In reply to Jones Beene's message of Sun, 12 Mar 2017 20:32:30 -0700: Hi, [snip] >Yes - that's correct... the impossibility of fusing the starting >elements into iron in a smelting operation comes from overcoming the >Coulomb barrier, not from the final energy balance.
Correct. > >There is no calcium at the start, but if there were - long before carbon >and calcium could fuse (if this were happening on a dying star) - the >carbon would fuse with another carbon or other light element. There is >no "clean" pathway to get iron alone as a desired goal, especially >without deadly radioactivity. The Ca was just an example, for the energy calculation. > >It's kind of absurd really. Bottom line - no mechanism exists to get >excess iron via transmutation of silica and carbon. There might in theory be something that involves a weak force reaction, with the neutrino(s) carrying away the reaction energy, but I grant that it's far fetched. Another option might be a mix of exothermic & endothermic reactions where the net change in energy is either very small, &/or carried by neutrinos. >Even if there were, >it would not add mass magically. Did he really claim that mass was added magically, or only that iron was added magically? IOW was there an (unmeasured?) loss of something else to compensate for the increase in iron? >Thus, it is likely that gross >measurement error is the likely explanation. Otherwise, this kind of >thing does not go unnoticed in a poor country. India is not exactly a >major iron producer but would be if this were not some kind of silly >anecdote. (It's a bit early for April 1). [snip] I suspect the most likely explanation is that they weigh the iron without determining the actual chemical composition, and that other elements are dissolved (alloyed) in the metal. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
