A potentially useful hypothesis appeared in 1990 to explain the P&F effect, one of many which are largely forgotten today. There were a number of papers on a this new bound hydrogen species, called the "binuclear atom", authored by Cerofolini and Para - who moved on to other fields in the mid 90s. One paper appeared in Fusion Technology and is still online:
http://paolo.accomazzi.net/coldfusion/CanBinuclearAtomSolveTheColdFusionPuzz le.pdf Their hypothesis is worth a revised look today in terms of Ni-H, even though the primary emphasis (at the time) was deuterium fusion to helium, i.e. cold fusion. They did not consider protium as being active (and being fermionic, having no recourse to some new kind of BEC). But a recently proposed reuse of that term "binuclear atom" has expanded the relevance of the original concept, and can perhaps help explain gain in Ni-H. Caveat: the term "Deep Dirac States" has been used for this binuclear/Millsean field; and Kim, Rice and others - have tried to disprove parts of the possibility (in a flawed paper that is in the LENR archive): http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RiceRAcommentsona.pdf But rather than get into why Kim, et al, have made the wrong assumptions on this - we should understand what the binuclear atom (not a molecule) happens to be, first, and then the limitations on how this species can lead to gain (which is "not exactly nuclear"). In the binuclear atom, two protons become bound as pairs, held together by electron charge, but not as a molecule. The atomic-like configuration is designated as (H+H+)2e-. The easier designation for email postings is "(pp)2e" . The activation energy of formation is ~30 eV, which is so similar to Mills' 27.2 eV that this species can serve as an alternative to Mills hydrino-hydride, using some of his theory. The two protons, despite Coulomb repulsion, become bound by several eV, which is less than molecular bonding, but fairly stable. This is indicative of formation inside a Casimir cavity. Now if we add the proviso that the Casimir cavity (or pit) is composed of a porous active metal (for instance Raney nickel) then we are well on our way to an alternative take on Ni-H energy gain and we avoid the objections of Kim. Cavity confinement during (pp)2e formation is a key. Unfortunately for Cerofolini and Para, they did not invoke cavity QED for the formation of the species, nor did they understand precisely how energy gain is possible from protium, yet with no fusion or conversion to a neutron. In fact, they went on to focus almost exclusively on deuterium-palladium fusion, and to helium as the result. More recently a paper turns up which proposes another piece of the puzzle: "A binuclear atom - a special type of close bound state between proton and heavy atom" Chaly, Gurevich, et al. 2007. In this one, they propose: "It is established within the Thomas-Fermi model that a bound state of a proton with a heavy atom should exist. On the one hand, the electrons of the atom screen the proton's field. This decreases the repulsion force between the proton and the nucleus. On the other hand, the attraction force between the proton and the electrons is directed towards the gradient of electron density, i. e. towards the nucleus. For instance, for Z=80 both forces become equal at approximately 0.6a where a is the Bohr radius. The corresponding minimum of the proton potential energy is in the region of negative energies (attraction) that can be of the order of several tens of eV. We propose to call such a system a binuclear atom." http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0606082 In contrast to the molecular state (nickel hydride) where a coupling of atoms is due to shared outer electrons, the formation of a binuclear atom is a collective response of inner electrons to the screened potential of a proton (or pair) that is stable inside the valence shell of the heavy atom. OK this could be another piece of the jigsaw puzzle, but we are still not there yet. When you combine this hypothesis with that of Cerofolini (plus the proviso of Casimir containment) then you can see the possibility of a binuclear hybrid where the (pp)2e species forms in a cavity and then becomes nested inside the collective electrons of a heavier host atom, which in this case is nickel. But all of this activity is endothermic. The final step is to describe how this metastable arrangement translates into net energy in a way that is "not quite nuclear". For this you need to look at nuclear mass depletion which does not (normally) result in any kind of transmutation. For instance, the mass of a proton can vary within a range around 938 MeV, which is an average and not quantized. Since only the three quarks are quantized, there is plenty of room for mass-to-energy conversion of binding bosons (pions gluons etc). Quarks account for a small part of proton mass - far less than half, depending on who you believe, and the non-quark mass is substantial and variable, to the extent that there can be a surplus in many atoms, some of which is extractable. This mass-to-energy conversion without transmutation shows up as the acceleration gradient of formerly bound protons (away from each other) when they occasionally approach within the limits of the strong force (but cannot bind due to Pauli). There you have it. At least for today. Jones
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