Richard, > OK, when you get through chuckling over it, expand on the thought. Aussies love to tease Texas boys but behind the comment lies something I haven't thought of before.
Robin can speak for himself- but there is no tease here IMHO. (not that Texan's don't deserve it on occasion ;-) I think that what he is suggesting is that just like the plastic film in CR-39 leaves evidence of a nuclear reaction, the same kind of thing could be happening with HMWPE- in the sense that the reason you see the needle-like pitting with sea-water and not with manufactured chlorine is that the chlorine has become photoactivated. Actually there are three or four possibilities and perhaps at least three are required to cause the marking you see: 1) The chlorine in the sea water must become photoactivated, and a percentage of it must remain in a metastable state by long exposure to UV light. This wold imply that the water used is surface sea water and not from the depths 2) All sea water will contain deuterium, but perhaps the HDO content has been enriched by natural processes in the particular situation 3) During processing, on occasion, the QM reaction mentioned in the previous post occurs, where the deuterium atom tunnels into the k-shell of the photoactivated chlorine resulting in a neutron stripping reaction. The neutron is absorbed leading eventually to a beta decay. Alternatively: 4) Solar hydrinos are created in the sun's corona and if they arrive in the solar wind, they will likely accumulate in the oceans of earth, and have an affinity for alkali metal ions. Unlike potassium, sodium is not a catalyst so it would only attract and not further shrink the hydrino - which is then poised to react with photoactivated chlorine. BTW - it would be extremely interesting to remove some of this pitted material and have it tested with a sensitive GM monitor to see if there is any residual radiation present. Jones
