On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 12:50 PM, Robert Lynn <[email protected] > wrote:
> It is clearly demonstrable that there exist mechanisms (of unknown type) > in room temperature condensed matter to create at least 10's of keV, check > out the rather fascinating following video: > > I wouldn't say that's a mechanism *in* condensed matter. And although the details of the fascinating interactions are not known, the essential concept is well understood, and nothing particularly new. Friction produces separation of charge, and that can produce large potential differences. That's it. Combing your hair can produce thousands of volts, and clouds millions of volts. And such effects can produce high energy electrons. However, to get 10s of keV electrons, as you saw, required a vacuum. Because you need to separate the charge by macroscopic distances to get the necessary voltage, and electrons have a pretty short mean-free path in air. So it's not clear how this could apply to nickel powder under pressure. I agree, there are ways to get a lot of energy into atomic sites. Simply accelerating ions with an electric field (fusors), or using pyroelectricity (pyroelectric fusion), or even using pneumatic rams (General Fusion). The problem is that none of these are (so far) efficient enough to get more energy out than in, and none of them are comparable to a hot nickel lattice with hydrogen in it. Again, that's not saying it's impossible; it's just that saying it's a resonance phenomenon doesn't make it plausible. Especially without experimental data to support it.
