At 03:28 PM 12/27/2011, Charles Hope wrote:
If the helium levels are "what they should be" compared to the heat,
that assumes some theory that correlates them. Which theory is that?
This is an experimental observation, and what you are asking was
stated. Helium is produced in PdD cells, when the FPHE effect is
observed and heat is measured, and helium is collected and measured,
at what Storms estimates as 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4.
If deuterium is converted to helium, the energy released is 23.8
MeV/He-4. So the hypothesis here would be that the reaction is
somehow converting deuterium into helium. For this purpose it is not
necessary to know what the reaction is, as long as there are no other
energy sinks. (For example, energy lost to neutrino emission.)
Krivit has criticised the work that was the basis for Storms'
estimate, mostly over details of little consequence. Regardless, when
Miles reported energy/He-4 that was within an order of magnitude of
the value expected for deuterium fusion, Huizenga, who might be
considered the leader of the skeptics, he did more to torpedo cold
fusion in the early days than anyone else, as co-chair of the 1989
ERAB panel, thought the Miles work was astonishing, solving a major
riddle of cold fusion (the ash!), but he then added his expecation
that Miles would not be confirmed. After all, there were no gamma
rays, which would certainly be expected from d + d -> He-4.
He was obviously assuming that if there was a reaction, it would be
straight, normal d+d fusion. Obviously, it isn't.
But *any reaction that converts deuterium to helium* will produce
that much energy. This is not a proof, but reactions that produce
that much energy per helium nuclear product are rare. I'm not aware
of any. Of course, this is indeed an "unknown nuclear reaction," so
... we don't know.
Just as an example of a different reaction that would produce the
same energy, though, Takahashi's Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate
"motion" causes, in theory, collapse and fusion of four deuterons to
form a single excited Be-8 nucleus. What happens then is unclear.
Normally, Be-8 has a very short lifetime, on the order of a
femtosecond, decaying into two helium nuclei plus 47.6 MeV.
The magic number, 23.8 MeV/He-4. No gamma would be expected.
However, still no cigar, Takahashi hasn't earned his Nobel yet,
perhaps. If the energy appears in the helium nuclei, if they were
23.8 MeV each, as kinetic energy, there would observable effects that
are not observed. Those would be very hot alpha particles, they would
Do Stuff, to use the technical term. To give an idea of why Something
Completely Different might happen, that Be-8 is formed inside of a
Bose-Einstein Condensate, and we have no idea what to expect as the
behavior of a highly unstable radioisotope that forms inside a BEC.
One possibility that looms is that the energy would be distributed
among all the consituents of the BEC, which, for starters, might be
larger than four deuterons. The deuterium in the BEC is molecular
deterium, possibly. It includes the electrons. They might carry away
quite a bit of the energy.
And studying this stuff, experimentally, is apparently very, very
difficult. Especially without funding!
