  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 1960 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
various measurements showing that, under certain conditions, electric arcs
within a hydrogen gas produce neutral, hadron-size entities that are absorbed
by stable nuclei and subsequently result in the release of detectable neutrons,
thus confirming Don Borghi's experiment. The possibility that said entities are
neutrons is discussed jointly with other alternatives. Due to their simplicity,
a primary scope of this note is to stimulate the independent re-run of the
tests as conducted or in suitable alternative forms.
