I wander here into what I'm currently excited about....
At 09:44 AM 7/15/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Daniel Rocha wrote:
So,
why not making an LENR experiment close to a big neutrino detector,
like the kamiokande?
This was done at Kamiokande. Unfortunately the experiment was
amateur and there is no chance it produced a cold fusion effect. It
would be a good idea to try again with a experiment that is
definitely producing excess heat. There is no other way to be sure
you have a cold fusion effect in the first place. There is no point
to testing a cell that is not producing heat.
That's not *entirely true*, but it is a huge caveat. In the early
days, lots of experiments were done where they didn't even look for
heat, they looked for "nuclear products." Hey, if it's fusion, there
have to be "nuclear products," eh?
Sure. Like helium. But, as Jed is implying, no heat, no reaction--
probably!, it's possible there was some and you might detect certain
possible nuclear products -- but if you don't see nuclear products,
you have demonstrated, with considerable effort, nothing. Those early
reports were published as if they were negative on the
Fleischmann-Pons effect, when, in fact, they almost certainly never
set it up. The only "sorta reliable" result of the FPHE was, as the
HE implies, "heat effect."
What iced the FPHE as fusion, for me, was the confirmed finding of
helium correlated with the excess heat. Independent findings of
helium would be far less interesting. After all, leakage, etc/, yatta
yatta yatta.
As became very obvious within a few years of the 1989 discovery, the
FPHE was extremely difficult to set up. However, many skeptics
assumed that "difficult to set up" meant "difficult to detect," so
they ranted about the effect disappearing when measurements were more
"accurate." That was completely bogus as an argument. As SRI P13//P14
showed, conclusively, in about 1991, the effect can be striking, not
down in the noise, when it's finally triggered, yet it can be
completely absent under what *seem to be* identical conditions. So
naive replication efforts, in the early days, assumed that if they
set up the conditions -- say, they did so "perfectly," i.e., as to
everything described -- they would either see the effect or it did not exist.
You know, we put some bait on a hook and caught a big fish. The
Bait-on-the-Hook effect. You say, wow!, I'd like to catch a fish,
too. You put some bait, the same bait, on an identical hook and toss
it in the water. You catch nothing. Replication failure? Yes.
Emphasis on "failure."
Be that as it may, I'm doing work with a Galileo-class replication,
and I'm jazzed, we should be seeing the first developed LR-115
radiation detectors in the next few weeks. If we are lucky, we'll see
proton tracks, a result of hydrogen atoms in the polyester track
base, or in the cellulose nitrate itself, getting whacked by
neutrons. The experiment is designed to be able to discriminate, we
hope, between radiation originating in the detector itself, as a
result of penetrating neutrons, and cosmic ray and other background radiation.
If we don't find any radiation, that will prove? Most likely it will
prove that I have lousy lab technique, and something I did in
building this puppy gave it indigestion. So then we try again. Hope
springs eternal.
On the other hand, just a few identifiable neutron "droppings",
apparently sourced from the cathode, from position and velocity, hey,
I don't drink champagne, and my co-worker here is 16 years old, but,
gee.... If we are lucky, we'll see hundreds of tracks, accumulated
over three weeks.
Besides my co-worker, only one researcher has purchased LR-115 from
me. I'm surprised. This is really cool stuff, and it's cheap,
substantially cheaper than CR-39, and, my opinion, much better suited
for this work, the detector layer is only 6 microns thick, and it's
deep red cellulose acetate, so tracks easily etch all the way through
and you see them by transmitted light, clearly, under an ordinary
microscope. Track detail can be observed.
Originally, when I developed my first test strip, and I saw "tails"
on the tracks, which even wiggled some, I thought that this was the
low energy end of the track, as the alpha particle from Am-241 lost
energy. Pam Boss, through Jed, set me straight. That was the high
energy end, because LR-115 will only detect up to maybe 2 MeV or so,
I don't have the exact figures. Above that, the energy transfer per
unit length to the detector medium is too low, the particle just zips
through in the night, leaving behind no trace. But, of course, it
continues to lose energy from electronic interactions, mostly, until
it does lose enough energy to become visible and eventually the track
becomes thick. And stops, as the particle is absorbed.
I'd love to have some independent confirmation of having set up the
reaction, like heat. My co-worker isn't measuring temperature, I
think. I will be. I might see something, just maybe, if I run a
parallel control with hydrogen. Just an indication.... these are
small cathodes. His cathode in the run just finished was an inch of
exposed 250 micron gold wire, compared to the two inches or so in the
Galileo protocol. So we cut the amount of electrolyte in half, and
likewise the currents, to preserve electrolyte concentration (thanks,
Dr. Storms, for pointing out the importance of this), current
density, and plating thickness.
So far, this good news: We used 12.5 g of prepared D2O electrolyte.
He did not need to replenish the electrolyte, the cathode remained
well-immersed. So we successfully demonstrated a Galileo-type current
protocol (cut in half because the wire was half as long), using that
small quantity of D2O, thus keeping kit cost low.
The cell design allowed him to have LR-115 detectors, dry, very close
to a half inch of cathode (just on the other side of the 1/16"
acrylic cell wall), plus a half-inch section of wire that he could
observe with a microscope during the run. I was worried that the cell
wall would fog up. It did not, and I was able to see his nice plated
cathode with microscope images over the internet, live. bubbling
away, at the end.
This is fun. Jed, you forgot about fun. There is a reason even
without excess heat. If we find neutron signals, we will have
confirmed the SPAWAR neutron findings, which will be published, I
assume, and will have learned a lot along the way, and I'll start
marketing to skeptics. You too can become a fringe lunatic cold
fusion nut case, deranged by what you have seen with your own eyes.
But .... chickens not hatched, I'll avoid counting them. It's just a
fun idea, right now. Very fun.
