At 10:15 PM 10/8/2012, Eric Walker wrote:
Oriani also talks about ...
Eric
[1]Â
<http://www.iscmns.org/CMNS/JCMNS-Vol6.pdf>http://www.iscmns.org/CMNS/JCMNS-Vol6.pdf,
p. 108 ff. Â See his conclusion on p. 115-16.
I should note that I had not read Oriani's recent "review" of his own work.
Looking at it now, I don't see anything new.
He claims increases in track counts "during
electrolysis," but he doesn't run exact controls,
and doesn't compare his increases with those in
controls under all-but-electrolysis conditions.
If electrolysis is the cause, then there should
be a dose-response effect. I.e., the effect
should lessen as the current lessens. There is no
correlation with current shown.
However, it would not be surprising to see
increases from electrolysis. Electrolysis moves
elements around. It attracts contaminants. It
also separates hydrogen isotopes, which may or may not be relevant.
Oriani draws many conclusions from his data that don't seem to be warranted.
More surprising is that nuclear particles can be
generated within the thickness of the plastic.
Well, if there are neutrons, this wouldn't be
surprising. But what does he conclude this from?
He re-etches the CR-39, and assumes that if he
finds new tracks, not visible before, these are
from radiation originating in the material.
That's what fast neutrons would do. He doesn't mention neutrons, though.
However, I don't see any mention of controls, of
the repeated etching of chips not exposed to electrolysis.
He finds an apparent anomaly, his cell with the
highest electrolytic current, experiment number
9, with tracks so numerous that they could not be
counted. (That would make it seem that track
counts do correlate with electrolytic current,
but this doesn't appear over all the data, and
I've been relying on Kowalski's relaying of
Oriani's comment that track counts did not
correlate with current.) Now, one could still
estimate overall track counts by counting them in
a small area and extrapolating, unless the tracks
really were so numerous that they have merged
with each other. Hamburger, it's called, perhaps.
Oriani does not appear to have attempted to
replicate that result. His experiments were all over the map.
This is investigational work, where you try lots
of stuff. It's not the kind of work that can be
used to draw clear conclusions, it's generally
useful to suggest directions for further research.
Oriani notes, in this paper, that some of the
control chips show more tracks than some of the
experimental chips. He then applies statistical
analysis. The problem is that this is not a
uniform data set, i.e., the experiments are
widely varied from each other. Kowalski, in his
replication, used a single protocol, and found no
effect. Kowalski also saw a few anomalies. Just not what he'd thought he'd see!
His Figure 2 shows a large cluster of tracks.
What caused that? Well, the CR-39 could be
exposed to a radioactive source at any time, from
the time it was manufactured and cured, up until
the time it was etched. It could be a bit of
radioactive dust, there is stuff floating around
from nuclear tests, still. A piece of dust on the
surface would not produce a spread pattern like
that, unless it was fairly large, which is
unlikely. But Oriani doesn't give scale for his
images. I'd think that some piece of radioactive
dust that was held away from the surface, a short
distance, could produce this. It's on the back
side of the chip, presumably the side away from
the cathode? (Otherwise, there is no definition
of back or front, CR-39 is symmetrical.) It's
always possible that some piece of dust ended up
in the CR-39 itself. Not likely that it could
produce that pattern, again. This looks like external radiation.
Looking over the paper again, I think I have
misinterpreted certain things. The research is
confusing because it represents many different
experiments, presented as if was a series that is
the same, which was implied by his claim of
reproducibility. Above, I make an assumption
about "back side." That may be completely
incorrect, because Oriani used CR-39, in at least
some cases, with the 6 micron plastic mylar
covering intact, on one side, removed on the
other. Oriani implies that radiation would not be
expected on the "back side," which implies an
orientation toward a source, but he doesn't seem
to show any consistent relationship of the detectors to the source.
To nail all this down, I'd need to read and
reread and restate and reanalyze Oriani's paper....
Bottom line, Oriani has not been replicated.
Kowalski failed to replicate (actually I didn't
see Kowalski's results as being that much
different from Oriani's, but Kowalski's opinion
was that he didn't replicate the results), but
this should actually be fairly easy work. If one
is going to do this with nickel-hydrogen, it's
cheap, and there is no reason not to use high
current, to get the kind of intense radiation
result that he (anomalously) reports.
