At 05:53 PM 12/7/2009, Jones Beene wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Horace Heffner
I think there may be a little bit of reason for doubt, as I noted in:
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/CFnuclearReactions.pdf
More than a little doubt, I would say ;-)
I don't think so, because the doubt and question
you raise isn't about the triple tracks. In a
way, you may be making the same mistake as Mr.
Beene, confusing the neutron inference with the
hypothesized source of the neutrons.
The conclusion of the Mosier-Boss et al.
article, that triple tracks are due to the
12C(n,n)3á reaction, implies the need for
repeating exactly the same experiment
using D2O + trace T2O instead of just D2O.
I've said that tritium doping is an obvious thing
to try, but it's quite possible that even if the
neutrons are from tritium fusion, there would be no increase.
Now, if the increase were from tritium fusing as
the initial reaction, you'd be right. And that is
a possibility. After all, if there is some
tritium in the cell, and it ends up in the place
where some deuterium would fuse, it would also
likely fuse. But very little of this tritium
would fuse, just as very little of the deuterium fuses. Good thing, eh?
But if the tritium is generated in the initial
reaction, sometimes, it would be hot, and very
likely to fuse. Adding more tritium would not
increase this, because the new tritium would not be hot.
We know that something generates tritium in these
cells, at low levels. And it would quite likely
be hot tritium formed, so it would probably fuse
with deuterium, and it would then produce the
required neutron to produce the triple tracks.
In other words, from what we already know
(tritium generation), we'd expect a low level of
neutrons. So neutrons are merely a confirmation
of this. It's a coherent picture already, and,
while that doesn't prove that this picture
corresponds exactly to the reality, there isn't
much need to conjure up exotic reactions. Except,
of course, for whatever it is that is going on in
the cell that would generate tritium! I think the
TSC would do it, and a lot of other things, both
directly if it encounters a nucleus before
collapsing and decaying, and indirectly as it
generates a few very hot alphas. I believe that
if it's generating seriously hot alphas (these
would be from early decay of the Be-8, before the
bulk of the energy of the excited nucleus has
been emitted as EUV or whatever it is), these
would be generated below the surface, there would
be significant loss of energy before they escape the cathode.
