At 03:10 PM 3/24/2010, Michel Jullian wrote:
Fits with your 159 IQ.
Someone else is paying attention, I like that.
159 is not well enough established to be a reliable figure, it's
based on one test in high school. There are other signs, though,
judge for yourself. Be careful. It is very, very difficult to judge.
Consider the problem of designing a test for very high IQ, which that
is. Who makes up the questions?
Back on topic, I understand why you are mad at Steve krivit for
pushing his POV that the heat/helium = 24 MeV/He is bogus, that's
because that correlation is what made you believe CF might well be
real. You don't want to doubt again.
The technical term for this argument is horseshit.
I'm very concerned about Steve because of the impact his "pushing his
POV" is having on the politics, and because I have an instinctive
reaction to horseshit presented to impeach the integrity of people,
as Steve has repeatedly done.
I came to "believe" -- always a provisional term for me -- that CF is
real because of heat/helium correlation, which isn't actually
challenged by Steve. It just looks like he's challenging it, and that
sloppiness is part of the problem. Take a look at what Steve thinks
is the real correlation range, and you'll see it. He still claims
that heat and helium are correlated.
The importance of this isn't dependent on the exact value, and I
don't consider the exact value well-established. What I see from the
scientists involved is mostly quite cautious -- and therefore
accurate -- statements.
The heat/helium ratio found through experiment (10 groups is what was
said at the press conference) is "consistent with" the value expected
for deuterium fusion.
No matter what the mechanism is, whether it's little teeny hot fusion
reactors, operated by super-intelligent bacteria (Vyosotski doesn't
know the half of it!) who happen to find palladium really comfortable
as a home, and with super shielding that they also fabricated to
absorb, immediately, all the radiation (how about an ultradense form
of palladium that they manage to push into place temporarily), that
smash deuterium together (hot fusion), or it's neutron absorption, or
it's cluster fusion (which some in the field now think the most
likely explanation), possibly in Bose-Einstein Condensates, or
something entirely different, the energy will be, except for what
ends up with other products instead of helium, 24 MeV/He-4. The laws
of thermodynamics require that.
If the value turns out to be 48 MeV instead of 24, I'm not offended
at all. But I'll wonder what other products there are in sufficient
quantities to explain that. In fact, if it's lower than 24, I'm not
offended, it would simply indicate other reactions besides those
which turn deuterium into helium are involved. There is no law that
says every reaction in a CF cell must be one particular form. (And
it's highly unlikely that there are *no* other reactions at all, but
it's looking like they are relatively rare, by comparison.)
Heat/helium correlation, no heat, no helium, turns CF "failures" into
control experiments, if helium is measured. If the correlation is
strong, then common mechanism or common cause must be strongly
inferred. So what would produce, together, heat and helium? If there
was no helium there, but something that reasonably might be made into
helium, what is likely to be going on?
If it's not fusion, you are faced with explaining something quite
difficult to explain, why bad calorimetry and bad helium
measurements, both of which are separately asserted, would come up
correlated. If they are correlated, each one confirms the other, as
long as no fraud is involved. Ordinary systemic error would not
produce this. I can come up with some stretched explanations, but
they don't, at all, match the experimental conditions.
Helium is a nuclear product, and to make helium as far as any known
mechanism is concerned, takes fusion. Krivit is off on a toot about
neutron absorption being "not fusion," which is a pure quibble, but
his loud noises are being read as might be expected: he's casting all
the research into doubt over a small detail, by comparison, the exact Q value.
