Heat Generation Above Break-Even From Laser-induced Fusion in Ultra Dense Deuterium (Leif Holmlid)

Quote from Thomas Clarke

So: Holmlid is doing well with his weird but elegant ideas.

He has an interpretation of a whole load of experiments which he explains by a new and extraordinary state of Deuterium (ultra-dense) in which nucleons have high kinetic energy and electrons are stationary.

The last five years of Holmlid work is founded on his "measurement" of the density of UDD. It's irritating to read that word, "measured" when it was not measured, but inferred from the energy of fragments from Coulomb explosions. The inference is plausible, but this is what must be noticed. The finding of UDD is astonishing. The experiment does not seem to be extraordinarily difficult (though that appearance can be misleading, as it certainly was with Pons and Fleischmann's work). Not only has there been no independent confirmation, I haven't seen any evidence of attempts to confirm, only more and more papers from Holmlid, reporting more and more astonishing results.

Those astonishing results are not so astonishing once the existence of UDD is accepted.

Reading Holmlid papers is frustrating for me. I see logical jumps, extraordinary conclusions, without clear and complete logical process, without the kind of high self-skepticism that I see in the best innovative scientific work. Holmlid seems open and cooperative, I've been provided with copies of papers, as I recall.

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This is so weird that few others pay it much attention, and I cannot say whether the hand waving QM for this is obviously wrong. Intuitively it seems unlikely, but that is no reason to reject an idea.

There is no reason to accept a new idea, so far outside of the ordinary, until there is confirmed experimental evidence. Holmlid's work is adequate to make it worth investigating his findings. (That was Winterberg's conclusion. I agree.)

Personally, I don't give a fig about theory at this point. Theory is weak for predicting the unexplored, and theoretical speculations don't seem to help encourage what is truly needed: experimental confirmation.

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Anyway, I say he is doing well because he now claims some supporting evidence. Specifically, he calculates intra-atomic distances for normal D correctly within a framework which shows the ultra-dense D.

That was generally reported five years ago. He showed that the technique he used for UDD works for the more normal Rydberg matter, matching theory.

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There is some weakness.

Understatement.

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The telltale sign is that the fusion rates he claims are 10% of what is expected and the heat excess is not that different from the energy put in. Given the large errors possible here in calculating excess that does not look much like fusion. He explains the lack of efficiency as due to high energy clumps of D ejected.

That kind of inefficiency is typical with hot fusion. It would not just be the neutral UDD clusters. The mechanism for the acceleration of these clusters is unclear, to be sure. How do you accelerate neutral clusters? The laser would blow away the electrons that bind the clusters. Because the material is ultra-dense, the resulting Coulomb explosions would tend to drive remaining fragments away, but the energy of this is not high, the UDD Coulomb explosion fragments have about 630 eV. That was called "high," because it is high compared with fragments from Coulomb explosions with ordinary matter.

I have been studying Holmlid's findings on Wikiversity: educational resource. Participation there is welcome.
(Any Wikimedia Foundation registered editor may edit there if not globally locked. If a locked user wishes to edit, contact me, I can assist. Wikipedia blocks or bans are not a problem if there is no cross-wiki disruption.)

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So: compared with vanilla LENR what does he have?

Technically, this is LENR, if it's real. However, the definition of LENR only focused on particle energies, but density equally is relevant. By intention, this is not LENR. It is something new.

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A vaguely plausible single novel theory (ultra-dense D) that would solve Coulomb barrier problems.

Not necessarily as they arise with LENR. The LENR theoretical problem is not only about the Coulomb barrier, it also is about the branching ratio and the energy distribution without gammas. Holmlid's work shows results more in line with hot fusion, though still unclear in many respects.

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Normal fusion with high energy products - so no problem here with mysterious "always looks like no fusion" reaction pathways.
claims of coherent observations in a large number of different experiments

If UDD is real, that there will be nuclear effects is not at all surprising. Because this is a new territory, that some of these effects are surprising in themselves, is also not so surprising. Muons are surprising! These are ordinarily created in the lab only with very high-energy collisions.

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[...] some coherent elaboration of the theory.

All this looks better than normal LENR.

I disagree strongly with that. "Normal LENR," i.e., PdD lenr, is widely confirmed, the ash is known (helium) and the correlation of helium with heat is widely confirmed. This known reaction apparently produces almost no radiation or radioactive products, so if commercial applications can be developed, it is far more attractive than what can be projected from Holmlid results. There is some nonsense speculation on Vortex-l. At commercial power levels, the Holmlid effect will be extremely dangerous. NiH reactions, if real, are of high interest, and apparently produce little dangerous radiation, if any. But I don't know if anyone has looked for muons. Muons are easily detected, if one knows what to look for.

The NiH situation isn't science, yet, it is mostly gossip and unconfirmable report. This will never move the physics community.

Holmlid looks "better" only because it is possible the physics is better understood. But Holmlid announced UDD five years ago. I've seen skeptical comment on physics blogs and Wikipedia, the usual ignorant BS, that didn't understand the claims. My point, though, is that in spite of an enormous pile of published papers, in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, nearly all have Holmlid as author or co-author, and the major exception, two papers by Winterberg, are about theory. There is no confirmation of the basic experimental finding.

Even confirmed experimental findings have not been enough with cold fusion. But there is a basis, then, to engage the political engines. That could also work with Holmlid, but I'm concerned that the existing literature is not particularly approachable. Skeptics may not be willing to put in the effort to understand obscure papers, and as soon as they see a "wild claim" that is not supported with crystal-clear evidence, they may just put it down and walk away.

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Not yet good enough for for plausibility, but nevertheless fascinating. He should find non-trivial predictions which could subsequently be measured. So far the anomalies measured have been unexpected and can be explained with complexity - like LENR - and that gives no confidence the explanations are correct.

Once UDD is established as existing, nuclear reactions are predictable, but the exact characteristics may not be.

Holmlid papers are high on speculation and low on careful and easy to access data on the experimental methods and results. Obvious tests do not seem to have been done. For example, the recent muon paper is, on the face, a report on a new method of measuring muons. I'm surprised the reviewers passed the paper, as-is, because the paper tests the new method with a material that is not expected to produce muons, and I see no validation of the method with known muon sources (such as cosmic rays, ubiquitous, and with known behavior). Further, the alleged muons were not measured with traditional methods (though the new method is not far from what is traditional: the use of a scintillator material followed by a photomultiplier).

I see no effort to show muon deflection by magnetic fields, which is how muons were first identified.

(to be continued)

(continued)

The nonsense on Vortex-l:
The possible health hazard from muons is dismissed by reference to an article which has no such conclusion, rather it says that the cosmic ray flux from muons implies (probably at sea level) about one hundred muons per second passing through your head.

If UDD is actually functioning as a muon factory, for high-energy muons, anyone close to it will possibly be exposed to far higher flux. If there is measureable heat from the reaction, as is now claimed, the reaction rate may be high enough to be of concern. If this was neutron radiation at that level, it would be quickly fatal.

Muons are like heavy, energetic beta particles (ordinary electrons). Beta emitters are not dangerous unless ingested, because the radiation is not penetrating. Very high levels of beta radiation could cause skin burns, perhaps.

High-energy muons are poorly absorbed. However, a percentage of them will be absorbed, or, more to the point, slowed. When a muon is slowed enough, it quickly decays, because the natural rest lifetime is very short. It decays into an electron and neutrino. The neutrinos are probably harmless, but that electron radiation will then occur spread throughout human tissues. So level and energy are important.

There is a neat report on the web of some students who measured muon radiation on 7 floors of a concrete structure, a parking garage. To their suprise, they found that the highest level of radiation was not at the top, but on the 6th floor. That should not, in fact, be surprising, and many comments on Vortex show that the issue of radiation absorptions has not been understood. As radiation declines in energy, being slowed by interactions with matter, the rate of absorption goes up. This I found to be easily visible with alpha radiation with LR-115 SSNTD material. Alpha tracks that are visible in the etched material are cones, very narrow at one end, and very fat at the other. When I first saw this, I thought that the fat end was high energy, and the low end was the slowed particle. Pam Boss disabused me of that notion! It was the other way around. Until the alphas are sufficiently slowed, LR-115 will show nothing.

So the top floor of the structure slows the muons. It does "not" increase the level of radiation, but increases the percentage of muons that interact with the detector. So Holmlid's results, showing an increase in detection when a lead shield is put in place, are not surprising. However, the devil is in the details.

I would be much happier if the detector were moved around in the space around the alleged source. There should be an inverse square law decline in detected events, with distance from the device. If there is isotropy, this would also show it. (From "spontaneous" fusion -- a misnomer, I think -- this is really triggered fusion from a laser pulse that is believe to cause a further collapse of UDD to well below 1 pm interactomic distance -- I'd expect the radiation to be anisotropic. As I understand it, muon detection typically looks for two flashes of light, first when the muon interacts with matter in the scintillator, slowing it, and then when it decays. The coincidence confirms that this is not noise, and, in a stacked detector, the delay can indicate energy and directionality. I don't think Holmlid's detector is stacked. But he could still look for a spatial variation in level, which would be very strong evidence of source, and, then, with various levels of shielding, he could possibly show muon evidence (he's done some of that, perhaps).

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I suppose I like his work because he is doing what needs to be done for any extraordinary new theory - develop theory, do experiments, make coherent predictions. It is just that his predictions don't look a great match with experiment.

If we take the predictions in the most general way, it is this: UDD is likely to produce a whole series of effects. He has reported these effects: superconductivity, the Meissner effect, and fusion. The problem is with quantitative prediction in an entirely new environment. When he says "not clearly understood" it's an understatement! If might be more honest to say, "We have no effing clue, but we guess that...."

We will know the planet has transformed when "effing" is allowed in MSPRJs.

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Anyway, because he is doing the right things, his work gets published more easily than most LENR stuff.

The skeptics, the few I've been able to find, think he is submitting to clueless journals and journal editors. I have some concern about this, as I mention above with the "new method of detecting muons."

What he is doing is not wrong, my opinion, but is incomplete. I'm not seeing a critical element in cutting-edge science, a necessary high level of self-doubt, vigorous effort to prove the conclusions wrong. Not just *some* effort, but sustained and persistent effect that does not easily exhaust imagination as to possible artifact. As an example, if the device is generating copious high-energy muons, this is a well-known and understood phenomenon. It may be complicated by high-energy neutral fragments, but those will not e deflected by magnetic fields.

Holmlid is rushing ahead to explore the new territory he's found. The excitement is understandable; however, he is entering hostile territory, so to speak. He would sensibly secure his supply lines, his entry into the territory. It is crucial that his findings be confirmed. Finding more and more, it is possible, will discourage confirmation, not encourage it. The situation was similar with cold fusion, and the long delay in confirmation caused negative opinion to become entrenched.

I highly recommend that Holmlid make facilitating independent confirmation a very high priority. I don't think he's claiming trade secrets, which is what vastly complicates the NiH LENR situation.

Quote from axil

What could stop the gamma radiation that should have come from kinetic impact of heavy Rydberg particle fragments whose speed in 1/3 the speed of light with stationary material?

Does a muons burst appear in this experiment right after the laser flash?

Wrong article. This paper is not about the heavy Rydberg fragments nor about the muons, though the heavy fragments are mentioned, because they will carry some of the reaction energy. As to gammas, yes, fast, heavy fragments should generate some gammas; however, such particles will only interact poorly with the material. If this is UDD, it's truly tiny, even if heavy. So there are quantitative issues to be examined, and there is a priority here.

1. UDD deuterium. Is this material real?
2. Effects from various treatments of the material. What are they? How are they identified? There is no accumulated body of knowledge on very fast neutral fragments, to my knowledge. I'm suspicious. Muons seem more believable to me than UDD fragments at very high energies. (How would they be accelerated?) And muons are still *incredible.*

The muon work is in the very recent paper, Muon detection studied by pulse-height energy analysis: Novel converter arrangements

The paper appears to assume the conclusions, in many comments. Consider: UDD deuterium is an unexpected result, normally considered impossible.Then muon generation is considered impossible under the experimental conditions (maybe even if one accepts UDD deuterium). So we create a "novel" method of measuring muons, and use it to confirm muon presence, before showing that our method actually works by confirming it with accepted methods, before the very existence of the material we are testing is accepted. Not a great idea, to my mind.

But fascinating work, I'm sure.

Muon detection often uses stacked scintillators, but even single-scintillator detectors look for a double flash, from the first muon interaction and then from the decay electron. I don't see double-flash delay and coincidence detection in Holmlid's work.

Holmlid is not showing fast time-correlation between laser pulses and muon detection. From the abstract: "The detection conversion in glass and Ge converters has a time constant of the order of many minutes to reach the final conversion level, while the process in metal converters is stabilized faster."

Color me skeptical. That the radiation would cause material changes, at the levels involved, would require it to be truly intense, intense enough to be quite dangerous.

Nobody has criticized Holmlid in a journal, that I've seen. This is huge: if there is no criticism, it indicates nobody is paying attention who would be competent to criticize and pass peer review with it. Yet there are obvious objections possible. It's a bad sign. It does not mean that Holmlid's work is being accepted. The opposite.