This Lecture is an article that appeared on pp. 112-116 of the July-August, 1997 issue of 'Infinite Energy'.
I use the expression 'reputable evidence' because I find that this is a criterion applied by the U.S. Patent Office in examining 'cold fusion' patent applications. There is, it would seem, no 'reputable evidence' supportive of the 'cold fusion' phenomenon.
On the one hand there are 8 million books all explaining to the world something that they can never ever understand, far less verify or see as a benefit to their existence, and on the other hand there are millions of patents and millions of scientific papers all saying something different and all being understandable because they have been scrupulously refereed by patent examiners or peer scientists. That is, if you are fortunate enough to have the backing of 'reputable evidence', as by being employed in the research laboratories of a major corporation. Yet, we are not destined to see amongst the U.S. collection of patents any which are based on the discovery of 'cold fusion', simply because the evidence in support is said to be of no 'repute'! It was not 'of repute' because it went against the vested interests of those researching 'hot fusion' and even though the attempts to prove its feasibility are of more than forty years vintage, that research has the proper 'repute'.
Why is it that 'cold fusion' does not have the backing of 'reputable evidence'? The reason is the startling nature of the scientific phenomenon involved. It is basic to the issues involved in the creation of the universe, but 'cold fusion' has not developed from the efforts of those who work with big particle accelerators or those who interpret four-space and worry about 'Black Holes' and such like. The orchestrated collaboration which keeps universities in funds applied to study the grand issues of the universe by computing what happened in the first few milliseconds after the beginning of time has assured a peer activity in creating the type of 'reputable evidence' that Examiner Behrend of the U.S. Patent Office would find acceptable.
If the Wall Street Journal says 'cold fusion' is not viable, then Examiner Behrend takes that as reason to reject an application for an invention, the structure of which is new and which has never been considered by those who brief the journalists of the Wall Street Journal.
So, in 2020 we find we can make something that ostensibly lacks utility. That is another criterion which Patent Examiner Behrend keeps in mind in judging patentability. But then I say that by doing something obvious we can endow that non-conductive block we have fabricated with 'utility'. It must be useful. Even with our old knowledge of physics we know that a strong magnetic field can destroy the superconductive state, but that, once a magnetic field penetrates the superconductor it can become locked into place at a level of field strength below a critical threshold. Our invention is therefore to take that block we have moulded and apply a very powerful magnetic field which we progressively reduce to zero. I then suggest, with my 2020 vision, that we are then left with what is, in effect, a permanent magnet.
If what I say is true, all we need, therefore, is to be patient and wait until we have on the market a material that exhibits superconductive properties at temperatures of the order of the boiling point of water and, hey presto, we can fabricate something new in permanent magnets.
Now, if I were to file a patent application today based on the invention just outlined, the U.S. Patent Office would not grant me a patent unless I could identify a substance suitable for fabricating those magnets. The U.S. patent system does not allow one to speculate, however ingenious the speculation. As a result, the system favours those who confine their efforts to building and testing devices that can be demonstrated with consistent results. The greater issue, such as the prospect of 'cold fusion', which may need exhaustive research to unravel all its mysteries, cannot be patented in U.S.A. because Patent Examiner Behrend has to be sure the invention really is a 'fusion' device. The idea that a patent can be granted for something meritorious that may need funding and experiment to verify fully its operability is not contemplated. To someone like myself who is familiar with patent practice elsewhere in the world this simply means that, owing to the trend now set by the cold fusion saga, there will be inventions galore that will never see the light of day in a commercial sense if they originate in U.S.A. and rely on U.S. backing for their development.
Readers of 'Infinite Energy' will know that Martin Fleischmann estimates the value of the ultimate breakthrough in 'cold fusion' as some 300 trillion dollars. We are, after all, talking about a new source of energy, one which can rival that of the so-called Big Bang creation of the universe, said to be somehow connected with hot fusion. That means temperatures of 100 million degrees rather than the temperatures I contemplate for those magnets fabricated from a new superconductive material.
Coming back to that theme, suppose I think some more about invention and put those grains of superconductor in a tube with no insulating bonding, but there being spaces through which a hydrogen gas can flow over the surface of those grains of superconductor. Suppose I then ask the question, "Might the superconductivity property be enhanced or weakened by the pressure of that hydrogen gas?" Would not that mean that, if I applied a magnetizing field, then a ferromagnetic condition exhibited by the system would respond by developing, as a function of the pressure of that hydrogen, a magnetic polarization coupled with the enormously powerful magnetic fields we associate with permanent magnets? Would not this involve possible hydride formation and heating and cooling as a function of the hydrogen gas pressure and would not that superconductive feature be an important factor in this type of research?
Now, I am going to develop this argument, basing my case on a granted U.S. Patent that has been cited against a 'cold fusion' application of mine currently in its examination phase in the U.S. Patent Office.
The subject of that granted patent is the conversion of room temperature heat into electricity. The technique involves the control of hydrogen gas pressure in a cyclic way to produce related variation of the magnetic state of the material. As it switches between a high and low value in unison with the change of pressure, the magnetic field, which is enormous, changes too and it can deliver electricity as output if a coil having many turns is wound around the device.
A little reasoning tells us that the hydride formation is necessarily a surface phenomenon owing to the fairly rapid cycle rate used in the reported experiments. It is governed by the gas pressure and involves cyclic heating and cooling, this being a reversible process, but if we can take power off as the magnetic field goes up and down then we must either be tapping that heat and so cooling the device or... well, you, the reader, can tell me where the energy comes from. There is doubt, because the device has to be cooled to get its hydride cycle to run faster. Can it be that the heat cycling is akin to an electrical switch mediating in an energy supply system which only controls action but yet can get a little warm in the process?
Patent Examiner Behrend would expect some 'reputable evidence' before granting a U.S. patent having claims to such an invention.
I will identify the U.S. Patent as we proceed, but let me first digress to discuss the 'supergraviton'.
In this article it is inappropriate to present research ideas that are wholly new. The reader has a right to expect what is described to have matured a little with time and so I will delve into a little history. You see, the years pass by and the research findings of those of us who trespass and express views not in accord with Establishment belief get brushed aside. They are, so to speak, swept under the carpet, but there can come a time when we need to look under that carpet and point the finger of recrimination at those 'sweepers'.
Like almost everyone in the scientific world, I had not heard of, or contemplated the possibility of, 'warm superconductivity' until its discovery, in breaking through the liquid nitrogen barrier, was announced two or so years before we heard of cold fusion. Alex Muller and Georg Bednorz of IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1987 for their discovery.
I spent my main working career with IBM, 19 years of it as their European Patent Operations Director, and visited that Zurich laboratory regularly during those years, years during which my theory of gravitation was evolving as a private venture and had no reason to know that one day my gravitational interest might have bearing on that warm superconductivity phenomenon. I retired from IBM in 1983 and with their support and initial funding became in my retirement a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton in England, close to my home. My object was to develop my theory by showing it could have technological consequences, the effort being on the electrodynamic issues which I knew were at work in the phenomenon of gravitation. A far cry from superconductivity and cold fusion, you might think, but gravitation is an all-pervading force and there is much to learn.
Having now moved into the latter stages of my retirement I have begun to scan though my published work and it is appropriate to highlight some that is lost in the dark corners. It is apt here to reproduce the text of a note I wrote on 'The Theory of Anti-Gravity' for BASRA, the Journal of the British-American Scientific Research Association, as published in volume XII of the March 1989 issue at pages 2-5.
It was written at a time when those of us interested in these matters sensed a feeling of euphoria because it was understood that advanced project management in British Aerospace was willing to fund an event at Edinburgh University in Scotland under the direction of Professor Salter, an expert on gyroscopic systems, expressly staged to assist inventors in demonstrating their mechanical anti-gravity devices. This was to be an activity conducted behind closed doors until the machines were performing and had been tested, after which there would be a public disclosure at which the press would be present. In the event, however, as seems to be an inevitable circumstance, the show did not take place. Whether this was due to the definition of the test protocol being too stringent or due to intervention by the [Establishment] powers that be or simply due to the lack of readiness by the inventors of these wonderful machines I cannot say. What I can say is that having been with Scott Strachan when he demonstrated his antigravity machine to an audience of two hundred or so scientists and engineers in Canada in 1988 and knowing that his machine was kept in Edinburgh in a state of readiness for demonstration at the time of the intended event, it is difficult to see why the show did not proceed. Strachan lives about two or three miles from the University laboratory at which Professor Salter was located. The machine, as demonstrated in Canada, developed an out-of balance force sufficient to lift an apple, a tribute to the proverbial discernment of Isaac Newton. Curiously, some years after this event Professor Eric Laithwaite and Alex Jones, in the South of England, both of whom had something to demonstrate were featured in a television program on the subject. Professor Laithwaite stood on a weighing platform and manually forced his spinning flywheel into its abnormal precessing mode. The professor with his flywheel lost weight, as clearly shown by the measurements conducted in a university laboratory. I can but wonder why this demonstration was not made years earlier at the Edinburgh site, but given Laithwaite's professorial status at the Imperial College of Science, and the fact that he had regularly demonstrated his gyroscopic anomalies at that location, the trek to Scotland to perform for another professor might not have had appeal. Be that as it may, when I wrote the following short paper on 'The Theory of Anti-Gravity' for the BASRA Quarterly Journal, I was reacting to the events at the time. The reader will need, therefore, to keep in mind my above comments about the situation as it stood during a winter period in 1988/1989.
The BASRA paper reads:
The recent confirmation that a spinning body can lose weight under certain circumstances presents a challenge to those who theorize on the nature of gravitation. The author here explains how his theory of long-standing can cope with this problem.There are many experimenters who have discovered loss of weight anomalies in spinning bodies. They have been ignored by those established in the system which governs science funding and regulates the teaching of future generations of orthodox scientists. However, the recent confirmation by a specially commissioned commercial testing laboratory that one such device does lose weight has begun to cause rumbles which might well upset the complacent posture of the relativists who monopolize the field.
This is a reference to the machine built by Scotsman Sandy Kidd and tested in Australia, but, as readers know, there are many others who have demonstrated such effects, for example Bruce de Palma in USA, Eric Laithwaite in England, and, as was noted in a recent BASRA article [1], Scott Strachan who demonstrated a machine in Canada in 1988.
A Scottish newspaper, the Dundee Courier of 28th December 1988, reported a projected event at Edinburgh University planned just after Easter 1989 at which as many as 12 such machines might be tested before responsible adjudicators with the object of settling this question once and for all.
Now, in the likely event that the phenomenon is verified on this occasion, what will the theorist do to cope with this very troublesome problem? We can guess that those interested in commercial exploitation will be in no such dilemma. Einstein's followers look like being left behind in the advance of technology because their theory is then destroyed for the reasons already of record [1].
The answer for the non-relativistic theorist is, in this author's opinion, to be found in the theory of gravitation which is of record [2] and which has the following basic features.
Firstly, one needs to admit that space is full of something that has energy but is invisible and very elusive. It is a sea of something having equilibrium to such a degree of perfection that it reveals itself only as a carrier of energy at light speed and, even then, it finds a way of confusing us when we try to detect the reference frame that it provides. We can be sure, however, that it is the seat of an inertial reference frame since only empty space provides the universal metric in which rotation is measured.
Secondly, one needs to admit that matter, as we know it, exists as a disturbance or misfit in this background sea of energy. Matter exists in some measure related to past events of happenings in this background energy sea, but we need not speculate on that in our quest to understand gravity.
Thirdly, all elements of matter suffer a jitter motion according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Matter has mass and is in a state of jitter in the inertial frame. Accordingly, guided by our own experience of how we get things to jitter, we must look for something that provides a counterbalancing action. It is here that the author intuitively made the presumption that some energy is displaced from the local background medium to form concentrated mass quanta (called gravitons) which move in inertial juxtaposition with the jittering matter to keep things in balance.
In summary, therefore, the theory regards a mass M of matter as moving in a pattern of motion constituting what we may term an E frame, which jitters about the inertial frame in which an energy deficit (-Mc2) has occurred accompanying the creation of a graviton mass M in balancing motion in what we may term a G frame.
So far as we can see, the matter mass M stands alone, but jitters. In reality, however, there is a graviton mass M coupled with the matter mass M but neutralized by a mass deficit effect in the sea of empty space.
How does this help us to understand gravity? Well, firstly, we stand a chance of quantifying gravitational action in terms of a standard graviton unit, especially if we say that the real action of gravity is not between matter mass but between graviton mass. Secondly, we can use electrical theory in an interesting way by saying that the electromagnetic reference frame (the E frame) is somehow determined by the collective presence of matter mass. This explains why no electromagnetic gravity action is seated in the matter mass. However, because the gravitons move relative to this E frame they are able to assert mutual electromagnetic actions and so give scope for interpreting gravitation as an electromagnetic effect, assuming that the gravitons are electrically charged, pervade a tenuous uniform sea of charge, and come in equal numbers as positive or negative.
Indeed, this theory has developed over the years and the author can now show that the tau lepton is the primary graviton form, whereas the muon lepton forms the background space medium defining the inertial frame. The remaining charged lepton form, the electron, is, of course, a feature of the matter frame or E frame.
What about that demonstrated loss of weight? Well, how can matter mass lose weight if its rest-mass energy is conserved and gravitates, meaning it has weight? It cannot. So the fact that matter mass 'appears' to lose weight is clear verification that matter mass has no weight in the first place. It merely can be coupled, and normally is, to graviton mass which does have the right properties. This is what the author's theory is all about. Evidently, by suitable manipulation of flywheels in the reported experiments, that close coupling is severed transiently and sufficiently for the gravitons to begin to fall under gravity when freed from the connection with matter.
In fact, being leptons present in charge pairs, the gravitons die and are recreated constantly by a pair annihilation process. Therefore, as they fall within the coextensive body of the flywheel, they move from positions of higher gravitational potential where they are created closely coupled to matter mass to positions of lower gravitational potential where they decay. This involves energy exchange not sustainable by the vacuum energy equilibrium state if the body of matter itself alters its position relative to the gravitational potential. The reason is that we must have overall energy conservation and if, periodically, the matter mass has its coupling with the gravitons restored, equilibrium demands that any gain of gravitational potential energy in the real matter world must come from somewhere. The laws of mechanics governing the precessing flywheel keep energy conserved so far as concerns motion of the flywheel about axes other than its spin axis. So, unless we can draw on energy of disordered motion, heat energy, the flywheel spin has to yield kinetic energy in some way to meet the demands of gravity, even if this breaches Newton's Third Law of Motion [3].
The loss of weight by the force-precessed offset gyroscopic machines must, therefore, be accompanied by a slowing down of the flywheels in a levitating system. Conversely, we should expect the flywheels to speed up in a descending situation. Such are the issues now facing researchers in this field. The author's theory of gravitation looks like being able to cope with the gravity challenge now before us.
[1] H. Aspden, BASRA J., pp. 2-4, Dec. 1988.
[2] H. Aspden, 'Physics Unified', (Sabberton), 1980.
[3] H. Aspden, 'Anti-Gravity Electronics', Electronics and Wireless World, vol. 95, pp. 29-31, January 1989.
In the above paper it was stated that only empty space provides the universal metric in which rotation is measured. By this is meant space devoid of matter. It is an experimental fact that a vacuum state enclosed within an evacuated cavity can be the seat of propagating electromagnetic waves which, by their interference, give a measure of the speed of rotation of the enclosing cavity. There has to be something in the vacuum that endows it with a non-rotating frame of reference, something real rather than a notion in a mathematician's mind, and I can but say that this has to be an aether medium. In referring to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle it may seem that I too am building theory on the notions of a mathematician, Heisenberg. I am not, because I see the graviton system and its dynamic balance with matter as the cause of a universal jitter which accounts for that uncertainty relationship. When something jitters in a circular motion and you see it from a distance it might appear to be at rest, but yet at all times its position is uncertain in measure represented by the radius of that orbit and its momentum is uncertain because it reverses direction constantly, but yet the product of the two is a constant which we relate to Planck's action quantum.
Concerning the mention of heat at the end of the paper, I am not really expecting researchers to find that a gyroscope cools when exhibiting anti-gravity. Only experimental research can resolve this question, but if there is an anomalous gain in energy then I have no problem in accepting that it is the aether that cools upon shedding energy. Indeed, the aether heats owing to the gain in entropy and by that jitter motion it puts order into this thermal chaos. When it gets too much energy it sheds it by creating protons and electrons, but maybe the anti-gravity process allows some to be intercepted before reaching the proton stage. The research aimed at 'free energy' is all focused on this same point. We must convert heat into useful power by drawing on the 'heat' of our ambient environment or on the 'heat' of the underworld of the aether!
Now, this is where the supergraviton enters onto the stage in playing a role as part of the process leading to 'warm superconductivity'.
However, in 1964, the aether theory I had then worked on for ten years revealed the secrets of the mu-meson and, shortly thereafter, in 1965, the 2.587 GeV graviton emerged. It was then a simple matter to evaluate theoretically the precise value of G, the constant of gravitation, expressed in terms of the electron charge-mass ratio and based on energy perturbations of that graviton form.
At pp. 81-82 of the 1966 edition of my book 'The Theory of Gravitation' I show how three well-known mesons were all unstable spin-off products of a decay involving the 2.587 GeV graviton. I also show, from pure theory based on my interpretation of the structured form of the dynamic aether, how its 5063 ratio of mass to that of the electron emerged from the theoretical analysis. By 1969, when I published 'Physics without Einstein' I was able to point to the relevance of the discovery, as later reported by Krisch et al [Physical Review Letters, 16, 709 (1966)], of the 'largest elementary particle to be discovered'. They write: "We believe that this is firm evidence for the existence of a nucleon resonance with mass 3,245 +/- 10 MeV ... It seems remarkable that such a massive particle should be so stable." This nucleon resonance occurred when protons were fed into a high energy environment in which pi-mesons (pions) were being produced. I immediately saw this as a particle resonance in which that graviton ghost had combined with the proton to shed pions and leave the transient signature as the energy quantum discovered by Krisch et al. Here was proton decay brought about by that graviton ghost! Note that 2.587 GeV plus 0.938 GeV less 0.279 GeV, the rest-mass of two pions, leaves 3.246 GeV.
Those were the days when particle physicists were probing the scope for creating exotic particles in the energy region we associate with the mass regime of protons, deuterons, and tritons, but nowadays they have gone to the very high energy region where they seek to decipher Nature by discovering particle resonances at mass values akin to those of atoms seated at the middle of the periodic table. This is the region where the supergraviton develops in response to the need for a more effective dynamic balance in that quantum jitter condition of the aether.
My onward research into that territory led me to discover that, if the gravitational balance were to be a joint effort shared by a group of ghost particles, where the mass and charge displacement properties were pooled, then the ratio of these quantitities which preserved the G-value would demand a unique supergraviton form as well as a super-heavy electron form (identified as the tau-particle or taon). The supergraviton is the cluster of such a group, but a degenerate form involving the mutual annihilation of a particle pair from this cluster leaves a residual neutral particle resonance in the region of 91-92 GeV, evidently the so-called neutral Z-boson which preoccupies much of the attention of theoretical particle physicists at this time.
The scientific paper disclosing this theory was published in Speculations in Science and Technology, 12, 179-186 (1989). The paper is entitled: 'The Supergraviton and its Technological Connection'. The supergraviton cluster has a rest-mass of 95.18 GeV, corresponding to 102.18 atomic mass units.
As explained in that paper, the technological spin-off had implications for cold fusion, but the key technological contribution was the account of the warm superconductive properties of the perovskite materials Sr2CuO4 and La2CuO4. These involve a dynamic balance tuned to the near-resonant conditions of interaction with three and four supergraviton masses, respectively. The lanthanum composition has a molecular mass of 405 or 407 according to the Cu isotope present. The strontium composition has a molecular mass of 303 or 305 amu according to the Cu isotope present. This implies an effective supergraviton mass of value between 101 and 102 amu. Warm superconductivity arises because the electron collisions with atoms involve energy transfer from the thermal motion of the atom to the electron, owing to the impact being absorbed through the centre of mass of the dynamic system, whilst field energy stored in magnetic induction sustains the current by its regeneration effect.
This then is some of the background leading to the supergraviton. I have, as I have reported under the title: 'Extracting Energy from a Magnet' in New Energy News, August 1995, come to realise that the supergraviton is at work in magnetic materials, particularly those exhibiting the very high coercive force needed by a permanent magnet. Indeed, in the latter part of my latest communication to New Energy News entitled 'The New Energy Spectrum' I drew special attention to the 'free energy' implications of a U.S. patent just cited against one of my patent applications. It is U.S. Patent 4,435,663 granted to IBM and dated March 6, 1984. Its title is 'Thermochemical Magnetic Generator'. What is described is an apparatus which uses hydrogen as a working gas and magnetic intermetallic compounds which absorb hydrogen as the working magnetic material'. The description of the invention says that 'thermomagnetic generators are devices that convert heat into electricity'. The description further shows that hydrogen is not consumed, it is trapped in an enclosure and merely transferred forwards and backwards from one absorbing substance to another cyclically under the regulated control of heat input. The magnetic transitions induce output electricity in a coil wrapped around the chamber housing the working substance. This patent presents experimental data showing that the mere variation of hydrogen gas pressure resulting from the heat cycle will generate electricity. This is a room temperature device but the magnetic state of the intermetallic compound transits through the Curie temperature reversibly, converting ferromagnetic state to non ferromagnetic state and vice versa, merely in response to hydrogen pressure, as thermally controlled. My interest is aroused by the fact that the chemical composition of the lanthanum pentacobalt working substance varies by absorption of hydrogen and a group of seven or eight such molecules, without the hydrogen, has a mass that is an integral multiple of 101 or 102 amu. The addition of hydrogen in changing LaCo5 to LaCo5H4 can affect the resonant tuning in the supergraviton coupling.
In my New Energy News communication I also mentioned that on March 26, 1997, I was granted GB Patent No. 2,278,491 entitled 'Hydrogen Activated Heat Generation Apparatus'. It has 18 claims and is part of my, albeit theoretical, efforts to contribute something to the cold fusion theme. I also mentioned that the British Patent Office has notified me that on April 16th the grant of my GB Patent 2,283,361 will be published. This is entitled 'Refrigeration and Electric Power Generation'. It bears upon the thermoelectric theme, the subject of my Energy Science Report No. 3, but it also exploits the 101-102 amu supergraviton resonance theme by disclosing why oxidized polypropylene is a room temperature superconductor and showing how this can be incorporated in a thermoelectric power converter. A group of seven molecules in the chain structure of oxidised polypropylene [C3H6O]7 has a molecular mass that is 4 times 101.5 amu.
The IBM patent is, of course, the one which I had in mind in referring to 2020 vision. If you have followed my logic in suggesting invention in using room temperature superconductor materials to fabricate a permanent magnet, then the converse implication is that, with the right treatment, the substances used today in fabricating permanent magnets might prove to be viable room temperature superconductors. The substance lanthanum pentacobalt warrants attention with that thought in mind.
I shall write more extensively on this subject and point to other evidence of anomalous effects arising from hydride (and deuteride) composition resonances as I expand my website presence on Internet.
Footnote
Readers who are curious to know where the 2.587 GeV graviton is mentioned in an easily accessible scientific periodical shelved in a university library, may look up the review paper by D. M. Eagles at pp. 265-270 in International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 15 (1976). It is entitled: 'A Comparison of Results of Various Theories for Four Fundamental Constants of Physics'.