From: Eric Walker * To play devil's advocate, the hypothetical neutron flux could have produced short-lived beta radioisotopes when they activated something in or near the experiment. Eric,
Even without activation - the neutron itself is a beta emitter. Free neutrons have a half-life of about 10 min and are almost gone in 15. The usual beta electron is .78 MeV and is charged so it will not look like a gamma. And there is no evidence of an accelerated decay in a well-investigate field. However, a fraction of free neutrons do produce a gamma ray on decay. This gamma ray is sometimes called “internal bremsstrahlung” but is soft. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung#Inner_and_outer_bremsstrahlung If Bob’s procedure is to test the ongoing reaction with no shielding and then with shielding, and compare the two - then many of these issues can be resolved. If no shielding gives significantly more counts, then cosmic rays can be blamed. However, my prediction is that no shielding will show fewer, not more gammas. That is especially true if the reaction itself is making muons (the Holmlid effect). IMO - the most important finding which could come out of this next test is to see significantly more gammas in the cave than with no shielding - and to see a variance from inverse square drop-off, when the cave is moved back from the reactor. Lastly, the peaks can be matched with the temperature differential. If a gamma burst is correlated with apparent endotherm, as happened in the last test – then it would be a significant indication that Holmlid is correct. Jones
