Hecht's cold fusion story not entirely fiction!
Brian Josephson
Saturday, 07 November 2009 20:00 UTC
Hecht’s story Clear proof: The final demonstration of the failure of cold fusion (Nature, Volume 462 (7269) p.126) is actually not so far from the reality (did Hecht know about that, one wonders?). The cold fusion library at lenr.org contains an account of an experiment where a similar explosion, caused by the water in the cell boiling, occurred soon after the current was switched on. Fortunately, apart from Prof. Mizuno being deaf for a week after the event there were no serious consequences.
This case differed from the Pons-Fleischmann meltdown described in the book of Beaudette in that parameters such as the temperature in the vessel and the current were being both monitored and recorded up to the time of the explosion, clearly demonstrating heat production vastly in excess of anything explicable through conventional mechanisms.
Updated 07 November 2009 20:34 UTC
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Replies
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After reading Jeff Hecht’s paper I was puzzled. If Professor Madeline Hou was a real person as that in the photo, she is supposed to read some publications in this field. Because she was still asking the question:" That reaction should have released a dangerous flux of neutrons. Where were the dead graduate students?” . I would suggest her to read the paper , “A new simple formula for fusion cross-sections of light nuclei.” in the Nuclear Fusion(2008) 48,125003 . This paper tried to answer that question based on the hot fusion data. If she likes I may send her a copy of that paper through an e-mail attached file. She is supposed to tell her audience in the next demonstration that there is an effort to answer that question.
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Xing Zhong: given the size of the crater in Hecht’s story, it is unlikely that Madeline survived to give a ‘next demonstration’! But I hope the sceptics will look at your paper.
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Yeah, I think it was a work of fiction. Probably.
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Wmm, is this a story of black humor? Since I cannot enjoy many of Western comedy dramas, maybe this story is the final demonstration of the different sense of humor between nationalities…
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