Bob Greenyer got this answer back from Parkhomov on the "64Ni" question (Sochi results).
"About high content of 64Ni. We assume that in fact an impurity 64Zn was registered. Mass spectrometer cannot distinguish between these two isotopes." That could be big news… This could be a major breakthrough... or not. The isotope in question was depleted by almost half, so it provided most of the excess heat. If the 4.4% of mass 64 was due to zinc, then about 8% of the starting nickel was zinc contamination which is high but not impossible. Since Parkhomov sounds fairly sure, then he may have seen the other zinc isotopes which were not mentioned. Obviously, the next questions are something like this: was the depletion of the zinc-64 (compared to the starting level) due to its slight inherent radioactivity, and was the decay vastly accelerated? If so, then we must accept that accelerated beta decay can provide excess heat and possibly avoid detection. Other mechanisms are possible but 64Zn has an extremely long half-life, yet it is known to beta decay. The bottom line is that it would be wise to add zinc to a glowstick experiment to see if it could really be this simple.
