At 09:51 PM 4/1/2010, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote:
Please note the correction statement. It refers to:
<http://newenergytimes.com/v2/blog/?p=113#comments>http://newenergytimes.com/v2/blog//?p=113#comments
Scroll down, to fifth received eMail:
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Received via e-mail:
In Inexplicable D-D Cold Fusion Claims From
Italy you wrote that Violante restated his
claims an entire order of magnitude smaller.
This is incorrect. 1E+15 is the same as 0.1E+16.
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
Northampton, Mass.
http://lomaxdesign.com/coldfusion
(Archive copy Cold Fusion Kit)
[Ed: New Energy Times thanks Lomax for this
correction. We made three attempts to get a
clear answer from Vittorio Violante to our
question about the specific values of helium measured by his group.
In his second response, Violante gave us values
expressed in E+16. In his third response,
Violante gave us values expressed in E+15. On
receipt of this third response, we failed to
notice that he had moved the decimal point, and
we were thus led to believe there was an order
of magnitude difference in what he was stating.
However, our mathematical error has no bearing
on the significant misrepresentation by
Violantes group (see our Fig. 2 in the article.)]
Comment by sbkrivit February 1, 2010 @ 1:01 am
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...or are you referring to a different incident?
Nope, that was it.
Note that Krivit only published a very short part
of my mail: This was the full mail:
re http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/34/343inexplicableclaims.shtml
You report that Violante wrote:
For the three points in the plot, we have:
0.35E+16, very close to 0.1E+16 (not well drawn
in the plot) and 0.50 E+16 atoms respectively
He had answered your question, but you asked again, and he responded:
In terms of new atoms the result is an amount
of He[lium] ranging from 1E+15 up to 5e+15 atoms.
And you were astonished:
This writer responded to Violante, reminding
him that he had, since 2004, represented the
measurements of helium-4 atoms from this series
of experiments in the range of E+16 and that
now he was stating to this reporter that his
group had measured helium-4 atoms only in the range of E+15 atoms.
This sudden change an entire order of
magnitude smaller is inexplicable, given that
the authors have not announced any errors or
retractions about this graph in the last six years.
New Energy Times asked Violante one additional
question: "Is there any comment you would like
to make [...] about your published
representations of this experiment to the scientific community?"
As we went to press, New Energy Times had received no response from Violante.
Steve, the two sets of figures are identical
values. The low value is reported first as
0.1E+16, which is 0.1 x 10^`6, and then as
1E+15, or 1 x 10^15. These are the same numbers.
It's not surprising that Violante did not respond!
This is, unfortunately, only one of many errors in the set of articles.
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
http://lomaxdesign.com/coldfusion
In so far as this particular incident is
concerned, it is indeed unfortunate that both
parties were unable to communicate effectively
with each other. I can well imagine it resulted
in a lot of hardened feelings. I does, however,
bare pointing out that Mr. Krivit quickly
admitted his mathematical error in confusing
magnitude values when you brought the mistake to
his attention. Please note, I am referring only
to the error in magnitude placement, not the
discussion pertaining to
significant misrepresentations.
You are correct, he did acknowledge the math
error. None of the rest of it, and he didn't
print the whole email. If you look at the history
he presents, Krivit, repeatedly, did not
understand what he was being told. And then
finally he excoriated Violante for making a
"sudden change, an entire order of magnitude."
Now, one would think that a writer for a serious
publication would have an editor. No. Krivit is
his own editor, as far as I can tell. And this is
what you get when you do that. But I'll go
further. I'll assert that it is likely that
Krivit makes these errors, time and again,
because he has an agenda to find something wrong.
Krivit prints or approves long adulatory
comments; but consider this: blatant error, some
knowledgeable people commenting before me, and
they didn't notice it. Can you imagine why? After
all, Krivit put it in bold, it's not like it was hidden.
Violante attempted to respond to Krivit. I'm not
sure I'd have had as much patience, but I'm
pretty sure that I'd not have responded more,
were I a researcher on the level of Violante.
Krivits commentary is replete with errors, the
order of magnitude gaffe was just the most
blatantly obvious. Possibly the worst error,
which he repeats over and over, is his
implication of a false claim that isn't being
made, he says that "the measured data does not
support the claim that it provides strong support
for the hypothesized D-D "cold fusion" reaction."
I'm not aware of the Violante paper being used as
"strong support for the hypothesized D-D cold
fusion reaction." Krivit is tilting with a
windmill that doesn't exist. "Cold fusion" is a
term for a whole class of possible or
hypothesized reactions, including, by the way,
what Widom-Larsen theory proposes, the claim that
W-L theory isn't claiming cold fusion is actually
preposterous, I'll cover that below.
Some theorists seem to think that some kind of
D-D fusion is still possible, but there are
obvious reasons for considering that unlikely.
Those reasons don't apply to 4-D TSC ( -> Be-8 ->
2 He-4) or other cluster fusion. Those would be
"deuterium fusion," but not "D-D" fusion. But it would show the same 24 MeV.
Krivit flew off on the fact that Violante plotted
helium data using an assumption of 24 MeV, the
figure that would result from d-d fusion, but
also from any process starting with deuterium and
ending with helium. It was a device for both
showing helium data on the same graph as heat
data, and for comparing the data with the 24 MeV
figure. It was in no way a proof of 24 MeV,
except that the two strong results do, in fact,
provide some support for 24 MeV, because they are
higher than it. The single data point that Krivit
is making such a big deal about was the weakest
finding. The heat was low and so the helium was
low, near background. That is not "misleading
appearance of close agreement between theory and
experiment," except to someone quite naive on the
subject, which Krivit was, apparently. Remember,
that's one point out of three, and is the
weakest. The interesting points are the other
two. I believe this will all be examined in a forthcoming paper.
As to Krivit's favorite, Widom-Larsen theory,
which allegedly is not "cold fusion," W-L theory
postulates the existence of ultra-low-momentum
neutrons, which could, through a series of
neutron absorptions, produce isotopes, including,
from Lithium-6 present, and two absorptions,
Be-8, which would then, of course, decay into
helium. Not so obvious is where the neutrons come
from. Larsen proposes they come from, in a
palladium deuteride experiment, deuterium. So the
overall reaction in the case described by Larsen
for lithium -> Be-* -> helium is ... fusion of
deuterium as a fuel to generate helium. The
difference is that the deuterium is dismantled first.
Suppose we take some deuterium and we feed it to
another deuterium nucleus, we'll get deuterium
fusion, never mind the problems. We'll certainly
call it fusion. Now, suppose we take the
deuterium and we add an electron to it. The
electron combines with the proton, so we end up
with two neutrons, which aren't bound to each
other. They can then enter nuclei. What happened?
This is, in fact, a device for electron-catalyzed
fusion. The lithium 7 that is formed from lithium
6, in Larsen's hypothesis, then becomes Lithium-
8 with the second neutron being added, and it
then spits out the electron to become Be-8, which then decays to helium.
If we add a proton to a nucleus, nobody will not
call it fusion. But suppose we bind an electron
to the proton, we've added something new. And so
then the proton can slip right by that pesky
Coulomb barrier, disguised as a neutron. If this
wasn't fusion, why not? If d + p -> He-3 is
fusion, why would d + (p + e) -> tritium not
fusion? Something more has been *added.*
"Not cold fusion" is enormously confused and
confusing. The problem in 1989 was the assumption
that if it was fusion, it must be simple d+d
fusion, which was very difficult to swallow, so
many difficulties were there. I see, by the way,
huge difficulties with W-L theory, mostly having
to do with the reaction rate problem for
sequential reactions, but I'll have to admit that
I haven't seen a clear exposition of W-L theory
and how the reaction rate problem might be addressed. Is it?
(I.e. if there is a reaction with cross-section
C(1) followed by another reaction C(2), taking A
to B to C, and if the reaction rate is low, and
unless there is something that would cause the
second reaction have a very high cross section,
i.e., C(1) is very low, or else the reaction
would be really obvious and heavy, which with
these nuclear reactions would mean very, very
dangerous, but then, if C ends up much more
common than B, C(2), which is basically the same
reaction as C(1), depending on the flux of ULM
neutrons, must be very high. 'Splain this thing to me.)
