One detail worth exploring further was the statement from Rossi that only hydrogen works, and that deuterium kills the reaction !
That is counter-intuitive to say the least. Everyone in hot fusion knows for an absolute fact that deuterium is the more active nucleus, right? And everyone in LENR knows that deuterium and palladium work, whereas H2 is often used as the 'control' to show what doesn't work. Go figure. Well, pondering this for a moment, the only possible property that comes to mind to explain it was posted a few days ago - the "composite boson" in the context of negative temperature. It is sounding better and better as a rationale. To rephrase, the complex argument goes like this. The heat anomaly, whether it is fusion or not depends on "pycno" or dense hydrogen clusters. Based on Lawandy's paper and others, we see that spillover catalysts operate by splitting molecular hydrogen into atomic hydrogen without ionization. Dense hydrogen forms from atomic hydrogen if there are adjoining dielectric surfaces or cavities. Atomic hydrogen is a composite boson. If there are internal defects (cavities) for atoms to accumulate, they somehow seem to densify there without ever going molecular. We know that H is a composite boson which is a singularity in nature - as it is composed of the minimum number of fermions (2) that permit both states to oscillate back and forth. and furthermore having this minimum number of quantum states to "align" (statistically) means that it is exponentially easier to condense than deuterium at so-called negative temperature (which are not "cold") especially since spin can be aligned magnetically... Thanks to google books, we have access to an old issue of New Scientist from 1981. On p. 205-6 there is clear indication that we have known for nearly 30 years that hydrogen condensation can happen at cryogenic temperatures - i.e. that monatomic hydrogen is a composite boson independent of the molecular state - which has very unusual properties as a condensate. http://books.google.com/books?id=IbbMj56ht8sC&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=composit e-boson+monatomic-hydrogen&source=bl&ots=XlZyp6rE-9&sig=AwMnZv-hCQzTfcbnkN2m QZ65VG0&hl=en&ei=JFwaTab7Oon0tgPSpKjJCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum =1&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false <http://books.google.com/books?id=IbbMj56ht8sC&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=composi te-boson+monatomic-hydrogen&source=bl&ots=XlZyp6rE-9&sig=AwMnZv-hCQzTfcbnkN2 mQZ65VG0&hl=en&ei=JFwaTab7Oon0tgPSpKjJCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnu m=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA> This paper seems to have been largely forgotten, and offers no indication that "negative temperature" could provide an alternative to cryogenic temperature. And certainly no indication that the Casimir cavity can provide a locus for negative temperature. No one should be blamed at this juncture for being completely skeptical that negative temperature in a cavity can do this, even on a temporary time frame; and the only evidence of it today is the implication from half a dozen papers which indicate that so-called pycno-hydrogen exists (under many different names, even IRH or Inverse Rydberg Hydrogen). Rossi's results are consistent with this modality, and Holmlid and Miley claim to have evidence of tiny bits of hydrogen a million times denser than liquid H2. Are they nuts too? Or is it all fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle? Jones
