In this discussion, Jones presumes muons to be traveling at light speed: The muon is an unstable fermion with a lifetime of 2.2 microseconds, which is an eternity compared to most beta decays. Ignoring time dilation, this would mean that muons, travelling at light speed, would be dispersing and decaying in an imaginary sphere about 600 meters from the reactor.
There are a number of things wrong with this. First, most commonly encountered muons are cosmogenic and have 100MeV-GeV energies. At these energies, the muon is traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light (but not at the speed of light) and as such experiences time dilation in its decay. Because of time dilation, the stationary observer sees the cosmogenic muon decay to be much longer than 2.2 microseconds. This is why cosmogenic muons can travel 50-100 miles to the Earth's surface without having decayed. What Holmlid has reported is "10MeV/u" as a measurement for his muons - this is a measure of velocity squared. One u (atomic mass unit) is 931 MeV/c^2. In Holmlid's units of measure (MeV/u), call the amount measured X, then the velocity of the particle is sqrt(X/931)*c. For Holmlid's report of a measure of 10 MeV/u, one gets sqrt(10/931)*c = 0.104c. This is only an approximation for small velocity compared to c; as the velocity increases special relativity must be invoked in the solution. Special relativity would reduce the velocity from this equation as it started approaching c, so the actual velocity will be somewhat less than 0.1c for Holmlid's particles, and a slight time dilation would be experienced. So, if Holmlid's particles were muons, and if Mills was creating the same at a v^2 of 10MeV/u, then the range in a vacuum would be on the order of 60 meters. However, muons being charged, are well stopped in condensed matter because the particle doesn't have to run into a nucleus to be scattered, just run into the dense electronic orbitals. The more dense the condensed matter, the greater the stopping power for the muon. If muons were being generated with a v^2 of 10MeV/u, I doubt any would escape Mills' reactor vessel. On Sat, Nov 12, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Jones Beene <[email protected]> wrote: > For those who suspect that the Holmlid effect and the Mills effect are > related, no matter what the proponents of each may think, here is a further > thought from the fringe … about one of the possible implications. Holmlid > has suggested that a very high flux of muons can be produced by a subwatt > laser beam. > > Mills uses an electric arc and will probably offer a real demo of the S > uncell® at some point. No one doubts that it works but an extended demo > will be needed… therefore, even if everything seen thus far is little > more than PR fluff, we could have a worrisome situation in response to a > much longer demo. > > Since Mills is applying higher net power to reactants (even if Holmlid’s > laser provides more localized power) there is a chance that some portion of > the energy produced escapes the sun-cell as muons. If Holmlid gets > millions of muons per watt of coherent light, what will be the > corresponding rate be from an electric arc? If anything like this scenario > turns > out to be the accurate, then any muons produced will decay at a > predictable distance away from the reactor, thus they could have been > missed by BrLP in testing thus far. > > The muon is an unstable fermion with a lifetime of 2.2 microseconds, > which is an eternity compared to most beta decays. Ignoring time > dilation, this would mean that muons, travelling at light speed, would be > dispersing and decaying in an imaginary sphere about 600 meters from the > reactor. Thus, the effect of radioactive decay could be significant at > unexpected distance– and Mills may never had imagined that this is a > problem. Fortunately, humans are exposed to a constant flux of muons due > to cosmic rays, and the flux is well-tolerated. > > Nevertheless, this detail is worth noting – and should Mills or his > associates start to feel a bit ill from the exposure – possibly an > unseasonal sun tan, then we can identify a culprit. > > The effects could be felt more in a remote office - than in the lab … > which is curious. > >
