At 09:56 PM 1/30/2010, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
> I think Krivit is confused on this.
I had already kind of gotten that impression from reading the blog.
Krivit's a reporter, right? Not a physicist? And if I read his blog
right, he's decided Storms, McKubre, and Hagelstein are wrong,
brainwashed, confused, and/or intentionally misleading everyone
regarding the results of experiments in the field. And the opening
paragraphs of the blog, in which Krivit says NET has "discovered"
"questionable actions" of a "subgroup" which "have misled" "the
scientific community" regarding the mechanism of cold fusion, flirt with
the sort of conspiracy theory I've come to associate with SR hating
crackpots who think physicists are all brainwashed fools.
Dunno, maybe I'm misjudging the no doubt highly expert Mr. Krivit but
this is starting to sound a little like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Or maybe I misunderstood his point.
It gets worse, in his detailed examination of the report presented to
the 2004 DoE panel by Violante (or on behalf of Violante by
McKubre?). In it, because Violante had reported a figure for *total
helium* (including background) of, for one experiment, 1.05 x 10^16
atoms, which after subtracting background of 0.55 x 10^16, becomes
0.5 x 10^16, but now in correspondence with Krivit, Violante says
that he found 5 x 10^15, and Krivit then blasts him for failing to
"correct" his prior report after so many years, ranting about how it
is a *whole order of magnitude* off.
Uh, decimal point, Steve? 0.5 x 10^16 is 5 x 10^15.
I think I've suggested before that Steve needs an editor. He's a
reporter, and he's not restrained, he went off on the whole
Fleischmann/Dardik thing (and repeated what is basically irrelevant
gossip about Dardik and wild assumptions about Fleischmann's health
and response to treatment), I've seen him blow up and exaggerate this
whole thing about the name "fusion," as if neutron reactions aren't
*substantially* fusion, and he's been on a bug for a while about what
he perceives as claims about "confirmation" of 24 MeV as the Q value
for reactions, when anyone who knows the field knows that
1. What's seen is excess helium generally in the range of 25 or so
MeV to under 48 MeV or so, or within that range when errors and
outliers are considered, which is claimed to be *consistent with* the
23.8 MeV value for d-d fusion, not a *proof* that this is the reaction.
2. Most people agree that whatever is going on is not simple d-d
fusion, but there are lots of theories.
3. If helium is being produced, what from? If from deuterium, then
23.8 MeV is going to be the figure, as a starting point, though it
could vary from that for lots of reasons (i.e., some possible
secondary reactions, as an example, could absorb some energy or
produce some more). What's important, what Krivit was told
originally, was that this is a confirmation of nuclear reactions,
that helium is produced at all. But helium is tricky and difficult to
measure, and the amounts measured are not far from background, so
it's easy to impeach helium results alone. Likewise heat
measurements, rightly or wrongly, have been considered questionable.
But heat/helium correlation? That's insanely difficult to impeach,
once it's understood.
But the present issue of New Energy Times goes way beyond anything
I've seen in the blatant bias of the attack on the majority of
workers in the field. The language is highly offensive, and Krivit
doesn't seem to have any consciousness that he could be screwing up,
that he doesn't understand the issues.
It's sad, really. Maybe in the long run some good will come out of
it. Krivit makes so many bloopers in this issue that it might raise
his consciousness a bit. And we'd all benefit from that.
What's the point? That "23.8 MeV" has not been proven? But I don't
know anyone who has claimed that it has been proven, nor is anyone
claiming that the Q values calculated from these measurements proves
that the reaction is d-d fusion, but Krivit seems to think that
everyone is claiming this. What do we call that kind of thinking?
The Q values are "consistent with" d-d fusion, and Storms points out,
quite accurately, that the same results (he gives it as 25 +/- 5 MeV)
could be consistent with other reactions, such as, quite notably, 4 d
-> Be-8 -> 2 He-4 + 47.6 MeV, or others. And, yes, "consistent with"
requires some helium retention, though it does seem that the
experiments with more effort to recover all the helium did approach
24 MeV more closely.
And if W-L neutrons end up catalyzing deuterium -> helium reactions,
we'd get the same numbers. If they were much different, there would
have to be significant other reaction products different from helium;
there are indeed other reaction products, but in sufficient quantity
in the palladium system to much affect this value?
Krivit seems to think that he has conclusively refuted the "helium
retention theory" and refers to it derisively, but his alleged
refutation is based on a complete misunderstanding of what is
theorized, it seems he is thinking of the cathode soaking up helium.
Nope. Helium is not soluble in palladium. Krivit cites very old
papers showing this, and he's beating a dead horse. Nobody thinks
helium is soluble in palladium; but I think that McKubre or somebody
mentioned helium in some way, maybe using the word "dissolved" as a
misnomer. What was meant was "trapped." To get inside the metal, the
helium had to either be generated there or deposited there as
radiation (which could only penetrate a short distance, but enough to
be trapped).
