At 04:23 PM 8/20/2012, James Bowery wrote:
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
if conditions are kept the same, it can suffice *for comparisons.*
What if the comparison is between a known heat source (ie: "unity")
and a suspected anomalous heat source (ie: "above unity")?
Why isn't that adequate for a qualitative demonstration that puts to
rest all questions concerning the _existence_ of the phenomenon?
There can be many issues, if you really want to "put to rest all
questions." However, the kind of evidence wanted does exist: it's the
heat/helium correlation. While it remains theoretically possible that
someone could simultaneously explain the heat and the helum, showing
how an artifact produced them both, at the right amounts, it becomes
preposterously unlikely, particularly when the correlation has been
shown by many different researchers using different approaches.
Bottom line, James, cold fusion *is* known to exist, based on solid
experimental evidence that shows production of helium, a nuclear
product, commensurate with the heat we'd expect if the helium is
being produced by deuterium fusion. That's a characteristic heat,
unusually high, so the measured heat/helium ratios, though not very
precise, would have to be *way* off if this isn't fusion, if, say,
it's W-L neutron absorption and reactions.
And explaining the heat/helium ratio with *no nuclear reactions*
would be far more difficult.
Basically, for scientists, anyway, if they are not already convinced,
they are pseudoskeptical, reasoning from conclusions, or they are ignorant.
If that's not so, I'd challenge this "knowledgeable skeptic" to write
a paper as to the error of all the reviews that have been written,
and submit it to a journal. It's been tried. The papers are rejected,
because there is no science there.
The flap and debate are all about politics, not science.
Rossi's claims are not "impossible." That doesn't mean that they are "real."
That takes independent confirmation. NiH is approaching the state
where some kind of reaction is confirmed, but since there is no
correlation with ash yet, it's nowhere near as solid as the PdD science.
Much research in this field looks for a single effect. It is nowhere
near as powerful as research that looks for correlated effects.
It was remarkable, in fact, in the early days, there were plenty of
experiments where people set up PdD experiments, didn't bother with
calorimetry, and went straight to measuring neutrons. No neutrons?
They thought that meant something! What it meant wasn't clear though.
Since lots of people also set up PdD experiments and looked for heat,
and found none.
They didn't set up the reaction, so, big surprise?
The lack of neutron results was taken to mean that cold fusion was
not occurring, but that depended on a definition of "cold fusion" as
being "d-d fusion," the brute force kind, which produces about 1
energetic neutron per 2 reactions. In fact, Pons and Fleischmann had
not claimed "cold fusion," but "unknown nuclear reaction." And if you
don't know what the reaction is, you can't predict the products!
Celani is doing investigational research into materials. For that
purpose, a single measure (heat) can be sufficient. People who are
not familiar with the field, who imagine that the reality of cold
fusion is a point of major concern among the researchers, then think
that Celani's work is shallow and "doesn't prove anything," but he's
concerned with *relative results,* and he's had experiments, same
setup, with no apparent excess heat, if I'm correct. That indicates
that his calorimetry is approximately correct. He doesn't need more
than that. He doesn't need a Seebeck. Fish bicycle (for him). Great
devices, though, and small ones are not that expensive. Isoperibolic,
though, is generally more sensitive, and faster response.
