On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 8:01 PM, Chuck Sites <[email protected]> wrote:
To me, it looks like the device ionizes H gas and accelerates it into the > (special) Ni lattice. If the Ni is ground. > Yes -- it does look like that. Note that for acceleration, you need electrostatic charge -- ionized hydrogen or, if you go along with the Defkalion paper, Rydberg hydrogen. But I assume that any acceleration will be very weak at the scale of the device, so the protons will not acquire all that much energy when they encounter the nickel. Assuming there is something going on, this suggests that the environment provided by the nickel has been changed by the spark discharges as well in order to make the reaction possible. Just to recap the possible reactions as I understand them (assuming we're not just dealing with Joule heating or hydrogen recombination): 1. p+p -> p+p "reversible" fusion, along the lines of Jones's hypothesis. 2. p+e+p -> d, along the lines of Ed's hypothesis. 3. p+d -> 3He + Q (5.5 MeV) (my own favorite) 4. p+Ni -> Cu (as suggested by Rossi a long time ago, and which no one really likes). I'm betting on (2), somewhere beneath the surface. The mechanism would yield fast 3He particles. It would be due to an enhanced tunneling cross section made possible by screening provided by the excited nickel electrons (also perhaps from the spark plugs). The fast particles would give rise to Bremsstrahlung, and you would need thick shielding to contain the ionizing radiation. Note that there was thick shielding in the video. I am highly doubtful that the shielding was there to contain magnetism in order to protect the electronics, although there may have been induced magnetism as well. Why are there always so many details with these demos that one must scrutinize closely and second-guess? Eric
