I have been thinking about expanding this paper about the Lewis CalTech experiment, and putting it in the poster session at ICCF18:
"How Nature refused to re-examine the 1989 CalTech experiment" http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJhownaturer.pdf 1. Lewis write a good paper in many ways, and a valuable contribution. 2. Lewis proposed that the apparent excess heat might have been caused by a change in the gas flow rate. Here is what I just noticed: his own test disproved his own hypothesis. It is a shame I cannot upload the Lewis paper to LENR-CANR.og. Regarding #1, I will say that Lewis did a pretty good job in many ways. I reread the paper the other day and I was impressed. He has important things to say about electrolysis and the potential pitfalls. He points out some "subtle sources of possible error" which sound legitimate to me. He cautions that Huggins et al. may have made some of these errors. I think this was a conscientiousness effort. They put a lot of effort into measuring neutrons and gamma rays, which was a good idea back in 1989. Regarding #2, Lewis set out to test his interpretation of Fleischmann's statement that cold fusion anomalous heat is proportional to current density. He tested this by reducing electrolysis by half, and compensating with Joule heating. The temperature did not fall, so he concluded that the anomalous portion of the heat (76 mW estimated by Miles) was not dependent on current density. Lewis states that the “abrupt changes in the rate of heat loss” were caused by a change in the rate of gas evolution. However, the rate of gas evolution should have fallen when he reduced electrolysis. That would also lower the temperature. His own test disproved his own hypothesis just as much as it disproved Fleischmann's hypothesis. As I said in my paper already, Lewis misinterpreted Fleischmann. Fleischmann did not mean the anomalous power responds instantly to current density, or in an exact proportion. You can cut power to zero and the heat may continue for a while. McKubre's curves copied to my paper show that when you increase current density, loading may increase and after a while the heat will follow. Lewis should have understood that! The cathode is not some sort of amplifier-like device that works by instantly modulating anomalous heat in response to current density. That's a silly model. Lewis scored what the British call an "own goal" without noticing it. Needless to say, his editor at Nature, Lindley, also failed to notice this. That is because Lindley is a certified nitwit, as he demonstrated in his letter I quoted in my paper, and in his tour de force here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LindleyDtheembarra.pdf Perhaps it is a waste of time to hash over these things, so many years after the fact. But it irks me that Lewis and others still claim his paper was the nail in the coffin! I heard this for the umpteenth time and thought "someone should upload a paper pointing out the problems with Lewis." No one did, so I uploaded the old paper by Noninski and then I wrote this one myself. - Jed
