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jlf1961 -> RE: Just Pick a theory, a short list of conspiracy theories (2/8/2010 2:45:19 PM)
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Again, if you have developed a fusion process that produces more energy than it takes to initiate the process, I challenge you to 1) apply for a patent, proving the process works as required by the patent office, and 2) announce the process to the mainstream media and scientific journals thus bypassing the conspiracy to keep such processes secret.
Considering that no one has been able to duplicate cold fusion experiments thus proving your claim, I agree with the previous statement that you actually have one.
As for calling the current technology antiqued, it is the only provable system working.
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Inconsistencies with conventional physics
Probability of reaction
Because nuclei are all positively charged, they strongly repel one another.[30] Normally, in the absence of a catalyst such as a muon, very high kinetic energies are required to overcome this repulsion.[108] Extrapolating from known rates at high energies down to energies available in cold fusion experiments, the rate for uncatalyzed fusion at room-temperature energy would be 50 orders of magnitude lower than needed to account for the reported excess heat.[109] [110]
Since the 1920s, it has been known that hydrogen and its isotopes can dissolve in certain solids at high densities so that their separation can be relatively small, and that electron charge inside metals can partially cancel the repulsion between nuclei. These facts suggest the possibility of higher cold fusion rates than those expected from a simple application of Coulomb's law. However, modern theoretical calculations show that the effects should be too small to cause significant fusion rates.[111] Supporters of cold fusion pointed to experiments where bombarding metals with deuteron beams seems to increase reaction rates, and suggested to the DOE commission in 2004 that electron screening could be one explanation for this enhanced reaction rate.[112][113]
Observed branching ratio
Deuteron fusion is a two-step process,[114] in which an unstable high energy intermediary is formed:
D + D → 4He* + 24 MeV
High energy experiments have observed only three decay pathways for this excited-state nucleus, with the branching ratio showing the probability that any given intermediate will follow a particular pathway.[115] The products formed via these decay pathways are:
n + 3He + 3.3 MeV (50%)
p + 3H + 4.0 MeV (50%)
4He + γ + 24 MeV (10−6)
Only about one in one million of the intermediaries decay along the third pathway, making its products comparatively rare when compared to the other paths.[77] If one watt of nuclear power were produced from deuteron fusion consistent with known branching ratios, the resulting neutron and tritium (3H) production would be easily measured.[77] Some researchers reported detecting 4He but without the expected neutron or tritium production; such a result would require branching ratios strongly favouring the third pathway, with the actual rates of the first two pathways lower by at least five orders of magnitude than observations from other experiments, directly contradicting mainstream-accepted branching probabilities.[116] Those reports of 4He production did not include detection of gamma rays, which would require the third pathway to have been changed somehow so that gamma rays are no longer emitted.[77]
Conversion of gamma rays to heat
The γ-rays of the 4He pathway are not observed. It has been proposed that the 24 MeV excess energy is transferred in the form of heat into the host metal lattice prior to the intermediary's decay. However, the speed of the decay process together with the inter-atomic spacing in a metallic crystal makes such a transfer inexplicable in terms of conventional understandings of momentum and energy transfer.
Proposed explanations
Cold fusion researchers have described possible cold fusion mechanisms (e.g., electron shielding of the nuclear Coulomb barrier), but they have not received mainstream acceptance. In 2002, Gregory Neil Derry described them as ad hoc explanations that didn't coherently explain the experimental results.
Many groups trying to replicate Fleischmann and Pons' results have reported alternative explanations for their original positive results, like problems in the neutron detector in the case of Georgia Tech or bad wiring in the thermometers at Texas A&M. These reports, combined with negative results from some famous laboratories, led most scientists to conclude that no positive result should be attributed to cold fusion, at least not on a significant scale.
Although, there is some promising research that is being taken a bit more seriously.
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Now Pamela Mosier-Boss and colleagues at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in San Diego, California, are claiming to have made a "significant" discovery – clear evidence of the products of cold fusion.
On 23 March, the team presented its work at the American Chemical Society's spring conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, a few months after the study was published in a peer-reviewed journal
Using a similar experimental setup to Fleischmann and Pons, the researchers found the "tracks" left behind by high-energy neutrons, which, they suggest, emerge from the fusion of a deuterium and tritium atom.
The team used a low-tech particle detector: a plastic called CR-39 that is otherwise used for spectacle lenses. When CR-39 is bombarded with subatomic charged particles, a small pit forms in the material with each impact.
The researchers placed a sample of CR-39 in contact with a gold or nickel cathode in an electrochemical cell filled with a mixture of palladium chloride, lithium chloride and deuterium oxide (D2O), so-called "heavy water". When a current was passed through the cell, palladium and deuterium became deposited on the cathode.
Triple tracks
After two to three weeks, the team found a small number of "triple tracks" in the plastic – three 8-micrometre-wide pits radiating from a point (see diagram, top right). The team says such a pattern occurs when a high-energy neutron strikes a carbon atom inside the plastic and shatters it into three charged alpha particles that rip through the plastic leaving tracks. No such tracks were seen if the experiment was repeated using normal rather than heavy water.
Johan Frenje at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an expert at interpreting CR-39 tracks produced in conventional high-temperature fusion reactions, says the team's interpretation of what produced the tracks is valid.
"I must say that the data and their analysis seem to suggest that energetic neutrons have been produced," he says, although he would like to see the results confirmed quantitatively.
More controversial is the team's suggestion for the process that produced the neutrons. High-energy neutrons are unlikely to be produced by a normal chemical reaction, says Mosier-Boss. So, it's possible, she says, they are created during the fusion of deuterium and tritium atoms tightly packed in palladium framework at the cathode. The tritium also being a product of the fusion of two deuterium atoms.
Some researchers in the cold fusion field agree. "In my view [it's] a cold fusion effect," says Peter Hagelstein, also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Full article
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