On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 12:48 PM, David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I have not seen any reference to transformation of nickel to copper as > Rossi claims and I was wondering if anyone else has seen any references. > Why would all of the freshly minted neutrons collect with protons only and > not any of the other nearby nuclei? > My present assumption is that in Ni/H systems, impurities are the seed, and in Pd/D systems, both impurities and hydrogen atoms are the seeds. If we assume neutron production at any level, one imagines that there would be reactions with nearby heavier nuclei, and perhaps some or all of these reactions would be exothermic. I would love a good computer model to further explore this line of questioning. While we're purely speculating, one possibility is that nickel is not a seed for reactions, however, which would appear to be contrary to an account along the lines you allude to. I've read in different connections that the cathode material itself is largely unchanged after a reaction. I would imagine that there is a shift in isotopes and additional activation. But this statement from Wikipedia could lead one to wonder whether the cathode (nickel, palladium, tungsten, etc.) is the "secret catalyst": The high binding energy of nickel isotopes in general makes nickel an 'end product' of many nuclear reactions (including neutron capture reactions) throughout the universe and accounts for the high relative abundance of nickel—although most of the nickel in space (and thus produced by supernova explosions) is nickel-58 (the most common isotope) and nickel-60 (the second-most, with the other stable isotopes (nickel-61, nickel-62, and nickel-64) being quite rare). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-62 There's a fascinating 1957 paper called "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars," in which the authors describe various elements subjected to heavy neutron flux during r-process nucleosynthesis. Some isotopes end up being the stopping point of an upward chain of transmutations, despite the fact that they are not too heavy, because they are particularly stable, and to get to higher elements you have to go through other paths. A question I have is whether there is a path from iron to copper that does not go directly through nickel -- I wouldn't be surprised if some of the nickel would transmute to copper, so that may well be the source of any copper, but it's interesting to think about whether iron might be the seed and nickel the catalyst and copper a result. Eric
