There is an interesting article from the MIT News Office which reports on research done by a team of scientists there who have found that water behaves in a highly unexpected way when confined in tiny spaces inside carbon nanotubes.
From the article here: http://news.mit.edu/2016/carbon-nanotubes-water-solid-boiling-1128
It’s a well-known fact that water, at sea level, starts to boil at a temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit, or 100 degrees Celsius. And scientists have long observed that when water is confined in very small spaces, its boiling and freezing points can change a bit, usually dropping by around 10 C or so.
But now, a team at MIT has found a completely unexpected set of changes: Inside the tiniest of spaces—in carbon nanotubes whose inner dimensions are not much bigger than a few water molecules—water can freeze solid even at high temperatures that would normally set it boiling.
The discovery illustrates how even very familiar materials can drastically change their behavior when trapped inside structures measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter. And the finding might lead to new applications—such as, essentially, ice-filled wires—that take advantage of the unique electrical and thermal properties of ice while remaining stable at room temperature.
There have been some researchers who have claimed that superconductivity happens in LENR, and one of the keys that seems to be required for LENR reaction is to have hydrogen molecules ‘trapped’ inside tiny cavities in a metal lattice, so this news could have some relation to the LENR field. Certainly something very unexpected has been observed here, which again shows that it can be presumptuous to rule out things that are are impossible according to conventional wisdom.
