At 05:20 AM 2/1/2010, Horace Heffner wrote:
Abd, your analysis of the MeV/He-4 chart looks excellent to me. Nice
job! Too bad your quality of response could not have been
forthcoming from the authors. When I first saw the graph many
months ago I simply assumed there was a misplaced decimal point on
the 3.4 kJ number, the low number.
That would have been a gross error. However, the low helium measured
with that experiment was consistent; it was merely difficult to
disentangle the information; this wasn't a formal paper, wasn't
peer-reviewed and may not even have been edited by anyone. It is,
indeed, an affliction to which some work in this field has been subject.
Once you know that your work is likely to be rejected, why bother
with polishing the presentation?
This was not an MeV/He-4 chart, actually, and it was not, contrary to
Krivit's assertions, used to "prove" the 24 MeV correlation. What the
paper was asserting was that there was a correlation between excess
heat and He-4, and this was merely recent (in 2004) confirmation of it.
In order to present two kinds of data in the same chart, Violante et
al used an effective device; they assumed (and stated) a correlation
figure. So they were able to plot the energy results, which they also
stated as explicit numbers, on the same scale as the helium atom counts.
The correlation figure chosen was an obvious one, and useful. But
certainly that figure did not prove anything, beyond one thing: the
correlation is indeed meaningful, it is "consistent with" d-d fusion.
And if you are finding helium where there is a lot of deuterium,
deuterium is an obvious possible fuel.
The fact that the conversion factor of 24 MeV allows the data to be
plotting on the same scale is quite interesting!
I'd have done it differently. I think the use of a conversion factor
is interesting, but I'd have calculated the conversion factor using
one of two methods: best fit to data from all three experiments, or
best fit to data from the more accurate experiments (signal further
away from noise). So then I'd have reported the conversion factor,
which would be an experimental value for the Q factor, and then I
might have noted the recovery efficiency required to produce that
result from an original energy of 23.8 MeV/He-4.
But this was apparently a last-minute cobbing together of a report to
be presented to the DoE as a confirmation. In fact, the Miles data
from the early 1990s and after that, as presented by Storms, was more
convincing to me. But the Violante results do confirm the earlier results.
I assumed a very low number, if
real, would have some kind of explanation, because it disproves the
assertion of a constant ratio of energy to 4He.
That would only be true if both recovery ratio were constant (and
there were reasons to think otherwise, those were not identical
experiments, another complication), and the energy were much larger
in Laser 3. Basically, with that low energy, the expected helium
would only be a short way out of the background, and that, in fact,
is what the chart showed.
This is often a problem with slide presentations, a great deal of
explicit information is missing. The paper should have had it. But it
was, again, just a conference paper. Not a great deal of importance
was attached to it, as far as I can see. It simply adds a few more
general data points, confirming a general result that Q factor is
within 1 to 2 times the d-d fusion expectation. The "2," of course,
represents 50% recovery.
To be truly useful in *measuring* an exact Q factor, it would be
necessary to do long runs with many cells, and with serious efforts
to recover all the helium. Dissolve the palladium, for example. Do
what it takes to get all the helium out.
In addition, the helium abundance data was calculated, method not
shown or described, and it was (properly) as-measured data, so it
included background. This was not an experiment were steps were taken
to remove helium. But with each cell, background was separately
measured before the elecrolysis began. That data should have been
reported, and it should have been used in making the energy to helium
conversion, and it appears that only a single measure was used. If
the measurements were all identical, fine, but what was the
variation, the possible error in background measurement. Etc.
Getting the raw data would be important to thoroughly analyze this
work, and I can appreciate that Krivit wanted the raw data, but he
made so many errors and even hostile assumptions that the necessary
rapport was not there.
I see the report as a useful one that could be more useful if more
fully documented, but it also isn't crucial, there are too many
variables. To get good heat/helium correlation, one would need all
experiments to be identical in design.
But the experiment was not designed to determine the Q factor. It was
designed for other purposes involving laser stimulation, and the Holy
Grail has been improving the quantity of energy generated, which is
fine, but which is not the work that is needed in order to better
understand the phenomenon.
Determining the Q factor has no potential for making the researchers
rich, to put it bluntly. It will not make them famous, as would
finding the magic wand to wave to get high heat and reproducibility.
I'm not impunging the researchers (far from it! I'm grateful for all
the work they have put in when it was so long quite frustrating),
merely pointing out that experiments designed to determine accurately
physical constants isn't sexy, and won't attract funding,
necessarily, unless it is funded by a U.S. DoE *actually following
the recommendations of its own panels.*
Yes, I know, a fantasy, but, hey, we can dream, can't we?
This variability
problem is, however, typical of most all repeated cold fusion
experiments. Some experiments "work" and some don't.
It isn't really a problem here. The variability in excess heat is
actually useful, and Laser 3 is useful; after all, lower output
energy is accompanied by lower helium, thus demonstrating a
correlation, but the helium detected was only a little above
background, significantly above though it was, but not enough to
produce an accurate measure of Q factor. Apparently, as well, the
researchers believe that there is reason to suspect greater recovery
of helium from that experiment, so the low Q value must also be seen
with that factor in mind.
The experimental design simply wasn't adequate to answer the
questions that Krivit was imposing on the results. And Krivit didn't
understand the background helium issue.
I tried various assumptions in reading the chart. The caption said
that it showed the increase in helium. And it did: the helium data
points were all above background. What was confusing, however, was
that the values plotting were not values for "increase," they were
simply the measured values that *showed* the increase.
Then there came the problem of the green dots. Why were they placed
where they were? Obviously, the authors intended them to be
meaningful, so they must have attempted to present the data
meaningfully. But they failed to state explicitly how they did it. A
few words would have fixed this, and, I'm pretty sure, they would
have responded to sympathetic questions, and probably still will.
But I did more or less figure out what they did to place the green dots:
They took the energy data, produced, I assume, by integrating
calorimetry data on excess power, and converted it to expected helium
at 24 MeV/He-4. Then they added background. It appears that they used
a background figure of 5.5 x 10^15 atoms.
And this points out that, probably, the data in the helium chart is
likely not as-measured data, i.e, the raw instrumental figures from
the mass spectrometer, because they intend the plots to be an
estimate of *total available helium," not just what was measured in
the spectrometer. Again, what estimates were used and how was the
plotted data calculated? Now, if I'm wrong and I've missed something
about their process, and it wasn't just sampling, but they ran the
entire volume of gas from the cell, including evaporating all the
liquid, maybe those were absolute measurements. But I doubt it.
Rather, they took samples and extrapolated from the sample size to
the total cell. Lots of room for error there!
They did show error bars, which, for competent researchers, as I
assume they are, would include those sources of error.
The last mystery was the apparent imprecision of the plots. And
Violante acknowledged that the plot for Laser 3 was poorly placed....
It was simply a bit of sloppiness, not particularly blameworthy in
something slapped together quickly for presentation on a fixed panel
date. And then, my guess, a realistic appraisal of the experiment was
that, given everything else of higher importance, it wasn't worth
going back and cleaning it up, there was nothing *drastically* wrong there.
But Krivit turned this molehill into a mountain of projected
obstinacy. The real story here is pretty boring, in the long run.
"Experiment confirms what has been known for a decade, helium and
heat are correlated." Three more data points, basically. But without
commensurable helium retention (which pretty much requires serious
efforts to recover it all), the usefulness is limited to generating
approximations, and I consider Storms' figure to be reasonable: 25 +/- 5 MeV.
Krivit and Larsen make a huge issue out of retention and the supposed
use of this data to "prove" d-d fusion, which actually isn't
happening. Larsen doesn't point out that his own theories seem to
predict a much lower Q factor than the 30-31 MeV Larsen seems to
think is correct from the SRI work. That opinion of the SRI figures
is based on an assumption of 100% collection, which seems highly
unlikely to me.
Larsen does raise some cogent issues, but then misses other important
ones. He disputes, as an example, serious retention based on alpha
penetration by assuming very low alpha energies as his theories
predict. But alpha energies might be as high as 23.8 MeV, under some
conditions. With Takahashi's theory, the energy would range from
something like what Larsen asserts from Be-8 decay, about 90 keV, to
23.8, depending on how long the excited Be-8 nucleus sticks around
before fissioning. While it is intact, the excited nucleus, according
to Takahashi, will lose energy to the lattice through photo emission,
in a complex series of transitions.
The proof would be in the pudding, eh? Take the pudding, dissolve it
or otherwise drive all the helium out of it, and measure it. If the
retention theory is correct, there should be anomalous helium in the
palladium bulk as well as in the cell gas and liquid. The SRI workers
attempted to recover helium by flushing with deuterium gas, but
Larsen points out that this might have generated additional helium
from additional reactions, and the SRI paper comments that
calorimetry was impossible at that point because of large
fluctuations in applied power.
It's a reasonable objection, indeed. But one that should be possible
to answer experimentally. Get rid of the lattice! Don't just try to
flush the helium out, that's doomed, for the most part, it would only
recover helium very close to the surface or cracks leading to the surface.
Easy for me to say, eh? Actually getting the funding and doing the
work is entirely another matter, and one of my objections to Krivit's
rant is that he says things like the researchers "didn't bother" to
check for other possible reaction products.
Give them enough money and time, I'm sure they would!
Until the
experiments can be better controlled I think it will not be possible
for anyone to credibly assert a fixed excess energy to 4He atom ratio
exists.
That's absolutely correct. There is enough data to come up with a
ballpark estimate, that's all.
Also, when first I looked at the chart I immediately
assumed the background line was there merely to show that the He
counts were above background, not that background was *included* in
the counts, which makes the chart essentially meaningless for the
supposed purpose of showing a constant energy/4He *ratio*.
Which, of course, was not its purpose. In particular, they did not
find that! They showed a rough correlation, though.
Not only
does it obscure the ratios, it shows the total counts to be close to
the background counts, and thus with large error bars.
Actually, if they are presenting the raw data (but extrapolated to
the whole volume), the error bars would be the same. The plot was
quite reasonable and the only problem was that they did not
explicitly state what it was! And, in fact, the caption was slightly
misleading, it was susceptible to two different interpretations.
When two
nearly equal counts are subtracted the difference is a smaller number
but the standard deviation becomes larger, so the deviation
proportion becomes very large.
The data that is truly close to background is the data from Laser 3,
where only 3.4 kJ excess heat was found. Given that this is not much
more than a tenth that found in the other two experiments, this is
almost a control. However, there was excess heat, and it would
produce an expectation for new helium at 24 MeV of 0.088E16 atoms.
The background is 0.55E16 atoms. The actual measurement was 0.1E16,
but, remember, this isn't an "actual measurement," it's a
calculation. What was plotted was 0.68 - 0.79, with the central
triangle at about 0.74. This is above background, significantly, but
barely. The accuracy of any determination of Q value from this is
going to be pretty low. For the other data points, it's much better.
If I obtained similar data that
contradicted my own hypothesis and I were forced by my boss to gloss
it over as much as possible I would have done the chart just as the
chart was done - with the background counts included so as to make
the ratios look more constant, and then not publish the actual
numbers.
The did publish the actual numbers, but not in an unambiguous way.
The purpose of the presentation prepared from the research was not to
show a constant Q factor, but to show that results did correlate. If
the goal were accuracy of estimation of Q factor, the data would have
been presented or analyzed differently. In fact what I see here is
three experiments, with two of them generating substantial heat. And
those experiments lead to an estimated Q factor, neglecting
retention, of 45 MeV (Laser 2) and 35 MeV (Laser 3). This would
correspond to retention factors of 47% and 35%, which is quite in
line with other work.
Retention can be expected to vary greatly with the degree to which
the palladium matrix is damaged by the process. If helium is trapped
by emission toward the bulk of the metal, but the metal is then
mangled, cracked, melted, etc., as does apparently happen, that
helium would be released if the damage reaches the involved depth.
And not if it does not.
The apparent stonewalling for months by the authors just
makes the situation look all the worse. OTOH, we haven't yet heard
the other side of the story.
But we have, in fact. Read what Violante wrote to Krivit. Krivit has
not reported the early communications from Violante, but simply
claims that they were "ambiguous and conflicting." But in what he
does then report, Violante did provide the data Krivit requested, but
Krivit did not recognize it as such and asked again. Violante, by
this time, it's easy to speculate, was burning out, "What does this
guy want?" He restated the helium data, probably off the top of his
head, and Krivit completely misunderstood, and went off, basically,
on the difference between 0.5E16 and 5E15.
Krivit has responded to my letter to the editor, you can see it at
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/blog/?feed=rss2&p=113. He acknowledges
the error, but dismisses it as unimportant, neglecting completely
that he made a very public big deal out of it, as I quoted in my full
mail to him. He edited the mail down to remove all that. I'll append
a copy here of the original mail. What he did publish was accurate,
though, he simply left out what would be seen as more critical of his response.
Given what I've come to expect from Krivit, unfortunately -- and I'm
finding that confirmed in private correspondence with other
researchers who are not, apparently, grinding some axe -- I would
draw no conclusions that impeach Violante for "stonewalling."
Was the paper sloppy? Sure. It was an effing *conference paper,* a
brief presentation of research, not a carefully edited and perfected
presentation for a peer-reviewed journal! Was the research sloppy? I
don't think so, I've seen no sign of that.
As to the rest of the NET story I just simply haven't been able to
follow it carefully.
I understand. Personally, however, I was hit by the personal polemic
in the recent publication by NET, so I decided to look into it. Can of worms.
It has long seemed to me, the folks asserting
fixed E/4He ratios (a) believe it and (b) are credible scientists,
but they (c) had formed strong personal opinions that the published
data could not yet strongly support.
What people may do informally, I'm not sure. But I haven't seen
formal assertion that the true ratio is known, plus there are factors
that Mr. Heffner brings up that, of course, apply. Within limits.
A fixed energy/4He ratio is a
logical hypothesis in some cases, but there is not a wealth of
consistent and quality data to support the conclusion.
There is a wealth of data to propose an estimate of "normal"
heat/helium, representing the bulk of reaction results in some
experiments, and that estimate is quite what has *actually* been
claimed: it's "consistent" with a d-d fusion hypothesis. So far.
Impeach the retention variability, you would indeed blow it to
pieces. But that hasn't been done, as far as I can see.
In fact the
existence of numerous *heavy element transmutation reports*
contradicts the possibility of a fixed energy/4He ratio in at least
those cases, unless such heavy nuclear reactions are assumed to occur
with absolutely *no* energy production.
Not true. All that has to happen is that the additional reactions are
relatively rare. From the data I've seen, they are. The *bulk* of the
reaction, as an operating hypothesis, takes in deuterium as fuel and
generates helium as ash, with very little energy going elsewhere. But
there are outliers, different experimental approaches, which may,
indeed, produce different results because of some shift in the
predominance of reactions.
I find it fascinating that Larsen proposes a reaction with lithium
that would ultimately produce Be-8 and thus alphas, which he
characterizes as expected to have 90 keV. He then suggests further
reactions with neutron absorption by the helium.
The fly in this ointment? There are a series of reactions taking
place in an environment where each reaction must be rare. So somehow
we manage to generate a tiny amount of helium, and then, somehow,
this helium finds one of what must be rare "low-momentum" neutrons,
to produce further reactions? I see almost no attention paid to
*quantitative* issues in what I've been reading from Larsen. He
proposes long series of reactions, with no estimate of reaction rate
under reasonable circumstances. If the neutron absorption that he
proposes were common enough to allow whole series of reactions to
take place, surely we'd see other effects, and plenty of them!
Rather, I strongly suspect, the primary reaction is not a compound
one. It is something that takes place under a very rare condition,
and then secondary reactions happen at normal rates for those
specific reactions. As an example, Process X is producing hot nuclear
products, such as, perhaps rarely, hot tritons. These hot tritons
would then, with reasonable cross-section, find a deuterium nucleus,
very common in that environment, and fuse with it, producing the
energetic neutrons that SPAWAR has reported. Very small quantities.
Has nothing to do with Q factor, but only with a more complete
understanding of the various phenomena that can occur once there are
nuclear reactions taking place in the solid state.
Instead of debating whether there is a fixed (23.8 MeV)/4He ratio,
i.e. from:
D(D,gamma)He4 23.8 MeV
it seems to me far more useful to note what is *not* observed in many
experiments, namely 3.27-4.03 MeV energies and corresponding
particles that support the common fusion reactions:
D(D,p)T 4.03 MeV
D(D,n)He3 3.27 MeV
Sure. That practically goes without saying. Basically, I don't know
anyone that is claiming that what is happening in the cells is
ordinary deuterium fusion. There *must* be something radically
different about it, and it isn't that some local conditions are
producing, say, fractofusion. I.e., local potentials accelerating
deuterons to fusion energies. If that were what is going on, we'd
have neutron emissions and the "dead graduate student effect," in
order to explain the amount of heat being generated. Again, this
isn't bubble fusion, same problem.
If it's d-d fusion (which I highly doubt as the *pathway*), then
something is very different, something is suppressing the normal
branching. Some kind of binding of the fusing nuclei with the entire
lattice? Most likely, though, the reaction isn't just two deuterons
fusing, even with some kind of catalysis (i.e., what amounts to
electron catalysis, for example). Rather, what most interests me is
4d fusion, and it takes place, according to Takahashi's theory, under
conditions where the symmetry is great. What is formed, in one feel
swoop, is a single, symmetric (zero momentum) Be-8 nucleus. This
explains *completely* the lack of neutrons, and apparently my
understanding that it would produce two 24 MeV alpha particles was an
incorrect understanding. It would produce alphas at energies in the
range of 90 keV or so (from the ground state of the nucleus) to the
full 23.8 MeV (from the fully excited state), depending on the
lifetime of the particular nucleus and how much energy it had dumped
as photons.
Now, is that deuterium fusion? It isn't d-di fusion, for sure! But it
would indeed be fusion of deuterium, though probably of deuterium
*molecules*, i.e., the electrons are indeed there and affect the
process. And the product would be the same as with d-d fusion, and
the Q factor would be the same, because for heat generation, it
doesn't matter if the energy is emitted directly by non-penetrating
photons or ends up as energetic alpha particles which lose their
energy routinely to the solid or liquid environment.
So, obviously, I have a Favorite Theory. But. I certainly cannot say
that it has been proven!
Given that high energy protons and neutrons are not observed in
accordance with the excess heat, and given that the energy observed
in some experiments greatly *exceeds* (4.03) MeV/4He, we can see that
conventional fusion is totally out of the question to explain those
experiments.
Right. It is not d-d fusion, unless there is some mechanism to
suppress normal branching, which seems pretty flimsy to me.
Something wonderfully useful is happening, provided it
can be harnessed. This is the important information. That there
may be bungling of one kind or another, and emotional wrangling over
theories with high emotional (and in some cases financial)
investments, holds little interest for me.
The human factors are important, because application of the
"important information" must be done by people, and if they are
fighting with each other instead of cooperating, much less can get done.
Overall, I'm quite interested in the flaws in scientific process that
led to the premature rejection of cold fusion. How is it that a
completely inadequate "refutation" of the theories managed to gain
serious ascendancy for so long?
I have no problem with skepticism, indeed, skepticism is utterly
necessary. The problems come when people are skeptical about
*everyone else,* but miss being skepticasl with their *own ideas.* Or
what they want to be true.
Hence the term "pseudoskepticism," because, underneath it, is
something that is not skepticism, it is the opposite, attachment to
ideas without adequate skepticism.
As with the global warming cover-up email flap - the behavior of a
hand full of individuals does not change the way the universe works.
There is an objective physical reality which is above opinion and
independent of human existence. It would be preferable that everyone
in the field worked harmoniously toward understanding this reality,
and that all human foibles could be set aside. However, if I
expected this to happen I would be even more of a crank than I am.
Yeah, you'd be like me.
Except there is a method to my madness. I don't expect people to be
different, not immediately. But provided with adequate structure,
they might be quite different. And what that structure would look
like is beyond the scope of this mail, but suffice it to say, this
has been my major effort for the last thirty years, and I consider
that, given the dimensions of the problem, I've been quite successful.
Controversy and especially reasoned debate is good and necessary.
Debate is indeed a good thing, but personally I don't have time for
extended debate of any kind. I'm just throwing in my 2 cents worth
here and am leaving it at that. I haven't had time to even read and
check out what is being said in various cases.
Your privilege, for sure, and even sane and proper. We have to make
choices about where we spend our time.
But if nobody looks at this stuff, well, it propagates....
[...]
However, we don't need more polemic that extrapolates from real or
merely perceived errors into reprehensibility and blame.
If evidence becomes conclusive that there is fraud (illegal) or
deliberate misrepresentation, sure, it's the duty of a journalist
to bring it into the light of public examination.
While I agree any assertions of fraud are unfortunate, the other side
of the coin is that over a period of more than a year, including the
period when Violante and Krivit were in Rome together, you would
think rational people could work out in short order the mysteries of
this seemingly simple chart.
I no longer see Krivit as rational. Too many anomalies. I'd love to
be wrong! It's damned inconvenient that a major gatekeeper is on a
binge, but ... it happens.
(And I've seen another side of Krivit, he does sometimes reverse his
opinions, at least temporarily. People are complicated, eh?)
[...]
Meanwhile, since Krivit has written about alleged problems with the
heat/helium work, following generally the same line of approach as
Larsen, I'd like to know what Widom-Larsen theory predicts as to
heat/helium relationship. I'm not finding it easy to find.
Personally I would like to hear why the lack of neutron activation in
most all experiments doesn't completely eliminate the WL theory.
I don't see any significant attempt to popularize and explain WL
theory, nor to respond to criticism like this.
Real progress is not made in proving a theory until extensive efforts
have been made to disprove it. Because a few experiments consistent
with a theory exist does not prove a theory.
That's quite correct. It's even correct that explanation of almost
all experimental results don't prove a theory, though as accuracy of
prediction increases, this becomes less true.
But what is usually considered definitive (temporarily! -- lest we
forget) is predictive power. What does a theory predict that is not
already known? Or will it make accurate predictions when only
approximate data is known?
In the case of W-L
theory it seems to me the key experiments to do would be those which
are focused on and carefully look for neutron activation.
Sure. Or any other one of the many predictions which it seems could
be derived from the theory. Where is that experimental work?
To save time I'll now just repeat what I have said on all this earlier.
Neutrons in the lattice can not be an explanation for the number of
events required to produce even modest excess heat. Neutrons produce
neutron activation, i.e. make some nuclei radioactive.
I'd think so, too!
I think the energy deficit which occurs in CF reactions, necessary to
depress some He* fission channels, and the dissipation of the
reaction enthalpy via multiple low energy gammas, can only occur via
a free electron in the nuclear mix *at the moment of fusion*.
In TSC fusion, there are four electrons involved. At the moment of
fusion. The TSC would not occur with just deuterium nuclei, if I
understand it correctly.
[...]
This is not to deny your particular theories.... and, of course,
there is a connection, the presence of electrons. In your theory, I
assume, some particular configuration of deterium, some kind of
confinement, would allow the electron involvement to shield the
barrier. But I still suspect, strongly, that if d-d fusion took place
under those conditions, it would be more like muon-catalyzed fusion,
and we'd see similar branching ratio.
But what if the required confinement was one with two deuterium
molecules in confinement? They would naturally tend to form a
tetrahedral pattern with the deuterons, because of the efficient
packing in a cubic lattice. Could it be, Hugh, that your theory is
really another form of TSC theory, differently stated?
But I don't understand your work adequately to say more than this,
nor, indeed, am I competent to judge TSC theory, the math is way beyond me.
