Re: cold fusion

[Rondo Jeffery <RJEFFERY@WEBER.EDU>]

   Chuck Britton is at least partially correct in his recent post.  The 'Jones person' is Steven Jones, and he worked on muon catalyzed fusion at Argonne in the early '80s.  They found that muons are able to induce fusion in deuterium gas, because when the muon replaces the electron in the molecule, the molecule is made smaller, and the deuterons come close enough together to fuse.  Neutrons and all the other signatures of D-D fusion were found.  The only problem with this is that the muons have a short half life (microseconds), and the number of fusions each muon is able to induce before it decays does not produce enough energy to make up for the energy required to run the accelerator that produced the muons in the first place.  (Sorry about the long sentence!)
   Later, Steve Jones was pursuing another way of bringing deuterons together at Brigham Young University, namely in a metal lattice.  He was still looking for neutrons, and detected some, but not a lot.  It was this work that Pons and Fleischmann, at the University of Utah (about 35 miles away from BYU), were hoping to 'scoop' with their press conference, not the muon fusion work.
  Yes, muon-catalyzed fusion works, but not well enough to be useful.  If someone could just come up with a way to make the darn things live longer, of sell them by the boxful.  :-)
   Cheers.
Rondo Jeffery
Weber State University
Ogden, UT 84408-2508
rjeffery@weber.edu


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> > > Chuck Britton <britton@ODIE.NCSSM.EDU> 09/20/99 10:56AM >>>
>
> But isn't this 'Jones' person I'm seeing reference to the 'muon induced fusion' guy.
> Isn't HIS research 'accepted'?

> If *MY* recollections are correct, then these ARE valid points. My
> memory sez that the muon stuff WAS 'valid' and P&F rushed their press
> conference to 'get a jump' on Jones' publication.

> I'd like to hear MORE about the muon induced stuff. Was it really
> 'table-top' or 'just' room temperature. Where can I get a box of
> muons?
>
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> Chuck Britton                                   Education is what is left when
> britton@odie.ncssm.edu                          you have forgotten everything
> North Carolina School of Science & Math         you learned in school.
> (919) 286-3366  x224                            Albert Einstein,        1936

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