Thanks to the generosity of donors to Infusion Institute, I’m airborne on my way to Denver, and while I’m a dedicated skinflint, and Southwest charges $8 for in-flight internet access, I decided to pay it, and gain three hours of work on the blog. I’m reading the ICCF-21 abstracts and will make short reviews as I slog through them ah, read them with intense fascination and anticipation. I’ll be at the Conference site tomorrow, all day. Some of those with large hairpieces (hah! big wigs) will be arriving tomorrow evening. I’ll be in the Short Course on Sunday. It is being guided by the best scientists in the field, this should be Fun! Yay,Fun!
The first abstract I’ve read is:
http://coldfusioncommunity.net/iccf-21/abstracts/review/afanasyev/
Cold fusion: superfluidity of deuterons.
Afanasyev S.B.Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation
The nature of cold fusion (CF) is considered. It is supposed that the reaction of deuterons merger takes place due to one deuteron, participating in the superfluidity motion, and one deuterons, not participating in the superfluidity motion, participate in the reaction. The Coulomb barrier is
overcomed due to the kinetic energy of the Bose-condensate motion is very large. The Bosecondensate forms from delocalized deuterons with taking into account that the effective mass of delocalized deuterons is smaller than the free deuterons mass.
etc.
Poster session
Just what we needed!! 28 years of theory formation has done nothing to create what the field needs. However, I consider that what the theoreticians are doing is practicing for the opportunity that will open up when we have enough data about the actual conditions of cold fusion. This paper, I categorize with Kim and Takahashi as proposing fusion through formation of a Bose-Einstein Condensate. Actually understanding the math is generally beyond my pay grade, and my big hope is that the theoreticians will start to criticize — constructively, of course — each other’s work. Until then, I’m impressed that some physicists with chops and credentials are willing to look at this and come up with ideas that, at least, use more-or-less standard physics, extending it into some unknown territory.
The standard reaction to BEC proposals is something like: You HAVE GOT to be kidding! BECs at room temperature??? The temperature argument applies to large BECS, small ones might exist under condensed matter conditions. But that is a problem for this particular theory, which, to distribute the energy and stay below the Hagelstein limit of 10 keV, requires energy distibution among well over a thousand atoms.
Nevertheless, there is this thing about the unknown. It’s unknown! From Sherlock Holmes, when every possible explanation has been eliminated, it must be an impossible one! Or something like that. I disagree with Holmes, because the world of possible explanations is not limited, we cannot possibly have eliminated all of them. Some explanations become, with time and extensive study, relatively impossible. I.e, fraud is always possible with a single report, and becomes exponentially less likely with multiple apparently independent reports. Systematic error remains possible until there are substantial and confirmed correlations.
Have fun at ICCF 21 Abd.
Look forward to hearing what
you learn and find out.
Regards
Sam