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- Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!ames!pacbell.com!tandem!zorch!fusion
- From: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
- Subject: Terry Test
- Message-ID: <930111132916.20802676@FNALD.FNAL.GOV>
- Sender: scott@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Scott Hazen Mueller)
- Reply-To: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
- Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
- Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 21:31:01 GMT
- Lines: 53
-
- Steve Jones reminds me that he worked with the bubble chamber here at Fermilab
- as a graduate student. And that it was with a deuterium fill. Douglas
- Morrison reminds me that he independently observed muon catalyzed fusion in
- bubble chamber film. (Apparently Alvarez saw it first. Alvarez got to almost
- everything first.) I assume, Steve, that you know about this as the muon
- catalysis expert. So if we can make D-D fusion work with Terry Bollinger's
- terribly smashing bubbles, then bubble chambers are a way to go as a detector.
- We already know that they will work, thanks to Douglas Morrison.
-
- But Douglas was quick to tell me why there is not much sense looking at film
- of old Deuterium filled bubble chamber events. I had the bubble chamber
- operation slightly wrong. First the piston is expanded making the contents of
- the chamber "superheated" (even though it is liquid duterium). Then a
- particle beam is passed through the chamber. This produces trails of ions,
- which form the nucleation sites for bubbles. After time for the bubble
- growth, the flash tube is fired to expose film. So this mode of operation
- guarantees that all the pictures were taken on expanding bubbles. Operating
- procedure was such, that ion tracks from fusion events from bubble collapse
- when the chamber was pressurized would have long since recombined if they had
- existed.
-
- So what to do? We have to expand and compress the chamber at the same time so
- let's do it.
-
- Inside a plain water bubble chamber, we put a pressurized small container of
- D2O in a thin wall container. This container is fitted with an ultrasonic
- probe - I actually have one designed for cell disintegration that could be
- used. It could put 100 watts of sonic energy into a few cc container. A
- little shaping of the ultrasonic probe would produce a near point source of
- bubbles inside the small container. For operation, first the piston would
- expand the plain water (if beer works, so should plain water) chamber making
- it sensitive to tracks. The shaped ultrasonic transducer would be fired,
- making a bubble. After enough time for the ultrasonic formed bubble to
- collapse, and the track bubbles to grow, the flash tube would be fired to take
- a picture. I think the D-D fusion products would make it through a pretty
- thick inner chamber.
-
- The whole thing would be relatively easy to build. With D2O in the test cell
- and H2O in the bubble chamber we could operate at room temperature. Later if
- an event was seen the whole thing could be redone with liquid D2 and H2 and the
- associated cryogenic problems. We would not need to buy a camera and flash
- tube system right away, as we could sit with our noses up against the glass
- chamber wall looking to see an event. Almost any source could be used for
- test, but a little patience would give a cosmic ray. I would not worry too
- much about getting radiated until I saw a track or two.
-
- Why should you do it with a bubble chamber instead of setting up counters
- (radiation detectors)? Well, one picture gets Terry (and possibly you) a
- ticket to Stockholm, where detector counts produce endless debates about
- background.
-
- Tom Droege
-
-