I've looked through the isotope charts again - searching for reactions that rapidly decay back to the starting element or to any stable isotope which has already been reported to be there, and have not found any other possibility...
...other than Ni58 (d,Cu59) -> Ni60 .... which happens by EC or positron
emission, with a half-life of 20 minutes or so, and which fits the facts as
reported in the most robust experiments (Rossi, DGT, Thermacore, Mills).
1) No or few gamma
2) No or little radioactive ash
3) No tritium, helium or positron annihilation
4) No or little bremsstrahlung
5) Excess energy which is at least 1000 times more than chemical
Since nickel absorbs a deuteron and decays back to nickel in minutes, with
low energy release, this reaction fits the bill. You may be thinking - what
about the positron (beta positive) decay? No problem there, since nuclei
which decay by positron emission also decay by electron capture in a known
branching ratio which is dependant on the net energy of reaction.
According to wiki-the-wonderful, in low-energy decays, electron capture is
energetically favored by reactions below 1.022 MeV. The final state will
have an electron added or a positron removed - and so the energy released is
determinative of what can happen in the branching. As the energy of the
decay goes up, so does the branching ratio towards positron emission.
However, if the energy difference is low, then positron emission cannot
occur, and electron capture is the sole decay mode. This would seem to be
"ready-made" for the DDDL or deuteron-deep-Dirac-level species, which uses
its tight electron for more than one purpose and probably reduces the net
energy of the reaction as well.
This still leaves spin conservation as the major problem. The end products
of this reaction would be Ni60, and the starting nickel would be Ni58, so
that is no problem. Both are spin 0.
But the intermediary isotope, with short half-life would be Cu60 which is
spin 2+ and the deuterium can only add is 1+ spin, and the EC electron
another ½ spin. This over-simplification of spin issues - probably means
that the reaction can only happen if a neutrino is captured, or else the
inherent spin deficit decreases the half-life even more than its short
nature. Probably the neutrino.
Best of all - as a general working hypothesis which would make this relevant
to LENR but is not expected to be seen anywhere else (which explains why it
is not documented in the physics literature, as of now) there is NO other
isotope in the periodic table (other than Ni58) - which is both a proton
conductor and demonstrably neutron-deficient ! (the proof of that being that
Ni-58 is lower amu than the preceding lower Z element (cobalt-59). That's
right it is a perfect storm scenario. If this evolving explanation is
correct, it will be seen nowhere else in the periodic table, since it
demands conditions which do not exist anywhere else.
This means, "anthropomorphically speaking" - that Ni58 desperately "wants"
two more neutrons, and to get them, it essentially "steals" from its
surroundings, whenever a deuteron comes too close... especially a DDDL.
Falsifiability? Yes, this is falsifiable in three different way, which is a
big advantage. Give me a working Rossi reactor :-) and a few months: if the
[Ni<->Ni] explanation is true, if will be proved beyond all reasonable
doubt.
P.S. do I get to keep the reactor?
_____________________________________________
One more thing to add ... wrt the overdue suggestion (Doh,
slaps forehead) that Rossi's "secret sauce" is looking like it is deuterium.
Thank you, Clean Planet.
The reaction would probably work best if it is started with
regular hydrogen, and then deuterium is added later. This is because the
"exchange" reaction between hydrogen and deuterium itself is so robust. In
fact, many of the early critics of LENR thought that the entire phenomenon
could be related to deuterium exchange. It is that energetic.
As we know, Rossi has this mysterious system - which he
calls cat-and-mouse. He has been intentionally vague on how it functions.
Yet in reappraisal, this system is fully consistent with having two
chambers, the main one containing hydrogen and the nickel reactant - and the
smaller one deuterium (or a mix of H and D). The metering response can be
simply by voltage to a window, since deuterium will diffuse through many
proton conductors in direct proportion to negative charge. Positive charge
stops the diffusion, which is easily controllable by a sensor.
The purpose of the small chamber (mouse) is to meter D into
the main chamber at a controlled rate, to avoid a runaway. If Rossi can be
believed, he suffered several runaways with the HotCat which we can imagine
did not have this kind of metering device.
This seems to fit into everything we know, so long as one
ignores Rossi's own denial of using deuterium. But deuterium is the one
thing which, if true - he would never admit to. That is, if Ni-D is indeed
the essence of E-Cat, in the same way that the change from palladium to
nickel could be the essence of the Mizuno reactor.
Things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser...
_____________________________________________
One interesting detail, in retrospect, about
Yoshino/Mizuno's MIT presentation and the switch to nickel (from palladium)
while keeping deuterium as the active gas may have been overlooked to date.
Apologies- if this slant on the underlying reaction has appeared before.
It is the copper connection. As we know,
Focardi and Rossi believed that the E-Cat is/was transmuting nickel into
copper by fusing with a proton. When one mentions a copper connection,
seldom does Mizuno's amazing new work come to mind. However, all reactions
of nickel with a proton result in a radioactive isotope with a half-life
which is long enough for it to have been seen. This kind of hot isotope is
not reported in any study of the Rossi reactor - but his proponents are
hoping that the TIP2 report will find evidence of copper transmutation.
The same kind of signature radioactivity is
not true with deuterium as the active gas. In fact, the solution is so
stunning - that we have to wonder if Rossi may be using deuterium as his
"secret" ingredient. Terry will remember that in the very first image to
come from Rossi, there was a color-coded tank of deuterium in the Lab.
Apparently it was not intended to be noticed. When questioned about this
later, Rossi glibly said the purpose of D was to stop the reaction if it got
out of hand !
With this new information... well... you can
be the judge of whether Rossi's excuse was ever true. Notably deuterium in
never seen again...
Nickel 58 is the most abundant isotope of
element 28, and as recently mentioned is "out-of-place" in the periodic
table, being lighter than any stable cobalt isotope, the element to the
left. By itself, that factoid would be unique in that it only happens in one
other place in the entire periodic table, where elements routinely increase
in average amu, in step with z.... But wait there's more than "relative
lightness" (putative receptivity to nucleon addition).
Look at Copper-60 , the expected product of
a deuteron fusing to Ni-58. Cu60 has a short half-life and decays back to
Ni60 in minutes. It could escape detection in any reactor - so long as a
reactor was not opened for a few hours, since all one would see is a nickel
isotope which is expected to be there. The beta decay is fairly strong
however.
The biggest problem with this scenario could
be conservation of spin. Ni58 is 0 spin, Cu60 is +2, and D is +1. A beta
decay ostensibly does not solve that problem. But the chance of this being
the gainful reaction in conjunction with nuclear spin-coupling as a
predecessor is otherwise worth looking at ways to get around conservation of
spin.
This elegant possibility of a gainful
reaction in which stable nickel converts to stable nickel, giving up energy,
is why my prediction for the Mizuno presentation in November is to suggest
that they will see a relative decrease in Ni58 and a relative increase in
Ni60.
The more intriguing idea is that Rossi has
been using deuterium all along in his E-Cat, but the only time the secret
almost got out was in the original demo !
Jones
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