At 10:14 AM 8/18/2012, Eric Walker wrote:
On Aug 17, 2012, at 18:28, Jeff Berkowitz <[email protected]> wrote:
> Widom Larsen postulate that the neutrons are produced when a
proton captures an electron. The process is endothermic (energy
must be supplied or it will not occur) so the neutrons initially
have extremely low energy ("cold"). As a result they are nearly
stationary and don't leave the material. Also the reaction
cross-section with nearby nuclei is high leading to a cascade of
nuclear effects that product the observed energy.
I believe the usual nuetron activation would lead to some
short-lived isotopes. But what is seen are shifts to stable
isotopes, which is a detail that would need to be accounted
for. There are low levels of tritium, which is radioactive, but
this appears to be the sole exception and can possibly be accounted
for in other ways.
W-L theory proposes ordinary neutron activation. The theory is, ah,
"unusual" in that they propose the formation of neutrons on the
surface of metal hydrides, through a "heavy electron patch" that
supposedly exists there. These "heavy electrons" can, supposedly,
more readily combine with protons to form neutrons, and they assert
that these neutrons will be very low momentum, which they call
Ultra-Low-Momentum. Maybe.
However, from there, it gets weirder. They propose a series of
reactions, instead of just one, because to get to the known main
product, helium, they must have more than one neutron activation *in
sequence.* They don't look at the rate issues.
That is, if N neutrons are being formed, to get to He-4, they would
need to activate He-3, which is absent. The most common and probably
most available reactant would be deuterium. So they add a neutron,
they would get tritium as the main product. That does not work,
because tritium is observed at levels far below those of helium. So
they have to have a different first reaction. I think they choose
lithium, which is only present in some types of cells.
Actually, at the moment, I forget how they do it. Someone read their
papers and explain, okay?
What I recall is that they need at least two reactions to happen
sequentially, but the neutrons formed would not preferentially react
with the product of the first reaction, so we'd expect the first
reaction product to stick around, and the second product to be rare.
And then there is the problem that neutrons are promiscuous. They
would react with almost everything in sight. I think some materials
have higher capture cross-sections, so that's a complication. In any
case, some of the activations would produce gamma decays, and the
gammas are not observed.
So to explain that, they need to invent *another* entirely new
process, a second miracle, beyond the first one of neutron formation.
They postulate that the heavy electron layer that creates the
neutrons also functions as an extremely effective gamma shield.
That has military implications, all of its own. They managed to
patent it, but ... the USPTO does not validate patents, normally,
unless they appear to be *impossible.* (Cold fusion is allegedly
impossible, and the UPSTO appears to be still following that line,
though it is seriously out of touch with the scientific journals.
There is a place for a bit of lobbying....)
I don't see that Larsen has *ever* addressed the serious problems
with W-L theory. Nor has Mr. Krivit asked him the hard questions and
reported his answers. Years ago, Krivit did report Larsen's response
when Richard Garwin asked him about evidence for the gamma shield.
"Propietary," was Larsen's response.
I've called W-L theory a "hoax." That's because it pretends to
present evidence that falls apart under examination. It's doing damage.
If W-L theory is real, it's a bit like Rossi being real. We can't
tell from the public evidence and independent confirmation.
The recent theory presented from Brillouin is a bit different. He
does hypothesis neutron formation, but in lattice sites, claiming a
different principle, which I'll leave to the physicists to dismantle
or accept. Once formed, the neutron would indeed be ULM, it seems,
because of how it's formed. It would then preferentially react with
hydrogen (i.e., a proton or deuteron). If what was formed was a
dineutron, and if the dineutron is stable for a nanosecond or so,
what we would see woudl be helium-4 as a product, most of the time.
(with deuterium loading).
It's a bit more reasonable. Missing: how is the 24 MeV resulting
reaction energy dissipated? Again, I'll leave this to the physicists.
It seems a little closer to me to plausibility than W-L theory.
