On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 7:48 AM, Bob Higgins <[email protected]> wrote:
You might compare Df/H to a gas of stable neutrons. If stable neutrons > could exist, they would cause spontaneous isotopic shifts from thermal > collisions with atoms. > In thought experiments, this is how I think of f/H -- as somewhat larger and slightly positively charged neutrons (statistically speaking), which, should they react with something, the reaction would be proton capture rather than neutron capture. (I assume the electron would be ejected.) This leads me to believe that a large quantity of the stuff passing through the wall of a device would be quite detectable; not from the f/H themselves, but from their reactions with surrounding material. Neutrons definitely lead to activation and interact with their surroundings in this manner; if a comparable quantity of f/H did not interact on a similar level (but in a different way), there would need to be a good explanation for this. This possibility of a large interaction cross section in turn leads me to the conclusion that f/H is an unlikely candidate for dark matter, which presumed to be the majority of matter in the universe and, I understand, is thought to be able to pass through normal matter without interacting. (Not that I'm that big a fan of the idea of dark matter.) Eric
