At 03:20 PM 7/15/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <<mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com>a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
There is no other way to be sure you have a cold fusion effect in
the first place. There is no point to testing a cell that is not
producing heat.
That's not *entirely true*, but it is a huge caveat. In the early
days, lots of experiments were done where they didn't even look for
heat, they looked for "nuclear products." Hey, if it's fusion, there
have to be "nuclear products," eh?
This experiment was electrochemical Pd-D circa 1990. Back then the
only practical way to confirm that the reaction was happening was to
measure heat or tritium. Pam Boss can now measure neutrons, but
that's a different story.
There were other techniques back then such as cryogenic gas loaded
Ti chips done at BARC that could produce a definite sign of a
nuclear reaction besides heat.
Sure. And some of these experiments did find nuclear products without
finding excess heat, i.e., if I'm correct, they didn't even look for
the heat. But the best work, obviously, sought both excess heat and a
nuclear product that was actually being produced! I.e., helium. From
Pd-D fusion, the only product of any significance is helium. MIT
looked for both heat and helium and found none of either (or very
little), thus confirming later work.
We really should congratulate MIT on their careful work confirming
the FPHE, that it's fusion. Don't you think?
As to neutrons, of course, Fleischmann and Pons screwed up. Pam Boss
can measure neutrons, perhaps, because neutrons can (rather
inefficiently, but, still) be detected with SSNTDs, rhough knock-on
protons for energetic neutrons (plus rare triple tracks), and slow
neutrons could be detected with special techniques. For perspective,
though, we are talking about detected neutron counts in the range of
one per hour per cm^2, or so, not more than a few.
Neutrons are largely irrelevant to the reaction. By the way, nobody
has confirmed Pam's work. Heh! If I'm extraordinarily lucky, might
have some news on that any day. Do *not* hold your breath.
Reviewing Kowalski's attempted replication of Oriani's work, I
noticed that Oriani reports roughly equal numbers of tracks on the
front and back sides of CR-39 chips. He is using it outside of the
cell, with a 6 micron mylar window keeping it dry. If those tracks
are significant (Oriani's reporting of his controls is, shall we say,
deficient), then it looks like what he's seeing is neutron radiation
from Ni-H. The track counts are in the range of 1 per hour per square
cm. No evidence is provided that these tracks originate in the cells.
Hey! Big discovery here! Electrolysis attracts neutrons! Maybe they
like the smell or something. (Or it attracts radon or some other
radionucleide ... but the front and back side tracks being equal
means, this ain't alpha particles, unless it's background....)
Sure. Like helium. But, as Jed is implying, no heat, no reaction--
probably!, it's possible there was some and you might detect certain
possible nuclear products -- but if you don't see nuclear products,
you have demonstrated, with considerable effort, nothing.
Actually, I was thinking more of diagnostics. It is easier to
measure heat than helium. Tritium is sporadic. The cryogenic Ti
produces a burst reaction which is not what you want when trying to
detect neutrinos. You want a steady reaction, I think.
Yeah. Neutrinos are terribly difficult to detect. I rather doubt that
CF experiments would produce detectable levels of neutrinos.... but,
hey, you don't know till you have tried. Ever check out what it would
cost to get access to Super Kamiokande? Perhaps we could take up a
collection, hold a bake sale or something.
Funding more helium work would be more useful and a lot cheaper, I'm
sure, if what we want is confirmation of fusion.
Anyway there was never the slightest chance this particular
experiment would work.
I'm not sure which one Jed is referring to. I think more than one
looked for nuclear products.
As I said, it was amateur. There was a photo published in the mass
media of the researchers holding the Pd cathode up to the camera
with their bare fingers just before launching the test. That ensures
massive contamination from skin oil and the like.
You mean we shouldn't touch the cathode? OMG, I'm doomed!
Yeah, I know that. But ... as I've written, my lab technique, to use
the technical term, Sucks Big Time. To consider the hexagram from the
I Ching, I'm praying for Success at the Beginning.
The photo made it clear that the other hardware in the experiment
was filthy by the standards of electrochemistry.
The rumor is that they were asked, by an electrochemist, "And did you
also pee in the cell?"
We should try that some day, you never can tell.
In electrochemistry you have have to take pains to ensure
cleanliness. I mean 2 or 3 days of cleaning and preparation.
We should make sure that the pee is sterile, only clean pee allowed in our lab.
Also, I have it on pretty good authority that they confused the
anode (+) and the cathode (-).
Well, that story is about one researcher, I think. If true, it shows
an, uh, distinct lack of understanding of the process. I mean,
getting the convention backwards, sure, but not understanding which
electrode would evolve deuterium, not understading that the whole
idea was to load deuterium into the palladium, that's pretty hard to
understand, if this actually happened, he wasn't thinking, at all.
Happens to the best of us. Some of us even think relative humidity
meters can be used to measure steam quality. I know, unbelievable,
but, hey, it happens.
The only experiment dirtier than this that I know of was done by the
late Tom Droege. He worked in his basement. He showed me a slide of
his cathode surface, and the conversation when like this:
ME: "What are those fibers? They seem to be galvanized on to the surface."
TOM: "Cat hairs. The cat you see in the other slide likes to sleep
on the calorimeter, because it's warm."
This sounds like my apartment. Now, the hope is that cat hair is the
magic Catalyst. The Big Question: she's a tortoise shell DSH. Is that
important for this reaction to work? What kind of cats do they have
at SPAWAR in San Diego? Anyone know?
