Storms: Schultz: Miles He data 12.14.98

Reply by Ed Storms

> Subject: Re: Commensurate helium production in cold fusion
> Date: 13 Dec 1998 17:45:39 GMT
> From: sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il (Richard Schultz)
> Reply-To: correct address in .sigfile
> Organization: Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
> Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
> References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
>
> britz (br...@kemi.aau.dk) wrote:
>
> : This argument cannot be resolved by mud slinging in this group. The
> : sticking point is, where does the measured helium come from? If Miles
> : et al can document convincingly that whatever helium they measure does
> : not come in as contamination from the air and is, thus, a product of
> the
> : reaction in the cell, then they have a case, whether the amount
> detected
> : is precisely commensurate with some other signature, or only roughly.
> : I'd be happy with an order of magnitude, given the difficulty of
> : measurement. The point is, however, that skeptics are not satisfied
> : that contamination was ruled out. At this point, we cannot get any
> further,
> : until we have new results with better error exclusion. I can't be the
> : only one tired of this "Troll" series of posts.

We all want better data and some is on the way. However, better data
has been hard to get because general funding is not available. (Skeptics
killed the work being done by Dr. Miles) Objections to the present
claims all sound very reasonable and appear to be based on criteria we
all support. However, when the data are analyzed by skeptics using
these universal methods, the result always includes a distortion of the
results or a misinterpretation of the experimental procedure, all
designed to disparage the claims. Clearly, a basic belief can always be
supported if one looks hard enough. Of course, this applies to
believers as well as skeptics. In the case of CANR, the difference
between these two viewpoints is that most skeptics are sure they are
right and most believers only want an opportunity to learn the truth,
either yes or no. In this field, this opportunity has been frequently
denied. This denial is based on the assumption that the experimenter
screwed up in some way, hence is unworthy of additional support. If
evidence for this screwup can not be found in the paper, various
speculations are proposed. Rather than asking questions, any information
not present in the paper is assumed to be missing because the
experimenter did not have it or was too stupid to consider its
importance. Never do skeptics consider they may be ignorant of
information which a simple question would supply. An arrogance is
implicit in this approach which makes any discussion very unproductive.
The following comments are an example of this problem, as I have noted.

Richard Schultz wrote:
>
> The problem with their report goes beyond the question of contamination.
> Several problems with the data themselves become obvious, especially
> when you compare the data reported in the 1993 paper with that reported
> in the 1991 paper (J. Electroanal. Chem. 304 (1991) 271-278). First of
> all, the two papers are reporting the identical data, as a comparison
> of Tables 2 and 3 of the 1991 paper with Tables 1 and 2 of the 1993
> paper immediately shows. The difference is that the division of mass
> spectrometer peaks into "big," "medium," and "small" is replaced with
> "10^14 atoms He", "10^13 atoms He", "10^12 atoms He."

Yes, this is the same data with a more qualitative estimation of the
helium appended. This study was based on the use of glass flasks. A
later study used metal flasks and a more accurate measurement of helium.
In this case, the helium was measured by the U.S. Bureau of Mines,
Amarillo TX, a laboratory which is well known for their ability to
measure helium very accurately even when it is mixed with other gases. I
list the results below in case the data are not easily available to the
readers.

FLASK/CELL, DATE He,ppb Power, W
3A, 5/21/93 9.0+-1.1 0.055
4/B, 5/21/93 9.7+-1.1 0.040
1/C, 5/30/93 7.4+-1.1 0.040
2/D, 5/30/93 6.7+-1.1 0.060
1/A, 7/7/93 5.4+-1.5 0.030
2/A, 9/13/94 7.9+-1.7 0.070
3/B, 9/13/94 9.4+-1.8 0.120

In addition, 8 samples gave no excess energy and had an average He
content of 4.5+-0.5 ppb He. This quantity is the effective background
and is well below most values obtained when excess power was measured.
In addition, the variation between these seven measurements is less than
the stated error in each individual measurement. Thus, the estimated
uncertainty is conservative when compared to the random variation based
on an actual measurement. Only two samples containing cesium produced
heat but no helium in the gas. The amount of helium retained by the
palladium was not measured and is expected to be significant.

These data are plotted in my review published in the latest issue of
Infinite Energy and are compared to a completely independent study done
at SRI by Ben Bush. Agreement is well within the stated error. Thus, we
now have a replication of the claim.

>No mention is
> made of any attempt actually to calibrate the mass spectrometer. As
> far as I can tell, they read their MS results on an analog oscilloscope.
> In the olden days, people would photograph scope traces and publish
> the photographs. No such data appear in either paper. Thus, we have
> to take their word for it that the MS really could distinguish D2 from
> He, and that the three sizes of peaks really correspond to changes by
> factors of 10 in size (and that the MS detector responded linearly
> with amount of He, etc.).

Why speculate? Just ask Miles and you will know.

> Even if you accept their (rather ad hoc)
> "quantitation," there are other problems. For example, the 1991 paper
> claims that the detectibility limit was about 8 x 10^11 atoms He/sample;
> and Table 1 of that paper reports that one sample showed "more He than
> expected." In the 1993 paper, the detection limit has become about 2 x
> 10^12 atoms He/sample (although Table 2 still reports some samples as
> having "10^12 atoms He/sample"). And the 1993 paper makes reference to
> a commercial MS that had a detectibility limit an order of magnitude
> higher. Their complete lack of quantitation of any of this; their
> failure to calibrate their MS by using known amounts of He (e.g. from a
> "standard leak" which is used to calibrate He leak detectors); their
> apparent failure to determine the true ability to separate D2 from He by
> taking mass spectra of known mixtures; combined to make me suspect the
> MS data altogether. I'm not saying that they didn't see any He -- only
> that their report doesn't exclude the possibility that their uncertainty
> was a lot bigger than they thought it was.

All of this speculation is based on a study which used glass flasks.
This was preliminary work which led to the use of metal flasks and the
data listed above.
>
> When you get to the data reported in Table 2 of the 1993 paper, you
> find that by their own admission, runs that produced the same excess
> power produced He amounts differing by an order of magnitude. When you
> also consider that their reported excess power varies by a factor of
> less than four, while their reported He production varies by a factor
> of 100, their claims of correlation seem to me to be rather optimistic.

Of course, that is why the later work was done.
>
> They also left a whopping clue that there may be unexpected errors in
> their calorimetry. In the 1991 paper, they reported "unexplained
> excess heat effects" with LiOH + H2O. By 1993, they had explained these
> effects as being due to poor sealing of the cell. But if the two sets
> of experiments (LiOD/D2O and LiOH/H2O) were done under identical
> conditions, then why could not the same problem have occurred in the
> LiOD/D2O cells? And if they were not, what use was the LiOH/H2O as a
> control? Note also that in 1993, they were unable to reproduce even the
> LiOD/D2O results with new electrodes.

Some experiments fail for good reason. This does not mean that all other
work is suspect. On the contrary it shows that the experimenters were
aware of the problem and would be sure future studies would not be
affected. Most samples of Pd do not make excess power for reasons I can
explain if anyone is interested. On the other hand, they obviously found
palladium that worked during the later study. Indeed, one batch
containing various amounts of boron were successful 7 out of 8 times
while other materials had a much lower success rate.
>
> So really, the issue is not "is finding He production within an
> order of magnitude evidence for a CF event." The issue is "given the
> methods they used, would they have been actually able to measure He
> production at that level." From the data they show, the answer has
> to be that we can't tell if they could or not. From my perspective,
> that means that they haven't demonstrated the He production, even if
> there was He production in their experiment.

I agree, that is why the later work was done. A summary of the work can
be obtained by ordering NAWCWPNS TP 8302, Anomalous Effects in
Deuterated Systems by M. Miles, B. Bush and K. Johnson, Naval Air
Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake, CA 93555-6100.
> -----
> Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
> Department of Chemistry tel: 972-3-531-8065
> Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel fax: 972-3-535-1250

Ed Storms

I worked at the weapons Center where Miles worked. I have since
retired. I have been to his lectures on Cold Fusion and the He production.
The NAVY as I remember has always been a thorn in his side since the
results he got did not fit with what the government decided had
to be the truth. I know the government has made many mistakes by
following political winds instead of results of its workers.
What truely seems a mystery to me is why no one has built a
practical energy producing device based on these effects.
Gentlemen it has been to many years what is the delay?

David A. Scott

--
http://cryptography.org/cgi-bin/crypto.cgi/Misc/scott19u.zip
http://members.xoom.com/ecil/index.htm

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own

: We all want better data and some is on the way. However, better data

Well, based on what I saw, I'd say that his competence is sufficiently
limited that the resources are better spent on someone who knows what
he's doing.

: However, when the data are analyzed by skeptics using

I did not distort anything. I merely pointed out that the Miles
paper of 1993 has been cited as evidence of cold fusion. I went
in to more details, but essentially, what I pointed out was that
both control experiments (He measurement and heat measurement with
LiOH/H2O electrolyte) gave false positives. Given that the *control*
experiments gave positive results, the "positive" result from the
actual experiment is meaningless. And in the 1993 paper, they never
took the trouble of repeating the control experiments to demonstrate
that the spurious effects had been eliminated. Thus, I stand by what
I said: the Miles 1991 and 1993 papers cannot be taken as good evidence
of cold fusion given how poorly the control experiments were done.

: Rather than asking questions, any information

This is a distortion of *my* comments. The traditional criterion for
what should be included in a scientific paper is "enough information
that someone else expert in the field could reproduce the experiment."
Thus, leaving out vital details is always suspect. No one reading
thos papers could possibly know just what the resolution and detection
limits of the He detection system actually were. And from the way
the paper is written, it is not at all clear that the raw data from
the He measurements is accessible even in principle. (They make no
mention of how they recorded the analog oscilloscope traces for posterity.
As I said originally, if they had taken photographs, then they should
have included them in the paper.)

: Yes, this is the same data with a more qualitative estimation of the

This later study is not what I was talking about. I was commenting
solely on what appeared in the two papers I referenced.

: FLASK/CELL, DATE He,ppb Power, W

In that case, what we need to consider is the *excess* He:

Power, W Excess He
0.120 4.9 +/- 1.9
0.070 3.4 +/- 1.8
0.060 2.2 +/- 1.2
0.055 4.5 +/- 1.2
0.040 2.9 +/- 1.2
0.040 5.2 +/- 1.2
0.030 0.9 +/- 1.6

Stop me if I'm wrong, but that data doesn't look particularly well
correlated to me. So even if there really are above background levels
of He in the experimental runs, you still have a long way to go before
you have demonstrated that cold fusion had anything to do with it.

: All of this speculation is based on a study which used glass flasks.

And you seem to agree with the fundamental point I was making: that
study cannot be used as any sort of demonstration of Cold Fusion.

: Some experiments fail for good reason. This does not mean that all other

It's kind of a basic rule that if your control experiment gives you
positive results, there is something fundamentally wrong with
your experimental setup. Unless they repeated the work and *demonstrated*
that they could simultaneously eliminate false positives from the
control experiments and get positive results in the test experiment,
all of their data is useless. In the 1993 paper, they did not repeat
the control experiments -- they merely asserted that they understood
what had happened and used the same results with the "excess heat in
LiOH/H2O cell" set to zero. And they were unable to replicate the
experimental results in the LiOD/D2O cell, which presumably explains
why they reused the old data.

The point that I was making and which Mr. Storms seems to have missed
(perhaps he is not a regular reader of s.p.f.) is that a claim was
made on s.p.f. (I don't think I have to remind people of who made
it) that the 1993 Miles paper was good evidence for cold fusion. And
even "True Believer" Ed Storms agrees with me that it was not.

-----
". . .Mr Schutz [sic] acts like a functional electro-terrorist who
impeads [sic] scientific communications with his too oft-silliness."
-- Mitchell Swartz, sci.physics.fusion article <EEI1o...@world.std.com>

Richard Schultz wrote:

It is always interesting watching Mr. Schultz distort what people
say or have published; in this case both Dr. Storms and Dr. Miles.

No wonder Mr. Schultz thinks myoglobin is a dimer (ROTFLOL).

Dr. Mitchell Swartz

: It is always interesting watching Mr. Schultz distort what people

It's interesting that you say this given that what I posted was a
detailed analysis of the data that Miles presented in his papers,
and that Storms based *his* discussion on another data set altogether.

Instead of posting one line lies about distortion, why don't you respond
to the scientific points that I raised about the poor quality of the
control experiments in the the 1991/1993 Miles papers? If I made a
mistake in my analysis, then it would be far more productive of you
to point out the mistake rather than merely to assert that I distorted
what he wrote without saying what the distortion was.

Of course, we all know that your claim to be interested in discussing
science here is a lie. At least every time someone tries actually to
discuss science, all you manage to do is to pipe in with a one-line
non sequitur and then run away very fast.

Richard Schultz wrote:

Nonsense.
Mr. Schultz's criticism and comments -- as usual -- are
low wattage, and distorted. They are as quantitatively flawed
as his repeated bogus claims that myoglobin in a dimer, when
it is a monomer.

Probably the best response to Mr. Schultz on his assertions
is by Dr. Miles himself, who has kindly given me permission
to share this email regarding Mr. Schultz's comments.

Those interested in this field should look closely at
paragraph 3, and work out the math for themselves.

Dr. Mitchell Swartz

===============================================

15 Dec 1998

Dear Mitchell,

Thanks for sending me the critical comments from Richard Schultz regarding
my work. I don't have the time to engage in endless debates, but I admire
the patience of Scott Chubb and Ed Storms for doing this. Critics like
Richard Blue, Steve Jones, Lee Hansen, Richard Schultz and others are
absolutely convinced that there is no such phenomena as cold fusion, hence
the only thing left for them in this field is to find errors with the
reports from many laboratories for excess heat, helium, tritium, and
radiation from cold fusion experiments. I challenge the critics to find any
errors in the report of anomalous radiation by Szpak, Mosier-Boss and Smith
in Physics Letters A, 1996, Vol.210, pp. 382-390. There are so many
different reports of cold fusion effects that searching for possible errors
will occupy the critics for years.

Answers to most of the comments by Richard Schultz regarding my work can be
found in my reply to Jones and Hansen: Journal of Physical Chemistry B,
Vol.102, pp. 3642-3646, 1998. The measurements of helium were performed at
three different laboratories that certainly knew how to distinqish helium
from deuterium. In fact, each laboratory separated the deuterium from the
helium prior to the gas entering the mass spectrometer.

How does any critic propose to explain the fact that 30 out of 33 of our
heat and helium studies yielded either excess helium when excess power was
measured or no excess helium when no excess power was present. The
probability of obtaining this result by random errors is about one in a
million. The helium present in air would have to possess at least the
intelligence of Richard Schultz to know which flasks to contaminate and the
appropriate levels of contamination to yield 10exp11 - 10exp12 atoms of
helium per second per watt of excess power.

The only possible explanation for the critics regarding our work is that Ben
Bush and I committed scientific fraud. They are all welcome to believe
this, but I know that it is not true. The anomalous excess heat effect does
indeed produce helium-4 in cold fusion experiments.

Sincerely,
Dr. Melvin H. Miles

: Probably the best response to Mr. Schultz on his assertions

: Critics like

: absolutely convinced that there is no such phenomena [sic] as cold fusion,

I cannot speak for the other three, obviously, but I am not "absolutely
convinced" that cold fusion cannot exist. I believe that it falls in
the category of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
In my opinion, the evidence provided in favor of cold fusion is not
of sufficient quality to justify my believing in its existence, given
that its existence would mean that a number of (thus far) well-established
and (apparently) well-understood physical principles are wrong.

: . . . . I challenge the critics to find any

This is a really poor way of "proving" that Miles was correct in 1993
for two reasons. One is obvious: it is possible that Cold Fusion exists
but that the 1991/1993 Miles experiments were flawed. The other may
not be so obvious to people who don't actually participate in the peer
review process: a paper may not contain any obvious errors and still
be wrong.

For example, a fairly well-known mass spectrometrist (who,
alas, died untimely about a year ago) once sent a paper to the Journal
of the American Chemical Society (arguably the world's most prestigious
chemistry journal, or possibly in second place after Angewandte Chemie).
He supposedly was measuring the properties of Scandium tetramer cations,
and discovered that even collision energies of tens of volts (100 eV lab)
were insufficient to dissociate them, which is so bizarre as to be
basically not believable. A reviewer asked if the "scandium tetramers"
were not in fact tantalum ions (Sc4 = 180 amu; Ta = 181 amu). The
author responded that his Sc rod was chemically pure, and that, as we
all know, FTMS has a resolution of ppm -- certainly enough to differentiate
Sc4 from Ta. So the paper was published, and if you read it, you will
not find any obvious errors (although their having produced Sc2 and Sc4
but not Sc3 looks a little weird).

Of course, some time later, they published a sheepish retraction in which
they reported that their "chemically pure" Sc was in fact 10% Ta
(for many of these metals, "chemically pure" means chemically pure
*excluding* rare earths and Ta). And thus their "Sc4" peak at 180 amu
was actually a Ta peak at 181 amu. Whoops. But the point is that he
could have said "I challenge anyone to find an error in my paper," and
no one would have been able to do so. But the paper was in error
nonetheless.

: How does any critic propose to explain the fact that 30 out of 33 of our

The critic doesn't have to. This was a basic point that Miles seems
to have missed: the cell that was supposedly not producing excess
heat was observed to produce excess heat. That means that *all* of
the heat measurements reported in that paper are in question because
we *know* that the method gives false positives. (Note that in the
1993 paper, they said that they found the reason that they got false
positives in 1991. But they did not do the obvious experiment of
repeating the control experiment and failing to get excess head; that
was probably because in 1993 they couldn't get the supposedly working
cells to produce heat either.)

Furthermore, in the 1991 paper, they say explicitly that they obtained
a false positive in the He measurement; that is, they recorded He as
being present in a sample that supposedly had none. That means that
*all* of their He measurements are in question, given that the
method that they used to measure He production is known to be flawed.

: The helium present in air would have to possess at least the

The part that Miles leaves out is that the paper explicitly says that
the detectability limit was 2x10^12. How could they detect He at levels
below that? And how were they able to determine that "big" peaks
contained 10^14 atoms of He, "medium" peaks contained 10^13 atoms, and
"small" peaks contained 10^12? They never gave any explanation of how
that quantitation was done, except to say that the peaks were read off
of an analog oscilloscope. And how do they explain the *lack* of
correlation between the amount of excess power measured and the amount
of He measured?

: The only possible explanation for the critics regarding our work is

There is a far simpler explanation: Bush and Miles are incompetent.
Or, at the very least, they are so convinced that they have something
new and important that they are willing to set aside any kind of
critical thinking about their own data and how they obtained it.

: The anomalous excess heat effect does

That may be true, but the 1991/1993 experiment cannot be taken as
evidence for that statement.

Please Richard, for the general readership, what exactly are the
well-established and well-understood physical principles that would be
disproven if "cold fusion" were proven to exist?

Richard Schultz omits a critical statement from Dr. Miles letter:

> :[Dr.Miles] . . . . I challenge the critics to find any

..... sentences by Dr. Miles deleted by Schultz (vide infra)

> : [Miles] How does any critic propose to explain the fact that 30 out of 33 of

> [Schultz:]

..... [criticism based upon bad logic deleted] .....

The conclusion appears to be more ad hominem by Mr. Schultz.

The missing sentences -- conveniently omitted by Mr. Schultz
-- was: Dr. Miles:"The measurements of helium were performed at
three different laboratories that certainly knew how to distinquish helium

Therefore, Mr. Schultz's claim that BOTH Drs. Bush and Miles
are incompetent must be extended by Schultz, in consideration
of the deleted sentences, to include three other laboratories
- possibly including one or two US National labs -
who supplemented this work by a US Navy lab. Seems unlikely.

Mitchell Swartz

: Please Richard, for the general readership, what exactly are the

Well, for starters, the notion that one can change the branching ratio
of a process controlled by the strong force via chemical means. Given
the disparity in the strengths of the strong and electromagnetic
forces, it just seems a wee bit unlikely. The other notion that comes
to mind immediately is the one pointed out by Steven Jones: it's
called the Special Theory of Relativity, and is one of the most
extensively tested theories in physics. Jones showed that a He*
nucleus cannot give up all of its energy to lattice phonons because
the speed of light limits the rate at which the phonon vibrations can
travel through the lattice.

That's why when Mitchell Swartz is queried to explain the relevance of
the Moessbauer effect, he replies that he doesn't do requests -- because
the Moessbauer effect (which I'm pretty sure he doesn't understand despite
his ability to produce quotations from textbooks) is evidence *against*
the Swartzian hypotheses of cold fusion. It's also why when the issue
of Jones's proof about the speed of light constraints comes up, Swartz
insists that he refuted Jones without saying how he did it. Those of
us who were here at the time remember that Swartz's "refutation"
involved his (metaphorically speaking) getting his butt kicked by
someone who actually understands physics.

Richard Schultz wrote:

BZZZT. Wrong.
The existence of cold fusion does NOT disprove the hot fusion
branching ratio OR special relativity (vide infra).

=================================================

Utter nonsense.
These incessant ad hominem attacks, by Mr. Schultz ingnoring
science, confirm the conclusion about Mr. Schultz being an electroterrorist
who is neither terribly literate nor accurate in these matters [mirroring
his lame and repeated errors even about hemoglobinology].

The science requires that one who uses the uncertainty principle
distinguish between E and delta-E. The citation to which Mr. Schultz
refers did NOT initially distinguish between the two, suggesting that
Schultz also is (conveniently?) unable to distinguish the difference.

I have elsewhere corrected this error, despite Schultz's bogus
comments, and his proclaimed continuous need to be "spoon-fed".

Mitchell Swartz

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

=rpes "Wyoming: where the men are men, the women are men, and the
=rpes sheep are scared."
[Richard Schultz, Re: The Myth of Coulomb Repulsion
3 Aug 1997 13:22:32 GMT <5s20mo$qp8$2...@cnn.cc.biu.ac.il>]

Mitchell, what is the citation that is being disputed?

David Naugler wrote:

> "Naugler": Mitchell, what is the citation that is being disputed?

David:

Dont think the citation is disputed, but rather whether
the equation is correct. ;-)X

The original citation was:

------------- citation begins ----------------------------------
In article <CGzEs...@world.std.com>,
mi...@world.std.com (mitchell swartz) writes:
> "Is there any real proof that physics in a solid state must obey only
> the physics and scenarios of a plasma from colliding particles? \/\/
> Certainly this continued knocking of so many people, and their
> experiments and theories, ought be based on some theory, formula(e) or
> evidence, right? "
Jones: "Again, the 10^-3 calculation is given in my paper referenced
above.
Briefly, we start with the uncertainty relation which follows from the
wave
nature of the reacting species (no need to appeal to the Schroedinger
equation
here; we'll keep it simple). Preparata and a few others have argued that
the
energy released following a nuclear reaction is transferred quickly to
the
lattice without the formation of (observable) energetic particles. (This
is
hoped, because such particles are far too few to correlate with m =
E/c^2,
if there are any energetic particles at all in cf cells.) The 'virtual'
energy
can travel a distance limited by the uncertainty relation and the speed
of
light:
r = ct = h-bar c/E (approx.; not concerned about small factors here).
Now, E is of order 1-10 MeV while h-bar*c = 197 MeV-fm. Dividing, we
find that
the energy can only be transferred a distance of about 10^-3 angstroms."
[Steven Jones sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Lattice-heating "theory": reply to Mitch Swartz
Message-ID: <1993Nov29....@physc1.byu.edu>
References: <CGzEs...@world.std.com>
Organization: Brigham Young University ]
------------citation ends --------------------------------

With all due respect, the equation is
h-bar ~ delta-T * delta-E

Hope that helps.
Mitchell Swartz

[Steven Jones argues that]
:: Again, the 10^-3 calculation is given in my

[Swartz responds]
: With all due respect, the equation is

Okay, now what value of delta-E do you plan to use for the calculation?
(hint: how much energy does the nucleus have to give up without ejecting
an energetic particle)

"I don't know why you are wrong, but my data shows you are completely off."
--Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 21 Jul 1992

Richard Schultz wrote:

Demanding again?
The citation was brought up by ----> Mr. Schultz who now demands
"... what value of delta-E do you plan to use for the calculation?".

========== original citation ========================
Richard Schultz originally wrote:

> ..... it's called the Special Theory of Relativity, and is one of the most

========== end of original citation ==================

Thus, the onus is on Mr. "Myoglobin-is-a-dimer" Schultz
to prove cold fusion can't exist. Meanwhile the experiments
trump the hot air and bogus ad hominems.

Mr. Schultz should also prove his bogus repeated unsubstantiated
claims that the US national labs and the US Navy labs are all
wrong, and that all the cold fusion experimenters are wrong.
[More likely he will demand more instead. ;-)X

Mitchell Swartz

: Demanding again?

And Swartz wonders why I think he's an idiot. The point is that
Steven Jones did a calculation. You claimed that his calculation was
incorrect. Therefore *you are required to prove your claim.* Merely
saying "it's delta-T * delta-E" is not sufficient. You have to
provide values of delta-T and delta-E consistent with the CF claims
and show that they lead to a different conclusion than the one Jones
reached. Since you cannot do that, the natural conclusion is that his
claim stands and your attempt to disprove does not succeed in doing so.

Remember, you are the one who claimed to want to have serious scientific
discussions here. Serious scientists do not say "I don't do requests."
Serious scientists do not refuse to answer requests that they support
their claims. Trolls (in the usual Usenet sense, not in the Swartzian
sense of "someone who knows what he is talking about") frequently do
all of these things, as do liars and frauds when the questions come
too close to revealing the lies and the fraud.

"You just make this crap up and publish it without thinking. . . You did not
have the foggiest, vaguest idea what the man was doing. . . Did you ever
think, for even a second, what might happen to you if these people turn
out to be right?" -- Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 6 January 1993

Richard Schultz finally admits he cited a post which had
the wrong equation, but is unable to prove his claim.

BZZZT. Wrong.

The values used were incorrect because the equation was wrong.
The important value is the width of the energy emission.
This is obviously quite beyond the ability of
Mr. "Myoglobin-is-a-dimer" Schultz who now hides
behind his lies, his accusations, and wide ranging ad hominems.

Mitchell Swartz

: Richard Schultz finally admits he cited a post which had

: BZZZT. Wrong.

Tell us what the width of the energy emission is, O Enlightened One.
(Hint: 24 MeV).

And if you read what Jones actually wrote, you would see that he was
talking precisely about the width of the energy emission and the
time (delta-T) that it takes to give off that much energy. For example,
how would you calculate the maximum lifetime of the virtual state in
a Raman excitation?

: This is obviously quite beyond the ability of

Since you have access to a complete access of s.p.f., you must know
that the above sentence is a lie. Which brings me back to another
question you absolutely refuse to answer: what exactly do you hope
to gain by telling obvious lies? Is it really your goal to discredit
the possibility of Cold Fusion? If so, you're doing a pretty good job.

Richard Schultz wrote:

Mr. Schultz's claim of the WIDTH of the energy emission
being 24 MeV heralds that he may just not understand the
physics involved.
Thus, perhaps his resurrected, now dead, bogus SR criticism
belongs in his "myoglobin-is-a-dimer" trashcan. ;-)X

Mitchell Swartz

============================================

More information on cold fusion is available at
http://world.std.com/~mica/cftrefs.html
and http://kemi.aau.dk/~db/fusion

More on the cf proceedings at
http://world.std.com/~mica/cftrefs.html#conferences

"... after a few more flashes in the pan,
we shall hear very little more of Edison or his
electric lamp. Every claim he makes has been
tested and proved impracticable."
[New York Times, January 16, 1880]

Then what *is* the width of the energy emission? Why won't you tell
us? (Hint: Swartz actually doesn't understand the nature of the
problem. Apparently, the third-rate diploma mill from which he was
graduated failed to teach him that "able to quote a physics textbook"
is not equivalent to "understands physics.") (Another hint: the question
at hand is the amount of time over which a 24 MeV excited state can
give up its energy assuming no intermediate states -- i.e., given a
delta-E of 24 MeV, what is the delta-T for the transition.)

Richard Schultz wrote:

> Schultz: Then what *is* the width of the energy emission?

Mr. Schultz seems to admit his error. Now he should
go back and read about the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle,
and answer his own question, for understanding of the issue.

======================================

> Schultz: Apparently, the third-rate diploma mill from which he was
> graduated ....

ROTFLOL. How could any institution EVER hope to even
come close to high standards of where Mr. Schultz claims
to have "studied" (which was?) and went on to grab his sheepskin?

Mitchell Swartz

==============================================

=rpes and the sheep are scared."

What I am pointing out is that you are unable to answer the question,
which strongly implies that either (a) you do not know the answer or
(b) you know that my answer (24 MeV) is correct but are too lacking
in intestinal fortitude to admit it. Considering that you don't even
know what a "troll" is, despite your continual use of the term, either
possibility is likely.

: > Schultz: Apparently, the third-rate diploma mill from which he was
: > graduated ....

: ROTFLOL. How could any institution EVER hope to even
: come close to high standards of where Mr. Schultz claims

I never made any claims about where I may or may not have studied;
only that wherever it was, we learned the difference between
memorizing things and understanding them. This is something that
you seem to have a lot of trouble with.

Richard Schultz wrote:

Mr. Schultz's description of the physics, as others have told him
apparently by email, demonstrates he doesnt have a clue about
what he is speaking. No wonder Mr. Schultz must
always ask questions, demanding to be "spoon-fed".

===============================================

Given the previous "holier-than-thou" attitude of Mr. Schultz, and his
back-peddling now, it must have been "Myoglobin-Dimer University". ;-)X

I thought that the contents of email was sacred and you never revealed
it? Oops on your part. Both you and the person who sent me the email
are completely clueless about the physics involved. I am in fact not
demanding to be spoon-fed. In fact, the longer you avoid answering the
question, the more of an idiot you reveal yourself to be. Why should
I want to stop you from doing that? As I explained before (but you
are far too dense to understand), Steven Jones did a calculation. You
claimed that the calculation was wrong. According to the standard
rules of science, it is up to you to prove your claim. If you make the
claim and then refuse to prove it, that is prima facie evidence that
you cannot prove it. If you could, you would simply go ahead and do so.

That you don't know what you're talking about is fairly obvious, as
evidenced by your deletion of my comment that a calculation similar
to Jones's can be done, for example, to calculate the upper lifetime
of the virtual state in Raman excitation. For that matter, the calculation
he did (AFAIK) helps explain why we're not continuously bombarded with
high-energy gamma rays from the quantum vacuum.

: > : ROTFLOL. How could any institution EVER hope to even
: > : come close to high standards of where Mr. Schultz claims

What back-peddling? I have never, to my recollection, made any claims
about places where I have studied. That I posted for a while from an
account at UC-Berkeley, then from an account at the University of Utah,
and after that at Princeton, is a matter of public knowledge. I do not
recall having claimed to have been a student at any of those three
institutions. In fact, I stated pretty clearly that I was *not* a
student at Princeton.

On the other hand, you claim that you have a better knowledge of physics
than I do. And I was pointing out (correctly) that the difference between
where I studied and the third-rate diploma mill from which you received
your degree is that I learned that memorizing the contents of a textbook
is not the same as understanding those contents. So much for back-peddling.

Richard Schultz wrote:

Your posts indicate the opposite, Mr. Schultz. Hardly
a post goes by where you dont demand more and more.

=======================================

This was done. E is not delta-E of the width of the emission.

I know physicists who understand this critical difference, and you,
Mr. Schultz, given your lingering fawning, coupled with your
utter lack of literacy, are NOT one of them.

=======================================

Obviously, you, Mr. Schultz, neither memorized that myoglobin
was a monomer, nor learned enough to figure it out from its elementary
and obvious dissociation curve with molecular diatomic oxygen,
but YOU purport to 'teach' chemistry. What a joke. ROTFLOL.
At least where I studied, the correct answer was taught (and learned)
both ways.

Mitchell Swartz

: > As I explained before (but you

If the calculation were so easy, you would have done it. As it is,
every time you post your blather without doing the calculation reinforces
the notion that you have no idea what Professor Jones was talking about.
That's fine by me, as I have explained before. You could calculate
how long it would take for a 24 MeV excited state to decay (assuming
no intermediate states) to zero. If you did that, you'd get the same
answer that Professor Jones did, so I can understand your refusal to
do the calculation.

As you are far more expert in this than I am, could you please tell
me whether the last part of your statement above is an ad hominem,
or is it a troll? I have a hard time understanding what you mean by
the terms, but I'd like to learn.

In article <769cte$p73$1...@morgoth.sfu.ca>

Note that "cold fusion" is not a single well-defined reaction.

From his answer, Richard clearly has in mind one of the reactions
that have been proposed to describe some of the experiments. Other
reactions would not violate any physical principles, but might
conflict with some experiments but perhaps not with others. Since
experiments conflict with one another, it is not clear which of
the two situations one is in.

IMO the main problem with CF is not theory but recipe: the first
step is to establish the phenomenology that following a specific
recipe will result in a specific result -- meaning reproducibly
and quantitatively. Then there will be something to talk about
without ambiguity.

For example, muCF is well-defined phenomenologically so it is
easy to talk about it. There are no problems there.

--
James A. Carr <j...@scri.fsu.edu> | Commercial e-mail is _NOT_
http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/ | desired to this or any address
Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst. | that resolves to my account
Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306 | for any reason at any time.

Exactly. Given the variety of physical situations that may be created in
order to demonstrate it, perhaps it would be better allow some license in
the language used to describe it, i.e.:

low temperature fusion of nuclear reaction
catalytic D-D fusion
chemically assisted nuclear reaction (CANR)
electrolytic D-D fusion
ferroelectric fusion
etc.
etc.

[CLIP]

You are right. However, a good model (let's agree not to use the word theory
inappropriately) can lead to the design of a new experiment. As far as I can
determine so far, it is G.V. Fedorovich who has the best handle on this.

Agreed. In fact a very good recent study is:

"Direct Sticking Measurements in Muon Catalyzed Fusion", Ph.D. Thesis, 1994,
Hendrik de Haan, Delft University Press, The Netherlands.
ISBN 90-6275-933-9/CIP

I find it interesting that some of the best work being done currently on
fusion is not being done in the U.S.

It WAS done. Ignoring Mr. Schultz's plea to be spoon-fed again,
E is NOT the delta-E of the width of the emission.
When Mr. Schultz suggests ignoring delta-E (the uncertainty
in the emission energy) and incorrectly substituting E in the
Heisenberg uncertainty equation, he demonstrates his lack of
understanding in yet another scientific issue.
As he admitted before, Mr. Schultz neither memorized that myoglobin

but he purports to 'teach' chemistry. This second gross, and
repeated, confusion about physics corroborates the impressions
learned about his "knowledge" of myoglobin. ROTFLOL.

Mitchell Swartz

In article <36884992...@world.std.com>

They did not seem particularly pertinent, although the example
Shultz provided from the literature (and that you snipped) is
a good example of how errors can be made in published work and
just be due to a mistake.

That does not explain why they did not quote the number of counts,
or why their calibration changed their numbers by a huge factor
without anything else about the experimental data changing. Ergo,
it does not address the points Shultz was making.

Jim Carr wrote:

Absolutely nonsense.
The statement was not only pertinent and important, but was
written by the author of the article in question, to you and to Mr.
Schultz about your incorrect comments and smears.
No wonder it has been ignored. ;-)X

and now by our Mr. Carr -- was:

NOTA BENE: The fact that MULTIPLE labs tested the
helium produced has been (conveniently) ignored, which it
seems is typical of pathological skepticism.

Mitchell Swartz

============================================

Absolute nonsense.

written by the author of the article in question, to Mr. Schultz
about some of your incorrect comments and smears.
No wonder its content has been ignored. ;-)X

The missing sentences, conveniently omitted by Mr. Schultz, was:

: Absolute nonsense.

"I don't do requests."

-- Mitchell Swartz, s.p.f., 1998

In article <368A304A...@world.std.com>

It would seem that what you are disputing is whether you know
how to apply the equation.

> The original citation was:

You should put Message-ID: <1993Nov29....@physc1.byu.edu>
up top since this is teh way one would find it in the archives.

This is a nonsequitur, of course, since Mitchell overlooks the fact
that there is also physics information that was not obtained from
a plasma of colliding particles that is pertinent, but that is
not the issue addressed by Jones.

> Jones: "Again, the 10^-3 calculation is given in my paper referenced above.

Note that he did *start* with the uncetainty relation. He then
applied it. Unfortunately, he did not make his presentation so
simple that it could not be misunderstood.

> if there are any energetic particles at all in cf cells.) The 'virtual'

> With all due respect, the equation is

And, with all due respect, that is the equation he used.

He just did not fill in all of the steps for you. Little steps,
like identifying delta-E with a certain energy and delta-t with
a certain time, and multiplying by c.

No big deal there, and a calculation familiar to any student of
quantum mechanics.

Jim Carr wrote:

It is ONLY correct when the width (delta-E)
of the emission is used, and not the center energy (E).
Also it was not the original equation in the first posts,
until it was corrected. ;-)X

Have a good day.
Mitchell Swartz

[re: Steve Jones's uncertainty calculation]

: He just did not fill in all of the steps for you. Little steps,

It's rather unfortunate that, given his heartwarming belief in the
reality of solid-state CF, Mitchell Swartz is not one of the people
familiar with QM. It's also unfortunate (for him -- as I've pointed
out, it's fine by me) that he responds to any attempt at real discussion
of the issue with a rather deafening silence. (e.g. when I point out
that one can do an analogous calculation to determine the upper limit
on the lifetime of the virtual excited state in a Raman transition)

================================================

More cold fusion references:
http://world.std.com/~mica/cftrefs.html
http://kemi.aau.dk/~db/fusion

Translation: Mr. Swartz hasn't a clue about what I was talking about.

: but saliently continues HIS silence after inadvertantly demeaning

Miles's comments were irrelevant to the issues that I raised. The
1993 paper makes no reference to external labs having tested the
samples. Testing the samples two years later would have been
meaningless, and if there were a systematic contamination of the samples,
then their agreeing on the presence of He would also have been meaningless.

Miles's claim about the positive correlation of excess heat with He
production left out one important point: the light-water "control"
cell showed excess heat but no Helium according to the 1991 paper. In
1993, Miles declared that the cell had not really been putting out
any heat, but he did not repeat the experiment to prove that he could
get excess heat from the "experimental" cells at the same time that he did
not get excess heat from the "control" cells. That he may have done
so in a later experiment is irrelvant to the question of what was
reported in the 1993 paper.

Actually, I'm more attempted to ask why exactly Swartz demands to be
spoon-fed the answers to his questions, and why he thinks refusal to
answer a particular question has any significance given that he has
explicitly stated that he will not answer any question asked of him
("I don't do requests" is how he phrased it).

Richard Schultz rolls out his ad hominems, since he can't ever
get the science accurate:

> Schultz: Translation: Mr. Swartz hasn't a clue about what I was talking about.

Who ever does? Myoglobin-dimers, oh my... :-)X ROTFLOL

===============================================

> Schultz: Miles's comments were irrelevant to the issues that I raised.

That is not true, and hence the obfuscation and backpedalling by Mr.
Schultz. The statements were not only pertinent and important, but were

about his typical incorrect comments and smears.
No wonder the full comments are ignored. ;-)X

One important issue discussed by Dr. Miles includes:
"How does any critic propose to explain the fact that 30 out of 33 of our
heat and helium studies yielded either excess helium when excess power was
measured or no excess helium when no excess power was present. The
probability of obtaining this result by random errors is about one in a
million. The helium present in air would have to possess at least the
intelligence of Richard Schultz to know which flasks to contaminate and the
appropriate levels of contamination to yield 10exp11 - 10exp12 atoms of
helium per second per watt of excess power.
The only possible explanation for the critics regarding our work is that Ben
Bush and I committed scientific fraud. They are all welcome to believe
this, but I know that it is not true. The anomalous excess heat effect does
indeed produce helium-4 in cold fusion experiments."
[Dr. Melvin H. Miles]

Another relevant issue -- conveniently omitted by Mr. Schultz was:

The fact that MULTIPLE labs tested the helium produced has
been (conveniently) ignored by Schultz's claim(s) that all people
involved in this cited study were unable to perform their work
correctly, which seems typical of pathological skepticism.

Mitchell Swartz

=============================================

: > : but saliently continues HIS silence after inadvertantly demeaning

I notice that as usual you deleted the rest of the paragraph I wrote
in which I explained, in detail, why I felt that Miles's response was
irrelevant to the points I raise. Speaking of "incorrect comments,"
"obfuscation," and "smears."

"I don't do requests."
-- Mitchell Swartz, in s.p.f.

"If it is sauce for the goose, then it must also be sauce for the gander."

-- Folk saying

: One important issue discussed by Dr. Miles includes:

How does Dr. Miles propose to explain the fact that his "control"
cell produced excess heat, and that he never went back and repeated
the experiment with a properly designed control? How does Dr. Miles
propose to explain the fact that his 1991 paper explicitly reports
that the He measurement gave a false positive? How does Dr. Miles
propose to explain the fact that the number of studies reported in
the 1993 paper is not 33?

: The probability of obtaining this result by random errors is about
: one in a million.

If the error is systematic, then this "probability" is irrelevant, even if
it had been calculated correctly.

: The helium present in air would have to possess at least the

Perhaps Dr. Miles would care to explain how he could report a detection
limit of 2 x 10^12 atoms and in the same paper a "positive" result of
about 1/3 the stated detection limit. While he's at it, perhaps he
can explain how the "large," "medium," and "small" peaks of the 1991
paper were calibrated to magically produce quantitative results for
the same data in the 1993 paper, and why he didn't bother reproducing
the oscilloscope traces that were the basis of these measurements so
that the reader could see for himself that the three qualitative
measurements actually corresponded to order of magnitude quantitative
changes.

: The only possible explanation for the critics regarding our work is

That is not true, and I have already said so. A much more likely
explanation is some combination of an unexpected systematic error, the
desire for positive results overcoming the necessary skepticism that
a scientist needs to have about his own work, and simple incompetence.

: They are all welcome to believe this, but I know that it is not true.

Dr. Miles may believe that, and it may even be true. But the 1993 paper
does not in my opinion constitute any sort of reasonable proof of that
claim. And Dr. Miles's comments do not address *any* of the *specific*
criticisms I made of that paper, no matter how much Mitchell Swartz
wants to believe that they did.

: Another relevant issue -- conveniently omitted by Mr. Schultz was:

If the gas were contaminated from a source other than CF, naturally,
anyone doing the measurement would find helium. The only person I
am claiming was unable to do his work correctly was Miles, and that
is solely on the basis of what I read in the 1991 and 1993 papers.
Perhaps he has learned since then how to design a properly controlled
experiment. But he did not seem to understand that if your control
experiment is known to give a false positive, then the results from
the test experiment are ipso facto unreliable. Mitchell Swartz seems
not to understand that either, but then, he doesn't seem to understand
much, so that's not too surprising.

Richard Schultz wrote:

> Schultz: Dr. Miles may believe that, and it may even be true. ...

OK

> Schultz: If the gas were contaminated from a source other than CF, naturally,

> am claiming was unable to do his work correctly was Miles ....

ROTFLOL Which is why background diffusion rate
measurements are routinely done.
Mel Miles remains credible, unlike yourself on this matter ;-)X

[...]

Is it not time to put an end to this discussion? I believe all the
points that can be made have been made. The skeptics (me among them)
do not regard the results of Miles as conclusive either way; they
might give some interesting hints at helium production, but they are
too rough for one to be sure. The enthusiasts believe the results. We
have seen a lot of argument (and personal exchanges) to and fro, and I
do not think that we can get any further with this. It is also a bit
much to expect Mitch to speak for Miles - a pity Miles himself is not
in on the discussion directly. Miles himself must be aware of the
tentative nature of those results and would no doubt like to do more
work, to get more definite results. I believe he is prevented from
doing so, however. That is another reason this cannot be resolved, unless
someone else takes over Miles' work. I must admit that Miles does provide
some evidence, though perhaps not proof, of helium production; this is
supported by the findings of Arata & Zhang, although their work, too, has
been criticised. But then, everything can be criticised, noone does the
perfect experiment.

I have repeatedly tried to make the point that we skeptics have to
stay reasonable. When we can't point to glaring errors in some claim,
we do not have to believe the claim, but we ought not to express
ourselves too strongly against it. I am reminded of this just now,
reading the book by Mizuno (I'll report on this soon). If the English
translation by Rothwell is a faithful rendering of Mizuno's Japanese,
it is very hard to doubt that author's work; Mizuno seems to be a very
pedantic and excruciatingly careful scientist, reluctant to accept a
result unless he has done it, in some cases, a ridiculous number of
times. He himself (and his coworkers) think of all possible errors, in
true Paneth & Peters style - and yet they get positive results. It is
not going to be easy to knock this work down by pointing at particular
weaknesses in the experiments, that Mizuno himself is well aware
of. More about this later. (Before someone else says it, the Mizuno
work I am describing was of course done in 1989-90, and there has been
plenty of chance to do the knocking down).

So, boys, how about a clean slate, and a start on some other
discussion, preferably confined to technical issues? Close the Miles
chapter for the moment at least, and start, for example, a sober
discussion on the 4He thing? All the scientific arguments on how those
24 MeV would generate X-rays etc, or how they would not, in some
Moessbauer-like fashion. Or how fractofusion is possible, and how it
is not. All without abuse, rancour, etc, please!

-- Dieter Britz alias d...@kemi.aau.dk; http://www.kemi.aau.dk/~db

<... much snipage by Mitchell ...>

In article <3699CBAC...@world.std.com>

As I wrote, and Mitchell chose to remove:

What is being misunderstood by Mitchell is which of many possible
pairs of E's and t's are being compared. Since Jones is not
writing about the lifetime of the state, the width is not of
interest. He is writing about the time over which that energy
can exist in virtual form, a standard elementary QM result.

Jim Carr wrote:

> Carr: What is being misunderstood by Mitchell is which of many possible

What is not answered by Jim is whether the QM calculations
also use the uncertainty principle, as was done here.

Perhaps Jim will elaborate with scientific clarity about the
differences which he claims, and the mathematical derivation
of his purported different calculation, rather than just
again trolling and setting up more 'strawman' arguments.
Thanks in advance.

Mitchell Swartz

=========================================
More on cold fusion at http://world.std.com/~mica/cftrefs.html
and http://kemi.aau.dk/~db/fusion

I suspect this is as close as we will ever get to an open admission by
Mitchell that he doesn't understand the basics of quantum mechanics.
--
Alan M Dunsmuir

It is unfortunate to see in this group discussion a stronger tendency to
argue than to inform. Who really cares whether Mitchell really understands
quantum mechanics when the real question is whether Heisenberg's principle
is being applied to absolutes in energy and time or uncertainties in energy
and time and the consequential spatial extent. Are we to conclude from what
has been said above that Alan M Dunsmuir is some sort of guru on the
subject?

: Who really cares whether Mitchell really understands

And the answer, as Jim Carr and I explained, is that Steven Jones applied
the principle correctly -- to uncertainties in energy in time (viz.
the length of time that the excitation energy can remain as virtual
energy). I invite you to do the same calculation that I mentioned to
Mr. Swartz -- calculate the lifetime of the virtual state in a Raman
transition. It's essentially the same calculation that Steven Jones
did regarding the He* state in putative Cold Fusion. Note that he was
unable to do the calculation. I hope you have better luck.

"P&F are getting so much heat that you hardly need any calorimetry at all."
--Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 19 Jul 1992
"The palladium based systems are a useless dead end. Who cares about them?"
--Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 10 Dec 1992

Yes, but you may recall that I have already come to the conclusion that the
Jones argument as presented by you was wrong.

Cutting through the obfuscation's, the question is whether a 24 Mev photon
can be coupled to phonon vibrations or other degrees of freedom to liberate
its energy as heat and over what length range this might occur. As I recall
your presentation of the Jones argument, the conclusion was that it would
have to do so within a distance short relative even to nuclear dimensions.

The Heisenberg uncertainty time-energy relationship is that the product

delta time * delta energy is equal or greater that h_bar.

If you take it to be equal, then the Jones argument as presented by you,
revolved around the assumption of a large value of delta E, of the order of
10 Mev. This gave a very small delta t, and the short length even when the
speed of light is factored into the relationship delta r= c * delta t.

Jones is not party to this argument but you are. The problem with this kind
of obfuscation is that above argument as presented by you is irrelevant to
the central issue and it is irrelevant to peripheral issues like whether or
not you or I are clever. And I assert that the only reason you belabor an
irrelevancy is that it looks like a clever argument to you.

High energy photons are scattered strongly by electrons and they do
eventually give up there energy to matter. An appeal to the the Heisenberg
time-energy uncertainty relationship for a mechanism by which this occurs is
a major simplification. Photon scattering paths are not straight line paths
and so the connection between time, distance and the speed of light is not
accurate.

I don't think you fully understand your position. You are not in a position
to instruct the readership. The Jones argument (as presented by you) is
faulty. You seem to feel that it is sufficient to rely solely on some
authority with some argument which is really no more than obfuscation.

The simple point is that a gamma ray photon can give up its energy to matter
and no amount of fancy argument given in the spirit of obfuscation can deny
that fact.

Now my question to you is why are we belaboring this point? It does not
inform me, it does not inform you, and it does not inform the general
readership. It is merely verbal combat. I have wasted some of my valuable
time answering you. But truthfully, I am not really interested in what you
have to say on the subject because you are just wasting my time. End of
story. Now please go away.

Richard Schultz wrote:

> energy). ........[zip] ......... Note that he was

Perhaps luck to avoid Richard's mendacious trolls. ;-)X

==================================================

On 31 Dec 1998 18:25:27 GMT, sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il (Richard
Schultz) wrote:
">In the sense that Vivaldi only wrote one piece and then did it again
>and again and again and again and again and again [snip] "
(1) I've always found such an appraisal of Vivaldi's instrumental
music laughable. If that's the way you hear it, I'm sorry for you.
(2) If you've never heard any Vivaldi operas, you cannot make an
informed judgment on the quality of his music. - Michael
[Re: Prokofiev on Mozart (was: Any Mozart fans out here?)
piper <pi...@interport.net> 1998/12/31
rec.music.classical ]

On 13 Jan 1999 05:14:22 GMT,
Richard Schultz <sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il> wrote:
: "And as Richard Feynman pointed out, you can always eliminate the
: electric spark by inserting a capacitor."
We're getting off topic here, but in the real world, they don't. Cost of a
capacitor to handle the sparking of the motor in your shaver is much higher
than just grounding the case to said motor. (Thereby rendering the sparks,
which are pretty puny for a 12v motor anyway, harmless.)
mi [ Re: Halacha question about electricity Micha Berger
<mi...@aishdas.org> 1999/01/13]

: Yes, but you may recall that I have already come to the conclusion

Well, I have come to the far more obvious conclusion that you don't know
much about quantum mechanics. But be that as it may.

: Cutting through the obfuscation's, the question is whether a 24 Mev photon

That is not the question. The question is, can a nucleus excited to
24 MeV give up its energy as a very large number of low-energy photons?
The answer to this question depends on a number of things, but first
we can ask is is possible *even in principle* (then we can start looking
for a mechanism by which it might do so). According to quantum mechanics,
the excited state can only extend its decay over a period of time
consistent with the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle; that means that for
highly excited states, the time *during which* the de-excitation takes
place must be very short. If this time equals t, then the only atoms
whose motions can be affected by the de-excitation are those within c*t
of the He* nucleus. When you do the calculation, you discover that this
is not nearly enough atoms to permit He* -> He + gazillions of phonons.

: The Heisenberg uncertainty time-energy relationship is that the product

Since the question was, can the excited nucleus give up all of its
energy as phonons, then the delta E has to equal the excitation energy,
which is of the order of 10 MeV.

: This gave a very small delta t, and the short length even when the

I see that Mitchell Swartz has gained himself an acolyte. I think
that you want to start calling it an "ad hominem troll" if you really
want to win his admiration, though.

: is that above argument as presented by you is irrelevant to
: the central issue

I don't know what the central issue is. Mitchell Swartz presented a
hypothesis to explain why "Cold Fusion" does not produce any high-energy
photons. His hypothesis was that the He* nucleus gives up its energy
to lattice vibrations rather than as a single high-energy photon. Jones
showed that this hypothesis cannot be correct even in principle. I
don't know how the argument can possibly be any more relevant.

: and it is irrelevant to peripheral issues like whether or

As I said, I don't know in what context you're looking for "relevant"
or "irrelevant." I "belabor" as you put it Steven Jones's argument
because it is a correct explanation for why Swartz's hypothesis cannot
be correct. As long as Swartz continues to insist that his hypothesis
is a reasonable one, those people who actually know what they are
talking about will continue to post the argument that refutes it.

: High energy photons are scattered strongly by electrons and they do

What is the inelastic scattering cross section for a 24 MeV photon
passing through Pd? Are you claiming that it is large enough that
*all* of the photons will have degraded to heat inside the metal?
Remember, what you have to explain is why *no* high energy photons
are seen. If you are claiming that the He* nucleus in fact gives
up its energy as a single photon, but that this photon is absorbed
or inelastically scattered in the metal, then (a) you are presenting
a different claim from what Swartz originally proposed and (b) you
should be able to do a calculation to show that your claim is
physically reasonable. Why not just do the calculation rather
than berating other people for obfuscation? (You see, real
scientists, as opposed to people like Mitchell Swartz, consider it
obfuscation when you could prove something by a simple calculation
but refuse to do the calculation.)

Thanks for the reply Richard, and thanks for the arithmetic but you failed
the algebra. As I said before the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states
that;

delta E * delta t is equal or greater than h_bar.

There can be some liberty in the interpretation of the meaning of delta E,
which you have taken. The relationship however is not an equality it is
equal to or GREATER than h_bar. The argument you have presented fails is you
choose GREATER than. You have chosen EQUALS and that is totally arbitrary on
your part. The argument presented to us for doing so may be of two kinds,

1) equality is necessitated some RULE X, or

2) equality is chosen upon the AUTHORITY of Y. In this case I think it is
the authority of Dr. Steven E. Jones that backs you up here. So consider how
he is treated in the recent literature. On 1999/01/06 I presented the
following in this forum:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------
Brazilian Journal of Physics, vol. 27, no. 4, december, 1997 515

"Catalitically Induced D­D Fusion in Ferroelectrics

V.D. Dougar Jabon 1 , G.V. Fedorovich 2 and N.V. Samsonenko 3

1 Escuela de Fisica, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Bucaramanga,
A.A.678, Colombia

2 Theoretical Problem Department, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow,
121002, Russia

3 Department of Theoretical Physics, Russian Friendship University, Moscow,
117198, Russia

Received March 15, 1997

Abstract:

A model of deuteron acceleration in ferroelectrical crystals under the
process of domain polarization reversal is proposed. Experimental
verification of the model with LiTaO 3 crystals saturated with deuterium was
fulfilled. It was shown that in the 75 kV/cm a.c. field the neutron emission
attributed to D­D fusion is two order magnitude higher the Jones level."

The entire paper can be obtained as a zip compressed file of the original
postscript at:

http://www-sbf.if.usp.br/WWW_pages/Journals/BJP/Vol27/Num4/index.htm

Could this possibly portend of a 'fusion gap' with Columbia?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------
Now towards the end of the 'Experimental Results' of that paper is the
following passage:

"This gives the fusion rate (6.0+/-2.4)*10^-22s^-1 per deuteron pair for the
thick crystal and (7.8+/-1.4)*10^-21s^-1 for the thin one. The last value is
practically two orders of magnitude higher the Jones level. This results
permit us to suppose that the process of the reversal polarization of
domains results the acceleration of the deuterium nuclei to energy of 200 eV
(which corresponds to a temperature of 10^6 K) and larger in cold crystal
sample."

You cannot use the authority of Jones to arbitrarily select 'equals' rather
than 'greater than' in the Heisenberg Uncertainty relationship because the
authority of Steven Jones in these matters is in dispute. That means the
Mitchell Swartz hypothesis has not been disproved by any principle. It has
been countered by another proposal which amounts to, "Let's build an
argument based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and let's select
'equals' over 'greater than' because that makes the argument work."

I have over time posted many links to new articles. These are excellent and
I hope you are reading them. If you don't, it can only be concluded that you
are not truly interested in the subject matter.

Richard Schultz wrote:

> Schultz:

ROTFLOL Au contraire.
David Naugler's comments are correct unlike those of
Richard Schultz - whose knowledge of hemoglobin biochemistry,
ESD, and other matters has been demonstrated to be faulty (repeatedly).

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> Schultz:

David Naugler is again correct. That is exactly the question.
Mr. Schultz attacks those who do serious calculations, perhaps consistent
with the fact that Mr. Schultz has not the ability to do such
calculations himself.

================================================