Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
Any vibration -- including the vibration of atoms which is heat -- is
presumably going to travel at mach 1.
However, that's sort of like saying the EM wave when you hook up a
battery goes through the wire at C (in the wire). It does, but that
doesn't mean a capacitor hooked to the end of the wire is going to be
fully charged Length/C seconds after you hook up the battery.
That's what I thought.
There is also the problem with getting electric signals through an
old fashioned undersea copper cable. Electricity may go at the speed
of light but the signals do not, for various reasons that I cannot
keep straight. Oliver Heaviside found that you can improve
transmission by increasing inductance, which seems counterintuitive.
Along with everything else he discovered.
Anyway, my point is that a nuclear chain reaction goes faster than
heat conduction which is why a critical mass holds together long
enough to make a really big bang. But if heat is the only means that
one cold fusion reaction triggers another (and not via fast moving
neutrons or what-have-you), I don't see how you can trigger a really
big bang by chain reaction or positive feedback. However, it is much
too early to reach a firm conclusion about the prospects for a bomb,
and I am certainly not qualified to reach it in any case.
Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part. Naturally, I hope that
cold fusion cannot be used for a bomb!
Maybe it will be possible to make a CF bomb of some sort, but CF will
remain a poor choice -- forever, we hope. Many different chemical
explosions can be arranged. You can make a huge explosion with dust,
for example, in a silo or a sugar refinery. One exploded in Georgia
recently and killed several people. But no one would think to make
"dust bomb" because there are better choices.
Even without a bomb, I am sure that cold fusion will have many
dreadful military applications, as I discussed in the chapter in my
book. It is regrettable.
- Jed
