One interesting detail, in retrospect, about Yoshino/Mizuno's MIT presentation and the switch to nickel (from palladium) while keeping deuterium as the active gas may have been overlooked to date. Apologies- if this slant on the underlying reaction has appeared before.
It is the copper connection. As we know, Focardi and Rossi believed that the E-Cat is/was transmuting nickel into copper by fusing with a proton. When one mentions a copper connection, seldom does Mizuno's amazing new work come to mind. However, all reactions of nickel with a proton result in a radioactive isotope with a half-life which is long enough for it to have been seen. This kind of hot isotope is not reported in any study of the Rossi reactor - but his proponents are hoping that the TIP2 report will find evidence of copper transmutation. The same kind of signature radioactivity is not true with deuterium as the active gas. In fact, the solution is so stunning - that we have to wonder if Rossi may be using deuterium as his "secret" ingredient. Terry will remember that in the very first image to come from Rossi, there was a color-coded tank of deuterium in the Lab. Apparently it was not intended to be noticed. When questioned about this later, Rossi glibly said the purpose of D was to stop the reaction if it got out of hand ! With this new information... well... you can be the judge of whether Rossi's excuse was ever true. Notably deuterium in never seen again... Nickel 58 is the most abundant isotope of element 28, and as recently mentioned is "out-of-place" in the periodic table, being lighter than any stable cobalt isotope, the element to the left. By itself, that factoid would be unique in that it only happens in one other place in the entire periodic table, where elements routinely increase in average amu, in step with z.... But wait there's more than "relative lightness" (putative receptivity to nucleon addition). Look at Copper-60 , the expected product of a deuteron fusing to Ni-58. Cu60 has a short half-life and decays back to Ni60 in minutes. It could escape detection in any reactor - so long as a reactor was not opened for a few hours, since all one would see is a nickel isotope which is expected to be there. The beta decay is fairly strong however. The biggest problem with this scenario could be conservation of spin. Ni58 is 0 spin, Cu60 is +2, and D is +1. A beta decay ostensibly does not solve that problem. But the chance of this being the gainful reaction in conjunction with nuclear spin-coupling as a predecessor is otherwise worth looking at ways to get around conservation of spin. This elegant possibility of a gainful reaction in which stable nickel converts to stable nickel, giving up energy, is why my prediction for the Mizuno presentation in November is to suggest that they will see a relative decrease in Ni58 and a relative increase in Ni60. The more intriguing idea is that Rossi has been using deuterium all along in his E-Cat, but the only time the secret almost got out was in the original demo ! Jones
<<attachment: winmail.dat>>
