At 05:02 AM 4/2/2010, Michel Jullian wrote:
Re Stephen's argument that it can be argued that He can leak in in spite of positive pressure, we could easily bathe the cell in a He free environment, or simply make the cell He impermeable (metal or metal coated cell casing).
Uh, how do you get an He free environment? Mind you, it's done, but this begs the question. If your experiment depends on the environment being helium free, the suspicion of contamination can remain. Contamination can occur anywhere in the system, from contamination of materials (say the palladium contains dissolved helium, which it will ordinarily) to contamination of any of the equipment.
Indeed, with care, plenty of experiments have shown helium, but the way we really know that a particular experiment was accurate with respect to helium is by comparing the helium production with another sign of the reaction having taken place, and the major marker, by far, is excess heat. And the quantitative relationship simultaneously starts to tell us something more about the nature of the reaction.
Remember, the original sign that something was happening was excess heat, but it was mysteriously missing the expected markers of fusion. Helium is, by expectation, a truly minor marker. That helium is appearing in amounts roughly commensurate with the expected value for d-d fusion is a huge clue to what's going on, that the fuel is deuterium and the ash is helium. Not exclusively, necessarily, but, at least, in bulk.
Remember, as well, what Huizenga wrote about this, when he commented, in his later edition, on Miles' work. He recognized the importance, but rejected the report because it was unconfirmed, and the blinders of his "d-d fusion" knee-jerk theory kept before him all the reasons why "d-d fusion" was impossible. He knew that if helium was confirmed, he'd have a breakfast before which he'd need to accept that *some kind* of deuterium fusion was probably taking place; if not that, then some other nuclear process. Miles' work confirms helium production in a way that can't be matched by mere findings of small amounts of helium.
Sure, in a sane world, the helium reports could be enough. But if you are getting helium, you are getting nuclear reactions, and the obvious question will be "what were your controls?" The controls in Miles' work are all the experimental cells that were otherwise identical but that did not generate excess heat. This turns a lemon (unreliable cold fusion cells) into lemonade! There are quite a few early experiments that looked for heat and helium, and found neither. This all become extended control experiments!
Re Abd's argument that no "sizable" amount of He can be produced, it seems to me that since a _measurable_ concentration has been found in spite of high dilution in the gaseous output of open cells, then a fortiori we should be able to accumulate a _sizable_ concentration in the head space of a closed cell. Plus, it is easier to measure excess heat accurately in a closed cell, for those who insist that heat should be measured too.
Michel, this work is extremely difficult to do. It's been done, but because of the difficulty, there are only a few reports.
It's not necessary, in fact. Long-running cells with accurate calorimetry, and, more importantly, with measures taken for full recovery of the helium, will be important. The highest-output methods also tend to be unreliable, so one must run many cells to get some that generate large amounts of excess heat. But we can know quite a lot from statistical analysis of low-output cells (now defined as cells that produce less than ambient helium concentrations). I'm not, in fact, convinced that high-accuracy investigation of the heat/helium ratio is a proper priority now.
What we need is more investigation of the predictions of theories. Once the mechanism(s) are elucidated, engineering cells for better performance will become much easier. Ruling out incorrect theories is a major part of this, but that is not necessarily easy.
At this point, to return to the major controversy, simple d-d fusion, i.e., two deuterons with no other reactants (such as electrons) is a very unlikely prospect, but not impossible if the branching ratio and energy transfer problems can be solved *and confirmed*.
And this remains true even if it turns out that the heat/helium, after full recovery, is right on 23.8 MeV/helium atom.
