From: OrionWorks
* But now, getting back to speculations on Casimir heating or cooling effects, how much evidence exists that might allow us to speculate on the proposed validity that the materials involved, which are being heated up and cooled, are capable of switching back-and-forth between boson-like and fermion-like states? I could see how an asymmetry might be introduced into the system - IF such transitions DO occur. * But DO they? Better yet, CAN they? Well Steven - that is the $64 question. There seems to be a growing body of robust but unpublished experimental evidence for both anomalous heating and cooling with nanopowder, using spillover hydrogen and based on Lawandy's paper. You will see more and more of this being published in the next few months. Thanks to google books, we have access to old issues of New Scientist from 1981. On p. 205-6 there is clear indication that we have known for nearly 30 years that hydrogen condensation can happen at cryogenic temperatures - i.e. that monatomic hydrogen is a composite boson independent of the molecular state - which has very unusual properties as a condensate. http://books.google.com/books?id=IbbMj56ht8sC <http://books.google.com/books?id=IbbMj56ht8sC&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=composi te-boson+monatomic-hydrogen&source=bl&ots=XlZyp6rE-9&sig=AwMnZv-hCQzTfcbnkN2 mQZ65VG0&hl=en&ei=JFwaTab7Oon0tgPSpKjJCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnu m=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false> &pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=composite-boson+monatomic-hydrogen&source=bl&ots=XlZy p6rE-9&sig=AwMnZv-hCQzTfcbnkN2mQZ65VG0&hl=en&ei=JFwaTab7Oon0tgPSpKjJCg&sa=X& oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false This paper seems to have been largely forgotten, based on the number of emails questioning that a quasi-BEC can really happen with monatomic H under any circumstances. However, this old article offers no indication that "negative temperature" could provide an alternative to cryogenic temperature. And certainly no indication that the Casimir cavity can provide a locus for negative temperature. No one can be blamed for being completely skeptical that negative temperature in a Casimir cavity can do this, even on a temporary time frame; and the only 'proof' of it today is the implication from half a dozen papers which indicate that so-called pycno-hydrogen exists (under many different names, even Rydberg hydrogen). Holmlid and Miley claim to have evidence of hydrogen which is a million times denser than liquid. Furthermore - I do not know of any other conceivable way for densification to proceed, other than some kind of BEC-like condensation in a cavity or quantum well; but that is opinion, not fact. Maybe there is another way. At any rate, this whole line of speculation is only offered to provide a working hypothesis - for the benefit of any experimenters who might want to take the Arata, Kitamura, Takahashi, Focardi, Celani, Rossi, and Mills etc findings of energy gain with nickel-based nanopowder and hydrogen - to the next level. Probably none of them have it right but all of them have a piece of the puzzle. BTW it may become obvious soon that the prior emphasis on deuterium going back to 1989 was misguided. We know that H alone is a composite boson which is a singularity in nature - as it is composed of the minimum number of fermions (2) that permit both states to oscillate back and forth. and furthermore that having this minimum number of quantum states to align means it is exponentially easier to condense than deuterium at negative temperature, especially since spin can be aligned magnetically... To some, this realization can be almost a 'eureka moment'. Doh! Why didn't we think of this years ago, like 1990? Well, obviously it took a while for nanopowder techniques to spread around. and Focardi did publish positive findings with Ni-H circa 1990, but nobody took much notice until he found out about nanopowder and improved them. Plus, some of the blame can be laid at the feet of the great Arata himself, who for whatever reason claimed not to find gain in both hydrogen and deuterium, when others have seen equal if not greater gain from hydrogen in the same apparatus. You almost have the sense that Arata was so convinced that it was real fusion, that he may have had blinders on. Or else that somehow, some way, he is doing something completely different and is indeed seeing only real fusion. That goes against Ockham - but there could be several different kinds of major anomalies happening with very similar systems. I never liked Ockham much anyway. Science usually matures to be far more complex than it seemed before - kinda like the fractal that keeps unfolding. Once you find the proper way to look for underlying simplicity, invariably you find layers of ingrained complexity instead. Jones
