> It can't possibly work because of the Coulomb repulsion between nuclei is far too strong for them to come into contact at our everyday energy levels.
Worth noting that (while obviously not what is normally meant by "cold fusion") muon-catalyzed fusion is possible and is cold, so the above statement can't be quite right.
Technically correct, yes, but muonic atoms have a lifetime on the order of microseconds. They aren't really relevant to the everyday-scale physics I was discussing.
There is however Lattice Confinement Fusion [1] which claims to overcome the Coulomb barrier through some kind of "screening" from the electron cloud in the lattice. That seems more like it would work on at everyday scales, though I don't understand it nearly enough to offer any opinion on viability.
> Technically correct, yes, but muonic atoms have a lifetime on the order of microseconds. They aren't really relevant to the everyday-scale physics I was discussing.
But they're relevant to the particular argument you were making, which involved only the nuclei and not what was orbiting them. Unless I'm misunderstanding?
> There is however Lattice Confinement Fusion [1] which claims to overcome the Coulomb barrier through some kind of "screening" from the electron cloud in the lattice. That seems more like it would work on at everyday scales, though I don't understand it nearly enough to offer any opinion on viability.
Lattice confinement fusion is generally considered to be crankery, as I understand it. It's what Pons and Fleischmann were doing. There are various people who have continued work on it but my understanding is that basically none of it is credible.
True...but without an extremely cheap source of muons (half-life: 2 microseconds), muon-catalyzed fusion will forever be condemned to "in theory, you could..." purgatory.
Worth noting that (while obviously not what is normally meant by "cold fusion") muon-catalyzed fusion is possible and is cold, so the above statement can't be quite right.