Some basics for which I lacked space in the past two issues:
Two nuclei (positively charged protons) repel each other the more strongly the closer they get to each other; but if they get close beyond a certain point, they will start attracting each other and fuse. To reach that critical point, a proton must have sufficient energy to climb over the mountain; yet some electrons get there with insufficient energy as if they had tunneled through it.
This is the "tunneling" I and other reporters often mentioned without explanation since cold fusion started.
It is an effect that emerges from the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. This nature is due to the different behavior of individual particles compared with the average behavior of a sub-stance in bulk. Since the bulk is made up of the particles, it may seem strange that there should be a difference. But it isn't: individuals, or at least some individuals, are very different from the crowd or nation that they form. (Look what you are reading!)
And they are very different when they are free as compared to forced membership in a collective. Suppose you have many prisoners chained together and surrounded by a 5-ft wall. They will never jump over it. Even if they are chained in pairs, it is not too likely that both of them will be good athletes. But if they are not chained at all, an athlete
¾still a rare case among the population will make it and get to the other side of the wall just as if he had tunneled through it.The wall of repulsion round the nucleus (repelling equal charges) would need a minimum energy to pierce it if the laws of mat-ter in bulk applied; yet an individual proton may, on rare occasions, make it through the wall even if it does not have that energy. It is as if it had tunneled through the wall instead of jump-ing over it. That is derived in quantum mechanics and amply verified by experiment.
Next, consider the energy associated with chemical reactions, that is, producing new compounds from their constituents. Some-times the reaction gives off heat
¾as in burning something (paper plus oxygen, if the chemists will forgive me for such blasphemy, yields paper oxide plus energy, the latter appearing in the flame). Such reactions are called exothermic, or giving off heat. Other reactions, such as occur in boiling an egg (I don't know what they are, but clearly chemical changes take place), absorb energy and are called endothermic.To give a more precise example, an electric current flowing through water will break down the water into its constituents, hydrogen accumulating at one electrode and oxygen at the other. This is electrolysis (used by F&P with heavy water, deuterium instead of simple hydrogen), and the reaction is endothermic: electrical energy must be supplied. If the two gases are mixed, a spark will ignite them, and the explosion produces water. This exothermic reaction gives off exactly as much energy as was needed to break it down by electrolysis, as required by the conser-vation of energy.
But F&P claim that the energy released in their setup exceeds the energy expended in electrolysis by a factor of up to 50, so the energy cannot come from that chemical reaction
¾nor from any other known one.The amount of energy could readily be explained by fusion; but some of the signs of fusion, at least orthodox fusion, such as neutron flux, tritium, and helium isotopes, have not been observed in the expected quantities. Hence the quandary.
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Vol. 16, No. 11
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 16, No. 11 Date: December 01, 2004 02:59 PM (For actual publication date see newsletter.) Title: The mentors
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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