In reply to Jones Beene's message of Sun, 22 Mar 2015 08:11:00 -0700: Hi, [snip] >From there on, the details of how the expected bremsstrahlung can be >completely downshifted require "illumination". but the missing mechanism >may have been hidden in plain view, all along. This premise is easily >falsifiable.
You get very little bremsstrahlung from alpha particles. They are about 8000 times heavier than an electron, and consequently move much more slowly. The higher (and positive) charge also tends to keep them away from other nuclei (where bremsstrahlung is produced). You will get some gammas from nuclei that are excited by alpha particle bombardment, and some x-rays from inner-orbital electrons that are knocked free, and also some bremsstrahlung from the electrons that are knocked free, but all of this will be but a small fraction of what you would have seen if the energy had been initially carried by electrons rather than alpha particles. Most of the alpha particle energy goes into ionizing valence electrons, which upon recombination only yield on the order of 10-100 eV each, so most of the MeV energy of the alphas is rapidly "degraded" to many 10-100 eV quanta. This is in the range of UV to soft x-rays. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
