Source of energy, Testatika

[mikewatson]

here is a diagram that suggests the Testatika uses radium as energy source


mike

[Shanti]

I don't recall any reports of smells of ozone, corona glow, occasional sparking, or being shocked while holding the small one by hand while running.

Actually we have more than one report which report sparks. Albert Hauser also reported that one could hear typical corona hissing as when using a Wimshurst or other influence machines.


@Mike: BTW: We just recently discovered a statement by you in the yahoo group, that a friend of you talked to Bosshard, and he told, that they couldn't scale the machines up.
Maybe you can tell a bit more about the source of this statement, and if he maybe also mentioned some other things.


For me, this sentence was quite an eye opener, as this is for me the best explanation so far, why they suddenly stopped building the machines.
If they really would work with stimulated radioactive decay, then there should have been no problem in scaling them up. If on the other hand it worked with air ions, you would very well expect that there is a certain max energy you can get at a local point before you get a saturation. So it could have well been, that they realized, that although they made them bigger, they couldn't get more energy out of it.
This would be similar to Plauson's balloons, where he had to put them 100m away from each other so that they didn't had to share the same amount of energy.
If the Testatikas had the same problem, then they would have been more or less useless, as the energy output per earth-surface would have been terrible low (as Plauson's balloon idea).


Maybe after some tries with bigger machines they started to realize this and so they trashed all future development of these machines.
E.g. if we would assume, that the machine gets its energy from the earth e-field, which is surely possible, then it would be obvious, that the total energy you could get even over the whole surface of the earth is just about the energy produced by one single nuclear plant. So definitely no alternative source of energy to feed the energy need of mankind. And the impact on nature not even mentioned...


The explanation from Baumann, that the machine works with the air ions and that it needed open windows to work also wouldn't make sense in relation to a radioactive power source.


From recent reports we also know, that the big long rear tubes of the 3kW machine, which do have these strangely patterned foil on them actually didn't have this foil on them, when the first visitors saw the machine. They could clearly see through the tube while it was running. And in the tube was just one big aluminum lathe turning, nothing else.


And just one additional note: I really don't think the machine has anything to do with a Wimshurst or any other known influence machine. Why? Look at the first machine made (the little two disc machine). It has only the two side electrodes and the top electrode on the front disc and no corner electrodes at all!


Edit:
Another note. AFAIK there's no visitor who ever saw the machine under a load for longer times. From all reports i know, they just saw the machine under load for a few seconds. This would also be explainable with the air ions theory, as under load, the air would have been saturated much more quickly. And then it needed some time for the ion cloud to get transported away by the e-field of the earth. This would mean, that the indicated 3kW power was only peak, and the machine not capable of delivering this power continuously.

[mikewatson]

As you probably know Stefan Marinov believed in overunity right up to his suicide in 1997. He told me that he asked Bossard or Baumann about the testatika being an perpetual motion  machine and the reply was that perpetual motion is impossible. The clear implication was that the machine had an energy source of some sort.
If aerial ions were the source, and the machine was producing 200 watts, then at 100 volts the load would be taking 2 amps, or 2 coulombs per second which is 3.2 *10^19 ions/second, assuming a minimum single electric charge. If the Testatika could attract that quantity of charge from the environment then onlookers would certainly suffer ionising radiation damage.
I heard that Baumann has only recently died at a very advanced age.


Mike

[Shanti]

If the Testatika could attract that quantity of charge from the environment then onlookers would certainly suffer ionising radiation damage.

First, I personally really don't think it attracted the ions, but that it generated the ions, for this is IMHO much more efficient. And secondly, it only depends how much energy you can get out of the earth e-field per ion (voltage), as how much energy you can get for the number of ions (current).
E.g. Plauson got about 3kW of energy for one of his balloons, but that was certainly at quite some height.
BTW: Even Viktor Schauberger declared that one of his early small machines was capable of ionizing the air at a rate of 40Amps!


Baumann clearly explained, that it works with air ions. So the question is, if he lied, or if he meant something completely different.
I personally think that it is much more likely that the machine used the earth e-field for power production, than radioactive sources, for the Methernitha people had quite an aversion against radioactive power plants.
It's also very unlikely that the machine got it's power from a conversion of ambient thermal energy, as no visitor ever reported the room getting cooler. Actually they even said the opposite when they attached a heating element.
And that the machines didn't work anymore inside a faraday-cage is IMHO an additional point against the theory of the radioactive power source.

Sure nobody knows, but IMHO clearly more clues point into the direction of air ions as power source, than other means.

[mikewatson]

But the air ion theory as the energy source for the testatika does not stand up to scrutiny. The fine weather earth atmosphere conduction current is 2 x 10^-16 amps/sq cm. or 2 X 10^-12 amps/sq metre,  see B.F Schonland "Atmospheric Electricity" page 41 and Chapter 2  Electric Fields and Atmospheric Electric Currents.
It seems to me that the only other possibilities are some sort of free energy discovery or radioactivity such as Moray and Hubbard and others used used 90 years ago.


Mike