2012年7月9日月曜日

Lattice Energy LLCによるカーボン常温核融合の研究

常温核融合のベンチャーの一つに、Lattice Energy LLCという会社があります。今まで殆ど取り上げた事がないのは、常温核融合の実験や商品ではなく、理論的な解明への取り組みで有名だったためです。この会社の創立者であるLuwis Larsen氏は、Widom-Larsen Theoryと名付けた理論を展開しています。例えば、New Energy Timesを運営しているKrivit氏はこの理論に惚れ込んでいるようで、以下のようなポータルサイトもできています。

私には、理論はさっぱりわからないので話題にする事もなかったのですが、最近、以下のような興味深いスライドが公開されていると知りました。

このスライドの中でかろうじて読めたのは以下のページですが、ここには非常に面白い事が書いてあります。2つの研究機関の実験で、2本の超純水なカーボンを超純度の水の中で放電させたら、それまでには存在しなかった元素Fe(1箇所ではNi, Crも)が出現したと言うのです。実験のミスやコンタミ(混入)でなかったとしたら、これは常温で起こる核変換現象ではないのか・・という事で、自分の理論を当てはめて考察しているようです。従来の常温核融合実験と全く違うのは、電極となっているのは水素吸蔵金属ではなく、カーボンだという点です。そして、カーボンの特殊な形態であるグラフェンの表面で起こる現象が鍵を握ると考えているようです。
中身はさっぱり分かりませんが、炭素でも常温核変換が起こるのかもしれない・・というのは、非常に面白い研究です。期待しましょう。


  • Independent, substantially similar LENR experiments were conducted by two teams, one at Texas A&M University (USA) and other at Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC - India) with high-current electric arc discharges between two ultrapure Carbon rod electrodes in ultrapure water (ordinary H2O). Both groups observed essentially the same anomalous post-experiment results; namely, that stable metallic elements (both reported detecting substantial amounts of Fe; BARC also found detectable Ni, and Cr) that had not been previously present anywhere inside apparatus and appeared to have somehow been created ab initio during arcing processes. Detailed mass-balance analyses of Fe, the most abundant apparent product, strongly suggested that elemental Iron (Fe) with ~normal isotope ratios had somehow been created during experiments. Since chemical processes cannot create new stable elements where no such elements had been present before, either both teams’ experimental observations were erroneous, and/or contamination may have occurred, or nuclear transmutation processes had produced the observed results
  • Both teams’ reported data were published in 1994 as two papers in a peer-reviewed journal, Fusion Technology (American Nuclear Society). To explain their incredible data, the Texas A&M team further proposed a highly speculative and physically improbable heavy element fusion mechanism: 2 6C12 + 2 8O18 ⇒ 26Fe56 + 2He4 . This conjectured “cold” fusion mechanism was not generally believed by the nuclear physics community; thus these retrospectively important experimental results simply languished, largely ignored and still unexplained, until 2009
  • In a Lattice SlideShare presentation dated Sept. 3, 2009, we applied Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs (WLT) to finally explain these ca. 1994 experimental results (for readers’ convenience. selected slides from it are included herein without alteration). As readers will recall, WLT requires presence of collectively oscillating surface plasmon electrons (SPs - or their dynamical equivalents) on substrates capable of supporting many-body surface ‘patches’ of protons on their surfaces and on which the Born-Oppenheimer approximation breaks down which enables creation of nuclear-strength local electric fields. Since no metals were present inside the apparatus at beginning of the 1994 experiments, there was theoretical challenge to explain exactly how WLT’s conditions for LENRs were fulfilled therein. With benefit of new knowledge unknown to the researchers back in 1994, namely that copious quantities of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and Graphene are formed during carbon-arc electrode discharges in water, in 2009 we hypothesized that surface plasmons exist on CNTs and graphene. As of 2009, there was already strong published experimental evidence for SPs on CNTs, however direct experimental evidence for controllable SPs on Graphene was still lacking. Well, thanks to papers just published in 2012 by two independent teams in Nature, that remaining issue has been decisively clarified: researchers have now directly resolved gate-tunable, propagating surface plasmons in real space on Graphene
  • Herein, along with other recent discoveries, we will cite the Nature papers and discuss implications for LENRs on carbonaceous substrates

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