At 08:09 PM 10/25/2009, you wrote:
On Oct 25, 2009, at 9:10 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
This is also a preliminary response to Horace. I agree that the
Galileo Project is a "poor kit to offer," or whatever you wrote.
However, it was designed for simplicity. Make it complicated, and
"replication" becomes less likely.
Why would anyone go to the trouble to produce a "poor kit to offer"?
BTW, those are not my words.
Sigh. I believe I was clear that the quotation marks indicated not an
exact quote, but a sense. What you actually wrote was "but the
Galileo protocol seems to me to be *NOT* a protocol appropriate for
dissemination on a commercial basis."
My work will proceed in stages. In the first stage, I'm gathering
materials for an expanded experiment following, more or less, the
Galileo protocol. I've never done a codeposition experiment before,
or anything like it since college, almost fifty years ago. I've got
two forces to balance, one is I don't want to waste time with
approaches that don't work, until I have an approach, in hand,
tested, that I know works. So I'm quite wary of any changes to the
basic Galileo protocol: the materials, the quantities, the cathode
geometry, the current profile. On the other hand, there are obvious
possible improvements, and I have different motives than the Galileo
experimenters. For them, saving, say, $100 on materials for a cell,
when they were putting a huge amount of effort in, would be trivial.
For me, saving money on a cell, as long as it doesn't have a
significant impact on results, is a big deal. But if I go too far in
the first stage, as, for example, using a cheap stainless-steel wire
that is plated with 24 K gold, instead of a pure gold wire, I might
end up wasting weeks. I'll spend the money on the gold. To start.
I'll also buy a little gold-plated wire for further development. The
biggest expense in the experiment is not the palladium, it's the wire
for the cathode and anode. The anode wire they recommend, platinum,
is the most expensive. Is that necessary? How about gold, if nothing
else? How about stainless steel, for that matter?
As the first stage progresses, I'll be buying materials. As it
happens, buying just enough for one experiment is pretty expensive.
So I'll buy more, and I will offer these materials for sale. Because
of the volume purchase savings, I should be able to offer low
quantities, buy what you need, for about what it would cost from the
suppliers. (If I can get some volume going, it might become cheaper.)
Basically, it's pretty much standard retail/wholesale. I now have
LR-115 radiation detector sheets. For some purposes, better than
CR-39. I also have a little Boron-10 neutron converter screen, enough
that I can experiment with it and sell some. I have much more of both
of these than I'll need for my own work, so, if anyone wants LR-115
radiation detectors or 1x2 cm pieces of Boron-10 screen, I could sell
them immediately. Be the first on your block!
There are only two down sides to LR-115: it's dark red, so if you
want to be able to see through the detector, not so good, and I have
no idea if it is stable in the electrolyte. If it is, whoopee! It's
about one-quarter the cost of CR-39 intended for radiation detection.
But commercial CR-39 is actually cheap. Problem is, if you don't know
the history of it, how much radiation damage has it suffered from
background? On the other hand, I do intend to buy some CR-39 sheets
from Ebay and develop pieces. They are so cheap, compared to
Fukuvi/Landauer CR-39, that I might as well try.
Second stage, I'll be varying the protocol; at this point it's no
longer the Galileo protocol and it might vary considerably from it. I
still want to keep it relatively simple. Unless, I suppose, some
angel investor pops up, which I'm not expecting. Horace, this is a
for-profit venture, because if it isn't, it won't happen. If you've
got some donor lined up to support me to put together free kits, or,
for that matter, to support someone else to do it, be my guest!
During the second stage, kits will be available to beta testers.
Unless I get that angel funding, these will also be kits that are
sold. They are sold as exactly what they are: a very specific list of
materials, a specific design, open information about what has been
tested and what the results were, and with no guarantees except that
all of this information is accurate. Your mileage may vary.
Third stage, the kits are sold to the general public, but, quite
likely, they will be accompanied with disclaimers. Full disclosure.
The results from my own work, and from all those who have used the
beta kits, providing it is disclosed to me, will all be published.
Whether the results were "successful" or not. These are science kits
and, in fact, there are no experimental failures if the procedures
are documented and the results are reported carefully enough.
Production of a kit for amateurs using a procedure known to have
major problems
By all means, share them if you know them.
and that produces results that are not even convincing
to the CF community is potentially harmful to the field.
I make no distinction between critics within the CF community and
without it. I'm convinced by the SPAWAR work, and I'm the one
investing my time and money to replicate it. I've read Kowalski,
great guy. And more weight has been put on the objections he raised
than they probably, in the end, merited. The Russians have made some
noises, but, apparently, what they have said has been, shall we say,
also over-interpreted as negative. They are, indeed, CR-39 experts,
but ... perhaps they are serving as devil's advocates, thinking up
whatever objections seem possible, instead of making a "neutral"
assessment of the preponderance of the evidence. Interpreting
"hamburger" is a problem, for sure, but, as Ms. Mosier-Boss has
noted, the problem is overexposure, too much signal, not an absence
of one. LR-115 is a possible solution to that, it might handle much
higher track density, more precisely, but to capture the primary
alphas, I'd need to put it in the electrolyte, or, alternatively,
protect it, perhaps seal it into a vacuum pack plastic bag. That
would reduce the radiation, but if the bag is thin enough, not much.
But I want to start with CR-39, to compare my work with others.
However, as I've mentioned, I'll be looking for neutrons more
intensively, and that will be done with LR-115 sandwiched with other
materials, including Boron-10. That's outside the cell and couldn't
possibly interfere with the Galileo protocol.
Likewise, I'll be set up to watch the cathode with a microscope. And
I intend to be listening with piezo microphones as well. I think I'm
going to need to get a decent digital oscilloscope, don't have one,
haven't had a scope for years.
Doing so
for profit casts an even darker pall on the community, because the
motives can be impugned.
I'll be blunt. That's stupid.
Motives are always impugned. Commercial motives are actually safer,
in this respect, than the "noble" motives of "scientific progress."
I'm not denying the nobility of such motives, but ... if I
misrepresent what I'm doing, I'll be taking a legal risk. If a
scientist overplays what he's found, or downplays what others have
found, what happens?
If I were asking you for a modest $100,000 to invest in this project,
Horace, you'd be absolute right to be suspicion. But I'm not asking
you for anything; and I appreciate that you donate your time to make
suggestions. I am aligning my own personal interest with the
interests of the market I perceive, and if I serve them, I believe
I'm entitled to fair compensation. There could be other ways to
arrange that, and many scientists work for institutions that support
them for public welfare. But that system has its down side, and the
cold fusion experienced it for the last two decades. I intend to help
break up that logjam. It probably could have been done a decade ago,
and, my guess, had it been done then, we'd be in a different
situation today. Nobody would be doubting cold fusion.
If I find that the Galileo protocol doesn't work, if I can't fix it,
and nobody else can help me, I'll report that, too. As I said, the
only unsuccessful experiment is one which isn't recorded and
reported. If the CR-39 results are bogus, don't you think we need to
know that, and how will we find out except by trying it? But I don't
think they are bogus. Do you?
I'm starting for my own testing with Galileo because I'm confident
that I'll see results, not because the design is optimal. There are
many aspects to the design that can safely be optimized, especially
by adding external monitoring of various kinds. Cathode design is
an obvious place to move to, but much monkeying with it in the
initial tests gets increasingly risky with how complex the change
is. What you have written, Horace, isn't wasted, it will be
considered as final cathode design moves forward. Fabrication
through plating had already been considered. (Why use a gold wire
if a gold-plated silver wire, for example, would do?)
If nothing else I hope you keep the CR-39 or other detector out of
the electrolyte. That is known to cause problems.
Depends on the CR-39. I assume you are referring to the fogging of
Tastrak radiation detectors that Galileo replicators found,
apparently that particular brand -- or batch -- of CR-39 wasn't
stable in the electrolyte. Did it quench the effect? Don't know. In
any case, apparently Fukuvi-Landauer detectors don't do this. But I
may skip the Fukuvi-Landauer detectors, unless I can buy small
quantities, I haven't checked yet. I intend to also see what happens
with commercial CR-39 sheet, I can buy small quantities of it quite
inexpensively.
There is a technique in the literature to "erase" CR-39 by etching
it. Like new. Except, of course, for buried damage from neutrons,
that would gradually build up from cosmic ray background over time.
But if I'm looking for charged particle radiation, and don't mind a
little background, it should be good enough for folk music. On the
other hand, even Fukuvi-Landauer material isn't *that* expensive, and
if those detectors are serialized already, hey, may be worth it.
On Sep 1, 2009, at 10:31 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
If the volume were large enough, we could buy one of those
spectrometers. Or build one, it's not a difficult measurement, you
need a Co-57 source, an accurate gamma detector, and a linear motor
to drive the source toward or away from the test sample at a known
velocity. I did this in sophomore physics lab at Caltech, that's
why I recognized the significance of Vyosotskii's findings, I'm not
sure that others get it.
Back in those days it was nearly impossible to find a physics major
at Caltech with less than 140 IQ.
Yes. The only time my IQ was measured was in high school, at 159. One
time, I happened to see the college board math aptitude scores of
*applicants*. Mostly 800s, i.e., perfect. Mine was. Heh! With that
and 25 cents I could get a ride on the subway. At one time. No more.
This exercise is beginning to look more like a social science
experiment than a legitimate physics effort.
There is a contradiction? If so, go fly a kite. If you think you can
advance physics without a community, you're either crazy or one very
rare kind of person. Don't count on the latter. Most people like that
end up unknown, even if some of their ideas are fantastic.
In any case, this isn't much of a physics experiment, is it? It's
chemistry. I'm trusting the electrochemists more than the nuclear
physicists, as to what happens in chemistry experiments.
Are you saying, by the way, that science done by commercial interests
is not legitimate?
As commercial interests go, I'm pretty weird. What ordinary
commercial enterprise would lay out in detail the exact commercial
plans, so that anyone could do it?
