At 12:16 AM 12/7/2009, Jones Beene wrote:
Abd,
I do not have the time to devote to this important topic tonight, and will
address the points in separate postings later, but first and because ...
apparently ... either you do not understand the situation as well as I had
imagined earlier, since you are wavering on many issues now - or else we are
having semantic problems - let's clear up a few important semantic things
first, and then determine who is, or isn't, paying attention at the end.
> Jones, you aren't paying attention. Please do. "Carbon fission" isn't
postulated as part of the reaction, nor are neutrons or tritium postulated
as having anything to do with the primary reaction.
Wow, that conclusion is most perplexing - that tritium is not important. You
must be looking at a different "primary reaction".
Nobody is proposing tritium involvement in the primary reaction. The
"primary reaction" is the one generating excess heat and helium at a
Q factor in the 25 +/- 5 MeV range. If this were classic d-d fusion,
with tritium being the product about half the time, there would be,
indeed, a fatal flux of neutrons, unless some very unusual and
unknown circumstance changed the branching ratio for that specific reaction.
Therefore, it should have been obvious from the beginning, what is
happening in CF cells is not classic d-d fusion. It is something
else. This is not taking deuterium nuclei and mashing them together
with brute force, i.e., high energy. If I'm correct, muon-catalyzed
fusion, which takes place at very low energies, still produces the
same branching ratios as hot fusion, but it could not be ruled out
(to my feeble understanding) that a fusion with negative energy
(resulting from some reaction like Oppenheimer-Phillips) might have
different branching, perhaps being so delicately balanced that the
symmetric outcome takes place, except that there is no symmetric
outcome with d+d -> He-4.
To me, the default hypothesis, given the lack of the signatures of
d-d fusion, is that d-d fusion is not taking place, and the
scientific community should not have been content until it understood
what *was* taking place. Being satisfied that d-d fusion wasn't the
show was rather obtuse.
"Daddy, daddy, there is a million dollars piled in the garage, it
must have been left there by the Easter Bunny." "No, sweetie, that's
impossible, the Easter Bunny only comes at Easter." "But daddy, the
money is in the garage." "Nonsense, sweetie, didn't you hear me when
I said that the Easter Bunny could not have left money in the garage,
it's the wrong time of year?"
Uh, is there money in the garage? Setting possible causation aside?
I am interested in only the *triple tracks* for now.
Good. Then tritium has *nothing* to do with it -- except that tritium
reactions might explain neutron generation. But triple tracks are
triple tracks regardless of how the neutrons are generated. They
actually tell us nothing at all about that.
That is the "primary
reaction" for me in this thread. These tracks are not possible IMHO without
carbon fission (three alpha reaction) and that is also in the opinion of the
authors of the paper. You seem to believe otherwise.
There is no other proposed mechanism for carbon fission under the
experimental circumstances, plus energetic neutrons are known to be
present for other (and more copious) reasons: knock-on protons.
Bottom line: if we have some non-radioactive material, and if charged
particle radiation is being generated *within* that material, under
specific external conditions, and not when those conditions are
absent, and there are no local energies in range to produce exotic
particles (which would have to be neutral), we have neutrons. They
might be thermal, epithermal, or energetic, which will cause
different kinds of reactions, but we are seeing a radiation effect
unique to neutrons and other neutral particles. In a cloud chamber,
we would see tracks originating within the chamber, out of thin air,
so to speak.
What are you considering to be the "primary reaction" if other than this?
The primary reaction is whatever is producing the excess heat and the
helium. In some experiments, conditions might cause other reactions
to be primary, but that's another story and doesn't apply here. I'm
current assuming that there is one primary reaction, with some at
least occasionally hot reaction products, which can then cause
secondary reactions.
But if triple tracks is also the 'primary' issue for you,
Primary issue and primary reaction are entirely different. Yes, the
primary issue here is the triple tracks. But the triple tracks are
not a product of the primary reaction in the cell; they are clearly
quite rare compared to whatever is heating and transmuting
(deuterium?) into helium.
then how are they
possible without the three alpha reaction, and especially with tritium as a
predecessor? (except "random overlap" which the authors effectively rule
out).
Isn't that my point? The three alpha reaction is the cause of the
triple tracks, and that reaction takes place in, in these
experiments, in the detector itself, as a result of an energetic
neutron striking a carbon nucleus. Thus the triple tracks are
indicative of energetic neutrons. In the detector material.
> The carbon fission they mention is not a rare reaction, it is a relatively
common one when energetic neutrons are present...
This is wrong. It is a a rare reaction if you consider the likelihood of any
fast neutron accomplishing it or not, within the CR-39 layer. But let's put
down some guidelines about "rarity".
Fast neutrons do not ordinarily cause C-12 breakup. My own rough
estimate from the SPAWAR results would be one triple track for every
thousand proton knock-on tracks.
First - let's begin with any fast neutron > ~7 MeV, as the author's mention
this value range several times. What other source for these than D+T fusion
do you imagine there to be in this situation? Please list the reactions and
the value of neutron energy.
D-T fusion is a possible source. I'm not going to look up other
possibilities, and, in fact, I don't care what the source is.
Something is generating energetic neutrons, that's the point, not
what it is. I have a sense that there might be a whole series of
possible reactions and that there may be *many* sources, from TSC
fusing with about anything it can reach before it collapses. TSC
itself eventually collapses and fuses to Be-8, which then fissions to
2 He-4, after having emitted most of its energy (at least usually) as
a series of photons. Not a single high-energy gamma.
But the TSC is neutrally charged, it's a Bose-Einstein condensate, so
there is no Coulomb barrier, in that it is like a neutron. It could
fuse with palladium, it could fuse with more deuterium, it could fuse
with oxygen, if there is any oxygen there, it could fuse with any impurity.
But that's theory. It must be considered at this point an
experimental fact that energetic neutrons are present, because of the
effects on the detectors. They are associated with the cathode,
spatially, and cathode substrate is very important to their generation.
Secondly, the issue of rarity. For every x-number of fast neutrons created,
how many (triple alpha) carbon fissions from that number of neutrons push it
into your category of "relatively common" ? one in ten? one in a hundred ?
I would think it higher.
one in a thousand ? Please try to be roughly precise within a few orders of
magnitude ;-) ... close enough for government work, as they say.
My guess from the results would have to be one in perhaps ten
thousand, if that. I'd trust Heffner's figures much more than this guess.
Hey what the heck, I'll toss out a number for starters: my definition of
"rare" in this situation would be less than one triple alpha reaction per
every 10,000 fast neutrons created.
Do great minds think alike? (I did *not* read Mr. Beene's guess
before making my own.)
And BTW - I do believe that tritium is
an absolute necessity for fast neutrons as we are defining them (>7 MeV).
What is your definition for "relatively common" ?
"Relatively common" means that the reaction is known from ordinary
experiments with fast neutrons. Most of which probably had much
higher neutron flux than what happens in these cells, hence much more
common occurrence of triple tracks.
We can take it from there in steps, and if nothing else, I will try to walk
you through it step by step - since you seem to be so impressed with the
apparent lack of criticism from the mainstream. Selective reading, perhaps.
I may borrow some thoughts from skeptics who I know, even though I am
basically a strong believer in LENR, but obviously not in the author's
attribution of triple tracks to a rare reaction which demands an even rarer
predecessor event (tritium).
The triple tracks, essentially *are* the rare reaction, or rather its
signature. So I'd suggest getting over it. There are that number of
triple tracks. And triple tracks do not require tritium for
generation. They require fast neutrons, which can come from other
sources. If I'm wrong about that -- I don't think so! -- someone here
will surely correct me. The precursor of the triple tracks is
energetic neutrons and carbon nuclei, tritium isn't in the list.
Tiritum would only be relevant as one possible source of fast
neutrons, from d-t fusion, perhaps.
