In reply to Jones Beene's message of Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:43:39 -0700: Hi, [snip] >Luis Alvarez was the first reported observer of muon-catalyzed fusion, and >despite deuterium being present along with hydrogen in the gaseous medium, >the reaction was NOT d-d fusion. > >Asking oneself: "why not?" could be instructive.
...because he was looking at ordinary Hydrogen, and only one atom in about 6800 is D, hence the chances of any given D fusing with another D rather than with H are only one in 6800. IOW it probably did happen, but would have been so rare that it wasn't noticed. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
