At 02:56 PM 3/29/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Which is, of course, brilliant. What is the context? This argument
practically would take care of itself, all it would take is clear
exposition of it. Would anyone defend it? If I'm correct, that
argument depended on the absence of independent evidence regarding
other signs of a nuclear reaction, and of only isolated reports, at
most, showing the excess heat effect.
You are incorrect. Your analysis is much too subtle. Forget about
context and nuances. Huizenga meant exactly what he said: If the
claimed heat exceeds the limits of chemistry or mechanical storage
it MUST BE an experimental error.
He was never shy about expressing that opinion. You can ignore the
other points he made leading up to this. That part stands alone as a
bold assertion.
Let me put it this way Jed. You are probably right. But that bit of
text is a weak proof of it. And it's irrelevant in the end what
Huizenga thought. What I see here that is important is that, in 1993,
Huizenga issued a clear and simple challenge: if you can't find a
fusion product that is commensurate with the heat, you have shown nothing.
Now that's extreme, for sure. Excess heat with no fusion product
would be *even more* puzzling and therefore worthy of investigation.
Huizenga was on a complete mind-lock on this. But the challenge was
there, and, I suspect, it is quite useful as a way of disentangling this mess.
It is, in that context, Not Quite So Stupid, provided that the
conclusion is tentative. The problem is that the conclusion
became, it was pretended, conclusive.
There was nothing tentative about it.
Sure there was. In context, the claim was conditional. It was *if
they don't* this, *then the theory is toast.* (Theory being nuclear origin.)
Absolutely, he lost his balance. My sense from his book is that he
was incapable of understanding the issue, it was a deep challenge to
his sense of personal expertise and accomplishment. He was trying to
appear sensible, though, and the argument he advanced was actually
sensible except for an overstatement at the end. My point is that a
reasonable skeptic, if there are any left, would read this piece of
Huizenga and think it reasonable, probably overlooking the
overstatement at the end. I don't think that any reasonable skeptic
would read the whole book, however, and come away without a sense, at
least, of unease over the vehemence of Huizenga's reaction. But they
don't read the whole book, if, indeed, they read any of it.
He was sure as sure can be that all results beyond the limits of
chemistry are wrong. He and Park both told me, in person, on more
than one occasion that they are 100% certain that all cold fusion
results are wrong, and not just a little bit wrong. They are all
preposterous, and all the result of incompetence, lunacy or fraud.
They make no bones about it. Perhaps they feel some doubts in their
heart of hearts, but in their papers and what I have heard them say
in person, they admit no hint of doubt. I cannot read minds but I
get no sense they are speaking with false bravado, or that they
have secret doubts, or that they are being assertive because of
cognitive dissonance. Park is equally assertive about a broad range
of subjects, to say the least.
Yup. He's even right sometimes. But so is a stopped clock. Actually,
I like the book, Voodoo Science, though how he treats cold fusion
makes me wonder about the rest!
How did Huizenga react to the helium evidence? That would be
interesting! I don't know when he lost his ability to consider
these issues . . .
I have the first edition of the book, published in 1992. (A signed
edition "with best wishes to Jed Rothwell.") I do not have the
second edition. There are 16 references in the index to helium-4 and
some other references to "helium-3" and "helium." Looking at the
ones for "helium-4" most describe the role of helium in conventional
nuclear theory. Chapter VIII section B. Helium describes a few early
efforts to find helium, by Lewis, and Williams. The longest
description is of an attempt to find helium in 5 used rods from
experiments by Fleischmann and Pons, undertaken by various labs. See
Salamon, Nature 344 401 (1990). They did not find the helium in the
rods. Neither has anyone else subsequently, as far as I know, except
in such small amounts that you would not have expected to find any
in the 1989 rods.
Which is, you know, a bit puzzling. Unless they also didn't find
excess heat, or the levels were low. As a surface reaction, the
helium might escape with time, it would not be deeply buried and it
seems half of it is immediately released. That tells me that the
helium is relatively mobile.
I think there is still helium work to be done.
Signed edition, eh? I am *so* jealous. I've only now been reading
Beaudette. He considers Huizenga the only true personal tragedy in
the whole case. While I don't think that is true, there are other
tragedies, but it is indeed sad to read Fiasco, the mental condition
underlying it is painful to see. Was it painful to him? Maybe not.
Being incapable of understanding something is not necessarily painful
until the rest of the world rejects one's position, and he is
probably beyond comprehending that now. But it does mean that
Huizenga's perception of himself as a scientist was dreadfully off.
The only other description of experiments regarding helium (as
opposed to theory) is in Chapter XII, p. 209:
"Believers in cold fusion will continue, at least for some period of
time, to report claims of success. This pattern of continuing claims
has been well established for other areas of pathological science
such as N rays and poly-water. What is surprising, however, is that
these far-out claims are still reported with a positive flavor by
leading newspapers (Wall Street Journal, April 8, 1991 and New York
Times, April 14, 1991) before the most elementary confirmation
checks have been made. Both of these newspaper articles describe
recent experiments by a group of chemists at the Naval Weapons
Center in China Lake, California, and give some scientific
respectability to the chemists claim of producing 4He in an
electrochemical cell (see Chapter VIII). The human desire for a way
to turn hydrogen, the most abundant fuel in the universe, into a
limitless supply of clean, cheap fuel is so strong that people want
to believe that there is something scientific about cold fusion."
This refers to Miles, but Miles is not mentioned by name and not
referenced in the index.
Right. Miles is in the 1993 index, ref to pages 243 and 244, which
are in the epilogue. On p. 243, Huizenga says he already mentioned
Miles on pages 135 and 212. The paper he's citing is Miles, Bush, et
al, J. Electroanal. Chem 1991 and 1993. This is remarkable. On pages
135, Huizenga is reporting that helium was found "approximately that
expected based on the University of Utah's previous claims of excess
heat." In the pages leading up to this, he has been discussing the
early helium claims. He knows then, that, in 1990 already, it was
being claimed that helium was found in the right amounts. He goes to
great lengths to discredit this, but my point is that he was
definitely aware of the importance of the amount of helium relative
to the excess heat findings.
Bush isn't mentioned on p. 135, it's page 136. And what Huizenga does
is to insert about every other sentence a mention of the utter
preposerousness and impossibility of all of this: "The validity of
the Bush et al claim requires three miracles, namely the fusion rate,
branching ratio and concealed-nuclear-products miracles.! I get the
impression that the book was compiled from a series of semi-focused
rants, very little edited.
(Hey, there is a tragedy: this book was published by Oxford
University Press, after first being published by Rochester University
Press. Editor? Who needs an editor?)
Here he is considering independent evidence for a nuclear product,
and he completely neglects the heat/helium ratio in considering it.
On one point I think we will agree, Jed. If this man was sincere --
and you believe he was -- he was completely and utterly confused, and
that so many listened to him for so long just goes to show. He's
offended that gamma rays weren't found. To him, if it's fusion to
helium, there must be gamma rays. He was making the common mistake of
those days, assuming that if it was fusion, it was the very simplest
fusion that could be imagined, two deuterons smasshed together, and,
of course, there was a huge pile of reasons to think that it wouldn't
be. Just for fun, I'll even say them again.
Direct deuterium fusion would have a rate so low that it could not be
observed at the temperatures involved. Of course, a totally new
mechanism that might enhance the rate -- such as catalysis as with
muons, only probably with something else -- could accomplish this
first "miracle."
If somehow we get two deuterons to fuse, they have a known branching
ration, and only a tiny amount will branch to helium. The other two
branches produce tritium and neutrons, clear and easily recognizable
signatures, so to explain the excess heat by this reaction, we need a
second miracle to save the lives of the researchers, who would have
died from neutron radiation from a level of fusion at the rate
required for the excess heat. My general conclusion from this is that
we aren't seeing straight deuterium fusion, though it cannot be, as
Huizenga imagined, utterly ruled out, because there might be some way
that the branching ratio is altered. The condensed matter environment
can, in a few ways, affect nuclei. It's just very unlikely to be the
explanation here, absent additional evidence.
And then there is the "concealed nuclear products" miracle. The
branching to helium, if somehow it occurs, is always accompanied by a
gamma ray, and with this branch, again, there would have been copious
radiation, this time gamma, not observed. He is assuming that if it's
helium, there must be gammas. Which is simply a continuation of the
assumption that the nuclear reaction was d-d fusion. D-d fusion is
not the only possible nuclear reaction, but with the primitive
thinking of the time, it seemed that other possibilities, if they
were even thought of, were even more remote. Like if two deuterons
couldn't fuse, surely three or four would be even more rare! (These
are almost never seen in plasma, if they are seen at all, I'd expect
it to take stellar core density and temperature, and it would still
be extremely rare). That view, though, neglects the possibility of
group effects. The three miracles do not arise with a more complex
reaction, necessarily. If Takahashi's math is correct, the question
could reduce to the frequency of a particular physical configuration,
difficult but not impossible to form.
Huizenga believes, obviously, that the Bush et al report from 1991
can be dismissed because there are no gamma rays. But the nuclear ash
is being reported there, and in amounts commensurate with the heat.
That it is, alone, shows that the reaction isn't dumping energy into gammas.
It seems like there is a non sequitur in almost every paragraph in
Huizenga, it's amazingly dense in them. On page 212, Huizenga rants
in a note on helium, as an explanation for his text denying that a
"commensurate amount of fusion products" have been found. He rants on
and on in the text about the absence of nuclear products.
But in the note he says, "The recent rehashed claim of Bush et al [J.
of Electroanlaytical Chemistry 304 271 (1991) of a commensurate
amount of 4He in the effluent gases from an electrolytic cell is
unconfirmed. First, no evidence for the commensurate intensity of the
23.8 MeV gamma rays was presented. Secondly, no 3He was observed as
required. It's absence requires a miraculous alteration of
conventional low-energy D+D fusion."
What is "conventional low-energy D+D fusion"? Perhaps he means high
energy, compared to the condensed matter environment, but low for
ordinary fusion, temperatures where the branching ratio can still be measured.
Yes. The reaction is not, I would conclude unless strong evidence
were provided to the contrary, D+D fusion. It's something else, and
we have some candidates that Huizenga seems to have never thought of.
My point is that he demands an ash, a nuclear reaction product, and
helium is that, and the energy released is, in fact, at roughly the
23.8 MeV value, but it's as heat, not as gamma radiation, most of
which would escape from the cell, I believe. He's got the nuclear
product correlated to the excess heat. And he can't see it. That's as of 1991.
Notice he calls the 1991 paper a "recently rehashed claim." What's he
talking about? Rehashed from what? Huizenga didn't cover an earlier
claim, but I think the work may have been presented at a conference
earlier that year. I think a detailed history of the helium
measurements might be in order.
Back to Huizenga's epilogue. There, he has:
The invited paper by Miles, Bush, et al. made the most spectacular
claim at the conference. It was reported that,
[The] amount of helium [4He] detecteed correlated approximatley
with the amount of excess heat as was within an order of magnitude
of the theoretical estimate of helium production based upon fusion
of deuterium to form 4He.
This claim has bee published elsewhere by Miles, Bush et al. [J
Electroanal. Chem 304 271 (1991); 346 99 (1993)] and I have
commented on it previously (see pp. 136 and 212). If it were true
that 4He was produced from room-temperature fusion in amounts nearly
commensurate with excess heat, one of the great puzzles of cold
fusion would be solved! However, as is the case with so many cold
fusion claims, this one is unsubstantiated and conflicts with many
other well-established experimental findings. [and he gives the
branching ratio theoretical reason, and concludes it is likely that
the 4He is a contaminant from the atmosphere, completely negelcting
then new mystery this counter-hypothesis creates: the correlation.
He also considers the absence of the gamma ray a conclusive
evidence. He then notes that if the gammas were produced, they would
transfer the energy out of the cell, destroying the heat/helium
correlation. Obvious conclusion, Dr. Huizenga! Gammas aren't being
produced! Just helium and heat (or something that converts to heat
within the cell).
He's depending, basically, on the nonreproduction of Miles et al's
work. That's relatively forgivable then, but no longer. Storms lists
seven reports from groups in three countries (p. 86) and gives
particular attention to Miles, first, referring to a review of the
work by Miles (10th Intnl Conf Cold Fusion, 2003). The summary Storms
gives: "First, 12 studies produces no extra energy and produced no
extra helium. Second, out of 21 studies producing extra energy, 18
produced extra helium with an amount consistent with the amount of
excess energy. The exceptions were one sample having a possible error
in heat measurement [-- hey, it can happen!] and two studies using a
Pd-Ce alloy. Miles calculates the chance occurence of this result as
being one in 750,000."
Let's reframe this. There is, from Miles results, roughly a one in a
million chance that fusion is not taking place, but that the
correlation he found was the result of noisy data. That is the
simpest interpretation. If some common cause that explains the
correlation is found, and I can't imagine one that matches the
experimental findings, this would be invalid. Data selection would
explain it. But Miles kept the heat data rigorously separate from the
helium measurements, which is why Hoffman's presentation on the Miles
work doesn't mention the heat correlation. That hadn't been released
yet. Hoffman, by the way, does a pretty good job of presenting the
early helium data and the problems. The heat data would have been
devastating in combination; without it, the helium work was one more
finding in the pile that caused Hoffman to claim that there were open
questions. Hoffman, like many others, focused on nuclear effects and
specifically said he wasn't dealing much with anomalous heat.
Beaudette gives a very good analysis of the implications of the loss
of focus on anomalous heat.
What "well-established experimental findings" does Miles' helium
results contradict? He's utterly confused. I think he means
experimental findings about hot fusion and the helium branch. No
gammas. Helium created with no gammas. "Contradict," then, must mean
"not seen before." Before Fleischmann and many others, of course! But
without heat correlation, it's all extremely difficult and confusing.
With heat correlation, it reduces to a simple controlled experiment,
where the controls are experiments without heat production. Miles
very much knew what he was doing.
If we assume that the reaction is producing 23.8 MeV, the Miles
results indicate that 46% of the helium is being retained and not
measured. With Bush and Lagowski, Storms comes up with 42% retention
under the same assumption. Storms presents data from Gozzi that I
don't understand, and does not give a retention analysis. And then
the Case study by McKubre is presented, "consistent with 25% of the
helium being retained," perhaps by the carbon substrate in that work.
And then there is the often looked-at "single very careful
measurement" of McKubre, deloading and reloading several times to
attempt to capture additional helium, coming up with a value of 24.8
+/- 2.5 MeV/He. Percentage of retention under the 23.8 MeV hypothesis is low.
Indeed, the more exhaustive analysis, if we take the central value,
may be right on, and give a measure of what percentage of the
reaction involves other branches, transmutation, etc.
Storms notes that the heat/helium data was ignored "by many members
of the DoE panel convened in 2004 to evaluate cold fusion."
It's worse than that. The data was misinterpreted in the report and
presented as if it were an anticorrelation. More on that another
time, it was a gross and blatant error, and it points to what I
suspect explained part of the majority still being unconvinced as to
nuclear reactions. For whatever reason, the helium message, which
Huizenga recognized was very important so long ago, didn't punch
through the noise in 2004. A single careful experiment isn't too
likely to impress scientists heavily inclined to skepticism here, but
a substantial series of them should have. The necessary information
was in the paper, but a great deal may have depended on how the
presentation was done during the meeting of the panel.
