Woodpecker, proof of concept

    Quote from Bruce__H

    think this is a good question to ask at this point

    It is a good question but then there are so many questions that need answers in LENR.

    The most unconventional idea is that Vysotskii seems to show that Cs137 transmutation is exhibited by bacteria.


    This means that the switch on of the magnetoelectrical cooperative whatever effect can be at < ev level..

    not at the ~Mev level as predicted by conventional Coulomb barrier thinking...

    but these switched on effects are huge.


    The switchon does not happen everywhere because otherwise we would be dead


    It's to do with nanostructure arrangement, isotope isomer population mix
    (=environment).

    I've completed a long all-unpowered test with the fans and the PSU turned off. About 10 minutes after doing this, a short-term component of the signal started decaying as it has done many times in previous testing. The half-life seems short enough that the possibility of radon byproducts as suggested can't be ruled out. The average background signal (long-term component) on the other hand at the moment is about 15 CPM higher than before the tests with the CuNiZn anode tip started.



    Vertical lines on the graph on the left:

    • 2019-07-07 19:00:00, "Turned PSU and fans off to check for Radon decay in 3 hours"
    • 2019-07-07 20:15:00, "Put the unpowered anode on its original position closer to the jar"
    • 2019-07-07 21:10:00, "Connected timelapse camera to wall adapter"

    I've made a timelapse video:


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    Quote from Bruce__H

    Is there a way to estimate the field strengths achieved in can's woodpecker setup?


    The anode can be seeing vibrating along its vertical axis, but it's a sub-millimeter movement. The base voltage is 12V, but upon contact separation this might be boosted by the coil from a few hundreds to possibly a few kilovolts. Realistically speaking under present conditions the field strengths might be in the same ballpark of what was cited by Fabrice David above.

    Quote from can

    The half-life seems short enough that the possibility of radon byproducts as suggested can't be ruled out.


    There are many short time products in the 222Rd decay chain. Only a measurement with the gamma spec will help!

    • Official Post
    Quote from Bruce__H

    I'm afraid I don't understand your point (about the need for a particular environment) . Could you restate?


    It seems simple enough to me. All chemical and nuclear reactions except for the decay of unstable isotopes - everything from your digestive system to the inside of a star favours some events more than others, and it is the environment in which they occur that sets the rules. To be honest, I am not sure if even isotope half-lives are totally immune from environmental effects, there is some evidence to suggest they might not be.


    To expect to see LENR routinely in axons -where evolution would have weeded it out as unhelpful - merely because there is a powerful electric field present - is like expecting to see strawberry fondant inside every chocolate.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    It seems simple enough to me. All chemical and nuclear reactions except for the decay of unstable isotopes - everything from your digestive system to the inside of a star favours some events more than others, and it is the environment in which they occur that sets the rules. To be honest, I am not sure if even isotope half-lives are totally immune from environmental effects, there is some evidence to suggest they might not be.


    Thanks for restating this.


    I think that my original point is correct. A field intensity of 2 MV/m is neither extraordinary, nor large enough to rearrange protons within an atom. If it were, then you would expect to see large scale subatomic rearrangements associated with the much more intense transmembrane field of neurons. And you don't, you see normal chemistry, normal types of bonds formed, etc. Also, Wyttenbach seems to confirm that far larger fields than 2 MV/m are needed for LENR (although I don't completely follow his reasoning and don't know what a de Broglie radius is).


    It seems to me that many approaches to LENR consist of trying to concentrate applied energy in space and time in order to achieve fields that are large enough to push protons together. People believe that the interstices of latices and molecules may provide spaces in which the fields might be concentrated and I expect that this has something to do with the special conditions you have mentioned. I think these special conditions have to do with the concentration of energy.


    But I think it is always good to keep the relative proportions of things in mind. And in this light I now wonder about the "woodpecker" system that is the subject of this thread. I see few signs, in the woodpecker, of any attempt to create "special conditions" for LENR other than producing fields in the gap between the electrodes. But this field would seem to be many orders of magnitude too weak for LENR effects. Do you see any other special conditions that concentrate energy here? On the face of it I don't. Just on the basis of the field strengths evoked here I would not expect any LENR-related phenomena in this system. Do you not see this as reasonable?

    can


    Can you try a run without the arc discharges? It wouldn't look as spectacular (no woodpeckering I guess) but would be an attempt to produce static charges of the same type as in your other runs. It would be a bit like Robert Horst's balloon test.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Bruce__H

    On the face of it I don't. Just on the basis of the field strengths evoked here I would not expect any LENR-related phenomena in this system. Do you not see this as reasonable?


    Well, I suspect you don't really expect to see LENR-related phenomena anywhere at all. It should be viewed as an unreasonable phenomenon, but that does not mean it doesn't happen. Having seen sudden erratic heat and radiation events in large and very low-voltage, low temperature systems containing only (relatively impure) carbon, light water and KOH in un-enclosed tanks and others in tiny hot and dry complex metal alloy/deuterium systems where there was no external EM field present at the time I know that different mechanisms exist.


    I can only hypothesise that the particular environmental conditions which promote cold fusion can vary enormously, and do not always demand extremes of anything. What they depend upon is a combination of conditions - that is not clearly understood nor can be readily categorised - that allows energy to be stored in nuclei - as EM - rather like energy is stored in a battery - up to the point where they contain so much energy that they become unstable. Result -- LENR.


    This requires for me a certain amount of hand-waving, and is guaranteed to produce anaphylaptic shock in certain sections of any audience, for which I apologise in advance.

    Quote from Wyttenbach

    There are many short time products in the 222Rd decay chain. Only a measurement with the gamma spec will help!


    For what it's worth, earlier today I tried removing the Geiger counter from its location and the logger, and the entire room and surrounding walls on adjacent rooms appeared to have elevated emissions (the broken part in the chart below). After this I tried to simplify the setup a bit. The last blue dashed line is when I tried placing a hard disk magnet close to the jar and the anode electrode.




    Quote from Bruce__H

    [...] But I think it is always good to keep the relative proportions of things in mind. And in this light I now wonder about the "woodpecker" system that is the subject of this thread. I see few signs, in the woodpecker, of any attempt to create "special conditions" for LENR other than producing fields in the gap between the electrodes. But this field would seem to be many orders of magnitude too weak for LENR effects. Do you see any other special conditions that concentrate energy here? On the face of it I don't. Just on the basis of the field strengths evoked here I would not expect any LENR-related phenomena in this system. Do you not see this as reasonable?


    Personally I see the "detailed description" in paragraphs 0021-0033 in this patent application as fitting for Woodpecker-like devices:

    https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110233061A1


    Abstract:

    Quote

    Methods and apparatus for energy production through the amplification of energetic reactions. A method includes amplifying an energy release from a dispersion of nanoparticles containing a concentration of hydrogen/deuterium nuclei, the nanoparticles suspended in a dielectric medium in a presence of hydrogen/deuterium gas, wherein an energy input is provided by high voltage pulses between two electrodes embedded in the dispersion of nanoparticles.


    * * *


    EDIT:


    Quote from Bruce__H

    Can you try a run without the arc discharges? It wouldn't look as spectacular (no woodpeckering I guess) but would be an attempt to produce static charges of the same type as in your other runs. It would be a bit like Robert Horst's balloon test.


    It is not running right now. It has run a few hours earlier today.

    Quote from can

    For what it's worth, earlier today I tried removing the Geiger counter from its location and the logger, and the entire room and surrounding walls on adjacent rooms appeared to have elevated emissions (the broken part in the chart below). After this I tried to simplify the setup a bit.


    Do a long time measurement and try to somehow clean the geiger. Go to a neighbor room and check there too!

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Well, I suspect you don't really expect to see LENR-related phenomena anywhere at all. It should be viewed as an unreasonable phenomenon, but that does not mean it doesn't happen.


    I agree with every word of this. It is how I been operating all along. It is how everyone should operate. It is how most pure scientists operate as a matter of course in their own work. I recognize that handwaving has an important role to play at certain points of an investigation. All scientists engaged in pure research recognize this too. You are nothing special in this regard.

    Quote from can

    For what it's worth, earlier today I tried removing the Geiger counter from its location and the logger, and the entire room and surrounding walls on adjacent rooms appeared to have elevated emissions (the broken part in the chart below).


    Are the emissions that you find in the rest of the room consistent with the long-term increase in emissions that you mentioned a couple of posts ago?


    Could it be that your activity in the room is stirring up particles associated with the increased readings?

    Quote from Bruce__H

    Are the emissions that you find in the rest of the room consistent with the long-term increase in emissions that you mentioned a couple of posts ago?


    Could it be that your activity in the room is stirring up particles associated with the increased readings?


    I'm not sure. However I'm consistently getting higher readings in the room where experiments have been performed. Throughout the day temperature and humidity vary, but generally they are respectively in the 27.5-30.5°C and 50-65% ranges depending on the time of the day, if the windows are opened or if the climate control in the large corridor outside of the room is running.


    I got the increase shown above while I was taking a nap and the door and window in the room were closed. However it seems as if it is due to the accumulation in the air of particles that move around, so it might very well be interpreted as radon progeny accumulation. As for why this would occur to the greatest extent in this room I have no idea.


    Earlier I took some spot readings with the Geiger counter using the total counts and computing the average CPM. However I have not been consistent with the measuring time so they might not be representative of the sustained peak readings observed.


    Location Average CPM Measuring time
    Room A, couch 108.21428571429 01:52
    Room adjacent to Room A, close to thick wall separating Room A 124.382022471913 02:58
    Floor immediately outside of Room A 125.274725274723 03:02
    Room S, close to perimeter wall 115.955056179778 01:29
    Bathroom adjacent to Room A, but measuring away from it 105.967741935478 02:04
    Room A on testing area 132.776280323452 06:11
    Bathroom away from Room A, close to the window 107.848101265823 01:19
    Room A on testing area, GM+Al shield at a moment when readings where high 176.390977443611 02:13
    ??? (not room A), GM+Al shield 92.3076923076901 02:49
    Quote from can

    I'm not sure. However I'm consistently getting higher readings in the room where experiments have been performed.

    If muons are there you will get a broad band activation. I would carefully (once a day at same time) monitor all rooms to detect a trend.


    Currently there is no reason to panic but if you go over 200 in outdoor rooms I would think about to dislocate the experiment to a distant room and to put some shielding in place. PET bottles are quite effective and inexpensive for the expected low energy muons. But you will need many layers.

    Wyttenbach

    However I suspect there's potentially another effect. During operation water heats up significantly and freely evaporates to the environment outside the cell, contributing to local humidity. Is it unreasonable to think that such moisture could contain [ultra-]dense hydrogen clusters? In that case by operating it could be distributing around the room and house, and recirculated ventilation would contribute to that. This would be difficult to prove however and admittedly one could just say that the results observed are really all due to radon accumulation (which I never observed before since I acquired this Geiger counter, though).


    When I write that the entire room seems affected I mean that all areas but especially those close to the the actual test location show a high radiation count. I just did a test on top of the logging PC which is about 50 cm away from the testing location and not exposed to the fan flow. (I chose a location that didn't interrupt data stream)


    1. 00:33:19 UTC 89842
    2. 00:36:31 UTC 90406

    => 3:12 minutes, 176.25 CPM average


    A few minutes earlier I did in the usual testing location exposed to fans and in front of the jar:


    1. 00:18:43 UTC 86685
    2. 00:21:43 UTC 87381

    => 3:00 minutes, 232.00 CPM average



    Currently the room is at 30°C, 52% humidity, by the way.

    To check out whether the Geiger counter itself wasn't being affected/accumulating radioactive dust, I put it onto a different location to see if there will be the same decay observed before over a few hours of time.



    Short term readings were indicating high.


    1. 2:29:51 UTC 16672
    2. 2:33:24 UTC 17343

    => 03:33, 189.01 CPM average


    I will edit the comment later with an update unless others post any reply below.

    These experiments are fascinating.


    It is possible that the tube (or driver circuit) is resonating with some EMF from the cell and driving the tube voltage higher, so it becomes more sensitive?

    I know Alan showed that the counter is pretty stable under EM noise, but that may not have been the ideal embodiment.

    However the extra counts should go away immediately when the cell is turned off if the above happened, unless the tube can somehow hold an extra charge for a long time (unlikely).


    Anyways, keep up the good work.

    I look forward to finding out where these experiments end up.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    If you read the history of LENR, you will see that often you get the best results when you turn off the power!


    eg Piantelli 2004 nickel hydrogen gas reactor

    "

    The first alteration in radiation emission happened in a condition of closed cell (matter cannot be

    exchanged with the outside). In this condition, a small thermal excitation was made (the electrical power was

    turned off for a few minutes) causing a photon emission that persisted for less than 10 hours. The spectra

    during this period, in the region of energy of interest, are shown in Fig. 8.

    http://newenergytimes.com/v2/l…ctromagneticRadiation.pdf

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