On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>
wrote:
> As often stated, the principle is obviously false, people state that
fusion cannot take place at these low temperatures. Okay, muon-catalyzed
fusion takes place close to absolute zero. "Oh, that's an exception." If
it's impossible, folks, no exceptions.
You are hung up on this. It's not as persuasive as you think. At least not
for me.
Look, absolute statements are rarely absolute. To be accurate, they usually
requires some qualification. But often these qualifications are not stated
explicitly because the context makes it obvious.
For example, I might say I can't walk on water, and people will understand
the implied qualifications that I mean I can't walk on liquid water with
ordinary footwear at ordinary speed. Of course I and my audience will be
fully aware that I can walk on ice, and that some people can skim on water
on skis (or even barefoot) behind a fast boat, and others will believe that
Jesus can walk on water, and so on, but this doesn't make my statement
operationally false, except in a pedantic, irrelevant way. No one will say,
that since I can walk on ice, *maybe* I can also walk on liquid water in
ordinary footwear, at normal speed, without divine power.
In the case of fusion, everyone who says fusion at room temperature violates
known theory, is fully aware that muon catalyzed fusion at room temperature
is possible, and that fusion with an accelerator at room temperature is
possible, and that deuterium fusion at room temperature occurs, but at a
vanishingly small rate. What they mean, and what most people will
understand, since they also know these things, is that fusion in ordinary
matter at room temperature, without accelerating the particles, (i.e. in the
context of a CF experiment) is predicted to be far too rare to produce
useful heat.
The point these people are trying to make is that CF as claimed violates
theory, so bringing up muon catalyzed fusion which is consistent with
theory, hardly negates the claim.
Just because the statement as spoken, is in some literal sense, false,
doesn't mean the intended message as understood by the audience becomes
false.
It's a complete red herring.
> What "unknown nuclear reaction" might mean is some other form of
catalysis. How could we say that there is no other form?
We can't of course. But we can estimate likelihoods. CF people are always
saying the energy is too high to be chemical. How can they know this? It's
from their understanding of chemical theory. But why do they put more
confidence in their chemistry theory than in physicists nuclear theory,
which says it can't be nuclear.
Nothing is ever certain, but some theories are pretty close. If I release a
rock, it falls to the ground. I can't be absolutely certain that it will
next time, though. All I know is that it always has, and that we have
theories that predict it, so I am pretty certain it will next time too.
I don't know that nuclear physicists have that kind of familiar certainty
with fusion of ordinary matter at room temperature, but I'm pretty sure they
have a better intuitive notion of it than chemists do.
> And, folks, that's what I learned from Feynman, and he's happy, I'm sure,
that we are waking up to this, he struggled with the Cargo Cult approach to
science all his life.
He struggled with it? He warned against it. He warned against scientists
fooling themselves. He warned against the sort of self-delusion most
scientists think CF scientists are afflicted with. He was a relentless
antagonist of free energy claims. It's a pity he didn't survive to see the
CF fiasco. We can't know where he would have come down on it, but I'd be
surprised if he wouldn't have been right there with Nathan Lewis and Steve
Koonin calling F&P incompetent. You may have known the man, but you're not
in the least bit like him.
> There was a conjecture, routinely accepted, that nuclear behavior in
solids would not deviate significantly from reality. Fleischmann has written
about what they were looking for. Contrary to the confident claims of
pseudoskeptics, that they were deluded by a desperate desire for "free
energy," they were trying to confirm the conjecture, by seeing if they could
see some difference between prediction and reality.
Do you have any evidence for this from his writings before they started the
CF experiments? Because I remain skeptical. In interviews immediately after
the announcement he says:
Conditions of D in Pd are like 10^27 atm pressure. This "made us think that
it might be feasible to create conditions for fusion in such a simple
reaction."
That's not the same as saying we were testing for an effect. "Might be
feasible" sounds pretty confident when theory predicted it to be 30 orders
of magnitude too low to be observable.
And there are many nuclear effects to test for, including some that are
affected by the chemical environment. You're saying the one they chose just
coincidentally might have been a revolutionary new source of energy?
No, they were almost certainly deluded by a desperate desire for free
energy.
> I've seen this dismissed as revisionist, that Fleischmann is just
rationalizing his past. However, that's a clear demonstration of how story
has taken over, instead of understanding of what happened.
WIthout evidence, we won't know his real motivation, but the writing and
interviews immediately after give the impression they were looking for, and
expected an effect.
> They didn't have a simple "kit" that would reliably show heat. Later,
others developed such things, apparently, but, always, so far, with the
FPHE, "reliability" remains statistical, not individual. Cells, with some
approaches, now "reliably" show *some heat,* but the amounts vary greatly.
> When we give someone a medicine for cancer, results vary greatly. Does
this mean that the effect is not real?
1. My opinion of CF does not depend very much on the fact that the results
are all over the map. It comes from the fact that nowhere on the map is
there an obvious demonstration of the claimed phenomenon. Some phenomena do
not need reproducibility to be convincing. Heavier-than-air flight, energy
from burning gasoline, hydrogen bombs, nuclear fission, and many others, can
be demonstrated unambiguously in a single experiment. And cold fusion, if
real, should be as easy as these examples to demonstrate. It is in the
absence of the obvious demonstration that reproducibility or statistical is
needed. As Rutherford said, if you need statistics, do a better experiment.
2. Medical research is very different from most physics research. It
involves living organisms, often humans, which are very difficult, and often
unethical, to establish controls, etc etc. On the other hand, physics
research on all manner of gases, liquids, and solids on the benchtop allows
complete control over the experimental parameters and things we observe.
Now, come on, which is cold fusion research more like. Good grief.
> Physicists, as "hard scientists," are utterly unfamiliar with this.
3. Well, QM is based on probability and statistics. Or to take a more
classical example, when Rutherford fired his alphas at a gold foil, the
scattering angle could vary through 360 degrees. But he was able to predict
or explain the distribution. Not so, CF researchers.
> But "cold fusion" isn't like that, precisely because *it is not
understood*.
Atomic spectra were not understood for a century, but they were very
reproducible and predictable.
> We can say, with very high confidence now, that deuterium is being
converted into helium, regardless of mechanism. ("We" only includes those
who objectively and neutrally review *all* the evidence, it does not include
religious fanatics […]
No, the "we" includes those who are religiously devoted to CF. It excludes
the vast majority of scientists, including the panel of experts who were
enlisted to study the question.
>> Well maybe so. But given the failures, the CF cabal would have to come up
with something better to get taken seriously again.
> If I'm a part of that "cabal," WE DON'T CARE.
Yes you do. That's why you are here replying at length to my objections.
That's why the CF cabal fought hard to get a review by the DOE in 2004.
That's why it' so important to the cabal to have sessions at the ACS and APS
meetings. That's why you were so bothered when APS declined to publish a
proceedings on CF.
> The work is being taken seriously, and funding has, from what I hear,
substantially increased.
This kind of vague meaningless statement is typical of the cabal.
> Seriously enough? Given the potential, no, but that's a political problem,
and there are people working on it.
Why? I thought they don't care, or rather DON'T CARE.
