Vernon Nemitz

“ And where were the irradiated-into-radioactivity pieces of laboratory equipment, due to neutrons that are also commonly released in fusions between deuterons? How could deuterium atoms lose their electrons and approach each other closely enough to fuse? And worst of all, why was the experiment so difficult to duplicate? (But even the expert chemists who announced the discovery could not produce excess heat every time; why should physicists that are generally less-expert at chemistry expect it to be easy?) ”

“ Every type of elementary particle that can possibly exist is a member of the set of virtual particles, popping/persisting/vanishing. This includes electrons, protons, neutrons, gluons, quarks, and of course pions, among many others. It happens that the pions that are involved in the strong force, holding nucleons together or causing nuclear fusion to occur, are always virtual pions. A peculiar fact about virtual particles is that no way exists to directly detect them during their moments-of-persistence. ”

“ Deuterons and Nuclear Fusion
The "deuteron" is a particle that consists of just one proton and one neutron locked together by the strong nuclear force. It is typically found associated with an electron, and together they qualify as a member of the set of hydrogen atoms. On Earth about one hydrogen atom out of every 6500 is deuterium-hydrogen, with a deuteron as its nucleus. (Deuterium is sometimes called "heavy hydrogen," since a deuteron has twice the mass of the more-common hydrogen nucleus, and thus water made from pure deuterium is known as "heavy water.") ”

“ There will be many virtual pions involved in causing two deuterons to fuse. There will be many opportunities for interactions with the muon to give it more kinetic energy. And perhaps some percentage of the time (25%?) the muon will gain so much energy, at the expense of the colliding deuterons, that when they finally fuse they will stick together as a helium-4 nucleus.
Inside a piece of deuterium-soaked palladium, we now start with the notion that some fraction of the deuterium atoms have donated their electrons to metal's conduction band, and have become bare deuterons. ”

“ The simplest interaction between virtual pions and two adjacent deuterons goes something like this: In the space between the deuterons, a pair of pions pops into temporary existence. These are electrically charged (not all pions are neutral, and while every pion consists of one quark and one anti-quark, the charged pions do not contain mutually-annihilatable quarks) . The negatively charged pion approaches the positively charged proton in one deuteron, while the positively charged pion approaches the neutron in the other deuteron. ”

“ Over the years physicists have discovered that every electrically charged particle can exist in two varieties that are identical to each other in almost every way, the primary exception being that they have opposite electric charges. ”

“ Therefore it is completely reasonable to think that the muon and the pion should interact with each other through the electromagnetic force. What will the result be?
The virtual pion is very likely travelling at high speed toward the nucleus of the muonic atom (when virtual particles pop into existence, they may be moving at any speed up to almost the speed of light) . When it is absorbed by a nucleus some potential energy becomes converted into kinetic energy (the nucleus starts to move somewhere) . ”

“ It happens that the muonic atom can approach the other atomic nucleus closely enough for the strong force to come into play, especially if the two hydrogens are both of the deuterium variety. Fusion occurs, even in liquid hydrogen, and the muon shoots out and becomes able to "catalyze" some more fusions in the same manner, before its short lifespan finally ends. ”

“ If a muon replaces an electron in a heavy atom like gold or mercury or lead, it will tend eventually to replace one of the innermost electrons of that atom, and, because it will orbit the nucleus 206 times closer than that electron, it will actually be orbiting the nucleus within the periphery of the nucleus. ”

“ Metals have a set of properties which are generally widely known and mostly need not be discussed here. The particular property which concerns us is the ability of a metal to conduct an electric current. This property exists because most of the atoms in the metal contribute an electron into a shared pool which is known as "the conduction band." ”

“ The less mass that virtual particles possess, the greater is the size of their cloud of possible locations, meaning the farther they can travel before they must vanish.) For the strong force, the distance that virtual pions can traverse (and pions are middling-weight particles) is closely linked to the range of the interaction cross-section. ”

“ Before the reaction occurs, the energy-to-be-released can be said to only "potentially" exist, although more accurately it can be said that the reaction simply converts some mass into some energy, that energy and mass are different forms of a larger concept, often referred to as "mass/energy." ”

“ As Sherlock Holmes pointed out: "When the impossible has been eliminated, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." If fusion is indeed occurring inside the palladium, then deuterium atoms must give up their electrons somehow, first. Part Five described something that may be improbable, hydrogen being an alloying substance, but can any reader show that it is impossible?
Next, the lack of tritium and neutrons is easily explained if the particular fusion reaction that occurs is always the ideal D+D->He4. ”

“ The hypothesis described in Part Eight includes a mechanism by which a muon could be involved enough in a fusion reaction, despite not being able to "feel" the strong force, to carry away some of the energy of the reaction. ”

“ One particular "set" of charged particles appears to be what most of the matter in the Universe is constructed from, so we call that set "ordinary matter." Any matter that is constructed from the opposite set of charged particles is called "anti-matter." ”

“ We know that they have some thermal energy, and every now and then two of the deuterons should happen to begin approaching each other. Normally, even discounting the electron shells they usually possess, they cannot get very close to each other, because they electrostatically repel each other. ”

“ Special conditions such as extremely high pressures are expected to be required for metallic hydrogen to exist. Nevertheless, the idea that metallic hydrogen can exist at all automatically means two things which are very relevant to the hypothesis presented in Part Eight. ”