Jones, I know you have a different opinion but please try not to get
personal. I provide facts to support my opinions, not personal
comments. If you believe the Kalman approach is correct, please
provide some objective support based on what is known to occur in
nature. The claim, based on pure math, has no support that I'm aware
of, neither in how CF behaves or in how nuclear reactions occur
normally. Even if the proposed process actually occurred, it would
not generate energy. QM only is useful if it actually describes actual
behavior or actually explains something useful. To be clear, since
you did not acknowledge what I said, I have great respect for QM when
it is properly applied.
Ed Storms
On Dec 22, 2013, at 10:45 AM, Jones Beene wrote:
The comments yesterday of Tampe and Storms - dissing QM while trying
hard
not to sound too much like luddites - are not just regrettable and
silly -
almost unforgiveable in the pursuit of a solid scientific foundation
for
LENR ... especially since Storms is so widely known and respected.
Storms: I have great respect for QM but I have great disappointment
with how
it is frequently applied. Modern physics is so dominated by
mathematical
constructs, they ignore what is real, and then excuse this by saying
that
this approach is ok because the quantum world is so strange. He
then goes
on to propose his own theory for LENR based on an equally "unreal"
reaction,
perhaps more improbably. Go figure.
Tampe: I couldn't agree more, it's very frustrating to learn QM. You
tend to
get a lot of powerful mathematical constructs but really no good
mental
model how it all works.
Oh my. This is nonsensical to the max. No one is asking you to learn
the
deepest secrets of QM. An adequate mental model is available with
zero math
- but - it is not the same logic as one finds in "common sense". How
can one
NOT have a mental model for quantum tunneling after all these years?
In fact
QM is more a process of ridding oneself of the wrong mental model than
learning a new one. One can mentally accept time reversal, for
instance,
without leaning the intricacies of CPT symmetry and Kramer's
theorem. "No
good mental model" and "ignoring what is real" are both complete cop-
outs.
I think Kalman has hit the nail on the heat with a version of neutron
exchange which is applicable to LENR, but to be honest my mental
model of
the tunneling dynamics may not yet be what he is proposing. I hope
that my
understanding will be refined soon - since an attempt to contact
Kalman has
been made. My LENR-transposed model suggests that the two isotopes
(Ni61and
Ni58, and the other combinations) which are in the active nickel
alloy, are
adjoining at a few angstrom distance when an electron of modest
energy (or
more likely in LENR - a polariton) screens the two isotopes in such
a way
that a neutron tunnels from the Ni61 to the N58, leaving Ni60 and
Ni59 - but
otherwise the electron does not react. What we have in the end is
the common
isotope of Ni60 and also Ni59, but since the Ni59 goes to cobalt by
EC with
no gamma, that fact makes this proposal FALSIFIABLE. The half-life
is long
but in fact small amounts of cobalt have been reported in LENR.
Tampe says he cannot get his mind around the Kalman model of quantum
tunneling, due to the mathematics - even though he is sitting in
front of a
computer which is doing billions of QM tunneling reactions per
second to put
his words into cyberspace - and that CPU can do the mathematics for
him. One
type of tunneling in nuclear and the other is electromagnetic but
they are
part of the same QM phenomena - where a particle tunnels through a
barrier
that it "classically" could not surmount. In fact, the nuclear
version came
before the semiconductor version and yet the later verifies the
former.
Is this a case of "not seeing the forest for the trees?" I hope that
it is
not an indication of a new type of circle-the-wagons mentality - or a
reactionary response to the failure of the early experimenters to
come up
with an adequate theory after 23 years. The field is complicated and
strange
- but it cannot be defined in overly simplified platitudes. When all
is said
and done LENR is quantum mechanical to its core, and it behooves us
all to
try hard to accommodate that fact, with or without the mathematics.
Kalman may have provided one huge clue for an M.O. that opens up
everything.
It is too early to say but it is waaaaay too early to dismiss this
paper as
being too strange or too mathematical.
<winmail.dat>
