In Asimov's short story "P=E2t=E9 de Foie Gras":
'So the number of reactions possible is very limited. I have been able
to find only one plausible system. Oxygen-18, if converted to iron-56
will produce enough energy to drive the iron-56 on to gold-197.'
I have two questions:
1) Is this statement itself true? Do the nuclear binding energies of
these atoms match up that closely?
2) The number of nucleons definitely do NOT match up; Oxygen-18 has 8
protons and 10 neutrons, iron-56 has 26p/30n, and gold-197 has 79p/
118n. So we have to gang up the reactions, say
56 atoms of O-18 -> 17 atoms of Fe-56 + 6p + 50n
and then use beta decay to make the extra nucleons into one more
Fe-56. Something similar for gold-197, though I haven't worked out
the numbers yet. So the Goose is going to be emitting electrons and
antineutrinos? This goose was generating up to 45.8 gm of gold a day,
or almost a quarter mole -- that's about 1.4E+23 atoms of gold
produced. Every day. So that's a lot of electrons being emitted. The
poor thing should have static electricity from its entire body, maybe
enough to electrocute itself.
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