Excess Heat

Reader Jim Driggers contributed this review of a book which reopens a topic considered embarrassingly closed for several years. The debate over cold fusion after a couple of Utah scientists made some startling announcements about their non-traditional fusion experiments showed how quickly new ideas can appear, be hailed as world-changing, then be abandoned by most of the scientific community. This book raises the excellent question of whether such a rush to judgement may do more harm than good, and specifically whether there's more to cold fusion than the scoffing allows.

Excess Heat author Charles G. Beaudette pages 365 publisher Oak Grove Press, LLC rating 8.5 reviewer Jim Driggers ISBN 0967854814 summary A book that casts new light on the possibilities and implications of cold fusion, and assails the too-quick rejection of that concept by the scientific community a decade ago.

Drs. Fleischmann and Pons between them had decades of academic and laboratory experience in the field of electrochemistry. Among other positions and awards, Dr. Fleischmann is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Dr. Pons was Chairman of the Chemistry Department at the University of Utah.

When they announced the discovery of 'cold fusion' in 1989, a scientific travesty occurred. Nuclear physicists declared that because no nuclear products could be demonstrated, the measurement of excess heat was flawed. This is completely irrational. The measurement of excess heat stands on it's own merit. If any assault is to be made, it must be upon the methodology used to measure the heat. The quantity of heat measured was in fact too large to be accounted for by mechanical or chemical means.

The Pons and Fleischmann experiment was never a simple 'kitchen chemistry' endeavor. The calorimetry measurements and heat accounting is difficult to master. Electrochemical knowledge and experience is an absolute must. The electrochemical cell represents a complex environment and there were unknowns associated with the palladium cathodes. As a result, early attempts at replication failed.

The nuclear physicists in question did not possess the knowledge or experience in electrochemistry and calorimetry to demonstrate any problem with the heat measurement. They did not enter the laboratory and, hands-on, find the alleged error in heat measurement. Instead, they resorted to the irrational argument above and to ridicule. They prevailed due to their prominent position in the federal government and the esteem of them held by publishers of the scientific publications. Unfortunately, they managed to derail an exciting turn in the history of science.

All of the above and more is to be found in the Charles G. Beaudette book, Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed. With the forward penned by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and introduction by David J. Nagel, Ph D, the book runs 365 pages cover to cover and is replete with references.

The book covers the initial discovery and the quick dismissal by the DOE Energy Research Advisory Board. The board issued it's final, negative report in a mere 8 months. Contrast that to the time period between the discovery of superconductivity and the decades taken to elucidate the theoretical underpinnings. Most of the points refuted by the author can be found at www.ncas.org/erab/sec1.htm.

The role of particular nuclear physicists is clearly described and dissected. The part played by the major, popular science journals, such as Nature, is elucidated.

Six cold fusion type experiments are presented, all of which produced excess power under mild conditions. Pertinent details are presented, such as a description of the apparatus and/or graphs of the measurements/results. The results of some of these experiments have been published in peer reviewed journals.

The measurement of "nuclear ash" is reported from other cold fusion experiments expressly set up for the purpose. Again, some of these results have been published in peer reviewed journals.

Other chapters consider scientific protocol, more on the role of the skeptics, and premature attempts at commercialization.

It is now obvious that any critic of cold fusion will have to do more than present illogical arguments or simply ridicule the scientists involved in the research. If they believe the calorimetry is flawed, they will have to present evidence, preferably from their own experiments, but at least from participation in a cold fusion experiment. They should have any critique peer reviewed by scientists well versed in the practice of calorimetry and/or electrochemistry, then published. Same goes for criticism of evidence of nuclear products, although this is an area where some of the skeptics could actually do some science.

The author presents detailed arguments. This is mostly good, but I found it difficult to attend to some of the more lengthy passages.

All in all, I very much enjoyed the book. If you find the neutrino problem, the Big Bang, the steady state theory, the double-slit experiment wiih only one photon in the apparatus, dark matter, more than four dimensions of space-time, or the modification of the laws of gravity to get rid of dark matter facinating, then you will enjoy this book also. It is a light directed to a partially opened door that connects what we think we know with what we don't.

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek. And for a taste of what's up in cold fusion research, take a look at the May, 2000 ICCF.

Comments

Why Cold Fusion is Bull

[dutky]

Even a second year undergraduate physics student can see that Pons' and Flieschmann's claims for cold fusion where severly overstated, if not simply fraudulent. Their obsession with inaccurate and difficult measurements suggests that they were, indeed, attempting a cover-up, but the cover-up was for the obvious fallacies in their own experiments.

The suggestion to persue either more accurate calorimetry (an error prone process even under the best conditions) or the search for 'nuclear ash' (better known as helium) are straw men to distract researchers from the easier to measure (and patently missing) by-products of a fusion reaction: neutrons! (and the dead lab workers caused by the neutron flux near the aparatus)

The following homework problem, taken from Physics for Scientists and Engineers, volume 2 third edition, by Paul A. Tipler, Worth Publishers, chapter 40 Nuclei, page 1336:

47. In 1989, researchers claimed to have achieved fusion in an electromechanical cell at room temperature. They claimed a power output of 4 W from deuterium fusion reactions in the palladium electrode of their apparatus.

1. If the two most likely reactions are [fusion of two deuterium resulting in a Helium-3 nucleus, a neutron, and 3.27 MeV]

and

[fusion of two deuterium resulting in a Helium-3 nucleus, a hydrogen neucleus, and 4.03 MeV]

with 50 percent of the reactions going down each branch, how many neutrons per second would we expect to be emitted in the generation of 4 W of power?

If one-tenth of these neutrons were absorbed by the body of an 80.0-kg worker near the device, and if each absorbed neutron carries an average energy of 0.5 MeV with an RBE of 4, to what radiation dose rate in rems per hour would this correspond?

How long would it take for a person to receive a total dose of 500 rems? (This is the dose that is usually lethal to half of those receiving it.)

The answers are:

1. 3.42 trillion neutrons per second emitted by the generation of 4 W of power.
2. 493 rems per hour absorbed by an 80.0 kg worker standing near the aparatus.
3. 1.01 hours for the worker to receive a lethal dose.

Without the most obvious by-product, neutrons, of the most likely nuclear reaction, the one suggested by Pons and Flieschmann themselves, as measured by an easily obtainable metric, dead or dying lab workers (or graduate students), the searches for any of the more esoteric by-products is a pointless waste of time.

Reviewer needed some real science know-how

[Logic Bomb]

Hey moderators, this is NOT a troll.

Quite frankly, cold fusion, at least in the sense that Fleischmann & Pons used it, has been utterly disproven. According to the reviewer, the book says that "nuclear physicists declared that because no nuclear products could be demonstrated, the measurement of excess heat was flawed." That's not quite right. They did say that, but then nuclear physicists then went on to explain where the excess heat was probably coming from -- definitely NOT fusion. They never got a chance to prove it for sure, because Fleischmann & Pons wouldn't ever tell anyone exactly how cold fusion was supposed to work.

It is quite obvious from the review that the book makes a lot of outrageous statements that, quite frankly, amount to straight lies. For example, the reviewer has learned from the book that "it is now obvious that any critic of cold fusion will have to do more than present illogical arguments or simply ridicule the scientists involved in the research." Oh my god. The whole problem with the cold fusion "discovery" was that Fleischmann & Pons refused to allow their work to be peer-reviewed! By not doing so, scientists had to slowly work to duplicate their experiment piece by piece, on the way doing a lot of speculating about what Fleischmann & Pons had done. Those two, along with some stupid members of Congress and the media, were the ones who dragged the whole thing through the mud.

There are probably any number of GOOD scientific books on the subject of this whole scientific debacle. I would direct readers in particular to "Voodoo Science" by Robert Park. It's a fairly good book anyway with an excellent long section about cold fusion.

I do not mean to insult the reviewer, but I would speculate he just isn't qualified to really judge most of the scientific statements made in the book he reviewed. I hope he explores the literature a little further to perhaps obtain a more reasonable perspective.