tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25045181223814746072024-03-04T20:46:36.251-08:00Rolling balanceWhat underlies the results of cold fusion experiments?Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-8858968931947061922014-02-21T18:48:00.004-08:002014-02-21T19:41:20.150-08:00What might be going on in LENR (2)Here is an update on an idea set out in an <a href="http://rolling-balance.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-i-think-might-be-going-on-in-lenr.html">earlier post</a> describing some of my more recent thinking on what might be going on in LENR.<br />
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I have put together a graphic to capture where <a href="https://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg88200.html">my thoughts are currently going</a>:</div>
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<a href="http://i.imgur.com/PoRGR7G.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.imgur.com/PoRGR7G.png" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here the small molecules are molecular hydrogen, the red particles are protons and the blue area at the left is the surface of a nickel metal grain. A spark discharge is underway between this grain and another grain nearby (not pictured). Prior to the discharge the two grains were electrically isolated. The discharge is drawing the protons into a recess in the metal grain, where a great deal of pressure is building up. If this process happens sufficiently quickly, e.g., before there is a lattice dislocation, perhaps the pressure could get quite high.</div>
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Here is where I think an <a href="http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/13734">insight of Ron Maimon's</a> might be applicable [1]. If the pressure is high enough to cause a d+p reaction, or perhaps even a nickel proton capture reaction, normally one would expect a gamma. But the emission of a gamma is a very slow process. Because the environment is electron-rich, and because the electromagnetic interaction proceeds quickly, under suitable circumstances it will be competitively favored over the emission of a gamma, which will take a long time. If so, my take on and adaptation of Ron's insight is that perhaps the [pd]* or [pNi]* intermediate state will couple with the surrounding electronic structure and possibly positively charged lattice ion cores, and the energy that would normally go into the emission of a gamma will instead be divided among a large number of recipients and result in a bath of low-energy photons.</div>
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A counterargument can be made that radioisotopes found within metals commonly emit gammas, so there is no reason that coupling with the electronic structure should happen in this particular case instead. I do not have a strong response to this complaint and only observe that the emission of a gamma from a metastable radioisotope seems to be a sufficiently different situation from the decay of a short-lived fusion intermediate state to suggest that something else might happen in the latter case.<br />
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[1] He's looking at a very different system that involves palladium and deuterium, and he makes no claims in connection with the current discussion. Do not be distracted by Ron's reputation of 1—this goes back to events unrelated to the quality of his posts, and previously he was one of the highest ranked contributors at physics.stackexchange.com.</div>
Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-84121808018923170312013-12-15T15:17:00.001-08:002013-12-16T09:36:09.765-08:00What might be going on in LENRHere I'm going to schematically lay out what I think might be going on with LENR, on the assumption that it is nuclear in nature. We will proceed in six steps.<br />
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Step 1: fusion precursors are far away from one another in the context of an environment at the surface of or a few layers into a host metal, and the likelihood of fusion is negligible. For the sake of illustration, we'll consider hydrogen and deuterium.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwXkcqPqZAxzQEY6EVA-oUQFwj5c2IPwOJtQquzkj1kum_x7Fo504zRNhFdx7sQg6HOZoAttjQcAUFjGOY1z8n24JYtE7nHIlh621OsdC2C-eqtN4qhj06__aztbDY1jGDt3lwCi1Bso3_/s1600/01-equilibrium-conditions.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwXkcqPqZAxzQEY6EVA-oUQFwj5c2IPwOJtQquzkj1kum_x7Fo504zRNhFdx7sQg6HOZoAttjQcAUFjGOY1z8n24JYtE7nHIlh621OsdC2C-eqtN4qhj06__aztbDY1jGDt3lwCi1Bso3_/s320/01-equilibrium-conditions.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The blue gradient represents the electron charge density. The closer free atoms get to the lattice sites in the host metal, the stronger the charge density and the more the electrons on the atoms are stripped off and the atoms behave like ions.<br />
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Step 2: a transient in the charge density forms somehow; perhaps there has been a spark discharge:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuZ3P3acWOPtW0g_aH3ZkxcXMeObuYtqCsZtsqb8IGOQkN7XH8n8R5Pne8ytdzxYZL9x-TAmZ4Jt66q85516Kfay55ZfCnPkfWGYG1gr09Axn8Sy3o5GkH6Gjpx8m0P9FU37872tmYKjNy/s1600/02-start-of-transient.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuZ3P3acWOPtW0g_aH3ZkxcXMeObuYtqCsZtsqb8IGOQkN7XH8n8R5Pne8ytdzxYZL9x-TAmZ4Jt66q85516Kfay55ZfCnPkfWGYG1gr09Axn8Sy3o5GkH6Gjpx8m0P9FU37872tmYKjNy/s320/02-start-of-transient.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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As a result of the transient, the charge density becomes very high; simultaneously, any atomic hydrogen and deuterium nearby are ionized.<br />
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Step 3: the negative charge of the transient becomes so high the now-ionized p's and d's are attracted to and cluster around it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxn6jPrpSnVsd40PqAuzB9DqXxnnyMZS-tz37pcEnPXgy-JFHkr_NJ-gVP6u_d0GblMMWsJpj2tEdtpRAyb_L_E3rNnwb3aaTJZqNTZ6vk_yKXgG32mOmzWQnDlyvxr6x5C5LmRUU68U5/s1600/03-middle-of-transient.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxn6jPrpSnVsd40PqAuzB9DqXxnnyMZS-tz37pcEnPXgy-JFHkr_NJ-gVP6u_d0GblMMWsJpj2tEdtpRAyb_L_E3rNnwb3aaTJZqNTZ6vk_yKXgG32mOmzWQnDlyvxr6x5C5LmRUU68U5/s320/03-middle-of-transient.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The ions are so strongly drawn in by the transient that they are brought into close vicinity to one another as well. The stronger the transient, the closer they are drawn; the longer-lasting the transient, the longer they will remain nearby one another. A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-pinch">z-pinch</a> might also be involved here, in which a confining magnetic field is formed by current.<br />
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Step 4: the likelihood of a p and a d tunneling is a function of their proximity to one another and the amount of time that they linger. Suppose the strength of the transient and its duration are sufficient to allow tunneling of one of the p+d pairs. The result is a very unstable [pd]* resonance that will quickly decay:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkwgBd2s2xhlKP0s_XBn6x1_1hJ_00CBACWWDT9Jd3BNGZFqtackkHNBt9_kAE6ZQXRu1HW50wKBk9usDyDrCPCdPAEZ7I7Dq-WI6rqgdDj8arlreuDXpgg7vjHBR6l11dYK6Qyq4mH1g_/s1600/04-reaction.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkwgBd2s2xhlKP0s_XBn6x1_1hJ_00CBACWWDT9Jd3BNGZFqtackkHNBt9_kAE6ZQXRu1HW50wKBk9usDyDrCPCdPAEZ7I7Dq-WI6rqgdDj8arlreuDXpgg7vjHBR6l11dYK6Qyq4mH1g_/s320/04-reaction.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Normally in such an event, the [pd]* that forms would decay into a 3He (an isotope of helium) and a gamma photon, which would be straightforward to detect. But this description pertains to what we currently know of the p+d fusion branch seen in pressurized plasmas and ion beam experiments. We are less familiar with what goes on in solid-state system such as a host metal, where the electronic structure is quite different. When a fusion reaction takes place in an electron-rich environment, there is reason to think that <a href="http://rolling-balance.blogspot.com/2013/08/lenr-and-thermionic-emission.html">no gamma will be emitted</a>.<br />
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Step 5: instead what might happen is the momentum of the reaction ends up being divided among a large number of electrons in the area, immediately resulting in the emission in every direction of a corresponding number of lower-energy photons:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglK_0POQBNQ667OTmVAp0tOLlTyLpf_Fnwi47XQFEohS5INgx4MYSELxhty4ZQj_zByVdRYmkJKYN60hSPxxphakASVnH_2ycrZ50495k7A4-rC7QjyX2A8TZqnUwFxWP0AP4vrjZIbJeC/s1600/05-discharge.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglK_0POQBNQ667OTmVAp0tOLlTyLpf_Fnwi47XQFEohS5INgx4MYSELxhty4ZQj_zByVdRYmkJKYN60hSPxxphakASVnH_2ycrZ50495k7A4-rC7QjyX2A8TZqnUwFxWP0AP4vrjZIbJeC/s320/05-discharge.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Step 6: after the transient has subsided, what is left over is heat from the bath of lower-energy photons together with a slow-moving 3He daughter:<br />
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Here no gamma photon has been emitted. One can imagine a similar process taking place with d+d or even p+Ni precursors, with environmental parameters determining the likelihood of various outcomes.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-56519549901812020032013-08-28T21:49:00.001-07:002013-09-20T19:23:40.678-07:00LENR and thermionic emissionIn a post to <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg86037.html">Vortex-L</a> a few days ago I described some of my recent thinking on what is going on with LENR. The post focuses on some fusion branches involving gamma rays that have bedeviled anyone trying to understand the LENR experimental data. Two, in particular, are:<br />
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<li>d + d → 4He + ɣ (23.8 MeV)</li>
<li>p + d → 3He + ɣ (5.49 MeV)</li>
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The main reason these fusion reaction branches pose a difficulty is that branch (1) is believed to be involved in LENR in the context of PdD, somehow, through some process, whether directly or indirectly, and yet no gammas are seen. And (2) has recently come up as a possibility for LENR in NiH. People involved in trying to explain LENR have taken various roundabout ways to get around the problem of missing gammas, including Bose-Einstein condensates in which four or more deuterons fuse simultaneously.<br />
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The message to Vortex summarized points from an ongoing discussion I've had with Robin van Spaandonk concerning a proposal set out by Ron Maimon. Ron <a href="http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/13734/6713">suggested in a post</a> to the physics site physics.stackexchange.com in 2011 that what is going on in LENR is that the energy that would normally be emitted as a gamma in fusion reaction (1), above, is instead transformed into kinetic energy upon the decay of a short-lived [dd]* resonance that is created from the fusion of two deuterons in close proximity to a palladium lattice site, brought about in a very specific way. In broad terms, Ron proposes that the behavior of reaction (1) is different in close proximity to a palladium spectator nucleus than when it occurs in a plasma or in a vacuum. Because the electromagnetic dumping of the mass energy of the [dd]* intermediate state into a nearby source of electrostatic charge such as a palladium lattice site would be much faster than the emission of a gamma photon, it would be competitively favored. Since the process is also faster than the two other known dd fusion branches, it would compete favorably against them as well. The result would be a 4He daughter that pushes off of the palladium lattice site with 22.9 MeV of energy, instead of a prompt gamma, a triton and a proton, or a 3He and a neutron, products that are known from existing dd fusion experiments.<br />
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In the Vortex thread, Ron's idea has been taken and modified a little. I suspect that the transfer of energy via the electromagnetic interaction can also happen with the electronic structure of the palladium metal, far away from the lattice sites. If this were to happen, and there is reason to think it would be the dominant outcome, the momentum of the reaction would be absorbed either by an ensemble of electrons in the local system or by a single electron, and the daughter 4He would be almost motionless.<br />
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Somehow this disruption of the local system would then feed back into the reaction. I suspect that this occurs by a modification of the electronic structure of the palladium lattice; in fact, of that of any metal and not just palladium. The form of the disruption is perhaps a change in the charge density in the lattice. Normally most of the electrons in a metal are tightly bound around the lattice sites. The disruption would be to somehow modify the charge density so that some of the electron orbitals extended out into the interstitial areas, where the deuterium and hydrogen nuclei are. The electrostatic dumping of energy upon the decay of the [dd]* intermediate state would somehow propel this process forward. An early source of the idea that charge density might play a role in cold fusion <a href="http://prb.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v40/i8/p5822_1">was a paper</a> written by a group at UC Berkeley in 1989, when a large number of people were trying to understand the results of Pons and Fleischmann. The Berkeley group do not appear to have taken into account the possibility that the charge density could be modified under certain conditions, however.<br />
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Getting the cold fusion process started would presumably require something other than fusion. I suspect in the case of Andrea Rossi's E-Cat and possibly Defkalion's Hyperion that this is through the agency of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermionic_emission">thermionic emitter</a>, which emits beta particles when heated up sufficiently. These devices could be using a compound such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanthanum_hexaboride">lanthanum hexaboride</a>, for example, whose properties are similar to those of modern lighter flint. As the heat of the substrate is increased by resistance heaters, or the thermionic emitter is stimulated by spark plugs, the compound would start to give off beta particles. Once that happened perhaps the charge density of the electronic structure of the metal lattice would be modified in some as-yet-unknown way, and dd and pd fusion would become many orders of magnitude more likely.<br />
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Ron Maimon does not like the idea of electron screening playing a role, for he believes it does not work at the scales involved in fusion (his explanation can be found in the comments <a href="http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/43960/is-there-any-reproducible-tested-evidence-for-ni-h-cold-fusion#comment155314_43960">here</a>). But I suspect there is something like this going on, and that it can be effective, for the mechanism of the Polywell reactor works on a similar principle, and the explanation as a whole provides a very good phenomenological fit with the experimental data along a number of lines, including the observation that 4He appears to be born with almost no energy, as seen in a lack of Bremsstrahlung and prompt radiation.<br />
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So if modification of electron charge density or something like the mechanism behind the Polywell reactor is occurring, it might be possible to catalyze it using a thermionic emitter. What is interesting in this connection is that researchers have <a href="http://www.iscmns.org/CMNS/JCMNS-Vol8.pdf">noted a possible connection</a> (p. 219 ff) during electrolysis between oxide in the substrate and excess heat. Elsewhere I have learned that oxidation can sometimes lead to a lower work function, which is what is behind thermionic emission. This is, then, another detail that points in the direction of this general line of investigation.<br />
<br />Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-563067961618688362013-02-10T21:58:00.000-08:002013-02-11T22:20:14.069-08:00Ron Maimon's theory (2)In a <a href="http://rolling-balance.blogspot.com/2013/01/ron-maimons-theory.html">previous post</a>, I attempted to provide a layman's overview of a theory put forward by Ron Maimon concerning what is generating anomalous heat in the palladium deuteride LENR experiments. The theory, which I have nicknamed a theory of "Auger deuterons," nicely incorporates the primary elements of the signatures seen in many of the Pd/D experiments:<br />
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<li>Heat</li>
<li>Broadband x-ray spectra</li>
<li>Fast alpha particles and protons</li>
<li>4He off-gas</li>
<li>Transmutations of various kinds</li>
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Part of the motivation for the earlier blog post was to get feedback from people on vortex-l, and as I hoped would happen, Robin, who is on that list, pinpointed several difficulties that needed to be addressed. Here are questions from him (1 and 2) and me (3 and 4) that resulted from the thread:</div>
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<li>How do two deuterons approach the Pd nucleus concurrently, as this seems a very unlikely thing to occur?</li>
<li>The d+d fusion cross section becomes negligible below 5 keV. Assuming a loss of 400 eV per palladium atom that a 20 keV deuteron passes through as a result of interactions with its electrons, the energy of the deuteron will drop below the 5 keV threshold after passing through 38 palladium atoms. In the unlikely event that it hits another deuteron head-on before that, even then a fusion is not assured. So all-in-all the likelihood of a self-sustaining reaction seems small. How can one be obtained under these circumstances?</li>
<li>The regular branches for d+d fusion are (a) d+d→t+p (50 percent), (b) d+d→3He+n (50 percent) and (c) d+d→4He+ɣ (almost negligible). What causes branches (a) and (b) to be suppressed and branch (c) to become dominant?</li>
<li>When you have fast particles flying through a deuterated metal lattice, a particle is likely to bump into a deuteron, and it in turn will hit another deuteron. Occasionally a side reaction of branch (b), above, will occur, yielding a significant number of neutrons which would then exit the system. But neutrons are only rarely seen and at levels barely above the sensitivity of the neutron counters. For this reason Peter Hagelstein places a 20 keV upper limit on the energy of the particles in the system. Ron's account involves alpha particles with energies of tens of MeV, so the lack of neutrons from side reactions on an order above that currently seen could be expected, presenting a challenge to be addressed.</li>
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The full vortex-l thread can be found <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg75249.html">here</a>. I am sure that the difficulties go back to my own understanding and have been anticipated by Ron. I will be interested to hear how he addresses them, especially (3).</div>
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<b>EDIT: </b>Concerning items (1) and (3), above, Ron addresses these questions in his <a href="http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/3799/why-is-cold-fusion-considered-bogus/13734#13734">original physics.SE post</a>:<br />
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The fusion of deuterons always happens through unstable intermediate states, and the cross section to alpha particle is only small because of the same non-relativistic issue. To get an alpha, you need to emit a gamma-ray photon, and emissions of photons are suppressed by 1/c factors. When there is a nucleus nearby, it can be kicked electrostatically, and this process is easier than kicking out a photon, because it is nonrelativistic (the same holds for an electron, but with much smaller cross section due to the smaller charge, and there is no reason to suspect concentration of wavefunction around electron density, as there is for a nucleus). </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The time-scale for kicking a nucleus is the lifetime of the two-deuteron resonance, which is not very long, in terms of distance, it is about 100 fermis, this is about the same size as the inner shell. If the deuterons are kicking about at random, this coincidence is not significant, but if the deuteron-hole excitations are banded, it is plausible that nearly all the energetic deuteron-deuteron collisions take place very close to a nucleus, as explained above. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are conservation laws broken when a nucleus is nearby. The nucleus breaks parity, so it might open up a fusion channel, by allowing deuteron pairs to decay to an alpha from a parity odd state. Such a transition would never be observed in a dilute beam fusion, because these fusions happen far away from anything else. This hypothesis is not excluded by alpha particle spectroscopy (there are a lot of relevant levels of different parities), but it is not predicted either.</blockquote>
This only hints at an answer to question (1), by saying that the banded state makes it "plausible" that the energetic deuterons will encounter one another near a palladium nucleus.</div>
Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-89627614216411455092013-01-06T21:29:00.001-08:002013-09-17T22:29:26.799-07:00Ron Maimon's theory of Auger deuteronsThere are <a href="http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/Theories/TheoryIndex.shtml">plenty of theories</a> available to explain some or most cold fusion experimental results, but none of them has gained general approval among cold fusion researchers. The rudiments of a <a href="http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/13734/6713">less-known but interesting theory</a> have been proposed by <a href="http://physics.stackexchange.com/users/4864/ron-maimon">Ron Maimon</a>, who up until the end of 2012 was an active participant on physics.stackexchange.com. The theory goes well beyond my knowledge of nuclear physics, but I was able to get ahold of some details about it that make it more recognizable to a hobbyist like myself, which are mentioned in this Stack Exchange <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/6594/2012/12/3">chat transcript</a>. Prior to the chat with Ron I participated in an <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg73256.html">interesting discussion</a> with Robin van Spaandonk, on the Vortex list, about some of the details of the theory as set out in the reply to the physics.SE question linked to above. Robin is knowledgeable about nuclear physics, and the discussion helped me to know what to ask later when I was talking to Ron.<br />
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The basic mechanism occurs when a K-shell electron is kicked out of its orbit around a heavy palladium atom in the metal lattice. That in turn creates a hole which can decay in various ways; normally it will decay either through an electron from another orbital filling the hole with a subsequent x-ray photon emission or, alternatively, through the ejection of an <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">Auger</span> electron. The energy involved in the decay of such a K-shell hole is on the order of 20 keV, an amount sufficient to cause two deuterium nuclei to fuse a significant portion of the time in a beam of deuterons.<br />
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Ron posits that when a deuteron is in the immediate vicinity of a palladium atom from which a K-shell electron has been ejected by action of an x-ray or a traveling alpha particle, the deuteron will preferentially receive the energy of the K-shell hole decay via electrostatic repulsion, thereby gaining 20 keV of energy. This makes the deuteron in a sense an "<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">Auger</span> deuteron." Should it fuse with another deuteron, the Q value of the reaction will be a very large 24 MeV, which will be shared with the daughter alpha particle and the spectator palladium atom. If I have understood Ron's account, there will be no gamma photon, as the reaction will have occurred close enough to the palladium atom for it to share in the momentum of the daughter alpha. The fusion cross section will be enhanced in the case where two energetic deuterons approach a palladium atom simultaneously; at the "classical turning point," i.e., the point at which the electrostatic repulsion of the positively charged palladium nucleus will start to push the approaching deuterons away, they will be in close enough to one another, as Ron alludes to and Robin clarifies, for their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_wave">de Broglie waves</a> to overlap enough to possibly result in a fusion.<br />
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Occasionally a fast daughter alpha particle will interact with a spectator palladium atom, causing it to gain or lose some number of nucleons and resulting in a transmutation to another element. This is understood to be a side channel and not the main source of heat. The reaction is sustained as a result of the energetic daughter alpha racing through the lattice, ionizing palladium atoms as it travels, triggering in turn the mechanism described above. According to this theory, the things to look for during and after anomalous heat are x-rays, helium and transmutations certain numbers above and below the mass of palladium.<br />
<br />
An issue that Robin had with Ron's theory is that he thought that the ionization caused by the traveling alpha particles would be too inefficient to result in enough K-shell holes. But he also pointed out that, if something like this were happening, you might see a similar effect in the nickel/hydrogen system. In that case it would be the fraction of deuterium in light water interacting with energetic protons, rather than p+p fusion, that would be taking place. If I have understood Robin, an attractive detail of Ron's Pd/D-focused theory is that it potentially provides a way to keep the energy needed for D-D fusion around long enough to sustain a continuous reaction.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-67619652660424758152013-01-06T20:28:00.002-08:002013-01-06T22:03:38.748-08:00Vortex-L temporarily downThe <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/">Vortex mailing list</a> is a list that I've been following for over a year now. The list was started in 1995 and is one of the best places for the general observer to get the latest news about cold fusion. The subject matter ranges far beyond cold fusion, however, and gets into some pretty <a href="http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/weird.html">wild topics</a>, such as the Papp engine and magnet motors, which can be quite entertaining to learn about.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately the list was suspended recently after a prolonged dispute. Hopefully it will be brought back up soon.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-8195484992793523402012-11-11T13:25:00.000-08:002012-11-11T22:12:58.035-08:00The Martin Fleischmann Memorial ProjectAt a conference this year, Francesco Celani, a cold fusion researcher, demonstrated a novel wire reactor apparatus. The apparatus showed what Celani believes to be clear evidence of anomalous heat—more energy coming out of the device, over time, than has been put into it, a central claim of Fleischmann and Pons.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.quantumheat.org/">Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project</a> is a project that started up this year with the aim of assembling a kit that will replicate Celani's experiment. Celani's device consists of a long glass tube with specially treated wire coiled around a <a href="http://www.quantumheat.org/images/blog/hi_res/DSC04426.JPG">rod of sorts</a> contained within the tube (the composition of the wire <a href="http://ecat-news.com/ecat/celani-wires-received-by-the-mfmp/">is a secret</a>). The effect is seen when the glass chamber is filled with hydrogen and a current passed through the wire. Once the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project have the design worked out for their kit, they will make the kit available to universities and third parties for study.<br />
<br />
The project's intention is to be transparent in everything they do, and in this spirit they're keeping a regular <a href="http://www.quantumheat.org/index.php/follow">blog of their progress</a> and are <a href="http://www.quantumheat.org/index.php/follow/107-another-day-another-calibration">making their data available</a>. In one of their <a href="http://www.quantumheat.org/index.php/follow/108-mid-calibration-data">blog entries</a>, they show a graphic of impedance in the wire versus the temperature in one of the thermocouples over a number of calibration runs. I downloaded their data and put together the same graphic:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7RfDHNYzyYwZsznH_W-O-ztkesVfjzdTCYRAgQvWOl9BlSVnLG6SdeUfkNRYt_J6efszUzd-pKIhWHj-fjD4K3cLPso136r5kMs0OxBS1S82rxzypBTVVBM1J8WPdF9iovN2yKyZRcpiw/s1600/calibration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7RfDHNYzyYwZsznH_W-O-ztkesVfjzdTCYRAgQvWOl9BlSVnLG6SdeUfkNRYt_J6efszUzd-pKIhWHj-fjD4K3cLPso136r5kMs0OxBS1S82rxzypBTVVBM1J8WPdF9iovN2yKyZRcpiw/s1600/calibration.jpg" /></a></div>
One detail that stands out right away is that they are smoothing their graphs somewhat.<br />
<br />
The following columns are available in the calibration data sets: <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Date</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_Board</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_Mica</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_GlassIn</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_Well</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_GlassOut</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Pressure</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Current Blue</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Voltage Blue</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Power Blue</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Impedance Blue</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Current Red</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Voltage Red</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Power Red</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Impedance Red</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_Ambient</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Pressure</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Total Power</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_Mica Rise</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_GlassIn Rise</span>, <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_Well Rise</span> and <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">T_GlassOut Rise</span>.<br />
<br />
The blog entry with the graphic mentions that an error of +/-3 percent has been calculated with a 95 percent confidence interval from three identical runs (which statistic is being analyzed is not yet clear). This error level means that they will be looking for at least 3W excess power. I would like to try to duplicate their calculation of the error.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-42782443958951048662012-04-29T22:43:00.001-07:002012-04-29T23:11:15.131-07:00Details to be explained or addressedI'm starting to get a sense of what I <a href="http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/23640/what-interactions-would-take-place-between-a-free-proton-and-a-dipolariton">think might be going on</a> in the LENR experiments. The idea is that there's a photoelectric effect involving a gamma or an X-ray and an electron, which gives rise to a bosonic quasiparticle which can then combine with a free proton in the metal lattice and yield a neutron. An <a href="http://rolling-balance.blogspot.com/2012/04/challenges-for-neutron-production.html">earlier post</a> has already noted some difficulties in adopting an explanation that involves neutrons.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In addition, there are other details which may not seem contradictory to an account involving neutrons but which nonetheless need to be explained or addressed. Edmond Storms mentions some of these details in his excellent paper, "A Student's Guide to Cold Fusion." For a Pd/D electrolysis experiment, these details include (possible explanations in parentheses):</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Lack of correlation between neutron detection and heat (neutrons were absorbed during heat generation and so could not be detected).</li>
<li>Far too few gammas for generated heat, lack of correlation (gammas are also absorbed in the reaction).</li>
<li>X-rays are not always detected in proportion to generated heat.</li>
<li>High Pd/D average loading is usually required (high loading is a proxy for the flux of free protons through the nuclear-active environment).</li>
<li>High Pd/D average loading is not always required (there are sufficient free protons in the nuclear active environment, despite the low loading).</li>
<li>Current must be maintained for a sufficient amount of time, but this time can be short for thin layers of palladium and a long time for bulk palladium (there has to be 1, sufficient proton flux, and 2, an energetic photon that comes along for some reason to set off the reaction).</li>
<li>Impurities can activate inactive palladium (the palladium is not what is involved in the reaction; it is a catalyzer).</li>
<li>Success in getting a reaction depends upon the batch of palladium (there has to be something that gives rise to the right optical phenomena, e.g., microcavities).</li>
<li>H2O contamination will stop a reaction (the atomic hydrogen does not ionize and prevents the deuterium from entering the lattice).</li>
<li>A higher temperature causes the reaction to go more quickly.</li>
</ul>
<div>
There are details in other types of experiments that need to be addressed as well:
<br />
<ul>
<li>There is an effective positive charge for hydrogen migrating through palladium in some electrodiffusion experiments (I have speculated <a href="http://rolling-balance.blogspot.com/2012/04/ionization-of-hydrogen-isotopes.html">elsewhere</a> that it is atomic hydrogen and not ions that migrate).</li>
<li>Energy and nuclear products have been seen when >1 MHz sonic waves are used to react deuterium with solid metals.</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-51697845260238001582012-04-29T10:24:00.001-07:002012-04-29T16:01:50.109-07:00Challenges for neutron productionAny explanation for cold fusion that involves neutrons will run into a number of objections. Edmond Storms sets out several of these objections in section 8.2.1 of his invaluable book, <i>The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction</i>. (I highly recommend this book to anyone exploring cold fusion.) In that section there is a numbered list of considerations, and considerations 2 and 4 seem to involve in part a lack of observed beta particle emission. I wrote Dr Storms and asked him about these two considerations, specifically, and the basis for concluding that beta particle emission is missing. I wondered whether this conclusion was based on the CR-39 evidence, which involves detecting tracks left in a kind of plastic that is used in sunglasses. This plastic is typically inserted directly into the electrolyte. A method of detection along these lines is necessary because beta particles cannot pass through the walls of the closed systems that are used in the cold fusion experiments.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In his helpful reply, Dr Storms seemed to indicate that these considerations were getting at something else in addition to the lack of beta particle emission. Here is the gist of what he said:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Occasionally neutrons are seen, but their levels are very low and their source unknown and unrelated to heat production.</li>
<li>The radioactivity expected when neutrons interact with their surroundings is easy to detect using a cheap Geiger-Muller counter and has been sought and rarely seen.</li>
<li>Neutrons are short-lived, with a half-life of ~ 16 minutes, so they must be constantly replenished in a sustained reaction. This is not possible in ordinary materials.</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
Storms' points have obviously been given some thought, and I hope to learn more about each of them. I understand that he discusses the low levels of neutrons that are occasionally seen in his "<a href="http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEastudentsg.pdf">Student's Guide</a>" and offers a possible explanation, so I will read that paper first before drawing any conclusions in the present connection.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-87333044859797969972012-04-28T13:51:00.003-07:002012-04-29T16:53:17.427-07:00Ionization of hydrogen isotopes<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><i>I'm redacting an email I sent to vortex-l and putting it up here, since the list appears to be down.</i></span></span><br />
<br />
In a recent thread on vortex-l, Axil mentioned that tungsten has a low hydrogen permeability and that this causes problems for Brillouin's and Widom and Larsen's hypotheses. He provided some interesting links, and he appears to be correct about the permeability of hydrogen-1 in tungsten.<br />
<br />
I find the low hydrogen-1 permeability an encouraging result, for roundabout reasons. A conjecture that I think we should consider is that ionization of the hydrogen isotope (hydrogen-1, hydrogen-2, etc.) is a requirement for a cold fusion reaction to proceed. One of the questions that has been bugging me is why hydrogen-1 appears to work well with nickel but palladium seems to require deuterium, and hydrogen-1, if anything, seems to interfere. This could be an overstatement; there have been many experiments, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is some countervailing evidence, but this seems to be the general trend of what is being seen, as far as I can tell.<br />
<br />
The low hydrogen-1 permeability of tungsten lends credence to the notion that the size of the lattice (and, apparently, it's Miller number -- 100, 110, etc.) is a factor here. So we might guess that palladium allows for the diffusion of monoatomic hydrogen, but it does not yield high levels of hydrogen ions, whereas nickel perhaps does. The following link is suggestive concerning the migration of monoatomic hydrogen (rather than unshielded protons) in palladium:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://pureguard.net/cm/Library/Palladium_Membrane_Purification.html">http://pureguard.net/cm/Library/Palladium_Membrane_Purification.html</a><br />
<br />
Like others, I think the heat-after-death effect, where a reaction continues after the current has been stopped, is not central to what is going on, so I see no strict need to require diffusion of hydrogen in the bulk of the cathode. Indeed, there is evidence that what is going on is a surface or near-surface reaction; the low permeability of hydrogen in tungsten seems to point in this direction as well. There is the question of the need for high loading in Pd/D electrolytic systems to see an effect; one possible explanation here is that you just need a high enough concentration of free deuterons on (or near) the surface of the cathode to see results in a situation in which we barely control the reaction, and high loading gives rise to this as a side effect, due to the desorption over time of large numbers of deuterons.<br />
<br />
Ionization is also something that would happen in the glow discharge and electric arc experiments.<br />
<br />
What role might ionization play? To pursue my pet hypothesis, perhaps you need an unshielded proton or deuteron in order for something to happen in connection with the its electrostatic charge. If bulk loading only plays an indirect role in specific systems and it was not needed in previous tungsten experiments because, for example, sufficient ionization was brought about through other means, it's not clear what the implications are for Brillouin's, Widom and Larsen's, or for that matter, Peter Hagelstein's hypotheses.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-79314690374397406672012-04-18T23:47:00.004-07:002012-04-18T23:54:12.592-07:00Optical microcavities and a possible photoelectric effectOne possibility that I'm entertaining is that cold fusion is a photoelectric effect, operating at X-ray or gamma energies. There are some interesting correlations in this connection. The basic idea is that the cathode has cavities in which photons resonate, in turn triggering an unknown process. There are cavities and structures on cathodes on the order of hundreds of nanometers that have been observed using scanning electron microscopes.<br />
<br />
An interesting review paper in <i>Nature</i> titled "<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v424/n6950/abs/nature01939.html">Optical microcavities</a>" (2003) discusses a number of developments in exploring optical microcavities. A typical cavity is several micrometers across. These microcavities have a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_factor">parameter<i> Q</i></a><i>,</i> which is a measure of the resonance quality. The higher the <i>Q,</i> the less likely photons are to dissipate. A high <i>Q</i> permits strong coupling to take place. Strong coupling implies a coupling constant <i>g</i> that is around or larger than 1. When it occurs, you can get a phenomenon in which an atom in an exited state emits a photon which transfers to a "cavity mode" and then eventually is reabsorbed by the atom many times, an effect called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabi_cycle">Rabi cycle</a>. With a <i>g << 1,</i> there will be weak coupling, which will lead to the photon being dissipated too quickly to see such an effect. Some of the experiments exhibit a <i>Q</i> ~ 13,000, which is very high. Also, systems in which strong coupling takes place must be modeled <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupling_constant#Weak and strong coupling">using non-perturbative methods</a>. One possible implication is that such systems are less well-understood by physicists, who are unable to rely on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perturbation_theory_(quantum_mechanics)">perturbation theory</a>, a basic tool in quantum mechanics.<br />
<br />
Is it even possible for a gamma or an X-ray to resonate in a cavity on the scale of hundreds of nanometers? If not, what are the wavelengths associated with the cavity modes for cavities on this scale?Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-15425511877170571572012-04-11T19:43:00.000-07:002012-04-11T19:43:17.059-07:00Possible errors in the evidence of transmutationsAbd ul-Rahman was kind enough to provide this reference for further reading on possible errors in Iwamura's experiments:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>"Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science," vol. 6, Feb. 2012, http://iscmns.org/CMNS/JCMNS-Vol6.pdf</li>
</ul>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-58933306833245806592012-04-10T23:08:00.001-07:002012-04-10T23:16:41.261-07:00Evidence on the transmutation of heavy elementsI've reactivated this blog after a hiatus of several months. At some point sometime back I joined the vortex-l mailing list. This is perhaps the best place to find the latest news and commentary on what's going on with cold fusion. I still have quite a bit to learn about the basic science involved in LENR. Sometimes, however, I like to jump into a technical thread, which I invariably seem to turn into a philosophical discussion; for example, there was <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg64978.html">this exchange</a> today:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The present mode of academic research, of excluding from consideration anything that has not been entered into the official record, is only suitable for legal courts and the obtaining of tenure. It's not the most efficient way of getting at the truth by any means, and as I become more and more familiar with academic research, I'm grateful not to feel bound by it.</blockquote>
<br />
Also, over the weekend, I somehow felt confident enough to offer the outlines of my <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg64916.html">own theory</a> about what is going on with LENR, which proceeds from a recent article in <i>Science</i> that discusses a new quasi-particle that is <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120405142156.htm">created from a photon and an electron</a>. The basic idea is this: when hydrogen atoms are drawn into the nickel lattice, the electrons and protons are dissociated, and the electrons enter into the free moving electrons of the metal. Then comes along a high energy photon, which combines with one of the electrons, creating the new quasi-particle, a so-called "dipolariton." The new particle is a boson rather than a fermion and is a static dipole, apparently meaning it has a positive and a negative charge. I would imagine that the negative side is instantly attracted to a nearby proton, and because the two are not both fermions, they readily combine, yielding a high energy photon and a slow neutron. The photon bounces around a cavity in the metal lattice until it combines with another electron, starting the process anew.<br />
<br />
The slow neutrons react primarily with impurities in the lattice. I'm guessing that any palladium atoms that it encounters quickly re-emit it. For reasons that have yet to be worked out, the reaction only takes place between free protons and free electrons, so you have to have a flux of hydrogen, which agrees with the evidence.<br />
<br />
I'll need to look into the possible Pd-104(n,*) reactions and what their half-lives are. I also need to better understand Fermi-Dirac statistics, Einstein-Bose statistics, the possible interactions between fermions and bosons.<br />
<br />
In the exchange above, with a fellow by the name of Abd ul-Rahman, who is quite knowledgeable about particle physics, he presented additional details on Peter Hagelstein's latest thinking as well as an experiment that is being prepared for publication. He primarily took issue with the specifics of Widom and Larsen's theory, while I was concerned solely with neutron flux as a general phenomenon, and to a certain extent I think we ended up speaking past one another. But he mentioned that there are questions about reliability of the evidence on transmutations, and I need to better understand these issues. What he mentioned about Peter Hagelstein's work with lasers also squares well with my dipolariton explanation, although he's looking at a Bose-Einstein condensate of deuterons and at specific laser frequencies, and I don't have any opinion on these things yet.<br />
<br />
Here are some links to further reading that came up during the thread:<br />
<ul>
<li>"About the possibility of decreased radioactivity of heavy nuclei," http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=512913</li>
<li>"Cold Fusion and Decrease of Tritium Radioactivity," http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Reifenschwcoldfusion.pdf</li>
<li>"Reduced radioactivity of tritium in small titanium particles," http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Reifenschwreducedrad.pdf</li>
<li>"Debate Between Douglas Morrison and Stanley Pons & Martin Fleischmann," http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf</li>
<li>"Robert Godes of Brillouin Energy Comments on LENR Research," http://www.e-catworld.com/2012/04/robert-godes-of-brillouin-energy-comments-on-lenr-research/</li>
<li>"Carbon nanotubes: The weird world of 'remote Joule heating,'" http://phys.org/news/2012-04-carbon-nanotubes-weird-world-remote.html</li>
<li>"10th International Workshop on Anomalies in Hydrogen Loaded Metals" (abstracts), http://www.iscmns.org/work10/Abstracts.pdf</li>
</ul>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-74899647514641637572011-12-26T18:48:00.000-08:002011-12-26T19:22:48.195-08:00The March 29, 2011, E-Cat demonstrationOn March 29, 2011, a demonstration of a small E-Cat device was given, with Andrea Rossi, Guiseppe Levi, Sergio Focardi, Sven Kullander and Hanno Essen present, and conducted by Rossi and presumably others. According to <a href="http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3144960.ece/BINARY/Download+the+report+by+Kullander+and+Ess%C3%A9n+%28pdf%29">calculations written up by Essen</a>, 25kWh of excess heat were produced by the device over a period of 6 hours. Given the amount of hydrogen (0.11 g) and nickel (50 g) that were present at the start of the trial, Essen rules out a chemical reaction of some kind.<br />
<br />
The demonstration was <a href="http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece">reported by NyTeknik</a> on April 6. According to the article, Guiseppe Levi is being paid by Rossi to carry out research on the E-Cat at the University of Bologna. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Kullander_(physicist)">Sven Kullander</a> is professor emeritus of physics at Uppsala University and chairman of the energy committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanno_Ess%C3%A9n">Hanno Essen</a> is an associate professor of physics at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and one-time chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society. I remember reading somewhere that Kullander was on a fact-finding mission, but I don't recall the context.<br />
<br />
An <a href="http://22passi.blogspot.com/2011/04/sergio-focardi-father-of-ni-h-cold.html">English transcript</a> of a radio interview with Sergio Focardi provides additional historical information on the development of the E-Cat. Focardi has not been not privy to the undisclosed "catalyst" that is being added by Rossi to the system in order to facilitate the reaction, though he speculates that it has something to do with preventing the hydrogen ions from forming molecular hydrogen. The interview confirms that gamma radiation is being generated, and for this reason there is lead shielding around the device. Focardi suggests an interesting explanation for what is going on with the gamma rays: a proton is somehow being added to the nickel nucleus by way of an unknown pathway. This results in its transmutation into copper in a highly excited state and the eventual emission of a gamma ray photon. When the gamma ray leaves, the new copper atom recoils like a cannon in the opposite direction. If things were indeed happening like this, the account would go a long way to explain the heat that is generated.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-15464534682002158352011-12-25T21:01:00.000-08:002011-12-26T14:34:00.893-08:00Beta decay, neutron activation analysis and the r-processA Wikipedia article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation_analysis">neutron activation analysis</a> (NAA) is helpful in understanding a little of what would be involved if inverse beta decay were causing a large number of neutrons to attach to nearby nuclei. Not only would there be transmutations not unlike those found in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-process">r-process</a>, a phase of rapid nucleosynthesis hypothesized to take place within supernovae that is responsible for creating elements above iron. In addition, following this activity there would be beta decay of unstable radioisotopes to more stable isotopes which would release gamma rays at specific energy levels, long after the experiment was dismantled, along the lines that Jacques Dufour described in a <a href="http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/critique/WLTheoryDufourCritique.pdf">note</a> on the Widom-Larsen work referred to in an earlier post. This gamma emission is a property of beta decay that is used in NAA to detect the relative levels of different elements (and presumably isotopes) in a sample.<br />
<br />
The process works by bombarding the sample with neutrons from a neutron source. Following the bombardment transmutations take place and then decay into more stable isotopes according to the half-lives of the elements concerned. Apparently there is a body of expertise that has developed around analyzing the gamma ray spectra that result. The neutron bombardment does not damage the sample, but it will remain radioactive at low and possibly medium levels after the analysis.<br />
<br />
An important implication seems clear: if there is a comparable process of electron capture that leads in turn to neutron capture and transmutations, then either
<br />
<ol>
<li>The nickel or palladium used in the experiment will exhibit mild to medium levels of radioactivity afterwards; or</li>
<li>There is some variable that has the effect of selecting transmutations of elements with very short half-lives.</li>
</ol>
<div>
I don't yet know much about the various decay chains that could be involved in such beta decay, but the second possibility could potentially require new physics if it turns out to be true. We should start with the assumption that the first case is probably the one happening. If the first case turns out not to be happening in some experiments, this is a good indication that some process other than inverse beta decay is taking place, although I find this scenario implausible, for the reason that it would appear to require that the measurements of the transmutations be in error. (This conclusion assumes that possibility 2, above, is even less plausible.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Up to now I haven't paid attention to the radioactivity of the samples that are mentioned in the LENR experiments, but I will start to keep tabs on this detail. I remember something mentioned in connection with Piantelli, possibly, where a cathode was placed in a cloud chamber after excess heat was exhibited, and it was necessary to wait for two hours before attempting to look closely at the trajectories due to the high number of emissions coming off of the cathode initially. In other experiments, it may be simply that the post-experiment radioactivity was overlooked. Assuming that there is radioactivity (an assumption I will proceed with for now), I wonder if the cathodes become unsafe.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This <a href="http://archaeometry.missouri.edu/naa_overview.html">excellent page</a> at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Web site describes neutron activation analysis in further detail. It mentions several parameters that have bearing on the results of a run:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Neutron flux</li>
<li>Irradiation time</li>
<li>Decay times</li>
<li>Measurement time</li>
<li>Detector efficiency</li>
<li>Isotope abundance</li>
<li>Neutron cross-section</li>
<li>Half-life</li>
<li>Gamma-ray abundance</li>
</ul>
<div>
The page includes a bibliography of books on activation analysis at the bottom.<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
The r-process is a kind of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis">nucleosynthesis</a> that is hypothesized to take place during supernovae and to have taken place during the Big Bang. If I understand what I have read, it involves a sufficiently high neutron flux to push atomic nuclei along the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_drip_line">neutron drip line</a> to counter the rate at which they beta decay into higher elements. As the neutrons pile on, unstable isotopes are formed which eventually undergo decay into other elements. The r-process was set out in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B2FH_paper">landmark 1957 review paper</a> by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle.<br />
<br />
The r-process seems to be very similar to what is going on in the nickel and palladium hydride cathodes in the LENR experiments. This connection was noted by Widom and Larsen in their February 20, 2006, paper. I'm beginning to think that the spectroscopy results of the LENR experiments are like fingerprints that are unique or almost unique to each experiment and that, for a given graph, one can work backwards to deduce all or most of the important details that went into the reaction:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>the original composition of the cathode;</li>
<li>the contents of the gas or electrolyte;</li>
<li>the energy released by the experiment;</li>
<li>the range of isotopes that were somehow given preference by the conditions of the experiment by an unknown variable; and</li>
<li>the approximate time the experiment ran.</li>
</ul>
<div>
The idea here is that the process would be similar to analyzing the radiation given off by a star, which I assume enables one to infer a number of details about the star. I wonder if there are computational models on the Internet that can be leveraged to pursue this line of investigation further.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-54752311577131789532011-12-25T17:01:00.000-08:002011-12-26T14:36:18.586-08:00Discussion of Widom-Larsen in New Energy Times, issue 26"The Widom-Larsen Not-Fusion Theory," <i>New Energy Times</i>, 26, January 11, 2008. Available at http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2008/NET26.shtml.<br />
<br />
When Widom and Larsen came out with several papers between 2005 and 2008 setting out their theory that inverse beta decay best explains the evidence for LENR thus far reported, the theory turned out to be relatively controversial within the small group of researchers. Steven Krivit, author of <i>The Rebirth of Cold Fusion</i> and editor of the <i>New Energy Times</i> Web site, asked a number of people to respond to a set of twenty questions probing various details relating to Widom and Larsen's work. This discussion was published in <i>New Energy Time's</i> issue 26, which is available at the link above. Some of the people who are central to the LENR research took part in the discussion, and Krivit was able to obtain some of the views of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garwin">Richard Garwin</a>, a renowned physicist who worked with Edward Teller on the first hydrogen bomb.<br />
<br />
Most of the critiques made for interesting reading, and a handful of them were emotional and lacked objectivity. My own favorite line of investigation at this point is that there is inverse beta decay going on under the control of several important variables, and the criticisms discussed in this issue provide a range of details that will be helpful in better understanding the implications of this category of explanation.<br />
<br />
Richard Garwin was an early critic of the cold fusion research, and he subsequently visited both McKubre's lab at SRI International and a lab in France. Steven Krivit has published Garwin's report on the visit to SRI International on his Web site, which would make for interesting reading.<br />
<br />
There was a discussion between Krivit and Scott Chubb that was related in the article, and one of the things that was raised as an issue by Chubb was that that there were a number of prior articles that Widom and Larsen failed to give credit to. Following are some of the authors mentioned in this connection:
<br />
<ul>
<li>Laili Chatterjee, in a 1998 paper published in Transactions of the American Nuclear Society</li>
<li>Mizuno</li>
<li>Kozima and his neutron band theory</li>
<li>John Fisher and his ideas relating to polyneutrons</li>
<li>Li (Xingzhong Li?)</li>
<li>George Anderman, in an ICCF1 paper</li>
</ul>
<div>
Lastly, Jacques Dufour, <a href="http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/critique/WLTheoryDufourCritique.pdf">in a note</a> critical of the Widom-Larsen work, mentioned that the theory did not agree with NAA analysis in terms of gamma ray emission, in that emissions should be detected after the experiment has been dismantled (which, presumably, is not something that has been seen). By "NAA" I think Dufour is talking about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation_analysis">neutron activation analysis</a>.</div>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-19064418860878087002011-12-24T20:57:00.000-08:002011-12-24T22:21:39.077-08:00Widom and Larsen, "Absorption of Nuclear Gamma Radiation" (2005)A. Widom and L. Larsen, "Absorption of Nuclear Gamma Radiation by Heavy Electrons on Metallic Hydride Surfaces," preprint (September 10, 2005), available at http://newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2006/2006Widom-AbsorptionOfNuclearGamma.pdf.<br />
<br />
Widom and Larsen seek to provide an explanation for the lack of hard gamma photons observed in LENR experiments. They assume that hard photons are a necessary result of the reactions. They look at the mean free path of the gamma photons and conclude that they are absorbed by the heavy electrons near the surface produced as a result of upward mass renormalization. After a heavy electron has absorbed a hard photon, a large number of soft photons are emitted in the x-ray and infrared wavelengths.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-69200514352588675532011-12-24T17:55:00.000-08:002011-12-24T20:59:21.080-08:00Widom and Larson, "Neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions" (2006)A. Widom and L. Larson, "Ultra low momentum neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions on metallic hydride surfaces," <i>European Physical Journal C</i> (2006).<br />
<br />
This appears to be the first of an important series of paper in the field of cold fusion. It suggests that what is taking place in systems is not fusion, per se, in which two positively charged nuclei overcome Coulomb repulsion to fuse into a new nucleus. Instead what is happening is that inverse beta decay is taking place, where neutrons generated from free electrons and protons. The neutrons then meander about at low energies and are absorbed, one after another, into the nuclei of nearby atoms. As they load, one after another, into these atoms, the atomic mass changes and eventually the atoms decay into other elements. There are different chains of decay, some of which release significant amounts of energy, which manifests itself in part in the form of heat given off by the system.<br />
<br />
The paper has main two parts. The first part attempts to provide support for inverse beta decay through an elaboration of ideas found in earlier literature, and the second part illustrates one concrete radioactive decay path. The first part gets into some math I'm unfamiliar with, whereas it is not difficult to imagine applying the ideas set out in the second part to the construction of a basic numerical model that attempts to predict, or at least explain, the ratios of residual isotopes found in some of the experiments.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-8861247018988559152011-12-24T17:38:00.000-08:002011-12-24T17:38:55.499-08:00Steven Krivit and Nadine Winocur, "The Rebirth of Cold Fusion" (2004)Steven Krivit and Nadine Winocur, <i>The Rebirth of Cold Fusion</i> (Los Angeles: Pacific Oak Press, 2004).<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This book covers the developments from Pons and Fleischmann to the 2004 Department of Energy review, which was underway at the time of writing. The book is less technical than Mallove's <i>Fire From Ice</i> and Beaudette's <i>Excess Heat,</i> and it appears to be written with both a technical and a nontechnical audience in mind. The authors are clearly passionate about the topic and devote the first few chapters to exploring the various options open to humankind in the way of energy production. In the middle of the book there is a series of chapters on various types of evidence that have turned up which go into some of the main scientists working in the field and some of the better known experiments. In addition to the valuable technical information, the authors have been in touch with many of these scientists and are familiar enough with the history of the last twenty years to provide some interesting anecdotes.</div>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-80473211105293674972011-12-22T20:31:00.000-08:002011-12-26T19:16:20.859-08:00Experiment: Focardi et al., "Evidence of electromagnetic radiation" (2004)Focardi, S., et al., "Evidence of electromagnetic radiation from Ni-H Systems," in <i>Eleventh International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science </i>(2004).<br />
<br />
Summary: Three Ni-H systems emitted gamma radiation after hydrogen was introduced. The first system showed excess heat, and the second showed none. When the third system underwent thermal excitation, the rate of photon emission increased for a short period of time.<br />
<br />
Discussion<br />
<br />
In three different experiments, nickel plates were interleaved with heating elements in a closed chamber. The chamber was first evacuated and then hydrogen gas was introduced. Emissions in one experiment lasted forty-five days after degassing. Gamma emission did not always depend on temperature. In the second experiment, which showed marked gamma activity above background, samples were kept for fifty-two days in a vacuum while measurements were taken of photon emission, before hydrogen was introduced. They obtained photon emission but not excess heat. The spectrum lasted for twenty-six days after hydrogen was added. In the third experiment there was no difference in spectra during the degassing period and the introduction of H2. In all three experiments, the peak energy in the spectra was the same. The first system showed excess heat at one point, and Cr and Mn turned up in the nickel samples. The second system showed no excess heat or neutron emission and nothing unusual was found in the surface analysis.<br />
<br />
There are two databases that can help in determining what is happening in a spectrum at a given energy range: <a href="http://www.lbl.gov/LBL-Programs/Gamquest.html">GAMQUEST</a> (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and <a href="http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/nudat2/">NUDAT</a> (Brookhaven National Laboratory).<br />
<br />
An important possibility here is that what is emitted by the system depends upon how the system is set up. Questions: The difference curve in figure 4 is small; is it statistically significant? What is degassing? Were there transmutations in the third experiment? Why were there no transmutations in the second experiment?<br />
<br />Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-43028069553186468832011-12-21T21:14:00.000-08:002011-12-21T21:14:43.478-08:00Experiment: Iwamura et al., "Observation of Nuclear Transmutation" (2004)<br />
Iwamura, Y. et al., "Observation of Nuclear Transmutation Reactions induced by D2 Gas Permeation through Pd Complexes," in <i>Eleventh International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science</i> (2004), Marseille, France.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Summary: Transmutations of Ba -> Sm, Cs -> Pr and possibly Sr -> Mo seen in deuterium-loaded Pd/CaO/Pd complexes. When MgO was substituted for CaO, no positive results were obtained.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Discussion</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A thin layer of Pd, beneath it a layer of CaO and beneath that a subtrate of Pd were used. At 70 C, Deuterium was loaded into the Pd complex by subjecting one side to 1 atm D2 and the other side a vacuum. The deuterium entered the Pd complex, separated into individual deuterons in the complex and then recombined into D2 on the other side. Target elements were deposited on the Pd complex using different means. In more than 60 trials, a Cs -> Pr transmutation was seen, with nearly 100 percent reproducibility. In three cases, a Sr -> Mo transmutation was seen, with ratios of isotopes of Mo different than found in nature. The existence of Pr was checked using several methods. The Cs -> Pr reaction appears to have occurred in a thin surface region. A positive correlation was seen between the rate of conversion of Cs into Pr with deuterium flux through the Pd complex.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It was necessary to infer the Sm from the presence of elements of weight 150, and two other possibilities were ruled out. In the Ba -> Sm transmutations, there was an increase of atomic mass of 12 and atomic number of 6.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
How important are unnatural ratios of isotopes? What is a Mossbaur isotope? Assuming the data are accurate, how impressive would these results be to a specialist in the field?</div>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-58499381190569843372011-12-21T00:10:00.000-08:002011-12-21T00:10:29.877-08:00futura-sciences.com, thread 1http://forums.futura-sciences.com/actualites/500126-fusion-froide-chaude.html<br />
<br />
The context of this thread was one of Andrea Rossi's experiments. There was a great deal of skepticism. A recurring theme was that without a paper to be found in a respected journal, it's likely that cold fusion is no more than a fantasy. There was an interesting discussion of muon-catalyzed fusion, but the discussion seemed to conflate muons with heavy electrons (although I may have misunderstood).<br />
<br />
One of the participants was a physicist who had sat in on a 2003 colloquium of mostly Russian scientists on the topic of cold fusion. They were describing some interesting results, but he took it all as an indication that they were essentially incompetent and that the sciences were suffering for want of capable people.<br />
<br />
There were few calculations concerning energy and none concerning transmutations. Overall the thread dealt more with the scientific process in general (in an indirect way) than the specific claims relating to LENR.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-68258664859351946972011-12-20T20:27:00.000-08:002011-12-22T20:31:44.127-08:00The NASA slides<div>
<ol>
<li>Dennis Bushnell, "NASA and LENR," http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government/NASA/20110922NASA-Bushnell-GRC-LENR-Workshop.pdf.</li>
<li>Gustave Fralick et al., "LENR at GRC," http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/LENR_at_GRC_2011.pdf.</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
The first set of slides were prepared by Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langley_Research_Center">NASA Langley Research Center</a>, and provided to Steven Krivit on November 25, 2001, by way of a FOIA request. Bushnell's slides are the work of a man who is convinced that LENR is real. His list of applications is fairly fanciful and raise the question of whether he might be a little credulous. He suggests that since 2006 the LENR theories have begun to favor weak force interactions over fusion proper. He mentions in passing a work by Zawodny et al.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The second set of slides are by three individuals at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Research_Center">NASA Glenn Research Center</a>. The slides describe several experiments.</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>One that was carried out in 1989, Fralick, Decker and Blue (1989) NASA TM-102430, presumably at NASA, used a Johnson Matthey HP Series palladium membrane hydrogen purifier. They saw no neutrons, and a 15 C temperature increase when deuterium was used and no increase when hydrogen was used.</li>
<li>Another, J. Niedra, I. Myers, G. Fralick and R. Baldwin (1996), NASA TM-107167, looked at an H2O-Ni-K2CO3 system, using an inactive cell as a control. This experiment was negative.</li>
<li>A third experiment looked at thin palladium films. Craters were found in D20 and none were seen in H20. John Wrbanek, Gustave Fralick, Susan Wrbanek, & Nancy Hall “Investigating Sonoluminescence as a Means of Energy Harvesting,” Chapter 19, Frontiers of Propulsion Science, Millis & Davis (eds), AIAA, pp. 605-637, 2009.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
The authors of the second set of slides were involved in some of the experiments the slides describe. After 1989, LENR was studied primarily at Navy, DARPA and various university labs (not NASA). Work at NASA started back up in 2009. There was apparently a positive finding in a 2009 experiment, although this is not apparent from the graphs in the slides. Publications mentioned include ones by Parmenter and Lamb; Chubb and Chubb; Maly, Vavra and Mills; Widom and Larsen; Hora and Miley; and Kim. There may be a proof of concept by Mounir Ibrahim, a professor at Ohio State University, using a Stirling engine. There is a set of full references at the end of the slides.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-36960407948955241002011-12-18T23:12:00.000-08:002011-12-23T19:22:58.716-08:00Interesting links (2)Following are some interesting links found in the Oil Drum thread <a href="http://rolling-balance.blogspot.com/2011/12/oil-drum-thread-1.html">examined in a previous post</a>, included here for later reference.<br />
<br />
Refutations<br />
<ul>
<li>http://www.esowatch.com/en/index.php?title=Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer</li>
</ul>
Publications<br />
<ul>
<li>Y.A. Baurov et al., Experimental investigation of changes in beta-decay count rate of radioactive elements. Phys. At. Nucl. 70(11), 1825–1835 (2007)</li>
<li>Kim, Y., "Generalized Theory of Bose-Einstein Condensation Nuclear Fusion for Hydrogen-Metal System," Purdue Nuclear and Many Body Theory Group (PNMBTG) Preprint PNMBTG-6-2011 (June 2011). Available at http://www.physics.purdue.edu/people/faculty/yekim/BECNF-Ni-Hydrogen.pdf</li>
<li>J.S. Brown, "H-H dipole interactions in fcc metals," arXiv:cond-mat/0703715v4 [cond-mat.mes-hall]. Available here: http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0703715 and http://www.iscmns.org/CMNS/JCMNS-Vol2.pdf (the latter is a cold fusion source). </li>
<li>Campari et al., "Surface Analysis of hydrogen loaded nickel alloys," on www.lenr-canr.org.</li>
<li>Vargas, P. and N.E. Christiansen, "Band-structure calculations for Ni, Ni4H, Ni4H2, Ni4H3, and NiH," <i>Physical Review B,</i> February 1, 1987. Available at http://users-phys.au.dk/nec/Papers/necPRB1/PRB351993.pdf.</li>
<li>Sargoytchev, S. "Theoretical Feasibility of Cold Fusion According to the BSM Supergravitation Unified Theory," December 14, 2011, http://vixra.org/abs/1112.0043.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Miscellaneous</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Krivit, on McKubre's results, http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/McKubreM4/20111220LetterToSRI.pdf</li>
<li>Robert Mockan, http://opensourcenuclearfuel.blogspot.com/</li>
<li>Aleklett, "Rossi energy catalyst – a big hoax or new physics?" Blog post with comments. Aleklett is a professor at Uppsala University, Sweden.</li>
<li>NyTeknik article on Rossi's device: http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3166552.ece</li>
<li>http://mightylib.mit.edu/Course%20Materials/22.01/Fall%202001/decay%20mechanisms.pdf, including a discussion of beta decay</li>
<li>http://www.optics.rochester.edu/workgroups/novotny/courses/OPT463/plasmons.pdf, concerning surface plasmons.</li>
<li>Rossi's Italian patent: http://www.uibm.gov.it/uibm/dati/Avanzata.aspx?load=info_list_uno&id=1610895&table=Invention&#ancoraSearch%20Patent%20Issued%20by%20Italian%20Patent%20Office</li>
<li>http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3173090.ece, concerning the Italian patent.</li>
<li>http://lenr.qumbu.com/index.php, one man's attempt to investigate the LENR claims and counterclaims. See also http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_proof_frames_v401.php.</li>
<li>http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7807226, a bibliographic reference for a paper on laser-driven fusion.</li>
<li>http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/research.htm and http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/LENR_at_GRC_2011.pdf, NASA slides concerning a positive LENR experiment (graphs look funny, though).</li>
<li>NASA patent, http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220110255645%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20110255645&RS=DN/20110255645</li>
<li>Francesco Piantelli's patent, http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0767962.pdf. Dietmar's description of Piantelli, http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/H-Ni_Fusion/message/964</li>
<li>The NASA slides (1), http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government/NASA/20110922NASA-Bushnell-GRC-LENR-Workshop.pdf</li>
<li>The NASA slides (2), http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/LENR_at_GRC_2011.pdf.</li>
<li>http://forums.futura-sciences.com/physique/513018-lenr-nasa-publie-un-document-2.html</li>
</ul>
<div>
Objections that were raised</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Widom-Larsen: inverse beta decay is endothermic, and there is a 780 keV threshold that must be overcome.</li>
<li>Widom-Larsen: inverse beta decay at 780 keV lasts on the order of ys, where nuclear phenomena occur on the order of fs.</li>
<li>Widom-Larsen: its prediction of He-3 runs counter to the He-4 ash that is actually observed.</li>
<li>Widom-Larsen: it depends on a surface oscillation mode that cannot exist.</li>
<li>LENR: very noisy data.</li>
<li>E-Cat: calorimetry results based on outgoing steam.</li>
<li>E-Cat: fraudulent demonstration, carried out with a fission rather than a fusion (or chemical) reaction.</li>
<li>E-Cat: the reported energy density would destroy the device. (The reports violate conservation of energy.) One poster says this objection is due to a mistaken assumption of perfect efficiency.</li>
</ul>
</div>
Links to industry<br />
<ul>
<li>Leonardo Corporation, Rossi's company: http://leonardocorp1996.com/</li>
<li>Ampenergo, which will receive royalties for E-Cat sales in the Americas, http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3179056.ece/BINARY/Ampenergo+Certificate+of+Organization--.pdf</li>
<li>Defkalion Green Technologies, Rossi's rivals in Greece, http://www.defkalion-energy.com/</li>
<li>http://www.fusioncatalyst.org/</li>
<li>http://www.h2incidents.org/</li>
<li>http://www.hydrogen2000.com/sfty_booklet.pdf</li>
<li>One poster reports that nickel ore is found in mainland Canada, Australia, New Caledonia, Cuba, Indonesia and Greenland, with the largest deposits in mainland Canada.</li>
</ul>Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2504518122381474607.post-79578836872230973852011-12-18T23:05:00.000-08:002011-12-19T00:00:38.686-08:00The Oil Drum, thread 1Thread at The Oil Drum, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7942.<br />
<br />
This thread is a fairly lengthy discussion, and it covers a wide range of topics, including specific calculations of isotope ratios, various scams that have been perpetuated in the past, the energy required or released by different reactions, the relative merits of some of the explanations that have been offered for LENR (including Widom-Larsen), and the economic implications if Rossi's device were to turn out to be legitimate. One of the participants was a contemporary of Fleischmann and knew him personally, and many of them had attempted to carry out their own Pd/D replications after the 1989 announcement.<br />
<br />
There was an interesting discussion of whether H+Ni -> Cu-63 is endothermic or exothermic. The conclusion was that it is probably significantly exothermic in this case. An important point related to the atomic mass of copper-63, which was subsequently the topic of a <a href="http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/10184/atomic-mass-of-copper-63">question on physics.SE</a>. There are two numbers that have been given for the mass of copper-63, one of which would make the reaction endothermic and the other exothermic. The heaver mass appears to be in error. The participants calculated the mass decrease to be .0061 GeV/c^2, or 6 MeV, which would be a significant amount of energy released into the system. A poster mentionend that the ratio of nickel-62/nickel-64 is important, and that Rossi claimed to be using enriched nickel. A point mentioned in passing was that the rates of decay of some elements <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html">are not always constant</a>. In the course of the discussion someone made use of Wolfram Alfa to <a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mass+%28Ni-62%29+%2Bmass+%28H-1%29+-+mass+%28Cu-63%29">carry out a computation</a> of the resulting mass of a reaction.<br />
<br />
One of the participants researched and taught quantum physics at Oxford for two decades. He had met Focardi and believed that the chances that Focardi and Rossi were perpetuating a scam were small, whatever else could be said of the E-Cat. He believed that there might be something that is actually happening in the device. This is his summary the key detail of a paper by J.S. Brown that he cites in support of a possible fusion reaction:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The author doesn't actually make the key point very clear, but the reason why he predicts fusion is because in the near zone, the dipolar attraction pretty much cancels the monopole repulsion. You are correct that this is a negligible effect and you still have one H in each interstitial cell. There is nothing to see from a classical chemical perspective. But, crucially the (classically non-existent) tails of the quantum gaussians will run into each other without the rapid attenuation you get normally due to the e^2/r monople repulsion. Geddit ? </blockquote>
Various examples of bad science were discussed at different points: Blacklight Power, Terawatt Research, Steorn's Orbo Technology, Scalar Waves, Deflagration Guns. One poster compared the consistency of Focardi's explanation since 1994 to that of someone offering a consistent prediction over time for the coming of the Rapture. A link was given to a <a href="http://www.thedailybell.com/604/Gary-Taubes-Good-Calories-Bad-Calories.html">2009 interview</a> of Gary Taubes, who has written a book on the premise that cold fusion is an example of bad science.<br />
<br />
There were some interesting back-of-the-envelope calculations on the economics of Ni-H power production if one proceeded from the figures reported by Rossi and Focardi. One participant said that 2.5 g nickel would yield 250 kWh, enough for the needs of one living a western lifestyle each day, and that it would not significantly diminish the supply of nickel over time for such power to be provided in mass quantities.<br />
<br />
The overall tone of the thread was balanced. Some people were clearly skeptical, while others were less so. One of the more skeptic participants had this to say about the 1989 Pons and Fleischmann experiments early on in the thread:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif;">As it turned out, there was no such effect and no actual fusion. Fleischmann and Pons had just discovered some kind of weird chemical reaction that made it looked like fusion was going on, and their continuing attempts to promote it just amounted to self-delusion.</span></blockquote>
I can appreciate that people will differ on the 1989 results, but I find this level of confidence that Fleischmann and Pons were wrong a little difficult to understand.Eric Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03152230119331380602noreply@blogger.com0