As some of you know, cold fusion became my full-time occupation since
retirement. I immersed myself into muddy waters of that field in order
to find one reproducible-on-demand demo of a nuclear process associated
with a chemical process. I am still searching. This work put me in
contact with a large number of people, some highly knowledgeable and
some with more enthusiasm than knowledge. There will be two Cold Fusion
sessions at the next Monday meeting of American Physical Society. I
decided to attend this meeting, and to make a presentation, if allowed.
It might not be accepted because it was submitted late. I am counting
on some last minute cancellations. I would be talking about an
experiment that was prepared and performed (in the last three months)
with an undergraduate physics major at Montclair State University, and
with two other persons. A retired electrochemistry professor was also
my teammate. He was our advisor, because lives in Minnesota. Our goal
was to replicate the SPAWAR experiment, described at points 7 and 8 in
Our experimental work ended about a week ago. We obtained the same
results as scientists from the US Navy lab in San Diego. Following
their protocol, we observed copious nuclear-track-looking pits on the
CR-39 detector that was in contact with the cathode of an electrolytic
cell. The most amazing, and puzzling, fact is that such pits are
produced only when a magnetic field (about 0.3 T near the silver
cathode) is present. After analyzing the pits, and comparing them to
tracks produced by alpha particles, I came to the conclusion that pits
cannot possibly be due to alpha particles, or to lighter nuclear
projectiles, as claimed by Frank Gordon et al. (see the above URL).
That is what I want to report next Monday at the APS meeting. Unit
#319, for my CF website, is ready; it will be posted it after the
conference. In that way I will be able to report how others reacted to
my presentation. Stay tuned. The title of my paper is "Nuclear or not
nuclear, that is the question." And the tentative answer will be "not
nuclear."
But I never heard about a chemical process whose rate is drastically
changed by a magnetic field from a permanent magnet. Does anyone know
of a chemical process that can be stopped by removing a magnet? If so
then please share what you know, preferably today or tomorrow. I still
do not know what to say about this experimental fact. Our
electrochemistry advisor thinks that hydroxide ions, from decomposed
water, are somehow concentrated where the cathode and the plastic
material (CR-39) are in contact. But how can it be? The prevailing
direction of the imposed magnetic field lines is from the anode to the
cathode (the q*v*B force is nearly zero).
_______________________________________________________
Ludwik Kowalski, a retired physicist
5 Horizon Road, apt. 2702, Fort Lee, NJ, 07024, USA
Also an amateur journalist at
http://netdrive.montclair.edu/~kowalskil/cf/