Dear Peter: A response to your EGO OUT article entitled, “THE CONCEPT OF “MISCOVERY” AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR LENR”
I am pleased and happy that you now have joined me in the realization that the “functional additives.” (AKA secret sauce) that Rossi has popularized is the motive force behind the surprisingly robust power generation of LENR+. LeClair has discovered the same stuff, at least the water based version, and fortunately for us is willing to share with us what he has uncovered about his “functional additive”. He shares his insights freely because he feels protected by a patent he was granted on this technology. To his credit from the very beginning, Rossi has always and unwaveringly stated that this functional additive was an indispensable driver behind the exponential increase in the effectiveness of his LENR approach as compared to other far weaker LENR approaches. The identity and functioning of this additive is so central to the success of his process that he has never revealed any information about it; he feels that it is the KEY to the success of his process. This is why you have coined the name LENR+ as the term that delineates LENR with functional additives reactions from those without this catalytic aid. My views on how the Rossi process works has evolved over time. But from the very beginning, I took Rossi at his word about the important role that his “functional additive” plays in his process and have concentrated in perfecting my understanding about its mechanisms to grasp how this functional additive performs its magic. At this juncture, here are some observations that have informed my opinions about this pivotal subject. The first and most surprising, the functional additive catalyzes a LENR reaction on any material, not just powdered nickel. If you missed this recent post in the vortex thread “defkalion eyewitness” which demonstrates this feature, I will recapitulate as well as revise and extend it as follows: By the way before I begin, I looked at Woomera’s original post in the context of the associated Chris Martensons forum thread, and Woomera in my opinion is believable when everything is taken into account from the other posts on that thread. For your convenience I reference that thread as follows: http://www.chrismartenson.com/forum/cold-fusion/51623?page=0#comments Woomera’s said something informative, “G'Day, I was JUST in Athens and met with representatives of Defkalion. They told me that they were going to begin selling their LENR device this July 2012. I was shown their R&D model which just starts with a flick of the switch. It also turns off with a just a flick of the same switch. They have their model running at 250degc.” Of extraordinary interest here Woomera goes on to say as a first person party to the conversation, “I was told that they were trying to actually see what happens in their device with some glass with a melting point of 1500degc. They saw it light up like the sun and then it melted the glass. This just took a second or two. I was told what their working theory was, but they really don't know what is going on. They have brought in several academics with a myriad of explanations.” This factoid validates LeClair’s statements: 1. That active reaction agent (ARA) does not need nickel to produce power but it may need nickel to produce heat without gamma radiation. In point of fact, any material will react with the ARA. This is consistent with LeClair’s observation that any sacrificial wall material that he has tested including glass will show transmuted elements, some more than others possibly as a direct function of the ease of electron flow at the surface of the material, as a result of his reaction. 2. The ARA is a product of the functional additive alone. 3. Since glass has a smooth, hard, and a surface highly resistant to hydrogen penetration, the much discussed nano-cavities in the nickel powder and/or the associated active nuclear sites, are not required to apply zero-point energy, hydrinos, Casmir force, zero point energy and the requirement for hydrogen penetration into the surface of the material, included among the other widely discussed reaction causation topics on vortex. 4. The ARA is carried onto the surface of the glass by the attractive nature of a positive electrostatic charge carried by the functional additive where this additive catalyzes a nuclear reaction by lowering the coulomb barrier through charge masking which is enhanced and amplified by increasing reaction temperature. With the kind of glass involved in this reaction unspecified, the object of this fusion based nuclear reaction is most probably the element silicon. The average melting point of Quartz glass is about 1500C depending on its exact composition. My conclusion is that both Rossi and LeClair have discovered the same category of stuff; namely protonated thermionic emotive coulomb nano-cluster compounds and both these variants of ARA are still likely as a possible explanation of the Rossi reaction that is functioning at the heart of the DGT reactor. The specifics of how the protonated thermionic emotive coulomb nano-cluster works is as follows. Because of their low work function, certain elements will thermionically emit electrons over a potential energy barrier to a cooler region. These elements use the low work function at the surface of a nano-particle to create a supply of ions that reach an average count of 10,000 as the reaction matures. This positive charge from ion accumulation is directly proportional to the temperature of the surrounding hydrogen plasma. The scientific aspects of thermionic energy conversion primarily concern the fields of nano-particle surface physics and dusty plasma physics. Cesium is a good thermionic candidate because it is the most easily ionized of all stable elements. Other candidate elements with a low work function are Barium, Calcium, Cerium, Potassium, Strontium, Samarium, Ytterbium, sodium. More complicated chemistry including several compounds involving transition metals and rare earths with boron and carbon might also be a possibility. However, one indispensable requirement of the catalytic nano-cluster is that it take the form of a two dimensional string as I describe this importance below. Of primary impact, the surface property of the nano-particles is the work function. Work function is the barrier measured at the surface of the nano-particle that limits electron emission current leaving from the particle surface and essentially is the heat of vaporization of electrons from the surface. The lower this barrier is, the faster electrons boil off the surface of the nano-particle. The work function is the important quantity associated with thermionic elements. Currently, just about all current inventions supporting thermionic emissions as the motive principle are born primarily by the action of a layer of cesium atoms on the surface of the thermionic medium. I have come to believe that extreme charge accumulation in a small volume is the basic cause of cold fusion. Certain nano-clusters called two dimensional clusters are long string like molecules that can accumulate charge in the very fine tip at the end of such a molecules. This sharp tip is comprised of just a very few atoms. In two dimensional Rydberg matter, this tip takes the form of a hexagon were six atoms are bounded together in a perfect plane. These hexagonal planes are stacked linearly one on top of another in vast numbers to form a string. This sharp point is where the coronal charge potential of the crystal is concentrated and multiplied to extreme levels To add some background, corona discharge usually forms at highly curved regions on the sharp tip of electrodes, such as sharp corners, projecting points, edges of metal surfaces, or small diameter wires. The high curvature causes a high potential gradient at these locations, so that the air breaks down and forms plasma there first. In order to suppress corona formation, terminals on high voltage equipment are frequently designed with smooth large diameter rounded shapes like balls or toruses, and corona rings are often added to insulators of high voltage transmission lines. Coronas may be positive or negative. This is determined by the polarity of the voltage on the highly-curved electrode. If the curved electrode is positive with respect to the flat electrode we say we have a positive corona, if negative we say we have a negative corona. The physics of positive and negative coronas are strikingly different. This asymmetry is a result of the great difference in mass between electrons and positively charged ions, with only the electron having the ability to undergo a significant degree of ionizing inelastic collision at common temperatures and pressures. I believe that this coronal effect plays a key part in cold fusion; specifically LENR+. This corona that I envision is a process by which a current flows from an electrode with a high potential into a neutral fluid, in the case of the Rossi reaction, the dry hydrogen gas envelop, by ionizing that hydrogen gas so as to create a region of plasma around the sharp point of this nano-electrode catalytic cluster. The positive ions accumulating on the catalytic nano-cluster will attract and associated negative charge on the surface of the nickel nano-particle. In addition, when the potential gradient (electric field) is large enough at this particle contact point in the gas, the gas at that point ionizes to form protons and a conductive cloud of coronal protons forms at the sharp tip of the catalytic nano-cluster. If a charged object has a sharp point, the gas around that point will be at a much higher gradient than elsewhere. Gas near the electrode can become ionized (partially conductive), while regions more distant do not. When the gas near the point becomes conductive, it has the effect of increasing the apparent size of the conductor. Since the new conductive region is less sharp, the ionization may not extend past this local region of contact. Within this region of contact and ionization and conductivity, the electrons cross over to the positively charged nano-cluster and are subsequently boiled off by thermionic emission though slowly. In summary, the topology of the catalytic nano-cluster is critical in cold fusion. Not any shape of nano-cluster will do. This extreme curvature at the sharp tip of the two dimensional nano-cluster is how a large amount of positive charge is accumulated and concentrated. This concentrated charge lowers the coulomb barrier and serves to produce protons in a small volume of nuclear active nickel. Charge projection at the tip of the nano-cluster will also orient and attract the cluster to contact the nickel particle point on and cause it to hold fast. This huge and concentrated charge accumulation some 10,000 ions strong; a sort of nano-lightning is the mechanism that reduces the coulomb barrier of nickel atoms in a small nuclear active volume to allow protons to enter therein. It is clear that the LENR+ reaction can be supported in any type of material, but the reaction will vary in strength based on the mobility of electrons in the base material. Glass will burn just as well as nickel. The strength of the reaction is proportional to the accumulation of the number of positive ions stored inside of the catalytic nano-cluster. The number of positive ions so accumulated is proportional to the overall temperature of the hydrogen envelope. The strength of the reaction goes up as the temperature of the hydrogen envelope increases. If the number of positive ions is allowed to increase without limit within the nano-catalytic cluster, a thermal runaway will occur. Self-sustain mode in the LENR+ process is a condition where the heat produced by nuclear fusion in the nickel substrate maintains a constant thermionic electron boil off emission from the surface of the nano-catalytic-cluster to compensate for the positive charge quenching effect of the electron flow between the nickel and the cluster. The knife edge balance needed to maintain this condition is difficult to sustain. So DGT has come up with a positive control procedure for this reaction where a microprocessor base controller must momentarily disrupt the connection between the nano-catalytic-cluster and the base substrate to stop the reaction. His magnetic field will rotate the cluster back and forth reactive to its large electrostatic charge. This can be done by cyclically applying an alternating magnetic field using a radio frequency generator to dislodge the catalyst from the surface of the nickel powder. It will take some time for the clusters to reattach to the nickel substrate so that the reaction can reemerge. Cheers: Axil
