Science questions not worth a thread I: I'm a moron!

[uppi]

As I understand it... I am by no means an expert, of course... the reaction proceeds in a number of steps:

1) Powdered Nickel is hydrided under pressure, forming a thin-film Ni-H coating on very finely divided Ni powder. This powder is then heated to somewhere around the curie point, (plus or minus).

2) A soliton plasma wave is electromagnetically induced in the thin film Ni-H, and ultra-cold (low momentum) neutrons are formed from the H in the film and the e- in the plasma wave. The neutron-forming process claimed by Rossi (and before him, by Piantelli) is quantum tunneling.

Quantum tunneling? That cannot be right. Quantum tunneling is going through a potential barrier to a state with the same energy, but there is no such thing here.

And the mass difference between a proton and a neutron is about 1.3GeV. Subtracting 0.5GeV for the electron still leaves 0.8GeV of energy that has to come from somewhere. And 0.8GeV is a huge energy at such a scale (typical energies in a solid are on the order of a few eV, almost a billion times less). Without an explanation where this huge energy comes from this is just pseudo-physics.

3) The neutrons are absorbed by the Ni (in their ultra-cold state, the capture cross section is very large and the mean free path very short) generating higher-mass nuclides of Ni, which decay via k-capture or inverse-beta decay through Co to Cu and (possibly) Fe.

And this makes no sense at all. K-capture or beta-plus decay happen when there are too many protons. If Ni captures neutrons it should decay by normal beta minus decay in the other direction (Cu, Ga, Ge...).

4) The energy released is from the de-exitation of the reaction products (the heavier nuclides) and from e-/e+ annihilation events.

This should work, provided there is enough shielding (but in the shown images one does not see much shielding...)


I am skeptical that one can induce these LENR with electromagnetic fields, but I admit that such an effect might exist. But if someone wants me to believe that he can get energy out of this, he should be able to show me the exothermic nuclear reaction that is supposed to happen, even if he wants to keep the process how to make it happen secret. And Ni is one of the most tightly bound elements, so one would expect that almost all nuclear reactions starting from Ni are endothermic.

I have to say, this whole thing is extremely fishy.

 

[Blue Emu]

And the mass difference between a proton and a neutron is about 1.3GeV.

You mean MeV, surely... that's still a hell of a lot of energy, of course.

I have to say, this whole thing is extremely fishy.

The mass spectroscopic analysis of the samples of used fuel are also rather ambiguous. Rossi claims that the used fuel contains Copper isotopes that are no longer in cosmic proportions (indicating that a nuclear reaction of some sort took place):

Two different samples of material used in the experiments labelled in table
1 as method A (288 kWh produced) and method B (4774 kWh produced) were
analysed at Padua University SIMS. In the long period sample, the mass analy-
sis showed the presence of three peaks in the mass region 63-65 a.m.u. which
correspond respectively to Cu63, elements (Ni64 and Zn64) deriving from Cu64
decay and Cu65. These allowed us the determination of the ratio Cu63/Cu65=1,6
different from the value (2,24) relative to the copper isotopic natural composi-
tion.The peak in the mass spectrum at a.m.u.=64, due to Ni64and Zn64 (both
caming from Cu64 decay) requires the existence of Ni63 which, absent in natural
Ni composition, must have been in precedence produced starting by more light
nickel isotopes.

... while an independant Swedish analysis disputes that claim:

What results have you obtained from the analyses?

Kullander: Both measurements show that the pure nickel powder contains mainly nickel, and the used powder is different in that several elements are present, mainly 10 percent copper and 11 percent iron. The isotopic analysis through ICP-MS doesn’t show any deviation from the natural isotopic composition of nickel and copper.

How do you interpret the results?

Kullander: Provided that copper is not one of the additives used as catalyst, the copper isotopes 63 and 65 can only have been formed during the process. Their presence is therefore a proof that nuclear reactions took place in the process. However, it’s remarkable that nickel-58 and hydrogen can form copper-63 (70%) and copper-65 (30%). This means that in the process, the original nickel-58 should have grown by five and seven atomic mass-units, respectively, during the nuclear transmutation. However, there are two stable isotopes of nickel with low concentration, nickel-62 and nickel-64, which could conceivably contribute to copper production. According to Rossi copper is not among the additives. 100 grams of nickel had been used during 2.5 months of continuous heating with 10 kW output power. A straightforward calculation shows that a large proportion of the nickel must have been consumed if it was ‘burned’ in a nuclear process. It’s then somewhat strange that the isotopic composition doesn’t differ from the natural.

It seems to me very unlikely that a nuclear reaction would produce isotopes of Copper (or any other reaction product) in exactly the cosmic abundance-ratios.

Do you know anything about Pramana, published by the Indian Academy of Sciences? Is it a reputable journal, or a venue for crackpots?

 

[GoodGame]

A bit of on-line sleuthing will gather quite a few of the details. Assuming that this isn't just a hoax, Rossi seems to have adapted (stolen?) Piantelli's process. You could Google Widom Larsen, or Piantelli, or surface plasma soliton wave, or Ni-H LENR... there are lots of search terms that will bring up some interesting info.

I'm still not sure whether this is on the level or not, but if it's just a hoax then it's a pretty thorough one.

Well if you have a good idea of what's going on, I suggest you patent it before they do.

 

[uppi]

You mean MeV, surely... that's still a hell of a lot of energy, of course.

Oops
Of course it's MeV. That energy still has to come from somewhere, though.

It seems to me very unlikely that a nuclear reaction would produce isotopes of Copper (or any other reaction product) in exactly the cosmic abundance-ratios.

Exactly. If there was just one copper isotope that was produced, I'd be more inclined to believe it. And it's a bit strange they focus on copper like this. Any process going from Ni-58 to Cu-65 should also produce a bunch of other products. Various isotopes of Zn would also be prime candidates, so why is there no mention of, say, Zn-66?

Do you know anything about Pramana, published by the Indian Academy of Sciences? Is it a reputable journal, or a venue for crackpots?

Never heard of it before. It has an Impact factor of less than 0.5, meaning every paper in there has a chance of less than 50% of being cited at all. The authors of the papers seem to predominantly Indian and it seems to be a journal where you publish your paper if you failed to get into a decent journal (i.e. a journal that somebody actually reads). That does not necessarily mean that the content is bad or crackpot material, but let's put it this way: I cannot imagine that the peer review process is very stringent.

 

[Blue Emu]

Never heard of it before. It has an Impact factor of less than 0.5, meaning every paper in there has a chance of less than 50% of being cited at all. The authors of the papers seem to predominantly Indian and it seems to be a journal where you publish your paper if you failed to get into a decent journal (i.e. a journal that somebody actually reads). That does not necessarily mean that the content is bad or crackpot material, but let's put it this way: I cannot imagine that the peer review process is very stringent.

Yah... too bad, I was hoping that there might be something to these claims.

Here's why I asked about Pramana:

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2010/2010Srivastava-Primer.pdf

 

[emzie]

Why are you bringing this one up again? Oh, they tested it a few days ago.

Because the previous post was looking for the thread?

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Let's say we have two sun-like stars in a binary orbit, with the secondary being about 70% of the mass of the primary, and about 1 AU apart. Would it be possible for an object, such as a planetoid or an asteroid, to remain in the lagrangian L4 or L5 point of the companion sun, or would it be ejected?

 

[Gigaz]

Let's say we have two sun-like stars in a binary orbit, with the secondary being about 70% of the mass of the primary, and about 1 AU apart. Would it be possible for an object, such as a planetoid or an asteroid, to remain in the lagrangian L4 or L5 point of the companion sun, or would it be ejected?

The lagrangian points generally don't allow an orbit that remains stable over billions of years.

 

[peter grimes]

I need a little help understanding something.

I just read an awful bit on ScienceDaily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111109111536.htm

Weird World of Water Gets a Little Weirder

ScienceDaily (Nov. 9, 2011) — Strange, stranger, strangest! To the weird nature of one of the simplest chemical compounds -- the stuff so familiar that even non-scientists know its chemical formula -- add another odd twist.

Scientists are reporting that good old H2O, when chilled below the freezing point, can shift into a new type of liquid.

The report appears in ACS' Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

Pradeep Kumar and H. Eugene Stanley explain that water is one weird substance, exhibiting more than 80 unusual properties, by one count, including some that scientists still struggle to understand. For example, water can exist in all three states of matter (solid, liquid,gas) at the same time. And the forces at its surface enable insects to walk on water and water to rise up from the roots into the leaves of trees and other plants.

In another strange turn, scientists have proposed that water can go from being one type of liquid into another in a so-called "liquid-liquid" phase transition, but it is impossible to test this with today's laboratory equipment because these things happen so fast. That's why Kumar and Stanley used computer simulations to check it out.

They found that when they chilled liquid water in their simulation, its propensity to conduct heat decreases, as expected for an ordinary liquid. But, when they lowered the temperature to about 54 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, the liquid water started to conduct heat even better in the simulation. Their studies suggest that below this temperature, liquid water undergoes sharp but continuous structural changes whereas the local structure of liquid becomes extremely ordered -- very much like ice. These structural changes in liquid water lead to increase of heat conduction at lower temperatures.

The researchers say that this surprising result supports the idea that water has a liquid-liquid phase transition.

I've bolded the sentence that struck me. It happens to have been a Trivial Pursuit question that I lost a game to, and I'll never forget it. I assumed the Trivial Pursuit question was poorly worded. But is this really true?? I thought that the state was dependent on the pressure, volume, and temperature.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, that is what you get by using poor wording and worse, relate it with something only tangencially related

What I think the author meant to say is that water states can somewhat coexist in PTN ( normal pressure and temperature ) in spite of that not being a stable condition, but that is far from being unique to water That or that the water has a triple point ,where solid, gas and liquid form are equally stable, but again nothing remarkable ( for water is IIRC 273,16 kelvin (0,01 °C), 611,73 Pa ) ...

All of that to introduce a possible liquid water II phase :/

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

The lagrangian points generally don't allow an orbit that remains stable over billions of years.

So I take it this means even Jupiter's Trojan asteroids usually aren't in the Lagrangian points for very long?

 

[El_Machinae]

My easy question!

If the universe expansion is accelerating, then that means that distant objects are receding faster than light and that as time passes more objects become FTL relative to us.

We're currently receiving light from stars that were 13 billion light years away, but are currently 45 billion light years away. This means that I cannot possibly affect them, because any laser I shoot will never get to those stars. Space is expanding between us too fast.

So, how big is our current influence bubble? What is the size of the region that I could transmit a laser signal to? How many galaxies can we affect?

Before Dark Energy and Universe acceleration, I thought that mankind had inherited 100 billion galaxies. But I think that number is actually decidedly less ...

 

[Blue Emu]

Before Dark Energy and Universe acceleration, I thought that mankind had inherited 100 billion galaxies. But I think that number is actually decidedly less ...

Does this take into account the Lorentz length contraction? The regions that are moving close to light-speed relative to us would contain "stacks" of paper-thin galaxies (from our point of view), wouldn't they? There might be room for an infinite number of them...

 

[Souron]

Well the size of the region that can be affected isn't changing. What is changing is the number of galaxies in that region. However, your question is more complex than it seems, because the what we can effect depends not only on the present rate of expansion, but also on how that rate will change over the course of light traveling in that direction. Also, you don't put an upper bound on when we affect those galaxies. Light could leave now and travel for longer than the present age of the universe before hitting something.

 

[Gigaz]

So, how big is our current influence bubble? What is the size of the region that I could transmit a laser signal to? How many galaxies can we affect?

It is relatively unclear how the value of the Hubble parameter will change in the future but the answer is propably between one billion and infinite.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well the size of the region that can be affected isn't changing. What is changing is the number of galaxies in that region. However, your question is more complex than it seems, because the what we can effect depends not only on the present rate of expansion, but also on how that rate will change over the course of light traveling in that direction. Also, you don't put an upper bound on when we affect those galaxies. Light could leave now and travel for longer than the present age of the universe before hitting something.

Well, sure. But there's a boundary between what my laser would eventually hit, and what it would never hit.

 

[uppi]

Well, sure. But there's a boundary between what my laser would eventually hit, and what it would never hit.

Maybe, but if the universe would stop expansion at one point in the future, such a boundary would not exist. And unless we have an actual theory of dark energy, there is no way to say how fast the universe will expand in the future.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

Question: Where does the energy difference of a red-shifted photon (let's say from a far away galaxy) "remain"? Let's say we have two objects that have different speeds relative to the galaxy, so if the can both detect the photon (don't know if thats possible) it has different energies.

 

[Gigaz]

Short answer: It goes into the space time continuum, duh.

Long answer:

The expansion of spacetime can be explaines with the Robertson-Walker-Metrik. To derive it, one assumes that the matter density of the universe is homogenous. In principle, the expansion of spacetime can be explained with a local interaction between two pieces of matter which conserves enery and impulse. In this case, this would a photon and the Dark Enery around it. So far, noone really knows what the DE is and how it behaves, but it principle, the energy should wander into the Dark Energy.

 

[El_Machinae]

Redshift changes the energy per unit of time, but not the total energy. A single photon from a star coming towards us will be 'blue shifted', but it can contain the same energy as a single photon from a star receding from us. It will take longer for the red-shifted photon to transfer all of its energy than the blue-shifted photon, but if they were equivalent photons when they were created, then their total energy will be the same at the end.