Ponderations on Cavitation (Updated with impressive results from a paper of 2018)

I have decided to start this thread as a place where I will develop conceptually and methodologically what I hope will become a small project for performing a series of experiments aimed to verify in an unambiguous and accurate way the validity of claims of elemental transmutation observed under conditions in which cavitation has been generated in aqueous media.

This idea has evolved as a result of the deep interest and inspiration that I have acquired through the reports and recent visit of a team belonging to the MFMP to the facilities of Japanese Dr. Ryushin Ohmasa, and since that moment, the analysis I have been doing of his patent applications and reported technical results of elemental transmutation of simple salt solutions (of Mg, Ca, Cu and Cs) prepared with a 5% in weight of D2O and submitted to low frequency (50-200 Hz) vibration by means of a seemingly simple mechanical device of Dr. Ohmasa's invention, which is basically a reciprocating motor attached to two vertical rods to which in turn an array of metallic fins of stainless steel (that in some of the embodiments are plated with palladium and/or plantinum).

They say a picture is better than a thousand words so here I link to some videos of Ohmasa's vibration equipment and ongoing transmutations experiments (he also uses it for water electrolysis with very interesting results, but that is not the focus of my attention within this thread).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAlhKaWWzLM

And here is a video of the complexity hidden within the simplicity of the experiments they perform with the vibratory apparatus (slow motion video of the vibratory fins submerged in a CuCl solution)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQAt0igDy4Y

A video of the ending of a CuCl vibration experiment (with a remarkable change of colour of the solution in a lapse of 3 hours as evidenced by the samples taken at preset time intervals)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYd_0o7j13g

And a video of an attempt of quickly validate results with MgCl via a colorimetric ion tests (all results in the patents are from ICP MS independent lab analysis).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inItVAOSNIs

As the reactor of Dr. Ohmasa has a significant price (I have been told one of his vibration units sells for 17000 british pounds), and my intention is to perform an independent validation of this kind of effects, and the vibration equipment is basically creating a intense turbulence and cavitation within the aqueous solution, I decided that my replication, in absolute need of being low cost, should find a different way to generate a similar effect in the water. A very efficient way to create cavitation is by means of ultrasound.

Not sure if anyone had ever reported transmutations in aqueous phase with the use of ultrasound in the formal literature, a cursory search in Google Scholar quickly yielded some interesting results, most notably from Dr. Cardone, who measured the appearance of an atificial Europium isotope by direct measuring through ICP MS in a vial of water submitted to ultrasonic cavitation. One chapter of a book written by Drs. Cardone and Mignani is properly titled "Piezonuclear Reactions in Cavitated Water". I will not upload here in order to avoid Copyright problems, but is very informative, but they also published a review in 2012 titled "Piezonuclear Reactions" that delves extensively in the observations of nuclear transmutation in diverse media, water and aqueous solutions included.

One of the things that I instantly detected in Dr. Cardone's publication was his attention and intention to detect "nuclear signatures" as radiactivity and neutrons. This contrasts heavily with the absolute absence of radiacivity and any concern about neutrons by Dr. Ohmasa.

Now, I have to clarify that my current understanding of these phenomena makes me lean towards the idea that LENT happening in this kind of situations is related to the behaviour of electrons rather than any classical nuclear reaction. This is highly speculative, and at odds with current mainstream knowledge, and I am aware of that so please refrain from pointing it out and mocking me for my ignorance, and allow me to continue exposing the sequence of ideas.

The interaction of water within a cavitation events rich environment in this context, is increasingly being thought to have an effect in the arrangement of water molecules, and this arrangement is related to the clustering of the electrons of these molecules. In that sense, we would be in the presence of similar structures to those proposed by Kenneth Shoulders, but generated in an aqueous media and capable of remaining stable in this environment and also to interact with dissolved ions in this solution.

If one focuses experiments with this later background idea, shifting from the old focus in the "brute force" effect of the cavitation that might create conditions to "break the Coulomb barrier" to cause nuclei to interact, one can device experiments that are focused in enhancing cavitation and formation of these water clusters, and forget about the nuclear fussion but see the effect of these electron clusters when interacting with nucleus.

This is what I intend to do, and in the following weeks I will be developing here an experimental protocol with the much demanded control experiment to compare, and submit it to your collective criticism in order to enhance it, within the brevity of the resources I have at my disposal, and later to execute it with the aid of a friend researcher of the city where I live, with the help of undergrad university students, and with the outcome to be made into a paper to be submitted to JMCS for consideration.

Your input and valid criticism is welcome.

Quote from Alan Smith

Curbina

Look up Roger Stringham's work on Lenr-Canr, there is also a UK start-up doing this work 'on a grander scale' - they avoid the term 'cold fusion' which has fooled some people

https://firstlightfusion.com/technology/#our-approach

Thanks Alan!!! This is exactly what Helps me, pointing me on the right directions to have more basis to compare and see how to build a good experiment.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Curbina,

Cavitation-induced nuclear reactions and associated phenomena (piezo-nuclear or mechano-nuclear reactions) have long been discussed on the boundary between fringe and pseudo science.

Non-linear collapse of bubbles, or voids in solids, etc can, indeed, create high microscopic temperatures and pressures.

See for example: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.7567/JJAP.56.117301

That motivates the hypothesis that such systems could induce nuclear reactions.

So far we have science. Fringe science since it is a common view that the temperatures and pressures reached this way are just not high enough: and many attempts theoretical and experimental have been made to quantify this

As you point out, many of the claims for nuclear activity associated with cavitation show experimentally no evidence of nuclear reactions.

The hypothesis that cavitation (or something else that might give rise to nuclear reactions) also magically disposes of all the normal high energy products in a way that makes the reaction look like a non-nuclear process is obviously not a happy one: there is no obvious mechanism and it is similar to:

"Let us look for unicorns in the garden"

"We have observed creatures that look like unicorns but have no horn"

"We hypothesise a "horn-hiding" mechanism (evolutionarily selected) whereby the unicorns turn their horn transparent"

No-one can say that unicorn horn-hiding does not exist. It even has some justification - a creature commonly hunted might well pretend to be a less huntable creature. Nevertheless, it is a large added complication, especially because evolution has nowhere else found a way to turn horns transparent. Actually, maybe it has - I guess there are chameleon-like creatures that can turn transparent when need arises, which might make such a hypothesis more plausible.

The situation with "hiding high-energy products" is worse because it has been observed nowhere else and is just very difficult to make work. Even if you can find some reaction pathway that allows fractionation (Hagelstein's attempts) you also have to suppose that somehow all the normal - high energy product generating - pathways also have zero or near zero probability. People have been trying to think of ways this could happen for a long time and no-one has solved it.

This same unicorn argument applies to LENR, which is why those who think LENR exists would perhaps view nuclear reaction product hiding as being quite plausible, even when the reactions are induced "normally" by high temperatures and/or pressures.

Be warned though - there is a lot of classic pseudo-science in this area. Look for the genuine science, not the guys with some demo who claims something unusual.

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Well, I appreciate your concerns. The issue here is that now I see this in a complete different light.

The idea that the anomalies observed in cavitation Rich environments is associated to high temperature and pressures is what has fooled many to pursue something that Is somehow expected and observed in really hight temperatures and pressures (like in fusion bombs). I think the same mistake expands to the idea that what happens in a high energy environment can happen within a lattice at lower energies because everything is closer and tightly packed.

When you realize that is the wrong optic to study the anomalies, and what you need to look for are phenomenons of electromagnetic nature, as what happens in plasma rich environments, then you begin to see why something unexpected could be happening.

I don’t know what is your assessment of Kenneth Shoulders’s work, I’d venture to say that you probably discard it as hogwash on the outset, and hence I think you will dismiss the very notion that what we observe in a cavitation environment is related directly to his work in the so called EVOs or charge clusters.

If one reads Shoulders, he tells us he made experiments where he created coherent charge clusters (which are postulated to be made basically of a great amount of electrons) and bombarded metal samples with these, and in the resulting damaged area he found areas of elemental transmutation. He provided evidence of this and you can say all you want about he being wrong but he was able to what he claimed consistently.

Making the connection requires realization that water molecules in liquid state can and do form crystalline structures that share electrons between molecules. This is not fringe and has been observed and computationally modeled.

So, once you begin thinking with this focus, then you stop expecting high energy markers because this has nothing to do with high energy.

If all this is too much to digest for your delicate stomach then by all means forget about this thread and let me toil away and get disappointed in my own when I find nothing. I think my efforts have a scant chance to be fruitful and yet the minute possibility that I might find something interesting is all the motivation I need.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

Copper chloride reduces to cuprous chloride by metal of vibrator, brown color at the end may also come from iron hydroxides. These experiments must therefore be carefully controlled for to avoid contamination of solution by metals from electrodes (platinum?) and compared with blind experiments for background. Until this hasn't been done it's difficult to speculate about possible LENR/transmutation effects/plasma/EVOs and another esoteric stuffs.

I wonder why you talk about electrodes here. There’s no electrodes in this purely mechanical device, and all the submersed metallic parts are either stainless steel or SS plated with palladium.

Of course one has to check if some degree of metal contamination detaching from the apparatus itself is taking place. That is beyond obvious. But in these experiments some of the ions detected in the solution after the period of vibration are completely absent in the original solution and in the constitution of all the parts in contact with the solution.

Quote from Alan Smith

Also check out the Russian, Talyarkan who was called out as a fraud, disgraced with a fanfare, and then when his work was replicated independently was silently reinstated. It's a good while ago, and I'm shaky on the fine detail.

Yes, I know about his work on sonofusion, his falling from grace and his come back, but he is still accepted with reluctance. He was focused in excess heat tho, not transmutations, but I have him as a source in my ongoing library.

Well, granted this thread will go off topic often but please remember my aim here is to gather information regarding anomalies observed in cavitation rich environments.

One big issue that I need to stress is that I am interested in the range of observations and not in the particular hypothesis behind them. I contend no theoretical frame can account for the observations and we need to look and experiment more before even begin to configure an hypothesis to model what’s happening. I just aim to replicate observations, not to make any predictions of what will happen other than we might observe something along the lines of what has been already reported, only this time I want to look for it and see if it’s really there or not.