Ed > I'm confused. I was under the impression that the NaH was the catalyst
required to form the hydrino. If this is true, what is the role of the Raney nickel? First - there are two very distinct ways to look at this situation. It is somewhat logical to believe, as does Mike Carrell, that Mills got everything right -- and that the energy anomaly he discovered is explainable based precisely on application his CQM theory, and that the theory rules, and that no amount of good fortune is present. This is why Mike constatnly wants people to "study" Mills theory as if it were gospel. If that is true, then the nickel probably serves only as a proton conductor and catalyst to remove the proton from the sodium. IOW - those who are strict BLP advocates cannot imagine the situation where Mills could have succeeded, though good fortune alone - and found an experimental anomaly but that it is one that his theory does not explain. However, that is merely their interpretation, logical as that may seem, and until more is known - most of us would agree that Mills should be given the benefit of the doubt. Which is not to say that other avenues should not be investigated at the same time. An alternate interpretation is that Mills found a robust energy anomaly and is trying to shoehorn it into a theory which itself is suspect; but which theory is partially correct, and close enough to make it seem like it "works" to explain the anomaly when it really only goes part of the way. If this alternative interpretation is eventually found to be valid, and it is a long-shot - then the nickel may serve a similar purpose and role as does palladium in LENR, and in fact the excess heat may be nuclear and not the result of "redundant ground states". After all, as far back as 1990-1991 others besides Mills were finding excess energy in nickel light water LENR. Personally - I think the truth may be somewhere in between and that "redundant ground states" are necessary precursor states to low energy nuclear reactions - yet the hydrino states alone are neither endothermic or nor very energetic by themself -- which is why Mills could never get it right with his initial choice of catalysts (sodium was not favored till recently) and that most of the excess heat is coming from LENR. Since this interpretation pleases almost no one but moi, it will probably not be tested for some time. OTOH it would be very easy to falsify by looking for the smoking gun. Therefore - I will name the exact 'make and model' of that smoking gun. There are two excellent candidate low energy reactions where "redundant ground states" mimic a neutron partially - and end up adding a proton to another nucleus without the expected radioactivity. The evidence shoud be there if they look for these changes and these transmutation elements. One reaction would be 23Na + (hy) --> 24Mg. Where the pseudo-neutron adds a proton and transmutes sodium into magnesium with very little radioactivity - but there could be energetic betas and soft x-rays. One big difference over a neutron reaction is that the beta-electron is not a decay product - since- it never participates at all, except to serve the purpose of allowing the proton to get into the range of the nuclear strong force and perhaps another QM 'trick' or two. The other would be 62Ni + (hy) --> 63Cu. These reactions could easily be hidden since neither transmuted nucleus is radioactive. Are there QM problems with coupling and conservation of spin, you ask? ... more on that later. Jones
