A post from can >From the Tern Research website linked above by Ahlfors there's a press release dated 2017-12-26; it has some interesting tidbits. It looks like they're doing laser ablation experiments. Metals exposed to ultra-dense hydrogen would take significantly more time to ablate.
* * * * * Press Release 12-26-17 Tern Research A Southern Utah entrepreneur has completed a series of experiments at Southern Utah University confirming that an unusual phase of deuterium can exist under the right conditions. This research is based on the work of Prof. Leif Holmlid at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Mike Taggett, who founded Chums, a sports accessories company, in 1983, is a long time inventor and researcher. Since selling Chums in 2002, Mike has spent most of his time working on alternative energy projects and inventions. He has worked in two labs prior to the one in Cedar City in attempts to verify the existence of Ultra Dense Deuterium (UDD). Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen, exists in sea water and contains a neutron along with the proton in its nucleus making it heavier than hydrogen. He has been studying dense deuterium for the past 5 years and has visited over 15 universities looking for a physics professor that would collaborate with him. "Most physics departments are pretty busy and they are reluctant to spend any time on a material they are skeptical about". He says. "I understand they are busy but Holmlid has spent over 12 years and has published over 30 papers; it's a significant discovery." In 2016, Mike was able to rent lab space at the University of Idaho and looked for changes in surface conductivity of metal samples being exposed to the catalyzed gas. "I was able to build up a good system; vacuum chamber, fast impedance analyzer, etc. but it turned out to be very tricky to get stable readings so the results were not reliable." I was trying to work there a year later in a laser lab but the project got stuck in bureaucracy." So Mike kept looking for places to work and did odd jobs to pay the bills. He had sold his home and was basically a science vagabond staying in cheap motels around the west. "I was staying in Cedar City and wandered over to SUU. I knew it was a 4 year teaching university, rather than having much research, but I thought I would take a look. I met Professor Ali Siahpush while waiting to see the Engineering Dept. Chair and I mentioned research and he said "Research? Great! If it aligns with our mission and you can use a student to help that would be great!" "Everyone was really helpful getting me going." Mike says. Mike was on a shoestring budget and built up a system with a rebuilt vacuum chamber, parts from eBay and a laser he borrowed from another university on condition he could repair it. Mike and his assistant Ben Thrift, an engineering student, had things up and running in 5 weeks. The work and data collection focused on comparing how the laser "ablates" the metal before and after deposition of the ultra dense layer (ablation is a term for removing material) and in this case the material evaporates directly from the solid rather than melting first. Mike says, "Looking into the vacuum chamber through the window, it looks like a welding torch when running as the pulsing laser is powerful but for very short times, about 5 nano seconds per pulse!" Mike and Ben ran over 20 multi-day experiments on a variety of metals and saw a definite change after the dense layer formed. "It would take 200 -300% longer to ablate through the metal. Pretty amazing considering the invisible UDD layer is really thin, perhaps just atoms thick!" "Of course there is always the chance of an alternative explanation but right now the results are positive," he says. Mike thinks the dense deuterium could have applications for energy storage or space propulsion. "It's really fun and challenging to work in an emerging field. I am one of just three groups that I know of working on this." "Who knows what can be done with this unique material?" The next step he says is to further the work with different types of particle and energy detectors to better understand UDD. Mike says, "A big thanks to Julia Anderson, Dean Robert Eves and professors Ali Siahpush, Matt Roberts, Scott Munro and Sangho Bok for helping me get going at SUU." http://www.ternresearch.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The electron spin wave on the surface of the ultra dense hydrogen protects UDH from destruction up until the neutron star pressure limit (1.5 to 3.0 solar masses),. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolman%E2%80%93Oppenheimer%E2%80%93Volkoff_limit Holmlid states above as seen in his experiments as follows: Coulomb explosions in H(0) in spin state s = 1 generate protons with kinetic energies larger than the retaining gravitational energy at the photosphere of the Sun. The required proton kinetic energy above 2 keV has been directly observed in published experiments. 2KeV translates into a temperature of 20,000,000C. Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington predicted that under an immense pressure of around 25 GPa (250,000 atm; 3,600,000 psi) hydrogen would display metallic properties: If it takes that much pressure to form metallic hydrogen, it should require at least that much pressure to destroy it. When Silvera and Dias managed to turn hydrogen metallic, it was at a pressure of 495 GPa, well beyond the 360 GPa of Earth's core. That is 4,950,000 atm of pressure at least to destroy it. But when metallic hydrogen forms, then you need to deal with degeneracy pressure. View this video to understand degeneracy pressure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRyU2spCCPk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_degeneracy_pressure Electron degeneracy pressure will halt the gravitational collapse of a star if its mass is below the Chandrasekhar limit (1.39 solar masses[5]). This is the pressure that prevents a white dwarf star from collapsing. A star exceeding this limit and without significant thermally generated pressure will continue to collapse to form either a neutron star or black hole, because the degeneracy pressure provided by the electrons is weaker than the inward pull of gravity. This video is informative also. Where to Find Some Metallic Hydrogen - Ask a Spaceman! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g96zG5lxa-8 It is all about degenerate electron pressure.
