Electron-assisted fusion

Still no explanation of temperature dependence of LENR. Also the spatial characteristic of your antennas remains much wider than the LENR jets. Even the best theories can get occasionally killed with uncomfortable experimental details (oder of Venus phases - do you remember?).

l am not a physics expert (computational science) however I believe much of the preceding discussion seems to ignore that the hydrogen embedded in a nickel matrix could have a highly modified orbital structure. Has anyone explored the orbital differences or looked for tunneling possibilities because of the combined pressure and interaction with the coulomb shell formed by the enclosing nickel.
I found several papers illustrating dramatic effects for atoms confined in buckyballs including hydrogen::

"A unique situation for an endohedral metallofullerene", Connerade et al,J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 32 (1999) L395–L403,IOP Publishing

"Endohedrally confined helium: Study of mirror collapses", Mitnik et al, PHYSICAL REVIEW A 78, 062501 2008, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.78.062501

"The finite-volume Dirac–Hartree–Fock method for confined relativistic many-electron systems", Gruchowski and Szmytkowski, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 37 (2004) 7783–7798 , doi:10.1088/0305-4470/37/31/010

Quote from Jarek

Here we are talking about spontaneously gathering of 10^6 times larger energy than expected by thermodynamics - if you don't have a very concrete amplification mechanism (flying hamster is not enough)

Amplification isn't needed if the requisite energy is already available and is simply released through a trigger of some kind. Radioactive nuclides are a notable example. If something could be done to induce increased activity, then you would have MeV of energy release without the need to build it up or concentrate it.

Quote from Jarek

Anyway, the fact that they don't observe expected radiation, requires a concrete mechanism in the moment of fusion: on nuclear scale.

Perhaps something similar to internal conversion, but drawing from a surplus electrons in the solid state environment brought there under unusual or nonequilibrium conditions, such as the buildup of static charge.

Quote from Jarek

If there would be a hidden energy there, thermodynamics says it should be released ... unless there is a huge barrier on the way, like for hypothetical proton decay - the question is if there is a smarter way for crossing this barrier, like going around it. But what is this going around the barrier? Electron's assistance can be seen as such catalizer. Otherwise, there is p + e + 762keV -> n or electron capture - both of them require large investment of energy.

The thermodynamics argument is a good one. Conclusion: activity is unlikely to be induced in radionuclides through normal thermodynamics. There is indeed a barrier (the Coulomb barrier) in the case of an alpha emitter, but it goes the opposite way in this case, keeping alpha particles within the unstable nucleus. Electrons, which you mention, seem like a most promising path to compromising this barrier sufficiently to increase activity. For electron capture, a weak interaction, it is not so much an amount of energy that is relevant, if we're talking about exothermic reactions, but instead its very low probability. The weak interaction has a cross section, and a variable that can be adjusted in this setting is the flux of incident electrons. Increase that flux significantly, in the form of additional time spent by electrons in the nuclear volume, and you'll increase the rate of electron captures, even if there is a very small cross section. A similar argument would seem to apply to beta decay.

Quote from Jarek

After fusion you have a nucleus with MeV scale of excess energy, which should be quickly released - the question is how it's done:
- as a single gamma - seems usually excluded by experiment,
- as lots of gammas - it would require a long sequence of intermediate states (?),
- as nonlocalized EM impulse (not gamma), like cylidrical wave for "linear antenna"-like p-e-p collapse.

Not in your list is a process analogous to internal conversion — the imparting of all of the energy of the gamma to a single electron. Normally this happens to inner shell electrons, and the probability varies from one transition to another. But if there are lots and lots of electrons where they shouldn't be, one can imagine a greatly increased probability.

I also like the EM impulse. I think of this as being similar to internal conversion, but spread out between a lot of electrons. This one seems much less likely to me, though, than having all of the energy dumped into a single electron.

In order to stay within quantum mechanics, we must assume that having lots of gammas would require lots of transitions between levels we haven't seen before; i.e., a much more granular nuclear level scheme than known up to know.

Quote from Jarek

however, MeV-scale electrons should still lead to observable effects in the experiments (?)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_par…raction_with_other_matter

This is an important question. Keep in mind that the energies associated with typical radioactive decays are around 0-6 MeV (roughly). When an energetic electron is stopped in matter, it skips like a rock along the surface of a pond, with only a very small percentage being delivered to the surrounding material at any given point as it travels. The energy is primarily removed through bremsstrahlung photons, when the electron is deflected from its course, and from characteristic photons, from the excitation of atomic electrons. My understanding is that you can have an MeV electron that is stopped without seeing MeV photons or even hard x-rays.

Related to the question above are several others:

• What is the spectrum of bremsstrahlung photons expected for energetic electrons in this energy range? (Characteristic photons from electronic transitions will be in the range of 0-40 keV, say, along some kind of curve.)
• In a typical LENR experiment with radiation detection that saw excess heat, in what photon energy ranges are the materials being used (SS, quartz, etc.) transparent?
• In a typical LENR experiment with radiation detection that saw excess heat, were there detectors present that would pick up emissions in the ranges that would make it through the container?

One wants to go back over all of the experiments that reported excess heat and ask these questions. We know that it is straightforward to shield the photons that arise from naturally occurring alpha decay, beta decay and electron capture. But what does the radiation profile of a system with a stainless steel pressurized container look like when 1 W or 10 W per cm^3 is being produced?

That's a graph of dσ/dE, the differential cross section with respect to energy. Integrate that over all energies and you get the total interaction cross section. The cross section will depend upon the abundance of high-Z elements in the substrate. At low Z it will be a small quantity in absolute terms. A question to be investigated in this connection is what is the background, and what intensity would be required to significantly surpass the background for a given detector efficiency, substrate in a specific experiment, and set of reaction Q values for interesting beta-producing reactions.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

Data supports the possibility that Li7+H1->Be8->2He4 + 17 MeV fusion is one of the main contributors to the excess energy. In accordance with it the injecting of deuterons into a molten lithium leads into formation of heat and huge amount of alpha particles - at five thousands of volts only. But only at the temperature of lithium few degrees above melting point (180.54 °C), not above. Once the lithium gets hotter just a bit more (200 - 250 °C), then the reaction stops,

Fine, but where are the gammas and neutrons produced by the 9 MeV alphas travelling in the Li?

Quote from Peter Ekstrom

Fine, but where are the gammas and neutrons produced by the 9 MeV alphas travelling in the Li?

I believe you have mentioned this more than once. I take it seriously. Please indicate what energies and what flux rates of gammas and neutrons one might expect in such system. Each 9 or17 MeV (or whatever seems possible and/or claimed) alpha would have what likelihood of generating what energy of gamma and/or neutron on interaction with say ⁷Li or say ⁵⁸Ni.

Thanks for your expertise, and for possibly saving some lives-- if that is a consequence,
Longview

/* Fine, but where are the gammas and neutrons produced by the 9 MeV alphas travelling in the Li? */

The reaction Li7+H1->Be8->2He4 + 17 MeV is aneutronic, if I calculate well. At second, I already explained here, that the same mechanism which catalyzes the reaction (by strong local acceleration of source component of LENR) leads into deceleration of products of reaction and their absorption within lattice. It's mirror-like symmetric process acceleration and braking.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Physi…gy_particles_from/d2fr2yf

What the physicists also don't understand is, how the quantum mechanics applies in cold fusion. The acceleration and compression of atom nuclei along straight line creates very dense area of vacuum formed by their conjugated pilot waves - the atom nuclei get entangled for a moment and the resulting dense area of vacuum behaves like the tunnel or worm hole. It therefore acts like the waveguide for resulting gamma ray photons and prohibits them to escape from reaction zone by total reflection mechanism.

In my theory the collinear character of collision also applies in similar way, like the formation of dark matter filaments along collinear galaxies. We can observe similar phenomena during solar eclipses and planetary conjunction (Allais effect). The high concentration of scalar waves presented here acts there like the scratching of surface of liquid metal droplets or like their immersion into a more dense fluid: it makes the merging of atom nuclei easier because the vacuum momentarily behaves nearly as dense there, as the surface of atom nuclei, which eliminates their surface tension and activation energy barrier required for their merging.

http://www.aetherwavetheory.in…urface/Gallium_metal1.avi

One theory of this anomalous behavior is presented here http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar…uses-on-neutrons#comments The neutrons are famous by their disappearance in magnetic field. I presume, it's a manifestation of weak charge oscillations (i.e. the analogy of neutrino oscillations - just inside the neutrons instead of free space) and we already have some experimental indicia for this hypothesis. http://www.nature.com/nature/j…3/n7197/full/453864a.html There is still quite lotta stuffs, which the mainstream physicists are not aware of. The Astroblaster effect or electron shielding are therefore just two pieces of the more complex puzzle. The blind pushing of one theory against all other explanations therefore has no chance for success here: we already have over sixty theories of cold fusion, and none of them works well, because they all deal only with particular aspect of cold fusion each. Whereas the final result is enabled by synergy of multiple effects.

Another interesting paper indicating a shortening of hydrogen bonds based on electrons changing orbitals:

"Electronic structure of homoleptic transition metal hydrides: TiH4, VH4, CrH4, MnH4, FeH4, CoH4, and NiH4", Hood et al, J. Chem. Phys. 71, 705 (1979); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.438357

the following paper of first principles calculations found a small attraction between H atoms at hollow (100 plane) surface sites because of electron screening:

"For the HL ( 100 ) site, we find even a small attraction between the H atoms."

in:

Kresse, G., and J. Hafner. "First-principles study of the adsorption of atomic H on Ni (111),(100) and (110)." Surface science 459.3 (2000): 287-302.

Quote from Longview

I believe you have mentioned this more than once. I take it seriously. Please indicate what energies and what flux rates of gammas and neutrons one might expect in such system. Each 9 or17 MeV (or whatever seems possible and/or claimed) alpha would have what likelihood of generating what energy of gamma and/or neutron on interaction with say 7Li or say 58Ni.

Yes, I have posted some calculations based in Stelson's publication:
Safety: Lithium Intoxication - Lithium Side Effects ?

vector meson dominance

Does this family of theories motion vector meson dominance as a factor?

Electron attraction mediated by Coulomb repulsion, Hamo et al, Nature 535, 395–400 (21 July 2016) doi:10.1038/nature18639