The Strange Theory of Light and Matter [Archive]

sol invictus

19th April 2009, 06:53 AM

"We do not have a good mathematical way to describe the theory of quantum electrodynamics"

He is pointing out that the coupling between light and matter has variables that are hocus pocus rather than experimental.

Feynman invented a good way to describe QED, one that works to incredible accuracy. It's true that the mathematical foundations are a little shaky - I guess that's what he's talking about in that passage.

"one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics, a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man.........It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than 50 years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number on the wall and worry about it"

Those who investigated this issue, Schwinger, Pons and Fleischman and others paid the price for this investigation and were labelled as frauds, cranks and all the usual derogatory terms.

That's such a completely false characterization I'm not sure even where to begin. Schwinger was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, a competitor and equal of Feynman's, and a Nobel laureate. Pons and Fleishchmann were chemists, and probably were frauds (or at least sloppy) - and more importantly for this topic, their research had essentially nothing to do with the mystery of the value of alpha.

Every high-energy theoretical physicist worth her salt wonders about the fundamental constants and tries to explain them. That's essentially the question the entire field is focused on - finding a theory with fewer parameters.

sol invictus

19th April 2009, 06:58 AM

Surely this implies an investigation into QED and alpha by P&F.

No - it has almost nothing to do with it. If they were right, it would have implications for low energy quantum chromodynamics (the strong force) - not QED, and nothing to do with alpha.

I'm not sure what your point is. P&F were wrong, almost certainly. Many groups tried to replicate their results - and they all failed. So suppose you were in charge of a funding agency, and a grant proposal came across your desk from them, years later. Would you fund it, or would you draw the most likely conclusion - that their work was invalid and you'd be throwing good money after bad? Of course without more info you can't answer that, but surely you can see that not all scientific work should (or can) be supported?

edd

19th April 2009, 08:21 AM

No.

Fusion has to involve more than QED - there's obviously nuclear forces at work. Even then, a purely electromagnetic effect explained by QED alone won't necessarily grant any insight into why alpha has the value it does.

As for scientists who may or may not have gone a bit off the rails (I don't know exactly what Schwinger had to say about cold fusion, and when in the saga he said it), I'd never use the word 'fraud' for any of them. Fraud is a very different kind of accusation to level at a scientist. And I can think of only one notable scientist who has gone so far off the rails as to label them a crank.

sol invictus

19th April 2009, 08:31 AM

Fusion has to involve more than QED - there's obviously nuclear forces at work. Even then, a purely electromagnetic effect explained by QED alone won't necessarily grant any insight into why alpha has the value it does.

I would make an even stronger claim. We know - as well or better than we know anything in the world, literally - what the correct theory of light interacting with matter is. We don't know why the fine structure constant is what it is, or even really why the theory works as well as it does, but we know what it is to incredible accuracy.

We think we know what the theory of the strong interactions is too, in principle, but we don't have the requisite mathematical tools to extract very accurate predictions from it at low energies, particularly at the scale of nuclear physics. So it is possible that there is some real surprise there - highly unlikely, but possible.

As for scientists who may or may not have gone a bit off the rails (I don't know exactly what Schwinger had to say about cold fusion, and when in the saga he said it), I'd never use the word 'fraud' for any of them. Fraud is a very different kind of accusation to level at a scientist. And I can think of only one notable scientist who has gone so far off the rails as to label them a crank.

I can think of more than one that could be labeled crank - but your point about "fraud" is right. Cranks can be well-intentioned iconoclasts who simply hold fringe beliefs, which are probably (but not certainly) wrong. When they are smart and honest, they serve a very useful role in science, because every now and then one of them hits on something valuable. Frauds, on the other hand, are both much more rare (among real scientists at least - not necessarily among the wingnuts that post here) and always damaging to the field and the progress of science in general.

edd

19th April 2009, 08:36 AM

I'd agree with all of that sol.

Skwinty

19th April 2009, 08:42 AM

No.

Fusion has to involve more than QED - there's obviously nuclear forces at work. Even then, a purely electromagnetic effect explained by QED alone won't necessarily grant any insight into why alpha has the value it does.

I agree, but it has something to do with cold fusion. My reasoning here is as follows.

1.Definition of cold fusion: fusion that can occur at lower temperatures than those necessary to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between nuclei.
2. Interpretation of the fine structure constant:The ratio of two energies: (i) the energy needed to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between two electrons when the distance between them is reduced from infinity to some finite d, and (ii) the energy of a single photon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon) (E = hν, where h is the Planck constant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant) and ν is the frequency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency) of the photon, see Planck relation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_relation)). WikiPaedia

And I can think of only one notable scientist who has gone so far off the rails as to label them a crank.

I would imagine you are referring to Linus Pauling.

To address Sol's replies.

Why has the US Navy and the DoE continued to pursue cold fusion if there is nothing to it?

My original post didn't imply that alpha was the only consideration, rather QED as a whole.

Also, are you implying that Schwinger was regarded in high esteem by the scientific community his whole life or just until his involvement in cold fusion.

Skwinty

19th April 2009, 08:57 AM

Herewith a link to Schwinger and cold fusion and the fraud issue.

http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue1/colfusthe.html

"What answer did I give, just three years ago to "Does cold fusion have a future?" I said: "I have little hope for it in Europe and the United States—the West. It is to the East, and, specifically, to Japan that I turn."

"In the more than two years that have elapsed since the birthday lectures, I have concentrated on the theory of coherent sonoluminescence. Why? Because, of the two physical processes that naive intuition rejects, it is coherent SL that exists beyond doubt. (No, Mr. Taubes, not even you could cry fraud. Too many people have seen the light.)"

ETA:http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/274fraud.html another link to the accusations of fraud.
and another http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJcoldfusiona.pdf

edd

19th April 2009, 09:05 AM

I would imagine you are referring to Linus Pauling.

Actually, no. But I don't want to get diverted into naming individuals.

Skwinty

19th April 2009, 09:10 AM

Actually, no. But I don't want to get diverted into naming individuals.
Agreed, my bad

sol invictus

19th April 2009, 09:31 AM

1.Definition of cold fusion: fusion that can occur at lower temperatures than those necessary to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between nuclei.

Let me try to explain again. We know what QED is better than just about anything else in the history of science (see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_tests_of_QED)). You're correct that cold fusion will require some mechanism to overcome electrostatic repulsion - we know that because QED tells us that. It's what that mechanism is which is the issue, and whatever it is, it has nothing to do with why alpha takes the value it takes.

2. Interpretation of the fine structure constant:The ratio of two energies: (i) the energy needed to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between two electrons when the distance between them is reduced from infinity to some finite d,

So.... what's the other energy in the ratio? At infinity the electrostatic repulsion is zero.

But if you specify a particular d, yes, you can think of the fine structure constant as determined by that energy, because it's proportional to the electron charge squared.

and (ii) the energy of a single photon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon) (E = hν,

No - the fine structure constant doesn't determine the energy of a photon (except for a tiny quantum correction). If could be zero and photons would have (almost) the same energy. Have you confused it with Planck's constant?

Why has the US Navy and the DoE continued to pursue cold fusion if there is nothing to it?

I didn't say there was nothing to it. I said there was almost certainly nothing to it, and I asked you to think about that. There are all kinds of crazy ideas out there. Most of them are wrong. Not all of them can be funded, because funding is limited.

As for why some research into this is still funded - first off, I'd like to see evidence DoE is funding it (the Navy I don't care about). Second, I'd need to see precisely what is funded. Fusion is important enough that it makes sense to pursue every possible lead to the end, even if it's unlikely. This isn't black and white - research is inherently unpredictable and the results uncertain. So you, the grant making agency, have to weigh potential benefit against cost and your guess (and it's always a guess) of the probability of success. In this case the potential benefit is enormous, but the odds of success very small.... so if the cost is reasonable, it might be worth it. It's a judgment call, and not one that can be fruitfully discussed here without much more detailed information.

My original post didn't imply that alpha was the only consideration, rather QED as a whole.

But your subsequent posts have nothing to do with QED.

Also, are you implying that Schwinger was regarded in high esteem by the scientific community his whole life or just until his involvement in cold fusion.

I don't know anything about his opinions on cold fusion, nor do I see why they have anything to do with the topic of this thread. I can assure you that Schwinger is held in very, very high regard by physicists. He was one of the giants of the 20th century.

ben m

19th April 2009, 12:53 PM

1.Definition of cold fusion: fusion that can occur at lower temperatures than those necessary to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between nuclei.

Hi Skwinty,

The "overcome the electrostatic repulsion" thing is a good shorthand for why fusion needs to be hot, but it's not exactly how it works. In reality, if you put two deuterons a distance D apart, there's some probability that they'll turn into a 4He. That probability gets smaller and smaller as D gets bigger, but there's no hard cutoff. At the same time, a deuterium plasma at temperature T implies (via atomic physics) some probability distribution for getting distances D---and those distributions tell that it's rare (exactly how rare depends on T) to get the very small Ds that make fusion likely. Anyway, you combine these two probabilities and that tells you the average fusion rate.

If you found out that your theory had mispredicted the fusion rate, you would ask two questions: "Do I understand how the fusion probability depends on D?" and "Do I understand how the D probability depends on temperature".

The latter depends on electromagnetism and atomic physics, but there are a zillion things other than fusion rates which tell you you have this right. As Sol said, this is one of the best-tested theories in all of physics.

It would be much more plausible to imagine that the former is wrong. I would have happily done so in this case if the data had been believable.

Reality Check

19th April 2009, 02:07 PM

So.... what's the other energy in the ratio? At infinity the electrostatic repulsion is zero.

But if you specify a particular d, yes, you can think of the fine structure constant as determined by that energy, because it's proportional to the electron charge squared.

Hi sol invictus: Swinty is quoting part of the Wikipedia article on the fine structure constant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_structure_constant):

The ratio of two energies: (i) the energy needed to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between two electrons when the distance between them is reduced from infinity to some finite d, and (ii) the energy of a single photon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon) (E = hν, where h is the Planck constant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant) and ν is the frequency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency) of the photon, see Planck relation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_relation)). Hence:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/a/2/d/a2dbb2403f129176933af69f0decc741.png

Swinty's question about the quotes was
"Are Feynmans comments still valid today, or were they not even valid when he made them"
and the answer is for the second quote is: yes (no one today knows why alpha has the value that it has) and no (the comment was valid when Feynman made it).

dlorde

20th April 2009, 04:12 AM

Just as a matter of interest, the US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command believe they have new and strong evidence for cold fusion, although it took 2-3 weeks to get a few potential high-energy neutron tracks, so we won't be generating power with it any time soon... see Neutron Tracks Revive Hopes for Cold Fusion (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127013.900-neutron-tracks-revive-hopes-for-cold-fusion.html).

sol invictus

20th April 2009, 05:38 AM

Hi sol invictus: Swinty is quoting part of the Wikipedia article on the fine structure constant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_structure_constant):

That section of the wiki didn't make sense (it didn't specify the frequency of the photon) - no wonder I couldn't understand what skwinty was saying.

Cuddles

20th April 2009, 06:09 AM

IWhy has the US Navy and the DoE continued to pursue cold fusion if there is nothing to it?

Same reason they've pursued things like remote viewing. Just in case.

Edit: Also, small correction:
Richard Feynman published the book QED:The Strange Theory of Light and Matter in 1988.
It was published in 1985, he died in 1988.

Skwinty

20th April 2009, 06:26 AM

It was published in 1985, he died in 1988.

Small correction. It was first published in 1985. The paperback edition was published in 1988.
published
October 1st 1988 by Princeton University Press

binding
Paperback, 176 pages

isbn
0691024170 (isbn13: 9780691024172)

description
Famous the world over for the creative brilliance of his insights into the physical world, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman also possesse

Skwinty

20th April 2009, 09:20 AM

That's such a completely false characterization I'm not sure even where to begin. Schwinger was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, a competitor and equal of Feynman's, and a Nobel laureate. Pons and Fleishchmann were chemists, and probably were frauds (or at least sloppy) - and more importantly for this topic, their research had essentially nothing to do with the mystery of the value of alpha.

Sol,
First, let me say that I have no issue with Schwingers reputation as a giant of 20th century physics. That he was.
I also accept the veracity of QED and the confirmation of it's accuracy.
Did you read the links I posted wrt the fraud accusations?
My issue is why was Schwinger, Pons and Fleischman ostrasized by the scientific community given that the research into cold fusion continues to this day? They (P&F) may have made mistakes and were to some degree sloppy, but did they deserve the fallout?
There is also this issue of Mallove resigning from MIT due to changes being made to the data (wrt excess heat) being altered between July 10 1989 and July 13 1989. Mallove lodged a complaint and resigned in protest.
These charges resulted in the original data being re-included as an appendix, but made no difference as the altered data had already been presented to congress as evidence that P&F had no basis for their claims.

Fleischman said at the time:

"I had no intention of saving the world, no intention whatsoever"
"I never told people that I was only interested in understanding quantum electrodynamics"

Norman Ramsey said about Schwinger and cold fusion:

"Schwinger invited me to lunch and asked me searching questions about the reliability of the experimental hyperfine anomaly. He said he thought he could explain it, but would have to develop a relativistic QED; he was worried about doing all that work if the hyperfine anomaly wasn't real. I told him I was convinced it was real. He then worked vigorously on this problem"

So, I don't understand why you say and I quote:

"That's such a completely false characterization I'm not sure even where to begin. Schwinger was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, a competitor and equal of Feynman's, and a Nobel laureate. Pons and Fleishchmann were chemists, and probably were frauds (or at least sloppy) - and more importantly for this topic, their research had essentially nothing to do with the mystery of the value of alpha."

and

"No - it has almost nothing to do with it. If they were right, it would have implications for low energy quantum chromodynamics (the strong force) - not QED, and nothing to do with alpha."

I am also a bit puzzled about the issue you had with the quote from WP wrt my post and I quote:

"1.Definition of cold fusion: fusion that can occur at lower temperatures than those necessary to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between nuclei.
2. Interpretation of the fine structure constant:The ratio of two energies: (i) the energy needed to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between two electrons when the distance between them is reduced from infinity to some finite d, and (ii) the energy of a single photon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon) (E = hν, where h is the Planck constant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant) and ν is the frequency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency) of the photon, see Planck relation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_relation)). WikiPaedia"

The quote refers to the frequency of the photon.

If I may also ask why you are not interested in the US Navy cold fusion program?

Thanks Sol

sol invictus

20th April 2009, 11:53 AM

My issue is why was Schwinger, Pons and Fleischman ostrasized by the scientific community given that the research into cold fusion continues to this day? They (P&F) may have made mistakes and were to some degree sloppy, but did they deserve the fallout?

I don't know - but my point is that that has nothing to do with the OP.

"Schwinger invited me to lunch and asked me searching questions about the reliability of the experimental hyperfine anomaly. He said he thought he could explain it, but would have to develop a relativistic QED; he was worried about doing all that work if the hyperfine anomaly wasn't real. I told him I was convinced it was real. He then worked vigorously on this problem"

The hyperfine "anomaly" has nothing to do with cold fusion. Why are you mentioning it there? That quote must be from the 50s, when QED was first being developed.

2. Interpretation of the fine structure constant:The ratio of two energies: (i) the energy needed to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between two electrons when the distance between them is reduced from infinity to some finite d, and (ii) the energy of a single photon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon) (E = hν, where h is the Planck constant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant) and ν is the frequency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency) of the photon, see Planck relation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_relation)). WikiPaedia"

The quote refers to the frequency of the photon.

What photon? Photons have an energy that depends on their frequency. What's the frequency?

BTW, the wiki has now been changed.

If I may also ask why you are not interested in the US Navy cold fusion program?

I don't think the US government, particularly the military, has a history that inspires any confidence in its ability to choose fruitful research directions.

Skwinty

20th April 2009, 02:19 PM

I don't know - but my point is that that has nothing to do with the OP.

OK, the penny has dropped.The OP title refers to QED and although the OP does mention P&F the title is not indicative of this.I suppose to discuss this the "cold fusion back from the dead" is more appropriate.

The hyperfine "anomaly" has nothing to do with cold fusion. Why are you mentioning it there? That quote must be from the 50s, when QED was first being developed.

After some more research on my part, I accept that you are right. This conversation happened in 1947. One of the pitfalls of popular science books.

What photon? Photons have an energy that depends on their frequency. What's the frequency?

BTW, the wiki has now been changed.

Point taken. Thanks for the wiki update.

I don't think the US government, particularly the military, has a history that inspires any confidence in its ability to choose fruitful research directions.

Never the less, some good things have come from military research.

theprestige

20th April 2009, 02:59 PM

Is it possible that P&F were ostracized not because they researched cold fusion, but because they did such a poor job of it?

I mean, Formula 1 races continue to this day, in spite of the fact that I have never been contracted as a driver by any Formula 1 racing team.

By your logic, Skwinty, we should suspect that I am being unfairly rejected by the Formula 1 community, because of some close-minded conformity and ignorance.

I think it much more reasonable to suspect that I am not a very good racecar driver, and that the Formula 1 community is treating me quite correctly.

Skwinty

20th April 2009, 03:12 PM

Is it possible that P&F were ostracized not because they researched cold fusion, but because they did such a poor job of it?

I do not suggest that P&F did a good job, merely did they deserve the fallout for being curious and experimenting with cold fusion.

I think it much more reasonable to suspect that I am not a very good racecar driver, and that the Formula 1 community is treating me quite correctly.

Schwinger wrote 8 papers on cold fusion and supported P&F. Did he deserve the cold shoulder?

Remember I am not making claims here, only asking more competent members of this forum about the issue.

sanguine

20th April 2009, 03:22 PM

Never the less, some good things have come from military research.

That's kind of a non-sequitir.

Keep in mind that what gets funded is not even strictly a cost-benefit, outcome-based analysis in the way Sol described above. That's part of it, but there's also the possibility of an interested Representative, Senator, or even First Lady. Funding does, fundamentally, come down to people making decisions. In some cases (e.g. NIH), there are peer review committees that try to evaluate proposed research and give funding officers their recommendations. In other cases (e.g. DARPA), there's just a program manager who can give a yes/no based on whatever is in their head when they make that choice. This means it only takes one person who is a fan of cold fusion, or holds out greater hope than is typical for cold fusion, for cold fusion to receive research funding.

Although people usually try to make decisions about what to fund based on scientific merit and promise, there is no truth to the inverse relationship -- just because research was funded does not mean that it actually has merit or promise.

There are giant (giant!) fights going on right now in various U.S. funding agencies over the direction of funding for next generation power, for example. Even within a given agency, some program managers prefer algae to cellulosic fuels or vice-versa, for example. Although both avenues have their associated cost-benefit analysis, a strong preference in one part of DOE for, say, cellulosic fuels, does not impart added credibility to those fuels as a reasonable avenue of research.

Or, to put it another way, the fact that my friend paid real money to see Speed Racer does not make it a good movie.

Skwinty

21st April 2009, 12:35 PM

Sol, if as you say, that QED has nothing to do with cold fusion, then perhaps what you mean is QED cannot explain cold fusion, hence the efforts by G.Perrata to propose a new form of QED that will explain cold fusion.

Connection of Preparata QED Theory and D-Pd-
D Cluster Theory for Cold Fusion Reactions LINCHON WU,
GEORGE MILEY, University of Illinois, NPRE Department, 103 S.
Goodwin Ave | G. Preparata earlier proposed a radical new QED the-
ory, and had just begun application to cold fusion prior to his untimely
death.1 We have since used a variation of his theory to explain D-Pd-D
cluster reactions in certain cold fusion experiments.2

1G. Preparata, QED Coherence in Matter", World Scientific Press,
Singapore, 1997.

Scott Chubb
scott.chubb@nrl.navy.mil
Naval Research Laboratory

ben m

21st April 2009, 01:11 PM

theprestige

21st April 2009, 01:39 PM

I do not suggest that P&F did a good job, merely did they deserve the fallout for being curious and experimenting with cold fusion.
Plenty of people are curious and experiment with cold fusion. I don't think that's why P&F got the treatment they got.

Skwinty

21st April 2009, 01:46 PM

Plenty of people are curious and experiment with cold fusion. I don't think that's why P&F got the treatment they got.
What about Julian Schwinger?

Skwinty

22nd April 2009, 03:46 AM

A few things of note. First, this is not a refereed paper, nor even a paper at all ... it's the abstract of a 10 minute talk at an APS conference. Second, although the literature is sketchy, I see no evidence that Preparata wanted to change QED, only to solve it more carefully in solid-state systems.

I never stated that this was a refereed paper or even a paper at all.There are very little or no mainstream refereed papers on cold fusion that I can find. as it is considered as fringe or even cranky, generally speaking. It is still apparent that QED has something to do with the cold fusion issue.I have read that cold fusion does not violate QED or QCD in any way. This is why I started the OP by relating QED to cold fusion and specifically Schwinger, Pons and Fleischman. I also read a 57 page document by Eugene Mallove (3436415.pdf) which details the data manipulation at MIT and the ERAB report which was presented to congress, stating that P&F claims were "scientific schlock". This document has many references to P&F and Julian Schwinger.
Or, do you adopt the same stance as Sol that QED has no bearing on cold fusion whatsoever?

Reality Check

22nd April 2009, 04:52 AM

I never stated that this was a refereed paper or even a paper at all.There are very little or no mainstream refereed papers on cold fusion that I can find. as it is considered as fringe or even cranky, generally speaking. It is still apparent that QED has something to do with the cold fusion issue.I have read that cold fusion does not violate QED or QCD in any way.
...snip...
Perhaps you can give us citations to where you read "that cold fusion does not violate QED or QCD in any way". I am unaware that cold fusion has been verified in enough experiments so that a mechanism by which it occurs has been determined.

IMHO: It is obvious that fusion does not does not violate QED or QCD in any way. All fusion needs is the right conditions to occur.
If cold fusion exists then it would also not violate QED or QCD since it would need specific conditions.

Reality Check

22nd April 2009, 05:11 AM

I do not suggest that P&F did a good job, merely did they deserve the fallout for being curious and experimenting with cold fusion.

They deserved the fallout for the unorthodox method of announcing the results of their experiments via a press conference. They also deserve the fallout of their experiment not being reproducible.
But you have not said what the fallout was.

Schwinger wrote 8 papers on cold fusion and supported P&F. Did he deserve the cold shoulder?

What cold shoulder?
8 papers on cold fusion" does not sound like cold shoulder.

Skwinty

22nd April 2009, 08:08 AM

They also deserve the fallout of their experiment not being reproducible.
But you have not said what the fallout was.

The accusations of fraud and all the usual derogatory terms.
See posts 5 and 12 for links.
I also understand that P&F's results were reproducible albeit not consistently. Also read Malloves article about MIT's manipulation of data.
If you google 3436415.pdf you will get the document on about line 5 of the google results. It sure looks to me as if the latest results of cold fusion are the same as P&F's. P&F stated that there were low energy nuclear reactions occurring.

What cold shoulder?
8 papers on cold fusion" does not sound like cold shoulder.

"Schwinger was a pioneering theorist in cold fusion. He felt that the bias of the physics community against cold fusion was based on inferences from hot fusion that are not valid in this new regime. He argued that the defense of cold fusion can be simply stated, "The circumstances of cold fusion are not those of hot fusion." He first submitted the results of his theoretical analysis of cold fusion to journals of the American Physical Society. He received such harsh treatment in the denial of publication of this work that as a symbolic gesture, he resigned his membership from the American Physical Society. This was no small step for someone who had been a leading member for over 50 years. In doing so he said, "The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors' rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science."
Undaunted, Schwinger did publish papers on cold fusion in other forums. He was the sole author of the following 8 papers on this subject:
1. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice," Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion (Salt Lake City) pp. 130 - 136, March 28 -31 (1990).
2. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice.1," Zeitschrift fur Physik D 15, pp. 221-225 (1990).
3. "Cold Fusion: A Hypothesis," Zeitschrift fur Naturforschung 45a, p. 756 (1990).
4. "Cold Fusion: Does It Have a Future?" in Evolutional Trends of Physical Sciences. Germany: Springer Verlag 1991. (From a talk delivered in Tokyo, 1990)
5. "Phonon Representations," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, pp. 6983 - 6984 (1990).
6. "Phonon Dynamics," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, pp. 8370 - 8372 (1990).
7. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice - Causal Order," Progress in Theoretical Physics 85, pp. 711 - 712 (1991).
8. "Cold Fusion Theory: A Brief History of Mine," Fourth International Conference on Cold Fusion (Maui, 1993) ICCF-4 Transactions of Fusion Technology pp. ? - ? (1994). "

IN MEMORY OF JULIAN SCHWINGER
Mario Rabinowitz

The bold italics sure sound like the cold shoulder to me.

Skwinty

22nd April 2009, 09:55 AM

Finally found the origin of the QED and Coldfusion link.

Why did you initially start your experiments?

This whole subject was driven by the need to find demonstration of the quantum electro dynamic paradigm. We’ve had the classical paradigm of
Newtonian mechanics. We’ve had Planck’s quantum mechanical paradigm. I think most people who work in physical science realize the limitations of the quantum mechanical paradigm and that it has to be replaced by the quantum electro dynamic paradigm, nevertheless the introduction of that paradigm is strongly resisted. And if you introduce the quantum electro dynamic paradigm you see that what is called cold fusion might be possible.

How could nuclear fusion at room temperature be explained using quantum electrodynamics?

Well, if you think about quantum electro dynamics you realize that you get a large assembly, a large collection of atoms and molecules behaving as a
single quantum system. So then you say, if I build a small amount of energy per atom into this large assembly of atoms and molecules then I will have a very large energy. And that large energy of course translates in the end to observable nuclear effects.

So physics actually drove your research?

I had worked since the 1960s on quantum electro dynamics in conventional chemistry. I had realized that all those systems had to be modeled in terms of quantum electro dynamics. And then I said, well, what is the most extreme question we can pose in quantum electro dynamics? And that is, can we get a nuclear effect by chemical means? I thought it would happen, but you might not be able to observe it. What happened is that it is possible and you can observe it.

Originally published in Telepolis, January 22, 2005,
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/19/19257/1.html (http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/19/19257/1.html)

Cuddles

22nd April 2009, 10:06 AM

There are very little or no mainstream refereed papers on cold fusion that I can find. as it is considered as fringe or even cranky, generally speaking.

No, there are very little or no mainstream refereed papers because there has been very little or nothing to publish. Cold fusion has never been demonstrated to work, and no-one has come up with a plausible theoretical mechanism by which it could. What exactly do you think people are going to publish? Papers entitled "We still don't have anything, but we're working on it" rarely get very far.

Why did you initially start your experiments?

This whole subject was driven by the need to find demonstration of the quantum electro dynamic paradigm. We’ve had the classical paradigm of
Newtonian mechanics. We’ve had Planck’s quantum mechanical paradigm. I think most people who work in physical science realize the limitations of the quantum mechanical paradigm and that it has to be replaced by the quantum electro dynamic paradigm,

Well that's just complete bollocks. QED is quantum mechanics. That's like saying we need to replace Einstein's mechanics with general relativity. Here's a nice quote from the Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics) article on it:
QED has served as the model and template for all subsequent quantum field theories.
Yeah, that's some pretty strong resistance there.

Skwinty

22nd April 2009, 10:17 AM

Here's a nice quote from the Wiki (http://QED has served as the model and template for all subsequent quantum field theories.) article on it:

I am unable to access the Wiki reference. Page cannot be displayed. Perhaps its undergoing an edit.

Skwinty

22nd April 2009, 10:30 AM

"Quantum mechanics is, at least at first glance and at least in part, a mathematical machine for predicting the behaviors of microscopic particles — or, at least, of the measuring instruments we use to explore those behaviors — and in that capacity, it is spectacularly successful: in terms of power and precision, head and shoulders above any theory we have ever had. Mathematically, the theory is well understood; we know what its parts are, how they are put together, and why, in the mechanical sense (i.e., in a sense that can be answered by describing the internal grinding of gear against gear), the whole thing performs the way it does, how the information that gets fed in at one end is converted into what comes out the other. The question of what kind of a world it describes, however, is controversial; there is very little agreement, among physicists and among philosophers, about what the world is like according to quantum mechanics. Minimally interpreted, the theory describes a set of facts about the way the microscopic world impinges on the macroscopic one, how it affects our measuring instruments, described in everyday language or the language of classical mechanics. Disagreement centers on the question of what a microscopic world, which affects our apparatuses in the prescribed manner, is, or even could be, like intrinsically; or how those apparatuses could themselves be built out of microscopic parts of the sort the theory describes.[1 (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/notes.html#1)] "

This quote comes from the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
The bold italics is mine. Doesn't QED, which was developed much later than Quantum Mechanics, go some way in resolving this limitation or controversy. If so, then isn't Fleischman correct other than a poor choice of words. He doesn't say QED has limitations, only QM.

Reality Check

22nd April 2009, 01:59 PM

The accusations of fraud and all the usual derogatory terms.
See posts 5 and 12 for links.
I also understand that P&F's results were reproducible albeit not consistently. Also read Malloves article about MIT's manipulation of data.
If you google 3436415.pdf you will get the document on about line 5 of the google results. It sure looks to me as if the latest results of cold fusion are the same as P&F's. P&F stated that there were low energy nuclear reactions occurring.

The "accusations of fraud and all the usual derogatory terms" from a small number of individuals (is it 3 or 4?) are what you expect from an experiment that cannot be reproduced reliably.

"Schwinger was a pioneering theorist in cold fusion. He felt that the bias of the physics community against cold fusion was based on inferences from hot fusion that are not valid in this new regime. He argued that the defense of cold fusion can be simply stated, "The circumstances of cold fusion are not those of hot fusion." He first submitted the results of his theoretical analysis of cold fusion to journals of the American Physical Society. He received such harsh treatment in the denial of publication of this work that as a symbolic gesture, he resigned his membership from the American Physical Society. This was no small step for someone who had been a leading member for over 50 years. In doing so he said, "The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors' rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science."
Undaunted, Schwinger did publish papers on cold fusion in other forums. He was the sole author of the following 8 papers on this subject:
1. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice," Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion (Salt Lake City) pp. 130 - 136, March 28 -31 (1990).
2. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice.1," Zeitschrift fur Physik D 15, pp. 221-225 (1990).
3. "Cold Fusion: A Hypothesis," Zeitschrift fur Naturforschung 45a, p. 756 (1990).
4. "Cold Fusion: Does It Have a Future?" in Evolutional Trends of Physical Sciences. Germany: Springer Verlag 1991. (From a talk delivered in Tokyo, 1990)
5. "Phonon Representations," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, pp. 6983 - 6984 (1990).
6. "Phonon Dynamics," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, pp. 8370 - 8372 (1990).
7. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice - Causal Order," Progress in Theoretical Physics 85, pp. 711 - 712 (1991).
8. "Cold Fusion Theory: A Brief History of Mine," Fourth International Conference on Cold Fusion (Maui, 1993) ICCF-4 Transactions of Fusion Technology pp. ? - ? (1994). "

IN MEMORY OF JULIAN SCHWINGER
Mario Rabinowitz

The bold italics sure sound like the cold shoulder to me.
Thus cold shoulder = the opinion of Schwinger that the rejection of some papers rejected by journals due to bad reviews was "venomous".

In fact the bit in bold is Schwinger's cold shoulder of the American Physical Society.

theprestige

22nd April 2009, 04:24 PM

What about Julian Schwinger?
One thing at a time.

Before we move on to Schwinger, what do you think of the possibility that P&F ran into trouble because their methods were faulty?

Cuddles

23rd April 2009, 07:59 AM

I am unable to access the Wiki reference. Page cannot be displayed. Perhaps its undergoing an edit.

No, it turns out I'm an idiot and pasted the quote in place of the url. Fixed it now.

The bold italics is mine. Doesn't QED, which was developed much later than Quantum Mechanics

Well, there's your first mistake. As I already said, QED is quantum mechanics. That's what the "Q" stands for. I don't mean it's all of quantum mechanics, there are plenty of other areas as well, but treating them as two entirely separate things is the same as saying that conservation of momentum is a separate thing from Newtonian mechanics. The one is part of the other.

go some way in resolving this limitation or controversy. If so, then isn't Fleischman correct other than a poor choice of words. He doesn't say QED has limitations, only QM.

Which is nonsense, since QED is QM. Other than that, I have no idea what point you are trying to make with that quote. Yes, no-one is sure exactly how to interpret quantum mechanics. In other news, water is wet and cats may be either alive or dead. That is in no way related to your misunderstanding of QED.

Skwinty

23rd April 2009, 10:00 AM

Well, there's your first mistake. As I already said, QED is quantum mechanics. That's what the "Q" stands for. I don't mean it's all of quantum mechanics, there are plenty of other areas as well, but treating them as two entirely separate things is the same as saying that conservation of momentum is a separate thing from Newtonian mechanics. The one is part of the other.
Which is nonsense, since QED is QM. Other than that, I have no idea what point you are trying to make with that quote. Yes, no-one is sure exactly how to interpret quantum mechanics. In other news, water is wet and cats may be either alive or dead. That is in no way related to your misunderstanding of QED.

Quantum Mechanics was developed to explain the atom and the spectra of light emitted by different atomic species. QM can be divided into 4 types of phenomena: wave particle duality, quantization of certain physical properties, the uncertainty principle and quantum entanglement.(1920’s). When QM was applied to fields rather than particles, quantum field theories were developed. This resulted in quantum electrodynamics encompassing electrons, positrons and electromagnetic fields.(1940’s). Quantum chromodynamics was developed next as the theory of the strong interaction describing quarks and gluons which are the components of hadrons.(1950’s). All of these theories form quantum mechanics which is a general term sometimes for all of quantum physics, but sometimes for just non-relativistic theories.
Now, given this distinction, perhaps you can forgive my not being more specific. My point therefore, relating to cold fusion is: You can interprete the results of the cold fusion experiments with either classical or quantum mechanics, but to describe the system requires quantum electrodynamics and probably quantum chromodynamics. So, when P&F decided to experiment, they found that QM in the terms I described above, would not allow for nuclear reactions to be initiated through chemical means, but perhaps quantum electrodynamics would, hence my comment “Doesn't QED, which was developed much later than Quantum Mechanics, go some way in resolving this limitation or controversy. If so, then isn't Fleischman correct other than a poor choice of words. He doesn't say QED has limitations, only QM.”

And, yes I do know that the Q stands for quantum, that water is wet and cats are alive or dead. More education and less condescension would be appreciated. Thanks.:)

Reality Check

24th April 2009, 12:45 AM

Finally found the origin of the QED and Coldfusion link.

Why did you initially start your experiments?

This whole subject was driven by the need to find demonstration of the quantum electro dynamic paradigm. We’ve had the classical paradigm of
Newtonian mechanics. We’ve had Planck’s quantum mechanical paradigm. I think most people who work in physical science realize the limitations of the quantum mechanical paradigm and that it has to be replaced by the quantum electro dynamic paradigm, nevertheless the introduction of that paradigm is strongly resisted. And if you introduce the quantum electro dynamic paradigm you see that what is called cold fusion might be possible.

The problem is that the standard QED paradigm states that cold fusion is impossible. Maybe he is refering to some non-standard QED paradigm.

How could nuclear fusion at room temperature be explained using quantum electrodynamics?

Well, if you think about quantum electro dynamics you realize that you get a large assembly, a large collection of atoms and molecules behaving as a
single quantum system. So then you say, if I build a small amount of energy per atom into this large assembly of atoms and molecules then I will have a very large energy. And that large energy of course translates in the end to observable nuclear effects.

"a large collection of atoms and molecules behaving as a single quantum system" needs specific conditions, typically very low temperatures as in a Bose-Einstein condensate. This does not happen in the excess heat experiments. There is no explicit attempt to make the atoms in the appartus form a single quantum system.

So physics actually drove your research?

I had worked since the 1960s on quantum electro dynamics in conventional chemistry. I had realized that all those systems had to be modeled in terms of quantum electro dynamics. And then I said, well, what is the most extreme question we can pose in quantum electro dynamics? And that is, can we get a nuclear effect by chemical means? I thought it would happen, but you might not be able to observe it. What happened is that it is possible and you can observe it.

Originally published in Telepolis, January 22, 2005,
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/19/19257/1.html (http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/19/19257/1.html)
The last sentence should be something like "What happened is that it is possible and you can sometimes (but not reliably) observe excess heat". No one has yet shown that any excess heat is produced by fusion and that the effect can be reproduced in experiments.

Skwinty

24th April 2009, 07:23 AM

http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.0466v2

Another link between QED and LENR previously known as "Coldfusion"

Reality Check

24th April 2009, 08:15 AM

http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.0466v2

Another link between QED and LENR previously known as "Coldfusion"
You might want to cite a published paper rather than a year old pre-print.

The LENR theory (http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml) as stated by Dr. Allan Widom and Lewis Larsen is not cold fusion or even "Coldfusion".

The actual pre-print is a reply to critisms of their original paper so the "link between QED and LENR" may or may not be correct. The original paper seems to be "Ultra low momentum neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions on metallic hydride surfaces" published in The Euorpean Journal of Physcs C in 2005.

Skwinty

24th April 2009, 09:32 AM

Skwinty

24th April 2009, 09:56 AM

The LENR theory (http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml) as stated by Dr. Allan Widom and Lewis Larsen is not cold fusion or even "Coldfusion"..

Agreed, see extract from LENR faq.

"Andrei Lipson, a physicist from the Russian Academy of Sciences, was experimenting with a similar process in the 1980s. Because of confusion between the Jones process and the Fleischmann/Pons process, as well as the assumption that cold fusion was a "colder" version of thermonuclear fusion, the term "cold fusion" was immediately and mistakenly associated with the Fleischmann/Pons work."

The name seems to have stuck however, even in the title of the newenergy home page. All I am trying to ascertain, is where the link between QED and cold fusion comes from and why. As I said in an earlier post, Fleischman states that he was trying to understand QED, although he never publically said so. Also why preparata was so involved with redefining or recalculating QED in the cold fusion context.

Skwinty

24th April 2009, 11:49 AM

Vorpal

24th April 2009, 07:21 PM

It's seems to me to be fairly straightforward:
-- QED coupling becomes roughly constant at low energies with a small coupling constant (α ~ 1/137), making calculations very easy through standard pertubative methods
-- those QED calculations are very thoroughly tested confirmed to absurdly high accuracies
-- QCD coupling becomes much stronger at low energies, making our knowledge of its quantitative behavior here a bit fuzzy
-- QCD is not nearly as well-tested as QED

For fusion to occur, the relevant particles must overcome the potential barrier between them, either through virtue of having sufficient energy or through quantum tunneling. If there is unexpectedly high rate of fusion of low energies, then the effective potential barrier must be different than expected. Since we know the QED contribution very well, and have all kinds of excellent empirical reasons to have confidence in it, it makes much more sense to lay the blame to the theory that's much less accurately quantified at these energies: QCD. If there's any blame to be doled out in the first place, of course.

Reality Check

24th April 2009, 08:19 PM

Quantum field theory is commonly applied to chemical systems and theories. Now, quantum electrodynamics is a relativistic field theory which is applied to matter and it's interactions via photons. Photons being the carriers of the electromagnetic force.

Correct up to here.

Hence my reason for accepting the association between QED and the P&F experiments.If this is wrong, then please give a reason for it being wrong, rather than just stating it's wrong. This will assist me in following the argument correctly, rather than being left in the dark and feeling like a mushroom.
But why "Hence" and what do you mean by association?
QED is involved with the experiments - this is chemistry and QED is part of chemistry!

QED could be said to be associated with cold fusion or LENR if cold fusion or LENR are shown to exist and a mechanism by which QEDS allows them is found to match the data.

Skwinty

25th April 2009, 12:02 AM

Thanks Vorpal,
A clear and concise explanation.

Skwinty

25th April 2009, 12:19 AM

But why "Hence" and what do you mean by association?
QED is involved with the experiments - this is chemistry and QED is part of chemistry!

QED could be said to be associated with cold fusion or LENR if cold fusion or LENR are shown to exist and a mechanism by which QEDS allows them is found to match the data.

My confusion came about when Sol stated that QED and alpha had nothing to do with P&F's experiments. Yet Fleischman et al kept saying QED was involved when trying to describe the system etc.

Now, P&F may have been sloppy, but they must have had a good reason for invoking QED, and this is what I have tried to understand.

Also, LENR has been shown to induce nuclear reactions through chemical and electrical means. The CR39 detector makes that case.
However, the mechanism is not proven to be fusion. P&F, as far as I can ascertain never called their experiments cold fusion either. This name was coined by the press.

Reality Check

25th April 2009, 02:44 AM

My confusion came about when Sol stated that QED and alpha had nothing to do with P&F's experiments. Yet Fleischman et al kept saying QED was involved when trying to describe the system etc.

Now, P&F may have been sloppy, but they must have had a good reason for invoking QED, and this is what I have tried to understand.

Also, LENR has been shown to induce nuclear reactions through chemical and electrical means. The CR39 detector makes that case.
However, the mechanism is not proven to be fusion. P&F, as far as I can ascertain never called their experiments cold fusion either. This name was coined by the press.
The CR39 detector result is too new to be considered as a case. Once their results have been verified then you have a case for LENR and the ruling out of cold fusion.

P&F may not have used the term cold fusion but they reported excess energy that has to be produced by nuclear reactions and small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons and tritium. To everyone that looked like fusion and P&F (as far as I know) have not disagreed.
Using LENR theory to explain their results is a recent development.

Reality Check

25th April 2009, 02:51 AM

http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2002/2002DeNinnoA-ExperimentalEvidenceOf4HeProduction.pdf

How about this one.See Appendix A.
It is well known that the mainstream considers the whole topic as fringe at best and fraud at worst. So I don't expect many mainstream peer reviewed papers. The newenergy website has peer reviewed papers though.
By who is it "well known that the mainstream considers the whole topic as fringe at best and fraud at worst"?
If by "fringe" you mean "an area with a small amount of interest" then you are correct.
If by "fringe" you mean "an area unlikely to produce results" then you may be correct.

What do you mean by "mainstream peer reviewed papers" and why are the "peer reviewed papers" in the newenergy website not mainstream?

IMHO: Mainstream science is that science which has passed the test of the scientific method. Thus LENR is possibly mainstream. Cold fusion is invalid (room temperature fusion without the obvious byproducts) and so not mainstream.

Skwinty

25th April 2009, 03:42 AM

What do you mean by "mainstream peer reviewed papers" and why are the "peer reviewed papers" in the newenergy website not mainstream?

What I meant was mainstream (and I agree with your definition of mainstream) has not shown any real interest in cold fusion, and therefore would not expect to see peer reviewed papers. The APS declined to publish Schwingers papers on cold fusion as an example.

LENR is the theory that continues trying to explain the P&F experiments and so forward the idea that nuclear reactions could be induced by chemical means, thus bringing about a new energy source. It seems to me, that hot fusion is not really producing these objectives, at least not in an economic manner. However, LENR is still only being embraced by a small portion of the scientific community. At least this is the impression I get when I read the new energy website. I am sure that once the CR39 experiments are verified, this will change.

This does seem to indicate that P&F were not frauds and they were on the right track. The pressures arising from the importance of their discovery wrt patents etc certainly got the better of them and they prematurely announced the results, much to their detriment. Although, they were probably coerced into making the announcement for the prestige of the university. Just my opinion.

Skwinty

25th April 2009, 02:02 PM

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/FrisoneFthecoulomb.pdf
here is another paper linking QED to LENR and cold fusion.

The Man

26th April 2009, 02:24 PM

What photon? Photons have an energy that depends on their frequency. What's the frequency?

It is the frequency of a photon with a wavelength equal to the distance between the charges.

e2*4-1*π-1*ε0-1 would give you the force times the radius squared of two electrons separated by that radius. If we then take the radius as ‘d’ in the equation of the wiki article and apply that as the wavelength for a photon to calculate the energy for that photon which we then divide into (along with the ‘d’) the electron pair force times radius squared we get the fine structure constant.

Or more succinctly

e2*4-1*π-1*ε0-1 = F*R2 for an electron pair.

over

h*n*l = Energy of a photon times its wavelength

gives us

(F*R2) for an electron pair * (h*n*l)-1for a photon of ‘R’ wavelength = α

ETA:

I think I missed a reduction of h (or the 2p) in there somewhere and I think it needs to be F*R2 of two electrons times the angular wave number (2p/l) over the energy of that photon (h*n) with ‘R’ wavelength.

Skwinty

28th April 2009, 02:40 PM

Reality Check

28th April 2009, 03:22 PM

http://arxiv.org/ftp/nucl-th/papers/0303/0303057.pdf

If anyone is interested, herewith a paper which has some information on the relationship between cold fusion and QED. It also offers a critique on all forms of cold fusion and theories regarding cold fusion. It is beyond my immiediate grasp and would like some comments prior to investing a lot of time to digest. Thanks:)
The paper states basically what I have been saying. There is a "relationship between cold fusion and QED" and that is that the Coulomb barrier prevents fusion from happening at low energies, e.g. room temperatures. The quantum part of QED though allows tunneling through the barrier. This should not be measurable at room temperatures.

The theories reviewed in the paper are grouped into attempts to get through the barrier (increasing the probability of tunneling, lowering the barrier and increasing the energy of d so that the barrier is ascended) and some other proposed mechanisms for cold fusion.
But none of these theories explain the data as in the abstract:
We briefly summarize the reported anomalous effects in deuterated metals at ambient temperature, commonly known as "Cold Fusion" (CF), with an emphasis on important experiments as well as the theoretical basis for the opposition to interpreting them as cold fusion. Then we critically examine more than 25 theoretical models for CF, including unusual nuclear and exotic chemical hypotheses. We conclude that they do not explain the data.

I suggest that you start with reading the conclusion.

lewisglarsen

30th April 2009, 10:20 AM

The paper states basically what I have been saying. There is a "relationship between cold fusion and QED" and that is that the Coulomb barrier prevents fusion from happening at low energies, e.g. room temperatures. The quantum part of QED though allows tunneling through the barrier. This should not be measurable at room temperatures.

The theories reviewed in the paper are grouped into attempts to get through the barrier (increasing the probability of tunneling, lowering the barrier and increasing the energy of d so that the barrier is ascended) and some other proposed mechanisms for cold fusion.
But none of these theories explain the data as in the abstract:

I suggest that you start with reading the conclusion.

Au contraire - that paper was written was back in 2003. Today, the Widom-Larsen theory of low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs) can explain all of the well-characerized anomalous experimental data that has been collected in the field for the past 20 years. In fact, in our view LENRs did not begin with Pons & Fleischmann in 1989 --- we have uncovered credible evidence in peer-reviewed literature that certain types of heretofore unexplained, LENR-related anomalous experimental effects have been episodically reported for 100 years.

The mystery of what is really happening in low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs) does in fact have an answer - and it isn't fusion. 'Excess heat' generated and measured in experiments with LENRs, as well as Helium-4 production (not covered by 60 Minutes) and nuclear transmutation products (also not covered), are not the result of Coulomb barrier-penetrating fusion processes: hot, "cold," warm, or otherwise.

We have developed and published a comprehensive theory of LENRs based on well-established electroweak theory within the context of the Standard Model and collective effects that posits weak interactions and subsequent ultra low momentum neutron-catalyzed nuclear reactions, not any form of fusion, as the dominant physical processes underlying experimentally observed LENR phenomena in condensed matter.

There is no 'new physics' in our theoretical work and in our view, LENRs most assuredly do not involve any "cold fusion."

Our theory can explain all of the well-characterized anomalous LENR-related experimental data that has been collected for the past 20 years, including McKubre's (SRI), Energetics' (Dardik et al.), and Pons & Fleischmann's, among others.

Weak-interaction LENRs could prove to be a vastly cleaner, 'greener,' less expensive power generation technology than strong-interaction fission or fusion. In our peer-reviewed European Physical Journal C - Particles and Fields paper (see below), we provide a practical example of a LENR-based lithium fuel cycle that generates about as much energy as fusion reactions (incl. Helium-4 as a major byproduct), but without production of dangerous energetic neutrons or deadly gamma radiation.

In addition to seven technical publications on the Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs, The Institute of Science in Society (I-SiS) a nonprofit 'green' environmental group headquartered in London, UK, has published six 'plain English' articles about our theory (written for a broad audience --- see list below) and potential long-term ramifications of LENRs that are available on its UK website.

Weak-interaction LENRs are potentially much better than fusion. That possibility is potentially revolutionary. However, LENRs gore many long-standing sacred cows and threaten a myriad of vested scientific, academic, and commercial interests.

Further information and references about our theoretical work:

Comments -

For a concise, much less technical overview, there are four public online MS-Powerpoint presentations that are available on the SlideShare website. To find them, please search with Google using the keywords: Lewis Larsen slideshare

The seventh "Primer" arXiv paper released in October 2008 summarizes the previous six technical papers at a higher conceptual level with less mathematics. It was written for non-specialists to hopefully entice other scientists to become interested enough in our work to take the time necessary to delve into the many details of the collective electroweak physics of LENRs that are contained in our previous papers.

1. "Ultra Low Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Nuclear Reactions on Metallic Hydride Surfaces", Eur. Phys. J. C 46, 107 (2006 - arXiv in May 2005) - a free copy of the final publication may be downloaded via the Widom-Larsen Theory Portal on Steven Krivit's New Energy Times website

Six additional technical publications can be found on the Cornell physics preprint arXiv:

2. "Absorption of Nuclear Gamma Radiation by Heavy Electrons on Metallic Hydride Surfaces" (Sept 2005) Widom and Larsen

3. "Nuclear Abundances in Metallic Hydride Electrodes of Electrolytic Chemical Cells" (Feb 2006) Widom and Larsen

4. "Theoretical Standard Model Rates of Proton to Neutron Conversions Near Metallic Hydride Surfaces" (Sep 2007) Widom and Larsen

5. "Energetic Electrons and Nuclear Transmutations in Exploding Wires" (Sept 2007) Widom, Srivastava, and Larsen

6. "High Energy Particles in the Solar Corona" (April 2008) Widom, Srivastava, and Larsen

7. "Primer for Electro-Weak Induced Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" (Oct 2008) Srivastava, Widom, and Larsen

********************* 'Plain English' I-SiS Articles *****************************

November 13, 2008 - "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions for Green Energy - How weak interactions can provide sustainable nuclear energy and revolutionize the energy industry"

December 4, 2008 - "Widom-Larsen Theory Explains Low Energy Nuclear Reactions & Why They Are Safe and Green - All down to collective effects and weak interactions"

December 10, 2008 - "Portable and Distributed Power Generation from LENRs - Power output of LENR-based systems could be scaled up to address many different commercial applications"

December 11, 2008 - "LENRs for Nuclear Waste Disposal - How weak interactions can transform radioactive isotopes into more benign elements"

January 26, 2009 - "Safe, Less Costly Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning and More - How weak interaction LENRs can take us out of the nuclear safety and economic black hole"

January 27, 2009 - "LENRs Replacing Coal for Distributed Democratized Power -Low energy nuclear reactions have the potential to provide distributed power generation with zero carbon emission and cheaper than coal"

Skwinty

30th April 2009, 12:13 PM

Welcome to JREF lewisglarsen.Thanks for the pointers to more information on LENR.I hope we hear a lot more from you.:)

ben m

30th April 2009, 01:26 PM

7. "Primer for Electro-Weak Induced Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" (Oct 2008) Srivastava, Widom, and Larsen
The argument in this paper is very, very badly flawed.

a) some ill-defined process in Pd-D electrodes manufactures MeV electrons. As far as I an tell, the process ignores quantum mechanics, ignores thermodynamics, ignores shielding, and merely points out that the electric fields of bare nuclei are pretty strong.
b) The paper makes a wild guess that these MeV electrons are present on the surface at a density of 10^16 per cm^2---that's one per square angstrom. In other words, of order every electron in the surface monolayer is relativistic. Of course, it makes this guess based on dimensional-analysis calculation of the cross section. This cross section is well known and has a phase space term in it which you would be wise to worry about---why not use the real calculation instead of an approximate one?
c) The paper dismisses the other detection mechanisms of this huge supply of MeV photons---saying (flatly incorrectly) that the mean free path of MeV gamma rays is short (it's not). Heck, the mean free path of MeV electrons isn't short. There is a "citation" of a paper which says nothing about gamma rays.
d) Even allowing all of that, allowing a common e + p --> n + nu process, you are utterly incorrect to expect the neutrons to be ultracold. If all of the progenitors are at least thermal, even for an exactly-at-threshhold reaction, the neutrons will be thermal. (And you have no reason to put the reaction exactly at threshhold; the cross section is higher above threshhold.) Even if the neutrons were somehow ultracold, you want the neutrons to be absorbed by warm nuclei. A collision between an ultracold neutron and a thermal absorber is a, in fact, a thermal collision with a thermal cross section, not an ultracold collision with an ultracold cross section.
e) Even if you magically make the entire system ultracold, you are incorrect to state that a 50A mean free path prevents any neutrons from escaping---because you specifically put the neutron production process into the material surface, and supplied 10^13 neutrons per cm per second. That is still 10^8 neutrons per second escaping from a depth of 50nm.
The paper completely ignores the fact that their pet reaction is not the only one available. If there's an electronic mechanism for stopping MeV gammas from escaping the system, it will stop them before they can react with protons; there is no way around this. If you somehow trap the MeV gammas in the surface, how do you stop them from exciting the dozen nuclear photoexcitations of 105Pd (all with an O(alpha^2) cross section rather than an O(G_F^2))? How do you stop them from transmuting 105Pd-->105Ag which is unstable and trivially detectable?
The paper seems to entirely ignore the difference between deuterium and protons. I thought that the whole point of cold fusion experiments was that they were meant to "work" with Pd-D and "not work" with Pd-H, and that this is claimed to be evidence that there's D-dependent nuclear physics going on. Yet you just sent us a paper whose energy calculations are based entirely on e-H reactions with their 1.3 MeV threshhold. The same threshhold for e-D will be 3.5 MeV. I don't see that this is a problem in the context of the paper; since the electron energy distribution was made up ad-hoc, you may as well extend it up to 3 MeV, right?

In other words, it looks like this paper presented a hypothesis (atomic surface effects can accelerate electrons to > 2 MeV) with the idea that it would generate (endothermic) e-D reactions which would then generate (exothermic) neutron captures which generate excess heat. Clever idea, does it make any sense? It does if you do a back-of-the-envelope calculation ignoring thermodynamics.. If it were true would it be observable? Not if we can invent new physics to hide the gamma rays, neutrons, and transmutation products. In other words, no, it doesn't make any sense.

It is, of course, merely my opinion that these processes cannot occur. If you are being very generous, you can invent more workarounds to get around any limit I should propose---although the fact that you casually ignored thermodynamics in this paper does not make me confident that your next batch of workarounds will be any more plausible than this batch. However, what you have done is propose a theory with lots of observables. For example, do Pd foils become utterly and unprecedentedly impervious to gamma rays when there's this funny process going on? Not hard to measure at all.

lewisglarsen

30th April 2009, 02:45 PM

Your summary comment - "The argument in this paper is very, very badly flawed."

What is in fact flawed, Ben M, are your arguments and your understanding of the physics contained in our paper(s).

Many, many physicists besides the referees (on the 2006 EPJC paper and on the about to be published "Primer") who have spent significant time carefully studying all of our published work have agreed that our physics is correct and that our mathematics/calculations are also correct.

Your conclusions, sir, are not shared by the majority of very knowledgeable, broadly-trained physicists who have taken the time to carefully study all of our theoretical work on LENRs.

Frankly, your comments are indicative of what amounts to an ill-thought-out attack and peremptory dismissal based upon a casual cursory review of one summary "Primer" paper, without any serious study of the details of what we propose is happening on condensed matter surfaces in LENR systems that can be found in our other previous, more mathematically detailed publications on the arXiv, and without bothering to check and read any of the many good references that were included.

Your errors of fact and understanding are so many that I do not simply do not have the time available to enumerate all of them and comment in detail thereon. Many of your comments are simply incorrect; they represent mere personal opinions with little substance or physics rigor behind them.

For example, it is abundantly clear from your remarks that you do not understand our use of collective effects in the context of well-accepted electroweak theory. If you don't understand that key feature of our work, then I suggest that you read more about such concepts.

Your comment that we somehow violate any of the laws of thermodynamics is simply wrong and, to be blunt, utterly nonsensical if you truly understood what we are saying (obviously you don't).

The neutrons collectively produced via the weak interaction on metallic-hydride condensed matter surfaces are in fact ultra low momentum; in a pending, peer-reviewed publication of the "Primer" paper, thanks to helpful comments by referees, we explain that particular feature of our theory in much greater detail in a fashion that will most likely satisfy your concerns on that issue.

I do think that you stated a simple truth when you said, "It is, of course, merely my opinion that these processes cannot occur." In my view, in your critical rant all that you voiced were mainly your opinions laced with an assortment of loose assertions and arguments about your 'discomfort' with this or that.

Some very prominent physicists have complimented us privately on this work; they do not share any of your concerns/issues about our physics. Please forgive me if I value their carefully studied opinions more highly than yours, Ben M.

ben m

30th April 2009, 04:30 PM

Your summary comment - "The argument in this paper is very, very badly flawed."

You are aware, lewisglarsen, that many of the claims in your paper are (at the very least) counterintutitive---that they are not what you would expect from a back of the envelope calculation or from "ordinary" physics intuition. You do not expect someone to read your primer and say, "yes, yes, this is very obviously true."

I read your paper and said "This is not obviously true"---as expected---but I also said, "... but I haven't done the calculations myself, let me see if I am wrong." So I looked at what I considered to be the most surprising claim,

There is also a high suppression in the production of high energy gamma rays (2).

and I did what you would have wanted me to do---I clicked through to reference #2, cond-mat/0602472. And this is when I stopped giving you the benefit of numerous doubts: cond-mat/0602472 does not even begin to explain why there would be suppression of high-energy gamma rays. I doesn't mention gamma rays, gamma ray absorption cross sections, or anything even moderately relevant. In fact, it's hard to tell why this paper was cited at all. It certainly does not justify the statement that the Primer used it to justify.

OK, "neutrons produced in a thermal bath come out ultracold", that's sure an obviously extraordinary claim, surely if it is well-justified you have a paper---or a webpage---or a calculation---justifying it? Again, I did not simply assume that you were a crackpot---I tried to follow up and see what your research says about it. Oops, sorry, no citation was provided. Neither is a citation provided in cond-mat/0505026. Tell me again why I'm supposed to believe that the a reaction between thermal products produces a sub-thermal final state? Because you can telling me on an anonymous Web forum that you had a referee agreeing with it? Sorry, if that were the standard then we would have proven Einstein wrong a couple of threads ago.

OK, let's try again---the cross section. There is an explicit mistake in the cross section approximation given. Your dimensional analysis correctly notices that there needs to be an energy^5 term in this calculation. However, if you look at the actual Fermi theory of beta decay, this term comes from the final state phase space, not from the mass. Rather than using the fifth power of the electron mass, you should have used the fifth power of the energy above threshhold. To produce ultracold neutrons you need sub-micro-eV of phase space, not 511 keV. Your cross section estimate is wrong by a very, very, very large factor. Let's see, maybe there is some special reason that your calculation rather than the standard one should be correct? No citation, no calculation.

I gave your paper the benefit of several doubts. The contents of the paper did nothing whatsoever to assuage those doubts. Hence my post. You are welcome to try to assuage those doubts here---for example by pointing me to the references or published calculations that assured you that your statements are correct, but that you somehow didn't manage to sneak into your preprint.

sol invictus

30th April 2009, 05:06 PM

Many, many physicists besides the referees (on the 2006 EPJC paper and on the about to be published "Primer") who have spent significant time carefully studying all of our published work have agreed that our physics is correct and that our mathematics/calculations are also correct.

Evidence, please.

Your conclusions, sir, are not shared by the majority of very knowledgeable, broadly-trained physicists who have taken the time to carefully study all of our theoretical work on LENRs.

Evidence, please.

Frankly, your comments are indicative of what amounts to an ill-thought-out attack and peremptory dismissal based upon a casual cursory review of one summary "Primer" paper, without any serious study of the details of what we propose is happening on condensed matter surfaces in LENR systems that can be found in our other previous, more mathematically detailed publications on the arXiv, and without bothering to check and read any of the many good references that were included.

Clearly Ben m's reaction was a first impression, as I don't think he had time to read all those references. But in many cases it's possible to reach a fairly solid conclusion without studying every possibly relevant piece of evidence. So far, you've said nothing to make me doubt that.

Your errors of fact and understanding are so many that I do not simply do not have the time available to enumerate all of them and comment in detail thereon.

Why not pick a specific one and address it?

For example, it is abundantly clear from your remarks that you do not understand our use of collective effects in the context of well-accepted electroweak theory. If you don't understand that key feature of our work, then I suggest that you read more about such concepts.

That's an extremely vague statement which has little or nothing to do with any of Ben's specific and concise criticisms. Why is that?

Incidentally, I happen to know who Ben is, and I can assure you he is an expert on electroweak theory (as well as the rest of the standard model).

Your comment that we somehow violate any of the laws of thermodynamics is simply wrong and, to be blunt, utterly nonsensical if you truly understood what we are saying (obviously you don't).

He didn't say that, exactly - he said you ignored thermodynamic effects. Is that true? If so, why?

Some very prominent physicists have complimented us privately on this work; they do not share any of your concerns/issues about our physics. Please forgive me if I value their carefully studied opinions more highly than yours, Ben M.

These amorphous and vague arguments from authority actually undermine your case. They're a common tactic among people who cannot defend their views with facts.

Dilb

1st May 2009, 11:07 AM

For a concise, much less technical overview, there are four public online MS-Powerpoint presentations that are available on the SlideShare website. To find them, please search with Google using the keywords: Lewis Larsen slideshare

Don't mind if I do! Of course, I'm a solid-state/QED guy, so I'll leave the electroweak theory to other people. I do have some questions about your presentation though.

Why are you trying to sound like a crackpot? The quotes on page 11 are textbook examples of what crazy people say. There are probably a dozen example on this forum alone of people using those quotes while arguing something absolutely ridiculous. There's no evidence of any sort actually presented, no numbers given for theoretical yield or production rates, you formed a company in 2001 but don't have anything to present except a publication 5 years later, again without even any estimates of what we should expect to be able to measure.

Who has called this the "Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs"? You're publication has been cited twice, according to web of science, and neither use that phrase. One is a review article, and the other[1] claims a resulting electron mass shift 17 orders of magnitude smaller than what you find (you know, about what people would expect), simply by redoing the calculation in the Coulomb gauge. Neither is a great endorsement of your theory.

Simply from the perspective of trying to sell your ideas, doesn't this seem like a very bad way to go about it?

[1]Electron mass shift in nonthermal systems
P L Hagelstein et al 2008 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 41 125001 (9pp) doi: 10.1088/0953-4075/41/12/125001

Skwinty

1st May 2009, 11:25 AM

[1]Electron mass shift in nonthermal systems
P L Hagelstein et al 2008 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 41 125001 (9pp) doi: 10.1088/0953-4075/41/12/125001

Here is a rebuttal to that paper. http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/2008Widom-ErrorsInTheQuantum.pdf.

Interesting read but way over my head. Please post your impressions.

Also, as I understand, the gamma blocking mechanism is being witheld due to intellectual/patent reasons.

Dilb

1st May 2009, 02:01 PM

Here is a rebuttal to that paper. http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/2008Widom-ErrorsInTheQuantum.pdf.

Interesting read but way over my head. Please post your impressions.

Also, as I understand, the gamma blocking mechanism is being witheld due to intellectual/patent reasons.

I'm not familiar with surface physics, and I'm not familiar with the formalism used. However, saying things like
Unfortunately, the whole Hagelstein-Chaudhary manuscript is invalidated by the blunder of leaving out Psi in their very first equation.
(emphasis theirs) is remarkably unprofessional of them. Even if they are correct about this, it would only be point a) on ben m's list, the existence of electrons with MeVs of energy available.

Dancing David

1st May 2009, 02:49 PM

Welome lewisglarsen!

Your conclusions, sir, are not shared by the majority of very knowledgeable, broadly-trained physicists who have taken the time to carefully study all of our theoretical work on LENRs.

Sorry LGL, but that is an appeal to authority. here at the JREF you will be expected to defend everything that you post. reference to uncited people without reference to specific points will go about this far. . That dot is about how far it will go.

Welcome to the Forum.

Your errors of fact and understanding are so many that I do not simply do not have the time available to enumerate all of them and comment in detail thereon. Many of your comments are simply incorrect; they represent mere personal opinions with little substance or physics rigor behind them.

Well, then this is not the Forum for you, if you can not defend your statements and critique those of others then , well there would not be any discussion.

Please if you feel that Ben M has an error, we would all welcome you pointing it out, and then discussing why you thinkl it is an error.

Welcome to the Forum.

For example, it is abundantly clear from your remarks that you do not understand our use of collective effects in the context of well-accepted electroweak theory. If you don't understand that key feature of our work, then I suggest that you read more about such concepts.

Why don't you explain them for us, then the consensus of terms and meaning occurs, then the issues get worked out, you may persuade people you are right.

Welcome to the Forum.

The neutrons collectively produced via the weak interaction on metallic-hydride condensed matter surfaces are in fact ultra low momentum; in a pending, peer-reviewed publication of the "Primer" paper, thanks to helpful comments by referees, we explain that particular feature of our theory in much greater detail in a fashion that will most likely satisfy your concerns on that issue.

Now that is not Ben's fault is it? Try to explain the process to us, without tipping the paper.

Some very prominent physicists have complimented us privately on this work; they do not share any of your concerns/issues about our physics. Please forgive me if I value their carefully studied opinions more highly than yours, Ben M.

Oh, secret admirers don't count for anything on this forum, defend your statements, critique tose of others, engage in the debate and discussion.

Welcome to the Forum!

:)

ben m

2nd May 2009, 06:16 PM

Simply from the perspective of trying to sell your ideas, doesn't this seem like a very bad way to go about it?

Actually, it looks like Mr. Larsen's way of selling his theory is to post this same sales pitch and set of ArXiV links in every comment thread he can find.

ben m

9th May 2009, 01:28 PM

(bump!)

Is Mr. Larsen not coming back?

Let me just pile on a few detailed points about his Magnum Opus. The closer I looked at it (and its references) the worse the science content gets.

Your paper suggest that ultracold neutron capture in Pd-H should produce 4He via the reaction chain 4He + n -> 5He, 5He + n -> 6He. The first reaction is forbidden by energy conservation, because 5He is almost 900 keV more massive than 4He and a neutron. The second reaction is energetically allowed, but made utterly irrelevant by the short 5He lifetime of 1e-22 seconds---it's barely a nucleus at all, it's a strong resonance. A chain of nuclear reactions, as the authors must know, depends on the accumulation of the intermediate states, which does not occur for such short-lived states. How is it possible to make a mistake like this? In a paper, moreover, whose premise is supposed to be "look how we're explaining cold fusion using well-known nuclear physics, not new stuff".

The authors also suggest that a layer of 6Li and 7Li on the Pd surface could capture neutrons. This seems to contradict several other aspects of the paper. First, it contradicts the claim that the neutrons are not independently detected because they cannot escape the Pd surface. How do they get past the Pd and get to the Li in this case? Secondly, we were earlier told that the Pd surface is impermeable to gamma rays, and that this explained their nondetection in various experiments---if neutrons are now allowed to capture in just outside the surface, we should indeed see these gamma rays, either from the 7Li radiative neutron capture or from the usual 1H and 2H reactions. Or does the exterior become impermeable too? Third, the authors seem to completely ignore the presence of other materials in these systems, like Pd, which can capture and interact with neutrons. Where's 105Pd + n -> 105Ag, for example, for which the cross section is larger than that of H, D, and 7Li put together? Fourth, in what seems to be a theme, the authors ignore the actual nuclear data on these systems. 6Li has a neutron capture cross section which is a factor of 10,000 higher than 7Li. The author's energy balance calculation appears to treat the captures as a chain ("for every 6Li + n->7Li there is a 7Li+n->2a") which is incorrect; the captures are independent events with Poisson statistics. How is it possible to get this wrong? This is not fancy cutting-edge physics; this is the basics. Chemists were doing these things correctly in the 19th century.

The authors miscalculate the weak-interaction cross section for e + p -> n + nu. To emphasize how bad their miscalculation is, please note that their dimensional analysis gives the same result for e+p->n + nu as it does for p+nu -> n+e (neutrino charged-current interaction). The fact that the latter has an extremely small cross section is well-known, and this should have made it obvious to the authors that their estimate was wrong. (In other words: there's a good reason we call it the "weak interaction".) Or do the authors think that neutrinos have a mean free path shorter than a few angstroms? Alternatively, if the authors are really resetting the electron's rest mass rather than giving it kinetic energy---in that case, they might have noticed that e + p -> n + nu does occur in appropriate heavy nuclei (it's called k-capture). Perhaps the authors would like to look at this well-understood (and well-measured) process, from which they will again learn that their dimensional analysis is wrong: the phase space is controlled by the 5th power of some rather small numbers, not the 5th power of the electron mass; the decay constant depends on the electron density at the nucleus, a number which is much larger for heavy elements than for H; and that decay times like those they propose are (10^3 s), experimentally, characteristic of multi-MeV decays with fast-recoiling final states, not barely-at-threshhold reactions with thermal final states.

The derivation of the mean electric field in Pd is very strange, where by "strange" I mean "the sort of thing you see on a bad Freshman physics midterm". First of all, it is nonsensical to point out strong fields---and 10^11 V/m is indeed strong---and suggest that proves the existence of "internal local electric fields more than sufficient to accelerate the surface plasmon polariton electrons in overcoming the threshold barrier." Surely the authors are aware that it is the product of force and displacement that determines energy; for example, a 10^11 V field over its typical coherence length, 1 Angstrom, can impart only 10 eV of energy. Secondly, they locate an electron 1 Bohr radius away from a proton, then displace the proton by the some amount (2.2 A) culled from phonon physics, and calculate the new electric field at the same point in space. This operation is so disconnected from the physics that it's hard to evaluate. It's like a reverse Born-Oppenheimer approximation. It makes no predictions whatsoever for the accelerations of electrons. To illustrate, when I hit my desk with my fist I can cause all of its nuclei to displace (and even to oscillate) by 2.2 mm; am I thus generating causing 10^17 V/m fields?

I'm not going to get into the thermodynamics unless Mr. Larsen is going to come back and discuss it. For the benefit of any other readers: this paper's conclusions are all wrong, and not in some tiny detail that the authors can attribute to "it's a young field and not all the bugs are worked out yet". The mistakes the authors make are on precisely the key points---the points which they claim make the difference between "Pd-H makes excess heat and 4He but no gamma rays" and "Pd-H just sits there like you'd expect".

Skwinty

12th May 2009, 01:43 PM

Hi Ben-M
It does seem as though lewisglarsen is not coming back.
I read your reply many times and I would like to ask a few questions.
1. Is your view point based on high energy nuclear reactions. Schwinger did say that the consequences of cold fusion are not the same as the consequences of hot fusion. Cold being low energy and hot being high energy nuclear reactions? The term "cold fusion" is misleading to say the least.
2. Are you saying that the experimental results Widom-Larson are trying to explain are bogus? I know you posted a negative response to the Spawar cr39 detector results.
3. Have you read any of Schwingers papers on cold fusion? If so, what are your opinions? Was Schwinger turning cranky in his latter years?

Here is a link to one of Schwingers papers, you will find more at this site.

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJnuclearene.pdf

1. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice,"
Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion (Salt Lake City) pp. 130 - 136, March 28 -31 (1990).
2. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice.1," Zeitschrift fur Physik D 15, pp. 221-225 (1990).
3. "Cold Fusion: A Hypothesis," Zeitschrift fur Naturforschung 45a, p. 756 (1990).
4. "Cold Fusion: Does It Have a Future?" in Evolutional Trends of Physical Sciences. Germany: Springer Verlag 1991. (From a talk delivered in Tokyo, 1990)
5. "Phonon Representations," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, pp. 6983 - 6984 (1990). - 4 -
6. "Phonon Dynamics," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, pp. 8370 - 8372 (1990).
7. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice - Causal Order," Progress in Theoretical Physics 85, pp. 711 - 712 (1991).
8. "Cold Fusion Theory: A Brief History of Mine," Fourth International Conference on Cold Fusion (Maui, 1993) ICCF-4 Transactions of Fusion Technology pp. ? - ? (1994).

Dilb

12th May 2009, 04:12 PM

Skwinty

15th May 2009, 02:08 PM

Hi Ben-M
It does seem as though lewisglarsen is not coming back.
I read your reply many times and I would like to ask a few questions.
1. Is your view point based on high energy nuclear reactions. Schwinger did say that the consequences of cold fusion are not the same as the consequences of hot fusion. Cold being low energy and hot being high energy nuclear reactions? The term "cold fusion" is misleading to say the least.
2. Are you saying that the experimental results Widom-Larson are trying to explain are bogus? I know you posted a negative response to the Spawar cr39 detector results.
3. Have you read any of Schwingers papers on cold fusion? If so, what are your opinions? Was Schwinger turning cranky in his latter years?

Here is a link to one of Schwingers papers, you will find more at this site.

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJnuclearene.pdf

1. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice,"
Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion (Salt Lake City) pp. 130 - 136, March 28 -31 (1990).

2. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice.1," Zeitschrift fur Physik D 15, pp. 221-225 (1990).

3. "Cold Fusion: A Hypothesis," Zeitschrift fur Naturforschung 45a, p. 756 (1990).
4. "Cold Fusion: Does It Have a Future?" in Evolutional Trends of Physical Sciences. Germany: Springer Verlag 1991. (From a talk delivered in Tokyo, 1990)
5. "Phonon Representations," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, pp. 6983 - 6984 (1990). - 4 -
6. "Phonon Dynamics," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, pp. 8370 - 8372 (1990).
7. "Nuclear Energy in an Atomic Lattice - Causal Order," Progress in Theoretical Physics 85, pp. 711 - 712 (1991).
8. "Cold Fusion Theory: A Brief History of Mine," Fourth International Conference on Cold Fusion (Maui, 1993) ICCF-4 Transactions of Fusion Technology pp. ? - ? (1994).

And, why no takers on this, other than Dilbs run of the mill dodge.

Dancing David

15th May 2009, 02:46 PM

Maybe Skwinty they haven't read it yet, and may all those papers are very old.

No dodge, have a nice weekend.

What do you think is relevant in those papers?

What highlights?

Skwinty

15th May 2009, 03:02 PM

Maybe Skwinty they haven't read it yet, and may all those papers are very old.

No dodge, have a nice weekend.

What do you think is relevant in those papers?

What highlights?

Sure, those papers are as old as cold fusion. However, Julian Schwinger was no crackpot and he endorsed the whole issue. If he was alive today, would he have changed his mind? Look, I am not holding my breath on any kind of fusion, hot or cold, The subject is however interesting from either perspective IMO. Yet the mainstream doesn't seem to think so and that I find even more interesting.

A lot has been said by proponents of cold fusion as to why the mainstream regards the issue as voodoo science and once again I am skeptical of these claims as well as the mainstreams claims towards cold fusion.

There seems to be lots of innuendo from both sides. I wonder where cold fusion or rather low energy nuclear reactions would be today if a similar amount of money had been allocated as had been to hot fusion.

Here in Cape Town (The Cape of Storms) we are battening down the hatches in preparation for some stormy weather, so fires, wine, DVD's and good books are on my agenda for the weekend. Have a good one too.:)

ben m

15th May 2009, 03:20 PM

1. Is your view point based on high energy nuclear reactions. Schwinger did say that the consequences of cold fusion are not the same as the consequences of hot fusion. Cold being low energy and hot being high energy nuclear reactions? The term "cold fusion" is misleading to say the least.

This paper presents the hypothesis that (a) solid-state effects give the electron a large effective mass, and (b) once that effective mass is there, ordinary Fermi theory predicts proton-to-neutron conversions. Then it gives (c) a bunch of excuses for why "proton to neutron conversion" wouldn't result in detectable neutrons and gamma rays.

I agree with the relation "if a then b" However, first and foremost, I disagree on thermodynamic grounds that (a) is true. They are right that Fermi theory says that this reaction would, if (a) were true, *exist*, but even in that case they are wrong about its *rate* by a large factor. They are using hideously wrong crackpot-style physics arguments for part (c).

Does that answer your question? Please note that the authors were at pains to say that they did not invoke new properties of neutrons and nuclei, so I feel it is appropriate to point out that their paper contradicts so many of the known properties of neutrons and nuclei.

Dilb

15th May 2009, 06:07 PM

And, why no takers on this, other than Dilbs run of the mill dodge.

Dodge? Excuse me for not taking a week to review a paper outside my expertise, on a subject that was thoroughly investigated when it was announced, only to completely fail to produce anything substantial, such as experimental evidence. But fine, let's look at a claim:

But consider the circumstance of cold fusion. At very low energies of relative motion, the proton and deuteron of the HD reaction are in an s-state, one of zero orbital angular momentum, and therefore of positive orbital parity. The intrinsic parities of proton, deuteron, and 3He are also positive. Then, the usually dominant electric dipole radiation — which requires a parity change — is forbidden. To be sure, as in the capture of a slow neutron by a proton, magnetic dipole radiation can occur, but at a significantly slowed rate. It is not unreasonable, then, that a good fraction, or, indeed, all of the available energy will be transferred to the phonon excitations of the heavily deuterided lattice. No 5.5 Mev γ-rays.

This sounds extremely unlikely. Rather than any minor process contributing a small amount of angular momentum, he's guessing that a few million phonons are created during a nuclear reaction. This is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect would happen if there is any nucleus-phonon coupling. The Mössbauer effect, which actually exists, involves phonons preventing energy from being lost in photons. In general phonons contribute much more momentum than energy to interactions, so this momentum-less but energy rich phonon production is really weird.

Skwinty

16th May 2009, 02:36 AM

Does that answer your question? Please note that the authors were at pains to say that they did not invoke new properties of neutrons and nuclei, so I feel it is appropriate to point out that their paper contradicts so many of the known properties of neutrons and nuclei.

Thanks ben m,
That answers question 1.
When you have the time and inclination, please answer questions 2 and 3.

2. Are you saying that the experimental results Widom-Larson are trying to explain are bogus? I know you posted a negative response to the Spawar cr39 detector results.
3. Have you read any of Schwingers papers on cold fusion? If so, what are your opinions? Was Schwinger turning cranky in his latter years?

Here is a link to one of Schwingers papers, you will find more at this site.

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Sch...nuclearene.pdf (http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJnuclearene.pdf)

Skwinty

16th May 2009, 02:59 AM

Dodge? Excuse me for not taking a week to review a paper outside my expertise, on a subject that was thoroughly investigated when it was announced, only to completely fail to produce anything substantial, such as experimental evidence.

Hi Dilb,
The reason I classed your reply as a dodge is because you took no notice of what has happened in the last 20 years. You simply restated the initial mainstream reaction.

I asked three specific questions which you dismissed out of hand.
The Schwinger paper I linked to was published in 1990.
Here is a further extract bolding mine.

"From what has been said, it is clear that cold fusion and hot fusion are quite different physical domains. The following qualitative remarks present that fact in an extreme form. To my knowledge, all treatments of nuclear fusion between positively charged particles represent the reaction rate as the product of two factors. The first factor is a barrier penetration probability. It refers entirely to the electric forces of repulsion. The second factor is an intrinsic nuclear reaction rate. It refers entirely to the nuclear forces. This representation of the overall probability, per unit time, as the product of two independent factors, may be true enough under the circumstances of hot fusion. But in very low energy cold fusion one deals essentially with a single state, or wave function, all parts of which are coherent. It is not possible to totally isolate the effect of the electric
forces from that of the nuclear forces. The correct treatment of cold fusion will be free of the collision-dominated mentality of the hot fusioneers. This audience needs no reminder of the extreme reactions that cold fusion has engendered. Happily, the psychological situation has been stabilized by a Christmas present from Los Alamos, re-enforcing an earlier announcement by Oak Ridge, as supported by findings at Texas A&M. It is no longer possible to lightly dismiss the reality of cold fusion."

Now, Julian Schwinger was no crackpot.

Fredrik

16th May 2009, 07:07 AM

The question of what kind of a world it describes, however, is controversial; there is very little agreement, among physicists and among philosophers, about what the world is like according to quantum mechanics.
...
Doesn't QED, which was developed much later than Quantum Mechanics, go some way in resolving this limitation or controversy.

QED is a theory of matter and interactions formulated in the framework of quantum mechanics. That means that QED inherits all the interpretational issues from QM and adds a few of its own. In particular: the idea that an electromagnetic interaction can be thought of as an exchange of virtual photons is just an interpretation of the individual terms in a series expansion of a mathematical expression that represents a probability amplitude (a complex number with the property that the square of its magnitude is a probability). It's quite a stretch to assume that the individual terms "describe what really happens".

Actually, I think it's an even bigger stretch to think that quantum mechanics is telling us what "actually happens". I think QM is just an algorithm that tells us how to compute the probabilities of possible results of future experiments, given the result of past experiments. People have come up with various "many-worlds" interpretations of QM to save the idea that QM is a model of the world rather than just a computational algorithm, but the more I learn about those intepretations, the less plausible they seem to me.

Dilb

16th May 2009, 02:07 PM

Hi Dilb,
The reason I classed your reply as a dodge is because you took no notice of what has happened in the last 20 years. You simply restated the initial mainstream reaction.

That's not the mainstream reaction, that's the mainstream conclusion. Nothing new has happened in the last 15 years. Occasionally you hear a new claim that cold fusion has definitely been measured this time, but it's never reproducible.

I asked three specific questions which you dismissed out of hand.

I answered your first two questions. Schwinger did not think there was anything unusual about the fusion reaction: it would work exactly like how hot fusion works. The results have never been reproducible in different labs, the most reasonable explanation is that cold fusion is not occurring.
The Schwinger paper I linked to was published in 1990.
Here is a further extract bolding mine.

"From what has been said, it is clear that cold fusion and hot fusion are quite different physical domains. The following qualitative remarks present that fact in an extreme form. To my knowledge, all treatments of nuclear fusion between positively charged particles represent the reaction rate as the product of two factors. The first factor is a barrier penetration probability. It refers entirely to the electric forces of repulsion. The second factor is an intrinsic nuclear reaction rate. It refers entirely to the nuclear forces. This representation of the overall probability, per unit time, as the product of two independent factors, may be true enough under the circumstances of hot fusion. But in very low energy cold fusion one deals essentially with a single state, or wave function, all parts of which are coherent. It is not possible to totally isolate the effect of the electric
forces from that of the nuclear forces. The correct treatment of cold fusion will be free of the collision-dominated mentality of the hot fusioneers. This audience needs no reminder of the extreme reactions that cold fusion has engendered. Happily, the psychological situation has been stabilized by a Christmas present from Los Alamos, re-enforcing an earlier announcement by Oak Ridge, as supported by findings at Texas A&M. It is no longer possible to lightly dismiss the reality of cold fusion."

Now, Julian Schwinger was no crackpot.

No, but that quote is from 20 years ago, based on the initial findings of some groups. Different groups claimed to have measured cold fusion, but they all used different experiments, and none of them actually had conclusive results that could be duplicated. This is despite the fact that a lot of people were investigating cold fusion. Schwinger was wrong about those early finding actually being anything.

Skwinty

16th May 2009, 02:37 PM

Occasionally you hear a new claim that cold fusion has definitely been measured this time, but it's never reproducible.

Many of the statements made by opponents are factually incorrect. For example, they assert that no result has ever been replicated, and that no cold fusion research paper has ever been published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed paper. It is a matter of fact that roughly a thousand papers have been published in mainstream journals. You can verify this in a university library.

If replication is the issue, then why is the same criteria not applied here.

Cloning – far more difficult to replicate than cold fusion. The success rate is less than 1 per 1000 attempts, whereas many cold fusion experiments work between 60% and 100% of the time, such as the Iwamura (Mitsubishi)
The top quark – cannot be replicated by any laboratory other than Fermilab. Unlike cold fusion, the proof of the top quark is entirely statistical in nature.

I answered your first two questions. Schwinger did not think there was anything unusual about the fusion reaction: it would work exactly like how hot fusion works.

Where does Schwinger make this claim. In the quote I pasted into the last post he says

"The correct treatment of cold fusion will be free of the collision-dominated mentality of the hot fusioneers."

and

"From what has been said, it is clear that cold fusion and hot fusion are quite different physical domains."

Dilb

16th May 2009, 05:50 PM

Many of the statements made by opponents are factually incorrect. For example, they assert that no result has ever been replicated, and that no cold fusion research paper has ever been published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed paper. It is a matter of fact that roughly a thousand papers have been published in mainstream journals. You can verify this in a university library.

If replication is the issue, then why is the same criteria not applied here.

Cloning – far more difficult to replicate than cold fusion. The success rate is less than 1 per 1000 attempts, whereas many cold fusion experiments work between 60% and 100% of the time, such as the Iwamura (Mitsubishi)

The last time I looked at cloning it was more like 1 in 8, and that was probably 10 years ago. No cold fusion results have been repeatable. The same person producing similar results is not repeatability. If it were, polywater and N-rays would be actual phenomenon. There are hundreds of polywater publications, all of which turned out to be wrong.

Where does Schwinger make this claim. In the quote I pasted into the last post he says

"The correct treatment of cold fusion will be free of the collision-dominated mentality of the hot fusioneers."

and

"From what has been said, it is clear that cold fusion and hot fusion are quite different physical domains."

Schwinger guessed that cold fusion could be explained by a regular fusion process, where 2 nuclei combine, except instead of producing neutrons or gamma rays, it would produce millions of phonons. This is quite different from Widom and Larson's guess, which involve a weak interaction, where protons and electrons combine to form neutrons. The nuclear pathway is entirely different.
All Schwinger was guessing was that the rate of cold fusion would be described quite differently than the rate of hot fusion. It would be the same high-energy nuclear reaction in either case.

Skwinty

17th May 2009, 06:11 AM

No cold fusion results have been repeatable. The same person producing similar results is not repeatability.

I disagree:

First report of a possible nuclear fusion in
palladium loaded with heavy hydrogen: Berlin,
Germany, September 17, 1926 by Professors
Paneth and Peters.

Detection of confirmed nuclear fusion in liquid
heavy hydrogen at -422F (-252C) in Russia,
Berkeley and other places from 1954 to 1959

See:
Catalysis of Nuclear Reactions between Hydrogen Isotopes by v- mesons
J.D Jackson (Physical Review Volume 106, no 2 April 15, 1957)

Hundreds of ‘excess heat’ results from at least 20 independent labs repeat PF results, from 1990 to 2009.
Quite similar results from many other labs in Italy, Russia,
China, Germany, and the USA (mainly SRI and US Navy)

Particle tracks: Navy SPAWAR in March, 2009.

Work underway at the Navy Research Labs (NRL) in DC

SEM images from Energetic Technologies Ltd. in Omer, Israel
Micro-craters in palladium following extreme heat release when loaded with
heavy hydrogen

Navy SPAWAR’s released data,
presented at the American
Chemical Society Meeting in
March, 2009.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2009/2009DuncanUMSummit.pdf
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/TM-107167.pdf

Cold Fusion” Rebirth? Reports on “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)”
In 1989, ‘cold fusion’ was hailed as a scientific breakthrough with the potential to solve the world’s energy problems by providing a virtually unlimited energy source. But subsequent experiments largely failed to replicate the initial findings and the controversial concept was dismissed by most people in the scientific community.
“Although ‘cold fusion’ is considered controversial, the scientific process demands of us to keep an open mind and examine the new results once every few years,” says Gopal Coimbatore, program chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Environmental Chemistry, which organized this symposium.
Some researchers say they have new evidence that the phenomena — now called ‘low energy nuclear reactions’ — has evolved and is supported by rigorous, repeatable experimental data. Nearly a dozen scientists will present their findings during a daylong symposium, “New Energy Technology.”

It has been reported that school kids are replicating these excess heat results.
A technician was killed when a cold fusion experiment exploded. P&F had a similar explosion.

So, there is something going on with excess heat and anomalous energy.
This is not explainable using current theories, so any new explanation is hypothesis only.

Dilb

17th May 2009, 03:54 PM

First, mu- meson is an outdated term for muon, which is especially confusing nowadays as muons are not mesons. That's a greek mu, not a v. I was very confused at first by that.

Muon catalysed fusion is a real thing, of course. Any list of fusion techniques will mention it. Cold fusion could not possible be muon catalysed fusion, unless muons are also being created at a phenomenal rate and going undetected, just like the neutrons, and the gamma rays, and everything else that ought to be seen, but isn't.

Skwinty

17th May 2009, 04:04 PM

First, mu- meson is an outdated term for muon, which is especially confusing nowadays as muons are not mesons. That's a greek mu, not a v. I was very confused at first by that.

My bad, I typed from a scan, and misread the character. Yes, the paper is old 1957.

Dancing David

18th May 2009, 05:59 AM

Skwinty, what is the point you are trying to make, as an outside observer I see the following:

1. Cold fusion was reported.

2. There was no large scale reprouction of the effect.

3. There are currently no models for how it happens that are reasonable.

Yet you seem to be obsessed with this, the fact that a few people over time have reported results is not large scale replication, the fact that there are huge holes in some models is not a problem for the people debunking the claims

It would be great if it did exist, but where is it in nature? Where do we see it in astrophysics, if possible.

You say that excess heat was reporduced by school kids, now what levels of controls and measurements did they use? Did they really measure something or was there an error, where are your protocols and procedures to verify that there is a statistically significant effect?

I respect you but this is just silly.

The burden is not on people debunking claims, so support your statement that there
"So, there is something going on with excess heat and anomalous energy."

To do so you need to show some rigor, that means actually looking at the data and how it was obtained. What protocols and procedures were used in making these claims, if they are not the same across the board than you skew the meta-analysis. What level of error is there in each trial? Does the effect rise past the level of error.

It is on you , who made the claim, to demonstrate that it exists. So, what is the source of your data? What procedures were used? How many trials are there?

ben m

18th May 2009, 11:03 AM

Now, Julian Schwinger was no crackpot.

Let's get this straight: "crackpot" is not the same thing as "wrong". Everyone gets things wrong sometimes. For five years around 2000, about 50% of the medium-energy nuclear physics community thought we had discovered a new baryon called a "pentaquark". For a few years in the 1980s we thought there was a neutrino with a mass of 17 keV. Just after Pons and Fleischman's announcement, a lot of people thought (reasonably enough) that P&F might have discovered cold fusion, and in the excitement afterwards a lot of people thought they had reproduced it.

So: who cares that Julian Schwinger believed in cold fusion in 1992?

More interesting:

Lewis Larsen's weak-fusion theory is wrong
The SPAWAR result (a) relies on incredibly error-prone analyses and (b) implicitly contradicts all of the nondetection-of-neutrons results

When you say that there are "thousands of cold fusion papers"---well, there are hundreds of pentaquark papers too, all either (a) wrong or (b) irrelevant. (You get a lot of papers that say, "IF statement A is correct, then here are the implications on B". If A is later disproven, then these papers don't become wrong---"if A then B" can still be true---but they cease to provide support for B.)

So: is cold fusion is "supported" by a thousand papers with the Larsen/P&F/SPAWAR level of reliability? Is it "supported" by a thousand "if A then B" papers and zero "A is true and here's the proof" papers?

If it's been reproduced multiple times, then why would anyone care about the lousy SPAWAR analysis? Seriously, when a mainstream scientist wants to argue that the Universe is expanding, they start with the most reliable data they've got. Unless, of course, the other "reproductions" are even less reliable than SPAWAR.

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