Lawrence de Bivort wrote:
I understand that you are saying that heat, above all else, is the required product, and that any other products are of secondary importance when it comes to asserting that the effect has been produced.
Not importance, exactly. Nature makes no distinction about importance. What Fleischmann says is that the heat is "principal" meaning it is the first thing you see, and it is the easiest signal to detect with the instruments we have at our disposal today. (That may change, for example, with something like the bubble detector Harry Veeder mentioned.)
The main thing is, until you are sure there is heat, you have no way to know there is a reaction going on or not. The effect is hard to reproduce, after all, and it may not be working, unless you happen to be an expert at the NRL with a microcalorimeter who does it hundreds of times in a row.
Looking for neutrons when you do even know if there is a reaction going on is like being blindfolded and flailing away at a piñata when you do not know whether any piñata is hanging up there! You could spend years looking for neutrons when there is nothing going on inside the cell, and nothing to look for. That's a waste of time. A colossal waste of time! Thousands of man hours were wasted in 1989 and the field was brought into disrepute because people looked for neutrons when there was no reaction and nothing to look for. The people who did that were upset and "felt they had been had" as Ed put in his book. Naturally they felt that way. However, while they were doing that, unbeknownst to them, Martin Fleischmann was at the U.S. Congress and at the NSF meeting telling everyone who would listen that "heat is the principle signature!" meaning you should look for heat first. They did not get the message, and perhaps they would not have believed it even if they had. It is regrettable.
Separately, you are saying that experimental design tends to search for one product heat, or nuclear emissions, or flashes, or noise but that if heat has not been verified any other product leaves one uncertain as to whether the effect was produced to begin with.
Heat is the only reliable indication in my opinion, and Fleischmann's. These other products seem to come and go, and are harder to measure. Unfortunately, an experiment has to be optimized to measure one product or another. It is hard to imagine the SPAWAR experiment working inside a good calorimeter. They have never tried to put the neutron experiment in a calorimeter as far as I know. They did many previous experiments with codeposition and they successfully detected heat with various methods.
You have to polish your technique first, learn to produce heat reliably, and then go on to neutron detection. And you have to hope that the round 2 experiments are still working.
Is this a fair summation? Is it generally accepted within the cf community?
It is not accepted widely enough to suit Fleischmann -- or me. But researchers do whatever they feel is best. You might as well try to herd cats as give them suggestions.
On a practical level, as I understand it, heat is likely to be the useful product, in any case,
That is true. But as Ed Storms and many others have pointed out -- correctly, I am sure -- particles may well hold the key to understanding the reaction. The thing is, what do you do when there are no particles? How do you reset and start the search over again? You look for heat!
- Jed
