Joshua Cude said on http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/the-sun-rossi%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Denergy-catalyzer%E2%80%9D-and-the-%E2%80%9Cneutron-barometer%E2%80%9D/#comment-5908
>The original report of neutrons was artifact. The recent reports are at levels vastly lower, but well above background.
This was my comment. The context was aleklett describing his own search for neutrons from CF experiments, back in maybe 1989. I was simply confirming that nobody was able to find truly significant neutrons, as to what would be expected if the reaction involved producing them. It doesn't.
Cude's response was totally off-point. He's got an axe to grind, he has a hammer, so everything is a nail.
Presumably you are referring to the CR-39 results, but these have been observed by one group only, and the results have been challenged as to whether they are in fact above background, and/or caused by artifacts.
"Have been challenged" covers a multitude of comments. Yes, there is only one group reporting this result, but, in fact, in spite of repeated comment to the contrary, the SPAWAR work confirms what was apparent from prior work, it was simply a bit more clear. Prior work had shown bursts of neutrons, neutron results at very low levels, and this work was frequently reported as if it were a negative result, since vastly higher levels of neutrons were expected from d-d fusion. Always, before, there was a serious question of background and bursts from cosmic rays.
aleklett's work would not be able to detect the levels of neutrons reported by SPAWAR, they would have been completely buried in the noise.
The trick of the SPAWAR work is that the detectors were very close to the source, presumably the cathode (as is shown by track correlation with cathode position).
SPAWAR has published a lot of CR-39 work, but Cude may not be aware that the Chinese published cold fusion CR-39 results in the early 1990s, it may have been as early as 1990. There are some very cogent and serious objections to the early SPAWAR CR-39 work, but Cude does not discriminate between this and the neutron findings, which completely sidestep those objections. The primary alternate hypothesis is that the "tracks" are actually chemical damage, caused by the very active chemical environment close to the cathode, and the CR-39 results in question are "wet," that is, the CR-39 plastic was immersed in the electrolyte, and was in actual contact with the cathode. I've seen the criticisms and some of them are quite clear and even convincing.
However, I'll add a caveat. The "chemical damage" won't produce tracks, per se, but it etches the CR-39, which may then reveal tracks that would otherwise be invisible, from various causes, including background. I consider none of this as firmly established.
A project led by Krivit with a number of groups involved, and pretentiously named the Galileo project, failed to confirm the CR-39 results.
That, again, isn't true. Where is that conclusion found? However, to me, the Earthtech results, which were not included in Krivit's report on Galileo, were the best documented, and Scott Little comes up with chemical damage as explaining what he found. It's a complex issue. There is, in the earlier SPAWAR work, CR-39 results that look like radiation tracks, and results that look like chemical damage, and no good analysis was done to discriminate these, in my opinion. Not yet, anyway.
What Cude glosses over is that the Galileo results have nothing to do with the topic, neutrons. At the time of Galileo, Pamela Mosier-Boss of SPAWAR was not at liberty to disclose their neutron findings. They are, after all, a military laboratory! Pam had specified the Galileo protocol, and had suggested that the cathode could be silver, gold, or platinum. Krivit didn't like that, wanted her to specify one metal. So she did. Had she specified gold, the results might have been very different, based on what she was able to publish later. But that would have been exactly what her supervisors didn't want, I suspect. So she specified silver. She thought their silver results were clear enough as to charged-particle radiation. Maybe. Maybe not.
Later, she published images of "backside" tracks from silver, platinum, and gold cathodes. Backside tracks could not be coming from charged particles emitted by the cathode (unless the energies were very, very high.) Rather, these would come from knock-on protons, mostly, caused by neutrons. This is actually a standard neutron detection technique, used in dosimetry. Backside tracks would not be caused by chemical damage, at least not tracks correlated with the cathode position, as the images show. Triple-tracks are unmistakeable, indicating neutron collisions with C-12 nuclei in the plastic. But they are rare.
Galileo has nothing to do with the neutron findings, period. The silver cathode produces almost no, or no tracks at all, on the back side. The platinum cathode produces many, and the gold cathode produces copious tracks. But, realize, "copious" means maybe a few tracks per hour, at most. These experiments run for maybe three or four weeks.....
So even these results, which in any case cannot explain the claimed heat, are far from convincing.
Heat isn't even measured in these experiments. Cude has "proof" on the brain, he's got an argument going on, all the time. No claim was made that the neutron results were "convincing," and the point was only that, if neutrons are produced, there are very few. Lots of people consider the SPAWAR work convincing, as to neutrons, but there is, indeed, an obvious problem, the lack of independent replication.
Given that this doesn't have anything at all to do with commercial possibilities, with the main interest in most cold fusion research, finding a way to enhance the reaction, it's not surprising. It's simply not of high interest, except for those few who want to see proof of "nuclear." Which most researchers in the field got over a long time ago.
However, there is scientific interest here, which is why I started putting together kits to replicate the neutron work. I just sold the first kit last week, before I was even able to run the experiment myself, to a high school kid who knows he's pioneering, and who knows that results might be negative. But he wants to try, and I applaud the spirit, and I applaud his father for supporting him in this, and I hope the hell they are careful when etching the radiation detectors, that's really the only dangerous thing here, hot lye in the eyes is not something to joke about.
One way or another, positive or negative, the results will be published.
Cold fusion experiments simply never get past marginal, controversial, and dubious.
Notice the absolute insanity of this. Cude has dismissed conclusive correlation, and reviewing the literature, there is plenty of exhaustive, careful work, demonstrating the effect beyond a reasonable doubt. But it's work to read that literature and to understand it, and someone like Cude isn't likely to put in the work, and he will filter everything through the lens of his expectations. He's searching for error, for something he can pounce upon, and he will always be able to find it, that's how the mind works, when it is operating from fixed conclusions.
Rossi has got to be a big stick in his eye. I can't rule out fraud, but at this point, it's damned unlikely, given the level of people who have looked at this, up close. It's not "independently confirmed," sure, and blame that on the lousy situation with patent law, encouraged by people like Cude, who convinced the U.S. patent office that "cold fusion" was like "perpetual motion," i.e., theoretically impossible. That was never shown, at all. It's only reasonably true if "fusion" refers to a very specific reaction, not the general "unknown nuclear reaction" that Pons and Fleischmann actually claimed.
There is not a single convincing experiment in cold fusion, period. And Rossi has not changed that picture at all.
What has not changed is Cude. Facts don't disturb him in the least. He will always find a way to discount or discard them, and he imagines that something is not "convincing" because he isn't convinced. And he can always make that true, he simply refuses to be convinced. Q.E.D.
Not convinced, fine. But Cude is convinced. He's convinced that this is all bogus, bad science, and he's missing the point of Rossi.
Rossi *has* changed the picture. The prior claimed results were low-level. Even though the prior heat results were very clear, and clearly above noise, and clearly, when carefully analyzed, not artifact, the levels were low enough (like 5% of input power, say, in certain SRI work) that it was quite possible to hold on to an interpretation that there was something being overlooked.
That isn't possible with Rossi. For the first time, this is either real or it is a positive fraud, simulating heat generation by a number of possible devices. As has been pointed out, there have been a series of demonstrations, and if they were all identical, every reasonable fraud mechanism has been ruled out. However, that assumes that the fraud was the same every time! What if the con artist arranged different forms of fraud, designed for the particular demonstration that was ruling out a prior demonstration's possible fraud?
There is no end to this, except multiple and completely independent replication, which is where science goes, necessarily. That's why Rossi isn't yet "science." But it's certainly big news, with major scientific implications, if confirmed. If Rossi is real, this will blow the cold fusion skeptics out of the water, not that anyone will care about the skeptics any more.
I warned the CF researchers about jumping on the Rossi bandwagon, because of the possibility of fraud -- and we all know and can recognize obvious reasons to be suspicious. Cude thinks that the physicists who have witnessed demonstrations are gullible. No, Cude is gullible, easily fooled by his own thinking, which he believes in firmly. Classic error, shades of Feynman.
"aleklett" is a true skeptic, and is to be congratulated. He's very clearly stated the matter. If this isn't a fraud, something is going on that existing theory does not explain. Isn't that fascinating?
*Even if it is a fraud,* it's fascinating, the sheer chutzpah of it! How the hell did he do this, if it's a fraud? Somebody is going to write a book, one way or another!
