Single circuits generate nuclear reactions

[mikewatson]

Naudin mentions that the thoriated tungsten rod he used had been previously used in his plasma cold fusion experiments. What I had not covered was the possibility that the thoriated tunsten rod had become more radioactive or activated in some other manner and this was why I could not repeat his results. To try this possibility I put the tungsten rod in a simple cold fusion plasma arrangement such as the one  on his site and fired it up several times. Each time the immersed part of the rod glowed white hot. I then put the rod back again in the carbon-tungsten set up and pulsed it again. No significant difference was found in the waveforms compared to my previous results.
So at present I am at a loss as to why I cannot repeat Naudin's experiment.

Mike

[mikewatson]

I am now pretty well certain that the cause of various kinks or humps in the waveform of the discharge current through a carbon-tungsten or carbon-carbon junction, which I have reported on this thread, occur when the capacitor discharge current has fallen sufficiently for instability in the arc at the junction to occur. The rapid change  in impedance at this point in time causes the energy in the circuit stray inductance and any inductance reflected from the current transformer to briefly increase the circuit current causing the hump.
It is interesting that the weak magnetic field from a coil wrapped around one of the carbons has a strong effect on the point at which the impedance of the arc increases and hence where the hump occurs on the wavefrom.

This appears to be the same effect as causes apparent close to overunity in motor commutators especially with carbon brushes, but arcing contacts in general.  Stefan Hartmann described this years ago on experiments with the Newman motor. In that case the source energy was the huge field inductance which discharges through the mechanical commutator contacts.

I suspect if there is extra energy, it comes from burning of the carbon in the air (oxidation) which coupled with the negative resistance of the carbon arc injects energy into the circuit.

Mike

[mikewatson]

Most people seem to have given up on this one. Nevertheless as many possibilities as possible should be covered.
I have gone back to a check out the plain carbon rod without a spark gap but using a stronger radioactive source. The usual capacitor discharge and toroidal current transformer were used with an energised  coil around the carbon to give a magnetic field.

I surrounded the carbon rod with a few turns of pure thorium metal wire. This thorium coil was not energised by an electric current. There is plenty of alpha emission from the thorium. No difference in the current transformer waveform was found when the carbon was pulsed from a 0.008 F capacitor at 180 volts with or without a concentric magnetic field on the carbon in either direction. The current in the carbon rod was about 3000 amps.

Mike

[forest]

That's how I see it : a couple of free high energy electrons generate cascade of much higher energy electrons in carbon. The problem  with all proposed solutions is : there were no single point having free high energy electrons. Electric current is not a flow of FREE electrons afaik.

Look here : http://xray.uu.se/hypertext/VacNews2.html  for possible hint. I suppose that replacing anode with a pure carbon block will release beat rays instead of x-rays.

[forest]

Doesn't it sound interesting ? :

Even operating in a cold cathode mode, the current through these tubes at 40 to 60 kV is enough to cause heating. Furthermore, as the tube elements warm up, the cathode begins to emit electrons thermionically. This leads to increasing dissipation, lowered potential, and a shift of the x-ray emission toward the soft, less penetrating, region of the spectrum.