At 11:59 PM 7/12/2009, you wrote:
All said, I see the gaping hole in Takahashi's theory being the orders of magnitude lack of detectable high energy alphas. Perhaps it is just a calculation error on my part. It wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened. 8^)
Sure. But Takahashi has been working on this since the early 1990s. Has he addressed the problem?
Precisely because it is so easy to make mistakes, to fail to consider this or that, I wouldn't consider a single calculation, by a single person, to be conclusive, no matter how good it looks.
I'm getting the feeling that there is a propensity for trying to be first with some idea, and so more energy goes into generating new theories than in specifically and in detail criticizing existing ones. Same with experimental work.
How much glory and, face it, money, is there in reproducing an experiment and confirming it? Especially an experiment that leaves something to be desired, i.e., only a *little* extra energy is reliable, or it's not even reliable but it still statistically very significant, or there is only a *little* neutron radiation?
So instead of confirming what's been done, for twenty years cold fusion researchers kept trying to *improve* the work. Thus the famous "they are all over the map" comments from DoE reviews, etc.
Takahashi's theory wasn't published yesterday. Where are the specific critiques, published? If there were critiques, then presumably Takahashi would reply. Others would reply. Experiments would be designed to test the theories, including the theories behind the criticism. What happens if you take an alpha source and immerse it in heavy water with a piece of CR-39 next to it? What happens if you generate hot alphas and let them impact some simulation of the electrolytic environment?
Bremsstrahlung radiation has been mentioned. My understanding is that it's been detected. Enough? That's another question. I'm suspicious of purely theoretical calculations, there are too many ways they can go wrong. Sure, it's a guide, but such should always be confirmed.
I do agree with one point. If hot alphas at 23.8 MeV are generated, they should then behave like any other hot alphas. On the other hand, I don't, offhand, know of a way of generating alphas at that energy in a simulated environment, i.e., simulating actual generation by Be-8 decay within a metal lattice instead of being accelerated outside of that, there might indeed be phenomena that we don't see in a plasma or vacuum environment. Still, if it hasn't been studied, it should be!
It's the deafening silence regarding detailed comment on existing theories that strikes me.
