At 06:29 PM 5/28/2011, you wrote:
Perhaps more important is the fact that a working E-cat means
confirmation of a
new source of energy. Once that is accepted many more people will
start working
on improving the output, as Jed has often said.
The interesting thing to me is that this argument would apply to the
original cold fusion work. If so many people are *independently*
reporting anomalous energy from palladium deuteride, under reasonably
reproducible conditions, then surely this would have been worth a ver
substantial investment to really nail it down and understand it.
Thus, from a neutral perspective, just looking at the game theory of
it, there should have been at least enough allocated to this project
to determine the origin of this apparent heat, one way or another.
Instead, what happened was that a faction among scientists was
allowed to dominate, to receive all the funding, and to practically
demolish routine research for the dissenters, those who had seen the beast.
It doesn't matter, from this perspective, if cold fusion is real or
not. Answering the questions, determining the source of this
confirmed observation, would, in a sane society, have been
collectively very important.
I'm seeing some similarities with N-rays, though they didn't have the
enormous implications that cold fusion had and has.
Wood allegedly did several surreptitious experiments. Only he
observed them, and these were, by definition, not replicable. Why did
it happen that Wood's report almost single-handedly, if we believe
the popular interpretations, demolished the idea of N-rays, which had
been "seen" by many people?
With our hindsight, it's quite easy to devise and determine
experiments that would have resolved the issue. But it was already
considered resolved, if we accept the standard story, by Wood's
tricks. Turning Wood's tricks into controllable and replicable
experiments would have been a scientific approach. Was that followed?
My guess is that it was, and that the results were negative. So, if
that's true, what really killed N-rays was that once the possible
causes of the observations were understood, and experimenters
designed experiments to rule them out, the effect did disappear.
Human eyesight is a totally amazing and sensitive instrument, and it
would have been difficult, in those days, to do better. But human
eyesight could still have been used, in spite of the obvious problems
with it, i.e., the dependence upon a human observer, whose
expectations can affect what is observed and reported. All that was
necessary was to, so to speak, run the experiments totally blind, to
not only rule out observer expectation bias, but also subtle bias
through unconciously communicated bias. That may not have been much
in people's minds in those days, they had other things to worry
about! But we can now see how to proceed. It's more difficlt, and
once one is convinced, one way or another, one isn't likely to go to
the trouble.
What is interesting is that the matter, in both cases, came to be
considered closed without adequate evidence!
In both cases, some researchers worked on, but there is a huge
difference between what happened with N-rays and what happened with
cold fusion.
The issue was enormously confused by differences in the disciplines
of chemistry and physics. Chemists are accustomed to complex
experiments where the results might not be so accurately predicted
from theory. An electrochemical cell, it turns out, is far from a
simple environment. Cold fusion has been shown to be a surface
effect, it does not happen, it appears, in the bulk of the palladium,
it happens at or very near the surface. What is that surface? An
electrolytic cathode attracts every impurity in the electrolyte,
elements that might be found, say, in a rubber seal used with the
cell, will show up there, plated on the surface by the current. Even
though oxygen is being evolved at the other electrode, there is
oxygen dissolved in the electrolyte that will nevertheless react, to
some degree, with the palladium surface.
Palladium metal, depending on its microstructure, may very greatly in
its ability to be loaded with a high percentage of deuterium. I have
read old sources that, as I recall, claimed that 70% was the maximum.
Apparently not. CF researchers who were successful often monitored
the loading ratio in various ways. One of the characteristics later
found to be consistent with replication failure was lack of attention
to loading ratio. Apparently, the effect only appears at around 90%,
which obviously was pushing the state of the art at the time.
(In gas-loading experiments, my understanding is that ratios above
100% are sometimes obtained. My own understanding of CF theories
leads me to think that CF doesn't happen until a locale actually has
what would be 400% loading! But it might happen in enlarged defects,
of just a certain size, so that ratio would probably be lower. That
is not at all sustainable for the material, it would disintegrate,
and transient appearance of such high loading probably damages the
lattice, which could easily be part of the explanation why the effect
is so evanescent. Damage to the lattice, that CF palladium rod
cathodes swell and crack, is a known effect.)
In any case, it's important to nail the Pd-D effect down; from a
scientific point of view, it's quite as interesting as Ni-H. Ni-H,
though, will get more funding, unless the Rossi bubble collapses. And
it's interesting, too!
And a hell of a lot cheaper to investigate. I was horrified to
realize how much the platinum wire I need as an anode in my cells
cost. Palladium? Piffle! I only need a little. I need a lot more
platinum, and platinum is a lot more expensive! So I'll be working on
reducing the size of the anode wire.
I have my work cut out for me.
