----- Original Message -----
From: "Jed Rothwell"
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSevidenceof.pdf
And a surprise bit of history in the intro....if it is correct.
However, it is 'suspect' since an accelerator must have been
involved. If incorrect, statements like this cast doubt on what
follows in the fine paper, so one wonders if it is some kind of
attempt to rewrite the history of LENR. Actually much of the
scientific history of that period 1932-45 does need re-revision,
but this ....?
"Low temperature nuclear reactions were first reported nearly a
century ago. In a brief communication, Oliphant et al. (1934)
disclosed that by bombardment of perdeutero inorganic compounds,
e.g. (ND4)2SO4, by deuterons produced tritium and hydrogen."
Oliphant ML, Hartreck Pm Lord Rutherford (1934) "Transmutation
effect observed with heavy hydrogen" Nature 133:413
But if an accelerator was used - is it really a low temperature
nuclear reaction ?
END of relevant comment.
The rest is historical rambling. Please excuse the following
flashback as it should have been posted last week at the Hiroshima
aniverssary...it is the recurring and haunting message which keeps
darting through the warped imagination of putative history
revisionism and cold war secrecy.
To backtrack two years from Oliphant - following the discovery of
deuterium by Urey at Cal Berkeley - heavy water by electrolytic
process - it became possible to prepare deuterium ions. Also at
Berkeley was the availability of the accelerator of Lawrence and
it became possible to produce radioisotopes by bombarding elements
with a beam of accelerated deuterons.
On the other side of the world, howeverm in his last experiments,
Lord Rutherford bombarded heavy water with deuterons from an
inferior Cockroft -Walton machine and beat the Berkeley pioneers
to tritium. After examination of the products of reaction (the
hallmark of the Cambridge Laboratory in UK), it was claimed that
two nuclear species with mass-3 could be identified: one was
tritium and the other helium-3.
It was technically possible thereafter (1934) to produce the
so-called "pure fusion" weapon, should it turn out eventually that
such is doable without a fission trigger through CANR. I have
contended for some years - at first in a half-hearted contrarian
role, but now more seriously, that the first CANR reaction was the
misfiring of the MARK II weapon at Port Chicago in 1944, only 10
miles away from Cal-Berkeley.
This weapon if it was involved in that tragedy, probably used the
infamous "Kistiakowsky trigger" which is a LENR trigger... not to
mention among the darkest of all black secrets (besides the truth
behind Port Chicago). Dr. Kistiakowsky, Head of the Explosives
Division of the Manhattan Project and putative inventor the first
A-bomb trigger, is almost completely unknown, as a result of that
rewriting of history.
If the D(T)+Cl --> HCl +n or He + n reaction was able to produce
neutrons from just a chemical reaction, it is easy to understand
why this info was squashed 60 years ago with the secrecy order,
with the side effect we have consequently missed the easiest of
all, and most robust of all LENR reactions - and what could have
been the foundation for expanding the technology into an
acceptable source of energy for our future use, now that oil is no
longer plentiful. However... this was not to be. Cold War.
Countervailing concerns. However, iis really NOT really a
terrorist threat - it is much too unreliable, as history may have
taught us already(and been revised).
As mentioned, the biggest clue to finding the truth may be with
Oppenheimer's memoirs, especially the unpublished family
documents. The brilliant scientist professed to feel no lasting
remorse for developing the Hiroshima bomb (the Mark III). However,
at other times, Oppenheimer revealed feelings of guilt and
responsibility for 'something' else. In a meeting with Truman, for
example, after which Truman actually said "I don't want to see
that son of a bitch in this office ever again" and referred to him
afterwards as "that [expletive deleted] cry-baby"...what caused
this strange outburst? Did Oppie, then dying of thyroid cancer,
threaten Truman with something along the lines of high-level
blackmail ? Did that meeting have anything to do with Port
Chicago?
Oppenheimer at times remarked that he had "known sin", had done
the "devil's work," but NOT in regard to the Hiroshima bomb which
he always justified as not a real moral issue in the final
balance - the prior firebombing of Tokyo, which killed far more
innocent civilians unnecessarily, having erased that moral-stain
in his mind. It was something else.
What was Oppie's monstrous but unspeakable sin? The three hundred
innocent Afro-American sea-men blasted into oblivion at Port
Chicago by an intrinsically hazardous weapon which should have
never left the lab? Was it Oppie's insistence to have this device
tested, despite the risk?
We may never know....
Jones
