Path: santra!tut!draken!kth!mcvax!uunet!lll-winken!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uxc!tank!eecae!cps3xx!cpsvax!raja
From: raja@cpsvax.cps.msu.edu (Narayan S Raja)
Newsgroups: alt.fusion
Subject: P/F CERN lecture report  --  I
Message-ID: <2417@cps3xx.UUCP>
Date: 8 Apr 89 20:34:09 GMT
Sender: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP
Reply-To: raja@cpsvax.cps.msu.edu (Narayan S Raja)
Organization: Michigan State University, Computer Science Department
Lines: 360

I got this report from a friend (tate@suhep, Ranjit Tate)
at Syracuse Univ. :



From:	SUHEP1::VIVEKJ       "Vivek Jain - Syracuse Univ."  3-APR-1989 20:13:05.98
Subj:	cold fusion news

                                                           31 March 1989.
              PHYSICS NEWS - COLD FUSION?

Dear E632 and WA84 Colleagues,
  There have been many reports in the newspapers that Prof. Fleischmann of
Southampton and Dr. Pons of Utah have evidence for cold fusion of
deuterium by electrochemistry. This afternoon Prof. Fleischmann gave a
seminar in CERN. Because of the many media reports, the auditorium was crowded
and although I arrived 20 minutes early, I had to sit on the steps. As I have
given several lectures on Wrong Results in Physics, I went to this and also to
the press conference afterwards - especially as the news reports had been
very hard to understand scientifically, but if true, this could have a major
impact on the world economy.
  Martin Fleischmann had a reputation as a major expert in his subject. As his
talk developed, it became clear that he was a first class scientist and it
seems to me that he has made a major breakthrough, though what the
fundamentals processes are is not yet fully understood.
  Let me try and explain what I think I learnt (I talked to him for a while
afterwards, so it may not be too bad).
  Basically the catalyst used, palladium Pd, is a face-centred crystal. It can
absorb a certain amount of hydrogen. If an electrical potential is applied,
then over a period of time it can absorb a great deal. For F & P, they reached
0.6 atoms of deuterium per atom of Palladium after three months.
    They made tests with four rods each of 10 cm length and of diameters
0.1, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 cm. They only have good measurements for the first
three as one morning when they came in they found that the fourth and largest
rod had melted and the fume cupboard was starting to smoulder!
They made calorimetric measurements and found that they were getting more
heat out than they had put in and this effect increased with the diameter of the
rod. It seems to be a volume effect and not a surface effect. The excess heat is
about 5 megajoules per cm3 which is about 100 times greater than any known
chemical process.
  A second measurement was by putting a NaI crystal close when they recorded
gammas. The energy spectrum of the gammas was sharply peaked between 2000
and 2400 which is characteristic of the (n,gamma) reaction on hydrogen. This
could be explained as the neutrons interacting in the water bath round the
experiment.
  Thirdly they observed tritium production and measured and found a
"characteristic" spectrum (I did not understand this fully, partly as he had
an incomplete scale on the graph, but see later).
 Fourthly they looked for neutrons using a polythene sphere filled with BF3.
The count was three times background. In 50 hours they counted 40 000 neutrons.
However there is a point that is a stumbling block for particle physicists - if
you take the rate of release of heat, then there should be 10 E 13 or 14
neutrons - a huge discrepancy. He does not have the equipment to measure
the neutron spectrum - the neutrons have to pass through the surrounding water
bath which tends to thermalise them.
  A conclusion that can be drawn from Fleischmann's talk is that the heating
is not due to the reactions
              2D + 2D  ---> 3He + n                               (1)
  or          2D + 3T  ---> 4He + n                               (2)
which are the ones that spring to mind.
 He gave a table of the excess enthalpy in the Pd rod cathodes expressed as a
percentage of breakeven values;
                0.1 mm   81%
                0.2     189%
                0.4     839%
>From this it can be judged that it was not too surprising that the 0.8 cm
rod melted!
  He opened his talk with a basic discussion of electrochemistry.

            D2O + e-   <--->  D(absorber) + OD-

           D(absorber)  <--->  D(lattice)

      D(absorber) + D2O + e-  <--->  D2 + OD-

  With the applied field the D can go over the potential barrier by applying
a Potl. Difference at the interface. The result is that inside the Pd there
can be many collisions without repulsion. Effectively there is a PD of 0.8 eV
which can translate into a compression of 10 E 27 atmos. i.e. it would require
this enormous pressure to achieve the same PD. Thus electrochemistry is high
energy chemistry! The D is in a sea of high electron density. The structural
or coherent strength of the Pd is 4000 atm. Thus it is a very strange kind of
Quantum Mechanics (his phrase).
  I have to go to collect my daughter at the airport, but will try and
continue later.

                                                            1 April 1989.
                                              (despite the date, it is serious!)
  Re-reading what I wrote yesterday. I realise that I have been trying to
explain simply. The actual talk contained some more details and two tables of
results that I had only time to copy down partially. There was a fuller
discussion of electrochemistry.
  The question now is what is happening. The observations are of a source of
heat, of emision of tritium, gammas and of neutrons, but the number of
neutrons are many orders of magnitude less than would be expected if the heat
produced came from reactions producing neutrons. Fleischmann talks as if you
have to modify quantum mechanics - this I do not believe - we have to apply it
differently.
  An additional piece of information that he gave at his press conference but
not at his seminar, was that the particle emission was not uniform but had
fluctuations which were much larger than statistical - this I think is a very
important piece of information.
  There are a lot of different theories being discussed. The following
comments should be considered private, qualitative and not necessarily
correct.
  The catalyst, palladium works by accepting an incredible number of deuterium
nuclei in the spaces of its face-centred cubic lattice. The distance between
 each
deuterium nucleus is therefore reduced. This was first demonstrated by the
observation of muon-induced catalysis where in deuterium, the electron is
replaced by a muon. As the muon is some 200 times heavier, the proton and
neutron are pulled closer together so that the probability of fusion is greatly
increased - by many orders of magnitude. Now there are two suggestions;
  1. Since the deuterium nuclei are in a very dense electron field, it may be
that the electrons have an effective mass much greater than normal and this
increases the probabilty of the nuclei tunnelling through the barrier.
  2. the applied potential difference drives more and more deuterium nuclei
into the spaces between the palladium atoms so that the separation of the
nuclei decreases so that the probability of fusion increases dramatically.
  Personally I have a preference for the second approach, but it is always
possible that both are applicable.
  Instead of saying that there is a discrepancy between the number of
neutrons produced and the heat produced, perhaps we should assume that all
the results are correct and that the reactions ocurring are different.
Maybe the dominant reaction is fusion, D + D ---> 4He, but we need
something else to share the energy and momentum produced - this could be the
close neighbouring structure of the lattice. Thus the dominant reaction is to
produce heat! Of course other reactions will also occur which is why there
is an observation of tritium and one would expect some production of 3He and
4He and neutrons and gammas. If this were true, and again this is mainly
a suggestion which needs experimental confirmation, then this would have
tremendous social effects as we would have a simple source of energy
without the particulate matter, sulphur and other gasses from coal and oil
fired power stations that are killing so many today. Also the radiation
danger would be very much less than with nuclear reactors ( sell your coal
and oil shares if you have any!)
  In answer to a question, Fleischmann said that they had tried to look at
3He and 4He production and ratio, but the experiment is difficult for them
and they prefer to leave that for experts who have the equipment - for they have
been using their own money for 5 years.
  Looking again at my notes, I discover that John Ellis had said in the
discussion that there could be little Coulomb repulsion as there could be a
classical oscillation of the lattice.
  Before the Seminar, things were rather disturbed with the media - lots of
TV crews and flashes popping off. The Chairman, Carlo, asked them all to leave
explaining this was a scientific meeting and he did not want questions on
any other subject, but afterwards there would be a press conference. After some
time the media left. At the end of Fleischmann's talk, the TV crews re-entered
and had to be requested to leave again before the question period.
  On the way to the press conference, Fleischmann was told that there had been
a report on the radio that a group (at Columbia?) had confirmed his result. He
said he had not heard this and during the Press Conference he continued to
emphasise, in a very proper manner, that before leaping to conclusions, there
should be further confirming evidence.
  Fleischmann had described his other press conference in Utah as awful,
but this one went well with Carlo a good Chairman - who was also asked
questions. Fleischmann explained that the work was intentional and not
an accident. He said that after verification, it might take 10 to 20 years
to develop an economically viable system. Carlo was asked his opinion and said
that "Dr. Fleischmann has planted a seed - will the seed grow up? I think yes"
Fleischmann said that he believed in Karl Popper's philosophy - you cannot prove
something right, you can only prove it wrong. "We have spent 5 years trying to
prove ourselves wrong, now other people should try".
  In explaining why they did it, "it was not to do an ego trip (though all
scientists are on an ego trip to some extent), but to try and find a
plentiful source of energy. We have a social conscience"
  Question - "There was a sceptical atmosphere in the room, did you feel
like a chemistry bull in an arena of physics toreadors?"
  Answer - "Are people correct to be sceptical?, yes, it is correct to be
sceptical. But it was not a bad atmosphere. Our experiment fits partly into
accepted ideas but not entirely, therefore either experiment is wrong or
we have extended the conceptions of possible fusion mechanisms".
  Carlo was asked if he found the meeting strange - "No, I am at home in my
own lab".
  Question - "Do you think it is correct?". Answer(MF) - "I think it is correct,
but others should show it is correct". (Note, this was typical of some of the
questions where the journalist asked "for a good quote").
  Carlo was asked if CERN should work on fusion. He replied " There are
different science cultures. In an orchestra everyone tries to play his own
instrument, and does not have other instruments. But we have quantum mechanics
in common. We should do what we do best. But there is also cross-fertilisation
between chemistry and nuclear physics" He also joked that this was the first
time that a chemist had discovered a neutron!
  Question - "Any military applications?"
  Answer(MF) - "There will always be some military application of anything, but
we do not know of any such thing"
  Question - " You said you did not have enough money, have you been offered
money since your press conference last week"?
  Answer - "Up to now have used our own money as we thought it unlikely to
work, so there were some restrictions. Since then we have been approached with
offers but as our capacity to spend money is limited, we have to plan carefully.
  Question - "If it is fusion what will its effect be on other fusion research?"
  Answer - " Glad you asked that. It would be a total disaster to cut back on
other fusion research. Ours is small scale, theirs is large scale generation
of electricity. It would be extremely foolish to cut back".
  There was more, but I hope this gives the flavour - both Fleischmann and Carlo
aquitted themselves very well and responsibly.
  Friedrich Dydak had told me he had two papers confirming the F & P work and
I could copy them. Later when I was returning them, Fleischmann came in for
another TV interview and we talked while he was waiting for the lighting to be
set up. He had not seen the papers, so I gave him copies. The main author was
Stephen Jones who is at the BYU in Utah beside Dr. Pons. We looked quickly at
the papers - he was particularly interested in the dates on the papers.
I explained I was interested particularly for two reasons. Firstly as I was
possibly the first to observe fusion in Europe - in the early sixties I was
scanning bubble chamber film of deuterium and normally when there is the decay
chain,
      pion   --->  muon  --->  electron
the muon always has the same short range (if the pion is at rest). But one day
I observed an extra long range for the muon. I spent some time measuring
the curvature and angles of the tracks, but could not explain it. However
someone told me that the Berkeley bubble chamber group had found it and it
had been explained as the muon replacing an electron and causing fusion. At
this Luis insisted that this should be treated as a secret, but quickly it
was calculated that it had no military or economical value. So I left it and
went on to new things(incidently the Scientific American article of July 1987
by Rafelski and Jones on Cold Nuclear Fusion says that this muon -induced fusion
was first suggested by Frank and Sakharov in the late 1940's).
    Secondly I said I had given several serious lectures on Wrong Results
in Physics and found that they exhibited certain characteristics so that
they could be recognised before they had been proved wrong - after the
press reports I wondered if this was a case in point, but after I had
heard his conference, I was inclined to believe that his results were
correct. He did not seem to appreciate this too much, not unnaturally,
but we continued talking and he told me some remarkable things. I mentioned
that after the press conference, Dr. Wind was looking for him as he used to
work in Utrecht on electrochemistry and had been able to insert 1000 hydrogen
ions per atom of palladium catalyst. Dr. Fleischmann (who had attained 0.6 ions
after 3 months) said he did not believe this number of 1000. However
talking with Per-Olaf Hulth this morning, he had checked this subject last night
and read that 850 ions of hydrogen had been inserted - this could be used as
hydrogen storage cells for cars driven by hydrogen - air mixtures. If I
remember rightly, Fleischmann had replied that they had not prepared the
surface of their palladium rod, and this could make a big difference. If
it were possible to insert so many deuterium ions into palladium, then the
rate of fusion would be greatly increased (or the charging time would be less
than 3 months).

  The two papers are;
1. "Observation of Cold Nuclear Fusion in Condensed Matter" by S.E. Jones
and others of Brigham Young Univ. and J. Rafelski of Univ. of Arizona.
2. "Limits on Cold Fusion in Condensed Matter; a Parametric study" by
J. Rafelski and others of Arizona and S.E. Jones of BYU.
  The main point of the first paper is that they claim to have observed
neutrons when there was low voltage electrolytic fusion of deuterons into
metallic titanium or palladium. They believe this is from the reaction;
        d + d  --->  3He(0.82 MeV) + n(2.45 MeV)              (1)
The distribution of counts in different channels give a broad enhancement
which the authors say corresponds to neutrons of 2.45 MeV. This looks
convincing - just; it would be good to repeat this.
  They say they have not yet(?!advertising?) obtained results regarding the
parallel reaction;
          d + d  ---> p(3.02 MeV)  +  t(1.01 MeV)                  (3)
  The electrolyte contains various minmeral salts and they say that their
evidence indicates the importance of co-deposition of deuterons and metal ions
at the negative electrode. "hydrogen bubbles were observed to form on the Pd
foils only after several minutes of electrolysis, suggesting the rapid
absorbtion of deuterons into the foil; oxygen bubbles formed at the anode
immediately". The palladium pieces were 0.025cm thick and had the surfaces
roughened or were mossy. They do not say that it took 3 months to get started
by charging the deuterons into the palladium (private comment - this suggests
to me that Fleischmann and Pons would have improved things if they had
increased the surface to volume ratio of the catalyst and roughened its surface,
but it is hard to be sure. However it does suggest that it is possible to
charge the catalyst in much less than three months).
  The experimental part of their paper gives an impression of haste, but there
are a lot of other interesting things in their paper;
In a deuterium molecule the separation between the deuterons is 0.74 A and the
d-d fusion rate is very slow about 10 E -70 per D2 molecule per sec ( calculated
in an interesting paper by Van Siclen, C.D. and Jones, S.E., Journal of Physics
G Nucl. Phys. 12 (1986) 213 - here they state that the fusion rates for
reactions (1) and (3) are nearly equal over the range 10 to 30 KeV. They also
discuss whether piezonuclear fusion - i.e. by pressure - within the liquid
metallic hydrogen core of Jupiter could account for the fact that the planet
radiates 1.5 times as much heat as it receives from the sun. However they
concluded that this process was many orders of magnitude too small to be a
significant energy source - this is where the idea of Fleischmann and Pons of
using electrolytic catalysis is so important). However in muon-induced catalysis
the internuclear separation is reduced by about the ratio of the muon to the
electron masses (200) resulting in the fusion rate increasing by an enormous
factor, 80 orders of magnitude! In the second paper this variation of fusion
rate as a function of the distance is quantified. This made me think of the
observation by Fleischmann that they had observed large fluctuations in the
signals - for the number of deuterons in a space in the lattice of Palladium
is discrete and given by Poisson statistics hence the distance between the
deuterons will vary appreciably - this and other factors(roughness of surface)
could cause there to be local spots hot in space and time, since the fusion rate
varies so violently with distance. In addition to the reactions (1) and (3),
there can occur the reaction on tritium that will exist to some varable extent,
            2D + 3T  --->  4He + n                            (2)
Although there is less tritium than deuterium, this reaction has a much higher
cross section - so that this reaction (2) could also help fluctuations (but
these comments on fluctations are my own, so treat them with appropriate
caution).
 Paper (1) also has an interesting chapter on Geophysical considerations
(or the Hawaii effect). Sea water contains about one part in 7000 of
deuterium. By subduction water is carried down to the earth's mantle
where it might undergo fusion via the reaction;
                 p + d  --->  3He + gamma(5.4 MeV)          (4)
under the extreme pressure and temperature there. Calculations are done which
indicate that a substantial contribution to the heat flux through the crust
could come from cold fusion. This heat could also help to explain the localised
heat of volcanism at subduction zones. They quote that the 3He to 4He ratio is
high in rocks, liquids and gases from volcanoes. Further they then predict that
tritium will be produced from d + d fusion and since tritium is relatively
short-lived(12 years half-life), observation of tritium  would suggest a
geologically recent process. On the Mauna Loa mountain on Hawaii, tritium was
monitored from 1971 to 1977 and a correlation is shown in the paper between
the tritium level and volcanic activity. This is very striking for the 1972
Mauna Ulu eruption but later eruption signals were partly confused by
atomic bomb tests. They estimate that in the Mauna Ulu eruption 100 curies of
tritium was released per day for 30 days!
   In paper (1), it is also reported that after diamonds are sliced with a
laser, the concentration of 4He and 3He has been measured - it is reported that
the 4He is distributed uniformly while the 3He is concentrated in spots
suggesting cold fusion reactions. Similar anomalies have been reported in
metal foils.
  The authors also calculate that the excess heat from Jupiter could be
accounted for from cold fusion in the core consisting of metallic hydrogen plus
iron silicate.
  The second paper calculates the cold fusion rate of d-d as a function of
1 - relative energy, 2 - separation of two hydrogen nuclei in a sphere,
3 - the effective electron mass,  4 - the effective electron charge. They
do not consider the effects of the lattice of a catalyst as do Fleischmann
and Pons.

  It is probable that some readers will be thinking that this letter has
wandered off strict physics news. They are right. It is intentional as I
feel this subject will become so important to society that we must consider
the broader implications as well as the scientific ones. Looking into a
cloudy crystal ball, it is not impossible to foresee the situation that
the experiments are so easy that schools will be doing them, that many new
companies will start up, most(not all) will fail and the present big power
companies will be running down their oil and coal power stations while they
are building deuterium separation plants and new power plants based on cold
fusion. No new nuclear power stations will be built except for military needs.
There will be very little if any research on high temperature(plasma) fusion.
Petrol will probably still be used for cars. Overall pollution will start to
be less. Ecologists will be talking about the contamination from radioactive
tritium and asking about the effect of this tritium on the ozone layer.

CONCLUSIONS
            It is known(from muon cataysis) that if two nuclei of deuterium or
tritium are held close together, then they can fuse releasing energy.
 Fleischmann
and Pons thought of achieving this by using electrolysis to insert deuterium
nuclei inside a palladium catalyst. They observed production of more heat than
they put in. They also observed tritium production, gammas of an energy
consistent with neutrons interacting with the surrounding water bath, and
neutrons directly. They thus conclude they have observed fusion of heavy
hydrogen producing energy, i.e. cold fusion. A paper by Jones et al. reports
on the operation of similar electrolytic cells with observation of neutrons
with an energy spectrum consistent with that expected from deuterium fusion.
They also describe interesting though rather anecdotal evidence for fusion
in volcanoes, Jupiter, diamonds and metal foils. The theory, while not fully
developed, suggests that the deuterium nuclei inside the lattice of the
catalyst, are held so closely together that the probability of fusion(the
tunneling effect) is dramatically increased by many orders of magnitude. it
may be expected that this will cause major changes in the energy industry and
major social, economic and hence political changes.
Path: santra!tut!draken!kth!mcvax!uunet!lll-winken!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uxc!tank!eecae!cps3xx!cpsvax!raja
From: raja@cpsvax.cps.msu.edu (Narayan S Raja)
Newsgroups: alt.fusion
Subject: P/F CERN lecture report --  II
Message-ID: <2418@cps3xx.UUCP>
Date: 8 Apr 89 20:36:15 GMT
Sender: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP
Reply-To: raja@cpsvax.cps.msu.edu (Narayan S Raja)
Organization: Michigan State University, Computer Science Department
Lines: 70

This is the second part of the report I got from
a friend at Syracuse Univ. (tate@suhep, Ranjit Tate):



From:	SUHEP::VIVEKJ       "Vivek Jain - Syracuse Univ."  4-APR-1989 14:36:59.58
Subj:	some additions to the news of cold fusion.

This is in addition to the previous note I circulated.

                                           Vivek Jain


ADDITION                                                 4 April 1989.
        The problem is to find an explanation for all the data, or alternatively
most of the data.
  The biggest problem is the discrepancy between the heat produced and the
rate of neutron production in the reaction
         d + d  --->  3He + n                            (1)
  Occurring with about equal cross section is the reaction
         d + d  --->   t  + p                            (3)
  The other energetically possible reaction is
         d + d  --->  4He
but this needs something else to carry off the energy - it could be a gamma
but the cross section for this reaction is much less than for (1) or (3).
The suggestion has been made that it could be the lattice of the palladium
         d + d  --->  4He + L                             (5)
where L is the Lattice.
This sounds attractive as the ratio of the cross section for reaction (5)
to reactions (1) and (3) is not known.
  In discussing with John Ellis this morning he suggested a three-body reaction
         d + d + L  --->  4He + L*                        (6)
where L* would be an excited state of the Lattice.
  However the energy released is about 19 MeV and this seems too much for the
lattice which normals measures its excited states in eV. However if an entire
region of the lattice were to move essentially coherently, say a few 1000
atoms, then MeV energies might be  obtained. However there is the problem of
timing - the nuclear reaction takes place in a much shorter time than the
period of oscillation of a lattice.
  So while reactions (1) and (3) probably do occur infrequently, we still
need a reaction mechanism which is dominant and gives out most of the heat.
  This afternoon I heard from two sources that Fleischmann and Pons used
Lithium salts in their electrolytic solution! If the electrolysis were then to
drive the lithium into the Palladium together with the deuterium then it would
be would be possible to have the reaction
         d + 6Li  --->  4He + 4He                          (7)
This is beautiful as it would explain how one gets energy(heat) but with
fewer neutrons.
  Looking again at the paper of Jones et al., they say they also used
lithium salts! Their actual wording is of interest; "we developed the following
(unoptimised) prescription for the electrolytic cells. The electrolyte is a
mixture of about 160 g of deuterium oxide(D2O) plus various metal salts in
about 0.2 g amounts each: FeSO4.7H2O,  NiCl2.6H20,  PdCl2,  CaCo3,  Li2So4.H2O
NaSO4.10H2O,  CaH4(PO4)2.H2O,  TiOSO4.H2SO4.8H2O, and a very small amount of
AuCN. (Our evidence indicates the importance of co-deposition of deuterons
and metal ions at the negative electrode)".
  Thus the experimental results can possibly be explained if the
deuteron - lithium reaction (7) is dominant and the d - d reactions (1) and(3)
occur but at a much lower rate.
  Thus the ratio of heat to neutrons could be varied by varying the electrolyte
composition.
  In the paper of Jones et al. that records anomalies in volcano gases, Jupiter
energy balance and 3He to 4He ratios in diamonds and metal foils, these effects
could possibly be explained as resulting from different conditions and elements
in the "electrolytic cell".
  It should be noted that if (7) is the dominant reaction, then most of the
energy will be emitted as Helium-4 nuclei and these should be searched for.
Also these Helium-4 nuclei will cause severe damage to the Palladium rods
which could also be studied. Again this damage could be important in
constructing a power plant which is economic.