From: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Subject: RE: <None>=Hot vs Cold Fusion/to Carr&Britz
Reply-To: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 15:40:27 GMT


Thank you, Prof. Jones (jonesse@physc1.byu.edu, Digest 724), for your
clarification of your mechanism and the history of cold fusion at BYU. It is
interesting that you, like P&F, are doubtful of what is supposed to be
happening:

>  "When a current is passed through palladium or titanium
>electrodes immersed in an electrolyte of deuterated water and various metal
>salts, a small but significant flux of neutrons is detected.  Fusion of
>deuterons within the metal lattice MAY BE THE EXPLANATION."  (Emphasis added.)

F&P, too, have backed down from their strong d-d fusion claim, in saying that
"an all-important question-mark was omitted from the title" of their first
paper.

However, your attempts at disassociation from the P&F work,

>Our research, therefore, should not be confused with P/F -- PLEASE.

>Thanks, Dieter, for finally including the Van Siclen / Jones paper in your
>list of early works related to cold fusion.  But let's not associate this
>with Pons and Fleischmann.  Can't we all see the difference?  We
>understand the difference between hot and cold fusion, now, hopefully.  And
>the distinction between muon- and electron- catalyzed fusion seems transparent.
>No one sees enough neutrons OR helium OR gammas OR tritium (I could go on to
>include any products of nuclear reactions) to justifiably associate claimed
>xs heat with nuclear reactions.  So why throw the BYU work in with P/F claims?
>   PLEASE HELP STOP THIS NONSENSE.
>The distinction is clear in Huizenga's book and Frank Close's, but uncritically
>muddled in Mallove's (which I profoundly resent).  It seems that believers in
>the unfounded notion that xs heat as claimed by P/F is nuclear  USE the
>low-level nuclear findings of the BYU group and others to support their claims.
>To me, this is grossly unfair and fallacious.  I will continue to fight such
>nonsense.

... are to no avail; your work, that of Fleischmann and Pons, the Russian
fractofusion work and even the recent (very dubious) work of Mills et al, are
all irrevocably lumped under "cold fusion", no matter what the origin or
original meaning of that term. I understand your resentment, but it can't be
helped. Behind that resentment, I feel, lies your assumption that the excess
heat type cnf is bogus, while your low-level neutron emissions are real, and
due to a nuclear process. At the moment, we do not have enough information to
judge which of the effects are real or not, which are nuclear or chemical. We
do all have our ideas, of course.

The distinction between cold and hot is fine. Clearly, muon catalysed d-d
fusion is cold: it does not require the two d's to hit each other with great
force. But this is also what the other camp claims, in saying that there is
something special in the metal deuteride crystal that micmics muon catalysis.
Even fractofusion, which involves accelerated (hot) deuterons, takes place in
an otherwise cold matrix, as opposed to a tokamak with a plasma at 1E08 K.
Mills et al - well, they themselves don't believe in fusion except as a minor
side effect, but here it is their imitators who lump this with cold fusion;
editor Miles did, too, when he put their paper into the "Cold Fusion Notes"
part of FT. Or did Mills and Kneyzis (Kneizys?) ask for that?

So as far as history goes, the Jones+ work was demonstrably there first,
together with the Russian fracto-work. Whether or not Fleischmann and Pons's
work goes back that far, we do not know, as there are no publications to prove
it. And, Prof. Jones, if I have my history right, you yourself must have seen
an association between your work and P&F's back at the time when you suggested
a collaborative effort.
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Dieter Britz alias britz@kemi.aau.dk
Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
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