We've already gone over the new Science paper on muonic hydrogen elsewhere, but I saw a comment on E-Cat World that I thought was worth bringing up here. According to a summary of the Science article in Ars Technica [1], the problem I alluded to in the title is that the charge radius of the proton has been measured very accurately to be both 0.84fm and 0.88fm. This would not be a big deal if the accuracy of the measurements allowed both of these values. But the measurements are extremely accurate, and incompatible, unless there is something unexplained going on.
The comment by Gerrit in E-Cat World elaborates [2]: Have we discussed the recent finding of the shrunken proton yet ? The proton in muonic hydrogen is 4% smaller that normal hydrogen. They cannot explain it with current understanding, yet the new measurements are very high accuracy. http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/01/hydrogen-made-with-muons-reveals-proton-size-conundrum/ “The proton structure is important because an electron in an S [ground] state has a nonzero probability to be inside the proton.” Oh wait a minute, if the electron is inside the proton, doesn’t the whole structure look like a neutron, ie it won’t see a coulomb barrier and can fuse with another hydrogen at will ? The next question that “established” science should target is measuring the proton size of a hydrogen in a metal lattice. I think it is inevitable that “established” science will eventually stumble over the same phenomenon that has been shown to exists for over 23 years. In a few years we’ll probably be hearing “Well, with the current understanding of physics we can no longer claim that Fleischmann and Pons were wrong” So it seems that under certain conditions, physicists are measuring something vaguely like Mills's fractional hydrogen -- it might be that it is Mills's fractional hydrogen, or it might be something entirely different. Gerrit asks whether you could get screening, e.g., sufficient to lead to the anomalous behavior in metal hydrides we've been following here, from whatever it is that is going on. The Ars Technica article ends with this interesting comment: "The one option they [the research team] seem to like is the existence of relatively light force carriers that somehow remained undiscovered until now." New force carriers is an interesting thought. Would that imply a heretofore unknown interaction? Eric [1] http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/01/hydrogen-made-with-muons-reveals-proton-size-conundrum/ [2] http://www.e-catworld.com/2013/01/robotics-and-lenr/comment-page-1/#comment-105365
