From: Eric Walker
I would have thought that the protons would migrate out and recombine to form H2. But I don't think that would account for a twofold increase. There would be a net decrease in gas quantity under any scenario in which D2 reacts with nickel – never wound an increase be expected, even small - much less a ~2:1 increase in gas quantity. Amazing. The chances of measurement error are minimal with this kind of instrumentation, especially since they performed a control run which did as expected - so the best assumption is that what they reported was at least fairly accurate. This takes a while to sink in, but it most likely means essentially that almost every deuterium atom is converted into 2 hydrogen atoms, with a net gain in energy. This also means that very few deuterons could have reacted with nickel, or else the quantity of gas would not have increased so remarkably. That is our most likely starting premise, unless there was severe measurement error. If there was measurement error in this aspect – then the calorimetry is also highly suspect, since it is much harder to perform. However, the control run indicates that they did everything correctly and we should at least start our analysis with that premise. Jones
