On 2012-12-13 16:02, Jed Rothwell wrote:
This is only my impression, but these graphs look far too smooth to be cold fusion. All of the actual cold fusion reactions I have seen fluctuate much more than this. They increase, decrease and sometimes stop for no apparent reason. This looks like an instrument artifact.
Nevertheless, this appears to be the same effect as reported by Celani and Ubaldo Mastromatteo from STMicro: the higher the input power applied, the more the glass tube appears to heat compared to calibration runs with an inert wire and the active wire under inert conditions. This temperature difference appears to be significant. . So, in a way, their replication was successful.
It's been suggested in their blog that they should use a steel tube (preferably painted in special black paint) instead of borosilicate glass, in order to make sure that there isn't some artifact happening with the active wire emissivity changing under loaded conditions and affecting temperature readings at the external glass thermocouple.
If that quick and cheap test will be successful too, then the final answer will come from proper flow calorimetry.
Cheers, S.A.
