At 06:32 PM 12/13/2012, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:
I agree with Jed,
I wish we could stop obsessing over what the phrase âCold Fusionâ
really means. The truth of the matter is: nobody really knows for sure
what kind of phenomenon âCold Fusionâ really represents. Big deal! Get
over it! The phrase âCold Fusionâ is nothing more than a place
holder.
It was at one time. It was quickly realized that
this was misleading, because we didn't know it
was fusion. However, as soon as Miles was
confirmed, that was obsolete. The FPHE is a
result of the conversion of deuterium to helium through an unknown mechanism
That is, we have not identified the burglar, but
we know what was taken and what was left behind.
We don't have to know who the burglar is to call the incident "burglary."
It's actually very important to establish "cold
fusion" as meaning the conversion of lighter
elements into heavier ones, releasing the energy
expected from the mass deficit. Not as meaning
"d-d fusion," bringing up images of colliding
deuterons. Bad Idea. It might be similar to that,
or very different, but the fuel-product
relationship is clear, at least for the main
reaction. All kinds of stuff might be happening
in there, explaining those minor effects, like
tritium production or ... neutrons! (at extremely low levels).
Krivit has been damaging the field by saying
"it's not fusion." He's doing this because he
imagines that W-L theory isn't "fusion." It may
not be as to specific reaction mechanism, but
even Larsen acknowledges that certain SRI work
showing a heat/helium ratio a bit above 30
MeV/He-4 is sound, he merely interprets it
differently, but he *does* acknowledge helium as
a product, and his reactions start with
deuterium. (In the PdD environment.) So what is
accomplished is "fusion," and *maybe* there are
some other things going on in there, but that has not been established.)
Krivit does not understand this, unfortunately. I
tried to meet with him when I was there. Hostile,
and gratuitously so. Unfortunate. He's trashing his career.
I find it to be an exercise in absurdity that others continue to make
such a big deal out of the fact that others continue to sue the phrase
âCold Fusionâ - as if doing so is a horrible thing to do to science.
What I see is far more political foreplay in harping on this issue, as
compared to focusing on actual scientific investigation.
I now refer to the FPHE as "cold fusion." Storms
did so in his 2010 review, "Status of cold fusion
(2010)", which is a remarkable shift. He didn't
use the word in the title of his book, only three
years earlier. "The Science of Low Energy Nuclear
Reaction." However, it's in the subtitle: "A
Comprehensive Compilation of Evidence and
Explanations about Cold Fusion." Nothing changed
of importance on this issue between 2007 and 2010.
I think it's very important. But until there is
solid evidence that NiH reactions are real and
involve fusion, I'm going to discourage it, and
probably challenge it. It's important to
distinguish what is scientifically established
from what is not. That obvious does not mean that
we should discard NiH! The opposite. There are
persistent reports, and the big problem with the
entire field has been that there are extremely
interesting findings that nobody replicates. They
may be real, they may be artifact. We really need to know!
My favorite example is biological LENR. If
Vysotskii's work can be confirmed, it could be an
approach to LENR that would blow all the others
out of the water. Imagine, biologically
engineering Nuclear Active Environment. Growing
cold fusion cells, literally, in culture medium.
Not to mention other applications.... Has
*anyone* tried to replicate Vysotskii? I have
heard of nothing. This is not difficult work, it
could be expected. For one approach, one simply
needs a strain that works, I presume Vysotskii
would cooperate, and access to a Mossbauer
spectrometer for a few measurements. Those are not rare.
Hah! The pseudoskeptics think that
Naturwissenschaften is a biology journal. So,
where would a Vysotskii replication be published? NW? Not a bad idea.
