🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <290@vlsi.ll.mit.edu>, glenn@vlsi.ll.mit.edu (Glenn Chapman) writes:
> 
>     A very astounding breakthrough just may have been made in nuclear
> fusion.  According to both the Financial Times (Mar 23, pg. 1, 26, and 22)
-----Stuff deleted----
>     The process they are using consists of the following.  Consider an
> electrochemical cell (like a battery) with a platinum electrode, a heated
> palladium electrode in a bath of heavy water (deuterium oxide).  Flow current

I read somewhere not very authoritative (I can't remember, but I don't read
autoritative magazines much) that "cold," or muon-catalyzed, fusion would
be expected to occur at about 900 C or so. I can hardly wait for real news
on how this "Pd-Pt catalyzed" fusion can be sustained with essentially no
rise in temperature. Any speculations available?

My trusty dictionary indicates Palladium is used as a catalyst in 
hydrogenation processes, so there is some justification for why it might
be useful in a process involving Deuterium. However, this reaction is not
all that interesting to me since it produces nasty fast neutrons. I know
there are reactions which eject fast-moving ions (electrons, etc.) with
no gamma rays or neutrons; I seem to recall these involve carbon as one 
of the "reactants." Anyone know what these particular fusion reactions 
are, or have a reference I could look this up in? Perhaps this 
fusion-catalyzing process will turn out to be more general once it's 
understood. (I like to leap before I look.) I'd even accept a process 
which had to occcur at 100 C, if it was clean in a non-gamma ray, 
non-neutron producing sort of way. If I had any choice in the matter.

===============
-- 
Tim Ebersole ...!att!mtuxo!tee 
                 or {allegra,ulysses,mtune,...}!mtuxo!tee