-----Original Message----- From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax >JR: The helium ratio is about the only rock-solid fact about the physics >that has been established so far, thanks mainly to Miles and the >Italian researchers.
ARL: "Yes. Krivit contests it, I'm not sure why -- maybe he's only contesting the specific numbers -- but it's still quite close, even if it were off by an order of magnitude, and it isn't, it would be quite a coincidence; the real proof is the correlation, which, statistically, is just about impossible if there isn't a decent connection between the heat and the helium." My response: Well - it is quite simple why the appearance of helium (which is rock solid but only as to its appearance as helium) is contested by many including Krivit (correctly, I might add) ... yet, first, lets clear up the point that despite what some skeptics say the helium is still NOT due to environmental contamination -- but -- this result is about as far from "rock-solid" evidence of fusion as one can get. In fact, it points directly at the most probably reaction, which is technically a form of fission (alpha emission), specifically indicating Pd(n,alpha) or one of dozens of similar well-known nuclear reactions that end up with transmutation products including Ag, Cd, Rh etc, and about 1 MeV of excess energy. IOW the helium which is seen is the alpha, which was once in the nucleus of the electrodes. IOW The only rock solid thing at all in LENR is that is NO (as in zero, zilch, nada, nil, negatory) *high energy gamma.* These gammas cannot be hidden, and stick out like a sore thumb. D+D fusion always produces a high energy gamma. There are no known instances in nuclear physics where deuterium fusion does not produce a high energy gamma. On the other hand there are plenty of well-known instances in nuclear physics where helium appears *without* said ~24 MeV gamma. Here is Steve Krivit's comment, the last time we had this discussion. It comes from "anon" (as in anon for all seasons ;-). SK: Someone (who wishes to be anon) wrote the following to me recently. The ERAB council "proved" that cold fusion isn't DD fusion. The point is, "So what?", there are a zillion nuclear reaction paths that are exothermic, other than DD (well, there are a large number and basically every path that takes a neutron from a deuteron and gives it to any other atom is exothermic... including by the way, if it goes to a heavy nucleus above iron, that is also exothermic, something many people don't realize given that we are told that fusion above iron is endothermic...[snip] So, proving that cold fusion wasn't DD fusion was a trivial and silly accomplishment. It absolutely didn't prove that cold fusion wasn't nuclear. And, IMO, cold fusion is neither cold nor low energy... it is some sort of blazing hot high energy nuclear reaction path just like every other nuclear reaction. End of the anon comment by way of SK. Almost any time that a thermal or low energy neutron is absorbed into the nucleus of a metal like palladium - helium results in the decay of that excited nucleus. Many isotopes of Pd have very high cross-sections for themal neutrons. So high, in fact that such a neturon hardy ever escapes to be detected. Some few are seen, as SPAWAR may well prove. Of course, the result of this low energy (or even 'virtual') neutron is a nuclear transmutation and decay chain wherein alpha emission provides the helium, but it is helium nonetheless. And the alpha-derived helium appears in about the same ratio of heat released, as in seen in the experiments. In fact, the fit relative to the excess energy is generally a better fit than for the higher amount that is claimed for D+D. Jones
