In the 'strange coincidences' department, there is an energy anomaly known as: The Bologna Stone: history's first persistent luminescent material. It can be described as phosphorescence-on-steroids.
http://www.schweizerbart.de/papers/ejm/detail/24/78460/The_Bologna_Stone_his tory_s_first_persistent_luminescent_material http://chemistry.unt.edu/drupal6/sites/chemistry.unt.edu/themes/unt_chemistr y/rediscovery/Phosphoro%20di%20Bologna.pdf The connection to Rossi's HotCat is not obvious at first. If a James Burke style connection does exist, then there would be a link between phosphorescence and SPP, and between SPP and nickel, and between thermal gain and nickel. SPP= surface plasmon polariton. There is no need for a "nuclear" reaction in this series of connections, except by default, since there is little of the normal indicia of a nuclear reaction. Even if Rossi says it is "nuclear" - it is clear that the inventor himself does not understand what is happening in his invention. Many physicists would say that if there is thermal gain above chemical, then it must be nuclear. They are probably wrong. Gain can be both above-chemical and non-nuclear, especially when mass is converted into energy, and that process does NOT strictly demand a nuclear pathway (unless one wishes to define everything above chemical as "nuclear"... which once again... is not justifiable. Antimatter is foaming-up all around us - just out of reach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foam). Back to Bologna ... or back to baloney if you prefer your spam served by mainstream fizzix :-) Special stones made from barium minerals glow for impossibly long periods after being exposed to light. There are reports of one glowing in a closet for six years and another for four years. These stones were discovered near Bologna, Italy in the early middle ages and were thought to possess magical properties by alchemists who altered them in several ways to increase the glow. It has been impossible to know if this gain is "above chemical" or not since there are luminescent minerals containing radium which have glowed for millennia. In fact, the Bologna Stone could contain traces of radioactive isotopes. Barium itself has been documented in many modern magnetic energy anomalies (as barium ferrite). This does not mean that there is a connection to the Higgs, nor to Rossi who has strong connections to Bologna and would have heard of this the stone, as a curiosity. But the main reason this post came up in the context of Rossi is that there is a barium isotope which is the same mass-energy as the Higgs particle (aka god-particle) bringing to mind the old adage of "if it looks like a duck..." Not to mention the "phos connection" mentioned in another post. Also of interest is barium phosphate. The Rossi connection to Higgs by way of barium or "phos" or both, and by way of Bologna and the magic stone of Bologna... well that is surely coincidental... or is it? Jones
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