On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 9:38 PM, Alan Fletcher <a...@well.com> wrote:
- Absolutely! Widom-Larsen (where an electron combines with a Proton to form a Neutron and a Neutrino).
- has a critical mass, similar to the Coulomb barrier for regular fusion.
Actually, it's about 10 times higher. And it's an *energy* barrier, just like fusion, too. WL like to call it a heavy electron to obscure the fact that you have to concentrate 780 MeV of energy in a single atomic site to produce electron capture. Since this reaction is endothermic, there is no possibility of tunneling through it; the energy has to be supplied. In the case of d-d fusion, reaction probability becomes useful below 100 keV, because that reaction is exothermic, and so tunneling is possible.
- The muon:proton has enough mass, and is known to happen.
- But electron:proton doesn't --WL proposes one method of getting an effective electron mass.
Are you saying that WL -- http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0505/0505026v1.pdf Introduction, First Column, up to Eqn (3) -- and Reference 1 -- are wrong? (I don't have access to Ref 1 or a similar "well known" textbook).
I agree that (l-) + (p+) = (n) + (vl) (WL 1)
is probably an approximation of a more detailed quark interaction. (And that the electron neutrino should possibly be an electron anti-neutrino).
It's curious that Hagelstein http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0801/0801.3810v1.pdf challenges WL's "effective mass" -- but does not the underlying equations (1) to (3).
NASA Langley (Bushnell et al) are strongly in favour of WL.
> I don't see the comparison to muon-catalyzed fusion. In muon catalyzed fusion the muon replaces an electron in hydrogen, and since its average distance from the nucleus is much smaller, it shields the charge of the nucleus more effectively, allowing closer approach between nuclei to improve the probability for fusion. WL propose that the heavy (energetic) electron is captured by the nucleus (proton), so the resulting neutron is captured by another nucleus. It's a rather different process.
I'm not sure that this is the same scenario at all. In muon-catalyzed fusion the muon escapes.
But all this is beyond my competence ... Quarks were only proposed when I was an undergraduate, and certainly hadn't made it into the curriculum.
All I was doing was summarizing WL (1) to (3), and saying that yes, it could be relevant.
