-----Original Message----- From: Horace Heffner >> JB: As we mentioned in previous postings, any nuclear reaction with Rb is extremely unlikely, if we assume it is related in any way to a thermonuclear reaction.
> HH: I think this is true. OTOH, the fact that a gas, Kr, would be produced from a Rb Bose condensate wavefunction collapse, it is very tempting to think such a thing is possible. JB: Well, I'm not sure why 'any gas' would be preferential, BUT there could be a "noble gas connection" to LENR ... at least there are some interesting aspects that go back to an earlier posting which I had been meaning to answer re: a message from Stephen A. Lawrence. I will include it here even though it is unrelated to Rb since it is related to transmutation into noble gases - helium and neon (in old experiments). >> JB: Now getting 10 deuterons together at one time to fuse into neon in a gas discharge tube, to the standard thinking of fizzix perfess'nals is beyond being wrong ... not even wrong ... > SL: A 10-way collision -- yeah, I'd say that sounds pretty unlikely. Yes, as a gas or plasma, it would be next to impossible - but as "pychno" on the surface of a nickel electrode, forming into a transitory BEC which somehow transitions to neon ... well ... it still seems unlikely, unless there is another factor which we aren't fully considering (related to the Bosenova and to noble gases in particular). >> ... yet Sir J.J. Thomson, no slouch in the lab and who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics and is best known as the discoverer of the electron described the production of helium and neon during the bombardment of various chemicals with these same "cathode rays". > SL: But cathode rays are just loose electrons, typically with an energy of a few tens of kev or less. Where do the deuterons come in? There were none in that instance - in fact deuterium was not known at the time. It was predicted in 1926 by Walter Russell, but not detected until 1931 by Urey. This odd example of 'old transmutation' was added to this thread (in what, as always, is a "stream of consciousness" narrative mode) to possibly indicate that there is something special or favored about transmutation into noble gases via LENR. At least the first four of them: helium, neon, argon and krypton - seem to be involved in a much higher percentage of experimental findings in LENR than would be random. IOW there seems to be some natural tendency for LENR reactions to produce noble gases as ash, as opposed to ordinary elements. Why? Neon and helium may be special because of "Magic Numbers" in Nuclear Structure. It is found that nuclei with even numbers of protons and neutrons are more stable than those with odd numbers. The magic numbers of neutrons and protons which seem to be particularly favored in terms of nuclear stability: 2,8,20,28,50,82,126. Also the numbers 2 and 8 turn up in valence electron orbitals for neon. That may be apropos of nothing, really. It sounds more like numerology than physics, and certainly - if neon is so "favored in stability" then why is there not more of it in the atmosphere? Same with helium... The only answer that I can come up with is that nuclear stability is like a well with a "false bottom". Hydrogen can fall into the helium "well" and nothing will come out the top of that well easily, but 3 or 4 alphas might "tunnel out" of the bottom of the well as carbon or oxygen and nothing else. Two neons might tunnel out of the bottom of the "neon well" as calcium so easily that that well just cannot ever get filled, thus the large proportion of calcium in nature and deficit of neon ;) As for Krypton, this gets a little dicey but if it fell into the neon well, out would come palladium ;-). "Noble gases transmuting preferentially into noble metals" with a LENR connection... hmmm... ...and you heard it first on vortex ... Jones
