NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/physics/fusion/3393

Text File | 1993-01-25 | 9.3 KB | 159 lines

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Path: sparky!uunet!UB.com!zorch!fusion
From: Jed Rothwell <ub-gate.UB.com!compuserve.com!72240.1256>
Subject: Common Ground
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Scott Hazen Mueller)
Reply-To: Jed Rothwell <ub-gate.UB.com!compuserve.com!72240.1256>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 01:35:16 GMT
Lines: 147

To: >INTERNET:[e-mail]

Frank Close and I have at last found common grounds for agreement
(seriously!), on the following two critically important points:

1. An isolated example of a phenomenon is probably expt error, results must
be replicated by a dozen workers or so, or better yet 100 workers.

     However! Frank says, "Hutchinsons group and Harwell (and other
     calorimetric expts such as your much loathed Caltech group) satisfy the
     dozen..." These people did not prove anything; they did the experiment
     wrong. They got no results. The Kamiokande work also did not prove
     anything, because their results were either non-existent or very weak (I
     cannot judge which).

2. An experiment yielding only milliwatts of excess cannot prove much.

Frank says: "Bang goes Fleischmann and Hawkins expt as written up by Pons."

Amen. The 1989 work was inconclusive, and nobody should ever believe (or
dismiss) cold fusion because of it. It took many, many years of hard work,
and hundreds of experiments in places like SRI before conclusive evidence was
obtained. This is not unexpected or unusual; the history of science and
technology is filled with similar examples of effects which were first
discovered at only marginal, difficult to detect strength, and were later
enhanced. It took SRI a great deal of money to build precision calorimeters,
and hundreds of experimental runs before they had results significant to 90
sigma.

However, given the limitations of their budget and their knowledge, and the
demands on their time, Pons, Fleischmann and Hawkins did the best job that
anyone on earth could have done. New science and technology always begins
like this, in fits and starts.

The parallels that I frequently cite to the Wright Brothers are uncanny:
contrary to popular belief, the so-called "first flight" at Kittyhawk was a
marginal, questionable experiment, that failed in many important ways. The
plane barely got off the ground in spite of the fact that there was a strong
wind "helping." The machine jumped up and down violently, barely under
control. They later reported that it came down in a "controlled landing" but
in fact, the landing was involuntary and so violent that the skids cracked on
impact. All flights were much shorter, and under much less control, than
their best previous glider flights. A "skeptical" observer might easily have
concluded that the 3 or 4 flights that day were dumb luck, and might never be
repeated. The results were, in every sense, marginal. If someone watching
that experiment had suggested that in 11 years thousands of those machines
would be the key weapons in a World War, he would have been crazy. It would
have taken an expert observer to see that the Wrights were on to something,
and a skeptical expert would have been completely justified in saying they
had failed, or they were not done much. It took many years of follow-up work
before they truly did demonstrate that they had a viable, replicatable
technology. This is *exactly* the case with P&F -- the first experiments did
not prove anything, you must look at the follow-up work.

"I suspect that the systematic errors have been underestimated in the
original FPH work certainly and in other work possibly..."

How so? What other work? Tell us exactly what McKubre, Kunimatsu, Srinvasan,
Storms, Mills and Thermacore have done wrong. If you can find no error, you
must admit the evidence is convincing. These results are not marginal,
arguable, they are not close to the noise, like the 1989 work was. They are
either right, or disastrously, obviously, wrong. You cannot hide subtle
errors with 2.5 watts in, 50 watts out, or even 3 watts out. Either McKubre
is right, or there is some dead simple, perfectly obvious mistake in his
work. I admit, you might have trouble getting the details from Mills, so why
not concentrate on McKubre? Go ahead, tell us what is wrong with *this* work.
We don't want to hear that the Kittyhawk flyer cracked a skid; we want you to
look at that Sopwith Camel up there at 5,000 feet going 120 mph, and tell us
why it is not airborne.

Also, it is not enough to say that "perhaps they forgot to check the power
in" or perhaps X, or Y or Z. You have to show that they actually *did*
forget. Actually, playing by the rules, you have to fax them and get them to
publicly admit that they forgot X, Y or Z, and that when they went back and
did X, Y or Z, the effect went away. If you can actually disprove these
experiments, you will save Japanese government and industry $50 million this
year alone, easily. You will become a national hero over there. They will
make you a top advisor to MITI, chauffeur you around, and feed you lunches
that cost more than most people's monthly rent. That's what they have done
for Pons and Fleischmann. So, if you can disprove the calorimetry, and show
that the megajoules per mole are an illusion, I will make you a millionaire
overnight. (I'll be your PR man; give me a percentage of the take.) Go ahead!
I will have Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and the other NHEP members eating
out of your hand in no time, I promise.

Let me make your assignment crystal clear: prove the heat is an experimental
error. Nobody at MITI or the NHEP gives a damn about neutrons. They do not
care whether CF is nuclear energy, zero point energy, or green cheese. They
know it yields megajoules of heat from each tiny bit of fuel, and they know
the fuel is water, and that is ALL they care about. PERIOD. They know that
the fuel contains thousands of times more energy than gasoline, and they
don't care about the details. I have talked with them and met with them, and
these issues never came up. So, don't bother trying to show there are no
neutrons; don't prove this is (or is not) D-D fusion. You must prove that the
heat does not exist in any quality, credible experiment, anywhere on earth.

By the way, this offer is open to Dick Blue, Dieter Britz, or any other so-
called "skeptic." I am perfectly serious: if you can conclusively disprove
the existence of CF heat, I can make you millionaire, a celebrity, the toast
of the Japanese Government, a lifetime advisor to EPRI, and the conquering
hero of the Japanese Hot Fusion community, which is getting antsy these days.

It will be very easy for any of you to disprove these results: a 50 watt
error is dead simple to find! It stands out like a sore thumb. Hiding a 50
watt error in any calorimeter would be like trying to hide an elephant in a
broom closet. Detecting a 50 watt excess is about as difficult as detecting
the noise of hand grenade going off in your front yard.

THIS is the very essence of your problem: the original FPH work is no longer
the issue. It is history. It has no bearing on the present. You are obsessed
with it! Please forget it; please forget the very existence of Pons and
Fleischmann, if that helps. You must concentrate on the later work, and upon
other people's work too, because it is far more convincing.

You must stop looking for neutrons, because they are not there. This cannot
be D-D fusion as we know it. We don't know what this is, it makes no sense to
even ask at this stage. You are exactly like the drunk looking for his key
under the streetlight, even though he dropped it in the garden. (He says he
looks for it under the light "because I can't see in the garden.") Stop
nattering on about the evidence which is not here! Stop worrying about
marginal, inconclusive, or failed experiments at places like Harwell and
Kamiokande. These people tried and failed. It turns out, as it so often does,
that they did not try hard enough, they did not stick to the problem long
enough. They stopped after a dozen experiments in a few months. They needed
to do 200 experiments over 2 or 3 years, like McKubre. A few months was not
long enough. This sort thing happens all the time in the particle physics
business; please do not pretend that you are not used to the idea.

There is heat, there are no neutrons, and that's that. You must work with the
pieces of the puzzle that nature has handed to you, and stop complaining
about the ones which are not included in this box. We know, with absolute
certainty, that the puzzle can fit together perfectly, somehow, because all
of nature's puzzles always do fit together eventually.

Also, please stop pretending that you believe a match can burn for eight days
without creating any ash. Stop quoting megajoules without telling us how much
material they came out of (how many moles, or grams). This is not a religion
forum. That is a fine story for the Old Testament, but it has no place in
modern science. If you *do* believe that, you and I have nothing in common.
CF cannot possibly be a chemical reaction. I suppose there is a finite
possibility that a 90 sigma result is incorrect, but there is absolutely no
possibility that any chemical reaction can evolve a million megajoules from
one mole of matter at room temperature, and you know it! You know it better
than me, to many decimal places.

- Jed