Jed Rothwell wrote:
Edmund Storms wrote:
It is my belief, based on an extensive examination of the literature,
that the few neutrons emitted from cold fusion experiments are not the
result of a "cold fusion" process, but result from a process
stimulated by relatively high energy. People have suggested that such
high energy can result from crack formation.
I do not think people have found enough cracks to explain the neutrons
generated in some experiments. My guess is that the neutrons come from
secondary reactions. In other words, the deuterons fuse to form helium-4
(for reasons I cannot begin to imagine), and in a few cases, in rare
circumstances, that reaction triggers a hot fusion event that results in
a neutron.
The cracks are too small to see even with an optical microscope. They
are most easily seen as a line of bubbles that occur during deloading.
My measurement of excess volume indicate that a sample can have a
large fraction of its volume involved in crack formation. Most of the
cracks do not reach the surface where they can be seen. It does not
take many cracks to produce the small number of reported neutrons.
The tritium also seems to be a secondary byproduct. Takahashi and others
feel that it is inversely proportional to the heat, the way smoke is
inversely proportional to fire. You might call it the product of
"incomplete fusion," (like incomplete combustion), or a precursor reaction.
This conclusion is based on theory, not on observation. Tritium is
seldom measured by people making heat measurements. Only Bockris found
significant tritium along with heat production.
Ed
I hope to have another, later review paper by Iyengar et al. soon, that
was published in Fusion Technology.
- Jed
