NEUTRON REPULSION - POWERS BEYOND THE DREAMS OF SCIENTIFIC FICTION

The purpose of this review is to share experimental evidence of neutron repulsion with others - and to show graphically why elusive neutron repulsion was overlooked as the likely source of “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction” in the development of nuclear energy - before neutron repulsion is presented for public discussion at the London GeoEthics Conference on Climate Change on September 8-9, 2016. Aston first suggested atomic “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction” in the last paragraph of his 1922 Nobel Lecture, ten year before the neutron was discovered in 1932. Aston's expression of nuclear “packing fraction” was largely replaced in nuclear science textbooks after 1935 by the cunning concept of nuclear “binding energy,” based on the neutron-proton model of the atomic nucleus. When Aston repeated his Nobel Lecture at the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1936, a talented 19-year-old student apparently recognized the discrepancy between measured “packing fraction” and calculated “binding energy.” Soon after neutron-induced fission of uranium was first reported in early 1939, other scientists independently reported numbers of secondary neutrons released during fission that might induce a self-sustaining chain of nuclear reactions. This became the basis for nuclear secrets and atomic bomb production during WWII. Three-dimensional plots of precise atomic rest mass data from Brookhaven National Laboratory revealed neutron repulsion as a powerful, short-range nuclear force in 2000. Neutron repulsion was later identified as the trigger for neutron-emission from pulsar cores of ordinary stars, like the Sun, and the primary source of solar energy.