From Professor Zhang Hang, July 2024
Dear Alan Smith
I have been considering a philosophical question recently, and of course physics is a branch of philosophy.
Oppenheimer said, "Deep things in science are not discovered because they are useful; they are discovered because they are possible to discover. This is a profound and necessary truth."
I looked at the history of superconductivity and a hundred years ago Dennis the Dutchman discovered that mercury was a superconductor by freezing it with liquid helium. Of course mercury was useless as a superconductor, it was just the discovery of a natural phenomenon, an experiment to detect microscopic phenomena with macroscopic quantities, and the experiment was successful, with 100 percent reproducibility, and laid the foundation for the discipline of superconductivity.
In order to make superconductivity applications, people try to use solid as superconducting materials, looking for higher temperature superconducting materials, more than 40 years ago, China's Zhao Zhongxian academician with liquid nitrogen cooling of a metal oxide, the discovery of a new superconducting materials, laying the foundation for high-temperature superconductivity, so that the superconductivity can be applied, because liquid nitrogen is cheap, the project cost is low.
Now people toward room temperature superconductivity, want to use superconducting materials directly in the atmosphere without liquid nitrogen, and it is estimated that the results will soon come out.
A look back at the history of cold fusion
In 1989 Fleischmann and Pons discovered the phenomenon of cold fusion, electrolysis of heavy water with palladium as electrodes in heavy water, measured superheat, put forward a reaction channel formula, D + D = He4, does not produce neutrons do not come out of the gamma, laying the foundation of the discipline of cold fusion.
This experiment is similar to the discovery of superconductivity, with a macroscopic amount of detection of microscopic phenomena, of course, the detection of excess heat is much more troublesome than the detection of resistance, and the precision is not high.
Now there are many cold fusion research methods, heating method, microwave method, solid state experiments, liquid state experiments, beam target method, glow discharge method, LEC method, laser excitation method and so on.
Cold fusion detection methods include calorimetric method, nuclear product method, neutron detection, gamma detection, charged particle detection, voltage detection, current detection, etc. Among them, calorimetric method, voltage detection, current detection belongs to the macroscopic amount of detection, and other nuclear detection belongs to the microscopic amount of detection.
Later, cold fusion was renamed as low-energy nuclear reactions, condensed matter nuclear science, so it seems that cold fusion research has formed two schools of thought, cold fusion school and low-energy nuclear reaction school.
With calorimetry, this kind of macroscopic quantitative detection, the reproducibility is not too good, many experiments can observe superheat, but not easy to repeat, so that the validation of cold fusion has encountered a great obstacle.
I have conducted experiments with calorimetry for many years, and I have detected superheat, but the amount is not large and the reproducibility is not good.
I am wondering how to do this, do I want to increase the superheat directly to COP3 or above for engineering prototypes, or do I want to settle for the second best and verify the phenomenon of low-energy nuclear reactions first, I am almost 60 years old (I am still young among cold fusion researchers), and my physical strength and memory are starting to decline. Recently, to do experiments need to write the operation steps on paper, operation step by step check box to confirm, otherwise there will be operation confusion, which did not need, in the past, memorized in the brain direct operation will not make mistakes.
The year before last, we began to explore laser experiments, testing nuclear products found transmutation elements, checked the information, France, Italy and other countries have found such a phenomenon. Of course, Mr. Tian Jian's team also found this phenomenon, although this phenomenon can not do engineering prototype, but for the verification of low-energy nuclear reactions is meaningful.
Last year, I read a report from MIT, and I was enlightened. MIT proposed that low-energy nuclear reactions are nuclear fission, and the detection of nuclear products and neutrons and charged particles can be used as evidence. The reference was astounding, and it dawned on me to read it. Verifying neutron radiation is 9 orders of magnitude more accurate than verifying superheat, and of course this is done with microscopic quantities.
Life is short and a white horse can pass by, so where to go from here needs to be carefully and thoughtfully considered.
Whether to take the road of engineering prototypes or to take the road of verification of nuclear reactions, need to make a choice, I have a poor theoretical foundation, but the experimental skills are slightly better, time waits for no one, need to make decisions, I estimate that the life of the engineering prototype time is not enough, can only do some verification of low-energy nuclear reactions of the groundwork, for the academic construction to make a modest contribution.
Determined the direction, on the action, after nearly a year of hard work, in Liu Bin, Zhou Kang, Ma Zhongfa, Zhang Wushou, Wang Tieshan, and other help, in accordance with the methods of MIT, finally made the experiment, confirming the production of fast neutrons, see the imprint of the charged particles, the nuclear transmutation elements and the number of fast neutrons basically coincide with the time to do the experiment I do not have the bottom of the barrel at all, and the results came out when I was assured.
Validated MIT's program, perhaps I moved fast, actually did it before MIT. Measured the production of about 70 fast neutrons per second, which is too small, if the production of 10E12 neutrons per second to have a watt of heat, fortunately the amount of value is small and safe, if the amount of value is large I can not live.
Now we are in the process of repeatability verification, and applied for a utility model patent for the improved part, and the repeatability verification results will be out next month.
According to MIT's program to make the validation conclusions can be said to be of no practical use, just a scientific discovery of experimental verification, back to Oppenheimer's words, "the deeper aspects of science are not discovered because they are useful, they are discovered because they are likely to be discovered. This is a profound and necessary truth."
Just make a discovery, how to apply it is a matter for engineers, you can't rush it, get down to work and make sense of natural phenomena.
I wish you good health.
Zhang Hang
