On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 7:18 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hasn't someone here rebutted the physics of e-c capture? >
The rebuttals I've seen involve the p + e- -> n + v reaction that is usually understood to occur between an inner shell electron and a proton in a nucleus, or of the heavy electrons that Widom and Larsen propose. An important assumption is that neutrons are not coming about through some other pathway involving electrons. I'm personally rooting for a photoelectric effect in which gammas or X-rays take part (although I have no basis for rooting for one theory over another). One obstacle to any e-c capture explanation appears to be the great mass of the W- boson; I have no opinion here. I suspect we're not being creative enough yet, though, and that as soon as we are willing to suspend disbelief at the possibility of neutron capture as a starting point, clever people can come up with a whole range of interesting and falsifiable hypotheses. Regarding the experiments, there are numerous reports of helium, tritium, low-level gammas and isotope shifts; there are even reports of very low levels of neutrons, which I'm not inclined to dismiss, although people who know much more about these things suspect that they're in error. Eric
