At 12:45 AM 3/28/2012, Guenter Wildgruber wrote:
Von: Jed Rothwell <[email protected]>
An: [email protected]
Gesendet: 1:22 Mittwoch, 28.März 2012
Betreff: Re: [Vo]:the desktop supernova
>Ed Storms wrote to me: "I did not confirm
transmutation. In fact, I told LeClair just the opposite."
>- Jed
So maybe the LENR-crowd should get its act
together whether there are transmutations or not.
Maybe Mr. Wildgruber should get his contexts straight.
Transmutation of elements occurs at quite low
levels in PdD cold fusion. There is, reported
from those experiments, only one high-level
transmutation, deuterium -> helium-4, i.e.,
correlated with the heat (at roughly the known
yield, by whatever pathway). Tritium is found, at
lower levels, and the same with other elements.
See the review by Edumund Storms, "Status of cold
fusion (2010)," Naturwissenschaften. (A preprint is hosted on lenr-canr.org).
It appears that Le Clair provided Storms with a
sample of the material allegedly produced by his
disastrous experiments. Storms found no evidence
of transmutation in that material, but I'm not sure what tests were performed.
Le Clair's story is fantastic, and his
explanations are even more out there. As I've
written, if Le Clair's story is true, there are
huge military implications. This is not merely a
method of producing energy, and it would make,
for example, a handy nuclear trigger. Do not try this at home.
Le Clair did it at home, and, again, if we can
believe his reports -- which is highly
questionable -- he and his partner nearly died.
Or was that last episode at the NRL in
Washington? I'm not sure that the stories are straight, but it doesn't matter.
(ie not only one-step production of He or Cu, but a spectrum of elements)
Then probably it would split into two groups,
(plus Randall Mills, who has a theory of his own).
As an observer I can only say:
There is evidence for both, or a contiunuum.
Which worries me.
Even good-mannered LENR seems to have some bursts of bad manner.
How human.
This isn't LENR. Get that straight. If this is
real, it's hot fusion, which is precisely why it
is so dangerous. Bubble fusion creates very high
temperatures in the collapse of the bubbles, and
there have been reports of energetic neutrons
from bubble fusion, which remain controversial.
(Normally, the known temperatures of bubble
collapse are still below the temperatures needed for hot fusion.)
Le Clair is using cavitation in a particular way
that might focus the cavitation energy on a
target. Le Clair is an expert on cavitation, apparently.
That he is openly talking about this, so long
after the events in question, is a sign that
there is nothing there. The military would not
try to keep this quiet through the inefficient
means of ignoring him, i.e., trusting that
everyone would think he's crazy. He has a
technique which, again, if he's not hallucinating
(or lying), has more than once generated strong
nuclear effects. This was not some mild LENR
effect, visible only through instrumentation. His
setup is not expensive, it's purely a matter of
knowing what to do. So, even if he's crazy as a
loon, he could do it again, he could demonstrate
it, and teach it to someone else.
No, the military would have investigated, and
probably did investigate. They'd have checked out
his reports of the paramedics and the Hazmat
team, they'd have reviewed his medical records,
and they'd have obtained samples from his lab. If
there was anything to this, he'd have been
ordered to keep quiet about it, the technology
would have been appropriated by the goverment,
and, yes, they can do that where national
security is involved. They'd pay him, and he'd be
working for them. And if he refused to cooperate,
he'd be imprisoned. And, again, yes, they can do that.
Rossi's work is, if real, LENR. What reaction
remains unclear. My position on Rossi is that we
should continue as if this is *nothing*, while
remaining open to evidence to the contrary.
Independent evidence. We were told, by Rossi,
that it would all be over by last October. Is it over?
I think not. We know practically nothing more
than we did a year ago this January.
Rossi has refused every opportunity for a
semi-independent confirmation, not to mention
full independent confirmation. His recent threat
to sue would be suing someone for stating the
obvious, i.e., for drawing and stating obvious
conclusions from behavior that Rossi voluntarily
engaged in. Some of us, thinking that Rossi may
have indeed found something important, have
hypothesized, to explain his bizarre behavior,
that he has deliberately created the impression
of fraud, treading an edge, so that he (1) gets
publicity and then possible investment when and
as he needs it, and (2) competitors will be
discouraged from trying to discover his secrets.
What is most likely, in my opinion, is that Rossi
did indeed find something, but that the reaction
is erratic and unreliable; as well, it may not
sustain well or reliably. Some of his
demonstrations, then, may have been fudged. Ni-H
reactions had already been reported, but, as with
almost all cold fusion, energy production was not
large, and was erratic and replication was
difficult. Rossi, under this hypothesis, had
found a way to scale up the reaction, but a lot
of cold fusion work has deliberately avoided
that, keeping in mind the original Pons and
Fleischmann melt-down. What if one cell in a
thousand decides to really go for it? Pons and
Fleischmann had a 1 cm. cube of palladium,
largely vaporized. They never again worked at that scale.
Le Clair, my hypothesis, is insane. If he's not,
he could demonstrate it, by backing up from his
fantastic *conclusions* and theories -- he is
generally not qualified in the field wherein he is theorizing.
He could carefully collect what evidence he has,
and, if possible, scale *down* and reproduce the
effect, with adequate precautions and controls.
He would, in this, assume that he'd get an
effect, at least an order of magnitude greater
than he did, and plan accordingly, approaching
the required conditions slowly, this time with
adequate instrumentation. One bubble isn't going
to kill him, though I'm not thrilled by his story
of nuclear ninja stars at relativistic speeds.
