At 09:46 AM 10/3/2009, Horace Heffner wrote:
I don't think controlling thermal instabilities is important, it is eliminating their effect on the calorimetry. This is of course why Seebeck calorimetry is useful. Whatever directions the heat flows, it is measured.
It occurs to me that, while there is a very important role for precise calorimetry to play in cold fusion research, from an engineering perspective it might be a bit of a red herring. I'd prefer to be able to estimate the instantaneous power generation as well as the volume that this is being generated within, i.e., the full thermal pattern inside the cell. One of the interesting SPAWAR results is IR imaging of the cathode, showing that the cathode temperature is substantially higher than that of the electrolyte.
Then studying whatever effects accompany that temperature increase could be quite fruitful. Many of these effects, it appears, haven't been examined so closely, perhaps because they were proof of "nuclear."
For example, as I've been asking, are there visible light emissions that accompany the heat generation?
There are acoustical phenomena, and not just the bubbling, I'd think. The sharp pressure spikes shown in the SPAWAR presentations lead me to wonder what would happen if a cell was instrumented with multiple piezo detectors, with the arrival time of the spikes being used to locate the source, that might be done quite accurately, so one might be able to construct a 3-D image of the underlying activity. I should do some calculations.... The rise time of the spike is such and such, the speed of sound in the electrolyte is such and such, leading to a spatial resolution of such and such.
Controlling the instabilities of fairies, sprites, elves, pixies, leprechauns, or other magical beings is outside my experience. 8^)
There is probably a reason why a belief in unseen forces is culturally common across the planet. The reality is that, as the movie title glossed it, we don't know bleep. (We also know a great deal, to be sure, but another useful trait is a tolerance for contradiction, an ability to suspend a requirement that concepts be consistent. That's why they say that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.)
If we can ascribe what we don't understand to unseen forces, it allows us to pursue causation without requiring consistency. In other words, it's possible that an "unscientific attitude" can facilitate a scientific one, but what passes, too often, for a scientific attitude, can lead, as we saw over the last twenty years, to attachment to established understandings of what is possible and what is impossible.
An ability to tolerate the unknown seems to be an important trait of those who extend the boundaries of science. There is other work, also important, to be done by those who need established paradigms.
