Thanks much for the explanation, Abd. Sounds plausible, whether or not you're suffering from the unconscious bias Jed, no doubt rightly, feels we all bring to things.
On 01/30/2010 08:01 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 05:46 PM 1/30/2010, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: > >> > http://newenergytimes.com/v2/blog/ >> Krivit says: >> >> > Bottom line, there is something real, no doubt. Nuclear, absolutely. >> > Potential for energy, yes. But fusion? I can't know for sure, but at >> > this time, I highly doubt it. > >> So if it's nuclear but not fusion, what is it? >> >> Fission? >> >> Or what? What else is there? > > I think Krivit is confused on this. I had already kind of gotten that impression from reading the blog. Krivit's a reporter, right? Not a physicist? And if I read his blog right, he's decided Storms, McKubre, and Hagelstein are wrong, brainwashed, confused, and/or intentionally misleading everyone regarding the results of experiments in the field. And the opening paragraphs of the blog, in which Krivit says NET has "discovered" "questionable actions" of a "subgroup" which "have misled" "the scientific community" regarding the mechanism of cold fusion, flirt with the sort of conspiracy theory I've come to associate with SR hating crackpots who think physicists are all brainwashed fools. Dunno, maybe I'm misjudging the no doubt highly expert Mr. Krivit but this is starting to sound a little like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect Or maybe I misunderstood his point. > He has been promoting Widom-Larsen > theory, and seems to have swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. Now, I'm > not saying that W-L theory is wrong, it's on the table, but W-L theory > involves ultra-low momentum neutrons, which could theoretically cause, > if they are generated somehow, a whole nucleosynthetic chain of reactions. > > Supposedly this isn't "fusion." It's semantic. Neutrons can "fuse" with > nuclei, so could Takahashi's Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate, both are > neutrally charged. In other words, fusion but not d-d fusion. Both of > them. The TSC, though, Takahashi predicts will indeed fuse within a > femtosecond, all by its lonesome. > > I've started trying to understand W-L theory and am finding it pretty > unpenetrable. > > Larsen agrees there is helium synthesis. What's the fuel, precisely? > What energy/helium ratio does W-L theory predict? > And then I found out why. It hasn't been explained, the "understanding" > is "proprietary." Krivit is backing what appears to be a commercial > venture, Lattice Energy, that is not fully disclosing the basis. Sound > familiar, folks? > > I can tell you what Lattice is predicting: cheap, clean energy. Why > worry about details like Q factors when you have something Really > Important to talk about, Cheap Clean Energy? The material Krivit points > to in his W-L theory portal is mostly promotional fluff, unfortunately. > Now, I haven't read it all. Maybe someone can point me to something useful. > > It's okay, nothing wrong with commercial ventures, but I do get a bit > concerned when it involves attacking just about everyone in the field as > obtuse and wrong, particularly when the attacks themselves are obtuse > and wrong. > > > > > >