MFMP Provides Update About Me356

Quote from Eric Walker

The column on the far right of the table "Properties of kaons" on the Wikipedia page has the common decay modes for a positive kaon. I suppose you can just fill in the antiparticles to get the decay modes for negative kaons. As you can see, neutral or positive pions feature in most of the branches, even when reversed for negative kaons. That suggests that if there are kaons there would be lots of 511 keV electron-positron annihilation photons.

Because the LENR reaction is produced in a Bose condinsate, all radiation produced by decay is absorbed into the condinsate. The 511 keV electron-positron annihilation photons are produced, but they are absorbed. Likewise. all gammas produced by nuclear events are absorbed by the condinsate. In like manner, Holmlid sees billions of neutral fragments produced by fusion but no gammas come out of those fusions and get out of the Bose Condensate that exists on the surface of the metalized hydride.

Quote from Eric Walker

did you guys purchase any of those components second-hand? And have you run a sensitive GM counter over them?

Some of the lead bricks were purchased new, and some are on loan from a nearby lab. All were checked with a GMC, though not with the pancake detector (not yet available). and wiped down with clean wipes and solvent before building the stack.

The entire stack was used with the scintillator in recording the two week-long background spectra. No unusual signals were seen in those integrations, and the files are available in the data archives at https://drive.google.com/open?…xJkjesxe4kb2FuQm9vTEJiaUU.

Quote from magicsound

some are on loan from a nearby lab.

By "some," I take it you mean some components and not some lead bricks? Either way, I'd be interested in knowing if anyone at the nearby lab knows if an open strontium or other beta source is ever used (assuming there is such a thing as an open source — I think there is), or if strontium or something similar is ever brought close to the instruments that are on loan.

Part of the difficulty here is that the signal was so weak that it was probably well below the threshold of detection instruments, meaning it would not necessarily show up in a run to check the bricks or the instruments. And if the dust moved into and out of view of the detector (e.g., through air currents), then it would only be picked up during some integration periods.

Quote from Eric Walker

By "some," I take it you mean some components and not some lead bricks? Either way, I'd be interested in knowing if anyone at the nearby lab knows if an open strontium or other beta source is ever used (assuming there is such a thing as an open source — I think there is), or if strontium or something similar is ever brought close to the instruments that are on loan.

No, I was referring to the lead bricks. The reactor components were all purchased new, and the instruments were all purchased new and are owned by me or by MFMP.

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Part of the difficulty here is that the signal was so weak that it was probably well below the threshold of detection instruments, meaning it would not necessarily show up in a run to check the bricks or the instruments. And if the dust moved into and out of view of the detector (e.g., through air currents), then it would only be picked up during some integration periods.

Not sure what you're proposing here. The signal was about five times background in the region of interest. The only instrument in question is the spectrometer, and it was thoroughly tested in situ, before and after the experiment.

On 22 Feb I ran spectra using each of the following check sources: 57Co, 109Cd, 133Ba, 137Cs, with simultaneous recording of counts at the GMC. I also ran three background integrations, bracketing the above tests. The results were scrutinized by Mark "Justa Guy" for the experiment team, and Ecco and possibly others for the "review team". Nothing unusual was seen, and the insensitivity of the GMC to 20-200 keV photons was demonstrated.

Those files have not been added to the online archive, but are available for further scrutiny if needed.

Regarding air currents, the cavity in which the scintillator lives is mostly closed at the back by the lead bricks, and at the front by the Al foil heat shield. Therefore active air currents that might have carried something from outside the lab into the cavity are well baffled and suppressed.

Quote from magicsound

Not sure what you're proposing here. The signal was about five times background in the region of interest. The only instrument in question is the spectrometer, and it was thoroughly tested in situ, before and after the experiment.

My understanding is that signal that was detected in GS5.2 Spetrum-07 and several others was extremely weak, and only after the analysis, subtracting the background, did it turn up. That suggests to me that it was well below the noise threshold that detectors would pick up in real time, e.g., when people are doing a pass with detectors looking for radiation. If there was very weak contamination, it would only show up by way of a similar analysis.

If the contamination was not in view of the detector for the integration periods that were analyzed by Ecco and Mark "Justa Guy", it would have been missed. Why would the contamination appear in some integration periods and not others? At this point I don't really know. But to get here we have already successfully weakened several previous objections to contamination: (1) that the detected radiation looked like bremsstrahlung and had a profile unlike normal beta radiation (we see now that strontium might produce a similar pattern); (2) that there was no plausible source for the contamination (we now have at least one plausible possibility — the nearby lab); and now, (3) that contamination would have been picked up during detection sweeps of the equipment (we now realize that it was likely to have been too weak). So I would not be one to rule out the possibility that any weak contamination could move into and out of view of the PMT or the crystal.

Quote from Eric Walker

So I would not be one to rule out the possibility that any weak contamination could move into and out of view of the PMT or the crystal.

Given the responses I posted, can you propose a plausible scenario where 90Sr (or similar) comtamination

1) Originated, and found its way into and out of the scintillator cavity
2) Did not produce detectable secondary 90Y beta emission (max. 2284 keV, average energy 935 keV)
3) Was detected by ~1/eV broad-band emission only, at ~5 times background, during the interval when spectrum 7 was recorded

Quote from magicsound

1) Originated, and found its way into and out of the scintillator cavity
2) Did not produce detectable secondary 90Y beta emission (max. 2284 keV, average energy 935 keV)
3) Was detected by ~1/eV broad-band emission only, at ~5 times background, during the interval when spectrum 7 was recorded

Re (1), by "cavity" I think you mean the lead cave? One possibility has been mentioned earlier: some dust was carried on air current. Another possibility — a lead brick was repositioned? If by "cavity" you mean into and out of the internals of the detector, that doesn't seem like a requirement to me.

Re (2), thanks to gameover, we've already seen a 90Sr beta spectrum that looks a lot like the GS5.2 signal; so whether the 90Y beta emission would be expected would be a question for experiment (such as the one that had the spectrum we saw that looked like the GS5.2 signal). Another possibility: the contaminant was something other than 90Sr.

Re (3), I was unaware that the signal was ~ 5 times background for Spectrum-07. I thought it was only apparent after the analysis, which subtracted the background out. At 5 times background the signal would have been immediately obvious upon visual inspection. If true, that suggests either higher low-level activity during the integration period, or a smaller number of bursts of high activity. I don't really have an opinion about this one. But I do not see how (3) (alone) would increase the plausibility of the live reactor being the source. It's kind of suggestive, if one squints one's eyes.

Quote from Eric Walker

Re (1), by "cavity" I think you mean the lead cave? One possibility has been mentioned earlier: some dust was carried on air current. Another possibility — a lead brick was repositioned?

There was no air current through the cavity, for reasons I previously posted. If there had been enough 90Sr in the air for a particle to find its way in there, I would probably be ill or dead by now.
The lead bricks weigh ~12 kg each and are hard to move even when that is necessary. The lead was not touched during the experiment, and there was no seismic activity.

Quote from Eric Walker

whether the 90Y beta emission would be expected would be a question for experiment (such as the one that had the spectrum we saw that looked like the GS5.2 signal). Another possibility: the contaminant was something other than ⁹⁰Sr.

The ⁹⁰Sr beta decay produces ⁹⁰Y as a product (1:1). ⁹⁰Y is unstable, with half-life of 64 hours and decay energy 2.28 MeV distributed to an electron, an anti-neutrino, and ⁹⁰Zr (zirconium), which is stable. I was suggesting that the resulting beta-decay spectrum could be identified because it would extend higher in its energy than the ⁹⁰Sr primary emission alone.

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Re (3), I was unaware that the signal was ~ 5 times background for Spectrum-07. I thought it was only apparent after the analysis, which subtracted the background out. At 5 times background the signal would have been immediately obvious upon visual inspection. If true, that suggests either higher low-level activity during the integration period, or a smaller number of bursts of high activity. I don't really have an opinion about this one. But I do not see how (3) (alone) would increase the plausibility of the live reactor being the source. It's kind of suggestive, if one squints one's eyes.

I was actually being conservative. The animated GIF file at the link below shows the sequence of normalized spectra, compared against the average of those outside the active time interval. The peak amplitude of spectrum 7 is more than an order of magnitude above the average. No need to squint to see it.
https://drive.google.com/file/…sxe4kWWl3WDRMSFJpNWc/view

Quote from magicsound

The 90Sr beta decay produces 90Y as a product (1:1). 90Y is unstable, with half-life of 64 hours and decay energy 2.28 MeV distributed to an electron, an anti-neutrino, and 90Zr (zirconium), which is stable. The resulting beta-decay spectrum would extend much higher in its energy ramp than the 90Sr primary emission alone.

Here is a 90Sr spectrum:

(Source.)

Here is another (in blue), from this source:

In the second graph we clearly see a fall off at 1250 keV, at which point the signal peters out. This, despite your point about 90Y. And yet other 90Sr spectra look different again. But I'll mention again: perhaps it's not 90Sr.

Quote from magicsound

I was actually being conservative. The animated GIF file at the link below shows the sequence of normalized spectra, compared against the average of those outside the active time interval. The peak amplitude of spectrum 7 is more than an order of magnitude above the average. No need to squint to see it.
drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxJkjesxe4kWWl3WDRMSFJpNWc/view

Yes, trace 7 is clearly visible above the background, which is good for me to be aware of. In the nice animation, there's three types of trace — ones that follow the black line with little variation; ones that show a lot of jitter around the black line; and trace 7. The ones with variation are not obviously good evidence of radiation, and would only be taken as something other than noise by virtue of trace 7. What caused trace 7? Bremsstrahlung was originally mentioned. Now that we've talked through this, it's not obvious that it was bremsstrahlung.

One topic that I have not brought up, since we've been discussing contamination, is the cosmic ray explanation. You mentioned earlier on that "For example, we looked at available solar event (cosmic ray) data from nearby observatories, and found nothing above the usual background during the time when the gamma spectrum was seen." Three questions in that connection were: (1) Would the cosmic rays necessarily have a solar origin? (2) Would the nearby observatories know about all relevant cosmic ray bursts during the integration period? And (3) would the area covered by a particular cosmic ray burst necessarily extend to nearby observatories? Despite these questions, I still don't think we've ruled out contamination.

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

Small point, but no. A single particle finding its way in gives no indication of the level in the air in general. If this repeats, the argument could grow some legs.
There are many weird phenomena seen when one starts looking closely at an ordinary environment.

Are you contending that one and only one particle of 90Sr wandered in through the closed door, then wandered through the ~2 mm gap between the Al foil heat shield and the lead cave aperture, then turned the corner and came to rest in front of the scintillator. Then it got up and wandered away out the same convoluted path, never to be seen again. How small would such a hypothetical particle have to be in order to be airborne without any support, over such a convoluted path, and then after hanging around for up to several hours, levitate itself and exit via the same path.

My point in pursuing all this detailed discussion is that objections to experimental data must be held to the same standard that the data itself is subjected to. In other words, a negating hypothesis must itself be falsifiable and must fit the known behavior of matter and energy, unless new theory is being proposed. So I assert that the hypothesized ⁹⁰Sr contamination does not fit the facts of the experimental environment or the known physical behavior of metal particles in air (they tend to fall rather than float). Unless you can refute my conclusion, I further assert that the ⁹⁰Sr contamination hypothesis has been falsified.

Quote from Eric Walker

One topic that I have not brought up, since we've been discussing contamination, is the cosmic ray explanation.

Only sparse data was readily available on the internet. I checked the record of solar activity from observatories in Mexico City and Hawaii, and saw nothing abnormal for the time of the experiment. This was only a cursory survey, and an in-depth investigation of celestial radiation data during the spectrum 7 interval would certainly be valuable. Someone with experience in astrophysics and access to the databases would be better equipped to do it than me. Any volunteers?

Quote from magicsound

Only sparse data was readily available on the internet. I checked the record of solar activity from observatories in Mexico City and Hawaii, and saw nothing abnormal for the time of the experiment. This was only a cursory survey, and an in-depth investigation of celestial radiation data during the spectrum 7 interval would certainly be valuable. Someone with experience in astrophysics and access to the databases would be better equipped to do it than me. Any volunteers?

I wonder whether such an excercise is possible, given the likely holes in the data and the possibility of very focused cosmic ray bursts coming from who knows what direction. But in the meantime the implication seems to be clear: we have yet to rule out cosmic rays for trace 7.

The real way to rule out cosmic rays in this instance would be to show the live reactor under your control, yielding radiations either when you want them, or at least correlated with some independent variable.

Quote from magicsound

My point in pursuing all this detailed discussion is that objections to experimental data must be held to the same standard that the data itself is subjected to. In other words, a negating hypothesis must itself be falsifiable and must fit the known behavior of matter and energy, unless new theory is being proposed. So I assert that the hypothesized 90Sr contamination does not fit the facts of the experimental environment or the known physical behavior of metal particles in air (they tend to fall rather than float). Unless you can refute my conclusion, I further assert that the 90Sr contamination hypothesis has been falsified.

I wonder about this conclusion. I think experiments involve a claim of some kind; in this case, that there was a signal that was picked up from the live reactor that was not picked up from the null reactor, and the signal consisted of bremsstrahlung of some kind. Let's call this the alternative hypothesis (i.e., alternative to the null hypothesis that there wasn't anything special). As the experimenter making a claim, it's your burden to demonstrate (1) that the data show that this is plausible and likely, and that (2) all other scenarios can be ruled out as impossible or implausible. So there's a special focus on the alternative hypothesis, and the null hypothesis has it easy. If enough life can be breathed into any other possibilities to raise the shadow of a doubt, the experiment needs to be revisited and additional controls added. Will that be possible in this case? Since it was a freak occurrence, I suspect it will be difficult. That is life.

Above you have ruled out the 90Sr explanation no more than I have completely put to rest the bremsstrahlung explanation, which still captures one's imagination with the question, could they be right? But in this instance, that just means another iteration of experiment is needed since the result is unclear.

Quote from Eric Walker

Above you have ruled out the 90Sr explanation no more than I have completely put to rest the bremsstrahlung explanation, which still captures one's imagination with the question, could they be right? But in this instance, that just means another iteration of experiment is needed since the result is unclear.

Yes, agreed as long as the same or reasonably near standard is applied in both cases. Otherwise, a conclusion becomes impossible to achieve, because there will be no convergence of understanding. We've discussed this at great length in other threads and forums, and as an independent experimenter, it concerns me greatly. It's one reason I'm reluctant to offer my data as "proof" of anything.

I approach each experiment as a chance to "do good work" as a practitioner of technical arts. With my sometimes-limited resources, I have to balance efficiency against attention to detail, and that is part of the art. So to follow the analogy, good critics can help improve the art, and bad ones can hasten the show closing.

Quote from magicsound

Yes, agreed as long as the same or reasonably near standard is applied in both cases. Otherwise, a conclusion becomes impossible to achieve, because there will be no convergence of understanding. We've discussed this at great length in other threads and forums, and as an independent experimenter, it concerns me greatly. It's one reason I'm reluctant to offer my data as "proof" of anything.

But I don't think the same standard applies. You need to really back up the claim about (1) bremsstrahlung (2) arising from the live cell and (3) not going back to various sources of possible artifact. There's a very strong standard that applies to your claims, which are unusual. I just need to raise the specter of (1) contamination and insufficient controls or (2) cosmic rays and insufficient controls. There's a relatively weak standard that applies to my spectering. I just need to not allow those alternatives to be shown to be totally implausible; and if I can get gradually make them out to be more plausible with effort, even better.

With regard to agreement and the difficulty getting to it, this has entirely to do with the data that are available and the claims being made in connection with them. You and Bob H. would have exactly zero difficulty getting agreement in this forum that there was an anomaly in the data, especially for trace 7. Where disagreement arises is in the interpretation of the anomaly. With the data as they are, I see no way around that impasse. The only way forward is a set of data that basically forces people to adopt a stronger conclusion, against their will. There are different ways of doing that: we had a live signal of the radiation, and when we inserted a barrier, it decreased by this much. When we turned off the apparatus, the signal went away with a half-life. We used a magnetic field and were able to decrease the count rates significantly, demonstrating that the radiation consisted of charged particles. We inserted attenuators of various thicknesses and determined that radiation was definitely electrons (and not protons or alphas or something else). We saw a clear correlation between the spectrum picked up by the spectrometer and excess heat.

If you have done enough controls like this, and people raise objections, and you take into account those objections and go one step further, eventually I think you'll be able to get agreement on a claim that is stronger than simply "anomaly." Frustration arises for people making a claim when an attempt is made to push a conclusion through that is not obvious and unavoidable.

Quote from Eric Walker

How about this scenario? A component of the detector was bought second-hand and had previously been present during a calibration by its previous owner with a strontium check source (or another beta emitter with a similar activity), at which point a small amount of contamination from the check source (which was not the kind that is encased in plastic) was left somewhere on/in the component.

You answered this (joke) yourself...

Quote from Eric Walker

If the contamination was not in view of the detector for the integration periods that were analyzed by Ecco and Mark "Justa Guy", it would have been missed. Why would the contamination appear in some integration periods and not others? At this point I don't really know. But to get here we have already successfully weakened several previous objections to contamination:

But contamination due to (muonic??) activation is a real concern in any experiment mfp should address in future tests. Even small pbb contents may be activated for a short time.
But Eric as I say in the sentence above: Activated for a short time. Not for a few minutes only!!!

In the version GL 5.3 experiment the same spectrum reoccurred many times, for a very short period. Thus it must be a very short living B-emitter!

To enhance the reliabilility of the experiment, I would add a second scintillator, at a different angle!
Why do we always assume that the radiation is isotrophic? I personally think there are good reasons against this. Thus we should move one of the two scintillators from time to time.

Quote from Eric Walker

But I don't think the same standard applies. ...I just need to raise the specter

By that rationale, the theory stated below by Magicsound is just as valid as yours:

Quote from magicsound

Some unknown person (whose initials could be E.W.) sneaked into the lab wearing an invisibility cloak (without opening the door of course). Then he compromised the experiment by touching the lead in front of the spectrometer with a refractory wand containing 90Sr, and left, again without opening the door.

When it come to these kind of supposed refutations, I think it is necessary to do more than just "raise the spectre". Otherwise we'd be here all day, slowly descending into a rabbit hole of weirdness.

For instance: Given the "signal" graph, (and knowledge of the scintillator programming) we can calculate the number of counts* received. Then, knowing the length of measurement 7, and the half-life of Strontium, we could calculate the minimum size and weight of this alleged free-floating particle... Which should give an understanding of whether it would actually float around the lab, or just fall to the floor.

It might not be completely conclusive, but at least it demonstrates that we are not just waving our hands and pulling rabbits from hats, as it were.

* Or is the 'count' axis just arbitrary? Either way, I'm sure you get my wider point.

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You answered this (joke) yourself…

Contamination coming from something on loan from a lab is most obviously a very significant worry, and not a joke. Perhaps you would not worry about it.

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But contamination due to (muonic??) activation is a real concern in any experiment mfp should address in future tests. Even small pbb contents may be activated for a short time.

But Eric as I say in the sentence above: Activated for a short time. Not for a few minutes only!!!

One cannot conclude short activation periods from the GS5.2 spectra, which had long integration periods, for the reason that what contamination there might have been with a longer half-life might have moved into and out of view of the detector. Perhaps you are drawing from information from subsequent experiments to get to this conclusion.

Muons are a possibility I suppose. I don’t know if I want to argue with Bob Higgins about muon detection, as he seems to have a good grasp of the subtleties and difficulties of it. (In contrast to Holmlid, who shows little awareness of the difficulties.) Muons are definitely not my first guess. But let’s let experiment sort that question out.

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To enhance the reliabilility of the experiment, I would add a second scintillator, at a different angle! Why do we always assume that the radiation is isotrophic? I personally think there are good reasons against this. Thus we should move one of the two scintillators from time to time.

Yes, a series of coincidence experiments would be great. You’d get correlation from an independent source, and you’d get angular correlation information. In nuclear experiments angular correlation tells you things about the spin-parity assignments of the excited state of the daughter as it transitions to the ground state.

But if, as you say, there is a very short half-life, characterizing the half-life and comparing it to those of known radionuclides seems like a very interesting thing to do.