You are asking the right questions Eric. I see the coupling between active sites as at least a two phase process. The energy released must find its way out of the sphere and I suspect that most escapes in the form of conductive heat energy where the hydrogen gas absorbs it and transfers it toward the outer walls of the device. The question is how long does a significant amount of the total energy remain bouncing around between the internal surfaces of the sphere? Any of the original energy that becomes randomized by one of the physical processes appears as normal heat. The temperature bubble surrounding the initial release point could be fairly large and it would tend to dissipate by diffusion at a slow rate when compared to that associated with ultrasound wave propagation.
My thoughts are that the localized thermal bubble should extend for a significant distance which could easily fall within a 50 nanometer diameter. The local temperature rise due to the energy stored within the bubble is significant and it would be plausible to assume that it greatly increases the probability of additional reactions occurring that might contribute to a chain reaction. The ultrasound bounding around constitutes the second process that appears similar to a large temperature burst at the points where the waves reinforce. This effect appears to be able to extend the active distance in my mental model. Both of these phenomena result in a coupling mechanism between individual NAE locals. A chain reaction due to thermal coupling has many advantages over individual site reactions. As I mentioned earlier it appears that nearly one half million reactions per second must occur within one of Rossi's spheres in order to generate the reported power. With a chain reaction process, only a few seeds would be needed to initiate the total required response. This elevates the power output from being difficult to measure on a one by one probability basis to a useful level with the chain reaction operational. There is evidence of the chain reaction as being important by observing the generation of hot spots and bomb craters on material surfaces. Many questions remain to answer and I suspect that thermal and phonon coupling will help to answer some. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Eric Walker <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Tue, Oct 1, 2013 2:59 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Sound in a Vacuum On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 10:36 AM, David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote: Eventually the energy would become heat which I assume appears like incoherent phonons, but initially it would be generated as waves propagating outwards from the point at which it is thermalized. Here outwards should be interpreted as more like a circular wave front emitted from that point in space due to the conservation of momentum. Any motion of atoms as a whole in one direction must have a balancing set traveling at 180 degrees. The idea of a wavefront is an interesting one. I seems likely that there would be one initially. One question I have is how far it would travel as a clearly-identifiable wavefront. Imagine having 5.5 MeV of mass energy to get rid of as quick as you can. If I were the one with the money, I would try spend it on as many electrons in the immediate vicinity as I could. It would not matter to me if they were cheap ones (outer shell electrons) or expensive ones (inner shell electrons). With 5.5 MeV, you can buy whatever electrons you want, and as many of them as you want, since you're a millionaire, and electrons generally cost less than 30 keV to excite. Perhaps there would be a diminishing payout a function of the radius from wherever you were. So the closer the electrons were, the more likely they would get some mass energy, and the further out, the less likely. In this thought experiment, then, there's an initial impulse of an incredible amount of energy that is delivered pretty much indiscriminately to the electrons in the immediate area. They would all presumably travel outwards, forming the initial shock front. Some energy might also go to the metal ion cores of the lattice sites. All of the electrons that were not somehow delivered from the metal would eventually return to fill some vacancy that was created, emitting a photon in the process. Photons emitted by outer shell and sea electrons would be of longer wavelength, for which the material would be opaque, and they would be reabsorbed. Photons emitted by the inner shell electrons would result in x-rays, and presumably a fraction of them would escape a nickel substrate, assuming we're not too far into the bulk, although I am not sure what fraction be stopped as well -- perhaps nearly all of them. While the electrons that were part of the initial wavefront will have been moving outwards from the initial event, as a result of conservation of momentum, I believe the photons will have been emitted in random directions. They will go on to excite electrons along their path of travel, and these in turn will fall back to ground state and emit photons in random directions. So I wonder how far the shock wave would travel. Eric
