At 05:18 PM 10/22/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
I've seen the reaction of pseudoskeptics to Vyosotskii. They don't
care how solid his work is or what he's actually found in his experiments.
They just know that this is ridiculous, that anyone who thinks that
biological organisms could cause transmuation is a complete nut
case. I suspect it blew their fuses.
Their reaction is understandable.
Yes, of course. But it is really in the same class as the rejection
of experimental evidence indicating cold fusion.
Two reasons make it hard from me to believe it:
First, anything that can happen in biology tends to be widely
exploited by many different species. Even phenomena that do not seem
possible in biology sometimes turn out to be possible, and when they
do, we have no trouble finding examples of them.
You could say that any fusion reaction in palladium loaded with
deuterium would have been noticed before.
We don't know how many species can manage nuclear reactions (if any).
Most organisms would find the radiation intolerable. They are up
close and personal with whatever they manage. That's why deinococcus
radiodurans was a good place to look. It can handle radiation
designed to kill everything else, totally. It has multiply redundant
copies of its DNA. Ask yourself, Jed, why it wastes so much energy on
that redundancy. Why don't other species have more than two copies?
(We have, effectively, two in each cell, all DNA-based organisms have
two copies.)
For example, you might think that generating electricity or high
efficiency light are not something a biological mechanism can
accomplish, but there are several species that generate
electricity, and lightning bugs and deep-sea fish do a marvelous
job generating light. On the other hand, as far as I know there are
no species that detect or make use of radio waves or radar. There
are no macroscopic species with anything resembling the wheel,
although there are microscopic ones with freely turning parts. In
other words, in biology either you can exploit a phenomenon -- in
which case many species do exploit it, in a way that is readily
observable -- or you cannot exploit it, in which case it never
happens. There seems to be a sharp line.
I'm not suggesting that cold fusion is *necessary,* nor even that it
would be probable. I'm merely suggesting that, if cold fusion is
real, and particular if it is based on something like cluster fusion,
it would not be terribly surprising if proteins can pull it off.
Second, It is one thing to suppose that cold fusion can occur with
materials and conditions that never occur in nature, such as a
non-cracking specially formulated palladium alloy highly loaded with
pure deuterium.
Cold fusion can definitely occur in other environments than that. How
many others, though, we don't know. That isn't a description of what
I'm working with, of codeposition.
I think the amount of that material naturally occurring in the
earth's crust is so small, there is no chance anyone would discover
it by accident, the way they discovered measurably radioactive
uranium. That is, samples of rock that could be seen to glow in the
dark, if you look carefully. I doubt there is enough Pd-D in the
earth to add measurably to the heat from the earth, unlike U and
other elements. Extremely rare physical phenomena are seldom
incorporated in biology. Anything that can happen in biology is
usually based on phonomena that readily and often occur in
non-living material on earth. (Sometimes not in exactly the same
form; i.e. combustion and metabolism. Obviously, biochemistry tends
to be much more complicated than non-living chemistry, but the same
rules apply and the same sorts of things happen.)
I'm going to assume that TSC theory is correct, that CF happens when
elements are arranged in a particular physical configuration that can
collapse and fuse -- or engage in some other nuclear reaction. That
arrangement obvious is very rare, not something that happens by
chance frequently. It may take special energetic conditions. But the
conditions need only exist on the level of, in the case of the cold
fusion we know (assuming TSC theory!), two deuterium molecules, that
is, this is not a bulk condition. Living organisms are good at
catalysis, at setting up reactions by placing reactants in very
specific physical positions, controlling what proceeds to happen.
Is this likely? I certainly would not say so. But the man has found
evidence, and I think it should be looked at, and I'm glad that
Marwan and Krivit included Vyosotskii papers, and I'm glad that Dr.
Storms mentioned it. And if this was behind the APS rejection, I'm
sad about that, but ... as I wrote, it's neither surprising, nor is
it correct. Vyosotskii is entitled to the same respect as all other
researchers. We do not have to swallow his conclusions without
confirmation, but we certainly should not reject his work as
"impossible." And that's my point.
This is why, for example, I find it a little difficult to believe
that magnets may have a therapeutic effect. Load-stones and other
naturally occurring magnets are rare and weak, and it is a little
difficult for me to believe they were exploited by evolution. The
entire earth is a magnet. It is weak but ubiquitous (of course!) so
I have no difficulty accepting that birds exploit it to navigate
while migrating.
I'm also skeptical about that. But I would never claim that it was
impossible. I'm just not ready to spend my money on, say, tachyon
beads. I was once offered some, when I had some minor ailment, and I
refused them. What would be the harm of trying them?, I was asked. I
said, "They might work."
In other words, I might get better, as people usually do. And I knew
enough to consider that this was practically certain to be a huge
scam. Secret process? They look like totally ordinary plastic, but
they are very expensive? A pseudoscientific name? If tachyons could
actually be observed, i.e, shown to exist and to have observable
effects, not to mention therapeutic effects, this would be huge.
It is not certain that when I flip the switch, my lights will go on,
but .... it's about as likely as those tachyon beads being the
obvious scam they appear to be. On the other hand, if someone takes
these beads and does some properly controlled experiments with them,
someone whose apparent interest is science and not simply selling the
beads, and shows a clear effect, a significant anomaly, I'd start to
set aside my skepticism, I don't care how certain I was. I don't
expect it with tachyon beads.... but you never know. Some very odd
person, perhaps, invented these things, and had personal reasons for
the secrecy, etc., etc. I'm just not going to pay for any, thank you very much.
I am assuming, naturally, that transmutation is "extremely rare." I
assume that mainly because no one observes it normally. Perhaps what
Kervran and Vyosotskii may have found is people have not observed it
because they refuse to look.
Regarding Kervran, see a recent upload:
Mallove, E., Book Review: Biological Transmutations (Kervran).
Infinite Energy, 2000. 6(34): p. 56.
<http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MalloveEbookreview.pdf>http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MalloveEbookreview.pdf
I hesitated to upload this, because it is not directly germane to cold fusion.
Well, any cold nuclear reaction is generally to be categorized with
cold fusion, I'd say. So it is germane. But I haven't read it yet.
I'm not ready to jump on the biological transmutation bandwagon, just
considering the possibility of trying to replicate Vyosotskii. On the
one hand, it really does seem like a long shot, and on the other,
damn! Mossbauer spectroscopy is highly specific about Fe-57. There
was an increase in Fe-57, that specific isotope, no doubt about it.
Where did it come from? Not present in light water controls.
Lots of information is missing from the reports, that always bugs me.
How many times was this experiment run? If he says, I missed it.
In fact, that kind of data is missing from a lot of cold fusion
reports. Not from the best, though.
