I hope readers of Vo don't mind if I have this public conversation with Jed.
At 11:21 PM 10/1/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Rothwell, J., CETI's 1 kilowatt cold fusion device denonstrated.
Infinite Energy, 1996. 1(5&6): p. 18.
That wasn't his work, it was CETI's work. He's a writer. That was
13-effing-years ago. I searched for information about what was
actually in the article. I finally found
<http://www.padrak.com/ine/ROTHWELLCF.html>http://www.padrak.com/ine/ROTHWELLCF.html.
Now, what's the problem? Rothwell reports some measurements he made,
he does not appear to make any firm conclusions, and uses
conditional language. And where are Patterson cells now?
The materials used to make these cells ran out a few years after
that test. Patterson's grandson and business partner Reding died
young, and Patterson lost heart. Patterson died some years ago.
Yeah. One of the arguments of the skeptics against cold fusion is
that the history is littered with companies that made enthusiastic
announcements about this or that product about to appear. And then
years pass and finding out what happened is a bit of a task. So here
is my enthusiastic announcement:
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NORTHAMPTON, MA: Friday, October 3, 2009
Lomax Design Associates (LDA) announced today that it is developing
kits for home demonstration of low energy nuclear reaction effects.
The first kit will be based on the work of the U.S. Navy SPAWAR
group, as successfully replicated by the Galileo project coordinated
by Steve Krivit of New Energy Times, and the effect demonstrated will
be nuclear radiation; other effects will be explored and may be
announced before the kits are available for sale. During the
development process, materials used will be available for sale; the
first product will be LR-115 radiation detectors. Current kit cell
design envisions the use of a CR-39 detector inside a
palladium-deuterium codeposition cell, as described in the Galileo
project documentation, with an LR-115 film stack outside the cell,
including a Boron-10 neutron converter screen, to search for and
characterize neutron radiation and distinguish it from alpha or other
charged particle radiation as detected by the internal CR-39 detector.
It is expected that the LR-115 detectors will be available for sale
by December 1, 2009, at easily affordable prices. Inquiries should be
directed to [email protected].
----------------------------------------
I don't expect to get rich from this, but neither do I expect to
fail. I'm not selling excess heat, I'm selling science. I believe
there is a market.
Cravens, who designed this experiment, is still with us and still
going strong. He has not retracted these results. I know of no
reason to doubt them, but after all I saw only one test for a few
hours. Hardly definitive! Plus I agreed with George Miley who was
there sitting next to me during the test, that this was a sloppy,
low budget calorimeter. That was a darned shame. Why not use better
instruments? Ah, therein lies a tale . . .
Please tell it!
When I learned the reason they used such crappy instruments it
boggled my mind. You would have trouble believing it even now and
besides it is complicated and wacky tale, so I won't bother telling
the story. Some other time, perhaps. Suffice it to say this was yet
another nutty cold fusion folly and a lost opportunity. Not for the
first or the last time did I sit there and watch people throw away a
$10 million opportunity for no good reason. You would be surprised
at how often that happens in business.
Not.
To top off the nuttiness, when I started taking notes and brought
out my thermistor to measure the water temperature, Reding went nuts
and tried to throw me out of the room. You don't have permission do
to that! he cried. I said no, I don't, and if you don't want me to,
I'll take the next plane back to Atlanta. And I will report in
Infinite Energy that you did not allow me to confirm your claims. He
relented. A few months later I found he was using my report in his
public relations packets!
Of course.
I called Chris Tinsley that night and gave him a blow by blow
description of this. I started off uncharacteristically upset and
fuming, but just about the time I got to the part where Reding tells
me to put away thermistor we were both laughing hysterically. I
laugh to think of it now. (As I said here before, I never hold a
grudge or stay angry for more than an hour, and let's face it, that
was hysterical thing for him to do. What was he thinking?)
I think you are right about yourself, Jed. Mostly! And maybe more
than that, maybe you are right about Hoffman. Maybe that's not a
grudge, maybe it's a sober assessment. On the other hand, other
people can behave one way and then change also. Whatever Hoffman did
in the past, and I do think he did some good, you seem to think
differently, but I'm more interested in where he is today, and I'd
like to find out. If any reader of this list knows how to reach Nate
Hoffman, or his family, I'd very much appreciate the information.
As I often said to Chris, and surely said again that evening, forget
about a cold fusion patent! If we only had the movie rights to this
circus we would make millions.
Write the book, you'll have the rights. You've already written a lot,
of course, but you could update it and fill in all those "crazy stories."
Now, if someone were to follow up on this, it might be of great
interest, but until and unless someone does, it is of no practical importance.
Patterson is dead and I doubt anyone could follow up.
What happened to the engineering documentation or lab notes from
CETI? There is no way that this whole affair is not a story of
tremendous historical interest. Suppose I build kits and sell them
and someone figures out the artifacts, there isn't any radiation, the
IR from SPAWAR is unexpected local oxygen/deuterium recombination,
the shock waves recorded in SPAWAR piezo detectors are from mini OD
explosions, there is no palladium melting underwater, it just looks
that way, etc. And similarly all the excess heat reports are
explainable by some unexpected effect that diddles with the
calorimetry, and something else explains the occasional meltdowns, etc.
It would still be a tremendous story, how so many scientists around
the world pursued this will-o-the-wisp, and managed to delude
themselves. But, in the other direction, how so many scientists
managed to delude themselves that so much work was "pathological
science" is probably an even more important story. Not to mention the
possible implications for our energy future. I'm not hanging my hat
on the energy generation peg, that is way too difficult a problem
unless someone gets lucky.
What I want to do is to, long-term, increase the number of people
positioned to get lucky, or at least to understand the science. I
believe that a very simple, cheap, reliable kit to demonstrate some
effects that we can call LENR, whether absolutely proven or not, will
facilitate that increase and that understanding.
Swartz has often commented:
Experimentally, the "kilowatts" would always disappear when
horizontal flow was used (which avoids the Bernard instability).
Read carefully, this is a prediction from a theory that the excess
heat shown in the CETI kilowatt experiment is an artifact due to vertical flow.
In plain English, this means that if you turn the cell on its side
the flow calorimetry will then show no excess heat, which is the
correct answer. The apparent excess heat in the vertical
configuration is an artifact. Cravens is, of course, familiar with
Swartz's hypothesis, since Swartz is trying to disprove his results.
He does not think the hypothesis is valid. Neither do I.
As far as I know, Swartz has never actually attempted to turn a flow
calorimeter cell sideways to see if the performance changes. Cravens
and I have actually tested this hypothesis by experiment. We tried
turning cells sideways. It makes no measurable difference.
Experiment trumps theory.
For various reasons unrelated to calorimetry the vertical
configuration is better.
Calorimetry is important, very important, when it's done by true
experts. To me, the details are boring. I'm sure they are very
important in the right context. But here, now? So, worst case,
Rothwell made some mistake 13 years ago, a mistake outside his expertise.
First of all, someone may have a mistake but it wasn't me. I doubt
that Patterson and Reding would have used my report as PR if they
thought it was a mistake, so evidently I correctly reported their claims.
Or at least your report was sufficiently supportive that they found
it made for good publicity.
Second, this is not outside my expertise. I have constructed and
calibrated several calorimeters working with Mallove, Tinsley,
Mizuno and various other people. I have spend weeks watching and
tweaking calorimeters and hundreds of hours back in Atlnata looking
at data and programming analyses of it with spreadsheets, Pacal and
other stone-age methods. I am pretty familiar with the ins and outs
of flow calorimetery and bomb calorimetry, at least at this level.
Not to suggest that I have 1% of the knowledge of someone like
McKubre or Rob Duncan, but I do know how those things work. And how
they don't work! I have seen many artifacts and problems, such as
the ones I describe briefly in my book, pages 17 and 19. Based on
this experience I am confident that there is no such thing as a ~1
kW artifact caused by holding the cell verticle. Frankly, that's
preposterous, and anyone with a calorimeter handy can disprove it in no time.
I'd think that would be the case. As to your expertise, and as to
what I write, always consider context. I was in this context pointing
out that your report in Infinite Energy, particularly given the
passage of time, was not critical to anything and so did not merit
the response coming from Swartz attacking it, even assuming that
Swartz was right about the calorimetry. Were you a "recognized
expert" in the field, that might be different. In no way was I
impeaching your knowledge of calorimetry, and I was aware that you
have done a great deal of work with it, supporting and assisting
researchers in the field. Having the knowledge and being a
"recognized expert" can be quite different.
Rothwell has repeatedly told me that calorimetry is extremely difficult.
Well, there is a lot that can go wrong with it, that's for sure. I
wrote two pages but I could write 20 or 30 at the drop of a hat, and
I have edited a lot of papers by Storms and others describing the
many things that go haywire with calorimeters. But as I said in the
book, calorimetry is actually the easiest part. Way easier than,
say, electrochemistry, mass spectroscopy or CR-39.
Easier in some ways, more difficult in others. CR-39 immersed in the
electrolyte is exposed to possible artifacts from the chemistry, but,
as you know, some experiments have the CR-39 outside and protected
from cell chemistry, and the only reason it's done inside is that
most of the probable alpha radiation won't penetrate the cell wall or
much of anything. However, detection of neutrons through proton
recoil or carbon-smashing generating alpha radiation, is another
matter. I'm planning on using the Galileo protocol, fairly straight,
though I may diddle with cathode/anode design specifics where I think
improvements can be made without compromising the function, and I'm
aware that *any* seemingly harmless change might quench the effect,
but I'm adding outside detection to search for neutrons. I'm using
LR-115 outside, partly because it is cheap but also because it seems
that it's less sensitive to etching variations because the sensitive
layer is so thin, and the red/clear results easier to see and count,
and I'm adding a boron-10 layer which should improve the detection of
low-energy neutrons, and not impede the detection of energetic
neutrons. The use of a stack will rule out other environmental
sources for any radiation detected in the middle of the stack, where
the boron-10 converter will be, and it may provide certain additional
information.
But, as a rank amateur, I'm sure there are many possible pitfalls
which I would overlook. And I'm also sure that these will be pointed
out to me before I'm committed to selling something based on an error.
As rule of thumb nothing about cold fusion is easy, and if you think
it is easy, you don't understand the problem yet. Actually, I would
say that about a lot of things, such as farming, programming,
raising children, . . . just about everything else I have ever done
has been difficult.
Yes, I'd accept that as a general principle. On the other hand, in
certain ways, it's easy to do anything, if it's difficult, we won't
succeed and we probably won't even try. Indeed, one of my sayings is,
if we want to change the world, it has to be easy.
Easy when you know how, it may be impossible when you don't. And
"easy" doesn't mean "immediate." It means that trying harder doesn't
necessarily improve the outcome, for something that intrinsically takes time.
