HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: blue@nscl01.nscl.msu.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Loading ? and Contaminants ?
Date: 9 Nov 92 15:43:20 GMT
Article-I.D.: dancer.0096359F.3DD77140.6436
Reply-To: blue@nscl01.nscl.msu.edu
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway

Jed Rothwell has informed me that cold fusion is certain to occur at
deuteron-to-palladium ratios of 0.9 and above, but I haven't ever seen
a clear explaination as to how these high loadings are measured.  Tom
Droege's puzzlement over this issue would seem to indicate that he too
would like to know where the numbers come from to support Jed's assertions.

My second question has to do with the recent abstract for the paper by
Chien C-C, Hodko D., Minevski Z, and Bockris J O'M, J. Electroanal. Chem.
338(1992)186.  After asserting that they had electrodes "producing
massive quantities of tritium and helium" they say that in 22 days they
produced 1E15 tritium atoms and somewhere between 4He 0.4 and 167E9
helium atoms.  They also say this was done in a "fairly well closed
cell" but that they ended with a 10% contamination of H2O in thier
electrolyte.  Can those of you who understand this sort of thing and/or
who may have read the full paper explain to me who any can claim trace
ammounts of tritium and helium had to be produced within a cell at the
same time they admit that enough light water was getting in to contaminate
the electrolyte at the 10% level?  

Dick Blue
NSCL @ MSU
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: logajan@anubis.network.com (John Logajan)
Subject: oops
Reply-To: logajan@anubis.network.com (John Logajan)
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 15:30:32 GMT

I forgot that I should have used the atomic weight of deutrium instead of
hydrogen, but it only changes the molecular weight by 2.6%, so it doesn't
significantly effect the numbers I just calculated.
From: "ALPHER, RALPH" <ames!gar.union.edu!ALPHERR>
Subject: Submission for sci.physics.fusion
Reply-To: "ALPHER, RALPH" <ames!gar.union.edu!ALPHERR>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 21:58:42 GMT

Having had the misfortune of reading some of Larson's publications, I
would urge the person putting Larson's ideas on the net to cease and desist.
Its hard enough to separate wheat from chaff on the subject of cold fusion.

Ralph Alpher
From: jbatka@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Location of heat production?
Date: 11 Nov 92 16:26:31 EST
Organization:  Wright State University 

Tom,

I posted a while back on this and got no response, so either I'm being
ignored, or my news manager got confused.

Have you (or anyone else that you know of) tried to localize where the
heat production (if any) is taking place?  It seems to me that every-
one is assuming it is taking place at the Palladium anode but noone
has bothered to check.

If the heat production is not at the anode, it would certainly be very
informative.

Would it be possible to take some measurements of the anode, cathode,
the head space above the cell, and in a few places in the electrolytic
solution?

Thanks for lending your ear,
-- 

   Jim Batka  | Always remember ...                        | Buckaroo
   Modemman   |    No matter where you go, there you are!  |   Bonzai
--------------+--------------------------------------------+--------------
It is very    | Work Email:  BATKAJ@CCMAIL.DAYTON.SAIC.COM | Elvis is
often easier  | Home Email:  JBATKA@DESIRE.WRIGHT.EDU      |   DEAD!
to get for-   |--------------------------------------------+--------------
giveness then | 64 years is 33,661,440 minutes ...         | Beatles:
permission    |    and a minute is a LONG time!            |   Yellow Submarine
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: ub-gate.UB.com!uunet!vxprix.cern.ch!morrison
Subject: Note to Mr Rothwell
Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 15:19:37 GMT

Note to Mr Rothwell.
     I received details of the "Curious Story" of the use of an abnormally 
thin wire on one of two "identical" cells, only when I was back in
Switzerland. This was too late to talk with the Japanese lady so unchivalrously
described.
                                    Douglas R. O Morrison.

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: mike@ruc.dk (Michael Zedeler)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Tokamak-magnets in JET/(ITER?)
Keywords: tokamak, magnet, field, torodial, polodial
Date: 10 Nov 92 17:02:54 GMT
Organization: Roskilde Universitetscenter, Danmark


 We are currently trying to figure how the JET-tokamak is working.

As a member of the subgroup dedicated to the subject "magnetic fields in - and
around the tokamak", I would like to know if anyone has the time to answer a
few, and very basic questions:

-What magnets are powered by alternating current in the tokamak?
   (Polodial, torodial, etc.)
-What magnets contributes to the torodial magnetic field?
-How does the plasma contribute to the magnetic field?
-Is it possible to estimate the size of the magnetic field configuration
 AROUND JET? (In the vicnity.)
-How does the polodial magnetic heating work?

If you have any answers, and DO have the time to answer any of them, we'd be
pleased to hear from you.

Michael and Henriette.
From: matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: No big crunch?
Followup-To: sci.physics
Date: 5 Nov 92 10:58:29
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
Distribution: world
	<1992Nov4.203930.20410@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
	<1d9lptINN94@agate.berkeley.edu> <5NOV199210450757@csa2.lbl.gov>
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics2.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov's message of 5 Nov 1992 10:45 PST

In article <5NOV199210450757@csa2.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:

> I think that it is far from "outrageous" to speculate that there are
> vast amounts of "unknown", a.k.a. nonbaryonic matter in the
> Universe.  In fact, questions of abundance aside, I regard it as
> likely that other forms of matter do exist.  I think it would be
> both presumptuous and a bit naive to think that at this early stage
> in our understanding of the high-energy world that nothing
> fundamentally new will show up.

I agree with Scott, but just with one small caveat.

I certainly think that we don't know all of the physics that's out
there, and that it is likely that there are particles that we have
neither discovered nor even predicted.

However, nonbaryonic dark matter requires something more than that: it
requires that there are *stable* particles that we haven't discovered
yet.  That's a much stronger statement; the last stable particle that
was discovered was the neutrino, and we've known about that for fifty
years.  It's entirely conceivable that we really have discovered all
of the stable particles that exist, that the more massive particles
will just decay into the things we see around us.

Of course, it's also conceivable that the opposite is true.  Doing
experiments to detect the more exotic forms of dark matter is
certainly worthwhile.

--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!
From: paul@mtnmath.UUCP (Paul Budnik)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: New Group sci.physics.orthodox
Summary: `sci.physics.announce' would be a better idea.
Date: 8 Nov 92 16:39:55 GMT
Organization: Mountain Math Software, P. O. Box 2124, Saratoga. CA 95070

In article <1deevpINNl33@bigboote.WPI.EDU>, phillies@bigwpi.WPI.EDU (George D. Phillies) writes:
> Is it just me, or is the crackpot and fringe material
> drowning out the real physics?  Perhaps it is time for
>  
> sci.physics.orthodox (moderated?)
> 
> sci.physics.orthodox is open to discussions of orthodox 
> physics of all branches.  Contributions that question the 
> fundamental bases of Schroedinger-Dirac quantum 
> mechanics, special relativity, or electromagnetism will 
> not be accepted.  Descriptions of gedanken-experiments 
> that purport to show inconsistencies in orthodox physics 
> will not be accepted.  ...

It is a bad idea to have a group whose name includes both the words
`orthodox' and `science'. There is no orthodox science, only experimentally
verified science, speculative ideas on science and erroneous science.
We would all like to get rid of the erroneous science (especially in
our own postings), but that is not practical in a news group. It is hard
enough (and never completely successful) in refereed journals.

> My motivation for this is the suspicion that this group 
> is not in contact with the physics community at all.  
> Note that approximately two months ago I posted an 
> announcement of a tenure-track physics opening at my
> institution.  Before the ad appeared in Physics Today,
> a month later, we received perhaps two applications.  
> We'renow up to around 60, with an end-of-the-year 
> deadline.  Since people usually tell their friends and 
> students about job openings, I infer that well under 1%
> of the real physics community actually reads this group.

What might help and be practical is a group called `sci.physics.announce'.
This group would contain no discussions of any sort. It would be limited
to announcements or news items of general interest to the physics community.
All discussion and follow up would be redirected to `sci.physics' or
another appropriate group.

It might also be useful to have a group called `sci.physics.issues'. This
would be devoted to discussing physics related issues that do not concern
the laws of physics or their application. Issues like funding of the SSC,
religion and science, the crackpot index etc. would be kept out of 
`sci.physics'. 

One should not expect a group like `sci.physics' to be a forum for professional
physicists to discuss physics issues among themselves. It is a way for
a few professional physicists who are so inclined to communicate with a
more general audience and for anyone to use in any way they want that
does not violate the charter of the group. The way for professionals to
discuss issues among themselves is to form a self selected mailing list
of people with similar levels of expertise on a topic. 

Paul Budnik
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Physics Questions
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 19:38:55 GMT

In article <1992Nov6.215453.23249@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu> b5249-23@mathcs.sjsu.edu (Kurt Stocklmeir) writes:
>To the innocent person who asked about the differences between
>gravity having an infinite velocity and a velocity = c.
>
>In addition to the rude insulting people and the fighting that goes
>on that nobody could find even in the first grade of the worse elementary
>school in the world, sci.physics is known not to have the best physics.
>Would anybody fly on an airplane made by sci.physics?

Are you preparing us for your own post or just insulting everyone here
on general principles?

>If the sun disappeared, and if gravity had an almost infinite velocity,
>the gravitational field would disappear with the sun.  If gravity moves
>at c, it would take 8 minutes.

The point, yet again, is that according to general relativity, the sun
CAN'T just "disappear," since this would violate (local) conservation of
energy.  So GR makes no predictions about what would happen in this
Of course, this experiment has not been done.  However, there seems to
be pretty good evidence from the double neutron star observations that
GR does well at predicting how gravitational radiation works.
Xref: sparky sci.physics:18212 sci.space:15374 alt.conspiracy:11888
From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.space,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: NASA Coverup
Keywords: Evidence gravity falsified
Date: 5 Nov 92 21:44:38 GMT
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
NNTP-Posting-Host: alfalfa.intel.com

In article <4586@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us> snarfy@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us writes:
>
>
>    Well  ,  it  sounds  like the willingness to cling to some kind of la-la
>   land belief that our  government  wouldn't  lie  to  us  about  the  moon
>   landings

I'm perfectly willing to believe that the government has lied to us,
but I prefer to believe it in the face of hard evidence rather than
the ravings of a lone crackpot.

For instance:

    The government lied to us when it said that George Bush was
    unsupportive of the idea of arms for hostages or ignorant
    of the effort to sell arms to Iran for the release of
    hostages in Lebanon.

vs.

    The moon is four times as dense as our terrestrial calculations
    and measurements suggest, because the government lied to us
    about its verifying data collected during the alleged missions
    to the moon.

I believe the former, because the evidence exists and is supported
by members of the government itself.  I do not believe the latter,
because there is no evidence to support the claim, and because it
comes from a person who previously misinterpreted Ohm's law to the
point that it assisted him in mis-deriving a theory of travelling at
speeds faster than light.

				--Blair
				  "Makes this God stuff look simple."
From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: graphical humping terminology
Date: 10 Nov 92 23:06:32 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer) writes:
>This article piqued my old annoyance with the free use of the term "gaussian"
...
>I believe it is time that we had another term for curves which have humps. It
>is appealing to call them "bactrian" curves, but confusion with the "dromedary"
>curves which often characterize class grade distributions would ensue. People
>would never be able to keep them straight!
...

How about "peaked"?
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)
Subject: Re: Do Balloons fly?
Organization: Simon Fraser University
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 19:28:07 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.130316.28438@kth.se> e92_anh@vaxkab.lne.kth.se writes:
>This will probably sound like a silly question to a lot of you, but WHY
>does a helium-filled balloon rise upward? Is it because of the
>difference in air-pressure at the balloon's top and bottom, causing the
>resulting force to press it upward?

Yes, that is correct. It is most easily seen to be quantiatively correct for
the case of a vertically oriented cylindrical baloon, a hard kind to find at
your average toy store!

>Thus, consider this: If the air surrounding the balloon had exactly the
>same density on all sides, then the balloon would not move (I think).

Well, that is correct, but it's a second order effect, and not causal in this
case. The pressure's the thing, and of course density is inversely proportional
to pressure.

>So, is my airpressure-theory correct? I'd very much like to know!

Yes it is, you'll be glad to hear! :-))

Leigh
From: phillies@bigwpi.WPI.EDU (George D. Phillies)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: New Group sci.physics.orthodox
Date: 6 Nov 92 18:53:45 GMT
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
NNTP-Posting-Host: bigwpi.wpi.edu

Is it just me, or is the crackpot and fringe material
drowning out the real physics?  Perhaps it is time for
 
sci.physics.orthodox (moderated?)

sci.physics.orthodox is open to discussions of orthodox 
physics of all branches.  Contributions that question the 
fundamental bases of Schroedinger-Dirac quantum 
mechanics, special relativity, or electromagnetism will 
not be accepted.  Descriptions of gedanken-experiments 
that purport to show inconsistencies in orthodox physics 
will not be accepted.  (Descriptions of pedagogical 
gedanken experiments that appear to show paradoxes, for 
the purpose of creating a cognitive dissonance in a 
student's mind, are acceptable if the paradox is given a 
full explanation.) 

My motivation for this is the suspicion that this group 
is not in contact with the physics community at all.  
Note that approximately two months ago I posted an 
announcement of a tenure-track physics opening at my
institution.  Before the ad appeared in Physics Today,
a month later, we received perhaps two applications.  
We'renow up to around 60, with an end-of-the-year 
deadline.  Since people usually tell their friends and 
students about job openings, I infer that well under 1%
of the real physics community actually reads this group.

George Phillies
phillies@wpi.wpi.edu
From: brahm@cco.caltech.edu (David E. Brahm)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: NEWS: Galileo Cleared of Heresy Charges by Vatican
Date: 7 Nov 1992 09:08:41 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: punisher.caltech.edu
Summary: Squeezing out the Big Guy

johan@blade.stack.urc.tue.nl (Johan Wevers) wrote:
> So [the Church] won't resist against the inflation model were the big
> bang was created from an instable false vacuum, where no gods are needed
> any more for the creation of the universe?

crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) replied:
> Please keep your particular religion out of science, it
> has no place there.  Since there can always be a time *before* you
> have any kind of false vacuum, bang or inflation, this discussion 
> simply *invites* consideration of initial conditions set up by 'gods'.

The canonical view of relativistic cosmology is that there is *not* a time
before the Big Bang; asking what came "before" is like asking what lies
"north" of the North Pole, in that it makes an incorrect assumption about
the range of a coordinate (time).  Furthermore, the fairly new field of
quantum cosmology attempts to show how the existence of a 4D macroscopic
universe is a "likely" "event" in a spacetime-less background, and that no
"initial conditions" need be externally imposed.

Not that these questions have been satisfactorily answered yet, but the
point is that even the most fundamental questions of existence are now
being explored by science.  And if they can in fact be answered
scientifically, where does that leave the Big Guy?  Historically science
has continually encroached on territory once belonging to religion, and the
gods have retreated from the trees, to the mountains, to the sky, to a
nebulous omnipresence, to the First Cause, to ???  This trend alone is
sufficient to convince me that "God" is a purely human creation.

--
Staccato signals of constant information,  |  David Brahm, physicist
A loose affiliation of millionaires and    |  (brahm@cco.caltech.edu)
  billionaires and Baby ...                |---- Carpe Post Meridiem! --
These are the days of miracle and wonder,  | Disclaimer:  I only speak
And don't cry, Baby, don't cry, don't cry. | for the sensible folks.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Some physics questions
From: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin)
Date: 5 Nov 92 17:56:17 GMT
Distribution: na

sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:

>In article <1992Nov3.122750.1@stsci.edu>, zellner@stsci.edu writes...

>> >  Why is the constant value of speed of light what it is?
>> >  Why not ten times the current value? ie 3*10^9 m/s
>> 
>>A meaningless question.  It's like saying "Why don't you make your meter sticks
>>only a tenth as long?"

>Not true.  It's a very good question, the answer to which is "We haven't the
>slightest idea - yet."  Whether a question seems vacuous often depends on 
>the theoretical framework in which you ask the question.

Or the system of units.  Particle people would rephrase the question
"Why are the coupling constants and masses what they are?"  because they
like to define the speed of light to be 1 and put all the free parameters
into coupling constants and masses.  Now that the speed of light is
defined to be constant, if a "change in the speed of light" were
detected it wouldn't be called a change in the speed of light-- more
likely it would be called a change in the size of all objects in the
universe, or in the speed of clocks, due to a change in coupling 
constants!  At least that's what particle physicists would say. 
-- 
Matt McIrvin
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: zowie@daedalus.stanford.edu (Craig "Powderkeg" DeForest)
Subject: Re: Relativity again (was Re: History of AC vs DC Power)
Organization: Stanford Center for Space Science and Astrophysics
	<ZOWIE.92Nov11100057@daedalus.stanford.edu>
	<11NOV199214081016@utahep.uta.edu>
Date: 11 Nov 92 14:03:10

In article <bar> sawyer@utahep.uta.edu (Lee Sawyer) writes:
   In article <foo>, I write:
   >[Then Lee DeForest invented the triode and it was all over...]
           ^^^^^^^^^^
	  //////////  <<= Are you related ? 
   >Craig DeForest -- astrophysicist for hire.   DoD#314159; PhD#271828

Can't say for sure.  My grandfather, Melvin DeForest, knew -- when I was a
kid, I remember talking to him and my father about it, when visiting him.
From that conversation, I seem to remember that he was my grandfather's
uncle or cousin or something.  But I was only a little tyke then, and
Melvin passed away before I got a chance to ask him again.  One of these
days I'll look it up.  Shouldn't be hard; I bet the DeForest museum at
Foothill college (near here) has the whole family tree, and there aren't
very many of us.

It was pretty stunning to walk through Palo Alto and stumble upon the Lee
DeForest plaque on Emerson St., about two blocks from my house -- I knew
his lab had been in this area, but didn't realize I was practically on it.
--
Craig DeForest -- astrophysicist for hire.   DoD#314159; PhD#271828
From: brahm@cco.caltech.edu (David E. Brahm)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Some physics questions
Date: 7 Nov 1992 09:28:15 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: punisher.caltech.edu
Summary: Dimensionful vs. dimensionless constants

sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
> What makes the speed of light any more fundamental than the charge
> of an electron, or the electroweak mixing angle?

Forgive me for jumping into a thread I haven't followed, but the obvious
answer is that the speed of light has *dimensions*, and thus is determined
by (or *defines*) the units you work in.  Once you set up (Planck) units
where c=G=hbar=1, the remaining physical constants (the dimensionless ones)
are the interesting ones.

For example, m(electron)/M(Planck) = 10^-22 might be the product of (a)
a SUSY-or technicolor-breaking scale, which in turn comes from the
logarithmic running of some coupling constant, and (b) some Yukawa
coupling.

> And even if it's more fundamental, what prevents you, in principle,
> from developing a theory which predicts the speed of light?

That theory would have to predict the length of a certain bar in Paris and
the rotational rate of a certain small (but nice) planet.

--
Staccato signals of constant information,  |  David Brahm, physicist
A loose affiliation of millionaires and    |  (brahm@cco.caltech.edu)
  billionaires and Baby ...                |---- Carpe Post Meridiem! --
These are the days of miracle and wonder,  | Disclaimer:  I only speak
And don't cry, Baby, don't cry, don't cry. | for the sensible folks.