From: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Subject: FF and turbulence
Reply-To: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 23:06:20 GMT


Dick Forman alias M21742@mwvm.mitre.org writes
>It was badly hacked by Herb Fox, the editor of Fusion Facts, but basically
Well, Dick, you are hacking Hal Fox's name here. Getting even?
                            ^^^
As for Dick's piece, I agree that what we need is experimental evidence; so
far, this is not unambiguous. With the exception of my very few "quality
positives", most of the "several hundred" papers of positive results cited by
ardent TB's are weak. This, as I have often said, does leave those few strong
ones to think about. Not that TB's hesitate to point to theories that support
cold fusion... I agree that fusion products should be looked for - and have
been, and sometimes apparently found; but mostly at doubtful levels, too close
to background for comfort.
 I do not agree that journals have treated cold fusion badly. Close to 700
papers have been published in a mix of fairly..very reputable journals. Where
is all this discrimination? So what if Nature and Science do not take papers?
There are plenty of others that do, and they are not el-cheapos. This ashes
on the head stuff is getting a bit tiresome.
 The same goes for research money. Very few research areas get specially
dedicated and large amounts of money from the respective governments. Again,
judging by the number of published papers, many many teams have received
research grants to do cold fusion, via the normal channels. These involve the
dreaded referees... and they have passed lots of cold fusion proposals. Don't
cry foul; write a grant application, like other people.
 On the other hand, when you come up with something that challenges entrenched
ideas, you must expect some resistance - if it were not there, we would be far
less sure of what we regard as True and Known. Some conservatism is
appropriate here. There are, as I say above, sufficient channels to show your
stuff, and gradually, the pressure of evidence will turn the tide. This is how
real science works, as HH Bauer has written so well about. Plug, plug: read
his book.


Tom Droege alias ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE writes
>We observe with McKubre et. al. that cells are noisy.  He says (Como
>p-436) "For both electrodes there was a 'high-frequency' fluctuation
>of the excess power with periods of aprox. 0.1 - 1h which correlated
>with cell pressure variations, characteristic of partially
>intermittent operation of the catalytic recombiner."

What is the mixing time in the cell? In other words, could this be thermal
fluctuations due to thermally inhomogeneous electrolyte? There is turbulence
in these cells, and several different sources and sinks of heat; these take
a finite time to come together. One ought to lowpass filter the cell
temperature with a cutoff at that mixing time (and of course sample the
filtered signal at double the corresponding frequency, i.e. 2/t(mix)).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dieter Britz alias britz@kemi.aau.dk
Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
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