Ken Shoulders ; The Man Who Made Black Holes

Alan Smith

That's also what Shoulders recommends (it's in his patents, like US5018180).

This would be the right occasion to verify Shoulders' claim that EV formation damages the tip of the cathode (-). Would a sharp anode (+) get damaged in the process? If it does not, what conventional explanation would there be for this effect? (note: I have no idea and I don't know if it's commonly observed in other fields).

Quote from US5018180

3. Cathodes

The cathodes, such as 12 and 22 discussed hereinbefore, may be pointed by any appropriate technique, such as grinding and polishing, and even chemical etching, to achieve a sufficiently sharp point to allow the concentration of a very high field at the end of the cathode. Under normal conditions, as EV's are generated at the tip of such a metallic electrode, the electrode material is dispersed and the cathode point or other configuration is destroyed by the energy dissipated in it, and the voltage required to produce EV's increases.

That's right after the excerpt I quoted from that patent:

Quote

[...] However, the cathode may be coupled to a source of liquid conductor, and the tip of the electrode regenerated in a very short time. FIG. 4 shows a metallic electrode 40 that is wetted with a conductive substance 42 coated onto the cathode whereby the coating material may undergo surface migration to the pointed tip of the electrode. The migrating material renews the tip of the electrode to maintain a sharp point as EV generation by the electrode tends to deteriorate the electrode tip. Surface tension of the coating material 42, its destruction at the tip, and the electric field generated at the cathode combine to propel the migration of the coating substance toward the tip.

[...] The coating material 50 may, in general, be any metallic liquid such as mercury, which may appropriately migrate over an electrode 44 constructed of copper, for example.

In the spirit of low cost, proof of concept experimentation this shouldn't be necessary, however.

Evidence supporting the formation of EVOs (which is reported to take place also during mundane processes) or the observation of unusual or poorly studied effects from high voltage discharge from sharp cathodes would be good. In other words, the aim would be proving/showing the underlying process(es) involved.

The observations he made in the paper I linked a few comments back didn't seem to have been done with a vacuum. If I understand properly he often uses a very mild vacuum to make these EV travel across larger distances, but it isn't strictly required.

Shoulders is the one who claimed to make real applications, though. He's also the one who has been referenced around on the blogosphere for about... 10 months? Practical demonstrations of the phenomenon rather than just theoretical support from other sources would be great, especially since the experiments appear to be generally simple to devise.

Practical sidenote: in US patent 5153901 (or the other I previously linked) it's claimed that in case of long DC pulses for EV generation, glow discharges have to be avoided. My impression (could be wrong) is that Shoulders' work is strictly within the realm of electrical sparks; are there suggestions of the opposite that I might have missed?

Quote

The cathode 22 may be driven by a negative-going pulse, or a direct current, of approximately 2 kv relative to the anode. The length of the negative pulse may be varied from a few nanoseconds to dc without greatly influencing the production of EV's. Under long pulse length conditions, the input resistor 28 must be chosen to prevent a sustained glow discharge within the glass tube.

That would have to be taken into consideration if the suggestion is that Rossi's QuarkX - or other plasma LENR systems - might also be based on Shoulders' EVOs (for example in this blogpost by Hank Mills on E-CatWorld).

Alan Smith

I mean that if EVOs are objects forming at high electron density, glow discharge regime operation, even if pulsed, should not really be desirable. The effect would be better achieved with shorter pulses at a higher current. Therefore, a LENR device which would exploit this effect for energy production would in my opinion operate more on the right than the left side of the graph below. I could be wrong, of course:

Technically speaking, electric sparks should be brief arc discharges, although there is not a clear definition as far as I can read (examples: 1, 2). Curiously, lightning is defined as a (big) spark too. The last link from Wikpedia too mentions that sparks of long duration become electric arcs:

Quote

[...] If the power supply continues to supply current, the spark will evolve into a continuous discharge called an electric arc.

Sprites

my r key doesn't alaways work (G)

http://www.padrak.com/ine/NEN_6_6_5.html

Quote

Hal Fox presented a brief to the point overview of his work with high-density charge clusters. Hal Fox is of the opinion this technology has great potential. I remember about 15 years ago when Hal Puthoff was working with Ken Shoulders in this same thing at Jupiter Technologies. This technology has been a long time coming and it is still not here. At the end of Hal Fox's discussion I asked, "Hal, Do you believe that Shoulder's electron clusters are superconductive?" Fox answered, "Yes they are superconductive and superfluid." I believe that this is a most important point. That's why I brought it up.

Quote from can

Shoulders is the one who claimed to make real applications, though. He's also the one who has been referenced around on the blogosphere for about... 10 months?

Not 10 months; he's come up in discussions over a number of years:

http://www.infinite-energy.com…sue61/chargeclusters.html

(No date given, but the copyright is 2014–15.)

Eric Walker

Infinite Energy Issue 61 was out in 2005:

http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue61/

It's clear when looking at web search results that Kenneth Shoulders' work has been discussed for many years. What I actually meant was that from relatively recently he's been referenced a lot more (heavily so, even) compared to the past 6-7 years. I shouldn't be the one discussing possible cost-effective experiments that could be done to observe EVs.

axil

I came across that website many times when searching the web for more information about Shoulders' work. You quoted an interesting excerpt.

Its a topic commonly being discussed within another type of science that may be taboo with main stream, unlikely to be mix any time soon.

They have a 2 year head start.

srry.. -sprites cockatoos get jealuos and eat things you spend more time with..like my r key~

In his theory of LENR, Rossi sites quadrupole magnetism as the source of the LENR reaction. This conjecture is close to the truth but the details are not correct. Magnetic fields do catalyze the LENR reaction but it is monopole magnetism that does it. This conjecture is easily deminstrated by an experiment.

https://www.thunderbolts.info/…-isotope-decay-constancy/

The anisotropic magnetic field from an Alcomax magnet is shown to change the nuclear decay constant by 2%. You can convince yourself that an anisotropic magnetic field can produce LENR effects by using a strong anisotropic rare earth magnet to change the nature of radioactive decay.

A magnetic field produced by an electric current will have no effect no the radioactive decay constant.

It is not the photons that produce the LENR reaction but the "virtual photons" that are the cause of LENR. The "virtual photons" are really the increase in the excitation of the vacuum produced by any number of EMF based causes.

These various EMF causes all have a common theme, excitation of the vacuum that generates the increased probability of creation of various subatomic particles that interfere with the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) processes that keep matter from decaying.