Whenever any element seems to work better than all of the others, it makes sense to look at the totality of physical properties for that element. Even those which may not be obviously connected to the way in which it works best.
To that end, one must ask: Is there any way in which palladium is unique - in the sense of a singularity ? Yes, there is at least one - and the possible connection to LENR is not obvious. There could be others, but there is one for sure, and I've not seen this alluded to before in the literature - even as trivia, so it is worth a mention. At this point, my original plan was to leave you guessing as to what the unique physical property consisted of, but in the interest of full disclosure, let's cut to the chase: after much diligence it has been noticed that Palladium is apparently the only element in the periodic table where there are elements with a lower atomic number which nevertheless have more electron shells! Doooh, do I hear someone mumbling "where's the beef"? Well, you might say that this so-called singular property is a bit underwhelming to begin with, since it is dependent on precise wording. Maybe so. Still it does indicate uniqueness in electron structure; and presumably electron orbitals are the first problem, at the angstrom level, which an approaching deuteron must deal with if it wants to react . to wax a bit anthropomorphic. This is a type of structural parsimony that is likely to be more interesting in the context of other properties, who knows? My main concern is - does this property relate in any other non-obvious or compound way, which is useful to promoting robust LENR ? Does it imply a way to look for other elements or alloys that can do it better? The answer is yes, but I will leave you guessing on that one. Jones
