BYU conference
sheely@groucho
I would like to thank Douglas Morrison for his notes which he has so kindly
made available to us. For the most part I agree with the things he has
written. There are a few areas which I would dissigree with, however. I
have commented on some of these below.
> Steve Jones reported on their work with Howard and others in a lead mine in
> the village called appropriately, Leadville. Being deep underground, the
> background is greatly reduced, from 23400 to 75 counts/hour for the singles and
> the correlation rate from 300 to 1/20 per hour - great improvements and this
> despite problems with humidity in the mine. To understand this experiment
> it is important to know that they did not count singles when on the surface
> as the rate was too high.
Not true, Steve Jones did count singles while on the surface. (by surface
I refer to the BYU under-ground lab where BYU's original experiments were
run. The lab is close to the surface.)
> So what they do is every time a count is observed they
> open a gate (typically for 128 microseconds) and if a second pulse is recorded
> then they score a correlation. Then this second pulse has a gate opened for it
> and again if another single occurs within the gate a correlation is recorded -
> and also if this third single occurs within the gate of the first single, then
> a correlation is recorded for it too.
Steve Jones does have such a detector, disigned to detect bursts of neutrons,
however, this is not the detector which was used to collect his original
data.
> But the main point is that
> this is not a simple conventional statistical problem. Also it should be noted
> that the figures are labelled "counts" but it should really be "correlations'.
> But the solution is clear - having gone down a mine to reduce background
> drastically, one should make use of it and drop entirely this complicated
> correlation system and use normal electronics to count singles. Then any
> bursts can be obtained from straightforward analysis that all can understand.
This detector was built after it was (discovered?) that neutrons were being
produced in bursts. The design of this detector was to enable the detection
of large bursts of neutrons without detecting interferences while bursts are
not occuring. The overall result is to greatly reduce the background, but also
it cuts out any fusion events which may occure which do not occure in bursts.
This design of this detector was a wise atempt to answer some of the questions
concerning cold fusion and neutrons. I agree it should not be the only detector
used, but it does add to our knowledge of what is, or isn't happening, and
should therefore continue to be used in conjunction with other detectors.
> A general comment - this was intended to be a Workshop where people with
> positive results on nuclear effects met and compared results and tried to find
> what they had in common to plan future experiments.
I saw no effort to incourage only possitive results at the conference. On the
contrary those with negative results were incourage to attend. Although I
do agree there were a noticable lack of them at the conference. The only
attempt I saw to discourage participation in the conference was that the
conference was designed to concentrate on the measurement of fusion products
Those who claimed fusion or the lack thereof without an attempt at measuring
fusion products were not invited to participate. Steve Jones, as with
most of the rest of us would love to be able to determine in all cases
why some experiments yield positive results and others negative. This
can only be done by comparing the experiments. Such comparision was
incouraged by the conferance organizers.
I came away from the conference at BYU with a much different view than
Dr. Morrison. Although I concure completely with him that none of the
experimental evidence presented at the conferece could conclusivily
prove the existanece of fusion with-in metals as has been claimed, I
believing a surprising amount of evidence has been presented in its
favor. The results of many well performed experiments, and some
not so well performed, were presented at the conference. Neutrons
were detected at the Jones level by many different groups using vastly
different methods of detection. Many of the experiments showed good
consistant repeatability. Methods of quinching the reactions which
if true explain away many of the negative results presented by other
groups were presented. As Dr. Morrison made clear, there have been experiments
capable of measuring neutrons at the Jones level which have been
negative, alothough not many. Most of the experimenters reporting
negative results have not had suitable equipment for measuring neutrons
at the rate claimed by Jones et al. If results presented at the
conference are correct, most of the negative results which did have
adequit equipment could easily be explained.
It is sad that more people who have had negative results with neutron
detection were not at the conference to discuss their work. Such could
have been very informative.
I must agree with Morrison that the work presented on tritium detection
was not very convencing. Hopefully planned experiments involving the
direct measurement of tritons will be more believable, whether possitive
or negative. That is not to say that good atempts to measure
tritium have not been made. Measurements at the concentrations
in question are difficult to make.
Eugene Sheely
she...@neon.chem.uidaho.edu
Department of Chemistry, University of Idaho, Moscow Id. 83843
Raul Baragiola
type experiments, at very low levels. Can these signals be separated
from noise? I am imagining that sharp electromagnetic pulses may be
produced in the electrochemical cell, due to formation of microscopic
defects, for instance when an oxide layer is broken. It is known,
for instance, that fracture of metals or melting or other mechanical
changes causes the emission of bursts of electrons. This is called
exoemission and has been studied for decades. Such a burst of electrons
can create an electromagnetic pulse which can conceivably be picked up
by the detector, pre-amplified, amplified, and then end up in the
counting circuits. They could even be detected by several detectors at
once if they are very sensitive to EM noise. This appears possible to
me since detectors are usually shielded from _outside_, but not from
inside noise.
If this can occur, perhaps the neutron detectors and electronics should
be enclosed in Faraday cages. Has this been done?
Raul A. Baragiola \Internet: ra...@virginia.edu
Dept. Nuclear Engnr. and Engnr. Physics \Phone: (804)-982-2907
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22901 \ Fax: (804)-924-6270