HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tiq@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au (Todd Green)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: EX: Explanation AND Re: excess heat experiments reported by Dr. McKubre
Date: 4 Oct 92 13:46:07 +0800
Organization: University of Western Australia
NNTP-Posting-Host: fennel.cc.uwa.edu.au

In article <E765B603B39F22F76E@vms2.uni-c.dk>, Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk> writes:
> 
> Originally-From: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
> 
>>I actually have an explanation for the cell gets hot and the catalyst gets
>>cold with no change in gas volume.  But the electrochemists won't like it
>>as it is not supposed to happen.  Besides there is the problem of the net
>>heat gain.
> 
> I'm an electrochemist, Tom, but I'm game to read something that I might not
> like. What is your explanation?

Yeah, Tom, lets hear the worst - we are not easily shocked. BTW  you realise 
that, because of the isotopic H/D separation factor for Pd versus the solvent
is 9 or 10, your electrode should contain roughly equal amounts of H and D. I
assume that this is intentional but some people claim that small amounts of
light water reduce XS heat and there is even some experimental evidence (e.g.
by Scott and also by Cravens) supporting this view.
 
> Originally-From: w1gsl@athena.mit.edu (Steven L. Finberg)
> 
>>In article <96900@bu.edu> jstravis@bass.bu.edu (John Travis) writes:
>>>In article <1992Sep26.142803.1@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au> tiq@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au
>> (Todd Green) writes:
>>>
>>>>This all seems a bit odd  - I thought McKubre advocated running a very
>>>>clean system so as to avoid poisoning of the cathode surface, and hence the
>>>>use of a teflon cell etc. If he were using a glass cell then the Si, Al
>>>>and B would be leached from the cell walls by the LiOD, but where are they
>>>>coming from in a teflon cell? Is he deliberately adding Si and Al once the
>>>>experiments are in progress?
>>
>>Cell is Quartz and Teflon.   Yes he is adding the inpurties after the loading
>>is done.
> 
> There is nothing odd about using a super-clean cell, and yet adding some gunk;
> you might want YOUR gunk, not any old gunk coming out of the cell walls. The
> use of poisons is a respectable technique. In the present context, they can
> either suppress the recombination reaction of adsorbed deuterium atoms with
> each other to form D2, and thus favour the ingress of deuterium into the Pd;
> other poisons will prevent the ingress. So choose your poison wisely.

Fair enough, but why Al and Si? The classic inhibitors of D2 formation are
compounds like thiourea, KI and As2O3 so why not use these? In any case, the
Al appears to have been added to form a layer of Al(OH)3 rather than to inhibit
D2 formation. Elsewhere McKubre recommends against the use of recombination
poisons because their effect in enhancing loading is typically short lived.
I guess if it works then "who cares?" but I wish there was a more rational 
basis  for adding these things. Reminds me of the LANL group who added wheat
flour to their cells to try and stimulate tritium production...

todd
Xref: sparky sci.physics.fusion:2347 sci.physics:15931
From: houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Atmosphere ignition (was:The H-Bomb secret is out)
Date: 4 Oct 92 19:41:19 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: New Mexico Tech

In article <1992Oct2.185932.12719@galileo.physics.arizona.edu> seh@neutron.physics.arizona.edu (Steven E. Hoell) writes:
>During the Manhatten Project there was concern that the bomb
>would ignite the atmosphere. After some calculations (according
>to Ulam, "Adventures of a Mathematician") this fear was put to
>rest.
>
>Does anyone know if these results are declassified and published
>somewhere? 

	Yes,  this is one of those things that became a legend among military
technology poseurs.  (Just like the one about FAE devices killing people by
sucking all the air out of their lungs).  There was some concern about this,
the idea was that an atomic bomb might create high enough temperatures to start
a fusion reaction in the atmosphere;  that this would create a detonation wave
(a la the classical "super") that would spread around the world.

	Hans Bethe,  rather quickly,  did some calculations that showed that
this could not happen around the early days of Los Alamos.  His recent book
"The Road from Los Alamos" contains a short article that talks about his
calculation.  If you look at the height of the coulomb barrier for any
reaction that can happen in the atmosphere,  you'll see that an atomic
bomb (50-80 MK) doesn't produce high enough temperatures to make any fusion
go at more than infinitesimal rates,  and it shouldn't be all that hard to
work the problem out in detail.  It turns out that you actually could start
a detonation wave similar to this,  but you need very high pressures (like
stellar cores) and even then they still don't seem to work very well.  If
you did manage to start atmospheric fusion on Earth (very hard!), the reaction
would quickly blow itself out.

	There is also no reasonable exothermic chemical reaction that you can
make go here either.  The only thing that would be reasonable would be N2+O2->
NxOy,  and all of those reaction have a huge activation energy...  And yes,  a
bomb could activate these but the reaction would not produce enough heat to
break up the N2 in any kind of propagative way.

	Even in stellar cores,  thermonuclear detonation waves do not propagate
well.  In most scenarios for supernovae,  the detonation wave cannot outrace
the core collapse,  so the shock ends up being stationary,  and the outer parts
of the star would fall through the shock and quietly collapse to a singularity
if it were not for the fact that the extreme compression of matter (p+e -> n +
neutrino) causes the emission of neutrinos which actually have a fairly good
cross-section to interact with the shock and to restart it.  This "good" cross
section is really pretty bad since probably about 1% of a supernovae's
energy output is in the form of light and heat and kinetic energy of ejected
matter.  Almost all of it goes out in neutrinos.


-- 
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: doug@UC780.UMD.EDU (Deac Moo of the UGC)
Subject: Re: Status
Reply-To: doug@UC780.UMD.EDU
Organization: The University of Maryland, University College
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 21:19:02 GMT

In article <NICKH.92Sep29122734@VOILA.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU>, nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines) writes:
>Way cool. The only reason I read this group is for Tom Droege's status
>reports, and now, _finally_, after years of patient, careful,
>disappointing work he's got his 100 sigmas.
>
>I'd like to buy him a beer.
>
>Hell, a case of beer.

It's only a verifiable experiment if he can do it all over again :)...

Hopefully verifable real soon :)


                               ******
   Net postings: Demonstrating the lack of quality psychotherapy in the world.

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: Frank Close <FEC@v2.rl.ac.uk>
Subject:  Cold Fusion Oxymoron
Reply-To: Frank Close <FEC@v2.rl.ac.uk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 14:24:41 GMT

Re: this week's ideas on nuclear ash


Jed Rothwell tells us that cold fusion isnt fusion (glad that we agree on
something at last).

Jed: Have you managed to convince your guru Martin Fleischmann of this?
Recall that he insisted, under questioning from me as recently as August,
that it *is* fusion, that *helium* is the ash and that it is "well known"
that he and Pons found it in 1989. As five weeks is a long time in
CNF (cold not-fusion)  it is possible that the axioms of August have since been
replaced by one or more alternatives. Has Fleischmann,having realised that
helium ash is eliminated, withdrawn his claim in favour of Jed's (implicit)
100,000+ unspecified pathways  or was Jed merely posting his personal opinion
in which case we can rate it accordingly?

If Jed, or anyone, wishes to check the latest "official" position on
CN-F, the fax number for the "secret" laboratory in Sofia Antipolis
(France) is (33)- 93 65 38 26. Mark it attn M Fleischmann and share
the results with Tom Droege so that some of his HEP colleagues can
help assay for the nuclear ash (though hopefully not the ones masquerading
as HEPs that Jed once consulted on helium at Gev energies).


Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: epperson@adobe.com (Mark Epperson)
Subject: Re: Reply on cell configuration
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 19:09:47 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.045823.857@ns.network.com> logajan@ns.network.com (John Logajan) writes:
>ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE writes:
>>This media needs a good (simple) graphical expression mechanism.
>
>PostScript is universal, many print shops will output your PostScript
>file if you don't have your own PostScript printer.

Try using something like Adobe Illustrator (mac, Windows or, Unix). It 
can be used to make the graphs that you need (and it is a 7bit ascii format)
Mark Epperson
From: aboulang@bbn.com (Albert Boulanger)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Replies
Date: 1 Oct 92 17:15:20
Organization: BBN, Cambridge MA
Reply-To: aboulanger@bbn.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: kariba.bbn.com
In-reply-to: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE's message of Thu, 1 Oct 1992 16:52:44 GMT

In article <920930125146.2160067e@FNALD.FNAL.GOV> ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE writes:


   I am pretty careful about putting the source in and out.  If I bump into 
   anything it is foam.  But I do worry about the cat purring.  

Or perhaps you should be worried about it *not* purring? Is your cat
like the bird in the mine?


Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: M21742@mwvm.mitre.org
Subject: Re: Wall Street Journal Article
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean VA 22102
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 12:37:09 GMT

In article <920928195537_72240.1256_EHL60-2@CompuServe.COM>
Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com> writes:
>
>There was a splendid article in the September 28, 1992 edition of the Wall
>Street Journal, page B3: "Predictable Heat Source Reported From 'Heavy'
>Water Electrolysis." It was about the September 24 lecture given at M.I.T.
>by Dr. M.C.H. McKubre, of SRI International. It begins: "A California
>scientist funded by the electric power industry reported he has repeatedly
>and predictably gotten excess heat from the electrolysis of 'heavy' water."
>                                    " The article quotes McKubre, "we are
>unable to account for the excess temperatures by any artifact or to account
>for the excess heat by any mechanical or chemical process of which we are
>aware," and adds, "Ruling out mechanical and chemical processes leaves only
>nuclear processes of some sort to explain the experiment."
>
>The article says there is a "growing suspicion" among CF researchers that CF
>is not the fusion of hydrogen nuclei, but some other "mysterious process"
>instead.
>
>- Jed
>
Dick Forman requests info:
Does anyone who follows the publication of that pulp journal "Science"
know if they have yet rescinded their NO RESUBMISSIONS Rule? I would like to
resubmit my manuscript titled: On the Catalysis of Nuclear Reactions of
Palladium and Deuterium.  The rejected it on 10 May 1989 and I would like to
retain the submission date. I would be willing to add a note added in proof
covering the useful data since that date, and detailing those predictions in
the original manuscript that have been subsequently confirmed by expts.
My apologies to Colin Norman for describing the place where he and his people p
ublish as a pulp journal. It is the journal part that is a rag. His section
represents the second best science journalism in the world.
E-MAIL TO: DICK@MITRE.ORG
RICHARD A. (DICK) FORMAN AT MITRE IN MCLEAN, VA  (703) 883-6198
DISCLAIMER: MY OPINIONS ARE MY OWN NOT MY EMPLOYER'S.
 
Thanks for any help you netters can give.
Dick.
P.S.: George Herbert Hoover Walker Bush's mini-recession has left me in the
unenviable position of looking for a new job. My termination notice at MITRE
is dated 1 October 1992.  I'll be here for a while after that time as part
of their severence/out-placement package.  But sometime soon I will lose
access to Internet. Notice of appropriate job opportunities within 30 minutes
drive of Potomac, MD ( a Washington, DC suburb) will be greatly appreciated.
From: al789@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John Logajan)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: What mystery?
Date: 4 Oct 1992 16:31:04 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: al789@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John Logajan)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


Tom Droege wrote:
>>There was no change in the cell E*I product.

Then I wrote:
>I presume you would have mentioned if your input electrolysis voltage
>changed much at the same time

Sorry -- I am obviously going senile.

Rule out the electrical short unless it just happened to be the same
impedance as the electrolysis load -- unlikely.

-- 
-- John Logajan ---  al789@cleveland.freenet.edu
From: al789@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John Logajan)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: What mystery?
Date: 4 Oct 1992 16:26:42 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: al789@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John Logajan)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE () says:
>How can the cell get hotter and the catalyst get colder with 
>no change in the gas volume?  There was no change in the cell E*I product.
>So that is not the cause.  There was also an apparent release of energy.  

I'm sure there are many possibilities, but I'd suspect a heat drop at the
catalyst to be caused by a reduction in free D2 or O2.

You said that there was no apparent change in gas volume -- so D2 and O2
production have either ceased or are being recombined elsewhere.

I presume you would have mentioned if your input electrolysis voltage
changed much at the same time, but just in case it did, I have two
paths to pursue:

Path #1: No significant input voltage change -- O2 and D2 production are
likely to be continuing, but local recombination moves the "center of heat"
away from the more distant catalyst toward the anode/cathode structure.

Path #2: A significant input voltage change, most likely downward -- A short 
between the anode and cathode has occured, O2 and D2 production drops off, 
but the resistance of the short times the current flow produces more local
heat than the O2 and D2 generation would (they represent stored energy.)

Actually, both paths represent a "short".  One is direct electrical, and
the other is through a chemical mediator (i.e. energy-->chem-->energy)

-- 
-- John Logajan ---  al789@cleveland.freenet.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: terry@aslws01.asl.dl.nec.com (Terry Bollinger)
Subject: Re: Wall Street Journal Article
Organization: NEC America, Inc. Irving, Texas
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 05:17:47 GMT

In article <168717CF2.M21742@mwvm.mitre.org> M21742@mwvm.mitre.org writes:

> In article <1992Sep29.061935.18534@asl.dl.nec.com>
> terry@aslws01.asl.dl.nec.com (Terry Bollinger) writes:
>
> | Hee hee ho ho.  Wagers, anyone?  How long until an article comes out in
> | which the concept of "total mass conversion" is clearly and understandably
> | applied to such experiments?  Any REALLY brave reporters out there?
>
> Dick Forman says: Wagers huh---Put your money where your mouth is.  Define
> the bet and suggest your bet size... AND YOU ARE SO SURE IN YOUR ANALYSIS...
> stop cluttering the thread... PUT UP OR SHUT UP.

(golly, if I'd known ya'll missed me so badly I would have dropped back
by earlier!)

Er, I hate to be a spoilsport, but the wager in question was simply whether
some reporter would be brave enough to broach the idea of TMC in a highly
public medium.  Net-conscious reporters are clearly aware of the discussion
a couple of months ago on the Rothwell/Menlove et al TMC theory, so I figure
that sooner or later someone will dare to mention it in something like the
Wall Street Journal.  I'll wager a figurative plugged nickel on 1-to-1 odds,
but that's about it.  I don't make a hobby of trying to predict the press.

Did you think I was the only one who has ever proposed a TMC mechanism?
Nope.  I was just the FIRST one to do it, and I assure you I received my
share of flames for having had such audacity.  But I absolutely stand by
the logic of that argument.  Nothing else fits.  And I remain as confident
as I was two years ago (more so in fact) that there is genuinely some room
for novel physics in my proposed mechanism of heavy-particle band solitons,
which by a rather bizarre coincidence appear to be most likely to exist in
Pd(Hx,Dy) media.  Heavy particle (H,D) banding in transition metal crystal
lattices was not identified as a real phenomenon until about a year after
I sent out Twist, so who knows?  I must have been doing *something* right.

Anywho, why not lighten up a bit?  Twist cost me months of intensive study
in some very obsure topics of solid state and quantum physics.  Are you
going to whack me for making the perplexing results of that analysis freely
available to anyone who might find them interesting?

				Cheers,
				Terry

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: jsb9718@cc.utah.edu (Jeff Bennion)
Subject: Little Old Ladies and Spontaneous Combustion (was Various Replies)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1  
Organization: University of Utah Computer Center
Date: 29 Sep 1992 16:23 MST  

In article <1992Sep24.154217.10794@javelin.sim.es.com>, biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel) writes...
{ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE writes:
{>I am glad that Dieter Britz
[...]

Messrs Droege, Britz, and Biesel:  I laughed very hard at your spurious and
hilarious elucidations on link between calcium, LOL's, and Spontaneous
Combustion.  In all seriousness (sort of), I think you three should get
together and submit it for all posterity to enjoy in _The Journal of
Irreproducible Results_

Jeff Bennion
University of Utah
From: houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: >Free-Energy Techs...
Date: 29 Sep 92 19:16:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: nmt.1992Sep29.191604.11479
Organization: New Mexico Tech

In article <717712154.6@mailbox.bison.mb> Glenn.Berg@mailbox.bison.mb.ca (Glenn Berg) writes:

>This was hardly "free" energy.  The energy was extracted from the motion of the
>satellite and shuttle NOT from the earth's magnetic field.  Getting the shuttle
>into its orbital motion was hardly "free".

	Yes,  but everybody I talked to,  except for a friend of mine who
wants to build rockets and my boss who does work with satellites seemed to
think that this experiment was really going to solve the energy crisis
or something.  I don't blame this at all on NASA's press coverage,  but
I do blame it on the fact that there are lots of people who are even going
to get degrees in physics who don't understand a damn thing about it.



--
From: tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Latest Result
Date: 30 Sep 92 21:03:41 GMT
Article-I.D.: netcom.1992Sep30.210341.12902
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <920929125437.208007bf@FNALD.FNAL.GOV> ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE writes:
>For example, explain an event where the cell gets hot, 
>the catalyst gets cold, and there is a small accumulation of energy over 
>the previous trend - all with no particular change in cell gas volume.  

I don't understand the "catalyst gets cold" part Tom. Could you clear
that part up?
>
>At present the power level seems to be slowly decreasing.  We are at about
>60 mw average.  So far about 42 killojoules accumulated.  The present plan 
>is to run this cell until it quits putting out power, or we have run so long
>(about two more weeks) that we think it is just drift.  It the cell does
>not stop by itself, we will reverse the cell current and try to make it stop.
>I am pretty sure about the starting calibration, but it is best to have on 
>a zeri measurement at each end of the run.  My belief level will be greatly
>reduced if I cannot get an ending zero.

Didn't Pons say that once started the reaction would boil off all of the
liquid? I think I remember him writing that he wouldn't replenish the
levels after boiling started and that 'fear' (??) prevented him from
doing so. After the liquid boiled off the reaction would stop.

If this is the case you reaction appears to be a bit more, uh, subtle
then his.
>
From: tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Date: 30 Sep 92 20:45:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: netcom.1992Sep30.204514.12015
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <6867@transfer.stratus.com> tarl@sw.stratus.com (Tarl Neustaedter) writes:
>
>   1) Building a fission U-235 bomb is supposed to be fairly easy. U-235
>      produces enough loose neutrons that you don't really need a trigger
>      to get things going - you just need a critical mass (produced in
>      1945 by firing a plug of U-235 through a ring of U-235 at the
>      end of a howitzer piece). However, producing U-235 is the well known
>      pain in the nether regions.

Need I remind you that it took the Russians 4 years (!) to develop a
fission bomb and that was with leaked information and all of their
scientific force behind the project? Jeez, you'd think that all there
is to making a bomb is saying it's easy.
>
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: logajan@ns.network.com (John Logajan)
Subject: Re: Secondary x-rays as nuclear evidence
Organization: Network Systems Corporation
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 02:27:30 GMT

jonesse@physc1.byu.edu writes:
>(Tabling for the moment the question "Is the heat real?")  

Okay, but Droege himself has explicitly taken his "theoretician's" hat off,
and is only wearing a "technician's" hat.  As such his results (and those
of others, of course) seem to be forcing a conundrum -- too much energy
for conventional chemistry, too little "ash" for conventional nuclear
reactions.  Only those who choose to put on the theoreticians hat have
taken it upon themselves to unravel the engima.

>Have I missed something, or should secondary X-rays provide for a crucial
>experiment to determine whether the "excess heat" is in fact nuclear in origin?

Ah, you are asking if anomalous heat results should be ignored on the basis
of known physics, no matter how apparently reliable the heat measurements
are.  For if the heat continues to be measured in excess of known chemistry,
and simultaneously does not reach your criteria of X-ray emission, you are
forced either to abandon the criteria, or ignore the heat measurements.

-- 
- John Logajan MS010, Network Systems; 7600 Boone Ave; Brooklyn Park, MN 55428
- logajan@network.com, 612-424-4888, Fax 612-424-2853