At 06:50 PM 12/7/2012, Jeff Berkowitz wrote:
Despite the "thinness" of the evidence and the ever-present contamination concerns, my gut tells me the LENR community would benefit from more focus on transmutation results. For one simple reason: transmutation results are persistent, while excess heat is ephemeral and easier to wish away. And frankly, across the history of CF/LENR, has been easy to get wrong (numerous examples).
Well, transmutation results have also been evanescent, and some have been tracked to contamination.
My comment about "thin," by the way, was about a theoretical explanation. The experimental evidence for a transmutation effect in the Iwamura experiment is looking considerably more solid than previously.
What would be conclusive would be, in fact, transmutation or other specifically nuclear evidence that is correlated with heat. That's only been done with helium.
With some reactions, there might not be any readily available nuclear evidence. If, for example, Storms is correct and NiH reactions are producing deuterium, this is going to be difficult to detect, given the natural occurrence of deuterium in hydrogen. Talk about clean nuclear power! But helium is, perhaps, even cleaner.
Still possible to detect deuterium, though, if a reaction lasts for long enough or enough total energy release, and if deuterium depleted hydrogen is used.
On the other hand, if these results can be confirmed and understood, it is very likely that the underlying reaction will turn out to be exothermic. So this approach offers a way to reach to the desired outcome (controllable, cheap, clean energy) by a "back door" discovery path.
Do realize that there have been transmutation reports for a long time, and *helium* is a transmutation result that is known to be correlated with heat. Generally, transmutation results -- other than helium -- are far below the levels of helium.
It's just a gut feel. I can't defend it any better than that. But I believe it.
I think "belief" in this stuff is a Bad Idea. Fine to hope. Fine to trust results enough to fully support further research.
But positive "belief" can be quite a similar error to the error of the pseudoskeptics, who "believed" in their own skeptical hypotheses without ever bothering to actually confirm them.
It's also fine to be excited about possibilities.
