Hi Göran and List, Göran replied:
> As the temperature that is required to get kinetic fusion between atoms > is way too high to be reached in an impact that way to generate neutrons > is closed. I think you misunderstood the <long-shot> mechanism I was offering up -- perhaps a language translation difficulty with the word "fusor". I don't mean thermonuclear fusion, of course; what I'm referring to is inertial electrostatic confinement, where the energy required is very modest. It's not that difficult to produce neutrons with a tabletop device using nothing other than electricity, a cleverly constructed pair of nested electrodes, a (poor) vacuum, and deuterium. Now while iron or chondritic meteoroids are probably not good fusor fuel sources, comets may be another story, since they could provide the deuterium (e.g. heavy water). Göran continued: > The only remaining way that I see is by photo spallation of > atoms by high energy photons. Typically photons begin to produce > neutrons on interaction with normal matter at energies of about > 7 to 40 MeV. You're not going to get any photons in that energy range for a simple kinetic impact. What is the maximum temperature we're talking about -- 15,000 K? 20,000 K? Even at 50,000 K, I don't think there are any blackbody photons at angstrom wavelengths. --Rob ______________________________________________ http://www.meteoritecentral.com Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
