----- Original Message ---- > From: Edmund Storms > When C12 is converted to C13 by addition of a neutron, the following > mass change occurs:
> 12.0000000 + 1.0086649 = 13.0033548, which represent a loss of mass > equal to 0.0053101 AMU. This is equal to 4.95 MeV. The mechanism does > not matter. If C12 is the starting material and C13 is the product, > this much energy MUST be removed. No one denies this Ed. You seem to be missing the point. The point is that C12 has a cross section for neutrons which is so very low that this reaction above will NEVER happen in practice, so the energy content before and after, of a real neutron, is absolutely meaningless to this situation. We are not dealing with a real neutron reaction. Period OK let's move on from there. You may complain that my invention of a "transmuton" which derives from a proton initially but has far less mass to loose, when it is adsorbed by 12C as a neutral energy poor particle - has no basis of fact in prior science, and that is clearly true. I will agree that for now - the transmuton or virtual neutron or whatever one wishes to label it - is a "construct" or an invention which serves a specific purpose. It could easily be fiction. But it is a construct in exactly the same sense that the neutrino was for many decades a construct, a fiction and an invention - which served a specific purpose ... that is, until the neutrino was discovered to be both real and very close to having the physical properties that its inventors thought it would have when it was "constructed". Jones
