Poser of the Day: Why is the element mercury a dense liquid? - there have been prior (incomplete) explanations, but it turns out that relativity is the culprit.
The inner electrons of Hg become much heavier than normal electrons because they are moving very near lightspeed - thus the higher density of the metal is NOT due to the nucleus but instead is due to electrons. IOW - it is not an issue of atomic weight, per se (mercury is denser than lead which is to the right of it in the periodic table). This could have implications for LENR (to be explained in later post). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201302742/abstract but this video makes it clearer (please ignore the 'bad hair' day) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtnsHtYYKf0 As for one of the possible LENR connections to very heavy electrons - check out Fig 12 and 13 http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CirilloDtransmutat.pdf Notice that two transmutation elements of remarkable high density turn up. Osmium is the densest of all elements and Rhenium is very close. Both would have an excess of very heavy electrons. However, this begs the question of cause and effect.
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