 |
APS Meeting Hosts Second Cold Fusion
Session
(Originally Published May-June,
2000 In Infinite Energy Magazine Issue #31)
by Eugene Mallove
For the second year in a row, cold fusion
researchers have been granted a session to present scientific results
at the primary annual meeting of the American Physical Society,
an organization generally known for its hostility toward cold fusion.
The latest session, dubbed "Palladium/ Deuteron," was held Monday,
March 20, from 2:30-5:00 p.m. at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
This was a modest step up from 1999, when the cold fusion session,
with an even more obscure name, was held on late Friday afternoon
as the APS meeting in Atlanta wound down.
Session "C32" was organized and chaired by Dr. Scott
Chubb of the Naval Research Laboratory. Going back five years, three
years before these specially designated sessions, Drs. Scott and
Talbot Chubb have given individual papers within other APS meetings.
(Infinite Energy covered last year's APS cold fusion sessions
and related activities in IE No. 25, p. 23 and IE
No. 26, p. 27.) A few dozen people, other than the speakers, attended
the session this March, which was one of many parallel technical
meetings running at the APS convention that afternoon. Only twelve
minutes were allowed for each presentation, not very much time to
get complex material across to the uninitiated. Still, anyone attending
the session, such as some eager-looking younger physicists who stayed
the full two hours, could grasp that some very big experimental
claims were being made and that sophisticated theories were being
presented to attempt to explain the data.
Two high-profile people who are not part of the cold
fusion community attended the session. One was Institute Professor
Mildred Dresselhaus of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science. She is a past president of the APS, but more
important, she had been one of the twenty-two participants on the
infamous 1989 DOE ERAB Cold Fusion Panel, which rendered a hasty
negative opinion in November 1989. Though Prof. Dresselhaus has
apparently kept an open mind about cold fusion since then, thanks
to continued coaching by her MIT colleagues who have continued to
be involved in cold fusion, she has, to our knowledge, taken no
steps to straighten things out at DOE. This day she was at least
able to hear MIT Professor Hagelstein's cold fusion theory talk,
as well as some of the meaty data provided by Drs. Storms and McKubre,
and by Storms for Dr. Claytor of Los Alamos National Laboratory
(who was unable to attend and present his paper). Prof. Dresselhaus
certainly has it within her power to "do the right thing," perhaps
with a letter or remark to the right people in Washington. We shall
see.
The other notable in the audience was APS PR agent
Dr. Robert L. Park, who sneaked in and sneaked out, staying only
for twelve minutes. Unless it was mere coincidence, he had to time
his arrival perfectly: he entered at the beginning of my eclectic
talk, which reviewed some of the high points of cold fusion investigation,
and he left just as I finished. Apparently Park was not interested
in learning about anyone else's results or theories--not even to
add bogus fuel to his ill-informed claims that cold fusion is "fraud."
One might have thought that Park would have at least tried to give
the appearance of a serious evaluation by staying for more
of the talks. He is shameless.
To review briefly the ten papers, in the order in
which they were presented:
[C32.001] Theoretical Basis for Anomalous Heat
and 4He in Deuterium-Metal Systems--Scott Chubb,
Talbot Chubb (Research Systems Inc., 5023 N. 38 St., Arlington,
VA 22207)
Scott Chubb made the fundamental point that cold fusion
is not like hot fusion. "When D+ and 4He++
occupy ion band states with low concentration, however, different
forms of electromagnetic coupling become possible, leading to the
production of helium-4, in which EMC is violated locally but conserved
globally."
[C32.002] Cavitation Micro Accelerator and Anomalous
Heat --R.S. Stringham (First Gate Energies, 2166 Old Middlefield
Way, Mountain View, CA 94043)
Since Roger Stringham could not be present, it was
left to Dr. Scott Chubb to present his work. Stringham uses ultrasonic
activation to produce cavitation bubbles on the surfaces of metal
foils suspended in heavy water. "The steady-state calorimetry of
the acoustic reactor and the acoustic power supply show the production
of anomalous heat, Q(x), above that of the input power. The sources
of Q(x) are unique nuclear events which result from jet acceleration
of the deuteron high density plasma into a metal lattice." Evidence
was presented for both helium-4 and helium-3 production.
[C32.003] Low Energy Nuclear Reactions: A Millennium
Status Report--Eugene F. Mallove (New Energy Research Laboratory,
PO Box 2816, Concord, NH 03302-2816)
In this eclectic talk, I denominated some of the more
convincing experiments that show that helium-4, nuclear scale excess
energy, tritium, and the transmutation of heavy elements can be
produced near room temperature in relatively simple systems. I also
gave an overview of NERL's recent activities to develop instrumentation
for cold fusion demonstration cells. Mainly for Dr. Park's benefit,
I flashed on the screen the cover page of my memorandum on cold
fusion, which was sent to the White House (following its request)
in February. He did not seem to take much notice of this. We have
yet to hear it decried in his weekly "What's New" column.
[C32.004] Calorimetric Studies at the New Hydrogen
Energy Laboratory in Japan--Melvin H. Miles (New Hydrogen Energy
Laboratory, 3-5 Techno-Park 2-Chome Shimonopporo, Atsubetsu-Ku,
Sapporo-004, Japan)
Dr. Miles presented highlights of positive cold fusion
excess heat results that he obtained in Japan. (These-and their
scandalous cover-up by NHE-were described in the last issue of Infinite
Energy, No. 30, p. 18.) "Experiments in Fleischmann-Pons type
calorimetric cells produced excess power in six out of eight experiments.
These studies involved palladium alloy cathodes, co-deposition of
palladium and deuterium from the solution, and electromigration
using thin palladium wires."
[C32.005] "Lochon" Catalyzed Fusion Reaction in
a Solid Matrix--K.P. Sinha (9805 Juniper Hill Road, Rockville,
MD 20850)
Dr. Sinha presented the theoretical model for cold
fusion which he published in IE No. 29, p. 54, in which lochons
(local charged bosons) located around protons or deuterons and interacting
with high frequency modes of the system can acquire heavy effective
mass.
[C32.006] A Requirement for Radiationless Deuteron
Fusion--Talbot Chubb, Scott Chubb (Research Systems Inc., 5023
N. 38 St., Arlington, VA 22207)
Dr. Talbot Chubb expanded on his and his nephew's
theories. Referring to the Fleischmann-Pons effect in the deuterium-palladium
system, he noted that Dr. McKubre says: "The evidence in my view
for the appearance of an anomalous unaccounted excess heat in the
deuterium-palladium system is essentially overwhelming. There is
something there. It's larger by more than 1 order of magnitude,
in some cases by more than 2 orders of magnitude, than the sum total
of all possible chemical reactions."
[C32.007] A Model for Fast Ion Emission from Metal
Deuterides--Peter Hagelstein (Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Research Laboratory of Electronics, Cambridge, MA 02139)
This was MIT Professor Peter Hagelstein's first cold
fusion paper at an APS annual meeting. His theories of cold fusion
have been much in the news over the years, and they have evolved
through many iterations. Because of his steadfastness within the
"bastion of skepticism" (MIT), we honor him by printing his entire
abstract: "There have been numerous claims during the past ten years
of the observation of a variety of anomalies in metal deuterides.
One such anomaly involves the emission of fast (MeV) alpha from
PdD as reported by G. Chambers and colleagues at NRL in the early
1990s. A related effect is the emission of a variety of low mass
fast ions from TiD reported by groups led by G. Chambers and by
F. E. Cecil (Colorado School of Mines) et al. (F.E. Cecil,
H. Liu, D. Beddingfield and C.S. Galovich, in Anomalous Nuclear
Effects in Deuterium/Solid Systems, AIP Conf. Proc., 228, p.
383, 1990). We have recently examined a theoretical model for this
effect. We propose a second order off-resonant reaction in which
fusion reactions are coupled to optical phonons, and then the optical
phonon excitation is dipole-coupled to nuclear ionization. Such
a model gives reaction products and energies which appear to be
in agreement with experiment."
[C32.008] In Situ Measurement of Tritium Concentration
Variations During Plasma Loading of Palladium and Palladium Alloys--T.N.
Claytor, D.G. Tuggle, J. Thompson (Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Mail Stop C914, Los Alamos, NM 87545)
In the absence of Dr. Claytor, Dr. Storms presented
the work of this group, which continues to confirm the production
of tritium in low energy nuclear reactions. (See Infinite Energy,
No. 7, p. 39.)
[C32.009] The Emergence of a Coherent Explanation
for Anomalies Observed in D/Pd and H/Pd Systems--Michael C.H.
McKubre, Francis L. Tanzella, Paolo Tripodi (SRI International,
Menlo Park, CA), Peter Hagelstein (Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Research Laboratory of Electronics, Cambridge, MA 02139)
Among the many results discussed by Dr. McKubre were
absolutely stunning multiple curves which show the time-evolution
of helium production in cells based on the catalytic fusion methods
of Dr. Les Case with deuterium atmospheres. The correlation with
excess heat production and the D + D reaction leading to helium-4
was remarkable.
[C32.010] Excess Power Using Thin Layers of Palladium
on Inert Substrates--E.K. Storms (Energy K. Systems, 2140 Paseo
Ponderosa, Santa Fe, NM 87501)
Excess power produced by thin layers of palladium
deposited on various substrates was measured using a double calorimeter
consisting of a flow-type and an isoperibolic-type combined. The
effects of palladium thickness and impurity deposition were explored.
The behavior was correlated with the open-circuit-voltage and the
over-voltage of the cathode with respect to a reference electrode
external to the D2O-based electrolytic cell. Several
potential errors associated with such calorimetry will be described.
The study is directed toward producing reproducible excess energy
production using the Pons-Fleischmann effect.
After the session, the full group of speakers retired
to a local restaurant for respite and discussions. Later we all
enjoyed the gracious hospitality of cold fusion researcher Professor
Richard Oriani at his Minneapolis home. Then I caught a late night
flight to Seattle, enroute to a cold fusion presentation the next
day at the Climates of Change Conference in Victoria, BC (see Briefs,
p. 39, in IE No. 31). A good thing for my digestion, because
back in Minneapolis on the next morning Dr. Park entertained a ballroom
full of physicists with his session (G8) "Voodoo Science." This
was a bit of physics circus and promotion "on company time" for
his forthcoming book of the same name; Park is really making a name
for himself, so to speak.
We were able to learn what went on at this meeting,
thanks to Dr. Melvin Miles and his wife Linda attending the session
and videotaping it. There were the expected barbs flung at "What's
New This Week That I Hate," plus a bit of extra firepower aimed
at BlackLight Power Corporation and Dr. Randell Mills. Self-righteous
statements were made about how the freedom of expression of poor
physicists was allegedly being threatened by lawyers for Dr. Mills
(see Briefs, p. 38, in IE No. 31). Park introduced a handful
of speakers, including Washington Post journalist Joel Achenbach,
author of Captured by Aliens (1999, Simon and Schuster),
who professed to be in awe of all these bright physicists. In his
book, Achenbach's ability to characterize cold fusion amounts to
this alone (p. 129): ". . .the notorious 1989 announcement of 'cold
fusion,' in which two scientists thought they could get more energy
out of a test tube than they'd put in." He admitted that he regularly
gets story ideas from Park's APS columns. Of course, we knew that
already. The blind leading the blind in mutual sycophantic admiration.
|
