Posted on 08/08/2006 9:40:52 AM PDT by Sopater
Weirder things have been true, so further investigation is reasonale.
But Madonna is a huge propoent, so I have serious doubts.
Of course the usual cast of ...scientifically challenged... posters are going to overwhelm this thread of cries of "See, they've proven that decay rates change. It's a young world afterall!" La te da.
If true, this could be a huge boon to the nuclear power industry and another knife in the heart of OPEC and it's fanatical beneficiaries/parasites. That day can't come soon enough for me.
Obviously, you've gotta deal with reality. If there is no change, then there is no change. But if there is a change, then there is a change. The mere fact that someone has done a prior experiment that showed one thing does not necessarily mean that the matter is not worth revisiting, though.
Plus, other than ingestion danger, alpha emitters aren't much of a worry as waste. What about neutrons, gammas, and betas?
my cold fusion reactor is not working properly.
please help
Strange things happen in physics when the temperature approaches absolute zero. Superconduction, a "fourth state" of matter, as relates to liquid helium, appears, and the near-cessation of all molecular movement seems to collapse the very atomic structure of most elements. There may be a very simple explanation of how the alpha-emitter decay of radioactive materials is apparently vastly accelerated.
We need some experiments with Alpha-emitters in cold Drude Metals. Should be pretty cheap. Hope it works out and turns into a useful technology.
I'm not an expert, particularly, but this sounds a lot like cold fusion to me. We shall see.
The only folks talking about that stuff on this thread are ... you two. That strawman you're beating is quite dead, I think.
This isn't cold fusion, its CON-fusion...............
Doesn't a material lose its "identity" at absolute zero? Can't the nucleus and electron shells collapse and then re-assimilate into something else?........
As a YEC, I can't see how this explains anything on the timescale. The temps required are far below anything that would occur naturally, so this technique is probably not an explanation.
One of the scientists that I worked with over 20 years ago had an idea about accelerating nuclear decay with powerful magnetic fields. Have not heard anything since then.
Sounds like someone wants Funding $$$.
Radioactive materials emit heat. The lower the temperature to be maintained, the less energy efficient the cooling. Thus, IF the claims are true, accelerated radioactive decay would also mean accelerated heat production which would require tremendous energy for the cooling. A self-defeating proposition.
"Any experts out there care to comment?"
I wrote a whole book on Yucca Mountain, though I'm not really a nuclear expert, just a mechanical engineer. That said, the problem with the schemes to irradiate the waste and knock to a lower state was the problem of unintended consequences. That is, you also make radioactive the containers and metal so it is possible to end up with more volume of waste than you started (even if it is less radioactive), transuranics get created. I suspect similar problems might exist here.
Tsk, tsk! Physicsweb should know better. You don't use 'degrees' with kelvin.
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