On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 6:24 PM, Harry Veeder <[email protected]> wrote:
If He took off by itself, how fast would it be moving? > > Detecting and measuring the speed of He particles > would be a way checking for a conservation of momentum violation. > As an amateur following the field, this is my favorite working hypothesis. The 4He would recoil off of a heavy lattice nucleus, and since it is much smaller than the lattice nucleus, it would retain most of the momentum. It would be traveling approx. 22 MeV at birth. It would not get very far before slowing down. It is difficult to measure the energy of any prompt 4He particles in a LENR system because there will be a housing that shields the internals of the reactor, whether the system is an electrolytic or a gas phase system. There are CR-39 solid state detectors which can be placed within the housing, which accumulate tracks over time of charged particles that make to them. Many CR-39 experiments have been done, and often there are tracks for 4He traveling between 10-17 MeV. Those who do not like the hypothesis that excess heat in Pd/D is being generated by prompt 4He attribute such tracks to side hot fusion reactions that are distinct from the main one generating the heat. Eric
