At 10:33 AM 2/21/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
<<mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com>a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
So I'm going to ask, as to cold fusion in general, "what has been
promised" and what do promises have to do with science?
A new energy source has been promised.
By whom? And, I'll ask again, "What to promises [and speculations]
have to do with science?"
Cold fusion is a natural phenomenon, it promises nothing unless a way
can be found to make it happen reliably and with sufficient return on
energy input to cover losses. Muon-catalyzed fusion, when discovered,
was first thought to be a possible energy source. That remains as a
possibility, but, the problem was, nobody knows how to make muons and
keep them active long enough to recover the energy cost.
And... "convinced of what"?
Convinced that nuclear reactions in cold fusion experiments have
produced measurable heat.
Thanks. Now, may I assume that you are not ignorant of the literature?
There are two questions here: the first is "measurable heat." We have
a huge number of experiments, some being repeated series of identical
experiments, showing "measurable heat." To be clear, this means, for
most experiments, heat that is not expected from known prosaic
processes, also called "anomalous heat."
Anomalous heat is heat of unknown origin, by definition. Is there such heat?
The second part of the question concerns the origin of the heat,
whether the origin is nuclear or not. May we agree that anomalous
heat, by itself, does not prove "nuclear."
But if we cannot agree that there is anomalous heat, surely we will
be unable to agree on "nuclear." That's why the 2004 U.S. DoE review
panel, 18 experts, was evenly divided on the question of excess heat,
half the reviewers thinking that the evidence for it was
"conclusive," but only one-third considered the evidence for nuclear
origin to be "convincing or somewhat convincing."
Right? So, first question, is there anomalous heat?
Given that there are massive reports of it, widely published, from
hundreds of research groups, 153 reports in mainstream journals as of
2009, there is only one sane way for you to deny it, as least as far
as I can imagine.
That would be to claim that you know the origin of this heat, or at
least that someone does. Otherwise it's still an anomaly. Right?
(The 2004 DoE panel, half, thought the evidence for anomalous heat to
be "conclusive." If we imagine that the other half thought it was
bogus, we end up with a paradox or conundrum. It's unlikely. In fact,
the other half, probably, was mostly and merely "not convinced,"
which can be a lack of conviction from pure caution, some need to see
more evidence, and for only for a few on the panel would there be a
belief that the evidence was totally spurious. One reviewer seems to
have thought that fraud was involved, as I recall, or certainly Bad
Science. But this has become an isolated, fringe position. Sometimes,
as well, people argue and apply logic from conclusions. I.e., if they
believe that LENR is impossible, they then discount the evidence for
LENR, more than they would if they were not attached to a conclusion.
Human beings. Don't leave home without being one. This is backwards.
There may be anomalous heat that is not of nuclear origin.)
