At 03:04 PM 6/7/2010, Jones Beene wrote:
From: Jed Rothwell
Letters from Miles and Kowalski. Google alerts brought me this:
<http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_63/iss_6/10_1.shtml?bypassSSO=1>http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_63/iss_6/10_1.shtml?bypassSSO=1
One comment about the Miles contention that:
âI have investigated cold fusion for many
years and find that the FleischmannPons effect
is strongly dependent on the palladium material.
Palladiumboron alloys made by the US Naval
Research Laboratory have worked especially well
in my experiments (see US Patent 6,764,561, 20
July 2004, and US Patent 7,381,368, 3 June
2008). That seems to me to suggest the
importance of impurities (boron is an oxygen
getter) rather than cosmicâray muons.â
OK - boron is one of many known oxygen getters,
but there are others that are far more effective
in that role - and it would not be a good choice
for the job if there was not more to it than
binding to oxygen. Boron notably has a very high
cross-section for thermal neutrons, but that is
never mentioned as being important.
Taking this odd statement at face value would
indicate that oxygen (presumably the impurity)
causes a negative effect, and that the boron is
only there to eliminate oxygen. Can this be interpreted another way?
Well, the general statement is that impurities or
mixtures may be important. Given that we
basically don't know what is going on, I wouldn't
get too exercised about it. The boron itself
might be important for what it does, or it might
be that a little boron creates just the right kind of cavities. Whatever.
The glaring problem with that statement is
that the Arata-Zhang alloy which is
presumably the most active host metal ever
found to date by any researcher, since it is
active without an ongoing energy input at all
(other than pressurization and the initial
thermal trigger), contains more oxygen than any
other element. This is due to the powder being
baked in air at high temperature for many
hours. Notably the percentage of palladium is tiny compared to oxygen.
I'd say that indicates that oxygen isn't a
poison, but, remember, there might be more than
one reaction! And more than one way to create
NAE, even with the same reaction. As to this
being "the most active host metal" that's perhaps
misleading. You mentioned the "energy input," and
it's fairly large. The formation of the hydride
or deuteride is exothermic. The "energy input" to
a P-F cell is a bit misleading. That is mostly
going to dissociate heavy water. The electrolytic
current may also be influencing the flow of
deuterium into the lattice. It's like including
the energy of making the deuterium gas in an Arata cell in the calculations.
The energy in, though electrolysis, is important,
but only for working with the calorimetry to calculate excess energy.
Nickel, zirconium and oxygen are there in
substantial atomic ratios compared to
palladium. Rossi and many others use no palladium.
And Rossi and others are insufficiently replicated, shall we say?
Surely someone on Physics Today will pick up
on this bit of apparent irrationality.
IOW - it does not look good from the PR
perspective, if one is trying to present a
logical case to skeptics for cold fusion.
These letters were not politically organized, and
I don't think Miles and Kowalski consulted with
others. Kowalski's comment is a bit unfortunate.
He has probably seen some CF effects, but,
unfortunately, he was distracted by the Galileo
project phase 1, using a silver cathode and not
looking for neutrons. Hence what he was might
easily have been chemical damage. But I think
some of his tracks weren't from that.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of ways to get this
wrong, and only a few ways to get it right.
I haven't see the original article, but muons
absolutely don't cut it, unless this is some muon
behavior that is completely different from that
in the known muon-catalyzed fusion, they would
have to be massively recycled. It's a bit
pathetic that this ad-hoc theory is getting
attention, when there has been serious work done
and published under peer review.
But in general, it's good that there is any attention at all.
Why not emphasize the A-Z effect instead, since
it has been replicated by a number of different groups now?
Because the best replicated and most solid work
should be emphasized at first, which would be
heat/helium, radiation evidence and tritium (as
evidence that nuclear reactions are taking place,
not that (much) radiation is involved in the
primary reaction), and, in general, the massive
replication of the calorimetric findings,
especially when reviewed with examination of the
experimental conditions. Experiments that didn't
achieve sufficient loading didn't show excess
heat. Experiments that don't show excess heat don't show helium. Etc.
