At 11:28 PM 8/26/2009, Jones Beene wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
> (3) any other ideas for a minimally expensive and simple experimental
set-up that would demonstrate a LENR effect?
These are some good ideas. Another suggestion that comes to mind is based on
the simplest experiment which has shown a high degree of repeatability -
which is the Arata-Zhang and offshoots ... since there can be a thermal
effect with no power input, and therefore nothing that can be claimed as
input measurement error.
Yeah, I thought of Arata's nanoparticle palladium alloy in a small
sealed container under pressure with deuterium gas, like a CO2
cartridge. The container comes with a history and
pressure/temperature profile as it was filled and through the
settling time, when it is shipped to the buyer. The container
contains small sensors which can be used to measure interior
temperature, and a resistor for heating (if I'm correct, this can be
the same thermistor), so that power/temperature under constant
thermal transfer conditions can be measured. Control containers
available, same setup, only hydrogen gas. The buyer can put the
container in a water bath with stirrer, all inside insulation so that
it is more sensitive (higher temperature differential per constant
power), as Arata does. Instrumentation package available for rent or
purchase with programmable power supply, the temperature sensors for
the water bath and ambient, and USB interface.
It wasn't my first choice because I suspect that the alloy is very
expensive. But it might work with ordinary nanoparticle palladium.
Still expensive, I think.
Given that the critical feature of the experiment (in my interpretation) and
the 'sine qua non' which is purely geometric - is Pd with an active reaction
zone within the Forster radius geometry of 2-10nm, and given that the most
convincing way to prove the effect is probably NOT calorimetry, but instead
via a "radiation signature" that must of necessity underlie the heat (even
if downshifted) ... then ... all of that can guide us in the best way to
proceed for minimal cost and maximum impact.
Yes. Note that the company may provide many different kits. If cold
fusion is real, if we haven't been suffering from a twenty-year
collective delusion (that does happen! -- but if I thought it was
happening here I wouldn't be bothering with the ideas), it should be
possible to do this, and a bit sad that it wasn't done more than a
decade ago. Think of the companies that started up to develop some
practical commercial application! All that money and effort wasted on
trying to do something that is obviously very difficult, when there
was something much simpler within reach, a demonstration of the
science instead of an immediate solution to the world's energy crisis.
Of course, if the science can be demonstrated in a way that can't be
ignored, much more might follow. Sorry, Mr. Garwin, no tea yet, but
you can't brew a cup of tea from muon-catalyzed fusion either, can you?
IOW - that signature would likely have a downshifted UV component, if it
relates to LENR and there is a QM nuclear reaction (and no other way to get
UV light onto the measuring device or media). It might make sense to provide
TWO side-by-side radiation monitors in the form of two very inexpensive UV
detector devices: chips, meters, cards or whatever - one covered by a sample
and the other not. The sample would be have a layer of 2 nm of palladium
deuteride and a sealant.
Yeah. Lots and lots of possibilities. The codeposition cells could be
glass or with a glass window (I haven't even approached the
engineering question re pressure if it is sealed, this is at the
brainstorming stage), I understand that the reaction may be
acoustically noisy, so a little sensitive microphone, an imaging
setup to record video of the cathode, many possibilities. CR-39 is
expensive, but only very small pieces would be needed, and many
pieces from many customers could be etched at once, with proper
control to keep them separate.
I'm told that the handling of CR-39 is tricky, takes real expertise,
and the Russians are the best at it. Would the Russians like to use
that expertise to make a little money?
An Arata-type cell, if the buyer is finished with it and decides not
to break the seal, can be sent in for helium analysis as well.
It's possible that the entire Arata type apparatus could be
battery-operated, so a buyer could purchase the whole kit and
kaboodle, and it would operate and record its data *while the thing
was being shipped.* But I think that's overkill actually. If it has
shipped after the temperature has settled, the day of shipment time
would be easily presumable to be constant power. So, after working on
calibration, the overall net power generation until termination --
does this reaction terminate?, the charts I've seen stop with no
apparent decline in temperature at 3000 hours -- could be calculated.
Here is a site on a "UV card" - which is a crude but perhaps moderately
accurate gauge of UV radiation, at a $5 cost. This is FAR less expensive,
and in a way actually more accurate than CR-39 film. The card may or may not
be sensitive enough, but it gives an idea of where this suggestion is going.
I have not researched it at all and am only offering an idea that could
possibly work in the way you suggest. Or not.
http://www.south-seas.com/uvcard2.html
A UV signature, while certainly interesting, and, nicely, cheap,
isn't as obviously diagnostic of nuclear effect as is
charged-particle radiation or maybe neutrons. (These cells would not
necessarily be operated at an intensity and length of operation to
make the neutron counts significant.) But, given how cheap it is, it
would be an experimental option.
The idea would be that over a several day run - the card with a sample of
Pd-deuteride (in nano geometry) mounted on it would show a significantly
higher UV radiation signature (indoors of course) than the one without. The
sample of loaded Pd film with need only be in the microgram range.
Yup. Definitely interesting. You could sell the whole kit, plug it in
and collect the results. And someone who wants to can take it apart
and see what's in there, what could possibly be generating UV here?
Let's expose the detector to known UV and calibrate it independently.
Lets analyze the sample. People could do with the kits what they
wanted, skeptics could take them apart and try to figure out the
scam. The more that try to do this, the better!
And, you know, if it were to turn out that there is a non-nuclear
explanation, great. The kits would provide an opportunity for people
to try to find one, giving a specific, easily reproducible experiment
to work on, instead of a many-headed monster to try to slay.
By rights, the US DoE ought to fund this thing! (If they really
wanted to know the truth about the science.) But I don't think we
need to ask for that, and it may be better that we don't.
The kit designs would be completely documented, creating that
documentation is necessary for the manufacturing process. The company
would sell the documentation set. Anyone who wanted to do a truly
independent replication could, easily.
The pricing of the kits would be designed for the company to be
self-supporting and create a modest return on investment, nothing
spectacular. The company might be owned by a non-profit corporation,
in fact, but it could also be a hybrid (i.e., for-profit company with
major ownership by a nonprofit, with profits to the nonprofit plowed
into tax-exempt activity according to its purpose. I can't afford to
donate much, but I'd buy shares as an investment, if the company
structure was sound.) The nonprofit could collect the startup capital
in the form of donations and loans. If it is done right, the only way
this could fail is if serious effort fails to find a simple kit that
works (or there is an organizational failure, such as embezzlement).
Absent embezzlement, failure would have some serious implications, eh?
As a bit of a personal introduction, my general interest the last two
decades is in how communities of interest communicate and cooperate
efficiently and effectively. We know how to do it with very small
communities, but when the scale increases, the traditional
consensus-building approaches break down in certain ways, and more
inflexible solutions are almost always applied: generally
oligarchical control or representative democracy, both of which
become highly conservative and unable to respond rapidly to new ideas
(overall, that is. With good process, both oligarchies and rep.
democracy can function well, but the normal trend is strongly
overconservative, the solutions *usually* work well, but the
exceptions can be doozies).
Wikipedia, a few readers of this list may be familiar with my work
there, is, in a sense, a case study for me. Working on that, I became
aware of cold fusion, and I see the cold fusion problem as one of
lack of good structure in the scientific community. With good
structure, the massive rejection might still have happened in
1989-1990, but a recovery path would have existed, and probably by
the mid-1990s the balance would have shifted, because enough
experimental work was available by then. But too few were listening,
and general ideas about cold fusion had become too rigid. Good
structure would have functioned to expand awareness that it was worth
revisiting the topic, and the dedicated die-hard skeptics, if they
had persisted, would have been bypassed. But that's a very long
story, and I don't expect more than a few to understand it. Suffice
it to say that I tend to think of structural solutions that tend
toward anarchist/libertarian concepts, even though I'm, politically,
not at all a Libertarian.
