Given the looming importance of the Arata-Zhang finding - of a special importance for a particular nickel alloy, over and above palladium for baseline LENR effects - taken alongside the Mills and numerous other reports of energy anomalies with nickel electrodes, one might ask: what is special about nickel in regard to lower energy nuclear activity ? I am assuming of course, that Mills is hiding or ignoring the nuclear transmutation which is occurring in his devices, for a number of proprietary reasons.
Dunno for sure what is special about nickel. But I started brooding on this subject this morning, trying hard to think outside the "mainstream" box, and two things stand out as potentially important: 1) Nickel is one of only two elements in the periodic table whose atomic weight is less than the preceding element (cobalt in this case). The other is so rare as to be of minimal importance. 2) In stellar cosmology, the nuclear fusion (nucleosynthesis) of heavier elements, the maximum weight for any element which can be fused is nickel (not iron as is commonly thought) reaching an isotope with an atomic mass of 56 - however this nickel isotope then decays to iron. Iron and nickel are 'joined at the hip' in many ways. To further expound on why this could be important in LENR transmutation: atomic weight is found by taking the atomic mass of each isotope and averaging by that isotopes natural abundance. The reason for the drop in atomic weight in nickel (compared to Cobalt which precedes it) is due to the distribution of isotopes: nickel-58 (68%), nickel-60 (26%), nickel-61 (1%), nickel-62 (4%), nickel-64 (1%). Because the largest contributor to the atomic weight of nickel is the nickel-58 isotope, which is lighter than cobalt-59, the overall atomic weight comes out "light" despite nickel having the extra proton. This is not quite a singularity, but the other time it occurs in nature is with tellurium and iodine. The importance of this factoid - if it does prove to be relevant for "ease of transmutation" is that nickel can be hypothesized to be the most "relatively receptive" common element in the periodic table for the addition of nuclear mass, due to its inherent "lightness" on relative stepwise scale. We are eliminating the Coulomb problem for the time being (to be explained). In the past everything nuclear seemed to revolve around charge, and large nuclei with larger charge were seen as being relatively less likely to be affected by another nucleus. This assumption may be wrong in a situation of very tight orbital spacing or orientation (even if that is an illusion based on relativistic factors as Fran Roarty suggests). IOW - if it turns out the hydrogen or deuterium do in fact have fleeting "lower ground states", which can be defined in a way which is very different from the way that Randell Mills does in his CQM theory, and even if the (so-called) orbital is not stable over time as Mills claims (and as we perceive it in 3-space) then there will exist the arguable ability of the altered near-field of hydrogen (or altered statistics of charge placement) to assist in overcoming normal Coulomb repulsion wrt other nuclei. If and when this happens, then nickel becomes arguably the "most nuclear-active element in the entire periodic table", due to its "relative lightness" (as defined above) . yes, admittedly this is a "stretch" in logical reasoning if one is hemmed in by mainstream teaching on the subject and by majority opinions. That is why it is necessary on occasion to force oneself to think "outside the box." And after all - a "stretch" in logical reasoning is also what Sunday mornings are best suited for anyway, no? Jones
