RE: Real Cold Fusion

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

 Jacques.Read@eh.doe.gov [mailto:Jacques.Read@eh.doe.gov] wrote on Tuesday
August 15, 2000 3:04 PM

Perhaps one reason why people were more gullible about cold fusion was that
Luis
Alvarez at Berkeley published in 1957 the discovery of mu-meson catalyzed
deuterium fusion.  His group had observed tracks in a liquid hydrogen bubble
chamber that showed a mu-minus meson being stopped and captured by a D-D
molecule.  The muon, as a negative lepton, replaced an electron, but having
450
times the mass was able to bind the two deuterium nuclei together with 450
times
the force.  The vibrational modes of the molecule were enough to defeat the
Coulomb barrier in a few vibrations, and fusion resulted.  In some
instances,
the same muon was able to catalyze several molecules before decaying.
Unfortunately, muons are short-lived, so nothing commercial ever came out of
it,
but the effect exists.  (Also, of course, the 20 MeV per fusion pay-back
isn't
enough to support the several hundred MeV needed to make the muon.)
<><><><><><><><>

Comment :  there have been a number of articles published on this, including
one in the popular magazine Scientific American some years ago (it was the
cover story, with the high pressure chamber illustrated on it).
As I recall, the results were actually somewhat more encouraging than
Jacques implies - I believe the figure was something like 168 catalysed
fusion reactions by each muon would be required for breakeven, before it
decays away, and a couple of hundred-plus for a viable energy producing
scheme. And some of the best experimental results were getting up close to
the brakeven figure....
But there doesn't seem to have been much progress published recently. (and
who needs it anyway, when fission is so much easier & simpler to exploit...)
Jaro
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