At 02:40 PM 12/5/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
I would be tempted to add a few multiple choice questions such as:
M. C. H. McKubre of SRI is known for using what type of calorimeter:
A. Seebeck.
B. Mass flow.
C. An ice calorimeter.
D. Davis-Besse.
E. He made up his results out of whole cloth because he believes in
"d-d fusion." The fancy calorimeter was just there for window
dressing, and how do you expect me to remember what silly excuses
cold fusion tinfoil hats use for their pretended results?
This would be a great question for Kirk Shanahan. Or Steven Krivit,
for that matter.
It's a great question, Jed. Someone like Shanahan comes up with an
armchair artifact, and produces, even, some evidence that it might
apply in some situations. But Shanahan's Calibration Constant Shift
does not apply to Mass Flow calorimetery, nor to Seebecks, particularly.
But the kicker is this: what if it does (possibly) apply? How then
can we explain the heat/helium ratio found and confirmed to be at
least approximately the deuterium fusion value (starting with Miles
in about 1993, and confirmed with higher accuracy by McKubre et al).
Error in calorimetry would be unlikely to produce this result, and
likewise error in helium measurement, and for the two errors to match
so well is almost totally preposterous, unless there is common cause.
So a common cause might be heat. I.e., if the temperature varies of
the cell -- because of prosaic heating, perhaps -- then helium
leakage might vary with it. It is thin, but not totally preposterous
on the face.
But, wait! With the SRI Mass flow approach, cell temperature is not
allowed to vary much. Obviously, if heat is being sourced in the
cell, it will run a *little* hotter, but the mass flow system works
to maintain constant cell temperature. It is, indeed, the work that
must be done to accomplish this that is how the generated heat is
measured. Heat, with this approach, clearly cannot explain the
correlation between anomalous heat and helium generation.
I'm going to be playing the devil's adovocate, for a few months, as
to cold fusion skepticism, since the skeptics have actually
defaulted, and we need this kind of debate as attempted
falsification, given how many people still think cold fusion is "rejected."
One of the neat things is that the single replicable experiment that
many have so long demanded is the measurement of the heat/helium
ratio. We only need a decent "success" rate -- 10% of cells showing
anomalous heat would be fine! -- to come up with good figures for
heat/helium, if the helium retention and recovery procedures are
sound. And this kind of research will stand, as a side-effect, as a
clear confirmation of the nuclear nature of cold fusion. Assuming the
correlation is not found to be artifact, of course.
If it's artifact, it will come out in the wash. Given how heavily
heat/helium has been confirmed, though, for practical reasons the
funding requests will be based, I assume, on the desirability of
knowing the ratio more accurately, to nail down theoretical
possibilities for the mechanism, not on a "prove cold fusion" agenda.
That actually was accomplished long ago, and I wouldn't suggest
wasting money on it.
But someone who believes that cold fusion is bogus would
theoretically love to see careful work done on heat/helium. After
all, as measurement accuracy is improved, "pathological science"
vanishes, right? Surely it is possible to identify calorimetric
artifact, and the same for helium measurement, right?
It is about time that the research recommended by both DoE reviews
actually gets done, properly funded and carefully designed to answer
open questions. We now know that CF does not produce much radiation,
if any, and much of the extensive effort in 1989-1990 was directed
toward looking for radiation. It failed, of course!
(What we now have as likely radiation results are at *very low
levels.* These are side-show. An exception might be Storms' recent
finding of X-rays, but that's not confirmed.)
