At 05:15 PM 4/5/2012, Jones Beene wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
> "Jones, Sure, some of those experiments produce hot plasmas, but there are
many
experimental results which appear to produce transmutations with
temperatures too low to produce collisions energetic enough for fusion"...
Lou - yes that is absolutely true. But there is a middle ground. This goes
back a few decades to Philo Farnsworth - the inventor of television. He was
obsessed with fusion at lower but not low energy. The Farnsworth Fusor is
the main case in point for the middle ground (and "exploding wires" is
next). This is a completely different regime than LENR. Indeed W-L may have
some relevance to warm fusion, but none to LENR.
Copious neutrons from both these devices (Fusor and exploding wire) are
documented at input energies of about 10 keV instead of the fusion threshold
of over 1 MeV for real fusion (100 times less). Thus, the name often applied
to these two reactions is "warm fusion." They are triggered with 100 times
more energy than LENR, but are 100 time colder than thermonuclear fusion.
Mas o menos.
The Farnsworth Fusor runs classic hot fusion. Using deuterium, it
produces neutrons from half the fusions. Fusion rates can be
calculated down to much lower temperatures, the "Coulomb barrier"
isn't an absolutely fixed thing, tunneling allows fusion below the
theoretical temperature to "overcome" the barrier.
http://www.rexresearch.com/farnsworth/fusor.htm#ligon talks about
getting significant fusion at 13 KV. Which corresponds to about 150
million degrees. One fusor is described which operated at about 150 KV.
The wild card which explains everything is the Oppenheimer-Phillips effect,
aka the "deuteron stripping" reaction, or "OP effect" which is the removal
of a neutron from deuterium.
The OP effect is interesting, and may have some peripheral
relationship to cold fusion mechanisms, but it is a true form of
"warm fusion," where a deuteron with incident energy inadequate to
reach a nucleus nevertheless loses its neutron to the target nucleus.
A key to understanding the OP effect can be to visualize the
deuterons as little dumbells, with a neutron end and a proton end.
The proton end is repelled from the target nucleus, but the neutron
end can approach the nucleus. If the neutron end approaches closely
enough, the nuclear forces take over, stripping the neutron, but the
proton is still repelled, and will be ejected. It can be accelerated
beyond the initial approach velocity, under some conditions.
Wiki has an entry but it is probably the most flawed Wiki entry I have read.
There is better information in the Vortex archive.
Hmmph! I ended up writing much of the page on the O-P process,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer%E2%80%93Phillips_process
It was originally mangled by one of the editors who was squatting on
the Cold fusion article, and in the process of working on O-P
process, he revealed his utter ignorance of all things scientific, at
least in this area. I noticed that and rescued the article. He was
resistant until ScienceApologist, a pseudoskeptic with regard to cold
fusion, but who, at least, knew his physics (he was an astrophysics
grad student), came along and worked with me for a bit.
In understanding what might happen during the collapse of two
deuterium molecules to form a Bose-Einstein Condensate, which has
been calculated by Takahashi to fuse within a femtosecond to Be-8,
the Oppenheimer-Phillips Process can provide some clues. I think of
the deuterons as backing up to each other, till their butts stick.
Sort of like that.... Rough, but, whatever it takes.... Please, don't
propose this as an accurate model!
