Category: Carnival

[0901.2411] A model for enhanced fusion reaction in a solid matrix of metal deuterides.

A model for enhanced fusion reaction in a solid matrix of metal deuterides

Authors: K. P. Sinha, A. Meulenberg

Our study shows that the cross-section for fusion improves considerably if d-d pairs are located in linear (one-dimensional) chainlets or line defects. Such non-equilibrium defects can exist only in a solid matrix. Further, solids harbor lattice vibrational modes (quanta, phonons) whose longitudinal-optical modes interact strongly with electrons and ions. One such interaction, resulting in potential inversion, causes localization of electron pairs on deuterons. Thus, we have attraction of D+ D- pairs and strong screening of the nuclear repulsion due to these local electron pairs (local charged bosons: acronym, lochons). This attraction and strong coupling permits low-energy deuterons to approach close enough to alter the standard equations used to define nuclear-interaction cross-sections. These altered equations not only predict that low-energy-nuclear reactions (LENR) of D+ D- (and H+ H-) pairs are possible, they predict that they are probable.

…would be nice to see this in a peer-reviewed journal rather than the arXiv slush-pile, but it did get an airing at a conference. Would be nice if such “low energy nuclear reactions” were studied a bit more dispassionately. The “cold fusion” circus really poisoned the well for anyone wanting to look at the data for themselves.

Were Mercury and Mars separated at birth? – space – 19 January 2009 – New Scientist.

Brad Hansen discovers that modelling a ring of debris makes two large planets and interrupts the growth of two others, thus reproducing the planets as we know them. In the process a Mars-like object would be needed to collide with Earth to make the moon and something akin is needed to strip Mercury’s mantle bare, but those are secondary details.

Question is: How did the debris ring arise?

Michael Woolfson’s Capture Theory has a natural answer – the solar system had two more gas giants than its present configuration and they collided, their silicate/metallic remnants forming a debris ring from which planets could form. But why only gas giants? That’s the trick – as Woolfson points out, gas giants form naturally via gravitational instability from gas filaments produced in a tidally distorted protostar. Terrestrial planets don’t, and have to be explained another way.

The little publicised gap in planet formation modelling is that going from the observed circumstellar dust to the planetesimals assumed by standard planet-forming theories is very, very hard to do. The dust if too small gets blown away, and if too large (but not large enough) falls into the star due to gas drag. Finding a process to counter-attack these two loss mechanisms is a damned hard problem, and one Woolfson-style theories tries to avoid entirely.

In science telling such origin theories apart needs better observational data at higher resolutions than we can presently attain. But bigger and better telescopic devices are coming soon…

Sorry… missed #84. The link is still available at Universe Today.

Now for #85… www.cheapastro.com… Space Carnival

…with a discussion on my favourite moon (no, not ours)… Triton

Computationally even relatively simple biological molecules can’t be emulated exhaustively – they exceed the computational power of the entire Universe (if it were a computer that is), thus purely first principles descriptions of any complex system are a nonsense. “Determinism” assumes infinite computational ability – Laplace’s Demon – but such just doesn’t obtain in the physical Universe.

So where has free-will vanished to, when even simple biomolecules are beyond deterministic prediction? It’s not free-will that’s threatened, but simplistic Determinism. Everything derived from “no free-will” is just cant and tendentious posturing. Human behaviour can’t be predicted in an absolute deterministic sense, even if we were just classical computers in essence. So give up the whole line of “there’s no free-will” – it’s meaningless from a scientific and human-level point of view. Only a God’s eye-view can make an utterly deterministic computation… and guess what? He’s not sharing the results with us!

Here’s the thing. Turing’s Non-halting proof means there’s no way of knowing in advance what a bit of not very complex software is going to do – will it continue forever or will it stop? Why should humans be any less complex and any less beyond prediction?

You might think “Well that doesn’t mean that the program’s future behaviour is not determined by its previous states.”

But by what do you mean “determined”? And who can judge whether it is or isn’t 100% “determined” or partially stochastic or partially “random”? In principle you can’t! So “determined” is operationally meaningless. It serves no descriptive purpose for complex systems. Doesn’t mean that non-determined things can’t exhibit statistical regularities – radioactive decay is inherently unpredictable, but it’s still layfully obeying the Law of Large Numbers and so forth. But what it does mean is the ideas of “freedom” and “free will” aren’t meaningless because lower level laws are inherently deterministic either. The evolution of a system down a particular branch of probable outcomes (one of Everett’s Many Worlds) is no more predictable than its evolution down any other branch, yet the ensemble of Possible Worlds is governed by quantum mechanics, a deterministic theory.

Freedom, free-will and Determinism.

Ian Musgrave – a Queenslander like me – is hosting #83…

Astroblogger Carnival… the Antipodean Edition

…these days he’s in Adelaide, South Australia (Ben Folds’ part-time home-town for a while.) Blogs hard on amateur astronomy, and gives Creationists a good kicking when they deserve it. Which is frequently 😉

The Carnival is here this week. Full of Mars news, the new exoplanets and a whole lot else. Enjoy!