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An independent re-check of the 71-atom snugness series — the table behind the silicon decision (P1/P2: 251,008 balls, , 303.6561 K) — reproduced its deciding trend exactly (slope , , zero of 20,000 shuffles as strong) and then found what the trend is: the series correlates with the measured binding energy per nucleon of the same 71 nuclides at — far stronger than with size alone. Deuterium and tritium, the loosest-bound light nuclei there are, sit at the two highest values; nickel-62 sits at the binding-energy peak in both datasets. The 71-series snugness is the standard binding-energy-per-nucleon curve, rescaled and renamed. The shuffle-null significance is genuine — and what it detects is nuclear physics tabulated since the 1930s. [null-fail on snugness-as-new-signal; the binding curve is standard physics, credited] This paper records that finding, adds the audit of the other snugness table (the 1,594-row corpus column, computed in this deposit's own runner), and states plainly what the silicon lock is once you know. This record holds one paper on its own and is refreshed every couple of months. The complete deposit, 10.5281/zenodo.21788037, holds every paper with its code and data and is updated first; for the newest version of this paper, go there.
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James Norman Ibbotson (2026) studied this question.
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