Charge Clusters in Action
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Charge Clusters in Action |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Ken Shoulders, Steve Shoulders |
| Keywords | charge clusters, electrons, low-energy, thermal gradient, charge, fluid, action, borehole, sloshing |
| Published | 1999 |
| No. of pages | 13 |
| Pages | 147-157 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
New energy transformations have been found using highly organized, micron-sized clusters of electrons, or EVs, having soliton behavior, with electron populations on the order of Avagadro's number. When interacted with solid material, these charge clusters perform a low-energy phase transformation type of atomic disruption that liquefies the lattice and propels the material to a high velocity without apparent signs of conventional heating. Using an ordinary thermal interpretation, a thermal gradient for bulk material greater than 26,000 degrees C per micrometer would be required to achieve these effects. Evidence will be shown for the EV transiting the solid material, fluidizing it by contributing one extra electron per nucleon for a period considerably longer than the relaxation time, and then imparting momentum to the fluid. Under such conditions, the impact of this fluid on another solid buries a slug of solidified material to depth of over 20 micrometers. This abnormal behavior introduces the notion of energy gain produced through a low energy atomic and molecular phase change coupled with high recombination energy release. Evidence will also be introduced for the underlying energy production process stemming from the equivalence of an electron-annihilation energy release based on the manipulation of fractional electronic charge.
Scanning electron micrographs will be introduced showing EV borehole perfection, dual EV existence, and an electrically driven, sloshing type of material reflection in the borehole that is correctable with impedance-matching, micro nozzles. Micro thrusters using a 20 micrometer diameter and 100 micrometer long slug of non-explosive material will be discussed that are based on a spark-like propulsion process giving sufficient velocity to produce shock cones 70 micrometers apart at atmospheric pressure after being initiated from an energy source of 20 micro Joules. In vacuum, the ions from such a source travel 1 cm in 50 nanoseconds. As an example of the new energetics produced by EV interaction with material, data will be submitted on an intense light source having dimensions of a few micrometers and duration of several picoseconds arising from a form of synchrotron radiation. The basis for controlling the wavelength of this photon source from the visible light region to gamma wavelengths will be discussed. Micrographs will be shown of a low energy nuclear reaction that has produced nuclear transmutations by using a nuclear cluster reaction process.
Overview
This 1999 conference paper by Ken Shoulders and his son Steve reports on the EV — Shoulders' own coinage, a Latin acronym for strong electron — a micron-sized, tightly bound packet of electrons with a population, he claims, of order Avogadro's number. The line of work began with a discovery in 1980, was described privately in EV — A Tale of Discovery (1987), and produced five US patents between 1991 and 1992 on electronic devices. Having finished with the electronic applications, Shoulders turned to the "energetic effects" he had encountered along the way and, in his own phrase, "swept under the rug". This paper is his account of digging them back out.
The claims depart from conventional physics at the most basic level. A packet of ~1023 like charges should explode; Shoulders asserts instead that it holds together with soliton behaviour, that it travels through solid matter rather than around it, and that in passing it contributes roughly one extra electron per nucleon, nullifying the material's bonding and converting the lattice to a fluid without conventional heating. The most striking consequence is a claimed non-thermal machining process: boreholes through silicon carbide (melting point 2,600 °C) so clean that a thermal reading would demand a gradient above 26,000 °C per micrometre. From this Shoulders builds toward micro-thrusters, an ultra-brief point light source, low-energy nuclear transmutation and, tentatively, energy gain. Notably for the free energy literature, the paper's stance is anti-theoretical: "Theories and ideas have almost no value at all in our world. Laboratory demonstrations are worth very slightly more."
What is reported
The strike, and the identity of spark and EV
An "EV strike" is what happens when a cluster hits a target. Shoulders reports resolving an early puzzle by concluding that there is no difference between a spark and an EV: "A spark is simply the visible, ionized gas trail left by an EV," with "electron feelers running ahead of it". An ordinary induction-coil spark striking 6-micrometre aluminium foil leaves a characteristic mark on both faces, showing clean penetration with no lateral meandering — evidence, he argues, that the energy form was short and organised rather than a wandering current. Metals limit penetration to a few micrometres because their free-electron supply destroys the EV's order; dielectrics and semiconductors allow "over a millimetre per kilovolt". The technique used to visualise this is elegantly simple: two lapped alumina plates, half a millimetre thick, are pressed together and sparked at the crack, giving a cross-sectional view of seven distinct EV trails.
Sloshing and impedance matching
A recurring theme is that an EV behaves like a fluid flow or an electromagnetic wave and "must be terminated in its characteristic impedance". Where it is not, it reflects and rebounds — Shoulders' "sloshing". Micrographs of lead-oxide glass show material laid down in two successive strokes, and one image is interpreted as a dual EV strike, two clusters travelling side by side and entering the material simultaneously, with the frozen pattern taken as proof of the coincidence. Tapering the exit into a small horn is the offered fix. Shoulders values sloshing chiefly as a diagnostic: it makes EV motion visible in places where it otherwise could not be seen, and it later supplies his explanation of the light source.
Disruption rather than melting
The central non-thermal claim rests on the alumina deposits collected on foil beyond a borehole. The material clearly arrived molten and consolidated, yet raised no perceptible temperature in the substrate; a low-melting wax temperature indicator remains undisturbed unless directly contacted; and the fluid's surface tension is so low that it spreads to an almost atomically thin edge with no evaporative decoration of neighbouring surfaces — behaviour Shoulders contrasts explicitly with what a thermally molten alumina particle does on the same foil. The order of events is inferred from a strike mark found on the far side of the foil beneath a deposit: the EV transits first, then the liquefied material follows. "The EV is what moves the fluid. Guide the EV and you guide the fluid." The 26,000 °C/µm figure comes from a deliberate test using paraffin wax as a binder for silicon carbide or colloidal graphite; the boreholes were so perfect that the cusp between dual EVs was resolvable, implying the full 2,600 °C drop occurred across less than 0.1 µm. Shoulders' conclusion is the disjunction: either that gradient is real, "or this is a non-thermal process."
Thrusters and the light source
Ejected slugs bury themselves about 20 µm into an aluminium substrate. Viewed edge-on, the ejecta show shock cones spaced ~70 µm apart at atmospheric pressure, from an electrical input of only 20 µJ for a 20 µm × 100 µm slug; in vacuum the fastest detected ions cover 1 cm in 50 ns. The light-source experiment substitutes photographic film for the foil and lays a 200-mesh copper grid over part of it for point-projection microscopy. Shadow sharpness from dust specks and the grid image together bound the source at 5 µm in both dimensions, about a quarter of the borehole width. Since EVs typically run at ~0.1c in a vacuum guide, the turn-around at a mismatched exit should take a few picoseconds; Shoulders identifies the emission as synchrotron radiation from that acceleration, giving a wideband chirped spectrum of picosecond duration, and estimates ~1011 photons from film sensitivity. Filters confirm the spectrum stops in the UV, consistent with the soft retarding field; harder stopping on low-inductance, high-mass targets is said to yield x-rays, and colliding double-EV shock waves gamma emission — which he suggests may explain gamma reports by others.
Transmutation and the energy question
Drawing on earlier work published in the Journal of New Energy (1996), Shoulders shows an EV strike on deuterium-loaded palladium foil. X-ray energy-dispersive analysis finds clean palladium everywhere except at the bombarded sites, where new material — "mostly silicon, calcium and magnesium" — appears. He reports that efficiency requires small EVs (~200 Å) for rapid stopping, and that brittle loaded material supplies these through fracto-emission, with large EVs acting as triggers. On the source of the excess energy he is explicit about speaking loosely: he invokes "a form of electron annihilation", not the electron–positron kind, but the annihilation of fractional electronic charges back into whole electrons, requiring the high magnetic field and vortical charge flow he expects inside an EV. Supporting anomalies are cited: EVs show a "diminution of expressed charge", with calculated surface fields orders of magnitude below expectation, and they carry the electron charge-to-mass ratio while seeming to have "lost mass also". A general rule closes the argument: "The EV must be irritated before energy is released" — strikes on bare aluminium release nothing, those working through silicon carbide give up much more. He also volunteers that "'cold fusion' results may not be nuclear at all when the base cause is found."
Assessment
What is genuinely valuable here is the observational core. The micrographs document something real and odd: refractory material transported and deposited without the thermal signatures — substrate heating, high contact angle, evaporative decoration around the impact — that a molten particle of the same substance reliably produces. That contrast is a controlled comparison, not an assertion, and it is the paper's strongest piece of reasoning. The impedance-termination insight is likewise a productive engineering idea, and the point-projection method for bounding the light-source dimensions is clever, cheap and self-checking. Shoulders' insistence that all this was done for under $300 is a fair rebuke to the assumption that anomalies can only be found in funded laboratories, and his candour about what he does not know — "we don't even know if we are dealing with contained electrons or something else" — is more honest than most of this literature.
The difficulties are severe and mostly concern what is not shown. No quantitative measurement in the paper establishes the defining property: the electron population of order 1023. It is stated as measured "separately" in the 1987 self-published monograph, and everything downstream — the one-extra-electron-per-nucleon fluidisation mechanism, and hence the whole non-thermal account — rests on that unreproduced number. A micron-sized object carrying Avogadro's number of electrons would have a charge of ~104 C and a self-repulsion energy exceeding anything a 20 µJ induction spark could supply by many orders of magnitude; Shoulders acknowledges the tension only obliquely, as "diminution of expressed charge", which names the problem rather than resolving it. The energy-gain claim is asserted without a single calorimetric measurement — no input/output energy balance appears anywhere in the paper — and the mechanism offered, annihilation of fractional electronic charges, is explicitly presented as fractured language rather than physics, with the fractional-charge experiments "by others" left uncited. The transmutation result is the most exposed: silicon, calcium and magnesium are precisely the elements that dominate laboratory dust, glass, cutting fluids and fingerprints, and EDX of a fractured, brittle, previously loaded surface without blank controls, isotopic analysis or a reported detection limit cannot distinguish nuclear products from contamination concentrated in a crack. The paper reports "many of the bombarded areas, but not all", which is exactly the pattern contamination produces. Finally, the deliberate refusal to name things conventionally — defended on the grounds that standard words bend work toward standard directions — has a real cost the author accepts: nothing here connects to the substantial literature on cathode spots and ectons that his own reference list includes (Mesyats), where similar micron-scale, non-equilibrium erosion craters are studied with conventional plasma physics and no new electron state. That comparison is the obvious test of the whole programme, and it is not attempted.