FAQ - Why no neutrons exit atoms in natural decay processes

[Chris Bradley]

David Stewart Zink wrote:
> I'm not sure what the lightning flux at your house ...has to do with the global values.
....because neutrons made 'globally', miles away, are not going to make it to my house for me to measure. The neutrons will thermalise before getting here and have insufficient energy, nor lifetime, to make the distance. 50% of the neutrons I measure were made locally in the previous 611 seconds .... more than 99.9% of them were made nearby in the last 2 hours.

> I thought we were discussing neutron flux (not muons)
..yes, neutrons which are made by muon bombardments....

Can I ask you, do you think it is better to learn something about the subject you are hoping to discuss, before trying to discuss it?

I think there is a lump of posts here that might be better deleted, as this is meant to be a FAQ.

[Carl Willis]

Not quite.

"It means that neutrons observed during the enhancement
event are generated in the air and in the upper layer of
the ground, what may indicate the possibility for neutrons
to be born in photonuclear process by rays generated in
atmospheric discharge." (p. 4)

The rest of p. 4 is the author's discussion about extremely limited data on photon fluxes in and around thunderstorms, and to be fair to you, yes, the point that his measurement challenges the photonuclear hypothesis in the context of the limited findings of one other experiment. It's not fair to call this a "refutation" of the only hypothesis the author actually advances; it's better to say that he calls attention to a reasonable hypothesis, noting that it isn't entirely consistent with spare data from a single other source.

You also want to pick a bone with me about who said what, further up this same thread. I think where you're missing the point of something I wrote has to do with a syntactical lack of clarity in one of my sentences. So let's rephrase my point in a way that gets that manufactured non-issue out of the way. My point is that you said two things, one about the source of most earthly free neutrons, and something else about how they probably come from electron capture, and neither has any attribution to a reliable source, nor is either commonly held to be true in my field. So my point was, and is, that I would like to see your source for those assertions. Very simple, really.

Our experimental hobby fusion community welcomes all honest and respectful comers who want to contribute from their own experience. Chest-thumping wars and pseudoexpertise dropped on a FAQ thread is an inauspicious beginning, though. Let's wrap this nonsense up and move on.

-Carl

[Dan Tibbets]

David, before others chip in on your misconceptions. Let me make some points. The cosmic rays are not neutrons. Mostly, they are protons. It is not neutrons falling to earth, nor is it electron capture. It is is a pure hammer approach. The kinetic energy of the cosmic ray particles is so high ( over a few MeV, they are atom smashers. They literally tear the target (and possibly themselves) apart. A shower of particles- muons, protons, neutrons, etc are produced.


Google atom smasher, particle accelerators, the Oppenheiner (sp?) effect, etc.

Electron capture can happen in hydrogen, but it is an incredibly rare event, even in the core of the Sun. The cross section is ~ 10^-45 .
In comparison hot deuterium fusion has a cross section of ~ 10^-27, A billion billion times more likely.

Despite cold fusion claims , I know of no evidence for this occurring outside of very dense and hot environments like the core of the Sun.

There is electron captures that occur at significant rates, but this is mostly in heavier elements in the incredibly hot environments of super nova explosions.

Dan Tibbets

[Richard Hull]

I hope my last word on this as this post morphs from its original theme of "little to no natural isotopic matter decay neutron emission" to earthly neutron sources.

If there is no thunderstorm in your immediate area, right now, you will measure 0.000000 lightning based neutrons. The neutrons or shall I say the "detection events" in a large volume, sea level based 3He detector are mostly from neutrons created at or near the surface or tube wall/gas events caused by cosmic rays that have made it through the atmosphere or other local, to the detector, cosmogenic events whereby freshly created particles of huge energy are reacting with the tube or gas. Due to a well adjusted discriminator, We can warrant that most events will be neutronic in nature, but when a 10-100mev particle hits the tube wall and stars into the gas, it will be detected! a carefully watched DSO hooked to the output of the tube's preamp will show neutrons versus cosmogenic events as pulse heights that are amazing compared to normal neutron detects.

For our data collecting purposes it is all background. A background that we must subtract from any fusor operational efforts. Whether every background event in our detectors is a neutron of not is of no significance, but we can be sure that anything above this background is a neutron based on a fusion event within our fusors.

For my large 3He detector which is not massive, but just large, I regularly measure only 5-8 events per minute, background, and have recorded a near doubling of this at certain times after a very large CME event on the sun.

[Steven Sesselmann]

?

Am I missing something in this thread...., why would a neutron be kicked out of a stable nucleus?

There is no Coulomb repulsion between the neutron and the other nucleons, so what if anything would kick it out and why?

In the case of fusion neutrons, I think there is a simpler explanation.

When two deuterons are captured in each others cross section, the angular velocity around each other may increase to a point where bits literally fall off, sometimes it is a neutron and sometimes it is a proton. A slingshot effect, similar to that used by spacecraft, to gain additional velocity by moving in a close rendezvous with a planet.

Steven