| From: | Adam Getchell acgetchell@*******.edu |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Cold Fusion (Re: SR History) |
| Date: | Wed, 17 Mar 1999 08:53:02 -0800 |
>> So was that the explanation given for the result? Last I heard (in '90)
>> they (or at least RPI's Nuclear Engineering professors) still hadn't
>> figured out how Pons & Fleichman got it to work. (I still think that
>> experiment was a hoax, the result of some sloppy lab work.)
>
>That's very cynical of you. I attended a lecture by one of guys involved
>(can't remember which, it was about 7 years ago). He gave a good account
>of the experiment and the theory. He seemed perfectly honest.
>
>Thermal experiments like they performed are extremely difficult to do
>with great accuracy. Neutron Detectors are also very temperamental
>things. To call their work sloppy is harsh, to call it a hoax is unfair.
Cynical? No.
The basis of science is repeatability. After Pons and Fleichmann made their
announcement, every university around the world set up palladium cells.
Some even reported preliminary confirmation of the phenomena. However,
after further effort, they retracted their claims.
No one else has published verification of Pons & Fleichmann's results.
Seeming honesty aside, that means it cannot be considered as valid.
Every fusion reaction produces neutrons and energetic gammas. The biggest
question on everyone's mind was "where are the neutrons?". The lack of
neutrons made their results highly questionable in terms of known fusion
theory.
Given that muon-catalysis does not magically erase neutrons either, Pons &
Fleichman would need to propose some alternate way as to how they can have
nuclear fusion without neutrons. They have not. That in and of itself would
be a major sticking point that would need to be resolved by studying the
reaction itself. But since no one can duplicate it for study, any
reasonable scientist would dismiss as unproven.
Last I heard, both of them were still working on replicating their results
in different places (was it Fleichman that was British?). Until I see
verification, I'm going to be sceptical, as is every other physicist in the
world.
And yes, there was questions about how they did their heat balance,
especially given the fact they used an approximation (which was quoted in
the original paper). This alone opens their work up to criticism.
Finally, they should have known better than to go public with such a
potentially astounding discovery until they already had verification from
other Universities. The whole affair is a lesson on how *not* to publish
results.
"Sloppy" and "hoax" were some of the milder terms used in conferences.
>
>Regards
>
>- David Woods
--Adam
acgetchell@*******.edu
"Invincibility is in oneself, vulnerability in the opponent." --Sun Tzu
