What you learn earlier in llife can be misleading. I had assumed that it
was the elctromagnetic repulsion of electrons that kept real world
things separate, but apparently this is not the case.
I wonder if there are other ways of looking at the Coulomb barrier in LENR
"A seminal work by Dyson came in 1966 when, together with Andrew Lenard
and independently of Elliott H. Lieb and Walter Thirring, he proved
rigorously that the exclusion principle plays the main role in the
stability of bulk matter.[25][26][27] Hence, it is not the
electromagnetic repulsion between outer-shell orbital electrons which
prevents two wood blocks that are left on top of each other from
coalescing into a single piece, but rather it is the exclusion principle
applied to electrons and protons that generates the classical
macroscopic normal force. In condensed matter physics, Dyson also did
studies in the phase transition of the Ising model in 1 dimension and
spin waves."
Wikipedia.
In passing, I thought this was an ecellent interview with Dyson about
the climate
http://www.vancouversun.com/texchnology/Conversations+that+matter+Earth+actually+growing+greener/10944052/story.html
