Posts by Longview

AlainCo wrote:
"I just feel that geometry, because it is linked to CoM and thus to the absence of energetic gamma (and tritium), is important."

In regards to Alain's comment above. This is very interesting. EM symmetry in all dimensions leading to no emission. That certainly supports the idea of simultaneous formation of a balanced neutron structures, rather than their assembly. So if that is operative, then the whole of Alain's discussion makes sense. If it is true, then we should pay attention to ways of bringing about an NAE by design. Looking at it from a more Widom et al perspective, perhaps finding ways of presenting 4 protons directly to 4 electrons is important. pepepepe or perhaps epepepepe and so on? With mass or charge disparities perhaps handled much like banker's book keeping tricks?

NOTE added March 6, 2015: Longview has conclluded that centrifuation per se will not work. Nothing simple other than true gravity can easily push neutrons. Instead see "Ultracold neutron isolation and detection" Longview post of March 6, 2015.

[Original post follows]
Still yet to check the numbers, but the concept may be in some doubt. The g-force may not be easily realized in a vacuum context such as this. The neutron will likely just sit there at its initial velocity and trajectory and the vacuum chamber will spin around it. Some sort of magnetic drive might be able to accelerate neutrons, but these tetrahedral concepts may have no magnetic moment because of spin up and spin down pairing. But I need to study this some more.

The idea of doing centrifugal mass spectroscopy on neutrons might be realizable if we can find a reliable way to push them without inducing nuclear absorption in the atoms of the "impellor" as it were. Neutrons are reliably massive and hence susceptible to real gravity. It is what first caused me to seize on the idea of the synthetic gravity of a centrifuge. But if we have a magnetic or EM "impellor" we might as well use it directly: Anandan and Hagen out of CERN have published an article suggesting direct acceleration of neutrons cds.cern.ch/record/247074/files/9301110.pdfCERN, that 1993 article is titled NEUTRON ACCELERATION IN UNIFORM ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS. Unforturnately it does not appear to be an easy path for our benchtop work. In my own mind we would have a much easier time trying to accelerate neutrons with surface plasmon resonance (aka evanescent waves). I have always wanted to set up SPR with two adjacent and parallel reflective surfaces so that the channel between them constrained the contents to feel the waves from both sides. I imagine that this could be elaborated to constrain from all sides, thus making a narrow and nearly cylindrical path from which at least charged particles could do nothing but accelerate down the channel. But, can SPR accelerate neutral particles?? Maybe not....

NOTE of March 6, 2015: Longview has concluded that centrifugation per se will not work regardless of the speed, or at least not well, since in a vacuum nothing can easily impel neutrons. Instead see Longview post of March 6, 2015, now renamed "Ultracold neutron isolation and detection"

[original post follows]
A quick reality check. A fairly good performance centrifuge that one could "mess with" enough to easily do such an experiment might allow a 10 cm acceleration gradient at 10000 g. That will give an ultracold neutron something like 1.6425 X 10^-20 J, so a tetrahedron of 4 neutrons would be 6.57 X 10^-20 J, or in eV around 0.4, the energy of an somewhat infra red photon a bit over 3000 nm in wavelength. So at least it is a conceivable scenario in a moderately refrigerated centrifuge and some material that will yield IR on neutron impact at such energies.

[Note: This is just a very error prone preliminary number, I'll double check and edit this if necessary.]

I might add that a predictable result of this tetrahedral neutron idea might be seen through simple centrifugation of materials presumed to contain them. They should move easily between atoms. They should acquire some considerable velocity, depending on the centrifugation g-force and the length of the acceleration path. Their acceleration there might be used to characterize them on CR-39 or other assays for low speed neutrons-- including generation of specific isotopes within defined targets.

I would suggest the Iwamura 4n where n=1,2,3... is also suggestive of another sort of geometry. That is free neutrons may have a tendency to form tetrahedral structures. The tetrahedron is unique among the platonic solids, in that its vertices are all equidistant from one another. In larger platonics (cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron) the distance across the enclosing sphere is larger than the distance to the adjacent neighbors.

So rather than requiring the creation of 4n, n=1,2,3 structures de novo, more plausibly they essentially create themselves due to their inherent stability in such a grouping. Then these structures enter recipient nuclei, and perhaps even do so in "trains" so to speak. Such tetrahedra and possible groups of them might well give neutrons greater stability than their inherent ~ 8 minute half life. Tetrahedra also may provide interesting magnetic properties due to spin up / spin down pairing and the orthogonality of the remaining two neutrons. Surely the nuclear entry as groups is one plausible way to get to such changes confined to single nuclei within a large number of unaffected nuclei. It would appear improbable or even impossible for the same target nucleus to be selected in temporally independent sequences. The n=2,3 etc must happen as a coordinated sequential or even simultaneous event.

So, essentially I am suggesting a geometry of stability may contribute to a geometry of formation, which then leads to the observed Iwamura isotopic numbers.

Nice idea, but some may be vegans and some allergic to maize....

More seriously: is Widom et al dependent on the electroweak theory? Isn't their model asking for relatively low mass/energy makeup?

The 4n and other such increments are certainly a potential hangup for simple Widom-Larson theory. If very cold neutrons like to hang around, or are stabilized in groups of 4, then perhaps not so bad.

I think we all agree we need to keep focus on the physics of small experiments, just as seems to be happening now thanks to the LENR community often seen here. Unifying the fundamental forces may or may not gain the little guys much.

Let's get over fossil fuel first, it is certainly possible even without successful LENR, but will be relatively easy with it.

Yours is a good point Peter Gluck. While it might eventually be necessary to say yes there are at least two or more fundamental mechanisms, I still hold out hope that there may be some fundamental unity-- at least a shared subset of important mechanisms. I have been using Pd examples bacause of the very large accumulation of data and phenomena in the literature. The H2 / Ni work is much newer, seems to have much higher COPs while having much less theoretical and phenomenological history with which to work.

The diversity of reported LENRs goes well beyond the two big ones we're often discussing here. I have confidence that there may well be a fundamental QM process shared by many, if not all, of those tentative CF and LENR reports that prove out during the coming years of what SHOULD be much better funding for basic research in the field.

One speculative point would be that the "hot fusion" physics that dominates the era that may just be passing, seems to have made many errors in assessing cold fusion. Are these all individual failures of theoretical and applied physics of the latter 20th century, or are they all simply the failure of many physicists to incorporate the diverse ways in which quantum mechanics (electrodynamics etc.) can surprise us?

Chemists, chemical engineers and semiconductor materials engineers have long seen the benchtop effects of quantum physics. Some physicists have too.

There have been few if any satisfactory explanations to directly overcome Coulomb in D+D or H+D or H+H models. Additionally, how to get from say 23 MeV down to a few keV is rarely explained well. For the latter, coherence is Prof. Hagelstein's possibly plausible and more recent explanation. But for the former he has demonstrated fairly convincingly that heavy electrons don't get to the mass requirement relativistically. Coherence offers some promise for Coulomb as well, but in my opinion it has by now been demonstrated that the model has to be quantum, not relativistic.

Your extensive summary [thanks] shows many phenomena co-occur with LENR. Paraphrasing your list as heat, THz radiation, liquifaction in certain domains, local or general alloying, high current density, and carbon nanotubules,,, all are highly consistent with QM mechanisms. I would add the frequent if not universal presence of oxides, the success of H2 with Ni, and the evidence for catastrophic failures at relatively low input energies is also supportive of QM mechanisms, while discounting relativistic [which have a much greater activation energies and much more tendency to self quench].

Alain, I should first indicate that I have nothing against the concept of the NAE (Storms' Nuclear Active Environment). But I am seeing considerable evidence against microcracks being a consistent feature of NAE.
In respect to your indication above that you "would rather consider that the NAE is resisting to heat."
I believe, this may be quite compatible with a couple of features of the "deBroglie concept" I've attempted to outline earlier. That is, oxides of nearly any metal are almost always of much higher melting point, much greater rigidity, much lower electrical conductivity than the parent metal. The repeated appearance of oxides or sometimes other electron deficient materials in proximity to conventional transition metal conductors in LENR devices is a reminder of the the very low work function for electron emission, particularly of calcium oxide which is repeatedly seen in CF / LENR work, and appears to have an electron emission work function of 1.69 eV, lower than virtually any other material.

Speaking of metallic liquids again, and my apologies to "Build it Now" or whoever the originator is over at E-cat world, in their excellent comment on the topic of Andrea Rossi's response when asked about heating an E-cat with natural gas. [And that itself is an interesting post!]

http://www.e-catworld.com/2015…-a-matter-of-simple-heat/

But here is what is said that again brings up metallic liquids, perhaps as in Alain and my brief discussion here of nanoprotrusions and later about liquid metal and its possible role, or not, in higher COP CF / LENR:
"[W]hen you compare the fuel-vs-ash photographs of the nickel grains, what emerges in the ash has transformed from a typical carbonyl-process nickel surface morphology (ie spiky and rough, not smooth) to a smooth, sintered-appearing surface. This suggests

to me that during reactor operation, at least the surface layers of that nickel grain are in a liquid state, as evidenced by the ash photograph (page 43, particle 1 of figure 2). Have you considered this possibility?"

At the risk of boring the readers, I am compelled to return to the molten metal idea, and to its implications, for example not only against tiny cracks as the sine qua non of NAE. I again direct readers' attention to the thread here at LENR Forum on "DeBrogie waves, Planck units, mass". Once again, there is a plausible connection between liquid metal and the behavior of that metal's d- and f- orbital electrons. In a liquid form of these "transition elements" with their often partially filled orbitals, the character of the metal itself can take on unusual catalytic properties well known in the chemistry of those elements. Further the orientational decoupling of such electrons from their nuclear bases might well lead to even more unusual or anomalous electronic properties. In addition to oxides and other electron deficient regions, that might correspond to some aspect of NAE, there is the now over 60 year history of semiconductor physics, which seems always to give the desired properties to the parent element through careful addition of impurities, that is "dopants". These create "holes' in p-type semiconductors which are virtual positrons or perhaps even virtural protons, and in the n-types, creates virtual electrons or possibly even virtual anti-protons. These virtual particles can contribute to real chemistry, and by extension possibly to nuclear chemistry.

My conclusion from too much reading and not enough benchtop work, is that liquid metal substrates may allow electrons to participate in coherent activities enabled by this nuclear decoupling. The proof of such might be to find examples of superconductivity or enhanced catalysis using liquid metals or liquid / solid transition element interfaces. But, in any case, we should not shy away from thinking of metallic liquids in LENR experiments.

Liquid metal electronic decoupling can be facilitated by external magnetic and/or electrostatic fields. Key ingredients of many LENR reports.

In short, my concern for us all here is to make sure that we are not missing something only because physicists or other scientists may have neglected to look.

Why are these two papers not covering this story? Are any other Italian papers or news sources covering it, to your knowledge?

Thanks for your insights!

Is such a pencil bar hollow?
If so, then is it closed on either end?
Does this mean that one can simply fashion plugs out of ceramic rod and glue them in with say McMaster's 4000 degree F cement?

All possibly good points, Alain. A potentially fertile domain of good experiments to be certain.

Novel components for liquid metal LENR experiments:
Metallic sodium [sodium reacts with hydrogen to give a hydride]
Mercury [HgH is an extremely unstable gaseous hydride, but HgH2 is a stable solid]
Mercury / sodium amalgam [might form LENR useful hydrides]
Mercury itself is a very unusual transition metal, it forms amalgams easily with nearly any transition metals, but not with platinum or with iron.The amalgamated surface of a transition metal in some LENR contexts could be expected to frustrate the formation of microcracks and be "self-healing". This might be instructive as to the true nature of any NAE present. On the face of the issue we might expect Hg to readily inactivate any NAE based on cracks or surface morphology.
On the other hand, Hg would be unlikely to heal any NAE that was simply some sort of island of oxidation.

Liquid metal has been seen, particularly in spectacular failures and surely in the oft-reported microscopic craters in Pd experiments. My off-the-cuff recollection is that it starts in the 1920s with Peters and Paneth's, Tandberg and others' exploding wires in deuterium, and continues in the mid 1980s with the spectacular failure by melt-through in the Fleischmann & Pons pre-announcement era which they later reported anecdotally. It may be so effective that it is dangerously susceptible to going out-of-control.

Liquid metal LENR reports are prevalent enough that they may substantially undermine most "micro-crack as NAE" theories.

For me, there is the fascinating possibility that liquid metal, liquid / solid metal interfaces may allow sufficient decoupling of d- or f- orbitals from high Z nuclei to enable the electron "gas" (Fermi "sea") behavior favorably LOW in at least one vector of motion-- enough to allow high effective electron mass. Please see the recent thread here under "DeBroglie waves, Planck units, mass".

At least a fair number of views. No comments?

I'll admit you can't just Google the subject and dive right in.

Topics related that might be searched:

"kinetic confinement"
"effective mass"
"deBroglie"
"inverse beta decay"
"mass deficit"
"heavy electrons"

GAR, Very interesting combination. Do you recall who did this work?

A question for WishfulThinking:

How do you "heavily armor" your reactor? I am concerned that your microwaves are not seeing the inside of the armor if it is metallic.

thanks,
Longview

Perhaps this topic will lead to a beneficial discussion.

Please look at this most fundamental quantum mechanical equation, considered "empirical" by Werner Heisenberg, but generally attributed to Louis deBroglie:

Lambda (that is wavelength, or RMS uncertaintly in position) = h/p, where p is classical Newtonian momentum, that is the product of mass and velocity. h is Planck's constant, known to be highly invariant, although sometimes given a few slightly different values depending on how it is derived.

Often somewhat misstated is the notion that one cannot specify an electron's position and its velocity simultaneously. More correctly it directly falls out of lambda = h/p, that is one cannot constrain MOMENTUM toward smaller values without simultaneously increasing lambda, that is the positional uncertainly of an electron. [The equation and the uncertainly relationship hold for larger and more massive objects, but the tiny mass of the electron make it particularly evident for that easily accessible particle.]

In all this is the assumption that an electron has a constant mass. And surely the Co-Data value for the electron is specified very precisely, even when it is locked positionally in a Penning trap. However, what happens to the deBroglie equation above if an electron is squeezed down to a quite fixed position AND it is constrained to a near zero velocity? If lambda, or positional uncertainty is to decrease because the electron is in fact being restrained, and if the velocity is nearing zero, it leaves only one variable to retain the relationship as described by the equation... that would be mass. Since the MEAN mass of the electron is precisely known, there may be only the possibility that the mass becomes time variant about that mean. Possibly related to this, an examination of "heavy electron" theory, will show that generally mass variation for electrons or "effective electrons" is vectorial, that is an increased effective mass in one direction is accompanied by decreases in at least one of the other spatial dimensions. I should note that the "deBroglie equation" has more complex variants that specify the variables with subscripts of x, y and z. Further there are relativistic versions. The general idea holds nevertheless.

One real world manifestation of the above discussion is the oft seen presence of oxides (and other electron deficient elements) in various situations involving unusual electron behavior. Such oxides are seen in high temperature superconductors, in low voltage work function electron emitters, such as oxides on electron gun filaments, AND very frequently in the literature of CF / LENR, for example calcium oxide and other oxides as critical components in the alloying of LENR devices. Why oxides? Is electron position and mass variation involved?

Does Planck length, mass and time, or quantum mechanics generally allow charge, position and mass components of an electron and/or proton to be dissociated sufficiently to tunnel one way [perhaps even around physics conventions] or another toward the empirically observed CF / LENR reactions? Can such interpretations be useful in selecting candidate materials and structures to facilitate high COP CF / LENR outputs? [Please also note that Planck mass is by far the largest dimensional quantum in our world, being in the microgram realm.]

It is not in my expertise to fully interpret any of this, but I do see something of interest in the "deBroglie equation", and I notice a distinct lack of mention of it in modern Physics discussions. The Nobel committee granted DeBroglie the Prize, but the Physics Community of the day apparently regarded him with some suspicion. Today this is essentially the same Physics Community undergoing a bit of a crisis with its currently criticized poor connection between grand theories and rather sparse and sometimes contradictory evidence.

Thanks for your attention! Perhaps we can evolve a useful theory as a group. It certainly seems important enough....

Note that this was posted at Oil Price.com late on February 12, 2015. Nevertheless it confirms that the energy sector in general may be, or may soon be, very interested in the topic.

It will be such a hugely important and diverse field with several distinct facets. There will doubtless be several strong specialist journals. Since Science and Nature early on participated in the rather shameful blackballing boycott, they have some special obligations to right that ongoing wrong. Naturwissenschaften has shown the way.