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Path: santra!tut!draken!kth!mcvax!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wasatch!donn From: donn@wasatch.utah.edu (Donn Seeley) Newsgroups: alt.fusion Subject: news from the epicenter Summary: recent Pons comments; new confirmations; upcoming meetings; patents Message-ID: <1731@wasatch.utah.edu> Date: 4 May 89 09:11:11 GMT Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 407 I've been away for a week -- I was visiting a good friend who was hit by a drunk on the wrong side of a freeway and survived. Some things are more important than fusion (hi, Cynthia! :-). When I got back, I discovered that fusion was still in the papers; here are some more excerpts from local reporting which the country at large seems to have been spared. A bit over a week ago, just before I left, Pons gave a news conference in which he presented a few more details about the new work going on at the U. Here are some of Pons's remarks, as reported by the Salt Lake Tribune on April 25th: U of U chemist B Stanley Pons said Monday [4/24] that his research team is perfecting a new design for his nuclear fusion experiment that may be much better suited for an eventual use as a [sic] energy source. Dr Pons declined to give specifics on his new experimental design, other than to say it was 'a clearly different configuration.' He gave dimensions of a cylinder about a foot long and 6 inches in diameter. 'If we can charge a very large piece of palladium, then the power will be considerable,' he said. 'But, again, we would like to build something we can charge up in a shorter time period.' ... He also said that the design would lend itself to better transfer of energy. 'There are much better designs for getting the heat out of the cell.' Asked how long before such a new design could be up and working, he replied, 'I would hope this year.' But he said making the process work on a commercial scale may still be decades away. 'The engineers will be the best people to scale up to that sort of level.' Dr Pons said he currently has four cells running, including one that produces no heat. Ten more are within two or three days of running and he guessed that nine more will be up within a week or so. The largest one will be about five times the original [sic], which used a palladium rod about 4 inches long and less than a quarter of an inch in diameter. Platinum and possibly other metals will be substituted for palladium in some of the new experiments, he said. ... He said one possible reason that other labs have not confirmed the results is that the palladium rod must be used as it is cast. Rods that have been machined or extruded do not seem to work. 'I think it's clear now that the processing of the palladium may be a factor.' Given what he has learned about that, Dr Pons said he can reproduce the results better than 90 percent of the time. ... The [Walling-Simons] theory was strengthened by Dr Pons' statement a week ago [4/18?] that he had measured a trillion helium atoms per second coming off the device. He acknowledged Monday that some helium may be present in the palladium before the reaction begins, but those trace amounts are 'probably a million times less' than the amounts he has observed. ... 'You could consume the palladium, the platinum, the glass, all the water, everything' and not generate the observed heat, he said. He cited the experiments at Texas A&M University and Stanford University as the most important confirmations. Those two are believed to be the only ones to support the controversial heat-producing aspects. Dr Pons said he knows of no confirmation of the helium generation. Another article in the same edition of the Tribune contained some testy remarks by Pons about control experiments: Dr Pons and Dr Fleischmann have been criticized for not maintaining a control experiment with light, or ordinary, water, but Dr Pons said Monday such an experiment was not a good control. 'We've always run a control experiment,' he said. 'The problem is that the world is trying to tell us what a control experiment is. I might not agree that plain water is a control experiment. I'll argue that.' The APS meeting was reported on the front pages of the Tribune and the Deseret News. On Monday Pons seemed to be in hiding; the Tuesday morning (5/2) Tribune was only able to say: Dr Pons declined to comment [on the APS meeting] Monday, referring all inquiries to university officials. By Tuesday afternoon Pons was back to form, according to the News: Pons and Fleischmann Tuesday were elated by the physicists' remarks. 'We are extremely pleased because they confirm our findings,' Pons said. 'The absence of neutrons doesn't concern us in the slightest. We couldn't be happier. We and other scientists will soon tell them why this is so.' Pons seemed rather blithe given the attacks cited later in the article: The Monday conference comes on the heels of the scathing editorial in the New York Times that stated that the University of Utah 'may now claim credit for the artificial-heart horror show and the cold-fusion circus, two milestones at least in the history of entertainment if not of science.' ... The physicists at the meeting gave their loudest cheer Monday night -- mixed with a few boos -- to S E Koonin of the University of California at Santa Barbara who attacked Pons and Fleischmann. 'Based on my knowledge,' he said, 'the experiment is wrong. It suffers from the incompetence and delusions of Drs Pons and Fleischmann.' ... He joked that maybe Utah and its environment are to blame. 'I don't know how much (radioactive) radon gas they have in the lab, but I do know they mine uranium in Utah.' I suppose Koonin could equally well have mentioned all that wonderful fallout that the federal government spread over the state back in the days of open-air atomic testing... The only direct rejoinder from Pons in the article was quite tart: 'We are amazed that Professor Lewis [of Caltech] has learned how to solve all those problems in only one month when it took us 5 1/2 years. We further would like to know that if his results are to be thermodynamically feasible, why is it that he doesn't observe cold spots along with his hot spots?' Pons said. The response of the local papers to the APS flap was to contact groups that had reported confirmations of the experiment and print their (positive, naturally) responses. Here is what the Tribune had to say this morning: Scientists who have confirmed the heat-producing aspects of the University of Utah's solid-state nuclear fusion experiment are standing firm despite an avalanche of criticism by physicists meeting in Baltimore. And one of the scientists, Uziel Landau of Case Western University, criticized the scientists for 'unfair' statements about the U of U electrochemists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann [sic]. 'I think the statements were just outrageous,' said Dr Landau, a professor of chemical engineering at the Cleveland, Ohio, school. He added that he wasn't at the meeting and only knows what he heard on the radio. Dr Landau, who announced his confirmation on Saturday, and scientists at Texas A&M University and Stanford University are believed to be the only people to publicly confirm the excess heat of the Fleischmann-Pons experiment. ... 'We do see a net power output from our cell, pretty much along the same number as Fleischmann and Pons had reported,' [Landau] said. ... Dr Landau took exception with reports that the original experiment and the confirmations suffer from improper heat calculations. 'I don't think we have a calculation error,' he said. 'We are just as expert as anyone else at heat-transfer calculations.' He also said he had great respect for Dr Fleischmann, whom he said he has known for about 10 years. 'He's a very cautious, very careful guy, highly regarded. I take very seriously any statement that has come out of him.' He said he has also seen a slight increase in tritium levels in the heavy water solution, but is making no conclusions yet. 'We stay way short of saying we have seen fusion.' ... Joel Scherkin, spokesman for Stanford University, said Robert Huggins and his team have an electrolytic cell that continues to produce excess energy. ... 'They are standing by their guns,' he said, adding that they are bracing for more criticism. 'They are circling the wagons.' He said Dr Huggins has submitted a paper to 'a prestigious journal' that he would not name, and he wouldn't have any other press announcements until it is published. 'We're going to do what the University of Utah didn't.' Texas A&M spokesman Ed Walraven said chemist Charles Martin and his team are 'a little surprised' by the acrimony coming from the Baltimore meeting, but 'they're not angry.' Mr Walraven said the school now has about a dozen electrolytic cells running in heavy water in various departments on campus, and 'about half' of them are producing heat. 'The cells still continue to generate excess energy, and the researchers continue to document those findings,' he said, adding a note of caution: 'We're far from having all the problems licked.' The News went so far as to report a confirmation from a second group at A&M: A second team of researchers at Texas A&M University has announced successful replication of the most controversial part of the U experiment. Their electrochemical reaction produced more energy than required to make the reaction work. ... Wednesday's confirmation by John Appleby, world-renowned electrochemist at Texas A&M University, could help silence skeptics who for six weeks have criticized the revolutionary research of Pons and Fleischmann. Appleby, director of the Electrochemical Systems and Hydrogen Research Center, and his colleagues are the second Texas A&M team to independently confirm the project. ... 'His (Appleby's) confirmation is no state secret, but he has only mentioned it to colleagues in a conservative way,' said Ed Walraven, assistant director of public information at the Texas university. Walraven indicated that Appleby's formal announcement is pending publication of his data in a scientific journal. Like the team headed by [A&M electrochemist] Martin, the electrochemical reaction carried out by Appleby's group produced between 20 percent more energy [sic] than required to make the reaction work, Walraven said. Like Martin's group, Appleby and colleagues report generating lower percentages of energy than do Pons and Fleischmann. Walraven said both Texas A&M teams are now trying to determine why the initial experiments (of Martin) produced between 60 and 80 [sic] more energy than required to make the reaction work -- and a second experiment continues to produce stable amounts of excess energy -- although at a somewhat lower level. They have half a dozen experiments that are producing excess heat. The News described how the electrochemists were planning to take their revenge on the physicists: ... U officials, who filed another patent application this week, predicted Wednesday that many more groups will announce confirmation next week at the biannual meeting of the Electrochemical Society in Los Angeles. Hugo Rossi, dean of the U College of Science and newly appointed director of the U's solid-state fusion research effort, said May 8 will be 'F-Day' -- the day that an additional chemists [sic], meeting with their colleagues, will report successful reproduction of the experiment that's caused fusion fever to run rampant worldwide. Rossi said several people are scheduled to speak at a special session at 5:45 PM 'at which time five or six papers will be reporting results consistent' with U chemists B Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. Rossi, who is overseeing the expansion and scaling up of the U experiment, hopes confirmations on Monday will satisfy the state Fusion/Energy Advisory Council. The council is charged with allocating $5 million in state money for fusion development. Also coming up in three weeks is a cold fusion workshop sponsored by Los Alamos, according to the 4/25 Tribune, although the APS fiasco may take some of the steam out of it: US Secretary of Energy James D Watkins has directed his 10 national laboratories to step up cold nuclear fusion efforts... ... Los Alamos National Laboratory will sponsor a scientific workshop on the subject in Santa Fe, NM, May 23-25. ... [DOE spokesman] Mr Sherwood said the May cold fusion meeting will be chaired by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Schrieffer, director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Norman Hackerman, a chemist and former president of the University of Texas who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In the meantime Pons apparently will work fairly closely with LANL: [Pons] gave sketchy details of his planned collaboration with Los Alamos. Scientists from the New Mexico laboratory will bring their equipment to Utah to examine the experiment, and they will likely take one of the working cells back with them. Some contributors to alt.fusion have speculated that patent considerations have led Pons and Fleischmann to restrict detailed information about their technique. A long article on patents in the 4/28 Tribune shows one U official trying to dispel this impression, while at the same time a U attorney apparently contradicts him: The Utah Attorney General's Office has selected law firms in Salt Lake City and Houston to lead what is already being characterized as a 'nasty' patent fight on its nuclear fusion research. ... Assistant Attorney General Joseph Tesch Thursday told members of the Fusion/Energy Advisory Council, the panel formed to distribute $5 million in state fusion money, that his office had retained the Salt Lake firm of Giauque, Williams, Wilcox and Bendinger to oversee the patent fight. And Richard Giauque, who Mr Tesch described as 'one of the best trial lawyers in America,' told the panel that he has hired the Houston firm of Arnold, White and Durkee to assist in securing national and international patent rights. Arnold, White and Durkee attorney Paul Janicke, who Mr Giauque described as 'a very, very tough litigator,' will lead the patent effort. ... The university had previously hired California attorney Peter Dallinger, a nuclear physicist who filed the first patent applications, and he will continue to assist the legal team, U Vice President for Research James Brophy said. ... 'Events which probably ought not to be made public have occurred in the last few days, which indicate that there are people who are going to take every advantage they can,' Mr Tesch said. Mr Giauque said his immediate goal is to stop the flow of information that could undermine the patents. 'We need to get a tight hold very early on disclosures.' Drs Pons and Fleischmann have been criticized for providing too little information to other scientists trying to duplicate the experiment, but Dr Brophy said they are not withholding information for patent reasons. He acknowledged that the only paper the pair has published is not as thorough as it could have been, but he and both scientists have tried to help their colleagues over the phone. He said some scientists have been 'surprisingly naive' and have committed some careless mistakes in trying to reproduce the experiment. 'You have to remember that Pons and Fleischmann spent 5 1/2 hears on this.' ... The U has filed several patent applications and plans to file more, and other schools, including university patent leader Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have said they have filed applications on their own interpretations of the experiment. The competition became quite apparent when Mr Giauque was interviewing patent firms. 'As we scouted the major patent firms, we found that some of them had developed conflict-of- interest problems already.' Mr Tesch had council members sign a confidential disclosure agreement requiring them to not discuss patent-sensitive issues. 'Any violation of that would be a crime,' he said. ... I couldn't resist repeating one little ironic comment about the media circus that appeared in the 4/26 Tribune: Drs Pons and Fleischmann were accompanied on their Capitol Hill visits by U of U President Chase N Peterson and by James J Brophy, the U's vice president for research. Rep. Howard C Nielson joined the U contingent with Majority Leader Foley, whose dog Alice was also in attendance. (Yes, but was the dog a physicist or a chemist?) While on the subject of the Capitol Hill testimony, I wanted to mention that as far as I know, the $25 million figure that has been attributed to Pons on alt.fusion actually came from U President Chase Peterson. U officials have lost most of their self-respect when it comes to scrounging for cash -- the Utah educational system is strapped, having suffered budget cuts in recent years and having narrowly avoided disaster with the defeat of massive tax rollback initiatives last November. The Channel 2 evening news tonight had a report on grade school education in Utah and found that among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Utah ranks: 51st in class sizes (24.1 pupils per teacher); 50th in spending per student; and 43rd in teacher salaries. Utah does manage to reach the national average on standardized tests, although this says to me that the state could be far superior if it wanted to. A schoolteacher friend of mine quit last year and is now driving limousines for a living... Let's hope that in a year from now, Stan Pons isn't in that line of work too, Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@cs.utah.edu 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 utah-cs!donn