Thank you Jed to remind me this exchange you had with Celani. I was not
fully aware of every detail. When I was reading, an idea come to me mind.
Could it be possible that the secret sauce of Rossi is a gamma emitter? I
explain myself: Secretly, Rossi could have opened his reactor to adjust
something inside then closed the reactor back. In the meantime, Celani
detected an increase of gamma emission. A low frequency gamma (25~50 keV)
could be easily shielded. If Rossi opened his reactor, then vacuum should be
applied prior to reload with H2. The noise of a vacuum pump can not be
hidden easily. Celani and al should have heard it as well. Rossi isn’t fool
to put air and H2 inside a closed vessel …

 

Unfortunately, we don’t have the wavelength of the emission. I don’t want to
play the sceptic here. Can Celani say that he is sure that Rossi didn’t open
his reactor while they were waiting behind the door?

 

  _____  

From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: mardi 21 mai 2013 15:48
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Vo]:Celani detects gamma emissions during the January 14, 2011
Rossi Test

 

[Here is a message I posted in 2011]

 

Celani detects gamma emissions during the January 14, 2011 Rossi Test

Villa reported no gamma emissions or other radiation significantly above
background from the Rossi device. Celani, however, said that he did detect
something. Here are the details he related to me at ICCF16, from my notes
and with corrections from Celani.

Celani attended the demonstration on Jan. 14. The device did not work at
first. He and others were waiting impatiently in a room next to the room
with the device. He estimates that he was around 6 m from the device. He had
two battery-powered detectors:

1.      A sodium iodide gamma detector (NaI), set for 1 s acquisition time.

2.      A Geiger counter (model GEM Radalert II, Perspective Scientific),
which was set to 10 s acquisition time.

Both were turned on as he waited. The sodium iodide detector was in count
mode rather than spectrum mode; that is, it just tells the number of counts
per second.

Both showed what Celani considers normal background for Italy at that
elevation.

As he was waiting, suddenly, during a 1-second interval both detectors were
saturated. That is to say, they both registered counts off the scale. The
following seconds the NaI detector returned to nomal. The Geiger counter had
to be switched off to “delete” the “overrange,” which was >7.5
microsievert/hour, and later switched on again.

About 1 to 2 minutes after this event, Rossi emerged from the other room and
said the machine just turned on and the demonstration was underway.

Celani commented that the only conventional source of gamma rays far from a
nuclear reactor would be a rare event: a cosmic ray impact on the atmosphere
producing proton storm shower of particles. He and I agreed it is extremely
unlikely this happened coincidentally the same moment the reactor started .
. . Although, come to think of it, perhaps the causality is reversed, and
the cosmic ray triggered the Rossi device.

Another scientist said perhaps both detectors malfunctioned because of an
electromagnetic source in the building or some other prosaic source. Celani
considers this unrealistic because he also had in operation battery-operated
radio frequency detectors: an ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) and RF (COM
environmental microwave monitor), both made by Perspective Scientific. No
radio frequency anomalies were detected. I remarked that it is also
unrealistic because the two gamma detectors are battery powered and they
work on different principles. The scientist pointed to neutron detectors in
an early cold fusion experiment that malfunctioned at a certain time of day
every day because some equipment in the laboratory building was turned on
every day. That sort of thing can happen with neutron detectors, which are
finicky, but this Geiger counter is used for safety monitoring. Such devices
have to be rugged and reliable or they will not keep you safe, so I doubt it
is easy to fool one of them.

Celani expresses some reservations about the reality of the Rossi device.
Given his detector results I think it would be more appropriate for him to
question the safety of it.

When Celani went in to see the experiment in action, he brought out the
sodium iodide detector and prepared to change it to spectrum mode, which
would give him more information about the ongoing reaction. Rossi objected
vociferously, saying the spectrum would give Celani (or anyone else who see
it), all they need to know to replicate the machine and steal Ross's
intellectual property.

Celani later groused that there is no point to inviting scientists to a demo
if you have no intentions of letter them use their own instruments. (Note,
however, that Levi et al. did use their own instruments.)

 

Jacques Dufour also attended the demonstration. He does not speak much
Italian, so he could not follow the discussion. He made some observations,
including one that I consider important, namely that the outlet pipe was far
too hot to touch. That means the temperature of it was over 70 deg C. That,
in turn, proves there was considerable excess heat. McKubre and others have
said the outlet temperature sensor was too close to the body of the device.
Others have questioned whether the steam was really dry or not. If the
question is whether the machine really produced heat or not, these factors
can be ignored. All you need to know is the temperature of the tap water
going in (15°C), the flow rate and the power input (400 W). At that power
level the outlet pipe would be ~30°C. Celani points out that the input power
was quite unstable, fluctuating between 400 and 800 W, but it was still not
large enough to explain the excess heat.

Celani did not see the steam emerge from the end of the pipe, but he
reported the whistling sound of steam passing through the pipe. I think
there is no question the water boiled, and much of it was vaporized, so
there was massive excess heat. Celani complained that phase-change
calorimetry is too complicated, but I think he exaggerates the difficulty. I
agree that the actual calorimetric method could be improved, especially with
a 5-minute test of steam sparged into a container of cold water.

Here are a couple of additional comments from Celani:

a) The NaI (Tl) gamma detector had an energy range from 25 to 2000 keV;

b) Celani asked, in several public mail to Rossi, that for a conclusive
SCIENTIFIC demonstration of such wonderful device, the maximum temperature
of the outgoing water has to be <90°C so that CONVENTIONAL flow calorimetry
can be used (rather than phase-change calorimetry). 

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