NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/physics/fusion/3378

Text File | 1993-01-23 | 8.8 KB | 175 lines

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Path: sparky!uunet!UB.com!zorch!fusion
From: [e-mail]
Subject: More Educating Rita
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Sender: [e-mail] (Scott Hazen Mueller)
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Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 22:26:13 GMT
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CHEMICAL AND UNCLEAR POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES

Steve Jones reminds us that there have been negative power excursions
that may compensate the positives. And he is right that Hutchinson of
Oak Ridge is an example (Scott at ORNL maybe but thats another story).
I followed Hutchinson's experiments as I held a senior position at Oak
Ridge then; indeed it was his comment to me about the large *negative*
excursion  of order a MJ that began to make us suspicious about nuclear
fusion as "explanation" of any heat (I am talking about spring 1989
here).The published work of his group shows that the net energy "excess"
is (my estimation) 1.5+/-1.9MJ. The flow from negative to positive could
be artificial (e.g. sloping baseline) or a "genuine" storage.

(p.s. After preparing this note I saw Tom Droege's post about possible
sources of negative heat in the "warm up" stage. This was all allowed for
here as in the Harwell data, see below, I believe. The Pd lattice undergoes
a phase change during the loading, which is an important player in this
"negative heat" story I guess. Perhaps other people can comment on this).

Hutchinson also looked for nuclear products. There were none. So if you
want to advertise this as an Oak Ridge positive heat (as Bockris has e.g.)
you should include it as a definitive nuclear negative (MJ = 10**18
nuclear events approx). This leaves nothing, chemistry or miracle.
Jed Rothwell assures us that chemistry is impossible for MJ, as has been
known for 100,000 years apparently, so that seems to leave nothing or miracle.

If you go look at the Harwell data you will see that these also show a
negative for hundred hours followed by a positive. The positives never
exceeeded two sigma and so they did not regard it as significant, but *if*
you want to believe that Harwell really saw positive heat, then you also
must accept the negative heat too. And here again, the integrated negative
and positive are consistent with zero.

Now, some people want to claim that Harwell *really* saw heat but
misanalysed their data. If so, then the fact that Harwell also took
careful measurements of neutrons, tritium etc and found that there were
none (in these "heat producing expts") means either that there was no
nuclear process at work or that they misanalysed their neutrons too.
Now, it is well known that people have mistakenly thought they saw
neutrons when there werent any, but I have not before heard suggested
that neutron experts saw none when they were actually being flooded by
10**12 each second. So here again the message seems to be "nothing,chemical
or miracle".

So lets examine the idea that a chemical process is at work further.

Jed Rothwell suggests that I have ignored FP later paper(s). Does this include
their 1991 paper Jed? have you read it? If so, please explain how it is
that it claims to have made experiments with ordinary water that balanced
*before* the 23 March press conference when it was stated explicitly by
Fleischmann on the 28 and 31 March89 that those experiments had *not*
been done. Did he have a poor memory? Surely we are not to believe that
he was deliberately lying, for if he were then we would have no reason to
believe any claim made then or since. So what is the explanantion Jed?
How are we to know which statements to believe?
Given the track record of credibility how are we to know whether to
believe that a video of bubbles and a dry cell shows, as claimed,
boiling with 100 watt excess power for ten minutes?
Guidance would be appreciated.

*If* the 100W excess is as reported then I dont care whether it is
nuclear or not, it would be an interesting phenomenon to be explained.
The problem is that Pons has made several claims during the cold fusion
episode which have later been shown to be less than the verite' - here
again I refer you to my book and invite you to verify with the sources.
It could be that this time it is for real and that he cried "wolf" too
often,and that this video shows a nuclear fusion process at work,
in which case you can all have fun enjoying the banquet at Stockholm
while I eat my hat. But in the meantime dont waste your breath badmouthing
all and sundry whose views do no agree with your own. Nature "knows" what
the real answer is and this will not be changed however much hot air is
blasted for or against in the meantime.

And in the chemical-nuclear conundrum do not forget the fact that Pons
expt produced apparently positive heat with *ordinary* water when finally
done in April 89. At least that is what he believed so long as it fitted in
with his nuclear belief (fed in part by Schwinger's interest at that time).
Pons told Martin of Texas, he told the DOE, he told Seaborg, as some
of these people noted in their diaries at the time. Fleischmann believed
in this too, as became clear to those at Erice in mid April 89. But then
the incompatibility of these data with a nuclear hypothesis was
realised and no more was heard. Now it is possible that they discovered
perfectly valid reasons to disregard those data; it is also possible that
those data are as "real" as the heavy water data. Heat with heavy and light
water and with no nuclear products conveys one message to me and another to
Jed Rothwell.


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

MORE EDUCATING RITA

 I had prepared the previous msg before reading the Rothwell post
that dismissed Huggins negative  heat and breaks new ground even by
JR's unique standards. As I am interacting remotely from Germany this
week I cant readily call up the first post and so apologise for
some duplication.

Jed Rothwell informs us that

*Chemistry has been around for a long time it cant fall flat on its
*face because of one expt


1.Replace "chemistry" by "nuclear physics"

2.It is not just "one" experiment. I have suspected for a long time that
you have either not read or have not understood some of the papers that
you denigrate. Your claims about Huggins show this. Start
by reading the Harwell paper; look at the figure. They had a high
percentage of negative power for over 100 hours (see previous posting).
Go and look at Hutchinson group from Oak Ridge. They also had a long
negative period, accumulating (negative) between 0.5 and 1.5MJ. This
appeared in Fusion Technology (I think it was) and/or one of the early
conferences.
This negative period is a well known phenomenon and the positive output later
in these expts did not exceed that early negative.
When I "left open" the question of storage (and note I used
"atomic" not "chemical") it was such phenomena that I had in mind.
You castigated me on this point two weeks ago asserting that there was
never any negative heat etc etc; I forgive you as it is clear that
you were unaware of this phenomenon.

(You also keep saying that the energies are beyond chemistry.
There are electrons bound with hundreds of eV in heavy atoms. Normal
chemistry may indeed primarily read the loosely bound electrons and hence
energies per atom in CNF be "more than chemistry" but that does not rule
out these energies on these grounds of *energy conservation* alone.)


*We must not believe an isolated example - - simply expt error. I never
*believe anything until I hear from a dozen workers....

Hutchinsons group and Harwell (and other calorimetric expts such as your
much loathed Caltech group) satisfy the dozen

*who have performed hundreds of expts.

Ah; thats the crunch; that is how I feel about Pons' video.

*An experiment yielding only  milliwatts of excess cannot prove much

Bang goes Fleischmann and Hawkins expt as written up by Pons.

*It is dead simple to make mistakes when measuring milliwatts of heat (power).

At last we agree on something. This point was made about the FPH work
in 1989. And before you accuse me of misquoting you by having omitted
your rider about experts, first rate equipment (or whatever), dont forget
that
(1)most of the data on heat/power in FP were actually measured by the
student Hawkins whose claims to expertise were established in the author
list of the original paper, and
(2) many electrochemists seem not to be overly impressed by the FP
calorimeters as the optimal precision devices.


In summary, I suspect that the systematic errors have been underestimated
in the original FPH work certainly and in other work possibly and that
localised heat excursions do not exceed the net energy budget contained
within the *electronic* degrees of freedom. A serious attempt to understand
the physical mechanisms might focus on these questions since there is one
reproducible datum, namely the lack of billions of nuclear remnants.