Following Rutherford's 1920 historical hypothesis of the neutron as a compressed hydrogen atom in the core of stars, the laboratory synthesis of the neutron from protons and electrons was claimed in the late 1960s by the Italian priest-physicist Don Carlo Borghi and his associates via a metal chamber containing a partially ionized hydrogen gas at a fraction of $1~bar$ pressure traversed by an electric arc with $5~J$ energy and microwaves with $10^{10}~ s^{-1}$ frequency. The experiment remained unverified for decades due to the lack of theoretical understanding of the results. In this note we report experimental and theoretical studies showing that, under certain conditions, electric arcs within a hydrogen gas produce neutral, hadron-size entities, here tentatively called {\it pseudoneutrons,} that are absorbed by nuclei thus causing nuclear transmutations that confirm Don Borghi's experiment. Independent studies are solicited due to the esoenergetic character of the transmutations that, if seeded in a constructive scientific environment, may lead in due time to a new form of clean energy so much needed by our deteriorating environment.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART II:
Printouts of the scans obtained with the Berkeley Nucleonics photon-neutron detector SAM 935

PART III:
Printouts of the scans obtained with the Polimaster photon-neutron detector PM1703GN