CALC-041

Citation-chain trace: every occurrence of the 23 mW/cm2 figure in the corpus

Feeds CLM-0044. Answers QST-001 and QST-005. SEARCH-METHOD, not arithmetic. Date of measurement 2026-09-02.

Why it was needed. Every document in the UK citation chain treats 230 W/m2 as fixed. If it is a physical constraint that is correct; if it is one lineage's 1978 choice, the chain has inherited a parameter without asking whether it applies. CALC-004 established the figure is lineage-specific from the JAXA comparison. This record establishes the separate question of whether any source arrives at it independently.

Corpus. The full held source set at the time of the sweep, 97 sources.

Terms.

"23 mW"
"230 W/m"
"mW/cm2"

Method. Full-corpus search on those three strings, then for each occurrence found, read what that occurrence cites. The output is not a count but a chain.

Result: an unbroken restatement chain of at least nine links, and no independent derivation.

The 1992 ISU link is explicit and is the strongest single piece of evidence in the chain, describing "the 23 mW/cm2 limit ... used by the NASA/DOE study".

Conclusion. No source in the corpus states the figure on independent grounds. 48 years, nine restatements, one origin.

Where this fails. A negative finding over the 97 sources held, not over the literature. An independent derivation may exist in a source not in this corpus.

Carried forward from the claim, because it is a method finding and not a search finding. The claim's own notes record that the author's framing over-attributed this chain to Cash three separate times in one session. That is a property of the method, not of the search, and it does not belong in a CALC. It is repeated here only so it is not lost when the working is declared.

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