In following the dots that LENR experimentation has throne like bread crumbs down a long and dark winding road, my journey of the dots has now led me to and then deep inside the nucleus. I now believe I must learn something about how nuclear matter is put together and stays together.
The name of the theory involved is Quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In this theory, nuclear matter is similar to a chemical compound like water with a state diagram. At low energy content, nuclear matter is confined like solid ice. Add some energy to the nucleus and nuclear matter begins to melt a bit with some parts remaining confined and some other parts free floating. This is called Quarkyonic Matter. When a lot of energy is added, all the parts of nuclear matter: the quarks and the gluons become unconfined and move freely around waiting to condense back into a solid again as energy is removed from the quark gluon plasma. Quantum chromodynamics is the theory that describes the interactions governed by the strong nuclear force. Where electromagnetism is mediated by the photon and the weak force by the W and Z bosons, the strong force is mediated by gluons. Gluons are force-carrying particles that hold quarks together and enable them to form the plethora of hadrons, such as protons and neutrons that are known to exist. It now seems to me, to understand what LENR does to the nucleus; we need to understand how the gluons work. The coulomb barrier may not be the real energy limit to be overcome in LENR. In order to support cluster fusion which is strictly supported by many experimental LENR results, this LENR energy barrier might well be advanced to either reaching the Quarkyonic Matter threshold or the quark gluon plasma saturation point. They are both in the order of some 170 MeV. Such a large threshold makes the coulomb look just like a crack in the LENR pavement; and a small crack at that.
