HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
Subject: A Dumb Question
Reply-To: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 20:10:53 GMT

Let me ask a dumb question about the electric field debate with Allred, 
Logajan, and others.

Consider two D ions sitting in a tube.  The tube is the Palladium lattice.  Let
them be at adjacent sites in the tube.  Now sneak up behind each with some
negative charges.  Q: How many charges does it take to push the two together?
Q: How much work is done in the process? (ev)

Seems to me it does not take either very many ev or charges.  I don't think we
need anything like 20 Kev, or a high voltage anywhere.  We just need a very 
high, very local electric field.  Now if all those electrons in the lattice 
can just be persuaded to bunch up peroidically, the internal net field could 
be very high while the external field is zero.  Seems to me that all those 
electrons in the lattice would want to lock up in some way.  

Happy New Year to All - Lets make this a breakthrough year!

Tom Droege
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Subject: Status #4 Cell 4A3 (Sorry if this is a duplicate send)
Reply-To: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 20:59:46 GMT

Status #4 Cell 4A3                   

If I don't believe a large shift in the calorimeter what do I believe?  Why do 
I keep doing these experiments?

First the calorimeter has been steady within a few milliwatts the last day or 
so at 7.248 watts with a calibration at 7.788.  This means that the balance 
point has changed 0.540 watts in the direction of "anomalous heat".  For the 
moment I am assuming that this is a shift in balance point brought on by the 
temperature cycling between 4 C and 60 C.  I have already been told by someone 
(sorry I have forgotten the name - please claim credit - I really appreciate 
the information) that thermoelectric devices age when they are temperature 
cycled, so I should have done more up-down cycles than I did during 
calibration to watch for this.  It is very hard to do enough calibrations when 
they take so long.  The sign of the change is such that if the temperature 
cycling is the cause, then the thermoelectric device became a less efficient 
pump.  This is exactly what one would expect if the temperature changes are 
breaking up the crystal structure.  

There is something in the data that to me would more indicate that interesting 
things are going on.  From time to time there are small up spikes in the cell 
temperature.  A typical one jumps up 0.1 degree in temperature between one 
minute samples and then decays with about a 2 minute time constant.  This 
decay time is quite reasonable for the dimensions of the cell.  One thing that 
could cause such spikes would be a jump in cell voltage, but that is not 
there.  The spikes are accompanied by an energy deposit, and the inner loop 
servo moves in a direction to remove heat from the cell.  Generally there is 
no matching temperature spike in the catalyst one way or the other.  This 
would seem to rule out catalyst artifacts or recombination in the cell.  

I am thus quite convinced that the cell from time to time puts out heat pulses 
with an magnitude of 1 to 20 joules.  More typical 5 to 10 joules.  Please 
note that I do not claim that these are net heat pulses, but only that they 
are sudden releases of heat which could have been stored up in some chemical 
relaxation oscillator process.  Note that we have also seen this on previous 
runs and have looked at a lot of cell temperature data and found that the 
distribution of temperature changes is not symmetrical as one would expect 
(I think) from noise.  

Since last night, there has also been a small upward trend in the "anomalous 
heat.  But less than 10 milliwatts.  We are about 200 hours into the run.  

Tom Droege

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Subject: Various Replies
Reply-To: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 17:57:04 GMT

After a nice discussion of the Helium measurement problem, Frank Close brings 
up the Chuck Sites measurements of my cathodes and asks "Has Tom produced some 
heat or are these control measurements?"  I would say neither.  We are learning 
how to do this experiment, Frank.  Chuck has both cathodes that have run and 
cathodes that are like the ones run.  It is not yet a program with carefully 
designed controls.  We are still working the mistakes out of our technique.  

I once spent two years designing amplifiers for liquid argon experiments.  
After all that time on the bench, the amplifier circuit looked just like the 
one I started with.  Only it worked.  This is very much the same kind of 
effort.  After nearly four years I am beginning to be able to make 
measurements that I can believe.  This does not mean that there are no 
problems (see today's other post) but that I now usually recognize them.  
To all who think that I should have learned how to make these measurement in 
less than four years, I say that is what it takes for me.  In fact, the 
amplifier (actually a whole measurement scheme) was done in two years but 
only after about 20 years of thinking about and building amplifiers.  P&F had 
that kind of head start on me (and in fact claimed to have been working five 
years before the press conference - and I believe them).  But then I bet I can 
out measure them! 

I remind all again that this is not publication.  This is an experiment in 
scientific communication.  You are looking over our shoulders in the lab.  The 
only statement that I have made about results was in a "Proceedings" and was 
so guarded that Huizinga liked it enough to include it three times in his 
book.  I say this because I detect a slight note of "Tom is not being 
scientific" in Frank's posting.  

I would like to remind Jed Rothwell that the Nickel cell heat went away with a 
Mercury bubbler between the cell and the catalyst.  You tell me how the cell 
knew the catalyst was there.  Perhaps it is an ESP experiment!               

Tom Droege
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: BOB HARVEY
From: jemille@eis.calstate.edu (Jeffrey d Miller)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 02:53:56 GMT
Organization: Calif State Univ/Electronic Information Services

LOOKING FOR BOB HARVEY AT GA IN SAN DIEGO.  PASS IT ON!
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: mvp@netcom.com (Mike Van Pelt)
Subject: Re: Breeder Reactor Fiasco
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 00:56:32 GMT

In article <921221154739_72240.1256_EHL67-1@CompuServe.COM> Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com> writes:
[Much plutonium-hysteria deleted]
>enough to cause cancer, and I think 20 or 30 kilos would be enough to
>manufacture a fission bomb.
[Much more plutonium-hysteria deleted]

This is plutonium from reprocessed power plant fuel, right?  So, it's
going to be something like 20% Pu240.  You don't make bombs out of
Pu240-contaminated plutonium.  The high neutron background from Pu240's
spontaneous fissions makes your bomb pre-detonate and fizzle.

-- 
Mike Van Pelt          | What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth?
mvp@netcom.com         | Judging from realistic simulations involving a
                       | sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we
                       | can assume it will be pretty bad. -- Dave Barry
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Subject: Subject: Re: Something I didn't know
Reply-To: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 19:21:29 GMT


Originally-From: webb+@CS.CMU.EDU (Jon Webb)

>But Dieter, you must admit that there is no tenable theory to explain
>excess heat in *any* cold fusion experiments.  Mills has a theory that
>must be wrong, but he's no worse off than Pons and Fleischmann who
>seem to be claiming D+D->4He, or any of the really wild theories
>(twist of ribbon, mini-black holes, multi-particle interactions).  All
>we have to go on is data, and Mills's data is probably about as good
>as any of the second-tier experiments.  So I don't see a good reason
>for doing, say, heavy water+palladium experiments instead of ordinary
>water+nickel -- if you're going to do an experiment at all, that is.
>At least if you do a Mills-style experiment the materials are cheaper
>and the claimed effect is stronger.

The cheapness and ease is about the only attractive feature. But the scenario
is worse than you describe. It's true that if this experiment unambiguously,
easily and reproducibly produced oodles of excess heat, one would have to
accept that it's good evidence. But it is not like that. Have you forgotten
that when it is conducted in a closed system, the effect goes away? In other
words, you get the effect only when doing a sloppy experiment, when you do
it better, no go. There is a totally meaningless explanation for this from
M&F. This kind of thing will not convince anybody except those who want to
believe.

F&P did at some stage start with a sort of "theory" or at least a hunch, that
they just might be able to generate sufficient pressure, or whatever, within
PdD to get fusion. To give them credit, they didn't set up an elaborate new
detailed theory that means rewriting QM and is full of holes; their theory
amounted to converting an overpotential, by use of the Nernst equation, to an
enormous "pressure". While I have my reservations about this, it is at least
controversial, i.e. not wholly nutty. If Bockris is willing to entertain it,
maybe I should, too. F&P knew they were not theoretical physicists, and left
it at their hunch, and went for the experiment.

A scientist learns to be selective. Not all papers are equally significant.
Oyama et al thought they found excess heat but it turns out they took
temperature peaks only, in a convecting solution. I can easily dismiss the
Russian work where two solutions were mixed and neutrons measured - except
as an instance of some of the bizarre outgrowths of this field; likewise for
black holes (or dust mites) and star formation. Weeding out all the rubbish
does leave a fair body of quality work, and even a tiny residue of quality
positives. But not "hundreds".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dieter Britz alias britz@kemi.aau.dk
Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Subject: Status #1 Cell 4A3
Reply-To: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 21:02:46 GMT

This weekend I went through the cleaning procedure and loaded a cell.  I give
myself D- on the job.  I can now just imagine what a lab looks like to do this
work properly.  This is intended as a practice run for the new polished
cathodes when I get them.  This cell was loaded with a cathode that was rolled
and then "polished" by me.  The result is a surface that is worse that that
which I started with.  But I must be running on Christmas day.  It is also a
practice run for the Mark V/II calorimeter and for a lot of new code.  Who 
knows what will happen when I tell it to ramp up to 60 C from the 4 C loading
point.  

There is also a new gas system switch.  It turns out the old one leaked and 
was the source of some of the mysterious gas measurements.  The gas system 
looks really tight and held well within a cc for over a week, with all the 
changes due to room temperature.  

The present plan is to charge with a ramp that increases the cell current by 
about 20 ma per sq cm per 24 hours.  I know this is not a copy of anybody's 
supposed successful result, but one has to use his head to try to guess what 
should work.  So I am going for a very gentle loading of the lattice, and hope
to get high loading by allowing plenty of time for things to move around.  

We put 200 ppm of Al into the electrolyte.  We are also running a "dummy" Pt
cathode as the most negitive electrode in the cell.  This was turned on last
night so it is likely cleaning out the 200 ppm Aluminum.  We will be able to 
add more Al loaded electrolyte as does Mckubre as we run.  

This cell also has a heater on the catalyst.  Earlier the catalyst would stop
working at these low temperatures.  

We will start the ramp up in current at 4 C tonight.

OK, Santa, I know they are scarce at the North Pole, but how about some joules
for Christmas?  I will settle for Epiphany as the charge time will better match
January 6.

Tom Droege
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: logajan@ns.network.com (John Logajan)
Subject: Re: Sounds plausible to me
Organization: Network Systems Corporation
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 92 06:39:52 GMT

Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com> writes:
>I don't know why nickel cells don't work well with recombiners.

>Why does a mercury bubbler + recombiner poison a nickel cell?

I think this mis-categorizes Droege's experiments.  It was, as I recall,
only when the recombiner and the cell were in the calorimeter at the
same time that the anomalous heat went away.  When the recombiner was
placed outside the calorimeter but still connected and functioning, the
anomalous heat returned. 

>I just heard from another nickel experimenter who reports "substantial
>recombination" on the cathode, along with substantial excess heat above I*V.
>
>My hunch is that recombination on the cathode occurs with certain cathode
>geometries, but not with others. Perhaps it is also a function of the cathode
>surface temperature. I do not have a handle on the problem.

My own measurements of 23% shortage of gases also pointed to recombination
(or parallel current paths.)  

On the basis of these recombination reports, it is now almost certain that any
result less than I*V is "down in the noise" unless extremely careful accounting
is made of evolved gases.  There might be anomalous heat in less than I*V
open cells, but it is competely masked by the uncertainty of the recombination
potential.

-- 
- John Logajan MS010, Network Systems; 7600 Boone Ave; Brooklyn Park, MN 55428
- logajan@network.com, 612-424-4888, Fax 612-424-2853
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: logajan@ns.network.com (John Logajan)
Subject: Cavitation and driven resonance
Organization: Network Systems Corporation
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 93 18:23:45 GMT

I'd just like to add a little elaboration on the topic of driven resonance
to Terry Bollinger's discussion of cavitation.

If you set up system of standing waves as Terry suggests, you will have
created a driven resonance system.

In such systems (as Tesla was fond of dramatically demonstrating) energy is
accumulated over many cycles, making the amplitude of each cycle successively
larger until a limit is reached.

For instance, in the case of a cyclical system in which the energy loss rate
is proportional to the amplitude, and say, for instance, accounts for 10%,
then the amplitude after several cycles will be the inverse of the loss rate,
(or 10 times in this case) of the amplitude of the first cycle (or of a
comparable single shot device.) 

This ratio of first cycle amplitude to later maxed out amplitudes is known as
the "Q" of the resonance (though there is a more precise definition of "Q".)

Another way to look at it is to see that the amplitude of the oscillation
and its proportional fraction of energy loss (to heating, etc) will continue
to grow until the amount of energy loss grows to just equals the amount of
driven energy being input on each cycle.  The oscillation amplitude stops
increasing when all the input energy is being consumed to cover the energy
loss mechanisms.

Therefore if you have a very efficient oscillator (low fraction of energy
loss per cycle) then you can have very high "multiplications" of the
"driver" amplitude.

A loss rate of 10% would mean an amplification of 10.
A loss rate of 1% would mean an amplification of 100.
A loss rate of 0.1% would mean an amplification of 1000.

-- 
- John Logajan MS010, Network Systems; 7600 Boone Ave; Brooklyn Park, MN 55428
- logajan@network.com, 612-424-4888, Fax 612-424-2853
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Subject: Monthly note: How to get the archived bibliography files.
Reply-To: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 15:16:10 GMT


I get asked regularly how to get the archived bibliography files. Here is how:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. By anonymous FTP from vm1.nodak.edu (134.129.111.1).  Use the userid
   anonymous and your e-mail address as the password (but 'anonymous' seems
   also to work). Once connected, enter
   cd fusion
   to access the fusion archives.  Then you may enter
   dir fusion.cnf*
   to get a listing of the bibliography files. The index is large, so this
   restriction saves a lot of time; if you should type in a global DIR, you
   can terminate the endless stream with CTRL-C, which gets you what the
   system calls an amicable abort. To transfer a given file use
   GET (ie. mget fusion.cnf*  or  get fusion.cnf-bks  etc.).
   Enter  quit to terminate ftp.

2. Via LISTSERV, which means you get it sent by email. To first find out what
   is in the archive, send an email to listserv@ndsuvm1.bitnet, with a blank
   SUBJECT line, and the "message" consisting of the command
   index fusion
   You get a largish list of all files available. To get any one of these
   files, you then send to the same address the command, e.g.,
   get fusion 91-00487
   get fusion cnf-pap1
   etc, according to what you're after.
   My files are: cnf-bks (books), cnf-pap1..cnf-pap5 (papers, slices 1..5),
   cnf-pat (patents), cnf-cmnt (comments), cnf-peri (peripherals),
   cnf-unp (unpublished stuff collected by Vince Cate, hydrogen/metal
   references from Terry Bollinger). There is also the file cnf-brif, which
   has all the references of the -pap* files but without annotations, all in
   one file.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: It appears that you can GET only 512 kb on any one day, so it might take
you a couple of days to get the whole pap file; each cnf-pap slice is about
150 kb long.
                                                                      Dieter
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dieter Britz alias britz@kemi.aau.dk
Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
==============================================================================
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
Subject: Reply to Chris Phoenix
Reply-To: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 02:24:38 GMT

Chris Phoenix worries that possibly the Mills experiment failed because 
there was a mercury bubbler in the calorimeter.  There was a water bubbler 
there first.  But Mills said the back pressure would not be high enough.  
There was also and oil bubbler, then the Mercury.  Mills seems to me to be 
a moving target.  Whenever a careful measurement does not work, you get to 
do something different.  But his first experiment "works" if done as he
describes.  But then you find that a more complete experiment does not work,
then Mills tells you to try something else ... .

As to Mercury making Freedom non habitable, while I agree that it is likely 
not good for you, the human body can stand a lot, and I bet that the over all
risk of a Mercury spill is a lot less than the toxicity of a bad "O" ring.  
I assure you that as a child, the breaking of a mercury thermometer was a "fun"
moment.  We would pick up and hord the mercury drops until we got a dime.  Not
very often in my childhood.  In those days dimes were made of silver and a 
small drop on the dime if worked long enough would makd the dime very shiny 
and slippery.  We likely also licked them, though I was broght up to never put
money in my mouth as it was "dirty".  Please note that this involved of 
working the mercury into the dime with the fingers.  If mercury were that toxic
I would be shaking like the Mad Hatter as I must have "silvered" dozens of 
dimes.  

Our logic on toxicity seems to be that if a milligram will kill a person, then
a milligram spread over a thousand persons will kill one of them.  Because 
we can now measure fantasticlly small concentrations of materials known to be
toxic in high concentrations, we are afraid of everything.  In the end, fear
will kill more of us than a few parts per billion of almost anyting.  

My grandmother said "you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die".  I think
our bodies were designed to cope with the toxic equivalent of that peck of 
dirt, and it is only when overwhelmed by a massive dose of toxic material that
the defense mechanisms fail.  

Tom Droege

* For those who don't know, a peck is 1/4 bushel.  Now what is a bushel?
"A unit of dry measure containing four pecks" says my dictionary.  But it
also says 2150.42 cu inches. 
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Subject: wavelength vs temperature
Reply-To: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 02:49:40 GMT

William R. Bernecky has posted some interesting temperatures.  Ones useful to
me are between 280 and 340 K.  I see the 317 for H.  What is the next one up 
in the T (D) table?  

The rumor has it that P&F are running fairly hot.  Would love to sit on a
resonant point.  I could hold a temperature about 0.01 C rms.  But I would 
be lucky to know where I was to better than 1 C rms.  I could also set up to
slowly scan back and forth over a region.

On a very old experiment on the Mark I calorimeter, I did a very slow current
scan and seemed to see power bumps.  This is why I continued work and built the
Mark II.  Because of the way the Mark I worked, a current scan also produced a
temperature scan.  But for this experiment, I would need a theory that produced
bumps at order 1 C intervals.  

Tom Droege
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Subject: Stainless Steel
Reply-To: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 23:38:45 GMT

Dieter, in my defense, I did look up Stainless Steel in the Cole-Parmet catalog
chemical resistance table.  They gave it an "A" for Sodium Hydroxide, the 
closest thing I could find (periodic table wise) to Lithium Hydroxide.  "A" 
means "No effect - Excellent".  But I guess there is Excellent and Excellent.

In any case, that is why I used it.  But the next design will be Teflon, Pd, 
and Pt.  

Tom Droege
From: rauchfuss@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Brian Rauchfuss)
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 17:18:07 GMT
Subject: Re: Brilliant as usual, wrong as always
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA