At 01:49 PM 12/29/2012, James Bowery wrote:
On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Mark Gibbs
<<mailto:mgi...@gibbs.com>mgi...@gibbs.com> wrote:
Let's see if I'm understanding this correctly: The theory was that
nuclear reactions cannot occur in a system such as P&F's. This
theory was falsified which means that nuclear reactions can (and did) occur.
Correct? If it is correct, then my original statement stands: There
is no theory yet that explains what is called cold fusion.
Close. It is the most widely-accepted interpretation of currently
accepted physical theory that was falsified. The theory itself is
subject to many interpretations, otherwise known as "conjectures" in
more rigorous fields such as mathematics.
The conjecture "Nuclear reactions cannot occur in systems such as
P&F's." is no more a product of theory than is the conjecture
"Nuclear reactions can occur in systems such as P&F's."
So it is not the theory that has been falsified -- because as an
axiomatic system there is no proven theorem of modern physics which
asserts "Nuclear reactions cannot occur in systems such as P&F's."
One can, of course, posit any number of arbitrary axioms and then
call the hodge-podge a "theory" in which one of the axioms is
trivially proven true because it is axiomatic. This appears to have
been the approach to "science" taken by folks who receive the vast
majority of funding for science and technology.
Context here should be more revealed. The fusion cross section (rate,
effectively) for standard deuterium fusion, caused when two deuterium
nuclei collide, can be calculated -- quite accurately -- for a
plasma, where the rate at which nuclei interact is known.
The distances between nuclei in condensed matter (the "solid" state)
are enormous, compared to the size of the nuclei. It seemed
reasonable that fusion rate could be calculated for deuterium
dissolved in palladium, by assuming that only two deuterium nuclei
would iteract at a time. It's a 2-body problem, and the math is
relatively simply. Generally speaking, making that approximation was
thought to be adequate, and the approximation predicted that, even
though the density and effective pressure of deuterium in palladium
could be enormous, it was not enough to raise fusion rates to a
measureable level.
That's what Pons and Fleischmann knew when they began their work.
Their work was not "energy research." They were not looking for an
"energy panacea," or "free energy." They were doing basic scientific
research, to test the assumptions being made about the application of
quantum mechanics to condensed matter. They thought that what they
would probably find was nothing. They were not naive, as the
physicists often portrayed them.
And then their apparatus melted down, and they had no chemical
explanation for it. And they were chemists, world-class.
They clearly did not understand what they had found. They believed
that it was a reaction taking place in the lattice. For lots of
reasons, that's pretty unlikely. It is a surface reaction. At least
usually. We don't know all the possibilities. Because they thought it
was a bulk reaction, they expected to find helium in the bulk. It
wasn't found. That's one of the experimental facts that deposited a
layer of egg on their faces.
Helium is produced as a rare branch from normal hot fusion, and most
people thought that cold fusion must be hot fusion taking place
somehow. But it didn't really make sense. If one got over the
enormous energies necessary to trigger hot fusion and managed to
catalze it cold -- and there is a known method of doing that -- for
there to be enough of a reaction taking place to account for the heat
that was being observed, the neutron radiation would have been
deadly. But a little helium would be produced, and with it, a quite
energetic gamma ray. No gammas were seen like that.
However, Preparata predicted that helium would be found to be the
ash. Miles was following Preparata's theory. So, Mark, here we had a
confirmation of theory. Does that mean that Preparata's theory was
true. Not necessarily! There is a whole lot more that would have to happen.
Helium is, in fact, found, but only in two places; evolved in the
gas, roughly half, and trapped in the lattice, near the surface. When
the original testing had been done on Pons-Fleischmann cells, they
had removed the outer layer of the cathodes, to eliminate absorbed
helium from the air!
In any case, there are plenty of confirmed theories of cold fusion.
It's just that there is no *complete* theory. There are theories than
can allow a researcher to be confident that in a series of cells,
they will see some with excess heat. There is a very important
theory, that the anomalous heat in an FPHE experiment is produced by
the conversion of deuterium to helium, with no other major products.
That theory, then, allows certain prodictions to be made. From the
heat, one can predict how much helium will be produced, or
vice-versa. This theory is quite adequately confirmed.
Storms is predicting, from his theory, X-radiation of a certain kind.
It's being sought, and he has reported it. It takes time for this
work to come out and for other researchers to gear up and confirm it.
And it's all underfunded. That's impeded the work, but it has not
stopped it. There was a period where to work on cold fusion was death
to your career. When I started getting interested in this field, I
found scientists who used pseudonyms to talk about cold fusion,
because they feared harm. And they were skeptical! Even to be seen as
talking about cold fusion was to raise eyebrows.
This is a thoroughly embarrassing event in the history of science.
It's a huge story, in fact. I've thought of asking Taubes to look at it again.
Taubes has actually done a great job identifying "cascades" in
another realm, diet. A "cascade" is a social phenomenon. I'll let
someone else explain it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The rejection of cold fusion was a cascade. Cold fusion was never
rejected as would normally happen with scientific procedures and
courtesies. The "artifact" behind the basic finding was never
identified. It was simply assumed. As Richard Garwin said a few years
back, "There *must* be something wrong." Okay, what?
This was the tragedy. Suppose cold fusion actually is not real. Set
aside the helium evidence. Suppose all we have is all that heat.
Obviously, if it is not a nuclear reaction (there are other
possibilities besides fusion), there is some powerful energy storage
mechanism, unknown to chemistry. Wouldn't it be worth finding out what it is?
