Good point Terry - but - I don't have a problem with the sampling uncertainty being less than what is actually available to be captured within samples.
This is not an easy point to reconcile, and I could be wrong on how NIST arrived at that number, but - the kind of uncertainty in the table could only define a variability per test sample over time and geography, and not an inherent variability within each sample. Thus you might say that there would be low mass variability between hydrogen split from tropical seawater in 1950 and hydrogen spit from Siberian methane in 2013. But within each of those samples, and independent of where they came from, is a range of mass-energy which varies from high to low at what could be as high as 36 parts per thousand. It may not be that high, but it could be much higher than the NIST uncertainty figure. If the actual variation was 36 parts per million, instead of per thousand - that is still considerably more than chemical energy. In short - even with a wider range of subatomic variability in each sample, hydrogen from any source will be more consistent. This only means that hydrogen is "extremely mobile" at the molecular level, which narrows variability between time and place - but the quarks and bosons are not as mobile at the subatomic level, preserving inherent variability at a finer level of measurement. After all, these same "authorities" will tell you that gauge bosons are massless and quarks are only a fraction of proton mass. Never mind that something is missing in that appraisal. -----Original Message----- From: Terry Blanton 7.4 x 10^-35 rather Terry Blanton < wrote: >> One derivative speculation of all of this, which points to usable details to >> help to better design NiH experiments, is to know "how much" excess >> mass-energy exists in hydrogen (as "overage" from the average) which mass >> can be converted to energy (via goldstone bosons). > > Would you agree that the uncertainty of 7.4 x 10^35 kg > > http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?mp > > sets the upper limit for the amount of mass-energy available?
