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RE: Arthur C. Clarke on Cold Fusion



Martin makes an important point. The skepticism about "cold fusion"
arises not because of any "conspiracy" on the part of "orthodox"
science, but rather because literally hundreds of competent scientists
have attempted to reproduce the effect without success.

The nuclear reactions associated with fusion are well understood, and
have well known signatures (reaction products such as neutrons and gamma
rays). These have been looked for with the most sensitive of detectors,
and have not been found. Since fusion is a nuclear process, it is these
nuclear reaction products that carry away the excess energy. If you
don't have any nuclear reaction products, then it can't be a fusion
reaction that is taking place in these "cold fusion" cells.

Rather than taking someone's word for it (even if that someone happens
to be Clarke or Schwinger), I prefer to base my own judgements about
"cold fusion" on the evidence. And right now the evidence for "cold
fusion" is pretty meager, while the evidence against it is pretty
strong....at least IMHO.

Mark (an old nuclear experimentalist)

Dr. Mark H. Shapiro
Physics Department
California State University, Fullerton
Fullerton, CA 92834-6866

phone: 714-278-3884
fax: 714-278-5810
cellular/pager: 714-350-3575
e-mail: mshapiro@fullerton.edu
http://chaos.fullerton.edu/Shapiro.html



-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Simon [SMTP:msimon@physics.ucla.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 1998 12:19 PM
To: phys-l@atlantis.uwf.edu
Subject: Re: Arthur C. Clarke on Cold Fusion

I'm quite behind on my readings of this group, but I wanted to give an
interesting reference on the cold fusion story that I haven't seen
discussed
very much. Most people don't believe in the fusion part of cold
fusion
anymore because there is little evidence of any fusion reaction
products
(and many experiments show the same results using plain water). The
only
"reproducible" result which has been hard to understand is the claim
of
"excess heat" from apparently competent calorimetry measurements.
However, there are a number of assumptions which go into the
calorimetry,
one of which is called the Faraday efficiency (a measure of the
efficiency
of the electrolysis), which is usually assumed to be 100%. This
paper,
measured the Faraday efficiency for these cells and found it to be
less
than 100%. They then analyzed all the published data which showed
excess
heat and showed that with the correct Faraday efficiency, all the
excess
heat disappears. No excess heat, no cold fusion effect and nothing to

debate anymore.
The paper is "Calorimetry, excess heat, and Faraday Efficiency in
Ni-H20
electrolytic cells", Zvi Shkedi, et al., Fusion Technology, Vol 28, pg
1720,
Nov. 1995.