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Lost History (Explorations in Nuclear Research Book 3) Kindle Edition
Steven B. Krivit (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Steven B. Krivit's Explorations in Nuclear Research three-book series (Hacking the Atom, Fusion Fiasco, Lost History) describes the emergence of a new field of science, one that bridges chemistry and physics. The books give readers an understanding of low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research and its history and provide a rare behind-the-scenes look at the players and personalities involved.
Lost History, written for scientists and science historians, covers the period from 1912 to 1927, and explores the story of forgotten chemical transmutation research, a precursor to modern low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) research. The book tells the story of century-old research that has been absent from the scientific dialogue for a hundred years — research that is surprisingly similar to events in the modern era.
In the formative years of atomic science in the early 20th century, at the same time that Niels Bohr introduced his model of the atom, and when nuclear science belonged to chemists and physicists alike, some scientists reported inexplicable experimental evidence of elemental transmutations. Papers were published in the top scientific journals of the day, including Physical Review, Science and Nature. Prominent scientists around the world participated in the research. The research was reported in popular newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times and Scientific American. The book relies heavily on published journal papers.
The experiments, using relatively simple, low-energy benchtop apparatus, did not use radioactive sources, so the results defied prevailing theory. This, coupled with the fact that the experiments were not easily repeated, caused most scientists by 1930 to dismiss the entire body of research as a mistake.
This history of research was omitted from historical references — until now. With the benefit of hindsight, and in light of modern low-energy nuclear research (LENR) and theory, this lost history, after a 60-year hiatus, is told here for the first time. Lost History is the first book that provides critical analyses of the original published scientific papers of the transmutation experiments performed between 1912 and 1927. This book reveals the fascinating story of these experiments and provides significant insights about our understanding of the history of physics, chemistry and nuclear science.
Lost History chronicles the following events that have been either forgotten or misreported:
- From 1912 to 1914, several independent researchers detected the production of noble gases: helium-4, neon, argon, and an as-yet-unidentified element of mass-3, which we now identify as tritium. Two of these researchers were Nobel laureates.
- In 1922, two chemists at the University of Chicago created helium using the exploding electrical conductor method.
- In 1924, a German scientist accidentally found gold and possibly platinum in the residue of mercury vapor lamps that he had been using for photography.
- In 1925, scientists in Amsterdam carried out a similar experiment, but starting with lead, and observed the production of mercury and the rare element thallium.
- In 1925, a prominent Japanese scientist reported the production of gold and another metal that was later identified as platinum.
- In 1926, two German chemists pumped hydrogen gas into a chamber with finely divided palladium powder and reported the transmutation of hydrogen into helium. One of them later tried to dismiss the results, but he was never able to completely explain the data as a mistake.
- Contrary to nearly all accounts that credit Ernest Rutherford with the first nuclear transmutation — of nitrogen to oxygen — the credit belongs to a researcher who was working under Rutherford.
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication date18 December 2016
- File size9211 KB
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About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B01MU2EXDO
- Publisher : Pacific Oaks Press (18 December 2016)
- Language : English
- File size : 9211 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 400 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,122,768 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 191 in Physics of Energy
- 1,632 in Energy Production & Extraction
- 76,578 in Science, Nature & Maths
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About the author

Steven B. Krivit is an author, investigative science journalist and international speaker who specializes in low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research. He is the leading author of review articles and encyclopedia chapters about LENRs, including invited papers for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons. He was an editor for the American Chemical Society 2008 and 2009 technical reference books on LENRs and editor-in-chief for the 2011 Wiley Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia.
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In other works, Krivit can be overly harsh in his criticism of scientists, but this work is entirely good-natured.
When it wasn't forbidden to search for elemental transmutations with the tools of chemistry, people found them.
But then as now people come in many flavors. Serious scientists. People who need funding. People who want to make lead in to gold. People who have a commercial product "almost ready" to do so.
And investors and research bureacrats, then as now, have to try to sort it all out, or in frustration throw the baby out with the bathwater.
At some point it was decided that physicists do transmutations, and chemists don't.
These stories predate that point. A particularly colorful period.
it is of special interest today because a few of the outrageous claims of transmutation are now commonplace in the laboratories of LENR researchers-- which provokes several questions: Who got there first? What else did they find out? What other simple and safe demonstrations of LENR exist to help elucidate its physical mechanism?
As scientists we are obliged to listen to Nature and allow her to overrule our ideology, no matter how well established the current models of physics may seem. Krivit's explorations are terrific evidence based roadmaps of the physics that is coming when the consensus that LENR can't happen is replaced by the expansion of physics to encompass another chunk of reality.

Krivit has once again proven his ability to dig for facts and produce an easy-to-follow and well-told story. I have long considered myself fairly well-versed in the history of nuclear research. I have studied it and taught classes in it. But Krivit showed me that there was much that I did not know, and as it turns out, hardly anyone knew. He found pieces of history that had been truly lost, wove these pieces together based on the historical chronology, and produced a comprehensive picture of what turned out to be a significant era in nuclear research.
What struck me most is how difficult it has been in science to break through the barrier of accepted facts. It was once accepted fact that the earth was both flat and at the center of the universe — until someone proved it wasn't. Some of this early atomic research was dismissed and ultimately lost because the results did not fit the paradigm of what scientists "knew" to be true. Most scientists did not want to accept the research or try to reproduce the experiments for fear of being labeled alchemists, the ultimate stigma for scientists of the era. Our view of the world was expanded through the research in this lost history, but not everybody was willing to go along for the ride. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this fascinating book.

