On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 7:13 AM, Edmund Storms <[email protected]>wrote:
There is no alpha. The helium CAN NOT MOVE spontaneously. The helium
> contains extra energy as mass. This mass must be converted to energy before
> it can appear as reaction energy. The He is fixed in space. Normally the He
> nucleus explodes into fragments producing hot fusion. Or it emits a gamma
> which releases the mass-energy. This conversion CAN NOT OCCUR outside of
> the nucleus simply by being near a Pd.
>
I suspect that you are very busy and haven't had time to read Ron's writeup
closely. Here is what he says about the production of the alpha:
The fusion of deuterons always happens through unstable intermediate
states, and the cross section to alpha particle is only small because of
the same non-relativistic issue. To get an alpha, you need to emit a
gamma-ray photon, and emissions of photons are suppressed by 1/c factors.
When there is a nucleus nearby, it can be kicked electrostatically, and
this process is easier than kicking out a photon, because it is
nonrelativistic (the same holds for an electron, but with much smaller
cross section due to the smaller charge, and there is no reason to suspect
concentration of wavefunction around electron density, as there is for a
nucleus).
The time-scale for kicking a nucleus is the lifetime of the two-deuteron
resonance, which is not very long, in terms of distance, it is about 100
fermis, this is about the same size as the inner shell. If the deuterons
are kicking about at random, this coincidence is not significant, but if
the deuteron-hole excitations are banded, it is plausible that nearly all
the energetic deuteron-deuteron collisions take place very close to a
nucleus, as explained above.
There are conservation laws broken when a nucleus is nearby. The nucleus
breaks parity, so it might open up a fusion channel, by allowing deuteron
pairs to decay to an alpha from a parity odd state. Such a transition would
never be observed in a dilute beam fusion, because these fusions happen far
away from anything else. This hypothesis is not excluded by alpha particle
spectroscopy (there are a lot of relevant levels of different parities),
but it is not predicted either.
Here there is a concept of a "two-deuteron resonance," i.e., the metastable
4He you're talking about following upon the d+d fusion, which will not last
long and must shed some energy. Ron states or alludes to the following in
the above paragraph:
1. There is a metastable "two-deuteron resonance" that will decay. This
is the energetic 4He you're referring to, which will then go and do
something else.
2. There are three channels for the decay of the two-deuteron resonance:
(a) d+d → [2d]* → 3He+n, (b) d+d → [2d]* → t+p, (c) d+d → [2d]* → 4He+ɣ.
Normally (a) and (b) predominate and (c) is rare. But the reason that (c)
is rare is that it takes a while for the photon to be produced (my reading,
anyway, of "emission of photons are suppressed by 1/c factors"). When
there is a palladium nucleus (not atom) nearby, however, the energy that
would have been dumped as a photon will instead be kicked to a proton in
the palladium nucleus, a process that occurs quickly rather than slowly.
Because this occurs quickly, branch (c) is enhanced and branches (a) and
(b) are suppressed in direct proportion.
3. When the mass deficit of the two-deuteron resonance is
electrostatically dumped into the proton in the nearby palladium nucleus on
the order of 24 MeV, you will get a palladium nucleus with additional
kinetic energy an energetically stable recoil alpha, moving quite quickly.
In his original description Ron has touched on points that address nearly
every objection you have raised so far. His description may well be
incorrect, but I suspect it is not incorrect for the reasons you have
mentioned so far.
I don't mean to press this issue. I just think Ron's theory should be read
closely before objections are raised; some very good objections have
already been raised in earlier threads. I understand if you're too busy or
if this lead does not seem to merit your time. There may be interest among
others here. It is also entirely possible that while Ron knows something
about the math involved, he knows nothing about what happens with these
things in real-life. I am wary of drawing this conclusion myself without
further evidence.
Eric
