In 1991, Gene Mallove published an important book entitled "Fire from
Ice" ... in an attempt to shed new light on the growing "cold fusion
confusion."
The "Fire from Ice" metaphor was catchy, but the level of skepticism for
the new technology did not diminish noticeably in the ensuing years, and
probably increased - but that is mainly because of the lack of a
commercial application. In the end, it's always going to resolve to
something akin to "show me the money" ... and the commercial payoff from
LENR has been non-existent to date.
Laser cooling is a new twist on the "Fire from Ice" metaphor. It refers
to a number of techniques in which samples can be cooled all the way
down to near absolute zero through the interaction with laser light,
which is itself can be very hot. Surprisingly, photons with effective
temperature of 10,000 C can effectively cool a sample. This is because
coherent photons are absorbed and re-emited in a way that the momentum
of an absorber changes independently of its prior temperature, which can
result in Doppler cooling. (see the Wiki entry)
Doppler cooling, is usually accompanied by a magnetic trapping force
within a magneto-optical trap, and this is the segue to framing a
hypothetical concept involving dark matter hydrogen and a variation of
Doppler cooling... without the laser, but with semi-coherent IR light
and magneto-optics.
The energy of dense hydrogen is severely depleted by thousands of eV.
One interpretation of that level of energy depletion is that dense
hydrogen, at least as described by Mayer, is cold ... very cold, far
below so-called absolute zero. Thus, in a reactor with ground state
hydrogen being admitted, and under the influence of quantum entanglement
with the dense hydrogen already there, H2 can be effectively catalyzed
using IR light to give up 25 keV and condense to same level as the dense
seed.
This is far from the original intent of "Fire from Ice" since cold
fusion is not involved, but I think Gene would have liked it.
As for the ultimate energy source...again, the gain is ostensibly
chemical but related to electron deflation instead of valence
manipulation -- and thus can be labeled as "supra-chemical." In the end,
excess energy derives from turning a hot electron into an extremely cold
one.
Earlier post:
There seems to be a kernel of truth in most of the dense-hydrogen
theories of the last 25 years, but the details are different. Perhaps
it is useful to cherry-pick the juiciest fruit and come up with a more
accurate hybrid to align the experiments to the theory.
If the Thermacore runaway reaction is replicated later this month,
then one immediate goal is to explain the excess heat ... where a
large mass of nickel (2000 grams or more) in the presence of hydrogen
is raised to a trigger temperature, at which point the heat becomes
self-sustaining and increasing until the nickel sinters and melts
(without oxidizing) -- in the process destroying the reactor but
without explosion or residual radioactivity.
Useful theories which are presently floating around are from Mills
(hydrino) Holmlid (UDH) Mayer (quatrino) Meulenberg et al (DDL,
femtohydrogen) Wigner (metallic hydrogen, 1936) Arata/Zhang
(pycnohydrogen) Miley (IRH, inverted Rydberg hydrogen) Lawandy
(unnamed 2D cluster) Heffner (deflated hydrogen) and others. None of
these seems to stands on its own, but all are intuitive.
The common feature of these theories is the densification of hydrogen
due to electron dissociation or ground state redundancy. The
hydrogen's electron can become almost stationary or "deflated,"
retaining charge but giving up some or all of its angular momentum,
which is independent of the nucleus. One detail of Mayer's theory, not
previously mentioned, seems to be a tie-in to Horace Heffner's various
"deflated" fusion concepts, except for the geometric scale. Horace
suggests nuclear fusion, but in the Thermacore runaway there is
apparently no indication of fusion. Also the active geometric scale of
Mayer is larger than Heffner and Holmlid (Compton scale instead of
femtoscale).
Mayer's deflated and nearly static electrons serve the function of
electrostatic charge to bind two protons, along with their own
magnetic dipole self attraction - resulting in a quatrino with 25 keV
binding energy. Importantly, this particle is bosonic. Clusters of
these quatrinos may act collectively as a PPP
(phonon-plasmon-polariton) at elevated temperature where IR glow
becomes the most obvious feature.
The possibility of electromagnetic bound states in which the magnetic
and electric forces are equal and counterbalancing - has been
suggested before but Mayer frames it nicely. In this example, the
electrostatic force between two electrons e2=r2 is comparable with the
dipole-dipole magnetic force 2e=r4 at a distance r*com, where com is
the electron Compton wavelength, about 2.4 picometers. Thus the active
particle (quatrino) of Meyer is about 40 times less diameter or 64000
time "denser" (mass/volume) than ground state Bohr atom, but this
turns out to be large, compared to Holmlid, for instance which is more
dense. Mayer seems to provide a better fit than the others to
experimental data. Mills posits 137 progressive steps instead of the
single drop but there is no convincing evidence of this.
Several of the dense bound states involving leptons are found as
solutions to the Dirac equation but most of Mills steps are not. The
approach of Meulenberg is similar, but differs greatly in the details.
The bottom line is that we do not need to ditch QM like Mills does -
and in fact we need to embrace it, in order to explain the non-nuclear
gain using QM entanglement of the PPP which is the active particulate.
All of the approaches above eventually result in a conversion of
hydrogen into dense dark matter with energy gain. As a quatrino, the
binding energy of ~25 keV is given up as heat during formation, but in
practice, much or all of it has been "borrowed" to accomplish the
reduced state. To explain the excess heat of the runaway, we need to
invoke quantum entanglement, which benefits from a pre-embedded
population of PPP dark matter.
This population of pre-embedded dark matter can come from nickel which
was refined using the Sherritt Gordon process or it can come from
extended pre-processing. When new hydrogen is admitted to the reactor
and heated, the already present population of dark matter - which can
be present in the range of 10 ppm, influences and catalyzes the
densification of new hydrogen with a larger part of the 25 keV mass
energy being surplus heat.
Curiously, the runaway reaction seems to be both non-nuclear and
non-chemical. But it can be defined is an enhanced kind of non-valence
chemistry - to the extent it involves energy depleted from electron
angular momentum (as with Mills theory) ... but the gain per particle
is far greater than traditional chemical, especially when electrons
become completely deflated. The process can be called "supra-chemical"
to differentiate from classical-chemical.
" Recomobination of hydrogen from the metallic state would release 216
megajoules per kilogram; TNT only releases 4.2 megajoules per kilo"
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-metallic-hydrogen-theory-reality.html#jCp
" Recomobination of hydrogen from the metallic state would release 216
megajoules per kilogram; TNT only releases 4.2 megajoules per kilo"
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-metallic-hydrogen-theory-reality.html#jCp