Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
I've seen the reaction of pseudoskeptics to Vyosotskii. They don't
care how solid his work is or what he's actually found in his
experiments.
They just know that this is ridiculous, that anyone who thinks that
biological organisms could cause transmuation is a complete nut case.
I suspect it blew their fuses.
Their reaction is understandable. Two reasons make it hard from me to
believe it:
First, anything that can happen in biology tends to be widely exploited
by many different species. Even phenomena that do not seem possible in
biology sometimes turn out to be possible, and when they do, we have no
trouble finding examples of them. For example, you might think that
generating electricity or high efficiency light are not something a
biological mechanism can accomplish, but there are several species that
generate electricity, and lightning bugs and deep-sea fish do a
marvelous job generating light. On the other hand, as far as I know
there are no species that detect or make use of radio waves or radar.
There are no macroscopic species with anything resembling the wheel,
although there are microscopic ones with freely turning parts. In other
words, in biology either you can exploit a phenomenon -- in which case
many species do exploit it, in a way that is readily observable -- or
you cannot exploit it, in which case it never happens. There seems to be
a sharp line.
Second, It is one thing to suppose that cold fusion can occur with
materials and conditions that never occur in nature, such as a
non-cracking specially formulated palladium alloy highly loaded with
pure deuterium. I think the amount of that material naturally occurring
in the earth's crust is so small, there is no chance anyone would
discover it by accident, the way they discovered measurably radioactive
uranium. That is, samples of rock that could be seen to glow in the
dark, if you look carefully. I doubt there is enough Pd-D in the earth
to add measurably to the heat from the earth, unlike U and other
elements. Extremely rare physical phenomena are seldom incorporated in
biology. Anything that can happen in biology is usually based on
phonomena that readily and often occur in non-living material on earth.
(Sometimes not in exactly the same form; i.e. combustion and metabolism.
Obviously, biochemistry tends to be much more complicated than
non-living chemistry, but the same rules apply and the same sorts of
things happen.)
This is why, for example, I find it a little difficult to believe that
magnets may have a therapeutic effect. Load-stones and other naturally
occurring magnets are rare and weak, and it is a little difficult for me
to believe they were exploited by evolution. The entire earth is a
magnet. It is weak but ubiquitous (of course!) so I have no difficulty
accepting that birds exploit it to navigate while migrating.
I am assuming, naturally, that transmutation is "extremely rare." I
assume that mainly because no one observes it normally. Perhaps what
Kervran and Vyosotskii may have found is people have not observed it
because they refuse to look.
Regarding Kervran, see a recent upload:
Mallove, E.,/Book Review: Biological Transmutations (Kervran)./Infinite
Energy, 2000.*6*(34): p. 56.
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MalloveEbookreview.pdf
I hesitated to upload this, because it is not directly germane to cold
fusion.
- Jed
