(continued)
The nonsense on Vortex-l:
The possible health hazard from muons is dismissed by reference to an article which has no such conclusion, rather it says that the cosmic ray flux from muons implies (probably at sea level) about one hundred muons per second passing through your head.
If UDD is actually functioning as a muon factory, for high-energy muons, anyone close to it will possibly be exposed to far higher flux. If there is measureable heat from the reaction, as is now claimed, the reaction rate may be high enough to be of concern. If this was neutron radiation at that level, it would be quickly fatal.
Muons are like heavy, energetic beta particles (ordinary electrons). Beta emitters are not dangerous unless ingested, because the radiation is not penetrating. Very high levels of beta radiation could cause skin burns, perhaps.
High-energy muons are poorly absorbed. However, a percentage of them will be absorbed, or, more to the point, slowed. When a muon is slowed enough, it quickly decays, because the natural rest lifetime is very short. It decays into an electron and neutrino. The neutrinos are probably harmless, but that electron radiation will then occur spread throughout human tissues. So level and energy are important.
There is a neat report on the web of some students who measured muon radiation on 7 floors of a concrete structure, a parking garage. To their suprise, they found that the highest level of radiation was not at the top, but on the 6th floor. That should not, in fact, be surprising, and many comments on Vortex show that the issue of radiation absorptions has not been understood. As radiation declines in energy, being slowed by interactions with matter, the rate of absorption goes up. This I found to be easily visible with alpha radiation with LR-115 SSNTD material. Alpha tracks that are visible in the etched material are cones, very narrow at one end, and very fat at the other. When I first saw this, I thought that the fat end was high energy, and the low end was the slowed particle. Pam Boss disabused me of that notion! It was the other way around. Until the alphas are sufficiently slowed, LR-115 will show nothing.
So the top floor of the structure slows the muons. It does "not" increase the level of radiation, but increases the percentage of muons that interact with the detector. So Holmlid's results, showing an increase in detection when a lead shield is put in place, are not surprising. However, the devil is in the details.
I would be much happier if the detector were moved around in the space around the alleged source. There should be an inverse square law decline in detected events, with distance from the device. If there is isotropy, this would also show it. (From "spontaneous" fusion -- a misnomer, I think -- this is really triggered fusion from a laser pulse that is believe to cause a further collapse of UDD to well below 1 pm interactomic distance -- I'd expect the radiation to be anisotropic. As I understand it, muon detection typically looks for two flashes of light, first when the muon interacts with matter in the scintillator, slowing it, and then when it decays. The coincidence confirms that this is not noise, and, in a stacked detector, the delay can indicate energy and directionality. I don't think Holmlid's detector is stacked. But he could still look for a spatial variation in level, which would be very strong evidence of source, and, then, with various levels of shielding, he could possibly show muon evidence (he's done some of that, perhaps).
If we take the predictions in the most general way, it is this: UDD is likely to produce a whole series of effects. He has reported these effects: superconductivity, the Meissner effect, and fusion. The problem is with quantitative prediction in an entirely new environment. When he says "not clearly understood" it's an understatement! If might be more honest to say, "We have no effing clue, but we guess that...."
We will know the planet has transformed when "effing" is allowed in MSPRJs.
The skeptics, the few I've been able to find, think he is submitting to clueless journals and journal editors. I have some concern about this, as I mention above with the "new method of detecting muons."
What he is doing is not wrong, my opinion, but is incomplete. I'm not seeing a critical element in cutting-edge science, a necessary high level of self-doubt, vigorous effort to prove the conclusions wrong. Not just *some* effort, but sustained and persistent effect that does not easily exhaust imagination as to possible artifact. As an example, if the device is generating copious high-energy muons, this is a well-known and understood phenomenon. It may be complicated by high-energy neutral fragments, but those will not e deflected by magnetic fields.
Holmlid is rushing ahead to explore the new territory he's found. The excitement is understandable; however, he is entering hostile territory, so to speak. He would sensibly secure his supply lines, his entry into the territory. It is crucial that his findings be confirmed. Finding more and more, it is possible, will discourage confirmation, not encourage it. The situation was similar with cold fusion, and the long delay in confirmation caused negative opinion to become entrenched.
I highly recommend that Holmlid make facilitating independent confirmation a very high priority. I don't think he's claiming trade secrets, which is what vastly complicates the NiH LENR situation.
