Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Rade

http://www.newenergytimes.com/Librar...ipleTracks.pdf

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I would be interested in learning how others think the Coulomb barrier was overcome in this Navy experiment. Also, is it really clear that the 3-pit pattern in Fig 1 (C) was made by three alpha particles ? It is not clear to me at all, I think each pit represents a nucleon. Any comments ?

According to the original paper’s abstract (see http://www.springerlink.com/content/022501181p3h764l), Mosier-Boss, Szpak1, Gordon and Forsley believe the “triple tracks” in the CR-39 detector material are caused by 3 alpha particles (helium nuclei, each consisting of 2 protons and 2 neutrons) due to the “breakup” (forced fission) of a single carbon nucleus (6 protons and 6 neutrons).

Because of the high energy requirement of breaking carbon (), the authors believe their finding suggests that this energy if from the fusion of a deuterium (1 proton and 1 neutron) and tritium (1 proton and 2 neutrons) isotopes of hydrogen into a helium nucleus (2 protons and 2 neutrons), releasing a fast-moving neutron. This fast-moving neutron has 14.1 MeV of kinetic energy, enough to break a carbon nucleus

This suggestion is, however, speculation. The claims of cold fusion “believers” that these results are “unambiguous” “evidence” “to physically place in the hands of doubters” are, IMHO, premature and overly enthusiastic.

I wish Mosier-Boss and her collaborators, or another group, would submit their or a similar paper in a journal dedicated to nuclear physics. The journal it was published in, Naturwissenschaften, is an “interdisciplinary” journal usually focusing on biology and biology-related subjects, so is not a very good place for a paper like Mosier-Boss et all’s, as it isn’t read by the most expert people, and may not have been reviewed by a specialist prior to publication (the identity of journal reviewers are usually confidential). Even better for amateurs like me would be submitting a paper to arxiv.org, where anyone would read it for free.