Does it necessarily follow that every mass-energy conversion must have a nuclear _origin_? The answer is no because if the principle of mass-energy equivalency is applied rigorously to chemical reactions, some mass-energy conversion will occur although it can be safely ignored because the amount converted is vanishingly small. So the question is must every _significant_ mass-energy conversion have a nuclear _origin_?
The conventional wisdom is that it must. However there might be a form of matter whose structure is not adequately characterized as either nuclear or chemical, but which is capable of converting significant amounts of mass into energy, and as a consequence bring about nuclear transformations. Harry On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Terry Blanton <[email protected]>wrote: > > which is probably a very advisable thing to do: get away from nuclear >> fusion. >> > > From the standpoint of regulators, I think this makes tactical sense. > > From the standpoint of what we know about physics, there seem to be these > options for what is going on (wild order of magnitude guesstimates in > parentheses): > > 1. something magnetic is going on (0.0000000000000000001 eV??). > 2. something previously known and chemical is going on (i.e., < 4 eV). > 3. something previously unknown and chemical is going on, such > as f/H (~10–30 keV?) > 4. something nuclear is going on (0.5–30 MeV). > > Which class are "HENI" reactions thought to fall within? I would have > guessed (4), but perhaps the recent Defkalion demo points to something > lower-powered? If HENI reactions fall into (4), what makes them not > "nuclear"? > > Eric > >
