Merged Cold Fusion Claims

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There's a difference between "impossible" and "impossible according to our current understanding". The people looking at cold fusion now are looking for something that, if it exists, exists outside our current understanding of physics. There's nothing wrong with that; in fact, it's the very essence of science. Every discovery was outside our current understanding at some point.

Even if the cold-fusion proponents are wrong, what they are doing is science, and good luck to them. Proving something impossible is just as worthwhile as proving something possible.
 
bruto said:
In that instance, then others would be doing it and no investment would be required anyway.
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Who are the "others" ?

Those like you that claim cold fusion to be impossible ?

But why a hell will you start to make cold fusion experiments, as you know cold fusion is impossible ?
 
pedrone said:
ben m, two questions to you:

1- Are you an expert in interpreting CR-39?

2- Did you see the CR-39 of Mosier-Boss experiment ? Did she invite you to anayse the CR-39?
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Don't get into a credentials/expertise cockfight with me. CR-39 is a very weird, specialized technology, used for the reasons I describe and for nothing else---so no, I haven't used it. At various times I've considered using it and rejected it because it's crappy for most applications. I've done a little simulation work (not data) with emulsions (much better than CR-39 unless you're beta/gamma saturated) and experimental work with similar data. My general expertise is in low-background, low-systematic-error detectors and data analysis---semiconductors, scintillators, gas detectors (in particular), you name it. I've worked with DD and DT fast neutron sources. I've worked on one of the lowest-neutron-background (certainly the best-known neutron background) experiments ever constructed.

Have I said something about CR-39 which you know to be wrong? Has Mosier-Boss published some neutron data that contradicts something I said?
 
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I might be off base, but they are reporting excess heat as well, plus x-rays and tritium. If there were enough fusion reactions to produce excess heat, shouldn't their setup literally be glowing from all the radiation? I'm pretty sure that's several order of magnitude above needing to squint at particle tracks to detect neutrons.
 
ben m said:
Supposedly it's from the reaction 12C + n --> alpha alpha alpha n.

The question is: Why focus on this bizarre, rare reaction? Why not measure the neutron flux from ordinary elastic scattering (single tracks)? Why not thermalize the neutrons and measure the captures?

Because they're not really doing serious neutron measurements---the sort where you put together a complete and accurate picture of the neutron flux vs. energy, or time, or distance, etc.. Rather, they're looking for anything that can vaguely pass as an "LENR confirmed" press release. Triple tracks? Triple tracks = neutrons! Yes! That hits the confirmation bias button! We're done measuring, get that press release out!
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Forgive me for being stupid, but it's been over a decade since my physics classes. So, the point is that there's a neutron hitting a carbon-12 nucleus and ejecting 3 alpha particles and another neutron, right?

Well, if I'm right, why's that supposedly a sign of fusion? Because the collision is strong enough to eject alpha radiation plus another neutron?

If I'm wrong, well... I guess I need to go find my old physics books... :o. Providing I haven't sold them back or anything...
 
Dilb said:
I might be off base, but they are reporting excess heat as well, plus x-rays and tritium. If there were enough fusion reactions to produce excess heat, shouldn't their setup literally be glowing from all the radiation? I'm pretty sure that's several order of magnitude above needing to squint at particle tracks to detect neutrons.
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Yeah, that's a longstanding problem. Real fusion reactions have only two ways of getting energy out of the daughter nucleus: energetic neutrons, or energetic gamma rays. Neither one of those "generates excess heat in the source". Rather, they escape, even through many inches of lead, and generate "excess heat" in anyone standing nearby. A one-watt fusion source would emit gammas or neutrons to the tune of 50 curies or so. Stand one meter away and you'll be over NRC radiation-worker dose limits in five minutes; you'll have acute radiation sickness after 90 minutes and certain death in ten hours. (And that's one watt---remember, the current crop of claims is for kilowatts.)

So yeah---all of this "we detected trace gamma rays, maybe" is evidence against fusion. (It is, however, exactly what you expect when you hand ordinary backgrounds to an inexperienced analyst. I can tell you about all of the "peaks" my undergrads have "discovered" in their "detector data" prior to their learning how background subtraction works.)

The smarter cold-fusion people (Hagelstein, for example) put a lot of effort into theorizing how "fusion" could conceivably fail to produce gamma rays and neutrons.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-alpha_process

When a star fuses carbon, it doesn't fuse three alpha particles together. It fuses two into beryllium, then that with another alpha for carbon. It makes a total of 7.275 MeV.

So to make a carbon atom break into three alpha particles, you will need more than 7.275 MeV. Probably much more, since it's apparently skipping a step. And you'll have to have that energy come from one neutron?

Fusing two deuterium atoms does not produce a neutron. Deuterium-tritium fusion does, but the report doesn't claim there was any tritium.

My guess is that there were three separate events coincidentally impacting the detector in around the same place.
 
ElMondoHummus said:
Well, if I'm right, why's that supposedly a sign of fusion? Because the collision is strong enough to eject alpha radiation plus another neutron?
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It's an endothermic process, so it doesn't happen at all unless there are incoming neutrons over 10 MeV or so.

Since 10 MeV neutrons are present in some fusion reactions---but, unfortunately, not the reactions that are actually said to be occurring---it's tempting to try to draw a connection between your supposedly-nuclear-reacting heat-making box and something, anything having to do with nuclear physics. From a distance, this only looks like "evidence for fusion" if you have a lot of confirmation bias.
 
ben m said:
It's an endothermic process, so it doesn't happen at all unless there are incoming neutrons over 10 MeV or so.

Since 10 MeV neutrons are present in some fusion reactions---but, unfortunately, not the reactions that are actually said to be occurring---it's tempting to try to draw a connection between your supposedly-nuclear-reacting heat-making box and something, anything having to do with nuclear physics. From a distance, this only looks like "evidence for fusion" if you have a lot of confirmation bias.
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Ok. So, if I understand this correctly: The triple-alpha plus neutron could have been from a fusion event, but that's far from being the only thing that could cause it, so saying "I found fusion" without taking into account natural background sources is committing a big mistake. Have I got that right?
 
ElMondoHummus said:
Ok. So, if I understand this correctly: The triple-alpha plus neutron could have been from a fusion event
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Well, 10+ MeV neutrons do indeed come from certain kinds of fusion events---but not, in fact, from any of pp, pd, dd, p-Zn, d-Zn, etc., which are the reactions Mosier wants to claim are occurring. But yeah, if you were running d-t fusion, 10+ MeV neutron bursts would be a good sign that fusion was really occurring.

but that's far from being the only thing that could cause it, so saying "I found fusion" without taking into account natural background sources is committing a big mistake. Have I got that right?
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Yep.
 
jhunter1163 said:
Even if the cold-fusion proponents are wrong, what they are doing is science, and good luck to them. Proving something impossible is just as worthwhile as proving something possible.
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Not if they don't do it carefully. Not if they misuse instruments and lie about how they did it.

To illustrate, imagine that 50 years from now someone theorizes that an interesting crystal phase transition occurs in warm, wet, hydrogen-soaked zirconium or palladium, and that maybe this change would detectable (or could be ruled out) by good calorimetric data. They do a literature search to see if maybe there's some old experiment whose data could be interpreted in light of the new problem ...

Is there any data from today's batch of LENR "experiments" that you'd recommend to them?
 
pedrone said:
Who are the "others" ?

Those like you that claim cold fusion to be impossible ?

But why a hell will you start to make cold fusion experiments, as you know cold fusion is impossible ?
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I was responding to your statement:


No.
If cold fusion really exists, then other cold fusion technologies will get the same, getting palladium.
So palladium will not be expensive in the future
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If other cold fusion technologies were operating and getting palladium, there would be nothing to discuss, and nothing for Bolotov to be selling as an investment, would there?

I have not asserted anything here for or against cold fusion. My question is simply why a process that claims the ability to get significant quantities of precious metals cannot be bootstrapped with its own output. The suggestion that the value of the output would be lessened if similar technologies already existed is, under the circumstances, very odd.
 
Is this the same Bolotov that is involved with the Petite Lap Giraffe breeding program?
 
ben m said:
Do you know how peer-review works? There's usually a step where the reviewers ask hard questions about the paper---questions like "Why do you claim to have interpreted the data from a humidity probe as a 'steam dryness'?", and "Can you show all of your thermometer calibration data?".
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Everything you said does not matter.

When a scientist submits a paper regarding an experiment, what does matter is:

1- The results obtained in the experiment

2- Can the experiment be replicable ?


The meaning of the experiment does not matter. Because as the experiment obtained some result, the result is what really does matter.
If the reviewer tries to get an interpretation of that experiment, his attitude is incorrect.

Of course the reviewer has not a laboratory within his brain. So, he cannot repeat the experiment into his brain, in order to verify either the results are correct or no.
So, what such reviewer must to do ?

Well, he simply must approve the publication of the paper, so that other scientist may be able to repeat the experiment, and verify if its results are replicable.
 
So he's invented a free money machine, and he needs me to give him money?

This sounds legit. I have a good feeling about this guy.
 
bruto said:
I was responding to your statement:

Quote:
No.
If cold fusion really exists, then other cold fusion technologies will get the same, getting palladium.
So palladium will not be expensive in the future


If other cold fusion technologies were operating and getting palladium, there would be nothing to discuss, and nothing for Bolotov to be selling as an investment, would there?
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bruto, your argument equals the following:

1- Prof Bolotov does not need to worry about to improve his experiments, because he knows that other researchers will do it.

2- And other cold fusion researchers also do not need to worry about to improve their experiments, because they know that other researchers will do it.

3- Therefore everybody will be doing nothing, because each cold fusion researcher will be expecting that the other researchers will do it (the work which he is not doing), and everybody do nothing.

4- So, nobody needs to do anything. The palladium will become no expensive in the future... by itself.
:D
 
ElMondoHummus said:
That's not true. Planck and Lorentz both contributed towards it's formation; Einstein did indeed put it together, but the point is that he was hardly alone. In fact, relativity was originally called the "Lorentz-Einstein theory".

ETA: More info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Lorentz#Electrodynamics_and_relativity
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OK, ElMondo, as you are a perfectionist, then let me say it in accurate words:

there were 3 men who believed relativity theory to be correct. The rest of the world, ie, millions of people and hundred of thousand of scientists did not believe
:)
 
ben m said:
Not if they don't do it carefully. Not if they misuse instruments and lie about how they did it.
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How do you know they really do it?

How can you be so sure?

Wow, I know how do you know it !!!

It's because you are sure that Quantum Mechanics cannot be wrong. Theferore your conclusion is obvious: all the cold fusion researchers are liars, charlatans, and pseudocientists.
:p
 
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