At 05:04 PM 3/24/2010, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:
Would you care to give your best guestamate (don't worry, I won't hold
you to it) on how much is theorized to be due to d+d = He+24 MeV, and
how much might be due to other processes?
Incidentally, to the rest of the Vort Collective, please feel free to
add your own speculations as to what these ratios or percentages might
possibly be.
I'm only asking for reasonable speculation. IOW, speculation is just
that: Speculation.
With all those caveats, and wondering why you'd ask *me*, since I'd
really ask someone else, like Dr. Storms, if I cared all that much
about it, my *impression* is that the energy not from deuterium to
helium is not more than maybe 20%, and could be much less. And may
vary quite a bit with exact experimental conditions.
Please, the way you asked the question, you aren't being careful. I'm
not convinced that *any* of the energy is from "d+d -> He +24 MeV."
So that's not the exact question I answered. I'm convinced that we
are seeing, in palladium deuteride experiments, the fusion of
deuterium to helium, but not at all convinced that it is "d+d." My
favorite theory has been Takahashi's TSC fusion of 4d to Be-8, but
I'm being informed by People Who Might Know, that the more general
case is called Cluster Fusion, which would produce anything from
single alphas up to other possibilities, with the cluster carrying
away the energy collectively. This is apparently Bose-Einstein
Condensate theory. And nobody really knows more than a few beans
about it and how a small BEC would behave in the lattice or at its surface.
I'm also told that Takahashi and Kim might not be mentioning each
other, though they are proposing roughly similar things, because they
are rivals for funding. I'd love to see them
Get
Over
It!
If this field gets serious funding, every serious researcher already
well-established will get a share of a much larger pie, and
stinginess now will probably hurt, not help the stingy individual.
Here we have two serious theoretical physicists, if this rumor or
speculation is true, not supporting each other, which then makes the
work of each look isolated and unconfirmed. The opposite of what they
both need! Have criticisms of each other's work? Have at it! -- but
at least pretend that you are working for the same company!
