At 12:08 AM 4/10/2012, Eric Walker wrote:
On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 9:48 AM, Abd ul-Rahman
Lomax <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
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W-L theory allows for a farrago of proposed
reactions, so one can pick and choose for a
large and complex field, to find a reaction that
might explain a particular result. And that the
required reaction series might be
way-silly-improbable is ignored. Essentially,
there will be, if W-L theory of neutron
formation is correct, there will be N neutrons
being formed. It is proposed that these have a
very high absorption rate, so N transmutations
will be caused. But this is N/T, where T is the
total number of possible targets. (Roughly.) A
transmuted element becomes just another target,
and would presumably be exposed to the same
neutron flux. The probability of a second
reaction in the "cycle" would be the square of
N/T. Â That would be, for all intents and purposes, close to zero.
Can you further explain this calculation? Â Are
you assuming a low flux, where N/T << 1? Â
You're also thinking that T is large and
includes the Palladium atoms in the lattice?
Yes, N/T << 1. If not so, then we'd be seeing far
stronger evidence of reactions: transmutation
products, heat, and (if not for the magic "heavy electron patches") radiation.
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The intermediate product would be left. Â If
neutrons are being created in significant
numbers, we would expect to see specific results
that are not observed, and gammas are only one aspect of this.
I think you mentioned a great deal of heat as
being another missing observable in addition to
gamma radiation. Â Just to make sure I
understand your position -- you're relying on
branching ratios and reactions that are known
from previous experience with fusion?
No, not at all. Where did you get that idea? Heat
is not missing, except when we look at what would
be required to generate the observed levels of
helium following the W-L pathways. The third
missing observable is the levels of transmuted
elements that would be present as intermediate
products, or as end products if the helium is produced by alpha emission.
(Which then leaves another problem, hot alphas,
which would create other observable effects.)
 I have no reason to doubt this approach, I'm
just trying to understand. Â What are the other
missing observables in addition to heat and gamma rays?
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Looking through some of the other slides, what
Larsen is doing is searching through
experimental records, finding anomalies that W-L
theory *might* explain. There is an absence of quantitative analysis.
I think Jed had a nice thread about the merits
of qualitative analysis not too long ago, but point taken.
It's crucial. I know of only one *partial* theory
that actually makes quantitative predictions,
beyond Preparata's expectation of helium, and it's not ready for publication.
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There is an absence of clear experimental prediction.
A good indicator of wishy-washy thinking.
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This is pure ad-hoc speculation, and all it can
do, scientifically, is to suggest avenues for exploration.
Arriving at new avenues for exploration doesn't
seem all that bad a result, but we should strive for better.
The problem is that it hasn't really been
developed to the point where specific experiment is being suggested.
Just to make sure I understand your position --
you don't like neutron flux because you don't
find sufficient evidence for it and you find strong evidence against it.
I don't find *any* evidence for it. W-L theory is
a speculation. The basis of the speculation is
this: if there is an unknown nuclear reaction,
what is it? So people make things up. Most of
these made-up theories are not considered
plausible. However, we cannot rule any of them
out completely, except where they make clear predictions.
Speculation that surface conditions on metal
hydrides might create a previously-unobserved
effect, making neutrons, fine. But then what do
neutrons do in that enviroment? Neutron behavior
is well-known and predictable. And what we'd
expect these neutrons to do just doesn't happen.
The missing gammas are a big part of it. To
explain them, a *new* previously unobserved
effect is required: gamma suppression, and not
just a partial shielding, complete shielding.
Beyond that, where are the copious transmutation
products (other than helium) required to explain
the observed heat? And if helium is being
produced by the "cycle" that W-L proposes, where
are all the required intermediate products?
This is what I understand: W-L theory proposes
that neutrons are formed within a "patch." The
neutrons have a short path, because of their very
low momentum. They all are absorbed. The
elemental composition of the patch, as to the
most common elements, can be known. The patch
cannot be very small, or gammas would escape from
neutrons travelling to the edge or beyond. Given
a composition, the transmutation products should
be predictable, and then the heat generation per
the total mix, with, then, each element of the
mix having a specific Q with respect to overall heat.
My understanding of the experimental history is
that no transmutation products correlate well
with heat except for helium, and helium must
account for at least half of the heat, if not all
of it. (I may be understating the case!)
There is no experimental evidence, certainly no
confirmed experimental evidence, that points to W-L theory.
 For there to be sufficient flux to have a
"carbon cycle" and so on would entail effects
that aren't seen experimentally, such as high
levels of heat. Â You don't see a strict
requirement for a D+D -> He reaction, but you
see compelling reason not to give serious consideration to alpha decay.
No. In fact, a prototheory which I consider is
quite possibly related to what is actually
happening does, like W-L theory, posit helium
generation from Be-8, which decays to two alphas,
i.e., two helium nuclei. The difference is that
the Be-8 is formed through a predicted (using
known quantum field theory) from the
Bose-Einstein condensation of two deuterium
molecules, i.e, four deuterium atoms (with their
electrons). The theory is incomplete because we
don't know that the precursor condition, used in
the calculation, a tetrahedral symmetric
arrangement of the four atoms (which represents a
close approach, due to interatomic repulsive
forces which would, in a free liquid or gas
phase, dissociate the molecules), would actually
form with enough frequency, nor do we understand
how the resulting energy would be released. Some
specific speculative predictions have been made,
of photon emissions at certain specific
frequencies, representing Be-8 nuclear
transitions, but ... these would be extremely difficult to observe.
In any case, that is "alpha decay." For a long
time I considered that "d-d fusion" could be
almost completely ruled out, for lots of obvious
reasons. Multibody fusion remained on the table.
However, I'm now seeing a level of unpublished
evidence that the reaction might indeed be the
fusion of two deuterons, and this is going to
require much futher investigation. That would
still leave a huge mystery. We'll see.
Bottom line, we do not seem to have sufficent
experimental evidence to develop a strong theory
of cold fusion. We know these things:
1. Levels of heat are developed such that expert
chemists say, this is not chemistry.
2. Helium is being produced at levels
"commensurate with" the heat, such that it
appears that some kind of deuterium fusion is
involved. That is, the fuel is deuterium (in the
FPHE), and the ash is helium. Mostly. There are
other reactions, but all at levels far below
those implied by the helium found. When the
helium evidence is considered in conjunction with
the heat evidence, a nuclear origin of the heat becomes the default hypothesis.
3. There is little radiation of any observable
kind. (There are enough reports of tritium,
X-rays, and various transmutation products that
these likely exist, but they are not clearly
correlated with the heat and are likely rare
branches or consequential reactions. The
Hagelstein limit of 20 KeV for charged particle
emission from the reactions applies to the bulk, not to rare effects.)
There is more that is "known." I put "known" in
parentheses because some evidence may be
misleading, may be due to particular conditions
in the experiments on which it was based.
Regarding transmutations, such as that of Barium
into Samarium reported in Iwamura et al. [1],
you either find evidence for them to be
unreliable and ultimately untenable, or,
alternatively, something that arises by a process other than neutron flux.
Have I misunderstood anything?
I think so. I'm going to point out that the
Iwamura reports are not of the Fleischmann-Pons
Heat Effect, per se. We might assume that nuclear
transmutations in an Iwamura experiment are due
to the same reaction, but that's absolutely not
clear. There may be more than one LENR.
Transmutations are known from FPHE experiments.
Some transmutation reports may be unreliable, but
helium is a transmuted element, and so is
tritium. Tritium reports are sufficiently well
established to consider them reliable, but
tritium levels are not clearly associated, quantitiatively, with excess heat.
There are some problems associated with the
identification of transmutation products, and
until there is adequate confirmation of results
like those of Iwamura, it's dangerous to base
much on them. Iwamura's results are certainly
interesting and worthy of replication, and there
have been replication attempts, some of which
appear to have failed (or, in a recent case, just
published in the CMNS journal, there was an
apparent transmutation product that was
identified as being, instead, a molecular ion
with similar weight). It's a complicated story
that I'm not going to research and write about here.
