Considering the pace of progress of CF/LENR over the past decade, and the age of some of the researchers, the future of the field of inquiry will depend - to a large extent - on either a dedicated commitment by some other country (China, Italy and Japan come to mind)...
...or, hopefully, to the emergence of a trained cadre of young experimenters in the USA, like those of John Dash at Portland State U. Others professors, perhaps Ludwik Kowalski at Montclair State U may also get into the act of inspiring young talent, but at the graduate level, there are not very many programs producing published results in LENR. Notice that these two are not top-tier engineering universities, yet... that is where the future of the US commitment to LENR may lie. The Bockris and Miley (former) connections with top tier universities seem to be producing precious little in this regard. Some other the student effort can be seen pictorially at: http://www.lenr-canr.org/Experiments.htm Notice the last image of a metal cold-roller, a tool from another age almost. Not exactly a standard lab instrument, but it is used in the following paper. Some results of one of the students of Dash, named Abhay Ambadkar appear in this article, which demonstrates Pd transmutation.: ELECTROLYSIS OF D2O WITH A PALLADIUM CATHODE COMPARED WITH ELECTROLYSIS OF H20 WITH A PLATINUM ELECTRODE: PROCEDURE AND EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS. Abhay Ambadkar and John Dash. Low Energy Nuclear Laboratory (LENL), Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA. http://www.newenergytimes.com/students/2003DashJ-ColdFusionRecipe.pdf The interesting thing is that the operative reaction is 108Pd + n --> 109Pd --> 109Ag + energy (beta decay). Neutrons... now isn't that interesting. Active neutrons, but yet they are seldom detectible outside the cell. Is there a possible explanation for this? Yes! but it is on the fringe of the fringe, shall we say. And is generally ignored by even the LENR community. It has been a while since the Oppenheimer-Phillips effect (deuterium stripping) has been mentioned, so let me toss-out some edited older postings: Even though the "textbook" numbers seem to indicate otherwise, the proton and neutron in deuterium are comparatively *loosely bound.* In fact, if you flip the spin of one of the nucleons, the deuteron falls apart. For experimental data, any search on "self-targeting" of D2 should turn up loads of data, mostly red faces from experimenters who relied on the book figure (2224.573 keV) for binding energy. Deuterium can even decay to p + p + e- directly (~1.5 MeV), but it is so rare that it is seldom mentioned. The real difference from all other nuclei is that the effective distance between the two bosons, not to mention the low electric charge (cause and effect) - which makes the D nucleus *loosely bound. * Heisenberg's door is open wide enough for weak and EM interactions to supply the missing energy (recoverable) to induce a "stimulated" but "spontaneous" beta decay of the deuteron. And then perhaps, because the neutron is so "deficient" itself - and accelerated decay of any stripped neutron which is not immediately absorbed. In a nutshell, that explains the issue of non-detestability. In 1935 Robert Oppenheimer and Melba Phillips made a basic contribution to quantum theory, discovering what is known as the Oppenheimer-Phillips effect. It is known today (only in arcane circles like vortex) as the �stripping effect� - and to this day the implications of it are not fully appreciated, even among high-energy physicists. Mainly because stripping (perhaps due to the vilification of Oppie), has slipped through the educational and categorical cracks�... and particularly since it is NOT high energy and tends to throw other energy balance calculations off, if included. In fact, I have a grave suspicions the widely used deuteron plasma cross-section table that is used by physicists all over the world was constructed without correction for neutron stripping reactions. The two physicists found that, when a deuteron is fired into a target atom even weakly in the low kilovolt range, the neutron of that deuteron can be stripped off the proton and penetrate the nucleus of the target. Before, it had been assumed that since the deuteron and target nucleus are both positively charged, each would just repel the other except in high-energy collisions. The Oppenheimer-Phillips effect suggests that electric polarization, at low energies of impinging deuterons, may act to nullify coulomb repulsion to a certain extent but that the effect is limited to deuterons, because it is the only nucleus in the periodic table in which the overall positive charge can be self-shielded WRT another nuclei. Most physicists who have not studied the Oppenheimer-Phillips effect assume that stripping is a form of spallation: which is a nuclear reaction in which a high-energy photon (i.e. EM radiation) causes a particles (most often, neutron) to be emitted from a target nucleus (usually a nucleus of high atomic number). Spallation is often initiated by a high-energy ion, fired from an accelerator, BUT it is photonic not kinetic and must be orders of magnitude higher in energy than is required for deuteron splitting. In spallation, the accelerated particle does not enter the nucleus but instead travels close enough to initiate a high energy photonic transfer with that nucleus - that is, spallation is the result of a self-absorbed bremsstrahlung emission. We know this because many of those photons are not absorbed and are easily detected. But Oppenheimer-Phillips stripping is neither traditional spallation nor photofission, at least insofar as there is no high energy photon transfer, and we know this because none are detectable - and they would be easy to detect if they were there - except for this qualification: extreme ultraviolet photons are universally absorbed by plasmas and/or reactor windows. OK, let me then qualify the preceding statement in this way: Oppenheimer-Phillips stripping, if it is low-energy spallation, could only be mediated by a photon which is not easily detectable, in other words, an EUV photon. This distinction is of particular importance in regard to Randell Mills hydrino theory in which EUV is implicated in certain novel hydrogen reactions. "Deuteron Structure" Science News May 2, 1998 "To understand the interactions that determine the size and shape of an atomic nucleus, it helps to have a detailed picture of the simplest possible combination: a proton bound to a neutron. Known as a deuteron, this simple nucleus has roughly the same dumbbell structure as a molecule consisting of two atoms." "An international team of about 60 researchers has completed an experiment at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va., in which an intense, high-energy electron beam interacted with deuterons in a liquid deuterium target. The electron energy was high enough to resolve details where had probed features just half the proton's size. Preliminary results indicate that even at the small scale now accessible- and contrary to theoretical predictions- the deuteron can be adequately described as consisting of two particles **loosely bound** together. "We don't have to worry about the quarks and gluons," notes team member Elizabeth Beise of the University of Maryland at College Park. In any case, experience has shown that any paper that assumes that fissioning deuterium requires MeV level center of mass energies is wrong. If you don't believe me, fire up any garage-made Fusor with 20 kv and a 2 keV plasma temp and count the neutrons. You don't have to worry about 3 sigma over background, you'll be closer to 3000 sigma. Of course, you will probably increase the background level by neutron activation over time. Significant neutrons from stripping have been seen with average plasma temperatures in the 1 eV range, but the actual particles involved are "runaways" in the 10+ keV range. In an effort to explain an alternative LENR mechanism, which is related to the one often referred to as 'warm' fusion, but appears in some CF work, this hypothetical mechanism of stripping could be the main operative mechanism. It could be found in the Farnsworth Fusor, the Gow magnetron, the Mizuno/ Ohmori/ Naudin glow reactor, some forms of sonofusion, the Graneau water arc, and other energy anomalies where deuterium ions are exposed to intense local electric fields (of 1 volt per micron, minimum which can be supplied by UV light for instance). It should be noted that detectable neutrons are not necessary - in order for the stripping mechanism to come into play, as it will be suggested that most stripped deuterons are either absorbed immediately, or are subject to accelerated decay. That is to say, the decay of free neutrons is accelerated by the same low energy process that created them (and the QM "deficit" which shows up as a huge shift in probability). The end result would be indistinguishable from �accelerated deuterium beta decay,� except it is a two step process dependent of several intertwined variables. This reasoning will overcome the QM rationale of why the deuteron will easily decay in a high radiation environment, and why, on the cosmological level, deuterium is not seen to markedly increase over time, even though it is constantly being manufactured in the stellar environment at a far greater rate than it is being consummed. Detectable neutrons, especially the characteristic 2.5 MeV neutron which is found in the Farnsworth Fusor, may indeed be a predictable result of this underlying mechanism, but a high fraction of those could be *secondary* and are not part of the stripping mechanism per se. The Fusor is an Inertial Confinement Fusion device which benefits from spherical convergence, but the detected neutrons which are generated are not collisional (from spallation) nor from stripping, per se, according to the expert spectroscopy which has been performed. Instead the detectable neutrons are actual fusion-derived, BUT it should be realized that these may be only a portion of the total neutrons which could have been generated. And the energy derived from the accelerated decay of the (undetectable) stripped neutrons may be supplying a part of the power need for the real fusion reaction. Formerly, it was generally assumed the all the neutrons observed are the result of the two well-known lower energy D+D fusion reactions. In fact most of the observable neuts do test-out to the expected energy of ~2.5 MeV but their very existence may serve to prove that another form of energy has been used to create them. How low can you go to get D2 stripping - and is some forms of CF an indication of this effect? Well, the graduate students of today, like Abhay Ambadkar may be able to answer that question...IF... future funding is available for this kind of R&D. If not, perhaps his counterpart in China will find the answers, and they will be the beneficiaries of LENR in the coming years.. Jones
