Hi Ed, I appreciate your nuclear insights; I ought to own up to the fact that, although I have a first degree in physics (Oxford), I have never practised nuclear physics professionally. So, I'm a bit confused by this talk of gamma emission and electron capture, so I went off to confirm my doubts. FWIW, Wikipedia agrees with my doubts - namely, it's a neutrino, not a photon, that's emitted in K-capture. Perhaps I misunderstand what you and others are saying. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture
Also, a general comment about LENR. If we are trying to overcome the Coulomb barrier, then let's look at mundane systems where we are doing our damndest to bang them into each other. One example that springs to mind is a piezoelectric material like barium titanate (BaTiO3). It's typically an FCC crystal structure and, when excited electrically to vibrate, exhibits a very high Q-factor at resonance. At high drive powers, the ions really do jiggle a significant delta-distance, expressed as a fraction of the inter-ion distance scale. And yet nothing like nuclear fusion has ever been observed in piezoelectric materials. It would therefore appear that investigating mechanical resonance in regular crystal structures is not the mechanism for LENR, if such is real. In the case of the Rossi experiment, we know that we're not allowed to know the stoichiometry of the initial powder, but the testers were allowed to break open the reaction vessel after the run - there's a photo of the cut tube and its powder content in the report. Is it the case that Rossi disallowed analysis of this final powder material? It would appear so, given that no such analysis appears in the report. Andrew (this is a resend of a post which did not "take") ----- Original Message ----- From: Edmund Storms To: [email protected] Cc: Edmund Storms Sent: Saturday, May 25, 2013 7:30 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Isotope separation technology can be improved On May 24, 2013, at 10:38 PM, Harry Veeder wrote: On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Edmund Storms <[email protected]> wrote: On May 22, 2013, at 11:21 PM, Harry Veeder wrote: Ed, I think the structure of the coulomb barrier is open to intrinsic modification, but the variables governing this possibility cannot be uncovered by the tools and concepts of high energy physics. I agree. In fact, the insistence that high energy physics be used is the flaw in the skeptical arguments. In most situations the coulomb barrier behaves in a textbook fashion, but when bathed in the right vibrations the barrier can be "tuned" to "soften". I think a different description is more useful. The two nuclei have first to get critically close together by intervention of an electron. This process is conventional. Once this happens and the bond can resonate, the periodic reduction in distance causes the nuclei to emit a photon (gamma). Each emitted photon allows hte distance to be reduced because the energy of the system has now been reduced, which reduces the Coulomb barrier. After enough photons have been emitted, the two nuclei collapse into one, which is the nuclear product. Of course, the intervening electron that is required to reduce the barrier is sucked into the final nucleus. The process you have described has the characteristics of a ratchet. Curiously, Jones used the ratchet metaphor in another post where he characterised the effect of modulating the input on the cell. Yes Harry, this can be called a ratchet. All kinds of ratchets exist in Nature. The challenge is to find the cause. In this case, the nuclei have to communicate before they have fused into a single nuclei. The form of htat communication is unknown, but very important. Once discovered, this will get someone the Nobel prize. Imagine the following sequence. The nuclei are held apart by an electron bond, which is normally the case. Once formed, this structure starts to resonate so that the two nuclei get periodically closer together. As they approach each other, information is exchanged between the nuclei that tells them they have too much mass -energy for being this close. After all, if they were in contact, the excess mass-energy would be 24 MeV if the nuclei were deuterons. But they are not in contact yet, so that the excess mass-energy is less than the maximum. Nevertheless, this excess must be dissipated, which each nuclei does by emitting a photon having 1/2 of the excess energy for the distance achieved. After the photons are emitted, the resonance moves the two nuclei apart, but this time not as far as previously the case. The next resonance cycle again brings the nuclei close, but this time they come closer than before, again with emission of two photons. This cycle repeats until all energy has been dissipated and the two nuclei are in contact. The intervening electron, that was necessary to the process, is sucked into the final nucleus. Because very little energy is released by entry of the electron, the neutrino, if it is emitted at all, has very little energy available to carry away. This process, I suggest, is the unique and previously unknown phenomenon that CF has revealed. Ed Storms This model requires the nuclei to "know" that they must emit energy when they get close and that magnitude of the Coulomb barrier is sensitive to the excess mass-energy of the two nuclei. Ed Storms Is this another way of saying it is related to the nuclear force? If so then the ratchet is the nuclear force. harry
