From: webb+@CS.CMU.EDU (Jon Webb)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Webb is right
Date: 30 Dec 92 14:51:59 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.C02uMn.CKC.1
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Originator: webb@DUCK.WARP.CS.CMU.EDU

In article <921229215812_72240.1256_EHL60-1@CompuServe.COM> 72240.1256@compuserve.com (Jed Rothwell) writes:

   "Basically, you seem to believe every paper published that claims a positive
   result for cold fusion, and disbelieve every paper that claims a negative
   result." Good Grief no!

Well, I must have misunderstood your posts.  What cold fusion
phenomena *do you* believe in, and what don't you believe in?  You
seem to accept all the positive Japanese results at face value, and
also Mills and Farrell.  What class of cold fusion phenomena does that
omit?

   "You claim that anyone can get 90 sigma..." That is the craziest thing I have
   ever heard. That is like claiming that anyone can build a functional RAM chip
   in their basement.

You *did* say, "Any fool can measure 90 sigma."  Perhaps I'm
misinterpreting your statement, but, to me, that sounds like what I
said.

   "The scientists you cite as skeptics look at the history of cold fusion
   experiments and see this pattern over and over: someone claims a positive
   result, then withdraws it later (or it just somehow disappears, being
   reported at a conference and then never heard from again)..."

   I hear from everyone in the field, at regular intervals. Whenever I call or
   fax, they tell me what they are up to. Who the Hell are you talking about?

Many many early cold fusion results were withdrawn.  As for results
that have disappeared, there are the China Lake results, for example.
Also a year or so ago there was a place in central Florida claiming
easy cold fusion through stimulation by radiation, and we've never
heard from them again.  Even McKubre has not seen fit to publish in a
journal.

   "Or someone claims to have gotten cold fusion to work, then can't get it to
   work anymore..." What do you mean "anymore?"

I mean never again, despite the most careful effort.  E.g., Huggins.

   "Or someone tries a cold fusion experiment with apparently careful technique,
   and it doesn't work..."   Who did you have in mind?

I mean many many experiments that you can find in Dieter Britz's
bibliography.  There are several instances where someone put together
a good team of electrochemists and physicists and couldn't get the
thing to work.

   I don't know
   anything about He3 or gamma rays, though, and you left out the single most
   important, most overriding and undeniable product; the key to the whole
   riddle:

	Heat

   Don't forget that! It is the easiest thing to measure, and the most
   conclusive, by far.

Actually, it's not that easy to measure.  You have a system into which
you're putting a certain, fairly large, amount of energy, and in which
you want to measure the excess energy emerging.  But (partly depending
on where the system is open or closed) some of the energy is going
into evaporation, some is going into disassociation of water, some is
going into the palladium as it absorbs hydrogen or deuterium
(apparently this is sometimes endothermic, sometimes exothermic), some
is going into or emerging from various chemical reactions, some places
in the experiment are hotter than others, etc., etc.

By contrast, a detector of radiation products can be made far more
reliable, since it gives a signal that has few other sources in the
environment (namely cosmic rays or radioactive impurities in the
experiment, which can be dealt with by various means), and which
emerges instantaneously, in the case of gamma rays and neutrons.  If
the experiment produces radiation or He3 or tritium that wasn't there
before, and it didn't come from cosmic rays or radioactive impurities,
well, then, you've got a success.  No messing around with figuring the
heat balance or worrying about turbulence or anything else.

-- J
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion