-----Original Message----- From: Terry Blanton > So how exactly does the surface of a metal dissociate molecular hydrogen?
Romanowski offers a complicated suggestion. In short - the copper-nickel alloy supplies about 3 eV of the necessary energy, in a kind of QM tunneling reaction. The molecule makes contact and part of it (one proton) "sticks" for a short time during which there is energy transfer. That deficit is the level that would need to be replaced by ZPE (or whatever). > Where does the 4.476 eV come from? If ~3 eV comes from tunneling-like QM effects - in the way Romanowski claims, then the remainder would need to come from either chemistry or to be "borrowed" in advance of femtosecond recombination. There is little real transmutation (some, but hundreds of times too little to account for the gain). > If only some of the energy comes from the zero point field then the Rossi reactor could be powered by the oscillation of hydrogen between the atomic and molecular states. Yes, Exactamundo ! ...that is one of the strong possibilities that we have been exploring for almost a year (yourself included), along with Roarty's cavity-based time distortion model, or alternatively with the idea that the proximate cause of gain is "strong force asymmetric interaction with IRH", followed by Coulomb repulsion. That later explanation depletes "non-quark nuclear mass" (gauge bosons); and this is a little more palatable than is "ZPE" to some mentalities (who consider ZPE to be another word for magic). I think that all of the above viewpoints can be merged into a single M.O. eventually. And this evolving explanation is also compatible with slight radioactivity - since QM tunneling of protons can occasionally (but rarely) proceed to a nuclear reaction. Quote from Romanowski which is a shock to the cadre of palladium fusion advocates: "On a basis of these calculations a measure of catalytic power of the metals was defined and the series of metals and alloys was ordered according to their catalytic power. It was found that the highest catalytic power with respect to the hydrogen dissociation process is exhibited by NiCu alloys." [over twice the catalytic power of palladium]. "All the quantum-chemical calculations have been performed using the methods of the density functional theory (DFT). The nonlocal version of DFT was applied with the gradient-corrected functional for electron exchange and correlation. The GAUSSIAN-94 and -98 suites of programs were employed in the calculations." END of quote Here is the Wiki entry on DFT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_functional_theory Some of the formalism looks similar to W&L surface plasmons, etc. - but they are known to "borrow" from every source imaginable. At any rate there is a strong argument here that the gain appears largely non-nuclear, even if the energy source is non-quark nuclear mass ("gluons" masquerading as ZPE). > Or not. Yes, in the end gluons-masquerading-as-ZPE will sound to skeptics a bit like Zeus masquerading as a swan ... Jones
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