At 05:41 PM 12/13/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
My suggestion. For more effective communication, don't use language
that treats a guess as if were known fact. Even if it seems like a good guess.
Any statement about the nature of cold fusion is a guess.
No, or more accurately, only as "cold fusion" came to be a term for
suspected LENR of many kinds.
The Fleischmann-Pons Heat effect is the result of the conversion of
deuterium to helium, at least primarily.
That is a statement about the nature of cold fusion which is not a
guess. It's a conclusion from the analysis of experimental data.
While it could be wrong, it's very unlikely to be so. There are no
credible artifacts that have been proposed and which match the
experimental data. None. While there are a few unexplained results in
early data, Stuff Happens. For example, helium was missing from an
Arata-Zhang replication attemped by SRI, and McKubre says that he
suspects the cell, a DS-cathode, leaked or was somehow prematurely
opened. That cell *did* show tritium, and He-3 as would be expected
from tritium generated from reactions inside the cell.
There is no work that impeaches heat/helium.
Don't confuse the entire class of statements, theories, with a
specific class, in this case about *mechanism*. What's true is that
we don't know the mechanism, we only know the result. Helium is being
generated commensurate with the heat, and the amount of helium
generated is consistent with experimental conditions and accuracy and
the value for deuterium-helium conversion, regardless of mechanism or
intermediate products. Only if an intermediate product persists would
it change this, and if there are intermediates, they do not appear to
be sticking around in quantity enough to affect the heat measurements.
There are no generally accepted theories. I'll take "fusion" over
the W-L theory or Mills.
WRT the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect, you would be on solid ground.
However, that effect results in deuterium fusion. Straight deuterium
fusion, for starters, is much easier to accomplish than, say, protium
fusion. Deuterium fusion is not an explanation for NiH results. It is
obviously different.
Now, the concept of "conservation of miracles." We need to stop
referring to cold fusion as a miracle. It might be, but it's quite
likely that all that happened was that people failed to anticipate --
and thus to calculate -- a possible physical configuration. The
application of quantum mechanics to the solid state is a primitive
field, it's extremely difficult to model more than two-body problems.
That's what Takahashi is doing, that's what Kim is doing (in a more
general way), and there is work on this going on elsewhere. This can
take years. The math is difficult and complex.
My suggestion: don't "take" anything. There were plenty of errors on
the pseudoskeptical physicist side, but the other side made the error
of insisting on "nuclear" when the evidence was still circumstantial.
As a result of the crystallization of opinon, the physicists mostly
stopped looking, but Huizenga noticed Miles, and commented with
genuine amazement. If confirmed, he wrote, this would solve a major
mystery of cold fusion. I.e., the ash. Well, Miles was confirmed, but
it seems Huizenga was infirm....
Thinking that was are obviously two distinct effects, experimentally,
must be the same because each one is a "miracle" is not going to help
the field. No, the FPHE is not a miracle, it's natural, under the
conditions. And a real conservation of miracles leads me to suspect
that this is also true for NiH, if it's real and confirmed.
There is NiH work going on right now at SRI, or at least being set
up. Brillouin.
There is the Celani work and the MFMP replication, and these people,
I suspect, aren't going to stop with mere replication, they will
attempt falsification, at least I hope they will!
Meanwhile, *we do know,* at least, the fuel/ash relationship for PdD.
It's obviously going to be different for NiH. While the mechanism may
be "similar," it's unlikely to be exactly the same. If it were the
same, the NAE for PdD would work with H. If it does, it's only at
very low levels.
Calling NiH "cold fusion" is jumping the shark. Even calling it LENR,
without confirmed nuclear products, is premature. It *may be* LENR,
and, yes, if it's LENR, some kind of fusion is most likely. However,
not all LENR would be fusion as to product. For example, neutron
activation is not normally called fusion (though it can be thought of
as the fusion of an element with neutronium), and it can lead to
energy release from *fission*. I'll agree that the reaction is
*probably* some kind of fusion, but that is *only* speculation.
I'd say its very important for those who accept cold fusion to back
off from "belief" and take on the skeptical role that the
pseudoskeptics abandoned. We need vigorous internal criticism. We
don't need to dive into pseudoskepticism that looks for reasons to
call claims "bogus." However, the scientific method does look for
such reasons, and then tests them. It *explains* results, it does not
dismiss them. N-ray experimental results were caused by visual
expectation, under conditions where the eye experiences a lot of
noise. That was not merely some suggestion, it was tested.
Experimental work, of the investigational variety, is frequently
"inadequate" as to proving anything. It provides clues where to look.
If we note that Celani's calorimetry is questionable, that doesn't
make him wrong or his work shoddy. It merely means that it is not yet complete.
It's easy to look at experimental work and wish that this or that had
been done. Sometimes it really was a mistake not to do something, but
... people, human beings, make mistakes. We don't think of
everything. The extended consideration by the scientific community
will complete things. That is why it is *so* important that the
physicists start looking seriously at cold fusion.
It is probably going to take some very serious application of quantum
field theory to explain the established experimental results. I very
much doubt that chemists will be able to do this. We need to stop
expecting chemists to explain their experimental results, except to
give informed opinion, when appropriate, that they are not
explainable by the chemistry they know.
LENR means more or less the same thing as "fusion" since it sure
doesn't see likely to be fission. What other reactions are there
starting with H or D? Nowhere to go but up. I doubt the entire
thing is host metal reactions.
You have to call it something. Any name will include some
assumptions and exclude others. Even "the FP effect" assumes that
Ni-H is the same effect as Pd-D.
It is axiomatic in language that: Words are not in themselves the
thing they represent; they are partial descriptions at best; and
(also along these lines) word etymology has no bearing on present
meaning. I was going to mention that with regard to your discussion
about the word "Allah." Even if it did once mean "Moon God" that has
no bearing on what it means now. (I will take your word that it did
not derive from that.)
The English word "Monday" is derived from the word "moon" but it now
has no connection whatever to the moon. The word "understand" no
longer means standing under, even though it originally had that
meaning a metaphoric sense. Computer folders no longer fold in any sense.
Most words were originally derived from metaphor.
- Jed
