In reply to Axil Axil's message of Tue, 23 Jul 2019 16:39:57 -0400: Hi, [snip] >If a nuclear reaction (fusion) was responsible for the transmutation, >wouldn't gamma radiation be produced?
Not necessarily as much as you might expect. It depends on the actual reaction. If there are particles available to carry away the reaction energy, then very few gammas are likely*. If those particles are electrons then some bremsstrahlung is to be expected, but not so if they are heavy particles. Positrons would of course result in annihilation gammas. * This is because particle emission happens on the order of 1E-23 seconds, whereas gamma emission is more on the order of 1E-17 seconds, so particles usually carry the reaction energy away before a gamma has time to form. This can result in a million times less gammas than one might otherwise expect. If the number of reactions is small to start with, then the gammas may get lost in the background noise, particularly if any such gammas are also shielded to some extent by the apparatus itself. Then of course, the experimenter also has to be looking for them. [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk local asymmetry = temporary success
