Text: Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 3:16 PM Subject: RE: U.S. DoE Will Review 15-Years of "Cold Fusion" Excess Heat and Nuclear Evidence Gene, That is indeed excellent news! Let us hope they do an honest review (which seems likely this time). If they do, then I believe cold fusion will indeed be recognized and finally "put on the accepted scientific mat". If so, then much of that success will be due to the sustained efforts and perseverance of one Gene Mallove! Also, I know you are much into thermodynamics forefront areas, and with very good reason. As you probably are aware, there are already known and recognized areas in forefront thermodynamics that violate the second law of thermodynamics. Violations occur, e.g., in sharp gradients, and not much is known about that, either experimentally or theoretically [Kondepudi and Prigogine, Modern Thermodynamics, Wiley, 1999, p. 459 lists several such recognized second-law violating conditions and areas]. In other thermodynamics forefront research, violations of the second law can and do occur, e.g., from statistical transient fluctuations alone. Modern thermodynamics is largely based on statistical mechanics, and there are no statistics as such without statistical fluctuations also. Accordingly, there are very rigorous thermodynamic transient fluctuation theorems available these days for calculating some of the effects of such fluctuations. One of the best such theorems is given by Evans and Searles; see D. J. Evans and D. J. Searles, "Equilibrium microstates which generate second law violating steady states," Phys. Rev. E, Vol. 50, 1994, p. 1645-1648. That paper advances the transient fluctuation theorem which predicts appreciable and measurable violations of the second law of thermodynamics for small systems over short time scales. The theorem relates the relative probability of delivering negative versus positive work to an experimental vessel. The theorem applies to systems in a constant-temperature environment and initially at equilibrium. This theorem has also been fairly widely applied to other areas and found to hold and be very useful. A generalized form of the transient fluctuation theorem applies when one manipulates a system so as to change its free energy. See Blau, Phys. Today, Sep. 2002, p. 20 for a cogent lay summary. For the full technical exposition, see Gavin E. Crooks, "Entropy production fluctuation theorem and the nonequilibrium work relation for free energy differences," Phys. Rev. E, Vol. 60, 1999, p. 2721-2726. In a fluctuation-induced violation of the second law, the reactions involved in the statistics can and do run backwards in a certain size region and for a certain length of time due to the delivery of negative work in the region rather than positive work. Or, more succinctly, this occurs in a temporary condition where the production of negative entropy (due to the production of negative work rather than positive work) occurs rather than the usual production of positive entropy. Chemically, this negative entropy region and its duration can be a surprisingly large effect and it can last for a surprising length of time. E.g., in a remarkable set of experiments, it has been experimentally proven that such "reactions running backwards" negative entropy fluctuations occur at up to cubic micron level and for up to two seconds or so. See G. M. Wang, E. M. Sevick, Emil Mittag, Debra J. Searles, and Denis J. Evans, "Experimental Demonstration of Violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics for Small Systems and Short Time Scales," Phys. Rev. Lett., 89(5), 29 July 2002, 050601. The researchers experimentally demonstrated the integrated transient fluctuation theorem, which predicts appreciable and measurable violations of the second law of thermodynamics for small systems over short time scales. Entropy consumption is experimentally shown to occur over colloidal length and time scales, for up to two seconds and at micron size scales. Note that a cubic micron of water contains something on the order of 30 billion ions and molecules. "Backwards-running reactions consuming entropy and producing negative entropy for up to two seconds can and do occur at such size scale. The great "objection" to cold fusion by the orthodox community has primarily been based on normal nuclear chemistry with positive entropy production. In that case, so long as the reactions do not themselves "run backward", the normal Coulomb barrier (mutual repulsion) effectively prevents two H+ ions (two free protons) moving toward each other from approaching so closely kinetically that they would collide, so that each would penetrate to the strong force region of the other. Instead, the Coulomb barrier either stops the momenta and reverses them (for exact heads-on approach), or deviates the particles aside from each other for oblique approach. If the two ions cannot penetrate each within the strong force region of the other, there can be no formation of a quasi-nucleus of the expected fusion product, and thus no resulting excitation decay to that fusion product. The only conventional way to overcome this ordinary "Coulomb barrier" blockage of fusion at low temperature is to go ahead and use high temperature and the resulting very high ion momentum necessary for some ions to penetrate and overcome the normal Coulomb barrier between themselves and their approaching ions, headed at each other and thus colliding. In short, some collision and formation of the necessary "quasi-nuclei" is achieved by brute force temperature and momenta, for some of the ions on mutual collision courses. Now consider a "reaction reversal zone" up to a cubic micron in size, where indeed the reactions do run backwards negentropically (due to the production of negative work) for up to two seconds. When reactions are reversed, then the law of attraction of charges can also be reversed. In this special zone, momentarily, now the "reversed Coulomb law" is that like charges attract and unlike charges repel -- for up to two seconds and in zones up to a cubic micron in volume. So up to a few dozen billion ions and molecules can be involved in reversals of the coulomb barrier into a coulomb attractor. Interestingly, the difference between a proton and a neutron is merely the orientation of a single quark. Consequently, theorists need to look into the implications at the quark level when two protons are in such a "negative entropy region" with reactions reversed. In that case, the Coulomb barrier is now reversed between the two protons! It is now the "Coulomb attractor" rather than the "Coulomb barrier". It seems the two protons could now certainly attract each other so closely that each does indeed penetrate to the strong force "deep" region of the other (if things were normal). Further, instead of the "deviation aside" of nominal close misses, the reversed Coulomb barrier can convert a near miss into a collision "hit". It may also be that the strong force of each particle is also momentarily reduced, depending on the extent of reversal action on the gluon forces and on the orientation of the quarks. At any rate, it appears that a "quasi-nucleus" of two H+ ions can form, with the probably "flipping" of one quark in one proton to turn that proton into a neutron, lowering the excitation. That would be the formation of a quasi-nucleus of deuterium. Then as the transient thermodynamic fluctuation reverses in sign and things move back toward equilibrium, the strong force would again resume its strength (much stronger than the now emerging Coulomb repulsion between the two protons). The notion is that the quasi-nucleus of deuterium would just "tighten" into a normal deuterium nucleus, or just a D+ ion. At least this notion of a reversal of the Coulomb barrier and a reversal of the law of attraction and repulsion of charges, precisely fits the known fact that negative entropy, reversed reaction zones do occur and have been experimentally demonstrated by thermodynamicists completely independently of cold fusion experiments. This then lends yet one more powerful argument that cold fusion can and does occur under the proper circumstances, and those circumstances may necessarily include the proven "reversal of reactions" that occur in such thermodynamic reversal zones that experimentally violate the second law of thermodynamics by producing negative work, negentropy, and reversal of the Coulomb barrier into a Coulomb attractor. In our book, Energy from the Vacuum, Cheniere Press, 2002 we also listed candidate "reversed reactions" that would well occur in such fluctuation zones, and that would yield the experimentally observed alpha particles, tritium, etc. in the experiments. These suggested "reversed reactions" are based on the temporary "reversal" of the law of attraction and repulsion of charges, occurring in one of the thermodynamic reversal zones that have been experimentally demonstrated by thermodynamicists. As is well known, the occurrence of such excess deuterium, tritium, and alpha particles is icommon to a great many of the successful cold fusion experiments conducted in multiple laboratories by many researchers, in multiple nations of the world. Anyway, let us fervently hope that the DoE gives a very rigorous and very fair review and appraisal of the cold fusion situation. And let us hope they also take into account the very important and pertinent transient fluctuation thermodynamics work and its production of significant "reversal zones", as shown by researchers such as Evans, Searles, Rondoni, Wang, et al. Best wishes, Tom Bearden

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