Path: santra!tut!draken!kth!mcvax!uunet!shelby!apple!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!wasatch!donn From: donn@wasatch.utah.edu (Donn Seeley) Newsgroups: alt.fusion Subject: members of the DOE committee visit Pons's lab Summary: and local metallurgists report results; legal fees for patent defense Message-ID: <1982@wasatch.utah.edu> Date: 3 Jun 89 02:21:35 GMT Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 130 We were cut off from alt.fusion for a couple days due to a lightning strike at the University of Michigan... Apparently we don't get alt.* or gnu.* from our other backbone feed, the University of Texas; perhaps they don't get these groups? Too bad. There still isn't much new technical information to report, but there have been some curious political developments. The most startling news is that members of the DOE committee actually visited Pons's lab today, in spite of the fact that Pons earlier stated that he wasn't interested in meeting them because he thought they were hopelessly biased. Yesterday's Daily Utah Chronicle (the student newspaper) reported: Following an earlier postponement, a Department of Energy panel studying cold fusion will visit the University of Utah chemistry lab of B Stanley Pons Friday. U Vice President for Research James Brophy said the five scientists from the 20-member panel will be on campus Friday morning to see the cold-fusion experiment firsthand and to talk with several U scientists. ... The panel was originally scheduled to visit Wednesday, but Pons objected to the negatively biased makeup of the panel and said he would not allow panel members in his lab until the bias was balanced out by either replacing the disbelieving scientists or adding more cold-fusion believers. ... Today's (6/2) Chronnie gave a partial agenda: ... The DOE panel ... is scheduled to arrive Friday morning and depart by 2 p.m. ... In the morning, the panel will visit Pons' laboratory along with U chemists Cheves Walling and John Simons. ... ... [T]he panel will [then] have a 'working lunch' with Milton Wadsworth, U dean of the College of Mines and Minerals, and several of his colleagues. ... The 6 o'clock news on channel 2 had a brief report on the visit. None of the committee members were interviewed and the committee briefing was closed to reporters, but Pons came out to chat with reporters later. He said that his group is now 99+% confident that they are observing fusion; they are now seeing substantial sustained bursts of energy in some experiments, apparently including one which amounted to 50x input continuously for about 2 days. Pons thinks that a small demonstration power plant may be ready pretty soon -- 'we know what to do to get power out,' he said, and he believes that the local metallurgists have the key to speeding up the practical device process. The U metallurgists have been very forthcoming over the last couple days. They apparently have at least one working cell, and already have some preliminary results, according to the 6/1 Chronnie: ... Sivaraman Guruswamy, a U metallurgy professor who has been trying to duplicate the fusion experiment using electrodes other than palladium, said ... he has duplicated the Pons-Fleischmann experiment using a palladium electrode, but has been unable to duplicate it using other electrodes. Currently, Guruswamy said he has had an electrochemical cell generating heat since May 21, albeit inconsistently. The cell has been giving off heat in spurts, he explained, and during one 90-minute spurt, 54 watts were being produced for every nine watts put in. ... There were more details in the 6/2 edition: ... Guruswamy has [seen] at least four 'very random bursts of heat' between 10 watts and 60 watts. ... Guruswamy's laboratory has yet to produce a sustained reaction on the scale of Pons and Fleischmann. After letting his experiment run for a few more days, Guruswamy will analyze the palladium cell for possible material changes. In addition to palladium, though, Guruswamy said he will also investigate 'at least four' other metals known to absorb hydrogen as possible cells for the experiment. Guruswamy said one possible metal to be investigated is zirconium, but would not reveal any others he is considering. Guruswamy added he will likely be working with U engineering professor Gary Sandquist and U physicist Michael Salamon in analyzing the cells. ... (Isn't Guruswamy a great name for a university professor? :-) On the patent front, there were rumblings on the evening news that the lawyers are turning out to be more expensive than expected. Originally the patent defense fund contained only twenty some odd thousand dollars but some administrators feel that this is inadequate and there may be a new legislative session called to allocate more money. All this is especially interesting given that the state's own fusion committee still has not officially concluded that fusion was confirmed, as far as I know. The New York Times's Tuesday fusion-bashing did not go unnoticed here. This afternoon's Deseret News reported some comments from the U on the Santa Fe coverage: The international controversy surrounding the University of Utah's cold-fusion claims has, unfortunately, divided the news reporters into two camps -- supporters and non-supporters, two U public relations directors contend. 'Depending on which newspaper you read, you would believe fusion is dead or still going strong,' U news director Pamela Fogle told a Salt Lake communications conference Thursday. As examples of bias in reporting, Fogle cited two recent headlines taken from newspapers reporting on the same event -- the May 24 Santa Fe, NM, conference on fusion: 'Conference on Fusion Told of Failure,' stated the New York Times headline. Conversely, Fogle said, the Wall Street Journal told readers that a 'Texas Group Reports More Signs of Cold Fusion at US Meeting.' Fogle and her colleague, science writer Barbara Shelley, said they have observed, as the fusion story has unfolded, that the West Coast media are more supportive than East Coast press. ... But are West Coast Usenet sites more supportive than the East Coast ones, Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@cs.utah.edu 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 utah-cs!donn