🚀 go-pugleaf

Several postings ago, I mentioned the possibility of quark-catalyzed fusion.
As promised (and requested) here are some additional details...
 
I smilied [:)] my original reference to quark catalyzed fusion since it
doesn't really apply to the problem of catalyzing fusion in a ramscoop :(
but it remains an interesting possibility for power generation here on earth
*if* free quarks can ever be isolated.
 
Quark catalyzed fusion is similar in concept to muon catalyzed fusion
with a difference - quarks don't decay. 

From F. Close, ``The quark structure of matter,'' in The New Physics, 
P. Davies, Ed., Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989, p. 422:

"Some of the practical details have already been evaluated and are as follows:
 
"A pair of antiquarks with charge -4/3 come to rest in hydrogen or deuterium at
a pressure of 2000 psi (1.4 x 10^7 N/m^2).  They capture a molecule and form
a system with charge -1/3.  The resulting `quark-molecule' is very excited.
It takes a short time to settle down, `de-excite', and in this time it captures
another nucleus, of charge +1, and fuses.  A quark is released to go on and
do the job again.  The process can be summarized by the sequence,

         Q + [D(pn) + D(pn)] -> [3H(pnn) + p] + (energy) + Q,

where Q = quark, D = deuteron, and 3H = tritium.
  
"The new quark moves on to the next nucleus and can initiate further fusion.
The reaction rate is one per second at 2000 psi pressure.  For deuterium,
this releases 3.65 MeV energy per fusion.  A few grams of quarks could 
catalyze fusion and generate 10% of the total USA energy consumption!
 
"There appears to be only one weak link in the whole enterprise: no one has 
yet found isolated free quarks!"
 
Various people have found evidence which suggests that free quarks exist
including Brian McCusker (cloud chamber photo in 1968) and William Fairbank
at Stanford (a variation on Millikan's experiment using niobium coated 
tungsten balls).
 
At present, theorists conjecture that quarks are confined in colourless 
clusters (hadrons) but this has not been *proved*.  It seems possible that
free quarks may exist.

If nothing else, it is interesting to contemplate the possible consequences
of free quarks...
 
--
Dave Michelson
davem@ee.ubc.ca