Red herring, Jed, or perhaps cold fish would be a better metaphor.
"cold fusion" in that context means anything below the "temperature"
where fusion cross-section is high. It's a term used in the field
that this particular section was about, synthesis of superheavy
elements by keeping the particle energy below normal; thus, when
fusion happens, it is *barely enough* energy to penetrate the coulomb
barrier, with little or nothing left over to encourage decay, thus
lengthening decay time to the natural maximum.
I saw nothing there that would be clearly about what we call cold
fusion. Unless you think of neutron stars as being "cold." I.e., the
section mentioning "the investigation of EOS for cold and dense
strongly interacting matter and its consequence for the possible
phases of quantum chromo dynamics (QCD) plays a crucial role in the
study of neutron stars in astrophysics."
At 06:06 PM 9/17/2009, you wrote:
See:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/sicp-tnp091609.php
Google alerts brought this to my attention. The reference is here:
". . . Instead, the following topics are included: heavy-ion fusion
reactions and large-angle quasi-elastic scattering studied with
Skyrme energy density functional, the formation probability of the
compound nucleus deduced from the measured evaporation residue cross
sections for "cold" and "hot" fusion reactions by combining these
studies and the HIVAP calculations for the survival probability; the
fusion hindrance of mass-symmetric fusion reactions investigated by
using the two-center liquid drop model, a systematic study of hot
fusion reactions of the neutron-rich projectiles with 238U target,
the capture cross sections based on the improved isospin dependent
quantum molecular dynamics model with shell effects included, etc."
No idea what that means. It is reminiscent of Takahashi's theory.
- Jed
