Nuclear reactions in light bulbs and bacteria

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Science has its own forbidden topics, its own taboos. Today, few scientists dare to study biofields, ultra-low doses, the structure of water …

The areas are difficult, cloudy, difficult to give in. It is easy to lose your reputation here, being known as a pseudo-scientist, and there is no need to talk about receiving a grant. In science, it is impossible and dangerous to go beyond the generally accepted concepts, to encroach on dogmas. But it is the efforts of daredevils who are ready to be different from everyone else that sometimes pave new paths in knowledge.

We have observed more than once how, as science develops, dogmas begin to stagger and gradually acquire the status of incomplete, preliminary knowledge. So, and more than once, it was in biology. This was the case in physics. We see the same thing in chemistry. Before our eyes, the truth from the textbook "the composition and properties of a substance do not depend on the methods of its production" collapsed under the onslaught of nanotechnology. It turned out that a substance in a nanoform can radically change its properties - for example, gold will cease to be a noble metal.

Today we can state that there are a fair number of experiments, the results of which cannot be explained from the standpoint of generally accepted views. And the task of science is not to dismiss them, but to dig and try to get to the truth. The position “this cannot be, because it can never be” is convenient, of course, but it cannot explain anything. Moreover, incomprehensible, unexplained experiments can be the harbingers of discoveries in science, as has already happened. One of such hot topics in the literal and figurative sense is the so-called low-energy nuclear reactions, which today are called LENR - Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction.

We asked for a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences Stepan Nikolaevich Andreevfrom the Institute of General Physics. AM Prokhorov RAS to acquaint us with the essence of the problem and with some scientific experiments carried out in Russian and Western laboratories and published in scientific journals. Experiments, the results of which we cannot yet explain.

Reactor "E-Сat" Andrea Rossi

In mid-October 2014, the world scientific community was excited by the news - a report was released by Giuseppe Levi, professor of physics at the University of Bologna, and co-authors on the results of testing the E-Сat reactor, created by the Italian inventor Andrea Rossi.

Recall that in 2011 A. Rossi presented to the public the installation on which he worked for many years in collaboration with the physicist Sergio Fokardi. The reactor, named "E-Сat" (short for Energy Catalizer), was producing an abnormal amount of energy. E-Сat has been tested by different groups of researchers over the past four years as the scientific community pushed for peer review.

The longest and most detailed test, recording all the necessary parameters of the process, was performed in March 2014 by the group of Giuseppe Levi, which included such independent experts as Evelyn Foski, theoretical physicist from the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Bologna, professor of physics Hanno Essen from Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and, by the way, the former chairman of the Swedish Society of Skeptics, as well as Swedish physicists Bo Hoystad, Roland Petersson, Lars Tegner from Uppsala University. Experts confirmed that the device (Fig. 1), in which one gram of fuel was heated to a temperature of about 1400 ° C using electricity, produced an abnormal amount of heat (AMS Acta, 2014, doi: 10.6092 / unibo / amsacta / 4084).

Rice. one. Andrea Rossi's E-Cat reactor at work. The inventor does not disclose how the reactor works. However, it is known that a fuel charge, heating elements and a thermocouple are placed inside the ceramic tube. The surface of the tube is ribbed for better heat dissipation.

The reactor was a ceramic tube 20 cm long and 2 cm in diameter. A fuel charge, heating elements and a thermocouple were located inside the reactor, the signal from which was fed to the heating control unit. Power was supplied to the reactor from an electrical network with a voltage of 380 volts through three heat-resistant wires, which were heated red-hot during operation of the reactor. The fuel consisted mainly of nickel powder (90%) and lithium aluminum hydride LiAlH₄(10%). When heated, lithium aluminum hydride decomposed and released hydrogen, which could be absorbed by nickel and enter into an exothermic reaction with it.

The report stated that the total heat generated by the device over 32 days of continuous operation was about 6 GJ. Elementary estimates show that the energy content of a powder is more than a thousand times higher than that of, for example, gasoline!

As a result of careful analyzes of the elemental and isotopic composition, experts have reliably established that changes in the ratios of lithium and nickel isotopes have appeared in the spent fuel. If the content of lithium isotopes in the initial fuel coincided with the natural one: ⁶Li - 7.5%, ⁷Li - 92.5%, then the content in the spent fuel is ⁶Li increased to 92%, and the content ⁷Li decreased to 8%. Distortions of the isotopic composition for nickel were equally strong. For example, the content of the isotope nickel ⁶²Ni in the "ash" was 99%, although it was only 4% in the initial fuel. The detected changes in the isotopic composition and anomalously high heat release indicated that nuclear processes might have taken place in the reactor. However, no signs of increased radioactivity characteristic of nuclear reactions were recorded either during the operation of the device or after it was stopped.

The processes taking place in the reactor could not be nuclear fission reactions, since the fuel consisted of stable substances. Nuclear fusion reactions are also ruled out, because from the point of view of modern nuclear physics, the temperature of 1400 ° C is negligible to overcome the forces of the Coulomb repulsion of nuclei. That is why the use of the sensational term "cold fusion" for such processes is a misleading mistake.

Probably, here we are faced with manifestations of a new type of reactions, in which collective low-energy transformations of the nuclei of the elements that make up the fuel take place. The energies of such reactions are estimated to be of the order of 1–10 keV per nucleon, that is, they occupy an intermediate position between "ordinary" high-energy nuclear reactions (energies over 1 MeV per nucleon) and chemical reactions (energies of the order of 1 eV per atom).

So far, no one can satisfactorily explain the described phenomenon, and the hypotheses put forward by many authors do not stand up to criticism. To establish the physical mechanisms of the new phenomenon, it is necessary to carefully study the possible manifestations of such low-energy nuclear reactions in various experimental settings and to generalize the data obtained. Moreover, a significant amount of such unexplained facts has accumulated over the years. Here are just a few of them.

Electric explosion of a tungsten wire - early 20th century

In 1922, employees of the Chemical Laboratory of the University of Chicago Clarence Irion and Gerald Wendt published a paper on the study of the electric explosion of a tungsten wire in a vacuum (G. L. Wendt, C. E. Irion, Experimental Attempts to Decompose Tungsten at High Temperatures. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 1922, 44, 1887-1894; Russian translation: Experimental attempts to split tungsten at high temperatures).

There is nothing exotic about an electric explosion. This phenomenon was discovered neither more nor less at the end of the 18th century, but in everyday life we constantly observe it, when, during a short circuit, light bulbs burn out (incandescent light bulbs, of course). What happens in an electric explosion? If the strength of the current flowing through the metal wire is large, then the metal begins to melt and evaporate. Plasma forms near the surface of the wire. Heating occurs unevenly: “hot spots” appear in random places in the wire, in which more heat is generated, the temperature reaches peak values, and an explosive destruction of the material occurs.

The most striking thing about this story is that scientists originally expected to experimentally detect the decomposition of tungsten into lighter chemical elements. In their intention, Irion and Wendt relied on the following facts already known at that time.

First, in the visible spectrum of radiation from the Sun and other stars, there are no characteristic optical lines belonging to heavy chemical elements. Secondly, the temperature of the sun's surface is about 6,000 ° C. Therefore, they reasoned, atoms of heavy elements cannot exist at such temperatures. Third, when a capacitor bank is discharged onto a metal wire, the temperature of the plasma formed during an electric explosion can reach 20,000 ° C.

Based on this, American scientists suggested that if a strong electric current is passed through a thin wire made of a heavy chemical element, such as tungsten, and heated to temperatures comparable to the temperature of the Sun, then the tungsten nuclei will be in an unstable state and decompose into lighter elements. They carefully prepared and brilliantly performed the experiment, using very simple means.

The electric explosion of a tungsten wire was carried out in a glass spherical flask (Fig. 2), closing on it a capacitor with a capacity of 0.1 microfarads, charged to a voltage of 35 kilovolts. The wire was located between two fastening tungsten electrodes soldered into the flask from two opposite sides. In addition, the flask had an additional "spectral" electrode, which served to ignite a plasma discharge in the gas formed after the electric explosion.

Rice. 2. Diagram of the discharge-explosive chamber of Irion and Wendt (experiment of 1922)

Some important technical details of the experiment should be noted. During its preparation, the flask was placed in an oven, where it was continuously heated at 300 ° C for 15 hours, and during this time the gas was evacuated from it. Along with heating the flask, an electric current was passed through the tungsten wire, heating it to a temperature of 2000 ° C. After degassing, a glass tube connecting the flask with a mercury pump was melted with a burner and sealed. The authors of the work argued that the measures taken made it possible to maintain an extremely low pressure of residual gases in the flask for 12 hours. Therefore, when a high-voltage voltage of 50 kilovolts was applied, there was no breakdown between the "spectral" and the fixing electrodes.

Irion and Wendt performed twenty-one electric explosion experiments. As a result of each experiment, about 10¹⁹ particles of an unknown gas. Spectral analysis showed that it contained a characteristic line of helium-4. The authors suggested that helium is formed as a result of the alpha decay of tungsten, induced by an electric explosion. Recall that alpha particles appearing in the process of alpha decay are the nuclei of an atom ⁴He.

The publication of Irion and Wendt caused a great resonance in the scientific community at the time. Rutherford himself drew attention to this work. He expressed deep doubt that the voltage used in the experiment (35 kV) was high enough for electrons to induce nuclear reactions in the metal. Wanting to check the results of American scientists, Rutherford carried out his experiment - he irradiated a tungsten target with an electron beam with an energy of 100 keV. Rutherford did not find any traces of nuclear reactions in tungsten, about which he made a rather sharp report in the journal Nature. The scientific community took Rutherford's side, the work of Irion and Wendt was recognized as erroneous and forgotten for many years.

Electric explosion of a tungsten wire: 90 years later

Only 90 years later, a Russian research team headed by Leonid Irbekovich Urutskoyev, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, took up the repetition of the experiments of Irion and Wendt. The experiments, equipped with modern experimental and diagnostic equipment, were carried out at the legendary Sukhumi Physics and Technology Institute in Abkhazia. Physicists named their attitude "HELIOS" in honor of the guiding idea of Irion and Wendt (Fig. 3). A quartz explosion chamber is located in the upper part of the installation and is connected to a vacuum system - a turbomolecular pump (colored blue). Four black cables lead to the blast chamber from the capacitor bank discharger with a capacity of 0.1 microfarads, which is located to the left of the installation. For an electric explosion, the battery was charged up to 35–40 kilovolts. The diagnostic equipment used in the experiments (not shown in the figure) made it possible to study the spectral composition of the plasma glow, which was formed during the electric explosion of the wire, as well as the chemical and elemental composition of the products of its decay.

Rice. 3. This is how the HELIOS installation looks like, in which L. I. Urutskoyev's group investigated the explosion of a tungsten wire in vacuum (experiment of 2012)

The experiments of Urutskoyev's group confirmed the main conclusion of the work ninety years ago. Indeed, as a result of the electric explosion of tungsten, an excess amount of helium-4 atoms was formed (about 10¹⁶ particles). If the tungsten wire was replaced by an iron one, then helium was not formed. Note that in the experiments on the HELIOS device, the researchers recorded a thousand times fewer helium atoms than in the experiments of Irion and Wendt, although the “energy input” into the wire was approximately the same. What is the reason for this difference remains to be seen.

During the electric explosion, the wire material was sprayed onto the inner surface of the explosion chamber. Mass spectrometric analysis showed that the tungsten-180 isotope was deficient in these solid residues, although its concentration in the original wire corresponded to the natural one. This fact may also indicate the possible alpha decay of tungsten or another nuclear process during the electric explosion of a wire (L. I. Urutskoev, A. A. Rukhadze, D. V. Filippov, A. O. Biryukov, etc. Study of the spectral composition of optical radiation in the electric explosion of a tungsten wire. "Brief Communications on Physics FIAN", 2012, 7, 13–18).

Accelerating alpha decay with a laser

Low-energy nuclear reactions include some processes that accelerate spontaneous nuclear transformations of radioactive elements. Interesting results in this area were obtained at the Institute of General Physics. A. M. Prokhorov RAS in the laboratory headed by Georgy Airatovich Shafeev, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Scientists have discovered a surprising effect: the alpha decay of uranium-238 was accelerated by laser radiation with a relatively low peak intensity 10¹²–10¹³ W / cm² (AV Simakin, GA Shafeev, Influence of laser irradiation of nanoparticles in aqueous solutions of uranium salt on the activity of nuclides. "Quantum Electronics", 2011, 41, 7, 614–618).

Rice. 4. Micrograph of gold nanoparticles obtained by laser irradiation of a gold target in an aqueous solution of cesium-137 salt (experiment of 2011)

This is what the experiment looked like. Into a cuvette with an aqueous solution of uranium salt UO₂Cl₂ With a concentration of 5–35 mg / ml, a gold target was placed, which was irradiated with laser pulses with a wavelength of 532 nanometers, duration of 150 picoseconds, and a repetition rate of 1 kilohertz for one hour. Under such conditions, the target surface partially melts, and the liquid in contact with it instantly boils. The vapor pressure sprays nano-sized gold droplets from the target surface into the surrounding liquid, where they cool and turn into solid nanoparticles with a characteristic size of 10 nanometers. This process is called laser ablation in liquid and is widely used when it is required to prepare colloidal solutions of nanoparticles of various metals.

In Shafeev's experiments, 10¹⁵ gold nanoparticles in 1 cm³ solution. The optical properties of such nanoparticles are radically different from the properties of a massive gold plate: they do not reflect light, but absorb it, and the electromagnetic field of a light wave near nanoparticles can be amplified by a factor of 100–10,000 and reach intra-atomic values!

The nuclei of uranium and its decay products (thorium, protactinium), which happened to be near these nanoparticles, were exposed to multiply amplified laser electromagnetic fields. As a result, their radioactivity has changed markedly. In particular, the gamma activity of thorium-234 has doubled. (The gamma activity of the samples before and after laser irradiation was measured with a semiconductor gamma spectrometer.) Since thorium-234 arises from the alpha decay of uranium-238, an increase in its gamma activity indicates an accelerated alpha decay of this uranium isotope. Note that the gamma activity of uranium-235 did not increase.

Scientists from GPI RAS have discovered that laser radiation can accelerate not only alpha decay, but also beta decay of a radioactive isotope ¹³⁷Cs is one of the main components of radioactive emissions and waste. In their experiments, they used a green copper vapor laser operating in a repetitively pulsed mode with a pulse duration of 15 nanoseconds, a pulse repetition rate of 15 kilohertz, and a peak intensity of 10⁹ W / cm²… Laser radiation acted on a gold target placed in a cuvette with an aqueous salt solution ¹³⁷Cs, the content of which in a solution with a volume of 2 ml was approximately 20 picograms.

After two hours of target irradiation, the researchers recorded that a colloidal solution with 30 nm gold nanoparticles formed in the cuvette (Fig. 4), and the gamma activity of cesium-137 (and, therefore, its concentration in the solution) decreased by 75%. The half-life of cesium-137 is about 30 years. This means that such a decrease in activity, which was obtained in a two-hour experiment, should occur under natural conditions in about 60 years. Dividing 60 years by two hours, we find that the decay rate increased by about 260,000 times during the laser exposure. Such a gigantic increase in the beta decay rate should have turned a cuvette with a cesium solution into a powerful source of gamma radiation accompanying the usual beta decay of cesium-137. However, in reality this does not happen. Radiation measurements showed that the gamma activity of the salt solution does not increase (E. V. Barmina, A. V. Simakin, G. A. Shafeev, Laser-induced cesium-137 decay. Quantum Electronics, 2014, 44, 8, 791–792).

This fact suggests that under laser action the decay of cesium-137 does not proceed according to the most probable (94.6%) scenario under normal conditions with the emission of a gamma quantum with an energy of 662 keV, but in a different way - nonradiative. This is, presumably, direct beta decay with the formation of a nucleus of a stable isotope ¹³⁷Ba, which under normal conditions is realized only in 5.4% of cases.

Why such a redistribution of probabilities occurs in the reaction of beta decay of cesium is still unclear. However, there are other independent studies confirming that accelerated deactivation of cesium-137 is possible even in living systems.

On the subject: Nuclear reactor in a living cell

Low-energy nuclear reactions in living systems

For more than twenty years, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Alla Aleksandrovna Kornilova has been engaged in the search for low-energy nuclear reactions in biological objects at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov. The objects of the first experiments were cultures of bacteria Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Deinococcus radiodurans. They were placed in a nutrient medium depleted in iron but containing the manganese salt MnSO₄and heavy water D₂O. Experiments have shown that this system produced a deficient isotope of iron - ⁵⁷Fe (Vysotskii V. I., Kornilova A. A., Samoylenko I. I., Experimental discovery of the phenomenon of low-energy nuclear transmutation of isotopes (Mn⁵⁵to Fe⁵⁷) in growing biological cultures, Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Cold Fusion, 1996, Japan, 2, 687–693).

According to the authors of the study, the isotope ⁵⁷Fe appeared in growing bacterial cells as a result of the reaction ⁵⁵Mn + d = ⁵⁷Fe (d is the nucleus of a deuterium atom, consisting of a proton and a neutron). A definite argument in favor of the proposed hypothesis is the fact that if heavy water is replaced by light water or manganese salt is excluded from the composition of the nutrient medium, then the isotope ⁵⁷Fe bacteria did not accumulate.

After making sure that nuclear transformations of stable chemical elements are possible in microbiological cultures, A. A. Kornilova applied her method to the deactivation of long-lived radioactive isotopes (Vysotskii VI, Kornilova AA, Transmutation of stable isotopes and deactivation of radioactive waste in growing biological systems. Annals of Nuclear Energy, 2013, 62, 626-633). This time, Kornilova worked not with monocultures of bacteria, but with the super-association of various types of microorganisms in order to increase their survival in aggressive environments. Each group of this community is maximally adapted to joint life, collective mutual assistance and mutual protection. As a result, superassociation adapts well to a variety of environmental conditions, including increased radiation. The typical maximum dose that ordinary microbiological cultures withstand corresponds to 30 kilorad, and superassociations withstand several orders of magnitude more, and their metabolic activity is almost not weakened.

Equal amounts of the concentrated biomass of the aforementioned microorganisms and 10 ml of a solution of cesium-137 salt in distilled water were placed in glass cuvettes. The initial gamma activity of the solution was 20,000 becquerels. In some cuvettes, salts of the vital trace elements Ca, K, and Na were additionally added. The closed cuvettes were kept at 20 ° C and their gamma activity was measured every seven days using a high-precision detector.

For a hundred days of the experiment in a control cell that did not contain microorganisms, the activity of cesium-137 decreased by 0.6%. In a cuvette additionally containing potassium salt - by 1%. The activity dropped most rapidly in the cuvette additionally containing the calcium salt. Here, gamma activity has decreased by 24%, which is equivalent to a 12-fold reduction in the half-life of cesium!

The authors hypothesized that as a result of the vital activity of microorganisms ¹³⁷Cs is converted to ¹³⁸Ba is a biochemical analogue of potassium. If there is little potassium in the nutrient medium, then the transformation of cesium into barium occurs at an accelerated rate; if there is a lot, then the transformation process is blocked. The role of calcium is simple. Due to its presence in the nutrient medium, the population of microorganisms grows rapidly and, therefore, consumes more potassium or its biochemical analogue - barium, that is, it pushes the transformation of cesium into barium.

What about reproducibility?

The question of the reproducibility of the experiments described above requires some clarification. Hundreds, if not thousands, of enthusiastic inventors around the world are trying to reproduce the E-Cat reactor, which captivates with its simplicity. There are even special forums on the Internet where "replicators" exchange experiences and demonstrate their achievements. The Russian inventor Alexander Georgievich Parkhomov has made some progress in this direction. He succeeded in constructing a heat generator operating on a mixture of nickel powder and lithium aluminum hydride, which provides an excess amount of energy (A. G. Parkhomov, Test results of a new version of the analogue of the high-temperature heat generator Rossi. "Journal of emerging directions of science", 2015, 8, 34–39) … However, unlike Rossi's experiments, no distortions of the isotopic composition were found in the spent fuel.

Experiments on the electric explosion of tungsten wires, as well as on the laser acceleration of the decay of radioactive elements, are much more complicated from a technical point of view and can only be reproduced in serious scientific laboratories. In this regard, the question of the reproducibility of an experiment is replaced by the question of its repeatability. For experiments on low-energy nuclear reactions, a typical situation is when, under identical experimental conditions, the effect is either present or not. The fact is that it is not possible to control all the parameters of the process, including, apparently, the main one, which has not yet been identified. The search for the required modes is almost blind and takes many months and even years. Experimenters have had to change the schematic diagram of the setup more than once in the process of searching for a control parameter - the “knob” that needs to be “turned” in order to achieve satisfactory repeatability. At the moment, the repeatability in the experiments described above is about 30%, that is, a positive result is obtained in every third experiment. It is a lot or a little, for the reader to judge. One thing is clear: without creating an adequate theoretical model of the studied phenomena, it is unlikely that it will be possible to radically improve this parameter.

Attempt at interpretation

Despite convincing experimental results confirming the possibility of nuclear transformations of stable chemical elements, as well as accelerating the decay of radioactive substances, the physical mechanisms of these processes are still unknown.

The main mystery of low-energy nuclear reactions is how positively charged nuclei overcome repulsive forces when they approach each other, the so-called Coulomb barrier. This usually requires temperatures in the millions of degrees Celsius. It is obvious that such temperatures are not reached in the considered experiments. Nevertheless, there is a nonzero probability that a particle that does not have sufficient kinetic energy to overcome the repulsive forces will nevertheless end up near the nucleus and enter into a nuclear reaction with it.

This effect, called the tunnel effect, is of a purely quantum nature and is closely related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. According to this principle, a quantum particle (for example, the nucleus of an atom) cannot have exactly specified values of coordinate and momentum at the same time. The product of uncertainties (unavoidable random deviations from the exact value) of the coordinate and momentum is bounded from below by a value proportional to Planck's constant h. The same product determines the probability of tunneling through a potential barrier: the larger the product of the uncertainties of the coordinate and momentum of the particle, the higher this probability.

In the works of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor Vladimir Ivanovich Manko and co-authors, it is shown that in certain states of a quantum particle (the so-called coherent correlated states), the product of uncertainties can exceed the Planck constant by several orders of magnitude. Consequently, for quantum particles in such states, the probability of overcoming the Coulomb barrier will increase (V. V. Dodonov, V. I. Manko, Invariants and evolution of nonstationary quantum systems. "Proceedings of FIAN". Moscow: Nauka, 1987, v. 183, p. 286).

If several nuclei of different chemical elements find themselves in a coherent correlated state simultaneously, then in this case a certain collective process may occur, leading to a redistribution of protons and neutrons between them. The probability of such a process will be the greater, the smaller the difference between the energies of the initial and final states of an ensemble of nuclei. It is this circumstance, apparently, that determines the intermediate position of low-energy nuclear reactions between chemical and "ordinary" nuclear reactions.

How are coherent correlated states formed? What makes nuclei unite in ensembles and exchange nucleons? Which cores can and which cannot participate in this process? There are no answers yet to these and many other questions. Theorists are only taking the first steps towards solving this most interesting problem.

Therefore, at this stage, the main role in the study of low-energy nuclear reactions should belong to experimenters and inventors. Systemic experimental and theoretical studies of this amazing phenomenon, a comprehensive analysis of the data obtained, and an extensive expert discussion are needed.

Understanding and mastering the mechanisms of low-energy nuclear reactions will help us in solving a variety of applied problems - the creation of cheap autonomous power plants, highly efficient technologies for the decontamination of nuclear waste and the transformation of chemical elements.