RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
George Holz's message of Saturday, October 03, 2009 1:50 PM [snip] Yes, it is reasonable to feel almost alone in considering non lattice based cold fusion, but there are a few of us out there quietly considering the relationship of Mills experiments to cold fusion experiments. It is interesting to consider that Mills' gas phase experiments are clearly overunity and apparently easy to replicate compared to solid state cold fusion experiments. The simplicity of H2 + He in a microwave plasma certainly requires new physics for an explanation. [end snip] George, could this be 2 sides of the same coin where the lattice structure of Casimir plates concentrate vacuum fluctuations while the narrow reservoir formed between the plates become equally depleted? The isotropy is broken in agreement with cavity QED but the overall structure appears balanced to the outside world. I know Casimir force requires conductive plates which don't necessarily have to be metallic lattices but the less conductive the plates the less catalytic action and so far Mills' and Arata findings seem to support metallic materials are always present. I think diatomic formations at high acceleration are torn apart in rigid Casimir cavities in the same way that the lattice in a Pd membrane breaks normal diatomic compounds. My point is that the lattices do seem to be a key ingredient in either scenario. I don't think Rayney Nickel or Pd nano materials could form cavities of sufficient strength except when intimately surrounded by lattices. Regards Fran
RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Robin van Spaandonk's message of October 02, 2009 , Hi Robin and Jed, Robin wrote: >Let me give a concrete example. Muon catalyzed fusion clearly meets the >definition of a Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, and hence papers on it could find a >place in your library, but I suspect you wouldn't even consider including them. >I understand how this has happened. It's because CF started with lattice based >reactions, and all the work since has also been lattice based (AFAIK)- in fact I >doubt that anyone other than me has even considered that it might not need to be >lattice based. I can think of at least 5 people other than you that have seriously considered, based on Mills' gas phase experiments, that there may well be a significant possibility of gas based cold fusion reactions. There was even an "unofficial" poster paper at ICCF 14 describing replications of Mills' gas phase experiments by a former Mills' associate. Mills does not want to be associated with cold fusion for political reasons and will not submit papers to LENR-CANR. Yes, it is reasonable to feel almost alone in considering non lattice based cold fusion, but there are a few of us out there quietly considering the relationship of Mills experiments to cold fusion experiments. It is interesting to consider that Mills' gas phase experiments are clearly overunity and apparently easy to replicate compared to solid state cold fusion experiments. The simplicity of H2 + He in a microwave plasma certainly requires new physics for an explanation. >My point Jed, is that neither LENR nor CANR specifically implies the presence of >a lattice, hence I think restricting the content to papers based only on lattice >based LENR-CANR is too severe a restriction. It may as yet turn out that it >really does only occur in a lattice, but I don't think we are that far along yet >in our understanding of the phenomenon (or perhaps phenomena if it turns out >that there are actually several different mechanisms capable of producing >LENR-CANR). Unfortunately the new name for the conference and journal, CMNS - Condensed Matter Nuclear Science seems to exclude gas phase reactions. A very unfortunate choice in my opinion. Fortunately, it will probably not be used as a reason for rejecting interesting papers. Now, if only people outside BLP would do some Mills experiments and submit them to CMNS / ICCF conferences it might provide some needed communition between the fields which we believe to be potentially related. George Holz Varitronics Systems geo...@varisys.com
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
On Oct 2, 2009, at 7:11 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 08:18 PM 10/2/2009, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:03:51 -0400: >It >might not be a metal lattice; the whole biological transmutation >approach, we might suspect, would represent protein-catalyzed fusion, >basically a protein, I assume, setting up confinement conditions that >facilitate fusion. What sort of confinement do you have in mind here? Confinement: restricting the motion of fusible elements such that the fusion cross-section is increased over what would be expected at the same temperature in free space. Confinement increases the wavelength size but, by itself, does not increase the fusion cross section. If it did then Bose condensates would fuse. A BEC, even a two molecule BEC, can not be described as simply the overlap of individual waveforms, and things do not behave as one intuitively might expect. For simplicity lets just talk particles instead of molecules for a moment. Yes, as relative motion of any two particles is reduced to zero in the reference frame of the observer, their de Broglie wavelengths increase to infinity, and obviously greatly increase their overlap if the centers of charge are not co-centered. This is not sufficient to increase the probability of fusion. What is important is, upon observation and wave function collapse, the probability of the two resulting point particles (nuclei) being sufficiently close to produce the fusion. If you break the individual wave functions into little cubes of a size sufficiently small to produce fusion of two particles within one, then as the wave function gets bigger you end up with more cubes (i.e. proportional to the wavelength cubed number of cubes) even if the wave functions *fully overlap*, i.e. the particles are co-entered. If, for the sake of argument, each cube has equal probability, i.e. upon wave function collapse each particle can be found in any of the cubes with the same probability, then the probability of both particles occupying the same cube upon full collapse actually *diminishes* with expanded de Broglie wavelength. For example suppose you start off with 2^3 = 8 cubes. The probability of fusion in any one of the cubes is 1/8^2 = 1/64. You have 8 cubes, so the overall probability is 8*64 = 1/8. Suppose now you double the wavelength, so have 4^3 = 64 cubes. The probability of fusion in a particular cube is 1/64^2 = 1/4096. The combined probability of fusion, given there are 64 cubes is 64 times larger, thus 1/64. The probability of fusion is reduced by a factor of 8 when the de Broglie wavelength is doubled (in this highly simplified version that is.) It gets worse. The probability could in actuality in all low speed cases be very close to zero. This is because the expected location (upon wave function collapse) of particles in combined wave functions is co-located with respect to the other particles, i.e. is co- dependent. The probability of finding of particle A in a given cube is conditional upon where particle B will be found, and vice versa. Particles having like charge have low probabilities of being found close together. This co-location affects things like the tendency for hydrogen molecules to be of a given barbell shape and size. You might expect that, as the protons are brought closer to each other, and the volume of the molecule decreased, the probability of the electrons being found between them and thus shielding their Coulomb barriers, would grow. Not so. The electron wave function actually thins out between the nuclei and thus increases the repulsion between the nuclei, thus restoring the molecular shape. The probability of the electrons jointly being found in the smaller volume between the nuclei decreases, and the probability of both being found on opposed sides of the nuclei increases. The probabilities are thus co- dependent. Similar arguments can be made for nuclei jammed into a tetrahedral space (their locations are co-dependent) as well as for any electron screening that might occur there. I suggested a possible means to beat this co-location problem (and thus cause fusion) here in 1996. It is described here: http://mtaonline.net/~hheffner/BoseHyp.pdf Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
On Oct 2, 2009, at 5:40 PM, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to Horace Heffner's message of Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:21:08 -0800: Hi, Sorry Horace, no harm intended. No harm experienced. No emotional content to my response was intended. Sorry, my writing style is a bit dry and terse, so easily misinterpreted. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 08:18 PM 10/2/2009, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:03:51 -0400: >It >might not be a metal lattice; the whole biological transmutation >approach, we might suspect, would represent protein-catalyzed fusion, >basically a protein, I assume, setting up confinement conditions that >facilitate fusion. What sort of confinement do you have in mind here? Confinement: restricting the motion of fusible elements such that the fusion cross-section is increased over what would be expected at the same temperature in free space. Palladium, if Takahashi is correct, appears to function by restricting the motion of deuterium molecules so that the probability is enhanced of Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate formation, which begins with a specific spatial relationship of two deuterium molecules (i.e., four deuterons, including four electrons), a relationship which we can imagine is encouraged by cubic confinement, the TSC being the most efficient packing; the reaction rate is then limited by the probability of getting two D2 molecules into a single cubic lattice position, which is -- fortunately! -- quite low. Proteins can create just about any necessary spatial configuration and thus catalyze many chemical reactions; I see no theoretical reason why proteins could not create a similar situation to the lattice; one or more of the atoms involved might be bound to the protein. All I'm saying is that if metal lattice catalyzed cold fusion is possible, then it would not be surprising to find that a protein can man age it, and if a protein can manage it, and if some survival advantage could exist for cells that pull off a LENR trick, then it would also not be surprising to find cells which can do it. While I'd not assign a high probability to this, ab initio and without evidence, it does mean to me that Vyosotskii's work should not be rejected out of hand, nor should the other reports of biological transmutations. *Someone* should investigate and attempt to reproduce Vyosotskii and perhaps some of the other, older, transmutation experiments, about which I know less.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
In reply to Horace Heffner's message of Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:21:08 -0800: Hi, Sorry Horace, no harm intended. [snip] > >On Oct 2, 2009, at 4:55 PM, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: > >> It's because CF started with lattice based >> reactions, and all the work since has also been lattice based >> (AFAIK)- in fact I >> doubt that anyone other than me has even considered that it might >> not need to be >> lattice based. > >Not true. For example, see: > >http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/GlowExper.pdf > >page 7 and following. > >Best regards, > >Horace Heffner >http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/ > > > Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
On Oct 2, 2009, at 4:55 PM, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: It's because CF started with lattice based reactions, and all the work since has also been lattice based (AFAIK)- in fact I doubt that anyone other than me has even considered that it might not need to be lattice based. Not true. For example, see: http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/GlowExper.pdf page 7 and following. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:53:22 -0400: Hi, [snip] >Bias is too strong a word. It is more a case of neat-freak programmer (me) >who likes to keep things in neat categories. I meant what I said: people >come to LENR-CANR looking for one thing, and I don't want them to find much >stuff that doesn't seem to fit. That annoys me when I go to other >specialized websites. My point Jed, is that neither LENR nor CANR specifically implies the presence of a lattice, hence I think restricting the content to papers based only on lattice based LENR-CANR is too severe a restriction. It may as yet turn out that it really does only occur in a lattice, but I don't think we are that far along yet in our understanding of the phenomenon (or perhaps phenomena if it turns out that there are actually several different mechanisms capable of producing LENR-CANR). > >The beauty of the Internet is that anyone can find Mills in an instant, so >they don't need me. Here you implicitly recognize that Mills might be relevant to the topic. > >A few unclassifiable odds things such as Oriani or Vysotskii will not bother >readers. Think of it this way. You go to the Freer Gallery to say Oriental >art. It is chock full of magnificent ancient paintings and sculptures from >China and Japan. There are also a few paintings by Whistler interspersed >among them -- also masterpieces. They don't bother the viewer even though >they are "off topic" as it were, The problem is that you seem to think that if it isn't lattice based then it's "off topic". Let me give a concrete example. Muon catalyzed fusion clearly meets the definition of a Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, and hence papers on it could find a place in your library, but I suspect you wouldn't even consider including them. I understand how this has happened. It's because CF started with lattice based reactions, and all the work since has also been lattice based (AFAIK)- in fact I doubt that anyone other than me has even considered that it might not need to be lattice based. >I don't recall ever discussing this with Ed. I also do not recall Mills or >anyone else in his team submitting a paper to LENR-CANR Am I mistaken in believing that you actively seek out papers for inclusion, and don't just wait for people to send them to you? >, although I met with >them at MIT and at other time. At MIT I got the distinct impression they >considered their gigantic bulk Ni experiments to be a form of cold fusion, >and I expect most cold fusion researchers think so. I have thought about >uploading their MIT slides but I can't find any of the authors to ask >permission. (And as you have seen, some authors do go ape shit when you >upload without permission!) > >- Jed Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:03:51 -0400: Hi, [snip] >At 06:30 PM 9/30/2009, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: >>Note that in at least >>one of Dr. Oriani's papers he reports ionizing radiation emitted >>from the vapor >>above a CF cell. > >I don't think that there is any substantial suspicion that this >radiation results from anything other than decay of radioactive >products coming from the cathode. (Or maybe some level of radiation >from the cathode.) I have a very substantial suspicion that this is caused by reactions in the vapor itself. Specifically the reaction, Na-23 + H ==> Ne-20 + He-4 + 2.38 MeV which after momentum redistribution yields a 1.98 MeV alpha that neatly matches the energy signature measured by Dr. Oriani. Of course he himself considers this reaction out of the question due to the high charge on the Sodium nucleus. > >> I think any interest in the field is due to our common need to >> find a new source >>of energy, so I think your belief that people only want to read about lattice >>based CF is probably misguided. > >He didn't say that. He said that people interested in lattice-based >CF might not like having a lot of papers on a lot of other >only-peripherally related subjects. I don't think that non-lattice based CF is "peripheral". In fact, my device, if it works, will not be based on a lattice at all. (I'm still trying to invent a lattice based one). > >>I also think that while a lattice may well *frequently* provide the necessary >>environment, it may not be a *necessary* requirement. > >I'm unaware of anything other than muon-catalyzed fusion that >bypasses the Coulomb barrier, without substantial confinement. ...but confinement without a lattice is possible, as your own example of muon-catalyzed fusion makes clear. (Muonic molecules constitute a form of confinement). In fact confinement within a reduced size molecule may well be the most robust method of achieving fusion. >It >might not be a metal lattice; the whole biological transmutation >approach, we might suspect, would represent protein-catalyzed fusion, >basically a protein, I assume, setting up confinement conditions that >facilitate fusion. What sort of confinement do you have in mind here? Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 06:35 PM 10/1/2009, you wrote: In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:30:15 -0400: Hi, [snip] >The transmutation of >radioactive waste, which is what his latest work has been about, is >not so easy a topic for "home LENR kits," unless one happens to have >some nuclear waste lying about. Fun for the kids? [snip] ..actually many people do. It's the Am241 in many smoke detectors. Thanks for reminding me. Now, how to use this? Maybe I need to reread Vyosotskii.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:30:15 -0400: Hi, [snip] >The transmutation of >radioactive waste, which is what his latest work has been about, is >not so easy a topic for "home LENR kits," unless one happens to have >some nuclear waste lying about. Fun for the kids? [snip] ..actually many people do. It's the Am241 in many smoke detectors. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 08:58 AM 10/1/2009, Roarty, Francis X wrote: [snip] might not be a metal lattice; the whole biological transmutation approach, we might suspect, would represent protein-catalyzed fusion, basically a protein, I assume, setting up confinement conditions that facilitate fusion.[snip] Abd, I am not familiar with this biological transmutation but assume your previous reference to spontaneous human combustion also comes under this heading? Not really, but politically they are similar in certain ways. Biological transmutation is a highly controversial field, of course. If cold fusion is impossible, biological transmutation would be restricted to certain narrow possibilities, such as the acceleration of radioactive decay; it's known that the chemical environment can do that. But, of course, we think that cold fusion, or something more or less equivalent that can result in elemental transformation, is possible. So biological transmutation is on the table. With SHC, then, we might imagine an energy source from cold fusion, but there are already ample energy sources available for combustion, in body fat, for example. How an NAE would not only arise in the body such that there is energy release, but that this, then, without generating intermediate effects, like your arm burning up but not the rest of you, goes whole-hog and incinerates the whole body, seems quite a stretch. Quite a stretch. With runaway "heat-after-death" -- which is much more "reproducible" than SHC -- there is a continuum of effects, from none to low to high enough to melt the palladium. Given that the very existence of SHC is controversial, adding controversy to controversy by very publicly speculating on SHC in his book, I think Storms shot himself in the foot. A little. I can understand. Simon notes that CF researchers, having been rejected and isolated as fringe or worse for so many years, generally became more tolerant of the extreme fringe. To some degree, the effect is good. Extreme fringe should never be *completely* off the table, just channeled to a corner where it can be discussed on a small scale until and unless something more reliable is found. This all has to do with how collective intelligence functions, when it's functional. I have suspected such a connection since learning the rare earth metal calcium is a porous powder which the body uses to build bone structure. I can only speculate at some natural process or disease that builds or leaches away to form pores of Casimir geometry in a biological equivalent of creating skeletal catalysts (no pun intended). Something out of the ordinary might be needed to encourage the ambient gas in these pores to become monatomic but the possible connection to excess heat is an intriguing clue. Fran There is a paper out there, so to speak, by Solomon Goldfein: Energy Development From Elemental Transmutations In Biological Systems, http://www.rexresearch.com/goldfein/goldfein.htm As I investigated the field of cold fusion for Wikipedia, I came across the "Biological transmutation" article, and, as well, the work of Vyosotskii. When I first looked at the Goldfein article, I was immediately put off by the reference to ATP as a "cyclotron." Now, rereading the paper recently, I saw that what he claimed might be more plausible than my knee-jerk reaction would allow. It still seems ridiculous, because what confines the electrons to the ATP chain once they reach sufficient energy to break free? Rather, Goldfein's theory is built on sand, insufficient confirmed anecdotal experimental evidence. That foundation must be solid for a radical theory, overturning more than a century of assumptions, to gain traction. There is a place for very raw speculation, but it's not in widespread discourse, it is in the locale for "back-of-the-envelope" or "napkin" sketches or calculations: in private work or in very small-scale discussions where brainstorming is de rigeur, where there is rapport; such discussions can cut through the rigid assumptions that are necessary for routine life, but which confine and restrict at the same time. If someone wants to work on biological transformation, and thinks that there is a reproducible experiment out there, nail down an experimental design, I'd be very interested, if it's cheap to do. If it's not cheap, you'd have to convince someone weightier than I. What I like about Vyosotskii is that it's possible for the work with deinococcus radiodurans to be done cheaply, the only really difficult part is the Mossbauer spectroscopy, assuming Voysotskii's culture wasn't unique, and it's possible that a market could be sufficient to justify hiring the services or building an adequate, special-purpose, spectrograph. Perhaps if someone meets Vyosotskii, or has good communication with him, he can be asked about how to obtain the culture. I'd definitely be interested in establishing a line and making it a
RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
[snip] might not be a metal lattice; the whole biological transmutation approach, we might suspect, would represent protein-catalyzed fusion, basically a protein, I assume, setting up confinement conditions that facilitate fusion.[snip] Abd, I am not familiar with this biological transmutation but assume your previous reference to spontaneous human combustion also comes under this heading? I have suspected such a connection since learning the rare earth metal calcium is a porous powder which the body uses to build bone structure. I can only speculate at some natural process or disease that builds or leaches away to form pores of Casimir geometry in a biological equivalent of creating skeletal catalysts (no pun intended). Something out of the ordinary might be needed to encourage the ambient gas in these pores to become monatomic but the possible connection to excess heat is an intriguing clue. Fran
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 06:30 PM 9/30/2009, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: Note that in at least one of Dr. Oriani's papers he reports ionizing radiation emitted from the vapor above a CF cell. I don't think that there is any substantial suspicion that this radiation results from anything other than decay of radioactive products coming from the cathode. (Or maybe some level of radiation from the cathode.) I think any interest in the field is due to our common need to find a new source of energy, so I think your belief that people only want to read about lattice based CF is probably misguided. He didn't say that. He said that people interested in lattice-based CF might not like having a lot of papers on a lot of other only-peripherally related subjects. I also think that while a lattice may well *frequently* provide the necessary environment, it may not be a *necessary* requirement. I'm unaware of anything other than muon-catalyzed fusion that bypasses the Coulomb barrier, without substantial confinement. It might not be a metal lattice; the whole biological transmutation approach, we might suspect, would represent protein-catalyzed fusion, basically a protein, I assume, setting up confinement conditions that facilitate fusion.
RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Abd, I don't think Mills papers or theory can be used without interpretation because the fractional states are actually relativistic. I do believe his data should be considered valuable as a measure to confirm new theories. I believe that soon someone with more math skill than I will calculate the DiFiore et al acceleration and redirected energy of a heated reactor in this confined cavity to better account for Mills output heat energy than he did. I understand this thread is about what information should and shouldn't be included on the LENR site but fractional orbit electrons keep detouring this subject and are not possible except relativistically. This is what Naudts suggested in 2005 but when Ron Bourgoin solved for the 137 fractional states in 2007 he did not realize the significance of Naudts statement or that the use of the Poincare transformation with an electron was only possible because of a relativistic perspective - A 1996 paper "Cavity QED* <http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/acta/vol27/pdf/v27p2409.pdf> " by Zofia Bialynicka-Birula supports the use of these equations normally associated with photons because of the destruction of isotropy inside a cavity and resulting effect on invariance under transformations of the Poincare group which therefore establishes the relativistic nature of their solutions. Put simply math performed from a relativistic perspective allows electrons to apparently occupy the same spatial coordinates and states because from an external perspective these hydrogen populations can have the same spatial coordinates but different temporal co-ordinates. Regards Fran -Original Message- From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax [mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:23 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion At 11:16 AM 9/30/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: >In some ways you have to draw an arbitrary line, for the convenience >of the reader. We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I >suppose they are cold fusion. Most of Mill's "claims" are only peripheral to cold fusion or low-energy nuclear reactions. If hydrinos exist, and if there is some mechanism for hydrino formation in the experiments, the reduced-orbit electrons might more effectively shield the Coulomb repulsion and thus catalyze fusion, but that doesn't make articles on hydrinos, themselves, relevant, nor are the BlackLight Power "reactors" relevant, that's definitely not cold fusion, but hydrino chemistry. New kind of chemistry, but not nuclear. > This is not because I have anything thing against Mills' work. It > is because people come to LENR-CANR to learn about metal-lattice > based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons effect, or whatever you > want to call it. It would annoy the readers to find many papers > about other subjects. If they want to learn about Mills they will > go to his site. It could be argued that some of Mills' papers are relevant to cold fusion. On the other hand, the political implications are problematic. Mills is working out his own karma, so to speak; if he manages to pull the rabbit out of the hat, and then someone else making a hat from the specifications likewise pulls out a rabbit, the whole issue might bear revisiting; we are likely to know within a few years. Meanwhile mentioning hydrinos simply confirms for critics how nutty these cold fusion people are. While we can't run our lives based on those opinions, we also might wisely avoid unnecessarily feeding the beast with tasty tidbits. Really, did Storms (2007) actually have to mention spontaneous human combustion? It was speculation upon speculation. (p. 142.) He does have much more reason to discuss Mills, and he does it in quite some depth. For some unknown reason, the more extensive discussion (p. 184-186) is missing from the index; he actually gives much more ink to Mills than to any other proposed explanations.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 04:13 PM 9/30/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Chris Zell wrote: Umm. where might these alternative sites be, that offer papers on transmutation? I think reading them might be an enriching experience. That was a paper by Roberto Monti. He has attended several cold fusion conferences. He does Medieval lead-to-gold style transmutation. Gene Mallove dabbled in it. You can find his work on the Internet in various places by searching for his name. http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4alchem.htm I think it is far enough removed from cold fusion that it should be considered off-topic. Jed, your web site is not "coldfusion.org," but "lenr-canr.org." He's definitely talking about low energy nuclear reactions! He claims to have published a paper shortly before Fleischmann's publication in 1989 (in J. Electrochem), in Italian, with his "new model of the atom," and that this model "made it easy for him to understand "what had really happened and where Fleischmann and Pons were wrong." If he's not blowing smoke, he predicted the kinds of transmutations that were later found by Mizuno, Brockris, etc. Definitely of interest. And definitely "out there." [...] As Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, we now have some papers by Vysotskii. He published them in recent ICCF proceedings and then sent me an earlier one, so why not? He's also published in the ACS LENR Sourcebook. The big mystery for me is that I've seen no sign of any attempts to replicate Vyosotskii's work. Some of it seems not only simple, but definitive. When Mossbauer spectroscopy detects Fe-57, it's there. That can't be simulated. Hence I Have some idea that a replication kit might be possible for Vyosotskii's work. It would involve finding an affordable Mossbauer analytical service. I suppose I could try to build a cheap Mossbauer spectrograph, that would make for a fun science kit all by itself. But that's not where I'm starting! I'm starting with what's already been replicated The transmutation of radioactive waste, which is what his latest work has been about, is not so easy a topic for "home LENR kits," unless one happens to have some nuclear waste lying about. Fun for the kids? My kids' mother would kill me. But a little deinococcus radiodurans, maybe I can get away with. Why did that bacterium evolve the capacity to withstand tremendous radiation levels? It might be fun to have some as pets, probably cheaper to feed than my cat. Could it be that it needed the radiation resistance to handle damage from the LENR it was catalyzing? Where does one go about getting some? http://www.atcc.org/ATCCAdvancedCatalogSearch/ProductDetails/tabid/452/Default.aspx?ATCCNum=13939&Template=bacteria. $195.00, plus you have to sign away your first-born. Non-commercial use only, except, of course, for "industry-sponsored academic use." The culture is considered safe, non-pathogenic.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Robin van Spaandonk wrote: > We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I > >suppose they are cold fusion. This is not because I have anything > >thing against Mills' work. It is because people come to LENR-CANR to > >learn about metal-lattice based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons > >effect, or whatever you want to call it. > > I have suspected this bias for some time, and I suspect the influence is > primarily that of Dr. Storms. Personally, I think that restricting CF > (general > term) to metal lattices may be too severe a restriction. Note that in at > least > one of Dr. Oriani's papers he reports ionizing radiation emitted from the > vapor > above a CF cell. > Bias is too strong a word. It is more a case of neat-freak programmer (me) who likes to keep things in neat categories. I meant what I said: people come to LENR-CANR looking for one thing, and I don't want them to find much stuff that doesn't seem to fit. That annoys me when I go to other specialized websites. The beauty of the Internet is that anyone can find Mills in an instant, so they don't need me. A few unclassifiable odds things such as Oriani or Vysotskii will not bother readers. Think of it this way. You go to the Freer Gallery to say Oriental art. It is chock full of magnificent ancient paintings and sculptures from China and Japan. There are also a few paintings by Whistler interspersed among them -- also masterpieces. They don't bother the viewer even though they are "off topic" as it were, because Whistler was influenced by the Japanese and his work looks wonderful in juxtaposition with it, and there are only a few paintings (plus one dreadful kitchy room full of his stuff that he designed which you should avoid). That's fine, but if they started cramming in pop-art, op-art or Renaissance Italian art it would be exasperating. You go across the Mall to see that. I don't recall ever discussing this with Ed. I also do not recall Mills or anyone else in his team submitting a paper to LENR-CANR, although I met with them at MIT and at other time. At MIT I got the distinct impression they considered their gigantic bulk Ni experiments to be a form of cold fusion, and I expect most cold fusion researchers think so. I have thought about uploading their MIT slides but I can't find any of the authors to ask permission. (And as you have seen, some authors do go ape shit when you upload without permission!) - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 11:16 AM 9/30/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: In some ways you have to draw an arbitrary line, for the convenience of the reader. We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I suppose they are cold fusion. Most of Mill's "claims" are only peripheral to cold fusion or low-energy nuclear reactions. If hydrinos exist, and if there is some mechanism for hydrino formation in the experiments, the reduced-orbit electrons might more effectively shield the Coulomb repulsion and thus catalyze fusion, but that doesn't make articles on hydrinos, themselves, relevant, nor are the BlackLight Power "reactors" relevant, that's definitely not cold fusion, but hydrino chemistry. New kind of chemistry, but not nuclear. This is not because I have anything thing against Mills' work. It is because people come to LENR-CANR to learn about metal-lattice based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons effect, or whatever you want to call it. It would annoy the readers to find many papers about other subjects. If they want to learn about Mills they will go to his site. It could be argued that some of Mills' papers are relevant to cold fusion. On the other hand, the political implications are problematic. Mills is working out his own karma, so to speak; if he manages to pull the rabbit out of the hat, and then someone else making a hat from the specifications likewise pulls out a rabbit, the whole issue might bear revisiting; we are likely to know within a few years. Meanwhile mentioning hydrinos simply confirms for critics how nutty these cold fusion people are. While we can't run our lives based on those opinions, we also might wisely avoid unnecessarily feeding the beast with tasty tidbits. Really, did Storms (2007) actually have to mention spontaneous human combustion? It was speculation upon speculation. (p. 142.) He does have much more reason to discuss Mills, and he does it in quite some depth. For some unknown reason, the more extensive discussion (p. 184-186) is missing from the index; he actually gives much more ink to Mills than to any other proposed explanations.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:16:39 -0400: Hi, [snip] >In some ways you have to draw an arbitrary line, for the convenience >of the reader. We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I >suppose they are cold fusion. This is not because I have anything >thing against Mills' work. It is because people come to LENR-CANR to >learn about metal-lattice based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons >effect, or whatever you want to call it. I have suspected this bias for some time, and I suspect the influence is primarily that of Dr. Storms. Personally, I think that restricting CF (general term) to metal lattices may be too severe a restriction. Note that in at least one of Dr. Oriani's papers he reports ionizing radiation emitted from the vapor above a CF cell. I think any interest in the field is due to our common need to find a new source of energy, so I think your belief that people only want to read about lattice based CF is probably misguided. I also think that while a lattice may well *frequently* provide the necessary environment, it may not be a *necessary* requirement. >It would annoy the readers >to find many papers about other subjects. If they want to learn about >Mills they will go to his site. > >- Jed Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
I have heard of websites paying huge data costs and I have never understood it at all. While $33 a month isn't quite what I'm talking about a host such as say GoDaddy charges... $4.99/mo for 300GB Transfer $6.99/mo for 1,500GB Transfer $14.99/mo for Unlimited Transfer (and unlimited space) On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: > Chris Zell wrote: > > Umm. where might these alternative sites be, that offer papers on >> transmutation? I think reading them might be an enriching experience. >> > > That was a paper by Roberto Monti. He has attended several cold fusion > conferences. He does Medieval lead-to-gold style transmutation. Gene Mallove > dabbled in it. > > You can find his work on the Internet in various places by searching for > his name. > > I think it is far enough removed from cold fusion that it should be > considered off-topic. That's what I told him, and he agreed. I have no > problem with him coming to conferences, and if he had a paper in an ICCF > proceedings and asked me to upload it, I would. Of course I would include it > if I upload the entire proceedings, as I hope to do with the next ICCF, and > maybe ICCF14. Any paper the editors accept is fine with me. > > ICCF editors usually accept any and all papers. > > As Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, we now have some papers by Vysotskii. He published > them in recent ICCF proceedings and then sent me an earlier one, so why not? > > Also as noted in my old message thoughtfully uploaded by Swartz, I used to > limit the number of papers because bandwidth was expensive. I think the cost > has fallen by about a factor of 10 or more since 2002. It used to cost me a > lot of money to distribute these papers when we went over quota. The quota > has been raised to 50 GB per month . . . but we are up to 36 GB (72%) this > month! Some of these new large files such as the NSF/EPRI proceedings are > eating up bandwidth. > > It now costs me $33 per month from Jumpline. That's probably a little high. > > - Jed > >
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Chris Zell wrote: Umm. where might these alternative sites be, that offer papers on transmutation? I think reading them might be an enriching experience. That was a paper by Roberto Monti. He has attended several cold fusion conferences. He does Medieval lead-to-gold style transmutation. Gene Mallove dabbled in it. You can find his work on the Internet in various places by searching for his name. I think it is far enough removed from cold fusion that it should be considered off-topic. That's what I told him, and he agreed. I have no problem with him coming to conferences, and if he had a paper in an ICCF proceedings and asked me to upload it, I would. Of course I would include it if I upload the entire proceedings, as I hope to do with the next ICCF, and maybe ICCF14. Any paper the editors accept is fine with me. ICCF editors usually accept any and all papers. As Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, we now have some papers by Vysotskii. He published them in recent ICCF proceedings and then sent me an earlier one, so why not? Also as noted in my old message thoughtfully uploaded by Swartz, I used to limit the number of papers because bandwidth was expensive. I think the cost has fallen by about a factor of 10 or more since 2002. It used to cost me a lot of money to distribute these papers when we went over quota. The quota has been raised to 50 GB per month . . . but we are up to 36 GB (72%) this month! Some of these new large files such as the NSF/EPRI proceedings are eating up bandwidth. It now costs me $33 per month from Jumpline. That's probably a little high. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
As best as I can tell the on-going dispute between Mr. Rothwell and Dr. Swartz appears to revolve around Dr. Swartz desire to prove that Jed "censors" experimental data from CF researchers, himself included. Meanwhile, from Jed's perspective, it would appear that Dr. Swartz refuses to follow a few simple steps that would let him publish Dr. Swartz's experimental data out the lenr-canr web site. Said differently: Mr. Rothwell and Dr. Swartz do not appear to get along with each other. I don't know why there is this on-going animosity between these two individuals. I suspect additional reason(s) that remain obscured from our view, and that are none of our concern, certainly none of mine. All I know is what Dr. Swartz has previously stated: > You [Mr. Rothwell] were given copies. Multiple copies. > By disk. On paper. By mail with green card. For which Mr. Rothwell has replied: > I couldn't read them. Mr. Rothwell then went on to suggest that in order to get Dr. Swartz's data posted out at the lenr-canr web stite: > 1. You [Dr. Swartz] first upload these papers to your web site. > 2. You give me permission, here, publicly, to copy them. > 3. I will then upload them. I will do it within the hour. I'm left with two conflicting perspectives. I don't understand why Mr. Rothwell wasn't able to "read/scan" what I presume were hardcopy documents allegedly given to him by Dr. Swartz at a prior encounter. Presumably such "hardcopy" could have been scanned. Were such "hardcopy" documents so unreadable that they couldn't be easily scanned - documents presumably assembled from a professional researcher, like Dr. Swartz? OTOH, I also don't understand why Dr. Swartz has been unwilling to follow Mr. Rothwell's three simple requests that would allow him to publish Dr. Swartz's data out at the lenr-canr web site. What seems to be extremely odd from my perspective is the apparent statement by Mr. Rothwell that the experimental data Dr. Swartz compiled (the data for which allegedly had previously been given to Mr. Rothwell in various formats) does not appear to be posted out at Dr. Swartz's own web site. If this is an accurate statement, it makes no sense to me. Why would Dr. Swarts complain about his papers not being published out at lenr-canr when they aren't even available at his own web site. Is this an accurate statement I've made? Please correct me if I'm wrong! It would tend to leave an observer (like me) with the following conclusions: That (1) Dr. Swartz's experimental data does not (or may no longer) exist, in a format that would lend itself to be easily reproduced at any web site, or (2) Dr. Swartz is far more interested in proving to the world that Mr. Rothwell censors experimental CF data of other researchers, rather than getting his own CF experimental data posted out at the lenr-canr web site. I freely admit that both of my conclusions could be inaccurate, or flat out wrong. But at present that's the best that I (as a third party observer) can conclude. From a voyeuristic POV these transactional spats are fascinating to witness - the source of speculation as to what this is really all about. However, from a professional POV they seem to reveal a unique (and volatile) collection of personal politics that feed off of the seemingly boundless energy of each other's outrage. Unfortunately, if either of my previously stated conjectures are reasonably accurate it would seem to indicate that both will never be able to resolve the continuing saga we bear witness to, because both have different objectives they wish to accomplish, objectives that unfortunately have no interest in cooperating with each other's goals since at their cores they are at the other's expense. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.orionworks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Umm. where might these alternative sites be, that offer papers on transmutation? I think reading them might be an enriching experience.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Dr. Mitchell Swartz quoted me: "At LENR-CANR.org we have censored out some of the controversial claims related to CF, such as transmuting macroscopic amounts of gold, or biological transmutations, along with some of the extremely unconventional theories. That is right. As I said, I recall we turned down 4 or 5 papers. One was about macroscopic amounts of gold, and one may have been biological. I helped the authors find web sites that specialize in these topics, and they amicably agreed that these sites were more suited to their work. There are some references to the biological work at LENR-CANR, including some in papers by Storms himself, so obviously he and I are not excluding all references to this research. In some ways you have to draw an arbitrary line, for the convenience of the reader. We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I suppose they are cold fusion. This is not because I have anything thing against Mills' work. It is because people come to LENR-CANR to learn about metal-lattice based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons effect, or whatever you want to call it. It would annoy the readers to find many papers about other subjects. If they want to learn about Mills they will go to his site. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 04:39 AM 9/30/2009, Dr. Mitchell Swartz wrote: Rothwell (admitting he edits papers): "Swartz's assertions are crazy nonsense. I would never demand to edit papers.. (but then in the next paragraph) When I am preparing papers for a proceedings, that's another matter. " Embarrassing. Dr. Swartz is playing "gotcha," and rather badly here. "Preparing papers for a proceedings" is entirely different from editing papers uploaded to lenr-canr.org without author permission, which itself is different from mere reformatting. The context would be editing papers that were provided, so what Swartz has done is to juxtapose the two different situations to make it look like a comment about one is about the other. Perhaps he believes this, and is merely inattentive. Rothwell (admitting he censors papers): "Ed and I have on rare occasions turned down papers altogether. Maybe 3 to 5 times. These papers were off-topic, crazy, utterly incomprehensible, or handwritten and illegible. Generally speaking though, if you can get a paper published in a proceedings or journal anywhere, and it has some connection to cold fusion, we'll take it. We never turn down papers because we disagree with them. On the contrary, for years I have been trying to get more of the skeptics to contribute papers. - Jed" Refusing to place a document in a library is a librarian's judgment and is not exactly censorship. And the topic wasn't papers on, say, biological transformation, but rather specific papers specifically about cold fusion, by a notable proponent, Swartz. And not the kind of allegedly wild-eyed speculation or dangerously and obviously idiosyncratic papers that Rothwell is talking about. Again, it's a gotcha. What is nonsense is that Jed Rothwell is disingenuous. Merely the postings on vortex corroborate the assertions. Rothwell is about as straight-out as they come, for better or for worse. He's not exactly "politic," himself. The truth is that communication is ambiguous, and a general truth still stands even when there are unstated exceptions. It merely needs qualification, but tendentious argument will attack a general truth based on the existence of exceptions. Jed previously explained why he censors at his site. At 10:45 AM 8/23/2004, Jed Rothwell admitted to censoring, but then purported it is for "political reasons", such as not to upset some of his "critics" (ROTFLOL) so he will not get hit with by "a baseball bat (given) to Robert Park". Rothwell: "I will not hand a baseball bat to Robert Park and ask him to please hit me over the head with it! It is a shame that CF is so political, but it is, and we must pay attention to politics, image and public relations." That's right. Now, we might disagree with some of Rothwell's decisions, but the principle is sound. The library isn't a completely indiscriminate collection of resources; if it were, it would be less useful. However, there is a problem, for sure, where material is excluded merely because of its political implications, and I immediately think of Vyosotskii. I've seen the political implications from this, playing out, for the discussion of Vyosotskii in discussed in Storms (2007) is used against Storms by some of the critics. And then that Vyosotskii once wrote a paper on "water memory," is used against Vyosotskii. Rothwell could set up an advisory board to which he would refer any disputes over inclusion. Or he could continue has he has, making the decisions himself. He's putting in the work, he has the right. If someone else wants to create a "library of rejected submissions to lenr-canr.org," they could, and my guess is that Rothwell would link to it... Basically, he's stated his motive, and it is not censorship. It's protective of the reputation of lenr-canr.org, which is considerable, and in which there is a great deal invested. What is also interesting is the following from the late Dr. Eugene Mallove (discussed on vortex previously) with regards to the website (Jed's) in question and what Jed and Gene called "political censorship". Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 Subject: Storms/Rothwell censorship From: "Eugene F. Mallove" To: Mitchell Swartz "Mitch, FYI -- this was a message that Rothwell posted to Vortex about a month ago: "At LENR-CANR.org we have censored out some of the controversial claims related to CF, such as transmuting macroscopic amounts of gold, or biological transmutations, along with some of the extremely unconventional theories. This is not because we (Storms and Rothwell) oppose these claims, or because we are upset by them. It is for political reasons only. The goal of LENR-CANR is to convince mainstream scientists that CF is real. This goal would be hampered by presenting such extreme views. Actually, I have no opinion about most theories, and I could not care less how weird the data may seem. At the Scientific American and the APS they feel hostility toward such things.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 08:50 PM 9/29/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Robin van Spaandonk wrote: In reply to Dr. Mitchell Swartz's message of Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:44:24 -0400: Hi, [snip] > Corroborating your fabrications, Jed, you have told others and us >that you demand to EDIT the papers. [snip] ..from the perspective of an outsider to all of this, I get the impression that Jed edit's papers to make them more comprehensible, however I can understand that some authors would object to any interference at all. Rothwell (admitting he edits papers): "Swartz's assertions are crazy nonsense. I would never demand to edit papers.. (but then in the next paragraph) When I am preparing papers for a proceedings, that's another matter. " Rothwell (admitting he censors papers): "Ed and I have on rare occasions turned down papers altogether. Maybe 3 to 5 times. These papers were off-topic, crazy, utterly incomprehensible, or handwritten and illegible. Generally speaking though, if you can get a paper published in a proceedings or journal anywhere, and it has some connection to cold fusion, we'll take it. We never turn down papers because we disagree with them. On the contrary, for years I have been trying to get more of the skeptics to contribute papers. - Jed" What is nonsense is that Jed Rothwell is disingenuous. Merely the postings on vortex corroborate the assertions. Jed previously explained why he censors at his site. At 10:45 AM 8/23/2004, Jed Rothwell admitted to censoring, but then purported it is for "political reasons", such as not to upset some of his "critics" (ROTFLOL) so he will not get hit with by "a baseball bat (given) to Robert Park". Rothwell: "I will not hand a baseball bat to Robert Park and ask him to please hit me over the head with it! It is a shame that CF is so political, but it is, and we must pay attention to politics, image and public relations." What is also interesting is the following from the late Dr. Eugene Mallove (discussed on vortex previously) with regards to the website (Jed's) in question and what Jed and Gene called "political censorship". Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 Subject: Storms/Rothwell censorship From: "Eugene F. Mallove" To: Mitchell Swartz "Mitch, FYI -- this was a message that Rothwell posted to Vortex about a month ago: "At LENR-CANR.org we have censored out some of the controversial claims related to CF, such as transmuting macroscopic amounts of gold, or biological transmutations, along with some of the extremely unconventional theories. This is not because we (Storms and Rothwell) oppose these claims, or because we are upset by them. It is for political reasons only. The goal of LENR-CANR is to convince mainstream scientists that CF is real. This goal would be hampered by presenting such extreme views. Actually, I have no opinion about most theories, and I could not care less how weird the data may seem. At the Scientific American and the APS they feel hostility toward such things. They have a sense that publishing such data will harm their readers and sully the traditions and reputation of academic science. I am not a member of the congregation at the Church of Academic Science, and I could not care less about the Goddess Academia's Sacred Reputation. I don't publish because of politics and limited web space. - Jed" Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 Subject: Storms/Rothwell censorship From: "Eugene F. Mallove" "This is known as science by politics -- it is disgusting. Storms doesn't have leg to stand on and he knows it." - the late, great, Dr. Eugene Mallove That said, I support, and in the past have supported, Jed and Ed in most of their efforts, and however they want to run their site. It is their choice.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 06:31 PM 9/29/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: They said they emphasized their own work because they understood their own work best, and they could discuss it in depth with the panel without fear of making a mistake or misrepresenting the work. That seems sensible to me. Sensible and very wrong. There is another reason to discuss your own work. It's your work, you are close to it, you think it's important. And your judgment about that might well be clouded. The big lacuna is Miles, of course, very old evidence, and heavily verified. They made a big deal about Miles! Right there in section 3. They didn't ignore other people's work, especially not his. They emphasized their own work, but they commented on many others. Yeah. My memory is probably defective on that, I haven't looked recently. They don't make as big a deal out of heat/helium as Storns does, it didn't seem as clear to me, and the Appendix torpedoed it, by also talking about helium in a way that diverted attention from the much more solid information in the main body. It's just a theory, Jed, that might explain why the helium evidence was ignored by one of the reviewers, who misrepresented it, and then the reviewer took that misrepresenation and distorted it even more, until what was a clear correlation was presented as an anti-correlation that, on the fact, made it look like helium and heat were not strongly correlated. I wasn't there. I don't know what the presentations were like. But McKubre is an accomplished lecturer. He's impressive in what I've seen. I have transcribed his talks and published them pretty much verbatim, as papers. Hagelstein is pretty good too. The paper they presented makes things quite clear. It as edited, improved and commented upon by many people before the presentation, including me. It was not dashed off in a rush. Some of the panel members understood the issues perfectly well. If the others did not, I suppose they were not paying attention or thinking things through. I doubt it was the fault of the people making presentations. "Fault" is a tricky word. Could it have been done better? Probably. You know my opinion about the 2004 Review. It was the turning point, it established credibility for the field *if it is read carefully.* It was presented, though, as a confirmation of the 1989 review, which is actually preposterous, they were like night and day. Or maybe like the dead of night vs. the dawn.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 04:58 PM 9/29/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: I'll bet if you contacted those people today (the ones still alive), you would find they have not learned a thing about cold fusion and they would not change a word of their endorsements. Unless you could approach them in a way likely to generate rapport, and discuss the issues in detail, perhaps following the approach of someone you love to hate, Hoffmann. It's not impossible, but, yes, it can be very difficult. Difficult or easy, why would I bother? I don't care what these nudniks think. They sure don't care what I think! If, Jed, if. I didn't say you should do it. As Mike McKubre says, "I wouldn't cross the street to hear a lecture by Frank Close." I might, but not if I had to pay, and not if I had to do much more than cross the street. And I'd bring a good book. Maybe the ACS LENR Sourcebook. On the other hand, I've never read Close. Have I missed anything? I have nothing in common with the extreme skeptics and the Avowed Enemies of Cold Fusion. No meeting of the minds is possible between us. I never communicate with them unless there is an audience and I wish to score points. Discussing the issues with them is a futile waste of time. Unless certain conditions arose. I don't advise holding your breath waiting for them, and I'm sure you don't need this advice. Or lack of advice, now, that was a weird construction, wasn't it? Needless to say, they think the same thing about me, as they have often said. Here is one that said that about me yesterday: http://evildrpain.blogspot.com/2009/09/freedom.html Supposed scientist uses pseudonym of Evil Dr. Pain. You hang out with strange people, Jed. Sounds like Wikipedia. Here is the "heated discussion" linked to in the blog: http://missatomicbomb.blogspot.com/2008/06/gullible-part-2.html Yeah, Jed, I've watched what you do, it turns up in searches for various topics of interest. I've done my share of advocacy responses to blogs, and, I must say, I've always found your comments quite civil and to the point. So this is the blog of Miss Atomic Bomb a.k.a. Nuclear Kelly. I'm always amused by the half-knowledge of some of these physics bloggers, who raise the most obvious questions not only as if nobody thought of those questions before, but, of course, there isn't any answer. Like, How Come the experiments can't be replicated? How Come the effect disappears if you use more accurate instrumentation? How Come there isn't any nuclear ash? How Come I ask all these questions without actually reading anything about the topic, and when someone like Jed Rothwell comes along and lays it out for me, I retreat further into my shell of contempt? Huh? How Come? I'd venture a guess that I was studying nuclear physics sometime around when Nuclear Kelly's parents were born. She treats Julian Schwinger as "not a nuclear physicist"? Hello? She imagines that those who work in the field of cold fusion are totally ignorant of the Coulomb barrier. Reminds me of a 12-year-old who once "corrected" my Arabic pronunciation. He'd learned a rule that *usually* applied, but not in the case involved. And when I told him about it, he flat refused to believe me. After all, I was only four times his age, why should he pay attention to me, when he *knew* I was wrong. Bright kid, actually, too accustomed to being right around adults who didn't know what they were talking about Her comment, "The fact that they call it "low energy nuclear reactions" actually sickens me," reveals a great deal. That's emotional attachment, taking offense at what destabilizes her world view, her sense of herself. It was quite impossible for her to read what you wrote rationally. Could you read if every word made you nauseous? She's right, of course, it is not what she knows of as "nuclear fusion." It's something else, but it is, I can say with certainty, low energy nuclear reactions. The idea that such reactions are impossible is preposterous, examples are known, and all that happened is that a new one was found, an unexpected one, to be sure. Her ad hoc numerical analysis was way off, and she neglected quite a number of important factors. Deuterium in a palladium lattice doesn't just sit at random locations, not when the lattice is at high saturation. What happens when local concentration exceeds 1:1 is interesting, and what happens when there is, near the surface, a population with some level of molecular deuterium may be of the highest interest. Takahashi -- a nuclear physicist, isn't he -- did his own calculations: what happens if somehow, it doesn't have to be for long at all, a femtosecond is enough, two deuterium molecules occupy the same cubic cell in the lattice? Takahashi's calculations describe what appears to be a Bose-Einstein collapse and fusion, predicted using quantum field theory, which appears to be totally beyond Miss Nuclear Kelly. Is this
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Robin van Spaandonk wrote: In reply to Dr. Mitchell Swartz's message of Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:44:24 -0400: > Hi, > [snip] > > Corroborating your fabrications, Jed, you have told others and us > >that you demand to EDIT the papers. > [snip] > ..from the perspective of an outsider to all of this, I get the impression > that > Jed edit's papers to make them more comprehensible, however I can > understand > that some authors would object to any interference at all. Swartz's assertions are crazy nonsense. I would never demand to edit papers. Editing is tedious and thankless work. I would no more DEMAND you let me do that than I would DEMAND you let me come to your house, do the laundry, and spray for cockroaches. Any time an author says he does not want me to edit something, I leave it alone. Often this results in a paper that is incomprehensible that no one will download or read. I know this for a fact, because I have detailed statistics from LENR-CANR showing which papers are popular and which are ignored. However, if an author wants me to upload an incomprehensible paper that no one will read, that's his or her business. It will not cost me any bandwidth, so why should I care? As I said there are thousands of authors and about a thousand papers by now so it makes no difference if there are a few duds. When I am preparing papers for a proceedings, that's another matter. The editors of proceedings usually want to impose some format uniformity because it makes the book more professional looking. Such as having all papers start with an abstract which is block text indented on both sides. Also, the editors do not want to publish papers with spelling mistakes and incomprehensible English. So they turn to me, because I have been writing and editing technical documentation for 35 years and I know much more about Microsoft Word than most scientists do. The decision to edit these papers is made by the editors (Hagelstein, Biberian, Melich . . .) not by me. Naturally, I approve. The earlier unedited proceedings were an embarrassment. Highly unprofessional. Ed and I have on rare occasions turned down papers altogether. Maybe 3 to 5 times. These papers were off-topic, crazy, utterly incomprehensible, or handwritten and illegible. Generally speaking though, if you can get a paper published in a proceedings or journal anywhere, and it has some connection to cold fusion, we'll take it. We never turn down papers because we disagree with them. On the contrary, for years I have been trying to get more of the skeptics to contribute papers. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
In reply to Dr. Mitchell Swartz's message of Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:44:24 -0400: Hi, [snip] > Corroborating your fabrications, Jed, you have told others and us >that you demand to EDIT the papers. [snip] ..from the perspective of an outsider to all of this, I get the impression that Jed edit's papers to make them more comprehensible, however I can understand that some authors would object to any interference at all. Therefore, I have a the following suggestion for Jed. In those cases, you could add an additional document to the web site, that accompanies the unedited original, and is clearly marked as either your list of edits, or as your edited version, whichever is easiest, while the unedited original is also marked as such. That way, both requirements are met. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: They said they emphasized their own work because they understood their own work best, and they could discuss it in depth with the panel without fear of making a mistake or misrepresenting the work. That seems sensible to me. Sensible and very wrong. There is another reason to discuss your own work. It's your work, you are close to it, you think it's important. And your judgment about that might well be clouded. The big lacuna is Miles, of course, very old evidence, and heavily verified. They made a big deal about Miles! Right there in section 3. They didn't ignore other people's work, especially not his. They emphasized their own work, but they commented on many others. I wasn't there. I don't know what the presentations were like. But McKubre is an accomplished lecturer. I have transcribed his talks and published them pretty much verbatim, as papers. Hagelstein is pretty good too. The paper they presented makes things quite clear. It as edited, improved and commented upon by many people before the presentation, including me. It was not dashed off in a rush. Some of the panel members understood the issues perfectly well. If the others did not, I suppose they were not paying attention or thinking things through. I doubt it was the fault of the people making presentations. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: I'll bet if you contacted those people today (the ones still alive), you would find they have not learned a thing about cold fusion and they would not change a word of their endorsements. Unless you could approach them in a way likely to generate rapport, and discuss the issues in detail, perhaps following the approach of someone you love to hate, Hoffmann. It's not impossible, but, yes, it can be very difficult. Difficult or easy, why would I bother? I don't care what these nudniks think. They sure don't care what I think! As Mike McKubre says, "I wouldn't cross the street to hear a lecture by Frank Close." I have nothing in common with the extreme skeptics and the Avowed Enemies of Cold Fusion. No meeting of the minds is possible between us. I never communicate with them unless there is an audience and I wish to score points. Discussing the issues with them is a futile waste of time. Needless to say, they think the same thing about me, as they have often said. Here is one that said that about me yesterday: http://evildrpain.blogspot.com/2009/09/freedom.html Here is the "heated discussion" linked to in the blog: http://missatomicbomb.blogspot.com/2008/06/gullible-part-2.html This person thinks that he won the debate, and that: "This debate, of course, turned out to be an utterly pointless exercise, as the advocate descended predictably into nonsensical argument, and what amounted to name calling, in order to defend his position." From my point of view, I made mincemeat out of him, and I never engaged in any name calling. I believe this is cognitive dissonance on his part. Mainly it was a discussion of matters of fact, not even technical matters. For example, he claimed that no nuclear scientists have worked on cold fusion, so I gave him a long list of distinguished nuclear scientists who have. He claimed that no replications have been done, so I gave him a list of replications. And so on. By the way, I would never claim that I won the debate by virtue of superior intellect or legerdemain. Any fool who bothers to read the literature can easily win this sort of debate. I am in the same position as someone in 1906 debating whether airplanes could exist. All you have to do is point out that those Wright brothers have done public demonstrations, flying for up to 40 minutes, as attested in affidavits by leading citizens of Dayton, OH. And they have a patent, and they have published scientific papers in leading journals of engineering, and there are photos, etc., etc. The skeptic may make an absurd technical objection: "Even if someone did fly, they could never land, because they would be moving so rapidly through the air." (A famous scientist in 1903 actually said this.) Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of flight would respond: "Birds solve this problem by stalling at the last moment, and falling on their feet. A human pilot can do the same thing, to fall on landing gear." Which is exactly the case, and which the Wrights and others knew perfectly well, and had been doing for many years. This is analogous to me saying to the cold fusion skeptic: "Many different calorimeter types have been used, so this cannot be a systematic error caused by one calorimeter type." It is one of the first things you lean when you study the subject, and it is easy to understand. (Many things about cold fusion -- and aviation for that matter -- are difficult to understand, but the skeptics of 1906 and 2009 fail to grasp even the ABCs.) - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 01:35 PM 9/29/2009, you wrote: I'll bet if you contacted those people today (the ones still alive), you would find they have not learned a thing about cold fusion and they would not change a word of their endorsements. Unless you could approach them in a way likely to generate rapport, and discuss the issues in detail, perhaps following the approach of someone you love to hate, Hoffmann. It's not impossible, but, yes, it can be very difficult. On the other hand, if you know someone who knows one of them well, and you can approach this second person and have that conversation, it might be possible.
RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 11:37 AM 9/29/2009, Roarty, Francis X wrote: I think the biggest disconnect is trying to make a direct jump from the materials to fusion without better explaining the interim step that supplies the energy to Create the fusion artifacts. I am following a current thread Zero point fluctuations and the Casimir effect over on scienceforums that relates to this. Fran It's very difficult to dissociate the field from the name it originally got. "Fusion" is a hypothesis; Francis is correct. What are the "artifacts," under what conditions to they arise, and theory should have been way down the list of matters to investigate.
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 11:03 AM 9/29/2009, you wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: For their part, the cold fusion "believers" did a lousy job of selling it. I agree their public relations efforts have not been good. I think it is a bad idea to make conference proceedings only available as copyright books. Biberian recently told me that they have sold only 85 copies of the ICCF-10 and ICCF-11 proceedings. Right. Now, what that means, probably, is that the publishers lost money. Bad model. Better model: on-line copies free. On-demand printed copies for a modest price that includes some funding to support the activity. The system as it is provides nothing to the people who actually do the hard work, the researchers. At least as far as I understand it. Now, it seems that the ACS LENR Sourcebook sold out and went into at least one additional printing. And it's phenomenally expensive, for what it is. It could be a small fraction of the price for an on-demand published and bound book, yet have the same utility for readers. However, I think many researchers have a good job presenting their results in well-written, convincing papers. There is enough good material out there to make a solid case. Goodness knows, there is also enough bad material to make cold fusion look crazy. But all endeavors involving large numbers of people are a mixture of competent and incompetent, brilliant and stupid. You have to judge by what is best. You have to judge by all of it, though it depends on what you are judging! The earliest effect that was actually conclusive was heat/helium correlation, which cut through the replication problem and turned it into classic proof through correlation (and this makes "failures" into controls). Somehow the presentation at the 2004 DoE review managed to sufficiently confuse the reviewers and the DoE so that the correlation was missed, and totally misrepresented in the summary report. This is true, but I doubt it was the fault of the presenters. The paper given to the panel explains the helium results clearly in section 3: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinnewphysica.pdf There is an old logical fallacy. Because we tried, we must be successful. Look at the results. Section 3 was largely ignored and what was covered in the review was the Appendix. Why was that? Well, perhaps, people remember most what they read last. To a CF researcher, the Appendix was of considerable interest. To the reviewers and the DoE, it was a colossal distraction, and they easily misinterpreted it, for reasons I could probably explain. Some people feel this paper should have said more about Miles or Iwamura. I asked the authors, Hagelstein and McKubre, about that. They said they emphasized their own work because they understood their own work best, and they could discuss it in depth with the panel without fear of making a mistake or misrepresenting the work. That seems sensible to me. Sensible and very wrong. There is another reason to discuss your own work. It's your work, you are close to it, you think it's important. And your judgment about that might well be clouded. The big lacuna is Miles, of course, very old evidence, and heavily verified. Really, a better effort might have been done by talking only about heat/helium, because it's a reframe of the replicability problem. It cuts through the most obvious objection to cold fusion, efficiently, as long as it isn't buried in less relevant and more controversial evidence. Appendix 1 was misunderstood because the point wasn't clear, and when I figured out the point, it was a truly minor one, important only with respect to *one* experimental example. Rather, because it reported, on the face, a series of experiments, there was a tendency to treat it as more than it was. People don't read "factually," they (mostly!) read emotionally and with some sense of the purpose of a writing, and if they get the purpose wrong, they will misinterpret and misremember the facts. By the way, all those papers listed in the references were given to the panel members. I gather they were given big goodie boxes crammed with papers as take-home prizes (homework). So if they didn't get it, it was because they didn't do their homework. It isn't all that hard to understand, after all! If you don't believe that the effect could be real, you won't read the papers, or you will skim them looking for some possible imaginary reason to reject them, even if, on examination, that reason turns out to be preposterous. I do not know if, in fact, it could have been done more successfully. A one-day session is probably inadequate unless there is a lot of pre-session communication. Imagine that a mailing list had been set up, with all the reviewers anonymously subscribed (through googlemail or something like that), or a wiki had been set up for them, and for the presenters, and a wider community had been included as presenters. And each detail
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Dr. Mitchell Swartz wrote: Dash is #52, ICCF6. Dash never censors anything and never denies permission, but I don't happen to have that paper in electronic format. Gosh. I don't see Prof. Dash at #52 in that table, so I must not understand what you meant. I just explained that in the previous sentence! I said I do not have that paper in electronic format, for crying out loud. If you want to scan it an OCR it for me, I will upload it. I don't feel like doing it myself. I have had enough of scanning. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Dr. Mitchell Swartz wrote: Sorry that you took this personally, but ... Wrong. You were given copies. Multiple copies. By disk. On paper. By mail with green card. I couldn't read them. Look, we have been over this 100 times. I will repeat once more. Here is what you must do if you want me to upload the papers: 1. You first upload these papers to your web site. 2. You give me permission, here, publicly, to copy them. 3. I will then upload them. I will do it within the hour. It couldn't be any simpler. If you refuse to do that, everyone will see that you do not want the papers uploaded, by me or by anyone else. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 01:09 PM 9/29/2009, you wrote: Dr. Mitchell Swartz wrote: How ironic (or not) that the two LANR/CF researchers who actually had perfomed open demonstrations at ICCF10, Dr. Dash and myself, did not have a single paper on that highly selected, therefore censored, list. Yes, it is censored, but you yourself are the censor! Hagelstein included one of your ICCF-10 papers, #19 on the list of References: M. Swartz and G. Verner, Excess heat from low-electrical conductivity heavy water spiral-wound Pd/D2O/Pt and Pd/D2O-PdCl2/Pt Devices, Proc. ICCF10, (2004). It is not shown on my list because I do not have a copy in the library. Many papers are missing from the list, as shown by the gaps in the numbers. I do not have a copy of any of your papers in the Library, or on my hard disk, because you have not given me any copies of your work. And you have steadfastly denied me permission to upload any of your papers, even threatening a lawsuit when I posted an abstract from one of your papers. Jed, Sorry that you took this personally, but ... Wrong. You were given copies. Multiple copies. By disk. On paper. By mail with green card. In fact, what is most boggling, is that you were given a CD with the papers when I gave you a ride back from Gene Mallove's funeral to Newbury St. You left the car, with it in hand. So the confabulations by you are nonsense. Corroborating your fabrications, Jed, you have told others and us that you demand to EDIT the papers. [ Now, to think about it, that is more censorship, isn't it? ] = So the only person censoring anything here is you. Don't blame Hagelstein, McKubre or me because you censor your own work, for crying out loud. BTW, when the late Dr. Mallove was murdered, you were still even censoring the titles of the three papers at ICCF-10. Since then you have the titles listed, and added others whom were not listed, like those by Dr. Bass. Thank you for all that. No one blames/d Prof. Hagelstein or Mike McKubre for the censorship by you at the LENR/CANR website. It wouldn't be logical. In fact, corroborating that, when you one wrote Gene and I about why you censor papers at your website, you named someone in the field, and it was neither of them. [ Also, FYI, Gene Mallove posted on vortex quite a bit about the censorship at your website. Some of them are quite interesting, although never understood what he meant about 'political censorship'. ] == Dash is #52, ICCF6. Dash never censors anything and never denies permission, but I don't happen to have that paper in electronic format. - Jed Gosh. I don't see Prof. Dash at #52 in that table, so I must not understand what you meant. Have a good day. Mitchell
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
I think they gave the reviewers all those papers because years ago I was in someone's office, and I noticed a cardboard box full of papers with familiar titles. I asked "what's all this?" and the person said "that's what we gave the reviewers. Those are all the references in Peter's paper." It was clear from the reviews that some of panel members read the material and understand cold fusion, and others did not. I do not think Hagelstein's paper was difficult to grasp, and these were distinguished professional scientists, so they darn well should have done their homework and figured out the helium versus heat part. But as Lomax pointed out, they got that wrong. That's sloppy. But even the best scientists sometimes make mistakes and jump to unwarranted conclusions. See the endorsement blurbs on the back of Taubes' book by Lederman, Richter, Schwartz, Seaborg and Rowland. Four Nobel laureates and the director of the AAAS! All of them full of bunk. Yeah, they should have known better, but they didn't. I expect it was an honest mistake. I know it was a sloppy one. I'll bet if you contacted those people today (the ones still alive), you would find they have not learned a thing about cold fusion and they would not change a word of their endorsements. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Dr. Mitchell Swartz wrote: How ironic (or not) that the two LANR/CF researchers who actually had perfomed open demonstrations at ICCF10, Dr. Dash and myself, did not have a single paper on that highly selected, therefore censored, list. Yes, it is censored, but you yourself are the censor! Hagelstein included one of your ICCF-10 papers, #19 on the list of References: M. Swartz and G. Verner, "Excess heat from low-electrical conductivity heavy water spiral-wound Pd/D2O/Pt and Pd/D2O-PdCl2/Pt Devices," Proc. ICCF10, (2004). It is not shown on my list because I do not have a copy in the library. Many papers are missing from the list, as shown by the gaps in the numbers. I do not have a copy of any of your papers in the Library, or on my hard disk, because you have not given me any copies of your work. And you have steadfastly denied me permission to upload any of your papers, even threatening a lawsuit when I posted an abstract from one of your papers. So the only person censoring anything here is you. Don't blame Hagelstein, McKubre or me because you censor your own work, for crying out loud. Dash is #52, ICCF6. Dash never censors anything and never denies permission, but I don't happen to have that paper in electronic format. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
The documents they were given are listed here: http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Submissions - Jed Jed, thank you for that list. Had not seen it before. How ironic (or not) that the two LANR/CF researchers who actually had perfomed open demonstrations at ICCF10, The URL for the open demo is here: http://theworld.com/~mica/jeticcf10demo.html More uncensored information on cold fusion here: http://world.std.com/~mica/cft.html Dr. Dash and myself, did not have a single paper on that highly selected, therefore censored, list. BTW, the DOE made quite reasonable requests/complaints which Dr. Dash and I had actually done. Dr. Mitchell Swartz
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 11:03 AM 9/29/2009, you wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: For their part, the cold fusion "believers" did a lousy job of selling it. I agree their public relations efforts have not been good. I think it is a bad idea to make conference proceedings only available as copyright books. Biberian recently told me that they have sold only 85 copies of the ICCF-10 and ICCF-11 proceedings. However, I think many researchers have a good job presenting their results in well-written, convincing papers. There is enough good material out there to make a solid case. Goodness knows, there is also enough bad material to make cold fusion look crazy. But all endeavors involving large numbers of people are a mixture of competent and incompetent, brilliant and stupid. You have to judge by what is best. The earliest effect that was actually conclusive was heat/helium correlation, which cut through the replication problem and turned it into classic proof through correlation (and this makes "failures" into controls). Somehow the presentation at the 2004 DoE review managed to sufficiently confuse the reviewers and the DoE so that the correlation was missed, and totally misrepresented in the summary report. This is true, but I doubt it was the fault of the presenters. The paper given to the panel explains the helium results clearly in section 3: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinnewphysica.pdf Some people feel this paper should have said more about Miles or Iwamura. I asked the authors, Hagelstein and McKubre, about that. They said they emphasized their own work because they understood their own work best, and they could discuss it in depth with the panel without fear of making a mistake or misrepresenting the work. That seems sensible to me. By the way, all those papers listed in the references were given to the panel members. I gather they were given big goodie boxes crammed with papers as take-home prizes (homework). So if they didn't get it, it was because they didn't do their homework. It isn't all that hard to understand, after all! The documents they were given are listed here: http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Submissions - Jed Jed, thank you for that list. Had not seen it before. How ironic (or not) that the two LANR/CF researchers who actually had perfomed open demonstrations at ICCF10, Dr. Dash and myself, did not have a single paper on that highly selected, therefore censored, list. BTW, the DOE made quite reasonable requests/complaints which Dr. Dash and I had actually done. Dr. Mitchell Swartz
RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
I think the biggest disconnect is trying to make a direct jump from the materials to fusion without better explaining the interim step that supplies the energy to Create the fusion artifacts. I am following a current thread Zero point fluctuations and the Casimir effect<http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=517524#post517524> over on scienceforums that relates to this. Fran From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 11:03 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com; vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: For their part, the cold fusion "believers" did a lousy job of selling it. I agree their public relations efforts have not been good. I think it is a bad idea to make conference proceedings only available as copyright books. Biberian recently told me that they have sold only 85 copies of the ICCF-10 and ICCF-11 proceedings. However, I think many researchers have a good job presenting their results in well-written, convincing papers. There is enough good material out there to make a solid case. Goodness knows, there is also enough bad material to make cold fusion look crazy. But all endeavors involving large numbers of people are a mixture of competent and incompetent, brilliant and stupid. You have to judge by what is best. The earliest effect that was actually conclusive was heat/helium correlation, which cut through the replication problem and turned it into classic proof through correlation (and this makes "failures" into controls). Somehow the presentation at the 2004 DoE review managed to sufficiently confuse the reviewers and the DoE so that the correlation was missed, and totally misrepresented in the summary report. This is true, but I doubt it was the fault of the presenters. The paper given to the panel explains the helium results clearly in section 3: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinnewphysica.pdf Some people feel this paper should have said more about Miles or Iwamura. I asked the authors, Hagelstein and McKubre, about that. They said they emphasized their own work because they understood their own work best, and they could discuss it in depth with the panel without fear of making a mistake or misrepresenting the work. That seems sensible to me. By the way, all those papers listed in the references were given to the panel members. I gather they were given big goodie boxes crammed with papers as take-home prizes (homework). So if they didn't get it, it was because they didn't do their homework. It isn't all that hard to understand, after all! The documents they were given are listed here: http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Submissions - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: For their part, the cold fusion "believers" did a lousy job of selling it. I agree their public relations efforts have not been good. I think it is a bad idea to make conference proceedings only available as copyright books. Biberian recently told me that they have sold only 85 copies of the ICCF-10 and ICCF-11 proceedings. However, I think many researchers have a good job presenting their results in well-written, convincing papers. There is enough good material out there to make a solid case. Goodness knows, there is also enough bad material to make cold fusion look crazy. But all endeavors involving large numbers of people are a mixture of competent and incompetent, brilliant and stupid. You have to judge by what is best. The earliest effect that was actually conclusive was heat/helium correlation, which cut through the replication problem and turned it into classic proof through correlation (and this makes "failures" into controls). Somehow the presentation at the 2004 DoE review managed to sufficiently confuse the reviewers and the DoE so that the correlation was missed, and totally misrepresented in the summary report. This is true, but I doubt it was the fault of the presenters. The paper given to the panel explains the helium results clearly in section 3: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinnewphysica.pdf Some people feel this paper should have said more about Miles or Iwamura. I asked the authors, Hagelstein and McKubre, about that. They said they emphasized their own work because they understood their own work best, and they could discuss it in depth with the panel without fear of making a mistake or misrepresenting the work. That seems sensible to me. By the way, all those papers listed in the references were given to the panel members. I gather they were given big goodie boxes crammed with papers as take-home prizes (homework). So if they didn't get it, it was because they didn't do their homework. It isn't all that hard to understand, after all! The documents they were given are listed here: http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Submissions - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion
At 10:25 PM 9/28/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: (A blogger asked me what is the source of the dispute, and the academic politics. I like my answer, so let me copy it here. This is, perhaps, a softer, more understanding response than I might have made years ago.) That's a good explanation, Jed. I'm not quite as old as the generation described as supportive of the experimental work, but my background led me, as well, to trust in experiment over theory, and that divide is broader than "science." Originally, I thought I'd be a nuclear physicist, and I was on my way, as an undergraduate student at Caltech. But my life took me to different places, so I never developed an investment in theory; I simply got an attitude and an approach from sitting with Feynmann -- who taught physics my first two years at Caltech, those lectures were the ones that became the standard text. I also had Linus Pauling for freshman chemistry, but he wasn't nearly as memorable. The rejection of cold fusion is very understandable, but also tragic. My own long-term interest is in the development of social structures that can avoid these kinds of errors, without becoming vulnerable to the opposite errors. In a word, social structures that are intelligent, not merely dependent upon individual habits and individual limitations, summed. The name "Cold fusion" was an error (i.e., preumature speculation), but a very understandable one, and, rather than reject it, as Krivit suggests (for good reason), I'd prefer to embrace it. There remain possibilities that don't involve fusion as normally defined, such as neutron absorption and resulting fission, but I'm going to be marketing science kits, and, as they say, bad press is better than no press. And "cold fusion" has the press low energy nuclear reactions and condensed matter nuclear science, though far more accurate, don't have the press. Yes, Teller should be considered a supporter of cold fusion; bottom line, he didn't reject it and very clearly did not consider it to violate known physical principles, and he encouraged the research. It violates assumptions, that's all, and the assumptions it violates can be shown to be weak extrapolations of experience from one field to another. Before Fleischmann and Pons, how many researchers had made a systematic attempt to falsify the assumption that the calculations of quantum mechanics, simplified to the two-body problem, were good enough to accurately predict nuclear behavior in condensed matter? Fleischmann expected to establish an upper bound for the deviations as below his experimental accuracy, he's written. Instead, he showed that the deviations were much greater than expected, and easily measurable under the right conditions. For their part, the cold fusion "believers" did a lousy job of selling it. Probably because of the obvious interest in energy generation, most attempts to explain cold fusion focus on the originally-discovered effect, excess heat, and, for lots of reasons, it is easy to impeach that and to dismiss it, when it is emphasized in isolation. The earliest effect that was actually conclusive was heat/helium correlation, which cut through the replication problem and turned it into classic proof through correlation (and this makes "failures" into controls). Somehow the presentation at the 2004 DoE review managed to sufficiently confuse the reviewers and the DoE so that the correlation was missed, and totally misrepresented in the summary report. I documented that confusion on Wikipedia, on the Cold fusion Talk page, but I've not seen it mentioned elsewhere. Probably the problem resulted from the Appendix on the Case effect results, which are a red herring, compared to the heat/helium work as reviewed by Storms. I had to read that appendix several times before I understood what was being presented. It shouldn't have been so hard, and I don't wonder that the negative reviewer who commented on it, and the DoE summarizer, misunderstood it.