Quantum mechanics governs both attraction and repulsion between charges. Ax far as the maths is concerned, it's just a sign change. If you come at this as an interaction characterised by "exchange of quanta", then (via a momentum model) only repulsion makes intuitive sense. But that's OK - QM is nothing if not unintuitive.
Andrew ----- Original Message ----- From: Harry Veeder To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2013 11:17 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Isotope separation technology can be improved On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Edmund Storms <[email protected]> wrote: On May 24, 2013, at 10:38 PM, Harry Veeder wrote: The process you have described has the characteristics of a ratchet. Curiously, Jones used the ratchet metaphor in another post where he characterised the effect of modulating the input on the cell. Yes Harry, this can be called a ratchet. All kinds of ratchets exist in Nature. The challenge is to find the cause. In this case, the nuclei have to communicate before they have fused into a single nuclei. The form of htat communication is unknown, but very important. Once discovered, this will get someone the Nobel prize. Imagine the following sequence. The nuclei are held apart by an electron bond, which is normally the case. Once formed, this structure starts to resonate so that the two nuclei get periodically closer together. As they approach each other, information is exchanged between the nuclei that tells them they have too much mass -energy for being this close. After all, if they were in contact, the excess mass-energy would be 24 MeV if the nuclei were deuterons. But they are not in contact yet, so that the excess mass-energy is less than the maximum. Nevertheless, this excess must be dissipated, which each nuclei does by emitting a photon having 1/2 of the excess energy for the distance achieved. After the photons are emitted, the resonance moves the two nuclei apart, but this time not as far as previously the case. The next resonance cycle again brings the nuclei close, but this time they come closer than before, again with emission of two photons. This cycle repeats until all energy has been dissipated and the two nuclei are in contact. The intervening electron, that was necessary to the process, is sucked into the final nucleus. Because very little energy is released by entry of the electron, the neutrino, if it is emitted at all, has very little energy available to carry away. This process, I suggest, is the unique and previously unknown phenomenon that CF has revealed. Ed, Typically we associate quantization with attractive forces as is the case with an electron and a proton in a hydrogen atom, but your system involves quantization with repulsive forces. If pushing an electron and proton apart can happen in steps through the absorption of photons, I guess it follows that pushing together of protons can happen in steps through the emission of photons. However, in the former situation "the pushing apart" is the effect but the absorption of the photons is the cause, whereas in the latter situation the pushing together is the cause, and the emission of photons is effect....or is it? ;-) If it is the cause, then the emission of photons serves to pull the protons together. Harry PS. Wikipedia says the fractional quantum hall effect also involves quantized states of repulsion although they are between electrons rather than protons and deuterons.
