At 04:44 PM 2/25/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Plus, PLUS! the red line is beautifully correlated with a control
factor, current density. You can see that at a glance. A correlation
is an important way to separate noise from meaningful data.
McKubre once wrote that he could do a much better job coming up with
skeptical interpretations than the skeptics. He's right, I'm sure.
I wanted to note a speculation that would explain the difference
between the hydrogen and deuterium results. There may easily be some
reason to completley discount this, but I'm pointing out why people
who don't thoroughly understand what's behind some charts might
reasonably still be skeptical. I think it's very important for us to
understand and sympathize with skepticism, it is normal and natural.
Up to a point.
Suppose that the hydrogen cell is fully loaded, but the deuterium
cell is not. Perhaps the current conditions for maintaining full
loading are different for palladium and deuterium, and these cells
were in series, both experiencing the same current.
As well, as I recall, the hydrogen cell was running, being loaded,
for some time before the deuterium cell was added. So they have
different history. It's not unreasonable to suppose that they might
be in different positions as to relation to maximum loading.
Okay, there is a high-current excursion. At the deuterium cathode,
deuterium is evolved and absorbed. That's an exothermic reaction.
At the hydrogen cathode, there is only gas evolution.
Hence there would be some extra heat in the deuterium cell.
This is, however, inconsistent, probably, with the prior results from
current excursions. But the point is that, indeed, there could be a
non-nuclear difference between the two cells.
Niggling doubts like this exist. What totally iced it for me was not
raw calorimetry, but helium correlation. Helium is not found with
hydrogen cells, either in P-F type electrolytic cells, nor with the 8
hydrogen controls that were the subject of the report from McKubre in
the review paper for the 2004 DoE review. When helium is found, it is
correlated with excess heat, with deuterium cells, at levels
consistent with deuterium fusion. At this point, once I knew this,
alternative explanations entered Rube Goldberg territory, and Occam's
Razor collapsed to:
It's fusion, get over it.
What kind of fusion? What mechanism? Beats me!
