Simon Brink "Subtle Atomics" Discussion Thread

Quote from oystla

But is there not a very mundane explanation here?

1. Stress release in the cathode as H ions is coming out would raise the temperature

2. Recombination to H2 as hydrogen ions come out of the cathode would increase the temperature

3. Possible recombination to H2O would raise the temperature (even If stainless is not a catalyst)...

An increase of the far IR band emissivity of the plates, modified by electrolysis effects somehow, could possibly explain these results. (Surface roughness, reflectivity changes, etc.)

It is not mentioned whether the heat balance between IR input and radiant power from the affected plates is expected to be anomalous, or if the affected plate(s) merely become hotter than other plates while being bathed in IR. Do the IR-hotter plates also cool quicker to ambient temperature when they are raised (together with the controls/others) to a higher-than-ambient temperature by conduction and then the input heat shut off?

See pages 12-13 in the linked report for an example of extreme emissivity modification of 316 stainless in a different environment. (Total emissivity changes from about 0.17 to 0.75)

For example, If the emissivity of the plate changed to only halfway to 0.75 from 0.17 , (new emissivity of 0.46), such a plate could absorb nearly 3 times the IR energy as the control in the same band.

https://www.researchgate.net/p…reactor_structural_alloys

It probably contains a few typos and transcription mistakes, but here is a more complete version of the catalyst table, according to my understanding of the process behind it. I intentionally used the same formatting as Brink's, but this might turn out to be inopportune. I'll change/remove that if requested.

Before I forget: from the previously posted video at about minute 14:45 Simon Brink mentions that he's causing the electrodes in his contraption (his words) to separate as soon as electrical contact is achieved. I think the large current transient (he mentions in the linked page >30kA and ~200J) could be causing a counter EMF of a voltage significantly higher than the 12V at which his capacitor bank is charged.

Transcription below.

* * * * *

[14:45] [...] At some point you got to probably do a bit of science, so this is my contraption that I've been using to do the testing and it's got a hell of a lot of capacitors, and you're looking at a DC pulse, but interestingly the important thing is not to just contact the electrodes and leave them contacted; you've actually got to bounce the electrodes off each other and so I've been doing that getting the reactions and then we've sent the electrodes off for XRF analysis and also obviously taking the photography of it as well too.

So I guess what we're thinking here is when we make contact you get a large flow of electrons going through, and then as the electrodes come apart you've almost got a... it's sort of like a water hammer effect I guess. So your electrons are probably in a pressure situation, because the flow is essentially restricted. The idea is that the electrons start to essentially "pressurize" and potentially create these smaller and smaller sized electrons.

So I guess the idea is there you may be able to do a lot of this stuff without a catalyst potentially, or whatever, but just using almost like a pressure flow situation to create these smaller electron states. [...]

Out of curiosity, I made a small script for generating automatically a list of electron catalysts according to Simon Brink's theories. This allowed not only to effortlessly list them all for all energy levels, but also plotting only a limited subset.

For example, in addition to the full table, I also tried making one which only includes very common elements, and another only including noble gases.

Quote from can

Out of curiosity, I made a small script for generating automatically a list of electron catalysts according to Simon Brink's theories. This allowed not only to effortlessly list them all for all energy levels, but also plotting only a limited subset.

For example, in addition to the full table, I also tried making one which only includes very common elements, and another only including noble gases.

can It would be interesting to have this table in absolute error instead of relative. At 10keV, 0.1% is a lot of eV (10) in comparison of matches at 100 eV range.

Thank you can. You took the absolute value. The sign is an information. There is an excess or a short in difference energy.

Arnaud

Please disregard the previous comment and information (EDIT: this was in reference to a deleted comment, not the previous visible one). There was a bug in the altered algorithm besides the cosmetic issue you highlighted (data was sorted by the absolute value of the difference, which was stored on a separate column, and I used that) and it needs some time to be solved.

The earlier version with the relative errors on the other hand is consistent with data in the table provided by Simon Brink.

Arnaud

Here it is again with absolute errors in eV and explicit +/- signs. Hopefully this time it should be ok.

The issue I was referring about was that it was skipping empty energy lists for any given energy level.

Basically it was compressing away the "holes" you can see in the first thumbnail below and so it was giving shifted results for some energy levels.

(readable version in the attached pdf)

Quote from can

Arnaud

Here it is again with absolute errors in eV and explicit +/- signs. Hopefully this time it should be ok.

The issue I was referring about was that it was skipping empty energy lists for any given energy level.

Basically it was compressing away the "holes" you can see in the first thumbnail below and so it was giving shifted results for some every levels.

(readable version in the attached pdf)

Display More

Great work can !

Tellurium is the perfect match from n=inf to n=1/8 !!! Shame tellurium is as rare as platinum. This could be the cause of its rarity : H(n=1/8) could sporadically fuse with its catalyser.

Quote from Director

xenon is a very good catalyst

Of course the emergent Wyttenbach theory suggests that some of Simon's designated catalysts

have metastable gamma states which can export energy as magnetic flux,( which has a side effect of induction heating)

From an atom ecological POV a broad mixture of different isotopes with both long and short lived metastable states in the

low gamma kEV (~~~0-400 kev) region may be useful for initiating and maintaining the LENR throughout the reactor

eg Sn ..117/119

Ag 107/109

Rhodium 103

xenon 127/129

The silver doesn't have to be 99% pure.. and even if 100%... it is still over half the price of xenon.

Another problem is stability to transmutation... higher Z numbers may transmute more easily.

Transmutation of W (Z=73 )to osmium/rhenium is huge problem with ITER.. Ag(Z=47) Xe(Z=54)

Quote from Director

One interesting thing I've realized is that although xenon is a very good catalyst on this chart that BLP didn't seem to get results when they used hydrogen and xenon.

The charge "back-flux" in the SUN-Cell is maintained by H₃Ar⁺ ions that are very stable. Xenon simply is to heavy = less current and also chemically less stable.

Quote from Arnaud

Great work can !

Tellurium is the perfect match from n=inf to n=1/8 !!! Shame tellurium is as rare as platinum. This could be the cause of its rarity : H(n=1/8) could sporadically fuse with its catalyser.

Interesting idea.

In general I find interesting though that Ni-Cu-Li-Pd-W seem to be among the best matches for achieving the various fractional states from the fully ionized electron state. These are in a way or another generally the elements preferred in many LENR experiments, so it's encouraging that the table is in agreement with this.

I have to stress however that these tables I made have been derived from Simon Brink's work/research and might not necessarily be accurate to his thinking. Ideally similar full tables would be available from him.

Quote from Director

Great work! These charts are very useful.

One interesting thing I've realized is that although xenon is a very good catalyst on this chart that BLP didn't seem to get results when they used hydrogen and xenon. What seemed to work better was hydrogen and argon or hydrogen, argon, and lithium. I wonder if xenon doesn't work well because near 1/20th you have to have a near exact resonance match.

To what Wyttenbach wrote, I think it can be added that in general one should probably separate the action of the various elements to the actual physical-chemical environment from their effectiveness as electron transition catalysts. A theoretically good catalyst might work against the reaction that one has been trying to set up for a given experiment.

Another possibility more along what you mentioned is that to reach the tightest electron states you just need a closer match. In that case, looking at it in terms of relative percentages might not be the best way. In the second version I made along Arnaud's suggestion where the energy match is in absolute energy terms, Xenon does not appear to be that good of a catalyst from the fully ionized state (n=inf), which could be more consistent with experimental observations by others.

Guess I should enter into this conversation. Thanks everyone for your interest and comments!!!

Quote from Dr Richard

.... Take the inertial electrostatic confinement polywell fusion reactor designed by RW Bussard and now developed further by Prof J Parks....

I'll start with a comment on the R Bussard polywell. My understanding is that a few of the reactor prototypes failed due to coil "meltdowns". This seems to be consistent with metal-deuterium LENR or LESNR (low energy sub nuclear reaction) type reaction/s occurring on the coil or coil surface, rather than in the desired D-D target reaction occurring at the centre of the polywell. A potentially very significant result, but probably not understood.

Quote from can

When the prevailing consensus within the niche of researchers who regards it as real is that cold fusion is a rare phenomenon which occurs within the lattice of deuterium-saturated metals like palladium, it's hard to imagine that it could be a natural (as in: spontaneously occurring in nature, as opposed to incandescent light bulbs or transistors to name a couple examples) or even common phenomenon.

If you look a bit more broadly, there is a lot of evidence of transmutations in a wide range of scenarios from the early 1900's including biological systems, geology, electrical, lightning, etc. My favourite is probably research that demonstrated that shell fish can still grow calcium shells even when in water free which is free from calcium and with diets also free from calcium (Kervran, 1972).

Transmutations are clearly ongoing in many materials, but are not typically observed because the reaction rates are extremely low.

One interesting application of this is in the design of structural metals. The stability of alloys over single element metals may be in part due to their capacity to facilitate internal random transmutations in comparison to single element metals where more the structure is more organised, so more susceptible to crack failure due to a transmutation.

Evidence of fast transmutation (milliseconds) has been observed in high current reactions system prototypes developed by Subtle Atomics.

Quote from can

It probably contains a few typos and transcription mistakes, but here is a more complete version of the catalyst table, according to my understanding of the process behind it. I intentionally used the same formatting as Brink's, but this might turn out to be inopportune. I'll change/remove that if requested.

Looks about right, without having checked the details. Just a theory, but nice that it matches the major LENR catalysts. Understanding how Ti fits in is more of a challenge.

Quote from Simon Brink

If you look a bit more broadly, there is a lot of evidence of transmutations in a wide range of scenarios from the early 1900's including biological systems, geology, electrical, lightning, etc. My favourite is probably research that demonstrated that shell fish can still grow calcium shells even when in water free which is free from calcium and with diets also free from calcium (Kervran, 1972).

That was more intended to be a half-serious remark, as several "historical" cold fusion researchers (e.g. Storms) do not think it's likely that it's a common natural phenomenon, but quite the opposite.

Quote from Simon Brink

One interesting application of this is in the design of structural metals. The stability of alloys over single element metals may be in part due to their capacity to facilitate internal random transmutations in comparison to single element metals where more the structure is more organised, so more susceptible to crack failure due to a transmutation.

Conversely, this would mean that good alloys should potentially be good LENR materials/catalysts, wouldn't it?

Quote from Simon Brink

Evidence of fast transmutation (milliseconds) has been observed in high current reactions system prototypes developed by Subtle Atomics.

I've been experimenting a bit with very rough tests involving [relatively] high current discharges, but I haven't had the opportunity to perform elemental analysis. However since rather than single large discharges what I'm trying to do involves significantly smaller ones (fractions of one Joule at most) at a higher rate (100-1000s of Hz) it's not clear if I would see anything.

Quote from Simon Brink

Looks about right, without having checked the details. Just a theory, but nice that it matches the major LENR catalysts. Understanding how Ti fits in is more of a challenge.

Good to know that it at least looks correct.

Speculatively, it could be that saturated hydrides like Ti might be physically promoting extreme hydrogen densities under specific conditions rather than simply acting as electron catalysts like other elements in your table. That might be a different way for obtaining fractional hydrogen states; I think several people in the LENR field have similar ideas (mainly with Pd). To name an example, Prelas et al. use cryogenic shocking of Ti to achieve this with a higher reproducibility. Also see this.