Energy particles could signal cold fusion
Scott Hazen Mueller
permission. Call 1-800-USE-NETS or email in...@clarinet.com for more
information.
GOLDEN, Colo. (UPI) -- A Colorado School of Mines researcher said
Monday he has evidence that some sort of nuclear fusion is taking place
in a tabletop experiment similar to one in Utah that caused a furor in
the scientific community.
Energy particles escaping from the experiment could be another sign
that nuclear fusion can occur at room temperature, said physicist Ed
Cecil.
``We've found indications some nuclear reactions are taking place,''
said Cecil, who said he has been trying to replicate solid-state fusion
since University of Utah researchers announced March 1989 they had
produced nuclear fusion in a relatively simple experiment.
Cecil and his team and electrochemists Stanley Pons and Martin
Fleischmann at Utah use the same concept, combining deuterium atoms in
such tremendous concentrations they claim the atoms fuse together,
releasing energy.
Pons and Fleischmann separate deuterium, a form of hydrogen with an
extra neutron, from heavy water and use a palladium electrode in the
heavy water -- made from oxygen and deuterium -- to capture and compress
the deuterium atoms.
But Cecil uses pure deuterium in its gas form in a sealed glass
vessel containing a strip of heated titanium metal. Titanium, like
palladium, absorbs deuterium as a sponge would soak up water.
The Utah researchers have measured excess heat, plus some neutron
emissions and low-energy X-rays. Cecil, however, said he has been
measuring ``charged particles -- charged alpha particles and protons.''
An alpha particle is a positively charged nuclear particle identical
to the nucleus of a helium atom, made up of two protons and two
neutrons, and is ejected during some radioactive transformations.
Cecil is not ready to call it cold fusion, or solid-state fusion,
``but I will say we've seen a number of positive results during the past
couple of months. We're at the 80 percent or 90 percent confidence
level.''
Critics of Pons and Fleischmann have said their reaction produces
such low numbers of neutron emissions it cannot be classical nuclear
fusion, it must be some sort of chemical reaction.
Cecil, who has been at the Colorado School of Mines for 15 years and
has his doctoract from Princeton University, said he is ready for the
same criticism; he is seeing ``hundreds of reactions per second instead
of billions.''
``That's the amazing thing about this; conventional wisdom says it
shouldn't be fusing at all. But something is happening in there,'' he
said. ``There's an awful lot of good evidence that a nuclear reaction is
taking place.''
Cecil said he also has run ``hundreds of hours' of control
experiments using hydrogen gas instead of deuterium and measured no
particles emissions, which he claims ''is very supportive`` of the
solid-state fusion of deuterium.
With his tiny experiment, he said, ``there is not enough evidence to
say I could turn this into a heat producing reaction. We would need
something producing millions of particles per second.''
The next step is to ``isolate all the conditions to nail this down,''
Cecil said, and confirm what is causing the emission of the energy
particles.
--
Scott Hazen Mueller | sc...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG or (ames|pyramid|vsi1)!zorch!scott
10122 Amador Oak Ct.| +1 408 253 6767 |Mail fusion-...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG
Cupertino, CA 95014|Love make, not more|for emailed sci.physics.fusion digests
SF-Bay Public-Access Unix 408-996-7358/61/78/86 login newuser password public
Les Earnest
******************
--
Les Earnest Phone: 415 941-3984
Internet: L...@Go4.Stanford.edu USMail: 12769 Dianne Dr.
UUCP: . . . decwrl!Go4.Stanford.edu!Les Los Altos Hills, CA 94022