At 10:09 PM 4/11/2012, Finlay MacNab wrote:
There are many problems with this paper.
The most glaring error is that they heated their sample to 1000C for
10 minutes before measuring. They do this to remove sulphur, which
should not be present under tightly controlled conditions
(incidentally they claim to explain the presence of sulphur in
reference 11, which is not included in the references section)! It
is very probable that massive material changes would occur under
high temperature treatment, like the diffusion of CaO into the upper Pd film.
The observation of natural Mo isotopic ratios BEFORE D2 gas
permeation and the presence of sulphur also indicates that their
fabrication process was poorly controlled.
The cited Iwamura paper tracks the growth of the Mo peak by XPS AND
SIMS through repeated cycles of D2 permeation and reports a zero Mo
peak before D2 Permeation by XPS. The paper in question shows a
huge CaO peak before D2 gas permeation which is not present in the
Iwamura samples before gas permeation.
My, that's ... assertive. Confident.
Those were not "errors," this is an experimental paper and they
reported what they did. They did not claim that this was an exact
replication. However, this paper has implications that cannot be ignored.
They found what easily could have been intepreted as an isotopically
pure Mo peak after deuterium "permeation." If they had not carefully
pursued a certain alternative, this paper would have been considered
an Iwamure replication.
But they did pursue that, and they reported their conclusion. It
wasn't Mo, it was Ca2O+. Which is certainly likely to be present,
since these experiments use calcium oxide layer separating layers of palladium.
I'm going to repeat this. If they had simply reported that peak, this
paper would have been considered a confirmation of Iwamura's results.
However, it wasn't. Now, we can easily claim that they did not manage
to create the "Iwamura effect." Fair enough. However, they have
raised a spectre that isn't just going to lie back down in the grave.
CaO2+, which could be expected to be somewhat present in Iwamura's
work, imitates Mo-96 quite closely. So, the obvious question, did
Iwamura take sufficient care to rule out that he was observing Mo-96
instead of CaO2+?
Now, these are the reported replications of Iwamura:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Higashiyamreplicatio.pdf reports
Praseodymium. (Another Iwamura report).
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/KitamuraAsearchforn.pdf found Mo in
8/14 runs, considered the identification "Not definite."
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CelaniFthermaland.pdf is not at all a
replication. They found anomalous Mo in an electrochemical cell, that's all.
Kidwell at the NRL apparently attempted to replicate Iwamura, and did
not succeed. There was speculation about Praseodymium contamination.
The Iwamura publication regarding possible transmutation of Sr to Mo
was in 2002. That's ten years. There is no clear confirmation as far
as I know, in spite of some attempts. The most important was
Kitamura, who considered it not definite, and so this new paper is
important, as an attempt to replicate, to become more clear about
what was being observed, specifically with Sr and Mo.
This paper, by the way, is a clear response to the skeptical chorus
that claims that the cold fusion community uncritically accepts every report.
