How much would you bet on helium produced from alpha decay?
On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 5:55 PM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 8:22 AM, Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote: > > This is not a fair characterization from a technical standpoint. We can >> trust the calorimetry – which is the more important detail by far. >> > > The 4He measurements have been important in establishing PdD LENR > specifically as a *nuclear* phenomenon. In this sense they're quite > important. The researchers (Miles, McKubre, etc.) had the presence of mind > to know that a mass spec with a resolution that could distinguish 4He from > D2 would be necessary. They have come out with unequivocal statements > concerning a positive 4He signal, above and beyond the sources of noise and > error you identify, which they were aware of and took into consideration. > One reason they put such effort into these measurements was precisely to > establish that we're dealing with a nuclear phenomenon. I'm not in a > position to assess the quality of their findings. But I can say that their > results, if reliable, are pretty important in pinning down what is going > on. I can also say that if they have come out and unequivocally stood by > 4He measurements that turned out to be unreliable, I would also have > significantly less trust in their calorimetry from that point on as well. > > I am skeptical, to put it mildly, that the m=4 species that were observed > were deep-dirac level bound deuterons. If I were on a game show, and I had > 1000 dollars to apportion between three possibilities, where the correct > bet would be multiplied by 1000, and the choices were (1) they saw real > 4He, (2) they saw something completely unrelated to 4He (e.g., some kind of > ion, or regular old D2) and (3) they saw DDL bound deuterons, I would put > 700 dollars on (1), 299.50 dollars on (2) and 50 cents on (3). > > Eric > >
