Document: Isotopic Composition of Rossi Fuel Sample (Unverified)

As a next step I will take a look at the Gamow factor applied to the fission daughters and see where that goes.

Quote from Hermes

The only problem is the fission energy for Pt is around 100 MeV or so (compared with 200 MeV for uranium).

Perhaps palladium will see higher fission activity than platinum, then (see the second list in this link). I'll know more once I add the Gamow factor to fission reactions.

Quote from Hermes

The next good point you allude to is that if Pt fission does occur, then stable products are most likely. That's unexpected! On the other hand there will likely be less frequent channels which do create radio-active daughters. So I think the model is wrong but I do like your thinking.

Yes — it was an edited list of platinum and palladium fission reactions leading to stable products rather than a model. A prerequisite of a model would be something that says how likely a particular branch is. With your additional advice I can start to make some models. How unrealistic the general approach is will depend upon the activity that is predicted from the unstable branches.

Quote from Eric Walker

Perhaps palladium will see higher fission activity than platinum, then (see the second list in this link). I'll know more once I add the Gamow factor to fission reactions.

Alas no. Palladium is much less fissionable than Platinum. If you like I can give you a list of all fission products with Gamow factors for any isotope you care to name. IMHO fission is too slow, too crude to account for LENR. We need something more probable yet more delicate. I think you know what I have in mind! But let's discuss that privately.

@Eric & Hermes
Two comments and a question:

N/Z ratio and stability
If you fission a heavy nucleus both fragments will end up away from the line of stability - they will have the N/Z (number of neutrons/number of protons) ratio of the parent which is too high. The fragments will thus necessarily be radioactive and decay by beta-minus decay (exactly as actinide fission).

Element analysis versus isotope analysis
There is a danger of only doing elemental analysis: an element can be transported to a different place in the sample by chemical reactions. Element ratios could then be changed without any nuclear reactions. Isotope analysis would be much better. There could be effects also in this case, but they will be very small since isotopes of a given element have very similar properties.

Alpha production
Why do you talk about production of alphas when you are discussing fission? Alpha decay is not considered to be fission in nuclear physics.

Hi Peter,

Quote from Peter Ekstrom

If you fission a heavy nucleus both fragments will end up away from the line of stability - they will have the N/Z (number of neutrons/number of protons) ratio of the parent which is too high. The fragments will thus necessarily be radioactive and decay by beta-minus decay (exactly as actinide fission).

There's two things that are different in this case — (1) I'm looking at the question of heavy screening of nuclei lighter than the actinides and seeing what kind of activity might be expected (if you really crank up the electron screening); and (2) we're supposing spontaneous fission rather than fission following upon neutron capture. Although the fragments may fall away from the line of stability, there are many branches that lead to stable daughters, so much will depend upon what the predicted rates look like.

Quote from Peter Ekstrom

There is a danger of only doing elemental analysis

I'm not doing elemental analysis, per se. I'm attempting to do modeling of decay rates of isotopes of various elements under electron screening, and this is why I've been talking about elements such as "platinum" and "palladium". Really I'm talking about isotopes of these elements.

Quote from Peter Ekstrom

Why do you talk about production of alphas when you are discussing fission? Alpha decay is not considered to be fission in nuclear physics.

Alpha decay arises by the same mechanism as spontaneous fission (tunneling through the Coulomb barrier), so it's natural to deal with both. Alpha decay is being used to look at the helium in LENR helium/heat experiments, and fission is being used to look at the heat. As Hermes suggests, perhaps it's all very unpromising!

Quote from Eric Walker

There's two things that are different in this case — (1) I'm looking at the question of heavy screening of nuclei lighter than the actinides and seeing what kind of activity might be expected (if you really crank up the electron screening); and (2) we're supposing spontaneous fission rather than fission following upon neutron capture. Although the fragments may fall away from the line of stability, there are many branches that lead to stable daughters, so much will depend upon what the predicted rates look like.

The line of stable nuclei is bent all the way down to light nuclei (where fission is endothermic), so fission will always yield neutron rich nuclei. Even if some end up in stable nuclei, most will be radioactive with easily detected radiation. No radiation, no fission! And how does fission help you to explain reactions with Ni?

Quote from Eric Walker

I'm not doing elemental analysis, per se. I'm attempting to do modeling of decay rates of isotopes of various elements under electron screening, and this is why I've been talking about elements such as "platinum" and "palladium". Really I'm talking about isotopes of these elements.

There are experimental papers where only elemental analysis was performed. What I meant was that these results may be unreliable.

Quote from Eric Walker

Alpha decay arises by the same mechanism as spontaneous fission (tunneling through the Coulomb barrier), so it's natural to deal with both. Alpha decay is being used to look at the helium in LENR helium/heat experiments, and fission is being used to look at the heat. As Hermes suggests, perhaps it's all very unpromising!

Both alpha decay and fission are more complex than just barrier penetration! I agree with Hermes that fission is probably not the explanation for LENR.

Quote from Peter Ekstrom

The line of stable nuclei is bent all the way down to light nuclei (where fission is endothermic), so fission will always yield neutron rich nuclei. Even if some end up in stable nuclei, most will be radioactive with easily detected radiation.

This is reasoning from first principles, and it deserves a proper analysis.

Quote from Peter Ekstrom

And how does fission help you to explain reactions with Ni?

I don't imagine fission and alpha decay explain Ni LENR. My suspicion for Ni: once you get down into the medium and light nuclei, any heat goes back to a combination of induced electron capture/beta decay and things going on with heavier impurities.

Quote from Peter Ekstrom

There are experimental papers where only elemental analysis was performed. What I meant was that these results may be unreliable.

Ah, yes. I got the impression somewhere that elemental analysis is cheaper. But the papers that make use of it solely are almost useless for this kind of investigation.

Quote from Peter Ekstrom

Both alpha decay and fission are more complex than just barrier penetration!

Not alpha decay and fission — spontaneous alpha decay and spontaneous fission. In light of this clarification, can you elaborate on what you have in mind? Obviously when heavy nuclei are left in excited states for one reason or another you get both of these processes. But those are not cases I'm considering right now. Considerations going back to spin are also important, and I'm not worrying about them right now, but I don't think they'll be sufficient to change the general direction of any analysis.

Quote from Hermes

You can use the code I published earlier to calculate the Gamow factor for every possible fission anf you will get some nice assymmetric "fission yield" curves.

Once I have all of the theoretical fission branches for a given parent nuclide, the Gamow factors and the activities for each branch, how do I aggregate activities in order to calculate the aggregate power for, e.g., a mole of 190Pt? To get the power output, do I simply sum up the activities of the individual fission branches multiplied by their Q values, or is there a further normalization step that is required across the branches before the output for each branch can be summed together?

@Eric Walker. The Gamow factors can only give a relative rate, not an absolute one. Missing are the probabilities that fission daughters materialize. The code I gave was for alpha emission, but you can imagine that more equal fragments are more probable so possibly some binomial factor is required. It would make a good paper....

@

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

I have discussed possible artifacts with heat/helium ad nauseum.

Ha! Point taken. I have no desire to seek nausea. I consider the heat helium ratio to be an irrelevant distraction today, but it was certainly relevant 20 years ago. We need to move on.

Quote from Peter Ekstrom

Why do you talk about production of alphas when you are discussing fission? Alpha decay is not considered to be fission in nuclear physics.

Because the theory behind alpha emission and fission are so similar.

Quote from Eric Walker

I don't imagine fission and alpha decay explain Ni LENR. My suspicion for Ni: once you get down into the medium and light nuclei, any heat goes back to a combination of induced electron capture/beta decay and things going on with heavier impurities.

Somebody linked and old russian paper, which focuses on Ti and the induced vanishing of Ti₄₈! (Ti₄₈ transmutes to a chain of other elements)

https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0101/0101089.pdf

and his daughter paper: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LochakGlowenergyn.pdf

I believe that this would be a far more optimal starting point to do calculations, as we now that the experiment is highly reproducible!

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

I have answered in detail on newvortex.

I don't do 'newvortex'. It's poor form to answer a post here with a post elsewhere.

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

I calculated a correlation coefficient for the full Miles data from Storms and combined with the six control experiments, the coerricient was 0.89.

How does one do that? The Fig. 47 data are for He atoms produced by 'LENR', which is alternatively evidenced by 'excess heat'. If there is no excess heat, there supposedly is no LENR, and there would be supposedly no He. The Figure though is trying to illustrate that the amount of He produced is consistent with what one would expect from the nuclear energy released in the putative LENR. Folding the controls' data into the plot is an 'apples and oranges' situation. All it really does is bias the data set numerically with more extreme values ('flyers', 'outliers'), and as I noted, the data set is already strongly impacted by that problem. Adding more of that in just hurts. it doesn't help. Of course the correlation coefficient will 'improve'. You're taking a data set that lies as a group far away from the (0,0) point, and adding several points in at (0,0). That will force a line through basically the center of mass of the original data (its average) and (0,0). (By the way, it seems that you have taken a data set that 'shows' (not really) that various levels of excess heat all lead to a consistent energy per He atom, as shown by the near random correlation coefficient, and turned it into one that proves the opposite (which is what a correlation coefficient of 0.89 implies). Is that what you intended?)

To answer my own question, you do it by 'just doing it'. You just chuck the new points into your calculator and churn out a correlation coefficient, with no regards to whether or not combining the data in one plot is legitimate. The numerics you end up with make no sense however, as would be expected from such a bogus procedure.

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

The time is 4440 seconds (I provide sources) and this was a constant.

I noted this number in my post. It is the nominal time to produce 500cc of electrolysis gases, which is computed from the current flow. But the experimental runs were not all at the same current flows, they were varied, sometimes within the same run. I assume the idea is to correlate He production with 'LENR' activity as measured by apparent excess heat. That makes sense right? So it doesn't make sense to collect gases when no excess heat is showing, you should see only background. Further, isn't the idea that as the 'LENR' proceeds, more He will be produced, perhaps in proportion to the total activity as measured by apparent excess heat? If yes, then you at least want to take the sample during the event, otherwise the He will be flushed out of the sample cell when the 'excess heat' quits.

Furthermore, if the 'time' is fixed at 4440 seconds, then there is no apparent connection between the two numbers in the data table (He atoms/500cc and He atoms/W-sec). That simply makes no sense. No, the time I computed and posted as the last column in the data table is somehow related to the magnitude of 'LENR' activity. But as I noted, Miles never explains this.

I believe my procedure was correct. Take Miles' He atoms/Watt/second, divide by the given He atoms/Watt to get 1/seconds, and reciprocate to get the unidentified time in seconds. And plotting the He atoms produced as a function of this time gives a plot that looks like a spike dilution process.

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

The time is dependent only on electrolysis power and gas evolution, and this is after the cell has stabilized, I'm sure,

Exactly, which varies from run to run, so a fixed 4440 is not correct. Your "I'm sure" indicates to me that your interpolating on what Miles said, and not quoting his actual words. In other words, like me, you're guessing what Miles did. That's one of my underlying objections to most CF research reports so far, insufficient information given forcing readers to guess at what was done, usually when what is being guessed at is very important, like this case.

Quote from Hermes

Eric Walker. The Gamow factors can only give a relative rate, not an absolute one. Missing are the probabilities that fission daughters materialize. The code I gave was for alpha emission, but you can imagine that more equal fragments are more probable so possibly some binomial factor is required. It would make a good paper....

Yes, indeed. In the model above for the Miles experiment I also incorporated the code from this HyperPhysics page, where Rod Nave obtains an actual decay constant and half-life using the relation P = exp(-2G), where G is his calculation of the Gamow factor. (So now I have both your code and this code living side by side, which are used in different printouts, but I haven't compared the factors yet to see if they're equivalent. I suspect they are not exactly the same.) Nave uses the assumptions about the alpha particle knocking around the nucleus trying to escape, calculating the velocity and the barrier assault frequency, and then making use of the probability to get the decay constant.

When I looked into codes used for calculating fission activity (e.g., FREYA), they all seemed either to rely on databases of existing experimental measurements or, where those data were not available, to interpolate from existing measurements. I could not find screening as a parameter, which would seem to imply something more ab initio than that, but perhaps I did not look hard enough. So I might need to do something along the lines you suggest, which I will need to look into more before I fully understand. Do you have a guess as to what incorporating a binomial factor might look like? How would you validate that sensible answers are being obtained?

Btw, your calculation of the Gamow factor goes to zero for a large number of palladium fission branches when approaching an electron screening of 20, which was what was needed to make Nave's code yield the alpha production seen in Miles's experiment (given one or two arbitrary assumptions about the amount of platinum available). You can adjust the screening down quite a bit and still get promising factors. So if there's something about anisotropy that implies that this much screening is not actually needed to obtain a given activity, there's hope. There were a LOT of branches that give rise to beta activity, but (1) a (very) cursory glance suggested that the half-lives were short and (2) one of my working assumptions is that weak interactions are somehow accelerated by the same mechanism of a superabundance of electrons. So perhaps those very short half-lives go down to nothing for the most part.

Quote from Wyttenbach

I believe that this would be a far more optimal starting point to do calculations, as we now that the experiment is highly reproducible!

Do you know of any reproductions?

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

While I'd have preferred to use actual XP measurements (which can be negative)

When you say "negative" I suppose you mean null. With no heat. Not endothermic. The experiments never show an endothermic reaction. Miles did use the null tests. Collecting effluent gas from experiments with no heat is very important. It is how Miles established the baseline.

The sequence of events in these experiments is a little confusing. The gas is collected for two days, and the flow of gas fills the collection flask 40 times during that time. The excess heat from the last of these 40 time segments is recorded for the sample. (Or no heat, if there is none.) The gas flow rate is both computed and measured: "Actual measurements of the gas evolution rate by the displacement of water yielded 6.75 ± 0.25 ml min-1 for cell A and 6.69 ± 0.15 ml min-1 for cell B." Shanahan's concerns about the flow rate and volume are answered in the papers. As usual he has not read or understood what the authors say.

You may find my summary plus the quotes from Miles easier to follow than the original papers. Starting on p. 4 here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJintroducti.pdf