New Age physics?

From: William D. Tallman (not.a.real_at_ddress.com)
Date: 06/21/04 

Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004 18:52:20 -0700

This NG seems to be a dumping ground for crack-pot ideas, but maybe I'm
making a hasty judgment. Nevertheless, I'm hoping that at least a few
readers really do know their stuff, because I've a question!

Recently ran across the notion of "high spin metallurgy". The idea was that
certain of the noble metals could be induced into an alternate state, where
a "nuclear field" became enhanced, making it impossible for the atoms to
form the metal in its "natural state". Apparently, there is a nuclear
field that envelops all electron orbits except the valence ring when in the
ordinary (ground?) state, but that can be enhanced to include the valence
ring as well. The claimed properties of this second state are quite
remarkable, starting with superconductivity (though this property would
seem to be made impossible by another claimed property).

So far as I know, there are still only four known forces, only two of which
exceed the boundary of the nucleus. These two are fairly well understood,
or so I thought, and nothing of this sort involves either of them, AFAIK.
I'm not a scientist, but I try to keep up with things; have subscribed to
Science News for years.

Have I missed something here? Is there anything remotely similar to this
sort of claim in actual reality?

Incidentally, I did pose a similar question to sci.engineering.metallurgy;
is there any other venue I might profitably consult?

Thanks all,

Bill Tallman