When discussing this work three major research programs come to mind (even though there are others): Miles/Bush, McKubre/M4, Frescati/ENEA
*Did the 4He come into the apparatus through migration through the glass somewhere along the circuit?* I think this is the most obvious candidate for a potential error, and from what I've read of Miles, M4, ENEA (DeNino + Violante), etc. they all seem to have accounted for this possibility and led for it pretty well. *Was the palladium already impregnated with elevated levels of 4He?* Not heard that one before. Maybe someone like Ed or Jed who is more familiar with the literature can weigh in on this one. Regardless in the cases that have gone through the trouble of doing this kind of research each tend to demonstrate the following without fail: when excess heat is measured, excess helium is detected (i.e. above background/baseline), when no excess heat is measured, no extra helium. It seems to me there would have to be a tremendous conspiracy of chance for such pattern to emerge. Doesn't mean it couldn't, it just means that if our opinions are gambles (which of course they are), I'll take my chances that this pattern represents more than just a mere flook. This doesn't mean all the heat is coming from some kind of cluster fusion event in PdD, but even accepting the most conservative estimates of McKubre's M4 work (50-70% correlation of Heat to Helium), they seem to indicate that most of the EH is correlated with the production of helium. Regards, John On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 9:57 PM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 3:34 PM, James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: > > How do you explain the correlation between He and heat in D+Pd systems? >> > > You are probably acquainted with the following details, but I'll mention > them anyway. > > The He/heat correlation in PdD systems can be called into question by > separating the correlation into two pieces -- He, on one hand, and heat, on > the other, and then dealing with them individually. We already know about > how the heat results are questioned. What is interesting is how the 4He > results are called into question. I've seen this done in two ways (there > are no doubt others): > > - Did the 4He come into the apparatus through migration through the > glass somewhere along the circuit? > - Was the palladium already impregnated with elevated levels of 4He? > > If you haven't carried out painstaking experiments to rule these two > possibilities out (and one gets the impression that getting a helium-clean > environment is hard), I can blithely ignore the correlation because the > component data is no good. If you have carried out painstaking > experiments, I can look for some other fault in the experiment. Nathan > Hoffman's book has the best overview I've seen of the various difficulties > that go into the 4He measurements. > > An interesting note about the second problem -- sometimes there are whole > pockets in the palladium that have 4He in them. What I think is cool about > that is that it suggests that 4He is formed in discontinuous events (I'm > thinking of the mini-volcanos). > > Eric > >
