells that are running in the same environment. 

Protocol 

1. Main and possibly heater wire if 2L Celani type, is analysed with SEM
2. Two V1.3 Celani-type cells each have a heater and main wire
3. Dynamic vacuum and power applied to remove potential gas in wires with heater wire powered to drive off any potential moisture in the cell.
4. Calibration of heater and main wire under dynamic vacuum with
   2.5W steps from 5W up to 20W and down again in both cells
5. With H2 under pressure and passively heated by the heater wire, only the main wire in the primary is loaded ideally by use of repeated warming and cooling to around 0.7 R/R0
6. Under dynamic vacuum the main wire in both primary and control has 5W to 20W applied in 2.5W steps
7. After load and “burn” cycle iterations to seek optimal PXs, the control cells main wire is loaded by using the heater wire
8. Both cells are run again, possibly a number of times through load and “burn” cycles
9. The primary in the US has an attempt made to “destroy or damage” its nano structures by putting too much current into it
10. Both cells are run again through a number of load and “burn” cycles
11. Main wire is removed from both Primary and control and same power as put through main wire is put through heater wire
12. Celani wires are analysed with SEM

Advantages 

Removing the need altogether for calibration in any gas it solves

1. Possible killing of the effect by Argon calibrations
2. Possible absorption of He into the nanostructures/metal lattice that makes it difficult to load with hydrogen
3. Possible variations in calibration because of different gas pressures
4. Potential for gasses to take part in power generation
5. Issues surrounding atomic and molecular gas thermal conductivity
6. Potential for gasses interacting with other cell elements
7. Convective variations in calibrations
8. Partially the feedback effect of ambient temperature on wires

Taking gas out of the active run means 

1. Much smaller powers are needed to achieve trigger temperature without complicating the cell design
2. Bigger signal to noise ratio potential
3. Cheaper power supply requirements for wider replication
4. Calibrations ONLY use the IR component of energy output from wires
5. No debate about the effect of changing gas pressure
6. No debate about convective variations
7. Reduced influence of ambient on wire temperature, only minimal radiative effects
8. No debate about oxidation or other gas related chemical energy sources
9. No debate about mono atomic / molecular gas influence 
10. No debate about long term exposure damage to pressure gauge due to Hydrogen exposure

Not taking the cell apart to install active wire after calibrations means 

1. No debate about change in position of any part of the experiment between calibration and active runs
2. Wires and gasses in cell are in exactly the same state except for Hydrogen loading in calibration and active runs

Having a second cell as control means

1. Ends debates about the influence of other potential environmental effects like EM, magnetic, light, sound, particle exposure etc.
2. Can do direct differential comparison
3. Without opening Control, can activate it and run it to confirm it has same active wires in LIVE data publishing
4. Can potentially disable the Primary with current overload under dynamic vacuum and test to see if effect is as pronounced

Having the entire differential test repeated in both US and EU provides 

1. The chance to simultaneously LIVE verify our results
2. Doubles the chance to get it right first time
3. Allows us to test in two different controlled environments

Maintaining the Celani type glass cell has several advantages over steel cells

1. Can visually see the inactive and active components and their state
2. It will allow a wide range of potential triggering methods to be explored in the wider replications that would be harder with a steel cell, such as:-
   
   - UV, Laser and broad band flash light exposure stimulation
   - Inductive and RF stimulation of wires through glass
   - Electrostatic field stimulation - for instance, exposure of cell to Tesla apparatus 

Open Issues 

1. Still using SB approximation, though we could use curve matching etc.
2. Related to 1 – still not as good as flow calorimetry,
   the steel cell and dual vacuum quartz/steel cells will address these issues between them.

Conclusions

If we can see 10% or more PXs in one of the primaries over its corresponding control, we are in a very strong position. If we see it in both, we have our lab rat. 

Current status of the cells required for this test

There are 3 brand new cells being constructed for this test and one modification kit to be applied to the current EU cell. They will take on board all of the experience we have acquired to date.

• Centre core with tighter double helix winding of heater and main wires
• Coarser heater wire to ensure that we can raise the temperature sufficiently during loading
• Thin mica to lower heat dissipation from wire to support
• Macor discs at ends of mica to reduce losses to end flanges
• Long feedthroughs to enable the cell to run hotter
• Schott Duran glass to ensure maximum infra-red (IR) thermalisation
• No argon in calibration
• No He
• To be run in horizontal mode

Elements such as glass, mica, macor, wires, glass, thermocouples, data aggregation etc. will be the same for each of these four cells.

Before the EU cell is modified - it will do a preliminary experiment using this new dynamic vacuum protocol to understand and refine the protocol we hope this will start as early as week beginning 11/2/2013.

Most of the components are made for this mammoth experiment, as you can see in the photos below and all the glass arrived from the blower this morning (5/2/2013), the required wires are on the way from Celani, Mathieu is preparing to bake the mica sheets... then after a raft of international shipping costs, we should be good to go.

We could upload every image we have, but that would cripple this blog post... so in the interests of keeping this "Current status..." current - we have decided to upload as a google drive gallery - that way as new images are generated and uploaded - you will all have immediate access to them - cool huh!

Cell V1.3 Gallery

These tests will run alongside our imminent Kickstarter campaign that we only now have the confidence to run and it will mean that we may have up to 7 live data streams running - HOLY COW as we say here in India!

MFMP team will coerce Ryan to re-start Nickel nano powder experiments if we can raise $5000 before the Kickstarter opens!

Not content with providing you with up to seven data streams to dig your teeth into... we have managed to convince Ryan that if we can raise $5000 before the Kickstarter begins - which maybe within a week, he will re-start Nickel nano powder experiments and make that data stream LIVE!  Donate here

WE DID IT!! $37,080 in donations so far which is 743.4%. Wahooo! You people are awesome!.

UPDATE#2 - Win a powder reactor cell!

Yes, you heard that right... Ryan said that since people were so generous, he would show a few of the poor orphaned reactors all waiting for some excitement! Look at them, they're so cold, they need some love.

Then he said he had a nearly finished cell and he would be willing to part with it (just needs passthroughs, powder, instrumentation, yada yada... but it comes with a diagram!). 

So what do you have to do to get your hands on it?? Well, simply donate $10 or more. Every $5 donated since this blog was first published up until the launch of the Kickstarter, will give donors one chance to win it. Each $5 will earn a donor a sequence number. Donors will be emailed their sequence numbers first before the draw. Then, we will run an open google hangout and share the random number generator at this site

http://www.psychicscience.org/random.aspx

with the first 5 followers registered on this site that join the hangout (they will have to verify the draw). We will put in the number range and hit the go button. We will video record the draw/hangout and email the link to everyone that took part. Good Luck!

UPDATE#3 -  powder cell drawing

We're really stoked with how the pre-Kickstarter fundraiser is going, fresh from handling the media, Ryan is keen to get some powder cells running.

We're thinking that maybe people out there have great ideas for powder reactors. So to get your mental juices flowing, here is Malachi Heder's 28/6/12 drawing of the type of cells you see above.

Update #4 - An interesting graph

Well, we did it! Below is a graph from one of last years runs provided without keys and explanation (well it was before Live Open Science was born). If we can push just a little bit more, I am sure an explanation will be forthcoming.

Update #5 - Piantelli knows

So now we have reached our pre-kickstarter funding goal that will trigger us to re-start nano powder testing  (please consider donating if you can Donate here ), I thought only appropriate to give credit to the "father of Ni + H" systems, Piantelli.

To Piantelli and your team, from all of us, thankyou.

One of our friendly Italian blog comment contributors, Giorgio, recently said "successive Piantelli experiments demonstrated that a real and large excess heat was indeed present. Last year (Feb 2012) Piantelli told me that in one of his cells he reached self-sutaining (NO input power!) at 200W for 2months!".

This lead to an article on ECW, which then resulted in a poster there discovering the following two videos from "The Atom Unexplored" conference, May 4th 2012. Please take time to view them.

Update #6 - Piantelli powder insight

So Piantelli comes up with a smorgasboard of things to try right as we are compelled to re-start powder testing thanks to YOUR generosity. In an addendum to his granted patent linked below, you'll find lot's of things to pick through, it's like a turbo charged version of our Triggering open doc - anyone want to work up a priority list? Would love to see some of these very broad based ideas in a raft of working prototypes. Anyone for an international replication? Piantelli?

Description

Claims 

A HUGE thank you to those folks that have helped us to do this, people will still be able to take part in the draw, right up the the Kickstarter launch by donating $10 or more. Please consider being a primary donor. Donate here

Why is that important to us? - well this would mean 8 data feeds and 8 is the luckiest number in Asia...

So with skill, your kind donations and a smidgen of luck we'll light this New Fire together.