Light emission from lime (CaO) has been around for almost 200 years, but it appears to be just now ready for the "limelight", so to speak.
Certain metal oxides emit more short wavelength light when heated than would be expected if the emission were due to incandescence alone. This was first discovered during the 1820's when a young fellow by the name of Goldsworthy Gurney (later Sir Goldsworthy Gurney) used the flame of his oxy-hydrogen burner, to heat a lump of lime (calcium oxide). He found that the lime gave off a brilliant white light. This is part of the backstory limelight, for those who are new to this forum, and/or do not like to dig into the Vortex archives. Back in 2007-8, at a time before SPP became the plat du jour, we were talking about thermal and luminescent anomalies of CaO (lime). Some of this relates to f/H or fractional hydrogen. Could these anomalies have been an early version of a new and improved "dogbone"? https://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg25947.html This is a long thread which may be strangely more relevant today than it was back then, but to cut to the chase: apart from thermo-luminescence, calcium oxide exhibits also so-called flame luminescence in the presence of hot hydrogen. Why? Dunno. but calcium and oxygen both have Rydberg energy values in their ionization potential (not to mention lithium, nickel and iron). All of these elements can be found in Jack Cole's reactor. The light emission properties are overwhelmingly intense. which is thought-provoking in the context of surface plasmons, where the intersection of light, electrons and a dielectric are the key to success. Jones
