Sounds like nonsense to me. "Citation needed" has been on the page since june 21, so I removed it.
It would take an enormous amount of energy to fully ionize Bismuth, and it has a nuclear charge of 83 vs. 5 for Boron and 1 for hydrogen. It would be very hard to get a hydrogen ion close to the nucleus.
Bismuth as a fusion catalyst? Wikipedia weirdness
Why? Because it is diamagnetic? Diamagnetism is caused by the orbitals of the electron. When it is ionized, it will just be an ordinary plasma. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiamagneticNanos wrote:Would pyrolytic graphite be a better choice ?
I've ordered some of that myself to play with.
Fusion is easy, but break even is horrendous.
catalyzing the P-P reaction
It might help to understand a bit more about the P-P reaction. The direct P-P reaction is painfully slow because it requires one of the protons to beta decay (weak force, slow) into a neutron while in range of the other proton(strong force). With the introduction of certain isotopes, such as carbon12, it is possible for protons to fuse to the heavier nucleus one at a time, and the beta decay producing neutrons can take place at leisure. The fusion of the 4th proton knocks off an alpha particle, restoring the catalyst. While driving the proton into range of the larger nucleus is harder, not requiring the beta decay to happen right then makes the reaction much easier.
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ortholithiation
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Someone try a tiny nano particle of Bismuth.
I have had this same idea, but for Pd or Ni. There is some evidence that some fusion takes place within the cathode grid. I'm sure some has tried it right? I was thinking that some of the surface of the cathode grid would ionize off and join the plasma as a ion.
Would they actually be a metal plasma or ions floating inside the plasma phase?
My far out there long shot idea is that somehow these metals could facilitate quantum tunneling. I know crazy talk with no basis except for garbage science with cold fusion. Who knows though?
For the polywell, I'm not sure that any metal core will not be dimagnetic once you heat it up or even ionize it. It is fairly easy to ionize most metals, if you have an ion why not introduce it into the plasma.
I have had this same idea, but for Pd or Ni. There is some evidence that some fusion takes place within the cathode grid. I'm sure some has tried it right? I was thinking that some of the surface of the cathode grid would ionize off and join the plasma as a ion.
Would they actually be a metal plasma or ions floating inside the plasma phase?
My far out there long shot idea is that somehow these metals could facilitate quantum tunneling. I know crazy talk with no basis except for garbage science with cold fusion. Who knows though?
For the polywell, I'm not sure that any metal core will not be dimagnetic once you heat it up or even ionize it. It is fairly easy to ionize most metals, if you have an ion why not introduce it into the plasma.
Bussard did mention Bismuth when he spoke in an interview (American Antigravity I believe) of catalyzed fusion rescuing his Bussard Ram scoop concept for fusing collected hydrogen. It was vague, but he implied this was CNO fusion and he credited Whitmire (sp?) who was involved with describing the CNO fusion process. I think Bussard was referring to this fusion process that becomes much more likely as the temperature increases. The peak slope is ~ 10^16 to 19 increase for each doubling of temperature (within limits). P-P fusion scales at ~ 10^4. This faster scaling allows hydrogen fusion to approach deuterium fusion rates, but not to exceed it. I saw one reference that suggested the CNO fusion process could come within about 10^-2 of deuterium at several hundred KeV. Some intermediate steps of the CNO fusion chain: P-Nitrogen15, and P-Oxygen17 might come very close to D-D fusion rates.
I tried to do a Google search on Bismuth and fusion, but found only 1-2 links that said essentially nothing, except that Bismuth had the highest Z of any element?- or perhaps it was the highest electron binding strength?). That would possibly allow bismuth to retain some electrons at very high temperatures. Perhaps this has some Coulomb shielding effect for protons flying around, or not!
On a possibly related situation (probably not), fusor fusion with D-Helium3 at the U. Wisconsin has been shown to occur dominantly on the actual cathode grid (or at least very close to it). I suspect (don't know for sure) that the grid was made of tungston, another high Z element. D-D fusion did not show this. Was it due to the different tendancy for helium to be absorbed into the surface of the wire? Was it due to...?
Dan Tibbets
I tried to do a Google search on Bismuth and fusion, but found only 1-2 links that said essentially nothing, except that Bismuth had the highest Z of any element?- or perhaps it was the highest electron binding strength?). That would possibly allow bismuth to retain some electrons at very high temperatures. Perhaps this has some Coulomb shielding effect for protons flying around, or not!
On a possibly related situation (probably not), fusor fusion with D-Helium3 at the U. Wisconsin has been shown to occur dominantly on the actual cathode grid (or at least very close to it). I suspect (don't know for sure) that the grid was made of tungston, another high Z element. D-D fusion did not show this. Was it due to the different tendancy for helium to be absorbed into the surface of the wire? Was it due to...?
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.
As usual, all is catalogued at Askmar.com:
http://www.askmar.com/Robert%20Bussard/ ... Ramjet.pdf
This drove me nuts for a while, until the paper was available. Dr. Bussard had told me about "Bi-cycle catalysis" as a way to get the intestellar ramjet to work, but I had no idea what he was talking about. It is a CNO pathway.
This is not to say we could start building an ISRJ tomorrow. There's still a fair amount of handwavium required. The energy conservation mechanism for avoiding ramscoop drag is a simple diagram and a wish. Conservation of the catalyst would be a major challenge. Fusion of plain hydrogen at an industrial scale would be amazing ... I'm not sure it has ever been actually demonstrated in a lab at any scale.
http://www.askmar.com/Robert%20Bussard/ ... Ramjet.pdf
This drove me nuts for a while, until the paper was available. Dr. Bussard had told me about "Bi-cycle catalysis" as a way to get the intestellar ramjet to work, but I had no idea what he was talking about. It is a CNO pathway.
This is not to say we could start building an ISRJ tomorrow. There's still a fair amount of handwavium required. The energy conservation mechanism for avoiding ramscoop drag is a simple diagram and a wish. Conservation of the catalyst would be a major challenge. Fusion of plain hydrogen at an industrial scale would be amazing ... I'm not sure it has ever been actually demonstrated in a lab at any scale.
I know I'm kinda resurrecting a thread that's been dead for 2/3rds of a month and basically repeating what the last guy said, but when I first read the thread I didn't fully get the final answer, so.....
In the above article "Catalytic Nuclear Ramjet", Bismuth is not mentioned once.
Quoting from the 4th page [and converting it to text]:
"The hot CNO catalytic Bi-Cycle consists of the following reaction chain:
C-12 + p -> N-13 + gamma
N-13 + p -> O-14 + gamma
O-14 -> N-14 + positron + neutrino
N-14 + p -> O-15 + gamma
O-15 -> N-15 + positron + neutrino
N-15 + p -> C-12 + alpha"
[where "C-12" is the isotope carbon-12, "N-13" is the isotope nitrogen-13, etc., and "p" is a proton.]
From this quote, I get the impression that bismuth has nothing to do with it and the wikipedia entry is wrong.
(Mmmmmm, Muons! [gurgle])
In the above article "Catalytic Nuclear Ramjet", Bismuth is not mentioned once.
Quoting from the 4th page [and converting it to text]:
"The hot CNO catalytic Bi-Cycle consists of the following reaction chain:
C-12 + p -> N-13 + gamma
N-13 + p -> O-14 + gamma
O-14 -> N-14 + positron + neutrino
N-14 + p -> O-15 + gamma
O-15 -> N-15 + positron + neutrino
N-15 + p -> C-12 + alpha"
[where "C-12" is the isotope carbon-12, "N-13" is the isotope nitrogen-13, etc., and "p" is a proton.]
From this quote, I get the impression that bismuth has nothing to do with it and the wikipedia entry is wrong.
(Mmmmmm, Muons! [gurgle])
The pp cycle and the CNO cycle are totally unrelated. Forget about a connection.
Whether there are any proton reactions with any isotopes that lead to some intermediate state to which another proton can get added (like the CNO cycle does, but using heavy isotopes instead), then I would not suppose that is impossible (only, highly improbable).
The question to ask, however, is 'why' would one bother? If one increases the pp reaction by 16 oom, you still get a reaction about 6 oom less than DD. So you'd still want to use DD. pp reaction barely happens. Though we are bathed in the heat from this reaction [supposedly] it is so statistically unlikely that it is barely seen here on earth.
Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see if there is such a reaction. I am wondering whether there is some sort of;
Bi+p->Po(m)
Po(m)+p->alpha + Pb, or D+Bi[therefore catalytic for the next reaction]
Whether there are any proton reactions with any isotopes that lead to some intermediate state to which another proton can get added (like the CNO cycle does, but using heavy isotopes instead), then I would not suppose that is impossible (only, highly improbable).
The question to ask, however, is 'why' would one bother? If one increases the pp reaction by 16 oom, you still get a reaction about 6 oom less than DD. So you'd still want to use DD. pp reaction barely happens. Though we are bathed in the heat from this reaction [supposedly] it is so statistically unlikely that it is barely seen here on earth.
Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see if there is such a reaction. I am wondering whether there is some sort of;
Bi+p->Po(m)
Po(m)+p->alpha + Pb, or D+Bi[therefore catalytic for the next reaction]