In reply to Eric Walker's message of Mon, 26 May 2014 16:38:30 -0700: Hi, [snip] >I was thinking of the Oppenheimer-Phillips process. The reason I suspect >the fast protons are not the primary channel is that I suppose there would >be a lot more detectable bremsstrahlung if there were enough of them. > Perhaps this is mistaken, or perhaps Piantelli's reaction is pretty >low-energy, and there aren't that many fast protons in the big scheme of >things, even if they're impressive to look at in a cloud chamber.
I don't think you will get any bremsstrahlung to speak of from fast protons. That's because they are much slower than electrons with equivalent energy. You will get a few x-rays where they knock inner electrons out of their shells. Also the occasional gamma, if they transfer their kinetic energy to another nucleus which becomes excited and then loses it's excitation energy via gamma emission. Also the occasional fusion reaction gamma. Something like 99.99% of the energy will end up ionizing other atoms, resulting in EM radiation with an energy in the range of UV to chemical energy, with the occasional x-ray as mentioned above. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
