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138) Other summaries of events
Ludwik Kowalski (4/15/04)
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ, 07043
Let me start with an article fetched by google (at www.pureenergysystems.com). It ends with links worth having.
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by Marc J. Plotkin
Pure Energy Systems News Service
March 27, 2004
FAIRFAX, VA USA
After fifteen years of wandering in the wilderness, the “cold fusioneers” may finally see their field get the recognition they believe it deserves.
Since 1989, that small but growing band of scientists has persisted in trying to verify the existence of low- energy nuclear reactions, at great personal costs and in the face of overwhelming opposition and ridicule from the mainstream physics community. But now, their persistence may finally be bearing fruit. The New York Times reported on March 25, 2004, that the U.S. Department of Energy has decided to give cold fusion a second look. At a meeting with several top cold-fusion researchers, officials from the Department indicated that given the Matterhorn of experimental evidence that has accumulated over the past fifteen years, a second review was reasonable. The Department’s findings will be presented in December 2004 or January 2005.
Three days earlier, New Energy Times science journalists Steven Krivit and Nadine Winocur have released a 50-page report on the current state of cold fusion. According to this report, almost 15,000 cold fusion experiments have been performed around the world since the field was declared anathema in 1989. In the first years after the initial announcement, experimental results were erratic and inconsistent, often with positive results occurring in only about 10 percent of the experiments. Within the last five years, however, successful replications have been occurring much more frequently. Five years ago, the Fleichmann-Pons effect had been observed in only about 45 percent of the experiments performed. Now, according to Krivit and Winocur, the effect has been reproduced at a rate of 83%. Experimenters in Japan, Romania, the United States, and Russia have reported a reproducibility rate of 100 percent.
This experimental success is due in large measure to more refined methods of measuring excess heat and detecting the signatures of nuclear reactions. Over the years, experimenters have discovered that in order to obtain more robust results, the ratio of deuterium atoms in the electrolyte solution to palladium atoms in the cathode must be above a certain minimum threshold. This is referred to as “loading.” The density of the electric current passing through the system must likewise reach a certain threshold. More recently, it was discovered that excess heat could be generated faster if the reaction could be triggered in some fashion. In a paper presented at the 10th International Conference of Cold Fusion, held at MIT in August 2003, researchers Dennis Cravens and Dennis Letts presented a variety of methods that could be used to “shock the system,” including current-pulsing, radio frequency excitations, and laser stimulation. Actual experiments were carried out at the conference, and the results were manifest for all to see.
According to Dr. Eugene Mallove, editor of Infinite Energy Magazine and a passionate advocate of cold fusion development, the evidence of excess heat and products from nuclear reactions is so extensive as to compel a finding that the cold fusion phenomenon is real. Were it not for Dr. Mallove and others who kept the faith, cold fusion might well have faded from the public consciousness.
When the Department of Energy decided to give cold fusion another hearing, it made no public announcement and did not post any information about its decision on its website. Nevertheless, Dr. Mallove remains confident that once the Department evaluates the evidence in an open-minded and unbiased fashion, it will reconsider its earlier rejection of cold fusion and pave the way for funding of next-generation cold fusion research.
Whether or not cold fusion can be turned into a useful source of energy remains uncertain. But the first step of that 1000-mile journey has been taken. The existence of the phenomenon discovered by Fleischmann and Pons in 1989, then disavowed by the scientific establishment, but subsequently confirmed worldwide in thousands of experiments, may finally be recognized as a revolutionary discovery of science. Cold Fusion may become hot news again.
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For Immediate Release:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/3/prweb114697.htm
References
The Cold Fusion Report - based on personal communication with more than 50 scientists from around the world. Prominent U.S. scientists verify the efficacy of this controversial discovery.
PDF email attachment - order from New Energy Times ($15.00) http://tinyurl.com/2fvqk
PDF as CD-ROM shipment - from New Energy Times ($20.00) http://tinyurl.com/yuox7
http://www.coldfusioninfo.com -New Energy Times (Steven Krivit and Nadine Winocur)
http://www.infinite-energy.com/resources/pressreleasedoe.html -U.S. Department of Energy Will Review 15 Years of "Cold Fusion" Excess Heat and Nuclear Evidence
New Report Establishes Case for Cold Fusion - press release by Steven Krivit ( ZPEnergy ; Mar. 22, 2004)
US Will Give Cold Fusion Second Look, After 15 Years (New York Times ; March 24, 2004)
Energy Department accepts scientists' request to revisit cold fusion (Salt Lake Tribune publication of the New York Times ' story [no login required]; March 27, 2004)
New studies of cold fusion prompt an official review (International Herald Tribune , France; March 25, 2004)
Cold fusion gets second look (India Times ; March 25, 2004)
http://www.infinite-energy.com -Infinite Energy Magazine (Eugene Mallove)
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=cold+fusion&btnG=Search+News - Latest international news reports on "cold fusion" according to Google.
Links
http://www.lenr-canr.org - premier Cold Fusion site
http://FreeEnergy.GreaterThings.com/Directory/ColdFusion/ Cold Fusion -- 15 Years and Heating Up (anniversary March 23)
See also
Contact
PESN - Pure Energy Systems News
Page created by SDA , March 26, 2004
Last updated March 27, 2004
PureEnergySystems.com
Search WWW
www.pureenergysystems.com
Copyright © 2003, 2004
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http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040331-050432-3573r.htm
Here is the ending of the article posted by Charles Choi at the above URL
"I was working at Los Alamos National Laboratory when Pons and Fleischmann made their announcement," Storms recalled. "The laboratory took an enthusiastic interest in the claims and many efforts were undertaken to replicate. Only three were successful, one of these being my effort. Actually seeing the effect is a powerful reason to believe it is real and caused me to continue my research after I retired."
Within a year after the initial announcement, a Department of Energy review decided cold fusion did not bear special federal funding. "The Department of Energy has been the single most important impediment in the development of the cold fusion phenomenon," Storms said.
McKubre, director of SRI's Energy Research Center, told UPI he felt the original Department of Energy review was "premature and hasty, but it couldn't have been avoided. And it really was not that damning if interpreted rationally. The original panelists said they didn't see any evidence to merit special treatment. That was interpreted as a condemnation, which meant no money was made available." In the past 15 years, researchers in universities, government, military and private labs in at least 13 countries have pursued cold fusion, according to New Energy Times. McKubre noted cold fusion results are now more reproducible.
Now, a number of prominent international researchers treat cold fusion seriously, including physics Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia, McKubre said, adding the U.S. government has provided funding for cold fusion research, albeit through military agencies, such as the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, and the Naval Research Laboratory -- not DOE.
McKubre said the new review has a target date of January 2005 for reporting its findings, although he said "it seems to be acted on in the Department of Energy at lightning speed. My guess is it could be done by the end of the academic summer."
Park had no objections to the review.
"The way the system is supposed to work is that everybody is supposed to make their point, that science is not closed," he said.
Charles Choi covers research for UPI Science News. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com
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And here is one which is short but very significant. I can say this because I met some of those who are motivated by “results once seen.” On 3/29/04 Richard Hull posted this message”
“. . . As much as physicists would like to see it all just go away like N rays and polywater, there are just too many folks impressed by the process and befuddled by its capriciousness to just drop it. Results, once seen, even if not replicable on demand, keep a faithful cadre of workers beguiled. (as it should any true scientist.). “
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John Harris, like myself, went to the 10th cold fusion conference to learn what about the field. On 3/27/04 he posted a message, under the subject “Cold fusion - Another official look.” Here is his messages:
“The tenth conference on cold fusion was held last August in Cambridge. I went up to see what was going on. Here is a quick summary of what I gathered in. Various researchers have by this time accumulated evidence for heat, helium-4, helium-3, and tritium. New to me were reports of quite energetic alphas loose in the system (8 MeV and faster) and energetic protons as well. It was not clear to me whether or not the protons were knocked out of deuterium by the alphas’ passage. Fast neutrons are still missing. I don’t think anyone has ever assessed the slow neutron population in a PF (Pons Fleischmann) cell.
There was a report of a change in lithium isotope ratios in the cathode, but it was not clear (to me, anyway) if this change could be attributed to reactions or to electromigration. One energetic trend in experimental systems is to thin films, and I had the impression some investigators would like to get away from the electrolysis cell altogether, that is, load palladium (or other metals) with deuterium under pressure rather than electrolytically. It has been found that it helps to stimulate the surface of a deuterium loaded cathode with a low power (semiconductor) laser. There were plots of laser stimulation vs xs heat out.
On the theoretical side, several researchers are still emphasizing d+d, and especially d+d => He-4. Scott Chubb has a helpful paper on the net explaining his and various other theoretical views of this concept. Peter Hagelstein has also created a theoretical basis for this pathway. The problem is that no gamma comes out. The theoretical efforts are aimed at somehow visualizing a way to turn the energy that one would expect to emerge as a gamma into heat instead. Another popular (maybe I should say modish) idea is a sort of triple deuterium reaction system. It actually seems like a pretty clean idea, and there were some experimentalists at the conference who are finding results that would seem to support it. One thing has not changed over the years. Although the umbrella name for the whole enterprise has been changed to “low energy nuclear reactions,” or LENR, and there is a nodding recognition that other reactions or processes could be invoked to account for the results, the discussion is still pretty much all about the fusion of deuterium. Many of the conference papers can be downloaded, now, from the LENR site.”
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Here are two messages I posted on www.MarsNews.com list:
My definition: "Cold fusion is any process in which a nuclear reaction is produced without relying on traditional means, such as particle accelerators, neutrons, cosmic rays, alpha particles or stellar temperatures." Unfortunately the term "cold fusion" means different things to different people. It is certainly premature to define cold fusion as a practically unlimited energy resource. But that is what most people say when asked to describe CF. I suspect that many disagreements about CF would disappear if its definition were accepted by all antagonists. The main issue today is validity of scientific claims, such as accumulation of He-4 at the rate of about one atom per 23 MeV of excess heat (reported by many teams), and not practical applications. Promissing too much too early was one of the mistakes made in 1989. I hope that the DOE will focus on science and not on applications. Applications would follow naturally after basic scientific claims are recognized as valid.
Posted by: Ludwik Kowalski at April 13, 2004 04:14 PM
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I am responding to my own message above. Excess heat (at the level of 1 W and less) can be due to non-nuclear causes. Most of us are not qualified to rule out possibilities of some parasitic chemical reactions (already mentioned in 1989 reports) or some electric battery effects (also mentioned by those who criticized cold fusion). That is why direct demonstrations of "nuclear signatures," such as neutrons, protons, tritons and alpha particles is much more convincing. See recent reports of Steven Jones (about neutrons and protons) or the report of Lipson (about alpha particles). These reports can be downloaded from the library at <http://www.lenr-canr.org> Excess heat, if it were reproducible at the level 50 W or more, would be not only very convincing but also very promissing. I have a web site devoted to cold fusion: <http://blake.montclair.edu/~kowalskil/cf/ >
Posted by: Ludwik Kowalski at April 14, 2004 05:57 AM
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At <http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/3/prweb114697.htm> is an interesting letter from Tom Bearden to Eugene Mallove, the editor of Infinite Energy. On 3/21/04, in the second half of his letter ,Tom wrote:
. . . The only conventional way to overcome this ordinary "Coulomb barrier" blockage of fusion at low temperature is to go ahead and use high temperature and the resulting very high ion momentum necessary for some ions to penetrate and overcome the normal Coulomb barrier between themselves and their approaching ions, headed at each other and thus colliding. In short, some collision and formation of the necessary "quasi-nuclei" is achieved by brute force temperature and momenta, for some of the ions on mutual collision courses.
Now consider a "reaction reversal zone" up to a cubic micron in size, where indeed the reactions do run backwards negentropically (due to the production of negative work) for up to two seconds. When reactions are reversed, then the law of attraction of charges can also be reversed. In this special zone, momentarily, now the "reversed Coulomb law" is that like charges attract and unlike charges repel -- for up to two seconds and in zones up to a cubic micron in volume. So up to a few dozen billion ions and molecules can be involved in reversals of the coulomb barrier into a coulomb attractor.
Interestingly, the difference between a proton and a neutron is merely the orientation of a single quark. Consequently, theorists need to look into the implications at the quark level when two protons are in such a "negative entropy region" with reactions reversed. In that case, the Coulomb barrier is now reversed between the two protons! It is now the "Coulomb attractor" rather than the "Coulomb barrier". It seems the two protons could now certainly attract each other so closely that each does indeed penetrate to the strong force "deep" region of the other (if things were normal). Further, instead of the "deviation aside" of nominal close misses, the reversed Coulomb barrier can convert a near miss into a collision "hit".
It may also be that the strong force of each particle is also momentarily reduced, depending on the extent of reversal action on the gluon forces and on the orientation of the quarks. At any rate, it appears that a "quasi-nucleus" of two H+ ions can form, with the probably "flipping" of one quark in one proton to turn that proton into a neutron, lowering the excitation. That would be the formation of a quasi-nucleus of deuterium. Then as the transient thermodynamic fluctuation reverses in sign and things move back toward equilibrium, the strong force would again resume its strength (much stronger than the now emerging Coulomb repulsion between the two protons). The notion is that the quasi-nucleus of deuterium would just "tighten" into a normal deuterium nucleus, or just a D+ ion.
At least this notion of a reversal of the Coulomb barrier and a reversal of the law of attraction and repulsion of charges, precisely fits theknown fact that negative entropy, reversed reaction zones do occur and have been experimentally demonstrated by thermodynamicists completely independently of cold fusion experiments. This then lends yet one more powerful argument that cold fusion can and does occur under the proper circumstances, and those circumstances may necessarily include the proven "reversal of reactions" that occur in such thermodynamic reversal zones that experimentally violate the second law of thermodynamics by producing negative work, negentropy, and reversal of the Coulomb barrier into a Coulomb attractor.
In our book, Energy from the Vacuum, Cheniere Press, 2002 we also listed candidate "reversed reactions" that would well occur in such fluctuation zones, and that would yield the experimentally observed alpha particles, tritium, etc. in the experiments. These suggested "reversed reactions" are based on the temporary "reversal" of the law of attraction and repulsion of charges, occurring in one of the thermodynamic reversal zones that have been experimentally demonstrated by thermodynamicists. As is well known, the occurrence of such excess deuterium, tritium, and alpha particles is icommon to a great many of the successful cold fusion experiments conducted in multiple laboratories by many researchers, in multiple nations of the world.
Anyway, let us fervently hope that the DoE gives a very rigorous and very fair review and appraisal of the cold fusion situation. And let us hope they also take into account the very important and pertinent transient fluctuation thermodynamics work and its production of significant "reversal zones", as shown by researchers such as Evans, Searles, Rondoni, Wang, et al.
My comment:
Another possibility is that potential energy curves (plotted against distances) might be more complex than a textbook curve with a single maximum. A V(r) curve, especially in a solid, may have two, or more, peaks separated by local minima. It is conceivable that a local minimum, (or a sequence of minima on the outer side of the coulomb barrier hill) play an important role in cold fusion. Fission isomers, discovered in 1960s, (by Polykhanov?) were explaied in terms of such potential energy minima.