While we wait for Brilliant Light Power to finally publish their data of a series of tests of a Suncell within a water bath calorimeter, I've been pondering if one potential path forward for Randell Mills and his entire team is to build a system utilizing mercury, or potentially a specific isotope of mercury, rather than silver. Such a device would certainly need to be re-engineered in a variety of ways, but the idea seems very enticing to me.
To begin, let's compare silver and mercury as potential elements to use in the Suncell.
1) Mercury has a very low melting and boiling point while silver has a very high melting and boiling point.
(I believe this would be useful and help reduce some of the potential over heating issues required when using molten or vapors of silver.)
2) Mercury and silver both can be considered to have pseudo-noble gas configurations if ionized and stripped of electron(s).
(Noble gases seem to be of a benefit to the formation of the macro-EVOs or complex space charges that form in these types of systems.)
3) Of Mercury's isotopes, 199Hg has a 1/2 integer spin and a positive magnetic moment. 111Ag and 113Ag both have an identical 1/2 integer nuclear spin. However, only 113Ag has a positive magnetic moment (compared to 111Ag's opposite or negative magnetic moment).
(If there's something about silver's 1/2 integer spin that's important, it doesn't hurt that 199Hg has an identical spin. Additionally, the two isotopes found in ordinary silver have different polarities of their magnetic moment. Could this be canceling out a self re-inforcing effect if spin polarizing of interior positive ions of the macro-EVO is important? Simply put, atoms with nuclear spin will precess when exposed to a magnetic field line such as those within the interior of a plasma vortex. I'm imagining that having two isotopes moving in opposite directions may not be optimal - perhaps inducing collisions and nullifying potential superconducting effects. Could just using a single isotope of silver or mercury be better?)
4) Mercury 199Hg has a stronger magnetic moment than silver.
(I think this could be important because it would mean that the mercury ions would more strongly react to the internal magnetic field of the macro-EVO.)
5) Mercury has a much higher mass than silver.
(From multiple sources we know that heavy ions help stabilize the plasma structures (macro-EVOs or complex space charges) that form during the negative resistance regime of an electric discharge. Silver is good. Could mercury's even heavier status be better?)
6) Mercury has a lower electrical conductivity than silver.
(I don't think this would be a huge issue in a device that created a plasma of mercury.)
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I think that a system that utilized a mercury plasma within the negative resistance regime of an electric discharge could be far simpler than a silver based system. In fact, I could imagine a device that's pretty much only a plasma tube with solid (not liquid) electrodes on each end, a few ports, sensors, thermocouples, etc. I think the key to maximizing the output would be to fine tune the system so that the ion acoustic oscillations from the macro-EVO or complex space charge would be amplified. I do not know if the current silver based Suncell uses any method of tuning the discharge into resonance. If not, I think the system is very unoptimized even though it is already extremely powerful.
