At 11:53 PM 1/16/2012, you wrote:
I asked a close
friend (PhD physicist) and he said the same thing as Krivit; that fusion has
a *very* specific meaning *to a physicist*, and neutron capture is not
'fusion' as far as they're concerned. Now, if I was a physicist, I would
hope that I'd be more concerned about whether the LENR/CF data was rigorous
enough and not be concerned about what it was being called, but then, my job
and my field of expertise is not likely to be ridiculed for delaying the
dawn of a new era for 20+ years. Humans are interesting indeed.
Yes.
Neutron capture reactions are not generally labelled fusion because
"neutron capture" is more specific. The answer you get from a
physicist may depend on the question.
"Is neutron capture fusion?" may elicit various responses, from "No,"
to "Well, we don't normally call it that," to "Well, it's obviously
the fusion of a neutron with a nucleus, and sometimes neutrons are
considered an element ('Neutronium'), so I guess you could call it a
kind of fusion. Depends on how deeply the physicist thinks about it,
as to the range of possible answers.
However, if you ask the physicist, "If there is a reaction mechanism
that takes in deuterium as fuel and produces helium as a product, is
this a fusion mechanism?" I think just about every one would say yes.
One might get more specific and look at the reactions proposed by
Widom and Larsen. If we look at the *complete reaction*, is this fusion?
What is being done is to look at one piece of the reaction (the
neutron absorption) and ask if that's fusion, and while it is the
step where the actual fusion takes place, where Z is bumped, there is
also another name for it, more commonly used.
But we are not looking at the individual reaction, we are looking at
and describing the *whole effect.* What's going in and what is coming out?
If what is going into a black box is deuterium and, when the box is
restored to equilibrium, what is coming out is helium and heat, it's
a "fusion box." It really doesn't matter what happens inside.
Now, W-L theory predicts *lots* of transmutations. These are not
observed to be correlated with the heat. Transmutations are indeed
observed, but at levels way below that of helium. Further, gamma
emissions would be expected from neutron activation reactions from
any slow neutrons, not to mention "ultra low momentum" neutrons. The
gammas are not observed. W-L propose a totally novel mechanism for
gamma suppression, and, realize, this mechanism would have to be very
efficient, catching *lots* of gammas, yet the mechanism would only
cover, as proposed, the area of formation of "heavy electrons." there
would be edge effects, some gammas would escape.
(Note that Larsen has patented a gamma ray shield based on this idea.
There is no published confirmation of any such effect, and Larsen has
never revealed any experimental evidence behind the claim. That such
a patent could be issued, while patents on "cold fusion" are rejected
as "impossible," like perpetual motion machines, is just an example
of how much damage the physics establishment did with its little
semantic error.)
