Posts by rakitsa

I leave this forum of ignorants and uneducated people voluntarely

Dear plazma_max,
I do not see logic in your statement. Your examples have nothing to do with the subject of our discussion. Did anybody observe energetically profitable cold fusion?
Please, do not mention such liars as Rossi and me356.

can you give an example of such a reaction?
perhaps you mean an absorption of a neutron by a nucleus. It has nothing to do with fusion. Fusion happens when two positively charged nuclei approach each other from afar. It cannot be without Coulomb repulsion.

TheGomp,
do you deny Coulomb repulsion between fusing nuclei ???
This is the only "model conviction" I base my logic on

robert_bryant

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Which is basically what this LENR FORUM is about.. finding a nuclear reaction which is cheaper and safer than actinide fissions.

I wish humans live forever, I wish a "perpetuum mobile" could exist, I wish .... etc.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature is such that these are not possible. We have to face this.
Nobody guaranties that energetically profitable LENR is possible.
Of course, we should try and search since there is no proof of its impossibility (unlike for perpetuum mobile).
However, one should be realistic in this search. The undeniable fact is that nuclei repel each other with a Coulomb force.
To achieve their fusion, we have to somehow overcome this Coulomb barrier. There are only two ways for it: either raise the temperature or to make the barrier thinner.
All exotic ideas based on non-standard physics (twists, time-worms, strings, etc...), even if possible, could have a negligible effect not sufficient to make LENR energetically profitable (otherwise they were discovered long ago). Forget about such things.
Addition of any special chemicals cannot influence the Coulomb barrier. Forget about them. Nickel has charge 28: this means that Coulomb barrier H-Ni is 28 times higher and thicker that for two hydrogen nuclei. Forget about fusion of H with Ni.
The only thing how nickel could help is via its crystalline lattice where hydrogen isotopes (when penetrate inside a crystal) are close to each other.
All the ideas and possible effects must be studied separately and thoroughly. If we speak about hydrogen entering a crystal, study the conditions, concentration of hydrogen, depth of penetration etc. And without all such studies (perhaps tedious for most of the participants of this forum), one cannot jump to constructing a power plant. All the elementary processes involved must be studied separately, before you combine them together. And a final note: unfortunately, such studies are not possible for non-professionals and in a garage instead of a properly equipped laboratory.

In the law practice there is the principle of "presumption of innocence". Prosecutor must prove that the accused is guilty. In science, everything is the opposite way. Anybody who claims a discovery, must prove his claim. In science, there is kind of "presumption of being wrong". If you claim something, you must present undeniable evidence. Until that - you are wrong. Any doubts (like not answering simple questions) act against the person who claims a discovery.

Me356 cannot answer a simple question: how did he detect the neutrons? What was the device for that?

Should I trust him after that?
Instead of explaining the process in few words, he start lamenting about absence of trust. For me, there is no doubt: he is simply cheating the community (similarly to Rossi) in hope to get fame or perhaps even some investment.

Before trying an exotic theoretical explanation of a phenomenon one must be sure that the phenomenon really exists.
That guy me356 said that he saw neutron flux. I wonder what type of neutron detector he used. Neutron does not have charge. It is much more difficult to detect neutrons, than, say, protons. It is really a challenge.

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If LENR turns out to be driven by vortex based processes, then quantum mechanics will not be applicable. We will need to go to other types of quantum math systems.

Before using a new theoretical idea in such a complicated process as nuclear fusion, one must study this idea separately in a simplified situation. Demonstrate experimentally that such vortexes exist, study their properties, etc. Since this has not been done (I doubt it will be done), forget about vortex processes. To my knowledge, the string theory so far has not been able to suggest any single experimenrt where its sofisticated mathematical tricks could lead to something observable. For me, string theory is like chess game: it is nice, sometimes even beautiful, but still just a game.

I cannot believe a single word about that "working nuclear reactor" unless it is given full description of all the components and given a plausible explanation of the processes that take place inside it. Before making a device an experimentalist must have an idea how the components work together. I cannot believe that a proper combination of components can be found by accident. If that guy does not understand or cannot explain how it works, this means only one thing: he is another "David Copperfield" (the circus magician) or another Rossi. And I do not accept something (any nonsense) that violates standard quantum mechanics.

May be I do something wrong but I cannot access the text. The system demands some payment. For me it looks like rubbish. I suspect the guy has nothing to say.

Dear Lou,
First of all I should say that what we observed (88 fusion events during 100 hours) was just a small part of the total events occuring in the sample. Our main task was to find out if the fusion indeed happens as a result of x-ray irradiation. We got a positive answer. As it is explained in the paper, we could only register those events that took place within a very thin layers of LiD, that were in contact with our detectors. The total mass of LiD, from which we register the fusion events (even not all the events but only 40% of them) was 0.61g. When you want to produce energy, you do not care if you can or cannot register the events: you just measure total energy release. If 88 events constitute 40%, the the total number of events in 0.61g is 220 (each releses 22 MeV of energy). Now, let us take 1kg of LiD. This is roughly 2000 times greater than 0.61g. And the number of events will be three orders of magnitude greater. This sample (1kg) can be irradiated with the same x-ray source with the same energy expense. We used LiD with only about 8% of Li6 isotope. What if we take pure Li6-D substance? Number of Li6-D pairs will be 10 times greater. This means that the number of fusion events will be 10 times greater (another order of magnitude). Now, let us use x-ray source with maximum energy of photons not 100keV (as was in our experiment) but 150keV. The Coulomb barrier penetration probability is growing exponentially with the energy. So, as a result of going from 100keV to 150keV, we can get several orders of magnitude increase in the reaction rate. In total, we can increase the number of events about 10^{10} (ten orders of magnitude). I think, this is a significant increase. Of course this is just intuitive reasoning. More accurate calculations are needed and more experiments.
My principles of scientific approach dictate that everything should be done step by step. Firstly, we should establish fo sure that x-rays can indeed induce the fusion. I expect and hope that somebody in the world will replicate our experiment and give an independent confirmation. After that we can move on. I do not want to jump to masuring excess heat before the physical mechanism is established with 100% surety.
My other principle is that you should always try to find an explanation to a phenomenon within existing and well established theories. Dark matter, black holes, small-size atoms (or compressed atoms), and other things like that MUST be avoided when you try to explain simple observations (first of all you must be 100% sure that a phenomenon really exists).
As to the phonon waves (oscillations of the lattice) in a crystal like Fermi-Ulam ones, I have no idea. People working in one of the nuclear research institutions in Moscow, told me that they observed many times flushes of neutrons coming from a crystal (I do not remember its chemical composition) when they cracked that crystal with a simple hammer. When you force the atoms in a lattice to move, you can achieve acceleration of the nuclei because there are very complicated electric forces there. The problem is that the effect of hammering a crystal if unpredictable and uncontrollable. The Fermi-Ulam model has an easily visulable analogy: a child is on a swing and you push it in resonance (exactly when the swing stops at the maximal displacement); you can easily encrease the amplitude of the swing oscillations.
In this or that way, you always try to excite the oscillations of the atoms in the crystalline lattice to higher levels, from which they can easily tunnel through a Coulomb barrier. In our experiment, we used x-rays to excite the oscillations. I think, with the same success one could use electric current flowing through a crystal, or some mechanical waves.... But to make a reasonable statement, one has to perform proper calculations. Intuition and hand-waving are not sufficient.
Sorry for a lengthy answer!

I attach a copy of the paper (which we are discussing here) recently published in Phys. Rev. C

As I understand, the number of any defects in a crystal is always much less than the number of correct cells. This means that they cannot significantly change the "bulk" reaction rate. In our experiment, by the way, not all lithium atoms were Li6 isotopes and not all hydrogen atoms were deuterons. In the estimate, we only took into account the pairs D-Li6. The same, I suppose, should be done when deffects are present. Of course, you can imagine a defect which increases the reaction. For example, an interstitial atom (displaced from its regular position) can be at a shorter distance from a neighbouring atom. The shorter is the distance, the easier the barrier can be tunneled through.

To Robert:
In principle, by absorbing many "small" quanta of radiation the deuteron can climb up the ladder of the levels. However, to give a definite answer, one needs to solve the master equation with a given spectrum of uv radiation. The radiation causes not only moving up the ladder, but also jumping down (like in lasers). There are therefore competing processes (up and down) caused by external radiation. Moreover, there are spontaneous jumps down. This means that without calculations it is difficult to say something.

To Robert:
Sorry, one remark; in Eq.(16) the units are meV (milli-electron-volts) - not MeV. You can easily calculate yourself the average deuteron energy for any temperature T, using Eqs.(16,15,9). Of course, this is under the assumption that the system is in thermodynamical equilibrium (no x-rays) and is described by the Boltzmann distribution.

To Lou Pagnucco:
Definitely, the effect will increase exponentially with the energy. This is because the barrier penetration exponentially increases. It is enough to look at Fig.8 of the paper to see that at higher excitations the barrier becoms much thinner. As to the paper which you cited, I just quickly looked at it (without going to all the details) and see that it has nothing to do with crystals. It is about a gas. In a gas, molecules behave individually and when interacted with photons, they get recoil (which is not the case for a crystal). As a result of the recoil the spectrum of the photons is broadening. In a crystal, momentum conservation can be ignored because whole crystal can compensate any change in momentum. One example is the Mosbauer effect, where nuclei absorb photons without recoil.

I suggest you to read the paper. The idea is very simple: a nucleus in a crystal is in a potential well, where there are energy levels. When exposed to external electro-magnetic wave, nucleus jumps to a higher level from which it is easier to penetrate through the barrier (because it is thinner there). In simple words: the electromagnetic wave forces the nuclei oscillate around their equilibrium positions, and the acquired kinetic energy helps them to tunnel through the barrier. No non-linear effects, no breathers etc. We should not introduce complications when it is not necessary.

The barrier is not 100 keV, it is around 1 MeV, but it is sufficient to have 10-100 keV to tunnel through this barrier. For example, the energy of protons inside the sun (and other stars) is only 1.3 keV (which corresponds to 15 million degrees of temperature), but this is enough for the sun to shine.
I would suggest another approach to the theory of LENR in Palladium: similarly to the paper on x-ray induced fusion, the deuterons in Palladium are excited by the electrons that carry the current through the crystal.

That statement was written in the paper just to get it published. As you know, for the last 26 years (since the 1989 scandal) any paper, even remotely related to cold fusion, was immediately rejected by all serious journals.
What actually was observed: 88 events (22 MeV each) in 0.61 gramm of LiD crystal during 100 hours. As it is written in the paper, not all events were registered: only about 40% of events that occur in the immediate vicinity of the detectors. But for energy production, we do not need to register events. They would release the energy regardless our ability to register them.
So, if we take 1 kilogram of LiD ( the same X-ray source can cover such a sample), the number of Li-D pairs will be 1000 times greater (the number of events will also be three orders of magnitude greater). Further, we can take pure Li6-D compound (with 100% of Li6 isotope). This will give another factor 100 (two orders of magnitude). One more thing: the penetration through the Coulomb barrier increases exponentially with the energy. In the experiment described in the paper, the maximal energy of the x-rays was 100 keV. What if we take 150 keV? Perhaps we can get a five-order of magnitude factor?
In total, we can increase the energy release by ten orders of magnitude. This means that more research is needed.