Oleksii Ivanchuk’s Spark Plugs

Getting back to Oleksii's presentation...

As a comparison with Paradigmnoia 's photo, these are the presentation slides showing tracks from the original "plain discs & spark plugs" test, and the "trapped room dust" marks.

But to prevent us from getting too hung-up on the "rolling dirt" type tracks - here are varieties of track from the "200 spark plug test", using soot-coated DVDs.

Second Type:

Third Type:

From Dwyer-Joyce, R.S., Sayles, R.S. and Ioannides, E. (1994) An investigation into the mechanisms of closed three-body abrasive wear.

The above report is looking at wear tracks of a larger scale, but it gives some background to three-body wear issues.

Just beware of the Pigeon Dropping Effect...

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And, unfortunately, although it is all fascinating, a lot of it will turn out to be a distraction. The problem is that it is often impossible to know, beforehand, which paths are going to lead to the desired destination.

It could be very frustrating for someone who is trying to learn how a pigeon is able to fly, to suddenly realise that all those years spent studying the shape and consistency of pigeon droppings have not really helped.

Quote from Alan Smith

A little off-topic

Something very much on-topic is at Ref. 3 of the document:

An EVO Scope for Electrolysis Projectile Measurement by Ken Shoulders.

As for the engine...

Quote from Curbina

includes the use of a Wilson Chamber for detection of traces

(n.b. For those people who don't want to watch the whole video - the cloud chamber part starts at around 30 minutes in)

It's many years since I've played around with a Wilson cloud chamber - but it can be quite good fun. I can still remember the first tracks I ever saw - which, of course, were well before I placed a sample radioactive source in the chamber. And that's because, as soon as you get the chamber working - it starts detecting cosmic rays.

Watching the tracks appear in the chamber in Bob's video, I immediately remembered seeing tracks of a similar size, and frequency, appear (from all those years ago) - without any radioactive source being present. I must admit, it was a little disconcerting at the time - to see actual evidence of the continual bombardment our bodies get from cosmic rays. But, of course, that is what we have evolved with - and biological systems can clearly cope with that level of bombardment. It is just part of the normal background radiation that we can see being picked up with, say, a GM tube radiation meter.

Watch this short video...

Getting back to the engine exhaust DVD test....

I wanted to find data on the electrical charge state of particulates in petrol (gasoline) engine exhaust. This paper is interesting:

On the electrical charge of motor vehicle exhaust particles

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The electrical characteristics of particles emitted in motor vehicle exhaust are examined via single and tandem differential mobility analysis (DMA). The measurements reveal that large fractions of the particles, approximately 60–80% are electrically charged, but with nearly equal numbers of positively and negatively charged particles, which leaves the exhaust aerosol essentially electrically neutral.

This is the size distribution of particles from a 1.8 litre direct injection spark ignition Euro IV compliant engine & exhaust.

What the implications might be, for exhaust gas interaction with polycarbonate, clearly needs a lot more digging.

So if there are a mixture of charged particles in the exhaust, would anything propel them to a polycabonate surface?

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In the absence of an applied electric field, two types of electrical forces can move charged particles towards a surface: image force and repulsive force. A charged particle induces an image charge in a nearby surface. The electrostatic attraction between the particle charge and the image charge provides a force for the particle to move towards the surface. Repulsive forces between two particles carrying charges of like sign can also drive particles towards a surface.

Source: Chapter 4 Behavior of aerosol particles

Do polycarbonate surfaces naturally charge positive of negative, tribo-electrically?

From the above (source), it seems that PC is close to neutral - with a slight negative bias.

The actual photos from the exhaust test, in the presentation, are here:

They are not as peculiar as most of the other photos - and so might not be produced by the exact same process. Maybe they are not quite as "strange" as the others - although, clearly, the lines of dots are still interesting.

I'll leave this video here, for people to watch and ponder.

The "plastic sheets" being used for these demonstrations are polycarbonate.

Quote from Alan Smith

Or did I miss something?

I don't think so. Except that the charge on the top of the sheet is probably negative (as he shows), but the charge on the other side will be positive (which his illustration doesn't show). What it highlights is the ability for PC to be charged, albeit temporarily, and that charge can do peculiar things to nearby particles.

What we see on the DVDs is the end result of a process - but the sequence of that process is invisible. If patches of the DVD surface suddenly acquired a charge, by some unknown mechanism, then nearby dirt particles (or surface soot) could behave in odd ways.

I'm currently mulling over ways to test a few ideas. Suggestions welcome.

Quote from Curbina

This is one presentation where the filmed “sparks” seem to interact

With regards to the VEGA apparatus; although I know little about it, I'm surmising that the chamber is operating at vacuum (or low gas pressure) and that it will necessarily contain a fairly high space charge.

In the video, Bob mentioned the usual presence of particles (some of which are sometimes deliberately introduced - in the form of carbon dust). If the chamber vacuum is charged, then particles will also acquire the charge and will "fly around", interacting with each other as they go. It is similar to the way that some moon dust "levitates" during the lunar day.

If any of those dust particles have also been heated to incandescence, by whatever electrical process is going on in the chamber, then they will be picked up by the camera - as they fly around and repel each other. Maybe that is what we are seeing (or maybe not. This is just a suggestion, after all).

With regards to Ken shoulders' schemes for detecting EVOs, I'm struck by his need to reveal their presence by physical interaction with other objects. The "detector", shown further up this thread, relies on an observer seeing flashes of light as the EVOs blast through aluminium foil. The foil, of course, can also be subsequently used to look for impact holes.

Other devices he proposed, and built, used phosphor scintillation screens. These, of course, react in real-time - and also reveal impacts by flashes of light. It seems that both methods are needed because they reveal the presence of some things that are otherwise invisible (either because they don't emit light, and/or because they move too fast). This suggests that if something is visibly "flying around", and can be captured by a 30 fps video camera, it may not be an EVO.

Quote from Alan Smith

Not all EVO's emit light. Black EVO's are also said to exist.

In the document Basic EVO Questions (2008) Ken says:

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How Are EVOs Measured: They can be made to give out either light or electrons and be seen visually.

This is a bit ambiguous, but could be interpreted as EVOs only being visible if forced, in some way (e.g. striking something)

He also says:

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What States Do EVOs Take: I assign a white state to very active EVOs expressing high charge and mass and black to vanishing, almost massless EVOs. There are almost an infinite number of gray states between white and black.

This would suggest white, gray, and black are not terms that relate to visibility, but to energy content.

However, in the document EVOs and the “Strange” Particles of L.I. Urutskoev (2007) (mentioned further up this thread), Ken says:

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EVOs as Radiation: It was also surprising to Urutskoev that the radiation had such a long range or high penetrating power. He thought a charged particle was not capable of this as he said, “It is clear that a charged particle would not travel this distance.” He was somewhat correct in this assumption, but he was apparently not privy to the way EVOs operate in virtual obscurity using a stealth mode at greatly reduced expressed charge. With normally available data and logic, the great penetration distance seen would be attributed to charge free radiation instead of to the very low charge projectile an EVO is. In the example given in Fig. 6 of the above-cited paper by Urutskoev, the EVO detected was in the gray mode where there is still some interaction with material, although weak. Had the process used for EVO creation allowed greater subsidence or cooling, the black mode of transport would have developed and it would not have been detected. I have no opinion as to how an EVO got as black as it did using the unsophisticated apparatus shown in the paper by Urutskoev.

This suggests a more obscure meaning for white, grey, and black.

For the moment, although it looks like Ken was definitely trying to describe something that he had detected, measured, and generated - even photographing the damage that it could produce - I shall treat a number of (possibly more speculative) descriptions with a generous pinch of salt.