[twb1960]

If Rossi’s device is doing what he claims, it produces excess energy through a Low Energy Nuclear Reaction. That's not a free lunch, any more than the energy generated by a coal fired power plant is. The only difference between the two is the physical mechanism used to extract energy from the fuel source (nuclear reaction vs. chemical reaction).

[muawiyah]

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/weakinteract.html should give anyone enough to work on.

[muawiyah]

Note, the the Weak Force is probably the reason why nickel doesn't "burn" down to "copper" all the time anyway ~ it could in an older hotter universe of course ~ but not under the current conditions ~ EXCEPT a little bit at a time under highly controlled conditions.

As the universe cools folks will have an even harder time working with this sort of fire, or any fire for that matter.

Good thing we still have plenty of residual free hydrogen atoms around. If we didn't we'd never figure this out I'm afraid.

[muawiyah]

Just realized that the larsen/Widom paper provides several reasons why a naturally occurring phenomenon on Earth (similar to the corona around the Sun) would appear to suddenly appear, dart to and fro, then rapidly disappear at a high rate of speed out of sight ~ to wit, your typical UFO.

Must be a gas discharge from somewhere ~ maybe natural gas bubbles? No idea what it would be, but it didn't seem to me any of this needed to be particularly hot to occur ~ although it would yield considerable heat once it did occur.