Abd, ...you may have missed the most obvious counter-point of all.
The study of "ultra cold" neutrons is mainstream and well-known; yet it bears no resemblance at all to the wild-eyed claims of W-L. Ergo, how does one distinguish between "ultra cold" neutrons and "ultra low momentum" neutrons - and what new dynamic can change the properties of the two so dramatically? Jones -----Original Message----- From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Well, no theories should be rejected completely, because it's always possible that a theory is merely incomplete. I've never seen an explanation of W-L that actually looked at what it would predict -- all of the predictions, not just cherry-picked ones -- and compared this with experiment. The problems with WL theory are this. 1. It postulates a series of unknowns, physical phenomena assumed to be possible or to exist, without experimental evidence. 2. In at least one case, it's been claimed by Larsen that experimental evidence exists, but couldn't be published because it was proprietary. Indeed. This piece of evidence would, itself, be of enormous import. It's about the alleged shielding of gamma radiation by the heavy electrons that are postulated. 3. The proposed formation of ULM neutrons would produce many transmutations, at high levels, that are not observed. Transmutation is observed in LENR experiments, but generally at very low levels. The only transmutation in classic PdD cold fusion that occurs at high levels (in relation to the heat) is deuterium -> helium. (To be fair, the "fuel" might not be deuterium, and the heat/helium ratio that supports the fuel being deuterium might be explained by analytical bias; still, it's difficult to imagine a different reaction sequence that explains the heat/helium evidence. 4. There are reaction rate problems. Widom-Larsen theory proposes sequential reactions to explain, for example, the appearance of helium. Because the intermediate products proposed are not observed, it's necessary to assume, first, a very low reaction rate for the primary reaction (equal to the rate of the final product), then a very high reaction rate for the next step or steps in the sequence. How can that very high reaction rate be explained, where the intermetiate products would still be present at a very low incidence? I.e., neutrons at level X, very low, are generated and 100% react with local nuclei to form intermediate product Y. If the neutrons being generated are limited in number, and the original, unaffected nuclei are still, by far, the most abundant, then very few of the new Y nuclei would be affected by them. Almost all Y would remain, only a tiny amount would then react further. 5. Gamma radiation would be emitted by nuclei that have absorbed the ULM neutrons (which are basically very slow neutrons, that's all, i.e., slow neutrons with an extremely high capture cross section, the idea is that they WILL be captured locally}. These gammas are not observed. 6. To explain the absence of gamma, it's proposed that the same heavy electrons that allegedly form these neutrons also absorb the gammas. However, for this to work, the shielding has to be almost complete. What about edge effects, what happens at the edges of the phenomenon? 7. W-L theory seems to have caught on with some simply because, allegedly, "it's not fusion." But that's a purely semantic distinction. We know that helium is being produced, and the W-L mechanism starts with deuterium and electrons that are catalytic in effect. And if it ends with fusion, it's a fusion reaction sequence, and will have the known fusion heat/product ratio for deuterium/helium. In order for the ratio to be different, there must be different products, in quantities that are comparable. Those are not observed. 8. It seems that this idea that it's not fusion is based on considering fusion to be only d-d fusion, or the like. That's artificial. If we start with low-Z nuclei and end up with higher-Z nuclei, we have fusion, in a more sensible understanding. From this point of view, neutron capture is a form of fusion, of "neutronium" with itself, or a higher-Z nucleus. 9. Apparently the formation of these neutrons, while theoretically possible, would take very high energy. Where would that come from? Because slow neutrons are highly reactive, they are easy to detect. Why have such neutrons not been detected, by the formation of the expected reaction products that are seen with slow neutrons in neutron activation analysis? "Cold fusion" came to be the term for all low-energy nuclear reactions, in fact. It's possible that some will be found that don't involve fusion, but there is pretty much only one other possibility: fission. And I don't think we want to go there. By all means, research into cold fusion theory is warranted and needed. W-L seems not very likely to me, but, we must remember, the whole thing seemed pretty unlikely.
