At 02:30 PM 10/29/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
As to calorimetry, it's one thing to accurately measure total
excess heat, it's another to identify heat itself at the cathode.
The cathode is the only conceivable source of excess heat in these
systems. This has been verified by many different methods, such as
observing boiling water in transparent cells undergoing heat after
death. No other surface in the cell is hot. It is also verified by
removing everything from the system except the saturated deuteride,
in the gas loading systems.
I have no doubt about this, personally. What I meant by my comment
was that measuring elevated temperature of a cathode is an
*indicator* of excess heat. But the possibility would remain that
some condition in the electrolyte close to the cathode raises the
resistance there, so the Joule heat would be dissipated there, thus
making the cathode appear hotter. But I think it unlikely. Shanahan
might disagree. But, remember, my goal is not to prove that cold
fusion is real, but to demonstrate it and detect its signatures. A
hot cathode is one.
It's crucial to develop other signatures of NAE, one is not enough
for rapid development in this field. It doesn't matter greatly if
the other signatures "prove" nuclear activity. It does matter if
they are strongly associated with NAE. That's why I'm looking for
sound, because SPAWAR has reported anomalous shock waves detected
by a piezo detector made into a codep cathode.
Yes, an NAE is essential. If you do not have one then you are
wasting your time. However you do not need to develop a signature
for it. Nature has already shown us the best possible signature.
Please assume the Lotus Position and chant Martin Fleischmann's dictum:
Heat is the principal signature of the reaction
Heat is the principal signature of the reaction
Heat is the principal signature of the reaction
Heat is the principal signature of the reaction
Heat is the principal signature of the reaction
Got that? Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.
Absolutely. Heat is a signature, a crucial one. So how do we know we
have excess heat? Calorimetry? Fine. Problem for my purposes is that
is cumbersome. I can estimate heat evolution by methods which will
not satisfy critics but which will tell me, quite likely, that NAE is
operating. Hot cathode! Even a very small elevation of temperature of
the cathode could be diagnostic, because if the heat is being
generated in the electrolyte, the cathode would be, if anything,
cooler, or at the electrolyte temperature under stable conditions.
Look for it. If you find excess heat, you have a cold fusion
reaction. If you do not find it, you have no reaction or perhaps
your calorimetry is not sensitive enough. Do not look for other
signatures until you have confirmed the principal signature.
More accurately, Jed, I would not take a lack of observed excess heat
as proof of no NAE, because the level of NAE may be below detection
by the method used, or may be marginal. Radiation is also a probable
signature. I suspect there are many signatures, some more difficult
to detect than others, and some requiring post-analysis, ordinarily,
not accessible in real time. I'm most interested in real-time
signatures. However, as with excess heat, the lack of other
particular signatures is no proof of no NAE, either. For example,
there may be LENRs which produce no radiation at all, or radiation
that is especially difficult to detect.
One of the biggest mistakes made in the early research, and it may
have been made by Earthtech recently, is to assume that an experiment
is replicating what happened in another lab, which it hasn't. So
finding no radiation or other products, by MIT, as a huge example,
meant practically nothing. All they showed, in fact, was that they
did not manage to cause the effect. My eight-year old daughter
understood that immediately. If it's true that Earthtech did not
create NAE, I'd really want to know why, because what they did was
*close* to the Galileo protocol.
Because they used a silver cathode, it's quite possible that they did
get radiation, but it was masked by major chemical damage, which
could have had to do with the specific CR-39 they used, its age, or
other factors. Their report, though quite detailed, was also missing
critical information. They'd be the best ones to track down the
problem, but they seem to have dropped the ball. Or did they continue
with further work?
If my first cell doesn't work, i.e., I don't see a significant
anomaly, I'm not going to announce that the Galileo protocol doesn't
work, rather I'm going to take whatever steps it takes to find out
why. I know how I'd proceed. But I don't expect it to fail to
demonstrate radiation, and I'm hoping for other signatures to be
revealed, and this would then guide the further development of the kit.
With the proper equipment, such as a micro calorimeter, you can
measure very low levels of heat. Robert Duncan told me that decades
ago he was measuring pico-Watts with confidence.
I'm not surprised. Sometimes surprisingly sensitive measurements can
be made by amateurs, as well. Better is not a synonym for "more
expensive." However, of course, quality is nevertheless positively
correlated with cost.
Of course such instruments and experiments are expensive and
difficult. However one good professional expensive experiment is
worth 1000 amateur ones, in my opinion.
Surely that depends on how well the professional and amateur
experiments are done! You'd be right, in general, i.e., on average.
The "expensive professional route," though, isn't available to me at
this point. If I fall into some serious money, it would be, I could
hire experts and buy the best equipment. Short of that, which I don't
expect to happen, I'll have to do with what I have, both in terms of
equipment and expertise. Were it not for my habit of asking for help
and listening to the responses, it would be hopeless. Consider me,
Jed, a lab assistant for a kind of community consciousness that will
be voiced through all the people who comment, experts and others. But
I'm also independent, I'm charged with making my own decisions
according to the best judgment I can muster. It's my money I'm
spending at this point, though I've been offered some kind of
donation or loan, I'll see what comes in the mail!
People looking for neutrons from the code that the system should
first confirmed there is excess heat from it using the best
calorimeter they can get their hands on, and then they should use
the best electronic neutron detection system they can get. If you
cannot afford electronic gadgets you are probably coming to this
field 19 years too late to make a useful contribution. Amateur
experiments have caused more harm than good, except for the ones
conducted by high school kids at Portland State University.
Maybe I'll be able to create some more exceptions for you to smoke,
Jed. As to neutrons, absolutely, if I find no neutrons and no heat,
it's obvious what happened. But if I find neutrons and no heat, that
is not a useless result. Neutrons don't just crop up because of
wishful thinking, (unless you are Pons and Fleischmann and it's 1989,
and you haven't had time to check it all out!)
Regarding the use of radioactive isotopes for any purpose other than
the intended one, my advice is to take Horace Heffner's advice to
take someone else's advice. As Horace says there are "federal,
state, and local laws and regulations with regards to sale,
transport, disposal and specific use or planned use by isotope kind
and quantity."
Well, regulations must be public or they aren't regulations, they are
secret directives for the secret police....
There are laws rules and regulations about just about everything
these days including how to spray bugs in your kitchen. That is the
kind of high-tech world we live in. Perhaps it is a good thing or
perhaps not, but that is how things are. When I see how stupid
people are, and I think about all the foolish, hazardous and
destructive things we used to do, such as smoke cigarettes and drive
without seatbelts, I sympathize with the lawmakers trying to
legislate away all of life's risks. But I think their goal is
unattainable in their methods may actually increase risk. As I noted
here previously, I have encountered 12-year-old children who have
never used a kitchen knife to cut a watermelon because their parents
and society are so protective. This does not make them safer in the long run.
Yeah, I knew a little girl who was drastically overprotected by her
father, and the mother, who had done a much better job with her
earlier children, was afraid to confront him. The result? Very, very
protected, ran away from home at 15, got involved with drug addicts,
lived very dangerously for a few years. She did recover from that,
but it could have turned out otherwise. Kids should be protected,
yes, but if that prevents them from learning how to deal with danger,
it can have the opposite effect.
So, alright already, I'll do some searching. Worse comes to worse, I
don't calibrate the radiation detectors. Not the end of the world.
I'm really concerned about comparing experiments with controls, and
calibration with LR-115 is not as important, I suspect. Controls are
important, controls that come from the same original sheet and thus
have the same history. And no finding is secure unless repeated,
preferably many times.
You know what convinced me about cold fusion, Jed, it was the
consistency of excess heat vs helium measured. Even low reliability
of creating NAE had no effect on that; in fact, the "failures" became
excellent controls, because they were as similar to the other
experiments as the experimenters could make them. So the only
variables were of unknown cause (at first, anyway, and some factors
remain unknown or a matter of speculation). But that heat and helium
were correlated, and quantitatively in the right range for fusion,
*that* basically made the reality of the effect, and its nuclear
nature, irrefutable, at least by any reasonable explanation I could
come up with, and I tried. And I haven't seen one. The Wikipediots
basically got around that by ignoring it and leaning instead of the
erroneous 2004 reporting by the DoE bureaucrat of what was in the
Hagelstein paper. They called my simple pointing out of the
discrepancy between the written summary and what was in the actual
report "Original Research," since nobody else ever reported that, of
it has been reported (I haven't seen it, actually), it wasn't in
"reliable source."
That was a violation of real Wikipedia guidelines, which don't
prohibit that kind of "original research," i.e., pointing out what is
obvious and verifiable by anyone.... glad I escaped that asylum....
