What about this reaction:
Ni (mass 60, 32 neutrons, pres. 26,223%) + Tritium (mass 3, 2 neutrons,
pres. synt) --> Cu (mass 63, 34 neutrons, pres. 69,17%) + gamma radiation.
On 21-1-2011 22:10, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
On 01/21/2011 03:55 PM, Roarty, Francis X wrote:
Hi Stephan
You state "If a tiny fraction of the nickel is transmuted each
second, and if nearly all the transmutation events produce unstable
copper which eventually decays back to (higher weight) nickel, and if
it takes multiple steps to get to stable copper, then by the time
we've got a lot of stable copper running around, nearly all the
nickel must have been transmuted at least once, and the whole lot
should be radioactive. "
But if you take a relativistic approach like that suggested for lead
acid batteries you not only have the potential for fusion but
potentially rapid aging of the reactants as well...
Aside from the obvious question of why this particular bunch of nickel
powder should show a shorter half-life than all the other bunches of
nickel powder that have been tested in other laboratories, the problem
with what you said is that this is just a simple "urn problem, with
replacement" from probability theory. Even if the half-lives were
scaled up or down by an order of magnitude it wouldn't make much
difference to the conclusion.
By the time 30% of the nickel atoms have been "chosen" by hydrogen
atoms /five times/ (which is what it takes to get from Ni^58 up to
Cu^63), nearly all the rest will have been "chosen" /at least once/.
And a lot of those are likely to have been chosen /exactly/ once, and
the ones which have been selected just once are the ones with the 75
kY half life.
Working out the details to get an exact answer would be messy, in part
because a bunch of the nickel is actually Ni^60, but the point is that
if any significant fraction of the resulting material were Ni^59 there
should be measurable radioactivity. And there's not.
