A cloudy world ahead

1st Official Post

    Reference:



    Enhancement of cloud formation by droplet charging
    rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsa/464/2098/2561.full.pdf


    Quote



    Shea & Smart (1995) also demonstrated ion production associated with a solar proton event in a surface ionization chamber, at Cheltenham, Maryland (398 N). This ionization was explained to be caused by muons, i.e. secondary particles generated from the solar protons. Other sources of high-energy particles in the lower atmosphere include thunderstorms (Wilson 1925; Lidvansky 2003), from which there is surface experimental evidence for accelerated electrons (Khaerdinov et al. 2005).


    Moderation in all things is sound wisdom.

    Increased cloud formation and electrification of the atmosphere could be an as yet unrecognized consequence of prolific and unregulated use of LENR in petawatt level power production. It is a good bet that LENR produces muons as a primary format of nuclear energy reformulation. Heat generation is only a minor energy pathway.



    If LENR gains traction as a primary source for global energy production, the atmosphere could experience a massive increase in water droplet ionization and atmospheric electrical charge amplification from LENR catalyzed muon creation.



    Muons from a LENR reactor can send very energetic muons high into the atmosphere where their interaction with water vapor is inevitable. This could result in a permanent loss in global fair weather conditions in a permanently overcast world. The deployed base of solar panel power production could be rendered ineffectual and the gloomy cloud shrouded earth could enter a new epoch of global cooling as little heat or light would penetrate to reach the ground.

    axil

    The inferred muons emitted from Holmlid's experiments do not have a very high energy. These would decay before reaching significant heights in the atmosphere. Are you referring to the hypothetical possibility that more powerful LENR experiments could emit much more energetic muons?


    AlainCo

    Have they been searched or looked for? What usual LENR experiments are you referring to?

    Without knowing in advance that there could be the chance of having muon (and other subatomic particle) emission I don't think it would be simple to tell whether they are being emitted or not.


    Low energy ones may cause capture reactions in materials surrounding the reactor, which would in turn cause beta decay, neutron emission, etc. or also a 511 keV signal of electron-positron annihiliation as positive muons freely decay.


    At a small level, this radiation might not necessarily be commensurate with the excess heat observed.

    • Official Post

    tons of experiments have been done with PdD electrolysis with radiation detectors, and muon or others they seldom found anything energetic...


    Time to stay near the facts, especially about fearmongering Ohio's mothers.


    There is no surprise LENR don't make any breakthrough, we have behavior that make us look stupid for rational people, when not supporting the prejudices of our critics with myth they love to support.

    Quote from AlainCo

    tons of experiments have been done with PdD electrolysis with radiation detectors, and muon or others they seldom found anything energetic...


    I get that you wanted to counter axil's extreme extrapolation based on the results from Holmlid's studies published in the mainstream scientific literature, but that doesn't sound like a very convincing answer; in which successful LENR experiments there has specifically been muon detection? And not just muons like those produced by cosmic rays which have energies in the order of several GeV at sea level, but low energy muons.


    Besides this, it looks like you misunderstood the rest of my comment. With "not necessarily be commensurate with" I meant that there would be more heat (ultimately) than radiation from nuclear processes (if any) in small-scale experiments, which is far from fear mongering.

    • Official Post

    Transmutation, as tritium, as neutrons, as energetic gammas, are found but much below what excess heat would account. It seems to be side reactions.

    Storms even consider there are some fissions happening.


    as far as we know, only He4 and heat seems proportionate to total output of energy.


    Before panicking about changing the climate (better to panic about current solar storm which as explained changing cloudiness thus weather/climate), we should battle to make reliable and convincing experiments, measuring all radiation and experiments, and understand what is happening .

    AlainCo

    Didn't you previously write this?


    Quote from AlainCo

    muons have not been detected, nor noticeable radiations (and this is a problem for LENr acceptation by physicists), in usual LENR experiments.


    What Storms described in the paper linked by Ahlfors above can be defined as noticeable radiation. It even causes activation of materials of one of his detectors. What's described would be pretty convincing evidence for LENR, although probably not what most proponents desire.


    In one case Storms apparently thinks that it's the very small fraction of unstable 40K in the potassium in the mica window of the GM detector which is having its beta decay stimulated/accelerated, but the 109 minutes half-life reported would also be consistent with that of 41Ar (a very close match in fact). Muon capture reactions could cause 41K to become 41Ar.


    Granted, without additional and different measurements it could be due to something else entirely, but the point is that muon emission might have been already detected without researchers knowing.


    Quote from AlainCo

    Before panicking about changing the climate (better to panic about current solar storm which as explained changing cloudiness thus weather/climate), we should battle to make reliable and convincing experiments, measuring all radiation and experiments, and understand what is happening .


    I know I wasn't panicking, and axil was just speculating on future possibilities as he often does.

    Ahlfors

    On a more careful read it's clear that Storms meant that the unstable elements are getting their decay accelerated, so 40K couldn't be a "typo" but actually what he intended to write. Still, it's interesting that there was a nearby isotope with virtually the same half-life he measured.


    I wonder if he's repeated the same test with thin layers of single-element materials placed directly in front of the window of his detector, or using a different detector window material altogether. I'm sure he must have had in private, but I don't know if it's been reported. That would be a very similar test to what Holmlid and Olafsson reported in 2015, but they didn't use unstable elements.

    Well, yes, the world for LENR is cloudy indeed. I've spent two months away, two weeks because I was banned here (never told why) and six other weeks for other reasons. I come back and Rossi is still doing the same (but now with a hurricane to delay even more his six years' delay on producing... "something",


    MFMP has gone to India and found out, again, that a meteorite has struck the modern day Einstein, Suhas, and the reactor is AGAIN not available and BLP... oh, bugger it, NOBODY is producing ANYTHING.


    I'll come back in four months , next time.

    Quote from AlainCo

    muons have not been detected, nor noticeable radiations (and this is a problem for LENr acceptation by physicists), in usual LENR experiments.

    muons have not been detected, except in Holmlid's experiments. Mesons of the key agent in the Rossi theory paper. Meson decay into muons. What produces all those pits in CR39?

    Quote from can

    axil

    The inferred muons emitted from Holmlid's experiments do not have a very high energy. These would decay before reaching significant heights in the atmosphere. Are you referring to the hypothetical possibility that more powerful LENR experiments could emit much more energetic muons?

    Relativistic charged particles with velocity up to 500 MeV u-1 thus 0.75 c are observed. Characteristic decay time constants for meson decay are observed, for charged and neutral kaons and also for charged pions. Magnetic deflections agree with charged pions and kaons. Theoretical predictions of the decay chains from kaons to muons in the particle beam agree with the results.


    These high energy particles can reach outer space...right?

    Quote from AlainCo

    tons of experiments have been done with PdD electrolysis with radiation detectors, and muon or others they seldom found anything energetic...


    Time to stay near the facts, especially about fearmongering Ohio's mothers.


    There is no surprise LENR don't make any breakthrough, we have behavior that make us look stupid for rational people, when not supporting the prejudices of our critics with myth they love to support.

    Muons are hard to detect especially when you are not looking for them.


    What is going on here?


    Decay of plastic and rubber three layers thick


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    By the way, plastic decays when exposed to ionizing radiation.





    Figure 1: ECCO fuel disintegrates PET bottle

    As far as I am aware of, Suhas' fuel there is composed of a LiOH-containing slurry with several metals. PET isn't compatible with soda or potassium lye. While lithium lye would be the least caustic alkali hydroxide solution, it could still damage the plastic container over time. An inexpensive test could be arranged on separate PET containers to check out the effects of a LiOH solution alone on this material over time. Hydroxides of other metals are strong bases too.


    EDIT: if the aim was to check out any possible effect caused by strange radiation on the PET container, a better idea could have been putting the powder/fuel in a thin-walled chemical resistant container (e.g. made of glass) and then placing the same in a suitable PET container.

    Alan Smith

    Looking forward to reading the results. On a related note, I've recently learned that NaOH/KOH solutions are sometimes used in PET recycling to break the material down at elevated temperature and pressure through "alkaline hydrolysis", so perhaps it's not unreasonable that over the course of weeks some amount of degradation might happen at room temperature and ambient pressure with LiOH as well, especially if other materials act as catalysts.


    http://www.sciencedirect.com/s…i/S1110062115000148#s0100



    To steer the discussion back in-topic, perhaps rather than cloud coverage a more immediate concern should be that of nearby materials, If muon some other kind of unusual or "strange", low energy emission is present.


    As I previously wrote, it looks like what confused axil (motivating this thread) was that Holmlid referred in the abstract of one of his latest papers to particle velocity ("MeV u-1" or "MeV/u") and not actual energy (MeV). However in the actual paper he's also reported:


    Quote

    [...] Both kaons and pions are possible. Also muons are possible, at >500 MeV u-1 or >50 MeV.


    This is not to say that more energetic emission is not possible, but it hasn't been reported yet by Holmlid.

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