This niche about dipole-dipole interactions could be even more important
within a Casimir cavity, especially if the cavity contains dense deuterium,
since the Brown parameters would presumable be closer together than he could
ever imagine.
The van der Waals interaction comes to mind as the sum of the attractive or
repulsive forces between molecules (or between parts of the same molecule)
other than those due to covalent bonds or to the electrostatic interaction
of ions with one another or with neutral molecules. According to Wiki, the
term includes:
* force between two permanent dipoles (Keesom force)
* force between a permanent dipole and a corresponding induced dipole
(Debye force)
* force between two instantaneously induced dipoles (London dispersion
force)
Keesom interactions are attractive interactions of dipoles that are
Boltzmann-averaged over different rotational orientations of the dipoles. I
suppose that is what we are dealing with in Ni-H systems, although it could
be all three.
The energy of a Keesom interaction depends on the inverse sixth power of the
distance, unlike the interaction energy of two spatially fixed dipoles,
which depends on the inverse third power of the distance. This could also be
News to Brown.
Obviously, in a situation with dense hydrogen, especially IRH (inverted
Rydberg hydrogen) the distance between atoms is very short. Miley sez 2.5
picometers.
Yikes! Seems like with IRH the problem becomes avoiding an explosion . OTOH
the reason this is manageable is probably statistical. Exotic states like
IRH are probably very rare and sudden surges in fusion result in quenching.
That could be fortunate.
Should we call it Bethe fusion ? We would be in good Hans with that
suspicion, one suspects. The other term is P-e-P, but with this kind of
dipole attraction, the electron is simply not needed to screen against
repulsion, according to Brown, and that greatly simplifies things. But is it
'cold fusion' or more like the solar model?
Until 1939, nobody knew how fusion might proceed in the sun, because the
most obvious product of two protons is helium-2 which is unstable and
immediately dissociates back to protons. That is when Hans Bethe proposed
that one of the protons decays into a neutron making deuterium, which is far
more stable.
This work in solar nucleosynthesis won the Nobel Prize for Hans. And if
Rossi has found a corollary in condensed matter, and plays his cards right,
he could be up for that prize too. However, he seems to have latched onto
the copper route, which is looking unlikely on closer inspection - and in
any event, the inventor seems more concerned with a megawatt power plant for
his investors - and less concerned with understanding what is really going
on. This is called "seeing green" on two levels ..
More power to him, so to speak.
If he has it, our World will be a much better place to live in 10 years,
with the possible exception of the Middle East.
Jones
