At 04:27 PM 12/26/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Mary Yugo <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
I suggest you stop guessing and read the literature.
I suggest you stop referring vaguely to some amorphous "literature"
and answer the question . . .
No can do. I learned years ago there is no point to spoon feeding
information to skeptics. First they misunderstand. Then they demand
more and more. You will have do your own homework.
"Apart from them"? So the after death cells produce electricity?
I rest my case.
You can't be serious.
Mary, let me explain what Jed is talking about. He's concluding, from
your question, that you haven't done your homework.
And you haven't.
Look, I was quite skeptical about cold fusion, I believed, with about
everyone else capable of understanding the issues, that what Pons and
Fleischmann had claimed had not been confirmed.
In order to change my mind, I had to really start reading on the
subject. I was a Wikipedia editor, and I'd come across some strange
stuff happening with the Cold fusion article, so I started reading
the sources. I eventually bought a series of books, what I could find
cheap, and my purchases included the major skeptical books (I.e.,
Huizenga, Taubes, etc.)
The title of Huizenga's book was "Cold fusion: scientific fiasco of
the century." He didn't realize the irony, I think. It was that, a
fiasco, but not just in one direction, as quite a number of writers
have pointed out. Scientists abandoned scientific protocol, resorting
to polemic and insult. It was really a mess.
I do suggest reading the material. I do ultimately recommend two
books: Storms, The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (World
Scientific,2007), but also a more popular book, Beaudette, Excess
Heat, which I think was published around 2002, and it is available as
a free PDF from lenr-canr.org. I bought the book, though.
Jed is a bit crusty, it comes from years of dealing with certain
kinds of skeptics, who do have their fingers stuffed in their ears,
they will raise preposterous explanation after preposterous
explanation, giving their own loony ideas complete credence, while,
at the same time, dismissing as delusional the confirmed reports of
serious researchers.
It's easy to understand a certain initial skepticism here. After all,
if LENR was possible, particularly PdD LENR, why wasn't it reported
before? Of course, it turns out that it was (possibly) reported
before, and, futher, after the FP announcement, people who had worked
with highly loaded PdD did recall certain "anomalies," that they had
simply passed off as unexplainable. Mizuno, for example, Jed
translated his book. Thanks, Jed!
Then there is that pesky Coulomb barrier. What I found, though, was
that there was ample opinion among quantum physicists that it was
possible that the unexplored conditions of condensed matter just
might provide some pathway around that, some kind of tunneling or
alternate reaction. Recent work has actually predicted fusion from a
physical arrangement of deuterium that *might* be present, quite
rarely, in highly loaded PdD. That's using, apparently, standard
quantum mechanics, but that theory is as yet unverified.
Basically, the math that the energized skeptics applied to claim that
cold fusion was impossible was probably correct, for the reaction
that they applied it to. That isn't the reaction! And that explains
why the neutrons and tritium and He-3 that this reaction (d-d)
predicted were (mostly) absent.
It all boiled down to hubris, assuming that we knew something that we
did not know. How could we possibly know that *no unknown reaction"
was possible?
Don't worry, Mary, you don't have to believe in anything; what I'm
suggesting is that you reserve a portion of your skepticism for the
claims of "standard scientists" who apply what they know from one
narrow field and from that assume they can make pronouncements about
what they have never researched. If you have researched cold fusion,
and succeeded in replicating the effect, they will call you a
"believer," completely dismissing all the work you did to be careful
about your measurements, to avoid jumping to conclusions, etc.
Why is it, I've seen it asked, that all the glowing reports about
cold fusion are from "believers"?
Well, would you do what Miles described as the most difficult
experimental work of his long career, if you thought the whole thing
was a crock and totally impossible?
The famous negative replicators in 1989-1990 spend a fraction of the
time necessary to build up high D loading in palladium, and when they
saw nothing, we we can confidently predict (in hindsight) from their
experimental descriptions, they concluded that Pons and Fleischmann
were charlatans.
You may believe that Rossi is a charlatan, he certainly looks like
one, I love that video of him looking up from the controls during the
Mats Lewan demo. I imagine him saying "Oh, I didn't actually touch
anything, I was just polishing the knobs. Would anyone with eyes like
mine lie to you? Don't even think of it!"
Sometimes, though appearances can deceive, that's all I'll say about
Rossi. It's obvious that if he wanted to be accepted, and if the
effect is real, he could trivially have arranged far better
demonstrations. He didn't, and what that means is pretty much what
one wants to make it mean. It really means nothing. I certainly
wouldn't send the guy my money from this! But neither can I prove
from it much of anything, beyond a capacity to emit hot air.
Biologically generated. Probably not fusion, eh?
And I will ask again: is there an experiment in which all energy
input is discontinued from a cell and it continues to provide heat
or electricity (I don't care which) for a VERY LONG PERIOD-- such as
weeks or more -- one which is well and properly documented by
reliable people . . .
If I tell you they went for hours, you will say they should have
gone for days. If I say they went for days, you demand weeks. You
will move the goal posts to months, then years. This is all
nonsense. The only relevant criterion is whether the heat after
death reaction exceeds the limits of chemistry. It does, in most
cases. For details, read the literature.
He's right, Mary. But, in my experience, it takes a heap of study to
come to that conclusion. Others jump to it quickly, and then are
blindsided by aspects of the field of which they were not aware.
If you want simple, become sufficiently conversant in how heat is
measured in CF experiments, at least the best methods, such as used
by SRI (McKubre), or Pons and Fleischmann -- who were, after all, the
worlds foremost experts at this -- and then look at helium and the
work that has been done. If helium is being made -- as it is -- then
this is a nuclear reaction. Practical consequences unknown.
