At 09:50 AM 12/4/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
This article at DGT says:
"we are not talking about nuclear energy but chemical energy derived
from transmutation."
Yeah. Maybe it's a language problem.
That does not make a damn bit of sense. It is contradictory.
"Transmutation" means changing from element to another. That is to
say, changing the nucleus of the atom. When you change the nucleus
you change the level of nuclear energy. You can't not do that. Any
energy release is nuclear energy by definition.
It reminds me of a ditty:
"Mother, mother, may I go for a swim?
Yes, my darling daughter. Hang your clothes by the hickory bush, but
don't go near the water!"
Chemical energy is what you get from changing electron bonds, It
cannot affect the nucleus, which means it cannot directly trigger a
transmutation. In cold fusion, chemical processes promote or trigger
nuclear changes. That is analogous to the chemical explosives used
to implode a plutonium core in a fission bomb. The chemical reaction
produces a mechanical transformation which in turn triggers the
nuclear reaction. I assume something similar is happening on a
microscopic scale in cold fusion.
Bottom line, we do not know what transformation is behind NiH heat.
With PdD, we have solid evidence that deuterium is being transmuted
to helium, and practically nothing else.
What if NiH heat is not nuclear at all? What if it's hydrinos?
(Chemical, just an unexpected form of chemistry, though hydrinos
*also* might catalyze fusion, but it would probably be hot fusion in
character, i.e., watch out for the neutrons.) What if it's simply
some combination of prosaic artifact or fraud?
(Some reports are certainly not fraud, but .... others are shakier,
especially the high-heat claims, yet fraud has also not been proven
with any of these claimants.)
If it is judged that there is enough evidence for NiH anomalous heat,
that could be a subject for replication efforts to be publicly
funded. Right now, what experiments would be replicated? What
experiments show enough evidence to warrant what might be expensive
replication? The Rossi/DGT claims are secret, proprietary. Brillouin,
though, is current engaged in a study at SRI, where SRI calorimetry
will be used to measure what they are getting. This should be interesting!
Ed Storms once told me that he was the only person to have made money
from cold fusion. Given how much he has invested, I'm skeptical about
that, overall, but he did make money from his book, and that was why
he said it. (And he's been subsidized by private donors.)
However, McKubre has been paid, if I'm correct, for *all* of his
work. SRI was a paid consulting firm, working on cold fusion,
originally for the Electric Power Research Institute, and later for
other customers. That, indeed, may be part of why the SRI work has
been so carefully and thoroughly done. (And also, as well, why it did
not always continue to investigate what was found. Contracts ran
out.) It had to be good work, McKubre's livelihood depended on it.
McKubre, as a consultant, was paid to render results and opinions
based on research, and the payments, I'm sure, did not depend on his
being "positive" or "negative." When you pay for advice, you want
unbiased advice.
