HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: logajan@SLEEPY.NETWORK.COM (John Logajan)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Radium and mercantilism
Date: 26 Jul 92 05:06:35 GMT

Droege mentioned his radium watch.  I presume it must be Radium 226, which
is listed as an alpha source of mostly 4.8 Mev alphas, with a half life of
1600 years.  The only other "long lived" Radium isotope is Ra 228, with
a half life of 5.75 years, and 45Kev beta.  Like Thorium, Radium undergoes
a series of transmutations on its way to Lead which produce a series of
alpha, beta, and gamma emissions.  These daughters have fairly short half
lives, so even a few months after chemcial purification, they should be
equal probability events.

Jim Bowery suggest "technosocialism."  A broader term is mercantilism,
updated from the old days when precious metal reserves were considered
important -- but retaining the grants of favoritism directed toward
connected interests, with regulation and taxes designed to stomp out
their competitors.

 -- John Logajan
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: rpetsche@mrg.tmc.edu (Rolfe G. Petschek)
Subject: Re: D+D:Mother of all discoveries
Reply-To: rpetsche@mrg.CWRU.EDU (Rolfe G. Petschek)
Organization: CWRU Physics Department
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 13:16:01 GMT

In article <weRiXuK00UhW04InRD@andrew.cmu.edu> pk03+@andrew.cmu.edu (Paul Karol) writes:

>Bruce Scott also guesses that D + D --> He-4 violates some quantum
>selection rule, but I do not believe that is the case.

d is spin 1
He is spin 0
gammas are spin 1

d is a boson. In a symmetric orbital angular momentum zero state two d's 
must have a symmetric spin wave function or total spin 0 or 2.  This implies 
that there must be non-zero angular momentum either in the initial or
final state (or two gammas in the final state or something).  Two gammas
will decrease the transition rate by a large factor, depending on
details unknown to me such as excited states of He.  Orbital momentum in
the final state will decrease the transition rate by something like
(ka)^2 where k is the inverse wavelength of the gamma and a is the
nuclear size (roughly 10^{-6}) and orbital momentum in the initial state
is going, particularly at low energies, to be yet much more serious.
This seems modestly consistent with the results as mentioned e.g. He is
down by about 10^{-7}, but you should know that I am a solid state
physicist and am making this up without reference to books or such.  I
am sure that good discussions exist.

--
Rolfe G. Petschek			Petschek@cwru.bitnet
Associate Professor of Physics		rgp@po.cwru.edu
Case Western Reserve University		(216)368-4035 
Cleveland Oh 44106-7079
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 14:13:18 -0400 
From: Paul Karol <pk03+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: D+D:Mother of all discoveries

Just to provoke a better response, before I misinterpret the present
situation...

It's been several days since I asked for a brief explanation of what the
D + D --> He + gamma scheme is all about.  I got two responses.  One was
a request that if I got any responses, please forward a copy.  The other
was a statement that it's a crock and why was I wasting my curiosity (my
paraphrasing).  

Are youns out there going to let it lie (no pun, as usual) this way?

Paul J. Karol
Nuclear Chemist
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: tiq@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au
Subject: Re: Oops.
Organization: University of Western Australia
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 09:54:52 GMT

In article <920721214152_72240.1256_EHL55-1@CompuServe.COM>, Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com> writes:
> To: >INTERNET:fusion@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG
> 
>> DB asks:
>> 
>> "I'll be the mug: who are these HUNDREDS? Or are you plucking facts out
>> of the air, Jed?"
> 
> Oops, sorry. No, not the air. I am plucking it out of my database. I did
> not really mean hundreds of group leaders who have published papers, I
> meant hundreds of people tagged in places that have reported excess heat,
> who happen to have their mailing address in my computer. Like for
> example, 3 at Hokkaido, 5 or 6 at Bockris's lab., a bunch in India,
> several at NTT... The number of groups who had reported heat last year
> according to Fire from Ice (page 246, courtesy Fritz Will) was 34. There
> have been a lot since then, of course. Most are getting more heat than
> ever, a few have probably decided they did not get heat after all. This
          ^^^
Come on Jed, there have been heaps of XS heat claims that have never panned out.
This list is a VERY padded one. People like Oriani, Wadsworth, Scott, Huggins,
Appleby, Landau, Schoessow and  Hutchinson all claimed heat in 1989 but how
many of those are still going strong now? Answer: none. I can only think of
two others (McKubre and Bush) who were claiming heat in mid 1989 and are still
claiming it now. Others have since bit the dust: remember the fuss about
Liaw with his 1500% heat in a molten salt experiment? As far as I know
they could never replicate, and others who have tried it failed too. So, I
don't  think it is fair to include most of these as "confirmations" especially
if the reason(s) for them abandoning the research are unknown. Maybe somebody
should ring these people up and ask them what their current position is wrt
XS heat.

> Not evading, just forgot. Kind of busy. Remind me if I forget. I meant
> pre-explosion results were much better than those reported at Como. Way
> better, but I have heard 50 different versions of just how much better,
> so who knows? McKubre is back from Japan and back at work now, I have
> heard. I have not spoken to him directly, lately. All work was suspended

How much better? I heard rumours that he can get up to 250%, but is this
true? I notice from the accident report that the cell had a much larger
cathode than usual - maybe they are attempting to scale up the process.
If only there were a few more good experiments like this one...

todd green
From: FEC@v2.rl.ac.uk (Frank Close)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Waiting for Godot
Date: 28 Jul 92 13:26:57 GMT
Reply-To: Frank Close <FEC@v2.rl.ac.uk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway

***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***

In response to my demonstration that Gene Mallove publishes reckless and
blatantly false accusations about me and about David Worledge of EPRI,
Jed Rothwell writes (on behalf of Gene?) that

"Gene has a deadline to meet, and he does not have time for you right now.
Wait your turn;"
[belligerent remarks about "blowing me out of the water" deleted].

No hurry! We who await the coming of cold fusion are used to being patient.
It is Gene Mallove's credibility that is at stake,his reckless disregard for
the truth that has been exposed and his moral integrity that are called
into question by this silence. If he wishes it to remain so, thats his problem.


I hope that the several places to which Dr Mallove sent out his more extensive
written attacks on John Huizenga and me, as well as on various people at MIT,
are now aware, via this public exposure, of the shameless style of these false
accusations and of the similarly dubious nature of the claims for cold fusion
that accompany them. I am indeed glad that this public network has enabled this
sort of behaviour to be more widely exposed to view.


But it does make me wonder a little: If you are acting as agent for one who
seems prepared to post such untruths in an attempt to rewrite history and,
when caught out, he/you do not come clean, then how are readers to know whether
to believe the rest of the material that you put out?

*** *** *** *** *** *** ***
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: eachus@Dr_No.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: A Little More Data
Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 23:36:39 GMT

In article <920724131231.208006aa@FNALD.FNAL.GOV> ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE writes:

   Pt  Gamma   Duration   Duration   Accumulated  Estimated   Average 
   #   Status  Seconds    Hours      Net Joules   Error-J     Power - watts

   1   On      17760        4.9        532.8        49       0.0300  +/- 0.0027
   2   Off     48060       13.4       1268.8        50       0.0264  +/- 0.0010
   3   On      87300       24.3       2715.0       100       0.0311  +/- 0.0011
   4   Off     77220       21.5       1621.6        50       0.0210  +/- 0.0006
   5   On      82740       23.0       3607.5        50       0.0436  +/- 0.0006
   6   Off     79980       22.2       2709.7        50       0.0339  +/- 0.0010
   7   On      83640       23.2       3284.3        50       0.0393  +/- 0.0010
   8   Off     57300       15.9       1201.0        50       0.0210  +/- 0.0010

   Many thanks to Robert Eachus for his data analysis. [Danke.]  How
   about it skeptics, what would be convincing?...

   I realized last night that a simple binomial test would be fairly
powerful with this data.  The expected result is that the power will
be greater when the power is on than off.  Consider a trial to be
adding or removing the source, and all we need to look at is whether
the difference between successive power levels is in the "right"
direction.  So the above data gives us 7 pairs all in the right
direction.  Alpha = 1/2**7 = 1/128 = 0.0078 = 0.78%, so with a one
percent significance level reject the null hypothesis.  (This only
says that the addition of the radiation source has an effect and it is
in the right direction, but that is saying a lot. This is already more
convincing than the statistics in most published papers in many
fields, including Cold Fusion.)

   For completeness the two statisics I posted previously are now:

Using Wilcoxon's W statistic (H0 = no effect, H1 = excess heat during
on periods): Alpha = 0.057 = 5.7%

Using the signed rank test (this is the less likely to be affected by
long term drift in the calibration as is the binomial test above):
Alpha (confidence level) = 0.0625 = 6.25%

Neither is decisive, but I still need more data (for this sort of test
about 20 data points is usual).  I'll do some more analysis over the
weekend, but at this point unless the data change radically, I'm
really looking for more information in the data, not whether or not
there is a treatment effect.
--

					Robert I. Eachus

with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use  STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: eachus@Dr_No.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: Latest News
Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 17:09:01 GMT


     Don't get upset Tom, the data isn't really that bad.  Wilcoxon's
Rank Sum W alpha = 0.037, Binomial test alpha = 0.0730, Paired
differences alpha = 0.1094 or 0.3438 (There were an odd number of
measurements this time.  The two numbers are for discarding the first
or last measurement respectively.)

     Also the apparent slight increase in effect with time has become
a deluge.  (At which point did you start using the "blank" source?)

     One last point...a geiger counter is not the best detector for
gamma rays.  Putting an appropriate material (Boron, I think) in place
will substantially increase the sensitivity to gammas. I've seen
counters which come with just such a shield.

--

					Robert I. Eachus

with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use  STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: medb@cc.newcastle.edu.au (Dieter Britz)
Subject: Tiny spark but mostly smoke
Organization: University of Newcastle, AUSTRALIA
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1992 23:05:03 GMT

In article <920720060600_72240.1256_EHL27-1@CompuServe.COM>, Jed Rothwell
<72240.1256@compuserve.com> writes:
> To: >INTERNET:fusion@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG
> 
> DB has answered my question:
> 
> "Jed, you write as if we are schoolchildren, and we are not. Yes, Teacher, if
> something gets hot, there must have been heat to make it hot, we understand.
> What is at issue here is the actual results; we'd like to see them..."
> 
> In short, he does not understand how thermometers work. He asserts that the
> finest scientists in the Japanese government are incapable of telling the
> difference between 1 watt of heat and 30 watts of heat. A schoolchild would
> know better.

Jed, you didn't answer my questions. This stuff about how thermometers work
is a smokescreen, and I for one am getting tired of it. You evade most of the
points made, and questions asked, with this verbiage. As I say, I would like
to see the results themselves.
You then go on with
> DB asserts that he does not believe that MITI, P&F, and McKubre cannot
> perform a simple experiment that *any* *scientist* could have performed with
> absolute confidence in 1880. Why? Because these results have not appeared in
> the so-called peer reviewed literature. 
Do you remember a few postings ago, Jed, when I wrote that I was AGNOSTIC?
This, as I explained then, means that I neither believe nor disbelieve. If you
(or anyone) were to show me convincing results, I would be convinced. It has
not happened yet. Why do I stay on this list? Why not get out, as I have done
with a couple of others?  If I thought that there is absolutely no chance that
there is something interesting going on under the generic name "cold fusion",
I'd stop wasting my time here. Please read the above sentence, and please, no
more about thermometers. I know a good place for you to put them, mate.

And by the way, with your smoke screen you evaded my question, which I put
here once again: you say McKubre is still seeing excess heat; do you mean he is
still looking at the pre-explosion results and seeing the same heat, or do you
mean he is doing new experiments and again seeing excess heat? Please clarify
this point - if you can. The reason I ask is that it looks to me as if you are
making something up here, for the reasons I mentioned in my last posting. Tell
me I am wrong, by answering the question.

Dieter alias medb@cc.newcastle.edu.au
-------------------------------------
From: FEC@v2.rl.ac.uk (Frank Close)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: d He gamma and Dieters neutrinos
Date: 31 Jul 92 13:37:05 GMT
Reply-To: Frank Close <FEC@v2.rl.ac.uk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway

Rich Long asks if spin 0 deuteron is possible. No. The reason is quantum
mechanical and similar in spirit to the way that electrons build up the
Mendeleev table. The electron is a fermion and obeys the Pauli exclusion
principle: "no two can be in same quantum state". This limits the possible
electronic configurations to a few, and hence the regularity of chemistry.
Same idea works in the nuclear world (all you chemists out there: nuke isnt
that different really). The p and n are fermions and obey Pauli; this limits
the possibilities. The pn deuteron is spin 1; if there were pp or nn states
these would be spin 0 and there would also be "another" pn state with spin 0.
However, as Jim Carr noted, this set is unstable. The only stable one is
the lone pn which Pauli exclusion forces into spin 1. Sorry that its technical
but thats how somethings are.

But to reiterate my earlier posting. The absence of direct d+d->alpha is much
less exotic: it is energy-momentum conservation.

Rob Eades picks up my remark about shedding 2,3 etc gammas suppresses the
probability. The word "shedding" has misled you, sorry. The total number of
gammas is the critical factor, whether initial or final state. So
gamma+d+d->He+gamma has the same problem as d+d->He+2gamma.
In fact even more of a problem: as discussed on the net two months ago (?)
in connection with Takahashi's triple d colision hypothesis, triple
coincidence collisions are so improbable as to be ignorable.

And, I repeat, the bottom line is: look for the helium that has to be there
if you want to believe in Ying.

Someone mentioned Pd excitations. Quite why a charge 46 nucleus suddenly
"likes" to beat the Coulomb repulsion when a charge 1 (d) has enough
problems beats me, but ---
You can look for such hypothesised transmutations too. No Pd isotope
anomalies have ever been found (there was a rumour in 1989/90 that Pd
anomalies had been found but these turned out to be misidentified
ZrO in the mass spec).

Dieter: congratulations on your solution to the neutrino puzzle and CNF
in a stroke. Or is it sunstroke, mate, there on the ozone hole illuminated
Oz beaches? :-) Must be the Danish influence, inspired by my reference to
Bohr. Well, get back to work and find out who is hacking into your computer
and sending out messages in your name attempting to discredit you:-). Have
any net notables taking vacation been sighted entering Australia recently?
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 15:09:38 -0400 
From: Bob_Sidebotham@transarc.com
Subject: Social responsibility?

Excerpts from netnews.sci.physics.fusion: 29-Jul-92 The importance of
being cha.. John Logajan@SLEEPY.NETW (3369)

> I see two general possibilities to explain the absence of mushroom
> clouds in Orlando and Batavia.

This sort of discussion makes me feel rather uneasy. Obviously, there is
no way of determining whether a runaway chain reaction might occur,
short of actually understanding what's going on or actually experiencing
such an event. On the other hand, the *possibility* of creating an
uncontrolled reaction may exist due to the various experiments being
conducted, whereas the possibility of this happening in the absense of
experimentation is remote.

Now I understand that lack of funding coupled with the relative ease of
experimentation (as compared to traditional attempts to achieve
controlled fusion, for example) is impelling people to perform these
experiments under varying conditions and with relatively little emphasis
on safeguards.

So here's some scenarios to think about:

1. Let's suppose a major incident occured, with extensive loss of life
and destruction of infrastructure. This is clearly not a good thing, and
besides the immediate results, would likely result in a complete
government clampdown on further research (I'm assuming it would become
obvious to the authorities where the explosion had originated and why)
and severe restrictions on the propogation of information. I suspect it
would be likely to have extreme effects on many other aspects of our
society.

Is this worth the current "risks" that are being taken (if, indeed, any
are being taken at all)?

2. A major incident does not occur, but the means for creating one is
published. It turns out that creation of a "cold fusion bomb" is
relatively simple.

What happens to society under this scenario? Do researchers have a
responsibility to evaluate the destructive possibilities inherent in
their work *before* publishing?

3. The government decides, for National Security reasons, to bottle up
all research. Since National Security is invoked, the precise reason
this is done is not mentioned. It could be for both physical security or
economic reasons.

What would your reaction, as researchers, be to this? Is it likely?
(Perhaps one sure indication that we have that the U.S. government
completely disbelieves in cf research is the fact that they haven't yet
taken this step.).

This is just to broach the topic. What do you guys think? What are the
potential social implications of cold fusion, and what are your
responsibilities as investigators? Are there any parallels to this?
Here's one: remember the lawsuits brought against biotech firms due to
fears of the possibility of the release of some deadly agent? Why
shouldn't cf experimentation pose a similar *potential* hazard?

Bob Sidebotham
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: edwlt12@lims02.lerc.nasa.gov (MIKE JAMISON)
Subject: Idea for verifying Ying's probability fusion theory
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center
Date: 22 Jul 1992 12:35 EST  

If I understand what Dr. Ying is saying, Pd may not be the best medium for 
verifying his theory.  The probability  for forming a virtual He atom 
should increase with decreasing distance between atoms (inverse square 
probability?).

With 1:1 Pd:D loading, atomic separation is about 1.7 angstroms, per one of 
(?Frank Close?)'s postings.

Atomic separation of D2 should be roughly the same as for H2, or about 0.74 
angstroms.

Hence, in liquified D2, the probability for fusion should be at least 2 
times greater than it is for a PdD cell, all other factors being equal (
size of cell, etc.).

The experiment:

Two identical dewars, each having an equal amount of D2.

Two (almost) identical pieces of material, one radioactive, the other inert
  The radioactive material should be whatever Dr. Ying uses, with very low 
output power.

The dewars should be sized/filled so that most of the decay particles/
gammas are absorbed by the D2, which probably means that some sort of net 
should be placed in each dewar to keep the material suspended above the 
bottom (done for both so the experiments are as identical as possible).

Lower both pieces of material into their respective dewars at the same time
, and note the amount of time for a given amount of D2 evaporation (should 
be extremely high at first, if the material used is near room temperature).

Follow up experiments:

1)  Switch dewars, and repeat.

2)  Place a small resistive device in one or both filled dewars, apply 
power equivalent to that supplied by the radioactive material, correlate 
results to the above experiments.

3)  Perform all of the above with H2 instead of D2.  Correlate to D2 
experiments.

Anyone willing to perform such experiments should obviously be very 
cautious, ensuring that the experiments are performed where ventilation is 
adequate to the task, etc.

If the above experiments show no signs of anomolous heat, but Dr. Ying's 
experiments do, then the Pd has more to do with enhancing the virtual He 
probability than I'm guessing it does.


Mike Jamison
From: eachus@Dr_No.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: DD->4He + gamma
Date: 30 Jul 92 19:14:25 GMT
Article-I.D.: Dr_No.EACHUS.92Jul30141425
Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.

In article <199207300852.AA20319@ames.arc.nasa.gov> Frank Close <FEC@v2.rl.ac.uk> writes:

   ...Anyone who has studied QED knows that it costs probability to
   shed gammas - roughly alpha=1/137 per gamma in the matrix element.
   The more gamma you shed theless chance. So shedding 2,3 etc is less
   and less likely. Even one kills you by around a million relative to
   the "direct" strong processes of t+p or n+3He.

   If Yang is right and has gamma mediated fusion, the three (most)
probable reactions are:

   d + d + gamma --> He4 + gamma
   d + d + gamma --> He3 + n + gamma
   d + d + gamma --> t + p + gamma

   As compared to the hot fusion reactions of:

   d + d --> He4 + 2 gamma
   d + d --> He3 + n
   d + d --> t + p

   First, since there are only two products in the first reaction
instead of three, and it is energeticly favored, there is no reason in
a Yang type process why we should see many protons or neutrons.

   Also, has anyone looked carefully at the resonances of the various
palladium isotopes?  If the reaction Pd + gamma --> Pd* --> Pd + many
gammas is going on, a chain reaction is very possible.  (The "all the
deuterium fuses at once" scenario is not real.  Assume that there is
some special state required for fusion, such as pairs of deuterium
atoms in interstitial sites.  As the system approaches criticality,
the first energetic particle to come along will cause a cascade,
lowering the number of favorable sites, and thus reducing criticality.
The initial signature of this will be heat pulses.)

--

					Robert I. Eachus

with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use  STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...
Newsgroups: sci.physics