Chuck Can you dig up any of that old theory you mentioned?
Anytime a theory makes predictions which turn out to be true, it should be
given a close look - no matter how preposterous. In this case, yttrium would
be highly unexpected, and it could add a lot of credibility to examine any
theory which predicts it - unless this was shoe-horned into the picture, at
a later date.
For instance - Y is element 39 and it consists of ~100% of the one stable
isotope - which is 88.9 amu, having 29 protons and 40 neutrons with no other
isotope.
This fact alone makes Y extremely difficult to fit into any theory as being
a transmutation product of a heavier nucleus, and with one or more decay
reactions following fusion... since when P combines with D, we find way too
many surplus neutrons; and LENR is generally neutron-free.
Therefore the atomic mass numbers have to work out on their own, without a
free-neutron wild-card. And correspondingly - this difficulty makes such a
theory much more cogent, if this can really be accommodated within the known
rules of hot nuclear physics (and/or known decay products and channels) -yet
to do so, without another miracle (over and above the two already present in
LENR - the fusion itself, and the lack of gammas).
So, basically it gets down to there being 39 protons and 40 neutrons in Y.
We can work backwards from that to Pd+D. which at a minimum is 102+2 or
104+2 (and up from there, meaning much more difficult to envision).
Pd of course is element 46, but with many stable isotopes the fewest being
102. The spread of 7 protons gives an indication that the theory to predict
transmutation to Y will involve a either a quadruple alpha emission, since
when fusion with D takes place there are 47 protons to account for (e.g. a
fission of P+D can go to Y + O or something similar) - so that that the
figure of 16 amu becomes an important number, but even the lightest Pd (102)
will have 14-8=6 extra neutrons to hide, after giving up two alphas.
Do you see the problem? The near impossibility of clean math here makes it
next to impossible. And this makes any theory predicting Y most difficult
and therefore most interesting if successful. (unless it is an
after-the-fact kludge).
Jones
From: Chuck Sites
...the EDAX plots I sent him where pretty incredible.... one
element stood out as weird; yttrium. Tom was very excited about that
finding and even had a theory that yttrium would appear in D+Pd nuclear
reaction
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