4 ms·
Digging into the research here, there are a lot of results which indicate some form of LENR should be feasible in suitably complex environments. As an example,
by lumost 6y ago
Digging into the research here, there are a lot of results which indicate some form of LENR should be feasible in suitably complex environments. As an example, calculating the exact screening effect of a metal lattice from theory has not been performed to anyones satisfaction, particularly if you account for hydrogen moving within the lattice, or the lattice undergoing some deformation.
The experimenters researching this clearly don't have a great way to control for other factors in an experimental setting either.
As an example, there are multiple reports of transmutations being observed following a hydride doping experiment... however these are all done by gas spectrometer. It's unclear from the experiments whether there happened to be random impurities in the hydride prior to doping.
Similarly heat/neutron measurements are really difficult to get right and be convincing.
- kergonath 6y agoAs a materials physicist, I have no idea what you mean by this: > As an example, calculating the exact screening effect of a metal lattice from theory has not been performed to anyones satisfaction, particularly if you account for hydrogen moving within the lattice, or the lattice undergoing some deformation. Screening effect from what? There is nothing surprising in the way hydrogen behaves in a metal. We can simulate that with great accuracy, in fact we do it all the time as hydrogen embrittlement is an important issue in metallurgy. This type of cold fusion would require two nuclei overcoming humongous energy barriers to get close enough to each other. No form of motion within a crystal lattice or no amount of deformation is going to provide that. The energies involved are about 6 orders of magnitude short. Heat is trivial to measure, we’ve been doing that since the 19th century. Neutrons are not particularly difficult either, we’ve been doing that since the 1940s.
- drran 6y agoThe idea of LENR is not to move hydrogen protons in a lattice, but to make it jump over imperfections, with hope that it will land into nuclei.
- kergonath 6y agoYes, but that’s not how it works. There still is an energy barrier to “land into” a nucleus, and tunnelling through that is just not plausible with the energy of a proton in a crystal lattice, again by more than 6 orders of magnitude. Structure defects do not magically create energy to give it to nearby ions.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- drran 6y agoThe mass of the proton is 1.67E-27, so we have about 20 orders of magnitude to spare.
- kergonath 6y agoI can see one way the mass is relevant in this case: it changes the particle’s wavevector. It does change the probability of tunnelling through the energy barrier (lighter particles tunnel mor easily), but that effect is completely negligible compared to the height of the barrier. The energy you get from the reaction has nothing to do with the mass of the particles; not all mass is “converted” to energy. The mass energy of a proton is 931 MeV. The energy you get from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction is ~14 MeV. Besides, this is irrelevant, as there is a ~1 MeV energy barrier preventing the reaction, which you still have to go through. If you’re implying that the energy from one reaction could be used to make another reaction happen, then yes. But when your atoms emit 14 MeV each, you don’t have a crystal, you have a plasma. And this is not cold fusion, it is just regular fusion, same as in a star or in a tokamak.
- drran 6y agoElectric field can easily create plasma at tips. Effect known as St. Elmo's fire. If material have impurity in the form of a tip in a cavity, then an electric field can create plasma in this cavity.