On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 11:55 AM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > I do not think it is clear yet what has been discovered. The story so far: > > At ICCF17, McKubre called into question Celani's calorimetry. Celani said he > would try to put these doubts to rest by making the cell self sustain. He > tried, but he could not. That's bad news. > > Celani himself said the calorimetry was kind of primitive "thermometry" > measuring the temperature at one point only. That is not how to do it well. > If the temperature rise is large enough that can be definitive. But it is > better to improve the calorimetry, I think. > > The MFM people set up a configuration similar to his. They got much more > stable heat. As far as I am concerned, that's bad too. It is much too > stable. Real anomalous heat does not look like that. Even Arata's > ultra-stable heat declined gradually over time. > > The MFM found that one of the temperature sensors does not agree with the > others, and it is stuck at the level it should be with no anomalous heat. > That's really bad news! If it were malfunctioning it would not be at that > temperature. It would be at some random temperature. > > All in all, things are not looking good for this wire experiment, but I > would not draw any conclusions yet. We may never be able to draw > conclusions. > > One conclusion I would reach, that I reached 20 years ago in fact, is that > you really have to understand calorimetry to do these experiments. A lot of > people don't understand it. I wish they would read Ed's paper on the > subject, and books.
Ed Storms first post on the MFPM site sounded arrogant. However, I suspect even he will learn something about calorimetry from this experiment, because this is not an electrochemical cell which is his forte. > They are learning. They can do it again. It will not take long, and it will > not take a lot of effort to improve the calorimeter and try again. When you > do research, you do things over and over and OVER again. It is like > programming, or cooking, or -- as Martin used to say -- like riding a > beat-up old bicycle. You do it until it is second-nature. You develop a deep > "feel" for the instrument and its quirks. > > - Jed > Harry
