🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <930106161158.20c082a7@FNALD.FNAL.GOV> DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov writes:

   While I agree with most of what Jon Webb says in reply to Jed Rothwell, when
   he says:

   -- it can't be the case that Mills & Farrell and Yamaguchi and Notoya and
   Pons and Fleischmann and McKubre are all right; they have inconsistent
   experiments."

   I don't think we know enough about what is happening to know that they are
   inconsistent.  For example, they could all be wrong, and that would make 
   them consistent!

   So Jon, how are they inconsistent?  From my view, they could all be 
   based on some common principal.  

You may be right; perhaps there is some completely unknown theory that
will explain all of them.  But their explanations of the phenomena are
completely different, and inconsistent; e.g., Mills & Farrell's
shrinking hydrogen theory vs. Pons & Fleischmann's deuterium fusion
theory.  The experimental conditions they think are important are
different -- e.g., Notoya's abhorrence of parafilm vs. Pons &
Fleischmann's use of it, at least in the early experiments.  Their
experimental results (amount of heat seen and time taken to see it)
are completely different; some claim copious amount of heat almost
immediately and with excellent reproducibility, and others claim small
(10% excess) heat after long periods of time, and unreliably.

There are so many differences between these experiments that the only
thing they really have in common is that they put isotopes of hydrogen
and metal in non-equlibrium conditions, and got more heat than
expected.  There is very little reason to think that all of these
experiments derive their excess heat from the same basic source.  It
is only because of historical context that we seem them that way.

-- J