Cold fusion exists, little doubt about that. Only that it is even much colder than people expect. I mean, it is a question of “when”, not of “if”, for two hydrogen atoms to fuse. That’s elementary.
Perhaps a billion times colder fusion than the so called “cold fusion” is a fact of life.
I once had my friend calculate the probability of a single pair of hydrogen nuclei fusing in the reaction of 2H2 with O2 in a balloon (which produces a cool boom resulting in water vapor). Despite the enormous number of atoms, and the fact that at the high energy tail of the distribution some fraction of atoms should be going really fast, the probability that any were going fast enough to fuse was e^-somethinghuge.
Cold fusion exists, little doubt about that. Only that it is even much colder than people expect. I mean, it is a question of “when”, not of “if”, for two hydrogen atoms to fuse. That’s elementary.
Perhaps a billion times colder fusion than the so called “cold fusion” is a fact of life.
I once had my friend calculate the probability of a single pair of hydrogen nuclei fusing in the reaction of 2H2 with O2 in a balloon (which produces a cool boom resulting in water vapor). Despite the enormous number of atoms, and the fact that at the high energy tail of the distribution some fraction of atoms should be going really fast, the probability that any were going fast enough to fuse was e^-somethinghuge.
Yeah, but you won’t be getting much energy by sitting around and waiting for it to happen “naturally”.
There’s also spontaneous fission of helium-4. At what concentration of H-2 and He-4 are they in equilibrium?
http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/02/19/episode-517-ice-capades/