Hi Robin,
> Hydrogen gas was added to the experiment. Yes indeed - but if I am not mistaken he clearly states that there was NO significant hydrogenation, meaning of course that the phenanthrene remained largely unaffected chemically; and that the second (outsourced) MS was performed on the black residue. Possibly it was even slightly hydrogen depleted by then, since in the ongoing gas MS, some methane was seen. Doesn't he state somewhere very specifically that there was little hydrogenation ? I found it most surprising that he would claim a rather massive nuclear transmutation but almost no chemical change after that many days under heat and pressure. OTOH the triple benzene ring must be exceptionally stable over time for this exact chemical to appear in coal, crude oil and creosote; since some of those deposits are from fossils which were once living a billion years years ago. I suppose if the moleucle will last a billion years unchanged in coal, then 10 days in a hot reactor is not too much of a stretch. It would be easy to write this off as bunko if it were coming from a lesser experimenter, and I cannot blame anyone, even the open-minded folks on this forum, for thinking that it is a huge leap of faith to accept it on face value. I am glad to see from the Mizuno message back to Jed that he had considered the obvious objections, even though I believe he is wrong about some details there. This one begs for a quick replication attempt with no calorimetry, looking solely for the end product transmutation to 13C. Heck it would be pretty big news if he got only 10^19 transmuted atoms instead of over 10^20 or whatever <g> Jones
