Here is a non-trolling shocker: The so called "unit" at the base of everything we know as "stuff" (matter) which is the atomic mass unit (a.m.u.) is a lie.
That's right - at least it is a small lie in the sense that after all these years, it has no firm value when you look close enough. No one at CERN knows exactly what it is, or how variable it can be, after it is pumped down, so to speak. It is also a "true lie" since we now use an assigned value to define itself (by convention) but it is a lie nevertheless. We give it a value that is used to calibrate the instruments that detect it so it CANNOT vary by much. This is partly due to the inconvenient truth that the atomic mass unit is "not exactly" equivalent to an average between the mass of a proton (1.673 10-27 kg) and a neutron(1.675 10-27 kg). Essentially it is a variable within a close range, so that we overlook the problem of not having a true value. Plus most of the known universe is hydrogen, with no neutron - so one must ask - why should it be an average anyway? Plus (HUGE) when you start looking at raw data - the mass of proton is NOT always the value we suspect without "recalibration" - and in practice, the detectors of whatever variety - are essentially calibrated back to give what is suspected to be the "known value". How convenient. Sometimes they are way-off without calibration. This all gets back to verisimilitude, as a philosophical matter, but it has a lot of practical meaning when we begin to dwell on hydrogen energy anomalies. That is because mass is convertible to energy, and the proton has such a large amount of potential energy, roughly a GeV, that it can provide thousands of times the energy of combustion, and still be hydrogen. IOW it has variable mass within a range and it is not a particular tight range, when the excess is multiplies by c2. This also relates to some of the mass of a proton being NOT quantized. Quarks are quantized but even their mass is at best a wild guess, insofar as far a firm values go and there is much more there than quarks anyway. More on that later, but write this off as another level of verisimilitude. BTW, the a.m.u. or atomic mass unit is actually smaller than the "average" of a proton and a neutron, in practice by 1% or so - since some mass is said to be involved in the binding energy of the nucleus. But hello ! ... even that is a lie, since if it were binding "energy" instead of force, then there would be a time delineated component and there isn't really. The proton does not decay (as best we can tell). More on this in later postings. My angle, as many vorticians are aware - is finding new kind of protonic nuclear reaction - one that does not involved very much radiation or transmutation. Working back from results in Ni-H as the defining question of our energy future - that forces one to reconsider nuclear and look at "subnuclear". Verisimilitude is a bitch. Pardon my French (or is it Italian) on that one, and Vada a bordo, CAZZO! Rossi may be taking on water faster than Mitt changes major policies, but the "Maru Ni-H" is getting more buoyancy by the hour. And that ain't all hot air. Jones
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