On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Mary Yugo <maryyu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Interesting. Long on theory. Short on data. > Long on obfuscation. A few things that struck me about that presentation: Slide 13: ------------ Zawodny is up front about the energy needed for electron capture by a proton, which is more than you can say for WL. They say it is: "inhibited by 0.78 MeV". [...] Then, a couple of lines further down, they try to explain where the energy might come from: "Field results from a breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation via a coupling of Surface Plasmon Polaritons to a collective proton resonance in the metal hydride." Say what? That's just gibberish. I seriously doubt that Zawodny has any idea what that sentence means, if it means anything at all. A physical effect is allowed by a breakdown in a mathematical approximation? What that sentence does is make people's eyes glaze over, and think it sounds sophisticated enough that it must be true. But how exactly is concentrating 780 keV energy into a site where the bonds are a million times weaker than that made plausible by a breakdown of an approximation? It's like a mechanic telling a naive customer their car needs new muffler bearings. Slide 14: ------------ "gamma rays get thermalized by heavy electrons" Right, that's the patent WL just got. Heavy electrons are the new lead. But that's just about the easiest thing to test. Fire gamma rays at a LENR foil and see if they're absorbed. NASA has been working on this for years, and they don't have data to show that this works? Please. And *all* the gamma rays? None escape to indicate the signature for all those proposed reactions? The heavy electrons that are captured by protons are not around to absorb gamma rays, so they have to be absorbed by *other* heavy electrons. That's gonna require some density to make sure all the gammas are absorbed. Slide 15: ------------ In the chain of events in the Li-Be-He cycle, they admit the first step (electron capture) requires energy (as mentioned above), and claim some mechanism to provide it. But further down the list, the 4He + n -> 5He is proposed with no mention that it is also highly endothermic. It also requires about 735 MeV, but there is no mechanism suggested this time that might provide that energy. In fact, they like to claim that the neutrons are ultra low momentum, so where exactly does the energy for this step come from? Slide 16: ------------ This slide is full of vague justifications for the theory, but as MY said, no hard data at all. And the best line is: "Simplicity: Only need one theory to explain all the LENR data as well as a few other long standing anomalies" They call 3 miracles simple. First they can provide 780 keV to induce electron capture by, as Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes put it when asked to explain Newton's law in his own words: Yakka Foob Mog. Grug pubbawup sink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz. Then they provide 735 keV by an unmentioned mechanism to induce neutron capture by 4He, and finally all gammas associated with the various proposed reactions are absorbed by heavy electrons. Simple. Slide 26: ------------ 6p + 3e --> 6Li + 28 MeV (and neutrinos) is called getting energy from the *weak* interaction. Sure the weak interaction is involved in the electron capture, but that *consumes* energy. Building 6Li out of 3 protons and 3 neutrons is where the energy comes from, and that's all about the *strong* interaction. (There are many intermediate steps, but those are the starting and ending particles, and all the energy released is from the strong force.) This may be quibbling, but they make such a big deal about tapping the weak force. The weak interaction may be critical to the process, but is it so hard to identify the source of the energy correctly? Slide 9: ---------- The summary of evidence for LENR is a perfect indication of the complete absence of evidence: "Metal hydrides of both H & D • High H loading required • Not just 4He being produced • Full range of elemental transmutations • Energy input needed • Forcing at resonant hydride frequencies is effective • Sporadic detection of neutron or gamma radiation " Not a definitive thing in there. "Sporadic detection of neutron or gamma radiation"? If there's gamma radiation, they should be able to nail down the reactions. And high H loading? Only in the electrolysis experiments. It doesn't seem to have to be high in gas loading experiments. Honestly, if a talk so devoid of hard results or plausible mechanisms were presented in any other field, it would be laughed off stage. One can only hope this is not representative of much of the research that goes on at NASA.
