Quote
Except that I do not have the time required for this sort of discussion and actually I am writing this at the expense of other duties. I hoped to also read the analysis of others who carefully read the papers, not just to personally engage in the discussion. Enough!
You will be lucky to find someone on this forum who has read those papers more carefully than you have. We have in our discussion already sorted out several good reasons to fully distrust the conclusions in those papers, e.g., the missing 0-53 MeV betas, the possibility of alternative interpretations and the lack of an effective investigation into really establishing that it was muons that have been detected and not something else. But if you do not find this discussion is useful to you, you are free to disengage.
Quote
As previously suggested, this would require setting up an experiment in a specialized facility, a "muon factory", that performed this sort of service to individual researchers. I do not know how many of these are in Sweden. There may be valid logistic reasons as for why Holmlid has not done this yet, I doubt that one can simply rent a multi-GeV particle accelerator as needed.
As previously suggested, then, the (hopefully) obvious thing to do here is to collaborate with someone or with a team that has access to such a facility. I understand it might be difficult for Holmlid to find such a person or team. Another possibility: find someone with relevant expertise who is not a pushover who can help Holmlid detect muons on the cheap, using a well-known method of detecting muons, rather than going along with him in inventing a whole new method of detecting muons that proceeds on the back of a dubious theory. Holmlid’s supposition that his PMT muon detector works through induced beta decay by way of the interaction of muons with atoms in the walls of the apparatus sounds like a new method of detection, even if it bears a superficial resemblance to an existing method (use of a scintillator together with a PMT).
Just to make clear the obvious: here we have someone with no expertise in detecting muons inventing a whole new method of detecting muons, and one that has not had the benefit of any kind of calibration against a known source of muons.
Quote
Eric: What significance do you take from this fact?
I was listing that as a possible reason why he may have wanted to not use the scintillator for most of the experiments there.
I would have expected a background signal, even if there was no scintillator, given the muon decay betas. Or are we to suppose that the muons are not decaying at all?
Quote
The problem here is that you are trying to put down an in your opinion implausible hypothesis (muon emission) with another one that is at least as implausible [energetic electrons] .... I tried using again the previously linked NIST tables (physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/Star/Text/ESTAR.html) for the range of electrons in matter with a similar material with about the same density to give the same results at 1 MeV. It takes 10 MeV electrons to penetrate the length of the scintillator. This is ignoring everything else.
I agreed to assume that the scintillator is removed when the converters are in place, so the scintillator itself should not be around to stop the electrons. They need only traverse the converters, or, even if stopped, penetrate far enough to cause bremsstrahlung, which, if the photons are in the high keV to MeV range, will not be attenuated much.
Induced decay in Fe2O3:K was just one idea that was thrown out there, one that I’m not attached to in the slightest. Hopefully it will not be a distraction. Perhaps let’s simplify the problem: can Homlid’s results be explained with energetic electrons (2, 5, 10, 20 or even 50 MeV, say) arising outside of the apparatus, cause unknown? Or more interestingly: what minimum energy would the electrons need to have to explain Homlid’s observations if they were arising outside of the apparatus, assuming this can be made to fit the observations? Or can Holmlid’s observations be explained by anything else that doesn’t stray too far into realms that are very far away from everyday life? Just as a thought experiment.
I don’t think Homlid has established that the betas that are being recorded by his PMT detector are arising in the walls of the detector. What’s more, they would at face value appear to go back to a single type of decay, if we are to go along with Homlid’s assertion of a straight-line Kurie plot. (When I looked at it, I wasn’t convinced that it was a straight line Kurie plot.) [I need to go back and double-check whether the Kurie plot was seen for the live runs.] What is something that can simplify the experiment enough to know, unambiguously, whether the signal arises from within the PMT or without?
Quote
Would not such massive electron emission already give a very significant signal when a converter material is not used?
This is an interesting question. What happens when you direct a beam of MeV electrons at a PMT, with and without converter materials? Seems like something that could and should be investigated. There was the 137Cs calibration, without the converters, but those electrons had an endpoint of 512 keV and hence will on average been ~ 170 keV.
Also, would you not expect a massive electron emission from the 0-53 MeV muons arising from muons that happen to decay outside of the apparatus?
Quote
This being said, if you want to introduce an unknown penetrating particle X that induces beta decay, can be ejected from the reactor and that is not a muon, I am fine with that. I suspect that Holmlid did not want to also suppose the existence of new elementary particles in the process.
I’m not 100 percent against a neutral particle of some kind. Bill Collis, whose opinion in these matters means a lot to me, has taken this approach. It’s not my own guess. I think an unknown neutral particle is in any event more likely than kaons and pions being liberated in significant numbers through a laser emitting low-energy photons. But assume for the moment that this is what is happening: think of the potential for a bomb that could be made, using only a low-power laser and Holmlid’s material?
I already take LENR seriously. The skepticism you’re witnessing here is probably a small fraction of the skepticism that academic physicists must have.
Quote
I think at that point he already performed other experiments that may have shaped his opinion on the signal observed. Hints may be found with the "received dates" of the papers.
Agreed. Holmlid no doubt thought that he had shown mesons and muons already. But I just take that as further evidence that he’s not being sufficiently self-critical, which I was already convinced of before reading those papers.
Quote
From what Olafsson wrote it sounded as if others have repeated the same measurements on Holmlid's test rig in his laboratory using his procedures, obtaining the same results. What I am saying here is that Holmlid is probably not getting a free pass with the peer review just because he is a professor emeritus, but also that only a replication using different methods can confirm what he thinks he is seeing.
I’ve never been of the opinion that Holmlid is not seeing some interesting experimental phenomena. It’s always been the interpretation that I’ve found lacking, going back before even ultra-dense deuterium and as far as Rydberg matter. One can take Holmlid’s low-level observations at face value and disagree with the interpretation. The other replications bolster the conclusion that there is something experimentally interesting to look at.
Anyone looking at Holmlid’s work should ask some basic questions, such as: How did he get to the conclusion about ultra-dense deuterium? What did the actual experimental observations look like that got him there? How did he get to Rydberg matter? Once one closely examines the reasoning that has lead him to those conclusions, one will go down a rabbit hole and come to distrust his very process of reasoning.
