home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
-
- Article 4711 of sci.physics:
- Path: dasys1!cucard!rocky8!cmcl2!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!pupthy!jhh
- From: jhh@pupthy.PRINCETON.EDU (Jim Horne)
- Newsgroups: sci.physics
- Subject: Cold Fusion preprint from Fleischmann and Pons
- Summary: "Electrochemically Induced Fusion of Deuterium"
- Message-ID: <7514@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
- Date: 31 Mar 89 19:25:18 GMT
- Sender: news@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
- Reply-To: jhh@pupthy.PRINCETON.EDU (Jim Horne)
- Organization: Physics Dept, Princeton Univ
- Lines: 70
- Posted: Fri Mar 31 14:25:18 1989
-
- The preprint of the Fleischmann and Pons paper is now being distributed.
- The paper is called
-
- "Electrochemically Induced Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium"
-
- by
- Martin Fleischmann, Department of Chemistry
- The University, Southampton, Hants. SO9 5NH, England
- and
- Stanley Pons*, Department of Chemistry
- University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA
-
- *to whom correspondence should be addressed.
-
- It was submitted to the Journal of Electroanalytic Chemistry on March 11,
- 1989; in final form March 20, 1989.
-
- I'm not going to type in the whole thing, but a brief summary follows.
- The basic experimental setup is described as "D+ was compressed
- galvanostatically into sheet, rod and cubic samples of Pd from 0.1 M
- LiOD in 99.5% D2O + 0.5% H2O solutions." They don't really describe
- things in much more detail.
-
- They ran four types of experiments.
- 1) "Calorimetric measurements of heat balances at low current densities"
- 2) "Calorimetric measurements at higher current densities"
- 3) "The spectrum of gamma-rays ... due to the (n,gamma) reaction"
- 4) "The rate of generation/accumulation of tritum"
-
- The results from 1) and 2) [in my opinion the most questionable ones]
- are "enthalpy generation can exceed 10 watts/cm^3 of the palladium
- electrode; this is maintained for experiment times in excess of 120 hours
- during which typically heat in excess of 4 MJ/cm^3 of electrode volume
- was liberated. It is inconceivable that this could be due to anything
- but nuclear processes."
-
- It is not very clear to me how they made sure they had subtracted all
- possible energy produced in chemical reactions. An obvious test would
- be to run the experiment with pure H2O and compare the heating rates.
-
- The result of 3) is the most impressive. They put a water bath nearby
- to soak up the neutrons produced, and convert them into gamma-rays.
- Figure 1A shows a graph of the gamma-ray spectrum, which has a peak of
- about 21000 counts per channel at an energy of about 2.21 MeV. The
- background level is 400 counts per channel. They is no way these
- photons can be produced in a chemical reaction. From the intensity of
- the photon flux, they estimate the D+D -> He3+n to be 4*10^4/sec for a
- 0.4x10cm rod.
-
- For experiment 4) they measure the tritium production rate, and
- get a rate of 1-2*10^4 atoms/sec.
-
- The reaction rates given by 3) and 4) are much too small to account
- for the energy production in 1) and 2), by a factor of about 10^9.
- They conclude that the He3 and T reactions "are only a small part
- of the overall reaction scheme and that other nuclear processes must
- be involved."
-
- Thus there still seems to be a problem with the total heat production.
- Their evidence for fusion seems clear, but the total rate seems rather
- uncertain. I would be much more skeptical if I hadn't also read the BYU
- preprint from yesterday. There are at least three groups at Princeton
- trying to reproduce the results, none of which have seen anything yet.
-
- In a week or two, we should know more. Remember, kids, don't try this
- at home unless you want your baby brother to have three arms.
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Jim Horne A quote? I'm supposed to have a quote?
- jhh@pupthy.Princeton.EDU
-
-
-
- Article 4777 of sci.physics:
- Path: dasys1!cucard!rocky8!cmcl2!lanl!hc!lll-winken!uunet!tektronix!tekcrl!tekgvs!arnief
- From: arnief@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Arnie Frisch)
- Newsgroups: sci.physics
- Subject: Re: Cold Fusion preprint from Fleischmann and Pons
- Summary: This, of course, is the key question .......
- Message-ID: <4878@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>
- Date: 3 Apr 89 15:56:20 GMT
- References: <7514@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
- Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
- Lines: 18
- Posted: Mon Apr 3 10:56:20 1989
-
- In article <7514@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, jhh@pupthy.PRINCETON.EDU (Jim Horne) writes:
- > The preprint of the Fleischmann and Pons paper is now being distributed.
- > It was submitted to the Journal of Electroanalytic Chemistry on March 11,
- >
-
-
-
- > It is not very clear to me how they made sure they had subtracted all
- > possible energy produced in chemical reactions. An obvious test would
- > be to run the experiment with pure H2O and compare the heating rates.
- >
-
-
- This, of course, is the key question. The very simplest confirmation
- of the fusion power output would be based upon comparisons of identical
- systems without the fusion capability. It is the lack of such a simple
- comparison that has me worried. In four years of research, this surely
- must have occurred to them!
-
-