Wow. This is a stunner. I'm not on CMNS because of their policy of insularity - so I cannot verify that the following message actually appeared, but it seems to be further devastation to the widely held notion that helium and excess heat can be well-correlated in LENR, even though it comes from only one proponent. He was a prime proponent - and his posting shows the underlying foundation is/was built on sand.
In fact, this almost proves to me that there is no correlation, or even negative correlation - when it had been used to show the opposite. That's right - this is better proof of NO HELIUM from fusion - than of a direct correlation. And worse, Miles has been called the "gold standard" by a few proponents. Apparently some were confused by the difference between million and billion. BTW, I did not get this from Krivit, but it shows that he may be largely correct on his unpopular stance on helium. And I hate to admit that, because Steve is wrong on a number of other issues IMHO - particularly on Widom/Larsen and his insistence that Rossi is a scammer. Yet, I for one owe Steve Krivit an apology, since he did stick his neck out on the helium issue - and he seems to be largely correct - or at least more right than wrong. >From M. Miles: "I want to respond to various comments about my China Lake (Navy) results from 1990-1994 about the heat and helium correlations. Someone commented that it would have been better if I had found helium-4 in the electrolysis gases at levels greater than the helium-4 content normally in air (5.22 ppm)." "I agree that higher excess power levels would have been nice, but we had to live with the excess power that was actually measured. However, it is unrealistic to expect helium-4 levels in the electrolysis gases via fusion greater than the 5.22 ppm found naturally in air for our open calorimetric system. (Our system was not open directly to the atmosphere, but the electrolysis gases escaped via an oil bubbler that prevented the back-flow of air)." "My calculations show that D + D fusion to form helium-4 would produce 11.2 ppb (Billion!-not million) of helium-4 in the electrolysis gases per 0.100 W of excess power using a typical electrolysis current of I = 500 mA (See page 32 of my final Navy report, NAWCWPNS TP 8302, September 1996). Therefore, the production of helium-4 exactly equal to the 5.22 ppm in air would have required an excess power of 46 W. Such a large excess power would have immediately driven my cell to boiling, depleted the cell contents, and ended the experiment." It is almost unbelievable that a few regular posters on CMNS would say that Miles work is proof of a good correlation, when it actually appears to show that all - 100% - of the helium measured could easily have diffused into system from the outside. I suspect that most of the other reports have the same or a similar underlying problem - they have not taken into account the high levels of helium in Laboratories where MS is routinely practiced. Helium concentration can be 1000 times more than what has been measured. One will often see a high pressure helium tank within feet of the instrument itself. This is supposed to be a science forum, where experiment rules, not a slap-on-the-back old boys club where past false notions live on, well beyond their predictive value and instead actually become counter-productive to progress. Isn't it about time that we either abandon or downplay the entire premise that LENR involves fusion without gamma radiation - when strong anomalous heat is seen? We are convinced of the excess heat - IT IS THERE - but there is precious little good evidence that nuclear fusion is responsible for it. There are a few experiments where tritium is seen which is good evidence. Transmutation is seen but it is thousands of times too low to be meaningful. In those cases the amount of tritium is tiny, or comes from high voltage (Claytor) and often there is no excess heat, so once again - we find this is a complex field with few absolutes. There is some small level of fusion happening, no doubt about QM - and there can be incidental helium in an experiment ... but this may come from low probability QM effects, since it is tiny and will not correlate with excess heat in a high energy output experiment. The field is at risk of losing it crown jewel - excess heat - to the insistence of a few proponents of a proved helium connection - by continuing to insist on any substantial level of fusion to helium, when there is so little good proof of fusion at all, other than the occasional trace tritium, or trace transmutation... and moreover, lots of tritium should show up long before helium does. Look at the published cross-section for heaven's sakes! If there was going to be a correlation of excess heat to nuclear fusion, it would be found via the expected fusion products: tritium and 3He! Yet that is NOT what these proponents have been trying to force feed others who are willing to accept the excess heat. THE EXCESS HEAT IS THERE. It's the lack of gammas, and trying to cover for that, which seems to make some of us go stupid. Old habits die hard. But they will die. Jones
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