H LV wrote: Using a cup of coffee as a starting point this blogger provides a friendly introduction to the history of the science of heat. He also leaves the reader with an open question. https://www.beanthinking.org/?tag=caloric
Harry Well-named article... even though it chooses to ignore implications of "negative temperature" (below zero K). And why not? It is a contentious subject. Here is an older Science News article which touches on negative temperature. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130104143516.htm But ... for the sake of argument, imagine that a simple experiment determines two things about the special type of hydrogen which is formed via the Holmlid/Mills effect - which effect results in a dense hydrogen species that should be useful in its own right, even after giving up anomalous heat. This would be a second use of the Holmlid effect. Furthermore let's assume that one characteristic of this H* gas (besides higher density) is that the atoms do not repel each other as does normal hydrogen -- since electrons have been catalytically moved into stable lower orbitals - which make the apparent nuclear charge more positive than before to its surroundings (due to the negative near-field of orbital electrons being compressed. Thus. thus dense H clusters can be easily formed. Even if the effect of negative temperature is weak, it points the way to a simple energy anomaly in thermal conversion efficiency . Proposed application of negative temperature effect: It could be possible such a dense hydrogen gas, mixed together with an inert gas like Argon (which atoms do repel one another) -- to construct a new type of Sterling piston engine which is extremely efficient, perhaps twice the Carnot efficiency using only solar heat, since there is an effective heat sink available from within the gas itself - which can be used to harness a bit of negative temperature. Of course, this is assuming that "negative temperature" and dense hydrogen are both real and interrelated. The bottom line is that atoms of dense hydrogen would tend to exert a negative instead of a positive pressure when heated. As a consequence, the atoms for a dense cloud which "wants to contract" when thermal input and this is balanced against the Argon component, which is more like a perfect gas. For this to work there would probably need to be a permeable membrane to separate the two gas, but there are a few good candidates for this. Maybe this is a product of too much coffee...
