As I said, I do not think much of Krivit's speculation about theory,
but he has done a good job describing the dispute between Iwamura and
Kidwell, something I could not follow from the lectures mainly
because the whole dispute gives me a headache:
<http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35904nrl2008.shtml>http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35904nrl2008.shtml
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35905nrl2009.shtml
I think he is biased against Kidwell, but so am I. A little, anyway.
I would not have made so many snarky comments about Kidwell, and
these articles would be a lot better without them. In fact, Krivit's
entire oeuvre would be better de-snarked. That's my opinion, but it's
his stuff, not mine.
I think Krivit does a better job in this analysis of the experiments
because it is easier to grasp the hands-on technical aspects of this
than to understand the theory debates between Hagelstein and Larsen,
for example. I myself could not begin to grasp the latter, and I
would never, ever pontificate about it or express my own opinions. I
might report what someone else says, but that is as far as I would
go. A person should know his own limitations.
Krivit quotes me in some of these sub-articles in the Special Report,
making way more of my comments than I intended. He fails to
understand the point that I made, and that McKubre made in much more
detail and with elegance, that we are only talking about the start
and end product of the reaction in some (but not all) experiments,
and that the intermediate products might include every element in the
periodic table, but that would not change the thermodynamics.
McKubre's statement is:
"A more subtle point is the presumption of mechanism. In
thermodynamics, one is concerned with initial and final states only!
The pathway (mechanism) is just important for rate predictions (and
we are a long way from that). The fusion 'purists' (with their
corrupt definition) want ownership of the products and process.
However, to re-coin a phrase, 'the circumstances of cold fusion are
not those of hot fusion.' Whatever reaction we are studying could (I
would argue must) undergo a very large number of steps involving a
very, very large number of participant species. But for definition,
this is not important. Is the final state the result of 'joining two
or more things together'? If yes, then I submit it is fusion. If it
is spontaneous, then it is exothermic. If it is exothermic, then it
consumes mass. . . ."
<http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35908neutroncapture.shtml>http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35908neutroncapture.shtml
How hard is that to understand?
Krivit also grossly mischaractorizes other people's arguments. He
thinks other people are saying:
Assumption #1: Helium-4 as the Sole Product
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35902coldfusionisneither.shtml
I have never heard anyone say that! That's ridiculous. Obviously
there are other products such as tritium. There may well be
transmutation. There are credible reports of light-water excess heat
without palladium, from Patterson, Mills and others. BARC saw
compelling nuclear evidence from Ti. Some people such as Violante and
Kidwell dispute some of the transmutation claims. I think most others
accept them to one degree or another, but I have not polled
researchers, and I do not ascribe random or monolithic opinions to
cold fusion researchers. Transmutation is a difficult subject with
lots of gray areas, unknowns and large error bars. It is not amenable
to Krivit's get-a-bigger-sledge-hammer, and let's-find-the-bad-guy
style of analysis.
Krivit ignores all of this and quotes me (of all people!) out of
context asserting that in the Pd-D system, it seem obvious that D
converts to helium-4. My reason couldn't be simpler. You start with A
and B and you end with A and C. That means B is converting to C
(ignoring intermediate products), and A is unchanged. I don't see how
anyone can argue with that.
I said nothing about the transmutations, light water reactions,
titanium, possible shrinking hydrogen (the Mills effect) or any of
the rest of it. Obviously I was referring to the Pd-D experiments in
which no changes to the Pd are observed. I exclude experiments in
which significant portions of Pd have apparently been transmuted,
such as Mizuno. Some people question Mizuno's results, but assuming
the results stand obviously something other than D+D => helium
occurs. Does Krivit seriously believe I never realized that?!? Who is
he trying to kid, and why?
- Jed
