A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, if one presumes that it
means anything.
At 12:11 AM 7/4/2012, Rich Murray wrote:
I'm glad to see my post has ignited a local hot spot in Vortex-L...
Some good will come out of it. I do intend to take this to the
original authors for comment, privately, suggesting some sort of
public comment that will resolve this issue. It's really irrelevant
to any important findings in cold fusion, an external electric field
may have been used in a handful of experiments, at most, out of many,
many thousands. Maybe a hundred thousand.
Lomax: Um, very highly unlikely. The plastic walls are intact, or
electrolyte would leak out. They have high dielectric resistance. If
this is acrylic, it's about 1/16 inch thick. Current will be very,
very low. If there is leakage current, the current will create a
voltage drop. It will not create "sporadic local heat." Basically,
that field does nothing. If Rich wants to assert that it does
something, well, that kind of contradicts his thesis, eh?
Murray: that's a pretty thin film of plastic to put 6 kv on -- local
radioactivity and cosmic rays will leave subtle ionized paths across
the plastic, without making tunnels that could leak the electrolyte,
while then the high voltages would tend to penetrate these paths and
increase the local ionization, always finding and expanding paths
until routes evolve right across the film -- very thin, complex routes
with all kinds of weird chemistry and physics as the 6 kv potential is
brought to bear on micro and nano size structures within the walls --
still without creating routes wide enough for liquids to flow through
-- so the vision becomes available for a multitude of strange
processes, constantly evolving and varying as time marches on,
creating anomalies -- there need to be research on whether micro and
nano currents are indeed flowing along the surfaces and within the
conductors and electrolyte inside these small cells -- and whether
they are creating chaotic corrosion on the micro and nano scales,
releasing complex chemicals and gases into the electrolyte...
And hordes of scientists are misled by the results, wasting decades
of research following paths that were caused by such a simple
mistake, and, as a result, the real physics is missed, the entire
future of humanity is lost as we all die from global warming, but a
few hardy souls survive underground, building tunnels and living a
new kind of life.
And the mind can make up anything it likes. Doesn't make it real.
Basically, acrylic is an excellent insulator. I would not advise
using it in the presence of massive charged particle radiation, which
will, indeed, break down the plastic. Don't use it in the presence of
methylene chloride either. Don't use it above its melting point, or
even close to it.
Rich, you made all this up. The plastic is unaffected by that
voltage, the breakdown voltage for acrylic is conservatively
specified -- for safety purposes -- at 17 KV/mm. So this
conservatively would be 27 KV for that "thin film of plastic." It's
not a "thin film," this is the side of a commercial plastic box, I
have a hundred of these exact boxes sitting in my lab. It's clear
acrylic, used for jewelry boxes and other display.
Sure, ionizing radiation will leave ionization tracks. However, those
paths would remain ionized only for a very short time. Two things
happen to such ionization tracks: the ionization does not remain,
what remains is the disruption caused by local ionization caused by
charged particle passage. Those tracks do not remain as available to
conduct electricity, not for long. In order to create a path all the
way through the plastic, a charged particle would have to have very
high energy. And the problem with this is that as the particle energy
increases above a threshold, the energy left behind *decreases*,
until a very energetic particle leaves no track at all. Basically, a
particle that can penetrate the plastic will not leave a track. This
is why insulators like acrylic don't routinely break down from
scattered cosmic rays. (there would be other effects, even if a path
should open, there would be a current burst *within the acrylic wall*
as the charged plastic capacitor discharges through itself. Given
that the *other* piece of acrylic would not discharge at the same
time, there would be no high current through the electrolyte, no
overall leakage current beyond a doubling of the normal tiny current.
Because this would be high-frequency, it might be detectable, if it
does happen. My guess is, no. It doesn't happen. Ever.)
Rich is correct about one thing: if a discharge pathway like that
opened up, it would not leak electrolyte, unless and until it became
a gross pathway, from a *lot* of current passage.
Look at Widom-Larsen descriptions of "water tree" breakdown in 40 kv
high voltage DC power cables with centimeters of high density
polyethylene insulation over weeks and months of exposure to the
voltage, reported by Japanese scientists to show anomalous elements...
Look at any of a million observations connected only in the mind of
Rich Murray. "Water tree breakdown" would be unmistakeable, visible
in this clear acrylic box, standing out like a sore thumb.
There is no observed phenomenon here to be explained by breakdown of
the acrylic under high voltage. There is a very poorly reported
"observation" -- it is really an interpretation, I see no sign that
objective criteria and precautions against subjective bias were used,
not confirmed, yet here Rich is building a castle of complex
imaginations on it.
I find this phenomenon fascinating. There are pseudoskeptics who
reject repeated observations, confirmed by many researchers,
ascribing them to "believers," while at the same time building Rube
Goldberg fantasies, with no experimental basis at all, to explain
away the results. That they can make up some fantastic "prosaic
explanation" -- anything but LENR! -- seems sufficient to them, they
can then sit back and imagine that they have "refuted" the claims.
And if they do find an actual error, they are overjoyed! Look! We caught them!
The heat measurements of Pons and Fleischmann were based on
state-of-the-art calorimetry, world-class, and the most careful
reviews of their methods were unable to impeach the basic findings of
anomalous heat, *at most* they were able to reduce the certainty that
the anomaly was as large as claimed. The anomaly remained, clearly
above noise and error.
But Pons and Fleischmann, convinced that they were seeing heat above
chemical possibility -- and, remember, they were world-class chemists
-- considered nuclear origin to be a practical certainty. They were
not nuclear physicists and they did not have the equipment to
accurately measure radiation. They know that the effect wasn't
ordinary deuterium fusion, that was totally obvious (and it was
insulting to think that they had overlooked the obvious, i.e., that
ordinary deuterium fusion would have produced fatal levels of
radiation from the heat they were seeing). But was there any
radiation? So they borrowed some equipment and found a signal that
indicated, they thought, a low level of radiation. And since any
radiation would be a sign of a nuclear reaction, they reported this
in their original paper.
And it was an error, as was quickly found. And they were clubbed like
baby seals for making a bonehead mistake. Outside their field. The
fact, amply confirmed: the FP Heat Effect is not accompanied by any
major radiation. There is some evidence that there are *tiny* levels
of radiation, but that remains controversial, there is no
unmistakeable, totally clear confirmation of this beyond isolated
experiments and findings.
But the work that they did, being experts? The nuclear physicists
frantically tried to confirm (or tried to disconfirm?) the heat
findings. All they succeeded in doing was demonstrating that
non-electrochemists could make a vast series of blunders. But the
biggest blunder was in assuming that a replication failure is a proof
of original error. No, it demonstrates that the attempted replication
did not actually replicate the original conditions, plus there is
always the possibility of a truly chaotic effect. Like a coin toss.
Sometimes this situation is then used, with a claim that "of course,
it is impossible to prove a negative." As if that somehow impeached
positive reports.
No, a basic operating courtesty and principle in science (and in law,
by the way) is to assume that testimony is true unless controverted.
So we assume that Pons and Fleischmann saw what they reported seeing.
And so with all the other experiments (including the negative
replications). Only if positive evidence of data alteration is found
do we go there (as has happened with the MIT results, there was
certainly a problem in the way their data was presented, and it does
possibly impact their results, but this is a detail, an isolated incident).
So I toss eight coins and they all come up heads, and I report this.
Is my report to be impeached because this is an unlikely result? The
fact is that whatever result I report as to the specific result is
unlikely (if it's a fair coin). What we would want to see, if we want
to understand what is happening, is a series of experiments. Each
individual result is unlikely, as an exact result, but we do know how
to extract useful information from an accumulated series of experiments.
Still, if it was my first experiment, and I got HHHHHHHH, I'd be
excited! Wouldn't you?
By sporadic local heat I am talking about micro and and nano regions,
where a nanoamp of current backed by by 6 KV can exert huge transient
forces in a small place, enough to vaporize Pd...
Hello? You seem to think that the effect of a nanoamp depends on what
voltage is "backing" it. The nanoamp is backed by the local voltage,
and Ohm's law applies. Each leg of the circuit can be analyzed
separately, and what is happening in another leg, what voltages exist
there, is irrelevant. If the local circuit were to open, to become
infinite in resistance, yes, the voltage would rise up to 6 KV. But
at zero current, the power is zero. Not the high power necessary to
vaporize palladium.
And such vaporization from possible leakage current from high voltage
isn't reported in any clear way. *At most* there might be a single
"hole" seen in the Pd plating, in the subject paper, and such craters
are seen, relatively plentifully, with a lot more morphological
evidence of high heating, in lots of experiments where there is no
high voltage involved.
Add to that, Pd fully loaded with H or D, and consider that the
reaction of 2 H with 1 O that hits the rough Pd surface will create
enough energy in the nano size molecule size region to separate a Pd
atom from the Pd lattice, i.e. vaporization... chemical energy thus is
easily able to provide the energy to vaporise 10 micron size craters
in Pd -- it would just take a 10 micron size bubble of O2 --
It takes only a little energy (1 eV) to shove a palladium atom out of
place. To shove a 10 micron sphere out of place? I'm not going to do
the math. It would take too much time, it's been done, and I've seen
the results. Shanahan attempted to do this. He completely neglected
the heat sinking, and he neglected reaction rates. If a bubble of
oxygen hit the wall, it would "burn." Underwater, surrounded by a
great heat sink, up against a wall of palladium lattice, also a great
conductor of heat. To vaporize palladium from a chemical reaction,
you'd have to release all the available chemical energy in such a
short period of time that the heat does not have time to conduct
away. Thus an ordinary oxygen bubble is hopeless. It would burn
within the bubble, transferring very little heat to the palladium.
Now, an explosive mixture would be more effective. Very unlikely
close to the cathode, but a few such bubbles might be created. They
would explode on hitting the lattice -- or any piece of palladium.
But that's still outside the palladium, why would this energy be
transferred immediately to the lattice? Instead of the liquid the
bubble is surrounded by except for the point of contact?
Okay, so maybe a bubble enters a cave of some kind, an
already-existing cavity. We'd get enough heat to melt some palladium,
maybe. I don't think so, in fact, but I can't say "impossible."
Look, if we depended for proof of nuclear reactions on these little
observed volcano remains, it would be interesting (that's why Duncan
points to those images) but weak. But we don't. The primary,
face-palm, evidence for "nuclear" is heat/helium. One of the largest
objections to the nuclear hypothesis in the first place was lack of
ash. MIT and others looked for helium and found none. Pons and
Fleischmann believed that the reaction was in the bulk. But when the
bulk was analyzed for helium, mostly none was found. (The results
were not totally null, but obviously lots of the bulk palladium did
not have elevated helium.) It was only when Miles confirmed earlier
work finding levels of helium in the evolved gases that the ash was
identified. In this work, unlike earlier work, the level of excess
power being generated when the samples were taken was recorded and
compared to later blind analysis for helium.
Correlation. Bingo.
Huizenga noted this and got the significance. But "because no gammas
were reported" he considered it likely that Miles would not be confirmed.
Right there, a huge and fundamental error of the skeptical community
is visible. It was assumed that if there was a nuclear reaction
making helium, it would be d + d -> He-4, and that this reaction
would behave in the same way as the known hot fusion reaction. That
is, for conservation of momentum, there *must* be a gamma. But Pons
and Fleischmann had not claimed d+d at all. They claimed "unknown
nuclear reaction." Instead of treating the claim in that way, a claim
that it was "d+d fusion" was substituted, and then skeptical "proof"
of impossibility depended on this substitution, all the calculations
of cross-section elevation, etc., were based on that assumption.
Miles was confirmed, and the accuracy of helium measurement was
increased, such that Storms could claim that the Q is 25 +/- 5
MeV/He-4, with a straight face, and get this past some heavy peer
review at Naturwissenschaften. I think his estimate is biased. I also
think he's right, and that the reaction does have the Q for deuterium
fusion to helium (23.8 MeV), but also that this is not yet
demonstrated, merely likely. You want to claim it's 14 MeV, fine. I
can't say it's impossible. Actual experimental results are more
toward double, the value, over 40 MeV/He-4, which very likely
reflects the difficulty in capturing all the helium (if helium is not
captured and measured, particularly if it remains trapped in the
palladium), then there is less helium reported, and the value of
heat/helium goes up proportionally.
If you want to be serious about cold fusion, Rich, you must face this
basic experimental fact: when both heat and helium are measured, they
are found to be correlated. Storms reports a dozen research groups
that have found this. There are no significant negative findings,
beyond a handful of isolated anomalies.
So if you want to put your inventive mind to work, put it to work on
this problem. There are a couple of relatively obvious fantasies I've
seen. They do not match the experimental realities. It is, in fact, a
clear sign of pseudoskepticism that a fantasy that doesn't match the
experimental evidence is asserted as if it were some sort of likely
explanation.
Background leakage is the most obvious of these. It is contradicted
by the findings of helium above ambient. It is contradicted by the
time-behavior of helium levels as they approach ambient (they show no
slowing, and continue past background without a reduction in slope).
It is most heavily contradicted by the correlation of heat and helium.
A more sophisticated version of this objection, Shanahan came up with
this, I think, would be that heat causes seals to leak. Thus helium
levels would correlate with heat. The problems with this:
1. It would never cause helium to exceed ambient.
2. It would vary with experimental details such as the exact nature of seals.
3. It would not be found with flow calorimetry, which maintains a
constant temperature, with only slight deviation from that as a cell
is heating internally.
4. It would be an amazing coincidence, repeated in many reports, that
the ratio remained similar.
5. That the Q erroneously calculated from this is close to the
deuterium fusion Q would be an even more amazing coincidence.
6. It leaves the heat with no explanation *at all*.
(With accepting helium as the likely ash, we then have a general
hypothesis that the heat is coming from an unknown process that is
converting deuterium to helium. This, in fact, matches a boatload of
data. It even confirms that the early negative replications were
generally accurate. I.e., as expected from this hypothesis, they
found neither heat *nor* helium.)
Bubbles this small do not float the way larger bubbles do -- being so
tiny, they experience Browning motion, random jitters from random
kinetic impacts from the hot electrolyte molecules, mostly H2O -- they
will, however, respond to electric potentials on all scales from cm to
micro cm --
Only if they are charged. Yes to the brownian motion.
so, what is the actual distribution of nano and micro
bubbles of H2 and O2 and other gases after a few days of this chaotic
electrochemical commotion, corroding all surfaces in contact with the
electrolyte -- perhaps with bits of dust falling in from lab air,
adding perhaps catalytic elements right up to uranium --
It's complex in there, but the flow of gas is entirely out from these
cells. The experiments are designed that way. If lab air enters the
cell, it will bring with it humidity, i.e., hydrogen. Heavy water is
hygroscopic, it readily absorbs ordinary water, diluting itself. And,
as it happens, shutting down the FPHE, which disappears by roughly 1% H.
Rich, you are standing on a limb, grasping for some straw, to explain
away something that isn't even important.
Such 10 micron bubbles would be so small that the chemical detonation
wave would be single pass,
These must be explosive mixture bubbles, not the pure bubbles that
are originally formed. Such bubbles would be very rare, and regularly
cleared from the electrolyte, they will disappear whenever they reach
the surface, and the larger they get, the more bouyant they are. They
will also disappear immediately if they hit the cathode anywhere. Or
any palladium. Miles, doing high-current codeposition, observed
bursts of flame as pieces of palladium -- loaded to the gills with
deuterium, broke off, the plating under high current adheres poorly
to the cathode, and circulated to the oxygen side of the cell. That
was the cigarette lighter effect.... They would start to burn, the
heat would cause rapid release of the deuterium, increasing the flame.
Mostly, before ever mixing with deuterium to create an explosive
mixture, these bubbles would either escape to the surface, or would
hit the cathode, any such contact and they would burn readily, disappearing.
The level of such internal recombination is known. It's very low.
Rich, I'll say it again. If you want to understand what is going on,
you'll need to drop all the made-up explanations and simply become
familiar with what's been observed. Some of the best minds on the
planet have been engaged in this problem, with no cigar. We don't
know what is happening, in detail (i.e, actual mechanism) but a few
simple conclusions are becoming obvious, and that's what was
published by Storms in 2010 in Naturwissenschaften.
On the other hand, if you want to make up complicated fantasies about
what might be happening, with little or no foundation in experimental
fact, you may certainly continue to do so, and you may as well
continue to expect that, mixed with such fantasies, your actual
findings, your clear analysis, will be ignored. The people who might
do something about this long ago stopped reading you.
reaching the whole bubble so fast that the
bubble would not have time to pop off the local vaporizing Pd surface
(which releases the adsorbed H right in proximity with the combustion
shock wave of the O2 bubble),
This is an image of a shock wave from burning. Nope. No shock wave.
There is an oxidation front, that actually pushes the bubble away
from the palladium. If it actually pushes away, the oxidation will
stop, there being no mixed deuterium, there only being an environment
of heavy water. There will only be a shock wave, spreading ignition,
if the bubble is not pure oxygen, but an explosive mixture.
Imagine trying to melt palladium with a simple flame. Underwater.
Flames are slow, depending on the feeding of the fuel to the flame.
As the oxygen "burns", the bubble and surroundings would heat.
Continued oxidation of deuterium depends on mixture, which would only
happen as deuterium in the lattice diffuses to the flame front.
That's inherently slow. The product is heavy water, so the bubble
shrinks in size. If it detaches from the palladium lattice, the
oxidation stops. Only if the bubble is truly trapped would it stay
attached. The heat generation would depend on the diffusion rate of
deuterium to the bubble. Balancing this would be the rapid condution
of heat away from the place of ignition, by ubiquitous heavy water,
away from the point(s) of contact, and by the metal lattice, which is
also a good conductor of heat. The rate of heat delivery to the area
of contact must exceed the rate of loss of heat by conduction for the
lattice to heat. That this process could result in not only melting
of palladium but vaporization (necessary to blow palladium out of the
resulting melt zone) seems radically implausible to me.
But so what if it does happen? What does this have to do with the
basic process causing anomalous heat? The possibiklity of internal
recombination at the cathode is already considered in the heat
studies. And how would this affect helium production?
Given that the mind can *always* make up something if uncontrained by
experimental fact, you can go on forever thinking up increasingly
implausible scenarios and imagining that you have found some that
"should be answered." How's it been working for you, Rich?
so that the entire explosion would be
like a shaped charge stuck to the Pd -- in fact the spherical or
hemispherical symmetry would tend to make a fierce, high density,
central jet aimed straight at the Pd surface, uh, maybe -- so, maybe,
no need to invoke nuclear nano explosions --
There is no "need" to invoke anything, if you can make up *anything*
to explain away confirmed experimental results. You can make up
shaped charges. You really haven't thought this through, shaped
charges require not just a combustible, but an explosive, i.e., mixed
hydrogen/oxygen in this case. Shaped charges require some specific
shape such that an explosive front creates a particularly penetrating
shock wave. And even with an explosive mixture bubble, describing an
explosion of a 10 micron bubble of D/O as "fierce" and "high density"
and, as well, "stuck to the palladium" -- what is sticking it there?
Any point of contact with the surface would immediately burn, and if
it is an explosive bubble, it would explode on first contact. I can
imagine that if the bubble were trapped, the explosion would be
confined, but think for a moment how that bubble could get into being trapped.
Suppose it starts as an oxygen bubble. Suppose it is somehow carried
to a cave in the palladium. Now the current is all away from the
cathode, there is no current inward. The cathode is evolving
deuterium gas, which is bubbling away. The gas appears at the
surface. Okay, because there is also deuterium gas being absorbed by
the cathode, maybe, let's grant, there are some local currents toward
the cathode. Bubbles of deuterium gas don't form everywhere.
So a bubble is carried toward the cathode somewhere. In order to
enter a cave, the bubble would have to not be carried by the inward
current into contact with the wall until it was completely into the
cave. Because it would immedately burn at the point of contact,
assuming that there was deuterium loaded into the palladium there.
Where does the explosive mixture arise? It can't arise there, because
any deuterium entering the bubble will burn. Not explode, burn.
So the bubble must already be an explosive mixture. In order to get a
trapped explosion, it needs to enter a cave, just so. My guess is
that it would be possible to study this, and rule it in or out.
However, it's not worth the effort! The little volcanos, with
apparent molten ejecta seen are not a crucial part of any CF
hypothesis. They are possibly explained by a high local nuclear
reaction rate, that's why they are interesting. My seat-of-the-pants
estimate is that chemical reactions could not, under the conditions,
heat up palladium fast enough to cause vaporization, but vaporization
is an effect first seen by Pons and Fleischmann in about 1984, in the
famous incident. From then on, they scaled down, for obvious reasons.
This effect was very difficult to control, and you might see nothing
for a long time, then bang!
That event was very difficult to explain by chemistry. This was an
open cell, no accumulated oxygen. If the cell were broken open, if
ignition took place, the palladium would burn. Not explode. The
oxygen would have to come from ambient air, not from evolution in the
cell, for the oxygen does not accumulate in a Pons-Fleischmann cell.
It would get hot, but the palladium would not vaporize. You'd have to
supply oxygen under pressure, as with an oxy-hydrogen torch, to get
that hot. This thing apparently got hot enough to vaporize some of
the palladium, and what melted and fell on the lab table burned
through the lab table -- these things are made to take substantial
heat -- and down into the concrete floor several inches. There was
not a big explosion. The lab was not wrecked, just filled with smoke.
This was a 1 cm cube of palladium, loaded with deuterium, probably
above 90%. You can figure the available energy from that if you like.
And then figure that it turns effectively, as heated, into an open
tap to a supply of deuterium, which would create a flame. As the
flame heats the palladium, the rate of evolution of deuterium would
increase (the cigarette lighter effect), but combustion would be
limited by the supply of oxygen. At most you would get a bloom of flame.
There was a famous explosion at SRI that killed a researcher. Very
different. Chemical explosion. The recombiner failed -- these things
tend to do that, they get clogged in various ways -- and so pressure
built up of an explosive mixture of deuterium and oxygen. When the
researcher moved the cell, the crud that was blocking recombination
fell off, causing rapid recombination, causing local heat, leading to
ignition. It exploded. The amount of heat released would not have
been large. I doubt anything was melted. The researcher died. McKubre
still has pieces of the apparatus buried in his body, I think.
(I had a piece of glass from a lab accident at Cal Tech in my thumb
for maybe fifteen years before it came out, if it had been deep
enough, it might have been there for the rest of my life.)
Murray's Law: nothing is as complex and devious as an apparently
simple electrolysis experiment...
Electrolysis experiments are indeed very complex, but not quite as
complex as Murray thinks. Nothing is as complex and devious as a mind
determined to make up explanations before having enough evidence to
actually see clear correlations and come to sane conclusions.
What's really interesting and personally useful is to look within and
discover what fuels this search.
Yes, it can be complex.
