We have talked about Borromean rings here in the past, the "Efimov state" and the enhanced nuclear stability of three interlocked units (which would normally repel, or at least do not bind).
Three quarks are stable in a proton, for instance, but two and four are not. A special Efimov state can be imagined as three bound protons (and two electrons) which is denoted as H3+ but is seldom mentioned in LENR. This species is also known as the "trihydrogen cation" or "protonated molecular hydrogen" and is actually the most abundant ion in the universe. The hydrogen cation is actually MORE stable than H2 in interstellar space, where charge can be an advantage. but H2 is more common in dense accumulations. H3+ can be the mystery vector for energy gain in certain situations in condensed matter - which heretofore were thought of as LENR, but are non-nuclear, and yet gainful but not exactly redox either. Here's why. The most interesting thing about H3+ in situations such as Mizuno's phenanthrene experiments and the follow-on work by others - could be that its formation is an exothermic reaction. That is, when molecular hydrogen H2 takes on another proton (from "the bay" let us say) in aromatic compounds it becomes H3+ which is surprisingly stable due to it Efimov nature. The net heat of the protonation reaction is substantial - the equivalent of 15,000 degrees C. This is unexpected, since we think of H2 as fully reduced. H3+ once it has been formed in a gas-filled reactor does not easily react with the remnant population of H2, due to spin issues. This opens the door for sequential chemical reactions which are asymmetric in energy, instead of reversible and balanced, as are most chemical reactions. The energy source could relate to a dynamical Casimir effect, or to ZPE interaction, or to a Millsean reaction . or most likely, it relates to a combination of zero-point and hydrogen fractionation in a two-step process. In short, the extra energy available from protonation of hydrogen to H3+ opens the door for a sequential Mills/Holmlid type densification reaction, where one of the three protons is captured by a nearby nucleus as dense hydrogen. The capturing nucleus can be carbon, for instance. The result is that carbon-12, for instance, would become a species which appears to be carbon-13, since it now has a very tightly bound dense hydrogen attachment giving it more apparent atomic weight, but which species will not be ionized in a mass spectrometer. (BTW - this came up years ago on vortex and is not new - but it was nearly forgotten since Mizuno went on to other things). Thus- the thermal anomaly looks like a nuclear reaction, when it is not. However, the net energy gain is impressive but less than nuclear. The appearance of what was thought to be "transmutation" but is not, confuses anyone who is not versed in the theory of Randell Mills. Of note: the basic patent covering activated carbon and hydrogen (and many other catalysts) is # 6,024,935 "Lower-Energy Hydrogen Methods" which is set to expire in a few months.
