Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[JRowe]

So, has anyone been blown up since the last post, or are you all just being quiet?

I've been following various incarnations of the Crystal Power cell for about 2 years, after seeing John Hutchison on TV.

I looked into various explanations for the phenomena, and while I am still skeptical as to the reality of John's claims in particular, I am absolutely certain that a crystal power cell can be created.

The current accepted understanding of physics has the strength of pure mathematics behind it. It's simple, verifiable, and proven. Most of the accepted Laws of Physics are unbendable (which statement is likely to make me somewhat unpopular on these forums.) You cannot get something from nothing. This, while being purely logical, is also true in Physics. Law of conservation of energy and all that.

Quantum physics also has the power of pure mathematics behind it. The law of conservation of energy, when combined at the quantum level with the uncertainty principle, lead to secondary projections. We don't entirely understand those projections, but the gist of it is simple: Where classical physics sees and reacts to space entirely empty of matter and energy (vacuum,) quantum physics sees a teeming sea of virtual particles. Tertiary conjectures and verifiable experiments have led to the discovery that those virtual particles can impact the 'real' world, in a manner that is apparent to classical physics. Hawking radiation, the Casimir-Polder effect, particle entanglement, and so forth.

We are discovering that arrangements of particles at the atomic level can significantly impact the effects those particles have on their environment.

When Edison was researching the lightbulb, he had the fundamental concept in mind... a particular material, when subjected to certain conditions, having an electric current running through it, would emit light, by a verifiable, mathematically, and physically legitimate process.

I propose that, a particular material(which we do not know the method of manufacture, composition, or desired properties as of yet), when subjected to certain conditions (again, unknown) will produce electricity by some verifiable, mathematically and physically legitimate process.

What is the underlying concept? Since you can't get something from nothing, (pet theories aside, and I apologize if that sounds insulting) if you want to get energy from a particular arrangement of materials, you need a source.

Mostly in this thread I've seen ambient harvesters and chemical reactions (which either retained energy from the baking process, or picked up energy from environments, or underwent chemical reactions, causing a galvanic effect.)

A true crystal power cell, as probably intended by most experimenters, would harvest energy from a quantum effect. Specifically, the Casimir-Polder effect, which is a direct consequence of one of the fundamental principles of quantum physics, and one that has been mathematically and experimentally verified.

For two metallic plates in a parallel arrangement in a vacuum, the Casimir force is measured according to the distance between the plates and the surface area. The plates must be uncharged and no external electromagnetic field be present, or the Casimir Effect is nullified.

The problem is now one of engineering. The force is constant, attractive (save in certain geometrical configurations) and dependent on an easily manipulated environmental factor(electromagnetic fields.)

Assuming one has met the conditions, one must take the energy from the system in some way that allows the system to retain its configuration after the energy has been removed.

So the requirements for a working crystal cell, operating on the Casimir Effect, are simple:
1.) Set up a physical arrangement in which the Casimir Effect occurs.
2.) Harvest the energy created by the Casimir Effect.
3.) Retain, or maintain, the physical arrangement, so the production of energy is consistent.

When presented with the requirements, I had an epiphany: Parallel plates occur all the time in nature. Crystals are amazing structures. Between crystalline planes exists... vacuum. Or smaller atoms or molecules, or what have you. However, a Casimir Effect setup could conceivably occur naturally (and often does in nanotech experiments, where it's referred to as Stiction.)

Another wonderful property of crystals is piezoelectricity. Move a molecule out of alignment, and when it snaps back, you get a nice little burst of electricity! All piezoelectric crystals are pyroelectric as well (as ambient temperature changes, so does the physical structure of a crystal, and as the physical structure changes, so does its electric potential.)

So we have a naturally occurring framework in which we can conceive of Casimir Effect inducing structures.

Let's say we have an ideal crystalline material. It's highly piezoelectric, with relatively weak molecular bonds, meaning that it's easy to move one out of alignment. We dope the crystal so that each layer in the crystal lattice has a corresponding layer of metal. In between the layers we have a vacuum.

Metal-Crystal-Metal   | vacuum |  Metal-Crystal-Metal

What I project happening is relatively simple. The two layers of Metal, on opposing sides of the vacuum, will be parallel by the nature of crystalline growth. This will induce the Casimir Effect. The Casimir Force will push one or many of the molecules out of alignment. Once the plates are out of alignment, the Casimir Force disappears. When the force pushing the molcules out of alignment disappears, the molecules snap back into place, releasing the energy of the Casimir Force as electricity.

Two obstacles remain - discharging the current, which prevents the Casimir Effect from resuming, and surface area. Electrodes within the crystal could transport the current.

The Casimir Force is tiny. Exceptionally tiny. You would need pair of Casimir plates the size of football fields to power a 1W lightbulb. So my thought is that a solution can be found in fractals... If you manipulate the growth of the crystal, hundreds of millions of sets of plates could be grown, effectively simulating a single plate millions of times larger than any specific surface area within the crystal itself.

I'm not a chemist, or a physicist... I don't know enough about how crystals grow or molecular chemistry to understand how to use the formulas to find the properties needed for a setup like this. It seems to me that it's fairly airtight... you're getting something from a verifiable physical phenomena, using logical methodology through every point of construction and energy generation.

So how would you go about creating a crystal with these properties, short of building it molecule by molecule with an electron microscope?

[ian middleton]

G'day all,

@JRowe,  BLOWN UP?  of course I've blown myself up, I do it twice a week in this thread 
Have you read most of the posts in this thread? What you have written matches very closely to what we are trying to achieve. Anyway thankyou for your thoughts. Have you tried to construct a cell yet? I'll be posting some results of the latest batch soon.

@Koen1:   G'day mate, hows the quirk?    I think I told you I had produced something similar. Anyway after one quirky mix had expanded and solidified I placed a peice under the microscope and found the matrix to be like a microscopic honeycomb. Because of the expansion of the mix, I think due to gasing, the cell was less dense than usual. However it puts out by far the greatest current. For this cell I used a new source of silicon, a finely powderd solar cell 
Now I'm getting peak currents greater than 25mA. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

The gallium coated silicon carbide bonded to the Al tube so well it fractured it, so we still have the gallium/aluminium problem. Or I have at least 


Ok time to go, spacecraft never sleep.

catch ya'll later

Ian

[Koen1]

@JRowe: Blown myself up? Hell no! I just managed to zap myself with another 2500 Volts
a few times... Nothing special... Although my glow-in-the-dark powder did glow when I
picked up the jar But no, no explodo this week.

As for your Casimir related breakdown;
yeah, that's one of the underlying ideas, yes.
You seem to be  repeating what Hutchison has said about how he believes
the Casimir effect could be used.
And indeed, it might be. If we get the material mix right.

But so far none of the Cells based on Hutchisons recipes actually works.
My last version was almost exactly according to his descriptions,
and in the mean time that does not produce anything above 300mV at
0,1mA. Which is a uselessly flimsy output, obviously.

Hutchison himself does not reply to emails in which I describe my Cell build(s)
and ask him for suggestions. This is typical, and excactly what he has done in
the past: he seems to ignore honest communication about his cells.
It took quite some effort to get him to reveal the "ingredients", but even with those
I have not heard of anyone who has been able to produce a Hutchison-style
Cell that actually produces some proper output.
To be honest, I am starting to doubt whether John really has working versions
at all. After all, he hardly ever talks about them anymore while the demand for
alternative energy sources has been skyrocketing, which is odd, and he does
remain preoccupied with his "Hutchison effect" which he's been tinkering with
for over a decade no, while that does not appear to have much of a direct application yet...
And he never replies to communication about the Cells...
If it really is so easy to build them, and if they really do produce power forever
based solely on the Casimir effect and the rectifying abilities of the semiconductors
used in the material, then why is Hutchison not running his entire lab on an array
of his Cells? Why do we not see him build more and more Energy Cells?
Why does he waste his time blogging with Paris Hilton instead?
This lowers his credibility a little, in my opinion.

So far I have zero working Cells based on Hutchisons recipe and instructions,
unless you want to call the one that puts out 0,1mA a success  ,
while I have at least 15 working Cells based on a different material composition
that is not at all inspired by John.

And so, although I too like to think we can use various effects for harnessing
ambient energy fluctuations and including the Casimir effect, I must say I feel
that your story does not really add anything we didn't know yet, and it follows
the lines of thinking of Hutchison very much, while the proof of Johns pudding
so to speak remains to be seen.

One thing that I have found curious from the start is that only half of the Casimir effect
seems to be taken into account. After all, we know that two flat plates are attracted
to eachother by the Casimir effect, in effect the ambient energy pressure pushing them
together as they shield eachother from part of that pressure. And it is obvious that such
plates, if they are of different metals, will have a tendency to charge in respect to eachother
as they get closer, much like the Electrophorus plates are charged as they move about.
But the Casimir effect does not allow these plates to move away from eachother again.
So if the Casimir effect were the only thing in play here, we would have the microplates
or "platelets" as John calls them attract eachother, they may build up charges, and these
could conceivably be rectified by the right semiconductive "diode"s... But then what?
Taking the charges off the plates does not move them farther apart. The plates have no reason
to move apart at all, ever, unless charges are fed into the material which can electrostatically
repel the plates... But that doesn't happen, and so I wonder how John really imagines this.

Also, John claims the materials he named will, when crushed, form tiny plates or platelets,
which experience the Casimir effect amongst eachother. Well, Galena and Pyrite, the materials
he named, actually do not tend to form platelets at all, they have quasi-cubic crystals.
Yet they are typical oldfashioned semiconductors that can be used for rectification.
This seems to indicate that the materials John sais to use are very unsuited for any Casimir
platelet related mechanism, but very suited for simple rectification of ambient charges.
It would seem that is themore important part of the story, and that Hutchison just throws
the Casimir effect in there with his list of ambient energy sources (like gravitational fluctuations,
attraction by the moon, etc) just to indicate that there's more between heaven and earth than
nuclear power plants and solar power.

Anyway, the only method to harness ZPE by utilising the Casimir effect that I know of
being documented is the one by Mead and Nachamkin where they suggest using a nanoscale
antenna with rectifier between two microspheres (nanospheres?). Here's a link to
Beardens story on it: http://www.cheniere.org/references/zpepatent.htm
I have tried to find the picture but can't find it right now. It is in Beardens book too, if you
have that.
Using tiny grains of semiconductor material and attempting to control their spread and
interconnectivity by applying the right polarising voltages during curing is a viable method
to produce a similar internal structure with tiny antenna-like branches as well as a large
number of rectifying junctions, in my current opinion. This seems to be why Hutchison
uses crushed semiconductor crystals in his Cells, and this is in line with the approaches
I and some other have thought up. Besides, that approach seems to remain valid even if
the entire idea of using the Casimir effect turns out to be humbug: the branched structure
and the multiple rectifying antenna branches should still "collect" any charge fluctuations.

Anyway, so far for my current thoughts on the Casimir part of the story.

As for what's happening on my end, I'm working on a mold to attempt a flat plate version
of my ceramic Cells. This is more difficult than I thought, and I'm not even sure this
version will work. But that's taking quite some time.

I have been considering several other builds using various materials. Like I usually am.
Have not put much time into the MAP-related materials I mentioned before.
Did have another look at the titanates and in particular Barium Titanate as that seems
to be potentially interesting, and its close cousins that can meld into the same
crystalline structure. I have some of them so I could try them... But they need higher
temperatures so I am not entirely sure yet.
Another idea I have been toying with is to mix the dry powder components of several
elements to get a mixture not dissimilar to that of the superconductive lathanium oxide
copper arsenide but different, more towards a semiconductive compound, and especially
with more sensitive intrinsic semiconductors mixed in, and finally bake that into a wafer
at something near 1500 degrees. But so far I have only been doing comparative analyses of
different hypothetical mixes and the known lathanide conductor compounds, so it's only
theoretical so far.

And I've been working on a new desk-toy idea which isn't working yet and may in fact never
work as intended, but would be quite cool and self-powering. Or at least, not powered off
the grid. But that has absolutely nothing to do with this stuff so just forget I mentioned it.

@Ian: G'day mate!
Hey I like that alternative source of silicon of yours.
As for the honeycomb structure and the decreased weight, it is very likely that you ended up
with a lot of hydrogen gas in the mix... After all, you mix gallium and aluminium and water,
and the aluminium will oxidise its outer monoatomic layer, the gallium will creep over it dragging
fresh aluminium atoms with it, and those will oxidise again, over and over untill all the aluminium
has oxidised into alumina and hydrogen gas, mixed with gallium. If too little water is present,
aluminium may form aluminium hydroxide which is slightly different. Both are fairly light materials anyway.
So my first guess would be that you've now got a honeycomb structure of porous alumina with
perhaps some additional honeycomb effect from the hydrogen bubbles.
Do you get the white-grey-ish "snot" on the aluminium tube?
My Quirk is still "snotting" away... Damn stuff doesn't want to solidify at all. I am considering
"feeding" it some aluminium powder... What do you think? Should I maybe spice it up with
a little copper powder? Or iron filings?

[sutra]

HI GUYS,

I saw you where talking about Vacuum within the matrix to induce Casimir effect.....

How inspiring.......did you think that molecules contains mostly VACUUM? How about building a molecule ( a crystal) that have conductive atoms like iron, lead, etc, in a lattice that also allow Casimir drag?

....Still thinking and... reading you.....

Cheers

[sutra]

here something interesting:

citation from the following web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/crystal
about melting a crystal reaching the "nematic" condition, in our case the Rochelle Salt one.....

"A liquid crystal is a material which is intermediate in structure between a liquid and a solid. Liquid crystals usually flow like liquids but have some degree of internal order. They are generally composed of rodlike organic molecules, although in some cases they are composed of disklike molecules."
Cool