Original subject was: Re: [Vo]:Rothwell has no opinion about theory
At 01:32 PM 10/26/2009, Horace Heffner wrote:
You utterly missed the point. My point was that you agreed to the
fact it was a poor kit to offer.
Depends on "it." Straight Galileo protocol, sure. But basic Galileo
protocol, no. I know of no other proven protocol, if you know of one
with the success rate of Galileo, by all means, suggest it. Almost
nothing has been invested at this point, beyond LR-115 radiation
detectors. But soon, I'm about to order the supplies.
Protecting the CR-39 in some way from contact with the electrolyte is
not a serious modification, unless the protective material could be
an issue. Basic goal of the protocol: create NAE with sufficient
radiation to be detected well above background. However, every
variation creates some risk of altering an unknown but necessary
factor. Thus any changes have to be weighed against the risk of doing
that. It's not a disaster if that happens, but it will delay the whole process.
Galileo, as-is, may be poor compared to what should be easily
possible, but is not poor in an absolute sense. If I could make no
variations, even for unknown reasons, a Galileo exact kit that works
is much better than nothing. It's even valuable if it *usually*
works. It would merely be sold with different representations.
That has nothing to do with who
said it, only that you agreed to it.
End of discussion on that.
It has only to do with the fact
you are willing to sell something that not even the fringe physics/
chemistry population constituting experts in the CF field agree to as
demonstrative.
Yes. I'm willing to sell, if it comes to that, a controversial kit.
Why? It ought to be obvious: to resolve the controversy. People
buying the kit would know the exact situation: some say it works and
some say it doesn't. And if investigating reality is considered a
problem, well, *that's* a problem, for sure. The very same problem
that got us into this mess about cold fusion.
(I say fringe even though the field has had a
comparatively high proportion of Nobels and other distinguished
fellows.) This could of course, at minimum, be damaging to the field.
Sure. If the Galileo protocol, designed apparently with the approval
and participation of members of the SPAWAR group, doesn't work, there
is a problem for the field. I, for one, might back up, I'd certainly
become less certain. There would still be the heat/helium results,
which is far more difficult for an amateur to confirm -- though not
impossible, merely much more expensive with more opportunities for
error. There are the many confirmations of excess heat from palladium
deuteride. But ... SPAWAR results definitely pushed me over the edge
of that fence.
I have no doubt that CF is real. There is a vast pool of evidence
that collectively demonstrates it is real beyond any reasonable
doubt. The problem is for experts to obtain enough funding for
research to pin down a useable theory and reliable results.
That's one problem, but it need not be an insuperable obstacle.
Creating a large body of people closer to the general public who
would support that research is a path to a solution. The "experts"
have not been able to resolve the impasse. Hence the rest of us need
to take charge of our public research dollars. How are we going to
decide whether or not the research is worth pursuing? After all, this
set of experts, perhaps in the majority, have said, "impossible."
Another set of experts have said, "It works, but needs more work."
There have been hundreds of millions of dollars, already, poured into
efforts to scale the effect up, without adequate results. That hot
fusion gets a lot of dollars in spite of no results doesn't mean that
cold fusion should get equal dollars! It may mean that hot fusion is
simply getting way too much. And this is precisely what worried the
hell out of hot fusion experts in 1989. They worried that before cold
fusion was proven, hot fusion funding would go into the toilet. They
had to stop it, and I can't say they were wrong to be worried.
They were wrong, however, to completely stop research into cold
fusion, that did great damage, it was clearly unfair, and clearly
contrary to public policy. They abused their trust as experts, and
that abuse continues. The questions that were raised in the 1989 and
2004 DoE reports should have been answered long ago, it is outrageous
that certain physicists used their political clout to prevent the
recommended funding.
If not for the SPAWAR results, I'd be sitting on the fence still. I'd
be with the majority of the 2004 panel: there is possibly something
of great interest here, and research should continue at a modest
level to solidify it. If Galileo doesn't work, I'd still be there,
and Galileo replication failure would not have much, if any, impact
on expert opinion; a repeat of the 2004 DoE review would probably
come up stronger on the side of cold fusion today, even if the SPAWAR
results were somehow shown to be bogus. But the SPAWAR work isn't
bogus, I believe, and if there is a problem with my replication, it
would almost certainly function to identify an unknown critical
factor, which would, in fact, advance the field, not retard it. All
the original replication failures, more carefully analyzed, confirm
cold fusion by specifying more accurately the necessary parameter
space. All roads lead to Rome, i.e., to the truth.
What is
missing is a single utterly convincing experiment that is readily
replicated.
Indeed. My conclusion, as well. And that is why I'm starting a kit
company, to facilitate the development and actual replication of such
an experiment. There is a proposed protocol. A defect in it was
identified by the attempt to reproduce that specific protocol: a
brand of CR-39 was found to be attacked by the electrolyte. And this
parameter remains to be adequately explored. Is it all CR-39 from
that brand, or only some batches? Commercial CR-39 is not tested by
immersion in an electrolyte next to an active cathode, and certainly
not with the specific chemistry involved.
No such experiment yet exists as far as I know, even as
accepted by the community. I'm not the only one to tell you this, so
you must be getting some kind of clue that it is true.
I have not disagreed with this at all, and that you'd think I do
shows one of two things: I haven't communicated my position
adequately, or you haven't been paying adequate attention. And
probably both are true.
However, if I wait for a complete consensus of the community before
proceeding, I'd be waiting for a long time. And unnecessarily so. I'm
going to run a Galileo experiment, myself, probably several. Any
problem with that? I'm not going to make decisions about what to
mass-produce until I know what's happening with that. No matter what,
production will start out with prototype quantities with select
customers. If someone wants to subsidize kits for certain
experimenters, I'd match the subsidy out of my margin, up to a limit.
My operation must be either self-supporting or supported through
donations, or some combination. I can't reduce my costs to "cost of
materials," because my own labor is a cost as well, and I can only
afford to invest it with no return up to a limit, which I may already
be exceeding, in reality. I.e., I may be damaging my family already,
indeed, I know I am, but I'm doing it in the hope that the long term
effect will be beneficial. It's a risk, a typical one in any business.
In regards to the Galileo protocol, I again suggest you read:
http://www.earthtech.org/CR39/index.html
Thanks. Very useful. Right off, Horace, I notice substantial
variation from the Galileo protocol, in ways that the experimenters
probably considered would only improve the results, perhaps under the
theory that if a little is better, more is even better. The photos of
what they call "SPAWAR pits" don't resemble SPAWAR photos. What you
have convinced me of, Horace, is that I should stick very closely to
the published protocol, even in what might seem to be silly details.
In some of the experiments, they used much more cathode wire,
probably creating much more surface compared to the amount of PdCl2
in the electrolyte, unless they also varied that. The photo that
shows a cathode CR-39 shows many turns of the wire around a CR-39
chip. The area close to the cathode, in SPAWAR photos, shows what the
Russians call "hamburger." What the photos from earthtech show are
hamburger with more distinct pits superimposed on top. SPAWAR doesn't
show the hamburger, and within hamburger areas, when they count
tracks on the cathode side, they don't count tracks that aren't
completely distinct. There is an often-used image that shows tracks
from three straight wire cathodes on a single CR-39 chip, as
automatically identified as distinct tracks. You can see that there
are few tracks on the cathode side of the chip, relatively, because
of the effect of hamburger. The tracks counted there are to either
side of a blank area that was hamburger. But on the back, it's
different. No hamburger, massive tracks associated with the gold
cathode wire, fewer with the platinum wire, and almost missing with
the silver wire. The Galileo protocol used silver wire; it was
created when the neutron results had not been announced. Almost
certainly, the back side tracks are the result of neutron radiation
from the cathode, creating knock-on protons and C-12 fission alpha
particles. Only a few of the latter are seen, probably, those are the
"triple tracks" that are so striking.
They put epoxy inside their cell, and then noted that the epoxy
expanded in the electrolyte, which indicates an interaction. They did
do runs with variations, such as running with high current from the
start. That is also not GP.
Because they used 4-year-old CR-39, and I doubt they pre-etched, I've
seen no reports about pre-etching within the CF field, they probably
had high background as well. (Now, reading further before I post
this, I see that Kowalski mentions pre-etch, it's done where they
want to detect background first and substract the background, he
doesn't mention that if one more deeply pre-etches, it erases
everything except for buried tracks from penetrating radiation or
radiation generated inside the plastic, which would mostly be from
cosmic background neutrons, I think.
Here is my immediate hypothesis: they didn't generate NAE at all, but
they did produce hamburger type damage on the CR-39. Hamburger
damage, if caused by the immediate cathode chemical environment, will
be, of course, associated with the cathode on the cathode side of a
piece of CR-39, and, in spite of looking like a lot of nuclear tracks
superimposed, isn't that. Why they did not generate NAE could be from
various factors, but the variation in the cathode geometry could be it.
They report four experiments, but only the fourth is TGP, The Galileo
Protocol. The first three were attempts to replicate another SPAWAR
experiment, based on a published paper. They report "SPAWAR pits" in
all four runs. However, these pits don't resemble the SPAWAR pits
completely, and, most notably, excess pits were completely missing
from the back side of the detectors. Either they didn't create NAE,
or the situation produced few neutrons because it was silver wire.
I find the report highly useful as a bit of a guide as to what not to
do. First of all, if it is going to be an exact replication, make it
as exact as possible. If you vary it and get different results, don't
assume that you replicated the experiment at all. First assumption
should be that some unknown variation caused the different results.
There are many details missing from the Earthtech report, which is
not surprising, those details are missing from experimental reports
in general. The protocol is more complete, showing, for example, an
exact description of the cathode.
However, there are details missing from the Galileo protocol as well,
and even stated assumptions that something different might be better
or might be tried. That's a flaw in the Galileo project itself. It
should have been absolutely and rigidly exact in its specifications.
However, it's quite good, nevertheless, i.e., I'm expecting that if I
avoid putting anything into the cell that they didn't put in, and I
don't vary the parameters, and I use the same cathode geometry and,
even use the possibly oversimplified polyethylene cathode supports,
though it grates against my sensibilities, and I use Fukuvi/Landaur
CR-39, I will *probably* get similar results to SPAWAR. There are
other possibilities: for example, it could turn out that
Fukuvi-Landauer CR-39 behavior is batch-specific. Probably not, but
it's a possibility. Hence my "outside" modification of the protocol:
using different SSNTD outside the cell, searching for neutrons. The
CR-39 inside the cell is just to see what I get there. If there are
no tracks on the back, I can pretty much assume I didn't get NAE, and
this would be a serious problem, because it's an effing simple
protocol. In that case I'd do a lot of talking and consultation.
Finding out what happened would be very important.
I want to underscore this: there are no unsuccessful experiments.
Earthtech reported their "failure." Good for them, damn good!
*Exactly* what did they do? I already know that they didn't follow
the protocol in most of the experiments. Now, I just noticed what I
didn't see at first. Each experiment is described in good detail on a
separate page.
I intend to use gold wire, that's a variation. If I don't get NAE,
I'll do silver, no matter how stupid it seems. I want to try
gold-plated silver wire, but if it doesn't work, I'm certainly not
going to blame SPAWAR, I'll report my results.
Gold-plated silver is attractive because it's far cheaper than gold
wire. The platinum anode is the most expensive thing in the SPAWAR
protocol, by a fair margin, and a gold cathode is almost as
expensive. What can I use for the anode besides platinum? Gold?
(Probably). Gold plated (probably). Stainless steel? (Probably, but ....)
Experiment 8 they call TGP. The detailed description follows the
Galileo prescription. They don't provide the photo of the finished
cathode or cell assembly that TGP requested, probably minor. From the
amount of wire used for the cathode, 3.5 cm., with a 1 cm CR-39 chip,
they did not do more than two wraps. However, they report different
quantities of PdCL2. The present GP document has 0.27 g. of PdCl2,
they used precisely half of that. Was this an early version of the
protocol? That could easily be a crucial variation. From their
reports then, in spite of having done many runs, only one was a GP
attempt, as they report, and it had half the palladium being used. I
am continuing to study the reports, looking at the individual
experiments in detail.
I think that because they saw hamburger, they assumed they had replicated.
They reported, in experiment A, damage to the cell. What was the cell
material? Galileo used a specific acrylic box, but it is entirely
possible that even if they used the same box from the same source,
acrylic batch could have an effect! Not fun, this possibility. If the
box is damaged, it has interacted with the electrolyte and whatever
dissolved in the electrolyte could quench the effect. For starters,
from the plastic, hydrogen.
Thanks again for the reference, Horace. But that reference only
underscores for me the importance of being extremely careful about
any variation from the Galileo protocol, even ones that seem
harmless. I may still vary, as I said, but if I don't see evidence of
nuclear radiation, or other strong evidence of nuclear reaction, I'm
immediately going to suspect the variation and the first thing I'd
do, before any formal report of my results, would be to back up and
do exact Galileo.
(I'm helpless about some variations, I can probably not obtain the
same specific chemical batches, but, hopefully, as long as the
reagents are of adequate purity, that won't matter. I need to be
careful about exposure of the heavy water to air, to avoid increase
in the light hydrogen content.)
I was thinking that I'd also do more wraps of the wire. Now, probably
not. I was thinking that I'd decrease the cathode-anode separation.
Now, probably not. So, Horace, your comments have been highly useful,
can't thank you enough.
