Interesting Alternate Fusion Concept

[Quantum]

Richard, I appreciate that muons are not found in cosmic rays, only created by them, as you say.

You also say that no-one knows the true origin of cosmic rays.

I was merely suggesting that it may be possible that muons 'may' be produced by cosmic rays within the sun.

I'm expecting to be 'proved wrong' on this matter, however, as you say, no-one knows the true origin of cosmic rays. I also suspect it would be difficult to detect muons within the sun. I was merely speculating that muons could possibly play a part in fusion within the sun.

Maybe muons are the 'lucky donkey' required for 'over unity'?.....

[Richard Hull]

We have been over muon catalyized fusion to distraction! It is perhaps a close brother to the forlorn hope of P-B11 fusion in these forums.

As earth based muons demand a minimum of 50mev to be produced, or more likely 100mev to be produced readily, any fusion efforts involving them by man would require extreme input energy expenditures.

Finally, there are no indications of any feasibility of this idea as a net power producing system. Certainly, no one here will ever investigate it.

Richard Hull

[Quantum]

I appreciate that, Richard, but one muon can catalyze tens of thousands of fusion events, so it would be exothermic overall.

[Edward Miller]

Muons can't catalyze thousands of reactions because their lives are so brief they can only get into a hundred or so, and even then they sometimes stick to the molecule instead of catalyzing more and more reactions.

I agree with Richard, there is not currently a practicable path to energy generation via muons. For the most part they're a distraction. I find it fascinating that they show that fusion can be done by just decreasing the intranuclear distance and without the ridiculous temperatures required by ion collision fusion.

[Chris Bradley]

Depends on your definition of 'temperature', I guess.

How fast are those deuterons and tritons spinning around the muon - even though that 'muon atom' itself is at a low temp? As we well-know in IEC, it's nuclear speed that counts, not 'temperature' which is a bulk property and therefore I suggest it doesn't describe beam-target or muon-type fusion

[Quantum]

Edward, I'm not disagreeing with you in principle.

The number of fusion events a single muon can catalyze is obviously debatable.

I was merely suggesting that no-one can say definitively that they don't play some part in fusion in the sun.

While I'm not saying no fusion would occur without muons, We have no way of proving that they don't play a part in some of the fusion that occurs.

It is, after all, accepted that the presence of muons will increase the rate of fusion. (increase the fusion cross section)

[Quantum]

Chris, surely a 'muon atom' has a much greater fusion cross section in any scenario?

[Chris Bradley]

I've no idea what you're talking about. How does that relate to muon fusion? The muon acts as the 'nucleus' to two fusible nucleii, thus keeps them hovering around real-close-like in a 'quantum space', whereas 'fusion cross-section' relates to two fast-moving fusible nucleii on a beam-collision trajectory.

[Quantum]

OL, Chris.....In layman's terms, muons act as catatysts, thereby effectively increasing the fusion cross section, or, at least, they 'increase the probability' of a 'fusion event' occuring.

[Chris Bradley]

Ash Small wrote:
> OL, Chris.....In layman's terms, muons act as catatysts, thereby effectively increasing the fusion cross section, or, at least, they 'increase the probability' of a 'fusion event' occuring.

Give it me in specialist's terms as best you can, as I am unclear what level of understanding of muon catalysed fusion you have and this makes the discussion difficult to know where to begin it. What do *you* mean by 'fusion cross-section' in respect of a muon-atom, and if the probability of fusion is increased, with respect to the probability of -what- is it increased?

[Quantum]

Let me sleep on it, Chris, and I'll do my best to answer your question tomorrow......

At the end of the day, I'm but a mere metal worker.....

[Quantum]

Chris,

'the concept of a cross section is used to express the likelihood of interaction between particles.'

If something increases the likelihood of fusion occuring, it increases the fusion cross section.

This is my understanding, it is also 'backed up' by wikipedia.

[Chris Bradley]

Not really. Cross-section only applies in respect of a probability of interaction where you have a populated medium in which free particles are moving as an 'emsemble' system. What is the density of orbiting deuterons in a muon-atom? It doesn't make sense in that context.

Fusion occurs in muon atoms due to a confined quantised space such that the wave function of those orbiting deuterons/tritons causes them to, potentially, 'occupy the same space' and thus fuse. This is opposed to fusion of free particles in motion [thermal or individually accelerated] in which there is a quantum probability that they actually exist at some distributed region of space (according to their relative de Broglie wavelength) such that they might spontaneously find themselves 'in the same region of space' and thus fuse.

Whether you wish to assign 'nominal' velocities and densities of the orbiting deuterons/tritons, so as to force fit the situation to match the free nucleii scenario, is your choice but I think it'll end up in confusion and tears if you try to make predictions with that notion.

[Quantum]

You are correct in as much as muon catalised fusion experiments use liquid D and T, so the nuclei are closer together, but gravity will achieve a similar result in the sun.

All I'm saying is 'How do we know there aren't any muons in the sun?'

[Chris Bradley]

Ash Small wrote:
> All I'm saying is 'How do we know there aren't any muons in the sun?'

Because the Sun has too much plasma mass for heavy charged particles like muons, or fast cosmic protons that tend to form them, for it to be penetrated, and that the most energetic reaction (in our p-p burning Sun) is a 5MeV gamma from the D+p reaction (that almost immediately follows a successful pp fusion) yet over 100MeV is needed to form a muon, hence there are no reactions known of that have sufficient energy to form muons in the Sun.

[Quantum]

Muons are formed by collisions between hadrons, (protons hitting nuclei in the case of cosmic ray produced muons).

Presumably muons can be formed by collisions between protons if their energy is high enough.

Surely there are protons in the sun with sufficient energy?

(That's where cosmic rays come from)

[Chris Bradley]

Nope. None*. It's way too cold.

*(excepting for the 'theoretical' 1 in 10^100-type tail end of the thermal distribution, whose probability works out as units of occurrences. I've not crunched the numbers, I could be out by 50 orders of magnitude, but it makes no odds. Effectively none.)

[Quantum]

Then how are 100 MeV protons (cosmic rays) produced?

[Chris Bradley]

When God flushes his bog, or something similar...

There's more we don't know about the rest of the Universe than we do. Supernova and huge gamma emitting sources are likely 'starting points' for that amount of energy. Black-holes or, if you don't believe in such things, at least highly dense neutron stars and rapid quasars with 'trans-luminal' rotating magnetic fields, &c., &c. The mind boggles. There are inordinate numbers of TeV protons hitting the earth continuously, let alone MeV protons.

The Sun is a comparative fridge compared with the ovens and fireworks in other parts of the Universe.

The fission of the larger nuclear masses (so formed in such events) produce such levels of energy so muons can actually be observed here on earth even by 'natural' sources. Of course, we've got accelerators to generate particles of such energy.

[Quantum]

OK, Chris, so hadrons in the sun don't have sufficient energy to produce pions or muons. (at least not in sufficient numbers to influence the rate of fusion)

[Chris Bradley]

yes, that is my understanding of it.

[Quantum]

Thanks for answering my question, Chris.

[Chris64Strev]

The concept is interesting. I think the theoretician thought pressure alone would get a reaction but the mentioned experiment disproved that. I understand a 600 Km Sphere of gaseous Deuterium will spontaneously light up like a star and atmospheric temperature and pressure.

I find the idea of D+D>He4 very interesting. But how would the energy of reaction be released? I suggest a 3 body collision would result in the third body carrying off the energy thereby being a catalyst.

I therefore suggest the use of a P + D mixture so the proton would be the catalyst. Since you would not need many protons a normal bottle of low grade laboratory deuterium would contain sufficient number of protons to be a catalyst.

The reaction would be second order wrt D so the reaction rate would be proportional to the square of the deuterium pressure.

The rate would also go up exponentially with temperature but if you use deuterons accelerated by electric fields the reaction rate goes up linearly with the energy of collision.

The probability of a three body collision depends on the product of the pressure of each of the components so in this model three D collisions are more likely than D+D+P. To make the latter more likely a higher pressure of P is required, Higher that the D pressure. I suggest a protium pressure of three times the deuterium pressure.

The four proton interaction would be proportional to the fouth power of the protium pressure and becomes important at collision energies of 17 KeV. This condition can easily be met with normal electric fields.

I suggest therefore that the fusor be folded so the ion travels in a curved path so high energies may be reached with small containers. A magneric field will curve the ion path.

The condition collision energy=mean free path x field strength means there is a trade off between pressure and electric field strength.

This trade off means that to obtain high collision energy low pressure is needed, but this means there will be a low reaction rate.

The power to generate the electric field depends on the field strength and the energy generated by fusion depends on the fourth power of the proton pressure so there will be an optimum pressure for each field strength.

To obtain the condition energy generated = exciter power (ignition) we need to plot a graph of electric power against pressure for collision energy of 17 KeV and a graph of power generated by the volume of the reaction against pressure at 17 KeV. Where the two graphs intesect is the ignition point.

For deuterium I make this 10^-4Tor at 10 watt but for hydrogen 1000 Tor at 100 MWatt.

Chris.

[Chris Bradley]

What are you blithering on about??

Anyone who stumbles on this site might actually read this as a set of some sort facts.

It's bloomin' guesswork, misunderstandings and nonsense that's "not even wrong". Don't try to write about something you clearly know nothing. It's claptrap of the first order.

[djolds1]

We have been over muon catalyized fusion to distraction! It is perhaps a close brother to the forlorn hope of P-B11 fusion in these forums.

As earth based muons demand a minimum of 50mev to be produced, or more likely 100mev to be produced readily, any fusion efforts involving them by man would require extreme input energy expenditures.

Finally, there are no indications of any feasibility of this idea as a net power producing system. Certainly, no one here will ever investigate it.

Richard Hull

Feasibility is now easier to assess. There's a patent on the idea, with a test-stand variant:

http://www.google.com/patents/US20130235963

Fuel LiD of the specified density.

And interestingly, Williams hypothesizes that the proton is a composite particle as well - two positrons in orbit of an electron. Neatly accounts for where all that antimatter from the early universe went.