Technical Paper

"Eadem sed aliter" (the same things, only different)
Quintiliano, Institutiones oratoriae

"The real voyage of discovery does not consist in seeking new landscapes, but in acquiring new eyes."
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

"The case must, you see, be kept revolving in the small circle to which it is artificially restricted"
Franz Kafka, The Trial

After much trumpeting, drumrolling and breath-holding, the DoE mountain moved ever so slightly and gave birth to a mousy report on a submitted review of Cold Fusion. The review was submitted by five scientists representing the field - scientists who had raised high hopes that a favourable DoE review was coming up, and whose jobs and professional careers were also on the line. We note that in the review they submitted, these five scientists entirely rejected the advice given to them by Dr. E. Mallove, to make reference to the work of Randell Mills of BlackLight Power Inc (though it is possible that BlackLight Power Inc. was actually consulted, as one of the six companies - whose names have remained secret - selected to submit research results during the 'review' process), to the theoretical body of publications relating the so-called ZPE field to nuclear reactions, and - most importantly from where we stand - to our own work in Aetherometry. Theirs was a partisan effort, and one that staked its claim to fame on a magical, single-step reaction that - as we shall see below - does not exist.

Let us dispassionately examine the grand event by taking apart its components. Our first query is:

1. Was this review an independent DoE assessment of the experiments and the published scientific literature? The answer is no; the review was actually conducted by the scientists who made the submittal:

"The scientists who made this request were asked to generate a review document that identified the most significant experimental observations and publications, and those areas where additional work would appear to be warranted. This document, entitled "New Physical Effects in Metal Deuterides," was prepared by Professor Peter Hagelstein of MIT, Dr. Michael McKubre of SRI International, Professor David Nagel of George Washington University, Dr. Talbot Chubb of Research Systems Inc., and Mr. Randall Hekman of Hekman Industries (hereafter referred to as the proposers). Together with supplemental material, said document was submitted to DOE in July 2004 (Attachment 1)."

This is an unusual, hands-off approach, perhaps explained by the fact that Abrahams, the current Secretary of Energy, will not continue into the new Bush Administration and something had to be hastily done.


2. What did the DoE do, if it did not conduct an independent review? The DoE named an anonymous panel which then conducted a review of the review...:

"First, the review document received by DoE was sent out for peer review by mail. Nine scientists with appropriate scientific backgrounds in experimental and theoretical nuclear physics, material science, and electrochemistry were identified by DoE, and were given approximately one month to review the report and supplementary material."

Lastly, six (unidentified) research groups submitted 1-hour presentations on their bench devices:

"The second part of the review consisted of a one-day review conducted on August 23, 2004. The reviewers consisted of nine additional scientists chosen by DoE for their expertise in relevant fields. Anonymous comments from the mail peer review, referred to above, were provided to members of the reviewers prior to the presentations. Oral presentations were made to the reviewers by research scientists, chosen by the authors of the review document. Six research groups gave approximately one hour presentations on the work being performed in their laboratories."

We know who evidently selected these six research laboratories - Hagelstein, McKubre, T. Chubb, Nagel and Hekman - but who they were, and how and why they were selected, is a mystery.

In the Washington Post (Nov. 21, 2004) Sharon Weinberger wrote on the secrecy of this procedure (which, for her part, she ventured had to do with DoE's fear of embarrassment):

"The Department of Energy went to great lengths to cloak the meeting from public view. No announcement, no reporters. None of the names of the people attending that day was disclosed. The DoE made sure to inform the panel's members that they were to provide their conclusions individually rather than as a group, which under a loophole in federal law allowed the agency to close the meeting to the public."

As for the six selected companies/laboratories, she adds:

"At 9:30 a.m., six presenters were invited in and instructed to sit in a row of chairs along the wall. The group included a prominent MIT physicist [most likely Hagelstein], a Navy researcher [most likely T. Chubb] and four other scientists from Russia, Italy and the United States. They had waited a long time for this opportunity and, one by one, stood up to speak about a scientific idea they had been pursuing for more than a decade. (...) At the end, the scientists presenting the idea and those reviewing it all shook hands. The reviewers stayed on to discuss the material. The cold fusionists went to a barbecue, feeling celebratory. No one had told them if the presentation had convinced anyone that cold fusion was real. But it was nice, they said, after so many years, just to be treated with respect."


3. What is the substance of the DoE report on the Review submitted by Hagelstein et al? The DoE report accepts the summary situation of the problems submitted by the reviewers:

"The proposers state that the results from the research provide evidence for effects in three categories, as summarized in the review document's Conclusions Chapter:
1. 'The existence of a physical effect that produces heat in metal deuterides. The heat is measured in quantities greatly exceeding all known chemical processes and the results are many times in excess of determined errors using several kinds of apparatus. In addition, the observations have been reproduced, can be reproduced at will when the proper conditions are reproduced, and show the same patterns of behavior. Further, many of the reasons for failure to reproduce the heat effect have been discovered.'
2. 'The production of 4He as an ash associated with this excess heat, in amounts commensurate with a reaction mechanism consistent with D+D -> 4He + 23.8 MeV (heat)'.
3. 'A physical effect that results in the emission of: (a) energetic particles consistent with d(d,n) 3 He and d(d,p)t fusions reactions, and (b) energetic alphas and protons with energies in excess of 10 MeV, and other emissions not consistent with deuteron-deuteron reactions.' "

On the first item, in the context of Charge Element 1 [1], the DoE Report concludes:

"Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic. Those reviewers who accepted the production of excess power typically suggest that the effect seen often, and under some understood conditions, is compelling. The reviewers who did not find the production of excess power convincing cite a number of issues including: excess power in the short term is not the same as net energy production over the entire of time of an experiment; all possible chemical and solid state causes of excess heat have not been investigated and eliminated as an explanation; and production of power over a period of time is a few percent of the external power applied and hence calibration and systematic effects could account for the purported net effect. Most reviewers, including those who accepted the evidence and those who did not, stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented."

This is perhaps the most positive note this DoE Report has dispensed: half of the chosen reviewers of the review thought there was compelling evidence for excess power! By Langmuir's criterion, however, this is the very hallmark of pathological science: 50% believers, and 50%disbelievers.

Why the disbelief? Because the experimental work has not produced reliable, sustained power excess results. Because most results are erratic. Because the CF researchers themselves do not know how the exact processes involved. But isn't the phenomenon of anomalous heat production in table-top electrolytic systems real?

"Two-thirds of the reviewers commenting on Charge Element 1 did not feel the evidence was conclusive for low energy nuclear reactions, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced. Many reviewers noted that poor experiment design, documentation, background control and other similar issues hampered the understanding and interpretation of the results presented."

Why is this so? One is never told. But we know why it is so. This is the unspoken that goes to the core of the scientific problem plaguing the field. The cold-fusioneers have taken the unexplained behaviour of deuterides in metal lattices, along with a postulated single-step magical reaction, to be the sine qua non of the Pons-Fleishmann (PF) effect, without realizing the complex reactions underlying the effect, or knowing how to systematically extract heat from them.

In our view, there are six broad reasons why cold-fusioneers are, and have been, off-track in their endeavour:

1. The notion that a single-step reaction could explain the PF effect and sidestep all complications; this was most unrealistic, as the process responsible for that effect would then have been a simple one to reproduce and control, not the difficult, erratic and elusive process that it has proved to be.

2. A confusion - in concept and by dint of bad measurement techniques - between anomalous heat evolution and liberation of energy in excess of breakeven; this made it sound like the field was going somewhere when it was not going anywhere, not even into the complex nature of the anomalous heat phenomenon.

3. An effective incapacity to determine the true carriers of energy and the end-point originators of the anomalous heat, and thus a lack of effective techniques to promote its production and capture it.

4. A misunderstanding of the equivocal role of nuclear ash.

5. A near-complete disregard of electrodynamic conditions.

6. A fixation on the loading of PD and other metal lattices with deuterium (this was already the substance of the criticism that Dr. Mallove had addressed to Talbot Chubb, in his ICCF-10 presentation entitled "LENR and 'Cold Fusion' Excess Heat: their relation to other anomalous microphysical energy experiments and emerging new technologies") - which did nothing to isolate the real instances of necessary compression of fusing atoms along the desired pathway.

The common feature of all these reasons for failure is that CF researchers and modern physicists know very little about the structure of the atom and, in particular, about its nuclear structure. Hence, they have no detailed idea of the exact processes involved in nuclear transitions, just a very rough one. To make clear how far our own research into these matters has departed from these errors, we have decided to reveal some of our own work in this area - just enough to situate where the real scientific problems lie. Accordingly, we will now insert our own evaluation of the scientific errors inherent in the submitted review, and introduce our solution, the aetherometric or "Correa solution" to the so-called Cold Fusion Enigma:

I - Failure to identify the nuclear reactions that generate the anomalous heat effect
The anomalous heat effect cannot be dissociated from the choice of preferred reactions, nor from an understanding of the processes that may (hopefully!) select these preferred reactions - and thus alter, or be made to alter, the branching ratios. The presentation made by the proposers/reviewers failed to identify these co-relations, and thus could not make any constructive suggestions with respect to the solution of the problems they raise. It identified the reactions of interest as the fusion of helium - d(d,n) 3He - and the fusion of deuterium - d(d,p)t. As we shall see, this is too vague; but there are reasons for this vagueness - it was caused by the blindfolds imposed upon the reviewers by the dogma of unchanging branching ratios. This ties in to Charge Element 2 of the DoE report (see below). Our contention is akin to that which has held the CF field together - that the anomalous heat phenomenon has a strict dependence upon a pathway. But the pathway has been wrongly identified by CF researchers. The problem is further compounded because, out of the three pathways for the fusion of deuterium with itself, there arise secondary pathways, some of which involve the fusion of byproducts, such as 3He and tritium T.

In a nutshell, the problem is that the reaction put forth by the five proposers -

D+D -> 4He + 23.8 MeV (heat)

is an ideal shortcut [2] that does not exist in nature. What resembles it, and exists in nature, is a reaction that releases gamma radiation via a paired intranuclear mass-reduction ("shrinkage") of two protons - an intranuclear process, which our work has identified, but about which existing physics still knows strictly nothing, other than its outcome:

D+D -> 4He + 23.5 MeV (gamma)

There is no magic that can convert the production of gamma radiation of 23.5 MeV (our best estimate) into heat having the same energetic value. This is the grand systematic error of the field, the 'horrible truth'.

Aetherometrically - and once we get rid of the mythical reaction which the five proposers, and other cold-fusioneers, are so fixated on - we must take into account all of the possible reactions, not only those of deuterium with itself, but also those of deuterium with tritium, with 3He, and of the latter with itself. The five proposers explicitly and implicitly set out not to do this. Our own work has identified a minimum three-step reaction process as being the one of interest, because this process alone avoids both gamma and neutron emission, and permits extraction of energy from the deceleration of nuclear emitted protons. Our central contention is precisely that the unexpected and anomalous evolution of heat in stimulated CF cells is actually consistent with the proper ("aetherometric") arrangement of conventional fusion reactions. It is only because the proposers limited themselves to fundamentally considering D-D fusion that they did not appear to go out on a limb when stating that:

"The excess heat effect itself is consistent neither with a conventional D+D fusion reaction mechanism, nor with any other nuclear reaction mechanism that appears in textbooks or in the mainstream nuclear physics literature." (p. 2 of the submitted Review)

Had the proposers given full consideration to complex pathways, they could then have intelligently examined the possibilities. Instead, they restricted themselves to considering only doublet reaction pathways for D-D, while discarding two of them without a mention - the production of tritium:

D + D -> T + p

and the production of 3He:

D + D -> 3He + n

- save for the dry statement:

" Searches for neutrons, tritons, and other energetic emissions in quantitative association with the excess heat effect have uniformly produced null results."

The proposers - like most experimentalists in the field ever since Pons and Fleishmann made the same mistake (J. Electroanal Chem & InterFacial Electrochem, 261:301, 1990) - thereby mistook what is a phenomenological absence that is detected experimentally, for the physical absence of any such particles as intermediates that were actually involved in the desired pathway. What they took to be the truth with respect to neutrons, tritons, and 3-helions also became the truth for protons.

Had the proposers given proper consideration to alternative pathways, they would have considered, at least, the triplet pathways that would involve T-D and 3He-D fusion:

D+D +D -> T + p + D -> 4He + p (3 MeV) + n (13 MeV)

D+D +D -> 3He + n + D -> 4He + p (14 MeV) + n (2 MeV)

The five proposers should have explicitly considered the likelihood of other, imbricated pathways. They had some inkling of this deficiency - of the necessity to examine other pathways and in particular those that generated protons - when they referred to the anomalous spectra of TiDx foils (on page 14 of their Review, Appendix 1 of the DoE Report); but they made no mention of the involvement of the reaction in the PF effect. In fact, the submitted review made the glaring mistake of classifying all proton emissions in the 10-15 MeV range of interest, as "Nuclear Emissions not Attributable to Deuteron-Deuteron Fusion" (section 5.5, p. 13), when, in fact, the first of the above two triplet pathways for D-D fusion would result in the production of protons in that energy range.

It is true - consideration of the triplet pathways would not have saved the proposers' review, or the CF experimentalists either. They would still have failed to resolve the problem of the 'neutron-poisoning' of the desired reaction process - and also therefore have failed to appreciate how tritons and protons would have to be necessary intermediates of the desired reaction process. The problem is that neutrons, too, must be either prevented from being produced, or must be re-absorbed within the reactor in order to give rise to yet another series of steps that can only be fully resolved if the fusion of 3He with itself is also performed, selectively and efficiently, within the same reactor. In essence, this is the final complication that has led to endless confusion about fusion pathways and their couplings in a device that would be truly designed to elicit thermal generation from nuclear fusion. So, again from the fusion of 3He with itself, the terminal protons - this time with mean energies of 6.6 MeV:

3He + 3He -> 4He + 2 p

- would have to be obliged to shed their kinetic energy in the form of heat. The role of protons, and in particular of those that result from 3He-3He fusion - has been entirely disregarded by CF researchers, who failed, therefore, to appreciate how the anomalous heat is primarily evolved from proton deceleration. And this is a critical error which the entire field has persisted in.

II - The proposed aetherometric pathway for anomalous evolution of heat

These considerations bring us to our own work and proposal. Up until now, we have only considered fusion reactions that involve deuterium doublets (D-D reactions), or deuterium triplets (D-T and D-3He reactions). The aetherometric model of the desired reaction specifies a physical process that only exists when it occurs in deuterium tetrads, ie when paired synchronous 2(D-D) fusions are promoted. That is the first major and critical difference between the aetherometric model and that of the proposers/reviewers and the CF researchers. In this context, we could consider the tetrad pathway that generates neutrons, as a continuation of the second triplet pathway:

{[D+D] +[D+D]} -> 2 (3He) + 2 n -> 4He +2 p + 2 n

This process generates neutrons and entails loss of usable energy, especially in an electrolytic device. What is the solution? The solution is the aetherometric model of the desired fusion pathway, where the sole intermediates are tritons and protons:

{[D+D] +[D+D]} -> 2 (T + p) -> 2 (3He) + 2 p + 2 beta -> 4He + 2 p (3 MeV) + 2 p (6.6 MeV) + 2 beta

Both tetrad pathways involve paired D-D fusions, and 3He-3He fusions, but only the last tetrad - or aetherometric pathway - exclusively employs proton intermediaries that permit extraction of heat, with no production of neutrons and complete absorption of tritons. This is why, when anomalous heat evolution is observed, no neutrons or tritons are significantly detected. A truly efficient device that, through intelligent construction, follows these principles and this model, would maximize its thermal production by ensuring minimal proportions of proton and triton leakage, and zero gamma and neutron production. And herein lies its potential to become a viable, environmentally-clean device.

It is gratifying to note that the 2002 results of the Mitsubishi group (Iwamura et al, Jpn J Appl Phys, 41:4642) permit precisely a tetrad-based interpretation of the pathways(s) of interest, in full accord with Aetherometry and the model just enunciated. Likewise, it is gratifying to note that the formation and role of 'tritium doublets' suggested by Otto Reifenschweiller's work (reprinted by Dr. Mallove in issue #54 of IE, in one of his last acts that received so much undue criticism from cold-fusioneers, with E. Storms at the forefront of this opposition) and envisaged by Reifenschweiller himself as having a critical role in "cold fusion", also point to the deuterium tetrad pathway that we propose - because of its necessary synchronization of 'triton doublets'.

At the end of the day, we contend that the reactions of interest are quite different from those submitted to the DoE by the five proposers, and that the proposers simply failed to realize how the same end-result (evolution of anomalous heat) could be obtained by the proper concatenation of different reactions. The CF/LENR field is, in fact, a long way away from being able to demonstrate sustainable excess energy; first, it would have had to master the production of anomalous heat, and it failed here, well before the target.

 

III - The ambiguity of nuclear ash as signature for the anomalous evolution of heat

Nuclear ash 4He is the end product of all known fusion reactions: D-D, D-T, D-3He and 3He-3He. Depending on the pathway, the ash is accompanied either by substantial gamma radiation or by the emission of a nuclear baryon (neutron or proton). The five proposers act as if, somehow, the same energy that could exit the nucleus in the form of a gamma ray, could also miraculously exit it simply as heat - by itself and on its own, without further ado or any proposed nuclear 'mechanism'.

Our contention - as set out above - is precisely compatible with both the observed anomalous evolution of heat and the production of 4He ash, and does not require the mythical reaction invoked by cold-fusioneers. When gamma radiation results, the released nuclear energy is lost in the form of ionizing energy. It is only, we contend, when the fusion reaction results in a proton, or protons, leaving the rearranging nucleus, that the energy released by the reaction can be exported in the form of the kinetic energy of a massbound charge (keep in mind the underlying electrolytic conditions). This is the real sine qua non of the subsequent burst evolution of sensible heat: if no proton exits the nucleus and subsequently undergoes deceleration, then there is no utilizable transfer of the released energy, nor any subsequent transformation of this energy into sensible heat. Anomalous evolution of heat in room-temperature CF devices is only observed when the fusion reaction is continuously accompanied by the release and deceleration of protons.This is the crucial element which the CF field was, and is, sorely in need of having understood. The incapacity of physicists and cold fusioneers to understand the extraction of sensible heat from protons is what led the entire field, experimentalists and theoreticians, to assume a mythical reaction that directly yielded heat but did not employ the intermediacy of protons. The simplistic notion of this impossible reaction obfuscated the actual simplicity of the role of protons in producing the desired effect. Let us then state: the anomalous heat effect is consistent, in principle, with all fusion reaction processes that release protons and decelerate them, even if only one such pathway of reactions is the desirable one. Instead of putting forth a direct process for a single-step generation of heat and ash, the proposers should have stuck to what they say in their footnote on p. 2:

"The observation of 4He correlated with excess energy [it should have read: correlated with anomalous evolution of heat...], which is discussed later, is suggestive that the reaction mechanism is consistent with D+D -> 4He, but sheds little light on how such reactions might occur."

If it sheds little light, one more reason for caution; but if it sheds enough light to suggest precisely that other known reactions are involved, and this involvement is optimal when the reactions are concatenated one way, and not any other way, then one must conclude that, after 15 years of study, the core of the reaction - ie the real scientific phenomenon - has still not been understood, nor properly circumscribed. All of this, because physicists continue to ignore how heat is generated from protons, or from any other massbound charges...

In an unsuspected way, the preceding also proves that these physicists - the five proposers and their community - are completely adrift in their grasp of the phenomenon at hand. For they do not know the correct ideal pathway for the fusion of deuterium (ie how not to 'poison' or contaminate the reaction, eg with those neutrons, etc), nor how to use it to systematically produce sensible heat. Only with aetherometric tools would they have been able to realize what the next step is - ie what permits such high-energy protons to shed their energy and thus give rise to heat. In other words, only if these cold-fusioneers knew which coupled processes they had to select, and how to transform their products essentially into heat, would they know how to create a reproducible and controllable phenomenon: a cold-fusion table-top reactor that would both generate heat and absorb all nuclear byproducts, so that the proton emission would not be detected outside that reactor, and there would be no neutron or gamma emissions. The real reason, then, why the presenters could not convince the DoE's review panel is that they themselves have no grasp of the physical processes whereby that anomalous heat is made to result from the fusion pathway.

On the Second Item, Charge Element 2 [3], the DoE Report states:

"The review document and oral presentations made the argument that the branching ratios are different at low energies and that in cold fusion, 4He fusion channel is predominant. According to the review document, no high energy gamma rays appear to accompany the 4He, as is observed in D-D fusion reactions. Instead, the approximately 24 MeV in energy resulting from D-D fusion was purported to appear as heat in the material lattice. To explain these unusual characteristics, the reviewers were presented with a theoretical framework that purported to describe how collective energy from the material lattice couples to a deuteron pair to induce fusion, how the only fusion reaction channel that occurs would be the production of 4He, and how all the energy is coupled back into the material in the form of heat instead of high energy gamma-rays. The reviewers raised serious concerns regarding the assumptions postulated in the proposed theoretical model for the explanation for 4He production."

The reader will now understand that the DoE had good reason to reject the physical process whereby the CF presenters proposed to accomplish the production of 4He ash. The presenters had tried to fit all the disparate evidence into one magical reaction process, when the real process involved is, per force, much more complicated.

By the same token, the reader will also realize that the DoE is wrong in assuming that the only possible pathway starting from D-D fusion and resulting in the production of 4He ash, involves production of gamma radiation. This is not the only pathway; it is the only direct pathway.

Obviously, then, both sides are wrong, because the question is substantially more complex than either side makes it out to be. What we are saying is this: through reactions that, in essence, are proton-mediated, one can selectively produce 4He ash, and do so precisely in a way which is accompanied by the evolution of heat. There is no magical single-step transition, as was proposed by the Group of Five. One must not only select for a complex multi-step reaction but also for the preferred branches of each step. Engineering for such an outcome becomes possible only when the basic research has been completed and an adequate analytical model is found, ie once the process has been properly understood. As Cold Fusion researchers failed to grasp the basic science, they also failed to determine the correct selection filters and boundary conditions that gear the cell or reactor to proceed, in essence, through proton-mediated pathways for the production of heat and nuclear ash. Gamma radiation can be suppressed in the production of 4He ash, and this suppression can be seen as being inversely proportional to the observed evolution of heat - sensible or chemical heat. But none of this can be done without the intermediacy of protons, the production and absorption of tritons and the avoidance of neutrons. The nut has been hard to crack not only because of its complex nature, but also because of the prevalent contention within CF research circles that endless blind manipulations of the CF 'gadget', in the hope of a serendipidous breakthrough, should take precedence over rigourous analytical understanding and systematic experimentation.

Rejection of Charge Element 2 was inevitable; the content of the submittal was wrong on both counts: the error (or wrong theoretical assumption) in the presentation, and the loose way it fitted the experimental data to that model - so loose that it proposed an unconfirmed single-step reaction and failed to delimit it in relation to the exclusion of unwanted, as well as unnecessary, nuclear products. The proposers failed even to convince the reviewers that 4He ash is the necessary signature of the true Pons-Fleishmann effect.

"The preponderance of the reviewers' evaluations indicated that Charge Element 2, the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions, is not conclusively demonstrated by the evidence presented. One reviewer believed that the occurrence was demonstrated, and several reviewers did not address the question."

 

IV - Complete omission of electrodynamic considerations and improper time-integration of power

On the question of whether compression pressures under electrolytic conditions favor fusion reactions of deuterides trapped in metal lattices, the submitted Review makes a point of categorically stating the condition ("Such high loading is accompanied by high internal pressure, and it is necessary for the cathode to be able to withstand this in Fleischmann-Pons experiments."), but ostensibly backs away from any explanation, including the obvious one, which it discards with a mere dixit:

"The notion that deuterons are somehow being squeezed together [One can only wonder what "high internal pressure" might mean, if not some squeezing together...], so as to fuse at high loading or high fugacity in these experiments, is not considered a plausible explanation." (p. 4 of Review)

Somehow, the in-depth loading is reduced to a surface effect ruled by chemical potential, and the weakest case - in both theory and experiment - is made for this, where the cell current for Fig. 3 is not even provided with the limits of its X&Y resolution. Yet, note that while the desired fusion processes may involve surface phenomena, these more likely than not implicate electron emission. The proposers make no mention of it, as if ignoring the electrodynamic aspects was a corollary to having previously ignored the role of protons as intermediaries in the evolution of heat. Further, and along this same line, the so-called temperature-dependence of the anomalous heat effect is but another red herring and may well simply be a result of resistive-inductive formation of thermionic hotspots. Add to this the SRI and Takahashi observations that abrupt changes in current density could initiate heat pulses, and it becomes apparent that one of the major omissions of the submitted review is the involvement of 'anomalous field emission' in triggering heat bursts, and possibly in sustaining them. Again the proposers made no effort to look into this matter.

Lastly, the Cold Fusion literature is riddled with defective experiments. The Ohmori-Mizuno Aqueous Glow Discharge is one example among all too many. If the presentations made by the six selected laboratories were of comparably poor quality, it is not hard to understand the skepticism about spurious measurements of unsustained excess heat, a problem which seems to have bedeviled the field [4]. CF researchers have claimed to have produced evidence of excess energy. This determination, however, would have to have resulted from the comparison of two time integrals - for input and output power, respectively - made for contemporary time intervals and, in particular, for time intervals which would include the actual beginning of the experiment and continue until either the temperature of the CF cell had returned to the baseline or the stimulating current had been discontinued. Rarely has such determination been made properly. Glaring failures, like that of the Ohmori-Mizuno device, occurred precisely because the selected time intervals did not extend to the completion of the experiment. Fig. 1 of the submitted review is one other example. Given such omissions, little can be ascertained about the reality of claims of excess energy, specifically in the form of excess heat.

 

V - Aetherometric conditions that one must conclude to

Much has been missed by cold-fusioneers, and we could attribute their failure to create a reliable, sustainable low-energy fusion reactor to their inability to account for the conditions required to observe room-temperature fusion with table-top reactors. To do so, they would have to satisfy all of the following conditions:

1. Avoid the pathway that generates gamma radiation

2. Co-ordinate paired tetrad fusions: 2(D-D)

3. Avoid neutron-generating tetrad pathways

4. Promote the tetrad pathway that generates triton doublets

5. Promote spontaneous transition of tritium to 3He

6. Promote 3He-3He fusions

7. Extract heat from protons at 3 and 6.6 MeV

8. Electrodynamically absorb the protons and segregate residual beta emission.

To design, control and engineer these steps into a select pathway, the CF researchers would have to know more than they do, or be more willing to learn than they are. They would, in fact, need to be studying Aetherometry - the science of Massfree Dark Energy or Aether - its roots, its solutions and its methods, before they could even dream about synchronizing the transition of coupled deuterium tetrads. They would have to understand where, in the above aetherometric equation for the desired fusion reaction (and unmarked as such by the present rules of notation), massfree energy - whose existence they do not even admit! - intervenes to catalyze the necessary steps of the process.

4 - What were the DoE recommendations and conclusions? This falls under the rubric of "Charge Element 3: Determine whether there is a scientific case for continued efforts in these studies and, if so, to identify [sic] the most promising areas to be pursued."

The recommendations are, in brief, to keep the status quo, and have separate funding agencies consider detailed proposals on their own merits - much as has been de facto done for over a decade:

"The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV. These proposals should meet accepted scientific standards, and undergo the rigors of peer review. No reviewer recommended a focused federally funded program for low energy nuclear reactions."

In other words, no help in this area is to be expected from the DoE - no focused effort, no Manhattan-like project (despite the glaring energy crisis caused by the price-hikes in oil and gas, and the prospect of continued, generalized warfare in the Middle-East, etc, etc), no attempt to elucidate how anomalous heat evolves from select fusion reactions that may occur at room temperature. As for the conclusions, they are the most negative that one could have expected:

" While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review."

Old Bob Park, who had announced on April 2 that "a band of true believers" led by Dr. Mallove ("the band leader [responsible for] publishing Infinite Energy magazine") saw the DoE review as "Vindication", must have been gleeful. The DoE Report on the submitted Review made Scott Chubb, new technical Editor of Infinite Energy, eat crow. For, while ostensibly filling the shoes of Dr. Mallove in the Breaking Through Editorial, Chubb had given a papal pardon to the Ol' Bobbie, stating that "he has never actually been pathological in his skepticism".

Old Bobbie wrote, on Friday, December 3, 2004:

'COLD, COLD FUSION: SO AFTER 15 YEARS, WHAT HAS BEEN LEARNED? We've learned that DOE should stop playing games with the Federal Advisory Committee Act while shrouding its review in secrecy (WN 17 Sep 04). Beyond that, we haven't learned much. The report released this week is an attempt to summarize individual comments from 18 unidentified reviewers. The conclusions at the end of the report were: 1) "significant progress has been made in sophistication of calorimeters," and 2)"conclusions reached by reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review." That's it? After 15 years we've got better calorimeters? The 1989 review called for no more cold fusion research. Good advice. Proponents now prefer "low energy nuclear reactions," but "no more" is still good advice.'

More radical and perfectly healed, Ol' Bobbie recommends sending those cold-fusioneers to the unemployment lines - just as befits a master of sane professional skepticism...

Cold Fusion remains pathological science - so says this new DoE Report, confirming the 1989 DoE Review - while pathological skeptics are rehabilitated, now that "a time for healing" (title of that Scott Chubb Breaking Through editorial in Infinite Energy...) has ostensibly begun. We wonder what Dr. Mallove - the much maligned and misrepresented Dr. Mallove - would have had to say about this newfound smugness (witness the Washington Post, Nov. 21, 2004: 'Park corresponds with some cold fusion supporters, including Scott Chubb, a physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. Chubb calls Park "a good friend." Park calls Chubb "competent." Park says Hagelstein is an "unusual case," but points to the connection to Teller, who made positive statements about cold fusion early on. "When the master says it's right, it must just be a matter of showing it."').

We know what Jed Rothwell commented on this DoE conclusion: "This indicates they are clueless idiots." Go, Jed, go... But then, he can't go - can he? Neither he, nor the five presenters to the DoE, nor the other scientists he has cheered on, can move forward. It's not just the DoE panel that doesn't know the subject - it's the cold-fusioneers themselves! Clueless idiots all, then, Mr. Rotwell. They can't go on because they did exactly what Dr. Mallove, in the very last editorial he wrote before his murder (IE#55), warned them not to do - when he admonished: "[the] real danger [is] that one or more theorists will try to push their theory too far and will put the field in a position from which it would be hard to recover". With the Hagelstein et al's model of a single-step reaction, the proposers threw away the only real card they had: to make a critical review of the literature which could have opened the doors to a multiplicity of testable models, all of which would have to question in some way the existing paradigms of physics (nuclear, electrodynamic, electromagnetic) and perforce examine selectable branching pathways for complex nuclear reactions. They did none of this. They, chose, instead a simplistic approach, based upon an ad hoc model, that reduced the complexity (and the breadth) of the problem to a patently untenable fantasy - eminently worthy of rejection.

"A positive answer -- even short of a ringing endorsement -- would finally lift the stigma", McKubre told Weinberger of the Washington Post. Instead, the conclusions of the 1989 Review were confirmed. No endorsement. No positive answer. Same old same-old.

(The Group of Five, if they had been official bureaucrats, would have likely been found to be in conflict of interest by dint of their connection to some or all of the six selected research laboratories. But since the DoE only performed a Report on the Review, and the authors of the Review were outside the DoE, there is no such apparent conflict. )

Skeptics can rejoice, but they should know that Dr. Mallove had no real stake in this kind of bureaucratic vindication. Others, after his death, made of this bone some form of vindication to their disingenuous versions of "poor old Eugene", and sold or peddled this tasteless joke in their publications and letters. Grave-diggers of the Spirit.

Dr. Mallove's interventions - at ICCF-10, in his Universal Appeal, and in his involvement (also most glaringly unacknowledged by the Group of Five!) with helping a real DoE review come about - were all about trying to open the public's eyes with respect to the consideration of electrodynamic and anomalous light emissions in the so-called LENR processes:

"a fair DoE review (...) should focus primarily on determining this key finding: the validity of the evidence for non-chemical magnitude excess heat and nuclear anomalies - as well as any other physical anomalies associated with the systems, such as anomalies in light emission. (...) It is the view of this author (perhaps not shared by many in the LENR field) that the DoE review, at least as part of its task, should examine other significant new energy-related research that has been published, beyond what is ordinarily confined within the LENR field (www.lenr-can.org). This research is almost certain to shed significant light on what has been found in LENR proper" (IE #55, p. 11)

Or, still, as Dr. Mallove put it in a Feb. 2004 confrontational exchange with E. Storms:

"As for the Correas, they have solid patents that are written more like PhD theses, which manifest excess electrical energy in a very clear way. This should give the DoE evaluators -- and perhaps even some enlightened LENR researchers -- a chance to consider the electrical phenomena they may be dealing with in discharge systems, including electrolytic cells."

They did not; nor did they consider just how much more complex the whole phenomenon actually is. It's little wonder that all they managed to do was to shoot themselves in the foot, eliciting a shoddy DoE Report in response to their own weak Review.

Vindication of Gene Mallove could never have depended upon a Report of a Review, let alone this Review. His vindication was not bureaucratic in nature, nor fixated on the victory of cold-fusioneers:

"That external vindication can only come when there is broad-based recognition of the proved reality of the newly discovered phenomena - by the scientific community, by educators, by the press, and even by that quirky barometer of popular culture, the entertainment industry. Above all, vindication will have arrived in force when the everyday assumptions shared by people everywhere are changed, when they can confidently look forward to a day - one hopes not too far off - when New Energy, in whatever form, will become a practical utility in their lives." (IE#55, p. 8)


5 - On the voluntary servitude of scientists to power systems: So, we ask, besides bedside entertainment, what has this review effort by Hagelstein et al, and the subsequent DoE Report on the submitted Review, taught anyone whose eyes are still not wide shut? Nothing. It only serves as a reminder that power is not the barometer of true science, and that nothing replaces true investigation and open-minded experimentation with testable models. The breakthroughs in New Energy will not come from the official sanctioning of scientific models, nor from the reductionism necessary to operate such bureaucratic sanctifications. They will come from those whose true passion is science, and from science - science not as a servant of power systems, but as the helper of life, in the service of the living, as a lifeline. Such science alone can bring forth true vindication. Eugene Mallove was one of the few scientists who understood this full well. About the illusions attached to a real review by the DoE, he wrote:

"Though we very much appreciate that the DoE will be carrying out a review of the LENR evidence [He still thought it would be a review, not a report on a review], the field of New Energy does not need the DoE's imprint and approval (bear in mind, we may still not get it!) to realize that we are dealing with a critical frontier of scientific and technological research (...)". (IE#55, p. 11)

These are quotes from Mallove's last editorial contributions to the publication he founded - a publication which, now that he is dead, indeed also sails under a very different pavillion and with a route rather different from that which he had charted for it. Yet, it is this same Dr. Eugene Mallove who became the great absentee of this entire process - a fact unmentioned by this brave new publication which, by the same token, can no longer carry news such as those you, the reader, are now reading. The site glorifying the proposers who submitted their own review also makes no mention of Dr. Mallove's pioneering and persevering efforts to bring about a real DoE review of low-energy nuclear fusion reactions. Not a note of thanks, even. Likewise, the past ICCF-11 made no mention of him. On this, one participant wrote:

" It was a major disappointment that the untimely death of Dr. Eugene Mallove was barely mentioned and not memorialized at all in the opening remarks in the opening of the ICCF-11Conference by Biberian. Somehow Preparata deserved better at ICCF-8 and he died of natural causes. There is now an award medal in his likeness (Preparata) being given out at each Conference. Hagelstein received one at ICCF-11." (A.K., Nov 18, 2004)

This DoE report and its process illustrate the cautions that Dr. Mallove frequently made against scientific research being placed at the mercy of bureaucrats, at the mercy of government interests and organized peer-review systems, and even at the mercy of sponsors. Only those who, riding on the natural curiosity of people, have been peddling, through their media and publications, the high hopes of a real review, and not just another washout, can and will continue to defend the notion that real change comes from above - from the signals of bankrupt and bureaucratized intelligentsias - and that, without permission of ossified cadres, no scientific change can or shall be accepted. This position is unacceptable. It is precisely what is and should be micropolitically unacceptable to anyone who considers himself or herself a real scientist.

Too many of these cold-fusioneers, the five proposers included, are more than satisfied with the science-fictioneering and the entertainment value of Cold Fusion. McKubre, of SRI, himself told this much to Weinberger of the Washington Post:

"[McKubre] observed, the stigma around cold fusion was already disappearing. "Cold fusion shows up everywhere," he said. "In comic books, in movies and in songs. It is the standard power generator technology of some cartoon characters. It is a fact." But aren't "facts" like that nothing more than fantasy? "It's a fantasy fact," he said. "That's nearly as good as reality."

In a world ruled by the image, the latter is as good as reality. This may well be the substance of power, of social power; however, it is not the substance of reality, of the physical world that cannot be subsumed by images. Neither Mallove, nor we, have been in the business of selling images, or illusions, to audiences or government bureaucrats - be they scientists or private sponsors. What Mallove and we jointly fought for during the last four long years, was a consideration of science - a consideration of all that is wrong, paradigmatically wrong, in accepted, official and officiating physics.

Dr. Mallove had no illusions about the real value of a DoE "review", and he was not out to sell illusions to others - the way this Group of Five and the various publications that support their views, including the post-Mallove Infinite Energy, are bent on doing. Increasigly crucial to his approach was, in fact, his awareness of the aetherometric understanding of coupled fusion reactions (imparted to him, by us, in the Spring of 2003), and how these can be controlled to lead to heat generation, suppression of neutrons, and capture of energetic protons and residual beta radiation.

On Nov. 6, 2003, Dr. Mallove wondered to Hagelstein about the DoE "review", already placing it in quotes:

"Can you tell me anything about the status of the DoE "review" -- which I firmly assume will NOT occur, or if it does it will be led astray? I am eager to know."

Now we know. It DID NOT occur. What occurred, instead, was a DoE Report, and a DoE Report that confirmed the DoE Review of 1989, and essentially discarded the Review submitted by Hagelstein et al, a review that followed none of Eugene Mallove's advice to Hagelstein and his al.

'Guess we now also know why Hagelstein got his ICCF-11 medal. And we guess he will be best remembered for imagining the X-ray laser that would have been the centerpiece of Reagan's StarWars program. The willing desire for servitude.

6 - Conclusion: CF researchers missed the Correa solution to the Cold Fusion Enigma. Why? When all is said and done, Eugene Mallove's main caution in his own submittal to ICCF-10 was ignored by the five proposers. They, and other CF researchers, should all have considered, to quote Mallove, "the possibility that other nuclear change phenomena connected with alternative fundamental physics theories might eventually be found to yield the same net reaction results" - an allusion to our work on nuclear fusion with which he had, by then, become familiar. It was, in essence, our work and the pathway that it has uncovered, as presented above, which CF researchers decided to ignore - above all by their concerted refusal to study Aether Physics (Tesla, Reich, Aspden) and, in particular, Aetherometry; but also by their stubborn failure to consider the implication of electrodynamic conditions. They have good reasons for this failure, however - they neither understand the physics, nor are willing to do the math, nor agree with what they sense of the micropolitics of Aetherometry. Now, go ask them to synchronize the fusion pathways of two molecules of deuterium gas...

December 16, 2004

Copyright © 2004 Correa & Correa. All rights reserved.
ISBN 1-894840-33-X

FOOTNOTES

[1] Charge Element 1 reads: " Examine and evaluate the experimental evidence for the occurrences of nuclear reactions in condensed matter at low energies (less that a few electron volts)."

[2] "Gozzi presented some very striking results, in which bursts of excess energy were time-correlated with bursts of 4 He observed in the gas stream. When compared one at a time, the number of helium atoms detected per burst was on the order of what might be expected from 23.8 MeV per D+D reaction, but with a variation between 0.25 and 1.0 of the this amount. If the energy production in these experiments is in fact due to a reaction mechanism consistent with D+D -> 4 He +23.8 MeV, then it seems that some of the helium may enter the gas stream and some remain within the metal. Several important conclusions can be drawn from the studies cited above:
The rate of helium production (atoms/s) varies linearly with excess power for the three studies taken separately and together (see Figure 6).
The amount of helium observed in the gas stream is generally within a factor of about 2 less than would be expected for a reaction mechanism consistent with D+D -> 4He.
Helium is partially retained, and dissolved helium is released only slowly to the gas phase for analysis."

[3] "Charge Element 2: Determine whether the evidence is sufficiently conclusive to demonstrate that such nuclear reactions occur."

[4] '(...) McKubre often speaks about a company in Israel, Energetics Technologies, that has received a couple of million dollars a year in private support to research cold fusion and has achieved "startling results," producing much higher levels of power and heat than his own experiments. McKubre has visited the lab. "It's the first clear indication that something practical might come out of all this effort," he says. But the scientist behind the Israeli group is Irving Dardik, a former surgeon, who secured funding from Sidney Kimmel, the billionaire head of Jones Apparel Group Inc. Dardik's state medical license was revoked by New York in the mid-1990s after several patients testified to a review committee that he had promised to cure them of multiple sclerosis using "waveform therapy." The review committee found that Dardik had charged ailing patients as much $100,000 for treatment involving little more than exercise and sports watches. Dardik, according to a patent application he submitted, believes that "all things in the universe are composed of" waves, and that those waves are part of larger waves, in what he calls "superlooping." This "superlooping gives rise to and is matter in motion." He has pursued research tying that theory to treating AIDS, Parkinson's disease and depression. The medical board questioned his use of made-up words such as superlooping and speculated openly about his mental health, describing him as "manic." According to the public records of the proceedings, the board ultimately concluded that he was mentally fit but found him guilty of "fraud and exploitation." Dardik says the medical establishment was simply intolerant of alternative science. No longer able to practice medicine, he is now applying his waves theory to cold fusion. Dardik would like, at some point, to get his medical license back in New York, but not now, he says; he's too busy with cold fusion. "I don't even have the time." McKubre and Hagelstein have consulted for Dardik; McKubre has cited Dardik's research to the DoE, now works closely with him and has repeatedly touted the work of Dardik's group. McKubre seems acutely aware of the strangeness that pervades the field, and he handles challenging questions calmly, seeming at times weary of -- and amused by -- some of his more fervent colleagues. But, in this case, it's easy to wonder if his optimism has gotten the better of him. Although he has acknowledged in an e-mail that "Dardik's ideas must sound mad, and . . . adherence to them is not science based," McKubre has continued to talk up the results of the Israeli research; he argues that the experiments themselves work. Yet endorsing the physics experiments of a medical doctor found to have defrauded sick patients is a serious threat to McKubre's reputation. Asked about Dardik's waveforms, McKubre traces waves along the wall with his hand and begins to talk about Dardik's theories of biological rhythms. He pauses, looking a little embarrassed. He acknowledges that, even to a cold fusion supporter such as himself, the theory requires a certain "leap of faith." (...)', S. Weinberger, Washington Post, Nov 21, 2004.