Thanks for the explication. I was not aware that an electron could be trapped like that, but as you say - everyone looks at the shadows on the cave wall from a different perspective.
-----Original Message----- From: Horace Heffner > How does a fast electron not produce gamma radiation? Keep in mind the fast electron is trapped, it can not escape the nucleus. The electron is initially trapped in the composite nucleus. When it is outside the nucleus it does not radiate, because spin flipping is required to get the spin for the photon. Its kinetic energy can be expected to be thermalized in the nucleus, with near light speed hops between hadrons. The thermalization can be expected to extract kinetic energy from both the hadrons and the electron, via the cooling mechanism of photon emission. Those hops involve spin flips and photon generation. This process is similar to, but the exact reverse of, the process of electron "tile jumping" on graphine. See: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/is-space-like-a- chessboard-199015.aspx It is also similar to the quantum mechanism by which nuclei radiate in nuclear magnetic resonance applications. The electron and the particles it interacts with are massive, due to high gammas. The radiation energy available to the photon from this process are small. Also, the electron inside a nucleus is highly shielded, so much of the radiation results in nuclear heat, which is kept in balance by interaction of nuclear particles with the zero point field. It is notable the hydrogen nucleus, be it protium or deuterium, has significant kinetic energy in the pre-fusion deflated state as well - a kinetic energy nearly matching that of the electron, which has a similar mass due to a high gamma. In the case of Ni-P fusion, both the proton and electron contribute to the initial nuclear heat, but it is the interaction with the electron that causes the radiation. This radiation comes in small incremental chunks of energy, not in large increments that result from nuclear isomer state changes.
