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Re: Challenging the laws of physics



It was really silly to select liquid hydrogen as a medium
in which nuclear energy is thermalized. Heavy water
would be a better choice. But let us ignore this and assume
that every intercepted muon somehow leads to fusion of
one hundred pairs of D2 nuclei into He4. Using known
masses on finds that the released energy is about 2.2 MeV
per reaction, or 220 MeV per one "super-effective" muon.

But the mass-energy of muon is 106 MeV. Thus at least
106 MeV of electric energy (in an accelerator) must be
used to produce one muon. In practice the first number,
220 MeV, will be lower because the assumption is highly
unrealistic. The second number, 106 MeV, on the other
hand, will be at least by two orders of magnitude larger.
This shows that, even under ideal conditions, the suggested
reactor would produce less energy than is needed to keep
it going.

Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

The idea of catalytic fusion was summarized for us by
Leight (see below). In the spirit of promoting student's
excitement let me speculate and ask some questions.

1) Is it fair to assume that liquid D2 can be produced
in a cryogenic lab?
2) If a muon stopped in this liquid can cuase fusion
of many pairs of D2, such as 10 or 100, then we
should be able to create a cold fusion reactor by
producing a sufficiently strong muonic beam. As
I recall a "muon factory" existed at Nevis lab of
Columbia University (1970's ?) in New Jersey.
Does it still exist?
3) I have no idea what cross sections for absorbing
muons (creating muonic atoms) are at different
speeds. Knowing them would help to explore
this idea quantitatively. Any suggestions? Try
to show that this kind of reactor is practically
impossible or that it would produce less energy
that is needed to keep it going.