In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:15:50 -0400: Hi, [snip] >So, how do you get there? Well d-d fusion remains some kind of >possibility, but something very strange is going on if that's it. I >prefer to look toward some process that forms Be-8, with ordinary >photon emission from the excited nucleus transferring most of the >energy to the lattice, before it decays to two helium nuclei, with >some residual energy, but the problem with this is the Hagelstein >paper just published, that places an upper limit that may be too low. [snip] The problem I have with Takahashi is that Be8 is itself unstable, with a very short half life. Therefore, I would expect excited state Be8 to have a very much shorter half life, particularly given the huge amount of energy available compared to that available in ground state Be8[1]. Consequently I wonder where it finds the time to radiate energy to the environment before breaking into two alphas. It seems to me that breaking into two alphas would be the preferred means of de-excitation, and I would expect it to occur at least 99% of the time, before any energy was radiated.
[1] The difference in energy between ground state Be8 and 2 He4 nuclei is just 91 keV, yet even this is sufficient to ensure that the half life of Be8 is on the order of 1E-16 sec. At 47.6 MeV it should be on the order of 1E-23 sec. In that time, light can only travel about 4 fm, which gives it no opportunity to communicate with the rest of the lattice. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
