Abd, You are right - I did not intend to sound dogmatic.
I am beginning to wonder whether a couple of different phenomena, perhaps sharing a common denominator, are occurring - depending on experimental materials and procedures. Nature may be getting a little perverse here. The Wendt-Irion exploding wire experiment did appear to produce Helium. Their original paper is - "EXPERIMENTAL ATTEMPTS TO DECOMPOSE TUNGSTEN AT HIGH TEMPERATURES" - Amer. Chem. Soc. 44 (1922) http://www.uf.narod.ru/science/WendtIrion.pdf Would this provide some link between CF and LENR if reproduced? Lou Pagnucco Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 04:37 PM 4/5/2012, pagnu...@htdconnect.com wrote: >>My suggestion is that transmutations be the litmus test for LENR - not >> the >>calorimetry results which never seem definitive enough for everyone. If >>the reported successful experiments were well conducted, then they will >> be >>reproducible. > > There are some highly questionable assumptions here. > > First, it appears that the predominant reaction (by far) in the > Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect does not involve transmutations *other > than to helium.* > > Helium has been found to be correlated with heat. Helium had been > reported, early on, by Pons and Fleischmann and by others, but the > results were not widely accepted and were not convincing. > > Miles, however, ran a series of cells, finding excess heat in most, > and collected gas samples from all the cells, submitting it for blind > analysis. His results were clear: no excess heat, no helium. If there > was excess heat, there was helium, in amounts well within an order of > magnitude of what would be expected from fusion of deuterium to > helium (by any mechanism; if the fuel is deuterium and the ash is > helium, this value, 23.8 MeV/He-4, will result. The major difficulty > is collecting all the helium for measurement; Storms figures that > roughly half is trapped in the cathode.) > > Secondly, individual cold fusion experiments, in PdD, continue to be > highly erratic. Success rates, i.e., finding some excess heat, have > increased over the years until nearly every cell shows such a result, > but the quantity of heat varies greatly. > > It is not a problem of how "well" the experiments are "conducted." > Rather, the very method involves physical conditions which are quite > difficult to control. It appears that the FPHE involves defects in > the palladium, and the palladium itself changes during the process. A > cathode which is showing no effect, later, under what would appear to > be the *exact same conditions*, then shows the effect, and not > marginally; rather, clearly, far above noise. > > What is constant, though, whenever it has been tested, is the > correlation of helium with the heat. There is no contrary > experimental evidence; the early negative replications, the ones that > tested for helium -- and some did -- actually confirm this. They > found no helium and they found no heat. From what we know now, we can > say for certain that they simply failed to set up the necessary > conditions, and from other later work, it's quite clear what this > likely involved. They ran at a loading of roughly 70%, whereas the > FPHE required loading of something on the order of 90% or better. > (Effects are not seen, at all, below 80%). > > To get that high loading requires special palladium. Before the work > of Pons and Fleischmann, it appears that 70% was considered about the > best you could get! > > And high loading, by itself, isn't necessarily adequate. > > In any case, the calorimetry, in the hands of experts, is quite > adequate. It alone won't convince those who are not confident about > calorimetry, which is why helium is so important. The helium and > calorimetry confirm each other. The only thing that connects them > would be transmutation, i.e., the fusion of deuterium to helium. > > There have been attempts to impeach the helium results, but every one > of those attempts that I've seen simply ignores the experimental > conditions. It's as if someone says, "Helium has been found in cold > fusion cells" and the person, without looking at the data at all, > says, "Must be leakage from ambient helium." End of topic. > > That could make some sense when the helium levels are below ambient. > It makes no sense when they rise above ambient, as they do on > occasion, and it does not explain -- at all -- how the helium could > be correlated with the heat, and not just at some random value, at > roughly the fusion value. Once this was known and confirmed, by > rights, the shoe should have been on the other foot. That happened > long ago, and here we are, still flapping about. > > With a preposterous theory gaining attention because, it's claimed, > "It's not fusion!" Where are the experimental results to back it up? > The confirmed predictions? > > >
