On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 10:24 PM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote:
One thing that comes to mind right away is the transition from a metastable > nucleus to a stable nucleus by way of the emission of a gamma-ray photon. > Sometimes in a fusion you get one or more metastable states rather than a > transition straight to the ground state. Each state corresponds to an > isomer that has more energy than the ground state, and sometimes I believe > there is more than one transition. > As I further reflect on the matter of isomer transitions and the emission of gamma-ray photons, it seems to me that this is an interesting way to make the energy loss more granular, but it is also telling in that the quanta are large -- on the order of MeV, typically. So obviously isomer transitions aren't going to do it. This is suggestive of three possibilities: 1. Any draining off of mass-energy is done at the level of the electron shells (e.g., Mills's f/H). 2. There are new physics to be found, where some kind of metastable combination of two fusion precusrors can be brought and then juiced, like you might squeeze an orange, without pushing the separate pieces together so quickly that the mass-energy is released all at once. This gets back to Dave's "demon" thought experiment. Robin thought it would be hard to keep the nucleons apart once the strong force kicked in. 3. There has been a misdiagnosis about the draining off of mass-energy, and the energy that is released really is a quantum of 24 MeV, but it occurs in a relatively benign way (a la Ron Maimon's theory). I don't see how (2) is any more justified than (3). They both seem pretty fantastic. Have I misunderstood (2)? Eric
