CFRL English News No. 24 (2001. 5. 10)

　　　Cold Fusion Research Laboratory Dr. Hideo Kozima

This is CFRL News (in English) No. 24 translated from Japanese version published for friend researchers of Cold Fusion Research Laboratory directed by Dr. H. Kozima in Portland State University. The e-mail address in PSU is cf-lab.kozima@pdx.edu.

In this issue, there are following items.

1) Reading ”The Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes (1),

Discovery of the Neutron – Importance of Expectation

2) A paper by M.H. Miles et al. published in the Report of Naval Research Laboratory,

3) WN reacts to the paper by M.H. Miles et al.,

4) A paper (1991) by D.R. Rolison and W.E. O’Grady,

(In the following sentences, emphases are given at citation.)

1) Reading Richard Rhodes, ”The Making of the Atomic Bomb” (Simon and Schuster, NY, 1986.) (1)

Discovery of the Neutron - Importance of Expectation

E. Rutherford is, as is well known, a great experimental physicist in the beginning of 20^th century who explored nuclear physics. The discovery of the atomic nucleus in 1911 by scattering experiments of alpha particles by metal foils and the artificial nuclear transmutation of nitrogen nucleus by alpha particle bombardment in 1919 are great achievement in nuclear physics at its beginning. One of them only will deserve the Novel prize at present. (He received the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 1908 for works including determination of alpha particles as helium nuclei.)

Rutherford expressed an interesting opinion on the constituent of atomic nuclei in the Bakerian Lecture given at the Royal Society of London in 1920:

“----, he also chose to speculate about the possibility of a third major constituent of atoms besides electrons and protons. He spoke of ‘the possible existence of an atom of mass 1 which has zero nuclear charge.’ “ (p.153)

J. Chadwick was an excellent experimental physicist who worked as an assistant of Rutherford and listened this lecture. He was interested in the atom of mass 1 without charge (neutron) and discussed with Rutherford against his opinion. R. Rhodes cites what Chadwick told later:

“And so,” Chadwick concludes, “it was these conversations that convinced me that the neutron must exist. The only question was how the devil could one get evidence for it, ---.” (p. 155)

Ten years later in 1930, W. Bothe and H. Becker in Germany observed curious phenomenon that occurred in beryllium (Be) bombarded by alpha particles:

“The radiation they had excited from beryllium had more energy than the bombarding alpha particles. ---; they proposed that it came from nuclear disintegration despite the absence of proton.” (p. 159)

Excited by the news of Bothe and Becker’s discovery of ”beryllium radiation”, Chadwick in England and Irene and Joliot in France started similar experiments. Chadwick obtained a new data in the summer of 1931:

”— the radiation from beryllium which was emitted in the same direction as the alpha-particles was more penetrating than the radiation emitted in a backward direction.” “And that, of course,” Chadwick adds, “ was a point which excited me very much indeed, because I thought, ‘Here’s the neutron.’ “ (p. 160)

On the other hand, Irene and Joliot in France discovered a new phenomenon and reported it to Academie Francaise in January 18, 1932.

”--- their discovery that paraffin wax emitted high-velocity protons when bombarded by beryllium radiation with a title ‘The emission of protons of high velocity from hydrogenous materials irradiated with very penetrating gamma rays’ “.

The journal Compte rendus containing this report arrived London in the beginning of February and Chadwick read it. The situation when he spoke it to Rutherford is vividly written as follows:

“Chadwick writes: ‘[In early February] as I told him [Rutherford] about the Curie-Joliot observation and their views on it, I saw his growing amazement; and finally he burst out ‘I don’t believe it.’ Such an impatient remark was utterly out of character, and in all my long association with him I recall no similar occasion. I mention it to emphasize the electrifying effect of the Curie-Joliot report. Of course, Rutherford agreed that one must believe the observations; the explanation was quite another matter.’” (p. 162)

They soon started an experiment to confirm the Curies’ result. They obtained protons with energies inexplicable by gamma rays.

“ ’It is evident that we must either relinquish [abandon] the application the conservation of energy and momentum in these collisions or adopt another hypothesis about the nature of the radiation.’ When they read that sentence the Joliot-Curies were deeply and properly chagrined.”

“ ’If we suppose that the radiation is not a [gamma] radiation, but consists of particles of mass very nearly equal to that of the proton, all the difficulties connected with the collisions disappear, both with regard to their frequency and to the energy transfer to different masses. In order to explain the great penetrating power of the radiation we must further assume that the particle has no net charge. --- We may suppose it [to be] the ‘neutron’ discussed by Rutherford in his Bakerian Lecture of 1920.’ ” (p. 163)

Chadwick finished this experiment in about ten days besides his usual work in Cavendish Laboratory and sent a paper to Nature in February 17, 1932.

“He titled that report published as a letter to the editor, ‘Possible existence of a neutron.’ --- ‘But there was no doubt whatever in my mind or I should not have written the letter.’” (p. 163)

It will be not necessary to explain further importance of expectation in research works. Only one point I want to say is about a sense of experimentalists. It is in his own right how an experimentalist considers an unexpected result he obtained. It is well known that such great discoveries as radioactivity by Becquerel, X-ray by W.K. Roentgen, and many others are done seizing new facts appeared by chances. On the contrary, the discovery of the neutron was done with a right expectation combined with excellent techniques. It is, however, noticed that every expectation is not always right; there have been very many examples of wrong expectations in the history of science and in our own experience.

Who knows expectations are right or wrong in the case of cold fusion phenomenon (CFP).

2) A paper by M.H. Miles et al. published in Report of Naval Research Lab.

A detailed paper on the experiment reported in this News No.16 (1), (4)-2) was published as an official report from Naval Research Laboratory.

M.H. Miles, M. Fleischmann and M.A. Imam, “Calorimetric Analysis of a Heavy Water Electrolysis Experiment Using a Pd-B Alloy Cathode

Naval Research Laboratory Report NRL/MR/6320—01-8526 (pp. 1 - 159)

FOREWORD

This study involves the palladium-boron alloy materials prepared at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) by Dr. M. Ashraf Imam (see NRL/MR/6170-96-7803, January 9, 1996). This new material was developed as part of a collaborative program with NRL and the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCED), China Lake, that was funded by the Office of Navel Research (ONR). Studies at NAWCED showed that the best reproducibility for excess power was obtained using the palladium-boron materials supplied by NRL (see NAWCWPNS TP 8302, September 1996). The new experimental studies described in this report were conducted by Dr. Melvin H. Miles at the New Hydrogen Energy (NHE) laboratory in Sapporo, Japan. Dr. Melvin H. Miles received a six months appointment as a Guest Researcher sponsored by the New Energy Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan. Dr. Melvin H. Miles expresses his appreciation to Dr. N. Asami and Mr. K. Matsui for providing him with this research opportunity. This experiment was conducted in a special Dewar-type calorimetric cell silvered at the top that was developed by Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons. The detailed analysis of the experimental data presented in this report was conducted by Dr. Martin Fleischmann. An independent method of data analysis developed by Dr. Melvin H. Miles while he was in Japan was presented in his NEDO Final Report and shows similar trends for the excess heat effect.

It is desirable that experimentalists examine this report and NEDO Final Report to clarify discrepancies in interpretations of the result between them.

3) WN’s comment on the paper by Miles et al.

B. Park, “spokesman” of APS, reacted to the above paper by Miles et al. as follows.

“WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 20 April 01 Washington, DC

3. COLD FUSION: MAYBE ONE MORE STUDY WILL CLEAR THINGS UP Or may be not. We hear often these days from cold fusion believers about the great progress that has been made in cold fusion. We will hear it again on April 30, at the APS meeting.

This week, WN received a long report from the Naval Research Laboratory. It was dated March 26, 2001, just three days after the anniversary of the 1989 cold fusion press conference in Salt Lake City. The report was about a Pons and Fleischmann kind of experiment: an "open" electrolysis study of excess heat in the electrolysis of heavy water, using a Pd-B alloy cathode. One of the authors is none other than Martin Fleischmann. How appropriate.

Twelve years ago at this time, the news was about the unreliability of closed calorimetry experiments. Twelve years later, cold fusion research is still struggling with the same point. Progress?”

Is this opinion scientific? When principles of a phenomenon are not known and techniques to obtain data are complicated, progress is naturally slow. We have to be moderate to judge things belonging to different fields where we are laypeople.

4) D.R. Rolison and W.E. O’Grady, “Observation of Elemental Anomalies at the Surface of Palladium after Electrochemical Loading of Deuterium and Hydrogen” Analytical Chemistry 63, 1696-1701 (1991)

In this paper, the authors report segregation of Pt (up to 40%), Rh (up to 4%) and Ag (up to 1.2%) in surface layers of few microns on Pd cathode surface. The results are obtained not only in heavy but also light water electrolyte with Li_{2}SO_{4}.

They interpreted the segregation of Rh and Ag as a result of selective migration from the matrix Pd:

“The presence of Rh and Ag as low level bulk impurities in the starting Pd material rather clouds the intriguing possibility of their creation by reaction of palladium isotopes with nuclear byproducts --- as does the hydrogen-isotope-independent segregation of Rh and Ag. The most plausible mechanism remains chemical potential-driven migration under the forcing conditions (time and current) of electrolysis as the palladium deuterides (hydride) phase forms rather than one based on nuclear chemistry.”

In my opinion, this conclusion should be reconsidered from our present knowledge of the cold fusion phenomenon that its events occur not only in deuterium systems but also in protium systems. We will give investigation of their data in near future.

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Dr Hideo Kozima

Kozima’s Cold Fusion Research Laboratory

E-mail cf-lab.kozima@pdx.edu,
CFRL Web-site (Japanese); www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~kunihito/cf-lab/index.html
CFRL Web-site (English and Japanese); www.web.pdx.edu/~pdx00210 (under construction)