Alternative Science (Alt-Sci) · Run 16 · 2026-10-10
2026-10-10-run16.html · 101 projects reviewed · ranked for an alternative-science reader who distrusts institutional science
How this document is organised
Rankings at a glance: one row per project; click a name to jump to its entry.
Rank entries: every entry has the same sections in the same order, so projects compare section by section.
Ranked Projects and Selected Projects: one card per project; Selected Projects are those the owner named for a full card whatever their rank.
Ranked Themes and Selected Themes: the same kind of card for an idea shared by several projects (for example the aether or free energy), with its timeline, core propositions and member projects.
Other ranked projects: every project outside the top 20, one line each.
What changed this run: movements, reasons, and the history of runs.
Each entry is a summary. The full study document is the project's primer, linked in the entry header with the arbiter, sites log and source catalogue.
How projects are ranked
Ranked for an alternative-science reader who distrusts institutional science. Rank 1 is the most interesting. Interest is not proof: every entry carries its verdicts. Four things are weighed:
A - Untested Untested anomaly or documented resistance
B - Open question Open question the arbiter left unsettled
C - Testable Reader can test or calculate it
D - Influential Depth and influence in alternative science
Who reviewed
Physicist tests each claim against known physics. Mathematician checks derivations, units and assumptions. Contrarian makes the strongest honest case for the claim. Arbiter reconciles the three and gives the verdicts. Investigator finds outside records (leads, not verdicts). QE audits coverage and shortcuts.
Verdict key
EstablishedPlausible, untestedNever properly testedTested, not supportedRefuted by calculationInternally inconsistentNot testable as statedHistorically superseded but instructive
Evidence status: read in the review · partly read · cited or indexed, not read · not found or not obtained
Single-source evidence is described, not dismissed; parties with a stake are marked · stake.
Moray's antenna-and-ground box lit lamps before named witnesses 1925-38; never metered, device lost, FBI file anomaly; the books' physics pages largely borrow Le Bon.
ABC
Never properly testedbox demonstrations and hidden-feed question
US government documents on scalar waves, cold fusion excess heat, tachyons and ELF mind control; refuted items beside an unreplicated heat-and-helium record.
Kassner's 1930s patents on microwave 'natural frequencies' of dipolar substances; never tested, the research record goes dark; standing-field electrolysis claim split.
Silvertooth's two-laser standing-wave interferometer reported a 378 km/s ether wind toward Leo, matching the CMB dipole; the derivation fails on its own premises.
Ether-Technology compiles Brown, Searl, Saxl and Seike gravity-control work; asymmetric-capacitor thrust is real ionic wind, the vacuum and Searl claims are not.
ABC
Refuted by calculationSearl spinning-ring mechanism
Vassilatos's book on Tesla radiant energy, Moray, HAARP and Farnsworth's fusor; pulse physics is real, 60 GW HAARP and gamma-weapon claims fail by calculation.
ABCD
Never properly testedTesla shield observations and ether-engine disconnect; HAARP 60 GW Refuted by calculation
Randell Mills's classical atom and 'hydrino' states below the ground state, with kilowatt-scale heat claims from a company he runs; derivation inconsistent, lab anomalies untested.
ABCD
Internally inconsistentMills's derivation; lab anomalies never properly tested
Kelly's 'Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices': hundreds of magnet, pulse, water and aerial devices with claimed COP above 1, almost none neutrally measured.
ABCD
Never properly testeddevice COP claims; closed-cycle magnet motors Refuted by calculation
Rahn's 1936 book on mitogenetic rays: faint ultraviolet from living cells said to speed division; a contested 1937 negative, never settled by agreed protocol.
ABC
Never properly testeddivision-accelerating UV emission
Lakhovsky's 1920s-30s theory that cells are tiny oscillating circuits, his multiple wave oscillator, and a 1924 geranium tumour-necrosis note never repeated with temperature recorded.
ABC
Refuted by calculationstrong form, cell as LC filament; 1924 geranium experiment Never properly tested
Bearden's potential-as-energy-flow theory and MEG patent: COP above 1 never neutrally tested, self-powered run undone; influential, with real physics underneath.
ABCD
Refuted by calculationsustained self-powered output
Lindemann's book reading Gray's cold electricity as Tesla radiant energy, plus Bearden, Meyer and Testatika claims; no test reports, net-gain forms fail energy budgets.
ABD
Never properly testednet energy gain from radiant-energy devices
Van Vlaenderen's scalar-potential electrodynamics keeps the Lorenz-gauge field S physical, predicting longitudinal waves and an extra force no one has tested.
Harold Aspden revived Maxwell's undetermined term in the force between moving charges and built a lattice-aether theory of constants; neglected, not suppressed.
Furtwangen professor Meyl's 'potential vortex' and scalar-wave (1.618 c) theory, Tesla transmitter kits and neutrino power; algebra re-derived and found inconsistent, device claims mostly untested.
BCD
Internally inconsistentderivation of scalar waves; vacuum longitudinal wave Tested, not supported
Ching-Chuan Su's local-ether wave equation: gravity as optical index, mass as frequency, Galilean magnetism; predictions differing from relativity mostly fail or are untested.
BCD
Not testable as statedlocal ether as explanation
A Untested anomaly or documented resistance · B Open question the arbiter left unsettled · C Reader can test or calculate it · D Depth and influence in alternative science
Ranked Projects
Rank 2Morray-TH
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 10:57
A Utah inventor's antenna-and-ground box lit kilowatts of lamps before about 30 named witnesses; it was never metered, the device is gone, and key federal files remain unread.
Invention / theory background
T. Henry Moray (1892-1974) of Salt Lake City demonstrated his Radiant Energy device from 1925 to 1938: a box wired only to antenna and ground that lit lamps and heated irons. He said resonance captured oscillating cosmic radiation, passed through 'valves': a mineral detector nobody was allowed to examine, and gas tubes firing stage to stage. His books' physics pages largely reproduce Le Bon (1905). He and his sons later claimed transmutation and sold the Cosray therapy device.
Ranking explanation
It ranks near the top as the collection's strongest untested anomaly (A): named witnesses, a sealed 158-hour run and a two-year federal engagement, none metered. Unread records (FBI file, Army report, Ottawa letters) keep it open (B); the energy and battery arithmetic is easy to check (C). The finding that the books' physics is borrowed leaves the lamp question untouched. Below Heaviside, whose blocked ideas were confirmed; above Government's mixed claims.
Key supporting elements
About 30 named witnesses on about 25 dated occasions, 1925-38, report lamps and an iron run from a box wired only to antenna and ground, including a 1938 Utah Securities Commission inspection with parts weighed, meter-tested and the box bored.
The sealed 1928 run lasted 157.9 hours at about 110-120 W, 17-19 kWh: about 450-600 kg of lead-acid batteries against two small boxes. Harvey Fletcher of Bell Labs: 'I am just as puzzled as ever.'
Field runs at witness-chosen sites: Strawberry Valley 1926, 26 miles from the last power line by odometer (one 100 W lamp for 15 minutes); a 1938 desert test 25-30 miles from Johnson's Pass (recalled 24 years later).
Records outside the family books: the REA paid and equipped Moray, Feb 1939 to Feb 1941; its engineer Wood called him 'essentially honest, unable to ... perpetuate a hoax' and said he had 'stumbled on to something'.
An Army Ordnance general (Shinkle) filed a report on a Moray demonstration in Dec 1936; the FBI interviewed Moray in 1951 about a 1929 Soviet visitor; a 74-page FBI file released in 2000 drew 'No Records' in 2013.
Key contradictions
No power was ever metered. Every wattage is a sum of lamp ratings, and one witness said bulbs 'burned cold except ... a hot spot about the size of a dime', so delivered power is unknown.
The detector was withheld in every recorded examination except possibly 1938, each start-up needed priming, and the 1928 ground was a house water pipe normally bonded to the mains. Hidden feed, ground path and priming are not excluded.
Known radiation cannot supply kilowatts: cosmic rays fall about a billion times short, and 50 kW per square metre is 37 times full sunlight. Moray's own text says the first stage is 'excited by an external energy source'.
Moray's own patent agent Hayes testified (Reno, 1932) that he could not build the machine from the patent papers; physicist Orin Tugman wrote (1940) he was refused a demonstration for 12 years and called it 'a very clever hoax'.
Claimed performance fell 600-1,000 times by 1968; the 1963-70 gold yields fall about 600,000 times short of the needed energy. The books' physics pages largely reproduce Le Bon, Glasser and Preston, with no Moray data.
User follow-ups (11)
Q01AnsweredWhat did Moray mean by taking up Rutherford's experiments again (Radiant Energy p.54)? The sentence is copied from Le Bon (1905), and the experiments are Rutherford's 1902-06 alpha-particle velocity measurements.
In Radiant Energy (1926, p.54) Moray writes that it "could prove profitable if these experiments of Rutherford and his co-workers were taken up again." What did he most likely mean? Which of Rutherford's experiments (alpha-particle velocities, scattering, the 1919 nitrogen transmutation, or others), and how would taking them up again connect to his radiant energy device and his later transmutation and direct-conversion work?
Asked 2026-10-06 · answered 2026-10-06 · 3 min web search
A01Not Moray's own idea: the sentence is copied, uncredited, from Gustave Le Bon (1905), and the experiments meant are Rutherford's 1902-06 measurements of alpha-particle velocity.
Known
The sentence is Le Bon's, from The Evolution of Matter (1905), Book IV ch.III, copied almost verbatim in Radiant Energy pp.53-56.
Le Bon wrote: "I think that, on this point, the experiments of Rutherford and his pupils should be taken up anew." Moray changed "should be taken up anew" to "could prove profitable".
Le Bon's footnote: alpha particles might be emitted by all matter, but are detected only above a minimum speed (Strutt, Nature 1906).
Rutherford's 1902-06 measurements found alphas become undetectable below about 9,000 km/s.
Scattering (1909-11) and the 1919 nitrogen transmutation came after Le Bon wrote.
Inferred
(a) Moray copied the passage and agreed with it, with no specific plan.
(b) He took up Le Bon's idea that ordinary matter gives off energy below what instruments detect, which fits his "sea of energy" and his valves that standard meters supposedly cannot read.
(c) Looking back from his later work, Rutherford stood for alpha transmutation (cited by Moray on p.60) and for direct conversion. His 1968 Air Force proposal cites Rutherford, Chadwick, Ellis and Le Bon, and "experiments dating back to 1913" (very likely Moseley's radium battery) for an isotope-excited semiconductor converter.
Open
Whether Moray knew the passage was Le Bon's.
When he first used it (1945 is the earliest dated printing).
Q02AnsweredWas Moray's 1968 contrast of intrinsic and extrinsic infrared detectors a hint at the cosmic microwave background? Unlikely: the passage is a correct summary of 1968 detector practice.
In his 7 August 1968 proposal to the Air Force Systems Command ("Proposal for Development Plasma Probe", with Stan Taylor, p.1), Moray contrasts intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductor infrared detectors: extrinsic detectors reach beyond 6 microns but need cooling below 40 K, while a narrow-gap intrinsic detector for longer wavelengths is "not beyond the realm of possibility." Was he hinting at detecting the cosmic microwave background (discovered 1965) or another background radiation, perhaps the "oscillations from the Universe" of p.5? What was the state of intrinsic and extrinsic long-wavelength detectors in 1968, and how does the passage fit the plasma probe and energy converter he proposed?
Asked 2026-10-06 · answered 2026-10-06 · 3 min web search
A02The passage is a correct summary of 1968 infrared-detector practice; a hint at the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is unlikely.
Known
Extrinsic detectors reaching past 6 microns meant chiefly mercury-doped germanium (cutoff about 14 microns, cooled to about 30 K; used in the first forward-looking infrared imagers, 1969) or copper-doped germanium (4 K).
The "material with a gap narrow enough" was the 1960s narrow-gap programme: mercury cadmium telluride (discovered 1959, aimed at 77 K) and lead tin telluride. The proposal names none of them.
No outside source of the paragraph was found; exact-phrase searches return only copies of the proposal.
CMB: the 2.7 K background peaks near 1 mm (photon about 0.0012 eV), about 100 times longer than the passage's range; Penzias and Wilson found it at 7.35 cm with a radio receiver.
The proposal never mentions microwaves or a 3 K background. Its "oscillations from the Universe" (p.5) and "radiations of the Cosmos" sit beside cosmic rays, Van Allen protons and Compton-scattered X-rays (pp.4-12).
Inferred
(a) Background showing the Air Force reviewers current detector knowledge.
(b) A bridge to the next sentence, which claims the Institute's tubes are "energy transponders" that both detect and convert, a narrower gap meaning lower-energy quanta can free charge; the passage itself notes such gaps need cooling.
Infrared plays no part in the plasma probe, which measures charged-particle spectra.
Open
The paragraph's source.
Who Stan Taylor was.
The Air Force reply.
Note
Context recorded with the question (moved here 2026-10-10): The source file is named Air Force Materials Command; the letter itself is headed Air Force Systems Command.
Q04AnsweredWhat was Moray detecting with phosphorescent sulphide screens (Radiant Energy p.54)? The passages are Le Bon's, uncredited; the zinc sulphide family offers several phosphors worth trying.
In Radiant Energy (1926, p.54) Moray describes the spinthariscope, a zinc sulphide screen that sparkles under alpha particles from radium, and adds: "One may, by using certain varieties of phosphorescent sulphide, succeed in making screens showing the phenomenon of dissociation, now [not] only with salts of radium, but also with other substances. Herein be the door to greater discoveries." What might he have been detecting, or hoping to detect, with such screens? Which sulphides, and which trace activators or dopants (for example copper, silver or manganese in zinc sulphide, or calcium sulphide, which he mentions elsewhere), would respond to radiations other than alpha particles, and which would be worth trying today? Is the passage Moray's own, or taken from Gustave Le Bon's writing on the "dissociation of matter", and if so, what did Le Bon mean by it?
Asked 2026-10-06 · answered 2026-10-06 · 3 min web search
A04Both spinthariscope passages are Gustave Le Bon's, uncredited; Moray added "Herein be the door to greater discoveries". The zinc sulphide family gives several phosphors worth trying.
Known
Le Bon wrote in the first person: "I have succeeded, by using certain varieties of phosphorescent sulfide, in making screens ... not only with salts of radium, but also with divers substances, notably thorium and uranium." His footnote: a thin sulphide layer on glass, laid on the sample; uranium and thorium minerals and a gas mantle scintillate. Those are real alpha emitters.
Moray dropped the named samples and added "Herein be the door to greater discoveries", his own sentence.
The calcium sulphide "eighteen months" passage is also Le Bon's ("In my former experiments"), part of his 1896 "black light" work, never confirmed. By "dissociation" Le Bon meant that all matter slowly breaks up and radiates.
Silver-doped zinc sulphide detects alpha particles and is almost blind to beta and gamma rays; mixed with lithium-6 fluoride it detects neutrons.
Copper-doped zinc sulphide (radium-paint phosphor, long green glow) is quenched by infrared; Le Bon used it as an infrared detector. Manganese-doped zinc sulphide is triboluminescent.
Europium-samarium-doped calcium or strontium sulphide stores charge that infrared releases as light, the modern form of Le Bon's observation. All are worth trying, against a blank.
Inferred
Competing readings: copying with a flourish; Le Bon's universal dissociation adopted; a check on his own radium-zinc detector stone (a 1984 note lists "triboluminescent zinc and radium chloride"); or detecting invisible rays generally.
Open
Whether Moray ever used such screens.
Note
Context recorded with the question (moved here 2026-10-10): "now only" is probably a transcription slip for "not only". In Isotopes in Ionic Recovery of U3O8 Moray notes that calcium sulphide exposed to the sun for a few seconds "radiates invisible light for eighteen months".
T. H. Moray, Radiant Energy ("1926" printing, post-1945), printed pp.54-55; Isotopes in Ionic Recovery of U3O8 (1958, rev. 1959) pp.5-6; Noffsinger notes 1984 (project _text and facts.json)
Q08AnsweredDoes resonance of current, light and sound break down and transmute matter, as Moray claims? Resonance does break objects, molecules and, at MeV energies, nuclei, but turning silver into cadmium needs nuclear reactions far beyond these inputs.
Moray describes a new phenomenon: matter breaks down (dissociates, disintegrates and transmutes) when exposed to resonance produced by the simultaneous, synchronized action of electricity, light (rays) and sound. Two passages: (1) Isotopes in Ionic Recovery of U3O8, pp. 23-26 (page images r023-r026): the frequency of the current and the wavelength of the ray or rays 'must harmonize so as to blend or synchronize with the natural frequency or wave length of the substance treated', which he calls a 'superultra sonic reaction'; violent oscillations cause 'disintegration and transformation'; all vibrations 'are electrical in nature and can be duplicated in harmonics and sonics'; p. 23 claims a silver-to-cadmium change. (2) Radiant Energy (1926), pp. 34-35: 'Every substance has a natural vibratory resonance and a point of dissociation'; 'pure resonance' leads to 'the dissociation of the matter'; 'The writer has, as Tesla did, come very close to pure resonance with certain substances.' Quote both passages exactly. Check whether either is borrowed (as Radiant Energy pp. 53-56 and the booklet's p. 6 were from Le Bon), for example from Tesla, Keely or Le Bon. Then answer: what does known physics say about resonance breaking matter (mechanical resonance and fracture; acoustic cavitation and sonochemistry; sonoluminescence; resonant multiphoton ionization and laser isotope separation; photonuclear reactions), what combined current + light + sound effects really exist, what energy would a silver-to-cadmium change need, and is there any independent evidence for Moray's claim?
Asked 2026-10-07 · answered 2026-10-07 · 3 min web search
A08The passages exist, but the theory is partly copied and has no data behind it. Real resonance breaks objects, molecules and, at MeV energies, nuclei. Silver becomes cadmium only through the nucleus (neutron capture or MeV reactions), far beyond current, light or sound.
Known
U3O8 booklet p.23: current frequency and ray wavelength "must harmonize so as to blend or synchronize with the natural frequency or wave length of the substance treated", a "superultra sonic reaction"; the same page claims "the change from silver to cadmium". No silver or cadmium data anywhere in the folder.
Pp.20-23 copy Glasser, Medical Physics (1944), pp.1354-55. Glasser's "reduced number of valence electrons" (a chemical effect) became Moray's silver-to-cadmium change.
P.25 adapts Preston, The Theory of Light (p.588): an oscillating capacitor discharge becomes "disintegration and transformation" of atoms.
Radiant Energy p.34: "Every substance has a natural vibratory resonance and a point of dissociation"; p.35: "The writerhas, as Tesla did, come very close to pure resonance". No earlier source found; Keely (water "disintegrated" by vibration, 1882) and Tesla's 1898 oscillator story are predecessors.
Sonoluminescence reaches 12,000-20,000 K (about 1.7 eV); AVLIS ionizes uranium-235 with tuned lasers; the giant dipole resonance breaks nuclei with 7-40 MeV gamma rays.
109Ag + neutron gives 110Ag, which decays to 110Cd (24.6 s). A proton must cross a Coulomb barrier of about 9.8 MeV.
Inferred
(a) A theory assembled from reading, with silver-to-cadmium as an illustration.
(b) Real chemistry (ionization, electrolysis, heating, cavitation) concentrating metals, described as transmutation.
(c) Real transmutation: would need a neutron or MeV source the booklet does not describe.
Open
Whether any silver-to-cadmium test was run (notebooks, assays, spectrograms).
What the "especially constructed tubes" emitted.
Full Glasser text, to check whether Figs. 4-7 are also his.
Q09AnsweredCould resonant transmutation of ordinary silver to cadmium yield a vacancy-filling current, and was Moray's detector a phosphorescent diamond? Such currents exist (Moseley 1913: 150 kV, microwatts) but need radiation at least equal to the output, and no Moray document names diamond as his detector.
Could Moray's resonance 'disintegration and transformation' (Isotopes booklet p. 25; silver to cadmium, p. 23) yield a current (J)? A new cadmium atom is one electron short, so fast transmutation could draw electrons, and a current made by filling vacancies (Moray's 'siphoning') might differ from ordinary conduction current. Related: his self-annealing detector (1968 Air Force proposal); Le Bon's idea that a tiny, unweighable dissociation of matter releases great energy; ordinary (not special) silver; a 'reverse Compton' pump letting matter absorb high-energy radiation that normally passes through (1968 proposal pp. 4-5); and his detector crystal (phosphorescent diamonds, Radiant Energy p. 55; phosphorescence 'and sometimes other properties', p. 58). Also: not only neutrinos; waves combining into harmonics at frequencies matching no known spectra, a hidden energy reservoir; entropy as missing energy; and how far star models, and science generally, can be trusted given dark matter and dark energy.
Asked 2026-10-07 · answered 2026-10-08 · 3 min web search
A09A nuclear-charge current is real but tiny and radioactive: output cannot exceed the radiation released. Diamond appears only in copied Le Bon text; Moray's detector was a pressed radium-doped stone.
Known
Moseley 1913: a radon bulb, alphas stopped, charged itself to about 150 kV at about 0.01 nA (about 1.5 microwatts).
Ordinary silver cannot become cadmium by itself: 109Ag to 109Cd is 215 keV uphill, 107Ag to 107Cd 1,416 keV, via the weak force. Stripping atoms bare unlocks decay for 163Dy (47 days) and 187Re (32.9 years), not silver.
Le Bon: a loss of substance "too small to be detected by our balances" may release great energy; 50 kW is about 48 micrograms a day.
Radiant Energy p.54 copies Le Bon's diamond sentence and drops his footnote: he gauged radium by the glow of Brazilian diamonds.
"And sometimes other properties" (p.58) is Moray's addition to Le Bon's phosphor paragraph.
Foster (1990, in Perreault 2001): radium-doped "Swedish Stone" detector pellets pressed in a diamond press "flashed" and burned out a 2000-amp supply.
Checks: neutrino and photon solar luminosity agree within about 10%; Neff 2.99 +/- 0.17; Weber's crystal neutrino enhancement failed four tests.
Inferred
A vacancy current is a near-ideal current source with no magnetic field in a spherical cell, but 50 kW out needs at least 50 kW of ionizing radiation; self-annealing protects only the device.
Foster's flash: stored energy released under pressure, or a short through the hot pellet powered by the heater supply.
A hidden energy channel is bounded to a few per cent of the Sun's output, not excluded; entropy is spread-out heat, not missing energy.
Open
Moseley's full paper; Foster's original letter and the Project X records.
What "other properties" meant: Moray's notebooks.
Decisive tests: radiation survey of a running device; electrode assay; gamma spectroscopy of surviving tubes.
Note
This question began as hypotheses put to the review in a discussion summarised on 2026-10-07 (status work in process; notes 2026-10-07-followup-Q09). It was researched on 2026-10-08 (notes 2026-10-08-followup-Q09), and the answer above is the researched one.
Hypotheses put to the review (Q09), research/2026-10-07-followup-Q09.md
Q11AnsweredIs Moray's negative plate that becomes 10,000 times more active in thorium emanation his own? It is copied from Le Bon, who credited Rutherford's 1900 experiment; collecting the deposit raises activity per area, not total energy.
Moray's booklet Isotopes in Ionic Recovery of U3O8, pp. 4-5, says a metal plate charged with negative electricity at a high potential, placed in a closed vessel with thorium emanation, collects 'all the particles emitted by the thorium' and 'becomes ten thousand times more active, surface for surface, than the thorium itself'. Is the passage Moray's or copied (Le Bon, whose text the same booklet copies on p. 6, or a radioactivity textbook)? What was the original experiment (Rutherford's 1900 'excited radioactivity' of thorium: the active deposit collected on a negative wire)? Does concentrating the deposit on a small surface add any energy, or only raise activity per area? Could Moray have used this to concentrate radioactive products in his tubes (compare the 1968 Air Force proposal's radioactive excitation)?
Asked 2026-10-07 · answered 2026-10-08 · 4 min web search
A11Copied: Isotopes pp.4-6 are Le Bon's Evolution of Matter, which credits Rutherford for the 10,000 figure; the booklet drops the credit. Concentrating the deposit raises activity per area only, never total energy.
Known
Le Bon, Evolution of Matter, Book IV Ch.III sec.6: 'according to Rutherford, this plate becomes 10,000 times more active, surface for surface, than the thorium itself'. The booklet copies the section in order, uncredited.
Booklet changes: Rutherford's name removed twice; Le Bon's 'current theory' (prevailing) becomes 'electric current theory'.
Rutherford, Radio-activity (1904 sec.166; 1905 sec.176): thoria vessel at +300 V, negative wire inside; wire 'over 10,000 times as active per unit surface as the thoria'. This is the cylinder and filament in the question; the figure is 10,000, not 1,000.
Original paper: Rutherford, Phil. Mag. 49, 161-192 (1900). Rutherford and Soddy 1902: activity 'entirely confined to the negatively charged surface', removable by acids, halves in about 11 hours.
Radiant Energy pp.58-59 folded cylinder is also Le Bon (experimental part, near p.401); Moray adds 'ray counter instruments' and 'gas-filled tubes'.
Inferred
The deposit is thoron daughters (lead-212) carried as positive ions. Collection moves atoms, not energy: 100 g thoria gives the wire at most about 0.06 microwatt, against 2.4 microwatts for the whole thoria.
Reading A: Moray copied it only to argue that radioactivity is dissociation of matter; no collector electrode appears in his device texts read.
Reading B: any tube with a radium-bearing (carnotite) coating and a negative cathode collects radon daughters on the cathode anyway, which could prime discharges but adds no energy.
Reading C: the 1968 proposal's '2.5 Mev to 8 Mev' excitation matches such deposits (thallium-208 gamma 2.61 MeV; alphas 6-8.8 MeV); possibly coincidence.
Open
Does the 1900 paper itself give 10,000? Which Le Bon printing did Moray use? Booklet p.5 page image not checked.
Whether any Moray tube had a biased collector: notebooks (Mahurin) or gamma spectroscopy and autoradiography of surviving tube electrodes (look for lead-210).
Notes
Context recorded with the question (moved here 2026-10-10): the booklet also describes a folded metal cylinder that accumulates 'emanation' (Radiant Energy pp. 58-59, Le Bon).
The question as first put gave 1,000 times and a cylindrical device with a charged filament; the booklet says 10,000 times and a charged metal plate.
Moray, Isotopes in Ionic Recovery of U3O8, pp.4-6; Radiant Energy (1926) pp.58-59; 1968 Air Force proposal
Q12AnsweredWas Le Bon's amalgamated tin, 'radioactive' in sunlight, really the photoelectric effect? Yes, by every test; Moray copies Le Bon's 'dissociation' reading but not the amalgam experiments.
Le Bon (The Evolution of Matter, 1909; rexresearch full text) says mercury and tin are each barely 'radioactive' in light, but mercury with 1/1000 of its weight of tin, or a tin strip soaked 24 hours in mercury (amalgamated tin), becomes 'extraordinarily radioactive' in sunlight: in his electroscope table amalgamated tin discharges fastest (1000, against 2 for gold, pure mercury and tin), but only when charged negatively. Was this radioactivity or the photoelectric effect (Hallwachs 1888: ultraviolet light ejects electrons, so only a negative charge leaks away; amalgamation cleans the surface and lowers the work function)? Did anyone repeat Le Bon's amalgam experiments, and how were they received? Does Moray (Radiant Energy, Sea of Energy, Isotopes booklet) rely on or repeat Le Bon's amalgam claims, and does it bear on Moray's detector or on Ives's thin-film photoelectric work (alkali metals and standing waves)?
Asked 2026-10-07 · answered 2026-10-08 · 5 min web search
A12Photoelectric, by every test: Elster and Geitel had the amalgam result in 1889, and Ramsay and Spencer repeated Le Bon in 1906. Moray copies Le Bon's 'dissociation' reading of light-driven charge loss, not the amalgam experiments.
Known
Elster and Geitel (1889, abstracted by Lodge): amalgams of K, Na, Zn, Sn are the most light-sensitive; 'pure mercury shows no effect'; only negative charge leaks. Their 1892 actinometer was an amalgamated zinc sphere.
Le Bon cites Elster, Geitel and Branly, and says Lenard and Thomson found his particles have the e/m of cathode rays (electrons).
Le Bon's data fit photoemission: action mostly at 0.29-0.36 micron, tin alone only below 0.295 micron, 200 times weaker uncleaned.
Ramsay and Spencer (Phil. Mag. 1906) repeated Le Bon: tin amalgam 0.6 s, mercury 216 s; but no measurable positive leak, nothing through metal shields; they suggested transmutation.
Millikan and Winchester (1907) treat these data as photoelectric. Campbell (Athenaeum 1906): experiments 'perfectly inadequate'; light-provoked activity is not spontaneous radioactivity.
No amalgam passage was found in Moray's texts. Radiant Energy p.46 copies Le Bon: the ultraviolet charge loss is 'dissociation of matter'. Elsewhere Moray writes 'photo-electric effect'.
Inferred
'40 times uranium' compares currents: a uranium alpha makes about 120,000 ion pairs; a photoelectron is one charge under 1 eV.
Sunlit amalgam (100 cm2) gives about 1 nA, nanowatts at most. It cannot power Moray's loads, and his detector ingredients contain no tin or mercury.
The sons' 'synthetic radioactivity as described by LeBon' may mean this chapter, the thorium induced activity (Q11) or the chemical effluves.
Plauson's 1925 patent (in the folder) puts photoelectric amalgams on an atmospheric collector. Ives's alkali cells descend from Elster and Geitel; his standing-wave effect is optical, not chemical.
Open
Why tin in mercury beats both metals alone (clean liquid surface, lower work function, or impurities).
Replies in the Athenaeum 1906 (pp.237-366); Nye 1974; which experiment 'Mr. Carse' failed to repeat.
Key point: Was Le Bon's light-provoked 'radioactivity' radioactivity?
Supports
Le Bon called his effluves identical with radioactive emissions; Ramsay accepted 'disintegration' in 1906.
Contradicts
Threshold, sign, cleaning and e/m all match photoemission; Millikan 1907; Campbell 1906: not spontaneous.
Moray, Radiant Energy p.46; Sea of Energy 5th ed.; Plauson US 1,540,998 (Nuenergy compilation)
Q15AnsweredAsked whether a gas tube with tin and mercury electrodes, once amalgamated, would pass more current or rectify. Amalgamation makes the tin act like mercury, so it weakens rectification (mercury on the anode causes arc-back) and barely changes the current.
Tin and mercury electrodes: if a gas tube had one tin electrode and one mercury electrode, and the two combined (amalgamated tin), would the current change? Would it increase, or would the tube rectify?
Asked 2026-10-08 · answered 2026-10-08 · 3 min web search
A15Amalgamation would barely change the current and would weaken rectification: tin and mercury have nearly equal work functions, and mercury on the anode causes arc-back. The tube's 253.7 nm light frees only nanoamperes of photoelectrons.
Known
Mercury-arc tubes rectify because the mercury pool emits and the cool carbon or iron anode does not (Wikipedia; Guntherschulze 1928 p.54).
Prince and Vogdes (1927): mercury condensed on the anode 'causes the formation of a cathode spot there' (arc-back). Copper parts were iron-plated against 'the amalgamating mercury vapour' (Guntherschulze p.162).
Glow rectifiers use unequal cathode falls (alkali against platinum: 80 V against 180 V) and unequal areas; the Argonal rectifier had alkali in a mercury cathode (Guntherschulze pp.46, 192-194).
Work functions: Hg 4.475 eV, Sn 4.42 eV; the 253.7 nm line is 4.89 eV, so both emit photoelectrons of at most about 0.45 eV.
Near-threshold quantum yield at 4.89 eV for gold is 1e-6 to 1e-4 electrons per photon (LISA Pathfinder).
Le Bon: amalgamated tin beats tin 1000 to 2 in sunlight but only 680 to 270 under spark ultraviolet. No amalgam-electrode tube test was found.
Inferred
A 0.055 eV work-function gap is about 2 V of cathode fall (44.4 V per volt): a clean tin-mercury glow tube is nearly symmetric; geometry would decide.
Photocurrent is about 2-20 nA per mW of absorbed 254 nm light, against milliamperes of glow current: it helps starting, not running.
Competing reading: if amalgam lowered the surface work function well below bulk values, glow-mode rectification would appear, as with alkali in mercury. No tin measurement decides it.
In vacuum under an external mercury lamp, unequal quantum yields give a one-way nanoampere photocurrent (LISA Pathfinder).
Open
No measured forward and reverse currents for a tin-mercury tube, clean or amalgamated; a bench test would settle it.
The photoelectric threshold of a dilute tin amalgam surface.
Notes
Context recorded with the question (moved here 2026-10-10): Le Bon's amalgamated tin discharged fastest in sunlight, only when negative (A12: photoelectric).
Orchestrator's reading, put to STEP F to check: mercury-arc rectifiers already rectify; mercury vapor amalgamates tin in operation; the 253.7 nm mercury line (4.9 eV) exceeds the work function of tin and mercury (about 4.4-4.5 eV), so the tube's own glow could free photoelectrons from an amalgam cathode. Find prior work on amalgam cathodes in glow tubes, measured rectification ratios, and whether Le Bon or anyone tried it.
Key point: Does amalgamating the tin make the tube rectify?
Supports
Alkali in a mercury cathode lowered the cathode fall and made glow valves work (Argonal, Pintsch).
Contradicts
Tin changes the work function by about 0.06 eV; mercury on the anode causes arc-back (Prince and Vogdes 1927).
Q16AnsweredAsked whether Moray's one-way valve between cascaded tanks is the key design point, how it compares with Wien's quenched gap, and whether the first stage feels the load. Yes: Moray describes a threshold gas gap firing stage to stage, like Wien's quench; each firing's size tracks the load.
Moray's multi-tank cascade (Sea of Energy 4th ed. p.116): oscillations in the first tank, reinforced by 'harmonic coupling', 'spill' over through a valve that blocks feedback into the next, lower-frequency stage. Is a gap that conducts only while energy passes, isolating the tanks otherwise, the key design point? How does it compare with Wien's quenched spark gap (1906) and impulse-excited tank chains? The tanks stay in phase, so when the load draws current the phase shifts slightly and the earlier stage should 'feel' the resistance at the next impulse: is that right (injection locking, Adler's equation)? Does a collector have to feel the load to absorb at all (a matched load; an unloaded resonant antenna re-radiates)? And 'the draft of the current is adapted to the load'. Include a bench test: diode vs gas-tube threshold vs ferrite isolator as the valve.
Asked 2026-10-08 · answered 2026-10-08 · 3 min web search
A16Yes: Moray himself describes the valve as a gas gap that fires at a set voltage and goes out when the voltage falls, passing energy stage to stage, which is Wien's quenched-gap idea. The earlier stage feels the load through how much charge each firing passes, not by back-flow; phase shifts only if a stage is detuned.
Known
Moray, Sea of Energy 4th ed. pp.55-56: 'when a certain voltage is reached, ionization occurs' and condensers discharge into the next oscillators; it stops 'because of the reduced voltage', 'much like a bucket brigade', 'a blocked circuit of no return'.
p.139: one direction at a time 'without necessarily changing from H.F. or A.C. to D.C.'; the same assembly is also used 'for the rectification and amplification' of radio signals.
Wien's quenched gap goes out at the first current zero, so the next circuit rings 'completely free of the primary circuit' (Wikipedia; NBS Circular 74).
Adler, after Razavi 2004: sin(theta) = (2Q/w0)(Iosc/Iinj)(w0 - winj); lock range (w0/2Q)(Iinj/Iosc).
A matched antenna absorbs at most what it re-radiates; an unloaded one absorbs nothing (Gustafsson 2012).
Ferrite isolators dump reverse power in a load; commercial parts start near 20-25 MHz.
Inferred
Example: 10 nF tanks, 1000 V, 100 V gap drop. Next tank at 300 V: 2.55 mJ drawn per firing; loaded to 100 V: 3.2 mJ. A direct capacitor dump loses 47-62 percent; Wien's resonant transfer avoids it.
A resistive load changes amplitude; phase shifts only with detuning (Q 50 to 40, 20 Hz off: 11.5 to 9.2 degrees).
An ideal isolator hides the load and burns unused power.
Competing reading: a contact rectifier between stages; p.139 excludes it for the cascade.
Open
The p.115 cascade schematic is unreadable in OCR; a page image would show stages and coupling.
No measurement of energy per firing against load, or of reverse isolation, exists for Moray's tubes.
Step by step: Bench test: diode, gas tube or isolator as the valve between two tanks
Two tank circuits (about 200 and 100 kHz) joined in turn by a fast diode, a threshold gas tube and an isolator. For each load, measure true drive power, load power, tank voltage, phase, firings per cycle and reverse leakage. Shows which valve matches Moray's 'bucket brigade' description, whether the first stage feels the load, and whether any configuration delivers more than it draws.
Context recorded with the question (moved here 2026-10-10): Moray, p.139: the valve passes waves 'in only one direction at a time ... without necessarily changing from H.F. or A.C. to D.C.': not a rectifier.
The bench-test design was in the research notes only, not in this answer; it was added as the step-by-step procedure on 2026-10-10.
Key point: Is the threshold gap the key design point?
Supports
Moray pp.55-56 and p.116 describe exactly a voltage-threshold gap that blocks feedback, as in Wien's quench.
Contradicts
p.139 also describes rectifier use; the valve design does not settle the energy source (claims 3, 4).
Q17AnsweredAsked whether multipaction, a secondary-electron avalanche, could be the mechanism of Moray's cold-cathode valve and ever gives net energy. It fits cold cathodes, radioactive seeding, thresholds and surges, but always draws on RF or an anode supply, and Moray calls his tubes gas-filled.
Multipaction as the mechanism of Moray's cold-cathode valve: a nonlinear secondary-electron avalanche that RF engineers try to eliminate. Could it explain conduction in unheated tubes (the Patent Office said the cathodes could not emit), radioactive coatings as seed electrons, a voltage and frequency window that acts as the 'spill over' threshold, one-way behaviour from unequal secondary yields, and the 'surges'? Is there any measured case of multipaction giving net energy rather than absorbing RF power?
Asked 2026-10-08 · answered 2026-10-08 · 3 min web search
A17Multipaction can explain cold-cathode conduction, radioactive seeding, a threshold window and surges, but no measured case gives net energy: it loads the RF, and Farnsworth's multipactor oscillators converted anode-battery power. Moray's own words ('Ionic', 'ionization occurs in the gases') point to a gas gap, while multipaction needs hard vacuum.
Known
Farnsworth cold-cathode multipactors, 1934-36: 200-4,000 W, 100 kHz-300 MHz, 'efficiency as high as 90%'; the oscillator 'takes energy from the battery in the anode circuit' (Wireless World 1936; Halloran 1934).
ECSS-E-ST-20-01C lists a 'Radioactive β source' among required seed sources; tests run below 1e-5 hPa.
Thresholds: no first-order multipactor below f x d of about 0.43 GHz mm (aluminium, 33.8 V); yield exceeds 1 only between E1 and E2 (Kishek and Lau 1998).
Kishek 1996: saturates 'by its loading of the cavity'; one overshoot can release 'as much as 20%' of stored energy.
Moray 4th ed. p.107: 'Ionic cold cathode tubes'; pp.55-56: 'ionization occurs in the gases'.
US 2,139,813 'ratio greater than unity' means secondary yield; Lyden (2023 patent) reads it as 'over unity'.
Inferred
At 1 MHz a two-plate gap needs about 43 cm and below about 7e-4 Torr; a gas tube at glow pressures breaks down as a gas discharge instead.
Unequal yields (2 and 0.5) give a DC current component, not a one-way block.
Competing readings: hard-vacuum multipactor; gas threshold gap (Q16); crystal rectifier (receiver use).
The 1934-36 tubes show the examiner's 'not heated' ground was narrow; his plate-potential point matches Farnsworth's need for an anode supply.
Open
Gas fill, pressure, gap and surfaces of a surviving Moray tube would decide the mechanism.
Moray's tank frequencies and valve voltages are unknown.
Borderland's 1989 multipactor test result was not found (Journal of Borderland Research 1989-91).
Note
Context recorded with the question (moved here 2026-10-10): The folder's aa-new multipactor papers (Kishek flyer, 'Multipactor discharge on a dielectric', 'Temporal evolution of multipactor discharge') are not yet weighed. Compare Farnsworth-PT (multipactor tube) and Dollard-Eric.
Key point: Does multipaction ever give net energy?
Supports
Borderland 1989 note (interested party): 'may produce over 100% efficiency'; no result published that was found.
Contradicts
All measurements treat it as an RF load; Farnsworth's tubes name the anode battery as the source.
Q18AnsweredCould resonance with electrons or nuclei release harvestable energy, and which proposed mechanisms (isomer triggering, photofission, NEET) are real? Each is real only as a trigger for energy stored beforehand, measured efficiencies are tiny, and kilowatt output would leave lethal gamma rays or fission products.
Resonating with atoms: if someone could resonate with electrons or nucleons, could their energy be harvested? Resonance can only release energy already stored out of equilibrium. Which candidates are real: triggered nuclear isomers (Collins's hafnium-178m2 claim, 1999, and the failed repeats; the disputed molybdenum-93m result, Nature 2018), resonant photofission of uranium and thorium (Moray's U3O8 booklet), nuclear excitation by electron transition? What would each leave behind (radiation, fission products) that witnesses would have noticed?
Asked 2026-10-08 · answered 2026-10-08 · 5 min web search
A18Only stored energy can be triggered, and Moray's materials hold no usable store. Isomer triggering claims shrank on retest (hafnium over 100,000-fold, molybdenum 500-fold); NEET returns less than it takes; photofission needs over 5 MeV gammas and costs more than it yields in natural uranium. Kilowatts by any route would leave lethal radiation.
Known
Collins 1999: dental x-rays raised 178m2Hf decay lines about 4%. Ahmad 2001 (Argonne): "No induced decay was observed", limit over 5 orders lower. LLNL 2008: "statistically marginal and inconsistent"; DARPA's restricted TRIP report is described as confirming.
Chiara 2018: 93mMo depleted 1% per ion, credited to NEEC. Theory: 9 orders lower. Guo 2022: below 2e-5. Ding 2026: 2.0e-5 (lead), from nuclear scattering, not NEEC.
NEET in gold: 5.0e-8 per K vacancy (Kishimoto 2000).
Photofission: about 10 MeV gammas; data reach down to 4.3 MeV. The booklet's top energy is 1.8 MV.
1968 proposal: "2.5 Mev to 8 Mev" excitation, "resonance absorption and re-emission", "without fission". Booklet p.34: nothing is removed.
Inferred
Both isomers are accelerator-made; 93mMo lasts hours. 5 kW for an hour needs 13.5 mg of 178m2Hf, about 1 Gy per second at 1 m.
At about 1 fission per 100 photons, 10 MeV gammas return 1-2 MeV. 5 kW is 1.6e14 fissions per second: neutrons, iodine-131, caesium-137.
Reading A: the 1968 text restates the isomer-trigger hope. Reading B: ordinary isotope decay converted in a semiconductor, resonance adding no energy.
Open
Gamma spectrum of surviving treated ore or tubes: fission products or only natural lines.
Full 1956 Bureau of Mines report on the "artificial" substance; any radiation survey of a running device.
Key equations
Process
Energy in versus out
Meaning
178m2Hf isomer, 31 y
2,446 keV stored; 1.33 GJ per gram
Real store, made in accelerators; trigger unconfirmed
A box wired only to antenna and ground lit lamps and an iron (0.1 to about 8 kW nameplate, 1925-38)
Never properly testedwitnessed, never metered; 50 kW unwitnessed
It was not induction, hidden wires or batteries
Never properly testedbatteries disfavoured for 1928 and 1938; hidden feed, ground path, priming open
The source is oscillating cosmic radiation captured by resonance
Refuted by calculationkilowatts from any known radiation, photoelectric or neutrino captureInternally inconsistentresonance as a sourceNot testable as statedunknown radiation or hidden channel, boundedNever properly testedprimed, stored or hidden feedTested, not supportedWeber's neutrino enhancement
The secret Moray valve (detector stone)
Plausible, untestedrectifier-type or radium-bearing stone; 1968 cascadeNever properly testedpreceded the transistorNot testable as statedpriority, without the stoneRefuted by calculationdetector alone as net power; radioisotope conversion at kWEstablisheddirect conversion at microwatts (Moseley 1913)
Matter dissociates into energy (Le Bon's thesis and observations, reprinted in the books)
Historically superseded but instructiveLe Bon's 1900s thesisEstablishedplain E = mc^2; amalgam charge loss as photoelectric effectTested, not supportedlight-driven charge loss as radioactivityNot testable as statedas Moray's power source
Gold made from reagents by irradiation (Research Institute, 1963-70)
Refuted by calculationnuclear origin at reported yieldsNever properly testedassays not artefacts
Cosray therapy device heals
Never properly testedefficacyInternally inconsistent785-patient tallyRefuted by calculation1946 treatise: alpha and beta pass body and lead
The work was blocked or suppressed
Establishedevents as documented history, incl. REA 1939-41Never properly testeddismissed without testing (standoff); 1939 smashing, 1940 shootingNot testable as statedbroad organised conspiracy
Inventor of the Radiant Energy device · sought patents, investors and funding
Salt Lake City, 1892-1974. Claimed an Uppsala doctorate (studied under the alias James Cain Larson, his sons say; no record found under 'Moray'). Alter's 1932 biography calls him 'Utah's electrical wizard, inventor, scientist, editor, poultry expert'. Author of Beyond the Light-Rays and The Sea of Energy; patentee of US 2,460,707.
John E. Moray
Son; editor of the 1978 5th edition; ran the Research Institute's gold and uranium work · heir; sells the book and raises funds
Co-inventor of the Cosray applicators per the family's 1946 treatise; led the 1963-70 irradiation work with Hooper, Hendricks and Rudolph; relays the accounts of the 1939 smashing and the 1940 shooting from his father.
Harvey Fletcher
Witness (25 Sep 1928); proposed the endurance test; says Moray skipped a New York test · asked fees for reports
Bell Telephone Laboratories physicist, born 1884, later dean at BYU. Wrote in 1928 'I am just as puzzled as ever'; in 1957 said Moray agreed to a Bell Labs or New York test and did not come (Moray: '100% untrue'); affidavit 1979 at 94.
Murray O. Hayes
Sworn witness to the 1928 endurance test; failed rebuild · Moray's patent agent and associate
Described as a patent examiner turned attorney. Said in 1929 he had seen everything including the detector; testified at Reno in 1932 that he and associates tried to build the machine from the patent papers and failed (editors' report, no transcript).
A. B. Jensen
Witness for the Utah Securities Commissioner, 1938 inspection and Dugway desert test
Called a battery expert in the family's 1991 paper; otherwise not in the review files. His statement is dated 1956 or 1958 and sworn 1963.
Felix J. Frazer
REA investigator 1939-41; accused by the family of smashing the device · accused party
Described in 1944 as a WPA investigator who spent two years 'assisting, begging, cajoling and threatening Moray'. Probably the Technocracy economist of that name, later an occultist; served subpoenas for the La Follette committee in 1937. Identity not proven.
Franklin P. Wood
REA engineer; August 1939 report · REA staff
Wrote that Moray was 'essentially honest, unable to originate or perpetuate a hoax or fraud' and had 'stumbled on to something'. Probably the Denver engineer of the American Technocratic League; identity not proven.
Orin Tugman
Critic; May 1940 letter quoted in the 1944 Senate hearing · university standing; investors in his state
Head of physics, University of Utah. Said that in 12 years Moray never let him see a demonstration, that demonstrations went to 'men not fitted to be critical', and called it 'a very clever hoax'.
Evidence / artifacts (198 of 202 listed, 98%)
Own works and inventions (15)
1920s-2000sMedia/photos collection (about 52 images) OCR sequence only; includes the capacitor test and a detector schematic with radioactive salt; photographs not interpreted
1931Beyond the Light-Rays: Explanations of the Oscillations of Radiant Energy T. H. Moray; scan of a later printing (16 pp.) and tesla.hu transcription; quotes Tesla's 'wheelwork of nature'
1932A Brief History of the Moray Radiant Energy Device (booklet) Printed in the 5th ed.; Moray later wrote it was 'composed and edited too much like promotion' (5th ed. p.62)
c.1940-1959Photo Actinia Oxygen Therapy by Electric Reaction (Cosray booklet) T. H. Moray, Research Institute; editions 1940/1945/1955/1959 cited; deep read pp.22-54; unsigned tally of 785 treated; June-July 1940 USDA order to build three devices
1945Radiant Energy: The Evolution and Transmutation of the Atom T. H. Moray, Research Institute; 22 pp.; 1940-41 gold and silver assays (Boaz Mine, Norris MT; Union Assay Office SLC, serial 88193); September 1943 transmutation letter
after 1945Radiant Energy: The Evolution of Energy and Matter T. H. Moray; a printing labelled 'compiled 1926' that cites the atomic pile and plutonium, so compiled after 1945; copyright entries for a 20-page Radiant Energy (23 Dec 1945) and a 55-leaf one (15 Jan 1956); ECAFE list (1950) gives a 1943 20-page edition. 63 pp. digested. Printed pp.53-56 (Rutherford and spinthariscope passages) copied nearly verbatim, uncredited, from Le Bon 1905 (follow-ups Q01, Q04). Pp.58-59 (folded metal cylinder, electroscope) and p.46 (ultraviolet charge loss as 'dissociation') are also Le Bon's (follow-ups Q11, Q12); pp.34-35 resonance-dissociation passage has no earlier source found (Q08). The diamond passage (printed p.54) and the p.58 doped-phosphor paragraph are Le Bon's; 'and sometimes other properties' is an insertion in Moray's printing (follow-up Q09).
1946A Short Treatise on Alpha, Beta, Gamma Ray Therapy By 'Dr. Henry Moray'; applicators 'the discovery and invention of John Eugene and Richard R. Moray'; 'half life ... about 1600 years'; 'no special shielding'. Internet Archive item thomas-henry-moray-radiant-energy· Moray family; printed by the sons
1949-02-01US Patent 2,460,707, Electrotherapeutic Apparatus (Cosray) Thomas H. Moray; filed 30 Apr 1943, continuation-in-part of a 15 Nov 1940 filing; tube with uranium or carnotite coating; the only T. H. Moray patent; no foreign family; cited by 9 later patents
c.1959Isotopes in Ionic Recovery of U3O8 (40-page booklet) T. H., John E. and Richard R. Moray; 0.04-2.6% ore to 21-67% U3O8; reports a Bureau of Mines radiometric report (28 Sep 1956) and an AEC Grand Junction estimate; deep read pp.33-40. p.6 calcium sulphide eighteen-months passage is Le Bon's (follow-up Q04). Pp.4-6 ('ten thousand times more active' thorium plate) copy Le Bon with Rutherford's credit removed (Q11); pp.20-23 follow Glasser 1944 and p.25 Preston's Theory of Light; p.23 claims a silver-to-cadmium change with no data (Q08). P.3 'Transmutation, Activation, and Fission are essentially one in the same reaction'; p.34 'not a refining method at all', nothing removed (follow-up Q18)
1960The Sea of Energy in Which the Earth Floats (4th ed. 1960; 5th ed. 1978) 4th ed. Moray's own last edition (197 pp.; deep read pp.116-197; photocopy also digested). 5th ed. Cosray Research Institute, edited by John E. Moray with history, foreword by Tom Bearden (279 pp.; deep read pp.32-133; tesla.hu transcription). The source of most witness statements. The sons write that Le Bon's book was 'withdrawn from libraries' and that the FBI asked about it in 1942 (5th ed. pdf p.187); no second source found yet. 4th ed. pp.55-56 and 116 describe the valve as a voltage-threshold gas gap passing energy stage to stage ('bucket brigade'), p.139 also as a radio rectifier; p.107 'Ionic cold cathode tubes' (follow-ups Q16, Q17)· Moray family; printed by the sons
1962-01-23Speech at Valley State College, Northridge CA T. H. Moray; first stage 'excited by an external energy source'; 2 good tubes in 100; about 1 lb per kW
1965-1982Progress Report: Recovery of Minerals from Low Grade Ore by High Energy Bombardment Research Institute (J. E. Moray), W. J. Hooper, Ruth L. Hendricks, T. E. Rudolph, L. M. Olsen; 68th National Western Mining Conference; 929.76 oz/ton gold; Aug 1963 controls 0.12 and 0.26 oz/ton; 62-test Varian series; Rex Research copy, deep read pp.1-22· Research Institute, seeking investment
1968-08-07Proposal for Development of Plasma Probe / Direct Energy Conversion from Radioactive Materials T. H. Moray, D.Sc. and Stan Taylor, Ph.D., to Air Force Systems Command; radioisotope-excited cascade at 'well below one pound per watt'; no reply in the folder. p.1 infrared-detector paragraph matches 1968 practice (Ge:Hg, HgCdTe), not a cosmic microwave background hint (follow-up Q02). Pp.2-4: 'excitation energy (between 2.5 Mev to 8 Mev)', 'resonance absorption and re-emission', release 'without fission' (follow-up Q18)
1991The Sea of Energy: A Means for the Preservation of the Environment (26th IECEC paper) John E. and Kevin R. Moray; Strawberry distance given as 50+ miles; notes held by the family· Moray family; printed by the sons
undatedA Brief Analysis of the Moray Radiant Energy Device: What it Is, Possibilities, Testimonies T. H. Moray, 50 pp.; Google Books lE4FNQAACAAJ; probably the original printing of the testimonies; WorldCat blocked
Patents and patent office (3)
1930sPatent Office files of Moray's seven rejected applications Moray asked for copies in 1954; Office said destroyed as abandoned; sons say 'disappeared' (5th ed. p.170). Decides: NARA RG 241, PTO file-wrapper index
c.1932Patent Office action on a Moray radiant-energy application (letter image) 'No natural source of electric wave energy is known to the Examiner and proof of the existence of such a source is required'; poor OCR, agrees with 4th ed. pp.163-164· the deciding party
1932-12-23Patent Office action, Serial No. 550,611 (REJECTED CLAIMS) Inoperability: unheated cathodes cannot emit; radioactive ionisation gives no space current without plate or grid potential· the deciding party
Court and state records (17)
pre-1921Marie Ahleen v. T. Henry Moray Utah Third District civil index
1930-12Ashton-Jenkins Co. v. Thomas H. Moray, case 46754 $2,500 on mortgage; Salt Lake Telegram 18 Dec 1930; Utah State Archives index
1930s-1950sUtah Division of Archives court index scans (9 pages) Folder copy of the Third District index pages; indexes stop at 1966
1932-04In re Moray Products Company (Second Judicial District Court, Washoe County, Nevada) Moray's petition under section 35 of the Nevada corporations act; notices SL Tribune 27 Apr and 3 May 1932, Nevada State Journal 4 May 1932 p.6. Case file, with Hayes's testimony of a failed rebuild, not obtained
1938Utah Securities Commissioner's report on the Moray device inspection Commissioner Gull; only A. B. Jensen's later statement survives in the family books
1940-03Salt Lake City police and medical records, March 1940 (shooting) Family account says no police report was made (5th ed. p.186)
1940-1943Ken Williams v. Moray Utah Third District civil index
1941Progressive Heating Co. / E. H. Brewster & Son v. Moray, case 65983 $616.24 on contract; Deseret News 14 Feb 1941
1941-1943Home Owners' Loan Corporation v. T. H. and Ella R. Moray, case 67422 Utah Third District civil index
1942-05-27Sanford v. Moray, cases 67845 and 68210 Judgment of $1,290 for failure to deliver stock bought in 'a corporation to use radiant energy in aircraft'; Deseret News 27 May 1942 p.15; case files not ordered
1947-1948Green/Christensen v. Mrs Henry Moray, case 80824 Utah Third District; Salt Lake Telegram 30 Dec 1947
1954-1956Roy Ware v. T. Henry Moray, case 104172 Utah Third District civil index
1970-09-25Research Institute and Moray v. Mark J. Hagmann, case 195569 Suit for return of papers; Daily Record 25 Sep 1970 p.1; Hagmann's endorsement is printed in the 5th ed. p.279. Case file not obtained
1974Salt Lake County probate file for T. H. Moray Would list estate property and what remained of the apparatus (arbiter, Silence A)
2019Utah business entity record: Cosray Research Institute, Inc. Printout from Utah Business Search
2019-05-14Utah water right 57-7134 (T. Henry Moray) Printout; home and laboratory address
undatedUtah probate files 2492 (Johannah Petronala Moray) and 2347 (James Moray) Probably Moray's parents; index entries only
Government records (26)
1935National Survey of Potential Product Capacity report (Felix J. Frazer, co-author) Basis for identifying the REA's Frazer as the Technocracy economist; Internet Archive report00ofnationalnatirich
1936-12-08Shinkle's report on the Moray demonstration AGO central decimal file 413.68 or 095 Steffensen name file, NARA College Park; not requested
1936-12-14War Department AGO index sheets: Shinkle report on 'Invention of sound detector by F. [T.] Henry Moray' NARA RG 407, T822; report of 8 Dec 1936 by Brig. Gen. Edward M. Shinkle, Office Chief of Ordnance; cross-filed under 095 Steffensen, K. K., 023 and Salt Lake City (NAIDs 557685758, 557741114, 556983073, 561454645); images saved
1937La Follette Civil Liberties Committee hearings Felix J. Frazer served subpoenas; HathiTrust osu.32437122905215 pp.3268-3324
1938-1939John M. Carmody Papers, REA files (FDR Library) Chronological File Boxes 102-103, card indexes 91-94, Box 99 'Senate Hearings [1944]', Box 30 'Technocracy'; finding aid saved; no Moray folder by name
1938-1941REA engineers' reports (Ben Crim; Felix J. Frazer) Craig: Crim found tests 'entirely satisfactory as far as performance [went]'; reports 'put in the Administrator's files', probably lost in the 1941 move. NARA RG 221 unsearched· REA
1939-02-14AGO index sheet: John H. Magdiel request via Sen. Elbert D. Thomas Asks for 'the report of Col. Edward M. Shinkle who witnessed a demonstration of Radiant Energy device'
1939-08Franklin P. Wood's report to the REA Quoted in the 1944 Senate hearing: 'essentially honest, unable to originate or perpetuate a hoax or fraud ... stumbled on to something'; full text not found· REA engineer, probable Technocrat
1940-06USDA 'written request and order' to build three Cosray devices Reported in Photo Actinia; no document
1944Senate Agriculture and Forestry subcommittee REA hearing (78th Cong., S. Res. 197, pt.4-5) HathiTrust umn.31951d03587118y. Investigators' report pp.1344-1345 (V. A. Young): payroll 17 Feb 1939-28 Feb 1941 at $25 a day. Slattery interview of 2 Jun 1943, pp.1370-1376: Craig's motor and fans, the German assassination story, Tomadelli 'pretty similar'· staff hostile to Administrator Slattery; Slattery accused
1945-1956Catalog of Copyright Entries: Radiant Energy (1945, 1956) and the 1946 therapy treatise Dates the folder's printings
1951-05-21FBI Salt Lake memo of interview with Moray (Yakovlev / Rosenberg espionage file) 249-page file, Moray passage p.14 plus a screenshot; Moray says a Russian he knew as A. A. Yakovlev visited in Oct 1929 and the Magdiels contacted the Russian embassy· FBI, accused in the family's account
1957Security-clearance hearing record for Moray Family account says a secret clearance was granted after a 1957 hearing (5th ed. p.172)
1961-07-21NASA reply declining to fund Moray Probability 'not sufficient to justify support'; facsimile in 5th ed.; John Moray says NASA first agreed $5 million· funding agency
1961-10-30Sen. Wallace F. Bennett letter to Lyle E. Holmgren Image fragment, no OCR; text from 5th ed.: Moray asked $50,000 and 'refuses to reveal the whereabouts of the box'· senator answering a constituent
1963FDA case file for Cosray (NARA RG 88) Not yet tried
1963-1964FDA Notice of Judgment 8137: Cosray Electronic device N.D. Fla.; misbranding default 3 Apr 1963, contested, motion to vacate denied 20 Aug 1963, destroyed 19 Mar 1964; 1,039-page volume searched, not read· prosecuting agency
1964-03Health Frauds and Quackery, Senate Special Committee on Aging hearings 91 pp.; lessee Gilbert paid $3,210 for a Cosray machine, told never to open the cabinet; mother not improved (p.85)· committee convened on quackery
c.1968Air Force Systems Command file and reply on the 1968 proposal NARA; no reply in the folder
1970-08-17AEC letter, Commissioner C. E. Larson to William Kerber Eyring 'convinced there is no demonstrable evidence that any energy has been harnessed'; folder fragment mostly illegible, text from 5th ed.· agency
1973-1974CIA Foreign Technology Division translation list and index card: 'Short Review of Radiation Energy' 95 pp., Moray at p.80; CIA cover sheet and card (1974)
2000FBI file on T. Henry Moray (the 72 released pages) Not on FBI Vault, MuckRock, governmentattic or theblackvault; request as previously processed records citing 917273; a 1942 enquiry about Le Bon's book, reported by the sons, would appear here if real· FBI, accused in the family's account
2000-06-22CIA FOIA request F-2000-01342 'THOMAS HENRY MORAY' governmentattic.org CIA logs, Google snippet; outcome not posted
2000-08-17FBI FOIA log: request 917273 'MORAY, T HENRY' 74 pages reviewed, 72 released, requester Michael J. Ravnitzky; a second 2000 request (924753, Nelms) closed for lack of consent; Internet Archive foia-log-2000-2002
2005NASA/CR-2005-213749 Advanced Energetics for Aeronautical Applications, Vol. II, section 4.4.5 David S. Alexander for NASA; calls the claim 'not scientifically defensible'; a literature survey, not a test
2013-02-11FBI FOIA log: request 1178194-002 'MORAY, THOMAS HENRY DR.' answered 'No Records' Requester Lynn Badia; received 1 Dec 2011, reopened 8 Feb 2013, closed 11 Feb 2013, 0 pages
Company and business records (7)
1931-1932Moray Products Company corporate file (Nevada) Not in Nevada's online index (earliest Moray entity 1987); request by mail. President in 1931-32 D. V. Farnsworth; no link to Philo T. Farnsworth found (follow-up Q17)
1932Moray Products Company stock trading, Salt Lake City Badger & Co. unlisted-stock tables (May-Aug 1932) and classified ads trading 'Moray radiant energy lighting stock'
1940-1941Boaz Mine and Union Assay Office certificates Cited in the 1945 pamphlet and Fate 1956; no certificates
1956US Bureau of Mines radiometric report (28 Sep 1956) and AEC Grand Junction evaluation Reported in the Isotopes booklet: 18-28% U3O8 equivalent with no 'before' value; originals not obtained. The full report would show what instrument saw the 'artificial' substance (follow-up Q18)
1963-1982Research Institute, Inc. corporate file, assayer certificates and accelerator logs Unnamed 'independent assayer'; runs at High Voltage Engineering, Electronized Chemicals, Radiation Dynamics, Varian; none obtained
1964-1965National Western Mining Conference proceedings Where the Institute presented the gold work
1925-08-06R. L. Judd (attorney) accounts, 1925-1928 Saw the device from Aug 1925; Oct 1925 lamp and 655 W iron with house mains pulled; Oct 1928 report to Fletcher; his own 'absolutely ... entirely new' is misattributed to Fletcher by John Moray· associate
1925-12-21Emigration Canyon test statement About 4 miles up the canyon, witnesses chose the site; Judd, O. W. Adams and others; countersigned 1929· associates
1926-10-29Strawberry Valley field test account Odometer: last power line at 26 miles; one 100 W lamp at about 75% for 15 minutes after 10 minutes of magnet stroking· associates
1928-09-25Harvey Fletcher letters, 1928-1933 6 Oct 1928 to Judd: 'I am just as puzzled as ever'; proposed the endurance test and an antenna-less run; 17 Apr 1933 to Benzel; May 1933 fee of 'about $200'
1928-10-08Endurance test statements (Hayes sworn; Judd; E. G. Jensen) 1-8 Oct 1928, railroad seals on the trunk, 157.9 h at about 110-120 W, ending at 635 W; water-pipe ground· associates
1928-1957Ottawa, Bray fonds S1-SS5-F24: Marcel C. Schiess 'witness accounts of the machine in use' and drawings; finding aid only
1928-1959Ottawa, Arthur Bray fonds 30-003, S1-SS5-F4: 'Radiant Energy' Invention (by Dr. T. H. Moray) Wilbert B. Smith files, 1928-56, 0.7 cm, with a brief biography; finding aid only
1929-10-24Murray O. Hayes to Lovesy Hayes has seen the wiring diagrams and 'the detector'· Moray's patent agent
1929-11-05Robert Millikan to Lovesy Declines: 'suspicious of a person who is trying to conceal things from a group of scientists'
1929-1930T. J. Yates statements (sworn 18 Dec 1930) 16 Mar 1929 checks; 13 Dec 1930 about 2.5 kW nameplate; shorted terminals, crystal set gave hum-free reception
1930-09-02Lovesy letters (1929-1932) Postscript reports 2,150 W at Ellison's visit; NYU discussion 1929· promoter
1930-10-05M. H. Welling (Utah Secretary of State) and Mexican Consul General Gaxiola About 1.5 kW; house meter did not register
1931John Y. Smith letter relaying a former GE man Patent examiners 'honeycombed' with large-company employees; relayed allegation (5th ed. pp.171-172)
1931-12Knudsen visit record (Moray memo and Richards letter, 19 Dec 1931) 'over four thousand watts'; the valve stopped during Knudsen's check; Knudsen suspected a hidden wire in the 90-ft pole
c.1936David I. Gardner statement (sworn 1963) About forty 200 W globes, about 8 kW nameplate
1936-09O. L. Polly letter, with E. G. Jensen, Herlin (1957) and Olsen (1937) extracts Polly, physics PhD per Moray's note: laboratory 'well equipped'; device 'does not depend on any battery'
1937-02Chester M. Todd statement (sworn 1971) Moray's nephew; about forty 100 W globes; bulbs 'burned cold except ... a hot spot about the size of a dime'· relative
1937-08-02Bell Labs (J. B. Kelly for Fletcher) to K. K. Steffensen Fletcher 'was not allowed to examine all the parts'; a small chance warranted 'complete investigation'; none made
1937-12-23Pyper letter (1938) Ex-utility electrician; about 5 kW, house lit from the box with mains opened; 'I did not see the inside of the larger box'
1938A. B. Jensen statements on the Securities Commission inspection and Dugway desert test About 5.5 kW for over an hour; leads 'electrically dead' before start-up; parts weighed and meter-tested; box bored; desert test 25-30 miles from Johnson's Pass. Dated 1956/1958, sworn 1963
1938-03-20E. G. Jensen letter on the series-capacitor test Output lit through 0.025 microfarad in the antenna lead; series 60 W lamp never lit· associate
1938-07S. E. Bringhurst statement (sworn 1971) About 5.7 kW nameplate; photograph· associate
1939John Moray's account of Frazer's tests and the smashing of the device Twelve-sheet glass test; Frazer 'took a hammer and smashed' it; Frazer's counter-claim that Moray destroyed it (5th ed. pp.180-181)· Moray family; printed by the sons
1940-03-02John Moray's account of the shooting and the 1943 Perish threat Relayed from his father; 'no police report was ever made' (5th ed. pp.186-189)· Moray family; printed by the sons
1940-05Prof. Orin Tugman letter to Craig Quoted in the 1944 Senate hearing p.1345: never shown a demonstration in 12 years; 'a very clever hoax'· University of Utah physics head
1945-1954Ottawa, Bray fonds S1-SS5-F6: Carl H. Betz With two Moray leaflets; finding aid only
1954-05-25Carl H. Betz handwritten lab notes Geiger rate rose near the device; lead did not shield it; partly legible
1955-01-05Helmut Wachs notes on detector materials Handwritten; partly legible
1955-03-25Gaston Burridge note on Moray Second-hand; conflicts with accounts of motors running
1956-10-22Fletcher to Schiess; Fletcher 1957 letter on the New York test Says he arranged a New York or Bell Labs test and Moray did not come; Moray: '100% untrue'
1957-1958Ottawa, Bray fonds F8 Richard Buchli and F17 Hooper (1958-59) Mention Moray; finding aid only
1959-03-04Ernest L. Wilkinson (BYU president) to Moray Offers help if Moray publishes or accepts an impartial jury
1963Henry Eyring statements (1963, 1965 memo, 1970 via AEC) Saw lights light; 'no way of knowing anything about its effectiveness' without inspection
1963Robert B. Craig letter (former REA deputy administrator) Saw the device on several occasions; recalls Crim's report (5th ed. p.119)· former REA official
1973-10-31Arthur G. Foster letter P.E., Hill Air Force Base; relays Fletcher on the New York test
1979-05-25Affidavit of Harvey Fletcher Age 94; made for a NASA proposal by the Eyring Research Institute (per House of Moray)
1984-01-08Noffsinger, 'Description of System' (handwritten) Only composition list of the detector in the folder; partly illegible; 'snow job also'
1990-04-11Arthur Glenn Foster account of pressing Moray 'detector' pellets ('Project X') Quoted in Perreault, Nuenergy (2001) p.30: ground, radium-doped 'Swedish Stone' pressed in a tetrahedral press; at a critical pressure it 'flashed', burning out the 2000-amp die-heater supply and a transformer. Only account of an outside contractor handling detector material; no letter or contractor found (follow-up Q09)· relayed by Perreault, who plans a commercial generator
2011-10-07Uppsala University Library reply on a Moray doctoral thesis No thesis 1910-1922 and no pre-1962 title under 'Moray'; the alias James Cain Larson not searched
undatedOttawa, Bray fonds S1-SS4-F4: two letters on Moray's demonstration Finding aid only
Later accounts and media (23)
1930-09-19Salt Lake Telegram reader's list of greatest Utahns Includes Moray and 'Dr. Murray O. Hayes'
1932J. Cecil Alter, Utah, the Storied Domain, pp.439-440 Biography of 'Utah's electrical wizard, inventor, scientist, editor, poultry expert'; Google Books snippet
1934Indian Science Congress proceedings, p.65 Cites the 1928 test ('bank of 100 lights for 154 hours'); speaker unknown
1940-03-26Tooele paper: Moray speaks at a funeral Three weeks after the family's shooting date; no mention of an attack
1941-12-02Salt Lake Tribune: Rep. Winter calls for an REA probe Cited by Bearden; not read
1942-05-01Ogden Standard-Examiner letter by J. G. Teuscher Recalls the 1931 announcement and public statements by Welling and others
1944-11-11Electrical World: REA's 'Industrial Revolution Projects' 'This scientist retailed perpetual motion to REA at $25 a day'· private-utility trade weekly
1944-12-11Chicago Tribune and Salt Lake Tribune: Halleck statement on the REA and Moray Full Wood quote; Frazer 'threatening Moray'; SL Tribune p.9, recap 17 Dec 1944· Rep. Halleck, opponent of the REA
1949-03-11Ogden Standard-Examiner: lab tour 'cos ray machine reportedly quite successful in treating cancer'; transmutation 'now being proved at Harvard'
1956Rosicrucian Digest, p.418 Author not identified
1956-09Gaston Burridge, 'The Alchemist', Fate Magazine Transmutation claims and 1940-41 assays; '57+ hours' run
after 1973'Free Electricity Generated from Radiant Cosmos' (popular article) 3 page images; a retelling
1977Tom Bearden, foreword to the 5th ed. and Excalibur Briefing page (cheniere.org) Zero-point-vacuum reading; says a 'trained Soviet agent' smashed the device; '50 kW' for the 157-h run· promoter with his own theory
1980John E. Moray speech to the U.S. Psychotronics Association Audio transcript; 2% valve yield· Moray family; printed by the sons
1998Exotic Research Report: Tesla and cosmic energy Bruce Perreault per the text
2000sHouse of Moray / T. Henry Moray Foundation home page and fundraising video John E. Moray; archived page and video transcript· Moray family; printed by the sons
2001Bruce A. Perreault, Radiant Energy Power Generation (Nuenergy) Spark-station then radioactive-dopant theory; says Moray's widow's tubes, bought by him, show no apparent radioactivity (p.12); deep read pp.9-21· plans a commercial generator
2008-12-08Free Energy Now interview with John Moray Sterling Allen; 100 W / 5 kW / 50 kW chronology; utility meters· Moray family; printed by the sons
c.2011Family narrative on Slideshare ('th-moray') Says the 1936 Shinkle test was of the 'Sound Detector Device'; Rep. Amlie said a report was filed· Moray family; printed by the sons
2016-11-17Gery Vesperman public comment to the NRC 250 pp.; Moray passage only
2016-2025Hobby replication videos, a Reddit 'blueprint' and a 2025 'specification' None with metered input and output
c.2020ConspiracyStuff video, 'Thomas Henry Moray and Zero-point Energy' Transcript; secondary retelling
undatedPatrick Kelly, Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices, ch.7 (Moray section) Mirror at alternativkanalen.com; quotes Moray's p.116 and 'bucket brigade' passages; no independent analysis of the cascade (follow-up Q16)
Related work by others (51)
1882John E. W. Keely, water 'disintegrated' by vibratory motion Nearest predecessor of Moray's resonance-dissociation idea, with Tesla's 1898 oscillator story; Wikipedia (follow-up Q08)
1889Elster and Geitel, light sensitivity of amalgams (Wied. Ann. 38) and 1892 amalgamated-zinc actinometer Amalgams of K, Na, Zn, Sn most light-sensitive; 'pure mercury shows no effect'; only negative charge lost. Read in Lodge's abstract and Fricke and Schlegel, HGSS 8 (2017) (follow-up Q12)
1898Tesla's mechanical oscillator story Resonance said to shake a building; predecessor cited for Moray's 'as Tesla did' (Radiant Energy p.35); Wikipedia (follow-up Q08)
1899E. Rutherford, electrometer separation of alpha and beta rays, Phil. Mag. 47 Probably the '1899' that the 1968 proposal cites for direct conversion; the identification is the investigator's (follow-up Q01)
1900E. Rutherford, Radioactivity produced in substances by the action of thorium compounds, Phil. Mag. 49, 161-192 Original 'excited radioactivity' paper: active deposit collected on a negative wire; full text not opened (follow-up Q11)
1901Nikola Tesla, US 685,957, Apparatus for the utilization of radiant energy Elevated plate and ground charging a condenser; same architecture as Moray's
1902Rutherford and Soddy, The Cause and Nature of Radioactivity, Part I, Phil. Mag. 4 Excited activity 'entirely confined to the negatively charged surface', halves in about 11 hours; Le Moyne Giunta text (follow-up Q11)
1902-1906Rutherford's alpha-particle velocity measurements (Phil. Mag. Aug 1906; 1908 Nobel lecture) Alphas lose ionization, phosphorescence and photographic action at about 9,000 km/s; the experiments Le Bon and Moray say should be taken up again (follow-up Q01)
1903Philosophical Magazine 6th series vol. V, incl. Battelli and Magri on oscillatory discharges Period background on spark oscillation and radium physics
1904E. Rutherford, Radio-activity (1st ed. 1904 sec.166; 2nd ed. 1905 sec.176, pp.297-298) Thoria vessel at +300 V, negative wire 'over 10,000 times as active per unit surface as the thoria'; the figure Le Bon credits and Moray's booklet uncredits (follow-up Q11)
1905Pierre Curie, Nobel lecture Background on radium
1905Gustave Le Bon, The Evolution of Matter (transl. F. Legge), Book IV ch.III Source of Radiant Energy pp.53-56 and the Isotopes booklet p.6: 'the experiments of Rutherford and his pupils should be taken up anew'; first-person sulphide-screen tests on uranium and thorium; Rex Research full text (follow-ups Q01, Q04) Also the source of Isotopes pp.4-6 (sec.6, Induced Radioactivity) and of Radiant Energy pp.58-59; its amalgamated-tin 'radioactivity' chapter is photoelectric by the tests of the time (follow-ups Q11, Q12). Also the source of the diamond passage (a radium gauge in Le Bon; his Brazilian-diamond footnote dropped) and the doped-phosphor paragraph (follow-up Q09).
1906Max Wien, quenched spark gap ('impulse excitation') The gap goes out at the first current zero so the next circuit rings free of the first; the transmitter counterpart of Moray's stage-to-stage valve. Known from Wikipedia (citing Leggett 1921) and Bureau of Standards Circular 74 (follow-up Q16)
1906-01-25R. J. Strutt, letter in Nature on undetected slow alpha particles Quoted in a Le Bon footnote that Moray's printing drops: ordinary matter may emit alphas below the detection threshold (about 9,000 km/s, 1.7 MeV); answered by nuclear binding energies (follow-up Q01)
1906-02-17N. R. Campbell, Dr. Le Bon's Theories of Matter, The Athenaeum no.4086, pp.202-203 Le Bon's experiments 'perfectly inadequate'; light-provoked activity is not spontaneous radioactivity; replies pp.237-366 not read (follow-up Q12)
1906-02-24'F. L.', reply defending Le Bon, The Athenaeum no.4087 Says Campbell's own case was quinine-sulphate luminescence, which Kalahne repeated and found chemical, as Le Bon said; Parodi repeated the phosphorescence experiments 'with perfect success'; Rutherford cites Le Bon 'without questioning their validity'. Saved text· writer of the journal's Research Notes defending his column; possibly the translator Legge (inference)
1906-03-24'F. L.', follow-up letter on quinine sulphate, The Athenaeum no.4091 Sets out Le Bon 1900 and 1902 (hydration), Gates 1903 (radiation stopped by thin aluminium; no atomic emission), Kalahne 1905 and Gates 1906: supports Le Bon on chemical cause, not on atomic dissociation· same writer
1906-10Ramsay and Spencer, Chemical and Electrical Changes induced by Ultra-violet Light, Phil. Mag. S.6 12:397-418 Repetition of Le Bon: tin amalgam 0.6 s against mercury 216 s; no positive leak, nothing through metal shields; the authors suggested disintegration or transmutation (follow-up Q12)
1907Millikan and Winchester, photoelectric effects in high vacuum, Phil. Mag. S.6 14:188 Treat the Ramsay-Spencer data as photoelectric and reject their mechanism (follow-up Q12)
c.1907Gustave Le Bon, The Evolution of Forces, Part II (black light chapters) Copper zinc sulphide as an infrared reagent, calcium sulphide for blue-violet; Le Bon's black light was never confirmed; Rex Research full text (follow-up Q04)
1913H. G. J. Moseley, The attainment of high potentials by the use of radium, Proc. Roy. Soc. A 88, 471-476 Radium beta cell in Rutherford's Manchester laboratory, the first atomic battery; probably the 'experiments dating back to 1913' the 1968 proposal cites (follow-up Q01, the investigator's identification)
1915E. Leimer, 'Radium antenna' (abstract) Only period experiment on radium and an antenna
1923-1924Oleg Losev, zincite negative-resistance amplifiers and oscillators Needed a bias supply; Wikipedia
1924-1926H. E. Ives, alkali thin-film photoelectric papers (ApJ 60, 1924; BSTJ 5:320, 1926) Descend from Elster and Geitel's photosensitive metals; standing-wave mechanism unrelated to amalgams or to Moray's detector (follow-up Q12; Ives project)
1925J. E. Lilienfeld, field-effect patents (Canada 1925; US 1,745,175, 1930) Solid-state amplification before Bell Labs; Wikipedia
1925-06-09Hermann Plauson, US 1,540,998, atmospheric-energy collector In the Nuenergy compilation (pdf p.83): zinc, gold or polonium amalgam patches on the collector balloon; photocurrents of nanoamperes per 100 cm2 (follow-up Q12)
1927Prince and Vogdes, Principles of Mercury Arc Rectifiers and Their Circuits McGraw-Hill; mercury condensed on the anode 'causes the formation of a cathode spot there' (arc-back); Internet Archive text searched (follow-up Q15)
1928Preston and Porter, The Theory of Light, p.588 Oscillating Leyden-jar 'back-rush' passage that Isotopes booklet p.25 turns into atomic 'disintegration and transformation'; Google Books snippet; edition used unknown (follow-up Q08)
1928A. Guntherschulze, Electric Rectifiers and Valves (transl. de Bruyne) Wiley; glow rectifiers by unequal cathode falls (alkali 80 V against platinum 180 V), the Argonal rectifier with alkali in a mercury cathode, pp.46, 54, 153-155, 162, 192-194 (follow-up Q15)
1929Tonks and Langmuir, Oscillations in ionized gases Plasma oscillation background
1930-05General Radio Experimenter: the dynatron oscillator Negative resistance from secondary emission
1934-10Halloran, 'Farnsworth's Cold-Cathode Electron Multiplier Tube Uses Neither Grid Nor Filament', RADIO Cold-cathode multipactor oscillator with no heater; reprinted by Borderland Sciences (follow-up Q17)
1936P. T. Farnsworth, US 2,139,813, Secondary emission electrode Secondary emission 'at a ratio greater than unity', meaning electron yield, not energy (follow-up Q17)
1936P. T. Farnsworth, US 2,184,910, Cold cathode electron discharge tube Names an anode battery as the power supply (follow-up Q17)
1936-04-03Wireless World, 'New Electron Multipliers' (Farnsworth IRE demonstration, 4 Mar 1936) Cold-cathode multipactors of 200-4,000 W to 300 MHz, 'efficiency as high as 90%'; the oscillator 'takes energy from the battery in the anode circuit' (follow-up Q17)
1944O. Glasser (ed.), Medical Physics vol.1, 'Roentgen Rays', pp.1354-1355 Copied nearly word for word on Isotopes booklet pp.20-23; Glasser's 'reduced number of valence electrons' becomes the silver-to-cadmium change; Google Books snippets (follow-up Q08)
1966Paracelsus Research Society Bulletin No. 29 'Mark J. Hagmann, M.A., covered transmutations'
1972Okuto and Crowell, ionization coefficient in semiconductors (PRB 6, 3076; also PRB 10, 4284, 1974; Solid-State Electronics 18, 161, 1975) Screenshot in folder; papers not open access
1985IEEE author biography of Mark J. Hagmann B.S. physics BYU 1960, Ph.D. electrical engineering Utah 1978; probable identity of the 1970 defendant
1989Borderland Sciences editor's note on a Farnsworth multipactor tube Tube lent by Farnsworth's widow; it 'may produce over 100% efficiency'; further tests promised, no result found (follow-up Q17)· alternative-energy foundation testing the tube
1996Kishek, Lau and Gilgenbach, Temporal evolution of multipactor discharge In the project folder (aa-new); saturation 'by its loading of the cavity'; an overshoot can release up to 20% of stored energy (follow-up Q17)
1998Kishek and Lau, Multipactor discharge on a dielectric In the project folder (aa-new); lower and upper field thresholds for multipactor (follow-up Q17)
1999Collins et al., triggered decay of hafnium-178m2 by dental X-rays, PRL 82, 695 About 4% rise in decay lines claimed; a real nuclear store with a disputed trigger (follow-up Q18)
2001Ahmad et al., Argonne retest of hafnium-178m2 triggering, PRL 87, 072503 'No induced decay was observed'; limit more than five orders below Collins (follow-up Q18)
2008Lawrence Livermore evaluation of the DARPA TRIP hafnium results 'Statistically marginal and inconsistent'; known through Wikipedia's quotation (follow-up Q18)
2010A. Franklin, review of Weber's neutrino-detection claim Weber's stiff-crystal enhancement of about 1e23 tested at least four times with null results (Franson and Jacobs 1992; Eot-Wash; Luo et al. 1995; Feng et al. 2006, '526 times smaller'); bears on the hidden-channel form of Claim 3 (follow-up Q09)
2018Borexino Collaboration, solar neutrino luminosity, Nature 562, 505 Neutrino luminosity within about 10% of the photon luminosity; bounds any hidden channel to a few per cent of the Sun's output without excluding it (follow-up Q09)
2018Chiara et al., isomer depletion of molybdenum-93m, Nature 554, 216 1% depletion per ion credited to electron capture; theory 9 orders lower (Wu 2019) (follow-up Q18)
2022Guo et al., molybdenum-93m retest, PRL 128, 242502 Upper limit 2e-5 per ion (follow-up Q18)
2023Lyden, US 11,588,421 B1 Reads Farnsworth's 'ratio greater than unity' (secondary yield) as 'over unity' (follow-up Q17)· patentee
2026Ding et al., 93mMo depletion by inelastic nuclear scattering, PRL 2.0e-5 in lead, 4.7e-6 in carbon, by nuclear scattering, not electron capture; abstract via Europe PMC (follow-up Q18)
Records named but not yet examined (16)
1903F. Gates, Physical Review letter (McGill) on quinine-sulphate radiation First-hand text behind the F. L. reply
c.1905Parodi, memoir to the Institut Egyptien repeating Le Bon's phosphorescence experiments Reported 'with perfect success' only in the F. L. reply; no second source found yet
1905Kalahne, 'Ueber die Strahlung des Chininsulfates', Annalen der Physik No phosphorescence or ionisation without water vapour, per the F. L. reply
1906-01F. Gates, Physical Review letter (Cavendish) on dried quinine sulphate First-hand text behind the F. L. reply
1910-1915Uppsala, Swedish church or police registration under 'James Cain Larson' Decides the doctorate claim
1930sFletcher or Bell Labs telegram about the New York test No document either way; John Moray: 'no such correspondence exists in Moray's files'
19401940 Salt Lake newspaper story that 'the Germans had tried to assassinate him' Slattery says it reached the papers; not found in about 40 searches
1950sRecords of any silver-to-cadmium or resonance-transmutation test Notebooks, assays or spectrograms; none in the folder (follow-up Q08)
1957-1963Witness statements for the 1957 and 1963 demonstrations About a dozen witnesses in 1957 (digest only); Eyring 1963
1958-1970W. J. Hooper papers (Principia College) Named by the arbiter for the gold work
1974Perreault's surviving tubes and Moray's notebook (Stan Mahurin) Gamma spectroscopy and composition would test the dopant account. Gas fill, pressure, gap and electrode surfaces would decide between a gas-gap, multipactor and crystal reading; a germanium gamma spectrum would show fission or activation products against natural lines (follow-ups Q17, Q18)
1974Mary Jo Nye, Gustave LeBon's black light, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 4:163-195 The standard history of Le Bon's reception; found, paywalled, not read (follow-up Q12)
1989-1991Journal of Borderland Research: result of the 1989 multipactor test Promised in the 1989 note; no result found (follow-up Q17)
c.1990Foster's 1990 letter, the press log and the 'Project X' contractor Would show whether the flash was stored energy or a short circuit of the press supply
undatedDARPA TRIP report on hafnium isomer triggering Restricted (FOUO); described as confirming Collins; not seen (follow-up Q18)
Left out: 26 earlier AI-written analyses, notes in the project folder and a 2018 enquiry to Uppsala University, duplicates, an unrelated shell script, 12 background papers not about Moray, web background on Le Bon's reception (L. Poincare 1907, Kragh 2012, a 2019 blog post) and the physics references behind the Q09 and Q15-Q18 checks (Planck 2018, CNO neutrinos, helioseismology, bound-state decay, isotope tables, work functions, LISA Pathfinder, ECSS multipactor standard, injection-locking and antenna-scattering papers, NEET and photofission data). Four minor family and address notices in Utah newspapers are counted but not listed. Full catalogue: Morray-TH sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A power meter, spectrum analyser and oscilloscope on the antenna and ground leads, in a mains-isolated room wired by a sceptic, with a driven-rod ground, calorimetry on the box, a 24-hour run, an antenna-less run and a dummy-detector blank.
Deciding records: FBI file 917273 (released 2000); Shinkle's 1936 Army report (NARA RG 407); Wood's full 1939 report and REA files (RG 221, Carmody Papers); the Ottawa Bray fonds letters 1928-57; the 1932 Washoe County case file; Moray's notebooks; Foster's 1990 letter and press log; gamma spectroscopy of Perreault's surviving tubes for Pb-210 and radium daughters.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it repeats Moray's own Appendix IV, compares it with cosmic rays and sunlight, shows resonance raises voltage but not power, and sizes the batteries for the 1926, 1928 and 1938 runs. By hand: 115 W for 157.9 h is about 18 kWh, about 500 kg of lead-acid.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter About 30 named people on about 25 dated occasions say they saw lamps lit with no visible source. That is strong evidence the effects occurred as seen. What it cannot settle, because no one metered the leads, is where the energy came from. arbiter.md, Claim 1
Investigator Moray describes his cascade valve as a gas gap that fires 'when a certain voltage is reached' and stops at reduced voltage, 'much like a bucket brigade', 'a blocked circuit of no return' (4th ed. pp.55-56): a one-way coupler like Wien's quenched gap. 'Rectifier' fits only its receiver use (p.139). sites.md, Lead 46 (follow-up Q16)
Contrarian The honest position: observed, partly checked, never measured, never replicated, never opened by a neutral party. The decisive test was never run by anyone, and the surviving record shows both sides declined to set it up. contrarian.md, Overall assessment
Physicist The 1938 capacitor test is the most informative single observation: 100 W through a lead carrying under 0.1 A needs over 1 kV. It matches Moray's 'high voltage, low current' description, and equally a hidden high-voltage source. It does not locate the energy source. physicist.md, Physics of the witness record
Investigator The Ottawa Arthur Bray fonds holds letters, witness accounts and drawings about Moray, 1928-1959, kept by Canadian government engineer Wilbert B. Smith outside the family's editing. Not digitised; copies must be ordered. sites.md, Lead 18
AI noteRadiant Energy's radioactivity pages, including its call to take up Rutherford's experiments again, are copied almost verbatim and uncredited from Gustave Le Bon's The Evolution of Matter (1905).
Rank 3Government
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 13:25
US government files on cold fusion, scalar waves, tachyons and space-time propulsion: an unreplicated heat-and-helium record sits beside claims refuted by one-line physics the reader can check.
Invention / theory background
Not one inventor but a folder of US government-held documents: a 1987 memo on Bearden-style scalar waves from a DIA science-and-technology office, held in CIA's STARGATE remote-viewing files; DIA report DIA-08-0911-003 (Beverly Barnhart, 2009) on low-energy nuclear reactions (cold fusion); Alan Holt's NASA TM-80961 (1979) on field-resonance propulsion; Feinberg's 1970 tachyon article, filed by CIA; and uncredited mind-control infographics.
Ranking explanation
Third. Below Morray-TH, whose witnessed box demonstrations are one inventor's sustained anomaly. Above TernionAG, whose untested resonance claim has no institutional record or heat-and-helium data behind it. Here the cold-fusion heat question is genuinely open (Never properly tested), with China Lake and ENEA data, a 2023 ARPA-E programme and a traced memo folder. Against it: most other claims fall to calculation, and DIA's sourcing leans on its own LENR contributors.
Key supporting elements
China Lake (Miles, Bush, Johnson 1996, a Navy report): up to 0.52 W and 30% excess heat; helium-4 matched heat in 30 of 33 runs at 1e11 to 1e12 atoms per second per watt, bracketing the 2.6e11 fusion value.
A third group, Italy's ENEA (De Ninno et al. 2002), reports heat and helium measured together over intervals under an hour; only its title page was read, and two authors had proposed a theory of the effect.
Fairness point kept by the arbiter: DIA says cells need several hundred hours of loading, so the fast 1989 replications were not a fair test. The 2004 DOE review split evenly; ARPA-E funded eight LENR projects in 2023.
The memo's own STARGATE folder holds a proponent's experiment: Glen Rein's 'Tesla watch' cut noradrenaline uptake in nerve cells by 19.5% (6 dishes per group). Field unmeasured, printed p-value not reproduced, no replication: Never properly tested.
Real physics sits beside each claim: microwave hearing (Frey effect) is Established and speech by pulse-timed microwaves (Sharp and Grove) Plausible, untested; laser megagauss fields are real; Feinberg ran his own tachyon search and reported the null.
Key contradictions
DIA has no data of its own: 16 of 54 endnotes trace to its five LENR-researcher contributors; per New Energy Times it grew from their 2009 SPAWAR workshop. Notes misstate Arata, Violante, the explosions and China Lake's first helium date.
Ordinary d+d fusion cannot carry the heat: 1 W needs 1.9e12 neutrons/s. CR-39 tracks are about 9 orders short; the authors' 2021 claim of 14.1 MeV neutrons needs tritium, which the abstract does not report.
Miles admits air helium leaks into Pyrex flasks at about the detection limit and 'we have not been able to solve the reproducibility problem'; helium held in untreated steel equals up to 31% of a one-hour 0.5 W signal.
The memo's scalar wave is pure gauge (E = B = 0, no energy). Bearden's two out-of-phase beams fail by linear superposition: cancelled beams carry nothing; partial ones are radio, damped to 5.5e-18 after 1 km of seawater.
Holt's flare premise fails on his own 3000 gauss figure (a 10,000 km cube holds the energy); his NASA abstracts to 2004 never define the space-time harmonic. A 10 Hz beam cannot focus on a head (30,000 km wavelength).
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 23 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Anomalous excess heat in some palladium/deuterium cells (DIA, China Lake)
Never properly testedno pre-registered, blind, multi-lab test of one fixed protocol
The heat is nuclear: helium-4 tracking heat, CR-39 particle tracks, transmutation
Never properly testedunknown mechanism; helium and tracks contested, transmutation papers unreadRefuted by calculationordinary d+d fusion at lattice temperature
DIA: LENR 'has begun to be accepted' as 'reproducible and legitimate'
Never properly testedreproducible (the excess-heat claim)Not testable as statedaccepted (a claim about people, not nature)
A scalar wave with E = 0 and B = 0 exists, carries energy, penetrates seawater and draws vacuum energy (1987 memo)
Establishedas mathematics only: pure gaugeRefuted by calculationcarrying energy or a signalNot testable as statednon-EM seawater carrier; vacuum or seawater energy
Proponents' material in the memo's folder: Bearden's two-beam scalar interferometry and Rein's 'Tesla watch' cell effect
Refuted by calculationtwo cancelling beams penetrating seawaterNot testable as stateddetection only at a 4-8 T magnet poleNever properly testedRein's nerve-cell effect
Laser megagauss fields tuned to a distant space-time point relocate a craft (Holt, NASA TM-80961)
Establishedlaser megagauss fields and reconnection, not at craft scaleRefuted by calculationpremise that reconnection cannot power flaresNot testable as statedEM-gravity resonance and relocation
Establishedimaginary-mass kinematics as consistent mathematicsTested, not supportedexistence of tachyonsHistorically superseded but instructivethe 1970 research programme
Microwave or ELF beams affect the body and mind at a distance (infographics)
Establishedmicrowave auditory (Frey) effectPlausible, untestedspeech by pulse-timed microwaves (Sharp-Grove, reported)Refuted by calculationfocused standoff ELF stimulation of a brain regionNot testable as statedthought insertion and radar ID by brain waves
Prepared the 2009 DIA report on low-energy nuclear reactions
DIA/DI, Defense Warning Office; prepared report DIA-08-0911-003 with five named LENR-researcher contributors. Education and career: not in the review files.
Dr. Jack Vorona
Addressee of the 1987 scalar-waves memo ('DT (Dr. Vorona)')
Named in a 1984 US Army INSCOM memo as Assistant Vice Director for Scientific and Technical Intelligence, DIA, heading DT and keeping overall DIA oversight of the psychoenergetic (remote-viewing) programme. Education: not in the review files.
Tom Bearden
Named in the memo as 'a chief proponent' of drawing energy from the vacuum; his 'Star Wars Now' is excerpted in the same folder · proponent of the scalar-wave claims the memo summarises
Lt Col (memo's title for him); known for his 'Fer-de-Lance' briefing on 'Soviet Scalar Weapons'; per the staff note, worked with Faretto, Dea and Bedini, funded by Josh Reynolds and Essentia Research. Reviewed in this series' Bearden project.
Glen Rein
Author of the 'Tesla watch' nerve-cell experiment filed in the memo's folder · supporter of the scalar principle reporting his own experiment
Proposed a 'Crystalline Transduction Theory' of scalar energy acting on cells; cites Puharich, Persinger and Bearden. Education and career: not in the review files.
Alan C. Holt
Author of NASA TM-80961, Field Resonance Propulsion Concept (1979)
NASA Johnson Space Center; 1979 University of Houston master's thesis on hydromagnetic waves and field-line merging; later in Space Station programme offices, proposing advanced EM and 'breakthrough' propulsion tests through 2004 (NTRS abstracts).
Gerald Feinberg
Author of the 1970 Scientific American tachyon article held in CIA files; ran one of the searches
Columbia University physicist who says he named the tachyon; with Ballay, Linsker and Yeh ran the bubble-chamber missing-mass search and reported its null result himself.
Pamela Mosier-Boss
DIA report contributor; first author of the CR-39 triple-track papers it cites · LENR researcher whose own work the DIA report cites as evidence
US Navy SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific, San Diego; Pd/D co-deposition work with Szpak; answered Kowalski's 2008 critique in print; with Forsley published the 2021 re-examination 'Nuclear Generated Tracks or Artifacts?'.
M. H. Miles
Lead author of the China Lake heat-and-helium report (1996), the best-sourced LENR evidence read in the review
Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake; ONR-funded programme from 1992, earlier work from 1989; first reported helium in March 1991. Education: not in the review files.
Evidence / artifacts (123 of 125 listed, 98%)
Government records (14)
1979-08Field Resonance Propulsion Concept (NASA TM-80961, JSC-16073, NTIS N80-19184) Alan C. Holt, NASA Johnson Space Center; private, unofficial research with a NASA disclaimer; presented June 1979 at the 15th AIAA/SAE/ASME Joint Propulsion Conference; 15 pp, no equations; read in full
1984-07-25US Army INSCOM memo "CENTER LANE Meeting with DIA - 20 July 1984" (CIA-RDP96-00788R001500100012-3) Names "Dr. Jack Vorona, Assistant Vice Director for Scientific and Technical Intelligence, DIA" and "DT (Dr. Vorona's office)"; signed by CENTER LANE Project Manager LTC Brian Buzby (OCR); STARGATE collection; found by the Investigator; places the memo's DT in DIA
1987-12-22Memo "Scalar Waves" (CIA-RDP96-00792R000500240001-6) From DT-ACO (name redacted) to DT (Dr. Vorona), a DIA science-and-technology intelligence office by inference from the office symbol; CONFIDENTIAL/NOFORN, redactions SG1B and SG1J, handwritten edits; released 2001-03-07 in CIA's STARGATE files; 3 pp, Gaussian-unit equations read from page images
1989US DOE Energy Research Advisory Board (ERAB) cold fusion panel report Found the 1989 results "did not present convincing evidence"; known here only from a Wikipedia summary· institutional reviewer
1996-09Anomalous Effects in Deuterated Systems (NAWCWPNS TP 8302) M. H. Miles, B. F. Bush, K. B. Johnson, Naval Air Warfare Center, China Lake; ONR-funded; internally reviewed; DIA note 40; read from a copy on lenr-canr.org, an archive run by supporters of the field· the experimenters' own account of their results
2002Experimental evidence of 4He production in a cold fusion experiment (ENEA RT/2002/41/FUS) De Ninno, Frattolillo, Rizzo (ENEA Frascati), Del Giudice, Preparata; heat and helium measured together over intervals under one hour on a Pd stripe cathode; 26 pp; title page and snippets only, pp.2-26 unread· Del Giudice and Preparata proposed a coherence theory of the effect
2004US DOE Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Paper review; reviewers split about evenly on excess heat; negative reviewers called helium "very close to background"; no federal programme recommended; known only from a Wikipedia summary
2009-11-13Technology Forecast: Worldwide Research on Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Increasing and Gaining Acceptance (DIA-08-0911-003) Beverly Barnhart, DIA Defense Warning Office, with contributions from McDaniel, Mosier-Boss, McKubre, Forsley and DeChiaro; coordinated with DIA/DRI, CPT, DWO, DOE/IN, SPAWAR Pacific and NSWC Dahlgren; UNCLASSIFIED; 8 pp with 54 endnotes; read in full· written with five LENR researchers whose own work fills 16 of its 54 notes
2017-03-22California State Threat Assessment Center 24-Hour Report UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO open-source news digest (terrorism, crime); in the zip "EM effects on human body"; no physics or EM content
2017-06-26California State Threat Assessment Center 72-Hour Report Same format; in the zip; no physics or EM content
2017-09-05California State Threat Assessment Center 96-Hour Report Same format; in the zip; keyword search for electromagnetic, microwave, directed energy and mind control found nothing
2022-09ARPA-E Exploratory Topic on LENR and February 2023 awards $10 million to eight projects "to determine whether" LENR could underpin energy technology; known from search snippets only; arbiter's fetches failed; results not seen
–"Defense Technical Intelligence Report" signed Jack Vorona, DIA/DT-1A (NSA-RDP96X00790R000100020003-3) Google snippet only; not opened
–Memo from H. E. Puthoff to Dr. Jack Vorona (CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230021-2) Title only, via archive.org; not read
Government records: the memo's STARGATE folder (RDP96-00792R0005002400xx, 8 items) (6)
c.1984Staff note "TO: COL BUZBY FROM: (Sanitized)" (item 0002-5) 3 pp; excerpts of Bearden's "Star Wars Now" (24 April 1984) plus the writer's "logical extensions"; two out-of-phase beams, seawater penetration, 4-8 T magnet-pole detection, "at least 78" Soviet tests; SG1B/SG1J redactions; released 2003-09-09; OCR read in full· staff summary of the proponent's claims
–Canada Weekly "The Secret of Entebbe" (item 0003-4) Press clipping; title only
–Weekend Magazine "Weapon?" (item 0004-3) Press clipping; title only
–Saturday Review "Front Runners" (item 0005-2) Press clipping; title only
–Toronto Star "Metro man Israeli hero" (item 0006-1) Press clipping; title only
–Toronto Star "Hero of Entebbe..." (item 0007-0) Press clipping; title only
Own works and inventions (the documents' authors and the proponents they summarise) (13)
1967Feinberg, "Possibility of faster-than-light particles", Physical Review 159, 1089 Cited from memory in the review; not in the article itself
1970-02Feinberg, "Particles That Go Faster Than Light", Scientific American 222(2) Copy in CIA reading-room files (CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030001-9, released 2000-08-10); why CIA filed it is not stated; 9 pp read in full
1979Holt, University of Houston master's thesis on hydromagnetic waves and magnetic field line merging Holt's own earlier work, cited in TM-80961
1980Holt, "Prospects for a breakthrough in field-dependent 'propulsion'", 16th Joint Propulsion Conference Known from a search-result summary; not read
1982-05Holt, "Starcraft", Science Digest Popular version; known from a search-result summary; not read
1984-04-24Bearden, "STAR WARS NOW! The Bohm-Aharonov effect, scalar interferometry, and Soviet weaponization" Apparently held in the CIA reading room; seen in search results, not opened; known through the staff note to Col Buzby· proponent's own paper
1986-05Holt, "Space station support of manned Mars missions" (NTRS 19870008374) Conventional mission support; no field propulsion; abstract only
1988Bearden, "AIDS: Biological Warfare" Cited by Rein; not read· proponent's own work
1989-07Holt, "Space Station Freedom - Accommodation for technology R&D", AIAA 89-2858 (NTRS 19890059759) Proposes testing "a hypothetical advanced electromagnetic propulsion system utilizing high-temperature superconductivity materials" on the station; abstract only
1990-04Holt, "Spaceport operations for deep space missions", NASA Lewis Vision-21 (NTRS 19910012853) Calls for "breakthrough level propulsion research" to "be initiated now"; abstract only; full text public, unread
1993-12Holt, "Space Station technology testbed: 2010 deep space transport" (NTRS 19940022865) In-space "tuning" of micro-engineered materials; abstract only; full text public, unread
1999Holt, Davis and Puthoff, "Space testing of electromagnetically sensitive materials for breakthrough propulsion physics", AIAA 1999-2143 Title only; not read
2004Holt, "Space Test and Operations Port for Exploration Missions", Space 2004 (NTRS 20050217407) Mentions "an advanced space propulsion testbed"; abstract only
Experiments and replications by others: cold fusion (LENR) (38)
1989Fleischmann and Pons papers, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry 261, 263, 287 The original excess-heat claims; DIA note 6; DIA says they did not show the expected radiation
1992Zhang et al., laboratory explosion report, ICCF-3, Nagoya Chinese 1991 explosion "not believed to be chemical"; DIA notes 25 and 27
1998Gozzi et al., heat-helium correlation report Named by a search snippet (Wikiversity mirror); not opened· proponent-side experimenters reporting their own results
1998Arata and Zhang, helium report Named by the same snippet; not opened· proponent-side experimenters reporting their own results
2002Iwamura et al., Japanese Journal of Applied Physics 41, 4642 Transmutation claim, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries; DIA note 18; peer-reviewed; not read
2003Swartz et al., JET Thermal excess heat and optimal operating points, ICCF-9 Beijing (2002) DIA note 39; conference paper
2003Bockris, history of transmutation at Texas A&M, ICCF-10 DIA note 1; conference paper on an earlier transmutation programme
2004Szpak et al., Thermochimica Acta 410, 101 SPAWAR excess energy; DIA note 33; peer-reviewed; not read· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2005Szpak et al., Naturwissenschaften 92, 394 SPAWAR transmutation; DIA notes 32 and 35; peer-reviewed; not read· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2006Roussetski, "Correct identification of energetic alpha and proton tracks in CR-39 detection", Condensed Matter Nuclear Science Outside group; found by Crossref; conclusions not read
2007Mosier-Boss, Szpak, Gordon, Forsley, "Use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments", Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. The paper Kowalski commented on; title only· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2008ICCF-14 proceedings and abstracts, Washington Whole conference cited for heat, particles and India (DIA notes 2, 11, 14)
2008Iwamura, ICCF-14 talks Mitsubishi funding and transmutation; DIA notes 8 and 16
2008Hioki (Toyota), ICCF-14 Corporate interest; DIA note 9
2008Celani, ICCF-14 DIA note 10
2008Yamaguchi, ICCF-14 Transmutation; DIA note 17
2008Violante (ENEA), "On the Correlation of PdD Alloy Material Properties with the Occurrence of Excess Power", ICCF-14 DIA note 20; cited for transmutation although the title is about excess power
2008Lesin et al. (Energetics Technologies, Israel), pulsed currents and "superwaves", ICCF-14 DIA notes 28 and 47· company presenting its own technology
2008Mosier-Boss et al., ACS Symposium Series chapter on CR-39 tracks DOI 10.1021/bk-2008-0998.ch014; found by Crossref in the deep read; not read· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2008Kowalski, Comment on "The use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments", Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. (ap08217) Published critique, Montclair State University; snippet mentions "highly-localized regions of damaged material" and etching; site blocked by a bot check; argument unread
2008Mosier-Boss, Szpak, Gordon, Forsley, "Reply to comment ...: a response to Kowalski", Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 44, 291-295 Published reply; bibliographic only. A related "Comments on Co-deposition Electrolysis Results: A Response to Kowalski" is on Cambridge Core· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2009Mosier-Boss et al., "Triple Tracks in CR-39 as the Result of Pd/D Co-deposition: Evidence of Energetic Neutrons", Naturwissenschaften 96, 135-142 DIA's only peer-reviewed particle source, cited three times (notes 12, 23, 34); Springer page behind a login, not obtained· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2009Mosier-Boss et al., "Characterization of tracks in CR-39 detectors obtained as a result of Pd/D co-deposition", Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. DOI 10.1051/epjap/2009067; same group follow-up; found by Crossref; not read· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2009"Arata" (probably Kitamura et al.), Physics Letters A 373, 3109 DIA note 19 credits it to Arata; authorship mismatch is [memory, medium]; not read
2009Biberian, Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science 2, 1-6 French laboratory explosion, photo on DIA p.4; DIA notes 26 and 54; in-field LENR journal
2009Mizuno, "Neutron Emission ...", University of Missouri seminar DIA note 24
2009Prelas, University of Missouri seminar Transmutation claims from several countries; DIA note 21
2009-03Mosier-Boss, American Chemical Society meeting briefing SPAWAR "nuclear particles", probably nuclear reactions; DIA notes 13 and 37· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2009-05McKubre (SRI), University of Missouri seminar Excess heat and helium production at SRI; DIA notes 31 and 38· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2009-08SPAWAR Pacific LENR workshop briefings, San Diego, 4-5 August 2009 DIA note 22 (transmutation); per New Energy Times the report was based on this workshop; presenters Tanzella, McKubre, Swartz, Mosier-Boss, McDaniel, Forsley, Hagelstein, McGinnis· presenters are LENR researchers
2009-08Mosier-Boss, SPAWAR briefings Anomalous heat, particles, transmutation; DIA note 30· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2010Mosier-Boss et al., "Comparison of Pd/D co-deposition and DT neutron generated triple tracks observed in CR-39 detectors", Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 51, 20901 DOI 10.1051/epjap/2010087; compares tracks with 14.1 MeV DT-generator neutron tracks; author list includes "Jack Y. Dea" (identity unknown); not read· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2017Savrasov et al., "CR-39 Detector Track Characterization in Experiments with Pd/D Co-deposition", JCMNS DOI 10.70923/001c.72415; outside group; conclusions not read
2019Berlinguette et al., "Revisiting the cold case of cold fusion", Nature 570, 45 Google-funded multi-lab Pd-D attempt, described by Wikipedia as a failed replication; design and loading time not read
2021Mosier-Boss and Forsley, "Interpreting CR-39 Detectors used in Pd/D Co-deposition: Nuclear Generated Tracks or Artifacts?", JCMNS 34(1):32-58 Abstract read: "notably 14.1 MeV neutrons", damage controls, an SRI replication examined by NASA and Russian Academy CR-39 experts; answers alternative explanations; 27-page body unread· the claimants' own review, in the field's society journal; both are DIA contributors
2024-03Gillespie, Lin, Jones, Duncan (Texas Tech), "Helium Detection in Technical Materials", arXiv:2405.02307 Untreated 316 steel retains 15-240 pmol of He-4 and can reabsorb it from air; pretreatment needed when helium is nuclear evidence; abstract read by the arbiter; no heat measured
–De Ninno et al., "4He detection in a cold fusion experiment" Method for detecting small amounts of helium in gas mixtures; lenr-canr.org; snippet only
–"Characterization of Neutrons Emitted during Pd/D Co-deposition", JCMNS Found by Google; PDF not opened· SPAWAR co-deposition programme, the DIA contributors' own line of work
Experiments and replications by others: scalar-wave biology, tachyons and microwave hearing (11)
1961Frey, microwave auditory effect (Journal of Applied Physiology 17, 689, 1962) First report of hearing pulsed microwaves; thermoelastic mechanism; known here from Wikipedia
c.1968Alvager and Kreisler, Princeton charged-tachyon Cerenkov search Cesium gamma source, lead shield, vacuum field region, photomultiplier; pair rate below 1/10,000 of electron-positron pairs; described in Feinberg 1970 pp.7-8
c.1969Ballay, Linsker, Yeh and Feinberg, Columbia missing-mass search About 6,000 K- captures on Brookhaven bubble-chamber photographs; 101 candidates, 23 after the capture-in-flight cut, 0 after remeasurement; limit under 1/400 of pion production; Feinberg 1970 p.8
c.1969Columbia antiproton-proton annihilation tachyon search Same group; no tachyons, no counts given; Feinberg 1970 p.9
1974Sharp, Grove and Gandhi, "Generation of acoustic signals by pulsed microwave energy", IEEE Trans. MTT 22(5):583-584 Walter Reed; about the mechanism of microwave hearing, not speech; bibliographic only
c.1975A. W. Guy (University of Washington), Morse-code microwave-hearing demonstration Reported in Justesen 1975, per Broughton
c.1988Rein, "Interactions with scalar energy - cellular mechanisms of action" (CIA-RDP96-00792R000500240008-9) Item 0008 of the memo's folder; 6 pp; "Tesla watch" cut noradrenaline uptake in PC12 nerve cells 19.5% at 30 min (n = 6 per group, printed p < 0.01, not reproduced); field not measured; Crystalline Transduction Theory; OCR read· a supporter of the scalar principle reporting his own experiment
2011OPERA superluminal neutrino result Traced to an instrument fault; Wikipedia, as cited by the reviewers
–Byrd, EEG recordings with the Tesla watch Cited by Rein; not read
–Persinger, mast-cell degranulation under two cancelling 0.5 Hz, 10 uT fields Cited by Rein, who says the scalar field was not measured; not read
–Puharich / Max Planck, E. coli gene activation Cited by Rein; not read
Theory and reference papers cited (14)
1962Bilaniuk, Deshpande and Sudarshan, "Meta" relativity, American Journal of Physics 30, 718 Reinterpretation of negative-energy tachyon states (Rochester); described in Feinberg p.5
1963Grief and Tolhurst, wind-tunnel tests of a circular plan-form aircraft with peripheral jet Holt's source for the winged-disc craft
1976Nishihara and Ohsawa, magnetic field generation from resonance absorption (Physics of Fluids) Holt reference; real laser-plasma physics per the reviewers
1977Kruer and Estabrook, laser light and self-generated magnetic fields (Physics of Fluids) Holt reference
1978Max et al., enhanced magnetic field generation (Physics of Fluids) Holt reference
1979Rachman and Dutheil, special relativity in a "superliminal world" Holt says the mathematical relationships are there; none shown
1982PACE newsletter Cited by Rein; not read
2003Tsvetkov, ICCF-10 Waste transmutation and weapons-of-mass-destruction uses; DIA note 48
2006Sinha and Meulenberg, Current Science 91, 907 LENR stimuli theory; DIA note 46; peer-reviewed
2008Srivastava, Panella and Widom, arXiv:0811.3293 LENR theory preprint; DIA note 43
2009Hagelstein and Chaudhary, LENR theory briefing DIA note 41
2009-08Hagelstein, SPAWAR briefing DIA note 44
2009-08McDaniel, SPAWAR briefing DIA note 45· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
–Olenik and Arepjev, Kiev Polytechnic LENR theory; DIA note 42 gives no venue or date
Witness accounts and correspondence (6)
1973-09-28Sharp and Grove (Walter Reed), personal communication to D. R. Justesen The source Justesen 1975 gives for speech conveyed by pulse-timed microwaves ("recognizable words were reportedly perceived"), per Broughton; citation page not seen
2009-05Forsley, Louvain colloquium talk Briefings to institutes abroad; DIA note 51· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2009-08-28DeChiaro, briefing for DDR&E Corporate and state funding; DIA note 7· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2009-10Personal correspondence, Dr. Michael McKubre, SRI International DIA note 50· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2009-10Personal correspondence, Mr. Lawrence Forsley, JWK International DIA note 52· contributor to the DIA report (LENR researcher); the report cites this as evidence
2009-11-23DIA Public Affairs email: "This is a DIA document." Reply to a Wikipedia editor asking whether DIA-08-0911-003 was real; as posted by New Energy Times, not independently verified
Later accounts and media (12)
1975-03Justesen, "Microwaves and Behavior", American Psychologist 30(3):391-401 VA Hospital, Kansas City; the published account of the Sharp-Grove speech result; scan located (zoryglaser.com), p.1 read only
1991Mallove, Fire from Ice Proponent's history of cold fusion; primer further reading
1992Huizenga, Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century Sceptical account by the 1989 DOE panel co-chair; primer further reading
2007Storms, The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Proponent's review of the experimental literature; primer further reading
2008-01-17Jayaraman, Nature India news item on India's LENR restart DIA note 29, via lenr-canr.org
2009New Energy Times, HTML copy of the DIA report with its origin and coordination line Steven Krivit's site; says the report was based on the 4-5 August 2009 SPAWAR workshop; lists presenters; read· a party with an interest in the field's coverage
2009-04CBS 60 Minutes cold fusion segment DIA note 49
2017Infographic "Bio-Electromagnetic field" (2RNM.jpg) Credited to Supratik Saha; brain-wave bands and radar identification of a person; cites no sources
2017Diagram "Remote Mind Control / Remote Brain Mapping" (9RNM.jpg) Uncredited; "ELF brain stimulation" frequency table (motor cortex 10 Hz, auditory 15 Hz ...); cites no sources; read from the image
2017Chart "Psycho-Electronic Weapon Effects" (EM effects on human body.gif) Watermark raven1.net; effects list from microwave hearing to forced speech, Gulf War shocks and break-ins; the Sharp 1974 note; cites no sources
–AFCEA SIGNAL article on the DIA report Seen in search results for "DIA-08-0911-003"; not opened
–Martin Broughton Research & Analysis, "Encoded communication: Morse code, speech" Secondary analysis of the Justesen and Sharp-Grove-Gandhi records; read
Records named but not yet examined (9)
1986IEEE-sponsored Tesla conference proceedings named in the memo Not named in the memo; probably the 1986 International Tesla Symposium [memory, medium]
2021Coordinated LENR study planned after the 2019 Nature paper Known from a secondary source only
–Bearden, "Fer-de-Lance" briefing on "Soviet Scalar Weapons" Named in the memo p.2; not read in this review· proponent's own briefing
–Redacted SG1B/SG1J portions of items 0001-0002, unreleased CENTER LANE/DT files and any DT response on scalar waves Would decide between "collecting proponents' material" (best fit to the released folder) and "work done and withheld"
–Records of any test flown or run on Holt's proposals None found in a one-site NTRS search
–SRI replication of the CR-39 work and the NASA and Russian Academy examiners' own reports Named in the 2021 JCMNS abstract; tritium measurement unknown; not seen
–Walter Reed report of the Sharp-Grove speech trial with power, pulse width and repetition rate Not found
–ARPA-E LENR project results Eight projects funded 2023; no results seen
–Independent blind replication of the heat-to-helium ratio Searched; none found
Left out: two background works cited by DIA for energy per mass (a nuclear engineering textbook and a Los Alamos note), four DIA explanatory notes with no source, other copies of the DIA report, Wikipedia pages used as secondary sources, and macOS junk in the zip. Full catalogue: Government sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A pre-registered, blinded, multi-lab run of one fixed Pd/D loading protocol for 500+ hours, with about 0.1% calorimetry, helium-4 measured against heat (2.6e11 atoms per joule) in pretreated, helium-blanked metal hardware, a light-water null cell, and an independent neutron counter beside any CR-39.
Deciding records: ENEA RT/2002/41/FUS pages 2-26; the 2021 JCMNS body and the NASA and Russian CR-39 examiners' reports; Kowalski's 2008 comment; Naturwissenschaften 2009; ARPA-E project results; the redacted and unreleased CENTER LANE/DT files; Bearden's full STAR WARS NOW!; Holt's NTRS full texts; the Justesen page citing Sharp and Grove.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it shows the memo's scalar wave gives E = B = 0 for any S, then computes seawater skin depth, Bearden's cancelled beams, 2.6e11 helium atoms per joule, the steel helium background, Rein's t-test and Holt's flare cube. Primer question 3 does the cold-fusion ash count by hand.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter An effect that explains away failures by unspecified incubation is close to unfalsifiable until the protocol is fixed in advance. Neither side has supplied a pre-registered protocol run blind by independent labs; that is why 'never properly tested' fits the heat claim better than 'tested, not supported'. arbiter.md, Claim 2, Arbitration point 2
Arbiter The proponents offer the CR-39 tracks as evidence that something nuclear happens, not as the heat channel, so the rate argument bears on the heat budget, not on whether the tracks are nuclear. The 7.9 MeV threshold rules out primary d+d neutrons, not 14.1 MeV d+t ones. arbiter.md, Investigator findings, F2.2
Arbiter The memo's released folder holds a proponent's summary, a proponent's experiment and five unrelated clippings, with no test, tasking or assessment. 'Collecting proponents' material' now fits best; 'work done and withheld' cannot be excluded while the redacted parts are unseen. arbiter.md, Investigator findings, F1.3
Contrarian Nothing in the new record shows suppression of any claim in the folder. Holt kept proposing tests inside NASA for 25 years; the DIA report was fed by a proponents' workshop; a DOE agency is now funding a neutral look at LENR. Only LENR has a rejection history. contrarian.md, Investigator findings, Cross-cutting update
Primer The authority trap, both ways: a CIA or DIA file stamp does not make a claim true, and dismissal by a panel does not make it false. Checking a report's footnotes is the first test of an official-looking claim. primer.md, section 7, Wrong, and why the mistake is instructive
AI noteThe scalar-weapons note in the memo's folder is addressed to 'Col Buzby', very probably the Army's CENTER LANE remote-viewing project manager, and is filed beside five press clippings, two titled on Entebbe.
Rank 4TernionAG
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 10:59
A 1930s Swiss-funded inventor patented sharp 'natural frequencies' that change food and chemicals beyond heating; never properly tested, cited in microwave-oven patents, and its research reports vanished.
Invention / theory background
Ernst E. W. Kassner, a German engineer, patented in 1931-36 the idea that dipolar substances such as water, juice and serum have sharp 'natural frequencies' at which a concentrated field, chiefly a standing field with the substance as a resonator's dielectric, changes them beyond heating: preserving food, altering colloids, curing rubber. Ternion AG of Glarus (1932, Max Stoffel) carried CHF 1.12 million of loan-financed research and voted to liquidate in December 1937. Kassner died in Munich by 1962.
Ranking explanation
Criteria A, B and C. Its central claim, a sharp resonance dispersion, remains Never properly tested, the research reports go dark after five funded years, and the deciding permittivity sweep is a cheap bench measurement. It sits below Morray-TH and Government, whose open questions rest on witnessed demonstrations or laboratory data, while Ternion's rest on the patentee's own text. It sits above Tesla, more of whose claims are already settled as Established or Refuted by calculation.
Key supporting elements
Kassner's 1936 disc-resonator theory is correct: his own worked example reproduces within about 1 percent (100.8 ohms against his printed 102), and his water band near 1.5 cm is real Debye relaxation.
The patents were noticed: abstracted in Chemical Abstracts (1935), cited in chemistry references and The Botanical Review (1944), and listed as references in Spencer's 1945 Raytheon microwave-cooking patent and Raytheon's 1954 fruit-juice patent.
Goodrich and Firestone announced in January 1945 that they had bought basic electronic-vulcanisation patents based on discoveries of Dufour, Le Duc and Kassner; a 1950 Goodrich paper names US 2,089,966 and 2,109,843 in the portfolio.
Others later claimed similar effects: Arnold (refused as 'too broad and indefinite', not on the physics) and Heller (Nature 1959, 'No temperature increase'); and high-frequency fields measurably cut electrolysis overpotential at a heated catalyst (Niether 2018).
The deciding test is cheap and was never recorded as done. The contrarian calls this the signature of 'never properly tested', not 'tested and failed'; Kassner reported heating beside his claimed effects rather than hiding it.
Key contradictions
A Debye band is broad (Q about 0.3; water at its own band has Q about 1); the claimed 2 percent band is about 170 times narrower, and Kassner's 1934 French patents describe his natural frequencies as Debye relaxation frequencies.
His 1932 tuning figures (10 cm disc at 30 cm, 6.2 cm at 18.6 cm, 39 cm at 116 cm) all follow wavelength = 3 x diameter, which matches no root of his own correct 1936 Bessel theory.
Every food, colloid and seed result is a single patentee run with no sample count or heat-matched control; foods warmed 2.5 to 4.5 K, and Kassner himself wrote that absorption is 'especially great in the case of resonance'.
Analogue sharp-line claims in cells at 26-90 GHz were looked for and not found (Gandhi 1980 swept spectra; Gos 1997 controlled repeat); these test the class of claim, not Kassner's own bands.
The buyers described the 1945 process as uniform heating (an interested party's account), and the board's own 1937 minutes give a financial end: 'complete lack of further funds', with patents lapsed for unpaid fees.
User follow-ups (2)
Q03AnsweredCould Ternion's resonant method lower the energy needed to split water? Not the 237 kJ/mol floor; at most the overpotential loss, which is untested for Kassner's standing field.
Could resonant anomalous dispersion lower the binding energy of water? For example, could the Ternion technique (irradiating a substance at its natural frequency, in its anomalous-dispersion band) weaken the bonds in water, either the hydrogen bonds between molecules or the O-H bonds within them, enough to make splitting water by electrolysis more economical? What did Kassner and Ternion write on this, and what later work exists on RF- or microwave-assisted electrolysis and resonant weakening of water's bonds?
Asked 2026-10-06 · answered 2026-10-06 · 5 min web search
A03Kassner's principle covers water, but a field cannot lower the 237 kJ/mol floor; what it could reduce is the overpotential loss, and that is untested for his standing field.
Known
Water is a dipolar substance, so Kassner's principle covers it directly. GB 417,501 names water's natural frequency, an anomalous-dispersion band near 1.5 cm (1.28 cm for pure water; pp.2, 4, 10), and claims a resonant field can drive reactions that otherwise need heat or catalysts (p.4).
Neither Kassner nor Ternion applied it to electrolysis; that step is an extension of his principle put to the review.
Splitting water needs at least 237 kJ/mol of work (1.23 V) by any path; field energy put into the bonds counts toward it.
Practical cells run near 1.8-2.0 V; the excess (overpotential and resistance, a rate loss) is about a third of the input. That is what a Ternion-type effect would have to reduce.
Fields do cut that loss at the electrode: Niether et al. (Nature Energy 2018) cut overpotentials by 100-200 mV by RF heating of catalyst nanoparticles; infra-red O-H excitation weakens the bond on nickel (Hundt, Science 2014).
Roy, Rao and Kanzius (2008) report RF releasing burnable gas from salt water, not independently replicated.
Open
Whether water in Kassner's standing field at its own band (between resonator plates, energy entering by displacement current) lowers overpotential.
Whether that saving exceeds the field power.
Note
Context recorded with the question (moved here 2026-10-10): Bears on claim 11: the arbiter rates RF-assisted electrolysis as a rate effect Plausible, untested, with the RF power counted as input.
Key equations
Quantity
Value
Meaning
Minimum work to split water
237 kJ/mol = 1.23 V
floor by any path; depends only on start and end states
Practical cell voltage
1.8-2.0 V
the excess over 1.23 V is the rate loss a field could reduce
Q05AnsweredCan a resonant tank circuit lower the work of splitting water, with the environment paying the difference? The heat-pump gain is only heat; a real asymmetry needs a second reservoir, and the overpotential question is untested.
Can the Ternion method create an energy asymmetry in splitting water? Hypothesis: 237 kJ/mol is the work needed to split water under ordinary conditions, but water exposed to the Ternion method and pumped at its resonant frequency, by a lightly loaded tank circuit costing very little energy, might have that figure temporarily lowered. The gases are then burned under normal atmospheric conditions, returning more energy than the operator put in. Nothing is created from nothing: the difference is paid by the environment, somewhat like air conditioning (though not exactly). Set out what is known and what is not: the supporting details (Kassner's dipolar-substance principle and water's band; the established part, a heat-pump-like gain of up to 1.2 from 48.7 kJ/mol of ambient heat at 1.23 V; any published field effects on water's free energy or on electrolysis energy); the issues (237 kJ/mol as the second-law minimum with one surrounding temperature; what a second reservoir, such as a temperature difference or ambient electromagnetic energy, would have to be; water's high loss at its own Debye band against a lightly loaded tank; whether a lowered cost per split molecule must appear as load on the tank); and what remains untested. Keep experimental design brief: name the deciding measurement, but do not design the apparatus.
Asked 2026-10-07 · answered 2026-10-07 · 2 min web search
A05The heat-pump gain is real but it is heat; a true energy asymmetry needs a second reservoir out of equilibrium with the room. Whether the standing field lowers overpotential by more than its own power is untested.
Known
Water is dipolar, so Kassner's principle covers it; his standing field makes the water the dielectric of a plate or tube resonator, energy entering by displacement current (US 2,089,966 p.3).
A cell at 1.23 V takes 237.1 kJ/mol of work plus 48.7 kJ/mol of room heat, and burning returns 285.8 kJ/mol of heat, up to 1.2 times the work, like air conditioning.
Turning that heat back into work with one surrounding temperature returns at most 237.1 kJ/mol.
237.1 kJ/mol is the minimum total work by any path, so a field that loosens water pays that share itself.
At water's own band (about 19-23 GHz) its loss tangent is near 1, so a water-filled resonator has Q about 1; Kassner himself wrote that absorption is greatest at resonance.
Published field effects (second Wien effect, RF-heated catalysts) change rates and overpotential, not the 237.1 floor.
Inferred
A real gain needs a second reservoir: a temperature difference (thermally regenerative cycles, Carnot-bounded) or radiation such as sunlight; ambient radio is microwatts per cm2.
Any lowered electrical cost per molecule must appear as at least equal real power drawn from the tank.
Open
Whether the standing field lowers overpotential by more than its own power.
Deciding measurement: total work in (DC plus the tank's real power) per mole of hydrogen at constant temperature, against 237.1 kJ/mol.
Notes
Context recorded with the question (moved here 2026-10-10): Ternion's method applies energy by displacement current: the substance is the dielectric between the plates (or concentric tubes) of a resonator set into its natural oscillation, Kassner's "standing field" (US 2,089,966; disc resonator theory in GB 483,062). Frame the tank-circuit hypothesis in those terms.
Context, continued: Kassner also used radiated RF, a "radiating field" focused by reflectors and applied with a wand-type applicator; treat it as the second method. The hypothesis put to the review, extending A03; bears on claims 1 and 11. Claim 11 has the closed cycle as Refuted by calculation and the COP-1.2 heat gain as Established.
Key equations
Quantity
Value (kJ/mol)
Meaning
Electrical work at 1.23 V
237.1
minimum work by any path
Room heat drawn in
48.7
the heat-pump part
Heat returned on burning
285.8
up to 1.2 times the work, but as heat
Key point: Can the Ternion method create an energy asymmetry?
Supports
The heat-pump gain is established: 285.8 kJ/mol of heat back for 237.1 kJ/mol of work.
A second reservoir (temperature difference or radiation) can supply real work.
Contradicts
With one surrounding temperature the heat returns at most 237.1 kJ/mol of work.
Field energy put into the water counts toward the 237.1 floor.
Water absorbs strongly at its own band, so the resonator cannot be lightly loaded.
Kassner, US 2,089,966 (Process for altering the energy content of dipolar substances), p.3: standing and radiating fields; absorption greatest at resonance (project _text)
Dipolar substances have sharp natural frequencies (electrolytes about 2 percent wide, serum near 90 cm, water near 1.5 cm)
Establishedwater's broad Debye band near 1.5 cmNever properly testedKassner's sharp resonance bands in electrolytes, serum, colloidsTested, not supportedanalogue sharp-line claims in cells at 26-90 GHz (class evidence only)
A resonant field permanently alters 'energy content'; a frozen-in oriented substance re-radiates on thawing
Establishedconventional electret storage, about a microjoule per cm^2Not testable as stated'energy content' gain and same-wavelength re-radiationNever properly testeda controlled, resonance-specific version
Practical effects: food preservation, colloid changes, catalyst-free curing, seed growth, effects on men and animals
Establishedthermal RF curing, drying, vulcanisationNever properly testedresonance-specific preservation, colloid, seed and chemistry effectsNot testable as statedeffects 'in men and animals'
A plate pair is a tunable resonator following Bessel-zero theory
Establishedthe 1934-36 Bessel mode theoryInternally inconsistentthe 1932 tuning rule for the stated geometryNever properly testedthat the sample, not the apparatus, resonates
Valves, coaxial resonators, wavemeter and polarimeter with tuning tables and 'about 40 percent' efficiency
Commercial significance: the 1945 Goodrich/Firestone purchase and Voss's 'foresaw the microwave oven'
Establishedthe purchase, as a press and trade recordNot testable as statedthat the purchase validates the resonance mechanismHistorically superseded but instructiveVoss's 'foresaw the microwave oven'
Never properly testedsuppression, as history: deciding records unreadRefuted by calculationsingle-photon or weak-field change of bond energy
Essay's claim: net energy from a closed electrolysis cycle, or from electrolysis assisted by a resonant standing field or radiated RF
Refuted by calculationclosed cycle, or total work below dG = 237.1 kJ/molEstablishedfield-assisted overpotential cut of 100-200 mV at a heated catalyst (abstracts only)Plausible, untestednet energy gain with the field power countedNever properly testedKassner's standing field or radiating field applied to electrolysis
Inventor: author of the Ternion patents and of later Vibranic, Universal Inventions and General Infra work
German national (no education recorded in the review files). Addresses: Berlin 1931, Arbon 1932, London 1934-36, Bern 1938, Zürich 1943 (engineer, board member of General Infra Co AG, Chur), Montana-Vermala by 1951. Patents from about 1921 (identity of the earliest unproven) to 1960; named as deceased ('†, München') on the 1962 print of DE 1,128,930.
Max Stoffel
Founder, sole director and liquidator of Ternion AG; founder of Dipol A.-G.; chairman of Vibranic Ltd (1945) · Ternion's principal shareholder (60 of 100 shares at founding) and later buyer of patent rights through Vibranic
Entered in the register as a merchant (Kaufmann) of Arbon, resident in St. Gallen. A Swiss federal judge of the same name, born in Arbon in 1911, is documented; whether he is the same man is unresolved and must not be assumed.
Friedrich Wilhelm Otto (F. W. O.) Bauch
Physicist said by his 1996 obituary to have worked on a Ternion UHF project while seconded to the GEC Research Laboratories in 1934-35
Born about 1903-04 in Berlin; physics in Berlin; 1928 steel-tape recorder patents; Heinrich Hertz Institute from 1930; GEC Wembley about 1934-35; later Philips in Berlin, technical director of RIAS (1946), back in Britain from 1947, UK agent for Studer through F.W.O. Bauch Ltd; died in Brighton 1996.
H. H. Giodvad Grell
New York agent who licensed the Dufour/Leduc heating patents outside rubber and in Nov 1945 sold 'patent rights' for Fr. 200,000 to Stoffel's Vibranic Ltd · Option holder and licensing agent in the 1945 patent chain; co-inventor of a heating patent assigned to Firestone and Goodrich
US citizen, New York; held a 1941 option on the Dufour/Leduc patents; co-inventor with Harry W. Richards of US 2,415,025; held an international high-frequency heating portfolio in 1943-49; vice-president of Vibranic; described in the 1943 Congressional Record as a promoter of the 'giro' barter-bank system.
Geoffrey Voss
Editor who in 1987 wrote that Kassner 'foresaw both the microwave oven and the industrial electromagnetic energy applicators' and asked 'Who was Ernst Kassner?'
Editor of the Journal of Microwave Power and Electromagnetic Energy in 1987. Nothing more is in the review files.
Orlan M. Arnold
Later inventor who claimed a sub-thermal effect at the centre of the anomalous-dispersion range; Kassner's US 2,089,966 was cited against him
Orlan McGrew Arnold (1904-1989), dielectric physical chemist: papers on electrolyte and resin dielectric dispersion (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1936; J. Electrochem. Soc. 1938); later Chrysler research. US 2,522,082 (filed 1945). Lost In re Arnold (1950) and Arnold v. Watson (1955, affirmed 1956) on breadth, not physics.
John H. Heller
Later claimant of frequency-specific, non-thermal biological effects whose 1959 patent cites US 2,089,966
New England Institute for Medical Research; with Teixeira-Pinto, Nature 183:905 (1959) on chromosome aberrations in garlic root tips at 27 MHz; US 3,095,359; known for pearl-chain work. Nothing more is in the review files.
R. F. Miller and W. L. Wittig
Authors of the 1950 B. F. Goodrich Research Center paper that names the Kassner patents in the portfolio and calls them marginal ('touch on this problem somewhat') · Staff of the buyer of the 1945 package and licensor of the rubber field; a heating-only reading suits that position
Not in the review files beyond their authorship of 'Radio-Frequency Heat in the Rubber Industry', Rubber World, Oct 1950.
Evidence / artifacts (211 of 210 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (27)
1921Adding-machine and gear patents of an 'Ernst Kassner' (Königsberg, then Berlin) CH 100,984 (German priority 20 Apr 1921; 'Ernst Kassner, Ingenieur', Königsberg), FR 551,455, FR 559,248, AT 97,814, US 1,609,119, US 1,676,559-560, 1,679,905, 1,692,411, US 1,773,145 (1921-28). Identity with E. E. W. Kassner unknown.
c.1925Other Kassner-name patents not yet identified GB 357,534 / FR 697,547 (glow-discharge chemistry), FR 693,641 (gas syntheses), GB 262,829 / FR 626,217, GB 302,585, plug connectors, a sound scarecrow (FR 822,220, DE 686,126); listed by DEPATISnet, inventors not opened.
1929Electro-optical patents of 'Ernst Kassner', Elektro-Physikalische Gesellschaft m.b.H. FR 672,132, GR 2381 / AU 21499/29, GB 340,964 / FR 678,190, ES 113,192, ES 111,807 (light-image microphone; making oscillations visible). Identity likely, not proven.
1932GB 383,508: production of ultra-short-wave radiation for medical and other purposes Kassner, Berlin, sole applicant; convention 9 Mar 1931; Tesla spark-gap applicator radiating 'from 0.5 mm wavelength upwards'; no dose, spectrum or disease named.
1933-09-26FR 732,805: Diffuseur à oscillateurs pour usages électro-médicaux et autres Kassner's own name, filed Paris 8 Mar 1932; the French member of the applicator family.
1933-12GB 435,643: relay converting light variations into electric oscillations J. Y. Johnson for Ternion AG, application 15 Dec 1933, divided out of GB 417,501; a plate-resonator light detector. Abstract only.
1934CH 169,177 and other members of the 1931 applicator family Swiss patent (SHAB 1934; agent Fritz Isler, Zürich; Kassner at Düsseldorferstrasse 35a, Berlin); DK 47,803, AT 132,868, CA 336,875, ES 125,879. NL and BE members on the Google Patents page of FR 732,805.
1934FR 786,294: ultra-short-wave emitter to act on dipolar substances Kassner resident in England; p.1 ties the natural frequencies to Debye relaxation. Pages 1-2, 15, 17-20 read on DEPATISnet.
1934French and Austrian valve patents of the 1933 family FR 786,295, 786,296, 786,297 (ball and multi-grid oscillator tubes); AT 148,300, AT 148,784.
1934-03-20US 1,951,731: Oscillator-radiator Filed 8 Mar 1932, 'assignor to Ternion A.-G., Glarus': the only Ternion assignment on a US patent.
1934-09-28GB 417,501: Process for altering the energy content of dipolar substances J. Y. Johnson for Ternion AG; application 32,555/32; 24 claims. The anchor patent: natural frequencies, electrets, milk, veal, juice, gold sol, agar, seed examples with powers and temperatures; hydrogen fine-structure wavelengths.
1934-09-29GB 417,564: plate resonator (devices for fields at quasi-optical frequencies) Divided out of GB 417,501; 1932 provisional (10 cm disc at about 30 cm) and a correct Bessel-mode complete specification (R = 10 cm at 26.2 cm).
c.1935ES 135,727: Spanish member of the energy-content patent 'Un procedimiento para alterar el contenido de energía de una sustancia dipolar'; found on DEPATISnet, not read.
1935DE 661,695: German member of the 1935 lamp family Assignee Universal Inventions Ltd, London (priority 9 Jul 1935).
1935-10-10FR 788,428: dielectric polarisation by electric molecular resonance of 'dipole' substances Filed Paris 27 Sep 1934; French member of the energy-content patent, same examples; first natural frequency 'given by the relaxation time'. Pages 1 and 6 of about 10 read.
1936GB 448,418: electric discharge devices and circuits for short waves Convention 31 Aug 1933; ellipsoidal-reflector applicator with the liquid circulated through a glass sphere. Abstract only; full scan on DEPATISnet.
1936-06-02GB 448,417: apparatus for generating and applying ultra-short waves Convention 31 Aug 1933; coaxial resonators, tunable dipole, differential Lecher wavemeter; Kassner of London.
1936-06-02GB 448,494: apparatus for investigating the properties of dipole substances Polarimeter in a coaxial resonator: the method for finding a substance's 'natural frequency' by induced double refraction.
1936-07-02GB 483,062: plate circuit element systems and plate oscillators Void application (not accepted). Bessel-mode theory, energy and load-resistance formulas, verified correct; 40 cm disc at 32.7 cm.
1937GB 448,419: apparatus for generating short electromagnetic waves Double-ended multiple-system valves; six tuning tables 0.33-4.9 m; 'about 40 percent' efficiency for one push-pull circuit, unmeasured.
1937-08-17US 2,089,966: Process for altering the energy content of dipolar substances Kassner, Arbon; filed 5 Dec 1932, German priority 9 Dec 1931; 16 claims; the US twin of GB 417,501, qualitative; the patent Voss and the courts cited. p.3 defines his two methods, the 'standing field' (sample as a resonator's dielectric) and the 'radiating field', and says absorption is 'especially great in the case of resonance'.
1937-10-05US 2,094,602: Apparatus for the generation of short electromagnetic waves Twin of GB 448,418; ellipsoid applicator; cited in Spencer's microwave-cooking patent.
1937-10-19US 2,096,459: Ultra short wave oscillation generator Twin of GB 448,419; repeats 'about 40 percent' with no method.
1938-01-04US 2,104,697: Electric lamp Assigned to Universal Inventions Ltd, London; 0.3-1 mm discharge path said to excite ultra-short oscillations; no spectrum.
1938-03-01US 2,109,843: Apparatus for generating and applying ultrashort electromagnetic waves US member of the GB 448,417/448,494/448,419 family; 12 claims; named by Goodrich in 1950; cited by 32 later UHF-tube patents.
1951-06-26US 2,558,568: Device for producing infra-red rays Kassner of Montana-Vermala, assignor to Vibranic Ltd; filament-and-rod lamp said to emit infra-red plus 0.3 mm to 50 cm waves.
1962-05-03DE 1,128,930: UHF resonance rotating fields Filed 14 Apr 1960; inventor 'Ernst E. W. Kassner †, München'; applicant Wilma Hencke, Munich; plate resonators for acceleration, plasma, fusion research.
Patents and patent office (23)
1928US Index of Patents entries for Kassner, 1928-1951 Annual indexes (Internet Archive) listing his US grants, the Ternion assignment (1934) and Vibranic (1951).
1934US Patent Office Official Gazette, 1934: Ternion entries HathiTrust full-text hit for 'Ternion A.-G.'; search-only.
1934-10-11Liebesny and Wertheim, GB 417,863: influencing micro-organisms and ferments Austrian priority 1932; frequencies 1.8 mm to 120 m chosen per organism; cited with Ternion in The Botanical Review 1944.
c.1938Dufour and Leduc high-frequency vulcanisation patents US 2,129,203, 2,163,993, 2,188,625, 2,261,847, 2,280,771, 2,303,341; the 'basic' patents of the 1945 purchase.
194132 UHF-tube and resonator patents citing US 2,109,843 RCA, Bell Labs, Western Electric, GE, Westinghouse, Sperry, Stanford (1941-56).
1943C. G. Smith (Raytheon), US 2,463,569: apparatus for treating gaseous media Cites US 2,089,966, GB 417,501 and GB 417,564.
1943Grell's international high-frequency heating portfolio GB 624,409, GB 599,193, FR 911,170/1, FR 1,004,277, CA 437,066, CA 451,395, Spanish and Australian patents, Argentine filing 1947.
1945-05-04Grell, CH 254,655 Shares its priority date with Vibranic's CH 250,508.
1945-05-04Vibranic Ltd, CH 250,508: ultra-short-wave treatment Quasi-optical waves radiated into a reflecting chamber for heating, ageing and vulcanising.
1945-11-22Grell, CH 264,736: heat treatment of materials in a high-frequency capacitor field Filed one week after Vibranic was founded; agent Fritz Isler, Kassner's agent in 1932 (SHAB 1949).
1946Vibranic Ltd, FR 926,351 Filed 6 May 1946; same priority (22 Apr 1943) as Grell and Richards US 2,415,025.
1946Westinghouse US 2,650,291 and RCA, Philco, Girdler, Deering Milliken heating patents Dielectric and microwave heating patents (1944-48) citing GB 417,564.
1947-01-28Grell and Richards, US 2,415,025: treating matter in a high-frequency electric field Application 22 Apr 1943; text about uniform heating.· Assigned to Firestone and Goodrich, the 1945 buyers
1950Arnold, US 2,522,082: critical frequency at the centre of anomalous dispersion Filed 1945; selective surface activation 'without' destructive heating; frequency must be tracked with temperature; examiner cited US 2,089,966.
1950Arnold, US 2,575,251 Cites US 2,089,966 and GB 417,501.
1950Jonas, US 2,712,713: seed treatment by high-frequency fields Cites GB 417,501; bears on the seed claim; no reviewer has read it.
1950-01-24Spencer (Raytheon), US 2,495,429: Method of treating foodstuffs The microwave-cooking patent, filed 8 Oct 1945; lists '2,094,602 Kassner' among references cited; framed as heating.
1954Copson (Raytheon), US 2,833,657: microwave irradiation of fruit juices Cites US 2,089,966; same application Kassner claimed, framed as thermal.
c.1958DE 1,027,745 B and DE 1,045,495 B, cited against DE 1,128,930 Citations in the search report of Kassner's last patent; not looked up.
1959Heller, US 3,095,359: high-frequency treatment of matter 'Each organism is responsive to a critical frequency and voltage'; pulsed 'to minimize adverse thermal effects'; cites US 2,089,966.
1983US Department of Energy, GB 2,120,008: Emitron, a microwave diode Craig, Pettibone, Drobot; cites GB 483,062.
–Serra group, ES 2,726,028 B2: microwave-driven water splitting Patent the authors' universities 'have jointly applied for', named in the competing-interests note of Serra et al. 2020 (follow-up Q03); date and text not seen.· The authors' universities, joint patent applicants
Court and state records (5)
1948Grell v. Insurance Co. of North America (N.Y. App. Div.) Noted via CourtListener; not on the claims.
1950-12-05In re Arnold, 185 F.2d 686 (CCPA) Kassner's US 2,089,966 used as prior art; the court summarises it ('excitation is especially strong ... under conditions of resonance'); ruled on patentability only.
1955-09-13Arnold v. Watson, 144 F. Supp. 282 (D.D.C.) Tried on 'evidence'; Arnold 'exposed the error of certain assumptions ... by predecessors'; judgment for the Commissioner.
1956-09-27Arnold v. Watson, 237 F.2d 584 (D.C. Cir.) Affirmed; claims 'too broad and indefinite'; Serial Nos. 110,469 and 576,245.
1996Ohio court finding on Stanley Meyer's 'water fuel cell' After experts testified it 'was simply using conventional electrolysis', the court found 'gross and egregious fraud' and ordered repayment to two investors; the court's characterization, from a Wikipedia snippet (follow-up Q03).
Company and business records (13)
1930Alfred Wiegner: ETH dissertation and dossiers Dipol's signing chemist (b. 1905): dissertation on carbides and silicides in alloys; ETH Hochschularchiv EZ-2.4/00630 and biographical dossier. Catalogue records only.
1932SHAB notices for Ternion A.-G., 1932-1952 Founding (23 Apr 1932), dissolution (29 Dec 1937), three creditor calls (May 1938), deletion (29 Aug 1952); liquidator Stoffel, Rosenbergstrasse 20, St. Gallen.
1932SHAB notices for Dipol A.-G., Arbon, 1932-1938 Founded the same day by Stoffel to run a laboratory; Philosophenweg factory; signatories Anton Lanter and Dr. Alfred Wiegner; trademark 79010 'Elektrische Apparate'; dissolved 1938.
1932-04-18Ternion AG founding file, Glarus commercial register Constituent meeting in Glarus before Dr. H. Trumpy; CHF 100,000; Stoffel 60 shares, Dr. Hans Hoffmann 40; certified copies of 2017 with OCR and translation.
1932-04-18Ternion AG statutes Purpose 'participation in electro-physical enterprises and laboratories'; no patents, inventors or Kassner named.
1937Phono-Vision, Ernst E. W. Kassner: 'photos and confidential company documents' Kantonsbibliothek Appenzell Ausserrhoden CMO-59-01-A-13 (Albin Grau papers); material for an advertisement; a digital copy exists, not obtained.
1937-12-20Ternion AG liquidation minutes and 1936 balance sheet 54 of 100 shares represented; research account CHF 1,120,380.15 on loans of CHF 1,096,535.05; 'complete lack of further funds', patents lapsed. Two identical certified copies.· The board's own account to its shareholders
1943SHAB notices for General Infra Company AG, Chur, 1943-1953 'Ingenieur Ernst E. W. Kassner, deutscher Staatsangehöriger, in Zürich' on the board; infra-red emitters on 'a new physical principle'; in-kind rights returned 1944; deleted 1953.
1944Philips Electro Spezial GmbH, Berlin: letterhead clip 'Deliverable only for war-important purposes'; an image in the essay's folder, date from the filename; Bauch was founding director of Philips-Electrospecial in Berlin (Swiss Sound 1983).
1945SHAB notices for Vibranic Ltd, Glarus, 1945-1952 Founded 17 Nov 1945; buys Grell's patent rights for Fr. 200,000; Stoffel president, Grell vice-president; Ternion's old domicile; dissolved 1949, deleted 1952.
1945-08Industry Inventions, Inc. (Ohio): incorporation and officers Goodrich-Firestone licensing company for the 'Leduc and Dufour' patents; officers listed in Rubber Age and Chemical Week 1945; Kassner not named.· Joint licensing company of the buyers
1952-08-12Ternion AG deletion papers Liquidation complete with no assets or liabilities; Stoffel to keep the books 10 years; lawyer Dr. W. Keller-Staub.
1960F.W.O. Bauch Ltd company record, 1960-1991 Company 00652326, incorporated 11 Mar 1960, liquidation noted 26 Jul 1991; directors F. W. O. and Helen Bauch, Brighton; notes of the register entry.
Government records (13)
1924NARA: 'Ernst Kassner' in a New York passenger-list index One of two catalog hits for the name; identity with E. E. W. Kassner unknown; not opened.
1939Swiss Federal Archives E4264#2000/63#1515: 'Kassner, Ernst (20.11.1900)' Federal police enquiries about foreigners; open; identity with E. E. W. Kassner unconfirmed.
1940NARA matches for 'Giodvad' (Grell) State Department purport lists 1940-44 (NAID 88008358); Army Secretary decimal sheets 1949-50 (NAIDs 222879108, 222877607, 222874556); context unread.
1943-01-16US Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order 201 Vested the 1926-28 'Ernst Kassner, Berlin' adding-machine patents.
1943-01-18US Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order 679 Vested the Dufour/Leduc patents and the French owners' interest in Grell's 1941 option; Kassner not named.
1946Swiss Federal Archives E4264#1988/2#24190: 'KASSNER, ERNST, 20.11.1900' Identity papers and passports for foreigners, 1946-47; open; identity unconfirmed.
1946Swiss Federal Archives E2001E#1968/78#9311: 'General Infra Co AG, Chur' 1946-48, filed under B.51.322 'Schwarze Liste'; the title alone does not show the firm was blacklisted; open, owner must order.
1947-01-02JIOA Objective List of German and Austrian scientists About 1,600 names; no E. E. W. Kassner, Bauch or Hoffmann (only Rudolf Kassner, jet engines).
1947-05-06UK naturalisation of Helen I. A. Bauch (HO 334/246/3669) UK National Archives catalogue; with an HO 405 reference.
1962NARA Guide No. 36, Miscellaneous German Records (T-84) Finding aid to 83 microfilm rolls; nothing on Kassner, Ternion or Bauch in the digests or text search.
1971PSCRL-1: Armed Services Patent Advisory Board security category list Routing list for patent secrecy referrals (directed energy, microwave emitters); dielectric heating not listed; not a record of secrecy orders.
2010NARA Foreign Scientist Case Files 1945-1958, name index No E. E. W. Kassner, Bauch, Hoffmann or Stoffel; only 'KASSNER RUDOLF, box 083'.
–NARA: 'Ernst Kassner' in seized German records (NAID 401666746) Captured German records, 'Number 518'; not opened.
Witness accounts and correspondence (7)
1938-11-05Kassner to Hans Kayser (Swiss Literary Archives SLA-Kayser-B-2-307a) Visiting card '(z. Zt. Hotel Schweizerhof Bern)' with a Herbert Lang & Cie letter to the harmonics theorist; content not catalogued.
1953-02Wireless World 'Our Authors' note on Bauch Hertz Institute work on 'supersonics', then 'a short spell at the G.E.C. Research Laboratories, Wembley'; no mention of Ternion.
1983-03Swiss Sound 1/83: portrait of F.W.O. Bauch Ltd Bauch's 1928 recorder, Hertz Institute, 'a first visit to England in 1934', RIAS, Studer agency; silent on Ternion.· Studer Revox house magazine: promotional history of its UK agent
1990-01-18Imperial War Museum interview with F. W. O. Bauch (4 reels) Interviewer Conrad Wood; 'I left in 1934 for England ... one and a half years ... the North Wembley Laboratories'; machine transcripts; reel 4 short.
1996-06F.W.O. Bauch, In Memoriam, J. Audio Eng. Soc. 44(6) At GEC 'he worked on a project for the Swiss Ternion company investigating UHF and decimeter techniques'; sold a radiation-therapy method to Marconi for 80 pounds. The only source for the Ternion project; its own source unstated.
–Imperial War Museum interview with Helen Irene Alexandra Bauch (3 reels) Met her husband in 1935; Berlin 1937-45; machine transcripts, reel 3 short; silent on Ternion.
–Bodleian, MS. S.P.S.L. 508/1-4, 'W Kaeser - E Kassner' Refugee-correspondence files of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning; which E. Kassner is unknown.
Experiments and replications by others (15)
1927Muth, pearl-chain formation in high-frequency fields (Kolloid-Z. 41) Mainstream orientation effect, cited by the 1960 Navy survey.
1933Schliephake and Compère, 'Spezifische Wirkung des Ultrakurzwellenfeldes' (Klin. Wschr.) 1930s claim of a specific (non-thermal) short-wave effect.
c.1935Archangelsky, 'Über die spezifische Wirkung des Ultrakurzwellenfeldes' Another 1930s specific-effect claimant; bibliographic record only.
c.1935Benedetti, yeast fermentation rising or falling with frequency Reported in The Botanical Review 1944; no data seen.
1936Kowarschik, Kurzwellentherapie (Wien), chapter on biological effects Snippets say no specific short-wave effect on bacteria was proven; paywalled.
1936Krasny-Ergen, theory of particle forces in HF fields (Hochfrequenztechnik und Elektroakustik 48, 49) Mainstream (induced polarisation) theory for pearl chains.
1936Arnold's dielectric-dispersion papers Arnold and Williams, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1936; Gross, Ott and Arnold, J. Electrochem. Soc. 1938.
1959Heller and Teixeira-Pinto, Nature 183:905 27 MHz pulsed field, garlic root tips: 'No temperature increase in the water was noted'; frequency-dependent chromosome aberrations; no counts or controls.
1960-06-14Midwest Research Institute, Survey of Radio Frequency Radiation Hazards (Navy NObs-77142) Reports Heller's effects as 'frequency and species specific' and 'A new specific nonthermal effect'; offers Maxwell-Wagner polarisation as mechanism.· Government contractor in a hazard-standards programme
1969Webb and Booth, 'Absorption of Microwaves by Microorganisms', Nature 222:1199 Sharp millimetre-wave absorption reported.
1976Mittler, 'Failure of 2- and 10-meter radio waves to induce genetic damage in Drosophila' Environ. Res. 11:326; title only; different organism from Heller.
1980Gandhi et al., 'Millimeter wave absorption spectra of biological samples', Bioelectromagnetics 1:285 26.5-90 GHz on cells, DNA, RNA, frozen samples: 'Sharp spectra reported by other workers were not observed'. Abstract.
1983Grundler and Keilmann, 'Sharp Resonances in Yeast Growth Prove Nonthermal Sensitivity to Microwaves', Phys. Rev. Lett. 51:1214 The positive sharp-line report near 42 GHz.
1997Gos et al., Bioelectromagnetics 18:142 Controlled repeat at 41.68-41.71 GHz: 'no consistently significant differences'. Abstract.
2013Kappe, Pieber and Dallinger, 'Microwave Effects in Organic Synthesis: Myth or Reality?' Angew. Chem.; non-thermal microwave chemistry still disputed, with a published reply.
Later accounts and media (40)
1933-12-30Thurgauer Zeitung on Arbon's 1933 tax shortfall (and two reprints) Names 'die Aufhebung der Dipol A.G.' as a cause; read as the lab closing in 1933, an inference. Reprints: Bote vom Untersee und Rhein, Der Landbote (Jan 1934).
1935Chemical Abstracts 29:1178 abstract of GB 417,501 Cited by Weissberger and Ellis; abstract not read.
1935Annales des Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones, vol. 24: Kassner French patents Lists FR 786,294, 786,296, 786,297.
1935-03-01Rubber World: new British patents, '417,501. Vulcanization' J. Y. Johnson (Ternion A. G.).
1936Science et industries photographiques and Photographic Abstracts (1936) on the Ternion light relay HathiTrust full-text hits for 'Ternion A.-G.', probably GB 435,643; search-only.
1936Electronic Technology (1936): Ternion abstract HathiTrust hit for 'Ternion A.-G.' beside The Wireless Engineer; search-only.
1936-02The Wireless Engineer: abstract of the Ternion light valve Read in OCR as GB 435,043; corrected to GB 435,643.
1936-07-10The Electrical Review: published specifications 448,417-448,419 Gives the title of GB 448,418.
1937Radio Daily: US 2,096,459 listing 'Ernst E. W. Kassner, London, England'.
1937Thorpe's Dictionary of Applied Chemistry (1937, 1945) Cites GB 417,501 for acetylene to acetic acid.
1943Congressional Record appendix on Grell Grell as promoter of the Scandinavian 'giro' barter-bank system.
19441944 licence notices for the Dufour/Leduc patents Rubber Age, Rubber World, Modern Plastics, Aviation, Power: Goodrich licenses rubber, Grell 'all other fields'.
1944-07Weintraub, 'Radiation and Plant Respiration', The Botanical Review 10(7) 'Claim of stimulation of bacterial fermentation is made in a patent issued to Ternion A.-G.'; reported, not tested.
1945Other 1945 trade-press reprints of the purchase release Science News Letter, Electronic Industries, Chemistry, Rubber Age, The Paper Industry, Ordnance ('creating uniform heat'), Coal Age, Fleet Owner and others; one release, heating described.· Buyers' announcement
1945-01Electronics, Jan 1945, on Grell 'The U.S. issuing agent for licenses relating to h-f heating of dielectric materials under the patents of Leduc and Dufour'.
1945-01-24Del Rio News-Herald, p.4 (AP, Akron) Goodrich and Firestone buy basic electronic-vulcanisation patents on discoveries of Dufour, Le Duc and 'E. E. W. Kassner of Switzerland'.· Buyers' announcement
1945-02-10Business Week, p.53, on the purchase Adds that Leduc and Dufour's research, 'dating back to 1920, was underwritten by the French government'.· Buyers' announcement
1945-04Rubber World, Apr 1945, on electronic vulcanisation 'Due not only to rapid uniform heating, but also may be connected in some way with electronic power itself'; no data.
1945-05-14The Record: electronic vulcanisation may become common Patents to be licensed 'on a reasonable basis'.
1945-05-21Valley Evening Monitor: sponge-rubber mattresses cured in one-eighth the time Heating account of the process.
1945-11Rubber World, Nov 1945: Smithers's talk to the Chicago Rubber Group Benefits of electronic curing; foam mattress cure 30 to 5 minutes.· General manager of the buyers' licensing company
1949Weissberger, Technique of Organic Chemistry (1949, 1956) Cites GB 417,501 and Chem. Abs. 29:1178.
1950-10Miller and Wittig, 'Radio-Frequency Heat in the Rubber Industry', Rubber World B. F. Goodrich Research Center; names US 2,089,966 and 2,109,843; they 'touch on this problem somewhat ... about 150 million cycles per second'.· Staff of the buyer and rubber-field licensor
1954van Went, Ultrasonic and Ultrashort Waves in Medicine (Elsevier) Found on the Internet Archive; text file could not be fetched; not read.
1987Voss, Electromagnetic Energy column, J. Microwave Power and Electromagnetic Energy 22:49-57 Kassner 'did some remarkable experiments', 'sketched' the subject, 'foresaw both the microwave oven and the industrial electromagnetic energy applicators'; 'Who was Ernst Kassner?'
2008C&EN, 'Water Fire Makes Scientists Burn' (cen.acs.org, vol. 86 no. 12) Press account of the Kanzius salt-water burning; error page in Chrome (follow-up Q03).
2008-03-26Philip Ball, Chemistry World, on Kanzius's radio-split sea water Snippet: Roy et al. 'stress that Kanzius never claimed he could get out more energy than was put in' (follow-up Q03).
2009Mae-Wan Ho, 'Can Water Burn?' (Institute of Science in Society) Summary of Roy, Rao and Kanzius: 13.56 MHz, about 300 W; flame only while the field is on; 'The phenomenon is real, but the mechanism is entirely unknown'; photon about 1e-8 of the energy needed; an anonymous reader comment finds the Raman spectra similar 'apart from a minor difference in peak intensities' and no independent replication (follow-up Q03).· Advocacy outlet on science policy
2010-06AIChE ChEnected on the Kanzius process Snippet: Kanzius 'admitted that this process could not be considered an energy source, as more energy is used to produce the RF signal than can be obtained' (follow-up Q03).
2012Resonance: Beings of Frequency (documentary) Schumann resonance and RF bio-effects; not UHF dielectric resonance.
2014Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip No Kassner, Ternion or Bauch in digests or full-text search.
2014Putney, The Geyser Reactor Self-published transmutation-by-resonance booklet; no measurements.
2016Wikipedia: General Electric Company plc Shows BAE Systems is not owned by American GE (an essay in the project folder says it is).
2016Wikipedia: GEC-Marconi scientist deaths conspiracy theory Stub; references hint at open verdicts and an official 'not a plot'.
2017-08-25The Guardian: how could the 'sonic attack' on US diplomats in Cuba have been carried out? Expert opinion on ultrasound; no Ternion, Kassner or RF.
–Ellis, The Chemistry of Synthetic Resins Cites GB 417,501 and Chem. Abs. 29:1178.
–Max Stoffel (1911-2002), Swiss Federal Supreme Court biography Judge born in Arbon; identity with Ternion's founder unresolved.
–Max Stoffel, encyclopedia-style entry Born 28 Aug 1911 Arbon, died 2002 Morges; cites NZZ 19 Jun 1981.
–'Dead Scientists: The Marconi Murders' (The Unredacted) 1982-90 deaths of British defence scientists; mostly unsourced; no Ternion or Bauch link.
2016-2019Private documents of the project owner (34), used in the review, not listed
Related later patents (the essay's weapon theme) (17)
1976US 3,951,134: remotely monitoring and altering brain waves Malech (Dome and Margolin).
1989US 4,883,067: translating the EEG into music Knispel and Wright.
1991US 5,036,858: binaural beats and voice Carter and Russell.
1992US 5,135,468: binaural-beat method of varying brain state Digest only.
1992US 5,151,080: changed state of consciousness by electroacoustics Bick.
1992US 5,159,703: silent subliminal presentation system Oliver M. Imvery (as read).
1993US 5,213,562: inducing mental, emotional and physical states Monroe.
1994US 5,356,368: inducing desired states of consciousness Monroe.
1996US 5,507,291: remotely determining a person's emotional state Stirbl et al.
2000US 6,011,991: communication system with brain-wave analysis Mardirossian.
2000US 6,081,744: electric fringe field generator for the nervous system Loos.
2000US 6,091,994: nervous system manipulation by subliminal pulsative fields Loos.
2002US 6,488,617: producing a desired brain state Katz.
2003US 6,506,148: nervous system manipulation by fields from monitors Loos.
2003US 6,587,729: speech by the radio-frequency hearing effect O'Loughlin and Loree (US Air Force); thermoelastic mechanism; no power or measurement given.
2009US 7,629,918: multifunctional RF directed energy system Brown, Canich, Berg (Raytheon); no frequency, power or biological mechanism.
2011US 8,049,173: dual use RF directed energy weapon and imager Brown (Raytheon); W-band.
Related work on fields and water splitting (follow-ups Q03, Q05) (29)
1934Onsager, theory of the second Wien effect Field-enhanced dissociation of weak electrolytes, water among them; the mainstream frame for field-assisted water dissociation (follow-up Q05).
1934Cleeton and Williams, microwave absorption of ammonia, Phys. Rev. 45:234 Absorption maximum at 1.25 cm, 2 percent from Kassner's 1.28 cm, but later than his 1932 patent and not about water; found by the arbiter's web check (abstract).
1937Bell Labs US 2,147,689: radio-frequency heating of dielectrics at 10-20 MHz Cited by the arbiter (via Wikipedia, Dielectric heating) to show RF dielectric heating was proposed independently in the 1930s.
1946Becker and Autler, 'Water Vapor Absorption of Electromagnetic Radiation in the Centimeter Wave-Length Range', Phys. Rev. 70:300 The earliest water-vapour line measurement found by the contrarian; priority unverified.
1946Townes and Merritt, water spectrum near 1 cm, Phys. Rev. 70:558 Second 1946 measurement found by the contrarian.
1969Liebe et al., J. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transf. 9: the 22.235 GHz water-vapour transition Gives the line frequency used to compare with Kassner's 1.28 cm (contrarian web check).
1981Chum, Review of Thermally Regenerative Electrochemical Systems Split hot, recombine cold: a heat engine with a second reservoir, Carnot-bounded; Google Scholar listing and a PDF snippet; year from the search query (follow-up Q05).
1983Puharich, US 4,394,230: method and apparatus for splitting water molecules 'Complex electrical wave form' applied to water, discussed with the Gibbs free energy; a later resonance-electrolysis claim; text not read (follow-up Q03).
1986Morehouse (NASA), thermally regenerative hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell power cycles Electrolyser at 1300 K, recombination cold; shows what an 'environment pays' gain would require; NTRS snippet (follow-up Q05).
c.1987Puharich compilation naming '22.3 GHz' as a water resonance 22.235 GHz is water vapour's rotational line (1.35 cm), about 5 percent from Kassner's 1.28 cm; the earliest vapour-line measurement found is 1946, so it cannot be what Kassner copied in 1932 (follow-ups Q03, sites.md lead 31).
1998Mafé et al., 'Electric field-assisted proton transfer and water dissociation' Second Wien effect in bipolar membranes; listing only (follow-up Q05).
2004Marken, Compton and co-workers, 'Microwave enhanced electrochemistry: mass transport effects and steady state voltammetry' Title names the mechanism as mass transport; not read (follow-up Q03).
2005Kaatze, water's Debye relaxation near 19 GHz (with the 2017 J. Chem. Phys. paper) Relaxation time about 8.3 ps; the basis for a water-filled resonator at its band having Q about 1, loss tangent 0.88-1.03 (follow-up Q05, sites.md lead 40).
2008Roy, Rao and Kanzius, polarised RF 'catalysis of dissociation' of H2O-NaCl solutions, Materials Research Innovations 12:3-6 13.56 MHz, about 300 W; gas burns only while the field is on; Raman change in the O-H region; claimants propose 'resonant coupling' and claim no net energy; no independent replication found (follow-up Q03).
2008Marken, 'Chemical and electro-chemical applications of in situ microwave heating', Annu. Rep. Prog. Chem. C Review; mechanism named as local superheating; not read (follow-up Q03).
2009Rassaei, Compton, Marken et al., microwave-enhanced electrochemistry in locally superheated electrolytes Title only; not read (follow-up Q03).
2010Rao, Sedlmayr, Roy and Kanzius, Current Science 98:1500-1504 Polarised microwave and RF effects on the structure of liquid water; not read (bot check) (follow-up Q03).
2012Saitta, Saija and Giaquinta, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108:207801 Ab initio simulation: water dissociates in fields beyond about 0.35 V per angstrom (follow-up Q05).
2013Pinuela et al., 'Ambient RF Energy Harvesting in Urban and Semi-Urban Environments' Primary survey behind urban RF levels of about 0.1-10 microwatts per cm2, too small to pay for splitting water; not read (follow-up Q05).
2014Hundt et al., 'Vibrationally Promoted Dissociation of Water on Ni(111)', Science 344:504 Established resonant bond weakening of water: infra-red excitation of the stretch, at a nickel surface; photon 3,400-4,700 times a 1.28 cm photon (an earlier '35,000' was corrected 2026-10-08) (follow-up Q03).
2018Bond-selective dissociation of HOD on nickel, J. Chem. Phys. Exciting O-H gives mainly H + OD, O-D mainly D + OH; snippet only (follow-up Q03).
2018Niether et al., 'Improved water electrolysis using magnetic heating of FeC-Ni core-shell nanoparticles', Nature Energy 3:476 RF magnetic heating of catalyst cut overpotentials by 200 mV (oxygen) and 100 mV (hydrogen) with a 5 C bulk rise; field power not stated in the abstract (follow-ups Q03, Q05).
2020Serra et al., 'Hydrogen production via microwave-induced water splitting at low temperature', Nature Energy 5:910 Microwaves reduce Gd-doped ceria, which then splits water below 250 C; abstract: H2 yield and energy efficiency 'material- and power-dependent'; whether the field power is counted overall is an open question (follow-up Q03).· Authors' universities applied for a patent on the method
2021Gatard, 'Alkaline water electrolysis enhanced by radio frequency alternating magnetic field', PhD thesis, Grenoble Follow-on to Niether 2018; not read (blocked) (follow-up Q03).
2021Bui, Corpus, Bell and Weber, 'On the Nature of Field-Enhanced Water Dissociation in Bipolar Membranes', J. Phys. Chem. C 125 Water molecules orient in a large field, speeding dissociation; a DC rate effect, not a resonance; snippet (follow-up Q05).
2022Gatard et al., ACS Appl. Energy Mater., durability of FeNi3@Ni for RF-heated electrolysis Snippet only (follow-up Q03).
2025Yamamoto et al., second Wien effect enhancing water dissociation PubMed snippet: field effects 'have been demonstrated to enhance the rate' of water dissociation (follow-up Q05).
2026Stovall et al., EES Catalysis, questioning the second-Wien model Snippet only (follow-up Q05).
2026'A Systematic Guide to Experimental Designs in Magnetic Electrocatalysis', ACS Appl. Energy Mater. 9(16):10362 Abstract and snippet: one field-assisted method a 'negative energy balance' once coil losses are counted, one a 'net energy saving of 215.6 kWh'; context paywalled (follow-up Q05).
Records named but not yet examined (22)
1931German priority applications of 9 Mar 1931 and 9 Dec 1931 The first filings of the applicator and energy-content families.
1932Dipol A.-G. register file, balance sheets and liquidation report Staatsarchiv Thurgau; not catalogued online; would show where the research and money went.
1932Arbon municipal tax rolls 1932-34 Stadtarchiv Arbon; would date the laboratory's closure.
1934GEC Research Laboratories reports and project lists 1934-35 Hirst archive; would confirm or not Bauch's Ternion project and any Ternion contract.
1934Bauch's 'Improved Method of Radiation Therapy' sold to Marconi British patents of 1934-36 not yet searched.
1934UK files on Kassner as a German national in London 1934-36 Home Office/MI5 aliens files and any patent secrecy directions on his British applications (Kew).
1936Universal Inventions Ltd, London: company file (BT 31) Kew; assignee of Kassner's lamp patents.
1936-07-17Ternion minutes of general meetings 1-4, share register and lenders Landesarchiv Glarus; who held the 46 unrepresented shares, who lent CHF 1.1 million, 1938 creditor filings.
1943General Infra Co AG register file Staatsarchiv Graubünden.
1944Bücherverzeichnis, Bücherei des Flugfunk-Forschungsinstituts Oberpfaffenhofen (HathiTrust uc1.$b560612) Library catalogue of the German aviation-radio institute; a search-only hit for 'Kassner Ultrakurzwellen'; whether it is E. E. W. Kassner is unknown.
1945USPTO assignment records for US 2,089,966 and 2,109,843 Would show who sold Kassner's patents in 1945.
1945Goodrich and Firestone purchase files and test data; Goodrich Series VII B.F. Goodrich Company Records, University of Akron (OhAkUAS0037), Series VII Research and Development; finding aid blocked.
1945Industry Inventions, Inc. charter and licence schedules Ohio Secretary of State; Goodrich records.
1945-11-15Vibranic Kauf- und Abtretungsvertrag with Grell Landesarchiv Glarus; would say whether any Kassner patent was in the Fr. 200,000 package.
1946BIOS Final Report No. 866, 'High Frequency Heating' Allied report on German HF heating; no online copy.
1952Stoffel's retained Ternion books (kept to about 1962) Family or St. Gallen archives, location unknown.
1953Arnold v. Watson trial exhibits and file wrappers (Serial 110,469 and 576,245) NARA RG 21, RG 276: the only known place an evidential test of a Kassner-type principle may be on file.
1960DPMA file K 40449, Munich death record and the Wilma Hencke link Kassner's last patent file; who Hencke was; where his later papers went.
–Bauch's HO 405 naturalisation file and the source of the 1996 memoriam Kew; AES archives.
–Clayton and Algar, history of the GEC Research Laboratories Named in the source-gap note; not obtained.
–Der Balneologe (HathiTrust umn.31951002733267b) Physical-therapy journal; a search-only hit for 'Kassner Ultrakurzwellen'; search inside did not render.
–Hochfrequenztechnik und Elektroakustik volumes (HathiTrust mdp.39015082273890, nyp.33433109987119, mdp.39015013786713) Search-only hits for 'Kassner Ultrakurzwellen'; not opened.
Left out: three earlier AI analyses, OCR and translated copies of the register papers, duplicate files and a Scribd copy, a misfiled 2002 obituary (Thiele) and a generic Swiss company-law page. Full catalogue: TernionAG sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A thermostatted 0.1-3 GHz permittivity sweep of water, 1 percent salt, milk, juice and serum with an empty-cell control, plus a rebuilt crossed-Nicols detector; then a four-arm blind food test (resonant, off-resonant at equal absorbed power, heat-matched, untreated), at least 20 samples per arm, over 28 days.
Deciding records: The Arnold v. Watson trial exhibits (NARA); Ternion's 1936 minutes, share register and lenders (Landesarchiv Glarus); the Dipol A.-G. file (Staatsarchiv Thurgau); the Vibranic purchase contract of 15 Nov 1945; Goodrich R&D records (Akron); GEC laboratory reports 1934-35; three open Swiss Federal Archives files.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: with Kassner's own 1936 disc formula, wavelength = 2 pi R / x, check whether a 6.2 cm disc pair can resonate at his stated 18.6 cm. The lowest mode gives 10.6 cm; step 9 then checks the water-splitting energy books (237.1 kJ/mol floor, 6.7 W field cost).
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Claim 1 is ruled Never properly tested, not Refuted: a calculation refutes a stated mechanism, and the patent states none; it claims an optical readout with no spectrum. The Q argument shows the two kinds of band differ, not that the sharp one is absent. arbiter.md, Where the reviewers agreed, disagreed, ruling 1
Contrarian Strongest honest case: the theory starts from correct science, reported heating matches stated power, and he reports it rather than hiding it. The decisive experiment is cheap and was never recorded as done: the signature of never properly tested, not tested and failed. contrarian.md, Strongest honest case for Kassner
Investigator Kassner's own words tie his natural frequencies to Debye relaxation: FR 786,294 places them 'En conformité avec la théorie des dipôles de Debye'. In these texts they are relaxation frequencies, which mainstream physics accepts but which are broad. sites.md, Leads for review, lead 21
Arbiter Commercial failure best explains the end of Ternion itself, and the people continued under other company names; neither explains why five funded years left no technical report. Classification and suppression are neither shown nor excluded; the deciding records are named and unread. arbiter.md, The record goes dark, Weighing
Arbiter Field-assisted electrolysis at a catalyst shows an applied field can lower the voltage cost of splitting water; it is not a test of a Kassner standing or radiating field, and an earlier '35,000 times' photon ratio is corrected to about 3,400-4,700. arbiter.md, Investigator findings (2026-10-08), rulings 2 and 4
AI noteKassner's 'most effective' chemistry wavelengths, 2.74, 9.25 and 27.75 cm, match hydrogen's fine-structure intervals to 0.3 percent: they were calculated from atomic theory, not measured.
Rank 6SilverTooth
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 11:38
A professional optical engineer reported a bench-top ether drift of 378 km/s toward Leo, near the cosmic background dipole; one replicator saw the signal, then traced it to temperature.
Invention / theory background
Ernest Wilbur "Bud" Silvertooth (1916-2000), Caltech physics graduate, Paramount optical engineer and 1941 Academy technical award winner, argued from 1972 to 1992 that light's one-way wavelength reveals absolute motion. His 1986 paper slid a two-beam standing-wave interferometer 0.25 mm, saw a 180 degree phase reversal and computed 378 km/s with Leo on the horizon. It names partial sponsorship by the Air Force Rome Air Development Center and DARPA.
Ranking explanation
Below TernionAG because its central derivation fails on its own premises and the best replication found a thermal cause, while Kassner's claims were never tested at all and his record goes darker. Above Sigma-Ro because its open question is sharper and cheap to settle: why independent builds showed a sidereal, CMB-sized signal if the apparatus should be blind. A rotating-table, lock-in, temperature-controlled run has never been done.
Key supporting elements
The reported 378 km/s toward Leo lies within about 2% of the measured cosmic microwave background (CMB) dipole, 369.82 km/s toward Leo [web, arbiter].
Doug Marett (2011-12), who hoped for a positive result, reproduced a 12-hour signal peaking near 5 h and 17 h sidereal time, of about CMB size after removing offsets (Investigator's reading of his web page).
Marinov (January 1987, different arrangement) reported 386 +/- 38 km/s; Wesley (1987) reported 378 +/- 8 km/s, right ascension 11 +/- 2 h. Both known only from abstracts; both authors have their own absolute-motion programmes.
Laser frequency drift (about 1e-6) is a thousand times too small to fake the 1.3e-3 wavelength mismatch, a point in the inventor's favour [calc, Contrarian and arbiter].
Silvertooth was a competent instrument maker: his 1983 standing-wave sensor with S. F. Jacobs (Arizona) reached a 20,000:1 node/antinode ratio, and in 1989 he stated all values lay within +/-5% over several years.
Key contradictions
Under the paper's own eq. (5), two opposed beams on a slide add their wavenumbers (k1 + k2 = 4 pi / lambda), so the first-order signal cancels; the alternative geometry gives lambda/(4b), not eq. (9)'s lambda/(2b).
Marett found a large offset, day-to-day scatter, the opposite sign to Silvertooth's prediction and the same 12 h pattern in solar time, tracking room temperature: "a very elaborate thermometer".
The inventor's own earlier one-way tests were nulls: 1972 JOSA (as recorded by Roberts and Schleif) and a 1976 two-laser test where 79 cycles were expected and "No phase shift was observed".
In 1976 he wrote that frequency and velocity change, wavelength being "a resultant effect"; in 1986 frequency "cannot change". The 1986 paper does not mention the earlier experiment.
The 1986 paper gives one value with no data, error bars, run count, dates or place; phase reversal was judged by eye on an oscilloscope. Krisher et al. 1990 set a 100 m/s one-way limit (conventionality caveat kept).
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Verdicts by claim (5)
Claim
Verdict
Round-trip (Michelson-Morley) tests cannot fix a one-way speed or wavelength; the null needs no isotropic c or contraction
Establishedweak form, as conventionality of the one-way speedNot testable as statedstrong form; circular as a rebuttal of contraction
The Sagnac shift of a straight segment survives in pure translation, giving lambda/(1 +/- v/c)
Internally inconsistentderivation (his 1976 paper says it cancels on a closed path)Establishedformula only as a synchronisation conventionTested, not supportedphysical measurability in translation
A slide-mounted standing-wave interferometer reads v/c = lambda/(2 Delta)
Internally inconsistentas stated; reverts to Never properly tested if a correct derivation from the real geometry appears
Delta = 0.25 mm east-west with Leo on the horizon gives 378 km/s; null north-south and at Leo 6 or 18 h away
Never properly testedthe original run (no data; not dismissed without testing)Never properly testedcause of the sidereal signal Marett reproducedTested, not supportedreading as a 378 km/s absolute velocity
A velocity-dependent wavelength count adds an L a/c^2 Doppler term explaining the accelerating universe, quasar redshifts and GPS errors
Internally inconsistenteq. (10) as printed in 1986Refuted by calculationrotating-quasar example (source orbits several times during light flight)Not testable as statedaccelerating universe and GPS (1990 GPS paper not read)
Associated scientists / relevant people (8)
Name
Role in the story
Background and contribution
Ernest Wilbur "Bud" Silvertooth
Inventor and experimenter; author of the 1986 paper
Born 1916 Portland, died 2000 Bellingham WA. Caltech B.S. in physics; Paramount optical engineer (1941 Academy Class III technical award, relay condenser system); optics papers 1940-1971 and a 1965 catoptric patent; Pasadena, later Olga, Orcas Island. Natural Philosophy Wiki (unsourced) says he later did classified Air Force think-tank work linked to the Aerospace Corporation.
S. F. Jacobs
Co-author of the 1983 standing-wave sensor paper
University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center. The 1976 paper says an east-west two-oscillator ether experiment was under way there; no outcome found.
Doug Marett
Replicator (2011-12) and author of a single-laser one-way null (2011) · Proposes the thermal explanation; says he hoped the effect was real
Toronto dissident-physics experimenter (site conspiracyoflight.com, "The search for new physics"); used a Juelich thin-film standing-wave sensor and a stabilised HeNe laser over 18 months, logging room temperature and laser lock voltage.
Stefan Marinov
Reported a repetition in January 1987 (386 +/- 38 km/s); wrote to Silvertooth 1 Nov 1986 · Claimant of absolute-motion detection with his own coupled-mirrors and toothed-wheel experiments
Not in the review files beyond his own absolute-motion experiments.
Paul Wesley
Reported 378 +/- 8 km/s, right ascension 11 +/- 2 h (1987) · Has his own absolute-motion programme (Contrarian)
Not in the review files.
C. K. Whitney
Co-author of the 1992 Physics Essays nodal-spacing experiment; 1993 discussion with Marinov · Has her own absolute-motion programme (Contrarian)
Not in the review files.
Chalmers W. Sherwin
Critic (Physics Essays 1989): AC coupling and a lambda/4 twist over about 500 wavelengths could fake the phase reversal
Not in the review files.
R. G. Newburgh
Critic of the 1976 paper in Applied Optics (1977)
Physicist at the Air Force Rome Air Development Center, Deputy for Electronic Technology, Hanscom AFB: the same agency the 1986 paper names as a sponsor.
Evidence / artifacts (56 of 64 listed, 88%)
Own works and inventions (19)
1940A Modification of the Hindle Test for Cassegrain Secondaries JOSA 30(3) 140; optical testing
1941Relay condenser system for transparency process projection With the Paramount Studio Engineering Department; 14th Academy Awards, Class III Scientific or Technical award (atogt.com)
1942Stop calibration of photographic objectives J. SMPE; Paramount period
1965Optically compensated zoom lens With G. Wooters; JOSA 55(4) 347
1966Aspheric mirrors by selective evaporation Applied Optics 5(5) 868
1968Correction of chromatic aberrations with single-element lenses Glamkowski, Nicholson, Silvertooth; Applied Optics 7(9) 1865
1972Isotropy of C JOSA 62(11) 1330-1331; one-way test with frequency-doubling crystals, recorded by Roberts and Schleif as a null consistent with special relativity; paper not read
1976-05Electromagnetic radiation, relativity, and anomalous red-shifts Applied Optics 15(5) 1100-1102; received 23 May 1975, endorsed by John Strong; Sagnac-segment argument, two-laser null (79 cycles expected), origin of the eq. (10) acceleration term, Newcomb 1881 quoted; saved in research/files
1977Author's reply to comments (Groen) Applied Optics 16(3) 543-544
1983Standing wave sensor With S. F. Jacobs, Univ. Arizona OSC; Applied Optics 22(9) 1274; node/antinode about 20,000:1, thickness under lambda/100; GE Syracuse photomultiplier; saved in research/files
1986-05Experimental detection of the ether The project document, 5 pp., modern retyping; Speculations in Science and Technology 10(1) 3-11 (journal per Marett's page); Delta 0.25 mm, 378 km/s; RADC and DARPA named as sponsors in part; the rexresearch PDF may be a scan of the original print, not reached
1986-08-14Special relativity (letter) Nature 322, 590, doi 10.1038/322590b0; possibly a reply to Aspden; promised details
1987Silvertooth paper in Speculations in Science and Technology 10(3) Listed in the 1989 article's further reading; content unknown
1988-06Letter to Electronics and Wireless World EWW June 1988 p.542
1989-05Motion through the ether Electronics and Wireless World 95, 437-438; +/-5% repeatability over several years, three GE-made sensors, Leo alignment; unsigned "Ether Challenge" suppression sidebar; read by the Investigator from page images (spirit-science.fr), not saved
1990Position Error in Satellite Navigation Systems Galilean Electrodynamics 1(6) 80-83; the GPS part of claim 5 with a numerical example; abstract only
1992A New Michelson-Morley Experiment C. K. Whitney and Silvertooth, Physics Essays 5(1) 82-89; node spacing in one arm departing from lambda/2, v0 about 378 km/s; abstract only; conflicts with the 1986 model, which gives exactly lambda/2
1999The Silvertooth effect: TETET-99 S. Silvertooth, D. G. Lahoz, Angel Garcia; Toronto, UNIAM; ISBN 978-0968308547; 211 pp.; authorship and content unknown
Patents and patent office (1)
1970-09-08US3527526A Catoptric image-forming system Filed 26 May 1965; DE and GB family members; optics only, no bearing on the ether claims; no ether or sensor patent found
Witness accounts and correspondence (2)
1881Simon Newcomb letter to A. A. Michelson National Archives RG78; quoted in the 1976 paper as stating the wavelength-compensation principle of claim 1
1986-11-01Marinov letter to E. W. Silvertooth In Marinov, The Thorny Way of Truth (Yumpu blocked; rexresearch PDF not reached)· Marinov, claimant of absolute-motion detection
Experiments and replications by others (10)
1978-05R. A. Muller, The cosmic background radiation and the new aether drift Scientific American 238(5) 64; U-2 radiometer, hotter toward Leo; the agreement the 1986 paper cites; existence verified, number not
1987-01S. Marinov, A Simplified Repetition of Silvertooth's Measurement of the Absolute Velocity of the Solar System Different arrangement; 386 +/- 38 km/s, declination -22 +/- 6 deg, RA 12.5 +/- 0.5 h; abstract only· Claimant of absolute-motion detection
1987S. Marinov, Repetition of Silvertooth's Experiment for Measuring the Aether Drift Speculations in Science and Technology; no abstract on file· Claimant of absolute-motion detection
1987P. Wesley, Silvertooth's Standing-Wave Measurement of Absolute Velocity of Solar System 378 +/- 8 km/s, RA 11 +/- 2 h; abstract only; source of data and error bar unknown
1988Gagnon, Torr, Kolen and Chang, guided-wave first-order one-way test Phys. Rev. A 38, 1767; cited by the Contrarian as the strongest mainstream evidence against claim 3; result not read
1990Krisher et al., hydrogen-maser one-way light-speed test Phys. Rev. D 42, 731; masers 21 km apart on fibre; limit 100 m/s; abstract via PubMed
2006-08-10Navia et al., Search for anisotropic light propagation as a function of laser beam alignment arXiv astro-ph/0608223; laser diffraction, reports a = -0.4106 +/- 0.0225 against SR -0.5; cites Silvertooth; abstract read
2011D. Marett, A Single Laser One-Way Speed of Light Experiment using a Standing Wave Interferometer conspiracyoflight.com; reported as a null; not read
2012D. Marett, A Replication of the Silvertooth Experiment conspiracyoflight.com; June 2011 to Dec 2012; 12 h sidereal signal, offset, wrong sign, solar-time pattern, temperature correlation; web page read by the Investigator, PDF not downloaded
2012D. Marett, A Four Quadrant Photo Detector for Measuring Laser Pointing Stability Companion paper on the pointing artefact; not read
Analyses and critiques (13)
1970J. A. Winnie, Special relativity without one-way velocity assumptions Philosophy of Science 37(2) 223-238; conventionality of one-way speed, cited by Forbes
1973A. A. Tyapkin, conventionality argument Lett. Nuovo Cimento 7, 760; cited by Silvertooth to dismiss Turner-Hill and Cole, and by Marett against a one-way wavelength measurement
1977R. G. Newburgh, Relativistic phase invariance: comments on a recent effort to reinvoke the ether Applied Optics 1977; RADC, Hanscom AFB; copy at i-logic.com Silvertooth4.pdf, not read
1977O. Groen, On Silvertooth's discussion of special relativity Applied Optics 16(3) 543
1987H. Aspden, A Note on the Silvertooth Experiment Speculations in Science and Technology, pp. 9-12
1988B. A. Nanning, A Preliminary Analysis of the Silvertooth Experiment Physics Essays 1(4) 272-274
1989C. W. Sherwin, An Analysis of the Silvertooth Experiment Physics Essays 2(2) 125-127; confirms Phipps: AC coupling, lambda/4 twist over about 500 wavelengths; abstract only
–T. E. Phipps Jr., critique of the phase-reversal reading Known only through Sherwin's abstract: a fringe output cannot go negative
1991J. S. Wilczynski, A New Explanation of the Michelson-Morley, Marinov and Silvertooth-Jacobs Experiments Listed on Natural Philosophy Wiki
1993C. K. Whitney and S. Marinov, Discussion on Silvertooth's Experiment Deutsche Physik 2(8)
–Some Cosmological Implications of the Silvertooth Experiment Listed on Natural Philosophy Wiki; no details read
–Getting Wind of the Ether Listed on Natural Philosophy Wiki; no details read
2007Roberts and Schleif, What is the experimental basis of Special Relativity? math.ucr.edu FAQ; lists 1972 as a null, 1983/86/92 under "apparently not consistent" with SR
Later accounts and media (7)
1978-10L. Essen, Wireless World article WW Oct 1978 p.44; in the 1989 reading list; copy at i-logic.com, not read
1986-11Wireless World report on the Nature letter worldradiohistory.com scan; not opened
1988-02L. Essen, Electronics and Wireless World article EWW Feb 1988 p.126; in the 1989 reading list
1989-11Wireless World replies to Motion through the ether worldradiohistory.com scan; not opened
1990New Energy Technology (PACE) States "Silvertooth has detected our motion through the ether"; search result only
2018-04-06B. Koberlein, The Tale Of A 1986 Experiment That Proved Einstein Wrong Forbes; accepts the observation, rejects the interpretation (relies on Marett); notes geocentrist sites cite the Nature letter
–Natural Philosophy Wiki, Wilbur Silvertooth Biography without sources; Terman study and Einstein anecdote flagged as anecdote; 47 search hits, about 12 read
Records named but not yet examined (4)
1975-05Third-Quarter FY75 Applied Optics Research Report, University of Arizona OSC Cited in 1976 for the east-west two-oscillator ether experiment "under way" (59 cycles predicted); outcome unknown
c.1986RADC and DARPA sponsorship records Contracts or reports behind "sponsored in part"; DTIC via Google found nothing; direct DTIC, AFRL Rome history office, DARPA archives, FOIA not yet tried
–Silvertooth's original data, lab notebooks and correspondence No data graphs in any paper (Marett); needed for claim 4
–Marett's full data set and PDF report Arbiter asks for the full data; PDF at conspiracyoflight.com not downloaded
Left out: copies of works already listed (Studocu, Scribd), the paper's own reference list, minor citing works (Selleri's book, Poquet 2005, viXra 1406.0045, rxiv 1508.0178, a Fandom list, a ResearchGate paper), i-logic images Silvertooth1/2.jpg and the Jacobs CV. Full catalogue: SilverTooth sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: The Contrarian's protocol adopted by the arbiter: the original design with lock-in readout instead of eyeballing an oscilloscope, a thermally controlled and pointing-monitored laser, a rotating table to separate sidereal from solar and thermal patterns, declared north-south and east-west run times, and the raw time series published.
Deciding records: Silvertooth's original data; RADC and DARPA records (direct DTIC search, AFRL Rome, DARPA archives, FOIA); the University of Arizona OSC FY75 report; the Nature 322:590 letter, JOSA 1972, Physics Essays 1992, Galilean Electrodynamics 1990, Sherwin 1989, Wireless World Nov 1986 and Nov 1989; Marett's full data.
Try it yourself: Compute v/c = lambda/(2 Delta) for 0.63 um and 0.25 mm (378 km/s), then show with lambda1 = lambda/(1+b), lambda2 = lambda/(1-b) that opposed beams give node spacing exactly lambda/2 for every b, so the slide signal cancels. example.py does both step by step.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Recomputed with SymPy: d(phi)/d(Delta) = k1 + k2 = 4 pi / lambda exactly, with b cancelling, so D1 and D2 stay in phase for every velocity. Held conditional: a correct derivation from the real geometry would revert the verdict to Never properly tested. arbiter.md, Recomputed item 2 and Claim 3
Arbiter Open question: why did independent replicators (Marett, Marinov, perhaps Wesley) see a CMB-scale signal aligned with sidereal time if the apparatus should be blind? Marett's thermal explanation fits his data, but the coincidence deserves a direct rotating-table test. arbiter.md, Open questions
Contrarian The null of his own 1976 two-laser test is a point against his mechanism, and a point for his honesty: he printed it. Phase reversal was judged by eye with Delta adjusted until it appeared, a procedure where expectation can steer the outcome. contrarian.md, sections 4 and 5
Mathematician Within the model c(theta) = c/(1 + b cos theta) with fixed frequency, the node spacing of two opposed beams is exactly lambda/2, so the 1992 Whitney-Silvertooth claim of a departure from lambda/2 would need a different model than the 1986 equations. mathematician.md, section 4
Investigator The 1986 statement of RADC and DARPA sponsorship has no report trail found; an RADC physicist (Newburgh) criticised the 1976 paper in print. Explanations to weigh: informal support, unindexed or restricted reports, overstated sponsorship. DTIC direct, AFRL Rome, DARPA archives and FOIA would decide. sites.md, Leads for review, Historical record
AI noteThe 1989 article prints the same 378 km/s as the value "on the day when this particular test was performed", so it is the 1986 number repeated, not a second measurement; Wesley's +/-8 km/s is tighter than the inventor's own +/-5%.
Rank 7Sigma-Ro
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 11:42
A 1977 gravity-control survey where a capacitor thrust ion wind does not fully explain, Brown's unpublished vacuum notes and a 1956 industry silence sit beside Searl claims arithmetic rules out.
Invention / theory background
Ether-Technology (1977; German original 1972) by 'Rho Sigma', identified by advocacy and popular sources as Rolf Schaffranke (1921-1994), said to have worked at Peenemuende and NASA. It compiles others' work: T. Townsend Brown's high-voltage capacitors, Erwin Saxl's charged pendulum, John Searl's spinning-ring 'levity disc', Seike Shin'ichi's spin resonance and weighed coil, Heim and others. It argues gravity is an ether flow that electricity can control, and that this work was suppressed. Most evidence is relayed second-hand.
Ranking explanation
Below SilverTooth (5), whose own instrument gave a sharp, cheaply testable signal, because Sigma-Ro's central Searl claims are refuted by calculation and rest on one undated relayed account. Above Pappas-PT (7) for breadth of open record: an Army Research Laboratory gap in the ion-wind explanation, Brown's never-published vacuum notes, a documented 1956 industry silence, nine suppression incidents with counter-evidence, two conflicting accounts of Searl's conviction, and a spinning-ring calculation the reader can run.
Key supporting elements
Bahder and Fazi (US Army Research Laboratory) found ionic wind 'at least three orders of magnitude too small' to explain asymmetric-capacitor thrust in air; ionic drift gives the right order, but the model is unfinished.
Brown's 1973 letters: in vacuum below 1e-6 mm Hg at 70-220 kV, thrust 'continued, even when there was no vacuum spark'; equal torque in air and transformer oil. His Paris, Winston-Salem and GE notes were never published.
In 1956 Interavia reported 2 ft discs (50 kV, 50 W, 17 ft/s), results 'highly classified'; Glenn L. Martin's vice-president and Rolls-Royce's Cleaver took it seriously. After 1957 the book records nothing more from industry.
Saxl, a trained physicist, published a charge-sign-dependent torsion-pendulum period in Nature (1964, timed to 1 part in 1e7) and, with Allen, eclipse period changes 1e5 above lunar attraction in Physical Review D (1971).
Seike's 1984 Physical Society of Japan abstract reports a Moebius-wound coil losing 0.059 to 0.291 g at 2 to 6 A; no repeat with reversed current or a dummy winding is on record.
Key contradictions
Searl's mechanism: a spinning ring's centrifugal electron voltage is 6.5e-9 V at 1,000 rpm, and at most 3.6e-7 V for any steel rotor before it bursts: 11 to 13 orders below the book's 1e5 V.
The book's Searl figures disagree (1e5 V versus above 1e9 V at 'low speed'; thresholds 1e13, 1e14, 1e10-1e14 V). 1e15 W output is about 55 times world power; 1e13 V stores about 600 kilotons.
Talley (1988) found vacuum force only during breakdown, Tajmar (2004) none; Hathaway and Williams (2021) saw no weight change on charged 1 kg conductors within 2 g; two Saxl repeats (1992, 1998) found no anomaly.
Brown himself wrote that air thrust was 'largely ambient ion momentum transfer' and that his 10 kg gravitors 'never floated'; the '1 percent weight change' is the narrator's wording, not Brown's.
A torsion pendulum's period contains no g, so Saxl's shift cannot show gravity changed; Roos's frictionless sink-flow ether gives a force falling as R^-5, not R^-2.
User follow-ups
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Verdicts by claim (8 of 36 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Asymmetric high-voltage capacitor thrust in air (Biefeld-Brown)
Establishedas an ionic (electrohydrodynamic) effect; quantitative model incomplete
Brown's thrust in vacuum and his solar, sidereal and lunar torque variations
Tested, not supportednon-ionic vacuum thrust; Talley 1988, Tajmar 2004, not at Brown's 70-220 kVNever properly testedtime correlations and air-versus-oil torque; records unpublished
Electric charge changes weight or gravity (static charge; Saxl's pendulum)
Tested, not supportedHathaway and Williams 2021; two Saxl repeatsInternally inconsistentinferring gravity from a torsion pendulum's period
Searl's ring generator reaches 1e5 to 1e14 V by centrifugal electrons plus coil feedback
Refuted by calculationthe stated mechanismInternally inconsistentthe quoted figures as a setPlausible, untested1e5 V from some source
Searl craft: output exceeds input, weightless and inertia-free, 1952 lift-off to 50 ft
Refuted by calculationoutput above input (1e13-1e15 W)Never properly testedweightlessness and the 1952 flight; one undated second-hand account
An ether exists and gravity is its sink or push flow
Tested, not supporteddetectable or Earth-dragged etherHistorically superseded but instructive'Michelson-Morley did not disprove every ether'Internally inconsistentsink-flow gravity as Roos states it
Plausible, untestedspin mathematics, as a gravity effectNot testable as statednegative gravitational energy and 3e9 kWNever properly tested1984 coil weight loss
Orthodox science and officials suppressed this work
Not testable as statedin physics terms; historically open, Searl strand with conflicting accounts
Author and compiler of the book; advocate of the ether hypothesis · Advocate of ether technology; promoter of the work he relays
Born 31 Jul 1921, died 22 Apr 1994 (Young Harris GA; another account Hayesville NC). Advocacy and popular sources (Natural Philosophy wiki citing Manning and Garbon 2008; Davidson 1989; Bergier 1978) say he worked at Peenemuende with von Braun, then as a NASA Huntsville propulsion consultant and later at Boeing; no official record found. Later wrote on space-energy converters (raum&zeit, New Energy News 1993).
T. Townsend Brown
Inventor of the 'gravitor' capacitor; source of the 1973 letters · Reporting his own work; patentee
Worked with Paul A. Biefeld at Denison University; six US patents (1934-1965); Navy demonstration before Admiral Radford at Pearl Harbor, 1950; vacuum tests in Paris (1955-56), Bahnson Laboratories (1957-58) and GE Space Center (1959); founded NICAP in 1956; retired in the Bahamas by 1973.
John R. R. Searl
Inventor of the spinning-ring generator and 'levity disc' · Inventor of the device
Per the Barret Report, an electrical fitter with the Midlands Electricity Board in 1949 with no formal education beyond the job; noticed a small EMF from spinning parts, built a 3 ft generator by 1952. Lived at Mortimer, Berkshire; a 1984 letter says he was prosecuted and detained in 1982-83. Wrote 'Antigravity: The Dream Made Reality'.
P. L. Barret
Issued the Barret Report, the book's main Searl source · Searl's associate
Styled 'B.Sc.' in the book; Davidson calls him Searl's associate. No date, venue or affiliation for the report, and no trace of him outside the book and works copying it.
Erwin J. Saxl
Charged torsion-pendulum experimenter · Reporting his own work
Described in the book as a 'post-doctoral student with Einstein'; privately financed (about $50,000); published in Nature (1964) and, with M. Allen, in Physical Review D (1971) on eclipse period changes; later automated runs analysed for periodicities.
Seike Shin'ichi (the book's 'Seiki')
Japanese physicist behind 'NER' and the 1984 coil weighing · Reporting his own work; director of his own institute
Born 1936 in Uwajima, died 2009; master's course, University of Tokyo graduate school of science; taught at Ibaraki University and Ehime Teikyo Junior College; founded the Gravity Research Institute (1973) and the magazine Uchutei; Physical Society of Japan abstracts 1965-1997.
Burkhard Heim
German theorist of the 'contrabaric' field-propulsion effect · Reporting his own theory
Lost his eyes and hands in a laboratory explosion; degree 1954, institute 1958 at Northeim; 1952 Stuttgart lecture; ridiculed at the 1952 Innsbruck astronautics congress per the book; Jan 1976 letter calls himself a 'loner'.
Martin Tajmar
Independent tester of Biefeld-Brown thrust (2004)
Described by the physicist reviewer as a mainstream propulsion physicist with no commercial stake in the idea; his AIAA Journal test found no thrust once corona wind was excluded. Otherwise not in the review files.
Evidence / artifacts (121 of 121 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (11)
1972Forschung in Fesseln: das Raetsel der Elektro-Gravitation Rho Sigma; Ventla-Verlag, Wiesbaden-Schierstein; reissued VAP 1994, 1996; German original, contents not compared
1976-05Edgar Cayce and the 'Ether' Controversy A.R.E. Journal XI no.3; earlier publication of the book's ether section, per the book
1977Ether-Technology: A Rational Approach to Gravity Control First edition Tamhelm Press, Lakemont GA; 1996 Adventures Unlimited printing read in full, 108 pp.
1981-10-23The Development of Post-Relativistic Concepts in Physics and Advanced Technology Abroad Abstract, 1st International Symposium on Non-Conventional Energy Technology; Natural Philosophy wiki list
1982The New Tesla Electromagnetics and the Secrets of Electrical Free Energy With T. E. Bearden; dated 1982 or 1984 by different lists
c.1989Schappellers kosmischer Energieextraktor raum&zeit no.37; teaser only (paid); bears on the book's ether-flow direction
1989Plaedoyer fuer die Raumenergie-Konversion raum&zeit no.39; teaser only; includes a 1986 Vallee letter to President Reagan
1990Erdbeben durch Atombombentests raum&zeit no.44; teaser only; peripheral
1990Space Energy Abstract; Natural Philosophy wiki list
1991Translation of the Gdansk compilation of Einstein's ether quotations Raum & Zeit (English) vol 2 no 5, per Schaffranke in 1993; not located
1993-11Ether Research: Frontier Perspective in an Age of Revelation New Energy News v1 n7 pp.10-11, under his real name; Methernitha and Tewari converters; no new Searl or Brown data
Patents and patent office (10)
1928Brown, British patent 300,311 (gravitor) Number from the primer's recall, not checked
1934-09-25Brown, first US patent (electrostatic motor) Book p.33; Investigator's candidate number US 1,974,483
1962-02-20Brown, US 3,022,430 (electrokinetic generator) Pages reproduced in the book pp.47-48, OCR garbled
1965-06-01Brown, US 3,187,206 Last of six US patents; pages reproduced pp.47-48
1971-10-05Hooper, US 3,610,971 All-electric motional electric field generator W. J. Hooper, Sarasota; assignee Electrodynamic Gravity Inc.; 5 claims, 8 figures
1972-04-11Hooper, US 3,656,013 Apparatus for generating motional electric field Filed 19 Apr 1968; rotating magnets, E = v x B; abstract read
–Brown, US 2,949,550 Scale model flown around a pole (Rose report); pages reproduced pp.47-48
–Brown, US 3,018,394 Listed in the p.69 footnote
–Dudley, US 3,095,167 Charged rockets 'up to six times the normal' height (p.33); patent not read
–Pages, French patent FR 1,251,902 Antigravity craft design (pp.93-95); not obtained
Government records (6)
1962-02Velkoff, ASD-TR-61-642, electrofluidmechanics USAF report cited in the book's addendum p.43
1972-06Project Outgrowth, AFRPL-TR-72-31 USAF, Edwards AFB, 28 members; lists antigravity propulsion as a field-propulsion category; relayed pp.54-55
1974Defence Minister Robert Galley, France-Inter interview with J.-C. Bourret Ministry 'secretly studied the problem since 1954' (book's paraphrase); INA archive not checked
c.1976Poher (CNES) computer study of about 35,000 UFO sightings Relayed pp.93-95
–US Navy records of Brown's rejected research proposal Brown says the Navy declined because ion wind predicted no vacuum operation (p.46)
–Paperclip (NARA) and NASA Marshall personnel records for Schaffranke Would document the Peenemuende and NASA career; not reached
Court and state records (3)
1982Reading Crown Court and Berkshire Record Office files on Searl Would decide electricity-theft versus pylon-damage accounts
–Florida corporate record, Electrodynamic Gravity Inc. sunbiz.org; would test Bergier's dating claim; not reached
–Texas registration, Association for Pushing Gravity Research Jan P. Roos, Austin; no trace found
Company and business records (7)
1930Brown's torque records, 1930-55 NRL, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Zanesville, two California stations; solar, sidereal, lunar correlations per Brown
1955Brown's vacuum-test laboratory notes and film, 1955-59 SNCASE Paris, Bahnson Labs Winston-Salem, GE Space Center; 'never published and are not available to me'
1956Aviation Studies, Electrogravitics Systems report Existence from memory (medium), not checked
1956Glenn L. Martin Co. / RIAS gravity research files G. S. Trimble, vice-president, quoted in Interavia
1956Rolls-Royce and Thomson-Houston archives on electrogravitics A. V. Cleaver; Gerardin, nuclear physics section, Le Raincy
1982Southern Electricity Board records of the Searl prosecution Interested party (the prosecutor, per the 1984 letter)
–Tamhelm Press publisher's files Lakemont GA; first English edition
Witness accounts and correspondence (14)
1952-04-08Mason Rose report on Brown and Biefeld Pacific Aeronautical Library, Los Angeles; five factors incl. dielectric mass; quoted pp.25-29
1970-11-05Hermann Oberth letter to the author Inertia, gravity and energy 'different sides of one and the same thing' (p.23)
1973-02-14Brown letter to Schaffranke Vacuum tests, 1928 gravitor 1 N on 10 kg, air-versus-oil torque, unpublished notes; also reprinted by Davidson 1989 (pp.44-46)
1973-04-05Brown letter to Schaffranke Kitselman witnessed a tethered 15 in dome lift 110% of its weight; Navy rejected proposal (pp.46-49)
1976-01Burkhard Heim letter Doubts he can publish as a 'loner' (pp.89-91)
1977-02-14McCampbell (MUFON) private communication 'The French are moving out!' (p.95)
1984-12-11Letter on Searl's 1982 raid, prosecution and detention Unnamed writer to Searl's associate in New Zealand; hedged 'allegedly'; p.108; original not seen
–C. B. Wynniatt letter to the author Onerahi, Whangarei, New Zealand; undated; Searl's claim second-hand, 1e14 V (p.73)
–The Ether-Vortex Turbine (the Barret Report) P. L. Barret; undated; reproduced pp.73-79; no rpm or measurement; original not obtained
–Searl experimental set-up photographs p.74; undated, uncredited; disc on legs outdoors and an interior with dials
–Jan P. Roos statement on the double toroidal vortex Austin TX, president of the Association for Pushing Gravity Research (stake); pp.81-82
–Dr Arthur Cain 'published testimony' on Searl Endorses Searl's 'calculations' (p.82); publication not identified; English and German searches found no trace
–Scientific Sub-Committee report on the Levity Disc Unnamed, undated, editor R.K.; 1e9 V and 1e10-1e14 V figures (pp.87-88)
–Joseph Wuest personal communication on Hess financing Told to the author in person (p.70); one source
Works by the researchers the book relays (35)
1904Jean Becquerel, N-ray paper, Comptes Rendus 138 p.1413 Book wrongly calls him discoverer of radioactivity (Henri)
1908Lippmann, charged-body inertia experiments No citation in the book (p.23); not identified
1909Oliver Lodge, The Ether of Space 'power of recoil' quotation (p.63)
1920Eguchi, electret records, Physico-Mathematical Society of Japan Cited in the Barret Report for Searl's skin effect (p.77)
1920Einstein, Ether and the Theory of Relativity (Leiden; Sidelights on Relativity) 'space without ether is unthinkable'; quoted in the book and in 1993
1929Brown, How I Control Gravitation, Science and Invention Rotors and pendulums under oil (p.35)
1931Hilgenberg, Ueber Gravitation, Tromben und Wellen in bewegten Medien Berlin, self-published, 78 pp.; Met Office Library; Roos's sink-flow source; unread
1933Wuest, Munich paper on 'a new type of radiation' 1933-34 (p.70)
1942Schappeller, The Physics of the Primary State of Matter 1942/1955; archive.org; 'Davson' in Barret's bibliography; source of the ether-flow direction; unread
1951Dirac, Is there an aether?, Nature Book dates Dirac's ether statement 1954 (p.62) and 1952 (p.65)
1952Heim, Die dynamische Kontrabarie, Stuttgart lecture Also the 1952 Innsbruck congress (p.89)
1959Dino Kraspedon, English translation (Neville Spearman) 400,822 km 'etheric covering' (p.67)
1964-07-11Saxl, An Electrically Charged Torque Pendulum, Nature 203 136-138 Positive charge gives a longer swing; primary text not read
1966Seike, Self-excited NMR of negative energy I JPS 21.5 p.348; Univ. of Tokyo; Newton's k in the spin-field energy tensor; page images
1966Seike, Self-excited NMR of negative energy II JPS autumn pp.143-144; 'energy-momentum ether'; damped solution saturates; page images
1966Todeschini, Decisive Experiments in Modern Physics Bergamo; experiments named, not described (pp.66-68)
1967Pages, Revue Francaise d'Astronautique no.3 Electromagnetic Magnus effect (p.83)
1969Seike, Ultra-Relativity theory (Chou-soutaisei riron) Editions 1972-1999; would settle the sign convention; not obtained
1970Seike, Gravitational field of antiparticles JPS spring 1970 p.3; CiNii
1970-08-28Allen and Endean, particles at 'about twice' c Book's one line (p.22); paper not identified
1971Seike, Klein's one-sided electromagnetic wave JPS spring 1971 p.117; CiNii
1971Saxl and Allen, Physical Review D 3, 823 Pendulum during the 7 Mar 1970 eclipse; abstract via search summary
1971Saxl and Allen, IRI Report #702 Eclipse gravity measurements; cited by Valone 2012
c.1971Hooper, New Horizons in Electric, Magnetic and Gravitational Field Theory B x V gravity monograph; snippets only
1973Seike, Uchutei magazine, 1973-1998 Gravity Research Institute, to issue 163
1974Pages, Le Defi de l'Antigravitation Chiron, Paris
1976Seike, The Experimental Disc Has Risen (Jikken enban fujou seri) Book; CiNii and ja.wikipedia
1982Seike, Nuclear Electric Resonance, 31a-NG-6 JPS spring 1982 p.5; Frenkel-Kramers equations; no gravity term or power figure
1982Seike, How to Assemble an Anti-Gravity Engine, 5th ed. Presumed source of the 3e9 kW; not obtained
1984Seike, Gravity cancellation experiment, 1p-EB-11 JPS autumn 1984 p.38; 17-turn Klein-bottle coil, 2-6 A, -0.059 to -0.291 g; no controls stated
–Searl, Antigravity: The Dream Made Reality Searl's own book; lists his publicity to 1983 (Life, Thames TV); Scribd snippet only
–Carstoiu, unpublished 'gravitational vortex' paper SUNY Albany / Univ. of Paris (p.86)
–Hieronymus, 'eloptic energy' work Relayed pp.69-70; no data
–Cayce readings 195-70 and 281-3 Offered as anticipating ether levitation (Part 3)
Experiments and replications by others (7)
1968Harald Fischer, Leipzig dissertation on electrostatic fields and pendulum periods Karl Marx University; copy said to be at Mainz; said to confirm Saxl (p.23)
1988Talley, vacuum test of Brown-type electrodes No thrust at 1e-6 torr DC; force during breakdown; via Wikipedia summary
1992Li Jianguo et al., Electrically Charged Torque Pendulum Experiment with a Null Result Chinese Physics Letters 9, 117; ten times Saxl's precision; abstract
1998Liu et al., Test of Saxl's effect: No evidence for new interactions Physics Letters A 244, 1; electrostatic equilibrium shift; abstract
2002Bahder and Fazi, Force on an asymmetric capacitor US Army Research Laboratory, arXiv physics/0211001; ion wind three orders too small
2004Tajmar, Biefeld-Brown effect: misinterpretation of corona wind phenomena AIAA Journal 42, 315; no thrust once corona excluded; abstract
2021Hathaway and Williams, Null-result test for effect on weight from large electrostatic charge Physics 3(2) 160, arXiv 2103.00700; 1 kg, 10 V-200 kV, within 2 g; abstract
Later accounts and media (22)
1923-04-14Michelson interview, Minneapolis Morning Tribune (Reuterdahl) Relativity need not reject the ether; via Brush 1976 and Wynniatt (p.61)
1934-03Popular Science Monthly on the Pasadena light-speed tube 'Variations of 12 miles per second and more' (p.22)
1956Hoversten, Interavia vol. XI no.12 p.992 2 ft discs, 50 kV, 50 W, 17 ft/s; 'highly classified'; quoted pp.38-39; original not obtained
1956Seesemann, Aetherphysik und Radiaesthesie (Locarno congress report) Relays Lenard's double tube and the Einstein-1952 claim (p.65)
1957A. V. Cleaver, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 16, 84-94 Rolls-Royce; 'a NEW PRINCIPLE' needed (pp.40-43)
1964-06-14Boston Sunday Globe on Saxl p.50
1965-01Keyhoe, TRUE magazine Heim 'put under official German security', which the book calls 'somewhat hastily'
1967-09Science et Vie no.600 p.54 'French physicists are several years ahead'
1972-08-25Edgar D. Mitchell, address to the 21st International Conference on Parapsychology Amsterdam; the book's foreword (pp.13-17)
1976-06-26La Suisse, Bourret on UFO sightings p.95
1976-11-02National Enquirer on Petit's MHD engine model CNRS plasma physicist; p.94
1978Jacques Bergier, The Secret War of the Occult (chapter) Corrales translation on Inexplicata; Rho Sigma from Peenemuende; links the report to Electrodynamic Gravity Inc.
1981-03CUFORG newsletter Vol 2 No 5, review of the book Canadian UFO Research Group; names Tamhelm Press; archive.org
1989John Davidson, The Secret of the Creative Vacuum Reprints the Brown letters; Searl via Barret; Earth-field induction and magnet-roller alternatives; archive.org
1995Yamamoto, Tondemo-bon no sekai, pp.227-238 Sceptics' book; main source of ja.wikipedia's Seike biography
2002Nick Cook, The Hunt for Zero Point Metadata match on Schaffranke; text restricted
2008Manning and Garbon, Breakthrough Power, p.11 Source of the Natural Philosophy wiki biography
–Natural Philosophy Society wiki: Rolf Schaffranke; Shinichi Seiki Advocacy wiki; dates, career, works list
–Japanese Wikipedia: Seike Shin'ichi Education, institute, books; sceptical framing
–Kook Science wiki: John Searl Sceptical wiki; pylon-damage conviction outline; search summary only, page did not load
–Wendelle Stevens, UFO Contact from Reticulum Repeats the book's Roos passage
–W. de Fonvielle, Les Mondes, on Ducretet's flying mica disc 19th century; spun before a Wimshurst machine (pp.84-85)
Records named but not yet examined (6)
1982Seike, Graviton reactor abstracts 3p-BD-4 (1982) and 30p-HF-9 (1983) JPS; free on J-STAGE; not reached
1983-01-05Evening Post (Reading) report on the Searl sentence Per a sceptical wiki summary: pylon damage, 15 months; British Newspaper Archive blocked
1985Seike, gravity cancellation follow-up, 31a-F1-1 JPS annual 40.1 p.27; would continue the 1984 record
1994Schaffranke obituary and burial record Young Harris GA versus Hayesville NC; Stone Mountain GA burial
–UK press on Searl, 1950-1999 British Newspaper Archive search blocked (HTTP 403)
–Record of the von Braun-Seike meeting Book p.83; Japanese search negative
Not counted: the book's own sections and diagrams (pp.72, 80, 92), its clairvoyant inputs other than Cayce, mainstream textbooks used only as background, Seike's other CiNii records (later abstracts, soil-mechanics papers, book editions), web snippets (Reddit, Substack, AbeBooks), and Brown's unidentified '75 patents in 12 countries'. Full catalogue: Sigma-Ro sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A hard-vacuum (below 1e-6 torr) torsion-balance test of a Brown-type asymmetric capacitor at 100-200 kV, sparks excluded, with a dummy electrode and leakage-current subtraction. And spin a metre-scale conducting disc, reading hub-to-rim voltage with an electrometer (prediction about 6.5e-9 V at 1,000 rpm).
Deciding records: Reading Evening Post 1982-83, Reading Crown Court and Southern Electricity Board files on Searl; Brown's vacuum notes and film (Bahnson papers, GE archive) and Navy proposal records; the 1956 Aviation Studies report and Glenn L. Martin files; the original Barret Report; Seike's 1985 abstract.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: compute V = m_e v^2 / (2e) for a 0.457 m ring at any rpm, then at steel's burst speed (about 357 m/s), and compare with 1e5 V. Then fit Seike's five coil points (2-6 A) and see why an I^1.4 trend cannot separate a magnetic force from heating.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Talley's force appeared during breakdown, which matches Brown's own thrust 'bursts' at every vacuum spark; the only unexplained part is Brown's statement that thrust persisted without sparks, for which he gives no numbers. Not dismissed untested: tested, but not at his conditions. arbiter.md, Claim 1
Contrarian The ARL calculation that ionic wind is 'at least three orders of magnitude too small' is 'a point that critics who say it is only ion wind tend to omit'. The force is real; a gravity explanation is not needed; the vacuum case is under-tested at Brown's voltage. contrarian.md, Claim 1
Mathematician Sink-flow gravity fails on its own premises: in a frictionless ether the force falls as r^-5, not r^-2; a 1/r^2 drag needs viscosity, which would drag planets. Roos calls the ether non-viscous, and his 'proof' from Searl's lift-off is a non sequitur. mathematician.md, Claim 2
Arbiter Two partial accounts of Searl's case: an associate's 1984 letter (prosecuted for 'stealing electricity', detained about a year) and a sceptical wiki summary (pylon damage, 15 months at Reading Crown Court, Evening Post 5 Jan 1983). Newspaper not seen; both interested. arbiter.md, Absence-of-evidence A
Investigator Bergier (1978) says the 1972 Rho Sigma report 'led to the creation' of Electrodynamic Gravity Inc., but that company's patent was filed in April 1968 and Hooper died in February 1971. Florida corporate records would decide; Schaffranke's career rests on advocacy sources. sites.md, Leads for review 4
AI noteThe book's own Lippmann citation says charge adds inertia. It does, by U/c^2: about 2.8e-18 kg at 1e5 V on a 3 ft sphere. So the book's support points the opposite way to the Searl chapter's 'inertia free' craft.
A Tesla enthusiast's 1996 book says HAARP was a corporate test to pull 60 GW from the aurora. Real history and patents sit beside unsourced numbers; the energy budget decides.
Invention / theory background
Gerry Vassilatos, described by his publisher as a New York City high school science teacher, wrote Secrets of Cold War Technology (Borderland Sciences, 1996). It argues that Tesla found a neutral 'Radiant Energy' released by short impulses, that Colorado Springs was an 'ether engine', that Cold War radio, nuclear and gamma-ray projects copy Tesla, and that HAARP's Gakona prototype tests drawing the auroral electrojet's '60 Gigawatts' to a ground screen. It also claims Farnsworth's fusor reached self-sustained fusion.
Ranking explanation
All four criteria apply. A: Tesla's shield observations, the Colorado Springs disconnect and the Savo car were never tested. B: long-delay echoes, ground-touching aurora and the unobtained HAARP contract reports stay open. C: the 60 GW and seawater-gamma budgets are hand calculations. D: it ties Tesla, beamray inventors, Reich and Farnsworth into one alternative history. It sits below Sigma-Ro, which keeps one measured effect, and beside Mills-Randal, another contested energy thesis; its central HAARP claim fails by calculation.
Key supporting elements
Tesla's 1,100 A is his own figure (1917 Edison Medal speech: 'from 1,000 to 1,100 amperes. That was in 1899'). The book's HAARP prototype hardware, 18 energised elements at 360 kW, matches the operator's history.
The electrojet is real and large: up to half a million amperes, driving measured currents in Alaskan pipelines (about 50 A) and power lines. HF heating does modulate it into ELF/VLF radio waves, a small transmitter steering a natural current.
Raytheon owned the HAARP contractor APTI from 1995 to 1998 through E-Systems, and the Eastlund patent's only non-patent citations are Tesla items, though the book says those patents have nothing to do with Tesla.
The auroral record is real: Lemstrom's 1872-84 artificial-aurora experiments, Corliss's ground-touching aurora reports (Norwood 1929), long-delay echoes unexplained since 1927, and Siple-Roberval amplification of injected VLF by up to 30 dB.
Farnsworth's fusors made fusion neutrons at ITT; the family archive says the reaction 'lasted no longer than thirty seconds'. The author also argues soundly against the HAARP-as-weapon and ELF mind-control readings.
Key contradictions
60 GW to a 12-acre screen fails three independent bounds: aperture (about 0.4 to 5 kW), induction (about 3 MW), and current through air (the whole Earth's fair-weather circuit carries 1.8 kA against 300,000 A wanted).
Gamma rays through 'several thousand feet of seawater' with no loss: at 1 MeV the e-folding length is 14 cm, so 305 m passes 10^-959. A kilogram of cobalt-57 stores only about 49 tons TNT of gamma energy.
The book's shield, microsecond pulse-scale and 10,000 V per inch statements are in no Tesla text checked. Tesla's 1892 article has one insulated plate partly stopping waves at six feet; his 1901 patents describe charged particles.
100 MV and 10,000 hp were Tesla's 1904 Wardenclyffe plan; he reported about 20 MV. Lighting 200 lamps at 26 miles by radiation needs at least 100 MW on the best antenna; the story is O'Neill's 1944 reconstruction.
Many unsourced figures are wrong (Argus altitude off 26 to 117 times, Starfish at 27,000 miles, Sputnik in 1956). Fusors run at gain near 1e-5. No HAARP energy announcement followed in 29 years.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 58 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Tesla's 'Radiant Energy': a neutral ether gas, released by short impulses, that passes glass and copper shields
Plausible, untestedTesla's own 1892 report (felt at six feet, insulated plate only partly stops it)Never properly testedthe book's stronger shield story, not traceable to a Tesla textRefuted by calculationpassing a closed, grounded copper shield (about 51 dB at 1 mm)Not testable as statedneutral ether gas
Colorado Springs as an 'ether engine' drawing power from space, 100 MV, 200 lamps at 26 miles
Establishedhigh-Q resonator, 1,100 A circulating current, streamersInternally inconsistent100 MV and 10,000 hp as 1899 results (a 1904 plan); 150,000/s with 0.0062 msRefuted by calculation200 lamps at 26 miles by radiation; resonator running minutes without supplyNever properly testedenergy 'from space'; lamp test by earth conduction or as an event
Savo's 1931 Pierce-Arrow run by a Tesla ether 'power receiver'
Never properly testedone witness through one interviewer, no object, tube-dating anomalyRefuted by calculationany radiated or ambient-field supply
Marconi plagiarised; every later project copies Tesla (the 'Tesla Rule'); oligarchic 'Houses' suppress inventors
Not testable as statedMarconi priority, 'Teslian component', 1915 award, the HousesInternally inconsistentthe Tesla Rule as used
Unacknowledged Cold War radiation technology 'documented in patents'
Establishednuclear EMP; acoustic modulation of Mossbauer linesRefuted by calculationgamma bomb, matter-to-gamma, gamma links to submarines at any depthTested, not supportedhalf-life changed by sound or other non-nuclear meansNever properly testedClear Atomic Light beams, orbital gamma-laser armada, Reich neutralisation, WWII beamray tests
HAARP's prototype is an industry test to draw about 60 GW from the auroral electrojet
Establishedhardware description; a conventional HF heaterRefuted by calculation60 GW to a ground screenTested, not supported'HF cannot make ELF'; 'major announcements soon'Internally inconsistentthe '1000 times Arecibo' scalingNot testable as statedpurpose reached by elimination
The auroral energy record (Lemstrom, ground-touching aurora, long-delay echoes, Siple-Roberval)
EstablishedSiple-Roberval amplification; the reports as reportsNever properly testedaurora reaching the ground; cause of long-delay echoes; a transmitter pulling auroral energy down
Farnsworth reached self-sustained fusion in 1966 and was suppressed through ITT
Establishedfusors make D-D fusion neutronsTested, not supportedself-sustained fusion (gain about 1e-5 to 1e-6)Never properly testedsuppression (funding ended; no record of intent)
Author of the book; source of every claim reviewed · Author; his other books are sold by the same publisher
Described by his publisher as a high school science teacher in New York City; producer of the Ray of Discovery video series; author of the 11-volume Vril Compendium (1992-95), Lost Science (1999) and Borderlands articles on HAARP and auroral power (1996-97). In a 1995 interview he set his method against 'quantitative science'.
Nikola Tesla
The book's central subject
Built the Colorado Springs station (1899) and planned Wardenclyffe (1904: 10,000 hp at 100 MV); patented radiant-energy collectors (US 685,957/958, 1901); reported 1,000-1,100 A and about 20 MV in his 1917 Edison Medal speech. His 1895 laboratory fire and the 1943 Supreme Court reading of his patent 645,576 figure in the story.
Michael Theroux
Editor of the book; supplier of its HAARP files; reported 12 ft streamers · Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the publisher
Of the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation; edited and prepared the book and its bibliography, supplied the HAARP files, and interviewed Vassilatos in 1995. His streamer replication has no publication or measurement.
Eric Dollard
Cited as reproducing Tesla's impulse effects · His 1985-86 videos and papers are sold by the book's publisher
The book credits him with 1985 'line interferometry' showing a 'super-luminal' surface component, 'interception currents' of hundreds of amperes and videotaped capacitor-charging and bulb-rupture demonstrations; no velocity, line or instrument is given. Otherwise not in the review files.
Peter Savo
Sole witness to the 1931 Pierce-Arrow 'ether car'
Per Ahlers's 1967 summary: born in Knin, served in the Austrian army, learned to fly at Wiener Neustadt, later a foreign trade specialist at the US Embassy in Belgrade and Bucharest; called Tesla's nephew on his mother's side. A genealogy lists no nephew of that name; identity unresolved.
Derek Ahlers
Interviewed Savo on 16 September 1967; his summary is the car story's source
An aeronautical engineer who had known Savo for about ten years (per the summary); noted Savo 'lacks a formal education'. Otherwise not in the review files.
Philo T. Farnsworth
Fusor inventor; the book's case of suppressed fusion
Director of research at ITT, which had bought his laboratories in 1949; with staff built 'fusors' (patents US 3,258,402, 1966, and 3,386,883, 1968); ITT's board pressed to end the work in December 1965; continued at Brigham Young University from 1967. Papers at the University of Utah (MS 0648).
Selim Lemstrom
Auroral experimenter the book cites for drawing aurora down
Professor at the University of Helsinki (1838-1904); between 1872 and 1884 tried to reproduce the aurora atop four mountains in northern Finland, with auroral and telluric current experiments at Sodankyla in 1882-84. Corliss records them as apparently never replicated.
Evidence / artifacts (155 of 155 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (10)
1992Vril Compendium, Vols. I-XI (1992-1995) Gerry Vassilatos; Borderland Sciences. Vol. I holds the Ward, Vion and Palencsar aerial-battery patents, Vol. X Hettinger and Grindell-Matthews, Vol. XI ELF and Sanguine; the book's 'VC' bibliography keys. Scans on archive.org, not read· Published by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the book's publisher
1995'The Rediscovery of Vril: An Interview with Gerry Vassilatos' By Michael Theroux, Journal of Borderlands Research Vol. LI No. 3; reposted on aetherforce.energy. The author sets his method against 'quantitative science'· Published by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the book's publisher
1996'The Broadcast Power of Nikola Tesla (Part I)' Borderlands Vol. 52 No. 2; Tesla's impulse discoveries; no Colorado Springs, Savo or Wardenclyffe material found by search· Published by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the book's publisher
1996Secrets of Cold War Technology: Project HAARP and Beyond Gerry Vassilatos; Borderland Sciences, ISBN 0-945685-20-3 (Adventures Unlimited edition 2000, ISBN 0-932813-80-1); 162 PDF pages, the one document in the folder; digested in full, deep read chapter by chapter· Author; edited by M. Theroux of the publisher, which also sells his other books
1996'HAARP With No Strings: What is the IRI?' Borderlands Vol. 52 No. 3; the author's earlier version of Chapter 7, first half; quotes a 48-element prototype description and 'Raytheon acquired the rights to the Eastlund patents'· Published by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the book's publisher
1996Cold War Technology Patent Collection (announced companion text) Named at the head of the book's bibliography as 'forthcoming' (p.154); the book says it would let readers check the patent paraphrases. Whether it became the 1997 companion volume is not stated in the review files· Published by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the book's publisher
1997'Drawing Usable Electrical Power from the Aurora Borealis' Journal of Borderland Research Vol. 53 No. 2; the 'Auroral Power Accumulator', 300,000 A x 200,000 V = 'some 60 Gigawatts', Vion, Lemstrom, Norwood 1929, pipeline currents; with references· Published by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the book's publisher
1997Declassified Patents of the Cold War and SDI: Companion Study Guide (Secrets of Cold War Technology II) 666 pp of patent texts and commentary; OCR on archive.org searched by keyword; names the De Ment 'Clear Atomic Light' patent and says Farnsworth produced fusion 'with control'; no HAARP material· Published by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the book's publisher
1999Lost Science Gerry Vassilatos, ISBN 0-932813-75-5; chapters on Tesla, Moray and Farnsworth; copies on archive.org, not read
–Ray of Discovery video documentary series; Ground Radio Named in the Borderland Sciences catalog of the author's works; not examined· Published by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the book's publisher
Tesla's own texts and patents (15)
1892-12-21Tesla, 'On the Dissipation of the Electrical Energy of the Hertz Resonator' The Electrical Engineer; impact of electrified air felt at 'six feet or more', 'cannot be entirely stopped by the interposition of an insulated metal plate'; the only primary text found for the shield story
1900Tesla, US patent 645,576 Held by the 1943 Supreme Court to anticipate features of Marconi's four-circuit system; known from the opinion
1900-06Tesla, 'The Problem of Increasing Human Energy' Century Magazine; defines a stationary wave as one with fixed nodes, against the book's 'stationary versus standing' distinction
1901Tesla, US 685,957 'Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy' Sun throws off 'minute particles of matter positively electrified' that charge an elevated plate against ground; no shields, microsecond scale or neutral gas
1901Tesla, US 685,958 'Method of Utilizing Radiant Energy' Ultraviolet, cathodic and Roentgen rays charge and discharge conductors
1901Tesla, US 685,956 Named with 685,957/958 in the deep read's web check of Tesla's radiant-energy patents
1904-03-05Tesla, 'The Transmission of Electric Energy Without Wires' Electrical World and Engineer; 'ten thousand horse-power under a tension of one hundred million volts' as a Wardenclyffe plan, the source of the book's 100 MV
1915-12-08New York Times item on Tesla, p.8 Non-patent citation in Eastlund US 4,686,605
1916Tesla's interview with his patent counsel (Anderson, ed.) Quoted on pupman: 'no difference whatever ... in the principle' between powering a telephone and a lamp
1917Tesla, Edison Medal acceptance speech 'currents of from 1,000 to 1,100 amperes. That was in 1899'; highest potential 'something like 20,000,000 volts'; with no receiver the plant uses 'only a few horsepower'
1919Tesla, 'My Inventions' IV, Electrical Experimenter Figure caption: coil 'capable of furnishing a current of 1,100 Amperes in the High Tension Secondary'; primary 51 ft (book: 75 ft cylinder)
1919-05Tesla, 'The True Wireless' Electrical Experimenter [memory, medium]; cited by the book by title only, with no quotation
1935-02Tesla in Liberty Magazine, p.7 Non-patent citation in Eastlund US 4,686,605
1940-09-22W. L. Laurence, New York Times, Section 2 p.7, on Tesla Non-patent citation in Eastlund US 4,686,605
–Tesla quoted in Anderson, Guided Weapons and Computer Technology, pp.227-229 Names his post-fire laboratory '46 Houston Street' (book: 40 West Houston); quoted by Open Tesla Research
Patents and patent office (38)
1860-06-19Vion, US 28,793 'Improved method of utilizing atmospheric electricity' Bibliography item; Google Patents page checked (title and date)
1872-04-30Ward, US 126,356 'collecting electricity for telegraphing' Bibliography item; Google Patents page checked
1889-11-12Dewey, US 414,943 Bibliography aerial-electricity patent; Google Patents page checked
1899-05-30Zickler, US 625,823 Bibliography entry the book links to 'darklight communications across several miles'; no test cited
1901-05-21Andor Palencsar, US 674,427 'Apparatus for collecting atmospheric electricity' Spelled 'Palinscar' in the book; Google Patents page checked
1903-03-17MacFarland-Moore, US 723,176 Bibliography; the book dates his device 1898, which matches no listed patent
1904-03-22MacFarland-Moore, US 755,305 Bibliography
1904-06-10Hulsmeyer, British Patent 13,170 'Improvement in Hertzian Wave Projection' The 'radio searchlight' with which Chapter 5 starts its radar history; bibliography item
1907-07-16Murgas, US 860,051 'Constructing Antenne' and US 915,993 'Wireless Telegraphy' (1909) Deep-well ground terminals the book makes a component of Sanguine and Seafarer; its 'ELF' tests at 50 kHz are low frequency, not ELF
1909-02-02Walter I. Pennock, US 911,260 'Apparatus for collecting atmospheric electricity' Google Patents page checked
1919Hettinger, US 1,309,031 Beamray device the book says was 'tested and classified during World War II'
1919-05-13J. H. Rogers, US 1,303,730 'Radiosignaling System' and US 1,395,454 'Submarine Signaling System' (1921) Buried-line antennas the book says filter static and became the basis of naval ELF systems; tested at 70 kHz (LF)
1922McCullough, US 1,403,700 Beamray device, same claim
1923McCullough, US 1,471,406 Bibliography
1924Reno, US 1,504,974 Beamray device, same claim
1934-02-27S. L. Weber, US 1,948,552 'Ray Aviation Compass' Chapter 8 patent table (text year 1932)
1946-11-19W. T. Weber, US 2,411,400 Chapter 8 patent table
1951-04-03DeLoraine, US 2,546,984 ('Communication System'; bibliography 'X-Ray Communication System') Text year 1947; named by the arbiter as a deciding text, not obtained
1957-06-25Reiffel, US 2,797,333 'X-Ray Source' Filed 24 July 1953; drawing reproduced in the book; the book calls Teller's SDI X-ray laser 'identical' to it
1959-09-15Gschleiden, US 2,904,692 Passive collimator; Chapter 8 table
1962-11-13Kell, US 3,064,134 Chapter 8 table
1964-03-03Chope, US 3,123,714 'Space Communications System' Filed July 1961; drawing in the book
1966-06Farnsworth, US 3,258,402 Fusor patent (Wikipedia IEC article via Investigator)
1968-06Farnsworth, US 3,386,883 Fusor patent
1968-06-11Gould, US 3,388,314 Chapter 8 table
1969-02-25Eerkens, US 3,430,046 'Coherent Gamma Ray Emitter' Filed June 1966; drawing in the book; named by the arbiter as a deciding text, not obtained
1970Hirsch, US 3,530,036 and US 3,530,497 Fusor patents (two)
1971-01-19Pieckenbrock, US 3,557,370 'Gamma Ray Laser' OCR text misprints 3,587,370; the '30 Gigawatts' is not on the visible title sheet
1973-02-06Dement, US 3,715,596 'Nuclear Explosive Light Generator' The 'Clear Atomic Light' source; named by the arbiter as deciding; not retrieved
1974-05-28Viecelli, US 3,813,555 Chapter 8 table
1974-06-18Jensen, US 3,818,222 Chapter 8 table
1974-07-09Wood, US 3,823,325 Chapter 8 table
1977-11-15Mallozzi, US 4,058,486 Book quotes 'weld, cut, and melt metals'; its '100 Gigawatts' is not tied to a patent line
1987-08-11Eastlund, US 4,686,605 (altering the atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere) Assigned Eastlund to ARCO 1985, ARCO to APTI 1987, BAE Systems 2006; no Raytheon or E-Systems assignment recorded; non-patent citations are Tesla items only· Patent owned by the HAARP contractor
1987-12-08Eastlund, US 4,712,155 Same ARCO/APTI assignment chain· Patent owned by the HAARP contractor
1991-08-13Eastlund, US 5,038,664 Same ARCO/APTI assignment chain· Patent owned by the HAARP contractor
1996Patterson, US 5,494,559 In the bibliography, as part of the author's cold-fusion lineage
–Reiffel, US 3,193,683 Bibliography basis for the Mossbauer 'gamma ray bomb'
Court and state records (4)
1915The court award 'ratified in 1915' giving Marconi 'sole priority of Radio' Book p.58; no court, country, case or judge named; no such proceeding identified
1943Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. v. United States, 320 U.S. 1 Opinion read (first 100,000 of 163,541 characters): Stone anticipated Marconi; Tesla 645,576 anticipated features; no priority awarded to Tesla
1956-05-07Wilhelm Reich's conviction for criminal contempt of the 1954 injunction Encyclopedia.com account checked by the arbiter; the book calls it 'malpractice'
–Court of Claims record behind the 1943 decision Named by the arbiter for what Tesla's patents were held to disclose
Government records (7)
1977Seafarer environmental impact statement and Navy hearings To test the book's claim that 'a few audio frequency watts' disrupted SEAFARER
–HAARP operator history and FAQ (University of Alaska Fairbanks) Prototype 18 elements, 360 kW (1994); 48 elements, 960 kW (1999); 180 elements, 3.6 MW (2007); transferred to UAF Aug 2015; about 10 MW diesel prime power· Current operator
–E-Systems and Raytheon HAARP contract technical reports (DTIC) The deciding record on whether electrojet 'contact' or energy was studied
–HAARP 1993-95 experiment plans and facility power log Named by the arbiter
–DOE nuclear test table (DOE/NV-209) For Hardtack II, Gnome and Hardhat yields the book gives
–Project West Ford reports (MIT Lincoln Laboratory) Book gives 1962 and 350,000 wires; record shows a failed 1961 and a successful 1963 launch
–USPTO assignment records for the Eastlund patents To confirm whether any was ever assigned to E-Systems or Raytheon
Company and business records (9)
1899Colorado Springs Electric Company supply records Supply power for Tesla's station
1924Philo T. and Elma G. Farnsworth papers, MS 0648, University of Utah (finding aid) ITT funded 'fusors'; 'the necessary reaction lasted no longer than thirty seconds'; board pressure Dec 1965; BYU 1967· Family archive
1931Pierce-Arrow registration and Buffalo records for the Savo car Named by the arbiter
1965ITT board minutes on ending the fusion work Would show why funding stopped· ITT
1967Farnsworth papers MS 0648 Boxes 16-17 (Mark II fusor drawings, research notes) For neutron counts and input power· Family archive
1976Audio recordings 'At Jim Heiniyo - Fusor Group' (MS 0648 related) A speaker describes the fusor's development
1994-06-30'E-Systems buys ARCO Power Technologies', New York Times Cited by the Wikipedia APTI article
1998APTI company history (Wikipedia, citing NYT 1994, Washington Post 2003, Defense Daily 2003) ARCO Advanced Technologies; E-Systems 1994; Raytheon 1995; management buyout Jan 1998; BAE Systems March 2003
c.1903Marconi Company and J. P. Morgan correspondence; Wardenclyffe foreclosure papers Named by the arbiter for the priority and suppression strand
Witness accounts and correspondence (13)
1842Joseph Henry's account of needles magnetised through a building by a Leyden-jar spark Third-hand in the book (p.15); no bibliography entry; named by the arbiter as a record to obtain
1872Elihu Thomson / Houston, 'On A New Connection For The Induction Coil', Scientific American Sparks from metal objects throughout a building; arbiter notes Thomson's 'etheric force' work is usually dated 1875
1895'Inventor Tesla's Loss' (trade report) Fire at 33 and 35 South Fifth Avenue, 13 March; no cause or arson stated
1895Fire-marshal, insurance or police reports on the 1895 fire Would decide ordinary fire, arson or sabotage
1895-03-13New York Sun and New York Herald reports of the laboratory fire Quoted by the Tesla podcast: fire began on floors below the lab per the night watchman; no dynamite mentioned
1927Jorgen Hals's letter to Stormer on long-delay echoes 'a weaker echo about three seconds after the principal echo'; via Wikipedia
1929Norwood, Ontario low aurora: 'A Low Aurora and Its Effect on a Radio Receiver', Nature 127:108 (1931) Quoted in Corliss: streamers 'from the sky to the ground' round a house; radio 'dead'; original note not obtained
1951McCullough's letters on Reich's neutralisation of radium and cobalt-60 Through BSRF; McCullough was Reich's co-worker; no measurement given; not obtained· Held and published by the book's publisher
1967Ahlers's original interview notes (36 questions) Named by the arbiter
1967-09-16Derek Ahlers, summary of an interview with Peter Savo 'Unidentified document circulated in the early 1980s'; the source of the 1931 Pierce-Arrow story; 12 tubes incl. three '70-L-7', 80 hp, battery 'for the lights only'
1996-09-13Richard Napolitano, private conversation on geopolitical regions The one source the book names for its 'Houses' model
–William Lehr, private discussions with the author Source for the 20 ft nitrogen blasts, carbon electrodes and radioactive roof copper
–Knin parish registers, US immigration and naturalisation records, US Embassy Belgrade and Bucharest staff lists To establish who Peter Savo was
Experiments and replications by others (21)
1867Henri De Saussure, 'Observations on Mountain Resonance' (Comptes Rendus, Smithsonian translation) Bibliography date 1867 against 1865 in the Chapter 7 text; part of the book's aerial-electricity record
1883Lemstrom, notes in Symon's Monthly Meteorological Magazine 18:33 and 18:51 Cited in the author's 1997 aurora article
1883Capron, 'Lemstrom's auroral experiments in Lapland', The Observatory 6:259 NASA ADS; not reached
1884Lemstrom, 'Artificially Induced Auroras', Science 4:465 In the book's bibliography; not obtained
1885Lemstrom 1885 report on Sodankyla experiments Cited by Nevanlinna and Tanskanen 2024
1904Mendeleev's 1904 booklet on ether as a 'zero group' element Book p.20; figures not checked
1906Gustave Le Bon, Evolution of Matter (1906) and Evolution of Forces (1908) BSRF reprints; the book's source for radioactivity changed by heat or sunlight (Chapter 4)· Reprinted by the book's publisher
1918-03Nipher, 'Can Electricity Destroy Gravitation?', Electrical Experimenter Book's evidence for ether-pressure gravity; not obtained
1920Paneth and Peters (1926) and Helbronner (1920): 'extra energy' from hydrogen over palladium Book p.72; arbiter notes [memory] that Paneth and Peters withdrew in 1927
1951Reich's ORANUR experiment Reich museum account: 1 mg radium needle in an accumulator, high readings, sick staff· Reich museum
1967Hirsch, 'Inertial-electrostatic confinement of ionized fusion gases', J. Appl. Phys. 38:4522 More than 1e10 neutrons per second per a secondary reprint; paper not opened
1974Helliwell, VLF wave injection from Siple Station Growth near 100 dB/s, gains up to 30 dB; snippets
1982R. L. Clark, 'Reich Technology and Nuclear Systems' One of the book's sources for neutralisation
1985Eric Dollard, 'line interferometry' and 1985-86 videos and papers Superluminal surface component, capacitor charging, mass repulsion; no velocity, line or instrument given· Sold by the book's publisher
1985Gregory Hodowanec, capacitor 'etheric' detectors (four private or magazine titles) 'continues to flow' for hours; none on Tesla
1988Helliwell, 'VLF wave-injection experiments from Siple Station, Antarctica' 30-50 dB amplification at Roberval; snippet
1990Toby Grotz, 'Project Tesla' recreation of Colorado Springs (1990 International Tesla Symposium) Grotz held that Tesla 'merely stored energy in the earth' (book p.43)
1995James S. Brett, 'The Whistler Serenade', Stonehenge Viewpoint pp.16-19, 1995; the book's source for Siple-Roberval VLF amplification
–Michael Theroux, 12 ft white streamers from a 2 ft by 1 ft secondary Book p.21; no publication, voltage or date· Editor of the book, of the publisher
–George Piggot, silver beads held in a positive field Book p.34; no bibliography entry
Contemporary periodical reports cited by the book (9)
1914-07-04Ulivi, exploding-bomb experiments, Scientific American Bibliography
1919Rogers underground-aerial articles (Secor 1919; Taylor, Proc. IRE 7(4) 1919; Electrical Experimenter 1919-1920) Five bibliography items behind the Rogers buried-antenna passage
1922Grindell-Matthews, 'Diabolic Rays', Popular Radio Bibliography
1924Turpain, 'Does Radio Cause Explosion?', Popular Radio Bibliography
1929Van der Pol, 'Long Delayed Radio Echoes', Nature 122:878, with Beatty 1923, Villard 1969 and Rasmussen 1975 Bibliography group on long-delay echoes (the Chapter 7 deep read listed no van der Pol entry, but the bibliography has one)
1934-10A. H. Halloran, 'The Farnsworth Cold Cathode Electron Multiplier', Radio With Farnsworth's 'Multipactors' patent collection and notes (VC 10); the book's Multipactor (1937) radar passage
1984Reichhardt, Space World News, on Project West Ford The one source cited for the West Ford passage; not read
–MacFarland-Moore, 'Radio Generator That Blew Up Bombs', Popular Radio (undated) Bibliography
–Coblentz item and Persinger (Laurentian) and Puthoff (SRI) items in the bibliography The bibliography places Persinger and Puthoff against the text's 'Phillips Corporation'
Later accounts and media (26)
1930T. H. Moray, Beyond the Light Rays (1930), with Talk on Radiant Energy (1962) and Treatise on Alpha, Beta and Gamma Rays (1946) Bibliography items; Moray is in the book's roster of Tesla-technology workers (p.57)· Some reprinted by the book's publisher
1944J. J. O'Neill, Prodigal Genius Origin of 200 lamps at 26 miles, reconstructed 'by piecing together the fragmentary material'; lending copies only
1978Campbell 1978 (Pure Appl. Geophys.) and 1980 on Alaska pipeline currents Up to about 50 A in mild activity; Springer page blocked
1979Merritt, 'Measurement of the auroral induced current in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline', ASME Snippet
1982-08-18'The Aurora Makes Waves on the Ground, Too', Alaska Science Forum Ground fields up to 10 V/km; 10 A surges on the Fairbanks-Healy line
1985W. R. Corliss, Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights and Related Luminous Phenomena (with his 1986 catalogue) Lemstrom 'widely reported but apparently never replicated'; ground-level aurora reports incl. Calgary 1903; archive.org OCR searched
1985Valerie Hunt, 'Human Aura', US Psychotronics Association Cited as '(Hunt)' among the ELF neurological-effect sources the author argues against (Chapter 6)
1987T. E. Bearden, 'Tesla's Secret', US Psychotronics Association video The book calls Bearden's ELF triangulation 'a blatant impossibility' (p.119)
1989Elma Farnsworth, Distant Vision Bibliography; its fusion pages not checked
1994Savage, Aurora Cited in the author's 1997 article
1995Begich and Manning, Angels Don't Play This HAARP Advertised in the book's back pages; the view the author argues against· Sold by the same publisher
1998-12-24T. Neil Davis, 'Auroral Electrojets', Alaska Science Forum Electrojets 'as large as a half million amperes'; pipeline and power-line currents
2007-10-16Gary Peterson, Tesla Coil Mailing List post Quotes O'Neill; calls the 26-mile account 'generally accepted as being apocryphal'
2022-03-24TESLA: The Life and Times podcast, show notes 029 (1895 fire) Watchman's account, oil-soaked premises; Cheney's gas jet and Seifer's suspicion of the watchman summarised
2024Fiona Amery, 'From laboratory to mountaintop: Creating an artificial aurora', History of Science 62(4) Lemstrom's 1872-1884 experiments on four mountains; abstract read
2024Nevanlinna and Tanskanen, Hist. Geo Space Sci. 15:17-25 Lemstrom's Sodankyla experiments 1882-1884
–Open Tesla Research page on Tesla's car and 'Peter Savo' Calls the story embellished; says Tesla had no nephew of that name (that site's characterization)
–Swiss Tesla Society, Teslacar.pdf Download truncated and unreadable; retry
–Treemily, Tesla family tree Nephews Petar (Trbojevic) and Sava (Kosanovic); secondary
–William Terbo remarks and obituary Nicholas Terbo = Nikola Trbojevich, Tesla's nephew; William Terbo an RCA executive; snippets
–Valone, Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature Snippet on Nicholas Terbo as Tesla's nephew
–Smithsonian NMAH Ken-Rad 70L7GT sample and Valve Museum 70L7GT page Tube dated 'Ca 1939' and 'first introduced in 1947', both later than 1931
–Hammond Castle, 'About John Hays Hammond Jr.' Mentored by Bell and Tesla; nothing on the book's 'permanent guest'
–Tesla residence timelines (Hotel Governor Clinton c.1930, Hotel New Yorker from 1934) Snippets; against the book's New Yorker penthouses in the RCA period
–Scribd copies 'Teslas Pierce Arrow' and 'Tesla's 1930 Cosmic Energy Car'; Tesla Universe 'Tesla's Electric Car - Folklore or Fact?' Not reached or not opened
–Grissett, deLorge and Wever ELF neurological-effect studies Cited by surname only in Chapter 6 for the neuro-entrainment accusations the author rejects; no bibliography entry
Records named but not yet examined (3)
1892-02Tesla's February 1892 London lecture and 1893 lectures Whether the shield, pulse-scale and 10,000 V per inch statements appear in Tesla's words
1899Tesla, Colorado Springs Notes 1899-1900 (Nolit, 1978) Source, if any, of 150,000/s, 0.0062 ms, the disconnect and the 26-mile test
1996Vassilatos, 'The Broadcast Power of Nikola Tesla (Part II)' Possible home of the Colorado Springs and Savo material· Published by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, the book's publisher
Left out: bibliography entries no review file names (most Vril Compendium keys and many patents and articles), the reviewers' mainstream reference sources (NIST tables, Wikipedia test and device articles, HAARP ERP and ELF-generation papers), saved page copies, and the review's own analyses. Full catalogue: Vassilatos-Gerry sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Measure the current that flows into a large grounded screen at Gakona during an active aurora (amperes against the 300,000 A claimed). For claim 1, put a calibrated 1 to 6 microsecond impulse source outside a sealed, grounded 1 mm copper box with a probe inside, then repeat with a 1 mm seam.
Deciding records: Tesla's Colorado Springs Notes and his 1892-93 lectures; E-Systems and Raytheon HAARP contract reports (DTIC) and USPTO assignments; the De Ment, Eerkens and DeLoraine patents; Farnsworth papers MS 0648 Boxes 16-17 and ITT board minutes; Nature 127:108 (1931); New York Sun and Herald, March 1895; Savo's immigration records.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it multiplies 300,000 A by 200,000 V, then bounds what a 12-acre screen can catch by aperture, current through air and induction. By hand: 1 MeV gamma rays in seawater fall by a factor e every 14 cm; work out the fraction left after 300 m.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter All three reviewers agree on the large pattern: the book is accurate on some hardware and history (prototype element counts, Raytheon's ownership of the contractor 1995-98, real patents, real aurora and echo observations, Tesla's own 1,100 A), and fails on the energy and attenuation numbers its central claims need. arbiter.md, section 1
Contrarian Strongest honest case: Tesla's impulse and shielding observations never had a neutral instrumented repeat; Marconi's 1901 reception rested on one listener; the electrojet is a real current that HF heating can modulate; pipeline currents, long-delay echoes and low-aurora reports are real. contrarian.md, section 4
Mathematician '1000 times Arecibo' uses the wavelength ratio linearly. Power density scales as 1/lambda squared, so matching a 1.6 MW radar needs about 870 GW, not 1 GW: the book's own premise gives the opposite of its conclusion. mathematician.md, section 5.2
Investigator The 1,100 A the review first called unsourced is Tesla's own (1917 speech; 1919 caption), and the 200 lamps at 26 miles began with O'Neill's 1944 reconstruction. The Eastlund patents passed ARCO to APTI to BAE; no Raytheon assignment is recorded. sites.md, Corrections to earlier documents
QE Michael Theroux both supplied the HAARP files and edited the bibliography. He belongs to the publishing foundation, so he is an interested party; he is also the source of the 12 ft streamer replication. qe.md, section 3
AI noteThe book's 18 energised elements at 360 kW match HAARP's official 1994 prototype exactly, and its 20 kW per element also reproduces the later 960 kW and 3.6 MW stages: the hardware numbers are right, the energy thesis is not.
A 1,876-page classical rewrite of physics puts hydrogen below its ground state as a power source; its sharpest precision test fails, while its laboratory anomalies still await a neutral test.
Invention / theory background
Randell L. Mills, founder and chief executive of BlackLight Power (founded 1991 as HydroCatalysis, now Brilliant Light Power), models the electron as a thin spherical shell of charge obeying Maxwell's and Newton's laws. His Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics derives atoms, molecules, particles and cosmology in closed form and predicts "hydrinos": hydrogen states below n = 1, reached when a catalyst takes m x 27.2 eV, releasing up to hundreds of eV per atom.
Ranking explanation
It meets all four criteria. A: outside measurements (NASA 1996 excess heat, a Delft EPR spectrum, DSC exotherms) never neutrally tested, and a patent withdrawn after an outside inquiry. B: whether those anomalies have ordinary causes is open. C: the g-factor failure is a calculator exercise. D: wide influence. Beside Silvertooth and Vassilatos it has a larger modern record, but its sharpest predictions fail and nearly all evidence passes through the interested company.
Key supporting elements
NASA Lewis (1996) measured up to 11 W excess on 60 W input in a Hydrocatalysis-lent cell; the authors said recombination would need "quite a high" efficiency, which the data only "marginally admit", and further study "remains warranted".
W. R. Hagen (TU Delft, declaring no BLP funding) recorded a structured EPR spectrum near g = 2.0046 in 11 samples from 11 reactor runs, with an empty-tube baseline and no nitrogen or transition ions; the company supplied the samples.
The USPTO examiner allowed the hydride-compound application after seeing experimental results and samples; it was withdrawn in 2000 after an outside inquiry. A 2008 UK appeal was allowed and remitted (reportedly refused again in 2009).
Formulas with no fitted continuous parameter give helium S-series quantum defects 0.144 and 0.289 (observed about 0.145 and 0.305) and a muon/electron mass ratio within 1.6e-8, though corrections are justified only in words.
Further anomalies: Thermacore USAF SBIR (1994) 25 W excess with a Lehigh ESCA 55 eV peak (with Mills consulting); Glumac UIUC DSC exotherms "far more exothermic than the predicted thermochemistry" (company-hosted); NASA NIAC funded a 2002 propulsion study.
Key contradictions
Mills's g-factor formula is 2.87e-10, about 2,200 standard deviations, from the measured value when modern alpha is used; its eleven-figure match relied on 1973-era alpha and two wrong coefficients that nearly cancel.
The derivation supplies hbar, spin, the Bohr magneton and the hydrino integers by postulate; the force balance holds for any Z_eff; l >= 1 shells fail the book's own wave equation; "no fitted parameters" conflicts with case-by-case choices.
EarthTech (1997) ran the light-water cell 164 hours with a recombiner: no excess within about 10 percent. Hagen-Mills call their EPR fit "semi-quantitative", concede a conventional two-radical fit, and report the Bruker duplicate only in Mills-co-authored texts.
The 2018-dated book says far-field gravitational waves do not exist (detected 2015 and 2017) and that the Higgs "will not be observed" (found 2012); its H0 of 78.5 and top-quark mass of 187 GeV miss measurements.
About 35 years and "over $150 million" (company figure) without a product sale or a neutral run on outsiders' instruments; company-hosted validators were hired or co-authors; Scientific American (2014) reports Mills saying hydrinos had not been isolated.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 52 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Spin, hbar, Bohr magneton and nonradiation derived from Maxwell and Newton
Internally inconsistentpostulated inputs; l >= 1 shells and self-force fail
g factor, Lamb shift, muonium and 21 cm line as closed-form predictions
Tested, not supportedg off about 2,200 sigma with modern alpha
Hydrogen has stable states below n = 1 (hydrinos)
Internally inconsistentMills's derivationRefuted by calculationhydrogen Hamiltonian with a finite-size proton
Laboratory anomalies (EUV, EPR, DSC) are hydrinos; kilowatt energy release
Never properly testedno neutral controlled testTested, not supportedlight-water cell, EarthTech 1997 repeat; NASA 1996 ambiguous
Hydrinos are the dark matter; 3.48 keV and other cosmic lines
Never properly testeddark-matter identity, conditional on hydrinosNot testable as stated3.48 keV assignment as evidence
One closed-form method gives molecular energies with no fitted parameters
Establishedas arithmetic, qualified; about 0.17 percent on tabulated totalsNever properly testedas blind predictionInternally inconsistent"no fitted parameters" as worded
Quantum mechanics is wrong: Schroedinger charge must radiate; Bell tests are classical
Refuted by calculationradiation argumentInternally inconsistentAspect "classical" curve is the QM formulaTested, not supportedloophole-free Bell tests
Gravity, cosmology and particle masses from the same theory
Tested, not supportedH0, CMB, top quark, Higgs, no gravitational wavesNever properly testedmuon/electron ratio; free-electron gravity; 1995 predictions
Inventor; author of GUT-CP; founder, CEO and President of BlackLight Power / Brilliant Light Power · Company sells hydrino technology; patent holder
By the book's own (publisher's) description: MD, Harvard Medical School; chemistry degree, Franklin and Marshall; studied electrical engineering at MIT. Medical and imaging patents from 1984, energy filings from 1989, about 115 patent results to 2022.
W. R. (Fred) Hagen
EPR specialist who measured the molecular-hydrino spectrum; co-author with Mills (2022, 2024, 2025) · Co-author; declares no financial support from BLP; samples supplied by BLP
Department of Biotechnology, TU Delft (ORCID: Delft 2017 to present). A fan wiki calls him Emeritus Professor of Enzymology; unverified.
J. M. Niedra
Lead author of NASA TM-107167 (1996), the government-laboratory light-water cell measurement
NYMA Inc., working with I. T. Myers, G. C. Fralick and R. S. Baldwin of NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland. Otherwise not in the review files.
Peter M. Jansson
Calorimetry for the company (1997 thesis, 2008-09 Rowan tests, redacted report); NIAC co-investigator · Service contract with HydroCatalysis; co-author of Mills papers
Rowan University, Electrical and Computer Engineering. 1997 Rowan thesis "Hydrocatalysis: a new energy paradigm for the 21st century"; co-investigator on the 2002 NIAC BlackLight Rocket Engine study.
Randy Booker
Company validator: 2020 SunCell power report (194-218 kW) and chapter-by-chapter arithmetic checks of GUT-CP · Company-hosted reports; compensation not stated
PhD in physics, UNC Asheville. Checked GUT-CP chapters 2017-2022 and reported reproducing its tables "to a very high degree of accuracy".
Andreas Rathke
Author of the main published theoretical critique (New J. Phys. 2005)
European Space Agency (ESA). Found "severe inconsistencies in the deterministic model"; Mills replied in 165 pages (2008), pointing out a sign slip in Rathke's Eq. 9.
Esther Kepplinger
USPTO Group Director who had allowed application 09/009,294 withdrawn from issue in 2000 · Institutional party (USPTO)
Not in the review files beyond her role and declaration: her "main concern" was an electron going to a lower orbital "contrary to the known laws of physics and chemistry".
Raj Ganesh Pala
Leads the first academic group to announce a replication of hydrino-compound syntheses (ECS 2026)
Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Kanpur, with Nandita Sharma. Their abstract treats hydrinos as already supported ("later corroborated at NASA"); no results yet.
Evidence / artifacts (162 of 162 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (15)
c.1991Mills and Good, Mills and Kneizys early electrolysis papers Listed on the 1997 company web site as confirmations (24.6 W out for 4.73 W in; Pout/Pin > 37), per EarthTech transcription· inventor
1995-11GUT-CP, November 1995 edition (Ch.22) The book cites it for predicting cosmic acceleration and the top-quark mass; not in the project folder or found online· inventor
2003Conrads, Mills, Wrubel, Plasma Sources Sci. Technol. 12, 389 Juelich EUV work the company calls independent; Mills a named author· co-authored by the inventor
2005Seven fast-hydrogen (Balmer-broadening) papers, refs 36-42 of the book 2005-2010, all with Mills as author; co-authors Scharer, Phillips, Chen, Mayo, Nansteel· inventor
2008-01-21Mills, reply to Rathke, "Physical Solutions of the Nature of the Atom, Photon ... Hydrino States" 165 pages, millsian.com; concedes the delta shell "is not a radial solution"; finds a sign slip in Rathke Eq. 9· inventor
2010Mills EUV papers: "Hydrino continuum transitions with cutoffs at 22.8 nm and 10.1 nm" and soft X-ray continuum paper NASA ADS record and company PDFs; with the Mills-Lu reply to Phelps-Clementson; not opened· inventor
2018Mills, Lu, Frazer, "Power determination and hydrino product characterization of ultra-low field ignition..." Chinese J. Phys. 2018, doi 10.1016/j.cjph.2018.04.015 (Crossref)· inventor
2018-12-10The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics (GUT-CP), project copy 1,876 pp, all three volumes and Appendices I-VI; cites a 2022 paper; about 75 percent deep-read with page images· inventor; published by his side
2022Hagen and Mills, "Electron paramagnetic resonance proof for the existence of molecular hydrino" Int. J. Hydrogen Energy 47(56) 23751; preprint Research Square 2021-02-10; Hagen (TU Delft) measured, BLP supplied samples· co-authored by the inventor
2024Mills, "Hydrino States of Hydrogen", preprint Ref 13 of Hagen-Mills 2022, the source of the Bruker duplicate statement; downloaded, not read· inventor
2024Hagen and Mills, "General EPR pattern from molecular hydrino produced in various reactors" ChemRxiv 2026-04-29; broad patterns 0-8000 G, L- to Q-band, anti-Curie behaviour, transition near 107 K; abstract read· co-authored by the inventor
2024Hagen and Mills, cosmic-neutrino-background EPR paper Company PDF; not downloaded· co-authored by the inventor
2025Mills and Hagen, "Spectral identification of hydrino compound Fe2O3:H2(1/4) by five complementary spectroscopies" States p <= 126 (book: 137); repeats the Bruker replication sentence; p.1 read· inventor
2025-02GUT-CP, February 2025 edition 1,888 pp, LCCN 2023905641, served at the old file name, PDF modified 2026-04-28; title pages read, changes not compared· inventor
Patents and patent office (69)
1984-12-10US5073858A "Magnetic susceptibility imaging (MSI)" Pre-hydrino medical imaging; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1984-12-14US5064754A "Genomic sequencing method" and US5221518A "DNA sequencing apparatus" Same priority; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1985-03-19US4815447A and US4815448A "Mossbauer cancer therapy"; AU1967788A tissue-necrosis apparatus Same priority; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1986-12-31US5428163A "Prodrugs for selective drug delivery" Pre-hydrino; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1988-03-31CA1341077C "Luminide and macroluminide class of pharmaceuticals" Pre-hydrino; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1988-11-10EP0444151B1 "Magnetic susceptibility imaging (MSI)" European filing, later priority; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1989-04-21BR9007303A "Energy emission process" First energy filing in the list; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1989-06-14AU5967190A "Apparatus and method for providing an antigravitational force" Patent record of the Ch.35 fifth-force idea; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1989-12-08CA2005039A1 "Pharmaceuticals and apparatus providing diagnosis and selective tissue necrosis" Medical; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1990-12-12CA2095734A1 "Energy/matter conversion methods and structures" Inventor applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1993-06-11AU7135694A "Energy/matter conversion methods and structures" Applicant Hydrocatalysis Power Corporation; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1994-05-20EP0760698A1 "Apparatus and method for providing an antigravitational force" Second antigravity filing; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1995-06-06WO1996042085A2 and US6024935A "Lower-energy hydrogen methods and structures" US patent issued 15 Feb 2000; companion application 09/009,294 withdrawn; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1997-07-22WO1999005735A1 "Inorganic hydrogen compounds, separation methods, and fuel applications" With ZA986478B and US continuations US20090123356A1, US20090142257A1, US20090129992A1 (reactor); Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1997-10-29AU734961B2 "Hydrogen catalysis power cell for energy conversion systems" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1997-11-13US6477398B1 "Resonant magnetic susceptibility imaging (ReMSI)" Medical imaging; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1997-12-24CA2315833A1 "A method and system for pattern recognition and processing" US/PCT twin 09/220,970 cited in the book; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1998-01-20US20090148731A1 "Hydride battery and fuel cell" Hydrino hydride application; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1998-08-03"Inorganic hydrogen and hydrogen polymer compounds and applications thereof" AU1515900A, MXPA01001234A, AU2002318885A1/B2; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1999-01-06US20090148729A1 "Inorganic-hydrogen-polymer and hydrogen-polymer compounds" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1999-09-08GB2370162A "Apparatus and method for propulsion" Inventor applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1999-09-08CA2396559A1 "Ion cyclotron and converter and radio power microwave generator" With ZA200201811B; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1999-09-30US20090196814A1 "One electron atom catalysis, increased binding energy compounds" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
1999-10-18US application 09/009,294 "Hydride Compounds": notice of allowance Examiner allowed the claims after experimental results and samples were submitted· applicant BlackLight Power
2000Kepplinger declaration Her "main concern" was "the electron going to a lower orbital in a fashion that I knew was contrary to the known laws of physics and chemistry"; quoted in the 2002 opinion· USPTO, institutional party
2000-01-06CA2320597A1 "Ion cyclotron power converter and radio and microwave generator" With AU2004202231A1; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2000-02-17USPTO notice of withdrawal from issue, application 09/009,294 Ordered via Robert Spar after Group Director Kepplinger read the issued patent, prompted by an "outside inquiry"· USPTO, institutional party
2000-03-23WO2001070627A3 "Hydrogen catalysis" With AU2001252939A1; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2000-06-12WO2001095944A2 "Photocleavable prodrugs for selective drug delivery" Medical; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2000-08-22WO2002016956A1 "4 dimensional magnetic resonance imaging" Medical imaging; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2001-03-07"Microwave power cell, chemical reactor, and power converter" AU2002257022A1, AU2002311772A1/B2, ZA200306519B; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2001-11-14AU2002365227A8 "Hydrogen power, plasma, and reactor for lasing, and power conversion" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2001-11-21BRPI0810972A2 "Energy source and reactor, catalyst, energy center" Brazil; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2002-01-02US20090068082A1 "Synthesis and characterization of a highly stable amorphous silicon hydride" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2002-05-01AU2003234301A1 "Diamond synthesis" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2003-04-15"Plasma reactor and process for producing lower-energy hydrogen species" EP1628909A2, PL380865A1 (2004), US20100209311A1 (2005); Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2003-07-21US7188033B2 "Method and system of computing and rendering the nature of the chemical bond" Patent form of claims 1 and 4; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2003-09-05US20170104426A1 "Electrical power generation systems" Brilliant Light Power applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2003-10-24WO2005041368A2 "Novel molecular hydrogen gas laser" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2004-01-05WO2005067678A3 computing atoms, and GB2434466A "Calculating the energy of electrons using Maxwell's equations" Same priority; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2004-05-17WO2005116630A3 computing excited states BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2005UK applications GB0521120.6 (plasma reactor) and GB0608130.1 (laser) BlackLight Power; the "new hydrogen species" applications· inventor or his company (applicant)
2005-10-28WO2007051078A2 computing polyatomic molecules BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2006-04-04US20080304522A1 "Catalyst laser" Inventor applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2007-01-03CA2673847A1 computing molecules and molecular ions BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2007-04-24"Hydrogen-catalyst reactor" AU2008245686B2, TW200920692A, AP2009005030A0, ZA200907494B; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2007-08-17CA2651267A1 "Fifth-force apparatus and method for propulsion" Patent record of the Ch.35 pseudoelectron claim; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2008-01-02US20100082306A1 computing atoms and molecules Inventor applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2008-04-17UK IPO decision BL O/114/08 Hearing officer P. Marchant; refused both applications as contrary to generally accepted physical law; p.1 of 10 read· UK IPO, institutional party
2008-07-30"Heterogeneous hydrogen-catalyst reactor" SG10201510821PA, AU2009276601B2, TW201104948A, UY32023A, US20200299130A1; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2008-09-25US20100121619A1 computing dipole moments BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2009UK IPO decision O/170/09 on remittal Reportedly refused the applications again; search summary only, BAILII page blocked· UK IPO, institutional party
2009-08-05US20120120980A1 "Molecular hydrino laser" Inventor applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2009-08-07EP2462653A1 "Heterogeneous hydrogen-catalyst power system" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2010-03-18"Electrochemical hydrogen-catalyst power system" (CIHT) EP3595066A3, US20130084474A1, BR112012023251A2, AU2015246122A1, ZA201206999B; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2011-04-05EP2702623A1 "H2O-based electrochemical hydrogen-catalyst power system" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2012-05-21EP3609009A1 "CIHT power system" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2013-11-20US20160290223A1 "Power generation systems and methods" Brilliant Light Power applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2014-03-03US20170070180A1 "Photovoltaic power generation systems" Brilliant Light Power applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2014-05-29WO2015184252A1 "Electrical power generation systems" BlackLight applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2015-05-09"Thermophotovoltaic electrical power generator" ZA201707925B, US20200403555A1 (2016); Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2015-10-05US20180294617A1 "Gamma-ray electron beam transducer" Inventor applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2016-05-30US20200327999A1 "Thermophotovoltaic electrical power generator network" Brilliant Light Power applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2016-08-12US20190170127A1 "Gamma-ray and tri-hydrogen-cation collisional electron beam transducer" Inventor applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2017-01-05WO2018129353A1 "Extreme and deep ultraviolet photovoltaic cell" With HK40016588A; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2017-02-12"Magnetohydrodynamic electric power generator" CA3053126A1, WO2018222569A1, AU2018378300A1 (2017); Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2019-01-18"Magnetohydrodynamic hydrogen electrical power generator" US20220021290A1, AU2021217228A1 (2020); Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2020-08-18WO2022039910A1 "increasing the kinetic energy of a directional plasma" Inventor applicant; Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
2021-03-08"Infrared light recycling thermophotovoltaic hydrogen electrical power generator" US20240079988A1, WO2023203472A3 (2022); Google Patents inventor search· inventor or his company (applicant)
Court and state records (3)
2000-05BlackLight Power suit, US District Court for the District of Columbia District court opinion not read· parties: BlackLight and the PTO
2002-06-28BlackLight Power Inc. v. Rogan, 295 F.3d 1269 (Fed. Cir.) Upheld the Director's authority to withdraw; "undisputed that no one involved in the withdrawal had reviewed the '294 patent application before issuance of the Notice"; FindLaw copy· parties: BlackLight and the PTO
2008Blacklight Power Inc v Comptroller-General of Patents [2008] EWHC 2763 (Pat), Floyd J Appeal allowed and remitted: test is a reasonable prospect that the theory proves valid on full investigation with expert evidence; National Archives text, paras 49-52 checked· parties: BlackLight and the Comptroller
Government records (4)
1994-03-24Thermacore, "Nascent Hydrogen: An Energy Source", SBIR Phase I final report Gernert and Shaubach, USAF Wright Laboratory contract F33615-93-C-2326; 25 W anomalous heat; Lehigh ESCA "predicted 55 eV signature"; in cooperation with Mills and Good· contractor working in cooperation with the inventor
1996-02NASA TM-107167, "Replication of the Apparent Excess Heat Effect in a Light Water-Potassium Carbonate-Nickel Electrolytic Cell" Niedra, Myers, Fralick, Baldwin, NASA Lewis; up to 11 W excess at 60 W in, gains 1.06-1.68; recombination "marginally" admitted; cell lent by Hydrocatalysis
2002-11-30NIAC Phase I final report, "The BlackLight Rocket Engine" Marchese, Jansson, Schmalzel, Rowan University; anomalies warrant propulsion work "regardless of the theoretical explanation"; pp.1-4 read
2013-12New Jersey Economic Development Authority grant, about $1.1 million Per Wikipedia citing NJ.com 20 Dec 2013
Company and business records (12)
1997BlackLight web-site list of 13 claimed confirmations As transcribed by EarthTech: Thermacore, HPC, Noninski, Hokkaido, NASA Lewis, MIT Lincoln, Westinghouse, AECL Chalk River, Moscow Power Engineering Institute, INEL and others· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2008-10-20BlackLight news release on Rowan "50,000 watt reactor" Rowan engineers led by Dr. Peter Jansson; Google result only· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2009-11-20Form D, BlackLight Power Inc., Cranbury NJ $10,976,000 sold of $10,983,000; 31 investors; board incl. Mills, Brewer, Good· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2010Pepco Holdings / Conectiv 10-K Exhibit 21 listing "Blacklight Power, Inc. DE" 2010-2016 exhibits; reason for listing not stated
2012-05-09Form D, BlackLight Power Inc. $4,518,000 sold of $5,013,000; 21 investors· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2014-07-03Form D, BlackLight Power Inc. $120,000 sold of $10,008,000; 2 investors· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2016-06-06Summary of validation reports (redacted) Booker, Jansson, Chary, Renick; claims "1 MW+" in less than a coffee-cup volume· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2016-06-07Form D, Brilliant Light Power, Inc. $25,000,000 offering, none sold yet; minimum investment $40,000· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2018-08-29Form D/A, Brilliant Light Power, Inc. $18,338,000 sold of $25,000,000; 45 investors· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2025Company publications list brilliantlightpower.com/pdf/Publications.pdf; newest entries 2024-2025· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2025-08Company summary "over $150 million invested", "100kW light-emitting prototype", "Hydrino confirmed by 24 independent methods"; p.1 read· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
2026Validation presentation 23 MB company PDF, downloaded, not read· Brilliant Light Power (formerly BlackLight Power, HydroCatalysis), the inventor's company
Witness accounts and correspondence (2)
2000Law-firm letters to four physicists over "defamatory comments" Reported by Harvard Crimson and Wikipedia; letters not seen· sent for the company
2000Mills's statement that the Navy was running research trials Reported by the Harvard Crimson; no document found· inventor
Experiments and replications by others (16)
1997EarthTech gas-phase runs 1-13 and light-water calorimetry runs 1-5 Linked from the EarthTech page; not read
1997-05-31P. M. Jansson, "Hydrocatalysis: a new energy paradigm for the 21st century", Rowan thesis 182 pp; calorimetry under a service contract with HydroCatalysis; p.1 read in Chrome, not saved· service contract with the company
1997-10-09EarthTech International, "Attempt to Observe Excess Heat in a Ni-H2O-K2CO3 Electrolysis System" Austin; 164 h, Pd recombiner, water-flow calorimeter: "no detectable sign of excess heat"; 10 percent would have shown
2008Rowan University validation tests, 2008-2009 Jansson group; "6.5 times more energy" per CBS 2009; reports not opened· company-hosted; author hired by or co-author with the company
2014G. Crouse DSC replication report Company PDF, downloaded, not read· company-hosted
2014-04N. Glumac (UIUC) DSC report Exotherms 101-148 J/g and 125-135 J/g "far more exothermic than the predicted thermochemistry"; p.1 read· company-hosted
2016Jansson redacted validation report 194 pp, image only, not read· company-hosted; author hired by or co-author with the company
c.2016Other company-listed validators: Renick, Weinberg, Ramanujachary (Rowan), Copeland, F500 study, ENSER Listed on the validation page; not downloaded· company-hosted
2017-08-07R. Booker, chapter-by-chapter checks of GUT-CP (Theory-Reviews.zip) 2017-2022, all chapters and appendices; "replicated all of his results ... to a very high degree of accuracy"; Ch.1, 7, 32 read· company-hosted; author hired by or co-author with the company
2018M. Nansteel, summaries of GUT-CP Ch.14, 18, 19 In Theory-Reviews.zip· company-hosted; author hired by or co-author with the company
2020-01-11R. Booker, "Report on the Power Output of Liquid Gallium Suncells" UNC Asheville; "excess power levels of 194-218 kW"· company-hosted; author hired by or co-author with the company
2020-02-07S. D. Tse (Rutgers), consultant report on molten-gallium and water-bath calorimetry Tse "was hired to observe tests and protocols"; p.1 read· company-hosted; author hired by or co-author with the company
2020-12-04Nansteel, 100 kW continuous steam validation Validation page entry· company-hosted; author hired by or co-author with the company
2021-03-16M. Nansteel, Report on Water Bath Calorimetry Single test at BLP Cranbury; PPlasma 169 kW, "210 kW" over 50 s; local gain about 4.2· company-hosted; author hired by or co-author with the company
2026Pala and Sharma (IIT Kanpur), "Putative Hydrino Compounds in Light Water Heat Excess Electrolysis Experiments" ECS Meeting Abstracts MA2026-01 1445; replication programme announced, no results
2026R. G. Pala, "Hydrino Mediated Nuclear Reactions: Model Elaboration and Search for Evidence in Electrolysis Experiments" ECS MA2026-01 1442; not read
Later accounts and media (31)
1967-10-30Witteborn and Fairbank, free-fall of electrons, PRL 19, 1049 Cited by the book for zero free-electron gravitational mass; the book itself gives "less than 0.09 m_e"; title only
1997Levine et al. (TOPAZ, KEK), PRL 78, 424 Cited by the book as confirming the free-electron charge profile; measures the running electromagnetic coupling
2000-05-17Harvard Crimson, "Academics Question The Science Behind BlackLight Power, Inc." Board (Brewer, Kalleres, Melissaratos), over $25 million, critics Georgi and Chu
2002Reichhardt, Nature news item Listed by Hagen-Mills 2022 among third-party evaluations
2002Bob Park account of the USPTO "outside inquiry" Named lead via Wikipedia; not read
2002-12-10Village Voice, E. Baard, "Eureka? Hydrino theorist gets nod from NASA-funded investigation" Marchese "agnostic about the existence of hydrinos"
2005A. Rathke, "A critical analysis of the hydrino model", New J. Phys. 7, 127 ESA; "severe inconsistencies in the deterministic model"
2005J. Naudts, "On the hydrino state of the relativistic hydrogen atom" arXiv physics/0507193; Klein-Gordon sub-ground state
2005Connett and Zimmerman; Rodgers, Physics World items Listed by Hagen-Mills 2022 among evaluations
2006N. Dombey, "The hydrino and other unlikely states", Phys. Lett. A 360, 62 Singular states vanish for a finite-size nucleus
2007A. S. de Castro, orthogonality criterion banishing hydrino states, Phys. Lett. A arXiv 0704.0631
2007Bourgoin, Adv. Stud. Theor. Phys. Listed by Hagen-Mills 2022 among evaluations
2008Guizzo, IEEE Spectrum; "Loser: Hot or not?" IEEE Spectrum 2008-2009 press record; not read
2008NYT/VentureBeat, CNET and New Energy Times issue 30 coverage October 2008 press; source of $60 million by 2006 figure
2008-08-25P. R. Giri, "Hydrino like states in graphene and Aharonov-Bohm field" arXiv 0808.3309
2008-10-29J. Phillips, "Selective atomic heating in plasmas: implications for quantum theory" arXiv 0810.5280; IJHE 34 (2009) 9816; Mills co-author elsewhere· co-author of the inventor
2009-08-13CBS MoneyWatch report on the Rowan tests Google result only
2011M. Rimmer, "Patenting free energy: the BlackLight litigation and the hydrogen economy" J. Intellectual Property Law and Practice 6(6) 374; source of the "cold fusion and perpetual motion" remark
2011-06-28Loureiro and Amorim, "Anomalous Doppler broadening caused by exothermic reactions" Eur. Phys. J. D; ordinary mechanism for fast-H Balmer lines; title only
2012Phelps and Clementson, Eur. Phys. J. D 66, 120 EUV continua from ions sputtered from electrodes; abstract read
2012Lawler and Goebel, Eur. Phys. J. D 66, 29, comment on the continuum paper Not read
2012-09-13Nadareishvili and Khelashvili, self-adjoint extension for inverse-square-like potentials arXiv 1209.2864
2013impactlab, "Hydrino theory validated by Harvard tests" Harvard-Smithsonian CfA EUV reproduction claim; not opened
2014Scientific American report: Mills said hydrinos had not been isolated Via Wikipedia; original not read; the book says they have been isolated (p.83)
2015Forbes article on BlackLight Via Wikipedia; not read
2015D. L. Selke, "Against point charges" Appl. Phys. Res.; cited by Hagen-Mills 2022
2015-11-27Khelashvili and Nadareishvili, "On the existence of additional (hydrino) states in the Dirac equation" arXiv 1601.01957
2021Hydrogen Revolution Substack, "The Misleading BLP Wikipedia Page" Supporter publication; link source for Booker reviews and Thermacore report· supporter
2025D. L. Selke, "Ionization Energies from Classical Force Balance: Calcium-like Uranium and Below" Eur. J. Appl. Phys.; extends Mills's atom method; not read
2025Speculative relatives: Zhigalov (dark hydrogen, erzions), Surmont 2025, Wulf 2026, Magnitskii 2025, Danghyan Recorded as found, not weighed
2026Wikipedia, "Brilliant Light Power" Tertiary; funding, critics (Anderson, Chu, Park, Chu-Carroll), court history; disputed by supporters
Records named but not yet examined (10)
1990sOwn reports of the company-listed confirming laboratories AECL Chalk River, Westinghouse, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, INEL, Hokkaido (Notoya and Enyo), Moscow Power Engineering Institute, Brookhaven (Noninski with Weismann)
1991Company registers: HydroCatalysis Inc., Hydrocatalysis Power Corp., BlackLight Power Inc., Brilliant Light Power Inc. NJ, PA, DE registers and OpenCorporates not reached
1994Lehigh University ESCA report on the 55 eV signature Named in the Thermacore report
1994Thermacore SBIR Phase II or DTIC record Not located; DTIC not reached
2000USPTO file wrappers of 09/009,294 and US 6,024,935, and the four related applications Would identify the "outside inquiry"; Patent Center not reached
2003Harvard CfA EUV continuum report (Bykanov, "Validation", GEN3_Harvard.pdf) Book ref 29, hosted on the company server; not read· company-hosted
2003NIAC Phase II proposal or refusal for the BlackLight Rocket Engine Not located
2022Hagen-Mills 2022 electronic supplementary information (reactor, controls, Fig. S6) ScienceDirect; not reached
2022Bruker-authored record of the duplicate EPR spectra (Billerica MA) Stated only in Mills-co-authored texts
2026IIT Kanpur replication results Due after the ECS 2026 abstracts
Not counted: the 15 Google Patents results beyond the 100 saved (not identifiable), patent family members in other countries, the book's individual cited papers, forum and fan-wiki posts, mainstream measurements used only as web checks (LIGO, Higgs, Planck, g-2, Bell tests, XRISM), and earlier AI-written analyses. Full catalogue: Mills-Randal sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A neutral laboratory makes its own Ga(O)OH or FeOOH product in its own reactor, runs a hydrogen-free control through the same KOH processing, and measures EPR at several bands with spin counting and Raman near 1950 cm^-1; separately, a SunCell heat run on the evaluator's own calorimeter.
Deciding records: The November 1995 GUT-CP edition; USPTO file wrappers naming the "outside inquiry"; the Hagen-Mills supplementary controls; a Bruker-authored EPR report; unredacted Jansson, Nansteel and Tse data; the reports of the 13 listed laboratories; the IIT Kanpur results; UK decision O/170/09.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it evaluates Mills's g-factor formula (Eq. 1.228) with the 1973-era alpha (eleven-figure agreement) and with modern alpha (2.9e-10 off, about 2,200 sigma). Also check the hydrino energy: H to H(1/4) releases (16 - 1) x 13.6 = 204 eV, against 1.48 eV per atom for burning hydrogen.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter No single explanation of the 35-year silence is excluded; it is "an anomaly not a verdict": it lowers the odds of a real but hard-to-engineer effect, but cannot be read as proof of artifacts. The cheapest decisive step is a neutral laboratory with its own sample and a hydrogen-free control. arbiter.md, Absence-of-evidence analysis
Mathematician The hydrino force balance is satisfied for any Z_eff, so it selects no integer; the integers come from a separate trapped-photon postulate. A rotating l >= 1 charge wave satisfies the book's own wave equation only if v = m omega R / sqrt(l(l+1)), never v = omega R. mathematician.md, claims 1 and 2; arbiter.md, claim 1
Contrarian Arithmetic is not the problem. The strongest positive items are not the ones the book emphasises: the NASA excess heat, Thermacore, Glumac DSC, the structured EPR spectrum and the helium-mobility peaks deserve a neutral laboratory, and they do not need the cosmology or the muon mass. contrarian.md, section 4
Physicist A real 100 kW source of hydrino gas would be easy for outsiders to authenticate with a mass spectrometer and calorimeter loaned for a week, and BLP itself invites replication. The arbiter records this as an argument about plausibility, not a test. physicist.md, claim 2 historical record; arbiter.md, claim 2
QE Most important miss of the first pass: the book says gravity has no far-field waves, "consistent with the absence of the observation of gravity waves", in a December 2018 edition, after LIGO's 2015 detection; p.1642 cites 2017 papers, so the page was edited and the sentence left. qe.md, section 3, M1; arbiter.md, QE revision 6
AI noteThe project PDF's title page says December 2018, yet it cites a 2022 paper; the same download address now serves a February 2025 edition that lowers the hydrino limit from p = 137 to 126.
Rank 10Pappas-PT
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 11:40
A Greek physicist's spark-gap coil was said to create energy and excite cells by resonance. The arguments fail, yet small sham-controlled trials report effects; his key 1991 paper is missing.
Invention / theory background
Panagiotis T. Pappas, a Greek physicist who published on the Ampere force law, patented a medical device in 1996 (US 5,556,418). It discharges a capacitor through a spark gap into a flat coil held over the patient. Sold as PAP-IMI or PAPIMI, it was not cleared by the US FDA in 1995 and later came under an import alert. It is now CE marked and used in European pilot trials. One Greek source says he died in 2026.
Ranking explanation
Rank 7, unchanged. It ranks below Sigma-Ro, which covers several gravity-control inventors and includes one real effect (ionic-wind thrust). It ranks above Wallace-Byran, whose central c+v claim was tested and not supported. Here the energy-gain report was never tested by a neutral party, the paper behind it is unobtained, and the US regulatory story is documented. Small sham-controlled pilots report effects. A worked example lets the reader check the physics (criteria A, B, C).
Key supporting elements
Small randomised, sham-controlled pilots report effects. In Viti 2023 (n = 32) heart-rate variability rose after PAPIMI but not after sham. In Keilani 2025 (Vienna, n = 20) post-COVID fatigue and walking distance improved. Both groups declare no conflicts.
The arbiter found that at the manufacturer's figures the coil induces 4e3 to 2e4 V/m in tissue. That shifts a large cell's membrane voltage by tens to about a hundred millivolts, so real physiological effects are expected.
The voltage and current spikes far above supply and average values are real (Established). The patent's bursts at the peaks of the damped ring match later descriptions of 'megahertz to gigahertz' peaks (Keilani 2025).
No neutral party has tested the inventor's energy-gain reports: the 1991 IECEC paper and the 1998 '20% excess heat on the probe alone'. The paper was never obtained, and a Google search for its title showed a legal-removal notice.
Pappas published peer-reviewed physics, including the 1983 Nuovo Cimento B Ampere-force paper (cited 151 times) and a 1986 J. Appl. Phys. experiment at NTUA. The patent was granted in Europe in 2001 with no opposition filed.
Key contradictions
The patent's 'infinite then negative gain' is a ratio of resistances, not a power ratio. Its own text says some electrons gain energy only as others lose it. A 0.001% duty cycle alone makes peak power 100,000 times average.
The patent gives 10^6 V/m both as the field a cell membrane needs and as the strength of air. The real values are about 1.4e7 to 2.3e8 V/m and 3e6 V/m. Induction needs no field in the air at all.
Radio quanta at 100-240 MHz carry about 1e-6 eV, a millionth of a chemical step, and become heat within picoseconds. Read as plasma frequency, the 'eigenfrequency' misses an arc's electron density by about 8 orders of magnitude.
In Leisner 2002, a controlled rat fracture study, untreated rats healed faster. The FDA's 2005 letter (the regulator's account) lists two rat deaths, two tachycardias and a fatal myocardial infarction during treatment. No causal investigation was found.
There are no controlled data for the cancer or membrane-potential claims. The 37-site US study was uncontrolled and was terminated by its IRB, per the FDA. The manufacturer's 'several 10 kA' does not fit its own 60-96 J per pulse.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 19 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Transient voltage and current 10-100 times the supply and average values
Establishedspikes far above average; ordinary for pulsed discharges
Arc resistance from infinite to -100 ohm gives 'infinite then negative gain'
Internally inconsistentthe patent's argumentRefuted by calculationa resistance ratio is not a power gain
Net energy gain as an experiment (1991 IECEC paper; 1998 '20% excess heat')
Never properly testedno neutral test; paper not obtained
Bursts at 'characteristic eigenfrequencies' of the gas
Establishedbursts exist (class of device)Refuted by calculationread as electron plasma frequencyNot testable as statedpatent wording, term undefinedNever properly testedspectrum shifts when only the gas changesInternally inconsistentthree stated burst durations
Pulses beat air breakdown 1-100 times to give 10^6 V/m at the cell
Internally inconsistentpremise: 10^6 V/m for both membrane and airEstablishedshort pulses exceed DC breakdown by a factor of a fewNever properly tested1-100 times from this devicePlausible, untestedinduced field reaches tissue at membrane-relevant strength
Plausible, untestedat adequate scale: two small sham-controlled pilots positive, one single-arm; not replicatedTested, not supportedfracture healing (one controlled rat study)
Restoring membrane potential cures cancer and AIDS; pulses 'pasteurize' cells
Never properly testedno test of any kind; regulators acted on missing dataNever properly testedpasteurisation; induced field short of microbe thresholds
Inventor; patent holder; owner of the Greek maker of the device · Patent holder and manufacturer (commercial stake)
Greek physicist and mathematician in Athens. He published papers on six-dimensional physics in Il Nuovo Cimento (1978-1982) and on the Ampere force (Nuovo Cimento B 1983; Phys. Lett. A 1985; a J. Appl. Phys. 1986 experiment at NTUA). He patented spark-gap lightning conductors (1988-1991) before the 1992 medical filing. The Seattle Times called him a math professor; a 2009 blog called him a 'professor' at TEI Piraeus. One source gives his death as 11 May 2026.
Charles (Chuck) Wallach
US distributor and sponsor-investigator of the 37-site US study · Distributor (commercial stake)
CEO of Bio-Energy Services Inc., Tarzana CA, and earlier of Pap Electrodynamics. Per the 2002 FDA report, he imported units declared as a 'plant and seed germinator', and the study's IRB terminated it in 2002. Pappas treated his back pain, and both called it a success. Education not in the review files.
Jorge Cure
Co-inventor, with Pappas and Harry Eichler, of the 1989 'ions by remote action' precursor patents
Named first inventor on US 5,068,039 (1991) and US 5,239,442 (1993), Greek priority 1989. These are described as 'ideal in applying Nordenstrom's method' and are the direct precursor of the 1996 patent. Education and career: not in the review files.
Ifianassa Athanasia Karampatsou
Collaborator since 1996; author of the June 2026 memoriam · Collaborator and promoter (interested party)
A physician who also promotes olive-leaf therapy. Her memoriam reports PAPIMI results presented at a Salzburg conference and use in Cuba, Vietnam and Swiss clinics, citing no studies. She says media and pharmaceutical interests resisted the work.
Michael E. Marcarelli
FDA official who signed the 10 June 2005 significant-risk letter to Pappas · Regulator (regulatory stake)
PharmD, Director of the Division of Bioresearch Monitoring at the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). The letter classed the device as Class III non-heating diathermy, cited animal and human adverse events, and declared it adulterated.
S. Leisner
Lead author of the only controlled animal test (2002, rat fractures)
Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, Hebrew University, with R. Shahar, I. Aizenberg, D. Lichovsky and T. Levin-Harrus. Their study found slower healing in treated rats than in untreated controls. Further career not in the review files.
A. Viti
Lead author of the 2023 sham-controlled pilot and the 2025 single-arm pilot
Centro Fisioterapico Apuano (Lucca, a private physiotherapy centre) and the Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence. The authors declare no conflict of interest and no external funding. Further career not in the review files.
M. Keilani
Lead author of the 2025 Vienna placebo-controlled pilot on post-COVID fatigue
Department of Physical Medicine, Medical University of Vienna, working with Therme Wien Med and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute. The authors declare no competing interests. Further career not in the review files.
Evidence / artifacts (114 of 120 listed, 95%)
Own works and inventions (28)
1978Physics in six dimensions: an axiomatic formulation P. T. Pappas, Lettere al Nuovo Cimento; Scholar listing only
1979'Three-dimensional time' equation Pappas, Lettere al Nuovo Cimento; Scholar listing only
1982On the R4 -> R6 -> R6 -> R4 transformations Pappas, Nuovo Cimento B; Scholar listing only
1983The original Ampere force and Biot-Savart and Lorentz forces Pappas, Il Nuovo Cimento B 76, 189; cited by 151; his stated theoretical basis for energy in sparks
1985On the fundamental laws of electrodynamics Pappas and P. G. Moyssides, Physics Letters A 111, 193-197
1986Rigorous quantitative test of Biot-Savart-Lorentz forces Moyssides and Pappas, J. Appl. Phys.; experiment at the National Technical University of Athens
1988The Cardinal Law of Electrodynamics, the Principle of Conservation of Energy, and the Tesla Magnifying Effect Conference abstract, 1988 International Tesla Symposium (Natural Philosophy Wiki, title only)
1988Thirty Six Nanoseconds Faster Than Light Conference abstract (Natural Philosophy Wiki, title only)
1989Non Relativistic Forces on Antennas Conference abstract (title only)
1989Einsiedeln conference paper on energy in arcs Cited in the patent ('Eisiedeln'); conference in Stefan Marinov's circle; proceedings not obtained
1990Energy Generation Phenomenon: Lab to Star and Galaxy Generation 1990 International Tesla Symposium; title only
1991-08Energy Creation in Electrical Sparks and Discharges: Theory and Direct Experimental Evidence Proc. 26th IECEC, Boston, vol. 4, pp. 416-423. Source the patent cites for the 10-100x claim; the arbiter calls it decisive; not obtained
1991-08-08On Solving the Great Problems of the World 26th IECEC luncheon speech, Boston (cited in 'Other Voices')
1993Electrodynamics from Ampere to now: future perspective In Essays on the Formal Aspects of Electromagnetic Theory, World Scientific
1990/1998PAP-IMI Cases Reports, 1990-1998 Inventor's case collection, cited by Moawad 2013 and the Journal of New Energy; not retrieved· Inventor (interested party)
c.1998papimi.gr website: 'Our Cancer Theory', 'Lung Cancer Case', RadioFungi pages, ICCF-7 paper Inventor's site 1998-2010; Internet Archive not reached· Inventor (interested party)
1997-11Update on Stefan Marinov's Death: emails from Panos Pappas Listed on the Natural Philosophy Wiki
1998-04Electrically induced fusion in the living cell ICCF-7 (Vancouver) contribution named in the 1998 letter; not obtained
1998-06Letter from P. T. Pappas, On Ion Magnetic Inductor New Energy News vol 6 no 2, pp.27-28 (ed. Hal Fox): 'C to Fe', '20% excess heat on the probe alone', energies '30 Kev'; editor notes work with UCLA M.D.s in Santa Monica· Inventor (interested party)
c.1999Electrically Induced Nuclear Fusion Journal of New Energy; cited by Moawad 2013
1999K-Na-K Nuclear Transmutations Inside the Living Cell 1999 Symposium on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions and New Energy; title only
1999The Lost Unified Theory Conference abstract; title only
1999Panagiotis Pappas (dialogues without Stop), video interview YouTube, 30 min, uploaded 2016 by George Apostoleas; not watched
2006-03-24Pappas' Physiology of the Cell and its Atomic Energy Athens, 67 pp, includes 2 Mar 2002 Starnberg talk 'PAPIMI - The Spark of Life'; '>1 Giga Watts', active/pause < 1e-7, cell as '(ATP) controlled microscopic Nuclear Reactor'; searched, not read in full· Inventor (interested party)
2006Basteas clinical report in the 2006 compilation Dr Ilias Basteas, Athens: '888 magnetic nanopulses at about 80 Joules each', blood chemistry, 28 osteoarthritis or pain cases (pp. ~40-55); not read in detail· Practitioner reported by the inventor
2011-12Pappas PDF on 'non conventional energy machines comprising arc and negative resistance' OverUnity Research forum attachment; login required, not opened
2014-01-24Lecture at the Diogenes Club, Dr Panagiotis Pappas YouTube, 64 min; not watched
2018-01-04Radio programme with G. Lekakis, 'On gods, humans, magnetic fields and electromagnetism' With Karampatsou; named in the memoriam
Patents and patent office (14)
1988-02-09GR2000017Y Greek utility filing by Pappas; no title or abstract available
1989-06-12EP 0402552 A1, High ionisation lightning conductor with an oscillating high-voltage converter Pappas; capacitor, coil and spark gap: the same topology as the medical device
1989-09-20US 5,068,039 and US 5,239,442, Method and device for dispersing ions by remote action Jorge Cure, Pappas, Harry Eichler; also WO 91/04102, AU 6421390A, GR890100595; 'ideal in applying Nordenstrom's method'
1990-01-19GR1000007B, Lightning arrester of high ionization and convertor of high oscillatory tension Pappas; Espacenet title only
1991-07-31GR1000132B, Composite lightning protector of high ionization and attenuation Pappas; Espacenet title only
1992-07-10GR920100309A, Greek priority of the medical patent 'Powerful induction of the ions ... by natural resonance plasma oscillations'; abstract read; US patent prints the number as 920200309 (probable misprint); full text at the Greek patent office not reached
1994-01-20WO 94/01176 (PCT/US93/06616), Method and apparatus for pulsed magnetic induction One listing names Em-Probe, Inc. as assignee; national phases in CA, KR, EP, JP, BR, AU
1996-09-17US 5,556,418, Method and Apparatus for Pulsed Magnetic Induction Pappas, Marina Del Rey; filed 6 Jul 1993; 7 pp, 17 claims; the project document, read in full with page images; fees paid to 2007, expired 2013· Inventor (interested party)
1998RU 2126278 C1 Russian member, 24 claims; abstract names 'therapeutic curing of malignant tumors'; lapsed 2011
2001-01-31EP 0648140 B1, Apparatus for pulsed magnetic induction Granted after two examination rounds, no opposition; DE 69329908, ES 2154271 T3; some states lapsed
2003-06-30US 2006/0220648 A1 / US 7,151,372 B2, Multi-activation of ions and atoms with NMR and EPR Pappas; wide family incl. JP 2007526991A, CN 1954229A, CY1109665T1; recasts resonance as NMR/EPR without a static field
2006-08-31GR1006848B, Ion induction and atom multi-activation with NMR-EPR, using an electronic or plasma switch Pappas; abstract mentions electric-shock risk if coil insulation is lost
2018-05-07GR20180200149U, Earth unbalance device - free energy generation from zero Panagiotis, Theocharis and Eleftherios Pappas; 134 m loop driven by a square-wave generator
1993EPO Register file for EP93917171 (examination correspondence) Could show examiner objections and whether data were filed; not reached
Related work and prior art cited by the patent (4)
1983US 4,369,345, selective localized hyperthermia Czerlinski; prior art cited in the patent
1986US 4,622,953 Gordon; prior art cited in the patent
1992US 5,160,591, regulating transmembrane ion movement utilizing selective harmonic frequencies Liboff et al. (ion cyclotron resonance, needs a static field); nearest mainstream-adjacent relative of the resonance claim
c.1983Nordenstrom's electrochemical (needle-electrode) cancer therapy Called 'quite successful' in the patent; the method the device set out to replace; not searched or assessed
Later patents citing or copying the design (11)
1997WO 98/57704 and US 5,908,444, complex-frequency pulsed electromagnetic generator Healing Machines
2007DE 10 2007 030325 A1, device for contactless cell therapy Dr Wilhelm Horkel; near copy of the PAP-IMI layout; lists 'Pappas; Panagiotis T.' among original assignees; lapsed 2010
2007EP 2062614 A1, Method and device for impulse induction Pulsartec S.L.
2007JP 2009539511 A, device attenuating cellular metabolism Enjoy s.r.o.
2015WO 2016/182600 A1, UV plasma power generation Brilliant Light Power
Government records (12)
1995-11-06FDA 510(k) for the 'Pap Ion magnetic inductor' Not cleared because it required clinical data that were unavailable (per the 2002 FDA report and Seattle Times timeline)· Regulator
2002-09-10FDA Establishment Inspection Report, Bio-Energy Services Inc., Tarzana CA FEI 3003668912; inspections 21 Aug-10 Sep 2002; 17 pp scan, pp.1-11 read by OCR; 'the science behind the device is not clear'; seed-germinator import; infant treated about 29 times· Regulator
2002FDA Form 483 (14 items) and EIR pages 12-17, exhibit list OCR'd but not read closely· Regulator
2003-01-13FDA Import Alert 89-08, PAP-IMI Ion Magnetic Conductor Device Importer Bio-Energy Services (listed 2009); Athens firm BioElectroDynamics added 20 Dec 2018· Regulator
2003-06-24FDA Warning Letter to Cheryl Jones Jaye MD, LifeWorks Wellness Center, Clearwater FL Consent and IRB failures; at least 50 subjects treated without IRB approval; device name redacted, CIRCARE files it as PAP-IMI· Regulator
2005-06-10FDA letter to Panos Pappas PhD, Chatsworth CA M. E. Marcarelli, CDRH; significant risk, Class III; '100 watts at 2 apps (2 seconds x 50 Joules)'; 2 rat deaths, 2 tachycardias, one fatal MI; adulterated· Regulator
2007-11-20Letter from Rep. Jay Inslee, House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight Via Wikipedia references; not opened
2007-12-28Health Canada advisory, 'Use of Unlicensed Pap-Ion Magnetic Inductor May Pose Health Risk' With a seizure order to the Canada Border Services Agency; known via Wikipedia references; not checked directly· Regulator
c.2003CE 0120 (SGS UK), GOSSTANDART and Mexico 0767E2003 S.S.A. approvals Claimed in the inventor's 2006 compilation; certificates not seen· Inventor's claim
–Greek ministry or EOF decision on PAPIMI approval Mentioned only in a Facebook comment that the ministry refused it; not found
2002/2005Adverse-event case records (rat deaths, fatal myocardial infarction, Florida deaths) Named by FDA and the Seattle Times; needed for any causal review; not obtained
2001/2005Data from the US sponsor-run study (BioMed IRB 2001, TABS IRB 2002) 37 sites in at least 12 states; outcomes not in the record
Court and state records (2)
2005California judgment against Gerald Allen Anderson / Bio-Energy Services (later Biophotonix) Barred from false or misleading claims; $2,750 penalty plus $7,000 costs; known via Quackwatch summary, full text not opened· Reported by an anti-quackery site
–Any court or Los Angeles County records on C. Wallach or Bio-Energy Services Not reached
Company and business records (6)
1994Em-Probe, Inc. Named as assignee on one WO 94/01176 listing; not researched
c.1995Pap Electrodynamics Earlier company with Wallach as CEO (FDA EIR)
2001-06-21Greek manufacturer invoice #270 and 'Z Electrodynamics' declaration of conformity Pappas's production and R&D companies, per Wallach (FDA EIR p.9, p.11); model 600P
2003Bio-Energy Services website description of the device 'advanced electrotherapeutic diathermy device'; quoted by Quackwatch· Distributor (commercial)
2023Pulse Dynamics Ltd, current manufacturer, and papimi.com pages Agios Dimitrios, Greece; models ASKLIPIOS and Delta; 'Clinical Trial Confirms...' page not opened· Manufacturer (commercial)
–Greek business register (GEMI) records for Pulse Dynamics, Bio-Electrodynamics, Z Electrodynamics Not reached
Witness accounts and correspondence (5)
2002Paper by Dr Shri Kant Mishra MD on rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and ageing Exhibit 23 of the 2002 FDA inspection report; not obtained· Used in distributor advertising
2002Dr David Minkoff annual report noting two subject deaths Cited in the FDA EIR; Minkoff wrote the treatments 'had nothing to do with their demises'· Study investigator
c.2002E-mail: 'Dr. Pappas was saying that pre-surgery treatments was shortening the recovery time by one-third to one-half' FDA EIR p.11
2026-05-11Facebook death notices (G. Kasimatis; P. Giannoulakis) Give the death date 11 May 2026; snippets only; one source for the date
2026-06-11Memoriam 'Takis Pappas', Arxeion Politismou Dr Ifianassa Karampatsou; Salzburg conference, Cuba, Vietnam, Swiss clinics; his two physicist children continue the work· Collaborator since 1996
Experiments and replications by others (6)
2002Leisner et al., effect of high-intensity electromagnetic pulses on fresh ulnar fractures in rats J Vet Med A 49(1):33-7, PMID 11913824, Hebrew University; untreated controls healed faster; abstract read
c.2010Single-subject PAPIMI reports: refractory seizures, skin wound healing, fatigue syndrome Viti 2023 refs 40-42; not retrieved
2014Efthimiadou et al., presowing pulsed electromagnetic treatment of tomato seed PMID 25097875, Greek group; whether a PAPIMI was used is unknown
2023Viti et al., HRV after PAP Ion Magnetic Induction in chronic musculoskeletal pain: pilot RCT Int J Environ Res Public Health 20(5):3934, PMC10001461; single-blind, sham, n = 32; Lucca and Florence
2025Viti et al., PAPIMI short effect on pain perception and HRV: a pilot study Healthcare (Basel), PMC12385873; single arm, n = 30; pain fell a median 2 points
2025Keilani et al., pulsed magnetic field therapy in post-COVID-19 fatigue: randomized controlled pilot Wien Klin Wochenschr, PMC12534222; Medical University of Vienna; n = 20; 96 J, 50-100 mT, '20 cm' penetration (manufacturer)
Later accounts and media (24)
1989P. Cornille, On the difference between the Lorentz and Ampere force laws IOP; follow-up in the Ampere-force debate
c.1990Stefan Marinov, The thorny way of truth, vol 7 RexResearch; cites Pappas 1983 and Einsiedeln
c.1997Journal of New Energy vol 2 no 2 Cites the 1991 IECEC paper beside arc negative-resistance discussion
c.1998Journal of New Energy vol 3 no 1 Cites 'PAP-IMI Cases Reports' 1990-1998
c.2000Other Voices: A Summary of Research Not Present Academia.edu; cites the 1991 IECEC paper and speech
c.2000Moray King, The Energy Machine of T. Henry Moray; Review of Zero Point Energy Zero-point-energy literature citing the 1991 paper
2007-11-19Seattle Times, 'Public never warned about dangerous device' C. Willmsen and M. J. Berens; Pappas quoted 'absolutely safe', 'can cure cancer and AIDS'; deaths linked by the paper· Newspaper's characterization
2007-11-19Seattle Times graphic 'The PAP-IMI in the U.S.' and timeline 1995-2007 89 units by state
2007-12-08Herald Extra, 'FDA bans import of miracle machines'; Sun Journal 9 Dec 2007 Snippets only
2008-01-04Seattle Times, 'State urges FDA to ban unproven medical devices' Not opened
2008-01-30Seattle Times, 'Fraudulent medical devices targeted' Not opened
2008-02-01MDDI, 'CDRH Promises Crackdown on Risky Devices' 'FDA inspected three PAP-IMI clinics outside California'; snippet
2008-02-15Biomedical Safety & Standards item (Ovid) Not opened
2008Chronicle of Higher Education blog on the TABS IRB Not opened
2008-12-26Seattle Times, 'Miracle Machines: The 21st-Century Snake Oil' Via Wikipedia references
2009-02-21Greek blog calling Pappas a 'professor' of TEI Piraeus Critical tone; snippet only· Critic's characterization
2011-05-06sarantakos.wordpress.com satirical mention Critic's characterization; snippet only
2013E. Y. Moawad, Cell growth energy ... nuclear transmutations in human cell Univ. J. Med. Sci. 1(2):27-35, Ain Shams; takes up Pappas's transmutation idea in theory; abstract and references read
–Yumpu 'Cases from private practices - Papimi' Inventor-side case collection; not opened· Supporters
2016Zukunftstechnologien fur nachhaltige Entwicklung (German survey) ResearchGate; cites the 1991 paper
2024-05-23Wikipedia, Pap-Ion Magnetic Inductor Stub categorised as pseudoscience; useful for its references
–Natural Philosophy Wiki page 'Panos Pappas' Bibliography and conferences 1988-2011
–Vysotskii and Kornilova, biological transmutation work Related work cited beside Pappas; not opened
Records named but not yet examined (2)
–Lumen Database notice for the Google result removed on the query for the 1991 paper's title Notice text and removed URL unknown; the arbiter sets out competing explanations
–Inventor's lab notes and archive, via his family or company Named by the arbiter as deciding for the energy-gain claim
Left out: six minor items found only as search snippets (two MedCrave/Science Publishing Group transmutation papers, Slovak and Italian new-energy surveys, an Energetic Forum thread, a German 'Pap-Imi-Therapie' page). Also left out: duplicate copies, the Scribd copy of the 2006 compilation, a spurious Gilead citation, and the Google 'similar documents'. Full catalogue: Pappas-PT sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Measure electrical energy in and total energy out by calorimetry over many pulses, with a calibrated probe, and compare with (1/2) C V^2 per pulse. Map dB/dt and the induced field in a saline phantom. Swap the gas (air, nitrogen, argon) and watch whether the burst spectrum moves. Run a large independent sham-controlled trial with checked blinding.
Deciding records: The 1991 IECEC paper (vol. 4, pp. 416-423) and the ICCF-7 paper; the Lumen notice on the removed search result; the US study files and adverse-event case records; EIR pages 12-17 and the Mishra paper; the EPO examination file; the Greek priority text GR920100309A.
Try it yourself: Run example.py (primer section 5). From 40 kV and 60 J per pulse at 240 kHz it gets C = 75 nF, L = 5.86 uH, peak current 4.5 kA, B = 95 mT, induced E about 7.5e3 V/m at 10 cm, and membrane shift dV = 1.5 E a of about 110 mV. Repeat with the patent's 1000 A.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The contrarian's 36 microvolts is 36 millivolts, a factor of 1000 off. At the device's published parameters, ordinary induction gives a membrane shift of tens to a hundred-plus millivolts, the same size as the resting potential. arbiter.md, section 1, correction 1
Physicist Mainstream physics rejects net energy gain, element-selective radio-frequency chemistry and the need to beat air breakdown. Yet the induced fields are strong enough to stimulate nerves and muscles: 'The patent's practical device may do something in tissue, but for reasons not in the patent.' physicist.md, section 4
Contrarian The FDA's refusal was on missing clinical evidence, not a refutation. No negative physics experiment was run and withheld, and the inventor did not publish one either. No blocking of funding or publication is documented. After the US ban the record moved to Europe rather than going dark. contrarian.md, How the claims were handled
Mathematician Hidden assumption: that a membrane effect needs an external field equal to the field inside the membrane, which is wrong by a factor of about 3000. The patent omits capacitance, voltage, inductance, current and oscillogram scale, so it cannot be tested as a derivation. mathematician.md, Notation, units and hidden-assumption list
Arbiter A Google search for the missing 1991 paper's title showed a legal-removal notice. Possible explanations: a routine copyright takedown, a request by the inventor, family or a company, or a different page. Nothing prefers one. The Lumen notice and a library copy would decide. arbiter.md, section 9, absence-of-evidence addendum
AI noteThe nitrogen-14 NMR frequency at 0.1 T is about 0.31 MHz, close to the device's 240 kHz base ring. But NMR needs a steady field, which the pulsed coil does not supply (primer, section 5 side checks).
Rank 11Wallace-Byran
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 11:40
Bryan Wallace argued that 1961 Venus radar echoes show light moving at c+v; the analysts kept the data, and the neutral refit he asked for has never been run.
Invention / theory background
Bryan G. Wallace (1933-1997, St. Petersburg, Florida), who worked with colleagues at Eckerd College, revived Ritz's emission theory: light from a moving source or mirror travels at c+v. From 1969 he argued that early Earth-Venus radar ranging fits c+v better than constant c. His 1993 manuscript The Farce of Physics adds a 'dynamic ether' theory of mass circulating at speed c and a long record of refused papers. He accepted E=mc^2 and much of relativity.
Ranking explanation
Ranked below Pappas (7), whose discharge gain was never metered, because Wallace's strong c+v claim has been tested by source-velocity experiments and failed. Ranked above Mallove's glow-discharge account (9) because its core is checkable: published radar papers, a specific refit nobody has run, dated letters about data access and editorial hostility, and algebra the reader can redo. Criteria A, B and C apply.
Key supporting elements
A first-order ballistic effect has the size of Wallace's residuals: about 5 ms for a 10 km/s relative speed. His two equations differ by hundreds to thousands of km, against quoted radar accuracy of 1.5 km.
Ash, Shapiro and Smith (AJ 1967), as quoted, found USSR residuals 'systematically negative' against Arecibo and Lincoln, up to five times the quoted error, cause unidentified; Kotel'nikov et al. (1976) report Venus residuals up to 3500 microseconds.
Data access, as relayed by Wallace: Shapiro wrote the data 'did not exist in the form' asked; AFCRL's Hollingsworth wrote Lincoln Lab could not be persuaded to test anything but c; McVittie (1970) wondered whether something was 'concealed'.
Pulkovo astrometrist Tolchelnikova-Murri independently argues the 1961-62 reductions used classical kinematics, and quotes Clemence (USNO) that second-order terms are no new confirmation of relativity. She does not claim c+v.
Editor Robinson's letters (1979, 1990, quoted by Wallace) cite 'very negative reader reaction' and anonymous letters and calls; PRL's editor admitted a 'mistake' in rerouting Wallace's 1969 paper to a second referee.
Key contradictions
Source-velocity tests needing no radar reduction find no c+v: Alvager et al. (CERN 1964) bound k below 1e-4, Brecher (1977) below 2e-9 from X-ray binaries; Cassini ranging fits relativity to 2e-5.
By Wallace's own yardstick, Newcomb's tables in Fig. 1 of his 1969 paper, the constant-c curve lies closer; c+v agrees only with his own orbit integration, whose starting conditions are not stated.
His own frequency datum points to plasma: the 30-day term is about five times larger at 440 MHz than at 1295 MHz; plasma predicts 8.7, a change in light speed predicts 1.
Wallace conceded Salamin's binary-star objection (c+v would give simultaneous redshifts in both stars); his electron model gives 1/34 of the electron's spin, and electrons are point-like far below his 1.1e-14 m scale.
Against suppression: Spectroscopy Letters printed four Wallace papers (1969-71) and then a rebuttal (Horedt and Ruck 1972); Shapiro answered in print in 1985 (unread); Wallace also published in Found. Phys. and J. Chem. Phys.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 29 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Light speed is c+v, dependent on the source or mirror (strong form)
Tested, not supportedAlvager, Brecher, Cassini ranging
A neutral joint refit of the early multi-station Venus radar data with a free ballistic parameter
Never properly testeddata not released in usable form; no refit on record
Tested, not supportedon his own yardstick; a weak test; algebra consistent for the stated c+2v rule
Shapiro admitted only c was tested; c+v was never tested
Not testable as statedthe 1968 conversation, one accountTested, not supportedby non-radar experimentsNever properly testedwithin radar reductions
Journals, referees and funders obstructed the work; relativity and QCD are pathological science
Not testable as statedas physics; editorial hostility documented in quoted letters, organised suppression not established
Rest mass is mass circulating at speed c inside each particle
Plausible, untestedin generalRefuted by calculationat his stated radius, spin 34 times lowInternally inconsistentGalilean energy accounting
The mass-in-cell computer model: force deviation below 1.1e-14 m, pion of electrons and positrons, gravity and spin
Tested, not supporteddeviation below 1.1e-14 mRefuted by calculationpion of 104 or 10^4 e+e-Never properly testedphoton, spin, gravity from the program
Eternal non-expanding universe with non-Doppler redshift
Tested, not supportedsupernova time dilation, CMBHistorically superseded but instructiveas a 1993 position
Born 8 Feb 1933, died 19 Mar 1997, St. Petersburg, Florida. Worked with colleagues at Eckerd College (H- ion source 1975; crossed-beam electron scattering 1977, which agreed with standard theory). Four Spectroscopy Letters papers 1969-71, Found. Phys. 1973; Natural Philosophy Alliance member; spoke at Leningrad conferences 1989 and 1991. Not a professional astronomer by the book's own account.
Irwin I. Shapiro
Led the Lincoln Laboratory planetary radar analysis Wallace disputed; correspondent 1968-69 · His group's reductions are the target of Wallace's charges
Co-author of Ash, Shapiro and Smith, AJ 72, 338 (1967) and Shapiro, Ash and Tausner, PRL 17, 933 (1966); Air Force-funded per Wallace; replied to Wallace in Scientific Ethics (1985), unread. Further background not in the review files.
L. M. Hollingsworth
Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories official who supplied a card deck and met Wallace in 1969 · Air Force data holder
Not in the review files beyond his AFCRL role and the letters of 29 Sep and 7 Nov 1969 that Wallace paraphrases.
J. W. Robinson
Editor of Spectroscopy Letters, who published Wallace 1969-71 and later stopped
Professor of Chemistry, Louisiana State University (per the book). Letters of 4 Apr 1979 and 23 Jul 1990 cite negative reader reaction and anonymous letters and calls.
S. A. Goudsmit
Physical Review Letters editor in the 1969 referee episode
Not in the review files beyond his letters of 11 and 23 Sep 1969, as Wallace reports them.
S. A. Tolchelnikova-Murri
Pulkovo Observatory astrometrist; independent critic of the radar reductions and witness to Pulkovo dismissals
Wrote to Wallace in 1988; translated his 1989 Leningrad talk; Galilean Electrodynamics 4(1), 3 (1993) and a 2001 Russian paper arguing the 1961-62 reductions used classical kinematics.
G. C. McVittie
Astronomer who complained in 1970 of Shapiro's secrecy about methods and results
Author of AJ 75, 287 (1970) on exact n-body solutions in general relativity. Further background not in the review files.
Louis Essen
Critic of special relativity whom Wallace quotes as his strongest professional ally
Built the first caesium clock (1955); wrote The Special Theory of Relativity: A Critical Analysis (OUP 1971); a 1989 letter on the eclipse results.
Evidence / artifacts (105 of 105 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (21)
1967-12-09An Interplanetary Radar Test of Relativity (first radar paper, unpublished) Wallace; per the book 'rejected by a large selection of journals'; text not in the folder
1969Radar Testing of the Relative Velocity of Light in Space Spectroscopy Letters 2, 361-367; eight 1961 Venus points vs Newcomb's tables; Eq. (1) tc/2 - tv/2, Eq. (2) tc/2; Fig. 1 p.366; read as page images; copies at GSJ and sciliterature.50webs.com
1970Cosmological Implications of a c+v Relative Velocity of Light Spectroscopy Letters 3, 115; binaries, non-expanding universe, fused-electron atomic models; abstract quoted in the book
1971Radar Evidence that the Velocity of Light in Space is not c Spectroscopy Letters 4, 79; 1961-66 residuals 'over 30,000%' of expected error; free at GSJ, not read in the review
1971Expansion of a Dynamic Ether Hypothesis of Physical Reality Spectroscopy Letters 4, 123; atomic models revised to use neutrons
1973The Unified Quantum Electrodynamic Ether Foundations of Physics 3, 381; said to hold the mass-dynamics equations missing from the book; abstract quoted
1975Glow discharge source of H- ions Rhodes, Block, Wallace; Rev. Sci. Instrum. 46, 1710; Eckerd College; title only in the book
1977Crossed beam electron-electron scattering Block, Floyd, Rhodes, Wallace; J. Chem. Phys. 66, 2108; 90 degrees, 300 eV, 1.2 and 1.3 microamp beams; agreed with Moller's cross section
1977NSF research proposal via Eckerd College $159,512 including $99,655 for a Harris computer; rejected Feb 1978; proposal text not in the folder
1981/1984Physics Today letters 34(8) 11 (1981); 36(1) 11, 36(8) 13, 36(9) 111 (1983); 37(6) 15 (1984); listed on the NPA wiki and in the book
1982Computer Simulation of Mass Dynamics in Electrons with Rhodes and Block; J. Clas. Phys. 1(2), 17; PRIME 750 'mass-in-cell' program; program not available
1984-07-09The speed of light is c+v (Physics Today letter) rejected 4 Jan 1985 by Acting Editor G. B. Lubkin; argues Moyer's JPL light-time equation is c+v in substance; described in the book
1985The Great Speed of Light in Space Coverup Scientific Ethics 1(1), 2; the article Shapiro answered; also Scientific Ethics 1(3), 3 (1985)
1986Speculations in Science and Technology 9, 9 Wallace's 'ninth, and last research paper'; mass-dynamics model and Moyer argument
1988-01-14Physics Today letter (not published) per the book, no acceptance received
1989-03-15The Problem of Space and Time in Modern Physics (Leningrad talk) 1st International Conference on space and time, Leningrad; 1961 Venus radar data; translated by Tolchelnikova-Murri
1990Galilean Electrodynamics 1(2), 23 one of his last journal statements of the radar case; not found online
1990Physics Essays 3(1), 94 not found online in the Investigator's search
1990Reply to Salamin's binary-star objection sent to Beckmann's Galilean Electrodynamics, which printed Salamin and not the reply; content given in the book
1991-09Space-time Problem in Modern Physics (2nd Leningrad conference) 16-20 Sep 1991, 114 participants, 14 foreign
1993The Farce of Physics (manuscript) 49,195 words, 7 chapters, 156 references; the only document in the folder; also online at ekkehard-friebe.de (same text plus a 1989 Leningrad photo caption)
Government records (4)
1969-09-29AFCRL IBM card deck of Venus radar data offered by L. M. Hollingsworth; Wallace first called it a good test (18 Oct), then useless (25 Oct): stations close, observing time constant· Air Force data holder
1978-02NSF rejection letter (B. R. Holstein) 'no reason to abandon the conventional and remarkably successful theories ... your model which is beset with a number of fatal conceptual difficulties'; quoted by Wallace· the funding agency that declined
1983R. J. Smith, Science 221, 133 Lincoln Laboratory decoy work; the article that led to Wallace's 'Star Wars' secrecy inference; passages quoted do not mention radar astronomy or light speed
1985/1989Beam-weapon and classified-data items Physics Today 1985 and 1988 items on laser classification; Sky & Telescope 1989 on one classified astronomical data set; circumstantial items Wallace cites
Witness accounts and correspondence (29)
1968Thornton Page editing and H. K. Eichhorn checking Wallace's first radar paper Wallace's account; Page sponsored him at the Texas Symposium· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
1968-12Shapiro's comment at the Fourth Texas Symposium, Dallas Wallace recalls Shapiro said all calculations assumed c and c+v was untested; Wallace: 'I have quoted your remarks as I remembered them'; no transcript· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
1968-12-26Wallace to Shapiro, preprint sent opens the correspondence· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
1969-01Shapiro letters of 13 and 17 Jan 1969 radar data 'not consistent with the ballistic theory ... consistent with general relativity', citing PRL 17, 933; paraphrased by Wallace· Shapiro led the analysis Wallace disputed
1969-03-13Walter Sullivan (New York Times) letter deferred to Thornton Page
1969-03-27Shapiro letter: data 'did not exist in the form' requested paraphrased by Wallace· Shapiro led the analysis Wallace disputed
1969-04-03Wallace to Shapiro: the 12:00 UT charge says Lincoln Lab removed daily variations by fixing the observing time, citing Evans et al. 1965· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
1969-08/09PRL referee episode first referee 15 Aug 'suitable ... if revised'; resubmitted 21 Aug; editor Goudsmit 11 Sep (rejected by a second referee) and 23 Sep ('made a mistake'); reports not reproduced· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
1969-10-25Wallace letter: the Duncombe charge synodic variation in Ash-Shapiro-Smith Fig. 4 'could only' be removed by empirical corrections like Duncombe's· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
1969-11-07Hollingsworth (AFCRL) letter 'impossible for him to persuade Dr. Shapiro or other Lincoln Laboratory people' to measure light speed as anything but c; paraphrased· Air Force data holder
1969-10/12Shapiro letters of 13 Oct, 6 Nov, 28 Nov, 9 Dec 1969 9 Dec: 'too much occupied with university matters to direct any large-scale investigation'; paraphrased· Shapiro led the analysis Wallace disputed
1969-12Hollingsworth meeting, AAAS Boston four-hour meeting; per Wallace, AU values 'ranged over thousands of kilometers' and data needed Shapiro's permission· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
1970G. C. McVittie letter Shapiro's secrecy 'makes him wonder whether there is something to be concealed'; paraphrased by Wallace; letter unread
1979-04-04J. W. Robinson letter (Spectroscopy Letters editor) could no longer publish Wallace because of 'very negative reader reaction'
1990-07-23J. W. Robinson letter 'completely unsavory and unobjective anonymous letters and phone calls'
1979/1985APS meeting confrontations S. Weinberg 1979, L. Lederman 1981, G. Brown 1982, C. Rubbia 1985; Wallace's accounts, no replies quoted· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
c.1983PRL paper rejected without a referee title and date not given· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
1984Santilli, Il Grande Grido allegations that Coleman, Glashow and Weinberg blocked his salary; relayed by Wallace; also Santilli's Foundations of Theoretical Mechanics I-II· Santilli's own allegations
1987-10V. Sekerin letter (Novosibirsk) computes c+v from double stars; passed Wallace's paper to Pulkovo
1988S. A. Tolchelnikova-Murri letter (Pulkovo) 'Two scientists were dismissed because they discovered some facts which contradicted Einstein'
c.1988R. T. Fienberg (Sky & Telescope) declines to review News Notes· Wallace, the inventor; his own account
1989-03Pulkovo early retirements under Director Abalakin two anti-relativist women retired early, later reinstated; A. Schpitalnaya named; Wallace's report of conversations
1989P. F. Parshin's Ives-type experiment data published in a Soviet journal, theory refused; no journal or numbers given
1989J.-P. Vigier letter offer to publish in Physics Letters A; 'doubts on Prof. Shapiro's observations'
1989L. Essen letter a former Pulkovo director argued the eclipse results 'did not support Eddington's claim'
1990-03-15Salamin's binary-star objection (via Beckmann) c+v would give simultaneous redshifts in both members of binaries; Wallace conceded the prediction
1991NASA (W. E. Brunk) question-and-answer noted in the online edition of Ch.5
1991-09Beklyamishev's Leningrad talk on Wallace's Venus radar data title only
variousEinstein statements via Pais and Clark to Zangger 1912; to Freundlich 1913 ('my whole theory ... is false' if source speed matters); on Dayton Miller 1921 ('collapses like a house of cards')
Experiments and replications by others (19)
1962Pettengill et al., A radar investigation of Venus AJ 67, 181; Millstone radar 6 Mar-18 May 1961
1962Muhleman, Holdridge and Block, AU by radar from Venus AJ 67, 191
1964Alvager, Farley, Kjellman, Wallin, CERN pion-decay photon speed Phys. Lett. 12, 260; 2.9977 +/- 0.0004 x 10^8 m/s from sources at 0.99975c; |k| < 1e-4
1965Evans et al., Venus radar AJ 70, 486; the 12:00 UT charge rests on it
1966Shapiro, Ash and Tausner, Radar Verification of the Doppler Formula PRL 17, 933; Shapiro's cited answer to the ballistic theory; paywalled· Shapiro's group
1967Ash, Shapiro and Smith, astronomical constants from radar and optical data AJ 72, 338; USSR residuals 'systematically negative', up to five times quoted error; fit values 1.57, 0.97, 7.10; quoted by Wallace· Shapiro's group
1968Shapiro chapter, Radar Astronomy (Evans and Hagfors eds.) p.159 'parameters will (usually) be selected ... to cover up the inadequacies of the theory'· Shapiro's group
1969Shapiro, Radar observations of the planets Uspekhi Fiz. Nauk 99:2; its citing list includes Wallace 1969 (Math-Net.Ru)
1972Hafele and Keating, around-the-world atomic clocks Science 177, 166; -59 +/- 10 ns east, +273 +/- 7 ns west
1974-12Standish (JPL), AAS meeting report 'significant unexplained systematic variations' fitted with empirical corrections; per Wallace
1976Kotel'nikov et al., 1975 Venus radar Astron. Zh. 53, 1270; residuals 'reach 3500 microseconds ... 500 km' against planetary theory
1977Brecher, Is the Speed of Light Independent of the Velocity of the Source? PRL 39, 1051; X-ray binaries, k < 2e-9
1995/2004Radio (VLBI) light deflection by the Sun Lebach et al. 1995 gamma = 0.9996 +/- 0.0017; Shapiro et al. 2004 gamma = 0.99983 +/- 0.00045
1996A. G. Kelly, FOIA reanalysis of Hafele-Keating raw data Institution of Engineers of Ireland Monograph 3; disputes the data analysis
2000LEP Bhabha and g-2 electron size limits r < 2.8e-19 m (LEP); below about 1e-18 m (g-2)
2001Goldhaber et al., supernova light-curve time dilation 35 supernovae, b = 1.07 +/- 0.06; later DES to z ~ 1
2003Bertotti, Iess, Tortora, Cassini radio test Nature 425, 374; gamma = 1 + (2.1 +/- 2.3) x 10^-5
2018Li et al., Jupiter energy balance (Cassini) emitted/absorbed 2.132 +/- 0.051, against Wallace's 2 1/2
Related work and published replies (20)
1964F. Schmeidler, Sky & Telescope 27(4), 217 92 star shifts from the 1922 eclipse 'going in all directions'; basis of the 'Trimming and Cooking' claim
1965J. G. Fox, Evidence against emission theories Am. J. Phys. 33, 1; the extinction loophole; cited by Wallace
1967Clemence remark, IAU Symposium 21 second-order terms 'cannot be regarded as a new confirmation of relativity' (Tolchelnikova-Murri's rendering)
1970G. C. McVittie, AJ 75, 287 passage quoted concerns n-body solutions in GR
1971L. Essen, The Special Theory of Relativity: A Critical Analysis OUP; SR as 'a new system of units', 'accelerations are always involved'; quoted by Wallace
1971P. M. Rapier, VLBI of quasar 3C 279 Spectroscopy Letters 4, 303; cites Wallace
1972Horedt and Ruck, Constancy of the Velocity of Light in Vacuum Spectroscopy Letters 5, 455; published rebuttal of 'papers 1-15'; abstract read, full text paywalled
1975Wegener and Ohrstrom, Relativity, gravitation and absolute time Nuovo Cimento B 30, 291; cites Wallace
1979Chandrasekhar, Am. J. Phys. 47, 212 Eddington's 1917 deferment; no statement on data handling
1983I. E. Segal, chronometric cosmology Phys. Rev. D 28, 2393; last sentence quoted
1985I. Shapiro, reply in Scientific Ethics 1(2), 10 Shapiro's published answer to Wallace; content unknown; first record to obtain· Shapiro led the analysis Wallace disputed
1986P. LaViolette, Is the universe really expanding? ApJ 301, 544; tired light fits four tests better than a no-evolution q0 = 0 model
1986R. R. Wilson APS address Physics Today 39(7), 26; 'ostracize the culprit ... well-practiced referees'; Wallace concedes it may be humour
1988G. Burbidge review of Arp Sky & Telescope 75(1), 38; 'interminable refereeing, blackballing of speakers ... denial of telescope time'
1990V. N. Barykin, Soviet Physics Journal 33, 856 cites Wallace
1993S. A. Tolchelnikova-Murri, The Doppler Observations of Venus Contradict the SRT Galilean Electrodynamics 4(1), 3; also GED 5(6), 116
2001Tolchelnikova-Murri, Radar observations of Venus confirmed the classical (Galilean) rule Izv. VUZov Geodeziya i aerofotos'emka No.6, 85-108; read via ritz-btr.narod.ru summary; argues the round trip cancels, not c+v
2010/2012G. B. Malykin reviews of the Ritz ballistic hypothesis Optics and Spectroscopy 109, 951 (2010); with Romanets, 112, 920 (2012); cite Wallace
2011/2022Other citing papers G. Cao, Physics Essays 24, 381 (2011); M. Tran, arXiv:2208.14828 (2022)
Later accounts and media (4)
1967-12I. D. Novikov, report on the Fourth Texas Symposium Soviet Astronomy (ADS dates it Dec 1967); date conflict with Wallace's Dallas 1968, possibly the Third
2026Natural Philosophy Wiki biography born 8 Feb 1933, died 19 Mar 1997; NPA member; publication list; states the mainstream reading (a sympathetic society's page)
variousSecondary mentions Sungenis, Galileo Was Wrong (relays the Shapiro claim); viXra 'The Aether' calls him a radio astronomer; a Zhihu column
2012ritz-btr.narod.ru Russian site on Ritz's ballistic theory hosting Tolchelnikova-Murri's article
Records named but not yet examined (8)
1968-12Fourth Texas Symposium discussion record would settle what Shapiro said
1969PRL editorial file and the second referee's report content of the negative report
1961/1966Lincoln Laboratory and AFCRL reports and multi-station data needed for a joint c vs c+v refit
1975/1986Eckerd College archives and the mass-dynamics program source Block, Rhodes, Floyd; whether gravity is derived or fitted
1919/1922Eclipse plates and Dyson-Eddington-Davidson (1920) with the modern re-measurement of the 1919 plates (arXiv 1409.7812, unread)
1997Obituary (St. Petersburg / Tampa Bay Times) none found; also a 1969 Florida Presbyterian College lecture
1985Physics Today editorial correspondence the Lubkin rejection and later letters
Left out: the book's philosophy-of-science and general cosmology references not used by the reviews (Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Mahoney, press reports on COBE), and web copies of listed works (GSJ, sciliterature.50webs.com, the Friebe edition), counted with their originals. Full catalogue: Wallace-Byran sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Refit the 1961-66 multi-station Venus radar data, or modern spacecraft ranging, with orbit elements, the AU and one ballistic (c+v) parameter all free, using the same epoch bookkeeping for both models. Nobody has published this.
Deciding records: Shapiro's reply in Scientific Ethics 1(2), 10 (1985); the Fourth Texas Symposium discussion record; Evans et al. AJ 70, 486 (1965) and Ash, Shapiro and Smith AJ 72, 338 (1967); Moyer 1981 eq. (A6); PRL 17, 933; Lincoln Laboratory and AFCRL data; the 1969 PRL referee reports; the NSF file.
Try it yourself: Run example.py. Derive tc/2 - tv/2 (constant c) and tc/2 (Wallace's c+2v rule), then compute tv/2 = -2,774 km for t = 452 s and v = -12.3 km/s, 30 days after the April 1961 conjunction, against 1.5 km radar accuracy. Then check that mass circulating at c on 5.7e-15 m gives 1/34 of the electron's spin.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Withdrew its own 'Internally inconsistent' verdict after QE: each radar equation follows exactly from its stated reflection rule, both at reception, so the tv/2 gap is a real model difference. But by Newcomb's yardstick in Fig. 1 the constant-c curve is the closer one. arbiter.md, QE revision A
Contrarian The size of Wallace's 3 ms is the natural scale of a first-order ballistic effect: the strongest honest observation in his favour. The same fact makes it testable, and the radar-specific question was never put to a neutral test. contrarian.md, Claim 1
Physicist Wallace's reading of JPL's Moyer formulation as c+v is a confusion: evaluating each endpoint at its own time is what a constant-c light-time equation in a barycentric frame requires. Moyer itself was not read in the review. physicist.md, Claim 1 b
QE Shapiro published a reply, Scientific Ethics 1(2), 10 (1985), answering Wallace's 'Great Speed of Light in Space Coverup'. Nobody located it, though it bears directly on the claimed admission; it is the first record to obtain. qe.md, section 3 item 1
Primer His methodological point is right: a fit that assumes c cannot, by itself, test c against c+v. Shapiro said as much in general terms. Source-velocity experiments that need no reflection rule still find no c+v effect. primer.md, sections 5.7 and 7
AI noteThe reviewers first called Wallace's radar algebra inconsistent; QE re-read the 1969 page images and found they had misread the epoch. His equations were right, yet his own Fig. 1 favours constant c.
Rank 14Malove-Eugene
down from 13A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 11:41
Mallove saw 50 W go into the Correas' glow-discharge tube and about 500 W come off a motor shaft. A cheap closed-loop test would settle it; none was ever reported.
Invention / theory background
Eugene F. Mallove, editor and publisher of Infinite Energy and a leading cold-fusion advocate, wrote 'Tesla and the Aether' (2003). He argues that physics wrongly dropped a dynamic aether. His evidence: Paulo and Alexandra Correa's patented Pulsed Abnormal Glow Discharge (PAGD) tubes, which he says gave about ten times more output than input; their Tesla-coil 'massfree' radiation; an acupuncture brain-scan paper; and cold fusion. He was the Correas' editor and fund-raiser.
Ranking explanation
Criteria A, B and C: a stated 10x figure that a closed loop would decide cheaply, and an independent test arranged in 2002 that stalled. It sits below Wallace, whose radar data, documented obstruction and never-run refit make a fuller record, because here the core evidence is one sole-observer letter and Correa-run sources. It sits just above Kilner, another untested but cheaply testable claim, because Mallove's comes with a number and an arranged test.
Key supporting elements
Mallove's letter of 14 June 2001 reports 50 W of DC input and about 500 W of shaft output, measured with electric meters, a digital storage oscilloscope and a data acquisition system. One letter, published on a Correa-run site.
Patent US 5,449,989 reports battery-to-battery 'breakeven efficiencies' of 228% to 906%, including 485.2% +/- 18% over 64 runs. The inventors themselves state that battery accounting could distort these figures 'by up to 10 fold'.
Named witnesses: Mike Carrell (open-box demonstration, December 1999), Arthur Axelrad, Uri Soudak, Harold Aspden and William Tiller, plus reports by Bahman, Sapogin, Minchrowski and King. All of them reach us through Correa-run or Correa-listed sources.
The claim was not dismissed without testing. In 2002 SEAS offered an independent test for its Z-Prize. The arbiter's arithmetic: a 50%-efficient generator on a 500 W shaft returns 250 W to a 50 W input, a fivefold margin.
Joie Jones, the co-author Mallove quotes, did not approve the 2006 retraction of the acupuncture paper. Johnson's 1994 Skeptical Inquirer piece mocks a conference and gives no technical argument against Tesla's physics.
Key contradictions
The 10x compares DC electrical input with motor shaft power. How the 500 W was measured is not stated, and SEAS's prize rules said torque-to-wattage calculations 'may be inaccurate by an order of magnitude'.
No closed loop was ever reported. The Correas refused NASA and Navy participants and any off-site testing, and tied tests to $15-16M of funding. No report exists after the meeting of 16 November 2002.
The inventors' own patent says that adding two cells to the 29-cell charge pack cut the oscillation tenfold, and that more cells 'extinguishes the phenomenon'. The effect is highly sensitive to load.
The acupuncture reference names the wrong authors and title, and five of eight authors retracted the paper. An 80-microsecond resolution can show only about 125-190x nerve speed, not 1,000x, and fMRI's blood-flow signal lags by seconds.
Mallove calls cold fusion 'irrefutable', but the 2004 DOE panel split evenly on excess heat, and two thirds were unconvinced of nuclear reactions. His own 2003 conference paper says the nuclear-ash hypothesis 'has not been proved'.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 22 shown)
Claim
Verdict
PAGD tubes give about 10x (50 W DC in, about 500 W shaft out)
Never properly testedstrong form (closed-loop gain): no demonstration; weak form (an indication in the inventors' lab, one observer): not replicated; an independent test was proposed in 2002 and not carried out
Tesla coils emit 'massfree' non-electromagnetic radiation; pulsing converts aether energy to electricity
Never properly testedexperimental part; Correa monographs not obtainedNot testable as statedwording ('massfree', 'aether energy')
Two kinds of electricity, massbound and massfree ('cold electricity')
Not testable as stateda name for an unmeasured entity
The aether is real, dropped by fashion; Tesla's global wireless power was possible
Tested, not supporteddetectable preferred-frame aetherHistorically superseded but instructive'dropped by fashion' history, partly accurateNever properly testeddynamic Reich-Correa aether, global power, aether as an energy source
A foot acupuncture point drove visual-cortex activation at least 1,000x faster than nerve speed
Internally inconsistentspeed as printedTested, not supportedthe paper's finding; retracted by five of eight authors, contested by three
Not testable as statedgeneral claim; suppression of PAGD not demonstratedTested, not supported'dark energy is a fudge'Established'settle it in the laboratory' as method
Cold fusion is established and needs the aether
Never properly testedheavy-water/palladium excess heat, in the decisive sense; transmutation without electric inputTested, not supported'irrefutable' nuclear reactions (contested); light-water nickel/platinum excess heatNot testable as statedelectron-cloud claim; 'needs the aether'
Author of the article; sole observer of the 50 W / 500 W PAGD figure (visits August 2000 and March 2001) · Editor and publisher of Infinite Energy, ran Cold Fusion Technology, Inc.; the Correas' editor, fund-raiser and business intermediary
Leading cold-fusion advocate; author of Fire from Ice (1991); founded the New Energy Research Laboratory and, in late 2002, the New Energy Foundation; co-author of a 2004 Correa Stirling-engine paper; died 2004. Education not in the review files.
Paulo N. Correa
Co-inventor of the PAGD tube and the aetherometry programme whose results Mallove reports · PAGD patent holder; runs aetherometry.com, aetherenergy.com and eugenemallove.com, the source of most later material
Former graduate student and collaborator of Arthur Axelrad at the University of Toronto (serum-free culture medium work); Labofex laboratory, Concord, Ontario, set up about 1987; US patents 5,416,391, 5,449,989 and 5,502,354.
Alexandra N. Correa
Co-inventor of PAGD; co-author of the Tesla-coil and biological-energy monographs · PAGD patent holder; co-runs the Correa websites and Akronos Publishing / ABRI
Not in the review files beyond her co-authorship of the patents, the ABRI monographs and the Journal of Aetherometric Research papers.
Arthur A. Axelrad
Witness to an Aether Motor demonstration; author of the April 2002 letter saying the lab was closing for lack of funds · Paulo Correa's former supervisor and friend of more than twenty years
MD, PhD, FRSC, Emeritus University Professor, University of Toronto; writes 'I am not trained in this field'.
Mike Carrell
Witness to an open-box PAGD demonstration (December 1999); wrote an overview of the Correa invention for Infinite Energy · Worked for Infinite Energy at the time
Retired RCA engineer. His report was not obtained by the review.
Theodore C. (Ted) Loder III
Proposed evaluator of PAGD for the SEAS $1M Z-Prize; at the 16 November 2002 Concord, Ontario meeting
Professor at the University of New Hampshire; gave a briefing on 'outside-the-box' technologies at the 2001 Senate field hearing. The SEAS side is known only through the Correas' quotations.
Joie P. Jones
Co-author of the 1998 PNAS acupuncture paper; source, in a June 2001 lecture, of the 80-microsecond figure Mallove quotes
Did not approve the 2006 retraction. Later wrote in the Journal of Scientific Exploration and on 'torsion'; his later pranic-healing experiments drew critical blog commentary (2012). Further background not in the review files.
Jeff Johnson
Author of the 1994 Skeptical Inquirer article that Mallove's side piece rebuts · Writes for CSICOP's journal; member of the board of the Rocky Mountain Skeptics
Electrical engineer, Littleton, Colorado. His article reports on an International Tesla Society conference; it names no specific error in Tesla's physics.
Evidence / artifacts (99 of 99 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (19)
1991Fire from Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor E. F. Mallove, book; named in the primer and the contrarian from memory
1991MIT Special Report (reanalysis of MIT cold-fusion data) Mallove; contrarian, from memory
2000-02The Strange Birth of the Water Fuel Age (memorandum requested by the Clinton White House) Mallove; listed in S. Hrg. 107-564 as 'not available at the time of this compilation'
2000-08-28Mallove letter after the first PAGD demonstrations 'satisfied myself in a preliminary way that the PAGD device was as-advertised'; quoted in the Correa narrative· Published by the Correas
2000-09-01Mallove letter of 1 September 2000 Listed on eugenemallove.com; not read· Correa-run site
2000-09-21Mallove letter of 21 September 2000 Listed on eugenemallove.com; not read· Correa-run site
2001-06-14Mallove letter to the Correas (source of the 50 W in / about 500 W shaft out figure) Visits August 2000 and March 2001; figure from the March 2001 visit; 'no one else from Infinite Energy was with me'; his stated certainties; saved in research/files· Mallove, the Correas' promoter; published by the Correas
2001-12-04Mallove letter to ABC (PDF) Listed on eugenemallove.com; not read· Correa-run site
2002The Correas: an Appreciation of their Science and Technology Mallove, aetherometry.com; not read· Correa-run site
2002-02-20Mallove letter: Aether Motor, ORAC-driven Stirling MM6, capacitor charger, Aether Field Meter 27,000 microfarad capacitor to about 2 V overnight; gold-foil weight effect; outputs judged by hand; saved in research/files· Published by the Correas
2003Tesla and the Aether, with side article Tesla and the Science Cops Infinite Energy issue 48, 4 pages; the project's only document; read in full· Mallove, editor of Infinite Energy
2003LENR and 'Cold Fusion' Excess Heat (ICCF-10 paper) Groups PAGD with Graneau arcs, Wallman/Dammann arcs and BlackLight Power; says the nuclear-ash hypothesis 'has not been proved'; saved in research/files· Published by the Correas
2003New Energy FAQ Mallove; Correas spent about $1.2M of their own money since 1987; saved in research/files· Published by the Correas
2003-10-29Mallove letter of 29 October 2003 Listed on eugenemallove.com; not read· Correa-run site
2004Power performance of Stirling motors driven from modified Orgone Accumulators, Part III P. N. Correa, A. N. Correa and E. F. Mallove, Infinite Energy 53:9; not read· Correas and Mallove
2004-01Mallove letters to Herman Branover (January/February 2004) Listed on eugenemallove.com; not read· Correa-run site
–Demonstrating Aether Energy (PDF) Mallove, from eugenemallove.com; saved in research/files; contents not summarised in the review· Correa-run site
–Confrontation with Jed Rothwell Mallove, listed on eugenemallove.com; not read· Correa-run site
–Cold Fusion/LENR: what Aetherometry has to teach Mallove, listed on eugenemallove.com; not read· Correa-run site
Correa works (PAGD and aetherometry) (18)
1993Labofex report LS1-07 P. and A. Correa; from the Correa bibliography· PAGD patent holders
1996PAGD paper, 3rd International Symposium on New Energy, Denver pp. 43-62; where Mallove met Paulo Correa· PAGD patent holders
1996PAGD articles in Infinite Energy issue 7 (pp. 18-21 and 22-27) Two Correa articles; the article says PAGD was profiled in issues 7-9· PAGD patent holders
–Excess Energy Conversion System Utilizing Autogenous Pulsed Abnormal Glow Discharge Paulo Correa, Proceedings of COFE, p. 150; known from Valone's citation in the Senate record· PAGD patent holder
–LGEN cathodes article, Infinite Energy 17:73 From the Correa bibliography· PAGD patent holders
1999PAGD article, PACE 10(2&3):11 From the Correa bibliography· PAGD patent holders
1999ABRI monograph AS2-13: (Re-)Examination of the energy radiation output by Tesla coils (1) Article ref. 3 ('S2-13'); paid download, also in Experimental Aetherometry Vol. IIA (2003); not obtained· Correas
1999ABRI monograph AS2-14: massfree and massbound nonelectromagnetic frequency functions (Tesla coils 2) Article ref. 4; in Experimental Aetherometry Vol. IIA; not obtained· Correas
1999ABRI monograph AS2-16: primary massfree waves, secondary massbound waves, tertiary EM waves (Tesla coils 3) Article ref. 5, printed correctly as 'S2-16'; in Experimental Aetherometry Vol. IIB; not obtained· Correas
1999ABRI monograph AS2-17A: The indirect ORgone effect of Tesla radiation From the Correa bibliography· Correas
2001-05The Reproducible Thermal Anomaly of the Reich-Einstein Experiment Under Limit Conditions Infinite Energy issue 37; Mallove called it one of IE's most important papers; not read· Correas
2002-01A Modified Orgone Accumulator (HYBORAC) as a Drive for Low Delta-T Stirling Engine Infinite Energy issue 41; not read· Correas
2002Correa Stirling/ORAC article, Infinite Energy issue 42 Named in the primer with the issue 41 piece; not read· Correas
2002ABRI monograph AS2-28: Fundamental measurement of biological energies 1 Source of the Galvani 'Tesla radiation' quotation; not obtained· Correas
2003A Short Appreciation of Nikola Tesla Correa and Correa, Infinite Energy 48:40, same issue as Mallove's article; not read· Correas
–The Aether Motor and the years of Gene's demos (2000-2004) Correa narrative on eugenemallove.com: Denver 1996 meeting, CFTI funding effort, demos, investors briefed, black-box policy; saved in research/files· Correas
2025Critical Appraisal of XXIst Century Energy Science and Technology (1): Relevance of Nikola Tesla's Inventions J Aetherom Res 4(1):1-54; not read· Correas
2026The PAGD Ping-Pong System J Aetherom Res 4(9):1-11; named by the arbiter as a deciding record; not read· Correas
Patents and patent office (6)
1969Ernesto Manuel patent on externally pulsed abnormal glow (can coating) Cited as prior work in the Axelrad letter; number not given
1995-05-16US 5,416,391: Electromechanical transduction of plasma pulses Correa and Correa; priority 15 October 1992; PAGD driving a motor; saved page, abstract read· Patent holders
1995-09-12US 5,449,989: Energy conversion system Battery-to-battery 228-906%, 485.2% +/- 18% (n=64), 'up to 10 fold' caveat, 29-to-31-cell sensitivity; saved in research/files· Patent holders
1993Foreign family of US 5,502,354: WO 94/03918, GB 2,284,093, CA 2,141,309 CA 2,141,309 granted 4 January 2000; full texts not read· Patent holders
1993Foreign family of US 5,416,391 and 5,449,989: WO 94/09560, CA 2,147,153, AU 5147693, IL 107285 PCT/CA1993/000430; full texts not read· Patent holders
Government records (3)
1989US DOE (Department of Energy) cold fusion panel report Unfavourable to cold fusion; named by the reviewers from memory
2001-05-30S. Hrg. 107-564, Innovative Environmental Technologies (Senate EPW field hearing, Durham NH) Mallove statement p.87 (not read in full); Valone briefing citing PAGD; Loder, Greer, Chubb, Bearden; printed 2003; searched for names only
2004US DOE Report of the Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Reviewers split about evenly on excess heat; two thirds unconvinced of nuclear reactions; seen via search results and a copy on a pro-LENR site
Company and business records (2)
2002-09-30SEAS (Space Energy Access Systems) $1M Z-Prize announcement and rules Rules exclude torque-based claims under 10x; known only as quoted by the Correas· SEAS (Steven Greer), prize sponsor
2002-10Correa 'Azure' development plan $15-16M; 1 kW converter demonstration prototype; known from the SEAS e-mail page· Correas
Witness accounts and correspondence (11)
1995Canadian Breakthrough on the One (Kilo)watt challenge Harold Aspden, Electrifying Times 12:25
1996Power from Space: the Correa Invention Harold Aspden, Energy Science Report No. 8
1996An Overview of the Correa Invention Mike Carrell, Infinite Energy 8(3):10-15 (year as in the Correa list; the arbiter ties it to his December 1999 open-box demonstration); not obtained
–The Correa PAGD Reactor: errata and supplement Mike Carrell, Infinite Energy 8(4) or 9(4):33-34 (the two Correa lists disagree)
1996The Supertube M. B. King
1998Auskopplung von Atherenergie durch Plasma-Entladung W. Bahman, NET-Journal 9/10:17 (German)
1998The theory of excess energy in a PAGD reactor L. G. Sapogin, Infinite Energy 20:48
2000The Correa device A. Minchrowski, PACE 11(1&2):31
2001Some Reflections on Gas Discharges and PAGD Pulses William Tiller (Stanford emeritus)
2002The PAGD, SEAS and the Z prize (2002 e-mail compilation) Greer, Kolber, Loder, Mallove, Correas; NASA/Navy refused; 'at our premises'; 16 Nov 2002 Concord meeting; 'holy grail'; about 50k of 178k characters read· Compiled and published by the Correas
2002-04-03Axelrad letter A. A. Axelrad, University of Toronto; Aether Motor demonstration witnessed; lists referees Aspden, Carrell, Soudak, Mallove, Tiller; lab closing for lack of funds; saved in research/files· Paulo Correa's former supervisor and friend; published on aetherenergy.com
Experiments and replications by others (14)
1941Reich-Einstein correspondence on the orgone-box thermal anomaly Einstein, 7 Feb 1941: 0.3-0.4 degrees, attributed to convection; Reich's 25-page reply; published in The Einstein Affair (1953); seen via search-result text
–Reich's orgone motor Cited as prior work in the Axelrad letter
1969Harold Aspden's 'law of electrodynamics' Invoked by Axelrad and the Correas
–Graneau water-arc and air-arc excess-energy experiments Excess 'approaching 24%' in a plasma physics journal, per Mallove's ICCF-10 paper
–Wallman/Dammann underwater carbon arcs Grouped with PAGD by Mallove
1991Mills and Kneizys, light-water nickel excess heat Explained by Mills as 'hydrino' formation; BlackLight Power; primary paper not opened· BlackLight Power
1991Shkedi and colleagues, Faraday-efficiency calorimetry 1991-93; reported to remove light-water excess heat; known via a Wikipedia article
c.1992Notoya and others, light-water excess heat reports 3-50% levels per a search summary; not opened
c.1992Bockris et al. (Texas A&M) transmutation reports Cited in Mallove's ICCF-10 paper; confirmations not searched
1998So, Jones, Kidney, Saito, Evaluation of Acupuncture Using fMRI and Ultrasonic Imaging (as printed in ref. 6) Not found; PNAS 95:2670-2673 is a different paper
1998-03-03Cho et al., New findings of the correlation between acupoints and corresponding brain cortices using functional MRI PNAS 95(5):2670-2673; Cho, Chung, Jones, Park, Park, Lee, Wong, Min; abstract read via Europe PMC by the contrarian; full paper not read
2006-07-05Retraction of Cho et al. 1998 PNAS 103(27):10527; five of eight authors; Jones, J. B. Park and H. J. Park did not approve; saved in research/files
2007Kurs et al., Wireless power transfer via strongly coupled magnetic resonances Science 317:83; 60 W at about 40% efficiency over 2 m; abstract via search
–SEEM journal paper on an orgone-accumulator thermal anomaly journals.sfu.ca/seemj; authorship and quality unknown; not read
Later accounts and media (18)
c.1875Encyclopaedia Britannica 9th edition, article on the aether (by Maxwell) Quoted by Mallove, p.2
1891-05Tesla's address to the AIEE, Columbia College 'electricity and ether phenomena are identical'; quoted via Seifer p.71
1910Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edition, aether article Quoted by Mallove, p.2
1931-07-20Time magazine cover story on Tesla at 75 Mallove printed 'July 10, 1931' (Tesla's birthday); checked by the arbiter via archive.org and teslauniverse search results
1957Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science pp. 11-14, paraphrased by Johnson; Mallove prints the paraphrase as a Gardner quotation
1994Jeff Johnson, Extraordinary Science and the Strange Legacy of Nikola Tesla Skeptical Inquirer 18, Summer 1994, pp. 366-378; saved copy lacks pp. 368-374; quotations checked· CSICOP's journal; author on the Rocky Mountain Skeptics board
1994Nikola Tesla: Genius, Visionary, and Eccentric Same Skeptical Inquirer issue; not read· CSICOP
1996M. J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla Article ref. 1
1997Fox 1997 PDF on newenergytimes.com Search result for Carrell/PAGD; not opened
2001J. P. Jones, Journal of Scientific Exploration 15(2):183-197 Lead from search results; not read
c.2002J. P. Jones on 'torsion' (2002 and 2004a) Scribd copies in search results; not read
2003-02-12New York Times report on the age of the universe (13.7 billion years) Quoted by Mallove, p.1; not seen
2003-02-18Dennis Overbye, New York Times profile of Adam Riess Quoted by Mallove, p.1; not seen
–www.electricspacecraft.com Article ref. 2
–Nikola Tesla: Man of Three Centuries (teslauniverse.com) Possibly a Mallove essay; mentions the June 2001 SSE meeting and Jones; not opened
2004Report on the Death of Infinite Energy Listed on eugenemallove.com; not read· Correa-run site
2005Murder-investigation press releases on Mallove's death Listed on eugenemallove.com; not read; nothing in the record ties his death to any claim· Correa-run site
2012Respectful Insolence / ScienceBlogs posts on Jones's pranic-healing experiments Critical commentary in search results; not opened
Records named but not yet examined (8)
c.1999Records of the earlier DOE/State episode ('Parks and Zimmerman') Cited by the Correas, via Valone, as a reason to refuse state participants
2000Non-disclosure agreement terms Covered the first visits and the proposed 2002 test; named by the arbiter as deciding
2001Mallove's own New Energy Research Laboratory results on the Reich thermal anomaly Promised in the June 2001 letter; no publication found
2001-06Joie Jones lecture, Society for Scientific Exploration, La Jolla Source of the 80-microsecond remark; whether it gave a latency figure is open
2002The 'Berlin video' Shown by Mallove to Loder in October 2002
2002-11SEAS / Loder evaluation notes and e-mails (SEAS side) Would show whether the Z-Prize evaluation went on after 16 November 2002
–File histories of the PAGD patents Named by the arbiter; not read
–Corporate and patent-office records: Labofex, ABRI, Akronos, Aethera; CIPO files for CA 2,141,309 and 2,147,153 Ontario/Canada registries not reached by the Investigator
Left out: bibliography and index pages, reprints of the article on other sites, the rexresearch compilation of copies, Correa monographs unrelated to these claims (e.g. AS2-15 on magnetism), and the review's own AI-written analyses. Full catalogue: Malove-Eugene sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A neutral lab measures PAGD input as the time integral of v(t)i(t) at adequate bandwidth and shaft power on a dynamometer. It then closes the loop (shaft generator feeding the tube, battery removed) and runs unattended for about a day, box open, having agreed beforehand how to tell load extinction from no gain.
Deciding records: The SEAS/Loder evaluation notes, the NDA terms and the 'Berlin video'; Carrell's 1999 report; the Correa Tesla-coil monographs AS2-13/14/16 (count rates, distances, Faraday-cage results); the 2026 PAGD Ping-Pong paper; the full Cho 1998 paper and Jones's 2001 lecture, for any latency figure.
Try it yourself: Run example.py. Then check by hand: a pulse train of 500 V, 10 A at 1% duty is 50 W true average, but pulse voltage times RMS current gives 500 W. Also, 80 microseconds over 1.2 m bounds the speed at 15 km/s, only 150x nerve speed.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Contrarian Dismissed without testing? No. The record shows the opposite: a third party proposed a test and the conditions were not agreed. Who bore the larger share of responsibility cannot be said, since the SEAS side is known only through the Correas' quotations. contrarian.md, Claim 1, c. Tests
Arbiter Physicist and contrarian are both right. The first law has no confirmed exception, and ordinary artefacts are not excluded. But this is no refutation: two numbers are all the data there are. A claim of this form is settled by measurement, not argument. arbiter.md, Claim 1
Mathematician If 80 microseconds is the shortest resolvable time, then over 1.2 m the largest demonstrable speed is 15,000 m/s, about 150 times fast nerve speed. Showing 1,000x would need about 12 microseconds, so the stated resolution is 6.7 times too coarse. mathematician.md, Claim 5
QE There was an error in the review chain. Mallove printed reference 5 correctly as S2-16. The 'S2-15' came from the Step 1 deep read, and all three reviewers and the arbiter then corrected Mallove for an error that was not his. It has since been retracted. qe.md, section 4, check 6, and Recheck
Investigator Most of the new primary material comes from websites run by Paulo and Alexandra Correa, who hold the PAGD patents and were Mallove's collaborators. It is reported as their selection and characterization. No independent, off-site measurement has been found. sites.md, interested-party note and Leads 2
AI noteIn 2003 Mallove's editorial called the cold-fusion evidence 'irrefutable'. The same year, his own ICCF-10 paper conceded that the nuclear-ash hypothesis 'has not been proved' and is approximately correct 'in only a few experiments'.
Rank 15Kelly-Patrick
down from 14A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 03:49
The largest compendium of free-energy claims, checked number by number: a few are refuted by their own arithmetic, most were never metered, and the book names its own cheap tests.
Invention / theory background
Patrick J. Kelly (pen name of Edward Dickson Williams, died 11 July 2020) compiled 'The Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices', V32.9, 2018, 2,481 pages: magnet motors, pulse and spark circuits, Sweet's VTA, gravity wheels, water-fuel cells, Moray's aerial device, Papp's engine and about 1,000 pages of reproduced patents. His thesis: devices are open to an ambient zero-point field, so COP above 1 breaks no law. He calls it mostly hearsay, even 'a work of fiction'.
Ranking explanation
All four criteria. A: dozens of COP claims never neutrally metered, plus suppression episodes (Moray's emptied patent file, Papp's suits, Meyer's death). B: open records and Puharich's unexplained gas excess. C: the richest set of checks a reader can run (Benitez energy per spark, Gibbs floor, Kelly's own timed-discharge test). D: very wide influence. It sits beside Mallove and Rahn because breadth replaces a single strong anomaly: almost nothing here has an instrumented record.
Key supporting elements
Kelly's open-system point is correct physics: COP is not efficiency, and heat pumps, solar panels and ram pumps legitimately deliver more than the operator pays for (arbiter: weak form Established).
Moray's device was shown to named witnesses: Hayes (675 W of lamps, 26 miles from a power line), and BYU's Eyring, who 'found no fault with the demonstration' and suggested only induction. Never metered; the device is lost.
Skinner's 1939 machine was examined by two named engineers: A. P. Michaels called it 'a practical device'; George Estill's check was incomplete. The UP story gives Skinner's own estimate of 1,200 percent (a factor of 12).
Puharich's water-splitting gas was measured by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry in two laboratories, the most careful measurement in the water chapters; it shows 1.4 to 2.1 times the gas his stated current allows, unexplained.
Records go dark where they matter: Moray's 1931 application file jackets survive but the contents are gone (family's statement); the 'TC 2800 special interest' list on p.17 flags free-energy applications; provenance unconfirmed.
Key contradictions
Benitez's 1918 patent, the most fully specified design, fails its own numbers: 0.16 J stored per spark at 1,000 sparks per second caps output at 160 W, against 2,400 W claimed (primer worked example).
The NBS tested Newman's motor in 1986 (77 measurements) and found input above output every time, 27 to 77 percent efficiency; Hastings's COP 8 counted MHz back spikes as output.
Water claims sit below the Gibbs floor as printed: Boyce pulsed implies 0.125 V per cell, Meyer's 5 gallons per hour needs 84 kW against about 1 W, and 3 L/min of HHO holds 0.36-0.43 kW against 5.5 kW claimed.
Numbers shift on retelling: Sweet's input is 0.31, 1 or 10 mW and output 0.5, 1 or 5 kW; Heins 30, 39.6 or 3.77; Barbosa and Leal 100, 273, 104 or 102.4; Papp 35 or 40 minutes.
Kelly warns that volts times amps is not power for pulsed loads (pp.1089-1091), yet reports his own boost converter at 'COP=1.5' from such readings (p.1259); a 90 percent converter would give 233 mA, not 389 mA.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 93 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Closed-system argument: COP above 1 is allowed because devices are open to an ambient or zero-point field
Establishedweak form, an identified and metered inflowRefuted by calculationstrong form for named reservoirs (atmospheric field, radio, vacuum)Not testable as statedstrong form for an unnamed source with no flux
Sharp pulses, sparks and resonance tap the field (Smith, Kapanadze, Bedini, Adams, Benitez)
Never properly testeddevice COP claims, including Adams COP 1,223 and Kelly's own LM2587 readingRefuted by calculationBenitez GB 121,561 worked example (also Internally inconsistent)Internally inconsistentSmith / Mohamed power formulas (units)Tested, not supportedKelly's Joule Thief lux testEstablishedresonance as voltage and current amplifier
Floyd Sweet's VTA: over 500 W from under 0.31 mW with conditioned magnets
Refuted by calculationif the magnets supply the energy (about 11 J stored)Never properly testedas a measured COP of 2e5 to 1.7e6Not testable as statedDirac-sea 'negative energy' mechanism
Permanent-magnet motors and switched-magnet devices (Wang, Perendev, Heins, MEG, Flynn, Asaoka)
Refuted by calculationcontinuous rotation from rigid magnets alone, closed cycleNever properly testedWang, Perendev, Johnson, Kawai, Heins device, KlingelhoeferTested, not supportedMEG, two small testsPlausible, untestedFlynn factor 2 in coil power; Asaoka drive reduction
Impulse, gravity and buoyancy machines give excess energy (Campbell, Tseung, Skinner, Milkovic)
Refuted by calculationnet gain from a conservative field in a closed cycleNever properly testedthe machines; Skinner read as COP 12, not 1,200Internally inconsistentMilkovic 'COP 12' is a force ratio
Water split, and engines run on it, for far less than textbook energy (Boyce, Meyer, Puharich, Hasebe, Spiros)
Aerial, passive and fuel-less devices deliver power (Moray, Papp, Newman, Joe Cell)
Never properly testedMoray kilowatts; Papp 300 hpRefuted by calculationatmospheric-electric source; Papp patent's one-helium-atom fusionTested, not supportedNewman motor (NBS 1986)Not testable as statedJoe Cell, pyramids
Inventors are suppressed by vested interests (10,000 builders, 40,000 confiscated patents)
Not testable as statedglobal claimNever properly testedcounts (unsourced) and individual episodes; primary records not obtained
Compiler of the book; ran free-energy-info.com · operator of a free-energy information site
Self-described 'ordinary person' who became interested after the Channel 4 programme 'It Runs on Water' and bought Stan Meyer's patents in 1986. Built a few small test circuits. Pen name per the FESIG memorial; died 11 July 2020. Final edition V34.8, February 2020.
Floyd Sweet
Inventor of the Vacuum Triode Amplifier (VTA), the book's largest COP claim
First Space Quanta Modulator test May 1986; filmed demonstration 1987; 1988 paper on 'negative energy'. An associate, 'Maurice', says he held a 1969 MIT MSEE; rexresearch shows MIT and General Electric credentials. Funded by Mark Goldes (Aesop Institute). Died 1995.
Thomas Henry Moray
Inventor of the radiant-energy device shown to witnesses
Demonstrated a device lighting 635-675 W of lamps to Hayes, Eyring and Fletcher; patent application 550,611 (1931) refused, its file contents now missing per his family; only grant found US 2,460,707 (1949, electrotherapeutic apparatus).
Carlos F. Benitez
Patentee of GB 121,561 (1918), the primer's worked example · patentee
Described as a civil engineer in his patent; four GB patents 1914-1918 on battery-charging spark circuits; cited by Lyden's 2023 US patent. Fuller biography not found in the review files.
Josef Papp
Inventor of the inert-gas engine · patentee (Environetics Inc; Papp International Inc)
Patents US 3,680,431 (priority 1968) and US 4,428,193 (1984). A November 1968 demonstration ended in an explosion with at least one death; partner and investor suits followed; he sued Feynman and Caltech and was paid in a settlement. Died April 1989.
Richard Feynman
Critic and witness at Papp's 1968 demonstration · party to Papp's suit
Caltech physicist who attended with students; his account in LASER says three were injured, that he judged the engine a fake, and that the suit was settled out of court.
Stanley Meyer
Inventor of the water-fuel cell, Kelly's starting point · patentee; defendant in an investors' suit
Ohio inventor; patents US 4,936,961, 5,149,407 and others. A 1996 Ohio court found 'gross and egregious fraud' (secondary sources). Died 1998; the coroner ruled cerebral aneurysm; his brother reported he said 'They poisoned me'.
Joseph Newman
Inventor of the Newman motor, tested by a government laboratory (NBS) · patent applicant and litigant
The Patent Office refused his patent as inoperative; in Newman v. Quigg (1988) the court recorded his witness Roger Hastings's COP claim and the NBS finding of 27 to 77 percent efficiency.
Evidence / artifacts (250 of 250 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (9)
2015-10Kelly's own LM2587 boost-converter test, 'COP=1.5' p.1259: 800 mA at 3.33 V in, 389 mA at 10.3 V out; no meter, averaging or repeat; the only COP above 1 Kelly says he measured himself
2017-09-12Kelly's video on William F. Skinner's gravity-powered device YouTube channel @TheEngpjk (79 videos, newest about six years old); not watched
2018-02-16The Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices, V32.9 (the project copy) Patrick J. Kelly (pen name of Edward Dickson Williams); 2,481 pp., 22 chapters plus Appendix A of about 1,050 pp.; about 85 percent deep-read. Later editions V34.5 (24 June 2019, 2,561 pp., tuks.nl) and V34.8 (26 Feb 2020, archive.org) downloaded, not compared; V34.8 adds sections on the Buie-Morin Power System and Art Porter's magnetic device· compiler and operator of a free-energy information site
2019-09Kelly's web site (free-energy-info.com and tuks.nl mirror) 'Simple Free-Energy' chapters, 2019 chapter PDFs; main site's last dated item May 2020, 503 from 2022 (Wayback)
–Kelly's Joule Thief lux test p.476: 139-221 lux/W against 470-918 lux/W for direct LED drive; a null result against the Joule Thief (one row misprinted)
–Kelly's FLEET toroid battery-swap test p.480 and pp.574-577: 'both batteries gained'; voltages not reported
–Kelly's true-power caveat in the Electronics Tutorial pp.1089-1091: volts times amps is not power for non-sine or reactive loads; a 'COP = 1.56' reading 'may be wrong'
–'The Suppression of Knowledge' essay and the 'Basics of Free-Energy' essay pp.12-17 and 993-1005: 10,000 American builders, 40,000 confiscated patents, both uncited
–Kelly's untested designs (Tseung-type pulsed rotor, flywheel and PWM self-powered proposals, buoyancy design) Chapters 4, 15 and 17; Kelly says the proposals have 'not been built and tested'
Patents and patent office (81)
1901Tesla US 685,957, aerial plate pp.584-586; Kelly prints two dates
1913Meyers GB 1913/01098 Appendix A, deep-read
1915-05-13Benitez GB 191417811A (filed 1914-07-28) System for the Generation of Electric Currents; Google Patents· patentee
1915-08-19Benitez GB 191505591A Addition to 17,811/14; not in Kelly's list; Google Patents metadata· patentee
1916-08-17Benitez GB 191514311A Two sets of accumulators, one charging the other· patentee
1918-12-24Benitez GB 121,561, 'New Process for the Generation of Electrical Energy' pp.452-458, page image p.457; 400 W in, 2,400 W claimed; the primer's worked example (160 W ceiling)· patentee
1923Prentice 'Electrical Power Accumulator' patent 500 W in at 500 kHz, 50 x 60 W lamps claimed
1933Pogue carburettor patents (three) First printed as US 642,434 (1932) against 1,938,497 (5 Dec 1933) in his later patents; no mpg figure
1935-07-02Garrett US 2,006,676, electrolytic carburettor No voltage, current or gas data
1949-02-01Moray US 2,460,707, electrotherapeutic apparatus Moray's only grant found; cited by Lyden 2023
1956Colman and Seddon-Gillespie GB 763,062 '70-year battery', 300 MHz irradiation
1961-05-02Shelton US 2,982,528 'approximately eight times the mileage'; book prints 1940
1966Schwartz US 3,294,381 'over 200%' mpg, ambiguous
1972-08-01Papp US 3,680,431 (priority 1968-11-01) Assignee Environetics Inc; Google Patents· patentee
1976-08-31Britt US 3,977,191, 'AEROPS engine' Noble-gas photon 'chain reaction'; no measured output· patentee
1978-08-08Hasebe US 4,105,528 2.8 V, 30 A, 116 cc/s, '20 times' Faraday; page image p.1936· patentee
1979Ogle US 4,177,779 'in excess of one hundred miles per US gallon', 1971 V-8· patentee
1979-04-24Howard Johnson US 4,151,431 Motor 'powered solely by permanent magnets'; no output figure
1982Kunel DE 3024814 Cascade claim, 1,000 MW from 1,000 W; digest-level
1983Newman WO 83/00963 126 V x 99 mA in, 640 V x >20 mA out, '102 percent'· patentee
1983-07-19Puharich US 4,394,230 Water splitting by modulated carrier; see article· patentee
1984-01-31Papp US 4,428,193, 'Inert gas fuel' pp.2196-2228 without the numbered claims (claim 1 read on Google Patents); 'minute fusion' of one helium atom per stroke; no measured output· patentee
1995Spiros WO 9528510 (PCT/AU94/000532) Pressure-electrolysis 'over-unity' loop; 20-run test to 2,450 psi; tables from page images· patentee
1995-10-03Flynn US 5,455,474 (lapsed 2007-10-03) Factor 2 in coil power; fee lapse per Google Patents
1999Asaoka US 5,926,083 About one fortieth of the drive for equal flux with a magnet present
1999Ainslie WO 99/38247 (EP 0932248), 'Harnessing a Back EMF' Examples COP 1.086, 2.45, 0.976-1.176· patentee
2000-10-03Chambers (Xogen) US 6,126,794 3.6 W, '1 p.s.i. per minute', engine run without gasoline; book prints 16 July 2002· patentee
2002-03-26Bearden et al. MEG US 6,362,718 (lapsed 2006-03-26) 48 W out per 12 W in claimed; assignment to Magnetic Energy recorded· patentees
2003-01Hatem FR 2,826,800 Gain '20 times'; Kelly also says 1955
2005Stephen Meyer US 2005/0246059 No figures
2006Correa US 2006/0082334 Appendix A
2007Barbat US 2007/0007844 COP up to 59 CdSe, 5,100 InSb (calculated)· patentee
2007Diduck US 2007/0296284 Magnet motor; units mixed· competing applicant
2008Lisac US 2008/0030165 Chapter 5
2008-08-28Kapanadze and Turk WO 2008/103129 and WO 2008/103130 (TR200700996U) Found on Google Patents; not read· patentees
2009-04-16Annis and Eberly US 2009/0096219 (abandoned) COP 200-400 for the switches 'without the coupling circuit'· patentees
2013Barbosa and Leal WO 2013/104041-43 (BR2013/000015) 'at least 1 to 100'; electron-trap coil· patentees
2015Tewari US 2015/0084467 A1 Claims only 'partial nullification of the back torque'
2023-02-21Lyden US 11,588,421 B1 Cites Benitez's four GB patents as keeping two batteries charged 'with relatively little or possibly no energy loss'; cites Moray· patentee
–Plauson US 1,540,998 Aerial installation, 100 kW claimed from over 100 aerials; digest-level
–Newberry US 2,218,922 Vapour carburettor; no mpg figure
–Jines US 3,469,130 Permanent-magnet motor; no data
–Tracy US 3,703,653 Magnet motor; no data
–Tucker US 3,653,643 Carburettor; no mpg figure
–Imris US 3,781,601 Appendix A, deep-read
–Ognyanov US 3,766,094 Appendix A, deep-read
–Ecklin-Brown US 3,879,622 Magnet motor-generator
–Alexander US 3,913,004 1,200 W in, 3,520 W out (COP 2.93), patentee figures· patentee
–Teal US 4,093,880 Magnet motor
–Donald Kelly US 4,179,633 Magnet motor; digest only
–Jamison EU 82400992.2 Appendix A, deep-read
–Meyer US 4,389,981 and US 4,421,474 Hydrogen gas burner and injection patents
–Meyer CA 1,213,671, magnetic-particle generator No data
–Spence US 4,772,816 Kilowatts rest on Aspden's report
–Hyde US 4,897,592 Electrostatic generator; '10 kW' and 'COP 10' are Kelly's headings
–Meyer US 4,936,961, water capacitor Example 1: geometry and 26 V, no gas volume or power· patentee
–Meyer US 5,149,407, CA 2,067,735 and WO 92/07861 About 5 US gallons of water per hour at 1-2 mA, 360-650 V· patentee
–Beck US 5,188,738 Blood-electrification patent cited by Beck
–Kawai US 5,436,518 19.55 W in, 62.16 W out, COP 3.18, one patentee run· patentee
–Garcia del Castillo ES 2,119,690 Gravity layout
–Hayasaka US 5,892,311 '1/5.2 torque'
–Jong-Sok An US 6,208,061 Appendix A, deep-read
–Flynn US 6,246,561 Force per coil power x2
–Bedini US 6,392,370 and US 2003/117111 US 6,392,370 states COP 0.98
–Bedini US 6,545,444, battery pulse charger Kelly: 'COP>10 when tuned'
–Reardon US 6,946,767 Bench figures up to 13,713 percent; headline 100.87 mW· patentee
–Grandics US 6,974,110 Oscilloscope data with Faraday cage check
–Kundel US 7,151,332 Magnet motor with moving stator magnets
–Klostermann US 7,076,950 Air-plasma engine, patent only
–McQueen US 7,095,126 Doubtful Devices chapter
–Thane Heins CA 2594905, bi-toroid transformer 0.29 W in, 11.51 W out, 'COP of 39.6'; page images pp.150-151· patentee
–Ribero US 7,958,726, buoyancy Kelly: 'never been built'
–Rossi US 9,115,913, 'Fluid Heater' 6 kWh out per 1 kWh in, 180 days; no test report· patentee
–Markov EP 0844626 Voltage ratio 5 to 11; Table 1 not reproduced
–Coutier FR 739458 '216x for three sets'
–Molina-Martinez patent Chapter 5 and Appendix A
–Boyd transformer patent No replication known (June 2013)
–Kwok 'Hidro' buoyancy patent Text includes a solar collector; licensing offered· licensing seller
–Von Platen and Munters absorption-cooling patent Chapter 14, conventional
Court and state records (6)
c.1969Papp v. Feynman and Caltech (settled) Known from Feynman's account: 'Mr. Papp was paid something'
1988Newman v. Quigg, 681 F. Supp. 16 (D.D.C. 1988) Hastings counted MHz 'back spikes' as output; NBS 77 measurements, efficiency 27-77 percent; read in Chrome (Justia)· both sides parties to the suit
1988-07Investors' suit against UPC (Papp) Judge ordered investors to work with Papp; per Ansley 1989
1989Newman appeal, 877 F.2d 1575 (Fed. Cir. 1989) Not reached
1996Ohio investors' suit against Stanley Meyer 'gross and egregious fraud', $25,000 repaid; known from Wikipedia and Sunday Times 1 Dec 1996 citations; court file not seen
1998Franklin County coroner's ruling on Meyer's death Cerebral aneurysm, high blood pressure; known from a Columbus Dispatch snippet
Government records (3)
1986-06NBSIR 86-3405, 'Report of Tests on Joseph Newman's Device' 'At all conditions tested, the input power exceeded the output power'; summary read by the contrarian; treatment of MHz spikes unread (image-only PDF)· commissioned for the Patent Office, a party
2006'Subject matter of special interest in TC 2800' list Image on p.17, which Kelly calls a 2006 reminder to Patent Office staff; perpetual motion, free energy, 'unfavorable publicity for the USPTO'; provenance unconfirmed
2013Invention secrecy order counts (FAS) About 5,445 (FY2013) to 5,976 (FY2021) in force, all subjects
Company and business records (7)
1985-12-29Goldes-Sweet agreement Listed in the AboveUnity notes; not seen· funder (Aesop Institute)
2008-04Claimed Chinese 'Reliability and Safety' test of ShenHe Wang's 5 kW generators Kelly's statement, source his own site; no tester or data
2008-07Smack's Booster ('Eletrik') report 1.7 L/min at about 20 A; no mpg figure
2010Perendev (Mike Brady) sales claims 'not less than 100 kilowatts'; Kelly: unconfirmed; backers 'most unhappy'· seller
–Les Pearson, Saturn SL booster and chip report 26 to 44-46 mpg, one 88 mpg run· seller of chips and kits
–Hotsabi booster report 1992 Caprice 18 to 27 mpg; no method
–Romag company specification 3.5 V, 7 A, self-running; Naudin only· maker
Witness accounts and correspondence (18)
1939A. P. Michaels letter on Skinner's machine Jacksonville engineer: 'a practical device'; quoted in the UP story
1939George C. Estill examination of Skinner's machine Retired president of Florida Power and Light; 'check was not complete enough'
1969Sweet MIT MSEE thesis 'Dynamics of Magnetic Domains' Maurice's statement; MIT index not checked
1971-03-19Chester M. Todd statement on Moray About forty 100 W bulbs, from memory
1986Darryl Roberts lab notes on Sweet (May-June 1986) Outputs 6-19 W, then 100-110 W, per hyiq.org; notes not seen
1987-04-26Sweet ('Sparky') letter to 'Maurice' 'one milliwatt ... over 200 watts', 'gain of some 200,000'; page 1 of 8 read· fund-raising letter
1988-06-24Sweet, 'Nothing is Something' typescript 10 mW in, over 5 kW claimed; A-808 to A-817
1994Ashley Gray lab notes 23 uW in, 19.15 W out; 1 mW in, 111 W out; witnesses unnamed
–Unnamed Tseung frame replicator 'COP = 1.5' after cutting three magnets to two
–Ron Knight, battery professional, on pulse charging Chapter 6: batteries need conditioning; about 15 times gain claimed; no data
Experiments and replications by others (34)
1986Sweet's own Space Quanta Modulator tests First test 19 May 1986; shown to Goldes and Roberts 24 May; hyiq.org
1986Hastings measurements of the Newman motor COP 8 per Kelly; output included MHz spikes (court opinion)· Newman's witness
1987Sweet VTA filmed demonstration 10 V x 31.2 uA in, 112.5 V x 4.7 A out, 'power factor measured to be 1'; transcribed by AboveUnity; video not watched
2007Ossie Callanan charger test 33 Ah battery 10 V to 14 V in about 6 h at 0.6 A
2008Murdoch University thesis, hydrogen injection in a diesel generator 18 percent in one low-load case, generally under 5 percent; search summary only
2009-10Tseung and Tong pulsed-flywheel demonstrations COP 3.3 (text) and 3.4 (heading)
–Chas Campbell flywheel and replication video 750 W in, 2,340 W out; larger versions May 2017
–South African 40 W pulse generator 0.89 W in, COP 45, three weeks (Chapter 19)
–Jes Ascanius Tesla-plate replication 2.6 V per module, 20 modules charge 12 V overnight
–Ascanius Hohl V-track replication A magnet stack rolled along a track, not a rotor
–Matchett and Ascanius mains-rod measurements 2.6 V fuse out, 129-162 V fuse in, 61 V under a 7 W LED; Kelly doubts net power
–FEMA wood-gas generator manual A-997 to end; digest-level
–Puharich, 'Cutting the Gordian Knot of the Great Energy Bind' Appendix A, pp.1901-1960, with US 4,394,230; 0.9 percent saline, about 600 Hz carrier, 98.8-100 mW for 30 minutes; undated (after 1973)· patentee
–Ivanov motor (Bulgaria) COP 2.4, later 'up to 5.4'; Chapter 3, pp.206-268
–Leben video: Meissner oscillator with a Flynn frame A proposal only, no numbers; Chapter 3
–HHO booster designs: West, DuPlex, Hogg, AVA Chapter 10; fuel-economy claims 8 percent to over 100 percent, none documented
–Bundock booster report and HydroStar / HydroGen plans Chapter 13: Bundock 25 to 35 mpg with a booster; the plans critiqued by the forum user Chemelec
–Rutherford-Geiger radium alpha count, Kelly's 'Four Corners' conclusion Chapter 11: 3.4e10 alpha per second at 4.5 MeV, read by Kelly as energy from the environment
Health documents in the book (not reviewed) (5)
1991Beck printed sources (Science News 30 Mar 1991, Longevity News Dec 1992, LA Times 10 Dec 1996) Named in the book; not obtained
1997-03-20Beck, 'Expanded instructions for experimental/theoretical HIV blood neutralization' pp.1069-1071; 2 h a day, about 2 months, 50-100 uA· inventor
–Anonymous Lakhovsky oscillator build Tumour settings 'based on very limited patient experience'; 'eighteen' replications
–Colloidal silver, suramin and Alzheimer audio statements pp.1210-1212, 1375, 1416-1417; anecdotes naming doctors (Nordstrom, Farber, Moyer, Bretano, Margraf, Crookes) and a burn case; no source
–Hulda Clark health claims Chapter 20, pp.1375-1417: illness from poisons or 'destructive bugs'; no study cited
Later accounts and media (20)
1902Daily Mail report on Figuera As quoted by Kelly; no date or page
1939-04-04United Press story on Skinner (Breckenridge American) 'about 1,200 per cent' for a 1/8 hp motor; rexresearch transcription read, scan not opened
1939-07-31British Pathe 'Gravity Power!', film 1190.10 Description read
1980Science and Mechanics, Spring 1980, Johnson motor Cited by Kelly
1986-08-29Chicago Tribune 'Perpetual commotion' (Newman) Not opened
1987-02-08Orlando Sentinel 'Energy inventor triumphs in court' Not opened
1989-08-27Ansley, 'The Dream Machine', San Jose Mercury News Hoaxes.org reprint: one dead, 'Eight others ... badly wounded'· reprinted by a hoax museum
2007-07-08Columbus Dispatch, 'The car that ran on water' Opening read; coroner snippet
2010-09-20Columbus Dispatch on Meyer's followers Snippet only
2013-10-15hyiq.org, Sweet VTA Generation 1 1986 outputs and funding
2020-07-13OverUnity Research 'In memoriam: Patrick Kelly' Real name, death 11 July 2020; snippet only
2020-08-05FESIG memorial service video Names Edward Dickson Williams
2021PolitiFact on the Meyer assassination claim Snippet only
2021-09-23AboveUnity 'My Notes on Floyd Sweet' Builder's compilation
–Feynman, 'Feynman on Papp' (LASER) Three injured; suit settled· party to the suit
–The Sea of Energy in Which the Earth Floats (Moray family) rexresearch excerpts; file jackets 'there', contents 'gone'· family
–Wikipedia 'Water fuel cell' and 'Josef Papp' Secondary
–Doug Arcuri Medium essay on Papp 'Authorities found no explosives'; snippet, untraced
–Kapanadze videos and Facebook post (move to Turkey, 100 kW) Not opened
–Jes Ascanius 'Radiant collector' forum thread Not read
Records named but not yet examined (13)
1931-07-13Moray patent application serial 550,611 file wrapper USPTO / National Archives
1968Roser v. Papp suit file and TRW / NUWC demonstration records Plus the coroner's record of the reported death
1987Sweet 1987 video with meters in view, frame by frame YouTube 5EksumJXwEw, 53:59
1987Bearden, 'Phase Conjugate Vacuum Triode' paper Named by the deep readers
–Michael Watson coil data (intalek.com) Sweet-type build
–Ainslie / Panacea 250-page test document Cited by Kelly for COP 17
–Gritskevitch commission test report 14-451 Device reportedly destroyed January 1997
–Grove City police report on Meyer's death
–FOIA records (DOE, FBI) on Maurice's Sweet account
–Florida newspapers 1939-1945 on Skinner; Estill's papers
–Original TC 2800 document with date and issuing office
–Hotsabi and Pearson original mpg reports
–Edward Dickson Williams civil records (UK probate, death index)
Counted once each: later editions and copies of the book, the 2019 chapter PDFs and archive.org re-uploads; left out: the Chapter 12 electronics lessons, conventional renewable-energy items in Chapter 14, the review's own AI-written analyses, the Lee-Yang, Penner and Bockris textbook citations, and devices the book mentions but the review files never name. Full catalogue: Kelly-Patrick sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: On any one device (Sweet-type, Smith, Kapanadze, Campbell flywheel), a true-power wattmeter on input and output, the drive circuit's own supply logged, run for hours into a calorimeter or a timed battery discharge through a known load, the test Kelly names on p.544.
Deciding records: USPTO file wrapper for Moray's 550,611; Sweet's 1987 video meters and Roberts's 1986 notes; NBSIR 86-3405 on the MHz spikes; Papp suit files and TRW records; the 1996 Meyer judgment; the TC 2800 document's provenance; Wang's 2008 Chinese test.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it rebuilds Benitez's 1918 design, computes 0.16 J per spark and the 160 W ceiling against 2,400 W, then checks Puharich's gas against the Gibbs energy and Faraday's law. Or compute the cell voltage implied by Cramton's 6 L/min on 36 W.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The book contains almost no input-and-output measurement by a named independent party. The measured items are bulb brightness, V x I products, nameplate ratings, terminal voltages and patentee examples. The cheapest decisive tests are named by the book itself and have never been reported by a neutral party. arbiter.md, How the three reviewers compare
Contrarian The two cheapest decisive experiments are named by the book itself: a timed discharge through a known load (Kelly p.544) and a closed-loop Campbell/Hardy flywheel run on a stated load. Neither has a reported neutral result. contrarian.md, Cross-cutting findings
Arbiter Page 17 reproduces an image no reviewer had read: 'Subject matter of special interest in TC 2800', listing perpetual motion, free energy and claims that 'would generate unfavorable publicity for the USPTO'. Provenance unconfirmed; it fits both a screen for inoperative applications and Kelly's suppression reading. arbiter.md, Claim 7
Primer The book contains both the correct warning that volts times amps is not power for pulsed or reactive loads and its author's own 'COP=1.5' boost-converter reading that ignores it. Energy per event times events per second would have caught most of the book's numbers. primer.md, section 7
QE The fact-finder first sampled about 40 percent of the book; QE ordered eight deep reads that added magnet-only motors, Adams COP 1,223, Heins 39.6, Papp's fusion mechanism, Puharich, Hasebe, Spiros and the medical claims. Headline verdicts did not change; recheck PASS. qe.md, Verdict and Recheck
AI noteSkinner's 1939 '1,200 per cent' is a factor of 12 in the United Press text; Kelly read it as COP 1,200 to make the newsreel's '3,500 homes' add up, and he flags his own reading.
Rank 16Rahn-Otto
down from 15A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-06 18:25
A Cornell bacteriologist's 1936 case that living cells signal each other with faint ultraviolet light: tested by both sides, never settled, and its energy fails per photon.
Invention / theory background
Otto Rahn (1881-1957), Professor of Bacteriology at Cornell 1927-1949, wrote Invisible Radiations of Organisms (1936) to put Alexander Gurwitsch's 'mitogenetic radiation' (found with onion roots in 1923) before English readers. Cells, blood, nerves and even simple reactions were said to emit very weak ultraviolet (about 1900-2600 Angstrom) that speeds division in other cells, passes quartz but not glass, and is missing from cancer patients' blood. Rahn's laboratory did some experiments; Sidney W. Barnes wrote the physics chapter.
Ranking explanation
Rahn enters at 10 on criteria A, B and C. Below Mallove (9), whose glow-discharge tube claims a tenfold power gain in a machine; Rahn's anomaly is biological and tiny in energy. Above Kilner (11): both rest on unblinded observers, but Rahn's record adds counter data, paired controls (Julius, cornea, Blacher's tadpoles) and a funded 1937 negative whose protocol the proponents contest, and a modern photon counter could test the emission now.
Key supporting elements
Living tissue does emit faint light: ultra-weak photon emission is established, and Rahn's 100-1000 quanta/cm2/s for strong senders matches modern photomultiplier figures, though modern work reports 350-1300 nm, not far ultraviolet.
Series with built-in controls are strong on their face: Julius's 56 quartz-glass fibroblast pairs (1.92 against 1.01), 15 of 15 cornea pairs, Blacher's tadpole limbs (net 10.6 and 12.1 percent), Suchow and Suchowa's 25 of 25.
Physical counters responded too: six of ten Table 30 rows exceed 3 combined errors; Siebert and Seffert report several hundred normal bloods raised counts while carcinoma and cyanide-poisoned blood did not, which Rahn calls 'most convincing'.
The objection to the 1937 negative is specific: Volodyaev and Beloussov (Gurwitsch tradition) say it used 15-19 hour cultures, a bare salt medium and constant stirring; Potozky's 1930 daylight result predates the Quickenden test they say ignored it.
Rahn was candid: he printed the energy objection himself, listed ten detector failures and called his own induction percentage of 'no quantitative value whatever'. Wainwright's UK group (1997) reported 'partial evidence', a good effect they could not make reproducible.
Key contradictions
Hollaender and Claus (NRC Bulletin 100, 1937) worked two years with biological and physical detectors: 'all the attempts have yielded negative results.' It is the heaviest single item against the effect; the bulletin itself was not read here.
Energy per event: a 2020 Angstrom photon carries 6.1 eV, while sucrose hydrolysis releases 0.14 eV and neutralisation 0.58 eV per event. Rahn's reabsorption rescue reaches only about 2767 Angstrom on his own numbers.
The field disagreed on its defining band: Reiter and Gabor (1928) found 3200-3500 Angstrom; Gurwitsch's school found 1900-2500 and nothing at 3400. Rahn says the German results were 'never accounted for in a really satisfactory way'.
Detector failures were recognised after the fact (54 of 373 Gurwitsch experiments), no positive control was fixed in advance, blinding is never stated, and the cancer blood test gives no case counts, sensitivity or specificity.
Screens did not isolate ultraviolet: glass-paraffin-glass also passed the sea-urchin effect (Magrou and Reiss proposed electricity); fingertip and oxy-cholesterol tests lack a tabulated glass control, and at the book's intensities the dose is 10^10 too small to kill yeast.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 43 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Living cells emit very weak light, in the book's version short ultraviolet (1900-2600 A)
Establishedweak form: ultra-weak light, near-UV to near-IRNever properly testedemission at 190-260 nm at 10-1000 quanta/cm2/s
The radiation speeds division in other cells that absorb it
Never properly testedunder a protocol both sides accept; NRC 1937 negative contestedTested, not supportedReiter and Gabor's 3200-3500 A band, by the rival schoolNever properly testedregular light pulses 30 times more potent; daylight-dependent senders
Ordinary reactions emit it, each with a narrow-band fingerprint
Establishedsome oxidations emit faint near-UV or visible lightPlausible, untestedoxidations emitting 190-260 nmRefuted by calculationneutralisation, NaCl, hydrolysis as one-photon-per-event sourcesNever properly testedreaction-specific fingerprints
Energy accounting: 420 cal/g needed against 9.7 cal/g measured
Refuted by calculationone 2020 A quantum per reacting moleculeRefuted by calculationRahn's reabsorption chainPlausible, untestedrare-event weak emission at the book's intensities
Secondary radiation travels about 30 m/s along roots and nerves and may carry the nerve impulse
Never properly testedthe speeds as a UV relayHistorically superseded but instructiverole in nerve conduction
Healthy blood radiates, cancer blood does not; cancer may be a radiation disorder
Never properly testedblood radiation as a cancer diagnosticNot testable as statedcancer as a radiation disorderEstablishedordinary UV causes skin cancer (Roffo), not shown for the mitogenetic band
The radiation shapes development, and a harmful form from fingertips and oxy-cholesterol kills yeast
Never properly testedtadpole limbs and wounds, sea-urchin larvaeRefuted by calculationharmful UV at the book's intensityNever properly testedsomething from skin or oxy-cholesterol kills yeast through quartz
Failed replications do not disprove the effect
Establisheddetector state sensitivity in general microbiologyPlausible, untestedas the explanation for the NRC nullNot testable as statedas a blanket defence
Author of the book; advocate who reported the Gurwitsch school's work and ran some experiments himself · His laboratory produced some of the reported results
Born 9 April 1881, died 26 September 1957. Probable doctoral thesis on a terpineol (1902). Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois from 1913; Professor of Bacteriology at Cornell 1927-1949. Books include Physiology of Bacteria (1932), Mathematics in Bacteriology (1939) and Microbes of Merit (1945).
Alexander Gurwitsch
Discoverer of mitogenetic radiation (onion roots, 1923) and head of the school that produced most positive results · Originator of the theory; criticised rival results
Russian biologist; his school's 1932 monograph is the source of most numbers in Rahn's Chapters V-VII. Otherwise not in the review files.
Sidney W. Barnes
Wrote Chapter I, the physics primer on quanta, spectra and photoelectron counters
Research Associate in Physics, University of Rochester. Not the Barnes of the oxy-cholesterol work. Otherwise not in the review files.
Margaret N. Barnes
Probable co-author of the 1933 oxy-cholesterol and yeast-death work · Member of Rahn's laboratory
Thanked in the book as Mrs Margaret N. Barnes; co-author of a 1933 J. Gen. Physiol. paper with Rahn; a Cornell dissertation on yeast morphology is cited by Macht (1949). Otherwise not in the review files.
Reiter and Dennis Gabor
German rivals (1928, Siemens) who put the active band at 3200-3500 Angstrom, which the Gurwitsch school could not reproduce
The book gives only 'Gabor'; the review files identify him as Dennis Gabor, later a Nobel laureate in physics (memory, high confidence). Reiter is not in the review files.
E. Lorenz
Critic who named three artefacts in counter work and the per-molecule energy objection as Rahn presents it
Author of J. Gen. Physiol. 17:843-862 (1934). Otherwise not in the review files.
Alexander Hollaender (with W. Claus)
Ran the two-year National Research Council study (Bulletin 100, 1937) that found nothing
Also wrote 'The problem of mitogenetic rays' in Duggar's Biological Effects of Radiation (1936). Claus's initials are not confirmed. Otherwise not in the review files.
I. Volodyaev and L. V. Beloussov
Modern authors (2015) who argue the negative studies used untested conditions and credit Rahn with optimising the bacterial protocol · Work in the Gurwitsch tradition at Moscow State University and defend the field
Volodyaev also co-wrote the 2018 historical review of early research and the Soviet cancer-quencher work. Otherwise not in the review files.
Evidence / artifacts (126 of 126 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (18)
1902Uber ein neues Terpineol vom Schmelzpunkt 32 Grad Probably Rahn's doctoral thesis; HathiTrust full view; not opened
1928Physik der Milchwirtschaft Rahn with a co-author; HathiTrust catalogue only
1932Physiology of Bacteria Rahn's textbook; HathiTrust catalogue; may hold his view of the radiation
1933Ferguson and Rahn, Archiv fur Mikrobiologie 4:574-582 Bacterium coli detector work; Table 36 (3.4-4.2 times faster growth at 6 h), known only through Rahn's account, pp.133-144· Rahn's laboratory
1933Tuthill and Rahn, Archiv fur Mikrobiologie 4:565-573 Yeast bud detector; Table 21 and the 10/20/40-minute dose table with no proportionality; known only through Rahn's account· Rahn's laboratory
1933Rahn and M. N. Barnes, criteria of death in yeast, J. Gen. Physiol. 16:579 Listed in the book's author index; Mrs Margaret N. Barnes of Rahn's laboratory, not the physicist S. W. Barnes· Rahn's laboratory
1933Barnes and Rahn oxy-cholesterol experiments (Table 53a) Five batches; day 1: three dead, one mostly dead, one normal Mycoderma through quartz; no glass or blank control; page image p.200· Rahn's laboratory
1933Rahn, Problems in Growth Chemistry JSTOR; section on blocking growth acceleration by absorbing the rays in gelatin; Google snippet only
1933Ferguson's two-sided irradiation (unpublished) Strong effect, no cancelling, against Gurwitsch's interference idea; prose only, p.142· Rahn's laboratory
1934The Disagreement in Mitogenetic Experiments, a Problem in Bacterial Physiology J. Bacteriol. 28:153-158, PMC533662; free scans; Rahn's own statement of claim 7; opened, not read
1934The physico-chemical basis of biological radiations Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 2:226-240; excerpt read: 'need not necessarily appear as heat'
1934Tuthill and Rahn, Analysis of the bud formation of the Baron method Archive of Biological Sciences Ser. B 35:289-296; cited by Naumova et al. 2018· Rahn's laboratory
1934Huntington and Rahn, 'Mitogenetic irradiation' (title only) Journal of Bacteriology index, p.718; not opened
1936Invisible Radiations of Organisms (Protoplasma-Monographien IX) Borntraeger, Berlin; 230 PDF pages; physics chapter by S. W. Barnes; deep-read pp.44-146 and 160-200, digests for the rest; a 1944 printing is in HathiTrust, not compared· Rahn, advocate; his laboratory did some of the experiments
1936Fingertip and herpes-zoster yeast-killing tests One student's fingertip: 5 min over an open glass ring, 15 min through 2 mm lanolin-sealed quartz; zoster patient 15 min for about 6 months; page image p.111· Rahn's laboratory
1937Mitogenetic radiation, Tabulae Biologicae 14:1-35 Rahn's review after the book, possibly after the NRC study; would show whether he changed his view; not located
1939Mathematics in Bacteriology HathiTrust catalogue; not read
1945Microbes of Merit HathiTrust catalogue; possible record of his later view; not read
University and biographical records (4)
1913-09-01University of Illinois trustees record: Otto Rahn, Assistant Professor (3 years) uihistories.library.illinois.edu; search result text
1957Cornell memorial statement, Otto Rahn 1881-1957 Office of the Dean of the University Faculty; hdl 1813/18707; PDF found, download needs approval; not read
2017Singleton, Albert Jan Kluyver and the Unity of Life, J. Hist. Biol. Cites the memorial statement: born 9 April 1881, died 26 September 1957
2022Jeff Weber Rare Books catalogue 279 'Professor of Bacteriology at Cornell University from 1927 until 1949'; snippet
Company and business records (1)
c.1934Terzano and Co. (Milan) hemoradiometer for Protti's blood-radiation work Named in the book; known only through Rahn's account· Instrument maker
Experiments and replications by others (63)
1923Gurwitsch's onion-root discovery Root tip aimed at another root's growing zone; more mitoses on the facing side; p.68-69· Originator of the theory
1928Reiter and Gabor, Zellteilung und Strahlung (Siemens) Effective rays 3200-3500 A (maximum 3400), antagonistic 2900-3200 A; parthenogenesis at 3340 A (3 + 3 eggs); pp.73-76, 183-184
1928L. Gurwitsch and Anikin, corneal epithelium 2030 A on one eye, other eye control; exposed above control in 15 of 15 pairs; page image p.98· Gurwitsch school
1929Frank: repeat at 3400 A, negative Three runs; no radiation above 2400 A from tetanised muscle; p.75· Gurwitsch school
1929Schwemmle's analysis of about 200 onion-root results Error +/-10% at 500 mitoses; 'did not consider it proved' that rays cause the effect; p.72
1930Chariton, Frank and Kannegiesser No effect beyond 2600 A; Table 18 nulls at 3340-3380 A· Gurwitsch school
1930Frank and Rodionow counter measurements Frog muscle and heart excesses 21-233% (2.5-9.6 combined errors); Table 30
1930Potozky, daylight dependence of yeast senders (Table 33) Daylight-grown 20-35%; dark-grown -6 to +6.5%; n 4-8; page image p.122· Gurwitsch school
1930Ziripolo, sea urchin eggs (Table 27) Unchanged eggs 71-98% in controls against 8-35% irradiated; page image p.95
1930Siebert, 35 cancer patients and frog muscle runs Majority showed no blood radiation; excited muscle above resting in 24 of 24 (Tables 19-20); pp.78-79
1931Taylor and Harvey, Biol. Bull. 61:280-293 Photographic plates against fermenting yeast for 90 days: no effect; p.104
1931Nakaidzumi and Schreiber Negative test, via Naumova et al. reference list
1931Motshejewa's critique of onion-root work Pressure, tube, root selection and omitted sections; negatives with yeast and blood senders; p.76
1932Gurwitsch monograph (source of most Chapter V-VII numbers) Intermittent light about 1/30 the time (Table 31), gradual approach, polarisation reports; known only through Rahn's account· Originator of the theory
1932Kalendaroff, frog sciatic nerve spectra Minimal exposure 6 min resting, 2-3 excited; Rahn's own calibration-shift note; pp.169-171· Gurwitsch school
1932Anna Gurwitsch, optic nerve and optic lobe radiation (also 1934a, b) Light on the eye makes lobes radiate; colour-dependent spectra, intensities not stated; Table 49· Gurwitsch school
1932Kostoff and Kendall, tomato tumour tetraploid 120 plants, 7 shoots, 1 tetraploid; no control; p.183
1932Christiansen, menstrual-blood radiation Most experiments lacked exclusion of volatile substances (Rahn); p.175
1933Paul, onion roots without tube Steel-needle control; Rahn: 'number of examples ... not large enough'; p.77
1933Acs, antagonistic radiation between bacteria B. anthracis retarded 22-136% in 14 experiments; no quartz-glass control; p.186
1933Lepeschkin, necrobiotic rays Dying yeast blackened AgBr and Eastman Speedway plates; dead and living yeast did not; pp.113-114
1933Nelson and Brooks, infrared and sea urchin fertilisation 9 of 9 experiments, 18.5-87.1% fewer fertilisations; p.115
1934Barth, proteolysis counter series 24 of 25 runs above control (p about 8e-7 if independent)
1934Siebert and Seffert, blood on photoelectron counters Several hundred normal bloods raised counts; carcinoma and KCN blood did not; no counts printed; page image p.106
1934Lorenz, J. Gen. Physiol. 17:843-862 Three error sources: water vapour, charge on the quartz, induction-coil stimulation
1934Kreuchen and Bateman, Protoplasma Photoelectric yields over 2000 quanta per electron except Rajewsky's; negative review; Table 30a
1934Suchow and Suchowa, egg white over silver bromide Quartz vessel darkened sooner than glass in 25 of 25; pp.114-115
1934Wolff and Ras, polarised secondary radiation (1934a) 'Enormously' more effective; no numbers; p.127-128
1934Klenitzky, blood radiation after tumour removal Radiation returned when all tumour removed, against Gesenius; p.195
1934Protti, cytophotolysis, yeast injections and young-blood rejuvenation Table 48, ten cases, no controls; 12 + 12 starved mice; p.166, 196· Clinical stake in the treatments
1934de Korosi, propagation of secondary radiation The only published experimental proof of propagation, per Rahn
1934A. G. and L. D. Gurwitsch, school summaries with error data Cited by Rahn, p.54· Gurwitsch school
1935Julius, chick fibroblasts split between quartz and glass 56 pairs 1.92 +/- 0.15 against 48 pairs 1.01 +/- 0.08; only on poor media; page image p.97
1936Hollaender, 'The problem of mitogenetic rays', in Duggar (ed.) Biological Effects of Radiation pp.919-958; critical review
1937Hollaender and Claus, NRC Bulletin 100 Two years, biological and physical detectors, all negative; protocol contested by proponents; bulletin not obtained
1938Audubert, Angewandte Chemie 51:153 UV emission from chemical reactions
1938Glasser and Barth, Radiology 30:62-67; Grebe, Krost and Peukert, Strahlentherapie 60:538-571 Later physical-detection papers in Naumova's reference list
1939Gurwitsch and Gurwitsch, 'Ultra-Violet Chemi-Luminescence', Nature 143:1022 Positive physical report; title only· Gurwitsch school
1947Koyenuma, Biochem. Z. 318:1-14 'On the existence question of so-called mitogenic radiation'
1954Colli and Facchini, Nuovo Cimento Photomultiplier measurements of weak light from living matter
1967Metcalf and Quickenden, Nature 216:169 Not opened
1974Quickenden and Que Hee, BBRC 60:764-770 Weak luminescence from yeast and the existence of mitogenetic radiation; not read
1989Quickenden et al., Radiation Research 117:145-157 Attempt to stimulate yeast division with weak UV; no abstract found; proponents say daylight condition was violated
1997Wainwright, Killham, Russell and Grayston, Microbiology 143:1-3 'Partial evidence for the existence of mitogenetic radiation'; record only
–Magrou (and Magrou and Reiss), sea urchin larvae (Table 29) 0% abnormal in 221 controls; 78-85% through quartz; glass-paraffin-glass also transmits; electrical explanation offered; pp.100-101
–Blacher, tadpole limb growth and tail-wound healing Net limb gain 10.6 +/- 1.4% and 12.1 +/- 1.8%; wound series over 500 tadpoles (Table 51); pp.182-190
–Bromley, salamander tail Table runs 6.2-56.4% over 1-24 h; no second maximum shown; page image p.188
–Golishewa, 54 failures in 373 blood experiments Recognised because all associates using that culture that day were negative; p.107· Gurwitsch school
–Gesenius, blood radiation and cancer; yeast fermentation counts No case counts; 'occasional exceptions'; 102 runs 68/4/30; p.99, 193-195· Clinical advocate
–Heinemann, gold-sol nephelometer and cancer blood test Blood about 26 units against 2-3; single runs; positive result 'excluded ... tumor with certainty'· Clinical stake in cytagenin
–Seyderhelm, cytagenin raising blood radiation 70-80 year olds after 1-2 weeks; duration not stated; pp.165-166· Clinical stake
–Braunstein and Heyfetz, tumour rats (Table 53) Groups of 3-14; page image p.194
–Roffo, ultraviolet and sunlight rat tumours 150 rats all with tumours in 4 months under UV; 52% of 700 in sunlight; none under tungsten; p.197
–Latmanisowa, parabiosis of sciatic nerve by radiation; Lapitzki, mercury lamp More than 40 repeats; no quartz-glass screen named; p.174· Gurwitsch school
–Salkind, periodicity and bud-count depression (Tables 34-35) Repeats with opposite signs; Rahn: 'no definite periodicity'· Gurwitsch school
–Wolff and Ras, neutralisation and NaCl dissolving (Table 14) +45% at 5 min; +28 to +45% at 20-30 s; one group, no error estimate; pp.64-65
–Zoglina, half-disk intermittent irradiation Five values near zero, five at +28 to +64%· Gurwitsch school
–Stempell, Liesegang rings and peroxide decomposition Disturbed by radiation and by volatile onion oil; pp.102-103
–Zwaardemaker, radioactive potassium substitutes restart frog hearts 34 experiments; not tied to mitogenetic rays; pp.115-116
–Rubner's heat of sucrose hydrolysis, 9.7 cal/g Basis of the 43-times energy objection; p.55
–Kannegiesser; Braunstein and Potozky; Ponomareva, oxidation spectra Agree on 2200-2350 A; one school, one detector· Gurwitsch school
–Unpublished oxalic acid + permanganate run (Table 15) The only same-time quartz-against-glass control in the deep-read pages
Later accounts and media (34)
1932-06-25'Evil Eye' Is Found to Be Based on Fact, New York Times p.14 Report of Rahn's AAAS Syracuse talk: eye, nose and fingertip radiation killed yeast; right hand stronger
1932-09-10Science Service wire by Watson Davis, 'Deadly Human Radiation' Read in the Hawera Star; also Gisborne Times, Greymouth Evening Star, Dunstan Times, Timaru Herald, Franklin Times (Aug-Oct 1932); 'preliminary stages'
1932Theosophical Quarterly report of Rahn's human-radiation lecture IAPSOP; not opened
1932Stempell, Die unsichtbare Strahlung der Lebewesen (Jena) German book with nearly the same title; not read
1934Science 79(2061):584, Cold Spring Harbor symposium programme Lists 'mitogenetic rays, Rahn'; not opened
1936JAMA 107(5) review of the book Seen in Google only
1936ACS journal review of the book Seen in Google only
1937-12-11'Mitogenetic Rays?', Nature 140:1007-1008 Unsigned news item on NRC Bulletin 100: 'all the attempts have yielded negative results'; about 600 papers published; abstract read
1939Gerlach, 'Existiert die mitogenetische Strahlung?', Naturwissenschaften Review of Hollaender and Claus; title only
1942Pesochensky, doctoral dissertation on blood-radiation quenching in cancer Leningrad Oncological Institute; via Naumova et al.· Gurwitsch tradition, defends the field
1947The Teaching of the Cancer Quencher Soviet monograph; via Naumova et al.· Gurwitsch tradition, defends the field
1948Introduction to the Teaching of Mitogenesis Gurwitsch and Gurwitsch; via Naumova et al.· Gurwitsch tradition, defends the field
1949Macht, 'Concerning the chemical nature of menstrual toxin', Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. Cites Rahn and M. N. Barnes dissertation; snippet only
–Macht, 'Experimental studies, old and new, on menstrual toxin' 'Rahn and his co-workers claimed that oxycholesterol emits destructive ultraviolet rays'; snippet
1950Avchina, dissertation on blood radiation and cancer Via Naumova et al.· Gurwitsch tradition, defends the field
1955Sneshko, dissertation on blood radiation and cancer Via Naumova et al.· Gurwitsch tradition, defends the field
1968A. A. Gurwitsch, later books (1968, 1974) Soviet continuation; not read· Gurwitsch tradition, defends the field
1973Tompkins and Bird, The Secret Life of Plants Links Rahn to Hieronymus's 'eloptic' devices; not opened
1976F. A. Popp, biophoton work (from 1976) Related ultra-weak photon emission research
–Vladimirov and Tarusov, ultra-weak emission (1950s-70s) Related work
–Corliss, Incredible Life: A Handbook of Biological Mysteries Reprints a 1932 press item; not opened
1988A. A. Gurwitsch, 'A historical review of the problem of mitogenetic radiation', Experientia 44:545-550 Not read· Gurwitsch tradition, defends the field
1988Van Wijk and Schamhart, Experientia 44:586-593 Related work; not read
1992Albrecht-Buehler, cell-to-cell light signalling Related work
1998Wainwright, 'Historical and recent evidence for the existence of mitogenetic radiation', Perspect. Biol. Med. 41:565-571 Project MUSE blocked by CAPTCHA; snippet calls the book 'impressive and influential'
2000Goraczko, Med. Hypotheses 54:461-468 Not read
2003Trushin, non-chemical distant interaction (2003-04) Related work
2007Farhadi, cell-to-cell signalling Related work
2009Fels, cellular communication through light Related work
2011Cifra et al., Electromagnetic cellular interactions Academia.edu; not opened
2013Scholkmann, Fels and Cifra, Am. J. Transl. Res. 5:586-593 Related work
2014Cifra and Pospisil review of ultra-weak photon emission Search summary: 350-1300 nm, several to thousands of photons/s/cm2
2015Volodyaev and Beloussov, 'Revisiting the mitogenetic effect of ultra-weak photon emission', Front. Physiol. 6:241 First 100,000 of 185,000 characters read by a fetch tool; disputes NRC and Quickenden conditions· Gurwitsch tradition, defends the field
2018Naumova, Naumova, Isaev and Volodyaev, historical review, JBPE 4(4):040201 Abstract and about 190 references read; 'very promising results', 'interrupted and almost abandoned'· Gurwitsch tradition, defends the field
Records named but not yet examined (6)
–Cornell Rare and Manuscript Collections: Rahn papers and Dept. of Bacteriology records Named by the arbiter as deciding for the post-1937 silence
–Smithsonian Institution Archives, Science Service records Original 1932 Watson Davis wire text
–NRC correspondence on Bulletin 100 and Hollaender's papers Named by the arbiter
–Reviews of the 1944 printing Would show the book's reception after the NRC negative
–Day-level raw data from any mitogenetic laboratory Would decide whether detector failures can be identified in advance
–M. N. Barnes dissertation, Morphological Changes in Yeast Induced by Biological Radiation Cornell; known from Macht's citation· Rahn's laboratory
Left out: the many other papers in the book's bibliography that no review file singles out (about 600 had appeared by 1937), the 1944 printing as a separate item, catalogue and index pages, and search hits for the unrelated writer Otto Rahn. Full catalogue: Rahn-Otto sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A pre-registered, blinded two-laboratory test: proponents fix culture age, medium, induction time and a calibrated UV-C positive control (10-1000 quanta/cm2/s) that declares a responsive day; quartz, glass and paraffin-glass screens assigned blind; analysis by day, copying Julius, Blacher and the cornea pairs. Alongside, a photomultiplier spectrum of lag-phase yeast and onion roots, 190-300 nm, with blanks.
Deciding records: Hollaender and Claus's NRC Bulletin 100 and NRC correspondence; Rahn's 1937 Tabulae Biologicae review and 1934 J. Bacteriol. paper; the Cornell memorial statement and Rahn papers; Quickenden 1989 and Wainwright 1997 in full; the Soviet cancer-quencher dissertations (1942-1955); the 1932 Science Service wire; reviews of the 1944 printing.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it reproduces Rahn's 420 cal/g (414, a ratio of 42.6), the per-event energies, the 2767 Angstrom limit of his rescue, a photon yield of 2.6e-14 per molecule and the 10^10 dose gap. By hand: a 3000 rpm disc, a 15 degree shift over 2.5 cm, gives about 30 m/s.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Dismissed without testing? No: it was tested by both sides. Was it properly settled? No: the only neutral, well-resourced negative is contested on protocol, and the positive results are unblinded and mostly lack error estimates. arbiter.md, Claim 1
Arbiter The total energy budget costs nothing at the observed intensities, about a millionth of a millionth of the heat power. What stands is the per-event problem: one 6 eV photon needs the energy of 43 sucrose events, and Rahn's remedy fails. arbiter.md, Claim 3
QE The text layer of p.111 reads '1.5minutes' where the page says 15 minutes. Two reviewers, the arbiter and the first primer discussed a faster-through-quartz anomaly the page does not contain; caught on the page image and withdrawn. qe.md, section 3, check 5
Contrarian Rahn complains that few English papers appeared and those were 'mostly negative'. That is a complaint about a literature, not documented suppression. The record is thin and the absence is not proof of its opposite. contrarian.md, section 2
Investigator The work went on in the USSR after the West stopped: Pesochensky's 1942 dissertation, The Teaching of the Cancer Quencher (1947), dissertations in 1950 and 1955. Naumova et al. (2018, Gurwitsch tradition) report 'very promising results', 'interrupted and almost abandoned'. sites.md, Leads for review 2; research/2026-10-06-jbpe.md
AI noteRahn's 1932 talk made the New York Times as ''Evil Eye' Is Found to Be Based on Fact'; his 1936 book says such human radiation occurred 'only very rarely' and that the authors did not want that publicity.
Rank 18Kilner-Walter
down from 17A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 11:39
A London hospital physician said a dye screen lets anyone see a human aura; a cheap blind test was designed in 1912 and is still not on record as run.
Invention / theory background
Walter J. Kilner (1847-1920), Cambridge-trained physician and former medical electrician at St Thomas's Hospital, London, published The Human Atmosphere in 1911. After looking at daylight through a glass cell of dicyanin dye, he said, an observer sees a three-layer haze round the body. He used it with a coloured afterimage band to read sex, heredity, temperament, epilepsy, pregnancy and local disease. A 1920 edition called the aura 'an ultra-violet phenomenon'.
Ranking explanation
Kilner meets A, B and C. Below Mallove (9), whose glow-discharge tube claims a large measured power gain; Kilner's claims are perceptual, with no energy anomaly at stake. Above van Vlaenderen (11), a theory whose predictions have no experiments or reception history yet; Kilner has 1911-12 trials in Chicago, Philadelphia, Graz and Paris, published counts, and a blind design by de Fontenay (1912) that nobody reports running. A reader could run the decisive test with a filter and a curtain.
Key supporting elements
Others reported seeing something: O'Donnell before about twenty Chicago physicians (newspaper report, 1911), H. C. S. and Goodspeed ('no doubt... a physical phenomenon is observable'), and two observers in Graz (Surya, 1912).
An unwitting sham: three times a methylene-blue screen was handed over in place of dicyanin, and the viewer saw nothing; Kilner says he did not tell her 'because this was regarded as a good test' (1920 edition).
Parent-child aura width classes agree in 15 of 15 pairs, far above the 0.38 chance rate; all 8 epileptics in the first hundred cases fall outside the blue-aura group (chance about 0.01).
Several readings ran against the patient's own belief: Case 21 told she was not pregnant (period came 7 days later); a 38-year-old's period came 7 days after the reading, not the fortnight she expected.
Kilner published his failures and retractions: failed photography, a 'healthy symmetrical' case who had hidden an epileptic fit, and 'the limitations of the Aura as a diagnostic agent are great'.
Key contradictions
In Paris (1911-12) de Rochas, de Fontenay and their friends saw nothing matching Kilner's descriptions with his own four screens; de Fontenay, sympathetic, called it 'a reservation, not a denial'.
H. C. S. found the haze 'more pronounced with an inanimate hand-towel than it is with the human being', against a body-specific emanation; Kilner replied he had never seen haze round any inanimate object except magnets and radio-active substances.
Every diagnosis and aura class rests on one observer, Kilner, usually the treating physician who knew the history; there is no blinding, no second observer who confirmed a band patch, and no count of failures.
A filter that only removes visible light cannot reveal a band outside the visible spectrum; the eye's lens absorbs below about 390 nm, so a normal eye cannot see an ultra-violet aura directly.
The two hidden-site willing trials used one paid subject who saw auras herself, signalled when to look and was in view; the blue band used cannot tell red from yellow, so they test location, not colour.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 23 shown)
Claim
Verdict
A structured haze round the body becomes visible after looking through a dicyanin screen
Plausible, untestedweak form: screen-primed observers report a hazeNever properly testedstrong form: an objective, body-specific emanation
The aura is a force from the body acting on the ether (1 aF and 2 aF)
Historically superseded but instructivethe 'two forces' are a bookkeeping device by Kilner's own words
The aura lies outside the visible spectrum
Internally inconsistent1911 form: invisible yet seen through visible-light screensNever properly tested1920 ultra-violet form
Hazes round magnets, uranium and galvanic circuits; aura changed by static charge and halogen fumes (1920)
Never properly testedsingle observer, unblinded, no counts
Aura width, colour and shape reflect sex, age, heredity, temperament and disease
Never properly testedwidth vs sex, age, parentage; colour series; left-side narrowing in epilepsyNot testable as statedtemperament, intelligence, disease types without a rule
The complementary-colour afterimage band diagnoses disease, tenderness, menstruation and pregnancy
Never properly testedas a diagnostic methodPlausible, untestedkernel: patches track skin and lightingEstablishedthe negative afterimage itself
Band changes show aura colour; the will projects rays and changes colour; two willed spots found blind
Never properly testedwilled rays and colour; the two hidden-site trialsNot testable as statedthe Appendix design as a test of colour
Inventor of the dicyanin screen method; sole observer in nearly every account
Born 1847, Bury St Edmunds; St John's College, Cambridge (B.A., M.B.); MRCP 1883. Medical electrician in charge of electrotherapy at St Thomas's Hospital, London, 1879-1893, then private practice in Ladbroke Grove. Earlier N-ray needle work, abandoned. Died June 1920; place of death conflicts (Isle of Wight per Wikipedia; Bury St Edmunds address in the 1920 preface).
Francis J. Rebman
Publisher of the 1911 book and of the Archives of the Roentgen Ray, which reviewed it · Sold the screens with the book (30s. boxed set; screens 17s. 6d.)
Described by Wikipedia as a friend of Kilner who supported his research in America; issued a 1912 booklet explaining the discovery. Otherwise not in the review files.
Patrick S. O'Donnell
Physician said to have repeated Kilner's experiments at Mercy Hospital, Chicago, June 1911, before about twenty physicians · The report is his own announcement, relayed by newspapers
Not in the review files beyond the 1911 newspaper reports relayed by the Annales des Sciences Psychiques and an encyclopedia entry citing Harry Price.
Guillaume de Fontenay
Paris investigator who tried Kilner's screens with Count Albert de Rochas and friends (1911-12) and saw nothing; proposed two blind tests
Wrote the March 1912 Annales des Sciences Psychiques review; sympathetic to the aura and called his failure a reservation, not a denial. De Rochas had earlier tested sensitives by secretly reversing a magnet's current. Otherwise not in the review files.
H. C. S. and Dr Goodspeed
US correspondents who reproduced 'some of the effects' and found the haze stronger round a hand-towel than a person
H. C. S. is unidentified. The Investigator suggests Dr Goodspeed is probably Arthur W. Goodspeed, University of Pennsylvania physicist and early X-ray worker, recorded as memory, medium confidence, not verified.
G. W. Surya
Ran screen trials in Graz (1912); two observers reported haze and rays; estimated about half of first-time viewers see nothing · Editor of Zentralblatt fur Okkultismus, published by Altmann, which also published Feerhow's book on the trials
Not in the review files beyond his editorship and the trials Feerhow reports.
Dr Merrick
Physician who brought patients to Kilner, including the one case Kilner framed as a test (history withheld)
Saw the aura 'quite plainly' in his ulcer patient (Case 33) but not the band spot Kilner reported. Otherwise not in the review files.
Harry Boddington
Revived the screens as 'Aurospecs' goggles c.1929-31 and wrote the only account of the 1914-1930 gap · Maker and sole seller of Aurospecs (one guinea), held a provisional patent, sold Kilner's book and courses
Ran the London Psychic Educational Centre; Spiritualist teacher. He himself warned that 'suggestion and optical illusions have a definite place'.
Evidence / artifacts (50 of 50 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (4)
1911The Human Atmosphere, or the Aura Made Visible by the Aid of Chemical Screens Rebman, New York and London; 42 cases, Tables I-II, Appendix willing experiments; Google Books scan, deep-read in full
1911The Shifting of the Chromatic Focus of the Eye by the Use of a Dicyanin Screen Archives of the Roentgen Ray v.16 pp.344-352; 12 observers of 30; read by the Investigator in a browser on HathiTrust, table not saved
1912Kilner's reply to H. C. S. Archives of the Roentgen Ray v.16 p.240: never seen a haze round an inanimate object except a magnet or radio-active substance
1920-09The Human Atmosphere (The Aura), second edition Kegan Paul / Dutton; second impression May 1926; ultra-violet hypothesis, Wimshurst, fumigation, microscope and hypnosis series; Internet Archive OCR, deep-read; later reprints 1965 and 1973
Patents and patent office (1)
c.1930Boddington 'Aurospecs' provisional patent UK; mentioned in Boddington's booklet; Espacenet / UK IPO search not reached· Seller of the goggles
Government records (2)
1920Kilner death registration and probate FreeBMD and probate; would settle Isle of Wight versus Bury St Edmunds
1914British dye import and wartime control records Would test the wartime loss of German dicyanin
Company and business records (6)
1911Rebman's Analytical Catalogue, Spring 1911 Bound into the project PDF (pp.350-357); lists the book 'with screens' at $10.00· Publisher and screen seller
1911Unsigned review of The Human Atmosphere, Archives of the Roentgen Ray v.16 p.156; 'many of them are able to see a bluish haze'; cautions on 'sight and suggestion'; prices· Publisher's own journal
1911Editorial on the aura, Archives of the Roentgen Ray v.16 p.122; editor W. Deane Butcher; 'artificial or temporary myopia' anecdotes· Publisher's own journal
1912The Human Aura: a Brief Explication of Dr. Kilner's Discovery Rebman booklet; HathiTrust hvd.hnxbgt, full view; not reached· Publisher
1910Meister, Lucius and Bruning (Hoechst) dye catalogues 1910-1920 Named by the arbiter as deciding for the dicyanin supply question
1911Rebman sales records Named by the arbiter for the commercial-failure explanation
Witness accounts and correspondence (4)
1911Letter from H. C. S. (with Dr Goodspeed) Archives of the Roentgen Ray v.16 pp.199-200; 'some of the effects'; haze stronger round a hand-towel
1929-06-06A. E. Mundy endorsement of Aurospecs Chemist who says he compounded the original Kilner screens; 'not prepared to say' what the aura is; printed in Boddington's booklet· Printed by the seller
1929-09-19Dr Drysdale Anderson letter He and his wife 'can make out the aura', about three inches thick; quoted in Boddington's booklet· Printed by the seller
c.1931Seven Aurospecs buyer testimonials Mist, sparks, 'X-ray' hands; one says 'may have been due to imagination'; in Boddington's booklet· Selected and printed by the seller
Experiments and replications by others (11)
1911-06-15New York Herald report of O'Donnell's Mercy Hospital demonstration About twenty physicians, four young women, 'succeeded'; known through the Annales 1912· O'Donnell's own announcement
1911-06Chicago newspaper report of Kilner's discovery London correspondent's note of 19 May, printed 21 June 1911; relayed by the Annales
1911-07Clipping: O'Donnell watches the radiation vanish at a death Headline says 'photographed', text says only 'saw'; relayed by the Annales· O'Donnell's own claim
1911-09-01De Rochas on the Chicago and New York reports Annales des Sciences Psychiques v.21 pp.264-268; not obtained
1912-02Surya's Graz screen trials Zentralblatt fur Okkultismus, February 1912; known through Feerhow 1913 ch. III· Altmann publication
1912-03De Fontenay, L'Aura humaine et les ecrans du Dr Walter J. Kilner Annales des Sciences Psychiques 22, pp.74-84; Paris negative trials with de Rochas and J.-C. Roux; two proposed blind tests; read from page images
1912Paris psychical society report of a de Rochas and de Fontenay lecture on Kilner's screens Annales des Sciences Psychiques 1912, PDF p.196
1912Werner and Caan on photo-activity of human tissue Relayed in Annales 1912 (printed p.183) from L'Annee Electrique; Heidelberg; no data given; a different effect
1913Feerhow, Die menschliche Aura und ihre experimentelle Erforschung Max Altmann, Leipzig; ch. III (other experimenters) read; ch. II and Vienna Psychological Society appendix not reached· Altmann, also Surya's publisher
–Scatcherd and Baraduc film 'photographs' of the aura One undated paragraph in Boddington's booklet; shown at 'the French Academy'; no plate or reference· Reported by the seller
–Harry Price note on O'Donnell, via Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 'Aura' Encyclopedia.com snippet: O'Donnell 'controlled and confirmed' Kilner's experiments; page returned 404
Later accounts and media (14)
1911-02-05The human aura has at last been photographed New York Times; headline only, page rendered blank; conflicts with the book's report of failed photography
1911-08-19Daily Journal-Gazette item on Rebman promoting Kilner's work Mattoon, Illinois, p.3; cited by Wikipedia
1918Bureau of Standards, wave-length measurements in spectra from 5600 to 9600 A US Bureau of Standards; dicyanin as a red and infra-red sensitiser; archive.org
1919Bureau of Standards, application of dicyanin to the photography of stellar spectra archive.org app144875051919318318unse
1925Powell, The Etheric Double and Allied Phenomena Used Kilner's findings; HathiTrust full view, not read
–Richet, Thirty Years of Psychical Research Cites Kilner and 'Dr. O'Donnell'; Google result only
1930-03-14Daily Chronicle article on Drysdale Anderson Said by Boddington to have 'confirmed Dr. Kilner's researches'; not quoted, not obtained
c.1931Boddington, Aura. Kilner Screens (Aurospecs) and All About Them London Psychic Educational Centre Handbook No. 4, ed. David Gow; account of the dicyanin gap 1914-1930; deep-read· Maker and seller of Aurospecs
1937Bagnall, The Origin and Properties of the Human Aura Pinacyanol screens in place of dicyanin; 1970 and 1975 editions on archive.org, borrow only· Maker of his own screens
1970The Human Aura: A Study of Beliefs Scribd snippet: dicyanin supply from Meister Lucius and Bruning cut off in 1914-18
1993Nickell on Kilner Sceptic author; calls it pseudoscience; via Wikipedia
2005Lindgren on cobalt-blue glass screens Via Wikipedia
2013Melton on Kilner Results seen as artefacts of the observer's optic process; goggles advertised into the 1970s; via Wikipedia
2026Wikipedia, Walter John Kilner Biography and reception; read by the Investigator and re-fetched by the arbiter
Records named but not yet examined (8)
1893BMJ society reports 1893 and 1898 (possible Kilner electrotherapy work) PMC2422466, PMC2422189, PMC2433863; listed by Europe PMC, not checked
1912-01-06BMJ review of The Human Atmosphere Issue 2662, pp.20-22, PMC2344221; 'Macbeth's visionary dagger' line and a replication claim known only from Wikipedia; blocked by CAPTCHA
1912Lancet and BMJ coverage of Kilner 1912-1920 Named by the arbiter for the professional-rejection explanation
1912St Thomas's Hospital minutes and Kilner-BMA correspondence Named by the arbiter for the suppression and rejection questions
1912BMJ editorial files Named by the arbiter
1911Arthur W. Goodspeed papers, University of Pennsylvania archives To identify H. C. S. and the 1911 trial
1920-06-30Death of Dr. W. J. Kilner, Suffolk and Essex Free Press p.6; cited by Wikipedia
1929Light, 1929-1931 Spiritualist weekly edited by David Gow; for Mundy, Anderson and the Aurospecs revival
Left out: further reprints and library copies of Kilner's books, the Google front matter and back matter of the scan, search hits not opened (Leaf 1926, Occult Review 1911, Electrograms from Elysium 1958, Tansley 1984, Dakin 1975, a 2026 web essay), and bibliographies that only cite de Fontenay. Full catalogue: Kilner-Walter sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Blinded detection: several observers primed with dicyanin or a sham screen of similar colour; behind a curtain a person, a warm towel at body temperature, or nothing, in random order; 50 or more trials each, pass criteria fixed beforehand. De Fontenay's 1912 designs (hidden magnets; a 25-pair wire board switched from a distant room) test the magnet haze.
Deciding records: The BMJ review of 6 January 1912 (did anyone run a trial?), the New York Herald of 15 June 1911 and Chicago reports on O'Donnell, the NYT article of 5 February 1911, the saved table of Kilner's chromatic-focus paper, and the Rebman 1912 booklet.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it turns Kilner's microscope shift (+2.5 divisions of 1/1000 inch) into about 1 dioptre of eye focus, and recomputes the hidden-site chance (about 1 to 3 per cent per guess), the heredity Fisher tests and the epileptics-outside-blue odds (about 0.01).
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The perceptual reading explains more of the record at no cost; the strong form has no independent support beyond Kilner's own reports. This is a judgement of fit, not a proof: nobody has tested a person against a towel or an empty background, blind, with a sham screen. arbiter.md, section 4, claim 1
Contrarian Several groups in 1911-12 reported seeing something with his screens. That is not nothing: it shows the screens produce a reproducible visual impression in some people. A cheap blinded test exists and was never run by anyone on record. contrarian.md, The strongest honest case for Kilner
Arbiter The first pass called the microscope shift far too big for the eye; that is withdrawn. With the 1.5-inch objective the 1920 text gives, the shift is about 1 dioptre, the size of ordinary focus changes, and it says nothing about ultra-violet sight. arbiter.md, 11.3
Arbiter Why the record goes dark: Kilner himself wrote that since the war 'it has been impossible to obtain any dicyanin'. War, one dye, one trained observer's method, poor repeatability by others, age and death combine. No evidence of blocked publication; one seller reports a chemist feared for his reputation. arbiter.md, 6 and 11.9
QE The OCR reads the digit 3 as 8 in case headings, so 'Case 88' in the scan is two patients (33 and 38). Two menstrual readings were first mis-scored and the sibling count was incomplete; all were corrected, and the recheck ended PASS. qe.md, Recheck
AI noteThe 1920 second edition is dated September 1920, three months after the June 1920 death Wikipedia gives, and it was still being reprinted in 1926, so the book outlived both its author and his dye supply.
Rank 20Lakhovsky George
down from 19A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 10:57
A 1920s radio theory of the living cell, a co-signed 1924 test in which three geranium tumours died while sixteen untreated ones grew, and an oscillator still sold today.
Invention / theory background
Georges Lakhovsky (1869-1942), an engineer born near Minsk and working in Paris, held that chromosomes are tiny insulated circuits filled with salt water, ringing in the infrared and powered by cosmic rays; disease is a cell pushed off its frequency. He built a 150 MHz Radio-cellulo-oscillator (1923-24), passive copper collars and belts sold by his company COLYSA, and the spark-driven Multiple Wave Oscillator (patented 1931-34). He moved to New York in 1941 and died there in 1942.
Ranking explanation
Criteria A, B and C. Like Rahn's mitogenetic rays and Kilner's aura screens, it rests on an early anomaly nobody settled: the four-author 1924 geranium note, never repeated with temperature recorded, plus case series from named clinicians. It sits below them because its central cell-circuit theory is Refuted by calculation, and ahead of Eskridge and Bearden because the experiment is published and cheap to repeat: crown-gall geraniums, a 150 MHz source and a thermometer.
Key supporting elements
The 1924 note (C. R. Soc. Biol. 91:626), co-signed by surgeon A. Gosset and Pasteur Institute plant pathologist J. Magrou: all 3 treated crown-gall geraniums necrosed from about day 16; 16 untreated controls kept growing. Known only from quotations.
Independent contemporaries took it seriously: Kotzareff's 1931 Paris thesis called the note the only experimental study of its kind; Nature's 1940 reviewer granted the oscillator 'apparently has worked marvellous cures in cases of cancer, goitre and enlarged prostate'.
Named clinicians reported cases, relayed through Lakhovsky's publications: de Cigna (Genoa, Vienna 1937) with histology-confirmed skin lesions and radiographed ulcers, and Attilj (Rome, 1928) with regressing sarcomas; Saint-Louis hospital cases carry biopsies and years of follow-up.
Heat is not an easy answer: the arbiter's bound gives at most a few kelvin of far-field heating at 0.1 m, though near-field heating is not excluded; Schereschewsky's 1926-28 mouse-tumour results were reinterpreted as thermal, not refuted by experiment.
His question is live science in other forms: 200 kHz Tumor Treating Fields extend glioblastoma survival, and radio noise disrupts robin orientation (Engels 2014), like his pigeon reports, though neither supports his circuit mechanism.
Key contradictions
His own stated materials sink the cell circuit: a salt-water filament has a quality factor near 1e-6, its resistance 1e5 to 6e5 times the critical value, so it cannot ring; cosmic rays supply 8 or more orders too little power.
The geranium test had 3 treated plants, no stated randomisation, blinding, field, distance or temperature, and 6, 9 and 33 hour doses all gave onset near day 16; it was never repeated.
No case series has a denominator or control, and all reach us through the maker's publications; de Cigna's ulcer patients also had lemon-juice regimens, diets and stopped medication, and he wrote 'six cases are not sufficient'.
The 1941 book says no contra-indication was ever reported, yet records five haemorrhage deaths after treatment, which Lakhovsky blamed on tumour necrosis freeing eroded arteries; whether the device or the disease caused them cannot be decided from the record.
Side claims fail checks: radium decay shows no cosmic-ray dependence deep underground, Roffo called his agent 'photo-active', not 'radio-active', a passive collar captures at most microwatts against 100 W of metabolism, and Orly contradicted his soil rule.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 41 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Every cell is an oscillating circuit: chromosomes as insulated salt-water filaments ringing in the infrared, powered by cosmic radiation
Refuted by calculationstrong form, LC filament with cosmic powerPlausible, untestedsoft form, cells respond to selected frequenciesNot testable as statedhis version, no frequencies given
Disease and cancer are oscillatory disequilibrium, a 'war of radiations' (microbes, irradiated cholesterol)
Not testable as statedgeneral formNever properly testedRoffo's irradiated-cholesterol result, single reportTested, not supportedRoffo's related heated-fat stomach tumoursRefuted by calculationa 'radio-active' carcinogen made by UVEstablishedUV skin carcinogenesis (background)
The 150 MHz oscillator (1924) and a copper spiral (1925) necrosed crown-gall tumours on geraniums
Never properly tested1924 note, 3 treated against 16 controls, heat not controlledNever properly tested1925 spiral, one treated plant
Passive circuits heal and sterilise: collars and belts (Attilj 1928, animal reports) and silver spirals in water (1929)
Refuted by calculationcollar as an energy supplyNever properly testedclinical relief, including Attilj; animal reportsEstablishedsilver kills B. coli, as chemistryNever properly testedsilver result as proof of nuclear oscillation
The Multiple Wave Oscillator emits 10 cm to 400 m at once and has cured cancer, goitre, prostate and ulcers with no contra-indication
Plausible, untestedmany simultaneous damped frequenciesInternally inconsistentstated spectrumNever properly testedcuresInternally inconsistent'no contra-indication' as printed beside five haemorrhage deathsNot testable as statedwhether the device caused the deaths, from this record
Cosmic 'universion' drives radioactivity (a 25 m lead sphere would stop radium), body heat and cancer after 40-45
Tested, not supportedradium decay triggered by cosmic wavesRefuted by calculationcosmic waves as the energy of radioactivity or of body heatInternally inconsistentlead-sphere passage as printed; skin screen to age 40-45
Cancer follows the electrical constants of soil and water (Paris quartiers, Thiais and Orly), with faster cures on conducting soils and a full-moon stall
Never properly testedcancer geography via soil conductivityNever properly testedfull-moon stall, conducting-soil response, water-supply effectNot testable as statedelectrical mechanism of the water effect
Radio transmitters disorient homing pigeons; animals navigate by their own radiation
Never properly testedpigeon on-off reports, 1924-26; oak-bombyx testNot testable as statedorientation by emitted radiation; canals as radio direction-finderPlausible, untestedduck-wing charging, about 600 V
Inventor and theorist; seller of the collars and oscillators through COLYSA · inventor and seller
Born 17 Sept 1869 at Ilya near Minsk (ncip.by, one source); Odessa School of Arts and Crafts, then the Sorbonne from 1894 (physics, bridges and roads, anatomy and physiology). Railway engineer with track patents 1902-1913, then telephone and loudspeaker patents. Built the Radio-cellulo-oscillator 1923, the MWO 1930-31; emigrated to New York 1941; died 31 Aug 1942 in Brooklyn after a car accident.
J. Magrou
Co-author of the 1924 geranium note; produced the crown-gall tumours
Of the Pasteur Institute, chef de laboratoire at the Salpetriere; the plant-tumour specialist who had produced many Pelargonium tumours by Erwin F. Smith's method.
A. Gosset
Co-author of the 1924 note; host surgical clinic at the Salpetriere
Senior Paris surgeon (professor); A. Gutmann, head of his medical clinic, also co-signed.
Anastas Kotzareff
Independent contemporary; called the 1924 note the only experimental study of its kind and reported the 40 W input figure · had a rival method (radon colloid therapy)
Born Ochrida 1890, Swiss citizen, MD Geneva, former privat-docent at Geneva; Paris MD thesis 1931 (jury president J.-L. Faure) on inoperable cancers treated with radon colloids and ultra-short waves.
Vittorio de Cigna
Clinician who reported the best-documented MWO series (Genoa 1935, Vienna 1937)
Faculty of Medicine, Genoa; Royal Academy of Medicine of Genoa. Used the MWO from 1934; reported only cases with photographs, radiographs or histology, and wrote that the oscillatory mechanism could not yet be 'completely proved'.
Pierre Rigaux
Physician reporting cases, including the penis-cancer colonel and two throat deaths after the fourth treatment · collaborator at Lakhovsky's institute
Institut de Physique Biologique, Paris; author of Cosmic Rays and Oscillating Circuits (1932); spoke on Colonel T. on 20 Jan 1933 and named 'effluvia and sparks' among the acting agents.
Sordello Attilj
Hospital radiologist who reported collar and belt tumour regressions (Florence, May 1928)
Radiology service, Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome. His reports reach us through Lakhovsky's publications.
James Ritchie
Nature reviewer (26 Oct 1940) of The Secret of Life
Not in the review files beyond the signed review, which identified the Corynactis 'circuit' as a stinging-cell thread.
Evidence / artifacts (141 of 141 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (19)
1924-07-26Gosset, Gutmann, Lakhovsky and Magrou, Essai de therapeutique du 'cancer experimental' des plantes C. R. Soc. Biol. 91:626-628; Salpetriere; 3 treated Pelargonium crown galls (6, 33, 9 h) necrosed from about day 16, 16 controls kept growing. Known from a 1925 press quotation, Kotzareff 1931 and Roussakow 2013; original not obtained (BHL, Gallica blocked)
1925-02Curing Cancer With Ultra Radio Frequencies Lakhovsky's own English article, Radio News (Gernsback); cited by Stadler 2009; worldradiohistory.com not reached
c.1925Le Secret de la Vie / The Secret of Life Founding book: cell as circuit, pigeons and radio stations, duck-wing electrometer, geraniums, silver spirals, soil and cancer, Attilj. Folder copy is the 1939 Heinemann English (tr. Mark Clement, preface d'Arsonval) re-typeset 2008 with 'Hatonn' and 'E.Y.' editorial layers that are not Lakhovsky; no figures. Spanish (1925) and German (1931) editions exist
1926L'Origine de la Vie (The Origin of Life) Listed in the 1941 book's bibliography and quoted there
1927L'Universion Gauthier-Villars; cosmic 'universion' waves, lead-sphere argument, the Rivera scale; text downloaded from archive.org, scale read by the mathematician
1927Contribution a l'etiologie du cancer (Italian: Contributo all'eziologia del cancro) Paris 1921-22 cancer deaths per 1000 by quartier against geology (sand low, clay and marl high); table read directly by the mathematician
1928-12-15Sur la theorie du cancer basee sur la nature geologique du sol Revue generale des Sciences; listed in Kotzareff's 1931 bibliography
1929Note in C. R. Acad. Sci. 188 p.657, with d'Arsonval's remarks p.659 Cited in patent CH 135072 for the 2 m plant spiral and in Kotzareff 1931; whether it is the same note as the 15 April 1929 silver communication is not settled in the review files
1929-04-15Lakhovsky and Sesari, silver-circuit sterilisation of water Presented by d'Arsonval to the Academie des Sciences; abridged in The Secret of Life pp.35-36: B. coli 1,128,000 per cm3 to 0 in 25 h against 43,680,000 in the control; Experiment III survives heating, lost on Chamberland filtration
1929La Sante par les ondes C.O.L.Y.S.A., 26 rue des Marronniers, Paris; theory, geranium history, practitioners' letters 1928-29 (Remond, Attilj); BIU Sante copy on archive.org· Lakhovsky's own company or publications (inventor and seller)
1930La Science et le Bonheur Gauthier-Villars; cited by Kotzareff; a dokumen.pub hit seen, not opened
c.1930sNouvelles applications de l'oscillateur a ondes multiples Seen as a Slideshare listing only
1930sMatter; The Skin; Civilization and the Racial Folly (and Racism) Further own books named in the 1941 book (pp.51-59) and by ncip.by; not obtained
1931L'Oscillation cellulaire Said to hold the originals of the horse and other animal data (Fournier-Ormonde); not obtained
1932L'Oscillateur a ondes multiples Gaston Doin, Paris; cited in bibliographies on Scribd; no free copy found
1939-03-18(Toward) The End of a Nightmare L'Illustration, Paris; cited in the 1941 book pp.49, 52, 57
1939Pour rester jeune a 100 ans: la spermatotherapie Editions S.A.C.L., Paris, for physicians; opens with cellular oscillation; read only at the opening
1941Radiations and Waves, Sources of Our Life English of Radiations et Ondes (1938); Emile L. Cabella, New York; preface by Jacques C. Presner. Fullest late statement: case histories, de Cigna's Vienna 1937 text, five haemorrhage deaths, New York tables, Roffo, universion, Child of the Waves
1941The Child of the Waves (three cases) and the municipal pre-marital treatment proposal Radiations and Waves pp.63-69; treated mothers' children framed as 'a new race'; digest-level only, case records not obtained· Lakhovsky's own company or publications (inventor and seller)
Patents and patent office (23)
1902-1913Railway patents: US 1,028,743; US 1,136,427; AT 19763B; GB 1903/07775 Sleeper-screw liners, fastenings, track gauge instrument; fits his start as a railway engineer
1902-1904AT 22361B / FR 325045A Mustard dispenser
1922-1940Telephone and sound patents: FR 570117, FR 578177, US 1,544,460, US 1,593,457, US 1,640,330 Diaphragms, horns, loudspeakers
1922-1940Later sound patents: FR 807497, FR 816144, US 2,263,408, FR 866037, FR 879824 Loudspeakers and microphones
1923FR 574671A Multi-branch adjustable antenna
1923German patent for the 1923 cellular oscillator Claimed by ncip.by; not found
1924-10-18FR 601155A Devices generating electric oscillations by oscillating circuits (published 1926); probably the Radio-cellulo-oscillator period; text not on Google Patents
1927-10-26CH 135072A / FR 657295A Open oscillating circuit (collar, belt, plant spiral of about 2 m); claim: open insulated circuit with 'aucune source d'energie propre'; cites C. R. Soc. Biol. 26 July 1924 p.626 and CRAS 188 p.657
1929-04-13FR 688887A Sterilisation of liquids by silver circuits; first of the series
1929-1932FR 37940E and FR 41175E Certificates of addition in the sterilisation series
1929-1931CH 147806A Silver chains whose links rub as the liquid moves; no heat, vacuum or chemicals
1930FR 696192A Razor
1931FR 733396A / CH 166006A Filtration and sterilisation by metal circuits
1931-05-02FR 732276A French priority of the Multiple Wave Oscillator (published 15 Sept 1932)
1931-11-13US 1,962,565 Apparatus with circuits oscillating under multiple wave lengths; granted 12 June 1934; six concentric split rings, spark gap; no wavelength, voltage or medical word
1932-02-12FR 42146E Certificate of addition to FR 732276 (published 31 May 1933)
1932-04-05CH 164027A Swiss MWO member (published 15 Sept 1933); names use 'comme agent therapeutique' and adds gas tubes, 'un veritable soleil artificiel'
1935CH 193774A / FR 810280A Sterilisation by metal circuits, later form
1935-05-20FR 802262A Polymetallic circuit for capturing electromagnetic waves; text not on Google Patents
1939FR 866036A Portable sterilisation device
1941-11-21US 2,351,055 Tube for producing multiple wave lengths; granted 13 June 1944 after his death; administratrix Anne-Marie Louise Lakhovsky; assignor to Henry S. Blum, Chicago; names therapy of cellular life· assignee Blum, a commercial party
2006-07-13Winey, US 2007/0258329 A1 Golf-shaft tuning application; background paragraphs say Lakhovsky 'treated and cured' cancer until 1942 (citing 1939) and link him to Rife and Priore; no experiment· applicant with a commercial and legal stake
c.2014EP 2862596 A1, Device for treating diseases Says the MWO 'used cw systems with some (though limited) success'; cites the 1941 Cabella edition· later applicant
Company and business records (6)
1929C.O.L.Y.S.A. (Circuit Oscillant LakhovskY S.A.) 26 rue des Marronniers, Paris 16e, from the 1929 booklet's imprint; made and sold the circuits· Lakhovsky's own company or publications (inventor and seller)
c.1934-1940Institute of Biological Physics (Institut de Physique Biologique), Paris Lakhovsky's institute; Rigaux worked there; source of the Institute cases Nos. 1-4 (1939-40), chosen 'at random' by an unnamed chief of staff· Lakhovsky's own company or publications (inventor and seller)
1939Editions S.A.C.L. 25 rue des Marronniers, Paris; publisher of Pour rester jeune· Lakhovsky's own company or publications (inventor and seller)
2021-08-30Colysa SA, Val-de-Ruz (Zefix CHE-103.596.682) Swiss register entry, last publication 2021; purpose technical products; no Lakhovsky link in the entry
2026colysa.ch, Laboratoires Colysa Present-day seller of Lakhovsky-type devices; hosts the 1925 article quoting the 1924 note· seller
2026Present-day MWO sellers (lakhovsky.com, altered-states.net, Tesla BioLights) Seen in search results; altered-states.net 'frequency analysis 20 Hz to 20 GHz' not opened· sellers
Witness accounts and correspondence (40)
1924-07-02Paterna (Valencia) radio station pigeon observation, with repeats to 7 Nov 1926 Pigeons released during transmission circled, then flew home minutes after it stopped; observer unnamed; Secret of Life pp.5-6
1926-03Kreuznach (Germany) pigeon trials Station on the homing line; birds lost bearing near the aerial; relayed by Lakhovsky only
1927-03-15Dr. Simeray, Academie de Medecine Village free of cancer on its own wells, cases after a distant supply; no name, counts or dates; relayed in Secret of Life p.55. Bulletin de l'Academie de Medecine paper not read
1928-03-16Dr. D. Marcus, insomnia letter Paris; on-off-on with a borrowed collar; Waves That Heal
1928-05Prof. Sordello Attilj, report to the Florence radiology congress Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome; collars and belts: relapsing hand sarcoma almost gone in two months, breast sarcoma no longer palpable; 'merely the beginning'; four or six patients depending on the book
1928-06-10Dr. Barinque letter Wound report dated before the healing it describes (20 July)
1928-11-20Prof. Remond (Toulouse Faculty) letters Asks to buy three circuits; in La Sante par les ondes· Lakhovsky's own company or publications (inventor and seller)
1928-12-06Dr. Perineau letter Patient of 81, leg ulcers healed with a collar, recurred when it broke, cleared with a new one
1928-1929Collar letters of Vaccaro, Cincin, Barthe de Sandfort, Sister Marie de l'Annonciation (Deauville), Duc de Valencay Practitioners' and users' letters, printed by the seller· Lakhovsky's own company or publications (inventor and seller)
c.1928-1931P. Fournier-Ormonde, horses with collars Institut Physiologique de la Croix Blanche, Vaucresson; seven horses, more red cells, lower viscosity; no values or controls
1929-1940Animal reports: filly Ballerina, Mercurin's fox-terrier (Cannes), Brisbane vet's dog (Jan 1940), a parrot Owners', trainers' and vets' reports in Waves That Heal
1931-05-01Dr. Raul Araujo, Montevideo, over 300 collar patients Summary only, no denominators; non-response blamed on latent infection; full report said to be in Rigaux 1932
1931-09-08Hospital Saint-Louis cases: Mme C. (rodent ulcer, biopsy), M.M. (naevo-carcinoma, followed to 90), J.S. (basal-cell, 13 Oct 1931) As told by Lakhovsky and Clement, with photographs; dates differ between retellings
1931-12Saint-Louis throat-cancer deaths (two patients) Haemorrhage found when Lakhovsky came for the fifth session; Radiations and Waves pp.41-42
1931-11Val-de-Grace, Captain H. (Prof. Chaumet) 8-10 kg thoracic tumour necrosed; died of haemorrhage January 1932
1932-04-26Mme S., 82, epithelioma of the cheek, Calvaire clinic After surgery and radium; healed in 16 to 35 days depending on the account
1933Prof. Mathieu Nicolau letter (Romanian colonel) Second-hand: 'went home not only cured, but really restored to his youth'
1933-01-20Dr. Pierre Rigaux, talk on Colonel T. (penis cancer) Biopsy positive 1931; radium, X-ray, silver nitrate under the apparatus; 'I'll let you be the judge'; also two throat deaths after the fourth treatment· collaborator at Lakhovsky's institute
1933-06-26Dr. H. (Brussels), five prostatitis cases Relayed by Rigaux's letter of 7 July 1933; micturitions '25 to one or two', unit unstated
1933-07-20Ch. Hulin, Paris Society of Odontology Salpetriere dentist; re-ossification in pyorrhoea with calcium-chloride iontophoresis under the apparatus; radiographs
1933-07-26Dr. Raoul Araujo, Cancer Institute of Montevideo, MWO letter 'Marvelous cures' after eight months of use; no cases
1933-09-03Dr. Postma (Groningen) letter German-built MWO; one ulcerated cancer 'nearly cured' after 12 sessions
1933-12-31Mr. C. ('Courbe') letter Cerebello-pontine tumour without histology, unchanged by radiotherapy in 1929; walking and working after MWO
1934Dr. Roversi (Bologna) letter List of results, one control radiograph, no histology; admits failures in advanced cases
1934-02Mme X., 'cancerous lupus' of the face (Rigaux) Retold in the 1941 book
1934-10Rigaux prostate case 3 Three specialists advised surgery; working at three weeks, no recurrence four years on
1935Dr. Nicholas Gentile, Medicina Nuova XXVI no.5, Rome Abridged report: technique every 4 days, 5-15 min; acute phlebitis contra-indicated; cardiac asthma negative
1935The English lady, leucocytes 20,000 to 5,000 in a week Pre-operative case, unnamed surgeon
1935-05-31Prof. Vittorio de Cigna, Royal Academy of Medicine of Genoa About ten cancer cases with histology and photographs said to be shown; the session record not obtained
1937-07De Cigna, communication to the Vienna International Congress of Short Waves Printed in the 1941 book: five skin cases, eight radiographed ulcer cases (later 18), lemon-juice regimen, 'six cases are not sufficient'
1937Dr. Vryonis, Polykliniki Hospital, Athens Bought an MWO; one-line mention
1938Exophthalmic goitre case (11 Jan to 4 Mar 1938) Goitre of 11 years gone in seven weeks; Waves That Heal
c.1938Prof. Sven Johansson, Goteborg (radium burn of a finger) Relayed in Waves That Heal p.27
1939Jacques C. Presner, stomach-cancer patient and preface letters (Cardin, Barthelemy) Gradual amelioration after 'several exposures'; prior treatments unstated· preface writer of the American edition
1939-12Institute cases Nos. 1-4 (Dec 1939 to Mar 1940) Mr. A. scirrhus with red cells under 3 million to 4.8 million; three others with no counts; follow-up one week to one month· Lakhovsky's own company or publications (inventor and seller)
1940-04-16Dr. Alexander Francis, Frinton-on-Sea, deafness and nerve cases No numbers; the one case told is a spinal paralysis
1941-07New York hospital table, 1 July to 21 Aug 1941 19 patients, mostly arthritis, each with a result, all improved; hospital anonymous, its own report withheld
1941Brooklyn urologist's cases Anonymous buyer of a machine; 8 cases and a 6-patient prostate group; S.B. bladder tumour smaller on cystoscopy· bought the device
1941Prof. Hugo Walter Reilly (Buenos Aires) and Prof. P. Liebesny (Vienna) Named as users; Reilly 'more than 1200 patients with short wave'; no works cited
c.1925-1929Unnamed Paris hospital professor, weekly records of circuit wearers Weight, blood counts and pressure; improvement stalled about eight days at full moon; no numbers printed (Secret of Life p.59)
Experiments and replications by others (21)
c.1870s-1900sJ.-H. Fabre, bell-glass experiments with moths Males find caged females; Fabre read it as smell; Lakhovsky departs from it (Secret of Life p.9); the attractant is now known as a pheromone
1913Curie and Kamerlingh Onnes, radium at low temperature Decay unchanged; search summary only
1930sRegener, Lake Constance cosmic-ray depth measurements Ionisation down to 231 m of water (arXiv 1411.6217, search summary); about 12 m of lead by Lakhovsky's own 1927 conversion, so not a contradiction of his 11 m
1926Schereschewsky, Public Health Reports 41 no.37 p.1939 US Public Health Service; 8.3-135 MHz fields lethal to mice 'without substantial heating'
1927-10-22A. Nodon, Les nouvelles radiations ultra-penetrantes et la cellule vivante Revue Scientifique p.609; electrometer 'radio-activity' of plants and insects, as relayed by Lakhovsky
1928Schereschewsky, The action of currents of very high frequency upon tissue cells Public Health Reports 43; mouse tumour grafts destroyed, 23 percent complete remission at 67 MHz (per Roussakow); thermal view adopted 1933
1928-1929Schliephake (Giessen) and Esau (Jena) short-wave experiments Milk sterilised, mice killed; Lakhovsky's stated reason for leaving single-band waves
1930sRoffo, irradiated cholesterol feeding (over 55 percent tumours) No paper cited; species mice or rats depending on the book; Roffo's own word 'photo-active and luminescent'
1930sRoffo, Bulletin No. 56 (photofluorescence of precancerous lesions); letter of 27 Sept 1938; 1935 Golden Book Buenos Aires Institute; Roffo said results 'could be interpreted as' compatible with oscillation
1930sRivera, Table of Radiations Printed in the 1941 book p.54 (page image read); 1941 copy's 0.25 mm is a misprint for L'Universion's few millimetres
1930sRoussy, Oberlin and Guerin, thorotrast in rats 11 of 17, 4 of 5; authors only
1931Kotzareff, Paris MD thesis (radon colloid therapy with ultra-short waves) Calls the 1924 note 'seule et unique'; reports Lakhovsky's 40 W input power and 2-10 m waves; dogs, mice, patients
1931Roffo, Ultra-short hertzian waves and cellular life In vitro tissue culture; no journal named
1936-11-25S. Laborde, Medical Press Cited without title or finding
1938R. Reding, The Struggle Against Cancer (Jul-Sep 1938) Cited in the 1941 book p.55
1939Roffo, Nature 144:246 Irradiated-cholesterol products; page would not open; search snippet only
1939-05-22Metalnikoff et al., presented by Roubaud to the Academie des Sciences Pasteur Institute; irregular bacterial growth under radon, read by Lakhovsky as confirmation
1939Cook (London) and Carnegie Institute Antwerp 'confirmation' Name only in the 1941 book
1941-1948Beck and Peacock 1941; Morris, Larsen and Lippincott 1943; Kirby, Br J Cancer 2:70 (1948) Did not confirm Roffo's heated-fat and heated-cholesterol stomach tumours (a different experiment)
2014Engels et al., Nature 509:353-356 Robins lost magnetic-compass orientation in 2 kHz-5 MHz noise, regained when shielded, blinded; related to the pigeon reports, not a test of them
2018Gran Sasso Ra-226 and K-40 decay-constant measurements (arXiv 1802.09373) Underground, cosmic flux suppressed; no time dependence at 3.5 ppm; abstract level
Later accounts and media (20)
1924-08-16L'Illustration article on the geranium work Cited in the 1941 book p.55
1925Vers la guerison du cancer (press article) Newspaper unnamed; quotes the 1924 note; apparatus 'under 200 francs'; reproduced on colysa.ch· hosted by a seller
1926Guiberteau, Paris thesis Cited beside the 1924 note in a radon-cancer document
1926-08-22Paul de Kruif, Life as a Matter of Voltage New York Times; cited by Stadler
1930sAdam and Givelet, La Vie et les Ondes Source of Presner's Postma quotes
1930sPostma, Leven en Golven Dutch book said to prove the theory
1932German reviews and press (Wissen und Fortschritt, Funk Wacht, Koestler in Gazette de Voss) Listed in Presner's preface
1932Rigaux, Cosmic Rays and Oscillating Circuits (Les ondes cosmiques et les circuits oscillants) Monograph said to hold Araujo's full report; petit-fichier.fr PDF not reached
1940-10-26James Ritchie, review of The Secret of Life, Nature 146 no. 3704 Filament model 'so far removed from known facts'; Corynactis 'circuit' is a cnidocyst thread; oscillator 'apparently has worked marvellous cures'
1949Mark Clement, The Waves That Heal Popular account (Health Research reprint); collar letters, animal reports, Gentile, case histories, New York tables; discrepancies with the 1941 book
1950-07-13Le Haut-Parleur no. 873 French radio trade journal; calls him founder of a field and lists about 30 later workers
1982K. Farrell, Hyperthermia for malignant disease: the work of Georges Lakhovsky Adv Exp Med Biol 157:9-10; not read
1986-1987Journal of Borderland Research XLII and XLIII MWO material
1989B. L. Reid, Medical Hypotheses 29:199-216 Names 'Lakhovsky's non-linear oscillators' in a growth-filament hypothesis; abstract
1994Thomas J. Brown, The Lakhovsky MWO Handbook Borderland Sciences; text downloaded, not read· publisher with a market for MWO material
2009Max Stadler, Assembling Life (Imperial College PhD) Places him beside Schereschewsky and Schliephake
2010-2020USPA MWO presentation videos (2010), BAGLIS TV (2020), Integrity Research Institute PDF Not examined
2013V. G. Roussakow, The History of Hyperthermia Rise and Decline Reads the 1924 note as 'mainly or entirely not temperature dependent'· author with a position in the non-thermal debate
2020-09-17ncip.by biography (Belarus IP office) Born 17 Sept 1869, Ilya; died 31 Aug 1942, Adelphi Hospital, Brooklyn; 1945 institute; unsigned, no sources
undatedMaxwell, Consider the Lilies; Sasha Archibald, Mass Effect (Cabinet); priore-cancer.com Secondary accounts seen in search; Cabinet link did not open
Records named but not yet examined (12)
1924-1926M. J. Casamajor's Paterna report and Spanish pigeon service records Valencia; title, journal and date not given
19251925 Paris statistical yearbook: age-standardised mortality for all 80 quartiers; Seine figures for Thiais and Orly with populations To re-test the soil-cancer map and the Thiais (3.36) and Orly (0.36 per 1,000) pair
1928-05Proceedings of the Florence radiology congress (Attilj)
1929-1950Paris Registre du commerce for COLYSA; Neuchatel cantonal extract for Colysa SA Would show any line of succession
1930s-1940sFDA, Post Office, AMA Bureau of Investigation and NARA files None found; nothing shown either way
1931-1933Saint-Louis, Calvaire and Val-de-Grace case files with biopsies, and records of the five haemorrhage deaths
1934Proceedings of the Venice Congress of Radiobiology Presner says it recognised Lakhovsky's priority
1937-07Proceedings of the Vienna International Congress of Short Waves Priority claim; Lakhovsky says reports were positive and negative
1941The New York hospital's own report to the New York Society of Physiotherapists
1942-08-31NYC death certificate and obituaries (New York Times, Brooklyn Daily Eagle)
1944-1945Henry S. Blum and Chicago corporation records; New York incorporation of the George Lakhovsky Institute of Multiple Waves
2026Lumen Database notices for results removed on three Lakhovsky queries Content unknown; no inference drawn
Left out: the remaining Lakhovsky patent records not named in the review files (77 in all on Google Patents, many family copies), the roughly 30 later workers listed in Le Haut-Parleur 1950, reprints and translations of the same books, and the later editors' commentary in the Secret of Life copy. Full catalogue: Lakhovsky George sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Repeat the 1924 test on Pelargonium crown gall at 150 MHz and about 40 W: 10 or more plants per arm, randomised, blind scoring, a fibre-optic thermometer in the gall, field mapping, sham and heated-only controls. For the MWO: spectrum and near-field measurements of a patent-built unit, then a sham-controlled trial on biopsy-confirmed basal-cell carcinoma.
Deciding records: C. R. Soc. Biol. 91:626-628 (1924) and C. R. Acad. Sci. 188 (1929) via Gallica or BHL; de Cigna's Genoa 1935 and Vienna 1937 files; Venice 1934 and Vienna 1937 proceedings; Saint-Louis and Val-de-Grace files on the five deaths; Casamajor's pigeon report; Simeray's 1927 paper; the 1942 death record, 1945 institute and Blum papers.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: a 10 micrometre salt-water filament gives L 8.6e-12 H, C 1.2e-16 F, a natural frequency near 4.9 THz and Q about 4e-6, against about 50 with a copper core. By hand: 2 m is 150 MHz, and the chance that the 3 necrosing plants of 19 were exactly the 3 treated is 1/969.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The geranium note is a real four-author communication with a stated control group. Against it: three treated plants, allocation and blinding not stated, no field, distance or temperature. Far-field heating looks small, but near-field coupling is not excluded: heating is neither shown nor excluded. arbiter.md, Claim 3
Contrarian The 1924 result was not refuted and was never replicated; short-wave oncology turned thermal after Schereschewsky's 1933 retreat. That is a case of 'superseded by a competing interpretation without a decisive experiment' more than 'tested and failed'. contrarian.md, section 3
Arbiter Two readings fit the five haemorrhage deaths and the record cannot separate them: treatment-induced necrosis exposing eroded vessels, which is evidence the device acted and an adverse-event signal, or the late course of advanced head-and-neck cancer. arbiter.md, QE revision, Claim 4
Arbiter The soil side-predictions do not test the soil-cancer link; they show how it was used. Orly, a counter-example on the same limestone, was absorbed by an added cause (water), and rocks are classed conducting or insulating to fit their cancer figure. Weakened as evidence, not refuted. arbiter.md, QE revision, Claim 5 soil section
Primer The cell-circuit model fails because an analogy was carried over without its hidden conditions: a good conductor, a signal above thermal noise, a power source. Q is about 50 for copper and 4e-6 for salt water. List a borrowed formula's assumptions and check each. primer.md, section 7
AI noteThe 1941 directions tell users to pause two to three weeks after the fourth treatment; the throat-cancer deaths Rigaux reported came after the fourth. The book never connects the two, and the arbiter reads nothing into it.
Rank 22Bearden
down from 21A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 13:25
A patented solid-state magnet generator reportedly gave 1.7 to 2.6 times its input; a US examiner asked for a demonstration that never came, and no neutral lab has tested it.
Invention / theory background
Thomas E. Bearden of Huntsville, Alabama, argued in The Final Secret of Free Energy (1993, updated 1994) that electric potential is ordered energy flowing from the vacuum, so a battery could charge a collector that then powers a load free. With Stephen Patrick and three others he patented the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator (US 6,362,718, 2002; EP 1 446 862, 2013): a permanent magnet in a Metglas core whose flux is switched between two paths at 87.5 kHz.
Ranking explanation
Moved 13 to 11, above van Vlaenederen Koen and Aspden-Hearld, on criteria A to D. The Investigator found a granted European claim requiring self-powering, a USPTO demonstration request left unanswered, builders seeing excess only on nonlinear loads and a Tektronix statement against the patent's power cross-check. The supply-removed run is a cheap test nobody has done. It stays below Kilner-Walter (10). Interest is not proof: sustained self-powered output is Refuted by calculation.
Key supporting elements
The patent's Fig. 8 shows COP (output over input power) measured by the patentees from about 1.7 at 10 V to about 2.6 at 75 V; they say their computed power agreed with a Tektronix THS730 scope's RMS reading.
Outside builder Jean-Louis Naudin reported 'The measured COP is 1.75' (MEG v2.0, 7 Nov 2000) and, on v2.1, 6.76 W output on 3.25 W total input (2.08), adding that measurement artifacts remain possible.
The European Patent Office granted EP 1 446 862 B1 in 2013 after 12 years, with claim 1 requiring output fed back to drive the switching (self-powering); no opposition was filed. A grant is not a performance test.
Bearden's 2004 USPTO remarks link his vacuum theory to the MEG (magnet as broken-symmetry dipole; E = -dA/dt pulses). The device-level test this makes possible, a run with the supply removed, is on record as Never properly tested.
Real physics underneath: potentials act physically (Aharonov-Bohm), Whittaker's 1903-04 decompositions are correct mathematics, his copper relaxation time of 1.5e-19 s is right, and his conditional that closed classical EM forbids overunity is Established.
Key contradictions
The patent names the magnet's stored flux as the fuel and concedes demagnetisation. Its 38.7 cm^3 NdFeB magnet holds about 7-22 J (web-checked range); the claimed 82 W excess would use that in 0.09-0.27 s.
A Tektronix support reply (2002, relayed by builder Jon Flickinger) calls scope 'RMS power' on non-sinusoidal waveforms 'bogus', the patent's cross-check. Flickinger saw COP 1.75-5 only with MOV loads, none with linear resistors.
The US continuation 10/081,847 was rejected in 2004 as violating thermodynamics; the examiner required a model or demonstration, the applicants asked to defer it, then let the application lapse (abandoned 2005). The file does not say why.
The collector scheme fails its own energy budget: charging 1 uF to 12 V takes 144 uJ from the battery but stores 72 uJ, so a load gets at most half; Bearden's trapped energy K_T equals the battery's outlay.
Longitudinal vacuum waves are excluded by div E = 0 and by polarisers; matter-neutrality tests (Bressi 2011) bound any charge shift; his current split uses d/dt(phi m) = (dphi/dt)(dm/dt), a product-rule error. The 1993-94 papers report no measurement.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 33 shown)
Claim
Verdict
The MEG (US 6,362,718) delivers more power than it takes in and can run itself after start-up
Never properly testedmeasured COP about 1.7-2.6 at 10-75 V; patentees and builders only; no calorimetry or true v(t) i(t) record either wayNot testable as statedCOP 3.44 at 100 V, a curve extrapolation; European text keeps it without the dataRefuted by calculationsustained self-powered net output, with the magnet named as fuelPlausible, untestedas an ordinary flux-switching circuit below unity; structure already in US 4,006,401
Closed classical EM cannot give overunity, so real devices must tap a hidden vacuum source
Establishedthe conditional (Poynting's theorem)Not testable as statedhidden source in general, and the 2004 broken-symmetry / E = -dA/dt mechanismNever properly testedthe MEG supply-removed run as the test of a vacuum source; Floyd Sweet's vacuum triodeNot testable as statedcharged capacitor across a magnet as a 'free energy generator' (2002)
A battery that only charges a collector, which is then switched to a separate load, is never depleted and could run a car or a grid
Refuted by calculationstrong form; COP at most 0.5 per cycleInternally inconsistent'current-free' charging via relaxation time; 1 ms implies an insulatorPlausible, untestedlower-loss step charging; efficiency N/(N+1), never above 1
Energy and potential are the same thing, and each scalar potential holds infinite energy exchanged with the universe (Whittaker/Ziolkowski)
EstablishedWhittaker/Ziolkowski decomposition as mathematics, no energy contentInternally inconsistentenergy = potential (J versus J/C)Refuted by calculationinfinite energy read as stored field energyNot testable as statedinfinite energy read as a vacuum reservoir
No force fields exist in vacuum; vacuum EM waves are longitudinal; electron charge varies with ambient potential
Tested, not supportedlongitudinal waves and potential-dependent charge, by existing experimentsRefuted by calculationdiv E = 0 forces transverse vacuum wavesInternally inconsistentproduct-rule step d/dt(phi m)Not testable as statedEM wave as oscillating rate of time flow; photon pairs to gravitons
Maxwell's original quaternion theory held the gravity-EM unification that Heaviside's vector version removed
Tested, not supportedhistorical record; Maxwell's own 1865 gravity attempt failedHistorically superseded but instructivequaternion to vector notation
Fogal charge-blocking semiconductor plus step-up transformer gives very high power gain and runs itself as a 'negative resistor' (13 May 1994)
Never properly testedreported gain; no data of any kindNot testable as statedgain in meter formRefuted by calculationclosed-loop self-powered formInternally inconsistentdphi/dt current decomposition
Operational efficiency alpha (load power over power lost inside the source) above 1 means overunity; conventional circuits are always below 1 (15 Feb 1994)
Establishedalpha above 1, as ordinary and not overunityRefuted by calculation'conventional alpha always under unity'Not testable as statedefficiency above unity via vacuum influxInternally inconsistent'local conservation does not apply to open systems' against his own global-conservation claim
The inventor reviewed: author of The Final Secret of Free Energy (1993) and its 1994 updates, co-inventor of the MEG and spokesman for Magnetic Energy Ltd · Co-inventor and spokesman for the company developing the MEG
Wrote from A.D.A.S., P.O. Box 1472, Huntsville, Alabama (1993); says the principle took him some 30 years to discover. Filed a declaration with the USPTO in 2004; co-author of the 2001 Evans et al. MEG paper; announced Energy from the Vacuum (2002). Education and career are not in the review files.
Stephen L. Patrick
First-named inventor of US 6,362,718 and of the continuation and European patent · Co-inventor of the patented device
Listed with Huntsville, Alabama on the patent and as first inventor on continuation 10/081,847. Not otherwise in the review files.
James C. Hayes, Kenneth D. Moore and James L. Kenny
Co-inventors of US 6,362,718 and EP 1 446 862 · Co-inventors of the patented device
Not in the review files beyond their names on the patents, all in Huntsville, Alabama.
Jean-Louis Naudin
Built MEG v2.0 (COP 1.75, Nov 2000) and v2.1; the main outside replication on record
Independent private builder (JLN Labs). Reported coil failure from sparks above 3 kV, an unsuccessful attempt to close the loop, apparent output above the heat in the load, and that artifacts remain possible; did not have the inventors' original diagrams. Other details not in the review files.
Jon Flickinger
Independent MEG builder; found excess only with nonlinear MOV loads and relayed the Tektronix statement on scope 'RMS power'
Author of 'The MEG Notes' on Naudin's site; posted to the MEG_builders list. Other details not in the review files.
Shawn Riley
USPTO primary examiner who rejected continuation 10/081,847 on thermodynamic grounds and required a model or demonstration (2004) · Agency examiner; the rejection is the USPTO's characterization
Art unit 2838. Not otherwise in the review files.
Floyd Sweet
Inventor of the vacuum triode amplifier (VTA), which Bearden cites as his Method 1 overunity device
Reported in Sweet's and Bearden's accounts to have claimed about 330 microwatts in giving over 500 W out; never had the device independently tested and kept his magnet-conditioning process secret; Bearden says Sweet feared for his life. Other details not in the review files.
William J. Fogal
Maker of the 'charge blocking semiconductor' Bearden places at the heart of his self-powered 'negative resistor' (13 May 1994) · Inventor of the device
Holds US 5,196,809 (filed 1991) and US 5,430,413 (granted 1995) for a high-gain transistor with an electrolytic capacitor at the emitter; his patents claim higher gain, not power above input or vacuum energy. Other details not in the review files.
Evidence / artifacts (100 of 100 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (12)
1993-02-09The Final Secret of Free Energy (slightly revised 23 Mar 1993) T. E. Bearden, A.D.A.S., Huntsville AL. PDF pp. 1-27 of the project bundle, read in full: energy defined as an ordering of the vacuum's virtual photon flux, Whittaker/Ziolkowski wave pairs, two-cycle collector scheme, pseudo-equations [1]-[8], footnote 25. No measurements. Also printed in Magnets 7(5) and Explore! 4(3/4) per its Ref 1. A byte-identical duplicate PDF is in the folder.
1993-03-12Additional Comments (appendix to The Final Secret of Free Energy) PDF pp. 25-27, read in full. Closed classical EM cannot be overunity; Method 1 (nucleus as pumped phase-conjugate mirror, Sweet's vacuum triode), Method 2 (collector), released freely 'so it cannot be suppressed'.
1994-02-15Additional Information on the Final Secret of Free Energy (Update) PDF pp. 28-41, deep read with page images p.29 and p.31. Contents list says 5 Feb, heading 15 Feb. Operational efficiency alpha, 'suicide circuit', step-charged capacitor collector in 'several hundred' steps, 98% Al / 2% Fe collector alloy, 25,000-component MOSFET. No measurement.
1994-05-13Practical Overunity Electrical Devices PDF pp. 42-49, a cheniere.org printout, deep read. Charge split into massless charge and mass (product-rule error), rigidized capacitors, SQUID argument, Fogal charge-blocking semiconductor in Figs. 1-2 (drawings not read). No measurement.
2000-12-02Bearden e-mail on MEG builds and an arranged independent test billstclair.com mirror of cheniere.org/correspondence/120200.htm, opened by the arbiter. Magnetic Energy Ltd builds at 'COP = 17 to 20', one pushed 'to destruction of the output coil' at 'COP>100'; university replication 'under U.S. Department of Defense auspices' arranged, names withheld; Naudin builds at COP 1.3 and 7.3. No waveforms or input/output values.· Co-inventor and spokesman for the developing company
2001-04-11cheniere.org MEG status page rootaction.net mirror. Magnetic Energy Ltd 'a private company and in business', 'in intense negotiations with several large financial enterprises' for capitalization. No COP measurement.· Co-inventor and spokesman for the developing company
2001M. W. Evans, T. E. Bearden et al., Explanation of the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator with O(3) Electrodynamics Found. Phys. Lett. 14(1); doi 10.1023/A:1012085429802 (Springer login wall). Takes COP above 1 as given; a theory paper, not a test. Naudin's index lists Bearden among 15 AIAS authors, so it is a co-inventor's own account.· Co-authored by a co-inventor
2001-07-04Bearden message about the Evans review Listed on Naudin's MEG index page; not opened.· Co-inventor and spokesman for the developing company
2001-10-30Bearden, 'MEG patent status, manufacturing update' Listed on Naudin's MEG index page and in cheniere correspondence; not opened.· Co-inventor and spokesman for the developing company
2002-08-15Bearden letter on the state of Magnetic Energy Ltd billstclair.com mirror of cheniere.org/correspondence/081502.htm (cheniere.org itself no longer serves the page). 'successful little experimental devices'; $9 million a year for three years sought; demonstrations only to prospective financiers; planned 2.5 kW and 10 kW units; 10% of sales in poor countries for wells, schools and clinics; 'vertical cliff' of scale-up funding; P.S. calls a charged capacitor across a magnet a 'proven free energy generator'.· Co-inventor and spokesman for the developing company
2002Energy from the Vacuum: Concepts and Principles (book) Announced in the 15 Aug 2002 letter as 'nearly 1,000 pages'. Not read.
c.2003Bearden paper on pdfcoffee giving Magnetic Energy Ltd, P.O. Box 1472, Huntsville AL 35807 Seen in Google results; cites Ritson, Nature 421 (2003). Not opened ('Solving the Energy Crisis' on pdfcoffee, not reached).· Co-inventor and spokesman for the developing company
Patents and patent office (12)
1994Patent application on two electrical overunity processes (collector and step-charged capacitor) Stated as filed in the 15 Feb 1994 update (p.28). No number, date, country or office given; nothing links it to US 6,362,718.
2002-03-26US 6,362,718 B1, Motionless Electromagnetic Generator S. L. Patrick, T. E. Bearden, J. C. Hayes, K. D. Moore, J. L. Kenny, Huntsville AL; filed 6 Sep 2000 (09/656,313); attorney Norman Friedland. Deep read pp. 7-15 and figure sheets as images: 10-75 V data, Figs. 6-8, p.12 'magnet is the fuel' passage, claims 1-29 (11.5 ms slip in claims 5 and 17). NdFeB magnet 40 x 25.4 x 38.1 mm, Metglas 2605SA1 core. Legal events on Google Patents: lapsed for the 4-year fee and reinstated 2006; 8-year fee paid late 2010; 12-year fee paid 2013; expired 2020; cited by 76 later patents (not examined).· Patent holders
2002-02-26US continuation 10/081,847, 'Power generation within a motionless electromagnetic generator' Same specification (page 2 missing per the examiner), 14 claims; published US 2004/0057255 A1. Full file wrapper (31 documents) on archive.org, uploaded 2014 from USPTO bulk data.· Patent applicants
2004-01-23USPTO non-final rejection of 10/081,847 (examiner Shawn Riley) All 14 claims rejected under 35 USC 101 as violating the first and second laws, under 112 and for double patenting over claims 1-29 of the parent; drawings and the 'perpetual motion' title objected to; model or demonstration required, citing Newman v. Quigg. Read on archive.org (OCR).· USPTO examiner (agency)
2004-05-24Applicants' remarks in reply (10/081,847) Asks that the demonstration requirement 'be held in abeyance'. Sets out the MEG mechanism: magnet as broken-symmetry dipole absorbing vacuum energy (Lee and Yang 1957), Prigogine, Whittaker flows, Aharonov-Bohm localisation and E = -dA/dt pulses, heat-pump COP (9.22 maximum, Halliday and Resnick), COP 5 feedback example, Kron's negative resistor, GR non-conservation, Dirac-sea negative energy and Bedini, 'time-energy' E = tc^2. First 50,000 of 85,447 characters read.· Patent applicants
2004-05-24Bearden's declaration filed with the reply (10/081,847) In the archive.org item list; not read.· Co-inventor and spokesman for the developing company
2004-07-26USPTO final rejection of 10/081,847 Remarks 'not deemed persuasive'; refers to Fig. 8 and the THS730 sentence; windmill argument that COP is below 1; 'Request for a model/demonstration has not been held in abeyance.' Read on archive.org.· USPTO examiner (agency)
2005-05-16Abandonment of 10/081,847 PlainSite docket: 'Abandoned -- Failure to Respond to an Office Action'; no appeal in the item list. The notice itself was not read.
2001-11-06PCT application and family members (WO, KR, CN, IL, JP) Listed on Google Patents for EP 1 446 862; WO, KR and CN shown struck through. Status and numbers of each not checked.· Patent applicants
2001-11-06European Patent Register file EP01988155 (92 documents, 2001-2014) Timeline read from the document list: claims filed 2004; description pages and drawing sheets replaced 15.06.2005; deemed withdrawn 2009 and 2012, both cured; intention to grant 2012; consultation 2013; no opposition. Applicants: the five inventors as individuals.· Patent applicants
2006-09-18EPO Examining Division communication and annex Pages 1-3 of 5 read: novelty objection that US 4,006,401 'discloses a motionless electromagnetic generator having the same structure', the only difference being power for the coils taken from the output rather than an AC source; inventive step over US 4,883,977 with FR 2,312,135 or US 2,866,943; clarity objections.· EPO examiner (agency)
2013-10-23EP 1 446 862 B1, granted European patent 19 claims; claim 1 requires switching without core saturation and feedback of output power to the switching circuit (self-powering). The granted description keeps the 3.44 extrapolation and the demagnetisation paragraphs but lacks the COP-versus-voltage plot and the 'all COP greater than 1' sentences. Expired 2021. Read on Google Patents.· Patent holders
Court and state records (2)
1988Newman v. Quigg Court case cited by the USPTO examiner (2004) for requiring a demonstration of an energy device. Not read.
2026-10-05Alabama Secretary of State business-entity search for 'Magnetic Energy' Form search, all types and statuses: only an unrelated non-profit. No Alabama registration found, although the 2006 USPTO assignment names 'Magnetic Energy, Ltd., Alabama'. A single name search.
Company and business records (4)
2006-05-30Nunc pro tunc assignment of US 6,362,718 from the inventors to Magnetic Energy, Ltd. (Alabama) Reel/frame 017706/0167, recorded 2006-06-01; corrective assignment fixing the name 'Magenetic', 017746/0237, recorded 2006-06-08. Seen as legal events on Google Patents; documents not obtained.
2006-05-23Security agreement: Magnetic Energy, Ltd. to Colmac Holdings Limited, Canada Reel/frame 017759/0537, recorded 2006-06-12. The only financing record found; secured amount, Colmac's identity and any release unknown. USPTO legacy assignment site returned an error.
–Business-directory listings for Magnetic Energy Ltd, Huntsville Manta ('Noncommercial research organizations') and ChamberofCommerce.com; seen in Google results, not opened. Directory traces, not registration records.
–Facebook page 'Magnetic Energy Ltd (@MagneticEngergyLtd)' Describes MEG technology; seen in Google results, not opened.· Company page
Witness accounts and correspondence (5)
–ZPEnergy, 'Letter to JLN Laboratories' An AIAS writer offers to work 'with your company and Magnetic Energy Ltd. to develop the MEG commercially'. Seen in Google results, not opened; bears on the AIAS group's commercial interest.
c.2001Account of the university/DoD replication ending over a non-circumvention agreement Two search summaries: the scientists 'observed the MEG in operation' and wanted to replicate it, but 'the university's administration refused to sign a noncircumvention agreement, and consequently the process was stopped'. Underlying page (apparently Bearden's) not identified.· Co-inventor and spokesman for the developing company
1997Tektronix application note on power measurement Quoted in the 2002 support reply: Vrms x Irms x cos(theta) is valid only for pure sinusoids; 'THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS RMS WATTS'. Not read directly.
2002Tektronix customer-support reply on scope 'RMS power', forwarded by Jon Flickinger Posted by Naudin 05-10-02 (jnaudin.free.fr/meg/ths720p.htm): 'the RMS measurement on a math waveform is bogus and has no value'; true power is the mean of v(t) i(t). The patent says its power agreed with RMS power on a THS730. One support reply relayed by a builder.
2021-01-01A. Craddock, 'Twenty years after Tom Bearden's MEG' (ZPEnergy) zpenergy.com News sid=3918, opened by the arbiter. Reproduces Bearden's 2000 statements (COP 17-20; university/DoD test 'being arranged') and records no later test or product.
Experiments and replications by others (6)
2000-11-07J. L. Naudin, MEG v2.0 replication novakcorp.com megv2.htm, opened by the arbiter: 'The measured COP is 1.75' (Test Run 1); output coils broken by sparks above 3 kV (16 Nov 2000); 'I am trying to close the loop ... the device stops after a while'. No input or output watts or instruments named on the page.
2000-12-06J. L. Naudin, MEG v2.1 status (page updated 2002-05-10) jnaudin.free.fr/meg/megv21.htm: ferrite magnets, Metglas C-cores, TL494/BUZ11 driver at 16-20 kHz, 10 ohm shunt, Tektronix THS720P. 3.25 W total input against 6.76 W measured output (2.08); nonlinear load required; apparent power above load heat; 'measurement artifacts remain possible'; calorimetry and loop closure not done.
–Naudin's later builds (COP 1.3 and 7.3 per Bearden), v3.0 and v4.0 cross-flux (meg4cf.htm) Reported by Bearden (2 Dec 2000); Naudin's own pages not opened. Whether he ever did calorimetry or closed the loop is unknown.
–Jon Flickinger, 'The MEG Notes' jnaudin.free.fr/meg/megnot01.htm, undated. Independent builder: no excess with linear resistive loads; COP 1.75 to 5 only with MOV loads (Panasonic ZNR10K621U); 'If anyone should experience valid COP's >1 with standard linear loads, please speak out!'
–Cyril Smith and Dave Squires analyses of the MEG Listed on Naudin's MEG index; not opened.
2011G. Bressi et al., Testing the neutrality of matter by acoustic means in a spherical resonator Phys. Rev. A 83, 052101; arXiv 1102.2766. Electron-proton charge difference below about 1e-21 e. Bears on 'charge varies with ambient potential'.
Related work by others (22)
1865J. C. Maxwell, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, section 82 (gravity) Found gravitational field energy would be negative and could 'not go any further'. Known via the Royal Society commentary; text at bem.fi not opened.
1897G. J. Stoney, Phil. Mag. 5(43) 368-373 Cited by Bearden as part of the 'Stoney-Whittaker-Ziolkowski' decomposition. Not read.
1903E. T. Whittaker, Math. Annalen 57, 333-355 Solutions of Laplace's equation as plane waves in complex directions; checked via arXiv 2205.08309. Real mathematics with no energy content.
1904E. T. Whittaker, Proc. London Math. Soc. 1, 367-372 Field expressed by two scalar potentials; Bearden's footnote 2. Not read.
1957T. D. Lee and C. N. Yang, broken symmetry (parity) Cited in the 2004 USPTO remarks for the magnet as a broken-symmetry dipole absorbing vacuum energy. Not read.
1959Y. Aharonov and D. Bohm, Significance of electromagnetic potentials in the quantum theory Phys. Rev. 115, 485. Cited by Bearden; reviewers count the physical role of potentials in his favour, as a quantum-phase effect with no classical energy channel.
–G. Kron, the 'negative resistor' Cited in the 2004 USPTO remarks and in the 1994 papers' language. Not read.
1983Calkin and Kiang, capacitor charging (Am. J. Phys.) Cited by Bearden for charging 'almost without entropy'; reviewers say it concerns ordinary low-loss charging. Not read.
1984Gupta, Shanker and Sharma, capacitor charging (Am. J. Phys.) Same use. Not read.
1985R. W. Ziolkowski, localized-wave solutions, J. Math. Phys. 26, 861 Cited for the wave-pair structure; these concern focused pulses, not a static potential. Not read.
1986Heinrich, capacitor charging (Am. J. Phys.) Same use as Calkin and Kiang. Not read.
1989R. W. Ziolkowski, Phys. Rev. A 39, 2005 Localized transmission of EM energy; cited by Bearden. Not read.
1989H. E. Puthoff, Source of Vacuum Electromagnetic Zero-point Energy Phys. Rev. A 40(9) 4857-4862; cited by Bearden. Not read.
1991J. E. Tippett and R. W. Ziolkowski, J. Math. Phys. 32(2) 488 Cited among the decomposition papers. Not read.
1991T. W. Barrett, quaternion Tesla oscillator-shuttle-circuit paper Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie 16(1) 23-41; cited for storage of potentials in circuits. Not read.
1992Fundaun, Reese and Soonpaa, capacitor charging (Am. J. Phys.) Bearden's lead support for step charging; arbiter's web check failed. Not read.
1993C. W. Hsue, A DC Voltage is Equivalent to Two Traveling Waves on a Lossless, Nonuniform Transmission Line IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters 3, 82-84; cited for 'a DC potential is a bidirectional flow'. Not read.
1993D. C. Cole and H. E. Puthoff, Extracting Energy and Heat from the Vacuum Phys. Rev. E 48(2) 1562-1565; cited by Bearden. Not read.
–The Testatika (Swiss electrostatic device) Named in the 1993 Foreword as an overunity device. Nothing further in the review files.
1991W. J. Fogal, US 5,196,809 (filed 1 Mar 1991) and US 5,430,413 (granted 4 Jul 1995), high-gain transistor Emitter tied to ground through an electrolytic capacitor; claims at least twice the gain; no claim of power above input or of vacuum energy. Fetched summary of US 5,430,413.· Inventor's own patents
–rexresearch compilation of Fogal articles and patents Exists per the arbiter; not opened.
2003Ritson, Nature 421, 575 Cited in a Bearden paper on pdfcoffee; not opened.
Related patents and prior art (14)
1957Starr, US 2,802,170 Flux-switching patent on Naudin's list of related devices. Not read.
–US 2,866,943 EPO prior-art citation D6 (2006 annex). Not read.
1963Toffolo, US 3,087,108 On Naudin's list. Not read.
1968Garron, US 3,368,141 On Naudin's list. Not read.
1975Galley, FR 2,312,135, 'Dispositif statique generateur de courant electrique' EPO citation D4 and on Naudin's list: an earlier static flux-switching generator. Not read.
1977deRivas, US 4,006,401 EPO citation E1: same structure as the MEG claims, coils driven by an AC source. Not read.
1978Richardson, US 4,077,001 EPO citation E2 and on Naudin's list. Not read.
–Kunel, DE 3024814 On Naudin's list. Not read.
–Volkrodt, DE 3501076 On Naudin's list. Not read.
–Bramanti, US 4,675,615 On Naudin's list. Not read.
–US 4,883,977 EPO citation D2: electromagnet in place of a permanent magnet. Not read.
–Boday, CA 2172240 On Naudin's list. Not read.
–Keiichiro, US 5,926,083 On Naudin's list. Not read.
2000Flynn, WO 00/07285 (Parallel Path Technology, Magnetic Revolutions) Listed by the Investigator and Naudin as closely related flux-switching work. Not read.
Later accounts and media (10)
–amasci.com, Sweet's vacuum triode amplifier page Sweet's claims, no independent certification, magnet-conditioning secret. Search summary only.· Archive of Sweet's and Bearden's accounts
–rexresearch.com, Sweet 'nothing' page About 330 microwatts in, over 500 W out claimed; Bearden's account that Sweet feared for his life. Search summary only.· Archive of Sweet's and Bearden's accounts
–Bork, on Maxwell's use of quaternions kirkmcd.princeton.edu bork_76.pdf: Maxwell wrote some equations in quaternion form but did not calculate with them. Search summary only.
–Bishop, 'In Disdain of Garbage Physics', and Cyril Smith's 2003 critique of it Listed on Naudin's site; not opened.
2003-02arXiv physics/0302016, critique of the AIAS (Evans group) literature Noted by the mathematician, title only.
2007-11arXiv 0711.4636, history of the neutrality-of-matter bound Physicist's source for the 1e-21 e bound.
2008-01arXiv 0801.4182, charge relaxation times Copper 1.53e-19 s, fused quartz about 51 days; Bearden's numbers right in order of magnitude.
2015Royal Society commentary on Maxwell's 1865 paper Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 373, 20140473. Arbiter's source that Maxwell had no gravity-EM unification; search summary.
2022-05arXiv 2205.08309, Whittaker's 1903 plane-wave representation explained Mathematician's and primer's source for Whittaker 1903.
–Maxwell's quaternions vs Heaviside's vector calculus (Medium article) Secondary web source: forms equivalent for classical EM.
Records named but not yet examined (13)
c.2000The MEG inventors' raw data Simultaneous v(t) and i(t), logic-supply current, load values, magnet strength before and after. The patent shows only Figs. 6-8 and does not say whether the logic supply is in the input.
–A neutral laboratory test of a MEG built to the patent, including a supply-removed run None found by any reviewer or the Investigator.
2000-09-06Parent file wrapper, US application 09/656,313 archive.org: 'Item cannot be found'; USPTO Patent Center not tried. Would show whether the parent's examiner raised utility or asked for a demonstration.
2007-03-19EPO file: applicants' replies 2007 and 2009, 2008 annex, 2006 annex pp.4-5, 2013 consultation minutes Public on the European Patent Register; viewer stalled. How the applicants defended COP above 1 in Europe, and why the COP plot left the text.
–Colmac Holdings Limited corporate record, and any release of the 2006 security agreement Corporations Canada and USPTO Assignment Center not reached.
–Magnetic Energy Ltd registration and dissolution record Not in Alabama; other states and countries not searched.
c.2001Measurement reports from investor demonstrations, and the identity of the university and DoD programme Bearden says financiers' technical representatives 'do their own measurements'; none has surfaced.
–Sweet's VTA device and magnet-conditioning process Withheld by the inventor; not available.
–Fogal charge-blocking semiconductor as used in Bearden's Figs. 1-2: structure, ratings, any overunity measurement Fogal's transistor patents exist; no overunity measurement found.
1873Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism Not checked for any gravity-EM suggestion.
–Source of the SQUID measurement of the field between charging capacitor plates Cited by Bearden (p.44) with no reference.
1994Bearden's promised follow-up paper or book ('in 60 to 90 days') and proof-of-principle circuits Promised on p.28 of the 15 Feb 1994 update.
c.1993Bearden's paper on biological harm from rising EM signal density and a cancer mechanism Referred to on pp.10-11 of the 1993 paper; not identified.
Left out: the byte-identical duplicate PDF, textbooks and general references cited only for argument (Griffiths, Feynman, Halliday and Resnick, Hilbert 1917, Logunov, Kondepudi and Prigogine and others), the 76 later patents citing US 6,362,718 (not examined), an unrelated Bedini patent found by a wrong guess, and earlier AI-written analyses. Full catalogue: Bearden sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A neutral lab builds a MEG to the patent, logs v(t) and i(t) together at the supply (logic supply included) and each output coil, integrates v times i, and calorimeters a linear then a MOV load; then runs EP claim 1's self-powered loop, supply removed, for hours, checking magnet flux before and after.
Deciding records: Bearden's 2004 declaration and the rest of the remarks; the parent file 09/656,313; the EPO 2007 and 2009 replies, 2008 annex and 2013 minutes; the Colmac security agreement (reel/frame 017759/0537) and any release; investor-demonstration measurement reports; the university and DoD programme named in 2000; Naudin's later build pages; the inventors' raw waveforms.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: the collector spends 144 uJ to store 72 uJ; step charging approaches but never exceeds efficiency 1; Part F shows Vrms x Irms overstating true power with harmonics, Naudin's 2.08 on total input, and the self-powering condition f x c at least 1. By hand: how long do 7-22 J last at 82 W?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Two descriptions of one fuel, both by the patentees: the 2000 patent names the magnet's flux and concedes demagnetisation; the 2004 remarks name the vacuum. The energy-budget refutation addresses the first; the untested supply-removed run addresses the second. Neither has a measurement behind it. arbiter.md, Investigator findings, Where they differ, item 4
Arbiter The physicist would rate the strong form Tested, not supported at an informal level; the arbiter keeps Never properly tested, because the scale requires controlled experiments and the builder reports are uncontrolled. Flickinger's linear-load null is stated in full as evidence against excess. arbiter.md, Investigator findings, Where they differ, item 1
Mathematician With open-loop COP c and a fed-back fraction f, running on its own needs f c at least 1; at f = 0.5 that needs c at least 2, which the patent's 1.7-2.6 straddles. The supply-removed run is the one test independent of instrument method: it runs or it stops. mathematician.md, Investigator findings; arbiter.md item 9
Contrarian Bearden is right that potentials are physically fundamental in quantum mechanics, that closed classical EM forbids overunity, and that the MEG is a concrete, cheap-to-test device never tested in public by a neutral lab. Against him: no data, mixed units, conflict with polarisation and charge experiments. contrarian.md, Fair case for the proponent
Investigator The USPTO continuation holds the only official demonstration request found, and it went unanswered; the EPO found the MEG structure already in US 4,006,401 (1977), its novelty being only the self-powering feedback, which is also the one feature never demonstrated. sites.md, Leads for review; research/2026-10-05-epo-register.md
AI noteThe granted European text keeps the extrapolated COP 3.44 but drops the measured COP plot and the 'all COP greater than 1' sentences; pages were replaced in 2005. Why is in EPO papers nobody has read.
Rank 23Linerman-Peter
down from 22A - UntestedB - Open questionD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-06 18:24
A tabloid-famous 1973 battery-and-capacitor motor, a 1974 DA raid, three patents and a disputed death: Lindemann reads it as Tesla's radiant energy, but nobody ever metered it.
Invention / theory background
Peter A. Lindemann (born 1951; honorary D.Sc. in complementary medicine; Borderland Sciences vice president 1987-99; Clear Tech co-founder) published The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity (2000) and The World of Free Energy (2001). He argues that Edwin V. Gray's capacitor-discharge motor (1973) and spark-gap conversion tube (patents 1986-87) released Tesla's ether-borne radiant energy, that seven families of free-energy devices are proven, and that they are withheld.
Ranking explanation
Rank 13 on criteria A, B and D. Below Bearden (12), whose MEG has patent-office records and a cheap supply-removed test; here every device figure is an advocate's assertion. Above van Vlaenderen (14), a theory with no experiments or reception history: Gray's story has witnessed 1973 demonstrations, a raid and prosecution, an unseen Crosby test report and records that go dark. Interest is not proof: net gain as a closed ledger is Refuted by calculation.
Key supporting elements
Gray's patents are real: US 3,890,548 (1975), 4,595,975 (1986) and 4,661,747 (1987), with Canadian, Japanese and Greek filings; the motor geometry is internally consistent (27 firings of 13 1/3 degrees).
1973 demonstrations (Tattler): a hurled 1.25 lb magnet caught by Hackenberger; six bulbs, a TV and two radios on a motorcycle battery; McCulloch Oil's C. V. Wood Jr. looked for hidden outlets. A sympathetic reporter; voltmeter only.
Crosby Research Institute's J. A. Maize, testing for investor Pan World, reported 7,460 W into a dynamometer on 26.8 W of battery draw (Tattler 1973): the only numerical test claim; no report found yet.
AP 1975 confirms the July 1974 raid; the DA said it was 'hard to find investors willing to press charges', as Lindemann says. An anonymous friend (2000) reports a 12-hour run ending with more battery charge.
Lindemann's critique of Gray's FIG.1 holds on page images (#42 shorted, #28 grid floating, #36 no coil), and he is right that Gray's 'peak apparent power' explanation is not an energy gain.
Key contradictions
Gray's own patents and 1980 application claim only partial back-e.m.f. recovery with a continuing battery supply, 'on theory', with no figures; the radiant-energy and 100:1 readings are Lindemann's alone.
TRW staff scientist Donald Cronin watched a test about mid-1974: 'It ran for about 10 seconds and then everything blew'; a Japanese team then packed up and left (AP 1975; one wire story, no second source yet).
The Crosby figures do not close: 7,460 W on 26.8 W is 278:1, not 'efficiency exceeding 99%'; energy is given in 'watts per hour'; the 203 hours is projected from a 21-minute run.
Lindemann writes that a motor built to the patent's principles 'doesn't perform anything like what was described' (no build details), and his '99% lost in the voltage drop' is wrong: arc loss is 2Va/V0, a few percent.
Tesla's own patents do not say it: 685,958 credits charged particles from the sun, not ether; 787,412 gives a finite 'mean velocity' of 471,240 km/s (about pi/2 times c), not instantaneous propagation.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 30 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Gray's motor and tube recover part of the coil energy into a second battery (what the patents claim)
Establishedthe recovery mechanismPlausible, untestedthe motor as an efficient, useful machine
Gray's devices give net energy gain (1973 demonstrations, Crosby test, 32-day run, Lindemann's 100:1)
Never properly testedprivate tests only, none neutral or instrumented; not dismissed without testingRefuted by calculationas a closed-ledger net gain
Gray's 'cold electricity' is Tesla's radiant energy, an Electro-Radiant Event drawn from the ether
Not testable as statedno measurable definition
Radiant energy propagates instantaneously, outside Maxwell's equations
Tested, not supportedsignal timing matches cNot testable as stated'Light Ether' vocabulary
Gains of 100:1 (Gray) and 1000:1 (Methernitha Testatika)
Never properly testedno protocol; Testatika closed to measurementRefuted by calculationas net energy gain
Seven free-energy families 'proven beyond all reasonable doubt' (samples)
Never properly testedBearden MEG, by a neutral testTested, not supportedMeyer electrolysis (1996 court experts)Refuted by calculation350 hp solar heat pumpContestedcold fusion
The laws of thermodynamics are not universal; Tesla's self-acting engine
Tested, not supportedstrong formInternally inconsistentLindemann's textRefuted by calculationengine on ambient heat alone
Gray's venture was raided and prosecuted, and suppressed; he died under mysterious circumstances
Establishedpatents, 1974 raid, 12 counts filed 1975Never properly testedsuppression as the cause; circumstances of death
Author reviewed: proposes that Gray's cold electricity is Tesla's radiant energy · Sells the book; co-founder of Clear Tech, Inc.; runs free-energy.cc
Born Milwaukee 1951; left Iowa State engineering in 1970 for self-directed study; honorary D.Sc. in complementary medicine (Open International University of Alternative Medicine, Colombo, 1999-2000); co-founded Unifield Dynamics (1983); Borderland Sciences vice president 1987-99, which published his 1994-95 articles (per a society wiki).
Edwin V. Gray
Inventor of the EMA motor and conversion switching tube; the subject of the book · Founder of EVGray Enterprises, which sold shares to about 800 investors
Born 8 January 1925 in Washington DC (contents page says 1923); Army and Navy service and later a mechanic (Lindemann's biography); patents 1975, 1986, 1987; died 20 April 1990 in Sparks NV per a VA record (Lindemann says 1989, an anonymous informant 1993).
Tom Valentine
Reporter who wrote the 1973-74 National Tattler articles and the 1977 NewsReal piece · Advocate press that championed Gray
Not in the review files beyond his articles; the March 1974 Tattler says a DA investigator threatened him with arrest.
Richard B. Hackenberger
Witness at the 1973 demonstrations: 'only 1% of the energy was used - 99% went back into the battery' · Gray's Vice President of Engineering
Formerly with Sony, Sylvania and the US Navy, according to the Tattler.
J. A. Maize
Crosby Research Institute engineering director, Beverly Hills; reported the 1972 dynamometer test · Test commissioned by investor Pan World Enterprises (Japan)
Not in the review files beyond the Tattler's report.
Donald Cronin
Witness to a failed test about mid-1974 ('then everything blew')
Staff scientist at TRW Systems, Inc. (AP 1975); otherwise not in the review files.
Mitchell Harris
Deputy District Attorney quoted on the raid, the charges and reluctant investors · Prosecutor
Los Angeles County District Attorney's office (AP 1975); otherwise not in the review files.
Gerry Vassilatos
Author of the 'Rosetta Stone' chapter on Tesla's 1889-92 impulse work that Lindemann builds on · Author-publisher of a book arguing the same thesis
Wrote Secrets of Cold War Technology: Project HAARP and Beyond (1996); otherwise not in the review files.
Evidence / artifacts (86 of 102 listed, 84%)
Own works and inventions (11)
1986A History of Free Energy Discoveries Lindemann's earlier book; listed in the Chappell wiki biography; not in the folder· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
1987Free Energy Research: Peter Lindemann and Eric Dollard (video) 1987 video posted by Eric Dollard; found in a Google result, not viewed· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
1988Tesla's Longitudinal Electricity (video) Lindemann video listed in the wiki biography; not viewed· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
1994Thermodynamics and Free Energy Journal of Borderland Sciences Research, Q3 1994; reprinted in the book pp.141-148; Constable 100,000:1, DePalma, Tewari hydrogen; deep-read· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
1995Tesla's Self-Acting Engine Journal of Borderland Sciences Research, Q3 1995; book pp.149-152; Doczekal, Schaeffer/Serogodski, Wiseman; deep-read· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
1996Thermodynamics (article) Listed in the wiki biography; not read· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
2000-10The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity Clear Tech, Inc., Metaline Falls WA; 156 pp., 81 OCR; chapters 1-4 and reprints all deep-read except pp.153-156; Fig. 34 probable schematic signed August 2000; 2015 Lulu reprint and web copies are the same work· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
2000-09-12Lecture: The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity Irvine, California (Tesla Tech circuit); also sold as a VHS; known through Ken Adachi's 2003 write-up· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
2001-03-01The World of Free Energy (essay) 8 pp.; seven device families, Four Forces, eight US patent numbers, con-man warning; deep-read· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
2006Radiant Energy and Its Role in Our Free Energy Future (video) Listed in the wiki biography; not viewed· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
c.2000sBedini SG handbooks and Electric Motor Secrets Co-authored with Aaron Murakami and John Bedini; apply the radiant-energy idea to battery chargers; Google results only· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
Patents and patent office (23)
1897-11-02Tesla US 593,138, Electrical Transformer Reprinted book pp.125-128; 185,000 miles per second worked example; deep-read
1901-11-05Tesla US 685,957, Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy On Lindemann's essay list; Google Patents summary checked by the arbiter: radiation charging an insulated plate
1901-11-05Tesla US 685,958, Method of Utilizing Radiant Energy Book pp.129-133; charging credited to charged particles from the sun, not ether; deep-read
1905-04-18Tesla US 787,412, Art of Transmitting Electrical Energy Through the Natural Medium Book pp.134-139; 'mean velocity of about 471,240 km/s', checked on page image p.136 and Google Patents
1939Doczekal Austrian patent NR 155744 Benzene/water engine said by Lindemann to beat Carnot; patent not read
1957Freedman US 2,796,345 Alloy said to split water for free; only the number is given (essay list)
1973-11-02Gray US 3,890,548, Pulsed Capacitor Discharge Electric Engine Issued 1975-06-17; Evgray Enterprises; 27 firings of 13 1/3 degrees, partial recovery into a second battery, 12 V and 18 x 3,500 V on FIG.2; book pp.74-91, page images; two copies in the PDF· Gray's own patent, attorney-drafted
c.1975Gray Canadian CA 1030600 A Family member of US 3,890,548 (application CA 211,165); Google Patents listing; text not read· Gray's own patent, attorney-drafted
1975Gray Japanese JP S50-74712 A Family member of US 3,890,548 (application JP 49-127019); text not read; fits a Japanese backer· Gray's own patent, attorney-drafted
1978Richardson US 4,077,001 Permanent-magnet device on Lindemann's essay list; number only
1978-04-25McDonald US patent (number not given) Related patent listed by the KeelyNet 2000 page; not checked
1979Frenette US 4,143,639 Rotating-cylinder heater on the essay list; number only
1980-04-10Gray, Regenerative Energy Recovery System, e.g., for Electromagnetic Propulsion 'Unidentified British application'; saved text on rexresearch: 24 V battery, about 2000 V capacitor, discharge through load into recovery battery; no measurements· Gray's own patent, attorney-drafted
1983-12-16Gray Greek priority application 24388 Printed on the front page of US 4,661,747; Google Patents lists GR73274A / GR72864B instead; applicant and text unknown· Gray's own patent, attorney-drafted
1984Perkins US 4,424,797 Rotating-cylinder heater on the essay list; number only
1984-10-18Gray US 4,595,975, Efficient Power Supply Suitable for Inductive Loads Issued 1986-06-17, Council, Idaho; no figures, gain 'on theory'; FIG.1 checked on page image p.115; book pp.110-116· Gray's own patent, attorney-drafted
1985-10-25Gray US 4,661,747, Efficient Electrical Conversion Switching Tube Issued 1987-04-28; division of 662,339; claims the tube only; book pp.116-125· Gray's own patent, attorney-drafted
1990Meyer US 4,936,961 Water fuel cell on the essay list; number only
c.1995Schaeffer and Serogodski DE 42 44 016 A1 Ambient-heat engine; Lindemann says 'granted'; A1 normally an unexamined application; not read
1995-10-10Gifford US patent (number not given) Related patent listed by KeelyNet 2000; not checked
1996-05-07Gossler US patent (number not given) Related patent listed by KeelyNet 2000; not checked
2000Chambers US 6,126,794 On the essay list; the essay never says what it is
2002Bearden et al. MEG patent Basis of the '6 W in, 96 W out' claim; American Physical Society statement against it known via Wikipedia· Patent holders
Court and state records (1)
1996Ohio court finding against Stanley Meyer Three expert witnesses found conventional electrolysis, 'gross and egregious fraud'; via Wikipedia
Government records (5)
1974-01-24SEC News Digest Searched for Gray, Evgray, Van Nuys, motor: no Gray item (negative)
1990-04-20VA burial record (Find a Grave memorial 3813396) Created by US Veterans Affairs Office: Edwin Vincent Gray Sr., veteran, b. 8 Jan 1925 Washington DC, d. 20 Apr 1990 Sparks NV, Riverside National Cemetery plot 27-1479
1990FamilySearch tree LY5P-7C9 Same dates and places; sources 1930 census, Find A Grave index, California divorce index; user-maintained tree
1990-06-17USPTO fee lapse of US 4,595,975 'Expired - Fee Related', two months after the VA death date; Google Patents
2004US Department of Energy cold fusion review Panel split about evenly on excess power; via Wikipedia
Company and business records (5)
1973EvGray Enterprises, 'Power Plant of the Future' Company text on the saved rexresearch page: a '21-minute run' using '9.75 watts', 'operated continuously for 203 hours'· Gray's company
1973-06EMA-4 data sheet (Probe The Unknown, Jack Scagnetti, 'The Engine That Runs Itself') 12 V DC, 2550 rpm, brake hp 32.05, 'Fuel Consumption: None'; book shows only a thumbnail· Gray's company figures
1973-10-11Letter, Renate Gray for EVGray Enterprises, to Lindemann 'due to our security we are unable to give out any information'; page image p.13· Gray's company
1976-02'Inventor of the Year' nomination, Los Angeles Patent Attorney's Association Documented in one published source, Lindemann's biography p.21, and the Tattler/NewsReal; no document seen
c.1980sGray's letters offering the technology for SDI To every member of Congress, the President and Cabinet, 'not a single reply' (Lindemann p.21 only)
Witness accounts and correspondence (11)
1973-07-01Tom Valentine, 'Man Creates Engine That Consumes No Fuel', National Tattler Van Nuys demonstrations: Hackenberger, Fritz Lens, C. V. Wood Jr., two unnamed physicists; voltmeter only; reprinted book pp.7-12 and rexresearch· Advocate press
1973-07-01Tom Valentine, 'Gasless Auto Gets $6-Million Backing', National Tattler Gray and designer Paul M. Lewis; in the saved rexresearch file· Advocate press
1973-07-08Tom Valentine, second Tattler article (EMA motor test) Four 6 V batteries, over 2,500 rpm for 30 minutes, '100 horsepower' beside 'brake horsepower 32.06'; page image p.11· Advocate press
1974-01-23Tom Valentine, 'Two Inventors Work To Devise Fuelless Car', National Tattler Listed on rexresearch; not read· Advocate press
1974-03Tom Valentine, 'Inventor of the World's First No-Fuel Engine is Suppressed by L.A.'s District Attorney', National Tattler With 'Threat of Arrest Spurs Tattler Reporter' (DA investigator Ran Novell); listed on rexresearch· Advocate press
1975-07-07AP wire, 'Either Saint or Sinner: Auto Motor Inventor Just Fueling Around?' Progress Bulletin, Pomona: July 1974 seizure; 12 counts May 1975; 800 shareholders; Deputy DA Mitchell Harris; TRW's Donald Cronin 'ran for about 10 seconds and then everything blew'· DA quotes are the prosecutor's account
1977Tom Valentine, 'EMS: Electronic Power...', NewsReal Book p.15: plea to 'a minor Securities and Exchange violation'; Dr. Chalfin 'no loss of energy'; 'one of six children'· Advocate press
1986Lindemann and Tom Brown bulb test near Dollard's transmitter Filament lit with the men 6 and 8 ft away, no shock, no instruments; book pp.50-51· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
1990-03-18'Issue 15' (free-energy-info.tuks.nl) Dated source carrying the Zetech sentence; may be the KeelyNet March 1990 file; not opened
2000Back-cover testimonials: Trevor Constable, Brian Desborough, Ken Rauen Desborough: 'incoming spikes over 1000 amps'; book p.156· Associates promoting the book
2000-02-23KeelyNet, 'EV Gray Updated' (mirror) Anonymous friend: death April 1993 Riverside, three police stories; 12-hour run ending with more charge; six motors; Western States holds rights; '$60 million offshore'
Experiments and replications by others (7)
1986Photograph of Eric Dollard's Magnifying Transmitter Alison Davidson, supplied by Tom Brown; 400,000 V 'anyone's guess', over 4 A on an RF ammeter, under 2,000 W from the wall; book p.50
1999Testatika 90-minute demonstration film About thirty engineers; only pictures of the machines; enthusiast pages at rimstar.org; no independent measurement
c.2000Naudin MEG replication pages Lindemann says Naudin 'duplicated' the MEG; primary page refused connection
2010Jelinek and Pekarek, MEG paper Found by the arbiter's search; not read
2019Google-funded cold fusion study (Nature) Found no excess heat; via reviewers' web sources
2019-2024groups.io EVGRAY forum Present-day builders: 'EV Gray CST', 'Capacitor energy anomaly'; not visited
c.2020sReddit r/plasma_pi, 'Modern Cold Electricity' Says Lindemann 'improved and simplified' Gray's circuit; not visited
Later accounts and media (10)
1900-06Tesla, 'The Problems of Increasing Human Energy', Century Magazine Quoted in book ch.3 and the 1995 article; self-acting engine 'for a long time yet'
1904-03Tesla, Electrical World article Quoted in book ch.3
1996Gerry Vassilatos, 'The Rosetta Stone' (Secrets of Cold War Technology, ch.1) Reprinted book pp.22-38; no footnotes or data; Dollard reproduction in one sentence; deep-read· Author-publisher of the same thesis
2002-12-16Tesla Universe review of the book Google result; not opened
2003-04Ken Adachi, 'Radiant Energy: Unraveling Nikola Tesla's Greatest Secret' ExtraOrdinary Technology pp.23-26, on the Irvine lecture; no measurements
undatedEducate-Yourself review of Lindemann's video Google result; not opened
undatedYumpu, 'E. V. Gray and the Self-Sustaining Motor' Google result; not opened
undateduapmurders.com page on conflicting narratives of Gray's death Google result; not opened
undatedWikipedia, 'History of perpetual motion machines' Cites free-energy.cc/graybio.html; en-academic copy
2026-09-02Chappell Natural Philosophy Society wiki, Peter A Lindemann Biography: born 1951, honorary D.Sc. Colombo 1999-2000, Borderland VP 1987-99, Clear Tech 2000; its sources unchecked
Records named but not yet examined (13)
1892Tesla, 'Dissipation of Electricity' lecture Vassilatos's only named primary source; would check the oil-bath and impulse claims
1872Scientific American account of Elihu Thomson Cited by Vassilatos without issue
1972-09Crosby Research Institute report (J. A. Maize for Pan World Enterprises) Tattler: 7,460 W out, 26.8 'watts per hour' in, 'efficiency exceeding 99%'; no report found· Commissioned by an investor
1975Los Angeles Superior Court file, People v. Gray Would settle the outcome: dismissal, plea or fine
1975-1976SEC News Digests and litigation releases Lindemann's March 1976 'two minor SEC violations'
c.1977-1990USPTO assignment records and Zetech / Western States corporate records Absorption versus abandonment of the patents
1986-1989Lindemann's unpublished photographs and unreleased video footage of experiments Listed in the book's references pp.153-154· Lindemann, author and seller of the book (Clear Tech)
1987-1988Borderland Labs videos Listed in the book's references
1990-04Washoe County death certificate and April 1990 obituary Cause and circumstances of Gray's death
1990-03 / 1991-10KeelyNet EVGRAY #1 and #2 files Predate Lindemann's book; linked from the 2000 page
undatedTewari Space Power Generator hydrogen report 'Twice as much hydrogen'; single sentence in the 1994 article
undatedConstable / Atmos Engineering rainfall and gauge records For the 100,000:1 claim
undatedPatent secrecy-order lists and FOIA releases Would test the patent-denial allegations
Left out: about 16 minor items, namely copies of the AP story on other sites (LENR Forum, BangShift, fuel-efficient-vehicles.org, tesla3.com), the seven-item bibliography of the 1994 article (Reich, Lehrs, Steiner, Wachsmuth, Constable), and the prior-art references printed on Gray's patents. Full catalogue: Linerman-Peter sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A metered build of the tube circuit: integrate battery voltage times current over a full discharge-recharge cycle including the charger, put a calorimeter on the spark gap, measure energy into a resistive load and into the second battery, and run a dummy battery as control. Only net battery energy rising across a cycle would matter.
Deciding records: The Crosby/Maize report; the Los Angeles Superior Court file for the 1975 case; SEC digests 1975-76; USPTO assignment, Zetech and Western States records; the Washoe County death certificate; the Greek 1983 priority file; the Canadian and Japanese patent texts; KeelyNet 1990-91 files; Lindemann's unreleased 1986-89 footage.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: one 15.3 J discharge kept as an energy ledger, arc loss 2Va/V0, the Crosby 278:1, firings per second for 7,460 W, the 100 hp versus 32.06 bhp table, and Tesla's 471,240 km/s as pi/2 times c. By hand: 140 BTU in 2 minutes against 100 W in.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Net gain from the motor or tube is Never properly tested, not dismissed without testing: Crosby, the Japanese team and Cronin all report private tests, and none was published or instrumented neutrally. As a closed-ledger net gain it is Refuted by calculation. arbiter.md, Claim 1, final verdict
Primer The most useful lesson: Lindemann's 100:1 (output over arc loss), the solar 17:1 and Constable's 100,000:1 all draw the ledger boundary so that an input is left outside. primer.md, section 7, Wrong, and why the mistakes are instructive
QE Every review first said Lindemann built a copy of Gray's motor and it failed. The text never says he built one: 'if you try to build this motor ... it doesn't perform'. Corrected; it stays as his statement against the motor, with no data. qe.md, section 4, item 6
Contrarian The DA finding no stockholder willing to press charges favours Lindemann's picture of loyal investors; it also fits Gray selling shares on a fuelless-engine promise, which is a regulated act whether or not the engine worked. contrarian.md, Claim 5, d
Investigator US 4,595,975 lapsed for unpaid fees on 17 June 1990, two months after the VA death date. An anonymous 2000 source says an oil-drilling firm, Western States, owns the Gray patents; USPTO assignment records would decide absorption versus abandonment. sites.md, Leads for review, 4. The historical record
AI noteGray's 1987 tube patent claims priority from a Greek application of 16 December 1983, ten months before the US parent, though Gray lived in Council, Idaho. Nothing in the record says who filed it or why.
Rank 24van Vlaenederen Koen
down from 23B - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 11:40
An electrical engineer kept the quantity textbooks set to zero in electromagnetism and found new waves and forces; mainstream journals now study the same field, but nobody has detected it.
Invention / theory background
Koen J. van Vlaenderen, a Dutch electrical engineer (Institute for Basic Research, later Ethergy B.V.), argues in papers from 1999 to 2016 that the Lorenz-gauge quantity S (later the scalar magnetic field B_l) is physical. Adding it to Maxwell's equations gives longitudinal waves, a force J S along currents, a static-charge power term, a Newton's-third-law-respecting force law and a superluminal Phi wave he links to Tesla, Moray and Podkletnov.
Ranking explanation
Rank 11 for open questions, things a reader can calculate, and real influence: his 2001 paper has 99 citations and mainstream journals (Minotti-Modanese, EPJ C) develop the same field with a bench proposal. Below Kilner, whose anomaly is the claimant's own and cheap to test; here every experiment is someone else's and no suppression record exists. Above Aspden because the S-field programme is live in peer-reviewed physics today.
Key supporting elements
The algebra holds: every identity in the 2003 and 2015 papers checked symbolically, the extended equations are self-consistent, and the Grassmann force between open current elements really is non-reciprocal (1e-5 N imbalance in the worked example).
Sceptics rebuilt the Monstein-Wesley ball antenna in 2013 and found a pattern closer to Monstein-Wesley's theory than their own data; they rejected both that theory and the ground-current explanation: 'a yet-unidentified mechanism'.
The same S field is developed in peer-reviewed physics journals by Minotti and Modanese (EPJ C 2023), who cite the 2001 paper and propose a detection circuit; the 2001 paper has 99 citations.
Reed and Hively (2020) independently reach the same J S force and power term and report preliminary tests in which the wave passed thousands of skin depths of copper (authors' own report; Hively holds the antenna patent).
Longitudinal-force experiments (Graneau's blocked-hairpin jets, Saumont 1992, Johansson 1996, Phipps on the Marinov motor) have never been closed by a decisive neutral test, per the arbiter.
Key contradictions
With charge conserved, the theory's own eq. 24 makes S a source-free wave, so ordinary antennas and capacitors produce none; Bruhn pressed this, and the author's 2001 preprint concedes a point charge cannot source S.
In standard theory the Newton's-third-law imbalance between open current elements is balanced by field momentum; the 2015 paper's own eq. 4.34 contains time-varying field momentum it says is absent.
The 'far-field inconsistency' fails: for an oscillating dipole the two longitudinal 1/r terms cancel exactly, so Lorenz- and Coulomb-gauge fields are identical (Jackson 2002).
The 4/3 resolution needs a self-energy twice the paper's own eq. 4.33; eq. 4.22, offered to select a >> c, holds for any a; Caprez et al. (2007) found no Aharonov-Bohm force delays.
The author reports no experiment of his own, gives no magnitude for S, and reads the same data two ways (Monstein-Wesley as Phi waves in 2003, LEM waves in 2015).
User follow-ups
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Verdicts by claim (8 of 35 shown)
Claim
Verdict
S is a physical field (extended theory with S, 2003)
Plausible, untestedself-consistent extended theoryNever properly testedS measurable; proposals onlyRefuted by calculationgauge 'circularity' argument for S
Longitudinal electro-scalar waves and the J S force along currents
Never properly testedno discriminating test
Static charge as a power source via the (rho/eps0)S term
Not testable as statedno S magnitude or matter-side law; Internally inconsistent only if rest mass is fixed
Maxwell-Lorentz force violates Newton's third law for open circuits
EstablishedGrassmann non-reciprocity, mathematicallyRefuted by calculationas a physical violation; field momentum balances it
A distinct longitudinal Ampere force J B_l exists
Never properly testedcontested hairpin and longitudinal-force experiments
2015 derivations: far-field inconsistency, a >> c and b = c, Rutherford 4/3
Refuted by calculationLorenz-gauge far-field inconsistencyInternally inconsistenta >> c selection; speed itself Never properly testedInternally inconsistent4/3 resolution, factor 2
Cited experiments support scalar or longitudinal effects
Never properly testedMonstein-Wesley, Ignatiev-Leus, Tzontchev, Strebkov, de SangroTested, not supportedAharonov-Bohm as a force; exploding wires (provisional)Not testable as statedTesla longitudinal waves and teleforce
Anomalous devices run on Phi or LEM radiation
Tested, not supportedPodkletnov weight effectNever properly testedPodkletnov 64c, Moray, Correa, ChernetskyNot testable as statedPhi photoelectric effect
Author of the theory (folder name misspells him 'Vlaenederen') · Theoretical research at Ethergy B.V., a company he gives as his R&D affiliation for scalar-field energy conversion
Master of Engineering per ResearchGate; 'Electrical engineer MD, The Hague' on his 2002 site; addresses in The Hague, Venlo and Alkmaar; Institute for Basic Research affiliation 1999-2018 ('Associate professor' in 2018); papers 1999-2018, Prague lecture 2023.
Andre Waser
Co-author of the 2001 Hadronic Journal paper and 'Electrodynamics with the scalar field'
Swiss electrical engineer and publisher (aw-verlag.ch) per citing papers; wrote on Tesla's radiations and cosmic rays. His website was unreachable.
Gerhard W. Bruhn
Critic: two web reviews showing the modified sources conserve charge only if S solves the homogeneous wave equation · Critic with a stake in showing the work wrong
Mathematician at TU Darmstadt who wrote web critiques of several alternative-energy theories (the research note tags this as model memory, medium confidence).
Christof Monstein and J.P. Wesley
Experimenters reporting longitudinal electrodynamic waves (EPL 2002); the author claims priority for their energy formulas
Not in the review files.
E.J. Butterworth, C.B. Allison, D. Cavazos and F.M. Mullen
Rebuilt the Monstein-Wesley apparatus (2013); reproduced the pattern, left the mechanism open
Not in the review files beyond their stated prior that Maxwell's equations are valid and longitudinal EM waves do not exist.
Lee M. Hively
Independent extended-electrodynamics author with the same scalar field, force and power term; reports copper-penetration tests · Inventor on US 9,306,527 (scalar-longitudinal wave antennas, Gradient Dynamics LLC)
Retired from Oak Ridge National Laboratory; papers with Giakos (2012), Loebl (2019) and Reed (2020).
F. Minotti and G. Modanese
Develop 'Aharonov-Bohm electrodynamics' with S physical, cite the 2001 paper, propose a gauge-wave detection circuit
Not in the review files beyond their publication record (EPJ C, J. Phys. Commun., Symmetry, 2021-2026); Modanese also co-authored with Podkletnov.
G.F. Ignatiev and V.A. Leus
Reported a 1.12c phase velocity from a spherical antenna, and per the 2003 paper unusually high transmitted energy
Krasnoyarsk University and Sobolev Institute of Mathematics, Novosibirsk, per their paper.
Evidence / artifacts (82 of 82 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (15)
1999-10-16A charged space as the origin of sources, fields and potentials arXiv physics/9910022, 6 pp plus references; Institute for Basic Research affiliation; psi as real charge density, rho_mass c^2 = rho Phi, charge dimension 3/2; whole paper deep-read with page images
2001-10-04The Lienard-Wiechert potentials satisfy the Lorenz gauge condition (and the Maxwell equations) Notes from the author's archived website: 4 Oct 2001 version and extended Institute for Basic Research version of 1 Mar 2003 (5 pp); copies in research/files, not read
2001-10-17Electrodynamics with the scalar field (with A. Waser) 3-pp preprint, biquaternion form, from the author's archived website; abstract read: a single point charge cannot source S because the Lienard-Wiechert S is zero. Later version Hadronic J. 27(6):673-691 and chapter 18 of a 2016 book, not retrieved
2001-11-13Generalisation of classical electrodynamics to admit a scalar field and longitudinal waves (with A. Waser) Hadronic Journal 24:609-628, Hadronic Press, Palm Harbor FL; received 13 Nov 2001; origin of S, the LES wave and theorem (33); basis of the priority claim; 19-page scan, only p.1 read; cited 99 times (Google Scholar)
2002-01-24Generalisation of classical electrodynamics to admit a scalar field and longitudinal waves (conference draft) Word file by the author alone, template Conf_Proceedings.dot, archived 2003; list of consequences read (superluminal waves, possible classical photon tunnelling, a charge density wave that only induces S)
2002-12-12The revealed secrets of classical electrodynamics (author's web page) home.wanadoo.nl/raccoon, Wayback capture; 'Koen van Vlaenderen, Electrical engineer MD, The Hague'; says Tesla waves and overunity devices 'have been kept a secret'
2003-05-21A generalisation of classical electrodynamics for the prediction of scalar field effects arXiv physics/0305098, 13 pp; S field, extended Gauss and Ampere laws (18-19), LES waves, J S force, static-charge power term, cited experiments, priority claim against Monstein-Wesley; whole paper deep-read with SymPy checks
2003-05-26One-page check of the Lorenz condition for Lienard-Wiechert potentials (Landau notation) Author's archived website, Wayback capture; copy in research/files, not read
2004Chapter in 'Has the Last Word Been Said on Classical Electrodynamics?' Rinton Press book; confirmed by an Academia.edu snippet and ref. 40 of viXra 1512.0297; not retrieved
c.2006Gerhard Bruhn's 'Remark' on my scalar field theory is wrong (reply to Bruhn) Author's comments interleaved in red in Bruhn's text; Wayback capture 2006-04-23; 'S is introduced not for mathematical reasons ... for describing new effects'
2015-01Classical Electrodynamics in agreement with Newton's third law of motion 25 pp, viXra 1505.0132; longitudinal Ampere force J B_l, three waves (a >> c, b = c, c), 4/3 problem, far-field claim, Section 5 experiments review; pp.1-21 deep-read, pp.22-25 digest only
2015-12-11General Classical Electrodynamics, a New Foundation of Modern Physics and Technology viXra 1512.0297, 31 pp, Institute for Basic Research; 'Coulomb premise' a >> c, b = c; energy conversion 'in the footsteps of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Henry Moray'; p.1 read
2016General Classical Electrodynamics Universal Journal of Physics and Application 10(4):128-140, HRPUB (author-pays), DOI 10.13189/ujpa.2016.100404; Ethergy B.V. Research, Alkmaar; Whittaker reciprocal force law; abstract and Section 4 experiments list read
2018-04General Classical Electrodynamics, part two ResearchGate preprint on the energy density of sources; abstract snippet only; full text not retrieved
2023-10-11Scalar field theory and technologies (SEM2023 lecture, Prague) and Q&A YouTube, channel NAMI-Tech, 48.6 min plus about 21 min Q&A; description mentions Moray's radiant energy source and devices converting the scalar field into electricity; not watched or transcribed
Patents and patent office (6)
1901-11-05Tesla US 685,953, Method of Intensifying and Utilizing Effects Transmitted Through Natural Media Printed as 1905 in the 2003 paper; grant date 5 Nov 1901 web-checked by the arbiter
2016-04-05US 9,306,527 B1, Systems, apparatuses, and methods for generating and/or utilizing scalar-longitudinal waves Inventor L.M. Hively, assignee Gradient Dynamics LLC, filed 2015-05-29; antennas for the same longitudinal wave; does not cite van Vlaenderen; page metadata and abstract read· Patent holder's characterization of what the device does
2026-10-04Google Patents search, inventor 'vlaenderen' No patents by the author; one unrelated 1980 German patent
unknownTesla US 512,340 Cited in the 2003 paper's references as support for longitudinal waves; date not in the review files
unknownTesla US 568,176 Cited in the 2003 paper's references; date not in the review files
unknownTesla US 685,012 Cited in the 2003 paper's references; date not in the review files
Company and business records (1)
2026-10-04Ethergy B.V. register entry OpenCorporates mirror of KvK 59508701, active B.V., head office Amsterdam; the papers give Ethergy B.V. Research, Hobbemalaan 10, Alkmaar; identity not confirmed; officers and filings not seen
Witness accounts and correspondence (3)
1979Harvey Fletcher affidavit on T.H. Moray's radiant energy device Cited by the author (2015 ref 9; 2016 ref 36, thmoray.org/images/affidavit.pdf) as confirming the device 'functioned as claimed'; host unreachable; text not obtained· Hosted by Moray's family and supporters
c.2005-10G.W. Bruhn, On Koen van Vlaenderen's Seventh Field Component Again TU Darmstadt web page; modified sources conserve charge iff S solves the homogeneous wave equation (same as 2003 eq. 24); 'Maybe that some reasons can be found for the validity of condition (II)'; saved copy read· Critic of the theory
unknownG.W. Bruhn, A Remark on van Vlaenderen's Seventh Field Component TU Darmstadt web page; S is 'completely superfluous' in standard theory and the 'Tesla' results are not correct; saved copy read· Critic of the theory
Experiments and replications by others (26)
1926T.H. Moray, radiant energy receiver Cited (2016 ref 35) for a 'Phi photoelectric effect'; 'kilo Watts of useful electricity, day and night', germanium cold-cathode tube, first stage at least 200,000 V, per the author; no calorimetry on record
c.1985Cavalleri et al., repeat of Graneau-Pappas Reported a conventional explanation; Physics Letters A listing (sciencedirect 0375960185905912); search summary only
1989Chernetsky hydrogen discharge tube Plekhanov Institute report per the contrarian; excess energy attributed by the author to the Phi photoelectric effect; no input/output figures; not read
1992R. Saumont, longitudinal force measurement Physics Letters A 165 (1992) 307-313; cited in the 2016 paper; not read
1996P.N. and A.N. Correa, abnormal glow discharge (PAGD) reports Labofex Scientific Report Series 1996; excess energy claims; not read· Inventors of the device
1996L. Johansson, longitudinal forces, Lund Institute of Technology Thesis-level study reporting longitudinal forces; web page via the contrarian (dflund.se); cited in the 2016 paper
c.1999G.F. Ignatiev and V.A. Leus, On a superluminal transmission at the phase velocities Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk; 2.5 km wavelength, 0.5 km fibre reference, 1.12c across terrain and season; 2-pp text from the author's site read; 2003 paper adds 'transmitted energy was unusually high'; Nova Science 1999 chapter not found
2000Tzontchev, Chubykalo and Rivera-Juarez, Coulomb interaction speed Hadronic Journal 23 (2000); speed about c; apparatus not described in the author's text; not read
2001Woods et al., Podkletnov gravity-impulse replication attempt Null with a note that many conditions were not met; search summary only
2002-08-15C. Monstein and J.P. Wesley, Observation of scalar longitudinal electrodynamic waves Europhysics Letters 59(4):514-520; ball-antenna longitudinal polarisation; subject of the author's priority claim; not read
2003Hathaway et al., superconducting gravity-impulse null No weight change to 0.001%, with the disk turned mechanically at lower speed; tested the weight effect, not the 64c timing; search summary only
2004J.R. Bray and M.C. Britton, Comment on Monstein-Wesley Europhysics Letters (2004); title only
2004Monstein and Wesley, Remarks to the Comment by Bray and Britton Europhysics Letters 66(1):155-156; title only
2007Caprez, Barwick and Batelaan, absence of Aharonov-Bohm time delays Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 210401; no force-type delays; the author calls the null 'premature'; abstract web-checked
2008K. Rebilas, On the origin of 'longitudinal electrodynamic waves' Proposes ground plasma currents for the Monstein-Wesley result; title only
2012-11de Sangro, Finocchiaro, Patteri, Piccolo and Pizzella, Measuring propagation speed of Coulomb fields arXiv:1211.2913, EPJ C 75:137 (2015); field 'rigidly carried by the beam'; cited by the author for a >> c; abstract read
2013Wang et al. (2013); Nimtz and Stahlhofen, evanescent-field superluminal results Cited in the 2016 paper as superluminal Coulomb near fields; not read
2013Butterworth, Allison, Cavazos and Mullen, The Monstein-Wesley Experiment Reconstructed J. Scientific Exploration 27(1):13-23; duplicate apparatus; pattern 'resemble[s] MW's theoretical pattern more closely than did their own experiment'; 'a yet-unidentified mechanism'; abstract read
2019-03L.M. Hively and A.S. Loebl, Classical and extended electrodynamics Physics Essays 32(1):112-126; primary report of preliminary tests with propagation 'through thousands of skin-depths of solid copper'; paywalled· Hively holds US 9,306,527
unknownAmpere's hairpin experiment and the Ampere, Gauss and Weber force experiments Cited for the longitudinal Ampere force and, per the 2015 paper p.16, as open-circuit experiments; no sources or numbers given; conventional account (Lorentz force plus diverging currents) also on record
unknownGraneau and Graneau-Pappas exploding-wire and hairpin experiments Cited for longitudinal forces; strong mercury jets reported with the hairpin blocked; not read
unknownNasilowski, exploding-wire striations Cited in the 2003 paper (pressure 'substantially greater than the pinch pressure'); no numbers; not read
unknownT.E. Phipps Jr., Observations of the Marinov motor Apeiron 5(3); the 2016 paper says the motor 'works as claimed'; not read
unknownE. Podkletnov and G. Modanese, impulse gravity generator, at least 64c Up to 2 million volt discharge from a superconducting electrode; 63 +/- 1 ns trigger difference; claimant's own timing; not read
unknownPublished replies to de Sangro et al. Argue the data show the Lienard-Wiechert field; search summaries only
unknownNekrasov, Strebkov and Avramenko, single-wire resonant energy transmission 2015 ref 6; 'very efficient', no figures; author's discriminator: ground return means TEM, none means LEM; not applied; not read
Related theory by others (23)
1994Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff, inertia from the zero-point field Phys. Rev. A 49, 678; cited by the 1999 paper as the ZPF mass model
1996W.A. Hofer, Beyond Uncertainty (Material Wave Theory) quant-ph/9611009; the 1999 paper builds on it
1999V. Petkov, mass of a charge as its electrostatic energy physics/9909019; cited by the 1999 paper
2002J.D. Jackson, From Lorenz to Coulomb and other explicit gauge transformations Am. J. Phys. 70, 917-928; fields are the same in any gauge; bears on the far-field claim; abstract only
2004C.H. Thompson, The phi-wave aether Rinton Press 2004; cited in the 2015 conclusions and viXra 1512.0297
2004G. Nikolaev (Tomsk), scalar magnetic field and induction law Named B_l the 'scalar magnetic field'; his account of the Aharonov-Bohm effect is adopted; cited in 2015 and 2016 papers
2009A.I. Arbab and Z.A. Satti, On the generalized Maxwell equations and their prediction of electroscalar wave Progress in Physics; says the author's eq. (35) becomes identical to their eq. (43); snippet only
2011A.I. Arbab, The analogy between matter and electromagnetic waves EPL; cites the 2001 paper
2012L.M. Hively and G.C. Giakos, Toward a more complete electrodynamic theory Int. J. Signal and Imaging Systems Engineering
2016V.M. Simulik, Longitudinal electromagnetic waves in the framework of standard classical electrodynamics arXiv:1606.01738; discusses van Vlaenderen and Waser
2017A.I. Arbab, Extended electrodynamics and its consequences; Quantized Maxwell's equations Mod. Phys. Lett. B 2017; Optik 2017; claims to explain the scalar function in van Vlaenderen
2017G. Modanese, Generalized Maxwell equations and charge conservation censorship; Time in quantum mechanics and local non-conservation of the probability current Mod. Phys. Lett. B 2017; Mathematics 2018
2019E.I. Nefyodov and S. Smolskiy, Electromagnetic fields and waves Springer textbook chapter citing the 2001 paper
2020D. Reed and L.M. Hively, Implications of gauge-free extended electrodynamics Symmetry 12:2110; same scalar field, J.C force and rho C power term; cites 'van Vlaederen' 2001-2003; read in Chrome· Hively holds US 9,306,527
2021Minotti and Modanese, earlier extended-electrodynamics papers Symmetry 2021 (current discontinuities in molecular devices); Quantum Reports 2021 (energy flux); titles only
2023F. Minotti and G. Modanese, Gauge waves generation and detection in Aharonov-Bohm electrodynamics Eur. Phys. J. C 83:1086, arXiv:2310.13968; S physical, sourced by non-conserved currents; cites van Vlaenderen and Waser 2001; reference list and abstract read
2023Minotti and Modanese, A scalar e.m. field cannot cause dissipation in a medium Symmetry 2023; title only
2024F. Minotti and G. Modanese, Simple circuit and experimental proposal for the detection of gauge-waves J. Phys. Commun. 8, 055003, arXiv:2403.10580; proposal only, no results; cites the 2001 paper
2025-12-15A.K. Tomilin and V.A. Panchelyuga, Longitudinal electromagnetic waves Metaphysics (RUDN, Moscow), Russian with English abstract; experiment review; cites the 2001 paper; abstract and reference list read
2026Minotti and Modanese, 2026 papers EPJ Plus 141, 788 (quantum collapse and local charge conservation); EPJ C 86, 593 (scalar-tensor gravity and superconductors); Fluctuations preprint; titles only
unknownMoyssides, Peoglos and Hillas, longitudinal-force papers Cited in the 2015 references; not read
unknownD.E. Rutherford, energy density correction (4/3 problem) Unrefereed web page (2015 ref 20); the 4/3 resolution needs its doubled self-energy; not read
unknownA. Waser, Nikola Tesla's Radiations and the Cosmic Rays Cited by the 2016 papers; not read
Later accounts and media (3)
c.2014Moray and Fletcher material on the web rexresearch Moray page; 'The Sea of Energy' 5th ed. (lists a 1927 affidavit); J.E. Dalton 2014 PDF with a 'Harvey Fletcher Affidavit' section; search results only
2026-10-04Google legal-removal notice on a Moray/Fletcher query Two results removed after a legal request (LumenDatabase); removed items unknown; recorded, not interpreted
2026-10-04Google Scholar citing list of the 2001 paper 99 citations; first page of 99 read; citing authors include Arbab, Simulik, Hively, Modanese, Minotti, Nefyodov
Records named but not yet examined (5)
unknownKvK extract and filed annual accounts of Ethergy B.V. Founding date, SBI activity code, Alkmaar link; would decide the absence-of-evidence question
unknownEspacenet and WIPO filings with applicant Ethergy or inventor van Vlaenderen Not reached in the time limit
unknownarXiv moderation correspondence, referee reports and submission histories after 2003 Would show why publication moved to viXra and HRPUB; none on record
unknownLagrangian behind the 2003 power and force theorems (33)-(34) Named by the arbiter as a paper-only check the author could supply; matter-side equation of motion not written
Left out: the review's own AI-written analyses, duplicate copies (PhilArchive, Academia.edu, the Wayback W. Heitler textbook excerpt), the author's ResearchGate profile, and unrelated namesakes (a Belgian chess player and company co-founder). Full catalogue: van Vlaenederen Koen sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Build the Minotti-Modanese gauge-wave circuit, or repeat the Hively-Loebl copper test independently with a closed grounded shield, a distance scan and a stated null; and repeat Monstein-Wesley beyond lambda/(2 pi) with isolated battery receivers and ground-current controls.
Deciding records: Hively-Loebl 2019 test report; Monstein-Wesley 2002 with the Bray-Britton comment and Rebilas 2008; the full 2001 Hadronic Journal scan; the Fletcher affidavit; Rutherford's energy density correction; the SEM2023 lecture and Q&A; the Ethergy B.V. KvK extract and any Espacenet filings.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: two 1 A m current elements 0.1 m apart give a 1e-5 N Grassmann imbalance, balanced either by the author's J B_l push or by field momentum; Part D shows a 231 N Coulomb force that swamps it in a real open circuit.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The static-charge power term is a covariant four-force; energy closes only if the charge's rest mass changes at dm/dtau = qS. The paper never says where the energy goes and gives no magnitude for S. arbiter.md section 8.2
Contrarian All parties agree on the condition: S needs non-conserved sources. The claim and its critics agree on the mathematics and disagree about whether nature ever supplies the source. contrarian.md section 3
Physicist The extended equations are a genuinely different theory, not a reinterpretation, and such theories exist in the mainstream literature. The question is empirical: does nature contain a free S field? So far nothing has detected one. physicist.md section 0
Arbiter Monstein-Wesley is the cleanest anomaly in the file: sceptics found the pattern, rejected both explanations, and said 'a yet-unidentified mechanism'. It does not test an S wave. arbiter.md section 3, claim 2
Investigator Ethergy B.V. (KvK 59508701, active) is the author's R&D affiliation, yet no patents, products or papers were found, while his 2023 lecture discusses devices converting the scalar field into electricity. KvK filings and Espacenet would decide. sites.md, Leads for review, historical record
AI noteThe author's own 2001 preprint already states that a single point charge cannot be a source of S, the same condition his critic Bruhn later pressed as an objection.
Rank 25Aspden-Hearld
down from 24A - UntestedB - Open questionD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-05 11:41
Maxwell admitted the force between two moving charges is not fixed by experiment; Aspden filled the gap with a mass-ratio term nobody has ever tested directly.
Invention / theory background
Harold Aspden (Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge) argued from 1960 to a 2005 essay that Maxwell's undetermined term in the force between moving charges carries the ratio of their masses, giving heavy ions an unbalanced push paid for by a vacuum lattice aether. His self-published Physics Unified (c.1980) builds gravity, Mercury's perihelion, alpha, particle masses and the 2.7 K background on that lattice. Paulo and Alexandra Correa cited his 1969 paper in three plasma-discharge patents.
Ranking explanation
Rank 12 for criteria A, B and D. Like van Vlaenderen (11), Aspden's core is a precise, never-tested addition to electrodynamics, and its plasma consequence is open at second order; his influence through the Correa device is wide. He sits below 11 because much of his numerical programme has since been tested and failed, and the record shows neglect rather than resistance. He sits above Bearden (13), whose headline claim is refuted by calculation. Interest is not proof.
Key supporting elements
Maxwell's own Treatise says closed-circuit experiments leave the force between single moving charges undetermined. Aspden's extra term integrates to zero around any closed loop, so no circuit experiment rules it out (arbiter: Established).
Ions hotter than electrons are real: Roth's bumpy torus per the essay, beam-heated plasmas and coronal holes. Coronal heating is not fully settled in mainstream physics (arbiter, [memory, medium]).
Sethian, Hammer and Wharton (Phys. Rev. Lett. 1978) measured electron-ion energy transfer 1000 times faster than classical and themselves suggested, without particular justification, the ion/electron mass ratio, the size of Aspden's factor.
Most of the arithmetic recomputes as printed (alpha 137.035915, m_p/m_e 1836.15232, G, 2.56 K, deuteron, pion, muon g). The revised alpha 137.035953 sat 0.7 standard uncertainties from the 1979 Williams-Olsen measurement.
His plasma papers passed refereed journals (J. Franklin Inst. 1969, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci. 1977 and 1986, Phys. Lett. A 1985). His explicit CMB formula predicts a solar-system gradient and a 0.08 K annual swing nobody has checked.
Key contradictions
The essay's case for net ion heating fails at first order: the extra force on a near-static ion is the time derivative of 1/r, so a complete electron flyby gives exactly zero impulse (mathematician, arbiter, example.py).
The corona 'factor of 160' is 1,000,000 K divided by the 6,000 K photosphere, two places, not ions against electrons; and the million degrees itself comes from iron lines excited by electron collisions.
Solar pp-chain and CNO neutrinos (Borexino 2020) identify the fusion reactions directly, against the essay's 'I am sure it is not'. Sethian's abstract reports electron cooling and ion heating at constant total energy, not a net gain.
Alpha 137.035915 is about 3,800 standard uncertainties from CODATA 2022 (137.035953: about 2,100). Each particle match uses 3 to 5 choices made with the target known, and every one stayed with its pre-1980 value as measurements moved.
Mercury's perihelion is matched only by picking the distribution that agrees with general relativity (n = 0 gives 28.7 arcsec per century). The same CMB formula with the Galaxy's potential gives 270-450 K, not 2.7 K.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 57 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Closed-circuit experiments cannot fix the isolated-charge force term
Establishedhistorical, Maxwell's own remark
The force law with the -(M/m)(v.r)V term is the true law for isolated charges
Never properly testedthe law itself; tension with beam data unsourcedInternally inconsistentthe derivation as a proof of uniqueness
The extra term makes plasma ions hotter than electrons
Never properly testedthe mechanism, never quantifiedRefuted by calculationthe essay's four-case argument, first orderInternally inconsistentcorona factor of 160
The sun is not powered by fusion
Tested, not supportedsolar neutrino detection
Lattice aether as preferred frame and energy source for the Correa device
Never properly testedCorrea excess power, no neutral calorimetryNot testable as statedpreferred frame, null by constructionTested, not supportedRydberg factor 2 - gamma, [memory, medium]
Gravity from lattice electrodynamics: Mercury's perihelion, G and a 2.587 GeV graviton
Internally inconsistentperihelion and parameter-free GTested, not supportedG 0.1 percent low; graviton not foundNot testable as statedthe mechanism
Alpha, m_p/m_e and particle masses follow from lattice geometry with no free parameters
Tested, not supportedat modern precisionHistorically superseded but instructivec.1980 agreementInternally inconsistentno free parameters
The 2.7 K background is a local lattice temperature set by gravitational potential
Refuted by calculationstated form, Galaxy's potentialNever properly testedsolar-system gradient and annual swing
Author of the force law, the vacuum lattice theory, Physics Unified and the 2005 plasma essay
Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge (book title page). The primer gives 1927-2011 and a long career as a patent manager at IBM UK, both from model recall (medium confidence, not web-checked). Self-published from 1960 (Sabberton, Southampton); refereed papers 1969-1986; wrote a 1996 report on the Correa invention.
Paulo and Alexandra Correa
Inventors of the pulsed plasma-discharge device that Aspden took as 'power from space'; the only uptake of his 1969 paper he names · Patent holders (US 5,416,391; 5,449,989; 5,502,354); excess-energy claims come from their own publications; their aetherometry.com site hosts the essay
Not in the review files beyond the patents and their Akronos/Labofex publications claiming excess energy (e.g. '483%' overall efficiency).
James Clerk Maxwell
Noted in his Treatise that closed-circuit data allow 'any value of Q', the undetermined term Aspden revived
Not in the review files beyond the Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (3rd edition) as quoted by Aspden.
J. D. Sethian (with D. A. Hammer and C. B. Wharton)
Measured anomalously fast electron-ion energy transfer, Aspden's chief quoted support
Not in the review files beyond Phys. Rev. Lett. 40, 451 (1978): beam-heated plasma, electrons cooling and ions heating 1000 times faster than classical, total perpendicular energy constant.
Peter and Neal Graneau
Exploding-wire and arc experiments Aspden cites as support
Not in the review files beyond their 1983 and 1985 papers. Kiloampere pulses break 1 mm copper wire into about 100 pieces; they credit Ampere longitudinal forces, others credit conventional forces. Ampere's law is not Aspden's law.
J. Reece Roth
Reported heavy ions hotter than electrons in a bumpy-torus plasma, cited by the essay
Not in the review files beyond IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci. PS-6 (June 1978), which was not obtained.
Paul Gerber
1898 retardation theory of Mercury's perihelion that Aspden says he completes
Not in the review files beyond a secondary web source: a fitted gravity speed of about 305,000 km/s, Seeliger's objection, and a 1917 republication arranged by Ernst Gehrcke in an anti-Einstein priority campaign, which the book omits.
E. W. Silvertooth
Laser aether-drift experimenter whose null result Aspden reports from private conversation
Not in the review files beyond the 1976 two-laser experiment (detectors 50 cm apart, 79 cycles expected at 30 km/s, no shift seen), told to Aspden and unpublished.
Evidence / artifacts (89 of 89 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (15)
1960The Theory of Gravitation H. Aspden, Sabberton, Southampton; first statement of the structured space medium and a lattice particle of 3.7e-29 g, 'firmly asserted' (book p.197)
1966The Theory of Gravitation, second edition Sabberton; introduces the 2.587 GeV G-frame particle deduced from G and hadron data (book p.197)
1969Physics without Einstein Named in facts.json as the book Physics Unified supersedes; that relation and the year are from model recall, low confidence
1969Paper in Journal of the Franklin Institute 287, 179 The revised force law and anomalous cathode reaction forces in the vacuum arc; the paper the Correa patents cite; the arbiter's first record to obtain
1975Paper with Eagles in Nuovo Cimento giving m_p/m_e = 1836.15232 Cited in the book (page image p.122-123)
1977Paper in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science PS-5, 159 Anomalous acceleration forces exerted by electrons on ions (essay)
1977Paper in International Journal of Theoretical Physics 16, 401 g-factor average relation (book p.146)
1978Paper in Speculations in Science and Technology 1, 59 Psi-particle work (book p.124)
1979Paper in Lettere al Nuovo Cimento 26, 257 Psi decay thresholds 3551, 3503, 3455, 3415, 3340 MeV; published after the psi discoveries (book p.128)
c.1980Physics Unified Sabberton, Southampton; 212-page scan, all pages OCR'd; deep-read pp.7-36, 54-80, 94-200 and 211 with equations checked on page images
1985Paper in Physics Letters A 111, 22 Discusses the Graneau experiments under the revised law (essay)
1986Paper in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science PS-14, 282 Cited in the essay
1996Power from Space: The Correa Invention 35-page report, Aspden's website www.aspden.org (essay)
2005-10-30A Problem in Plasma Science 2-page web essay; PDF is a 6/11/2019 printout from aetherometry.com; read in full
–Aspden article in Intercom Popular article cited in Chapter 9 of the book; date not given in the review files
Patents and patent office (3)
1995-05-16US 5,416,391 P. and A. Correa, plasma-discharge apparatus; cites Aspden 1969· Patent holders
1995-09-12US 5,449,989 Correa; Google Patents page linked by the arbiter; data not obtained· Patent holders
1996-03-26US 5,502,354 Correa; data not obtained· Patent holders
Experiments and replications by others (34)
1875Gore self-rotation experiment Refuted by Maxwell and Stokes; the book's basis for 'no self-torque' (p.12)
1887Michelson-Morley experiment Null result; the book's E-frame follows the laboratory so the null is automatic
1893Lodge rotating-disc experiment Null result read by Aspden as the E-frame not rotating
1903Trouton and Noble, charged-capacitor torque experiment Proc. Roy. Soc. 72, 132; cited for Maxwell's law over Lorentz's; special relativity also predicts the null, and eq. 14 predicts a larger couple for a real capacitor
1915Einstein-de Haas gyromagnetic effect Book p.46
1923Sucksmith and Bates gyromagnetic ratio Source of Aspden's k = 2; the factor is electron spin g = 2
1925Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment Earth-rotation Sagnac effect, which special relativity also computes
1930Kobel, cathode reaction forces in cold-cathode discharge Phys. Rev. 36, 1636; cited support for anomalous ion forces
1932Kennedy-Thorndike experiment Null, reproduced by the E-frame construction
1938Ives-Stilwell experiment Transverse Doppler; book pp.66-68
1958Townes et al. opposed-beam maser test 1.08 cps beat, 0.05 cps daily variation; by Aspden's own scaling this already limits his expected 0.3 km/s signal
1962Mandelberg and Witten, hydrogen Doppler test 0.498 +/- 0.025 at v/c < 0.01; tests only the beta^2 coefficient
1970Altschuler et al., ball lightning energy density Nature 228, 545; 2-5e9 J/m^3, against Aspden's 8e9 from a freely chosen speed
1972Jones, light through a rotating glass rod (Fresnel drag) Proc. Roy. Soc. A328, 337
1972Hafele-Keating flying clocks Book pp.189-191 says it should be repeated at different times of year; numbers not computed
1972Eagles and Burton computer check of lattice sum r/d = 0.302874 National Standards Laboratory (book pp.113-115); the sum depends on summation convention
1975Zinsser, 'Kinetobarische Effekte - ein neues Phanomen?' Umschau 5, 152; anomalous torque, cited with no description of the experiment
1975Taylor and Cohen value of alpha 137.03592 AMCO-5, Paris; book footnote p.119
1976Silvertooth two-laser experiment No phase shift seen; told to Aspden privately, unpublished (book p.65)
1976-08Fermilab report of a state at 2.250-2.270 GeV Matched Aspden's 2.260; known via Calder; may be Knapp et al., PRL 37, 882 (model recall, unverified); later fate unverified after two failed web checks
1977Apostolakis et al., resonance near 2.60 GeV Phys. Lett. 66B, 185; the candidate for Aspden's 2.587 GeV graviton
1977Rapidis et al., psi(3770) Discovered before Aspden's 1979 'prediction' of 3.772 GeV
1977-10Smoot, Gorenstein and Muller, U-2 microwave background anisotropy Phys. Rev. Lett. 39, 898; 390 +/- 60 km/s, which Aspden reads as aether drift and uses in Appendix III
1978van Apeldoorn et al., search for the 2.60 GeV state Phys. Lett. 72B, 487; failed to confirm it, as the book itself reports
1978Sethian, Hammer and Wharton, anomalous electron-ion energy transfer Phys. Rev. Lett. 40, 451; abstract checked on the web: faster equilibration, total energy constant
1978-06Roth, bumpy-torus plasma with ions hotter than electrons IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci. PS-6, No. 2
1979Williams and Olsen value of alpha 137.035963(15) Book footnote; 3.2 sigma from eq. 157, 0.7 sigma from the Appendix III revision
1979Perl, tau lepton at 1.785 GeV New Scientist; compared with Aspden's 1782 MeV
1983P. and P. N. Graneau, wire-rupture experiments Phys. Lett. 97A, 253
1985P. and P. N. Graneau, exploding-arc experiments Appl. Phys. Lett. 46, 468; the fragmentation is real, its cause contested
–Sagnac experiment Discussed in Chapter 3 with Michelson-Morley
–Champeney, Isaak and Khan, Moessbauer rotor Proposed by Ruderfer; null reproduced by nested E-frames (book p.64)
–Snyder and Hall, neon Doppler test 0.502 +/- 0.003; cannot separate Aspden's factor from special relativity
–Pound-Rebka gravitational redshift Book p.190, explained by atom-lattice energy exchange
Theory and literature the book relies on (16)
1873Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism Vol. 2, the undetermined term Q; quoted on book p.12 (checked by the arbiter)
1893Heaviside's advice on the spatial distribution of interaction energy Cited on book p.35-36
1898Gerber, 'Die raeumliche und zeitliche Ausbreitung der Gravitation' Zeitschrift f. Math. u. Phys. 43, 93
1917Gerber republication and Seeliger-Oppenheim exchange Ann. d. Phys. 52, 415; 53, 31 and 163; 54, 38; arranged by Gehrcke (web, secondary)
1951Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity Source of Aspden's vector notation (essay)
1960Vonnegut on tornado energy J. Geophys. Res. 65, 203; a speculation quoted as corroboration
1963Ritchie on ball lightning Book p.197
1966Phillips, 'Is the Graviton a Goldstone Boson?' Cited as support (book p.198)
1967Steiner on geological and galactic periodicities J. Geol. Soc. Australia 14, 99; also Geology 1973
1970Brillouin, Relativity Reexamined Speed of gravity and mass of interaction energy
1970Bailey and Picasso, a 3.8 GeV 'leptonic boson' for muon g-2 Cited as encouragement (book p.198)
1974MacGregor quark mass fit Aspden's printed 336.9 MeV equals this fit, not his own equations
1975Koshiba, 'Does Hadronic Ether Exist?' Cited as support (book p.198)
1977Calder, The Key to the Universe BBC popular book, p.122; source for the 2.260 GeV report
1978Bardeen and Tye, a light Higgs near 50 keV Cited as support (book p.198)
1978Matsuki, Higgs scalar effects on gravity Cited as support (book p.198)
Later accounts and media (7)
–Correa publications on aetherometry.com Excess-energy claims for the pulsed abnormal glow discharge (PAGD) device, e.g. '483%' overall efficiency (contrarian, web)· Inventors and patent holders
–Rex Research Correa page rexresearch.com/correa; proponent compilation cited by physicist, arbiter and primer
–aetherscience.org Energy Science Report 8 page Cited by physicist and arbiter as a Correa source; whether it is Aspden's 1996 report is not established in the review files
–Eugene Mallove web page on the Correa work eugenemallove.com, cited by the arbiter
–Enthusiast forum discussions of informal Correa verification and non-verification attempts Found by the arbiter's search; disputed, not peer reviewed
1985Physics Letters A article in the Graneau wire-fragmentation debate ScienceDirect 0375960185905912; seen as abstract and search summary only; authorship not stated in the review files
–Wikipedia, Paul Gerber Secondary source for Gerber's fit, Seeliger and Einstein critiques, Roseveare on light deflection, Gehrcke's role
Tests by others used in the verdicts (11)
1977Schwinberg and Dehmelt, Penning-trap electron g-factor Aspden's series about 23 sigma off it (model recall, medium)
1977CERN muon g-2 result Aspden's muon g already about 4.7 sigma below it (model recall, medium; web check failed)
2003Saathoff et al., stored-ion Ives-Stilwell test Li+ at beta = 0.064, a few parts in 1e7; excludes the Rydberg factor 2 - gamma (model recall, medium)
2007Reinhardt et al., stored-ion time-dilation test Model recall, medium; web check failed
2018Gaia local escape speed estimates 445-580 km/s (arXiv 1807.04565 and ApJ ac4244); gives the 270-450 K Galactic term
2020Borexino detection of CNO-cycle solar neutrinos Nature 587, 577
2021CMB temperature-redshift T(z) compilation arXiv 2106.00119; beta consistent with zero
2022MICROSCOPE final equivalence-principle result arXiv 2209.15487; about 1e-15
2022CODATA 2022 constants (alpha, m_p/m_e, G) NIST web pages
–Geomagnetic polarity timescale About 183 reversals in 83 million years, irregular, Cretaceous superchron; last reversal about 780,000 years (Wikipedia via deep read)
Records named but not yet examined (3)
1976University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center Silvertooth-type experiment 'Under way' per the book (p.65); outcome unknown
–Existing beam-ion and ion-trap force measurements The arbiter's cheap test of claim 1: any measured force along the ion's velocity of size (M/m)vV/c^2 times Coulomb
–FIRAS, WMAP and Planck monopole data fitted for a solar-distance or annual signal Would test the 0.08 K peak-to-peak swing of eq. 230
Left out: earlier AI-written reviews, the book's popular and newspaper sources in Chapter 9 (Markert, Hill, Stoneley, The Times), and standard textbooks named in the primer. Full catalogue: Aspden-Hearld sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Measure the force between isolated charges of very different mass, such as an electron beam passing a trapped ion, looking for a force along the ion's track of size (M/m)vV/c^2 times Coulomb. Separately, run blind neutral-lab calorimetry of a Correa discharge device with true input and output power.
Deciding records: Aspden, J. Franklin Inst. 287, 179 (1969) and his 1977, 1985 and 1986 plasma papers; Kobel 1930; Graneau 1983 and 1985; Roth 1978; the data behind the three Correa patents; Aspden's 1996 report Power from Space; the fate of the 1976 Fermilab 2.26 GeV report.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: one electron flying past a proton gives zero net energy at first order; the Sun and Earth potential gives T = 2.56 K but adding the Galaxy gives 267-453 K; alpha swings from 137.06 to 137.01 between integers 1841 and 1845. Then test Aspden's Earth magnetic-moment formula on Jupiter.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter No source on file shows any claim was dismissed without a test. Aspden says his papers were ignored, though they appeared in refereed journals. Neglect, not documented suppression, is what the sources support; no funding block, retraction or data omission is documented. arbiter.md, The contrarian's distinctions, Dismissed without testing
Contrarian Strongest honest case: closed-circuit data leave a gap (Maxwell said so), the Ampere-versus-Lorentz question for longitudinal forces in metals is not entirely closed, and the Graneau fragmentation is real. A momentum-carrying medium is not absurd; Maxwell's own field momentum works that way. contrarian.md, Claim 1, Strongest honest case
Physicist Sethian, Hammer and Wharton saw electrons cool and ions heat with total perpendicular energy constant: faster equilibration, not ions gaining net energy from outside. That is weak or no support for an unbalanced force pumping ion energy. physicist.md, Corrections to Step 1, item 4
Arbiter Every particle comparison value predates the book, and wherever the measurement later moved, Aspden's number stayed with the old value. That pattern is what fitting produces. Yet much of the arithmetic reproduces exactly: the freedom, not the algebra, fails. arbiter.md, QE revision Q3
Primer Genuinely open: does Aspden's term give a net ion energy gain at second order or with correlated motion in a current-carrying discharge? Nobody has done the kinetic calculation; a Monte Carlo of many encounters is a good project. primer.md, section 7, Genuinely open
AI noteThe book's revised alpha (Appendix III) depends on the lattice's speed through space, so the model implies an annual change in alpha of about 0.02 ppm as Earth orbits. The book never states it and nobody has checked it.
Rank 26Meyl-Konstantin
down from 25B - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 11:00
A Furtwangen engineering professor says Maxwell dropped a term, yielding faster-than-light 'scalar waves', neutrino power and a growing Earth; his table-top Tesla kit and numbers are checkable at home.
Invention / theory background
Konstantin Meyl (born 1952; Dr.-Ing. Stuttgart 1984 on eddy-current couplings; professor of power electronics at Furtwangen 1986-2018) keeps a 'potential vortex' term he says Maxwell's equations leave out. From it he derives longitudinal 'scalar waves' up to 1.618 c, equates them with Tesla's radiations and with neutrinos, and claims over-unity from a two-coil kit his firm INDEL sells, Earth growth by neutrino absorption, particle masses from vortex shells, and medical uses. Books and papers 1990-2016.
Ranking explanation
Strong on influence (D): the textbook, the kit and 'Neutrinopower' shaped the German-speaking scalar-wave scene. Strong on C: the kit, the 490% power record and the Earth-growth arithmetic can be checked at home. Open questions (B) remain: no cage measurement, no direct speed measurement, no full-scale Tesla transmitter. It sits beside van Vlaenderen and Aspden but below them: its derivation is internally inconsistent and its over-unity tested and not supported. Above Ives, whose core result is mainstream.
Key supporting elements
The kit effects are real: the IGF reproduced the receiver LEDs lighting and the transmitter 'feedback' before explaining them, and Meyl's granted patent DE10348862B4 describes a working resonant capacitive link carrying energy and data.
The algebra from Meyl's extended laws to his 'fundamental field equation' is correct; a magnetic-current term is a legitimate formal extension, and his rule that a speed needs two measured quantities (wavelength and frequency) is sound.
He made falsifiable predictions: a proton-radius ratio of 0.948 (2014) matching the muonic puzzle in size before the 2019 data, and dated eclipse forecasts; on his named day, 4.4.2006, an M5.5 quake struck off Zakynthos.
Nobody has built Tesla's full-scale magnifying transmitter; the IGF itself wrote that Tesla's experiments 'have not yet been exactly replicated', and neither side published a Faraday-cage measurement or a wire-removed control.
Meyl reports his own negative results plainly: 1990 capacitor-Q differences that 'drowned in the mean variation', a 3 kW magnetic converter his lab could not reproduce, failed Moebius-winding rebuilds, three inventors he told had 'measured wrong'.
Key contradictions
Combined, Meyl's starting equations E = v x B and H = -v x D hold only for v = c, as his book itself prints; his 1.618 c needs an inward-moving profile (outward gives 0.618 c).
The only worked over-unity record (December 1999): 49 mW out for 233 mW in, 21%; '490%' is 49/(233-223), and at power factor 0.055 just 56 ps of probe skew equals the 10 mW.
With LEDs removed and a low-harmonic oscillator the IGF found Meyl's effects 'no longer exist'; his own manual says unplugging the cable puts the receiver LEDs out, and his patent says a return line 'is required'.
Earth growth of 18 cm/yr needs 2.3e26 W, 60% of the Sun's output and about 6.6e10 times the whole solar neutrino flux's energy; space geodesy measures 0.1 +/- 0.2 mm/yr radius change against his 28.7 mm/yr.
Dated forecasts failed at the named places (no quake excess after 11.8.1999, nothing at Crete in 2006 or South Carolina in 2017, day-length changes of the wrong sign); his particle model gives a neutron-proton mass excess 39 times too large.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 61 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Maxwell's equations are an approximation; the potential-vortex term b = B/tau2
Internally inconsistentderivation from E = v x B and H = -v x DRefuted by calculationshort tau2 acting in vacuumTested, not supporteddiv B not zero in ordinary dielectricsNot testable as statedlong or unspecified tau2 in matter
Potential vortices explain noise and capacitor losses
Refuted by calculationcomplex c and noise-match argumentsNever properly testedloss as vortex decay; Meyl's 1990 Q test; Kirlian and microwave runsTested, not supportedcapacitor circles as proof (electrode corrosion)Not testable as statedcharge amplifier 'E not a gradient field'
Longitudinal scalar waves of variable speed, stability limit 1.618 c
Internally inconsistentderivation of 1.618 c and the antenna ruleTested, not supportedsource-free longitudinal wave in vacuum; neutrinos above c (SN 1987A)Never properly testedthe same at Tesla's full scaleEstablishedlongitudinal waves in matter and radial near fields (not Meyl-specific)
The two-coil kit shows scalar-wave effects
Establishedtransfer and feedback as resonant circuit effects with a conducting returnTested, not supportedscalar interpretation; 500-1000% over-unity (490% record within probe-skew noise)Refuted by calculation1.5 c as inferred from a frequency ratioNever properly testedFaraday cage; direct speed; flat versus cylindrical coils; Tesla's full-scale apparatus
Neutrinopower: neutrinos as vortices, harvested, and making the Earth grow
Refuted by calculationEarth growth 18-19 cm/yr; harvesting at standard couplingTested, not supportedEarth growth (space geodesy); superluminal neutrinosNot testable as statedresonantly enhanced coupling and 'Tesla radiation = neutrinos'Historically superseded but instructiveHilgenberg-Carey Earth expansion
Eclipse neutrino lens, dated forecasts and relayed free-energy devices
Refuted by calculationeclipse lens against Meyl's own refraction mechanism; railgun '399 GJ' energy budgetTested, not supporteddated eclipse, earthquake and day-length forecasts 1999-2017 at the named placesNever properly testedZhou eclipse-clock reports; relayed devices (no per-device verdict)Not testable as statedafter-the-fact links (Montserrat, pendulum); galaxy 'resonating interaction'; slow-neutrino premise
Theory of objectivity: fields set lengths and c; particle masses; Schroedinger
Internally inconsistentlengths and c; Moon factor 36; Schroedinger derivationTested, not supportedbeam fields; particle masses; 2014 proton-radius prediction; proton moment, neutron = proton + electron, anti-sunsRefuted by calculationHafele-Keating as supportNot testable as statedgravitation as closed field lines; length law from inside a laboratory (Meyl's own words); no strong interaction
Scalar waves as biological carrier; electrosmog; vibration medicine
Inventor and author of the theory · Sells the kits, books and devices through INDEL GmbH; adviser to egm
Born 1952 in Lemgo; Dr.-Ing., Universitaet Stuttgart 1984 (eddy-current couplings); professor of power electronics at FH Furtwangen from 1986, retired 2018; head of the 1st TZS transfer centre, St. Georgen; earlier patents on regulators, eddy-current drives and converters.
Johannes von Buttlar
Interviewer and co-author of Neutrino Power (2000) · Co-promoter; the publisher also runs the Magazin 2000plus congress
Sympathetic popular-science author (publisher's blurb: 'more than 28 million' books sold); named Annalen der Physik as the journal that rejected Meyl's 1990 paper. Further background not in the review files.
Herbert Weidner
Tester of the kit (IGF Waldaschaff)
Co-author of the six-author IGF report (Sept 2001) and sole author of the companion analysis of 10 Aug 2001, which found the effects vanish with LEDs removed; thanks the Goede foundation for the kit and instruments. Further background not in the review files.
Gerhard W. Bruhn
Principal critic · Organised critic (GWUP member)
Mathematician, TU Darmstadt; wrote the critique printed beside Meyl's JSE 2001 paper, arguing the basic equations give only transverse waves at |v| = c; documented the dean's statement, the Runckel opinion and the 2004 withdrawal notice.
Robert Hoenl
Dean of Meyl's faculty at Furtwangen · The university's reputation
Dean of CEE at FH Furtwangen; in CoMed 12/2002 said the topics were excluded from teaching and independent opinions on the kit were negative in Meyl's sense (quoted by Bruhn).
Hans-J. Runckel
The one named academic supporter
Professor of financial mathematics, Universitaet Ulm; wrote an opinion on Meyl's equations (Nov 2003) after Meyl's dean asked for names; Meyl lists him as an adviser; text known only through Bruhn's rebuttal.
Gao Peng
Independent builder reporting a positive result
Laboratory of Beijing Wellan Century Co.; viXra 1607.0130 (2016): torsion-balance deflection near a 45 W dual Tesla coil, resonances 2.65 and 4.17 MHz, on/off controls only.
F. Gollnick and G. Conrad
Tested the mobile-phone blood-rouleaux demonstration · Published by the FGF, an industry- and ministry-linked association
Physiological Institute, University of Bonn; repeated the live-blood demonstration in their laboratory and found rouleaux independent of a phone call (FGF Newsletter April 2000). Further background not in the review files.
Evidence / artifacts (139 of 145 listed, 96%)
Own works and inventions (41)
1984Dreidimensionale nichtlineare Berechnung von Wirbelstromkupplungen (doctoral thesis) Universitaet Stuttgart; eddy-current couplings, the root of the potential vortex as the dual of the eddy current; named by de.wikipedia
1990Potentialwirbel, Band 1 (1990) and Band 2 (1992) INDEL, ISBN 3-9802542-1-6 and 3-9802542-2-4; Band 2 cited in the 1996 patent for the electron vortex model· Meyl sells the kit, books and devices (INDEL GmbH)
1995Meyl, article in EMC Journal 1 (1995) pp.56-59 named in the folder documents; not obtained
c.1997Elektrosmog, die physikalischen Grundlagen 11 pp, condenses the 1996 'Elektromagnetische Umweltvertraeglichkeit' Part 1; grad div versus rot rot split; Kelvin 1897 visit; Tesla US 787,412; digest only
c.1997Teslas Radiations und Kelvins Ringwirbel aus Sicht der modernen Neutrinoforschung 1. TZS St. Georgen, 13 pp, after June 1997; no equations; neutrino as ring vortex alternating electron/positron; deep-read
c.2002Objektivitaetstheorie, Beitrag 1: Der Aether und die Einsteinsche Fehlinterpretation 9 pp, undated (written 1997 or later; PDF 2002-02-25); E, H proportional to 1/l^2; sign error in E_z; glyph losses restored; deep-read with page images
c.2002Objektivitaetstheorie, Beitrag 2: Die Vereinigungstheorie 10 pp; c proportional to l; Moon lengths '36-fold' (own law gives 2.45); Apollo 15 features called Apollo 11; no constants derived; deep-read
2000Neutrino Power: Der experimentelle Nachweis der Raumenergie (interview book) J. von Buttlar with Meyl, Argo-Verlag, 302 pp; kit 'over 500%', Clausthal '1000%', failed 3 kW converter p.240, Annalen account pp.213-214, length law 'unmoeglich' to test p.193; deep-read in full· publisher and interviewer sell the book and congress
c.2000Teslastrahlung: Die drahtlose Uebertragung von Skalarwellen (lecture with demonstration) TZA Steinbeis, 15 pp; demonstrations Nov 1999 and Feb 2000, Technologiepark Villingen-Schwenningen; kit 1,100 DM; unnamed EMC laboratory 'confirmed' the cage· Meyl sells the kit, books and devices (INDEL GmbH)
c.2000Longitudinalwellen-Experiment nach Nikola Tesla 6-page lecture handout; five kit claims, over-unity 'approximately 10', 1.5 c from 7/4.7 MHz; deep-read with figure images
2000-06Scalar Wave Technology: Documentation for the Experimental Kit (German: Skalarwellentechnik und Dokumentation, ISBN 3-9802542-6-7) INDEL kit manual, 34 pp, experiments 21 June and 1 July 2000; prices 800, 1400 and SWG-A 3950 EUR; Experiment 2: unplug the cable and the receiver LEDs go out· Meyl sells the kit, books and devices (INDEL GmbH)
2001Scalar Waves: Theory and Experiments Journal of Scientific Exploration 15(2) pp.199-205 (SSE Amsterdam talk, Oct 2000), printed beside Bruhn's critique; five kit experiments, 500-1000%; deep-read
2001-04-29Skalarwellenstrahlung: Welche Bedeutung haben Skalarwellen fuer die Medizin? GNP lecture, Wiesbaden, 14 pp; nerve 60 kHz from 1 mm nodes; 'up to 500%'; 'over 50 universities' with four named and no results; deep-read
2001-06-23Fortschrittliche Konzepte zur drahtlosen Energieuebertragung INET/DVR conference lecture, Thurgauerhof, 16 pp; over-unity 'between 1 and 10'; earth lead off, oscillation stops; deep-read
2001-10-06Physikalisch-technische Aspekte komplementaermedizinischer Diagnose- und Therapieverfahren G.E.I.M. lecture, Kaiserslautern, 12 pp; zapper, bioresonance, Clark frequency therapy 'should not work' by present physics; digest only
2003Scalar Waves: first Tesla physics textbook for engineers (German: Elektromagnetische Umweltvertraeglichkeit Teil 1-3, 1996-2002) INDEL, 657 PDF pages; theory, relayed devices, ch.19 own experiments, ch.20 eclipse forecasts; deep-read except ch.1-4 and 6· Meyl sells the kit, books and devices (INDEL GmbH)
2003Faraday or Maxwell? Do scalar waves exist or not? 16-page translated extract of the 2003 book; shortest form of the derivation; deep-read with page images
2003-01Elektrische bzw. magnetische Skalarwellen im Kreuzfeuer der Kritik (CoMed 01/03 interview) Meyl answers H. Groesser; calls the IGF 'a questionable private institute'; unnamed 'hundreds of measurements' and professors; deep-read
2003-05-24Erdwachstum durch Neutrino-Absorption colloquium paper, Schloss Theuern (with TU Berlin); 18-19 cm/yr circumference growth from 0.71 s/yr of leap seconds; deep-read, arithmetic recomputed
2004Sendetechnik der Goetter (novel) INDEL, 3rd ed. 2004; neutrino telegraphy between Roman temples; Meyl later calls it historical science fiction
2004Neutrino power and the existence of scalar waves (Extra Ordinary Technology Conference, Salt Lake City) listed on rexresearch with a video link; not fetched
c.2005Kritik zur Erdexpansion and FAQ zu Erdexpansion 2 pp and 12 pp on k-meyl.de; 19.9 cm/yr from equatorial drift rates with subduction called 'a postulate'; tidal 1.7 ms/century set against 7.3 s/yr
2005-12-08Neutrinopower lecture, HAPAG-Lloyd house, Hamburg 2 pp from k-meyl.de; hosted by IVH (BDI) and Norddeutsche Affinerie; kit 'rebuilt' at etzs.de
2007Far Range Transponder (1st RFID Eurasia Conference, Istanbul) engineering form of the kit link; listed on rexresearch; not fetched
2009k-meyl.de FAQ answer: Clausthal '1000%' = 50 mW in, 500 mW out inventor's site, 2009 answer to a reader in Vienna; no measurer, date or report; cage failures blamed on leaks or tuning
2011DNA and Cell Resonance: Magnetic Waves Enable Cell Communication DNA and Cell Biology 31(4) 2012, with JCCS, PIERS Moscow 2012 and WMSCI 2012 versions (one work, four publications); retracted 2013 for duplicate publication
2012Wireless Power Transmission by Scalar Waves (PIERS Moscow 2012) proceedings PDF on k-meyl.de; listed on rexresearch; not fetched
2012About Vortex Physics and Vortex Losses Journal of Vortex Science and Technology 1, Ashdin, doi 10.4303/jvst/235563; div B not 0; Fig. 11 tan delta plot; deep-read with page images
–Documentation Volume 2 (reply to Eibert) Meyl says Eibert relied on a different Prof. Meyl (Stuttgart, later TU Muenchen); seen as a Scribd snippet only· Meyl sells the kit, books and devices (INDEL GmbH)
2013-08Consequences of the Extended Field Theory PIERS Stockholm 2013 pp.930-935; six textbook equations; vortex-loss curve only as a plot from the Treskatis thesis; Yializis photographs; deep-read
2013-08Wireless Power Transmission by Enlarging the Near Field (PIERS Stockholm 2013) found in a Google result list; not fetched
2013-09Medikamenten-Fernuebertragung (CoMed 09/2013) remote transfer of drug information, the article form of DE102014109660; on k-meyl.de; not fetched
2014Zur Berechnung des Protonenradius (NET-Journal 19, 11/12 2014) 2 pp on k-meyl.de; predicts muonic/electronic proton radius 0.9483; matched the 2010-13 puzzle in size, failed after PRad 2019
2015Plant growth and ATP papers (IJEE 2(1) 2015; BEM 2016 doi 10.15761/BEM.1000156) longitudinal magnetic waves said to raise plant ATP and slow ageing; listed on rexresearch; not fetched
2015Calculations Concerning the Variable Size of Protons and Other Nuclei (PIERS Prague 2015) pp.2436-2438; draft on k-meyl.de; not fetched
2015-08-25Earth Expansion by Neutrino-Power J Geol Geophys 4:5, 1000219 (OMICS); English version of the 2003 talk plus an Aristarchus year-length comparison; deep-read
2015-10-16Microcosm to Macrocosm Calculated with One Equation lecture, TU Epirus, Arta; listed on rexresearch; not fetched
2016-01-01The Transition from Far to Near Field calculated by Vortex Wireless Power Transmission Fluid Mechanics: Open Access 3(1):122 (OMICS); v^2 - vc - c^2 = 0 gives 1.618 c (outward profile gives 0.618 c); checked with SymPy
2016Der Skalarwellenkrieg (autobiographical book) INDEL, 173 pp, ISBN 9783940703460; the inventor's account of the controversy; names Eibert among critics; not obtained· Meyl sells the kit, books and devices (INDEL GmbH)
–Later k-meyl.de papers: Wassermotor mit Ozon, Die Struktur von Gas 1-3, no blue shift of a shrinking galaxy, Visoko (NET-Journal 09/2014) listed on the inventor's site; not fetched
2026k-meyl.de home page: scalar-wave devices (SWD) at 6.78 MHz devices on sale with a return line between receiver and sender; Schrodt-Meyl 'Zellradio'; 'Entdeckung magnetischer Monopole' cited as recognition· Meyl sells the kit, books and devices (INDEL GmbH)
Meyl's own experiments (reported in his books) (11)
c.1989Charge-amplifier measurement: 'the E-field is not a gradient field' home-built amplifier, pointer 'dance'; no readings or controls (book ch.19)
c.1990Kirlian 'phantom leaf' photographs and a student's spark-gap map 20000 V; no cleaning or blind comparison; the spark-gap map showed no place dependence (book ch.19)
1990-06-11Capacitor Q test, HF laboratory, FH Furtwangen about 400 MHz on a network analyser; Q 48 silver on, 28 polished off, 9 acid-stripped; repeats 'drowned in the mean variation'; colleague withdrew from joint paper (PDF pp.410-412)
1995Tesla flat-coil receiver 50-100 mV blew the oscilloscope input diode; over half a volt in distant thunderstorms; no controls (book ch.19)
1996-10-22Microwave oven versus hotplate cooling comparison student practical; one run per method; curves 1-2 degrees C apart; text and caption disagree on direction (book ch.19)
1997-06-14Electrosensitivity on/off test at an electrobiology seminar one woman called the receiver grounding state every 5 s, '100 percent' after training; unblinded, trial count not given; repeated 'with different success' (PDF p.418)
1998-01-22Student high-voltage generator work a fluorescent lamp glowed in the field; 511 kV not reached (book ch.19)
1999-08-11Eclipse forecast and radioactivity measurement near Munich focusing of 27-28 times forecast over Ulm-Augsburg-Freising (NET-Journal 7/8-1999); granite under the umbra showed 'almost no change'
1999-12Scalar-wave transmission line power record, TZ St. Georgen 6.7 MHz, LeCroy 9304C, M. Andresen and M. Rehm; 233 mW in, 223 mW idle, 49.1 mW out; read as 490%, gross 21%, power factor 0.055 (PDF pp.419-422)
c.2000Reproduction attempts: an inventor's 3 kW magnetic converter and Seike's Moebius windings Neutrino Power pp.238-240: 'could not be reproduced in my laboratory'; none of the Moebius rebuilds worked; Meyl took part in the converter design
2003Dated eclipse forecasts for 29.3.2006, 13.11.2012 and 21.8.2017 2003 book p.448: rotation slowing and earthquakes near 4.4.2006 at Crete and Asia Minor; South Carolina 2017; checked by the review against USGS and IERS
Patents and patent office (15)
1900Tesla US 645,576 and US 649,621 named as the kit's forerunners; Psiram notes Tesla claimed no efficiency above 1; not read
1905-04-18Tesla US 787,412, Art of transmitting electrical energy through the natural mediums 471,240 km/s is Tesla's own number ((pi/2) c); 'six per second'; no '12 Hz' or Schumann in the text; read on Google Patents by the arbiter
1980-02-12DE3005103A1, adaptive regulator Meyl's control-engineering filing; Google Patents
1986-07-31DE3625913A1, reducing switching losses in current-injecting converters Meyl; power electronics, his teaching field
1988Stanley Meyer water-cell patents (WO 89/12704, Canadian 1234773) cited by Meyl via Raum und Zeit Special 7; '18 patent specifications'; not read
1996-04-12DE19614575A1, Verfahren und Vorrichtung zum Empfang von Neutrinos spheres plus flat spiral coil in antiphase resonance; 66e9 neutrinos/cm2/s, 'about 27 W/m2', the only energy budget; application only, ceased
1997-09-30Patterson US 5,672,259 (CETI cell) cited by Meyl with 'over-unity up to 4000'; reprinted in Infinite Energy 1997; not read
1999Reichwein patent family (DE10005906A1, WO2001034096A1, EP1230649A1, US6611412B1) D. Reichwein, coils and emission reduction; matched Meyl vocabulary; texts not opened
2003-10-21DE10348862B4, Vorrichtung zur Datenuebertragung (granted 2009-03-12) capacitive path plus conducting connection forming one L-C circuit; 'a return line is required'; no over-unity claim; Meyl's only granted patent on this work
2011Lange DE202011005559U1 and DE202006000736U1 bio-energetic 'harmonisation' devices using scalar-wave vocabulary; texts not opened
2012Mendes Waechter WO2013155580A1, Scalar energy generation device text not opened; whether it cites Meyl not checked
2014-07-10DE102014109660A1, information transfer by a self-resonant LC circuit with organic fluids Meyl, Radolfzell; withdrawn; patent form of remote drug-information transfer
–CN106772547A/B (China Aerospace Construction Group) cites DE19614575A1 in its citation list; not opened
2021-10-21DE102021127321A1, expansion engine with magnetised gas before compression Meyl; withdrawn; latest dated work; found on Espacenet
Company and business records (4)
c.1990INDEL Industrieelektronik GmbH, Freiburg HRB 603012 Villingen-Schwenningen; managing directors Meyl and A. Schrodt-Meyl; accounts to FY 2012 filed 2013; managing director N.N. from 25.03.2024 (North Data)· Meyl sells the kit, books and devices (INDEL GmbH)
2000Kit price lists and SWG-A scalar wave device 800 EUR demo set, 1400 EUR experiment set, 3950 EUR SWG-A for 'biological information' (manual p.34); book p.649 advertises '1 to 3 times over-unity'· Meyl sells the kit, books and devices (INDEL GmbH)
–INDEL Industrieelektronik GmbH, St. Georgen, Muenchen HRB 64127 second, dissolved company at the transfer-centre address (North Data)
–egm international GmbH, Papenburg, 'Wirbelwandler' advisory board Meyl on the scientific advisory board (Psiram); fuel mixed with water and CO2· advisory role
University and publication records (5)
1990-04Rejection of 'Potentialwirbel in der Elektrodynamik' (journal named by the interviewer as Annalen der Physik) Meyl's account, Neutrino Power pp.213-214: one ground in the passive voice, one 'referee' sentence on approximation methods; no date or report· the inventor's own account
2002-11-27Furtwangen dean R. Hoenl, statement in CoMed 12/2002 topics excluded from teaching; independent opinions on the kit 'negative in Meyl's sense'; positive sources not named (quoted by Bruhn)· university reputation
2003-10-25DGEIM meeting and H. J. Herrmann's statement on Stuttgart ICA I chair claimed Stuttgart led in this technology; director Herrmann says his institute never worked on scalar waves (Bruhn, Richtigstellung 2004)
2008Furtwangen chancellor G. Kusserow to SWR; Suedkurier 'Hochschule distanziert sich von Messeauftritt' Suedwest-Messe 2008 show 'Neutrinopower'; Meyl may not lecture on scalar waves; devices 'knapp 10000 Euro' (copy on Bruhn's pages)· university reputation
2013-02-22Retractions of the cell-communication paper (Retraction Watch) DNA and Cell Biology and JCCS, for fourfold duplicate publication after a complaint by U. Berger (Austrian sceptics' society); a referee called it 'way out there' but possibly right· complainant is an organised critic
Witness accounts and correspondence (9)
1897Kelvin's visit to Tesla's laboratory, in Tesla, 'Famous Scientific Illusions', Electrical Experimenter, Feb 1919 Tesla's own account: 'true conduction', not Hertz waves; no 'longitudinal' and no 'Both are right' (Meyl's additions); read on the web· Tesla, on his own priority
1930sMoray's report of solar neutrinos dropping at night (in a 1960 book) cited by Meyl in Erdwachstum and the 2015 paper; predates the neutrino's detection (1956); single source in the folder
1932-02-06New York Times, Tesla statement on superluminal cosmic particle radiation cited in Neutrino Power p.25; says nothing about collecting energy with a coil (deep read)
1994A. Schneider compilation of free-energy devices (Coler: Kloss and Franke, TU Berlin, '450%'; Schumann '4.8 to 6.7 times') Coler documents said to be confiscated by British intelligence, partly declassified 1962; relayed by Meyl (book ch.14-18)
1997-05-28Gruber's eyewitness report of the Patterson cell at CETI with N. J. Olson (Pacific Northwest Laboratory) and an ABC team; '50% of the radioactivity removed' in one hour, 'up to 80%' elsewhere; relayed by Meyl (book p.370)· Gruber, space-energy advocate
c.1999Third-party devices relayed in the textbook (railgun, Testatika, Bedini, Ecklin, RQM, Searl, Stan Meyer, Podkletnov and others) second-hand figures from NET-Journal, Raum und Zeit Special 7, company pages; Meyl's doubts (Testatika 'can't be talked of free energy'); railgun '399 GJ' from 'the Internet'
2001-10-27raum&zeit report on Hartmut Mueller's 'G-Com' demonstration, Bad Toelz H.-J. Ehlers, raum&zeit 115/2002 pp.99-102; voice link to St. Petersburg 'without carrier'; no independent check; does not name Meyl· publisher was an exhibitor
2003-11H.-J. Runckel (Ulm), 'Betr. Theorien von Herrn Prof. Meyl' the one academic opinion Meyl named; known only through Bruhn's reply of 12.08.2004; text not found
2018A. Schneider's report of an SBB 'railway without overhead line' plan (Sissach-Olten) relayed by Psiram with the 2014 stroke report; a record at SBB or in the Swiss press would settle it
Experiments and replications by others (16)
1972Hafele-Keating clock experiment -59 ns east, +273 ns west: difference 332 ns, not Meyl's 214 ns (arbiter web check)
1980Yializis, Cichanowski and Shaw, IEEE ISEI Boston 1980 source of the 'visible proof' capacitor photographs (450 V, 60 Hz, 100 C); the paper speaks of electrode corrosion
1984Taylor, IEEE Trans. EI-19 (1984) discusses the same electrode marks as corrosion; cited in Meyl's figure caption
1987SN 1987A neutrino timing neutrinos and light agree to 2e-9 for 10-40 MeV; 1.618 c would arrive 64,168 years early
1993Tunnelling experiments: Enders and Nimtz (Cologne), Chiao (Berkeley), Krausz (TU Wien) cited by Meyl for 2-5 c; mainstream reading: group delay with fronts at c (Winful); Nimtz reads them as superluminal
1998Super-Kamiokande atmospheric neutrino deficit and solar day-night data night flux a few per cent higher, not half missing; up-going deficit explained by oscillation (abstracts read)
1999Shu-wen Zhou, eclipse anomalies, 21st Century Science and Technology 12(3) spectra, caesium clocks (USNO pair 1989-91) and Allais-type pendulum during eclipses; cited by Meyl
2000-01Live blood 'rouleaux' demonstration against a mobile mast, Kall (Eifel) reported in the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger 15./16.1.2000; the demonstration the Bonn study repeated
2000-04FGF Newsletter 1/00: Gollnick and Conrad, Bonn rouleaux test Physiological Institute, Bonn: rouleaux appeared with or without a mobile-phone call; no sample sizes; deep-read pp.4-7, 13-14· FGF, industry- and ministry-linked
2001-08-10H. Weidner, 'Analyse eines Teslaschwingkreises oder Was ist dran an Skalarwellen?' (IGF companion report) recovered from the Wayback Machine (gravitation.org/meyl2.html); LEDs removed and low-harmonic source: 'the effects no longer exist'; coil loss 0.8%
2001-09IGF Waldaschaff, Experimente zum Nachweis von Skalarwellen Junker, Schmelzer, Senkel, Weidner, Winkels, Zentgraf; measured 10 Jul 2001; Lecher-line resonances 5.35 and 29.5 MHz, 3.4 mA in the link, about 45% by eye-matched LEDs
2009Morris, Tennant et al., spin-ice 'monopoles', Science 326, 411 cited by Meyl for div B not 0; authors' abstract says div B = 0 remains intact (abstract read)
2011Wu et al., Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L13304, Earth radius change 0.1 +/- 0.2 mm/yr against Meyl's 28.7 mm/yr
2016-07-10Gao Peng, Attempts to Detect the Torsion Field Nature of Scalar Wave Generated by Dual Tesla Coil System viXra 1607.0130, Beijing Wellan Century Co.; torsion balance near a 45 W dual coil, positive by author, on/off controls only
2019PRad proton radius and CODATA 2018 0.831 and 0.8414 fm; muonic/electronic ratio near 1, against Meyl's 0.948
2026-10-08USGS ComCat and IERS length-of-day checks of Meyl's eclipse claims 27 M6+ events after 11.8.1999 (25 expected); M5.5 off Zakynthos on 4.4.2006, nothing at Crete or Anatolia; LOD changes opposite in sign
Related work by others (7)
1755R. Boscovich, only ratios of lengths are observable Meyl's named source for field-dependent lengths (proton-radius paper)
1933O. C. Hilgenberg, Vom wachsenden Erdball credited by Meyl as pioneer of Earth expansion; aether physics replaced by neutrino absorption; historically superseded
1967G. Bosse (Mannheim 1967) and K. Simonyi (Berlin 1979) textbooks Meyl's support for unipolar induction as the general law; he concedes there is no proof (Neutrino Power p.164)
–W. R. Pohl's textbook equations per Bruhn the source of Meyl's 'dual field approach', describing a transverse wave at c
1996R. Shannon, Notes on Scalar Detector Designs (Barkhausen effect detector) 9 pp in the folder, Bearden-style detectors; no measurements; not by Meyl; digest only
2002I. Perrin, NCGT 2002 analysis of NASA data diameter growth 7.79-7.94 cm/yr, Meyl's comparison value
2003Bearden MEG and Evans AIAS circle cited in support at DGEIM 2003 shared theme of longitudinal EM and vacuum energy (Bruhn)
Later accounts and media (12)
2001G. W. Bruhn, On the Existence of K. Meyl's Scalar Waves, JSE 15(2) pp.206-210 printed after Meyl's paper; the JSE editorial explains why; not downloaded· organised critic (GWUP)
2003-02-20Bruhn, Stellungnahme zu Aeusserungen des Herrn Meyl in CO'MED 01/03 basic equations give transverse waves with |v| = c; 'nobody disputes scalar waves in general'· organised critic
2004Bruhn, Richtigstellung, Runckel reply and 'Meyl zieht sich zurueck' notice Feb-Aug 2004; reports a March 2004 withdrawal announcement not found in the Wayback Machine· organised critic
2008-05-30Bruhn, commentary on three near-identical Meyl papers Meyl's dual equations taken from W. R. Pohl; misapplied chain rule· organised critic
–Bruhn, Skalarwellen und die rauhe Wirklichkeit der Experimente, and about 40 further pages Fresnel polarisation as evidence against longitudinal light; 'Zwoelf Fragen', 'Abschlussbericht', the Dipol-Elektron prize pages not opened· organised critic
2008-05-17Suedwest-Messe show 'Neutrinopower', model boat and plane shown to minister Ernst Pfister Suedkurier and Schwarzwaelder Bote 4.4.2008 PDFs on k-meyl.de (not opened); Psiram captions
2020J. J. Gryz, The future of energy security of states, Security and Defence Quarterly cites Der Skalarwellenkrieg pp.33-34
–de.wikipedia, 'Konstantin Meyl' born 1952 Lemgo; Furtwangen from 1986, retired 2018; works with ISBNs; IGF result
–Goede-Stiftung summary of the IGF kit tests current foundation page: effects explained by standing waves on a Lecher line
–Press items listed by Meyl (Spiegel 'Schwarzwaelder Kopernikus' 21.5.2001, Suedkurier 23.4.2003, Gruber in DVR 4.4.2003, Rothdach in GeoForum 2003) named in the textbook bibliography; not obtained
–Klaus Keck, critic's documentation site xy44.de/skalar Konstanz chemist named in Suedkurier 2008; not reached· organised critic
Records named but not yet examined (19)
c.1899Tesla's Colorado Springs notes on the 200-lamp story Meyl gives 42 km and 25 miles in two texts
1990-04Annalen der Physik referee report or 1990 correspondence would test Meyl's account of the rejection
1999NET-Journal 7/8-1999 and Magazin 2000plus nr.148, 150, 151 eclipse articles hold Meyl's forecast data
2000A. Waser, NET-Journal 12/2000 cited by the IGF; not obtained
2000-07-06TU Clausthal 'control survey' of the kit (1000%) no names, data or report; no Clausthal record found
2001IGF Faraday-cage check and correspondence after Aug 2001 report says the cage was checked but prints no measurement; reply to the invitation unknown
2002Independent opinions on the kit held by Furtwangen dean says they are 'negative in Meyl's sense'; none published· university reputation
2004T. F. Eibert, 'Eine kritische Betrachtung der Theorien von K. Meyl', FGF Newsletter 1/2004 Meyl says Eibert confused him with another Prof. Meyl· FGF, industry-linked
2004-03Meyl's own 'withdrawal' statement (k-meyl.de Stellungnahme_Rueckzug) no Wayback capture
2010T. Treskatis, bachelor thesis on dielectric losses of a film capacitor, University of Konstanz the only measured data behind the capacitor-loss claim; supervised by Meyl per his note; not online
2012Meyl, 'Self-consistent electrodynamics', PIERS Moscow 2012 the loss-term paper
–Hallock/McNair Tamarack mine plumb-line records single-source account used for the theory of objectivity
–Declassified British report on the Coler device would decide the confiscation story
–'EMC laboratory' cage confirmation and CE declaration unnamed laboratory, no report
–'Over 50 universities' and 'hundreds of measurements' on the kit Edinburgh, Vienna, Stanford, TU Beijing named; no results
–D. Kuehlke, 'Elektrische Skalarwellen: Spekulation oder Tatsache?' Furtwangen physicist colleague; not online
–DPMA file histories of DE19614575 and DE10348862 examination, grant and lapse
–Bundesanzeiger filings 2010-2012 and Handelsregister history of INDEL company record after 2012
–Furtwangen faculty minutes 2002-2008 teaching ban and dean's statement
Left out: the review's own AI analyses, saved web pages and duplicate copies, German editions counted with their English works, and six minor citations (a 1932 Tesla letter on Einstein, the Cheney biography, Gottfried's NCGT paper, Hassler and HealthTech patents, 2024 diefreien.ch excerpts). Full catalogue: Meyl-Konstantin sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: One day in an RF lab: a low-harmonic source, no LEDs, calibrated power at generator and load with deskewed probes, the link wire removed as a control, a battery transmitter in a welded enclosure for the cage, gated-burst time of flight for the speed, and a closed loop.
Deciding records: The TU Clausthal notes of 6 July 2000, the Treskatis 2010 thesis and the PIERS 2012 loss formula, Waser's NET-Journal 12/2000, the unnamed EMC laboratory report, Runckel's opinion, Eibert's FGF 1/2004 critique, IGF correspondence after August 2001, and the 1990 Annalen referee report.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: Part A shows Meyl's 0.71 s per year is an accumulated leap-second count, not a yearly change of the day, so the growth falls about 100-fold; Part B gives 0.618 c for an outward profile. Also compute 49/233 and 49/(233-223).
Top reviewer notes (5)
Mathematician Put H = -v x D into E = v x B: E = (v^2/c^2) E, true only if v = c. Meyl prints this as 'result: v = c', so his own starting equations rule out the arbitrary speed his scalar waves need; Bruhn said so in 2003. mathematician.md, section 0
Arbiter Faraday cage: Never properly tested, not Tested, not supported. The IGF says the cage was checked but prints no measurement; Meyl's test has a cable or gap through the wall, and he concedes the received signal cannot show what share was scalar. arbiter.md, claim 4
Contrarian Against the critics: the IGF's 45% comes from eye-matched LED brightness, its distance curve also fits conducted transfer, there is no cage measurement and one test group only; Wikipedia and Psiram labels are characterisations, not tests; the IGF itself says Tesla-scale experiments were never done. contrarian.md, Where I would push back on both sides
Arbiter Asked how to prove E, H ~ 1/l^2 in a laboratory, Meyl says it 'duerfte ziemlich schwierig bis unmoeglich werden'. By his own account the length law cannot be tested from inside, while his outside predictions (fields of fast beams) fail. A reader should see both. arbiter.md, QE revision 2, claim 6
Investigator The IGF companion report (Weidner, 10 Aug 2001), listed as missing, was recovered from the Wayback Machine: with a low-harmonic oscillator and LEDs removed, 'the effects described by Meyl no longer exist'; the IGF invited Meyl to repeat the tests. sites.md, Leads for review 4; research/2026-10-08-wayback-gravitation-org.md
AI noteTesla's patent US 787,412 does say 471,240 km/s, which is (pi/2) c to five digits; it has no '12 Hz' and no Schumann comparison. Those are Meyl's readings, and Tesla's 1919 Kelvin story never says 'longitudinal'.
Rank 29Su-CC
down from 28B - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-06 18:24
A Taiwanese engineering professor rebuilt relativity's results with an ether that rides along with each planet; it matches GPS, but its own distinctive cavity prediction was later measured null.
Invention / theory background
Ching-Chuan Su, professor of electrical engineering at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, published 2000-2006 a 'local-ether' model: light moves at c relative to an ether fixed to Earth's centre near Earth and to the Sun between planets. A matter-wave equation makes mass a frequency, gravity becomes an optical index, magnetism a Galilean force law, and quasar redshifts gravitational. Papers appeared in Eur. Phys. J. C, Europhys. Lett. and J. Electromagn. Waves Applic.
Ranking explanation
Rank 16 for open questions, things a reader can calculate, and a small continuing literature. Below Aspden, whose revived force law is untested; Su's sharpest prediction, the 62 Hz cavity term, has since been tested and not supported. Above Haisch-Bernard, whose net-power claim is refuted by calculation: Su still leaves open questions (aberration, his F2 term beside a 1976 anomaly, electronic-clock redshift) and offers clean worked calculations.
Key supporting elements
Every number Su matches (GPS Sagnac correction, Hafele-Keating, Ives-Stilwell, light bending, Shapiro delay, neutron Sagnac and gravity phases) is correct; the reviewers found the algebra right throughout the deep reads.
The GPS observation is real: the Sagnac correction is applied in the Earth-centred frame and Earth's 30 km/s orbital motion is not; relativity gives the same, so GPS cannot adjudicate either way.
Su stated departures as numbers (62 Hz, about 1 degree, -11.5 Hz) and named his own unsolved problem (annual aberration) and his unfavourable data ('not good quantitatively'), behaviour the Contrarian calls falsifiability-minded.
Edwards, Kenyon and Lemon (1976) reported an unexplained coil potential quadratic in current with electron sign: the form and sign of Su's F2 term, though 24-320 times larger than F2 with uniform current.
Published in refereed journals, cited 46 and 32 times; Gift (2021) calls the nested ethers 'a reasonable working hypothesis' (a proponent); Field 2019 and Kipreos 2024 (IJMPA) examine preferred frames and cite Su.
Key contradictions
Herrmann et al. (Berlin, 2009) measured the lab-fixed term at twice the turntable rate at about 1e-17 over a year, roughly 4e4 below Su's 4.5e-13; an incidental test, not a dedicated one.
An ether carried by the Earth cannot yet give annual stellar aberration; Su conceded it, and no rule says where Earth's ether ends.
Su's one-way turntable effect cancels when his own clock formula is applied to atomic clocks; his transverse radar Doppler shift is the standard formula evaluated at a different instant.
His wave equation, expanded, gives a different gravitational redshift for electronic than for hyperfine transitions, contradicting his own universal formula; he never sized it.
The quasar fit uses a weak-field formula at Phi/c^2 = 4.1 with a chosen density: 1.3e16 solar masses, escape speed 2.9 c, free-fall time 272 years.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 40 shown)
Claim
Verdict
A local ether carries light (Earth-centred frame near Earth, heliocentric between planets)
EstablishedECI-frame Sagnac, no orbital term (not evidence for an ether)Not testable as statedether as the explanation at first orderTested, not supportedannual aberration with an Earth-carried ether
Tested, not supportedHerrmann et al. 2009, incidental test
Gravity is an optical index, not curvature
Establisheddeflection, delays, GR's numbers by constructionNot testable as statedno curvature neededNever properly testedsecond-order redshift and frame effects
Matter waves obey the preferred-frame equation; mass is a frequency
Establishedde Broglie and clock relations, as SR in the ECI frameNot testable as statedpreferred-frame reading; mass as origin of inertiaPlausible, untestedhyperfine and nuclear extension, as a derivation
Gravitational redshift is (1 - Phi_g/c^2) for every transition
Establishedhyperfine clocksInternally inconsistentelectronic transitions, from Su's own equation
Magnetism can be Galilean (augmented-potential force law)
Establishedlow-speed reduction to Lorentz force; Fresnel dragNever properly testedextra terms F1-F3 incl. F2 after Edwards et al. 1976; Barnett; magnetic-medium drag
Other predictions differing from relativity
Internally inconsistentone-way turntable link with atomic clocksRefuted by calculationtransverse radar Doppler as a differenceNever properly testedBragg asymmetry, -11.5 Hz offset, third-order rotor
Quasar redshifts are gravitational, with preferred values from halving
Internally inconsistentformula at Phi/c^2 = 4.1Tested, not supportedKarlsson periodicity premise (contested)Not testable as statedabrupt-boundary argument
Originator of the local-ether model and Quantum Electromagnetics · Originator; his accounts of relativity, GPS practice and others' experiments are his characterisations
Born 1955 in Taiwan; B.S., M.S., Ph.D. in electrical engineering, National Taiwan University (1978, 1980, 1985); ITRI 1980-82 (IC fabrication); NTHU faculty from 1985, professor of EE; antenna and microwave papers in IEEE journals 1988-2003; local-ether papers 2000-2006; record stops 2006.
James Marsen
Promoter of Su's work; source of the c.2007 death date; proposed orbital Michelson-Morley tests · Advocate of the model; author of his own 'Tron Theory' with a 'very similar' ether
Education and career not in the review files. Wrote viXra 1906.0336 (2019) and 2105.0110 (2021) and presented Su's model to the John Chappell Natural Philosophy Society in June 2021.
Petr Beckmann
Proposed the same local-ether postulate in 1986, apparently independently of Su
Not in the review files beyond his works: Einstein Plus Two (1987) and the journal Galilean Electrodynamics; described as 'the late Prof.' by Marsen.
Stephan J. G. Gift
Independent author arguing from GPS timing for an Earth-bound ether; endorses Su's hierarchy of ethers · Proponent of preferred-frame readings of GPS
Not in the review files. Papers 2006, 2012 (viXra) and Applied Physics Research 13(1) (2021) on the same point.
A. Brillet and J. L. Hall
Ran the 1979 laser isotropy test whose 2-omega residual (about 34 Hz, per Su) is Su's one old comparison
Not in the review files; their paper (Phys. Rev. Lett. 42, 549, Boulder) was obtained only as an abstract, so their reasons for calling the term spurious are unread.
S. Herrmann et al.
Berlin rotating-cavity experiment (2009) whose lab-fixed amplitudes bound Su's cavity term about 4e4 below prediction
Not in the review files beyond the paper: Phys. Rev. D 80, 105011, data May 2007 to June 2008, designed to test sidereal modulation, not Su.
W. F. Edwards, C. S. Kenyon and D. K. Lemon
Utah State University experimenters who reported a coil potential quadratic in current (1976, 1992), the record bearing on Su's F2
Not in the review files beyond the papers; they did not test or cite Su.
Halton Arp and Geoffrey Burbidge
Sources of the quasar-ejection view and cases Su adopts for his redshift mechanism · Proponents of quasar-galaxy association
Not in the review files beyond their cited papers (Arp 2001, Arp and Russell 2001, Arp et al. 2002; Burbidge and Napier 2001).
Evidence / artifacts (122 of 122 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (34)
2000A local-ether model of wave propagation complying with the Sagnac correction in the global positioning system IEEE AP-S International Symposium 2000; earliest statement of the model; cited by 10 (Google Scholar); not obtained· Author and originator of the model
2000Generalisation of radar Doppler shift for target of arbitrary velocity relative to transceiver Electronics Letters 36, 1812, doi 10.1049/el:20001281; source of the transverse radar Doppler item; not obtained· Author and originator of the model
2000Second-order radar echo time paper J. Electromagn. Waves Applic. 14, 1525; cited in claims.md as carrying derivations; not in the folder· Author and originator of the model
2000/2002APS March and April meeting abstracts Su's talks 2000-2002, listed by the Natural Philosophy Wiki; not reached in the time limit· Author and originator of the model
2001A wave-propagation model for gravitational effects on light deflection and radar echo time J. Electromagn. Waves Applic. 15(2), 259-268 (f5b); index n_g = 1 + 2GM/(c^2 r); 1.75 arcsec, 43-60 ps GPS delay, about 230 microseconds Earth-Venus; OCR scan, equations from page images, numbers recomputed· Author and originator of the model
2001A local-ether model of propagation of electromagnetic wave Eur. Phys. J. C 21, 701-715 (also as f1a); foundation paper: GPS Sagnac, Japan-USA and Japan-Korea links, Michelson-Morley, 62 Hz cavity prediction, aberration admitted unsolved, CMBR second-order test; pp.1-15 deep-read; cited by 46· Author and originator of the model
2001A local-ether wave equation and speed-dependent mass and quantum energy Eur. Phys. J. B 24, 231-239 (f6); f = f0 sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2), Hafele-Keating, GPS clocks, Hughes-Drever, -11.5 Hz prediction, universal redshift formula eq. 25; pp.1-9 deep-read· Author and originator of the model
2001Explicit definitions of electric and magnetic fields in potentials and derivation of Maxwell's equations Eur. J. Phys. 22, L5-L8, doi 10.1088/0143-0807/22/3/101; not obtained· Author and originator of the model
2001On the Sagnac effect in wave propagation J. Electromagn. Waves Applic. 15(7), 945-955; not obtained· Author and originator of the model
2001-07Modifications of the Lorentz Force Law Invariant under Galilean Transformations IEEE AP-S 2001 Digest vol. 1, Boston, p.208 (f2b); scan from the Wayback copy of Su's site; abstract-level reading· Author and originator of the model
2001-07Modifications of Maxwell's Equations Invariant under Galilean Transformations IEEE AP-S 2001 Digest vol. 1, p.212 (f3b); Wayback scan; abstract-level reading· Author and originator of the model
2001-10-15Reinterpretation of the Michelson-Morley experiment based on the GPS Sagnac correction Europhys. Lett. 56(2), 170-174 (f1b); downloaded from the Wayback Machine; orbital term absent, rotational term too small; read by the Mathematician; cited by 32· Author and originator of the model
2002A local-ether wave equation unifying gravitational and electromagnetic forces J. Electromagn. Waves Applic. 16(3), 403-410 (f5a); gravitational index in the matter-wave equation, identity of inertial and gravitational mass; OCR scan, equations from page images· Author and originator of the model
2002A local-ether wave equation and the consequent electromagnetic force law J. Electromagn. Waves Applic. 16(9), 1275-1290 (f4a); m0 = hbar omega0/c^2, augmentation operator, force law; OCR scan, equations from page images· Author and originator of the model
2002Book contents, chapter abstracts and publication notice (web version) contents.htm, ch1-ch8.htm, publish.htm from Su's site, Wayback 2002 captures; lists 'Unsolved and Predicted Propagation Phenomena'; 'publish of this book is in preparation'· Author and originator of the model
2002-08-23Local-ether wave equation of electric field and interferometry experiments with moving medium and path arXiv physics/0208082 (f3a); Fresnel drag from polarisation current, Krisher fibre link, Sagnac index-dependences, no drag in a magnetic medium; pp.1-12 deep-read· Author and originator of the model
2002-08-23Modifications of Schroedinger's equation complying with the effect of Earth's rotation on quantum energy in atoms and with the electromagnetic force arXiv physics/0208083 (f4b); downloaded twice (arXiv, Wayback); abstract only; likely source of the unsized atom-radiation prediction· Author and originator of the model
2002-08-23Resonant absorption between moving atoms due to Doppler frequency shift and quantum energy variation arXiv physics/0208084 (f7); Ives-Stilwell, ammonia masers, Mossbauer rotor; third-order rotor prediction about 1e-18; pp.1-12 deep-read· Author and originator of the model
2002-08-23Reinterpretation of matter-wave interference experiments based on the local-ether wave equation arXiv physics/0208085 (f8a); neutron Bragg-angle asymmetry about 1 deg; compared with Staudenmann et al. 1980, 'not good quantitatively'; pp.1-12 deep-read· Author and originator of the model
2002-10-01Reinterpretation of the effects of the Earth's rotation and gravity on the neutron-interferometry experiment Europhys. Lett. 60(1), 1-6 (f8b); matches standard Sagnac and COW phases; rotation-yes, orbit-no test; OCR scan read from page images· Author and originator of the model
2002-11-05Modifications of the Lorentz force law complying with Galilean transformations and the local-ether propagation model arXiv physics/0211019 (f2a); augmented potentials, extra terms F1-F3, CRT example; pp.1-12 deep-read, QE deep read pp.8-11· Author and originator of the model
2003A local-ether wave equation unifying quantum mechanics, electromagnetics, and gravitation IEEE AP-S 2003; cited by 2 (Google Scholar); not obtained· Author and originator of the model
2005Reinterpretation of Fizeau's experiment with moving medium in accord with the Sagnac effect due to Earth's rotation J. Electromagn. Waves Applic. 19(4), 559-567 (f3c); Su concedes first-order Fizeau cannot discriminate; pp.1-9 deep-read· Author and originator of the model
c.2005Quantum Electromagnetics: outline of the book outline.pdf, 9 pp.; 11 predictions on p.8, four not derived in any folder paper; QE deep read pp.4-9· Author and originator of the model
c.2005Quantum Electromagnetics: web summary page summary.htm; one-page summary listing experiments 'accounted for' and predicted effects· Author and originator of the model
c.2005Author biography page Ching-Chuan Su.html (same text as autobio.htm on the Wayback copy): born 1955, NTU degrees 1978/1980/1985, ITRI 1980-82, NTHU from 1985· Author and originator of the model
2005An Ignored Mechanism for the Longitudinal Recoil Force in Railguns and Revitalization of the Riemann Force Law Listed by the Natural Philosophy Wiki; not obtained· Author and originator of the model
2005-12-20Reexamination of Barnett's experiment based on the modified Lorentz force law arXiv physics/0512179 (f2d), Wayback copy; predicts non-zero induction outside a rotating solenoid or with a short one; unsized; partly read· Author and originator of the model
2006Mechanisms for the longitudinal recoil force in railguns based on the Lorentz force law IEEE Trans. Magn. 42, 2193, doi 10.1109/tmag.2006.878010; last Crossref record; not obtained· Author and originator of the model
2006-01-02A wave interpretation of the Compton effect as a further demonstration of the postulates of de Broglie arXiv physics/0506211 v3 (f8c); reproduces the Compton shift; unsized 'direct radiation' at lambda_C/(gamma - 1); pp.1-7 deep-read· Author and originator of the model
2006-04Connections between the Riemann and the Lorentz force laws Found. Phys. Lett. 19(2), doi 10.1007/s10702-006-0376-z (f2c); relative-speed force law obeying action-reaction; Wayback copy; abstract-level reading· Author and originator of the model
2006-08-16A proposed mechanism for the intrinsic redshift and its preferred values purportedly found in quasars based on the local-ether theory arXiv physics/0608164 (f5c); z = 2.07 vs 2.114 for the NGC 7319 quasar with an assumed density; halving series vs Karlsson peaks; publication status unknown; pp.1-11 deep-read· Author and originator of the model
unknownCompanion gravitational-redshift paper Cited in f6 as ref. 15, 'submitted'; not in the folder or found· Author and originator of the model
2008-03Quantum Electromagnetics: A Local-Ether Wave Equation (book) NTHU Press, ISBN 9789574110971 (ISBN dated 1 Feb 2005; NTHU Press edition 1 Mar 2008); HyRead e-book and a scholar.archive.org PDF listed; full text not obtained· Author and originator of the model
Experiments and replications by others (36)
1851Fizeau, flowing-water interferometer Re-derived by Su (f3a, f3c) via polarisation current; same first-order result as special relativity
1887Michelson and Morley Su's reinterpretation: rotational second-order term about 1e-12, 'too small to detect' (EPJC, f1b)
1912Barnett, induction with a rotating solenoid Basis of Su's 2005 preprint; original not read
1912/1917Kennard, unipolar-induction experiments Described only by Su; ambiguous; unread
1914/1942Harzer 1914; Dufour and Prunier 1942, Sagnac loops with moving media Cited by Su via Post 1967 for index-dependences; same coefficients as first-order special relativity
1925Michelson and Gale, Earth-rotation Sagnac interferometer Listed by Su among results accounted for; primer evidence table
1925Bothe and Geiger coincidence experiment Arbiter web check (Wikipedia): photon-electron coincidence, against a wave-only reading of Compton scattering
1925Compton and Simon coincidence experiment Arbiter: memory, medium; not web-checked
1958Cedarholm et al., ammonia-maser ether-drift test Null beat frequency; Su's formula independent of lab velocity (f7)
1960Hay et al., Mossbauer rotor Cited by Su (f7) as a demonstration; no data quoted
1960-1961Hughes-Drever isotropy experiments Null; Su's agreement comes from symmetry of the ECI speed, not a calculation (arbiter QE revision)
1962Mandelberg and Witten, Ives-Stilwell experiment Su's v^2/c^2 = 7.26e-5 and 7.24e-5 reproduced; same as special relativity; wavelengths possibly representative, not raw (Contrarian)
1963Champeney et al., Mossbauer rotor Cited by Su; no data quoted
1963Kundig, Mossbauer rotor Not cited by Su; named by the Contrarian as a record to read
1964Turner and Hill, Mossbauer rotor Cited by Su; no data quoted
1964Bertozzi, kinetic energy of fast electrons Electrons to about 15 MeV agree with relativistic mechanics; possible tension with Su's high-speed F1, not worked through by anyone
1971/1979Shapiro 1971, Anderson 1975, Reasenberg 1979 radar time-delay tests Cited by Su (f5b) without measured values; agree with the gamma = 1 coefficient (memory, medium)
1972Hafele and Keating, flying atomic clocks Su quotes HK's predicted -40 and +275 ns, not the measured -59 +/- 10 and +273 +/- 7 ns (memory, high)
1974Edwards, report preceding the 1976 Phys. Rev. D paper Named in the QE deep read; not read
1976Edwards, Kenyon and Lemon (Utah State University), possible electric fields from steady conduction currents Phys. Rev. D 14, 922; superconducting coil potential quadratic in current, n = 2.02 +/- 0.05, 'as yet unexplained'; same form and sign as Su's F2 but 24-320 times larger; scan read pp.924-928
1976Saburi, Yamamoto and Harada, Japan-USA satellite time comparison About 0.3 microsecond Sagnac-type error, cited by Su (EPJC)
1977Kimble, Dagenais and Mandel, photon antibunching Phys. Rev. Lett. 39, 691; abstract web-checked by the arbiter; Su does not discuss it
1977-1985CMBR dipole and seasonal-modulation observations Su's EPJC refs 41-43; cited for the CMBR 'local ether'
1979Brillet and Hall, improved laser test of the isotropy of space Phys. Rev. Lett. 42, 549 (Boulder); per Su a 2-omega term of about 17 x 2 Hz 'attributed to a persistent spurious signal' against his 62 Hz; abstract only obtained
1979Dresden and Yang, neutron interference with moving lattices Cited by Su (f8b) as precedent
1980Staudenmann, Werner, Colella and Overhauser, neutron interferometry Su's one Bragg-angle comparison; zero offset and wavelength source unknown; named by the arbiter as deciding; not obtained
1980Vessot et al., hydrogen-maser redshift (Gravity Probe A type) link Discussed by Su (f6); same formula as general relativity
1989Lee et al., Japan-Korea time comparison About 40 ns Sagnac error cited by Su (EPJC)
1990Krisher et al., 21 km hydrogen-maser fibre link Phase stable over days; Su predicts a turntable test (f3a)
1990Krisher et al., spacecraft 2.3 GHz links Basis of Su's -11.5 Hz item; Su says the data cannot test it (fitted oscillator term)
1990Bartlett and Maglic, reported null test of current-induced electric fields Rev. Sci. Instrum. 61; recalled (memory, low-medium); the arbiter's search did not find it
1992Lemon, Edwards and Kenyon, observed potential difference Phys. Lett. A 162, 105; cited via the abstract of arXiv:1009.0474; not read
1997Littrell et al., neutron interferometry geometry Su's eq. 8 (f8b)
2003Cassini, PPN gamma = 1 + (2.1 +/- 2.3)e-5 Arbiter web check; Su's index reproduces gamma = 1 by construction
2007Ashby et al., hydrogen masers vs caesium fountains Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 070802; |alpha_H - alpha_Cs| < 2.1e-5; both hyperfine clocks, so not a test of Su's electronic-transition coefficient; search summary
2009Herrmann et al. (Berlin), rotating optical cavity test at 1e-17 Phys. Rev. D 80, 105011, arXiv:1002.1284; lab-fixed 2-omega year means C0 = -0.2 +/- 11.7, S0 = -10.2 +/- 14.4 (1e-18), about 4e4 below Su's prediction; text read by the arbiter
1971Karlsson, preferred quasar redshift peaks Premise of Su's halving series; peak 0.60 has no counterpart in Su's series
2001Arp, Arp 220 companions and NGC 383 group Cited at second hand in f5c; Su notes NGC 383 sits uneasily with axis ejection· Proponent of quasar-galaxy association
2001Arp and Russell, clusters and quasars aligned across M82 Cited at second hand in f5c· Proponents of association
2001Burbidge and Napier, periodicity reported in other samples Contested; cited via Wikipedia by the arbiter· Proponents of association
2002Arp et al., NGC 3628 filament to quasars z = 0.995 and 2.15 Cited at second hand in f5c· Proponents of association
2002Gutierrez et al., NGC 7320 abrupt redshift change The observers read it as evidence for projection; cited at second hand
2002Hawkins, Maddox and Merrifield, no periodicities in 2dF data 1647 galaxy-quasar pairs; arXiv astro-ph/0208117 (web)
2004Gutierrez and Lopez-Corredoira, NEQ3 filament z = 0.1935, 0.1939, 0.2229; cited at second hand· Proponents of association
2005Galianni et al., NGC 7319 quasar z = 2.114, 8 arcsec from the nucleus, V-shaped filament; basis of Su's worked example
2005Lopez-Corredoira and Gutierrez, MCG 7-25-46 H-alpha at z = 0.003 stops where z = 0.098 begins; cited at second hand· Proponents of association
2005Tang and Zhang, 2dF and SDSS periodicity tests No periodicity found; cited via Wikipedia
Related theory and citing work by others (23)
1967E. J. Post, Sagnac effect review Rev. Mod. Phys. 39, 475; first-order coefficients Su offers as a test match it
1973Le Bellac and Levy-Leblond, Galilean electromagnetism Il Nuovo Cimento B 14, 217; the textbook magnetic limit is already Galilean covariant (memory, medium)
1986/1987P. Beckmann, local-ether proposal; Einstein Plus Two; journal Galilean Electrodynamics Same postulate (light at c relative to the dominant local gravitational field); Su's EPJC text does not cite him; text not read
2001OPTIS satellite test proposal arXiv gr-qc/0104067; proposal only, flight status not found
2006/2012S. J. G. Gift, earlier papers incl. one-way light speed from interplanetary tracking (viXra 2012) Same Earth-bound-ether point; 2012 paper cites Su; not read· Proponent of preferred-frame readings
2010D. L. Khokhlov, spatial and temporal wave functions of photon Applied Physics Research; cites Su (OpenAlex)
2015Fiscaletti and Sorli, dynamic quantum vacuum and relativity viXra; cites Su (OpenAlex)
2015Jing and Dong, GEO satellite motion in TWSTFT Two-way satellite time transfer; cites Su's EPL Sagnac formulation; how it is used unknown
2016Jing and Guang, antenna direction in TWSTFT IEEE Frequency Control Symposium; cites Su's EPL paper; not read
2017A. Hauschild, Basic Observation Equations Springer Handbook of GNSS ch. 19; cites Su's EPL paper; not read
2018J. Marsen, Tron Theory Describes its ether as 'very similar' to Su's model (Google snippet)· Advocate of Su's model
2018/2021Zihua Weng, coordinate transformations and refractive indices arXiv; AIP Advances 2021; cites Su's EPL paper
2019J. H. Field, The Sagnac and Hafele-Keating experiments Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 34, 1930014; preferred frames near a gravitating body; cites Su; abstract only
2019J. Marsen, A Michelson-Morley type experiment should be performed in low Earth orbit and interplanetary space viXra 1906.0336; 7.6 km/s and 30 km/s signals predicted; reads Brillet-Hall residual as possibly Su's signal; read· Advocate of Su's model
2019J. Wu, H.-W. Tsao and Y.-R. Huang, Reviewing Michelson interferometer experiment and measuring the speed of starlight J. Mod. Phys. 10, 539; cites Su's EPL paper; wave-ether model with zero drag; abstract and p.1 read
2021S. J. G. Gift, Detection of the ether using the Global Positioning System Applied Physics Research 13(1), 12; ECI frame as an Earth-bound ether; calls Su's nested ethers 'a reasonable working hypothesis'; read· Proponent of preferred-frame readings
2021J.-E. Persson, The misunderstood Sagnac effect; The wave-particle dilemma in light Physics Essays 34; cites Su; not read
2022M. M. Tran, The c-equivalence principle Universal J. Phys. Research; cites Su
2024E. T. Kipreos, Assessment of the experimental support for differential simultaneity Int. J. Mod. Phys. A; alternate transformation compatible with current experiments; cites Su; abstract only
2024G. Scalera J. Electromagn. Anal. Appl.; cites Su
2024/2025B. Kovac, two papers J. High Energy Phys. Grav. Cosmol. 2024; Open J. Philosophy 2025; cite Su
2024L. Li and J. Yan, multistatic UAV SAR synchronisation IEEE GRSL; cites Su's EPL paper
2025W. Ma and Z. Xu, distributed MIMO-SAR synchronisation IEEE GRSL; cites Su's EPL paper
Company and business records (2)
2005/2008ISBN and book-trade records for ISBN 9789574110971 isbn.tw and Amazon.com.au: 1 Feb 2005, publisher Ching-Chuan Su; govbooks and sanmin: NTHU Press, 1 Mar 2008, 230 pp.; search listings read
2008-05-09NTHU alumni e-news item announcing the book ROC year 97 March edition, NT$900; seen only as a Google result, page did not open
Later accounts and media (10)
2002/2023Wayback Machine captures of Su's site qem.ee.nthu.edu.tw 38 URLs, captures 2002 to 2023, including 2017; six papers not in the folder recovered
2021-05-19J. Marsen, The Local-Ether Model and Quantum Electromagnetics Theory of Prof. Ching-Chuan Su viXra 2105.0110; written 'to promote the work of the late Prof.'; sole published source that Su 'passed away in approximately 2007' and the website was removed· Advocate of Su's model
2021-06-12J. Marsen, CNPS talk 'The Local-Ether Model - A viable alternative to Einstein's Relativity' YouTube 6tbT8Wh6R24; title and snippet only· Advocate of Su's model
2025-11CosmoQuest 'Against the Mainstream' thread on Su's book Advocacy post calling Su 'the late Prof.'; closed 27 Nov 2025 with no discussion
2026Natural Philosophy Wiki page 'Ching-Chuan Su' Sympathetic secondary page (dissident-science society); death 'about 2007' citing Marsen; bibliography; Beckmann precedent· Dissident-science community promoting the model
2026-10-06Live site qem.ee.nthu.edu.tw Now redirects to the NTHU EE department home page
2026-10-06Crossref and arXiv bibliography of Su DOIs 2000-2006; no record after 2006; no arXiv paper after Aug 2006
2026-10-06Google Scholar and OpenAlex citation records Scholar: EPJC cited 46, EPL 32, EPJB 12; OpenAlex lists about 20 citing works; Scholar cited-by lists blocked by CAPTCHA
2026-10-06Google searches for a Comment, Reply or obituary No published Comment or Reply found; no obituary or university notice; one result removed under a legal request (Lumen), content unknown
unknownResearchGate copy of a Su paper with 'Einstein Plus Two [1]' in its snippet Whether Su himself cited Beckmann there is unclear; not checked
Records named but not yet examined (6)
2007-2008NTHU EE department or alumni notice, newspaper obituaries Would decide whether Su died c.2007; need his Chinese name, which is not established (the arbiter's guess returned nothing)
unknownNTHU personnel and institutional-repository records Faculty record, retirement or death notice; not reached
unknownTheses advised by Su (Taiwan NDLTD) Not reached; needs the Chinese name
unknownFront matter of the 2008 book Who saw the book through the press if Su died c.2007
unknownGoogle Scholar cited-by lists for the EPJC and EPL papers Deciding record for reception and rebuttal; blocked
unknownReferee correspondence on Su's papers Unobtainable; would show how the papers were received
Left out: the review's own AI-written analyses, the duplicate copy f1a and the duplicate biography and f6 web pages, site images, Su's unrelated antenna and microwave papers, and mainstream textbooks given only as further reading. Full catalogue: Su-CC sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: A rotating-cavity comparison at two latitudes reporting the lab-fixed 2-omega amplitude (Su predicts 1.2e-12 times cos^2 latitude); a copper-coil repeat of Edwards et al. at Su's 0.1 microvolt F2 level with current distribution measured; an optical-clock redshift comparison against Su's electronic-transition coefficient.
Deciding records: Brillet and Hall 1979 full paper (phase and size of the 2-omega term); Staudenmann et al. 1980 (zero offset, wavelength); Bartlett and Maglic 1990 and Lemon et al. 1992; physics/0208083; the 2008 book; an NTHU notice or obituary (needs Su's Chinese name); Scholar cited-by lists.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: derive the round-trip time on an arm moving through an ether, get Su's 62 Hz at 40 deg latitude, see Lorentz contraction cancel it, then compare 4.5e-13 at Berlin with Herrmann's 1e-17 year mean.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter A constant lab-fixed term would not average out over a year; that is exactly what distinguishes it from the varying systematics. The measured year mean is about 1e-17, a factor of roughly 4e4 below the prediction. arbiter.md, section 1, D1
Primer Same numbers, different story, is not evidence. In every case his formula is relativity's formula evaluated in the ECI frame; the lesson is to ask, for every confirmation, whether the rival theory predicts the same. primer.md, section 7
Contrarian Published, not suppressed: the core papers appeared in refereed journals, so the 'blocked from publication' narrative does not apply. Ignored rather than refuted: no Comment or Reply was found. contrarian.md, How the claims were received
Arbiter The strongest honest reading is that a published, unexplained anomalous signal (Edwards, Kenyon and Lemon 1976) has Su's F2 form but not his size, and no neutral, controlled test of F2 exists. arbiter.md, QE revision, Q2
Investigator The death c.2007 rests on one advocate source (Marsen 2021); no obituary or university notice was found. The book appeared from NTHU Press in March 2008, yet Su's site was still captured in 2017. sites.md, Leads for review 4; arbiter.md section 5
AI noteSu's model keeps time dilation of clocks but drops length contraction of rods; the primer shows that this single omission is what creates the 62 Hz cavity signal, and adding contraction removes it exactly.
Selected Projects
Named by the owner for a full card whatever their rank.
Rank 21Eskridge-Amy
down from 20A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 10:57
She said her NASA-engineer father's unpublished 2015 superconductor test threw off strange forces; his NASA memo reports a spinning bismuth disc changing weight by 0.3 g. Neither was properly checked.
Invention / theory background
Amy Eskridge (1987-2022), a University of Alabama in Huntsville chemistry graduate, co-founded the Institute for Exotic Science to fund gravity-modification research privately. Her 2018 HAL5 lecture surveyed Podkletnov's and Poher's superconductor claims and said her father Richard, a NASA Marshall propulsion engineer, tested a Poher-type device in 2015, unpublished. His 2021 NASA memorandum proposes a 'spin-coupled force' and reports a bismuth-rotor weight change. She published no paper, equation or data, and died in 2022.
Ranking explanation
Meets all four criteria: an unpublished NASA test and a 0.3 g rotor result, both Never properly tested and never dismissed (A); the 2015 test, the rotor and the Institute's silence after 2020 left open (B); a nuclear-alignment calculation the reader can do (C); a much-discussed figure in gravity modification (D). Below Lakhovsky, whose own 1924 experiment is on record; here her own physics is absent and the data are others'. Above Bearden, whose self-powered claim fails an energy budget.
Key supporting elements
NASA-published author biographies say Richard Eskridge and Michael Schoenfeld 'researched the anomalous gravitational effects of electrically pulsed superconductors', matching her 'my dad did that' account of the 2015 Marshall test.
The first-hand voice in her Q&A: a magnet over a second superconductor 'went far away', 'strange effects ... forces coming off the disc', and a disc 'pristine' after the blast, which it offers against a thermal explosion.
The NASA memorandum's 211 g bismuth rotor lost 0.3 g anti-spin and, after a rebuild, gained 0.3 g co-spin (October 2016); the motor reverses by phasing, not current; magnet field measured unchanged; the effect returned with new magnets.
Her method point holds: the published Podkletnov nulls were static (Li 1997) or slow and unpowered (Hathaway 2003, 400-800 rpm against 5,000), so the original was never copied.
Sokol (Falcon Space, an interested party) reports 'a positive correlation between Dynamic Nuclear Polarization and changes in sample weight'; Institute adviser Glen Robertson began a new Podkletnov replication in 2025 (per APEC). No data seen.
Key contradictions
The same first-hand voice: 'we never reproduced the waves' and, with a double Faraday cage, 'we did not reproduce Boyer's [Poher's] signals'. No control discharge with a warm disc; boiling nitrogen and a 0.08 T pulsed field not excluded.
By the memorandum's own force law, a 0.2 T magnet at room temperature aligns about 4e-7 of bismuth nuclei, predicting 1.5e-4 g, about 2000 times less than the 0.3 g reported.
The rotor effect faded with use; the rotor was taken apart between modes; no spin-zero control was run; the authors raised buoyancy and air currents, later suspected the magnets, and call the data 'rudimentary and preliminary'.
Poher-type devices tested by others: Lorincz and Tajmar found an electromagnetic artifact under a double Faraday cage and acoustic noise; Dembovskis (2024) did not confirm Poher's accelerations.
Tajmar offered to test her samples and she did not send them; her 'funded by the German Air Force ... publishes no results' has no source, and his group publishes detailed nulls and artifact analyses.
Never properly testedoriginal conditions: 5,000 rpm, RF drive, composite discTested, not supportedreduced versions: static, slow, no RF
Poher-type pulsed superconductor impulse device produces a force
Tested, not supportedartifact under shielding; positives only in Poher's reports
Her father's unpublished 2015 NASA Marshall test of a Poher-type device gave anomalous effects
Never properly testedinformal, no controls or data on record; not dismissed
The POAMS spin-coupled force of the NASA memorandum
Internally inconsistentin application: three results for one nucleusNever properly testedorbiting-gyroscope prediction: contradicts rigid-body mechanics, never measured in its regime
A spinning bismuth rotor changed weight by 0.3 g, consistent with the theory
Never properly testedthe 0.3 g effect itselfRefuted by calculation'matches the theory': about 2000 times too large at 0.2 T, room temperature, no microwaves
Dynamic nuclear polarization lowers weight (Alzofon), the next thing to test
Never properly testedAlzofon's own regimeTested, not supportedNMR variant (Dresden 2024)Plausible, untestedas a 2020 research programme
Mainstream nulls are not decisive; Tajmar used a monolayer and is funded to publish nothing
Plausible, untestedlogic: modified setups do not exclude the originalNever properly testedmonolayer premiseNot testable as statedGerman Air Force funding
She was surveilled, burgled and threatened because of this work
Never properly testedthe events: no records examinedNot testable as statedNSA list of five and 5,000 agents
President, chairwoman and co-founder of the Institute for Exotic Science; lecturer and advocate for gravity-modification research · Her Institute sought equity investment for this research
Born 19 Sep 1987, died 11 Jun 2022 (ruled a suicide). UAH degree in chemistry (obituary: double major with biology); UAH Materials Science PhD student in 2018; says she nearly finished a biotechnology PhD. MEMS and gyroscope testing at AMRDEC, Redstone Arsenal; CEO of HoloChron. Published no paper, patent or data.
Richard H. Eskridge
Her father; Institute co-founder and lead scientist; ran the 2015 MSFC test by her account; first author of the NASA POAMS memorandum · Co-founder of her Institute; assignee of the plasmoid-thruster patent
33 years at NASA Marshall; retired Dec 2016 as Chief Technical Advisor of the Propulsion Research Lab. Research included 'superconductor impulse gravity generators', fusion and electric propulsion; co-inventor of US7808353B1 (PT-1 plasmoid thruster). Told NewsNation her death was not suspicious: 'Scientists die also'.
Chris Milam
CEO of Quantum Machines LLC, which requested and funded the POAMS Space Act work; present at the 7 Oct 2016 bismuth test · Thought POAMS could underpin a propulsion system; holds the V5 rotor data
Not in the review files beyond the memorandum's account.
Mark Sokol
Co-interviewer in 2020; head of the New Jersey lab pursuing Alzofon's weight-reduction experiment · CEO of Falcon Space (Hawthorne, NJ) and co-founder of the APEC conference that reports his work
Works with the Alzofon estate on S-band and X-band DNP rigs; claims a DNP-weight correlation (poster with David Chester, not found). Says he was 'havana attacked' during her 2020 visit.
Martin Tajmar
Critic and tester: she confronted him at Estes Park in 2018 over his superconductor nulls; he offered to test her samples
TU Dresden. Rotating-superconductor gravitomagnetic experiments 2006-2011; with Lorincz, a scaled Poher-device replication found an artifact; co-author of the 2024 NMR test of Alzofon's claim, which reported a null and a heating artifact.
Eugene Podkletnov
Source of the rotating-disc 'gravity shielding' claim she treated as the field's central anomaly · Author and patentee of his own claim
Reported 0.05-2% weight loss over a rotating YBCO disc (1992, 1997); 2001 patent and impulse-generator paper with Modanese; dispute with Tampere University and a withdrawn preprint; consultant to the UAH-MSFC disc work. No visual record of the original was found.
Claude Poher
French researcher whose discharged static YBCO disc device her father tested at Marshall in 2015, by her account · Author of his own claim
His discharged static YBCO disc device is independent of Podkletnov's, not a replication of it (Gallerati review); he claims positive results, while Lorincz and Tajmar found an electromagnetic artifact and Dembovskis (2024) did not confirm it. Not otherwise in the review files.
Ning Li
UAH physicist whose stopped superconductor-gravity work is the main 'disappearance' case in her lecture
Worked with NASA Marshall in the 1990s (Physica C 1997 static test); founded AC Gravity LLC 1999; $500,000 DoD contract 2001 (her slide). Published nothing after 2002; injured by a vehicle on the UAH campus in 2014; died 27 Jul 2021.
Evidence / artifacts (112 of 120 listed, 93%)
Own works and inventions (15)
2017-01'Amy Pettigrew' Medium blog posts (@amypgrew) Posts of 30 Jan and 5 Feb 2017 by a 'CEO/Co-founder at Black Label Data LLC', chronic-pain patient advocate; Anomaly Archives files them under her name; identity not verified
2018Institute X (Twitter) account @ExoticInstitute Listed on her last HAL5 slide; a post congratulating the Institute on its site launch seen in search results; posts not read
2018-12HAL5 program page for 'A Historical Perspective on Anti-Gravity Technology' Huntsville Alabama L5 Society announcement; her self-reported bio: UAH chemistry degree, Materials Science PhD student, President of the Institute, CEO of HoloChron Engineering
2018-12-06A Historical Perspective on Anti-Gravity Technology (HAL5 slides) 35 pp., Huntsville-Madison County library; no references; slide p.29 'tested at NASA MSFC, 2015' (Poher device); p.34 'promising results always disappear into the classified realm'; deep-read with page images
2018-12-06HAL5 lecture recording and Q&A (YouTube --2dfdJElBg) 1 h 08 min, machine captions, no speaker labels; 'my dad did that' (00:29:39); an unnamed first-hand voice on the 2015 MSFC test (00:49:38-00:52:44); 'I believe in the ether'; deep-read in full
2019YouTube upload of a 2019 talk or video Named in the owner's source notes as unavailable; content unknown
c.2020'Institute for Exotic Science - 60 Second Spot' New District Media House; listed by Anomaly Archives; not opened
c.2020Talks at the Alternative Propulsion Engineering Conference (APEC), 2020-2021 Unconfirmed in the owner's source notes; a search for a video found none
2020-02'Institute For Exotic Science' promotional video New District Media House, 3:40, YouTube 77_39zgEv24; transcript not read
c.2020-05Interview with Jeremy Rys and Mark Sokol (YouTube l0O4cEIkUZc) 3 h 15 min machine captions, uploaded 2024 by Rys; Tajmar monolayer story, 'six forces', planned 28 May New Jersey test, surveillance account, Maxar calendar entry; deep-read in large part· Both interviewers planned a 'disclosure' documentary; Sokol runs the New Jersey DNP lab
2021The Proof is Out There (History), six episodes 2021-2022 Credited as President, Institute for Exotic Science; IMDb nm13210059; segment content not seen
2022The Proof Is Out There: Skinwalker Edition, one episode IMDb credit; content not seen
2022The Proof Is Out There: Bermuda Triangle Edition, one episode IMDb credit; content not seen
2024The Proof Is Out There: Alien Edition, one episode Aired after her death, probably earlier footage; IMDb credit; content not seen
–'New Antigravity Research Institute', Parts 1 and 2 Galactic Gregs YouTube channel; listed by Anomaly Archives; not opened
Patents and patent office (6)
1928US 1,655,144, shown on her slide p.12 as Tesla's 'space drive' Actually a grain-treating machine by Hallgarth and Chandler; slide image taken from William Lyne's book; checked on Google Patents in the QE round
1928-01-03US 1,655,114, Tesla, Apparatus for Aerial Transportation Vertical take-off 'helicopter-plane'; the nearest real Tesla patent; no space drive in it
1971US 3,626,605, Wallace 'kinemassic field' patent Cited by the NASA memorandum as the Wallace effect; her slide p.18 marks Wallace 'unsubstantiated'
2001Podkletnov gravity-shielding patent Named on her slide p.26 with the claimed 2% weight reduction; not obtained· Podkletnov's own claim
2010-10-05US7808353B1, Coil system for plasmoid thruster Inventors R. H. Eskridge, M. H. Lee, A. K. Martin, P. J. Fimognari; filed 2006 by NASA; US only; expired for fees; the only Eskridge propulsion patent; none by Amy, the Institute or HoloChron
2018-10-03Assignment of US7808353 from NASA to Richard H. Eskridge Seen as an event on Google Patents; USPTO reel and frame, and terms, not checked
Court and state records (7)
2018-07-16HoloChron LLC, Alabama entity 000524283 Formed in Houston County; organizer Lucus S. Michels, Seattle; annual reports 2019-2021; dissolved 2022-12-28; read on the al.ltddir.com mirror of the state register
2018-07-16HoloChron Holdings LLC, Alabama entity 000524282 Formed the same day by the same organizer; dissolved 2020-12-27
2018-07-19HoloChron formation certificate, annual reports and dissolution filings Scanned at the Alabama Secretary of State; would show what the companies did; not read
2018Institute for Exotic Science Delaware public benefit corporation filings She said it was registered in Delaware (lecture); entity search needs a CAPTCHA; not tried
2018AC Gravity LLC (Ning Li) Alabama entity and licence Licence renewed through 2018 per the Huntsville Business Journal; filings named by the arbiter as deciding the Ning Li question
–Record of the 'court case' she says ended her biotechnology PhD Interview 02:05:28, 'a sexual harassment thing ... a really horrible court case'; a filed case would leave a record
2022-06Death investigation report Ruled a suicide; Madison County Sheriff per the Sentinel, Birmingham police per Wikipedia (conflict unresolved); no public report
Government records (13)
1969Mansfield Amendment, Public Law 91-121 section 203 Limited DoD research to work with 'a direct and apparent relationship to a specific military function'; does not mention gravity; her slides date it 1973; checked by search summary
1973Senate roll-call vote on a 1973 Mansfield amendment voteview RS0930410; what it changed was not retrieved
2001Ning Li's $500,000 DoD contract Her slide p.24; contract record not obtained
2015-07-01Space Act Agreement SAA8-1519855, NASA MSFC and Quantum Machines LLC Funded the POAMS work; proprietary period now ended; known from the memorandum p.5· Quantum Machines thought POAMS could underpin a propulsion system
2015MSFC records of the Poher-type pulsed YBCO test Notes, accelerometer traces ('excess of 500 Gs') and whatever was sent to management ('we told management about this'); no NTRS report found (search inconclusive); FOIA named by the arbiter
20151,000,000 frames-per-second film of the discharge Described by the first-hand voice as showing 'a wave coming off' an emitter
–Space Act Agreement with a 'France' partner Memorandum p.37 lists France among Nelson's partners; whether it was Poher is an inference
2017-12AATIP / DIA reference documents Covers shown on her slide; contents not examined
2018-12-17SAM registration of the Institute, entity FTWBFXR1NE21 Amy as President, Joppa, Alabama, per the Sentinel Network; not verified at SAM.gov
2021-11NASA/TM-20205010911, A Study of the Pope-Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis Theory (POAMS) R. H. Eskridge, M. A. Nelson, M. P. Schoenfeld; she is not named; eq. 28a; 211 g bismuth rotor 0.3 g on 7 Oct 2016; author bios on pulsed-superconductor gravity work (pp.37-38); deep-read· First author is her father; work funded by Quantum Machines
–MSFC property-disposal and GSA auction records Would test her claim that cancelled prototypes are 'melted down for scrap' (interview 01:16)
2024-11-13Michael Shellenberger written testimony, House Oversight UAP hearing HHRG-118-GO12-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20241113.pdf; includes her death; not read
2026FBI and congressional inquiry into a 'missing scientists' cluster Reported by CNN, NewsNation and the Huntsville Times; Rep. Eric Burlison named; no record seen
Company and business records (9)
2018-11-11Institute for Exotic Science website (Wayback capture) Public benefit corporation; staff Amy, Richard Eskridge (co-founder, 33 years at MSFC), Shantel Butler, Samuel Reid, Glen Robertson, Robert Becker· Promotional page of a venture seeking investors
2019-07-23Institute website, rebranded 'Technology for a space economy' (Wayback capture) Now 'for-profit'; Richard's bio lists 'superconductor impulse gravity generators'; Bill Dent and Seth Wahle on staff· Promotional page
–LinkedIn posts quoting a HoloChron mission statement 'To create a public-facing persona to disclose anti-gravity technology'; original source not found
2019-12-17Maxar plasma-thruster patent negotiation She reads it from her calendar (interview 00:57:56); possibly US7808353B1 (arbiter's inference); correspondence not obtained
2020-09Cease-and-desist letter sent on behalf of the Institute, citing NASA Reported as stopping Falcon Space's presentation at the online Estes Park workshop; posted on X by @Alien_Scientist; text not seen
2020-05-28Falcon Space test logs for the planned New Jersey 'Alzofon' experiment Caption reads 'alzheimer's experiment'; link to Alzofon via APEC; no result in any document· Falcon Space (Sokol)
2021-12holochron.com Only an 'under construction' page, per the owner's notes
–Institute bank and investor records She said equity investment was 'closing right now' (2018); named by the arbiter as deciding
–V4 and V5 bismuth rotors and their data Held by Quantum Machines after NASA work stopped for lack of funding (memorandum p.35)· The funder
Witness accounts and correspondence (6)
2020-09@Alien_Scientist posts of the cease-and-desist X status 1306981668419301379 and 1307975074050441216; X needs a login; not opened
2025-10-27Mark Sokol's account of being 'havana attacked' during her 2020 visit Red Panda Koala's UFO History Archive video, via Anomaly Archives; recording not checked· Interviewer and DNP-lab head
–Franc Milburn's claim she was targeted with directed-energy weapons by a private aerospace company Via Anomaly Archives· Retired UK intelligence officer active in the UAP field
2026-04-20Richard Eskridge to NewsNation Declined interview; does not think her death suspicious: 'Scientists die also, just like other people'· Her father and collaborator
2026-04-21Family statement to CNN 'a marvelously intelligent person' who suffered from 'chronic pain'; Google snippet only; WSJ of 25 Apr 2026 quotes the family too
2026-04Text she sent a friend saying she would not have killed herself Reported in 2026 coverage (Daily Mail 'chilling texts', Facebook snippets); seen only in search summaries
Experiments and replications by others (26)
1981-07F. Alzofon, Anti-gravity with present technology, AIAA 81-1608 17th Joint Propulsion Conference; INIS record found; paywalled, not obtained
1987Wu, Ashburn, Torng et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 908 (YBCO at 93 K) UAH co-authors; her 'stolen patent' story names 'Jim Ashworth', probably Jim Ashburn; the patent story is unchecked
1989Hayasaka and Takeuchi gyroscope weight-loss report Spinning gyroscopes said to lose weight
1990Quinn and Picard, Nature 343, 732 Gyroscope null: about 5% of the claimed size, cut more than tenfold after friction and temperature corrections
1990Faller et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 2115 Gyroscope weighing null
1990Nitschke and Wilmarth gyroscope test Null more than two orders of magnitude below the reported effect
1992Podkletnov rotating YBCO disc report Sintered single-layer disc; 0.05-2% weight loss claimed; no visual record found· His own claim
1994Alzofon's dynamic nuclear polarization weight experiment 0.5 g aluminium powder with iron, about 0.33 T, 9.5 GHz; maximum 1.1 mg (0.22%); known through the Dresden paper· His own claim
1997Podkletnov preprint cond-mat/9701074 and the Tampere dispute Withdrawn paper; her slide says he was 'ousted' from Tampere, no source
1997-08Li, Noever, Robertson, Koczor and Brantley, Physica C 281, 260-267 MSFC static levitated-YBCO test; change under 2 parts in 10^8; not a rotating disc; NTRS 19990039542
2001NASA MSFC rotating-disc Podkletnov replication (Robertson, final report due 2001) 'Never completed ... despite rumors' per Robertson via APEC
2001Woods et al. rotating-disc attempt Unsuccessful, per the Gallerati review
2001Podkletnov and Modanese impulse gravity generator (physics/0108005) Composite crystal; source of the 'impulse' line Poher followed· Authors' own claim
2003Osborne and Pope, An Angular Momentum Synthesis of 'Gravitational' and 'Electrostatic' Forces Galilean Electrodynamics 14 (2003), as cited in the memorandum (p.55); the theory the memorandum reformulates; not in the folder
2003Hathaway et al. rotating-superconductor test 400-800 rpm against Podkletnov's 5,000 rpm, no RF drive; null to 0.001%; arXiv gr-qc/0404005 checked by the arbiter
–Claude Poher's own pulsed-disc reports (universons) Static YBCO disc discharged at about 2 kV; claims positive results· His own claim
–Lorincz and Tajmar scaled replication of the Poher device 2.2 kV; effect an electromagnetic artifact once a double Faraday cage was used (via Gallerati)
2016Tajmar group follow-up on the Poher device Remaining accelerometer signal attributed to acoustic noise (via Gallerati)
2019-07-16David Prutchi, critique of Alzofon's 1994 experiments diyphysics.com PDF: the data show 'absolutely no effect'; not downloaded
2022Gallerati, Interaction between macroscopic quantum systems and gravity, Frontiers in Physics 10:941858 Review with Podkletnov, Poher and UAH-MSFC sections; read via arXiv 2206.07574 by reviewers, page extraction failed for the Investigator
2024-02Stark, Grafe and Tajmar, Investigation of the Alzofon weight reduction experiment using NMR arXiv 2402.15529; NMR at 9 T, 5 K; null at low pulse counts; high-power signal also without specimen, tracks temperature; DNP not tried; deep-read
2024Tajmar, Kossling and Neunzig, steady-field search for a gravity-electromagnetism coupling Scientific Reports; cited by APEC and in search results
2024-12Dembovskis, Report on replication attempt for C. Poher's pulsed gravity accelerator ResearchGate DOI 10.13140/RG.2.2.28989.17129; 'did not confirm' Poher's accelerations; snippet only
–Sokol and Chester poster, Experimental NMR Conference (Asilomar) Said to show 'a positive correlation between Dynamic Nuclear Polarization and changes in sample weight'; not found· Falcon Space
–The Tajmar protocol she says used a YBCO 'monolayer' Paper not named by her and not identified by any reviewer
2025Glen Robertson's new Podkletnov replication Begun with volunteers per APEC; Robertson was an Institute adviser; no result reported
Later accounts and media (20)
–F. and D. Alzofon, How to Build a Flying Saucer (and Save the Planet) Book on Alzofon's weight-reduction idea; cited by APEC; a copy found online, not read· The Alzofon family promotes the idea
–William Lyne, Occult Ether Physics Source image of her slide p.12 'space drive' claim· Popular book arguing its own thesis
–Robertson and Modanese (eds.), Gravity-Superconductors Interactions: Theory and Experiment Cited in Robertson's Institute bio; not read
–Anonymous r/conspiracy post on Ning Li's disappearance Screenshot on her slide p.25, the slide's only source
–NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics document on Podkletnov replications Hathaway private replication done; 'Tony Robertson, NASA MSFC, Final report due 2001'; Google snippet only
2022-06Obituary (obits.al.com / Arab Heritage Memorial Chapel) Born 19 Sep 1987, died 11 Jun 2022 aged 34; UAH chemistry and biology; mirrored by Anomaly Archives, AL.com blocked
2022-06Arab Tribune obituary URL recorded; not opened
2023-01-08APEC 'UAP Technical Briefing' tribute to her Snippet only· Sokol's conference
2023-07-30Huntsville Business Journal on Ning Li No publications after 2002; AC Gravity licence renewed through 2018; died 27 Jul 2021; partial extraction
2024-09Courtney Marchesani, 'Amy's Disclosure Launchpad' (Medium) Not reached
2025-01Mike Hobart, 'Who Was Amy Eskridge?' (Substack) Quoted by Anomaly Archives: little came out after the Sept 2020 cease-and-desist
2025-07-09APEC, Superconductors and Gravity Control: A 30-Year History Gary Stephenson interview; NASA's replication 'never completed'; Poher 'claimed positive results'· Promotes the field
–Anomaly Archives collection file 'Pettigrew, Amy Eskridge' Hub: obituary, blog, cease-and-desist, Sokol and Milburn accounts, video list
2026-04-21APEC, Mark Sokol: Anti-Gravity with Present Technology Falcon Space, Hawthorne NJ, works with the Alzofon estate; S-band and X-band DNP rigs· Sokol's own conference site
2026-04-23AL.com, Death of 'genius' Alabama woman linked to investigation of missing, dead scientists Paywalled and blocked in Chrome
2026-04-30The Sentinel Network, 'The Garrison' SAM entity, Physica C 1997, Ning Li's 2014 injury; misexpands POAMS· Argues a suppression thesis
2026-05-16APEC, NASA's Spin-Coupled Force Experiments Popular account of the memorandum; finds no Eskridge patent on POAMS or gravity· Promotes the field
2026Wikipedia, Missing scientists conspiracy theory Ruled suicide; says Birmingham police, which conflicts with other sources
–Reddit r/UFOs post and X posts (@UAPLuigi, Tobie Venne) on the cease-and-desist Say the C&D cited NASA and halted the Falcon Space work; archive.ph copy blocked
–Post-death videos UFOB edited interview, 'Rest in Peace Amy', German ExoMagazinTV segment, 'alleged radiation burns on hands', Michael Salla videos; none checked
Records named but not yet examined (10)
–Robert Becker's UAH quantized-gravity thesis She says she photographed every page; Becker was the Institute's quantum-gravity adviser
1999UAH loan record of the Becker thesis She says it shows a 1999 'DIA' interlibrary checkout
2018Estes Park workshop records, 2018 (Tajmar meeting) and 2020 (Falcon Space presentation) SSI workshop videos not reached; Shantel Butler a possible second witness to 2018
c.2020The 'paper' she planned to post on arXiv Never published; press reports say NASA authorization was needed
c.2020The 'mathematical equation' for six forces Claimed in the interview (00:20:20); never shown
c.2020Audio of the 2020 interview Needed to fix who says what (German Air Force repeat line, six forces)
c.2020Bluetooth 'logs and live packet captures' She says they exist; never shown
c.2020Uber trip record of the Lexus with the swapped plate, and any plate photograph or police report Named in her account; none examined
c.2020Cybersecurity consultant's findings Ex-CIO of Northrop Grumman, unnamed, who said her story matched other women in technology
c.2020'Mana World Holdings Trust' $100 million offer She calls it a Russian criminal intelligence front; no document
Left out: eight minor 2026 news and commentary pages seen only in search results (WION, WFMD, Lifehacker, uapmurders.com, Council Estate Media, The Political Saucer, Hack Liberty, Vremya footage), copies and re-uploads, and the historical devices and programmes her slides survey without examination (Brown, Searl, Dean, Laithwaite, Hutchison, Woodward, Morningstar, Boeing GRASP, Torr-Vargas-Datta). Full catalogue: Eskridge-Amy sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Weigh the bismuth rotor against a matched-mass spin-zero rotor in a closed, temperature-controlled housing, with no disassembly between spin directions and magnet-only runs; and repeat the 2015 discharge with a warm or non-superconducting disc as control.
Deciding records: The 2015 Marshall notes, accelerometer traces and million-frame film (FOIA; Richard Eskridge could name the Q&A speaker); the V5 data from Quantum Machines; the Sept 2020 cease-and-desist text; Delaware, SAM and HoloChron filings; the packet captures and Uber record she named.
Try it yourself: Estimate bismuth-209 nuclear alignment with the Curie law, P = (I+1)/(3I) x mu B / kT, with I = 9/2, mu = 4.11 nuclear magnetons, B = 0.2 T, T = 300 K: about 4e-7. The 0.3 g on 211 g needs 8.4e-4, about 2000 times more. example.py does every step.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Within the memorandum's own framework the reported 0.3 g is about 2000 times what its force law predicts for the available alignment. That refutes 'the data match the theory', not every conceivable spin-weight coupling; the 0.3 g itself stays Never properly tested. arbiter.md, claim 3 and QE revision A2
Mathematician For a rigid body the arm force is total mass times centre-of-mass acceleration, whatever the spin. The memorandum's 15-19% gyroscope prediction at 60 Hz therefore needs a new force, not a reformulation; its long derivation only restates the POAMS postulate. mathematician.md, Verification of the POAMS / SCF mathematics
Contrarian The Dresden group did not test Alzofon's method: plain NMR at 9 T and 5 K, not microwave DNP at 0.33 T and room temperature. It is a null for NMR-style excitation, not a refutation of Alzofon's regime. contrarian.md, Corrections to Step 1, item 1
Physicist She declined a test offered by the person she accuses of suppressing results. A group publishing detailed artifact analyses is the opposite of 'publishing nothing'. physicist.md, Claim 4, b
QE The arbiter first said, with confidence, that the memorandum's Table 1 does not follow from its eq. 28a; that was a sign error, now withdrawn. The primer had also dropped the 'pristine disc' argument and the memorandum's own control arguments; both were restored. qe.md, Verdict and Retention check; arbiter.md QE revision A1
AI noteHer slide's Tesla 'space drive' patent 1,655,144 is a 1928 grain-treating machine. It sits beside the cover of William Lyne's book, its likely source; Tesla's real 1928 aircraft patent is 1,655,114.
Rank 13Flat-Earth
new this runA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-10 15:51
It began with real sightings: distant objects over calm water stay visible. Nobody ever measured the refraction on those days, but the one pre-agreed equal-height test showed curvature.
Invention / theory background
In 1838 Samuel Birley Rowbotham ('Parallax') watched a flagged boat over six miles of the Old Bedford River in the English Fens and concluded still water is flat. His Zetetic Astronomy (1865; 3rd ed. 1881) built a disc earth centred on the North Pole, a small near sun, sunset by perspective and no motion. Hampden's 1870 wager with Wallace, Carpenter, Lady Blount's society, the Koreshans' concave rival, Voliva's Zion, the Flat Earth Society wiki and Rob Skiba carried it on.
Ranking explanation
All four criteria apply: a documented 1870 wager and its litigation, tests run by the movement itself, one open question (refraction never measured during the low sightings), arithmetic any reader can redo, and lasting influence. It sits below Wallace's c+v radar case and Le Bon's black light, whose headline verdicts are the same but whose anomalies are better documented, and above Mallove's glow-discharge account and Kelly's device guide, whose claims are untested rather than tested and failed.
Key supporting elements
The sightings are real: Rowbotham 1838 and 1870, the Nab light-ship, Naylor 1894, about 20 Koreshan sightings in 1896-97 and Clifton 1904. A globe needs refraction coefficients k of 0.4 to 1.0, never measured on those days.
Refraction was invoked, not measured, in every historic test. Blount and Smith's 1904 retort that critics 'can blow both hot and cold' is, the arbiter and contrarian agree, a legitimate logical point.
Rowbotham's '8 inches times miles squared' is the correct small-angle drop and most of his arithmetic is right; his own 1872 preface calls some first-edition evidence 'not entirely satisfactory'.
Clifton, the Dallmeyer operator the zetetic account calls a 'globularist', saw the sheet's lower edge from 2 ft at six miles and wrote that 'unless rays of light will travel in a curved path' the water is level.
Replies to Carpenter's 1885 challenge (Gilman of Johns Hopkins, Baird of the Smithsonian, Proctor's postscript) were dismissal without engagement, not tests; Proctor had conceded that a sight close to the canal surface would be decisive.
Key contradictions
The pre-agreed 1870 equal-height test (sketches signed by both sides' referees) put the middle disc about 6 ft above the line (umpire: 'five feet, more or less'); a plane with straight light predicts zero. Oldham repeated it 1900-01.
On the north-centred flat map, southern distances come out 2.1 to 2.6 times the globe's; Johannesburg-Perth is flown in about 10 hours, which the flat-map distance would need about 1,850 km/h to match.
One sun height cannot fit equinox noon elevations at several latitudes (3,938, 3,109 and 2,393 mi); the movement's own 1893 table gives 3,585, 3,105, 2,390, and Rowbotham's 1881 700-mile sun fails on his own inputs.
Airy's 1856 Harton Colliery pendulums found gravity 1.00005185 times greater 1,256 ft down, about a billion times a uniformly accelerating floor's prediction; the GPS clock offset follows from mass gravity (operator's own specification).
Michelson and Gale (1925) observed 0.230 +/- 0.005 fringe against 0.236 predicted for a rotating earth; Rowbotham's vertical gun cannot resolve the 0.3 to 2 m Coriolis drift a globe predicts, and his 8,400 ft prediction is internally wrong.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 34 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Still water is a plane over miles, so the earth is not a globe (strong form)
Tested, not supportedWallace 1870, Oldham 1900-01; refraction measured in neither
Establishedthe observationNever properly testedas proof of flatness; k never measured
A flat earth with a definite map (north-centred disc)
Refuted by calculationsouthern distances x2.1 to x2.6; flight times; Rowbotham's own scale off by 2.3
The earth neither rotates nor orbits
Tested, not supportedrotation: Michelson-Gale, Foucault, ring lasersTested, not supportedorbit: aberration and parallax, from memory, not in folderRefuted by calculationAiry, Michelson-Morley, Rowbotham's gun and star tubes as proofs of restNot testable as statedrest as a coordinate choice
Sun and moon small and near; sunset by perspective or upward-bending light
Refuted by calculationperspective sunset; Rowbotham's 700-mile sunTested, not supportedsizes and heightsNot testable as statedElectromagnetic Acceleration, no value of beta
Universal Acceleration replaces gravity
Tested, not supportedAiry 1856 gradient, GPS clock offset, latitude, tides, orbitsInternally inconsistentparts as written (Davis plane, tides)Establishedlocal equivalence of acceleration and gravity
NASA and Army documents admit a flat, nonrotating earth; agencies conceal the shape
Tested, not supported22 reports held, 5 read in depth: a stated short-range approximationNot testable as statedconcealment and faked space travel
Never properly testedone run by the colony; constant 0.12 arcsec bias would mimic itTested, not supportedNaples Bay mid-stake as support for 8 in/mi^2 concavity
Founder of Zetetic astronomy; made the Bedford canal sightings from 1838
Born about 1816 in Cheshire, died 23 December 1884 at Beckenham (user genealogy). From 1838 Secretary of the Hodsonian community at Manea Fen beside the Old Bedford River. Lectured, debated and wrote for over thirty years on paid tours (Hewitson, Preston, 1866: 'honest & intelligent & ingenious'). Sold 'Dr. Birley's Syrup of Free Phosphorus'. The historian Garwood calls him 'a self-educated quack inventor' (her characterization). Formal education not in the review files.
John Hampden
Challenger in the 1870 wager · staked £500 on flat water
Dated 1819-1891 in the Epsilon notes. Wrote The Popularity of Error (1869); offered £500 in Scientific Opinion (January 1870); declined to look through the instruments; called Walsh's ruling 'monstrous'. Bound over at Stratford in 1871 and jailed after the 1875 Chelmsford libel trial over his 'cheat and swindler' letters; recovered his stake in Hampden v. Walsh (1876). Career otherwise not in the review files.
Alfred Russel Wallace
Accepted the wager and designed the equal-height test · staked £500; winner of the umpire's decision
Asked Lyell before accepting; corresponded with Darwin (Epsilon). Received the stakes, repaid £500 after Hampden v. Walsh, and called the affair 'the most regrettable incident in my life' and fifteen years of 'litigation, and persecution' (My Life, 1905). His education and scientific career are not described in the review files.
William Carpenter
Hampden's referee in 1870; author of One Hundred Proofs (1885) · Hampden's referee and a zetetic lecturer
Described by Wallace as 'a journeyman printer'. Signed the 1870 large-telescope sketch 'under protest' and argued that equal steps in the level telescope meant a straight line (a mathematical error). Printed his 1885 pamphlet in Baltimore and wrote to Johns Hopkins, the Smithsonian and Proctor.
John Henry Walsh
Umpire and stakeholder of the 1870 wager · held the £1,000 pool
Editor of The Field. Authorised in writing by Hampden (Epsilon WCP5561); consulted the optician Solomons at Hampden's request; decided on 18 March 1870 that Wallace had shown curvature 'to the extent of five feet, more or less'. Sued by Hampden in 1876. Hampden called him Wallace's nominee.
Lady Elizabeth A. M. Blount
Led the Universal Zetetic Society; commissioned the 1904 Bedford photograph · zetetic leader
Edited the Earth Review (later volumes) and Earth (about 1900-1904); co-wrote Zetetic Astronomy: The Sun's Motions (1904) with Albert Smith; published Flat or Spherical? (1905). Hired E. Clifton, Dallmeyer's operator, for the 11 May 1904 photograph. Other background not in the review files.
H. Yule Oldham
Repeated Wallace's equal-height test in 1900-01
M.A., a Cambridge geographer (not R. D. Oldham the seismologist). Read a 23-line abstract to the British Association (BAAS) Section E in Glasgow, 17 September 1901: the middle mark stood 'about six feet above the line of sight'. No heights, weather or photographs survive in the record.
Rob Skiba
Leading 2015-2019 advocate; Testing the Globe articles, videos and balloon launches · flat-earth advocate
1969-2021. Filmmaker, actor since 1986, Hollywood Film Institute graduate, author of Babylon Rising and Archon Invasion (his own site). Called his own tests 'inconclusive' and wrote 'I cannot prove any conspiracy at work here'. Died of COVID-19 in October 2021.
Evidence / artifacts (178 of 178 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (17)
1865Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe! (2nd ed. 1865; 3rd ed. 1881) S. B. Rowbotham ('Parallax'); deep-read at 1865 PDF pp.68-80, 103-107, 160-180 and 1881 Chapters II-V and the wager pp.268-273; air-gun and cannon tests, star tubes, sun altitudes, lighthouse table· inventor
1869-12The Popularity of Error and the Unpopularity of Truth John Hampden; 19 pp. pamphlet, read in full; no wager terms in it (OCR '1809' is 1869)· the challenger in the 1870 wager
1870-04-05Experimental Proofs ... That the Surface of Standing Water is Not Convex but Horizontal 'Parallax' (Rowbotham), 24 pp.; his turf-boat repeat (telescope 18 in, board kept in view) and his objection that the agreed three equal discs were not used; WKU scan, pp.8-18 read· inventor
1872-07The Zetetic, vol. 1 no. 1 B. Chas. Brough's case to Wallace that the signal near the telescope was omitted; TFES library PDF, OCR read· zetetic movement's own publication
1885One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is Not a Globe William Carpenter, Baltimore; 42 pp. read in full; letters to Gilman (Johns Hopkins), Baird (Smithsonian), Proctor; Sharpe's Island light· Hampden's 1870 referee
1893The Earth (not-a-Globe) Review, 1893-1897 Universal Zetetic Society journal (A. Smith, later Lady Blount); 266 PDF pp. digested, about 40 pp. deep-read: Revell's New Zealand letters, G.M.'s sun table, Roy's pickets p.34, the 1870 sketches p.265, heliograph pp.218-219· zetetic movement's own publication
1894-08James Naylor, 'The Old Bedford Canal' levelled repeat Earth Review pp.216-217, printed about 1896; theodolite, Dumpy level; railway girder 12 mi off seen over Welney Bridge; no readings in figures; globe needs k 0.6 to 0.9· zetetic, single first-person account
c.1895Naylor, 'Zetetic Refraction No. III' Earth Review p.175: concedes sun angles 'far more nearly correspond with the common theory than with Zeteticism'· zetetic movement's own publication
1896-07-25Koreshan optical tests, Summit canal, Lake Michigan, Roby, Gordon's Pass, Naples Bay (1896-97) Koresh and Morrow 1898, PDF pp.84-106 read from page images; about 20 sightings needing k 0.36 to 0.99; Naples Bay mid-stake fits neither model· Koreshan Unity, testing its own doctrine
1897-03The Flaming Sword, January to July 1897 Koreshan journal (IAPSOP); March 'Explanation of Apparent Depression of the Horizon' (light 'curvilineating slightly upwards'); June survey report· Koreshan Unity
1898The Cellular Cosmogony, Part 1 (Koreshan Geodetic Survey, Naples, Florida, 1897) Koresh (Cyrus R. Teed) and U. G. Morrow; Rectilineator run 17 March 1897, 4 1/8 mi; data fit exponent 2.09; deep-read PDF pp.83-195· Koreshan Unity
1899Zetetic Cosmogony, 2nd ed. 'Rectangle' (usually identified as Thomas Winship), Durban, with Port Natal observations; misattributed to Rowbotham at the Internet Archive; text saved, title page read· zetetic movement's own publication
–Earth, monthly magazine no. 51 Edited by Lady Blount c.1900-1904; OCR: a column repeating the 8-in rule, no new data· zetetic movement's own publication
1904Zetetic Astronomy: The Sun's Motions North and South Lady E. A. M. Blount and Albert Smith; 40 pp. read in full; two ether vortices, figure-8 sun; 'they can blow both hot and cold'· zetetic movement's own publication
1904-05-11Lady Blount, Flat or Spherical? (1905), incl. 'Collapse of the Globular Theory' and Clifton's letter Account of the 11 May 1904 Bedford photograph: Dallmeyer camera about 2 ft above the water, sheet six miles off; Clifton: 'very unfavourable', 'aqueous shimmering vapour'; chapter 8 and intro from TFES library· zetetic; Clifton worked for Dallmeyer, which sold the camera
1930Earth Not a Globe: Scientifically, Geometrically, Philosophically Demonstrated Henry J. Goudey, Boston; Internet Archive; held as a lead, not read· zetetic movement's own publication
–Earth Not a Globe but Positively a Plane John T. Lawson; Internet Archive; not read· zetetic movement's own publication
Modern flat-earth works (Dubay, Flat Earth Society wiki) (20)
2015200 Proofs Earth is Not a Spinning Ball Eric Dubay, blog post; all 200 proofs read; 68 quantitative items rechecked (tangent drop mixed with sagitta, target horizon omitted)· advocate
2022TFES wiki: Aviation Cites a 1979 New Scientist letter from the RAF College on a fixed celestial sphere· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Bedford Level Experiment Deep-read; Clifton figures wrong ('about 15 ft'; right figure 12.1 ft); 'court found Wallace cheated' not supported· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Eratosthenes on Diameter Digest· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Flat Earth FAQ Digest· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Flat Earth Maps Digest; the north-centred map used for the distance calculation· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Michelson-Gale-Pearson Experiment Deep-read against the 1925 paper; its +0.26 mean is Correa's single-reading figure, not the paper's 0.230· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Moon Digest· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Sinking Ship Effect Deep-read· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Sun Digest; sun 32 mi across, about 3,000 mi up· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Universal Acceleration Deep-read; equations are images· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2022TFES wiki: Wilbur Glenn Voliva Biography stub; 1932 Irving Wallace interview (sun 3,000 mi away, 32 mi across)· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2023TFES wiki: Airy's Failure Deep-read; Fresnel drag predicts Airy's null for a moving earth· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2023TFES wiki: Coriolis Effect Deep-read; its own sources (Reich, Shapiro, Trefethen, firing table H) show demonstrations· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2023TFES wiki: Electromagnetic Acceleration Deep-read; formula y = (3/4)(beta x^4/c^2)^(1/3) with no value of beta· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2023TFES wiki: Foucault Pendulum Deep-read; includes the South Pole 'twice what is expected' anecdote· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2023TFES wiki: Ring Laser Gyroscope Deep-read; misreads the Brillouin caption; does not mention Knodel· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2023TFES wiki: The Setting of the Sun as a Perspective Effect Digest· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2023TFES wiki: The Conspiracy Digest; 'Space Travel Conspiracy'· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
2023TFES wiki: World Geodetic System 1984 Deep-read; quotes no WGS 84 definition; its own quotations call the earth an ellipsoid· the Flat Earth Society's own statement
Rob Skiba, Testing the Globe (29)
2015-05-22Inconclusive Preliminary Test of Curvature (video) YouTube auto-captions; digest· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015Testing the Globe: I Can See For Miles and Miles! testingtheglobe.com· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015Testing the Globe, Part 1: In Whom Do We Place Our Trust? Rob Skiba web article; digest of opening and main passages· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015Testing the Globe, Part 2: Easy Globalist Arguments to Refute Concedes he could not refute the Coriolis effect or the lunar eclipse in a 'Top 10' list· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015Testing the Globe, Part 3: The Quest for Truth Begins Rob Skiba web article; digest of opening and main passages· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015Testing the Globe, Part 4: The Bible and the Still Flat Earth Rob Skiba web article; digest of opening and main passages· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015Testing the Globe, Part 5: Angels and Stars Rob Skiba web article; digest of opening and main passages· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015Testing the Globe, Part 6: Pillars of the Earth Rob Skiba web article; digest of opening and main passages· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015Testing the Globe, Part 7: Enoch and the Still Flat Earth Rob Skiba web article; digest of opening and main passages· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015Flat Earth Testimonies (Facebook notes) Rob Skiba web article; digest of opening and main passages· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2015-12-11Journey to Investigate Flat Earth (interview with Patricia Steere) Auto-captions· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2016-03-02Debate with Zachary Bauer, Beaumont, Texas Auto-captions, 1:14:52· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2016Testing the Globe, Part 8: The Truman Show? Rob Skiba web article; digest of opening and main passages· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2016Testing the Globe, Part 9: Conclusions Deep-read; 'I cannot prove any conspiracy at work here'; tests 'inconclusive'· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2016-06-29Chicago Skyline Not a Mirage (Lake Michigan boat trip, 24 June 2016) Deep-read caption transcript; Chicago from a 3 ft eye at 42.6-46 mi needs strong refraction· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2016-07-27Ships Do Not Go Over Any Curve (video) Auto-captions· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2017-01-21Atmospheric Magnification (short video) Auto-captions· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2017-01-27Chicago Skyline Expanded, Part 1: Refraction and Magnification Deep-read; meteorologist Coomes and optics professor Rennie concede looming· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2017-02-25Max Igan: Flight Direction and Level Tests (video) Deep-read caption transcript· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2017-06-21Goals of the High-Altitude Balloon Test (video) Deep-read caption transcript· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2017-06-25Balloon Launch Discussion with Rick Hummer and Victor Brewer Deep-read caption transcript· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2017-07-15Rob Skiba 'Proves Globe' Debunked (reply to Sly Sparkane) Deep-read; concedes curvature appears at about 100,000 ft, argues the same shape appears under 1,000 ft· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2017-11-15Testing the Globe's Second High-Altitude Balloon Launch (video, 2 h 58 min) Investigator, yt-dlp captions: 'a very slight curve' but lens barrel distortion and cloud make it 'hard to tell'· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2017About Rob (robskiba.com) Biography page· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2018-12-20Skiba vs Sungenis: Biblical Cosmology Debate Auto-captions, 2:05:49· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2018-12-20Debunking the 'Top 10 Reasons We Know the Earth is a Globe' (condensed) Auto-captions· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2019-11-26FEIC 2019 Part 1: Who Has the Intellectual High Ground? Auto-captions· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2019-11-27FEIC 2019 Part 2: Preponderance of Evidence Deep-read; a friend's 'moon under 300 miles' phone triangulation, no angles or baseline· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2020The Flat Earth Controversy From A Biblical Worldview (home page) Rob Skiba web article; digest of opening and main passages· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
Government records (25)
1961NASA TN D-645, Wind Compensation for Launching of Unguided Rockets James and Harris; digest and phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1965NASA CR-62898, Atmospheric Oscillations Lineberger and Edwards, Georgia Tech; deep-read PDF pp.12-16· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1971NASA TN D-6218, Reducing Sensitivity of Optimal Nonlinear Systems Elliott and Teague; phrase search: assumption list· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1972NASA TM X-2514, Angles of Attack and Sideslip from Radar Data Preisser; deep-read; 'flat, nonrotating earth' limits the analysis 'to short-range, short-duration flights'; rotation 0.25 deg/min· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1978NASA CR-3073, Aircraft Landing in Variable Wind Fields Frost and Reddy; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1980NASA TM-81238, Mathematical Model of the CH-53 Helicopter Sturgeon and Phillips; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1983Geodesy for the Layman (DMA TR 80-003) Defense Mapping Agency; deep-read PDF pp.10-35· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1987NASA TP-2768, User's Manual for LINEAR Duke, Patterson and Antoniewicz; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1988NASA RP-1207, Derivation and Definition of a Linear Aircraft Model Duke, Antoniewicz and Krambeer; deep-read· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1988NASA TM-100996, Flight Testing a V/STOL Aircraft McNally and Bach; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1988NASA TP-2835, User's Manual for Interactive LINEAR Antoniewicz, Duke and Patterson; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1991NASA CR-186019, Aircraft Model for the AIAA Controls Design Challenge Brumbaugh; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1993NASA CR-4568, Approximate Optimal Guidance for the Advanced Launch System Feeley and Speyer; deep-read; spherical nonrotating model, 'flat' is the epsilon = 0 sub-problem· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
1997NASA TM-104330, Thrust-Enhanced SR-71 Performance Conners; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
2000ARL-TR-1812, Modeling of Atmospheric Effects Shirkey, Army Research Laboratory; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
2002ARL-TR-2683, Automatic Target Acquisition of DEMO III Der et al.; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
2002NASA TP-2002-210718, SR-71 Stability and Control Estimation Moes and Iliff; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
2006Singular Arc Time-Optimal Climb Trajectory in a Wind Field Nguyen, NASA Ames; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
2007General Equations of Motion for a Damaged Asymmetric Aircraft Bacon and Gregory, NASA Langley; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
2007Long-Baseline TWSTFT Including a Troposphere Delay Model (PTTI) Piester, Bauch, Fujieda et al. (PTB, NICT, KRISS); deep-read; plane troposphere rejected as 'too large'
2010ARL-TR-5118, Liquid Payload Effects on Spinning Projectiles Cooper; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
2010Flight Dynamics Summary (TU Delft course notes, aerostudents.com) Student summary, not NASA; on the 'admits' lists; phrase search
2011ARL-TR-5810, Spin-Stabilized Projectiles with a Liquid Payload Cooper; phrase search· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
2014NGA.STND.0036, World Geodetic System 1984 National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; rotating oblate ellipsoid, a = 6,378,137 m, 1/f = 298.257223563; normal gravity 9.7803 to 9.8322· US agency or contractor with a stake in the globe model
2022-08-01IS-GPS-200N, Navstar GPS Interface Specification Clock offset -4.4647E-10 reproduced by mass gravity (constant g gives 5 times too much); rotation rate 7.2921151467e-5 rad/s; no 'flat' in 248 pp.· US GPS operator, which also issues WGS 84
Court and state records (6)
1871-07-13Stratford magistrates: Hampden bound over for a letter 'menacing' Wallace's life Daily News 13 July 1871 p.2, via Epsilon WCP1947 editorial note; a week's imprisonment for want of sureties
1872-10-10London Standard: Hampden committed for trial WKU scan saved; not read in full
1875-02-19Chelmsford Chronicle: interview with Hampden in Springfield Gaol WKU scan saved; not read in full
1875-03-08Chelmsford Spring Assizes libel trial (The Times, 8 March 1875) Six months in Chelmsford Gaol per Schadewald; quoted Hampden 1874 'cheat and swindler' letter
1876-01-17Hampden v. Walsh, 1 QBD 189 Cockburn C.J., Mellor and Quain JJ.; agreement a wager; depositor recovers stake; no finding on the experiment or on Wallace's conduct; WKU scan read
c.1887Koreshan Unity Papers, State Archives of Florida, N2009-3 (ca 1887-1990) Box 6 f.5 photo KOR2283, 'The Air Line' Rectilineator on Naples beach, read; KOR2282 staff photo not opened; field notebooks not examined· Koreshan Unity collection
Witness accounts and correspondence (17)
1866-05-16Anthony Hewitson's diary: Parallax lecture at Preston Open Book Publishers edition; lecturer 'honest & intelligent & ingenious'; moon self-luminous, earth a plane; Preston Herald advert 26 May 1866 cited
1870-01-12Hampden's challenge in Scientific Opinion £500 to prove 'convexity' of any water; cited by Wallace· Hampden
1870-03J. H. Walsh to Wallace (Epsilon WCP5561) Walsh 'now authorized in writing by Mr. Hampden' as umpire· stakeholder and umpire
1870-03-26The Field 35(900):285: Carpenter's referee report, Coulcher's sketches, Walsh's decision Signals 13 ft 4 in; sketches countersigned by both referees; decision 'five feet, more or less'; Fig. 6 scales to about 6 ft (arbiter)· both referees and the stakeholder
1870-04-02Wallace's letter in The Field 'about 5 1/2 ft at the middle signal', '22 ft in all'; via the R1 deep read and WKU· winner of the wager
1870-04-02Carpenter's letters in The Field, 2 and 9 April 1870 Hampden's referee; read in the QE round· Hampden's referee
1870-04-02T. Westlake's letters in The Field, 2 and 9 April 1870 Wallace's friend; first letter says stations not equidistant, second corrects it· Wallace's friend
1870-04-02Hampden's letter in The Field 'monstrous decision'; Coulcher 'a perfect stranger to us both'· Hampden
1870-04-16Hampden, 'The Bedford River Survey', Weston-super-Mare Gazette 'Either the Bible or science is a lie and a fraud'; promises 'a series of experiments'· Hampden
1870-04-27Scientific Opinion 3:377, 'The convexity of water painfully demonstrated' Prints the 8 Feb 1870 agreement; hostile to Hampden
1870-07-30Chambers's Journal, 'Is the world round?' Hearder's Eddystone account; same figures as Wallace's Field letter
1871Wallace, Reply to Mr Hampden's Charges (WKU S202) Saved; source of the WCP5561 text· Wallace
1871Other Epsilon letters on the dispute (WCP4571, 6753, 3589, 6754, 3370, 3587, 6755) Listed in search results 1871-1883; not read; 35 more results unread
1872-11-04Hampden to Wallace, covering note to his signed apology (WCP6911) Signs only 'in the sense in which you yourself understand it'· Hampden
1874Hampden to Wallace (WCP6734) 'thousands of letters declaring your conduct to be that of a cheat and swindler'; origin of the 'cheat' charge· Hampden
1875Wallace, 'The Libel Case. Summary Punishment' (WKU S248A) and letters S162-163 Saved pages; not read in full· Wallace
1905Wallace, My Life, vol. II, ch. XXXIX 'Hampden and the Flat Earth' Read in full; winner's account 35 years on; 'the most regrettable incident in my life'; repaid £500 after 1876· winner of the wager
Experiments and replications by others (10)
1851Foucault, Demonstration physique du mouvement de rotation de la terre Comptes rendus 32; deep-read; precession 15.04 deg/h x sin(latitude)
1856Airy, Pendulum Experiments in the Harton Colliery Phil. Trans. 146; gravity 1.00005185 +/- 0.00000019 times larger 1,256 ft down (net of height and rock); mean density 6.566
1901-09-17H. Yule Oldham, Experimental Demonstration of the Curvature of the Earth's Surface BAAS Section E abstract, 23 lines; 1900-01 repeat of Wallace's design; middle mark 'about six feet above the line of sight'; no heights, weather or photographs
1905-01-20Clement Stretton's Ashby Canal test English Mechanic, via Wikipedia only; theodolite showed a dip 'of about eight inches' at one mile
1925Michelson, Effect of the Earth's Rotation on the Velocity of Light, Part I ApJ 61:137; read in full
1925Michelson and Gale, Part II (Clearing, Illinois) ApJ 61:140; 0.230 +/- 0.005 fringe observed, 0.236 predicted; 269 readings
1965Trefethen et al., bathtub vortex, Nature 207:1084 Sydney drain reported clockwise in secondary sources; paper not read
2010Hirt et al., Monitoring of the refraction coefficient in the lower atmosphere JGR 115 D21102; read in full; k from -4 to +16 at 1.8 m over grass; +1 to +18 over water in cited work
2019Campanella's four-mile light-through-holes test (Behind the Curve) Earth.com press report: light 'not visible by Campanella'; hole height not given; a flat-side test reported as showing curvature· flat-earth proponent
2019Knodel's commercial ring-laser gyroscope reading (Behind the Curve) Press reports (Earth.com, Kottke): about 15 deg/h, the earth's rate; no instrument record· flat-earth proponent
Later accounts and media (34)
–Schadewald, The Plane Truth (e-book) Critic's history; chapters grepped: Clifton 1904, Hampden's gaol term, Voliva's $5,000 offer· critic of the movement
–Visit Southwest Michigan: 'if it is upright, that is a looming refraction' Google result only
–Ouse Washes local-history site: flat-earth experiments and Manea Fen Chronology; bridge naming ('Welney Bridge' often means Old Bedford Bridge); 2015 re-enactment
–WikiTree: Samuel Birley Rowbotham User genealogy: b. c.1816 Cheshire, d. 23 Dec 1884 Beckenham
1908-05-15R. M. Brown, 'Experiments on earth curvature', Science 27:789 Short recap; Hampden 'refused to look'
1913Heath, Aristarchus of Samos, pp.339-340 Eratosthenes' measurement; Greek symbols garbled
1921-10Other Chronicling America hits on Voliva (257 pages) Tulsa Daily World 30 Oct 1921, Kennebec Journal 19 Oct 1921 and others; not read
1921-10-19AP wire: Zion schools adopt a flat earth (Palatka Daily News p.4) Chronicling America; 'flat circular world ... surrounded by a wall of ice'
1922-02-12New-York Tribune, 'Great Is Zion City, and Voliva Is Its Prophet' Bettinghaus; flat earth only in a caption
1931-03-05New York Times: 'Voliva still insists the world is flat' After a 3-year cruise; snippet only (paywall)
1933-06-12TIME, 'Courageous Mr. Voliva' 1931 world trip; 1933 involuntary bankruptcy; cites TIME 16 March 1931
1997Russell, The Myth of the Flat Earth ASA meeting paper
2000Langdon, Owenite thesis (White Rose eTheses) Manea Fen scholarship; not fetched
2001Garwood, 'Alfred Russel Wallace and the Flat Earth Controversy', Endeavour 25:4 Cited by Hewitson's editor; calls Rowbotham 'a self-educated quack inventor'
2007Garwood, Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea Historian's account; not used
2012Utopian Studies 23:2 article on Manea Fen Not fetched
2015-04-29ABC57: Chicago skyline photo 'actually a mirage' Joshua Nowicki's photograph, almost 60 mi; Google result only
2015-04-30KFVS12: Chicago skyline from Warren Dunes, about 50 mi Google result only
2016Faulkner, Flat Earth - Star Trails (Answers in Genesis) Dome model against trails at 39 N; digest only· critic, religious organisation
2017-04-19Washington Post: Chicago 'floating on Lake Michigan ... a fata morgana' Google result only
2018Proofs of Spherical Earth Presented by Flat-Earthers (FlatEarth.ws) Includes FE101's Indonesian Eratosthenes data ('could not get a consistent figure')· anti-flat-earth site
1904-05-11Clifton's negative and prints of the Bedford sheet Would show whether the reflected sheet was a mirage image; Dallmeyer firm records
1922Voliva's WCBD radio records and $5,000 standing offer Schadewald (critic): 'nobody ever collected'; Noell 2020 thesis and Modern Mechanix item not obtained
2017Skiba team raw balloon footage ('Explosive Truth' channel) with lens specification Not checked· Rob Skiba, flat-earth advocate
2019Knodel's gyroscope instrument data Not obtained
–General Roy's pickets, Trigonometrical Survey vol. 1 p.175 Quoted second-hand in the Earth Review p.34: straight in the afternoon, concave in the morning; original to obtain
–Hampden, Is Water Level or Convex After All? The Bedford Canal Swindle Detected and Exposed Attributed to Hampden on style (Schadewald); not found· Hampden
–Ten listed agency documents not in the folder Two CIA, NOAA, IRIG 106-17, NAVAIR and seven ARL reports from the Reddit and Steemit lists
–Universal Zetetic Society records No institutional archive found
–Ebenezer Breach, 'Twenty Reasons against Newtonianism' (NHM archives) Seen in a Google result; record not opened
Left out: the private source-folder finding aid, duplicate copies of listed works (Internet Archive scans, the Earth Review's reprint of the 1870 sketches, Wallace's Field figures in Chambers's), AI-written review files, and textbook results the reviewers cite from memory (Bradley's aberration, Bessel's parallax). Full catalogue: Flat-Earth sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Repeat Wallace's equal-height trio over the Old Bedford with temperature profiles at two heights and reciprocal vertical angles to measure k, plus a low-eye run (about 2 ft) at the same time. Globe: k-corrected mid-point bulge 6.0 ft over six miles; plane: zero.
Deciding records: Clifton's 1904 negative; Oldham's full report and photographs; the Koreshan field notebooks (State Archives of Florida N2009-3); English Mechanic v.80 letters; Skiba's raw balloon footage; Knodel's gyroscope data; the ten listed NASA, ARL and CIA documents not in the folder.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: the 8-inch rule, Rowbotham's 1838 flag (11.67 ft hidden at k = 0; k = 0.612 needed), Wallace's 6.00 ft sagitta, and the sun's height from three equinox noon elevations. Or take noon sun elevations on one meridian from an almanac.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The one genuinely open empirical question is small and narrow: how large k was on the days of the low-sight-line sightings. It was never measured. That it exists does not rescue the strong form. arbiter.md, overall result
Arbiter QE revision: the signed 1870 sketch scales to about 6 ft of mid-point offset, the globe's value for k near 0. Rowbotham's objection that the near disc was missing fails because equal-height signals at eye height coincide on a plane however the instrument tilts. arbiter.md, section 9.1a-b
Mathematician Wallace's design is robust: uniform refraction multiplies both angles by (1 - k) and leaves the 1:2 ratio, and a level error shifts both marks equally. Equal angular steps are the signature of a curved profile, not a straight line. mathematician.md, section 1.2
Physicist Refraction is not a hand-waving excuse: it is measured, large and variable, largest exactly where the zetetic observations were made, low sight lines over calm water. Each 'I could still see it' report needs the k a globe would require. physicist.md, section 0
QE Reviewer slips corrected at QE: Universal Acceleration's 6,000-year kinetic energy is about 5e7 times the sun's output over that time (not 1e11); a small near sun is no heat-budget problem (about 1.8 kW/m^2 from a 5,772 K disc); Michelson-Gale took 269 readings (not 263). qe.md, Recheck and Orchestrator fix
AI noteThe movement's own journal conceded, about 1895, that sun angles along a meridian 'far more nearly correspond with the common theory than with Zeteticism' (Naylor, Earth Review p.175).
A self-taught outsider whose 1887 loading paper was blocked by a Post Office chief, then confirmed in the field from 1899, with the patent money going to others.
Invention / theory background
Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925), an English telegraph engineer and mathematical physicist with no degree or university post, published mostly in trade journals. He recast Maxwell's theory as four vector equations (1884), found the energy flux E x H independently of Poynting, gave the distortionless-line condition R/L = G/C (1887), patented a coaxial conductor (1880), invented an operational calculus, and in 1902, after Kennelly, suggested a conducting layer in the upper air.
Ranking explanation
The clearest documented arc in the collection from a claim blocked without testing (1887) to field confirmation (1899 onward), now backed by his own 1887 text and archive records of Preece's position. The reader can check his numbers with first-year electromagnetism. Morray-TH (2) and Government (3) carry open, untested anomalies but no completed arc. Interest is not proof: most verdicts are Established.
Key supporting elements
His own 1887 Electrician text (Electrical Papers Vol. 2, Sec. XL): 'Make R/L = K/S, and the distortion is annihilated', with the exact travelling-wave solution and 'half electric, half magnetic' energy; all three reviewers re-derived it.
The block is documented: Hunt (2012) and Bruton (2018) say Preece, as Arthur's superior, blocked the April 1887 joint paper; an IET notebook notes Phil. Mag. parts 'blocked by Preece'; Preece's draft calls Heaviside's work 'dreadful twaddle'.
Campbell's loading-coil test on a 46-mile cable worked on 6 Sept 1899; Krarup built loaded cable in 1902; AT&T bought Pupin's patent option fearing it was unpatentable 'due to Heaviside's prior publication' (Wikipedia, arbiter-checked).
Checks the reader can repeat: attenuation is smallest exactly at R/L = G/C, equal to sqrt(RG) at every frequency (arbiter); his 1888 half-transmitting copper sheet recomputes exactly to 8.488e-9 cm (QE).
The conducting layer of his 1902 Britannica sentence ('There may possibly be a sufficiently conducting layer in the upper air') was shown by Appleton in 1924 (Nobel 1947); Breit and Tuve measured its height in 1925.
Key contradictions
Source gap: the folder holds nine page images. The primary texts now cited were read by the Investigator as OCR on archive.org and not saved; no formulas for claims 7a, 7b or eqs. 47-48 have been read.
The block is reported two ways: before submission (Hunt, Bruton) or rejection by the Society of Telegraph Engineers (1925 IEE obituary). The Electrician's editor cited space, readership and libel; Preece pressure rests on Biggs's later hint.
Faults on more than one side: Heaviside's 1873 duplex paper ridiculed Preece's and Culley's work and omitted Preece's 1855 patent; Kelvin in July 1887 called a Heaviside footnote 'ill natured'; Arthur later sided with Preece.
His 1902 layer sentence is tentative ('may possibly'), about guidance between sea and layer rather than reflection, and about nine months after Kennelly's March 1902 article. The coil proposal's date (1887 or 1893) is not fixed by any primary text.
Wikipedia's 'confirmed by Gravity Probe B' is stronger than any source shows: the probe tested general relativity, not his 1893 equations. His anti-relativity arguments are unread (Einstein is not named in Vol. 3).
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 9 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Maxwell's theory can be written as four vector equations in E and H
Established
Added inductance balanced so R/L = G/C makes a line distortionless; Preece was wrong
Establishedpublished by Heaviside 1887; joint paper blocked 1887; tested 1899 onward
Waves plus diffusion in conductors; diffusion is repeated internal reflection; a perfect conductor is a perfect reflector
Establishedeqs. 60-62, perfect reflector; eq. 63 as a formula onlyPlausible, untestedeqs. 47-48, no proof given, calculation not done
Operational calculus (d/dt treated as algebra) solves differential equations
Establishedoutputs, later justified by Bromwich and the Laplace transformHistorically superseded but instructivethe unrigorous method itself
A conducting ionised layer in the upper atmosphere guides long-distance radio
Establishedlayer shown 1924; his 1902 text tentative, after Kennelly, credit shared
Maxwell's internal force on intrinsically magnetised matter is wrong
Never properly testedinternal distribution only, not total force; formulas unread
Gravity analogue of electromagnetism (1893)
Historically superseded but instructive'confirmed by Gravity Probe B' stronger than the sources show
Opposition to Einstein's relativity
Not testable as statedhis arguments unread; not in Vol. 3 by keyword
The scientist reviewed: author of the vector equations, the distortionless-line condition, the operational calculus and the 1902 conducting-layer suggestion
English telegraph engineer and mathematical physicist (1850-1925), self-taught with no degree, working outside any university and publishing in trade journals such as The Electrician. Collected his work in Electrical Papers (1892) and Electromagnetic Theory (1893, 1899, 1912). Struck off the Society of Telegraph Engineers for unpaid fees (Bruton dates it 1881), IEE honorary member 1908; refused a Royal Society Relief Fund grant in 1894; civil-list pension from 1896.
Arthur West Heaviside
Oliver's brother and co-author of the 1887 'bridge system' telephony paper that Preece blocked; supplied line observations and a tube-return experiment · Post Office employee subordinate to Preece; later sided with Preece on loading
1844-1923. Post Office District Superintendent and Superintending Engineer at Newcastle 1870-1904; supervised Preece's inductive wireless experiments on the Northumberland moors and worked with him on parallel lines in 1885 (1923 IEE obituary, via Grace's Guide). Published his part of the bridge system in his 1900 IEE Newcastle address (Bruton).
William Preece
Post Office engineer who held self-induction harmful to signalling and blocked the 1887 joint paper · Senior Post Office official with a public position (a costly iron-to-copper wire change justified by reducing inductance) and authority over Arthur; Wikipedia's attribution of his motive to reputation is that article's characterization
Head of the Post Office telegraph engineers (Electrician in 1887, Engineer-in-Chief from 1892); holder of an 1855 duplex patent. In 1873 called Oliver's duplex paper 'most pretentious and impudent'. His draft reply to Kelvin uses Kelvin's cable formula against Heaviside (IET catalogue).
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
Author of the cable formula Preece relied on; wrote to Preece in July 1887 that a Heaviside footnote was 'ill natured', then praised Heaviside's propagation theory in 1889
His 1855 cable theory is the inductance-free (KR law) limit of the telegrapher equation (arbiter). Helped Heaviside's waves series into the Philosophical Magazine in Nov 1887 and praised it in his Jan 1889 IEE presidential address (Hunt). Other details not in the review files.
Biggs
Editor of The Electrician who supported Heaviside, declined his anti-Preece letters for fear of libel, and was removed in October 1887 · His later hint that his removal was prompted by his support for Heaviside is his own account (Hunt, citing Mahon 2009)
Not in the review files beyond this episode; first name not given.
George Campbell
Ran the first loading-coil demonstration, on a 46-mile cable, 6 Sept 1899 · AT&T engineer; AT&T held the commercial interest in loading coils
Engineer employed by AT&T, which in 1897 set him and Pupin 'to find some respect in which Heaviside's work was incomplete or incorrect' (Wikipedia Loading coil page). Other details not in the review files.
Michael Pupin
Patented loading coils (filed Dec 1899); AT&T bought the rights · Patent holder, paid $455,000 (Wikipedia), 'over $400 000' (IET blog) or $500,000 (Hunt); says he conceived loading while climbing a mountain in 1894, with nothing published then
Professor in America (Russell, Nature 1925), who worked 'on these lines some ten years later'; published a paper on loading in 1900 (IET blog). Wiener later called AT&T and Pupin 'thieves'. Other details not in the review files.
Arthur Kennelly
Proposed the conducting upper-atmosphere layer in Electrical World and Engineer, 15 March 1902, before Heaviside's December 1902 Britannica sentence
Not in the review files; his 1902 article has not been read.
Evidence / artifacts (96 of 108 listed, 89%)
Own works and inventions (24)
1873Paper on duplex telegraphy Disparaged Culley's and Preece's duplex work and did not cite Preece's 1855 patent; provoked the Preece-Culley exchange (Bruton 2018). A copy is in the Preece papers (IET catalogue snippet).
1885-01/1887-12'Electromagnetic Induction and its Propagation', series in The Electrician Ran 3 Jan 1885 to sec. 46 (Sept 1887) plus a straggler 31 Dec 1887. Sec. XL (1887, EP2 pp. ~119-124) read by the Investigator: 'Make R/L = K/S, and the distortion is annihilated', critical inductance, the 'unbelievable result' caveat.
1886-08/1887-07'On the Self Induction of Wires', Phil. Mag. Parts I-VII Parts VIII and IX(?) were 'declined by the Philosophical Magazine and blocked by Preece, and partly published in The Electrician' (Bruton, describing IET notebook SC MSS 005/I/1/12).
1887-04'Bridge System of Telephony' (with Arthur Heaviside) Joint paper for the Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, blocked by Preece; manuscript location unknown. Theory later in EMT1 and the Electrician sections (Bruton).
1887-09-24'Mr. W. H. Preece on the Self-Induction of Wires' (Electrical Papers Vol. 2, Art. 38) Headed 'Sept. 24, 1887; but now first published' (1892): 'Mr. Preece is wrong ... radically wrong'. Read in OCR by the Investigator.· Heaviside's characterization of an opponent
1888Verse after the 1888 Bath meeting ('You British Engineering man!') IET notebook 7 p. 113, quoted by Hunt 2012.
1888Letter to Oliver Lodge on losing his outlet 'I should have been obliged to take some very decisive measures' (Hunt 2012).
1888-89'On Electromagnetic Waves, and the Propagation of Potential' (Phil. Mag.), in Electromagnetic Waves (1889; Cambridge reprint) Pages 139, 142, 143 read as page images: eqs. 47-48, 58-63, 'let p = ni', magnetic-conductor duality. Full 1889 text located on archive.org (electromagnetic01heavgoog), not opened.
1892Electrical Papers, Vol. 1 Three contents images read (Arts. 1-28: duplex, propagation of current in wires, the operator del, localisation of energy, thermo-electricity). Full text on archive.org (electricalpapers01heavuoft); bodies unread.
1892-93'On Operators in Physical Mathematics', Parts I and II (Royal Society) Printed; links in arbiter (gwern.net Part I, archive.org Part II). Not read in the review.
1893'A Gravitational and Electromagnetic Analogy' (The Electrician; EMT1 App. B, pp. 455-466) Finite-speed gravity, (u/v)^2 radial intensity change, moving-mass h field and reversed energy flux (arbiter's own OCR read). Exponent of u missing in OCR; probably 7. Equations unread.
1893Electromagnetic Theory, Vol. 1 Contents pages read as images; secs. 1, 68 ('gravitational difficulty') and 83 ('Maxwell's Solution probably wrong') read in OCR by the Investigator. Holds the bridge-system theory and the 1893 discrete-coil proposal (Bruton; Grace's Guide).
1894'On Operators in Physical Mathematics', Part III Refereed (William Burnside, per a snippet of Hunt 1991) and rejected over divergent series; a modified version is said to be in EMT2 (deadreckonings snippet). Original text not located.
1899Electromagnetic Theory, Vol. 2 Operational calculus. Sec. 425: 'not good enough for Another Place ... wet blankets of rigorists'; p. 9: 'Shall I refuse my dinner ...' (Investigator, archive.org OCR).
1902Nature letter, 'The Waste of Energy from a Moving Electron' Listed on archive.org by the Investigator; unread.
1902-12'Telegraphy', I. Theory, Encyclopaedia Britannica 10th ed., vol. XXXIII 'There may possibly be a sufficiently conducting layer in the upper air ... guidance will be by the sea on one side and the upper layer on the other.' Author initials garbled in OCR (likely Heaviside).
1903Nature letter, 'The Undistorted Cylindrical Wave' Listed on archive.org; unread.
1905Nature letter, 'Electromagnetics in a Moving Dielectric' Listed on archive.org; unread; a possible place for his relativity views.
1908Manuscript notes on Preece's proof 'America Revisited - 1907' IET SC MSS 005/I/2/057, 30 pp.; catalogue entry only.
1912Electromagnetic Theory, Vol. 3 OCR keyword count only: 'Einstein' 0, 'Minkowski' 0, 'Lorentz' 30, 'relativ' 21; sec. 473 'Lorentz's Equations of a Moving Dielectric'.
1886-1889Notebook SC MSS 005/I/1/12 (IET) MS copy of 'Self Induction of Wires' with notes on the fate of Parts VIII-IX (Bruton fn. 18). One of 21 notebooks in the IET Heaviside Collection; a further notebook records 'disputes with Sir William Preece and Lord Kelvin' (catalogue 110000639).
1922Letter to Highfield on Arthur and Preece (IET SC MSS 068) 'AWH was very afraid of P ... The greatest mistake AWH ever made was to throw me overboard' (Bruton).· Heaviside's characterization, 35 years after
–Letter to Bethenod on refusing the Hughes medal Mentioned in a Google snippet of Mahon 2009; letter and reason unread.
–Heaviside Library at the IET (his books with marginal notes) IET archives blog; not examined.
Patents and patent office (3)
1855Preece's duplex telegraphy patent Not cited in Heaviside's 1873 paper (Bruton).· Preece
1880British patent no. 1407, 'Improvements in Electrical Conductors' Granted to Oliver alone (Arthur, a Post Office servant, could not hold it); Bruton calls it 'essentially the patent for ... a coaxial cable'. Specification unread.
1899-12Pupin loading-coil patent and its purchase by AT&T Filed Dec 1899 (US patent 1900, Grace's Guide); AT&T paid $200,000 by Jan 1901 and $455,000 in total (Wikipedia), 'over $400 000' (IET blog) or $500,000 (Hunt). Patent number not in the review files.· Michael Pupin (patentee) and AT&T (purchaser)
Government records (5)
1886-1887Preece's public statements justifying the iron-to-copper wire change Cited by Hunt 2012 as reducing inductance, the 'bete noire'.· Post Office (Preece)
1896Civil-list pension to Heaviside GBP 120 a year, later GBP 220 (Hunt 2012).
1932GPO report 'The Application of the Heaviside Analysis to Electrical Engineering Problems' 'No copies of which survive' (Bruton).
c.1936Typed copy of a report by Arthur West Heaviside Probably made by Sir Arthur Preece for correspondence with The Times (IET catalogue 110008809); not opened.
c.1957Heaviside papers found under the floorboards of his former Paignton home Used by H. J. Josephs of the GPO (Bruton); present location not stated.
Company and business records (3)
1881Striking-off for unpaid fees and 1908 IEE honorary membership IET archives blog; Bruton dates the striking-off 1881.
1894Royal Society Relief Fund grant, refused Hunt 2012.
1897AT&T commission to Campbell and Pupin To 'find some respect in which Heaviside's work was incomplete or incorrect'; AT&T estimated savings of $700,000 (New York and New Jersey) and about $100 million by 1925 (Wikipedia Loading coil).· AT&T
Witness accounts and correspondence (9)
1873Preece-Culley letters on Heaviside's duplex paper Preece: 'most pretentious and impudent ... He must be met somehow'; Culley: 'We will try to pot Oliver somehow' (Bruton, archival ref. 22; letters not seen).· Post Office officials whose work the paper criticised
1887-07-12Kelvin to Preece (IET SC MSS 022/VII/535) A Heaviside Phil. Mag. footnote 'should not have appeared as it was so ill natured' (cataloguer's wording).
1887Preece's draft reply to Kelvin (IET SC MSS 022/VII/526) 'Heaviside and his dreadful twaddle'; uses Kelvin's formula to show Preece is right; 'drawing room philosophers like Oliver Heaviside and Sylvanus Thompson'. Undated; catalogue description only.· Preece
1887-10Biggs's account of his removal as editor of The Electrician Hinted it was prompted by his support for Heaviside (Hunt, citing Mahon 2009 p. 79); no second source.· Biggs, the removed editor
1888-09-09FitzGerald notebook entry 'Very important ... Must be all in O. Heaviside' (Trinity College Dublin, per Hunt).
1897-1921C. A. Stevenson correspondence (IET SC MSS 005/I/6/43) Includes 'Heaviside's brother's career and being blocked by Preece'; catalogue only.
c.1894Pupin's account of conceiving loading coils while climbing a mountain Nothing published by him at that time (Wikipedia Loading coil).· Pupin, the paid patentee
Experiments and replications by others (11)
c.1885Arthur Heaviside's observations of oscillations making ABC indicator pointers jump Reported by Oliver in Electrical Papers Vol. 2 (pp. ~120s); prompted part of the induction work.
c.1886Arthur Heaviside's tube-return experiment No inductive action outside the tube (EP2 pp. ~185-186), as textbook electromagnetism predicts; known only through Oliver's text.
1886Arthur Heaviside's bridge-circuit telephone observations More telephones in parallel improved clarity (Hunt 2012); the basis of the 1887 paper.
c.1887Reports of good long-distance telephony on copper-covered steel wire Cited by Heaviside in Sec. XL, 'I do not wish to magnify its importance'; others' practice, not a controlled test.
1887-88Hertz's electromagnetic wave experiments Confirmation of Maxwell's theory in Heaviside's form; from recall (high confidence).
1899-09-06Campbell's loading-coil test on a 46-mile cable George Campbell, AT&T (Wikipedia Loading coil).· AT&T
1902Krarup's continuously loaded cable Wikipedia Loading coil.
1923-24Permalloy and mu-metal loaded cables Wikipedia Loading coil, cited in contrarian.md.
1924Appleton's demonstration of the ionised layer Experiments begun late 1924 (Bruton); direct evidence with Barnett Dec 1925; Nobel 1947. The Heaviside Wikipedia page says 1923.
1925Breit and Tuve's measurement of the layer's height Wikipedia Kennelly-Heaviside layer.
2004-2011Gravity Probe B results Frame dragging -37.2 +/- 7.2 mas/yr vs general relativity's -39.2; tested relativity, not Heaviside's 1893 equations.
Related work by others (7)
1855Kelvin's cable theory (KR law) Inductance-free limit of the telegrapher equation, right for slow cable signalling, wrong at voice frequencies (arbiter, physicist).
1884Poynting's energy-flux theorem Heaviside derived the same flux independently (Wikipedia).
1894Foppl's textbook carrying Heaviside's form of Maxwell's equations 'From which Albert Einstein, among others, would learn electromagnetic theory' (Hunt 2012).
1900Arthur Heaviside's IEE Newcastle address His part of the bridge system, published here (Bruton).
1900Pupin's paper on loading IET archives blog.· Pupin
1902-03-15Kennelly, 'On the Elevation of the Electrically-Conducting Strata of the Earth's Atmosphere' Electrical World and Engineer 39(11): 473; independent layer proposal. Cited by search results and Bruton; text unread (an ETHW copy exists).
–Bromwich's contour-integral justification of the operational calculus Links Heaviside's method to the Laplace transform (Wikipedia). Date not in the review files.
Later accounts and media (24)
1898C. S. Bright, Submarine Telegraphs Recognised the 1880 coaxial patent (Bruton).
1923IEE obituary of A. W. Heaviside On Grace's Guide: Newcastle career, Preece's experiments, 'fights with Headquarters'.
1925IEE obituary of Oliver Heaviside On Grace's Guide: Preece's circle caused papers 'to be rejected by the Society of Telegraph Engineers'; Silvanus Thompson and Pupin as early adopters; 'sarcasms' in the 1902 article.· Written by an admirer
1925-02-14A. Russell, obituary in Nature Quoted inside the IEE obituary: Pupin worked 'on these lines some ten years later'; Vol. 4 'found impossible'.· Written by an admirer
1925Personal appreciation in The Electrician, vol. 94, p. 174 Referred to by the IEE obituarist (possibly Lodge, low confidence); unread.
1959Norbert Wiener, The Tempter Novel; Wiener denounced AT&T and Pupin 'as thieves' (Hunt).
1988P. J. Nahin, Oliver Heaviside: Sage in Solitude Standard biography; recommended from recall, not read.
1991B. J. Hunt, The Maxwellians Recommended from recall, not read.
1991B. J. Hunt, 'Rigorous Discipline: Oliver Heaviside Versus the Mathematicians' In The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument (ed. Dear); names Burnside as referee (snippet only; PDF did not load).
2007'Heaviside's Operator Calculus', Dead Reckonings Says EMT2 holds a modified Part III; search summary and snippet.
2009B. Mahon, Oliver Heaviside: Maverick Mastermind of Electricity (IET) Source of the Biggs episode (via Hunt); snippets only.
2011I. Yavetz, The Work of Oliver Heaviside 1872-1889 Springer; snippet only.
2012-11B. J. Hunt, 'Oliver Heaviside: A first-rate oddity', Physics Today Read in full: April 1887 block before submission, Biggs, Operators Part III rejection, Pupin $500,000.
2018E. Bruton, 'From theory to engineering practice ...', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 376: 20170454 Read to footnote 24: the brothers, the 1873 quarrel, patent 1407, notebook 005/I/1/12, the floorboard papers, BT archive references.
2023-04IET archives blog, 'From under the sea to the edge of space' Archivist's summary; Pupin 'over $400 000'; collection references.
–Grace's Guide chronologies of Oliver and Arthur Heaviside 1887: Heaviside 'suspected' Preece blocked publication.
–Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry Snippet only: 'Heaviside's career reached a watershed in 1887'.
2025Lenhard, 'The most important thing: Wittgenstein, engineering, and ...' Snippet mentions Burnside; unread.
–Wikipedia: Oliver Heaviside Preece's block and motive (the article's characterization), 'confirmed by Gravity Probe B', Eves on relativity, 1923 ionosphere date.
–Wikipedia: Kennelly-Heaviside layer Appleton 1924, Breit and Tuve 1925.
–Wikipedia: Gravitoelectromagnetism Heaviside's analogy 'differing only by some small factors'.
–Wikipedia: Gravity Probe B Final frame-dragging and geodetic results.
Records named but not yet examined (10)
1884-85Heaviside's original papers on the four equations and the energy flux Named by the arbiter for the Poynting and Gibbs priority questions.
1887Society of Telegraph Engineers council minutes and Journal Would decide block before submission vs rejection: a paper never submitted leaves no council record (arbiter).
1887The Electrician 1887 volumes and proprietors' papers Biggs's removal; Preece's British Association paper (16 Sept 1887, p. 400). HathiTrust not reached.
1886-1900BT Archives TCB 274/1, inductive telegraphy experiments Not reached.
–BT Archives TCK 89/23, Preece press cuttings Not reached.
–BT Archives POST 30/2668B, patent rules for government servants Bears on why Arthur could not hold patent 1407. Not reached.
1894Royal Society referee report on 'On Operators' Part III RR series; catalogue not reached.
1899-1901AT&T-Pupin contracts Would settle the payment total.
c.1912-1925Notes for a fourth volume of Electromagnetic Theory In the 1971 and 2003 Chelsea editions (archive.org, lending only, not opened); the likely place for his relativity remarks.
1893Page images of EMT1 secs. 79-85 and App. B Needed for the 7a and 7b formulas and the printed exponent of u.
Left out: search-result titles seen only as snippets with no bearing stated (a 2022 ResearchGate history of the Heaviside equation, an Elgar chapter citing POST 30/631A, an Academia.edu wireless paper, Encyclopedia.com, two radio-history PDFs, three ionosphere histories citing Kennelly), two unrelated IET Preece records, finding aids (AIM25, TNA Discovery), textbooks cited only for teaching and the 66 browser-junk files. Full catalogue: Heaviside sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: None pending for the central claims; field and laboratory tests 1887-1925 settled them. Residues: check eqs. 47-48 against the telegraph equation once pp. 136-138 are obtained; compute the frame dragging his 1893 equations predict against Gravity Probe B; an internal-stress measurement in a permanent magnet (7a), possible in principle, never done.
Deciding records: Society of Telegraph Engineers 1887 minutes; IET notebook SC MSS 005/I/1/12 and Preece's draft SC MSS 022/VII/526; The Electrician 1887; the Royal Society referee report on Operators Part III; Kennelly's March 1902 text; AT&T-Pupin contracts; the fourth-volume notes; page images of EMT1 secs. 79-85 and App. B.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it reproduces his 1888 half-transmitting copper sheet (8.488e-9 cm), shows a thin sheet absorbs at most half the wave, and tabulates attenuation at 300 Hz to 3 kHz for bare, loaded and distortionless lines. By hand: substitute V = e^(-Rt/L) f(x - vt) into the telegrapher equation and find R/L = G/C.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Contrarian Preece's draft is better evidence of conviction plus stake than of bad faith. A model-based objection (the KR law is correct for slow cable signalling, wrong for telephony frequencies) would explain the dispute without suppression, and nothing found refutes that reading. contrarian.md, Investigator findings, Finding 3.3
Arbiter Whether the paper was blocked before submission (Hunt, Bruton) or rejected (IEE 1925) would be decided by the Society of Telegraph Engineers council minutes: a paper never submitted leaves no council record, which is itself a prediction that can be tested. arbiter.md, Records that go quiet, item 1
Arbiter The Investigator's u = 3 x 10^6 cm/s for the 1893 gravity analogy was not read from the text: the OCR drops the exponent. Heaviside's printed 'one-millionth' and 'one two-millionth' fit 3 x 10^7 cm/s; a page image would settle it. arbiter.md, Claim 7b and QE fixes 5b
Primer Heaviside's half-transmission sheet is also the sheet that absorbs the most, and no single thin sheet in free space can absorb more than half of an incident wave: a standard modern thin-film result that falls straight out of his 1888 equations. primer.md, 5.5 Energy audit
QE After the Investigator update, Heaviside's own 1887 evidence and his self-flagged 'unbelievable result', and Arthur's line observations and tube experiment, had been dropped at condensation; all were restored to the arbiter and primer. No verdict changed. Final: PASS. qe.md, Investigator update check and Recheck
AI noteHeaviside papers turned up under the floorboards of his former Paignton home around 1957, while a 1932 Post Office report on 'the Heaviside Analysis' has no surviving copy (Bruton 2018).
Rank 27Ives
down from 26B - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 01:01
Ives measured moving clocks running slow (1938), then rebuilt relativity and Einstein's gravity inside a fixed ether: same numbers, no new force. Moray's book cites him for exactly that.
Invention / theory background
Herbert E. Ives (1882-1953), Bell Telephone Laboratories physicist and television pioneer, measured with G. R. Stilwell (1938, 1941) the second-order Doppler shift of fast hydrogen canal rays: moving atomic clocks run slow. He read it as Larmor-Lorentz slowing in a fixed ether and, from 1937 to 1953, re-derived special relativity and the Schwarzschild solution of general relativity in ether language. Ruderfer's appendix in Moray's Sea of Energy cites him as proof that an ether is admissible.
Ranking explanation
No anomaly or suppression of his own (no A): Bell Laboratories funded the work, and Physical Review and JOSA printed his ether papers. It scores on open points (B: the Pobedonostsev-Parshin deficit, the exact-field postulate, the untested dishing disk), on what a reader can compute (C: example.py refits the plates and Mercury's 43 arcsec) and on influence (D: neo-Lorentzians, Ruderfer, Moray). Its verdicts are more settled than Aspden's or van Vlaenderen's; unlike Su's local ether, its predictions match experiment.
Key supporting elements
The 1938 design cancels the 21.5 A first-order Doppler shift by viewing atoms coming and going together, leaving a 0.011-0.047 A clock shift; eight plates fit (slope 0.972 +/- 0.031). Part II (1941) reached 0.113 A, above the doublet.
Repeated many times since, now to parts per billion: Mandelberg-Witten 1962, Saathoff 2003, Reinhardt 2007, Botermann 2014 at 34% of light speed, and the CERN muon storage ring at gamma 29.3.
Ives's 1939 and 1948 papers derive the exact Schwarzschild line element and Mercury's 42.98 arcsec per century with no fitted constant; his light-speed field gives the full 1.75 arcsec light bending, as Ruderfer says in Moray's book.
Robertson checked Ives's theory papers expecting errors and found every deduction valid. The 1945 paper gets mass increase, contraction and clock slowing from conservation laws and radiation pressure, showing how little of relativity is extra.
A dissenting repeat exists: Pobedonostsev and Parshin (SPIE 1989) report the second-order shift 40-82% below relativity at 150-300 keV, stated error 0.04 A per line. No replication or rebuttal has been found.
Key contradictions
The ether adds no force and no prediction: Robertson called the theory 'completely equivalent in substance' to special relativity; Ives wrote of 'no ... new law of gravitation' and force equations 'implicit in the general relativity solution'.
The energy-filled ether linking Ives to Moray is Ruderfer's addition: none of Ives's 31 papers gives the ether energy or force to tap. Ruderfer's 'any Lorentz-ether theory ... necessarily equivalent' fails: Nordstrom's theory bends no light.
The gravity result rests on one postulate, the field factor y exactly 1 - 2GM/(Rc^2); a second-order term kappa changes Mercury's advance by (6 - kappa)/6. It covers one static mass: no field equations, radiation or two bodies.
The Pobedonostsev-Parshin deficit jumps erratically, vanishes at 1.5-2.0 MeV and has no systematic-error budget; a half-degree misalignment of their two optical arms gives a deficit of that size, and their own classical model predicts +5%.
Side claims fail: relativity gives the same Sagnac result, as Ives's 1938 paper does; his 1949 'internal inconsistency' is the Lorentz transformation with re-set clocks; Einstein's E = mc^2 step is not circular; the photon survived (Grangier-Roger-Aspect 1986).
User follow-ups (3)
Q10AnsweredWhere can Ives's papers be obtained legally? Nearly all, including every paper Moray's books cite, are public domain and now saved; only three papers from 1952-53 remain in copyright.
Obtain Ives's papers legally, first those Moray's books cite, then any relevant to Moray's interests. Cited in Moray, Sea of Energy 5th ed. (Ruderfer appendix, notes 5-8): 'Derivation of the Lorentz transformations', Phil. Mag. 36, 392 (1945); JOSA papers 1937-1952 on the Lorentz aether; JOSA 29, 183 (1939) and 38, 413 (1948) on gravitation; Phys. Rev. 72, 229 (1947). Relevant to Moray's interests (aether, radiant energy, standing waves, photoelectric conversion, mass-energy): Ives-Stilwell, JOSA 28, 215 (1938) and part II (1941); 'Revisions of the Lorentz transformations', Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 95, 125 (1951); 'Derivation of the mass-energy relation', JOSA 42, 540 (1952); 'Adventures with Standing Light Waves', Proc. Am. Acad. Arts Sci.; his photoelectric-cell papers (use the bibliography in the 1956 NAS memoir in the source folder). For each: is it public domain (US works 1929-1963 needed copyright renewal: check the Catalog of Copyright Entries renewal records; HathiTrust full-view status of the journal volume; British rules for Phil. Mag.)? Save every legally free copy (HathiTrust full view, Internet Archive, author or institutional copies, publisher free access) to review/Ives/research/files/ with its source URL. No shadow libraries (Sci-Hub, LibGen). List what remains unobtainable and the cheapest legal route (library, interlibrary loan, purchase).
Asked 2026-10-07 · answered 2026-10-07 · 14 min web search
A10Every paper Moray's books cite and nearly all the Moray-relevant ones are public domain and are now saved in research/files/ from open Internet Archive scans. Only the 1952 mass-energy paper and the two 1953 JOSA notes remain in copyright.
Known
Renewal records (Online Books Page, from CCE and CPRS): JOSA issues renewed only from December 1951; Physical Review from July 1956; Proc. Am. Philos. Soc., Proc. Am. Acad. Arts Sci., Phil. Mag., Nature and Bell System Technical Journal: no renewals found.
So JOSA 1937-1950, Phys. Rev. 72 (1947), Proc. APS 95 (1951) and Proc. AAAS 81 (1951) are public domain in the US. Phil. Mag. 36 (1945) is public domain in the UK because Ives died in 1953 and life plus 70 years has passed.
Saved: Phil. Mag. 36:392 (1945); Phys. Rev. 72:229 (1947); JOSA 29:183 (1939) and 38:413 (1948) on gravitation; Ives-Stilwell II, JOSA 31:369 (1941); Proc. APS 95:125 (1951); Adventures with Standing Light Waves, Proc. AAAS 81:1-32 (1951); Ives-Fry Standing Light Waves, JOSA 23:73 (1933); ten more 1939-1950 JOSA aether papers; four 1924-1926 photoelectric papers (ApJ, BSTJ).
The Internet Archive serves these issues openly but lends the August 1952 JOSA issue only; HathiTrust opens Proc. APS v.95.
Phil. Mag. 1945 abstract: the Lorentz transformations follow from energy and momentum conservation in radiation striking a particle, and "the space and time concepts of Newton and Maxwell are retained without alteration."
Inferred
JOSA 42:540 (1952) and the 1953 Genesis and Note papers are still in copyright, because those issues were renewed; they are cited by reference only.
The Internet Archive's open or lending status matches the renewal record, so the open scans are legitimate copies.
Open
Mass-energy paper JOSA 42:540 (1952) and the JOSA 43 (1953) notes: cheapest legal routes are a free Internet Archive loan, free interlibrary loan, or Optica pay-per-view (price unchecked).
Not fetched yet but public domain and open: the Phys. Rev. 1923-1932 and JOSA 1924-1938 photoelectric papers (Internet Archive sim_ issues), ApJ 62:309 (1925; ADS timed out) and ApJ 56 (1922).
Not searched: Nature 141:551 (1938), Proc. Roy. Dublin Soc. 26:9 (1952).
Q13AnsweredWhy does Ives matter to Moray, and does a Lorentz ether add any new force? Ives is Moray's authority for an admissible ether, but that ether adds no new force; it re-explains relativity.
Why is Ives interesting to Moray? And even if Ives is correct, his ether follows Lorentz and Einstein: does a Lorentz ether contribute any new force beyond those of Lorentz/Einstein, or is it only a different explanation of the same observed phenomena?
Asked 2026-10-07 · answered 2026-10-07 · 0 min web search
A13Ives is Moray's credential for an admissible ether, via Ruderfer's appendix; and yes, Ives's ether adds no new force: it re-explains special and general relativity.
Known
No Ives paper mentions Moray. Ruderfer's 1975 'Neutrino Structure of the Ether' (Appendix VI, Sea of Energy 5th ed., pp. 271-275) cites Ives as 'the most direct verification of the validity of a Lorentz ether'.
Ruderfer then fills the ether with a neutrino sea of energy and a Le Sage push gravity; none of Ives's 31 papers gives the ether energy or a tappable force.
Robertson: Ives's theory is 'completely equivalent in substance to the special theory of relativity'.
Ives 1939: 'no non-Euclidean geometry, nor new law of gravitation'; 1948: 'the force equations are actually implicit in the general relativity solution'.
His 1939 and 1948 papers derive the Schwarzschild metric, so they give GR's single-mass numbers: Mercury 43 arcsec per century, light bending 1.75 arcsec, red shift.
Inferred
The reading in the question is right, provided 'Einstein' includes general relativity.
Ruderfer's 'any Lorentz-ether theory is necessarily equivalent to GR' is not a theorem: Nordstrom's scalar theory has Newton's force and bends no light.
An ether invisible enough to match relativity offers no gradient to tap; a neutrino sea at rest in one frame could be detected.
Open
Whether Ruderfer's neutrino sea survives modern neutrino-detection and preferred-frame limits: a question for the Moray review.
Q20AnsweredIs empty space like a pond, and would crossing beams that do not seem to combine reveal a preferred direction? Light beams superpose like ripples and no preferred direction is found; space has properties (epsilon0, mu0, quantum effects) but, unlike a pond, no detectable rest frame.
Is empty space like a pond? Two equal waves combined in phase give the sum of both at that point. The premise: a pond is special because we can see the water; if we could only see the waves it might be more like empty space, and crossing beams that do not seem to combine would point to something special about space, perhaps a preferred direction. What do experiments show: crossing coherent beams and their fringes; how Wiener's 1890 standing-wave experiment and Ives's own thin-film work bear on it; tests for a preferred direction (Michelson-Morley, Hughes-Drever, modern cavity tests); what a wave-only observer could still infer about a medium (dispersion, loss, frame dependence); and whether space is a medium with properties (epsilon0, mu0, displacement current, the quantum vacuum, Einstein's 1920 Leiden ether) but no rest frame.
Asked 2026-10-08 · answered 2026-10-08 · 2 min web search
A20Crossing light beams do combine wherever they overlap, exactly like pond ripples; the effect is hidden by fine fringes, drifting phase or crossed polarization, not by anything special about space. What space lacks, unlike a pond, is any detectable dispersion, loss or rest frame.
Known
Wiener 1890 photographed standing light waves; the action follows the electric field. Ives and Fry (1933) repeated it with a photoelectric probe: electrons 'follow minutely the orders of the standing wave pattern' (Ives 1951).
Independent lasers interfere: Magyar and Mandel (Nature 1963) photographed fringes; Marett (2010) saw beats that vanish when one beam is blocked and appear only between same-polarization modes.
Light-speed anisotropy is excluded at 10^-17 (2009 cavities) and about 10^-18 (Nagel 2015), though Earth moves 368 km/s relative to the cosmic microwave background.
Hughes-Drever tests find no direction dependence in nuclear energy levels.
Fermi-LAT (2009) found no energy dependence of light speed; an earlier MAGIC hint (2007) was superseded. ATLAS and CMS observed light-by-light scattering.
Einstein 1920: space 'is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense ... there exists an ether', but 'the idea of motion may not be applied to it'.
Inferred
Fringe spacing is lambda/(2 sin(theta/2)): 36 micrometres for red laser beams crossing at 1 degree, too fine to see on a wall.
A wave-only observer would still detect a pond through dispersion, damping and drift; Ives's ripple tank failed exact invariance through capillary dispersion (0.852 against 0.658). The vacuum shows none of these.
Reading 1 (Einstein 1920, mainstream): a medium with properties and no rest frame. Reading 2 (Ives, Ruderfer): a Lorentz ether with an undetectable rest frame. Both predict the same nulls.
Open
Lorentz violation below 10^-18; direct laboratory vacuum birefringence (PVLAS) not yet detected.
Wiener's oblique 45-degree no-fringe variant is cited from memory; his 1890 paper (Ann. Phys.) would confirm it.
Key equations
Formula
Value
Meaning
I = |E1 + E2|^2
4I0 bright, 0 dark, 2I0 average
Two equal in-phase waves add; energy is conserved
Lambda = lambda/(2 sin(theta/2))
36 um at 633 nm, 1 degree
Fringe spacing of crossing beams
c = 1/sqrt(epsilon0 mu0)
299,792,458 m/s; mu0 c = 376.7 ohm
Vacuum constants, the same in every inertial frame
Moving clocks run slow: the Ives-Stilwell second-order Doppler shift (1938, 1941)
Establishedmodern tests to parts per billion; 1938-41 data alone modest; Pobedonostsev-Parshin dissent kept, unreplicated
The result shows real slowing in a fixed ether and favours Larmor-Lorentz over Einstein
Establishedwith Michelson-Morley and Kennedy-Thorndike it fixes clock rate and contraction (l = 1)Not testable as statedether over special relativity; identical predictionsTested, not supportedentrained-ether and ballistic rivalsHistorically superseded but instructiveabsolute simultaneity as a 1938 position
Sagnac and Michelson-Gale show a fixed ether that relativity cannot handle
Refuted by calculationrelativity gives the same first-order result, as Ives's own 1938 paper doesNot testable as statedwhether his reading differs measurably
An alternative theory rebuilt from classical ether physics (1937 transported clocks, 1945 conservation laws, 1948-51 rod-clock quotients)
Not testable as statedequal predictions; 'relativity principle superfluous' not shownHistorically superseded but instructiveas a programme; the 1945 route is the most instructiveRefuted by calculationcharge that special relativity is self-contradictory (1949, 1937 clock paradox)
Gravitation: the Schwarzschild solution as forces in an ether (1939, 1947, 1948)
Establishedone static mass: Mercury 43 arcsec per century, light bending 1.75 arcsec, red shift (general relativity's values)Not testable as statedether reading and transverse force as a separate forceNever properly testedas a complete theory; large-interferometer conjectureRefuted by calculationthe earlier review's 'fitted to reach 43'
Einstein did not derive E = mc^2 in 1905
Refuted by calculationcircularity charge, partly withdrawn by Ives in 1953Establishedthe 1905 proof is not fully general (Planck 1907, Ohanian 2008)EstablishedE = mc^2 itself, which Ives accepted
The photon will 'go the way of the caloric' (1951 Rumford lecture)
Tested, not supportedsingle-photon anticorrelation, Grangier-Roger-Aspect 1986
Other physical claims: radiation pressure on a moving absorber (1942), a spinning disk 'dishes' (1939), ripple-tank ether (1941-42)
Establishedradiation-pressure formula; 'earlier values wrong' is a definition differenceNever properly testeddishing disk, far below classical stressesEstablishedripple tank as a classical-wave analogy only, not a test of light
Experimenter (Ives-Stilwell 1938, 1941) and author of the fixed-ether reading, the transported-clock and conservation-law derivations, the Schwarzschild-in-ether gravitation papers and the 1952 E = mc^2 critique
Born Philadelphia 1882 (31 July per LoC, 21 July per the Chappell wiki), son of colour-photography inventor Frederic E. Ives. B.S. Pennsylvania 1905; Johns Hopkins doctorate 1908 under R. W. Wood on Lippmann colour photography. Army aerial photography 1918; Bell Laboratories electro-optical research: facsimile, 1927 television, about 100 patents; standing-wave explanation of thin-film photoemission, which he called 'probably my most important contribution to science'. OSA president 1924-25, NAS 1933, Rumford Medal 1951. Retired 1947; died November 1953 (13, 15 or 3).
G. R. Stilwell
Co-experimenter on the 1938 and 1941 atomic-clock papers and the 1941-42 ripple-tank (moving-medium) papers
Long-time member of Ives's Bell Laboratories television group (Bell Laboratories Record 1947); co-author with Ives of the 1927 sodium-potassium photoelectric paper. Otherwise not in the review files.
M. Ruderfer
The link to Moray: his 1975 'Neutrino Structure of the Ether', reprinted in Moray's Sea of Energy, calls Ives 'the most direct verification of the validity of a Lorentz ether' and fills that ether with a neutrino-sea energy store · Advocates his own neutrino-sea ether and cites Ives as support
Dimensions, Inc., Hempstead, New York (per the reprint). Proposed the 1960 Mossbauer rotor ether-drift test (Phys. Rev. Lett. 5) that Preikschat carried out; papers on a neutrino sea 1972-75. Otherwise not in the review files.
H. P. Robertson
Referee of Ives's 1947 Phys. Rev. gravitation paper and author of the relativity assessment in Ives's 1956 NAS memoir: deductions valid, theory 'completely equivalent in substance' to special relativity · Ives's referee and critic, then the memoir's chosen judge of his work
Caltech relativist; main Physical Review referee for relativity from 1930 through the 1940s (Lalli 2016). Robertson Papers at Caltech, 10024-MS.
L. A. Pobedonostsev and P. F. Parshin
Authors of the only experimental dissent: a 1989 canal-ray repeat reporting a shift 40-82% below relativity at 150-300 keV
Pobedonostsev at the V. G. Khlopin Radium Institute, Leningrad; Parshin at the Leningrad Academy of Civil Aviation. Papers on the Doppler effect 1989-1995 (Chappell wiki); full Russian account in Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 1989.
Albert Einstein
Called the experiment 'the most direct proof yet' of relativity (NYT, 27 April 1938); author of the 1905 mass-energy paper Ives criticised; a correspondent in the Ives papers at the LoC; his 1920 Leiden address kept an ether 'endowed with physical qualities' to which 'the idea of motion may not be applied' (follow-up Q20)
Not in the review files beyond these items.
P. W. Bridgman
Sympathetic evaluator: used Ives's arguments, but his 1959 memo called Ives's real-but-indeterminable absolute simultaneity 'a complete negation of the operational attitude'
Harvard physicist; posthumous A Sophisticate's Primer of Relativity (1962); papers at Harvard University Archives (HUG 4234.50). Otherwise not in the review files.
E. E. Butterfield
Correspondent, late 1940s-1953, whose letters describe anti-Einstein feeling; recipient of Ives's 5 October 1951 'Semitic school' letter quoted by Lalli
Not in the review files beyond the Library of Congress finding aid and Lalli 2014.
Evidence / artifacts (156 of 156 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (63)
1906Improvements in the Diffraction Process of Color Photography Phys. Rev. 22:339. Early colour-photography paper from Wood's laboratory; NAS memoir bibliography.
1907Three Color Interference Pictures Phys. Rev. 24:103. Lippmann standing-wave line; NAS memoir bibliography.
1908An Experimental Study of the Lippmann Color Photograph (doctoral thesis) Astrophys. J. 27:325, Johns Hopkins under R. W. Wood. Standing light waves imprint layers in the film; root of his later photoelectric idea (NAS memoir pp.6-8; Rumford lecture).
1920Airplane Photography (book) From his 1918 Army aerial-photography work; seen in an Internet Archive search listing only.
1922The Voltage-Current Relation in Central Anode Photoelectric Cells With T. C. Fry, Astrophys. J. 56. Public domain; not fetched (follow-up Q10).
1923The Properties of Very Thin Films of Photoelectrically Active Material Phys. Rev. 21:389. Public domain, open on the Internet Archive; not fetched (follow-up Q10).
1923The Velocities of Emission of Photoelectrons in the Normal and Selective Photoelectric Effects Phys. Rev. 21:713. NAS memoir bibliography; not fetched.
1924Photoelectric Properties of Thin Films of Alkali Metals Astrophys. J. 60:209-230, saved from NASA ADS. Thin Na, K, Rb, Cs films on platinum show the selective effect only at one stage of growth; selective/normal ratios 15-25 against at most about 4 from absorption. Digest.
1924Normal and Selective Photoelectric Effects in Alkali Metals and Alloys With A. L. Johnsrud, Astrophys. J. 60:231. Elster and Geitel's ratio of 70 for Na-K at 70 degrees; potassium on a flat bulb gives only 3-4. Digest.
1924-1928Further photoelectric papers listed in follow-up Q10 JOSA 8:551; Phys. Rev. 32:44 and 32:57. Public domain, open on the Internet Archive; titles not given in the review files; not fetched.
1925The Influence of Temperature on the Photoelectric Effect of the Alkali Metals With A. L. Johnsrud, JOSA 11:565; companion on rubidium films, Astrophys. J. 62:309 (ADS timed out twice).
1926Photoelectric Properties of Thin Films of Alkali Metals. II Astrophys. J. 64:128. Caesium films on a heated platinum ribbon: photoemission peaks 5-10 times above room temperature near 650 K; thermionic electrons not photo-excited. Digest.
1926-04The Alkali Metal Photoelectric Cell Bell Syst. Tech. J. 5:320, saved. Why the Bell System's picture transmission used alkali cells; Einstein's equation eV = h(nu - nu0); photocurrent ratios 20-30 for polarised light against 4-8 in absorption. Digest. Popular companion: Engineering Foundation 3:66-80 (1926).
1927Photoelectric Emission as a Function of Composition in Sodium-Potassium Alloys With G. R. Stilwell, Phys. Rev. 29:252. Peaks of 14, 16 and 31 in the selective/normal ratio (memoir pp.20-21).
1927Rubidium film thickness measured optically With A. L. Johnsrud, JOSA 15:374. NAS memoir bibliography.
1928The Distribution in Direction of Photoelectrons from Alkali Metal Surfaces With A. R. Olpin and A. L. Johnsrud, Phys. Rev. 32:157 (NAS memoir).
1929Maximum Excursion of the Photoelectric Long Wave Limit of the Alkali Metals With A. R. Olpin, Phys. Rev. 34:117. Long-wave limit moves to the free-atom resonance wavelength and back as thickness changes.
1929The Preparation of Photoelectric Cells with Thin Films of Lithium as the Photoactive Material Phys. Rev. 33:1081.
1930Photoelectric Properties of Extremely Thin Films of Alkali Metals Phys. Rev. 35:669.
1931The Vectorial Photoelectric Effect in Thin Films of Alkali Metals Phys. Rev. 38:1209.
1931The Photoelectric Effect from Thin Films of Alkali Metals on Silver With H. B. Briggs, Phys. Rev. 38:1477.
1932The Depth of Origin of Photo-Electrons With H. B. Briggs, Phys. Rev. 40:802.
1933-03Standing Light Waves; Repetition of an Experiment by Wiener, Using a Photoelectric Probe Surface With T. C. Fry, JOSA 23:73-83, saved. Caesium film on a quartz wedge over platinum; Ives expected 'only positional and qualitative agreement' and called the result 'very satisfactory'. Digest.
1934Optical Factors in Caesium-Silver-Oxide Photoelectric Cells With A. R. Olpin, JOSA 24:198.
1936The Optical Constants and Photoelectric Emission of Potassium With H. B. Briggs, JOSA 26:238, with companion 'Calculated and Experimental Photoelectric Emission from Thin Films of Potassium', JOSA 26:247.
1937Optical Constants of Sodium; Optical Constants of Rubidium and Caesium JOSA 27:181 and 27:395. Remeasured to test the standing-wave explanation (memoir p.21).
1937Graphical Exposition of the Michelson-Morley Experiment JOSA 27:177-180. Huygens chart; Kennedy-Thorndike 'cannot by itself test the Larmor-Lorentz hypothesis'. Digest.
1937Light Signals on Moving Bodies as Measured by Transported Rods and Clocks JOSA 27:263-273. Deep read with page images; equations checked to 40 digits: equal to special relativity for the same transport procedure. Aberration called his 'strongest evidence' (p.10).
1937Apparent Lengths and Times in Systems Experiencing the Fitzgerald-Larmor-Lorentz Contractions JOSA 27:310-313, sequel to 27:263. Digest and inside the 27:263 deep read.
1937Measurement of Light Signals on Moving Bodies by Transported Rods and Clocks Science 85:442. NAS memoir bibliography.
1937-09The Aberration of Clocks and the Clock Paradox JOSA 27:305-309. The ether frame supplies the asymmetry; special relativity's frame-change resolution not discussed.
1937-11The Doppler Effect Considered in Relation to the Michelson-Morley Experiment JOSA 27:389-392. Proposes the canal-ray experiment; credits 'Einstein and Ritz'; laboratory ether velocity cancels in its algebra. Digest.
1938Rate of an Atomic Clock in Motion Nature 141:551. Not searched (follow-up Q10).
1938Unsymmetrical Doppler Effect in Hydrogen Canal Rays Rev. Sci. Instr. 9:283. Not obtained; would show whether Ives reported the asymmetry Faraj describes.
1938Correlation of Optical Properties and Photoelectric Emission in Thin Films of Alkali Metals With H. B. Briggs, JOSA 28:330.
1938-04-16Light Signals Sent Around a Closed Path JOSA 28:296-299. Page images read: derives the standard first-order Sagnac result himself and objects only to its interpretation.
1938-04-25An Experimental Study of the Rate of a Moving Atomic Clock (with G. R. Stilwell) Read to the NAS 25 April 1938; JOSA 28:215-226. Eight plates, 6,788-18,350 V, shifts 0.011-0.047 A; caveat: all below the 0.09 A H-beta doublet separation. Deep read.· Bell Laboratories funded it
1939-05The Behavior of an Interferometer in a Gravitational Field JOSA 29:183-187. Deep read: exact Schwarzschild line element, which Ives names; 'no non-Euclidean geometry, nor new law of gravitation'; red shift and bending in words. Cited by Ruderfer.
1939-07Derivation and Significance of the So-Called 'Chronotopic Interval' JOSA 29:294-301. Ether as 'a theoretical tool'; Lorentz transformations a limiting case. Digest.
1939-11Theory of the Double Fizeau Toothed Wheel JOSA 29:472-478. Wood-Hackett 'twist' from contraction alone; a spinning disk 'dishes' like a saw blade. Digest plus passages.
1940-02The Measurement of Velocity with Atomic Clocks Science 91:79-84. Natural philosophy against prediction only (per Lalli 2014).
1940-06The Doppler Effect from Moving Mirrors JOSA 30:255-257. Moving-mirror Doppler gives a null only with the same contractions as Michelson-Morley. Digest.
1941-01Interference Phenomena with a Moving Medium (with G. R. Stilwell) JOSA 31:14-24. Ripple-tank analogue: contraction, clock slowing and Fresnel drag appear in a moving liquid. Digest.
1941-05An Experimental Study of the Rate of a Moving Atomic Clock. II (with G. R. Stilwell) JOSA 31:369-374. Up to 43,000 V: 0.113 A against 0.1098 computed, above the doublet separation; answers Jones and Otting. Deep read, Table I from page image.
1942-01Interference Phenomena with a Moving Medium. II (with G. R. Stilwell) JOSA 32:25-31. Mercury ripples, v/c = 0.585; one ratio 0.852 against 0.658 predicted, put down to dispersion. Digest plus passages.
1942-01The Pressure of Radiation in a Moving System JOSA 32:32-33. Absorber moving toward a source: P = E_a(c + v)/(c - v); calls Lorentz's and Poynting-Abraham's values wrong. Digest plus passages; reproduced by the arbiter.
1943-03Impact of a Wave Packet and a Reflecting Particle JOSA 33:163-166. Lorentz mass-velocity law from classical waves and Newtonian conservation laws. Digest.
1944-04Impact of a Wave Packet and an Absorbing Particle JOSA 34:222-229. Absorbing case with heat terms. Digest.
1945Derivation of the Lorentz Transformations Phil. Mag. (7) 36:392-403. Deep read: no relativity formula put in, but the relativity principle enters through three premises; calls it 'a superfluous hypothesis'. Ruderfer's note 5.
1947-08The Physical Significance of Birkhoff's Gravitational Equations Phys. Rev. 72:229-232. Deep read: a transverse force v^2/c^2 times the normal part of gravity; moving mass alone gives one sixth of Mercury's advance. Refereed by H. P. Robertson.
1947-10Historical Note on the Rate of a Moving Atomic Clock JOSA 37:810-813. Four contractions consistent with Michelson-Morley give four clock rates; the data 'decide unequivocally for l=1'.
1948-04The Behavior of an Interferometer in a Gravitational Field. II. Application to a Planetary Orbit JOSA 38:413-416. Deep read from page images: one postulate gives 42.98 arcsec per century, no fitted constant; force equations 'implicit in the general relativity solution'.
1948-10Measurement of the Velocity of Light by Signals Sent in One Direction JOSA 38:879-884. Defines the 'rod-clock-quotient'. Digest.
1949-09Lorentz-Type Transformations as Derived from Performable Rod and Clock Operations JOSA 39:757-761. Deep read: his 'internal inconsistency' equations are the Lorentz transformation with clocks lagging by k r'.
1950-04Extrapolation from the Michelson-Morley Experiment JOSA 40:185-191. Missing from the NAS bibliography. Digest.
1951Revisions of the Lorentz Transformations Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 95:125-131 (read 27 Oct 1950). The constant 'is not equal to c and should not be called the velocity of light'. Digest.
1951Clock Paradox in Relativity Theory Nature 168:246, letter. Not obtained.
1951-11Adventures with Standing Light Waves (Rumford Medal lecture) Proc. Am. Acad. Arts Sci. 81:1-32. Standing-wave career; predicts 'the photon will go the way of the caloric'. Digest plus the photon passage.
1952Proc. Roy. Dublin Soc. 26:9 Cited in Ives's 1953 'Genesis' paper; absent from the NAS bibliography. Not searched.
1952-08Derivation of the Mass-Energy Relation JOSA 42(8):540-543. Credits Poincare; ends 'The relation E = mc2 was not derived by Einstein'. Read; in copyright, cited by reference.
1953-03Genesis of the Query 'Is There an Ether?' JOSA 43, reply to Dirac 1951: Sagnac and Michelson-Gale as 'positive first-order results'. OCR copy (in copyright).
1953-07Note on 'Mass-Energy Relationship' JOSA 43:619, reply to Riseman and Young: 'something must be added ... from valid physical considerations, not by assumption'.
Patents and patent office (1)
c.1920-1953Ives's US patents (about 100: television, facsimile, stereoscopic panoramagrams) NAS memoir: 'no fewer than one hundred'; Google Patents shows about 105 before 1954; none on relativity surfaced.
Company and business records (3)
1927-04Long-distance television demonstration with Herbert Hoover (AT&T, Washington to New York) Dated 7 April (NAS, Wikipedia) or 27 April 1927 (Optica). Ives led the work.
1947-05Bell Laboratories Record, May 1947 Biographical note and 20th-anniversary photo naming Stilwell and Ives. Saved.· Ives's employer and the experiment's funder
1947-08Bell Laboratories Record, August 1947 (retirement notice) 'First direct proof of the system of compensation for motion embodied in the theories of Larmor, Lorentz and Einstein'. Saved.· Ives's employer and the experiment's funder
Government records (3)
1869-1957Frederic Eugene Ives and Herbert Eugene Ives Papers, MSS27508 Library of Congress, 15 boxes, about 5,000 items; Einstein among correspondents. Finding aid read; container list not opened.
1938-04Photograph of Ives at the National Academy of Sciences meeting Smithsonian Institution Archives, Science Service Records, image SIA2008-4306. Record page read.
1959-05M. Benton, The Clock Problem (Clock Paradox) in Relativity: annotated bibliography US Naval Research Laboratory. Lists Ives-Stilwell 1938 and 1941 as verification of clock retardation, Ives 1937 as resolving the paradox 'through motion relative to the ether'.
Witness accounts and correspondence (7)
1920-1970Ralph V. L. Hartley papers AIP Niels Bohr Library finding aid lists Ives as a correspondent. Not opened.
1938-04-27'Einstein Hails Proof; Dr. Ives Provides Best Support for Relativity' New York Times p.25. Einstein: 'the most direct proof yet' of relativity, while the article frames it as verifying the ether. Opening only.
1947-03H. P. Robertson's referee report on Ives's Birkhoff paper Robertson Papers 10024-MS, Caltech. Framing 'a bit (ca. 40 yrs) out of date'; paper published. Known through Lalli 2016.· Robertson was Ives's referee and critic, and later wrote the memoir's assessment
c.1947-1953E. E. Butterfield letters to Ives LoC MSS27508. Anti-Einstein feeling in 'certain scientific circles'; Einstein and followers 'castigated as left-wing radicals' (finding aid). Not seen.
1950-10-24Ives letter on his 1938 Princeton reception Hostile reception; Pauli reported his 'work didn't amount to anything'. One published source (Hazelett and Turner p.90, via Bonizzoni and Giuliani); no second source found yet.· Ives, the party describing his own reception
1951-10-05Ives to E. E. Butterfield LoC MSS27508 Box 13. Quoted by Lalli 2014: championing 'the classical English school ... against the paradox of the Semitic school'; Lalli: it 'seems to imply' an implicit anti-Semitism.
1959-08-18P. W. Bridgman, Comments on Ives' Papers on Relativity (unpublished memo) Harvard University Archives HUG 4234.50. Real-but-indeterminable absolute simultaneity 'a complete negation of the operational attitude' (via Lalli 2014).
Experiments and replications by others (24)
1939G. Otting's canal-ray repeat Physikalische Zeitschrift; Part II (1941) answers his criticism; fit 2-3% with the 1938 points per Mandelberg and Witten.
1960V. W. Hughes et al. (1960) and R. W. P. Drever (1961), Hughes-Drever isotropy tests Phys. Rev. Lett. 4:342. Unsplit lithium NMR line: no direction dependence in nuclear energy levels; later clock-comparison limits 10^-25 to 10^-33 GeV (Wikipedia, follow-up Q20).
1962H. I. Mandelberg and L. Witten, Ives-Stilwell-type repeat JOSA 52:529-536; exponent 0.498 +/- 0.025; judged the 1938 real uncertainty 10-15% (via Giuliani).
1963Magyar and Mandel, Interference fringes produced by superposition of two independent maser light beams Nature 198:255-256. Fringes photographed from two independent pulsed ruby lasers: independent beams combine where they overlap (follow-up Q20, search snippets).
1964T. Alvager et al., speed of light from fast pi0 decay photons 2.9977 +/- 0.0004 x 10^8 m/s from pions at v/c >= 0.99975; rules out ballistic emission. Web-checked.
1967Pfleegor and Mandel, interference of two independent single-mode lasers Extends Magyar-Mandel to continuous single-mode lasers (follow-up Q20, ADS snippet).
1968-10E. Preikschat, The Mossbauer Effect and Tests of Relativity (PhD thesis, Birmingham) Ruderfer's rotor proposal carried out: ether drift (2.0 +/- 5.2) cm/s, a null for both theories; summarises Ives 1948. Passages read.
1977CERN muon storage ring (gamma = 29.3) Time dilation of stored muons to 2e-3; part of the modern record.
1986P. Grangier, G. Roger and A. Aspect, single-photon anticorrelation Fewer beam-splitter coincidences than any classical wave allows, by 13 standard deviations: the evidence against Ives's 1951 photon prediction. Search-summary web check.
1989L. A. Pobedonostsev and P. F. Parshin, 'New results in Ives experiment' SPIE 1121, Interferometry '89, pp.36-41. Shift 0.17-0.60 of relativity at 150-300 keV, 0.9-1.1 at MeV. All 6 pages read from page images.
1989Pobedonostsev and Parshin, full account, Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 1989 no. 3 pp.84-99, and Khlopin preprint PU-199/L Raw data and error budget behind the SPIE report; the arbiter's deciding record for the dissent.
1991-1995Pobedonostsev and Parshin, later papers 'Experimental Investigation of a Relativistic Effect' (1991) to 'Once Again About the Doppler Effect' (1995). Titles only.
1997Wardle et al., Observational Evidence against Birefringence over Cosmological Distances No vacuum birefringence over cosmological paths; known from the Lorentz-violation page's reference list (follow-up Q20).
2003Saathoff et al., laser Ives-Stilwell test in a storage ring Cited by the reviewers (via Giuliani 2015).
2005Rainville et al., direct test of E = mc^2 Agreement to 4e-7; web-checked (MIT news).
2007Reinhardt et al., Li-7+ at 3.0% and 6.4% of c Nature Physics; Mansouri-Sexl alpha <= 8.4e-8 (abstract-level check).
2007MAGIC, energy-dependent photon arrival from Markarian 501 A possible energy dependence of light speed; superseded by the more precise Fermi-LAT measurements (Wikipedia, follow-up Q20).
2008Rath, Kanseri et al., Fresnel-Arago laws verified in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer Am. J. Phys. (2008): 'light waves with orthogonal polarization do not interfere' (follow-up Q20, snippet).
2009Herrmann et al. and Eisele et al., rotating optical resonator tests Phys. Rev. D 80:105011; Phys. Rev. Lett. 103:090401. Light-speed anisotropy excluded at 10^-17, though the Solar System moves about 368 km/s relative to the cosmic microwave background (follow-up Q20).
2009Fermi-LAT, GRB 090510 photon arrival times Nature 462:331. No energy dependence of light speed, beyond the Planck scale for a linear term: no vacuum dispersion (follow-up Q20).
2010D. Marett, Interference of Light Beams from Two Independent Lasers conspiracyoflight.com, the site hosting the Ives papers. Two independent HeNe lasers beat at a photodetector; only same-polarization modes beat; blocking one beam removes all beats. Marett presents it as refuting Dirac (follow-up Q20).
2014B. Botermann et al., Test of Time Dilation Using Stored Li+ Ions as Clocks at Relativistic Speed Phys. Rev. Lett. 113:120405; beta = 0.338, below 4e-9. Saved; abstract and p.2 used.
2015Nagel et al., rotating orthogonal microwave resonators Light-speed anisotropy limit about 10^-18, against about 5e-9 for Brillet and Hall 1979 (Wikipedia, follow-up Q20).
2016ATLAS (2016) and CMS, light-by-light scattering Seen in ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions: the vacuum's one observed nonlinearity (Wikipedia, follow-up Q20).
Related theory and criticism by others (25)
1819A. Fresnel and F. Arago, laws of interference of polarized light Two orthogonal, coherent linearly polarized waves cannot interfere: why crossed beams can show no fringes (follow-up Q20, Wolfram and Wikipedia snippets).
1900H. Poincare, radiation momentum (1900, 1904) Credited by Ives 1952 as the source of E = mc^2; Ives's own 1942-45 derivations use m = E/c^2 for radiation.
1905A. Einstein, 'Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?' The derivation Ives called defective in 1952.
1907M. Planck's objection to Einstein's 1905 mass-energy step Raised first the point Ives repeated; settled by von Laue 1911 and Klein 1918.
1917A. S. Eddington (1917, 1923) and H. B. Phillips (1922), gravitation in force form Gave the same relations as Ives 1948; Ives cites them, so his is a re-derivation, not an advance prediction.
1920M. von Laue (1920) and P. Langevin (1921), Sagnac effect in relativity Give the same first-order result as the ether reading.
1920A. Einstein, Ether and the Theory of Relativity (Leiden address) Wikisource text: space 'is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether', but 'the idea of motion may not be applied to it' (follow-up Q20).
1922E. Schroedinger, photon emission from energy-momentum conservation Gives the Ives-Stilwell factor without clocks; rediscovered by Davisson 1938 (claim 6).
1939R. C. Jones (Bell Laboratories), JOSA 29:337 Re-derived the Ives-Stilwell predictions from special relativity and raised the imparted-velocity objection Part II answers. Known through Part II and Bonizzoni-Giuliani.
1951P. A. M. Dirac, 'Is there an aether?' Nature 168:906. The paper Ives answered in 1953. Not read.
1957G. Builder, clock paradox and 'Ether and Relativity' Aust. J. Phys. 10 (1957), 11 (1958). Extended Ives's one-way light argument. CSIRO copy blocked.
1960M. Ruderfer, 'First-Order Terrestrial Ether Drift Experiment' Phys. Rev. Lett. 5. The Mossbauer rotor proposal Preikschat carried out.
1961M. Jammer (1961), Arzelies (1966), A. I. Miller (1981) Supported Ives's charge against Einstein's E = mc^2 derivation (per Ohanian); Miller judged the theory never developed into a serious alternative.
1962P. W. Bridgman, A Sophisticate's Primer of Relativity Posthumous; uses Ives's arguments (per Lalli 2014).
1968Stetson, JOSA, on Wiener's experiment Wiener's results 'establish that the photographic process is sensitive to only the E vector' (follow-up Q20, search snippet).
1972S. Marinov's classical model Proposed by Pobedonostsev and Parshin; predicts about +5% at their angle, not their deficit.
1975M. Ruderfer, 'Neutrino Structure of the Ether', Lett. Nuovo Cimento 13:1 Reprinted as Appendix VI of Moray's The Sea of Energy, 5th ed., pp.271-275: Ives as 'the most direct verification of the validity of a Lorentz ether'; neglect of his gravitation 'unwarranted'; a neutrino-sea energy store. Read in the Moray text.· Ruderfer advocates his neutrino-sea ether and cites Ives as support
1977R. Mansouri and R. U. Sexl, test theory of special relativity Gen. Rel. Grav. 8; the framework in which Ives-Stilwell fixes one coefficient and preferred-frame limits are set.
1982J. Stachel and R. Torretti, reply on Einstein's 1905 derivation Argued it is not circular (via Ohanian).
2009D. Y. Gezari (2009) and W. Kantor (1971) Sources Faraj cites for the 'longitudinal asymmetry' reading. Not read.
c.2010A. A. Faraj, 'The Ives-Stilwell Experiment' General Science Journal no. 727. Says only a longitudinal asymmetry was measured; his algebra gives twice the Larmor-Lorentz shift (deep read). Saved.· Advocate of the emission (ballistic) theory
2024J. Chen, The fundamental factor of optical interference (arXiv) Questions the 'only the electric field' reading of Wiener's experiment; a dissenting lead seen as a snippet only, not read (follow-up Q20).
n.d.G. D. Birkhoff's flat-space theory of gravitation The equations Ives rewrote in 1947; admits only a fluid with sound speed c and lacked a general derivation (arbiter, summary-level web check).
n.d.G. Nordstrom's scalar theory of gravitation Newtonian static limit but no light bending: the arbiter's counterexample to Ruderfer's 'any Lorentz-ether theory ... necessarily equivalent'. Web-checked.
n.d.R. W. Wood and F. E. Hackett, double toothed-wheel (Fizeau) experiment Their 'twist' of the axle is what Ives's 1939 disk paper explains by contraction alone. Known through Ives's paper.
Later accounts and media (24)
1956O. E. Buckley and K. K. Darrow, NAS Biographical Memoir of Herbert Eugene Ives 47 pp., in the folder; relativity section by H. P. Robertson ('completely equivalent in substance' to special relativity); bibliography to 1951. Digest plus deep reads.· Robertson, quoted for the verdict, was Ives's referee and critic
1977D. Turner and R. Hazelett (eds.), The Einstein Myth and the Ives Papers Devin-Adair, 1977 or 1979, revised 2005; holds Ives's later correspondence. Not obtained.· Editor Hazelett: Hazelett Strip-Casting vice president (per Martin Gardner, a critic); anti-relativist preface (Giuliani)
1980S. C. Som, review of The Einstein Myth and the Ives Papers Journal of Optics (Springer). Search result only.
1994R. S. Edgar, Field Analysis and Potential Theory, Part 3 DTIC ADA299147; cites Hazelett and Turner. Download blocked.
2000I. Bonizzoni and G. Giuliani, interpretations by experimenters of time dilation experiments 1940-1970 arXiv physics/0008012, in the folder; deep read pp.16-21.
2007L. C. Young, thesis on newspaper dissemination of Einstein's theory of time OhioLINK ETD; covers the 1938 press coverage. Not opened.
2008H. C. Ohanian, Einstein's E = mc2 mistakes arXiv 0805.1400, in the folder; deep read pp.1-5. Ives 'wrong' on circularity, but Einstein's step valid only for slow internal motion.
2008-05-04Classic Science Paper: Otto Wiener's experiment (1890), Skulls in the Stars blog Explainer: the electric field is the active field; electric node and magnetic antinode at the mirror. Keyword passages read (follow-up Q20).
2013R. Lalli, 'Anti-Relativity in Action' (Ives) Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 43(1):41-104; abstract only: 'most important American opponent of Einstein', 'hidden network of allies'.
2014R. Lalli, The Revival of the Larmor-Lorentz Ether Theories: Herbert E. Ives' Opposition to Relativity 1937-1953 ESHS 2012 proceedings pp.359-365; saved and read.
2015G. Giuliani, Experiment and theory: the case of the Doppler effect for photons arXiv 1502.05736, in the folder; deep read pp.7-12.
2016R. Lalli, Robertson and Physical Review refereeing Notes Rec. R. Soc. 70(2):151-174; read on PMC.
2017P. J. E. Peebles, Robert Dicke and the naissance of experimental gravity physics Eur. Phys. J. H; discusses Ives-Stilwell and Ruderfer 1960. Search results only.
2019Study of the Chinese Academy of Sciences 'Relativity Criticism Group' Names Ives and Dingle among the group's sources (ResearchGate 327752597). Snippet only.
2020'Whittaker, Einstein, and the History of the Aether' (Sage) Describes Ives as 'a staunch antagonist of Einstein's person and his theories'. Snippet only.
2024'Herbert Ives: relativity, the aether, and theory choice' Essay at text.nxg.me.uk/2024/1; blocked (Chrome permission denied, HTTP 403).
2026'Secret Clocks: The US Military, Einstein's Relativity, and the GPS' HSNS 56(3):210; abstract read; Ives cited as early evidence only.
2026Wikipedia, Herbert E. Ives Saved page in the folder; digest. Birth 31 July 1882, death 13 November 1953.
n.d.Martin Gardner on the Hazelett-Turner book In The Colossal Book of Mathematics; a critic's account. Not opened.
n.d.H. Nieper, Revolution in Technik, Medizin, Gesellschaft Free-energy book citing the Ives volume (search snippet).
n.d.R. Sungenis et al., Galileo Was Wrong Geocentrist book citing the Ives volume (search snippet).
n.d.Optica history biography of Herbert E. Ives Saved page in the folder; digest.
n.d.Optica list of JOSA articles by early OSA presidents 66 Ives JOSA papers with ids.
n.d.Chappell Natural Philosophy Society wiki, Herbert E Ives and Lev A Pobedonostsev Dissident-science society wiki; bibliography, Hazelett-Turner details, Pobedonostsev papers 1991-95.
Records named but not yet examined (6)
1890O. Wiener, standing light waves, Ann. Phys. 276:203 Original not obtained. Known through Ives-Fry 1933, Ives's 1951 Rumford lecture and Q20 web sources; would confirm the oblique 45-degree no-fringe variant cited from memory in follow-up Q20.
1938Bell Laboratories project files on the canal-ray experiment Would explain why the work stops after Part II (1941). Not located.
1938Bell Laboratories Record 1938 issues as page images; NYT 8 May 1938 'A Mystery Deepens; Dr. Ives Revives Ether Controversy' Text search of the 1938 Record found nothing; the NYT URL returned 'Page Not Found'.
1938Princeton colloquium notes and Pauli correspondence Second source for Ives's hostile-reception account. Not located.
c.1938Science Service Records, RU007091 Smithsonian Institution Archives; may hold the April 1938 press copy. Finding aid not opened.
1974C. M. Will, Scientific American (cited by Ruderfer) Cited in Ruderfer's appendix; not obtained.
Left out: the project README, the review's own AI analyses, Ives's non-relativity colour-photography, lenticular and television papers (about 250 papers in all), his roughly 100 patents one by one, textbook experiments (Michelson-Morley, Kennedy-Thorndike) cited only as background, and records follow-up Q20 cited from memory (Kostelecky-Russell tables, PVLAS). Full catalogue: Ives sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: For the dissent: an independent canal-ray or storage-ring repeat across 150-2,000 keV with the viewing-arm alignment measured. For the ether: only preferred-frame tests (Mansouri-Sexl parameters, Mossbauer rotor) could decide, and limits are null. For Ives's gravity postulate: a second-order test fixing kappa, or a binary-pulsar result derived from it.
Deciding records: Pobedonostsev-Parshin, Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 1989 no. 3 pp.84-99 with raw data; Ives, Rev. Sci. Instr. 9:283 (1938); a legal copy of JOSA 42:540 (1952) and the 1953 notes; citation indices for Phys. Rev. 72:229 and JOSA 38:413; the LoC MSS27508 container list; Robertson's and Bridgman's papers.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: Parts 1-5 show why the line centre moves by lambda0 beta^2/2, give 0.047 A at 18,350 V and refit the eight 1938 plates; Part 6 the 43 kV points of 1941; Part 7 Mercury's 43 arcsec and the one sixth from moving mass alone; Part 9 the ripple-tank ratios.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Ives matters to Moray as a credential: a Bell Laboratories experimenter whose experiments and theory leave a physical ether admissible. Ruderfer's next step, an ether whose energy may exceed that of matter, is his own: none of the 31 papers gives the ether energy that could be tapped. arbiter.md, The owner's questions
Contrarian A Lorentz ether adds no new force and no new prediction to Lorentz and Einstein; it supplies a different story (a physical medium, absolute time, real contractions) for the same measured numbers. Those who prefer the ether reading are choosing on grounds of physical picture, not data. contrarian.md, The owner's questions
Physicist His gravitation work is not a one-number fit: it is the exact Schwarzschild solution for a single static mass, re-derived in fixed-ether language, and he says himself it adds nothing measurable. Where he goes beyond that, the claim fails, was never tested, or is a definition. physicist.md, Bottom line for the reader
Mathematician The 43 arcseconds follows from the choice 'the Newtonian escape speed, exactly', not from the ether idea: with a second-order term kappa in the field the advance is (6 - kappa)/6 of the GR value. Ives states the exactness openly, so it is an input, not a fudge. mathematician.md, Claim 4a
Investigator A pond betrays itself to a wave-only observer by dispersion, loss and a rest frame: Ives's own mercury ripple tank missed exact invariance by dispersion (0.852 against 0.658). The vacuum shows none: no dispersion (Fermi-LAT) and no anisotropy to 10^-17 to 10^-18, which a Lorentz ether also predicts. research/2026-10-08-followup-Q20.md, Reasoning 4
AI noteRuderfer wants two things from the ether that pull apart: invisibility, to stay equivalent to relativity, and usable energy. A truly Lorentz-invariant vacuum energy offers no gradient to extract work from (arbiter, citing the Mathematician).
A famous crowd psychologist's decade of physics: real infra-red and phosphor discoveries, a sweeping claim that all matter decays, and a book Moray cited by name.
Invention / theory background
Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), French physician and author of The Crowd, ran physics experiments in his Paris laboratory from about 1894 to 1908. The Evolution of Matter (1905; English 1907) and The Evolution of Forces (1907; English 1908) argue that all atoms slowly dissociate toward the ether, that atoms store vast 'intra-atomic energy', and that invisible 'black light' persists in phosphors. A 1990 Borderland review calls the books Thomas Moray's sourcebook.
Ranking explanation
Strong on all four criteria. A: the 1896 black light and the hot-metal emanation were never neutrally tested, and the US press dismissed black light without testing. B: the Campbell dispute, the 1897 priority notes and the IMEC notebooks are open. C: afterglow, infra-red quenching and the coin energy are reader-testable. D: Moray cited him. Like Wallace it rests on the inventor's own tabulated data; its strong form failed indirect tests, while Mills's lab anomalies stay untested.
Key supporting elements
He was right against Henri Becquerel that uranium rays are not polarised (May 1897); Becquerel credited 'Rutherford and Le Bon' in 1900 and dropped the credit in 1903 (Martins).
His black-light work is real physics: months-long invisible afterglow, infra-red stimulation of CaS and quenching of ZnS, near-infra-red passing ebonite and black paper, with glass-strip, ice-trough and split-screen controls.
His photo-leak tables match modern work functions (aluminium and zinc leak in sunlight, copper hardly), and he separated electron emission from air ionisation by vacuum ultra-violet.
Repeats and endorsements on record: Berget in Lippmann's Sorbonne laboratory (1897), Kalahne 'absolutely confirm' the quinine effect (1905), Izarn 'stupefied with the clearness', Ramsay and Spencer and Gates partial repeats, Poincare presenting four notes.
His gram-of-matter energy arithmetic is exact (5.0e12 J, 6,800 million metric horse-power if stopped in a second), the right order for mc^2 before Einstein, and Moray's 1926 Radiant Energy quotes him by name.
Key contradictions
He predicted metallic radium 'will never be isolated' and would be inactive if it were; Curie and Debierne isolated radioactive radium metal in 1910.
The background leaks he read as matter dissociating were traced to radioactive impurity, radon, penetrating radiation and cosmic rays; stable nuclides show no decay products (proton partial lifetime above 8e33 years).
His floating aluminium strip would need about 260 W to vanish in 300 years; small sparks carry milliwatts. Dynamo output rises with shaft torque, so it does not come from atoms.
No blank run in the same open geometry is reported for the leak experiments, only a capped-electroscope criterion (1 degree per hour); his dark cylinder and warmed cage rates are 60-360 times that.
The 1990 review misreads the book: heated radium recovers in 'twenty days or so' as radon grows back, not 'a week', and no half-life change appears; 'records stricken' is contradicted by the open IMEC archive.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 59 shown)
Claim
Verdict
All matter is perishable: atoms slowly dissociate toward the ether
Establishedweak form: some atoms disintegrate; light, heat, chemistry free electronsTested, not supportedstrong form: every atom of ordinary matterHistorically superseded but instructiveether as the end state
Atoms are reservoirs of intra-atomic energy; conservation of energy is a dogma
Establishedmatter holds energy of order mc^2 (by later physics)Historically superseded but instructivehis 1900-1905 magnitude estimateRefuted by calculation6,800 million hp as the yield of ordinary matter; dynamo draws on atomsNot testable as statedconservation as a dogma, philosophical form
Over-unity: a machine giving more than it takes 'can be considered possible'; electrification by influence turns matter into energy
Never properly testedmachine proposed (Matter p.231), never builtRefuted by calculationfloating strip as matter-to-energy; battery versus static tension
Light, heat and chemistry release this energy in ordinary bodies
Establishedcharge leaks under light, UV, flames, hydration (photoelectric, ionisation)Tested, not supportedreading as dissociation of ordinary matterNever properly testedwarmed-metal emanation that rest renews
Chemical theory of radioactivity: a pure body cannot be radioactive; radium metal will never be isolated
Tested, not supportedradium metal isolated 1910; lifetime of 100 years about 23 times too short
Black light: invisible afterglow, infra-red action on phosphors, near-IR seeing through opaque materials
Establishedin kind: afterglow, IR stimulation and quenching, IR transparency, ZnS imaging; Branly-Le Bon shieldingPlausible, untestedhis specific decay and sensitivity numbersNever properly tested1896 single new radiation through metal; dismissed without testing in the US pressNot testable as stated'darkness added to darkness gives light'
Le Bon was first and was resisted
Establishednon-polarisation of uranium rays against BecquerelTested, not supportedpriority for universal radioactivity of ordinary bodiesHistorically superseded but instructiveresistance: documented disagreement, slide out of physics; no suppression found
Moray connection and the effluves through insulators
EstablishedMoray cited and drew on Le Bon (his own 1926 text)Never properly testedlibrary and FBI story; 'Girard Le Beau'; particles crossing the platesPlausible, untestedglow beyond thin insulators in a high-frequency field; one repeat by LeggeNot testable as statedbooks hold a working method for releasing atomic energy
French physician (1841-1931), author of The Crowd (1895). With no physics training he experimented from about 1894-96 to about 1908, with an assistant, in his private laboratory at 29 rue Vignon, industrial laboratories and Bouty's Sorbonne laboratory; about 15 Comptes rendus notes; directed Flammarion's Bibliotheque de philosophie scientifique; title pages say member of the Royal Academy of Belgium.
Henri Poincare
Reviewer of protocols and presenter of four of Le Bon's notes
Leading French mathematical physicist. In letters of 1896-1911 he questioned exposure equality, light leaks and de-fogging, presented the January 1899 notes, attended Le Bon's Wednesday lunches, and in 1903 asked how an endothermic atom could be so stable.
F. Legge
Translator and editor of both English editions · Sympathetic editor; his footnotes report reception in Le Bon's favour
His signed footnotes record confirmations (Kalahne, Gates, Ramsay and Spencer) and objections (Thomson, Campbell, Elster and Geitel); he repeated the effluve passage with a Tesla transformer, ran a vacuum-jacket null test, and asked for an independent check of the Faraday-cage experiment.
Pierre de Heen
Physicist who, per Le Bon, repeated and adopted his experiments
Professor at the University of Liege and director of its Institut de Physique (per Le Bon). Le Bon says he likened the experiments to X-rays in importance; his 1912 Academie royale de Belgique memoir cites Le Bon. His own texts were not read.
Henri Becquerel
Critic and priority rival · Rival for credit in radiation research
Criticised black light strongly and suggested in 1897 that it was infra-red; his own polarisation result for uranium rays was an error; in 1900 credited Rutherford and Le Bon with the negative result and omitted them in 1903 (Martins); said Le Bon 'had no idea of the phenomena of radio-activity'.
Thomas Henry Moray
Inventor who cited Le Bon · Promoted his own radiant-energy and transmutation work
Salt Lake City inventor (reviewed in the Morray-TH project). His 1926 Radiant Energy and Sea of Energy quote Le Bon and list both books; a 1960s Air Force proposal credits Le Bon with direct conversion 'as early as 1897'.
John E. Moray
Source of the library and FBI story · Moray's son and head of the Research Institute that promoted the Moray process
Edited the 1978 Sea of Energy and spoke to the U.S. Psychotronics Association in 1980, recalling FBI agents asking about the Salt Lake City Library copy of Le Bon's book in 1940-41.
Gerry Vassilatos
Author of the 1990 review linking Le Bon to Moray · BSRF, which publishes him, sells the books he recommends
Not in the review files beyond his Journal of Borderland Research articles (1990 review, Black Waves, Induced Radioactivity by Solar Light, 1997).
Evidence / artifacts (152 of 163 listed, 93%)
Own works and inventions (32)
1896Nature et proprietes de la lumiere noire, Comptes rendus 122, pp.386-390 Named by the Poincare Papers editors; not obtained
1896-01-27La lumiere noire, Comptes rendus 122, pp.188-190 Presented by d'Arsonval; light from lamp or sun said to pass cardboard, iron and copper; IA scan in research/files
1896-05-11Paper read 11 May 1896 widening 'dark light' and answering the light-leak objection Known from the Cosmos notice of 23 May 1896 reprinted at BSRF
1897Le Bon, Revue scientifique [4] 7, pp.72-81 Cited in Martins, A pool of radiations; not obtained
1897-04-05Comptes rendus note: metal-light experiment reproduced in Lippmann's Sorbonne laboratory Presented by d'Arsonval; named by the arbiter as deciding for the 1897 priority; not obtained
1897-04-26Sur les proprietes electriques des radiations emises par les corps sous l'influence de la lumiere, Comptes rendus Presented by d'Arsonval; cited in the Poincare Papers
1897-05Note denying polarisation of uranium rays, with reply to Becquerel (p.691) Quoted by Martins: experiments 'do not invariably succeed'
1897-08-05Comptes rendus note on leak from illuminated bodies Named by the arbiter as deciding for priority over Lenard and Thomson; not obtained
1899Le Bon 1899 text, pp.108-109: metallic and uranium radiations never polarised Quoted by Martins
c.1899Hertzian-wave weapon proposal: mirror beam to detonate ships and magazines at kilometres Forces p.179; not attempted 'solely on account of the expense'; Oudin room-sparking anecdote, Le Bon sole witness
1899-01-16Luminescence residuelle invisible (invisible residual luminescence), Comptes rendus 128 Presented by Poincare; 2 h at 3 days to traces at 18 months; names operator Gaston Braun fils
1899-01-30Transparence des corps opaques pour les radiations de grande longueur d'onde, Comptes rendus 128 Presented by Poincare; CaS 300 times, plates 5000 times less sensitive than ZnS; read by mathematician and contrarian
1899-04-01Branly and Le Bon, Hertzian-wave absorption by metal enclosures and dielectrics, Comptes rendus pp.879 ff. Joint note with Edouard Branly; summarised in Forces pp.178-196; note itself unread
c.1900Oudin-resonator effluves through glass and ebonite plates (with Dr Oudin) Matter pp.235-237, 444-447; up to 1/2 mm; frequency, plate size and controls not reported
c.1900Electrification by influence: the floating aluminium strip Forces pp.140-143; 0.5 by 2 cm; no charge, mass or control measurement
1900-05-05Revue scientifique article cited for the 'silence' of radium holders Le Bon's reference in Matter p.213
1901-08Solar ultra-violet 'disappearance' spectrograms, 23 and 30 Aug, 26 Oct, 12 Nov 1901 Matter pp.371-374; slow-leak days tied to missing UV lines; no dark rate for those days
c.1902Quinine hydration and gas-evolving reaction leaks Matter chs VI-VII; 1 mg water per g gives 12 degrees in the first minute; phosphorus 80 degrees per minute; controls stated
c.1902Warmed-metal 'emanation' in a Faraday cage and the 8-day dark cylinder Matter ch.X; cage 5-6, cylinder 1-2 degrees per minute; no same-geometry blank; Legge asked for an independent check (p.411)
1902-06-09Comptes rendus 134, pp.1387-1388: measurements of light acting on bodies Referred to commissioners Sarrau, Poincare and H. Becquerel
1902-11-15Revue scientifique memoir, pp.614-625 Cited in Le Bon's 29 Nov 1902 letter to Poincare (reaction-produced discharges)
c.1903'Tin 40 times uranium': sunlit amalgamated tin against a uranium nitrate screen Matter pp.386-388; 40 degrees in 10 s against 6 in 60 s; printed 'four times' is a slip for forty
1903-10-17Revue scientifique memoir on intra-atomic energy (from 17 Oct 1903) Cites Larmor, Maxwell, W. Thomson; Poincare commented
c.1904Radium tests: zinc-sulphide scintillation screens and diamond phosphorescence Matter pp.163-165; Forces pp.268-272, about 200 Brazilian and Cape diamonds (digest only)
1905L'Evolution de la matiere (Flammarion); English The Evolution of Matter, tr. F. Legge, 1907 (1909 printing) 489 PDF pages, OCR; deep reads of pp.159-176, 201-216, 227-243, 350-432, 444-447; French scans on IA and gustavelebon.org
c.1905Seances with Dastre: 'nothing demonstrative' Forces p.402; medium and conditions not given
c.1906Infra-red plant and antagonism experiments Forces pp.369-391; black-paper greenhouses as 'hints', one season; ZnS behind a copper-sulphate trough 14 times brighter; conflicts with p.364
1906-03-24Reply to Campbell, Athenaeum Legge says it showed Campbell's 'mistake'; content unread
1907L'Evolution des forces; English The Evolution of Forces, ed. F. Legge, 1908 454 PDF pages; deep reads of Black Light pp.317-368 and pp.137-196, 369-402, 415-420
1907-08La Naissance et l'Evanouissement de la Matiere (Mercure de France, 1908) From an Ostend lecture, Aug 1907; Project Gutenberg 67253; general law of dissociation quoted
1911Les opinions et les croyances Recalls H. Becquerel's belief in N-rays; via Poincare Papers note
Patents and patent office (1)
–US patent 4,507,562, infra-red stimulation of luminescent phosphors Cited by the arbiter as the modern counterpart of Le Bon's CaS stimulation; a search for any patent by Le Bon found none
Government records (4)
1903Nobel Prize in Physics nomination, no. 18-0, nominee Gustave Le Bon Google snippet of the Nobel archive; nominator and motivation unread; arbiter could not confirm
c.1907French Minister of Marine's inquiry on masking ship and lighthouse lights Forces pp.365-368; Le Bon's account only; no trial reported
c.1965Moray proposal, Direct Energy Conversion from Radioactive Materials (Air Force Materials Command file) Credits Le Bon with direct conversion 'as early as 1897'· Moray, proposer
n.d.Academie royale de Belgique membership Title pages: 'member of the Royal Academy of Belgium'; election date unchecked
Company and business records (4)
1964John E. Moray, Recovery of Minerals from Low Grade Ore by High Energy Bombardment Research Institute, Inc.; on rexresearch; no Le Bon mention· Moray company
1965-02-04Transmutation of Low Grade Ores by High Energy Bombardment (Hooper, Hendricks, Rudolph) 68th National Western Mining Conference, Denver; Hooper finds 'no avenue of escape'· Moray company and its consultant
2019BSRF catalogue, Radiant Energy Sells Le Bon's two books as xerographic copies; no 'Girard Le Beau' title· Seller of the books
2019BSRF catalogue, Flying Saucers: Resines booklet 'an electrogravitic experiment by Dr Le Bon ... about 1907'; no such experiment in pages read· Seller
Witness accounts and correspondence (22)
c.1896-01-28Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-2) Sees no explanation but diffusion by air; asks about cleaning, exposure; proposes lead-plate geometry; editors' summary
c.1896-02Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-3) Validates protocol except the negative; Pierre-Sadi Carnot collection
c.1897-04Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-4) Saw with Lippmann M. Berget, who reproduced Le Bon's experiment; summary
c.1897-04Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-5) Asks whether UV-struck metal discharges the electroscope at a distance; summary
1899M. Izarn's letter to Le Bon 'I was stupefied with the clearness of the results'; Forces p.350 footnote; only source Le Bon's book
1899-01Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-9) Plate de-fogged in infra-red under ebonite; Le Bon annotated 'Jamais'; full text
1899-01-05Le Bon to Poincare (2-35-6) Announces the two January 1899 notes; letterhead 29 rue Vignon; full text
1899-01-09Le Bon to Poincare (2-35-10) Infra-red maximum near 1 micron on sulphides; full text
c.1899-01-25Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-11) Agrees to present the note; troubled that de-fogging needs ebonite; summary
1899-03Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-12) Reflection experiments: find cause of weakening with distance; full text
c.1902-07-07Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-17) Nodon priority note 'plutot nuisible'; summary
1902-11-29Le Bon to Poincare (2-35-18) Quinine in a closed box: discharge 'enormement reduite', ions must circulate
1903Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-19) On ether density and N-ray plate measurements; summary
1903-11Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-20) Endothermic sub-atoms: 'comment peut-elle etre si extraordinairement stable?'; summary
1909-02-23Le Bon to Georges Renard Seen in a Google snippet of Marpeau 1998
1911-11-26Poincare to Le Bon (2-35-23) On Les opinions et les croyances; summary
1922-04-09Le Bon to Einstein Collected Papers of Albert Einstein vol.13 calendar; not selected for translation
1922-06-30Einstein's reply to Le Bon Per Moatti; text unread
1922-07-13Einstein's second reply to Le Bon Per Moatti; text unread
1978John E. Moray, introduction to Sea of Energy 5th ed. Library withdrawal and FBI visit; '1,340,000 barrels' misread as fission; 'I am told' Einstein letter to Le Bon's daughter· Moray's son and promoter of the Moray process
1980John E. Moray, talk to the U.S. Psychotronics Association 'FBI coming to my father's door' over the Salt Lake City Library copy, 1940-41· Moray's son and promoter of the Moray process
Experiments and replications by others (37)
1867Niepce de Saint-Victor's photographic action of dark radiations Credited by Le Bon as 'real author' of radioactivity's discovery
c.1888Hertz, Hallwachs, Elster and Geitel, Branly: earlier photo-leak and sunlight results Acknowledged by Le Bon (Matter p.389); precede his photo-leak work
c.1897H. Becquerel: black light is infra-red Per Poincare Papers editors· Priority rival
1897Berget's reproduction in Lippmann's Sorbonne laboratory Metal-light experiment; documented in Le Bon's 1897 note and Poincare's letter summary
c.1897W. J. Russell, chemical fogging of plates by metals Nature 60 (1899) p.210 related item found; 1897 paper not seen; Le Bon accepted a chemical cause
1899Gaston Braun fils, statuette photographs in a cellar Named operator in the 1899 note; 8-15 day exposures; not independent
c.1899Bose and Veillon reports of transparent metal boxes Corrected by Branly and Le Bon (Forces pp.181-182)
1900H. Becquerel: 'same negative conclusions' by Rutherford and Le Bon Credit dropped in his 1903 book (Martins)· Priority rival
1900J. A. Fleming, Cantor Lectures Called the Oudin effluve passage 'striking' (Matter p.235)
1900Lenard, ionisation of air by extreme ultra-violet, Ann. der Physik Cited in Matter pp.400-401
c.1900Von Wesendonk, positive discharge of a Tesla secondary Cited by Legge for the effluves' polarity (Matter p.447)
1901De Heen (Liege) memoir adopting Le Bon's experiments Le Bon says he repeated them and likened them to X-rays; unread
1902Nodon, Comptes rendus 134 Priority dispute
1902Rutherford and Soddy, transformation theory of radioactivity Quoted selectively by Le Bon as allies for 'chemical' (Matter p.210)
1903Curie and Laborde: radium heat about 100 cal per hour per gram Le Bon's quoted figure (0.116 W/g)
1903Rutherford and Cooke; McLennan and Burton, closed-vessel leak fell up to 30% with shielding Known through a 1926 PNAS abstract
1903-10-15Heydweiler, radium weight loss, Physikalische Zeitschrift 0.02 mg per day from 5 g; Matter p.211
1904J. J. Thomson, emanation of ordinary substances, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. Attributed to radioactive impurity (Legge's notes)
1904Miss Gates, Physical Review 18 p.144 Le Bon 'right as to the cause' but rays differ from radioactive ones; later retreat (1906)
1904Kelvin's statement on radium heat and withdrawal, BA Cambridge Matter p.86 translator's note
c.1904Elster and Geitel, penetrating radiation over the whole earth Legge's notes p.178, 429
1904Rutherford, Radio-Activity: adopts the quinine finding, classed as not true radioactivity Known via Legge and the deep read; book unread
1905Kalahne (Heidelberg), Ann. der Physik pp.450, 457 'absolutely confirm' the quinine chemical phenomenon; interpretation differs
1905-04N. Campbell, Radio-activity and Chemical Change, Phil. Mag. Ascribes chemical leak to heat; outcome of dispute open
1906Cambridge critics in the Athenaeum Admitted theory 'in the main correct', contested experiments and priority (Matter p.27)
c.1906Delbruck: soaring birds may cancel gravitation by intra-atomic energy Forces p.401; Le Bon: 'not fundamentally absurd'; hypothesis, no test
1906-10Ramsay and Spencer, Phil. Mag. Repeated UV charge experiments; different explanation of metal fatigue
1907P. D. Innes, Proc. Roy. Soc. p.442 'a great store of energy in the atom seems now beyond question'; quoted by Legge as approval
c.1907Legge's Tesla-transformer repeat of the effluve passage Ernecke transformer in vaseline; 1/2 cm glass, ebonite, sulphur, shellac, 1 cm paraffin; Matter p.446 footnotes· Sympathetic translator
c.1907Dufour: breathed air contains radioactive particles Forces p.419; no citation or figures
c.1908Legge's vacuum-jacket test of the needle 'attracted' by living bodies Needle stayed motionless; convection concluded; Forces p.401· Sympathetic translator
1910Curie and Debierne isolate metallic radium Refutes Le Bon's prediction; webelements history page
1912De Heen, Introduction a l'etude de la physique, Mem. Acad. royale de Belgique Persee; cites Le Bon; PDF refused
2009Super-Kamiokande, proton partial lifetime above 8.2e33 years arXiv 0903.0676; used by the arbiter against the strong form of claim 1
n.d.De Heen, La Matiere (CORE pdf) 403 to script; not read
n.d.Gariel, Physique Biologique: textbook summary of the black-light work 'almost extraordinary ... no occasion to put them on one side' (Forces p.319); only source Le Bon's book
n.d.Red-glass greenhouses at Juvisy Cited by Le Bon as others' work (Forces p.374), no reference
Later accounts and media (46)
c.1896Internet Archive 'Bulletin' item mocking 'lumiere noire (!)' Seen in search results; not opened
1896-05Popular Science Monthly 49, Recent Work on X Rays Quotes Le Bon: thickness of plates 'absolutely without importance'
1896-05-23Cosmos notice 'Dark Light' via Literary Digest Light-leak suspicion; 'no one ... thought it worth while' to test; reprinted by BSRF
1896-09-26L'Eclairage electrique on lumiere noire CNUM; not reached
1903Revue scientifique notice: 'Depuis six ans, Gustave Le Bon poursuit ses recherches' Quoted at gustavelebon.org
1903French newspaper: 'Poincare and Le Bon fearlessly undermine the old scientific dogmas' Via Nye 1974 p.185, quoted by Kragh
1910-07-09Revue scientifique item Google snippet only
1926T. H. Moray, Radiant Energy (The Evolution of Energy and Matter) pp.41-42 quote and paraphrase Le Bon by name· Moray
c.1960T. H. Moray, The Sea of Energy in Which the Earth Floats, 4th ed. Bibliography lists both Le Bon books· Moray
c.1960T. H. Moray, Isotopes in Ionic Recovery of U3O8 'Matter may be Reconverted' attributed to Le Bon· Moray
1974Mary Jo Nye, Gustave LeBon's Black Light, HSPS 4, pp.163-195 Standard history; paywalled; named as deciding
1987Falconer, citing Le Bon, Comptes rendus 122 p.188 Seen in search results; not opened
1990-03G. Vassilatos, review of the two books, Journal of Borderland Research 46(2) Moray 'sourcebook'; 'Girard Le Beau'; radium 'a week'; project document· BSRF sells the books
1997G. Vassilatos, Induced Radioactivity by Solar Light, JBR 53(3) Magnesium plate under focused sunlight; Lehr anecdote; not weighed· BSRF
1998Benoit Marpeau, Gustave Le Bon et les universitaires, Mil neuf cent 16 Revises 'university rejected him'; opening only
1999L. Rollet, thesis on Poincare Seen in search results; not opened
2000Benoit Marpeau, biography of Le Bon Cited by Moatti and the arbiter; unread
2007Moatti, Einstein, un siecle contre lui, ch. XI and XIII Einstein replies 1922; antisemitic writings; ch. XI paywalled· Critic of 'alterscience'
2007Poincare correspondence volume, chapter 'Gustave Le Bon' (Birkhauser) Private lab, industrial labs, Bouty's Sorbonne lab, an assistant; abstract only
2010Etherwave blog, Exemplary Episodes: The N-Rays Seen in search results; not opened
2012Helge Kragh, Eight Physicists and Astronomers, arXiv 1208.3114 'most physicists failed to detect the rays'; no test named
2012Helge Kragh, A Sense of Crisis Black light 'no more real than N-rays'; Lodge congruent
2013Moatti, Alterscience, ch. XIV Publisher's listing only· Critic
2018Gloubik Sciences, La dissociation de la matiere et les radiations nouvelles Not reached
2020Scribd 'Alchemy Archive Reference' index Indexes the BSRF review; text obfuscated
n.d.Nuenergy Repeats 'synthetic radioactivity as described by Gustave LeBon'
n.d.G. Vassilatos, Black Waves, JBR 48(4) 'more sublime than ... Los Alamos'; Dan Winter galena experiment· BSRF
n.d.G. Vassilatos, Recording Telluric Signals, JBR 48(6) Le Bon radioactivity 'vitalistic'; not read· BSRF
n.d.R. A. Ford, Homemade Lightning Describes the calcium sulphide experiment; not opened
n.d.William R. Lyne, Pentagon Aliens Techniques 'rediscovered' from Le Bon; not opened
n.d.Martins, Becquerel's experimental mistakes, Studia 2-3 Le Bon first to deny polarisation of uranium rays
n.d.Nye, Gustave Le Bon: a 'Scientific Irregular' and His Media ResearchGate listing
n.d.Millikan paper grouping black light with N-rays and Burke's radiobes University of Chicago Press; not opened
n.d.Martins, A pool of radiations: Becquerel and Poincare's conjecture Cites Le Bon in Revue scientifique 1897; not read
n.d.Martins, Did Niepce de Saint-Victor discover radioactivity? On Le Bon's plagiarism charge against Becquerel; not read
n.d.Nys, Cosmologie Internet Archive; cites Le Bon and De Heen; not opened
n.d.Oublier les savants (JSTOR) Mentions De Heen and Le Bon; not opened
n.d.How Einstein Discovered E0=mc2 (ResearchGate 258706471) Cites Evolution of Matter on intra-atomic energy; not opened
n.d.Wellcome Collection, Recherches sur une propriete nouvelle de la matiere Mentions Le Bon's lumiere noire; not opened
n.d.JF Ptak Science Books blog on the 1903 Nobel nomination Only source the arbiter found for the nomination; fetch failed
n.d.Einstein travel-diaries volume, index entry 'Le Bon, Gustave, AE on, 151' Google Books index; text unread
n.d.G. Vassilatos, Lost Science Internet Archive and Scribd; seen in results· BSRF author
n.d.WISE wiki page linking Le Bon to Moray's Cosmic Ray Receiver Seen in search results
n.d.Energetic Forum PDF: matter as condensed cosmic energy 'according to Le Bon and Moray' Seen in search results
n.d.rexresearch1, Space Energy Receivers PDF Moray circuit; seen in search results
n.d.SVP wiki timeline Dates Evolution of Matter to '1872', an error
Records named but not yet examined (6)
1940FBI file on T. H. Moray, 1940-41 FOIA not requested
1940Salt Lake City Public Library holdings and withdrawal records Would test the Moray-family library story
–IMEC fonds 851GLB (notebooks, scientific documentation, correspondence) Abbaye d'Ardenne, Caen; description read, finding aid not reached
–Academy of Sciences referee records for Le Bon's notes Named by the arbiter as deciding on suppression
–'Girard Le Beau', The Evolution of Matter and Energy Hearsay in the 1990 review; no trace in HathiTrust, Open Library, BSRF
–Einstein letter to Le Bon's daughter John E. Moray, 'I am told'; not found
Left out: about eight Poincare-Le Bon letters in the 2-35 series that were not fetched and three BSRF pages that mention Le Bon in passing; also, uncounted, encyclopedia pages, editions, scans and reprints of listed works, and AI-written analyses. Full catalogue: LeBon-G sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Blank-corrected ionisation-chamber runs on clean copper and zinc, shielded and unshielded, with radon monitoring over days; and an independent black-light repeat with a calibrated 1 micron infra-red LED, unexposed blank screens and a darkroom without a red lamp.
Deciding records: Le Bon's Comptes rendus notes of 5 April and 5 August 1897, the 1903 Nobel nomination file, De Heen 1901, Nye 1974, the IMEC finding aid and notebooks, the Academy's referee records, Campbell's 1905 paper and the 1906 Athenaeum reply, Moray's FBI file and Salt Lake City Library records.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: redo Le Bon's one-gram coin energy (5.0e12 J, 6.8e9 metric hp-seconds) against mc^2 and radium's real yield, and check the dynamo balance, the photoelectric cut-offs (1240 eV nm divided by work function) and radon ingrowth after heating radium (72% at 7 days, 97% at 20).
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Le Bon's energy arithmetic is exact for metric horse-power; the flaw is the premise 'suppose the whole gram is dissociated', which his own figures contradict: one molecule in 100 million, and radium yields about 350 times less. arbiter.md, section 2, claim 2
Contrarian I found no experiment that tested Le Bon's own protocols neutrally and published a failure with data. The objections on file are reinterpretations and a general light-leak suspicion; the red darkroom lamp he blamed for failed repeats really does quench ZnS. contrarian.md, section 9
Arbiter Kragh's 'most physicists failed to detect the rays' names no test. I find no published neutral controlled test and no published failure with data, so the 1896 black light stays Never properly tested; Le Bon himself later abandoned the single-agent form. arbiter.md, section 2, claim 4
Arbiter The effluves passing glass and ebonite fit a displacement-current reading at every reported detail: high frequency needed, insulators only, thicker plates need more tension, plate unharmed. No control separates it from Le Bon's particle reading. arbiter.md, section 8, R6
Investigator The record did not go dark: it moved out of physics into history of science. IMEC holds Le Bon's notebooks, scientific documentation and correspondence, open by appointment, which answers the 1990 claim that 'all records of Professor Le Bon have been stricken'. sites.md, Leads for review, 4
AI noteMoray's 1926 booklet is subtitled 'The Evolution of Energy and Matter', close to the title of the 'Girard Le Beau' book the 1990 review says exists; no copy of that book has been found.
Rank 87Maxwell
down from 86D - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 10:59
The founding papers of field theory, read on the page: what Maxwell's 1865 equations, numbers and ether actually say, and where textbook and alternative-science retellings differ from them.
Invention / theory background
James Clerk Maxwell gave Faraday's lines of force a mathematical form (1855-56, a fluid analogy he called only notation), then in 1865 wrote twenty equations in twenty variables with displacement current, predicting waves whose speed, from Weber and Kohlrausch's electrical ratio, matched light within about 5 %. Oliver Heaviside, a self-taught telegraph engineer, recast them as four vector equations in 1884-85. The folder holds both Maxwell papers and two articles on Heaviside (Hunt 2012, Belrose 2014).
Ranking explanation
Its interest is depth and influence (D): these equations are the reference point that the scalar-wave, ether and quaternion claims elsewhere in the collection argue against. It sits among other D-only projects such as Dunning-Davis's quaternion Maxwell and Very's ether particles rather than higher, because its central claims are Established and its open items are conceptual (local energy flow, the reality of A) or printed slips, with no untested anomaly. The owner selected it for a full card.
Key supporting elements
Weber and Kohlrausch's electrical ratio, 310,740,000 m/s, matched light speeds measured by wholly independent methods (Fizeau +5.03 %, Foucault -0.60 %, aberration +2.74 % from modern c); Hertz confirmed electromagnetic waves in 1887-88.
Page images show the 1856 paper already has B = curl A and EMF = -(1/4 pi) dA/dt with explicit gauge freedom; the Aharonov-Bohm experiments (Tonomura 1986) later showed the loop integral of A is physical.
Displacement current makes the equations consistent with charge conservation, and Maxwell's field-energy integral checks on the page image (p.34); Heaviside's four equations are in effect the sign-repaired set.
Heaviside's loading result, blocked by Preece in 1887, worked in practice: Pupin patented loading in 1899 and sold it to AT&T for $500,000 (Hunt 2012, one secondary source).
Maxwell published his own anomaly: gold leaf passes 1/500 to 1/1000 of green light where his theory gave about 10^-50, 'unless' losses are smaller at light frequency (page images pp.52-53).
Key contradictions
As printed, 1865 equations (F) and (G) have sign errors: with (F) the absorption equation (95) amplifies a wave that Maxwell's own text calls weakened. Arbiter: Internally inconsistent as printed; two sign flips repair it.
In 1865 the 5 % match was suggestive, not decisive: Fizeau and Foucault differed from each other by 5.7 %, and Maxwell's calculated coil inductance (430,165 m) differed from two measurements by +6.18 % and -4.69 %.
Maxwell's sunlight field, 600 Daniell cells per metre, is 1.6 times below what his own formula and input give (975 V/m; modern peak 958 V/m), and his Sun-surface value is about ten times low; causes unknown.
The ether Maxwell believed in was not supported: Michelson-Morley (1887) found no ether wind. Maxwell had written that his conclusions were independent of that hypothesis, and the equations survived.
The suppression story holds only in part: the 1893 Royal Society rejection was a rigour objection to divergent series, later met by Bromwich and Wagner (1916); the Electrician cancellation's cause rests on Biggs's later hint.
User follow-ups (1)
Q06AnsweredWhat would Maxwell's longitudinal (scalar) terms look like in modern vector form, and why did Heaviside drop them? Maxwell's equations give no travelling longitudinal wave in an insulator; Heaviside kept the longitudinal laws and dropped only the potentials.
Maxwell's theory allows longitudinal solutions. Give the modern vector equivalent of his quaternion formulas for the longitudinal (scalar) part, as they would read if Heaviside had kept them. Explain why these terms had meaning for Maxwell and why Heaviside discarded them.
Asked 2026-10-07 · answered 2026-10-07 · 3 min web search
A06Maxwell's equations give no travelling longitudinal wave in an insulator, and he said so. But he left one door open, and Heaviside kept the longitudinal laws while dropping only the potentials.
Known
The 1865 paper has no quaternions; they first appear in the 1873 Treatise.
1865 §§98-99: the vector potential A splits into a transverse part and a longitudinal part grad(chi), with J = div A.
The longitudinal electric field in an insulator is static: "no disturbance depending on J can be propagated as a wave."
§100 leaves "normal vibrations" open if electricity had "a definite density".
Treatise Art. 616: chi is "not related to any physical phenomenon"; Maxwell sets div A = 0.
Heaviside kept the longitudinal physics as div D = rho and div B = 0. He dropped the potentials, which "did not locate the energy correctly", and quaternions, "antiphysical and unnatural".
Inferred
The terms mattered to Maxwell because the potentials were his primary quantities.
Elastic-solid light theories wrongly predicted longitudinal waves, so a transverse-only result was a point in his favour.
Plasma oscillations (1928-29) later realised his "electric fluid with density" case, in a medium.
Open
Treatise quotes are from Wikisource text, not checked against page images.
Source for Belrose's claim that Heaviside criticised Helmholtz's longitudinal waves.
Key equations
Maxwell (quaternion, 1873)
Modern vector form
Meaning
∇𝔄 = S.∇𝔄 + V.∇𝔄
−∇·A + ∇×A
scalar (longitudinal) plus vector (transverse) part
𝔅 = V.∇𝔄
B = ∇×A
transverse part
S.∇𝔄 = 0
∇·A = 0
Maxwell's choice (Coulomb gauge)
𝔈 = V.𝔊𝔅 − 𝔄̇ − ∇Ψ
E = v×B − ∂A/∂t − ∇φ
electric field
(1865 eq. 77)
E_L = −∇(φ + ∂χ/∂t) = −∇φ₀(x,y,z)
longitudinal field is static
(extended, if S kept)
∇·E = ρ/ε₀ − ∂S/∂t
S = ∇·A + (1/c²)∂φ/∂t; allows a longitudinal wave with B = 0
Key point: Did Heaviside throw away Maxwell's longitudinal physics?
Supports
He eliminated the potentials A and Psi; the Aharonov-Bohm effect later showed A has measurable effects.
Keeping S as a real field gives extended equations with a longitudinal vacuum wave (van Vlaenederen Koen review).
Contradicts
Maxwell himself found no longitudinal wave in an insulator and called chi physically empty.
Heaviside kept the longitudinal laws as div D = rho and div B = 0.
S can only be created where charge is not conserved.
B. J. Hunt, Oliver Heaviside: A first-rate oddity, Physics Today (2012)
Verdicts by claim (7 of 17 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Faraday's lines of force given exact mathematical form by an incompressible-fluid analogy (1855-56)
Establishedas a mathematical representation; checked on page imagesNot testable as statedthe fluid itself, which Maxwell disclaims
Faraday's electro-tonic state is a vector potential A (B = curl A, EMF from its rate of change), 1856
Establishedloop-integral form confirmed by Aharonov-Bohm experimentsNot testable as statedA as a local physical entity, classicallyHistorically superseded but instructiveA as a state of a medium
Field energy and displacement current, as twenty equations in twenty variables (1865)
Establishedfield energy and displacement currentInternally inconsistentthe printed 1865 set: signs of (F) and (G); later repairedPlausible, untestedtwenty in twenty as a well-posed system, in the mathematical senseNot testable as statedwhere the energy is, beyond the total
Transverse waves travel at v, the ratio of units, which matches light, so light is electromagnetic
Establishedconfirmed by Hertz; the 1865 evidence alone was plausible and suggestive; V = v for mu = 1
The effects occur in an all-pervading ethereal medium
Tested, not supportedmechanical ether with a detectable rest frameNot testable as statedundetectable Lorentz-type etherHistorically superseded but instructiveMaxwell's 1865 position
Heaviside's four vector equations and S = E x H; the real action lies in the field
Establishedfour-equation form; S as an integral conservation lawNot testable as statedlocal energy location ('action in the field')
Heaviside, a self-taught outsider, was blocked and later vindicated
Establishedloading physics; Preece's obstruction is documented history (Hunt)Historically superseded but instructiveoperator-calculus rigour objection, later resolved; Electrician cause never established
Author of both papers in the folder; field theory and the electromagnetic theory of light
Lived 13 June 1831 to 5 November 1879; first Cavendish professor at Cambridge from March 1871 (Belrose). Wrote On Faraday's Lines of Force (1855-56), A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (1865) and the Treatise (1873).
Oliver Heaviside
Recast the equations into four vector equations; energy flow S = E x H; the resisted outsider
Self-taught, reclusive telegraph engineer (Hunt). Vector equations 1884-85, inductive loading, operator calculus; elected FRS 1891; government pension from 1896. Never patented loading.
Michael Faraday
Source of the lines of force and the electro-tonic state; credited by Maxwell with the electromagnetic theory of light in substance (1846)
Not in the review files beyond his experimental researches, which supply every experimental reference in the 1856 paper, and his 1846 Thoughts on Ray Vibrations.
Wilhelm Weber
Rival action-at-a-distance theory; with Kohlrausch measured the ratio of units that gave Maxwell his speed
Not in the review files beyond his force law, which Maxwell printed in 1856 and called 'a really physical theory', and the 310,740,000 m/s measurement.
William Preece
Blocked the 1887 Heaviside loading paper · Post Office official whose public position against inductance the paper contradicted
Post Office chief engineer, head of its telegraph engineers and Arthur Heaviside's superior; campaigned publicly against inductance in telephone lines in 1886-87 (Hunt).
Heinrich Hertz
Produced and detected the predicted waves (1887-88); 1890 component restatement
Not in the review files beyond these experiments, which FitzGerald hailed as the confirmation of Maxwell's theory, and the 1890 restatement (via Belrose).
Michael Pupin
Patented inductive loading in 1899 · Patent holder; sold the rights to AT&T for $500,000
Not in the review files beyond the patent and sale, which Hunt describes as 'under somewhat shady circumstances'.
Bruce J. Hunt
Historian; author of the folder's main source on Heaviside (Physics Today 2012)
Historian of physics; also wrote The Maxwellians (1991). His article is the single secondary source for the three Heaviside episodes.
Evidence / artifacts (76 of 76 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (9)
1855-12Maxwell, On Faraday's Lines of Force (read 10 Dec 1855 and 11 Feb 1856) Trans. Cambridge Philosophical Society 10; 75-page scan in folder. Part I fluid analogy (deep read, page images pp.13-28), Part II electro-tonic state (page images pp.36-54); Part III worked examples pp.56-75 digest only
1861Maxwell, mechanical vortex model of 1861-62 (On Physical Lines of Force) Named by the physicist and mathematician from para 73 of the 1865 paper, where Maxwell says he avoids that hypothesis; not in the folder
1864-12-08Maxwell, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (Phil. Trans. 155, 1865) Smithsonian/Dibner scan, 66 pp. Deep reads pp.7-24 and 53-60; page images pp.15-20, 29, 31-34, 47, 52, 53, 57, 59, 60; rest digest. Twenty equations, wave speed, (F)/(G) sign defect, sunlight estimate, British Association coil
1873Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Arts. 616-619 and 783-784 Quaternion forms; chi 'not related to any physical phenomenon'; J and Psi left out for periodic waves. Read as Wikisource text for follow-up Q06, not on page images; (G) sign said to be corrected here (Arthur, via Wikipedia)
1884Heaviside, Electrician articles: four vector equations and energy flow (1884-87, resumed January 1891) Per Hunt: recast Maxwell's equations into four vector relations in E and H (1884-85) and found S = E x H independently; series cancelled late 1887 by a new editor
1887-04Arthur and Oliver Heaviside, joint paper on adding inductance to telephone lines Blocked when Preece, Arthur's superior at the Post Office, declared it worthless and refused clearance (Hunt p.6)
1887-11Heaviside, Philosophical Magazine series on waves (1888) Placed with William Thomson's help after the Electrician series ended (Hunt p.6)
1893Heaviside, On operators in physical mathematics (three instalments) First two published by the Royal Society; the third refereed and rejected over divergent series (Hunt p.7)
1893Heaviside, Electromagnetic Theory, 3 vols. (1893-1912) Listed in the primer's further reading [memory: high]; not in folder
Patents and patent office (1)
1899Pupin, inductive loading patent Patented loading in 1899 and sold the rights to AT&T for $500,000, 'under somewhat shady circumstances' (Hunt's phrase); Heaviside never patented· Pupin was the patent holder and seller
Government records (1)
1896Government pension to Heaviside 120 pounds a year, later 220, accepted two years after he refused a Royal Society Relief Fund grant (Hunt p.7)
Royal Society records (3)
1891Heaviside elected Fellow of the Royal Society Hunt p.7; before the 1893 rejection
1893Royal Society referee report rejecting the third operator instalment Grounds: handling of divergent series (rigour), not the Preece feud; report itself not seen (Hunt p.7)
1894Royal Society Relief Fund grant, refused by Heaviside Hunt p.7
Company and business records (2)
1887-10The Electrician: editor Biggs removed, Heaviside series cancelled New editor said he found no one who read the series; series resumed January 1891 (Hunt pp.6-7)
–AT&T use of inductive loading 'AT&T and other companies later used it with great success' (Hunt); no primary company record seen
Witness accounts and correspondence (7)
1886Preece's campaign against inductance in telephone lines (1886-87) Head of Post Office telegraph engineers; called the loading paper worthless (Hunt)· Preece was the official whose view the paper contradicted
1887Heaviside's caustic letters attacking Preece Declined by the Electrician's editor Biggs for fear of a libel suit (Hunt p.6)
–Biggs's later hint about his removal Biggs 'later hinted' he was removed for supporting Heaviside; the only evidence of cause, so the arbiter rates the cause never established
1888-09FitzGerald at the British Association meeting, Bath Address hailing Hertz's work as the confirmation of Maxwell; notebook entry 'essentially a gauge condition' during the 'murder of Psi' debate with Lodge, Thomson and Rowland (Hunt)
–Heaviside's reply to his rigour critics 'Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?' (Hunt)
–Wiener's denunciation of Pupin Mentioned by the contrarian, who calls it the polemic of an interested party; not seen
Experiments and replications by others (20)
1856Weber and Kohlrausch, ratio of electromagnetic to electrostatic units v = 310,740,000 m/s as quoted by Maxwell, +3.65 % from modern c; Maxwell's speed link. The 439,450,000/sqrt 2 origin is [memory: medium]
–Fizeau, speed of light 314,858,000 m/s Quoted by Maxwell 1865; +5.03 % from modern c
–Foucault, rotating-mirror speed of light 298,000,000 m/s Quoted by Maxwell 1865; -0.60 %; differs from Fizeau by 5.7 %
–Speed of light from stellar aberration, 308,000,000 m/s Quoted by Maxwell 1865; +2.74 %
–Pouillet's solar measurements (83.4 ft-lb per s per sq ft, as calculated by Thomson) Input to Maxwell's sunlight field estimate; equals 1217 W/m^2
1856Faraday rotation and Verdet's reversed rotation in paramagnetic solutions Maxwell's evidence for motion in the medium (1865 p.9); Verdet 1856/57 per the deep read
–Hockin's gold-leaf transmission measurement 1/500 to 1/1000 of green light passes where the theory with d.c. conductivity predicts about 10^-50 (page image p.52)
1863British Association spinning-coil experiments (sixteen runs) Least-squares L = 456,748 m against Maxwell's calculated 430,165 m (+6.18 %); Maxwell's own rough electric-balance value 410,000 m (-4.69 %)
–Felici's induction experiments Maxwell 1865 rests the induction facts on Faraday's and Felici's experiments
–Tyndall's repetition of Weber's reverse polarity of diamagnetics Cited by Maxwell 1856 p.54
–Foucault's heating of a rotating conducting shell Cited at the end of the 1856 paper (p.75, digest only)
1887Hertz, generation and detection of electromagnetic waves in air (1887-88) Reflection, refraction, polarisation, light-like speed [web: ETHW milestone]; FitzGerald called it the confirmation of Maxwell
1888-03Lodge, waves along wires from Leyden-jar discharges Parallel, independent work overshadowed by Hertz at Bath; Hunt does not say Lodge replicated Hertz
1887-11Michelson-Morley ether-drift experiment Null result [web: APS News]; excludes a detectable-rest-frame ether
–Later ether-drift null tests (Kennedy-Thorndike, Ives-Stilwell, resonators) [memory: medium/high], not web-checked; no verdict depends on them
–Miller's positive ether-drift reports (1920s) Raised by the contrarian; no source in the folder; the arbiter makes no claim and does not rate them
1960Chambers, first claimed Aharonov-Bohm observation Shielding later questioned [web: Wikipedia]
1986Tonomura, unambiguous Aharonov-Bohm experiment Shows the loop integral of A is physical [web: Wikipedia]
1928Langmuir and Tonks, plasma oscillations (1928-29) Longitudinal electric oscillations in a medium of charges, matching Maxwell's 1865 para 100 'electric fluid with density' case (follow-up Q06, [memory: high])
1989-06C.E. Smith, Short Low Loss AM Antenna (IEEE Trans. Broadcasting 35) Measured data for station KVOK against which Belrose ran NEC-4D
Related work by others (19)
–Faraday, Experimental Researches Every experimental reference in the 1856 paper (Exp. Res. 60, 371, 2429 ... 3320; Series XI)
1845Neumann, induction law Cited by Maxwell 1856 p.54; vector-potential-like quantity [memory: medium]
1846Faraday, Thoughts on Ray Vibrations Maxwell: the same electromagnetic theory of light 'in substance', lacking only the speed data (1865 p.14)
1847Helmholtz, conservation of force Maxwell derives induction by this energy balance (1856 p.50)
1847William Thomson, papers of 1847 and 1851 Credited by Maxwell for the possibility of the electro-tonic mathematics (1856 p.55)
1849Stokes, similar expressions Credited by Maxwell 1856 p.55
–Weber's force law and electrodynamics Printed by Maxwell 1856 p.54 as 'a really physical theory'; set aside in 1865 only for 'mechanical difficulties' and called possibly still useful
1854William Thomson, energy argument for the density of the medium (and his solar calculation) Maxwell's ether evidence (no number given); the arbiter names it to check the foot-pound convention behind the sunlight factor of 1.6
1856William Thomson, magnetisation as motion in the medium (1856/1861) Basis for Maxwell's 'some reason to suppose' rotation (1865 p.9)
1867Lorenz, gauge condition Named in follow-up Q06 [memory: high]
1870Helmholtz, electrodynamics with an adjustable constant Allows longitudinal waves for some values [memory: medium]; Belrose says Heaviside criticised it (one unsourced sentence)
1884-01Poynting, energy-flow theorem (abstract January 1884) Preceded Heaviside's independent result (Hunt)
–Gibbs, vector analysis Similar path to Heaviside, published after him (Hunt)
1890Hertz, component restatement of the field equations 'Mathematically equivalent' to Heaviside's version (Belrose quoting Arthur and Forfar; second-hand)
c.1900Drude, frequency-dependent conductivity of metals Possible resolution of Maxwell's gold-leaf anomaly [memory: medium, not checked]
1916Bromwich and Wagner, rigorous operational calculus (later Carson, van der Pol 1929, Laplace transforms) Met the Royal Society's rigour objection on Heaviside's methods (Belrose p.1)
1949Ehrenberg and Siday (1949); Aharonov and Bohm (1959), vector-potential phase effect Prediction that A has measurable effects through its loop integral [web: Wikipedia]
1949Bohm and Gross, warm-plasma longitudinal wave Follow-up Q06 [memory: high]
–Extended electrodynamics with a scalar field S (Ohmura, Hively, Arbab) Keeps S = div A + (1/c^2) dphi/dt as a field; reviewed in the van Vlaenederen Koen project; cited in follow-up Q06
Later accounts and media (6)
1988Nahin, Oliver Heaviside: Sage in Solitude (IEEE Press) Standard biography; Belrose's subtitle borrows its title
1991Hunt, The Maxwellians (Cornell University Press) FitzGerald, Lodge and Heaviside; may document Hertz replications
2012Arthur and Forfar, Maxwell Foundation newsletter Source of the Hertz 1890 remark, quoted by Belrose
2012-11Hunt, Oliver Heaviside: A first-rate oddity (Physics Today 65(11), 48) 8 pp. in folder; deep read pp.5-7. The single secondary source for the Heaviside episodes
2013Arthur, The Evolution of Maxwell's Equations from 1862 to the Present Day (IEEE A&P Magazine) Sign questions in the 1865 equations; known via Wikipedia [memory: medium]
2014Belrose, Oliver Heaviside: a first rate oddity, sage in solitude 9 pp. in folder; deep read pp.5-8. Paraphrases Hunt; adds the NEC-4 antenna case and the Helmholtz remark
Records named but not yet examined (8)
1887Post Office correspondence on the 1887 loading paper Arbiter: deciding archival record for the Preece episode
1887The Electrician editorial records for 1887 Arbiter: would decide why Biggs was removed and the series cancelled
–Heaviside's primary letters used by Hunt Not seen; Hunt's account is single-source
1888Documented repetitions of Hertz's air experiments, 1888-89 (Lecher and others) [memory: medium]; arbiter suggests Hunt's book
–Another printing or edition of the 1865 paper To check the factor of ten in the Sun-surface values
–Source for Heaviside's criticism of Helmholtz's longitudinal waves Belrose's sentence is unsourced (follow-up Q06 lead)
1999-03Belrose, Umbrella Top Loaded Antennas (ACES review, Monterey) Holds the numbers behind the NEC-4 versus KVOK comparison
2001-04Belrose, Radiation Characteristics of an Electrically Small MF Broadcast Antenna (IEE Conf. Pub. 480) Same comparison; not seen
Left out: textbooks and web reference pages used only for checks, people Maxwell cites only in passing (Ohm, Kirchhoff, Quincke, Ampere), and the AI-written review files; no Investigator web run has been made yet (there is no sites.md), so outside records come from reviewer checks and follow-up Q06. Full catalogue: Maxwell sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: No experiment is needed for the core physics; Hertz settled it. The open items are calculations: redo the sunlight and Sun-surface figures against Thomson's 1854 foot-pound convention, and recompute the error budgets of Weber-Kohlrausch and Fizeau to judge whether the 1865 agreement was earned.
Deciding records: Treatise (1873) page images to date the (G) sign repair; another printing of the 1865 paper for the factor of ten; Post Office and Electrician archives for 1887; documented repetitions of Hertz in 1888-89 (Hunt's The Maxwellians); Belrose's 1999 and 2001 NEC papers.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: Part A gives the 1865 speed percentages, Part B the printed sign error (amplitude 1.368 against 0.731 per wavelength), Part C energy entering a wire through its sides (0.5348 W = I^2 R), Part D sunlight: his formula gives 975 V/m, he printed 600.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Printed (F) makes conduction current run against the field, so equation (95) amplifies the wave while Maxwell's text says it is weakened. The minimal repair is two sign flips, (F) and (G). It does not touch displacement current, the wave speed or the energy integral. arbiter.md, Disagreements 1
Mathematician Maxwell finds V = v only for mu = 1, and his plane wave 'consists entirely of magnetic disturbances'; the symmetric E and B wave of textbooks is a later restatement. mathematician.md, Corrections to Step 1, item 2
Contrarian Heaviside and Hertz eliminated the potentials as unphysical; Aharonov-Bohm later partly vindicated A. The correct reading is that A is physically meaningful up to gauge, not that new energy sources follow. contrarian.md, Claim 2
Primer The 1865 paper is in plain Cartesian components, not quaternions; quaternions appear only in the 1873 Treatise. So the claim that Heaviside 'truncated' Maxwell's quaternion equations does not apply to the 1865 paper. primer.md, section 4.1
Investigator In a perfect insulator Maxwell found 'no disturbance depending on J can be propagated as a wave', yet left 'normal vibrations' open if electricity had a density. Heaviside kept div D = rho and div B = 0 and dropped only the potentials. research/2026-10-07-followup-Q06.md (follow-up Q06), sections 1 and 5
AI noteThe number that tied light to electricity, Weber and Kohlrausch's 310,740,000 m/s, came from Weber, whose action-at-a-distance theory Maxwell set aside only for 'mechanical difficulties' and said may yet be useful.
Rank 19Meyers-Stan
down from 18A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 11:00
The best-known car that 'runs on water': patents, eyewitnesses, a 1996 fraud judgment, and one cheap deciding measurement, gas against true electrical input, that nobody on record ever made.
Invention / theory background
Stanley A. Meyer (1940-1998) of Grove City, Ohio, patented and promoted a 'Water Fuel Cell' from 1982 until his death. Water between stainless tubes is the dielectric of a capacitor, pulsed through chokes and a diode at resonance, said to split water 'without electrolysis' on far less energy. He added 'hydrogen fracturing' (up to 2.5 million barrels of oil per gallon), water-fuel injectors, a magnetised-gas generator and a self-sustaining loop, and sold dealerships and profit-sharing certificates.
Ranking explanation
Meets all four criteria: an untested anomaly with a story of resistance (A), an unsettled history and a bench test never made (B), arithmetic the reader can redo (C), and wide influence among builders (D). Below Kilner and Rahn, whose core observations stay untested in ways calculation cannot settle; Meyer's headline claims fall to energy accounting. Above Lakhovsky and Eskridge for a richer record: about two dozen patent families, eyewitness accounts, court and probate dockets, and unobtained government evaluations.
Key supporting elements
Electronics World, Jan 1991: Hindley, with Laughton and Admiral Griffin present (Oct 1990), saw gas from tap water at ammeter readings 'no greater than a tenth of an amp', a cold cell, and a burner melting a steel bar.
Perkins Technology bench observation, 8 Oct 1992: dissociation from about 10 V, 'maximum observed current was less than 1 milliamp', vessel at room temperature; the firm agreed to support WFC subject to proof of concept.
Nagypal (Vienna, 1991) built a 600 V plate cell: 0.5-1 cc of gas per minute at about 20 mA, 2-4 times Faraday's figure; never repeated with net charge measured. He also offered to distribute WFC.
Per the Perkins notes, a DTI-sponsored Queen Mary report could not reconcile the claims with established science 'however they left open the possibility' of a new development, and a Sussex breadboard rig produced hydrogen.
The arbiter rates 'more gas per joule than ordinary electrolysis' Never properly tested: thermodynamics allows a pulsed cell to beat a poor DC cell, up to about 121 percent, and nobody measured it.
Key contradictions
At kHz water conducts: the cell's Q is at most 4 even for ideal pure water, and 0.004 for Meyer's own tap-water analysis; holding 20 kV across tap water would take megawatts. The resonant voltage gain cannot build up.
Meyer's own numbers read as ordinary electrolysis: his 1983 patent runs at 12 V and 1 A with gas linear in current, its Fig. 16 shows DC beating pulses, and his 1995 table, units corrected, matches Faraday at 40 A.
2.5 million barrels per gallon is 4.5 percent of the water's entire rest-mass energy and 57 times the ceiling for fusing all its hydrogen; Meyer's own injector figure sits eight orders of magnitude lower.
Perkins, a willing partner, noted that on three UK visits (1990-92) no water-fuelled engine was ever shown running; NIST reportedly found 'a net consumer of energy' (second-hand); two dealers won a 1996 fraud judgment ($40,515.72 garnished).
The self-sustaining loop cannot run: splitting water costs at least 237 kJ/mol and recombining returns at most that, so real loops return about 38 percent; the '100 V x 100 A' example is 68 times the gas energy.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 27 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Pulsed high voltage across a water cell releases hydrogen and oxygen
Establishedas electrolysis and discharge chemistry
Resonant gain to 20-40 kV in the water capacitor, and charge-free bond breaking by the field
Refuted by calculationresonant gain in conducting waterRefuted by calculationbulk-field bond breaking (field 270-17,500 times too small)
More gas per joule than ordinary electrolysis, or gas energy above input
Never properly testedno test measured input energy and gas together; above 286 kJ/mol out would break energy conservation
Meyer's printed equations, and the 1983 patent text that pulsing 'enhances considerably' the splitting
Internally inconsistentEq 9, '78.54 ohms', Eq 14, Eq 17Internally inconsistenttext against the patent's own Fig. 16
'Hydrogen fracturing': 44,000 to 2.5 million barrels of oil per gallon of water
Refuted by calculationthe barrel figuresInternally inconsistent'complies with thermodynamics' beside 'Zero Point energy'Not testable as statedthe thermodynamics statement alone
Vehicles run on water through water-fuel injection
Refuted by calculationwater as net fuel, on Meyer's own flow and power numbersNever properly testedthe dune buggy or tractor itselfPlausible, untestedengine supplemented by battery-electrolyser hydrogen (not Meyer's claim; no free energy)
Self-sustaining loop: electrons extracted from water fed back so it 'goes until there's no more water'
Refuted by calculationthe loopInternally inconsistent'not perpetual motion, water is the fuel' beside 'does not create energy'
Electrical Particle Generator ('gas battery', voltage amplification)
Establishedvoltage step-up by inductionNot testable as statednet power gain; 'permanently magnetized gas'Never properly testedthe device as builtRefuted by calculationlaser 'compounding' of a 10 W laser to 10-100 kW
Inventor, patent holder and promoter of the Water Fuel Cell · Patent holder; sold dealerships and profit-sharing certificates
1940-1998, Grove City, Ohio; his brief calls him a 'businessman and free-lance inventor' (heart monitors, a banking 'Validator', oceanography). Solar patents from 1976, hydrogen patents from 1982. Died 20 or 21 Mar 1998; the coroner ruled a cerebral aneurysm.
Dr Keith Hindley
Eyewitness author of the Electronics World account (Oct 1990 visit)
UK research chemist. Reported gas at low meter current, a cold cell and a melted steel bar; argued that Section 101 patents amount to independent confirmation, a characterisation the reviewers found unsupported by USPTO practice.
Prof. Michael Laughton
Observer in 1990; probable author of a 1992 report; named as the 1996 expert witness
Dean of Engineering, Queen Mary College, London. Favourable observer in Electronics World (1991); the Sunday Times names him as the 1996 court expert, but the docket transcription does not show him. Whether his view changed is unresolved.
Admiral Sir Anthony Griffin
Supporter who brought UK engineers and Perkins Technology to Meyer · Sought UK partners to proceed with WFC
Former Controller of the Navy and past president of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects. Present in 1990 and 1992; Warsash lecture 1993 ('10 W in, gas at 10 psi within 10 s, vessel cold').
Tibor Nagypal
Built a Meyer-type cell in Vienna and reported to Meyer (1991) · Offered himself as WFC distributor for Austria and Hungary
Education and career not in the review files. His letter gives the file's one number above a Faraday estimate (0.5-1 cc/min at about 20 mA) and says he could not reproduce Meyer's waveforms.
T.W.E. Downes
Managing director, Perkins Technology Ltd (Peterborough); led the 1992 visit and Project TACO · Prospective partner
Not in the review files beyond his role. His firm's notes record the under-1 mA bench run, the planned VW and ferry-engine proof of concept, and that no water-fuelled engine was shown.
George P. Lewett
NIST correspondent on Meyer's claims (letter of 28 Jun 1991, cited by Heard)
Described in the Investigator's notes, from memory (medium confidence), as head of NIST's Office of Energy-Related Inventions, whose report is quoted as 'a net consumer of energy'. The file itself is not obtained.
Judge William Corzine III
Presided over Willis and Harper v. Meyer, Fayette County, 1996
Not in the review files beyond the case. Meyer says he ruled the cell 'only electrolysis' and switched off the court audio (Meyer's allegation, no second source); the decision transcript is not obtained.
1987WFC News Release No. 3 (Winter/Spring 86/87) Staff writer Marcia Thompson; '44,000 barrels of oil' headline with no derivation; EPG lab model 'required by the patent office'; Pentagon presentation planned; 'filing 42 patents'; dune buggy on ABC news 1985; read as page images· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1988WFC News Release No. 4 (Winter/Spring 87/88) 44,000 to 108,000 barrels 'predicted' from 'preliminary tests'; 'Nine out of Forty-two patents' issued; EPG as a 'gas battery'; 351-acre development centre, 5 percent of profits to investors; read as 200 dpi page images· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1989Talk at the SAFE Free Energy Conference, Einsiedeln, Switzerland Video, about 57 min transcribed (whisper); 'maintains itself as long as there is water in the fuel cell'; 'excite it for 5 seconds ... producing gas for 94 seconds'; about 40 patents; deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1989House meeting in New Zealand Video, 2 h 38 min, whisper transcript without speaker labels; dealership terms, 0-2,000 V and up to 90,000 V, 100 V x 100 A 'self-sustained oscillation', EPG figures, 'General Abramson' and 'General Bachard' stories; deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
c.1990-1996The Birth of New Technology: Water Fuel Cell Technical Brief 222 pp., Memos 420-430 and Appendices A-B; two identical folder copies; a 1990 edition cited by Heard; a 233-page viXra edition (2006) with Lawton's appendix; pp.1-56 and 126-222 deep read, Memo 424 read at pp.117-125, pp.57-116 unread· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1990-1994Conference talks listed in the brief Colorado Springs 1990 and 27 Jul 1991 (Extraordinary Science Conference), Geneva 1991, Daytona Beach 1991, Denver 1993, Ukiah 1994; named in the Birth biography and Newsletter No. 8; no texts found· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1992WFC International News Release No. 8 (Winter/Spring 91/92) Reprints Grove City Record 31 Jul 1991; five retrofits listed, only the buggy installed; Nagypal 'Your theory works'; patent date 'June 25, 1991' matching no patent; 11 US numbers against 'more than 25'; page images· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1992'Voltage Disassociation of Water', Global Sciences Congress talk Video on the Internet Archive; not downloaded or transcribed· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1993Interview, 'Stanley Meyer on One World Government and Alternative Fuel Sources' Video on the Internet Archive; not downloaded· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1994-05WFC International News Release No. 10 'Military funding is anticipated'; US 5,293,857 as '26th major patent'; buggy still being retrofitted 'to match the acceleration performance of gasoline-driven cars'; profit-sharing certificates; Bell water chart (test date 10 Jan 1983)· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1995-01-01WFC International Independent Test-Evaluation Report (binder) Meyer's own compilation: Perkins notes, Nagypal letter, affidavits and witnessed water-collection tests (pp.48-58), lab reports (pp.40-47), energy table pp.59-60 (12.5 V at 40 A, 46,666 cc/h per tube), Dublin IT and Griffin papers; machine transcription marked unverified at stanslegacy.com· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1996WFC Technical Supplemental Report No. 11A 'Pre-manufacturing'; 26 patents; zero-point 'energy aperture' beside 'complying with the Laws of Thermodynamics'; 40,000 V at about 1 mA; pp.12-18 duplicate Issue No. 10· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1996-12-02Request to Retract, letter to the Sunday Times About Tony Edwards' article of 1 Dec 1996; named in the Public Notice; text not seen· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1996-12-20WFC Public Notice to Inform Meyer's account of the Franklin and Fayette County suits: judge ruled the process 'only electrolysis', court audio switched off during his VIC demonstration, expert Mathias Johanson never called; counterclaim $333,929 plus $279,250; read at stanslegacy.com· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1997'WFC Industrial Contract: Europe' placard and Heat Resonator concept (project 427-DA) Spiral-bound placard 'Proposed Packaging Concept', copyright 1997; seen in the photographs; no party, date or country given· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
undatedOther lecture videos on the Internet Archive 'Stan Meyer: Fuel From Water', 'Secrets of Stanley Meyer's WFC Lecture 1.1', 'Stan Meyer explains the Water Fuel Technology'; among 81 search hits; none downloaded· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
Patents and patent office (27)
1976-07-20US 3,970,070 Solar Heating System With Stephen R. Gray, Columbus; Meyer's earliest patent in the folder; front page only
1981-05-05US 4,265,224 Multi-Stage Solar Storage System Solar heat storage; biographical context; front page only
1981-06-30US 4,275,950 Light-Guide Lens 176 pp., mostly drawings; front page only
1983-1986Electrical Particle Generator family CA 1,213,671 (4 Nov 1986, 16 claims), EP 0 098 897 A2 and A3 (search report 27 Feb 1985, five category-A citations, examiner M. Galanti), JP 58-207610; priority 9 Apr 1982; no voltage, current or turns; CA deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1983-06-28US 4,389,981 Hydrogen Gas Injector System for Internal Combustion Engine Family: EP 0 086 439 A1 (1983) and B1 (31 Jan 1990), CA 1,233,379 (1988), JP 58-202352; priority 17 Feb 1982; no engine, flow or power figure; US deep read, others front pages· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1983-12-20US 4,421,474 Hydrogen Gas Burner Filed 25 Aug 1982; quenching nozzle; front page only· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1984JP 59-148584 (unidentified generator) Classes H02N 11/00, F03G 7/00; probably the generator line; not identified
1984-08-14US 4,465,455 Start-up/Shut-down for a Hydrogen Gas Burner Filed 24 Sep 1982; front page only· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1984-1987Gas Electrical Hydrogen Generator family US 4,613,304 (23 Sep 1986), CA 1,228,833 (1987), EP 0 106 917 A1, JP 59-132784; DC plate electrolyser plus magnetic particle accelerator, not the pulsed cell; US deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1984-1988Resonant Cavity Hydrogen Generator family (gap resonance) EP 0 103 656 A2 and A3 (search report: Wolf, Inoue/Japax, category A), CA 1,234,773 (5 Apr 1988), JP 59-59889; priority 24 Sep 1982; no dimensions, frequency or data; EP deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1984-1988Hydrogen Generator System family EP 0 111 573 A1 (filed 14 Dec 1982; 12 V at 1 A; Fig. 10: 84 W with 456 in3/h, 120 W with 2700 in3/h; Fig. 16 gas falls with shorter pulses; search report 9 Sep 1983, category A only) and CA 1,234,774 (1988, 'restricting the current'); both read in full· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1984-1988Hydrogen injection family, priority 23 Mar 1983 EP 0 122 472 A2 and A3 (search report 22 Apr 1985 cites Meyer's own EP 0 086 439 and EP 0 111 574 as category X), CA 1,231,872 (1988), presumed JP 59-153922; A2 searched, rest front pages· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1984-1990Controlled Hydrogen Gas Flame family CA 1,235,669 (1988), EP 0 101 761 A2, A3 and B1 (granted 28 Mar 1990), JP 59-38525; 'rippling wave form' without polarity change; front pages only· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1984-1991Hydrogen Aeration Injection System, EP 0 111 574 A1 (1984) and B1 (11 Sep 1991, narrowed and retitled); German family members DE3280356D1 and DE3280143D1 per Google Patents; front pages only· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1986-09-23US 4,613,779 Electrical Pulse Generator A rotating brushless electromechanical generator, not a cell circuit; deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1987-09-22CA 1,227,094 Hydrogen/Air and Non-Combustible Gas Mixing Combustion System Filed 4 Feb 1983; front page only· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1989-01-17US 4,798,661 Gas Generator Voltage Control Circuit Filed 25 Mar 1985; cites Puharich 4,394,230; onset ladder 2.5-8.5 V with distilled water and 'negligible' current; deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1989-05-02US 4,826,581 Controlled Process for the Production of Thermal Energy from Gases With WO 89/01464 (PCT/US88/02680); four-stage 'hydrogen fracturing'; 'thermal explosive energy beyond the gas burning stage'; deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1989-1993EP 0 333 854 (Euro-PCT, hydrogen aeration injection) A4 supplementary search report 28 Sep 1989 in the folder (category A only); A1 deemed withdrawn 2 Mar 1993 per Google Patents
1990-06-26US 4,936,961 Method for the Production of a Fuel Gas The core water-capacitor patent; Newsletter No. 8 misdates it 25 Jun 1991; fees paid to 2002; read in full by the fact-finder· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1990-09-05EP 0 381 722 A4 supplementary search report Examiner Wassenaar; four category-A citations; family not stated on the page
1992-05-14WO 92/07861 Control and Driver Circuits for a Hydrogen Gas Fuel Producing Cell With AU7485291A (abandoned); 0-650 V unipolar pulses, 1-2 mA leakage at resonance, about 5 kHz, '5 gallons of water per hour'; deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1992-09-22US 5,149,407 Process and Apparatus for the Production of Fuel Gas With WO 89/12704, JPH03500042A, AU3862389A (abandoned); 26 V, 10 kHz, single Example I; lapsed 22 Sep 2004; deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1992-12-23WO 92/22679 Water Fuel Injection System With CA 2,067,735 (examination requested 15 May 1998, dead 2003); injector as micro water capacitor; no numbers; deep read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1992-1994Hydrogen Gas Fuel and Management System family WO 92/08046 (deep read), US 5,293,857 (granted 15 Mar 1994, lapsed 2006; not in the folder, downloaded by the Investigator, not yet deep read), AU6887091A; burn-rate dilution· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
2001-03-22USPTO assignments and legal events US 4,936,961, 5,149,407 and 5,293,857 assigned from the estate (administrator Alphonse P. Cincione) to Marilyn Meyer; fees to 2002, lapses 2004-2006; no licensee found; Google Patents
Court and state records (15)
1979-1981Franklin County 79CV004853, Schuler / Leukart v. Meyer Earlier investor suit, 3 Oct 1979 to 8 Sep 1981; docket index only
1993-1994Franklin County 93CV005477, Schneider, Brooks and Gilvesy v. Meyer Dealership contract ('Fuel C Water'); settled 1994, Brooks's money (over $300,000) returned per the Dispatch; Schneider and Brooks also named as retrofit partners in Newsletter No. 8 (names only)
1993-1997Fayette County CVH19930292, Willis and Harper v. Meyer: docket Judge William Corzine III; inspection order 27 Oct 1995; trial 1-2 Feb and 8-10 May 1996; judgment 24 Sep 1996; $40,515.72 garnished; satisfied 6 Mar 1997; transcription· Transcribed and framed by an advocacy archive (stanslegacy.com)
1995-1996Fayette County exhibits and depositions Videotapes, poster boards, depositions of Willis, Harper and Meyer, exhibits 1-11 and A6-A37; destroyed 18 Jun 2014
1996Meyer's judicial-misconduct complaint to the Ohio Supreme Court Disciplinary Counsel Meyer's statement; Ohio Supreme Court case lookup found nothing (such complaints are usually confidential)· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1996-09-04Affidavit of Dr Russell E. Fowler with Meyer's new-trial motion Docket entry; Fowler was a WFC officer; text not seen· WFC officer
1996-09-11Fayette County decision transcript Filed 11 Sep 1996; would show the court's findings, the 'gross and egregious fraud' wording and the expert evidence
1996-09-24Fayette County Final Judgment Entry Min 116/166-168; should remain in the court journal
1998-03Death certificate The Dispatch gives 20 Mar 1998, the probate sheet 21 Mar 1998; the certificate would settle it
1998-03Franklin County coroner's report Ruled cerebral aneurysm; toxicology only lidocaine and phenytoin (per the Dispatch); report not obtained
1998-03Grove City police investigation file Lt. Steve Robinette; no taped interviews of the two Belgian investors in the file (per the Dispatch)
1998-2001Franklin County Probate 457686, estate of Stanley A. Meyer Administrator Alphonse P. Cincione; inventory $306,608.04; ADS Systems searched his computer; Canadian patents maintained; '83 DuneBuggy' transferred 5 May 2000; transcription· Transcribed and framed by an advocacy archive (stanslegacy.com)
1999Franklin County 99CV006575, Kramer v. Cincione, Admr. Creditor suit against the estate; docket index only
1999Franklin County 99CV006793, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur v. Cincione, Admr. Law-firm suit against the estate; docket index only
1999-09-15Probate valuation: 'Water Fuel Cell: Valuation of Sole Proprietorship as of March 21, 1998' In the court file, not online; would show what an appraiser valued the technology at
Government records (4)
1988-1989US foreign-filing licences 492680 and 490606 Printed in the Birth brief as government permission; 492680 dated 10 Jul 1989; 490606 dated 15 Nov 1988 in the folder copy and 15 Nov 1989 in the viXra copy; a routine permission· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1991-06-28NIST Office of Energy-Related Inventions evaluation (George P. Lewett) 'would be a net consumer of energy, not an energy producer' as quoted by Spy (Dec 1991); Heard (2000) cites Lewett's letter; a government agency's characterization, no known stake; file not obtained; web checks failed
1992DTI-sponsored Queen Mary and Westfield College report (probably the 'Laughton Report on SM's patents', 13 Apr 1992) Experts 'unable to reconcile' the descriptions with established science but 'left open the possibility'; known only from the Perkins notes (Annex J1); UK National Archives search found nothing
1994Securities filings for WFC profit-sharing certificates Newsletter No. 10 says filings were submitted to the SEC and Ohio and other state securities divisions, approval pending; not searched· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
Company and business records (5)
c.1987-1996WFC Profit Sharing Certificate Prospectus and dealership terms $100 to $1,000,000; 8 percent of net profits a year up to 300 percent; dealerships as licences by deposit; referred to in the brief, newsletters and the New Zealand talk· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1992-10-06Perkins Technology visit notes and Project TACO plan T.W.E. Downes, G. Purkins, Dr M. Graham with Griffin; bench run 8 Oct 1992 (about 10 V, under 1 mA, room temperature); VW engine then the Thames ferry Brunel; binder transcription· Prospective partner
1993-02-28Perkins Technology meeting note with Griffin $125,000 deposit, 'no redress' clause; no water-fuelled engine shown on three UK visits; Sussex breadboard; QMW/DTI report; UK scientists see a breach of the first and second laws; binder transcription· Prospective partner
1993Perkins Project TACO file and outcome The record stops at 28 Feb 1993; Peterborough or Livett Launches would hold it
1998Belgian investors' land agreement, 56 acres on Seeds Road, Grove City Phillippe Vandemoortele and Marc Vancraeyenest; research campus approved by the city two months earlier; known from the Dispatch
Witness accounts and correspondence (9)
1982Steel-analysis affidavit of Robert L. Queen, Materials Joining Consultants T-304 tubing; binder pp.48-58 with witnessed water-collection tests; linked by Lammertink to his scrap-alloy hypothesis; not read in full
1983Laboratory reports and patent-validation summary by Anthony D. Cennamo Binder pp.40-47; patent attorney's summary; not read· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1991-01'Free energy for ever?', Electronics World + Wireless World, pp.10-12 Hindley's eyewitness account (Oct 1990, with Laughton and Griffin): ammeter 'no greater than a tenth of an amp', cell cold, steel bar melted, brown precipitate; editor Frank Ogden: technique 'has more holes in it than a sieve'; saved PDF
1991Griffin, Laughton and Hindley, 'The Adoption of Hydrogen as a Universal Energy Source: An Appreciation' Quoted in Newsletter No. 8: recommends that WFC credibility 'first be established'; paper not in the folder· Supporter seeking UK partners
1991-06-04Tibor Nagypal letter, Vienna Plate cell, 600 V bursts, about 20 mA, 0.5-1 cc/min (2-4 times Faraday); 'can't reproduce' the waveforms; 'your theory works'; binder pp.66-68 transcription· Offered to distribute WFC in Austria and Hungary
1993-09Griffin, 'Water as Fuel', Southampton Institute, Warsash Binder pp.113-128; '10 W in, gas at 10 psi within 10 s, vessel cold' as reported (vessel volume unknown); a merlib.lackluster.org copy not reached· Supporter seeking UK partners
c.1995Dublin Institute of Technology explanation (Rea O'Neill, Industrial Liaison Office) Binder pp.81-95; not read by any role
1996-12-14Hans Nieper letter (DVS, Hannover) Refers to 'the tested overunity effect'; unseen
1997-01-16Russell Fowler memo Calls the technology 'scientifically verified by the German Association of Vacuum Field Energy'; stanslegacy transcription· WFC officer
Experiments and replications by others (4)
1983-01-10Bell water analysis, R & D Laboratory, Columbus (C. Thomas Bell) Sodium and potassium in seven waters (tap 11 ppm, distilled under 2, ocean 26,100); Birth p.163 and newsletters; assay only, no energy test
1992-1993Sussex University breadboard rig 'succeeded in producing hydrogen from a breadboard rig based on Meyer's circuitry' (Perkins note); report not found
2006-06-02Dave Lawton, Replication of Stanley Meyer's Demonstration Electrolyser Six 316L tube pairs; about 1-2 A at 12 V; no gas rate; appendix to the viXra edition; Ravi Raju and Scott Cramton built on it
2000s-2020sLammertink wiki (tuks.nl): scrap-steel alloy hypothesis and replication project Inferred COP 'of at least 500' (his inference, not a measurement); Pollack exclusion-zone reading; about 9 minutes of buggy footage said to survive
Related work by others (14)
1983-07-19Puharich, US 4,394,230 Method and Apparatus for Splitting Water Molecules 0.9 percent saline, 100 mW, '114.9 percent' (unit slip; corrected 77 percent); cited by Meyer's US 4,798,661; deep read
1986Azevedo, P. Graneau and N. Graneau, water-arc explosions, Physics Letters A Filed by Meyer in his binder; not read by any role
1987Jearl Walker, 'The Amateur Scientist', Scientific American Cited on the face of US 4,798,661; not read
1987-02Puharich, ELF Magnetic Model of Matter and Mind 344-page typescript; patent reprint and PHASER chapter (600 Hz, 0.16 mW) read, about 140 pages not; no mention of Meyer
1997-05-27Kucherov, US 5,632,870 Energy generation apparatus Cites Meyer; electrolytic cell said to draw ambient heat; abstract only
2005Shimizu et al., 'A novel method of hydrogen generation by water electrolysis using Short Pulses Power' Ultra-short-pulse electrolysis; on the Internet Archive; not read
2005-11-03Stephen Foster Meyer, US 2005/0246059 MLS-Hydroxyl Filling Station In the folder; a different Meyer (Golden Valley, Minnesota); no link to Stanley found
2025Puteanus et al., 'Efficiency improvement by pulsed water electrolysis: An unjustified hope', IJHE 113 Jensen's-inequality argument that pulsing cannot beat DC for a standard cell model; saved PDF
2026Ghosh et al. (TU Delft), current modulation in water electrolysis, IJHE Search hit; PDF not retrieved
undatedNational Bureau of Standards Monograph 168, 'Selected Properties of Hydrogen' Cited by US 4,389,981 and Appendix A for flame speeds; Meyer attributes the '2.5 times gasoline' figure to the NBS; not read
undatedGary L. Johnson (Kansas State), 'Electrically Induced Explosion in Water' Cited by Meyer (Appendix A) and in his binder; not read
undatedNortheastern University, 'Powerful Water-Plasma Explosion' Center for Electromagnetics Research; cited by Meyer (Appendix A); not read
undatedTony Woodside, 8XA WFC Driver Circuit and PSU 7490 Component layout and PCB artwork in the folder; third-party design, relationship to Meyer unknown
undatedGerald Pollack, exclusion-zone water Charge-separated layers next to hydrophilic surfaces; raised by Lammertink; contested; no prediction for this cell
Later accounts and media (39)
1976-03-18Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.5; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1976-04-29Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.5; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1976-07-29Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.16; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1979-11-29Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.18; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1982-07-01Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.1; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1984-11-08Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.3; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1985ABC and Columbus television news items on the dune buggy Named in Newsletter No. 3; about 9 minutes said to survive of an alleged 3 hours, original held by the Columbus Dispatch news department (Lammertink)
1985-07-04Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.9; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1985-10-17Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.5; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1986-11-13Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.3; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1987-04-15Columbus Dispatch article Cited by stanslegacy.com; not searched
1987-10-29Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.1; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1988-01-21Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.3; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1988-07-07Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.1; 'The U.S. Patent Office has completed the process of granting me all the patents' (index OCR); indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
c.1989WTVN 'Action 6 News' report Appended to the Einsiedeln video; read in the transcript
1990-01-25Grove City Record Local newspaper, pp.4 and 7; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1990-09-13Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.1; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1991-06Ship & Boat International (RINA), p.38 Diagram of the cell; Griffin and Hindley; 'Demonstrations ... were, however, surprising' (snippet)
1991-07-31Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.1; reprinted in Newsletter No. 8; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1991-10Air & Space Smithsonian, Oct/Nov 1991, p.32 'Energy-Related Inventions. The verdict was clear.' (snippet)
1991-12Spy, pp.45-47 Quotes NIST's report: 'a net consumer of energy, not an energy producer'; Google Books full view searched in-book
1992Asian Defence Journal, p.59 'very small amount of initial power using high voltage and low current' (snippet)
1992-09-16Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.1; 'Running a car on water is now several steps closer to reality' (index OCR); indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
1993Bailey and Grotz review, Proceedings of the 28th IECEC, p.2-909 'over 28 patents ... over $1.6 million' (snippet)
1995-12-17'It Runs on Water', documentary narrated by Arthur C. Clarke Channel 4 per stanslegacy, BBC per the Dispatch; on the Internet Archive; not viewed
1996White, Hodgson and Crainer, The Future of Leadership, p.120 'managed to get his device patented around the world' (snippet)
1996House of Lords seminar, British Maritime Charitable Foundation Meyer says it was cancelled; Hansard not searched· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1996-12-01Tony Edwards, 'End of road for car that ran on Water', Sunday Times, Features p.12 Laughton as expert witness, three experts found 'nothing revolutionary', '$25,000'; known via Wikipedia and a stanslegacy summary; original not found
1996-1997New Energy News items on Meyer Bibliography PDF at newenergytimes.com blocked to script
1997Fortean Times 94-99, p.9 Fraud finding, 'ordered to repay $25,000' (snippet)
1998-03-25Grove City Record Local newspaper, p.4; indexed at stanmeyerfiles.com; scans not downloaded; the library archive was blocked
2000Alex Heard, Apocalypse Pretty Soon, p.354 Endnote citing Lewett (NIST) correspondence of 28 Jun 1991 and a 1990 edition of the Birth brief (snippet)
2007-07-08'The car that ran on water', Columbus Dispatch Death, coroner, missing police tapes, Belgian investors; Charles Hughes saw the tractor run 15 minutes on well water; family buy-out stories ($250 million, $800 million); Neville Reay quoted; read in Chrome
2020Reading of the coroner's verdict (YouTube, uwantsun) Pointed to by stanslegacy's death-certificate page; not viewed
2026Wikipedia, 'Water fuel cell' Relies on the Sunday Times and the Dispatch; 'three expert witnesses' tagged as needing a source
2026Stan's Legacy archive (stanslegacy.com) Proof page, timeline, 'What the encyclopedias cite', transcriptions of the binder, dockets and probate· Advocacy archive
2026Stan Meyer Files (stanmeyerfiles.com) Primary-source archive; Franklin County case snapshots; Grove City Record index; 'has not located a controlled, independently reproducible energy-balance test'
undatedPatrick Kelly, Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices, chapter 10 Builders' material on Meyer cells; listed on stanslegacy 'Proof'
undatedJames Robey, 'Water Car', and the Kentucky Water Fuel Museum Named by the Dispatch
Records named but not yet examined (5)
1982-1988Canadian and European patent file wrappers of the 1982-83 filings May hold the 'Patent Validation Report' and any test filed
1983-01-14WFC Patent Validation Report Cited once (Birth p.190) as 'WFC Test-Results, Mode of Operability'; no author, lab or number; possibly in the 1995 binder· Meyer's own description (patent holder, dealership seller)
1988-1992USPTO file wrappers of US 4,936,961 and 5,149,407 Would show whether any demonstration or affidavit was filed; the cheapest deciding record
1983-2000The '83 DuneBuggy' itself Transferred in probate on 5 May 2000; present custodian unknown; could be run with logged fuel and power
c.2009Shelves of binders photographed with the hardware Visible in one photograph (p.34); contents unread
Left out: copies and duplicate pages (second Birth copy, the Newsletter 11A reprint of No. 10, the 8XA PNG and PCB counted once), the binder's individual pages (counted in the binder), Thingiverse replica parts, forum builders' posts, Who's Who entries named in the brief, and search hits not opened (a 2023 MDPI review). Full catalogue: Meyers-Stan sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: One 100-second bench run of a Meyer-patent cell and drive on tap and deionised water: a power analyser integrating v times i at the supply, a fast scope at the cell, net charge through the cell, gas collected in a burette, a plain-DC control in the same cell, and a calorimeter; compare gas with Faraday and with input energy.
Deciding records: The USPTO file wrappers of US 4,936,961 and 5,149,407; the NIST Energy-Related Inventions file (Lewett, 1991); the DTI/Queen Mary and Laughton 1992 report; the Fayette County decision transcript and Final Judgment Entry; the 1983 Patent Validation Report; the binder scans of pp.59-60; the probate valuation; the Perkins TACO file; the surviving buggy and hardware.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it computes the 3-inch cell's capacitance, its quality factor Q = omega epsilon / sigma (independent of size), the power to hold 650 V and 20 kV on tap water, and the energy behind '5 gallons per hour'. Then check Faraday: 1 A for 1 h gives about 686 cc of mixed gas.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter One calibrated bench test settles claim 1. It has been possible since 1990 and costs little. Its absence is the central fact of this project. arbiter.md, section 12
Mathematician The ratio of the cell's conductance to its susceptance is sigma over omega epsilon, independent of geometry, so no electrode design rescues it; holding 20 kV costs 2.6 kW even with ideal pure water and about 24 MW with tap water. mathematician.md, claim 1; arbiter.md, section 2
Contrarian The Perkins and Nagypal numbers are real observations by non-Meyer engineers who gave their figures; they were never repeated with net charge measured, and a proper test of that one point is cheap. contrarian.md, Case for the claims
Physicist A US patent needs credible utility, not a demonstration; under MPEP 2107 asserted utility is presumed unless doubted, so 'granted under Section 101' is not independent confirmation, contrary to Hindley. physicist.md, section 1
Investigator Laughton was a favourable observer in 1990, and the Sunday Times names him as the 1996 expert witness, but the docket transcription does not show him. The decision transcript would settle whether, and for whom, he testified. sites.md, Leads for review, historical record
AI noteMeyer's own 1983 patent (EP 0 111 573 A1) says pulsing 'enhances considerably' the splitting, yet its Fig. 16 shows gas falling as pulse on-time shortens: continuous DC gave the most gas.
Rank 17Naudin-JL
down from 16A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestablePrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 12:39
Naudin published the voltages and currents of his home-built Lifters and over-unity readings for others' devices, so a reader can check them; one vacuum-force question remains open.
Invention / theory background
Jean-Louis Naudin, a French experimenter, ran the JLN Labs website (1996-2013) and published open replications of claimed devices: the Lifter, an asymmetrical capacitor that flies on about 40 kV; Bearden's Motionless Electromagnetic Generator (MEG); the Mizuno-Ohmori plasma-electrolysis 'Cold Fusion Reactor'; Moller's atomic-hydrogen generator; Steorn's Orbo and others. With Patrick Cornille he filed two patents through the French company AES, one claiming a power source with 'efficiency of more than one'.
Ranking explanation
Criteria A, B and C. Naudin's published numbers let a reader check Lifter physics with one formula; the high-vacuum force question is open, tested badly in both directions; and the CNAM excess-heat reports stand unread. It sits below Kelly's far broader catalogue and Rahn's sharper open question because most of Naudin's energy claims met an independent replication or a calculation against them. It sits above Kilner, whose aura claim has no comparable data trail.
Key supporting elements
Lifters fly and are reproducible: the US Army Research Laboratory built three lifters and a wire that lifted at 30-37 kV, and Naudin's logbook lists 351 self-registered builds by October 2006.
Vacuum positives: Gravitec's NSSTC video (3 July 2003, 1.72e-6 Torr, 45 kV) shows rotation 'weaker than at atmospheric pressure'; Brown reported equal torque in air and transformer oil. All from interested parties, no raw data.
The CNAM Paris group (Fauvarque, Clauzon, Lalleve 2005) reported plasma-electrolysis COP about 1.35 to 1.41 after cathode preconditioning, and Kowalski's 2006 draft called 41 Colorado tests (mean 1.24) 'seems to be real'. Reports not read here.
Cornille reports that a 500 pF capacitor charged to about 70 kV on a thread 'locked' East-West over dozens of repeats in 1996-99. Documented in one published source (Cornille, the co-inventor); no raw data yet.
Naudin published results against himself: no overunity from the Bedini Magnetic Gate in closed loop, 'NO Overunity' for his magnetic amplifier, '4.75 is NOT A COP' for Larsko's Orbo. His reactor calibrations closed at 0.985 and 0.988.
Key contradictions
Lifter thrust fits ordinary ion drift: Naudin's four Lifters sit at 0.3 to 1 of the ceiling F = I d / mu, and Dstl's own chart data give an ion bound 2-5 times the weight lifted.
Vacuum nulls: NASA MSFC saw 'No NACAP performance ... in vacuum'; ISR measured no force on a coarse rig; NASA's Campbell patent says thrust is 'substantially ... reduced in vacuum'; Talley (Air Force) saw no static-DC force.
EarthTech rebuilt Naudin's reactor: COP2 averaged 0.98 over its Dewar runs (stirrer-off runs 9-11 excluded). Adding evaporation after power-off, as Naudin did, gives 1.27-1.77, which EarthTech calls double counting. Kowalski, Little and Luce: 1.00 +/- 0.02.
MEG: a 100 kohm load at 512 V dissipates 1.31 W, not the 10.28 W on screen, and Naudin found the load 'only a bit warm'. No calorimetry and no closed loop in about 26 years.
MAHG: Naudin's pure-DC blank returned 64% while pulsed runs gave 224%. Reading 'average voltage and current' at 5% duty inflates COP by 1/D, so 21 x 0.05 = 1.05.
User follow-ups
No user follow-up questions.
Verdicts by claim (8 of 16 shown)
Claim
Verdict
Lifter thrust in air is not simply ion wind; the wire-in-vacuum-tube tests show a new force
Tested, not supportedair thrust: collisional ion drift of the right size; Dstl's own data agreeRefuted by calculationtube tests as evidence: ordinary electrostatic pull is the same order as the foil's weight
A static-DC force on asymmetric capacitors survives in high vacuum
Never properly testedtested badly in both directions; not dismissed untestedNot testable as stated'electro-gravity by elimination' (Losonc)
Never properly testedone reported series, no raw data, controls not described
Lifters fly reproducibly and scale
Establishedflight in airPlausible, untestedscaling above about 250 g; about 2.5 kW per kg at best reported efficiency
Naudin's MEG replication gives COP above 1
Refuted by calculationsustained net gain from a passive magnet-biased core, if all energy enters by the four electrical portsNever properly tested'apparent COP' as real power; evidence on file points to a measurement errorNot testable as statedBearden's 'active vacuum' source
The Mizuno-Ohmori plasma-electrolysis reactor (CFR) gives reproducible excess heat
Tested, not supportedNaudin's method as replicated by EarthTech and in the Texas cell (COP about 1.0)Never properly testedNaudin's own 33 runs; CNAM and other positive reports, against droplet loss and post-run accounting
Moller's atomic hydrogen generator gives COP 5 to 21
Refuted by calculationmechanism: recycled atomic hydrogen as an energy sourceNever properly testedthe measured COP 5 to 21
Cornille-Naudin patents: fast charger; power source with 'efficiency more than one'
Plausible, untestedFR 2 789 818 fast charger (ordinary switch-mode technique)EstablishedUS 2005/0057116 voltage rise on capacitance switching, as a capacitor effectInternally inconsistentmulti-cycle formulas and three unreconciled energy sourcesNever properly tested'efficiency more than one' (no energy measurement)
replicator and experimenter; ran JLN Labs · promotes the ideas; co-inventor on two patents assigned to AES, a company formed to sell electromagnetic generators
Published replications on jnaudin.free.fr and jlnlabs.online.fr from 1996 to 2013 and calls it 'my own and private lab'. One unopened web snippet names him AES R&D director; Horky (2009) says, citing no source, that he joined Bearden's team. Education not in the review files.
Patrick Cornille
co-inventor of both patents; Trouton-Noble experiments with Naudin · co-inventor; AES president 2014-2021
Senior Physicist at Advanced Electromagnetic Systems S.A. (STAIF-2000 snippet). His 2020 review proposes 'stimulated forces' violating Newton's third law through the magnetic force and absolute motion relative to vacuum.
Thomas E. Bearden
inventor of the MEG that Naudin replicated · named inventor; Magnetic Energy Ltd holds the MEG patent
Lead author of the 2000 MEG paper claiming energy from the 'active vacuum'. In a 2 Dec 2000 e-mail he said Naudin reached COP 7.3 and announced a DoD-linked university replication, never found.
Scott Little and George Luce
independent replicators of Naudin's reactor (EarthTech International, Austin)
Failed to replicate Mizuno 1998-2000 with Mizuno's cooperation; in July 2003 rebuilt Naudin's set-up with a Clarke-Hess meter and continuous balance (COP2 0.98); co-authors with Kowalski at ICCF-12.
Ludwik Kowalski
commentator and co-replicator on the plasma-electrolysis and MAHG claims
Physicist at Montclair State University. Called Naudin's 33 runs 'very impressive' in 2003; co-authored a null (COP 1.00 +/- 0.02) in 2005; a 2006 draft said the CNAM and Colorado2 results (mean 1.24) 'seems to be real'.
Thomas B. Bahder and Christian Fazi
evaluators: US Army Research Laboratory lifter tests
Authors of ARL-TR-3005 (2003): built three lifters and a wire that lifted at 30-37 kV, said the basis 'is not understood', and named vacuum behaviour 'the most pressing question'.
Nicholas Moller and Alexander Frolov
originators of the atomic hydrogen generator Naudin tested · 50-50 contract on the MAHG, per Frolov
Moller of Spectrum Investments Ltd contracted Frolov's Faraday Lab (St Petersburg) to test Langmuir's atomic-hydrogen recombination; Frolov reported 82% with smoothed DC and 124-250% with pulses, flagging a 'possible mistake'.
Jean-Francois Fauvarque, Pierre Clauzon and Gerard Lalleve
CNAM Paris electrochemists; positive Mizuno-type report
Thanked by Naudin for scientific support. Their 2005 paper reported COP about 1.35 to 1.41 after cathode preconditioning, per Kowalski's pages; the report itself was not read in this review.
Evidence / artifacts (148 of 148 listed, 100%)
Own works and inventions (47)
1996Cornille-Naudin Trouton-Noble capacitor experiments 500 pF Plexiglas capacitor on a 1.5 m nylon thread, about 70 kV from a Wimshurst machine, 'locked' East-West; dozens of repeats near Paris, 1996-99; known only from Cornille's 2020 review; raw data not obtained· co-inventors' own report
1996-08-30G-Field V1.1 test report (2.5 W R. Cole / Bedini generator) Naudin's build and test; Bedini's comments claim '120% or better' and 12 W in, 72.5 W out for his own machine (no method)
c.1997JLN Labs home page, 'The Quest for Overunity' jnaudin.free.fr / jlnlabs.online.fr; project list and latest updates, c.1997-2013
1997-08-14Scalar Waves Research: solid state generators (menu) Index of Delayed Lenz Effect, 2SGen, Zaev converter, Time Energy Pump series; updated 2013
1998-02-01Magnetic motors researches (menu) Index of Newman, Mini-Romag, Adams, An Jong-Sok and other motor pages; updated 2010
1999Variations on the PFT motors, towards a new Searl engine Dave Squires, hosted by Naudin; eight proposed tests of the Poynting Flow Thruster
1999-03-05Bedini's Magnetic Gate experiment 27 Sep 1999 note: closed-loop tests show 'no overunity effect', a preloaded magnetic spring
1999-03-19The Mini-Romag generator, design and drawings Claimed 3.5 V, 7 A (about 24 W) self-sustaining; no measured data
1999-09-28The new SEG generator (design proposal) Squires with Naudin; 'This has not been built and tested yet'
2000-10-06The MEG project index Gateway to Naudin's 'private, independent replication' of Bearden's MEG; Bearden quote 'COP=5.0'; prior-art patent list
2000-10-29The MEG v2.0 built by JL Naudin Test run 1, 7 Nov 2000: COP 1.75; 13 Nov: 'trying to close the loop'
2000-11-03Magnetic Amplifier Experiment (megjln01) Magnet raised output on 100 ohm from 13.78 to 30.39 mW with input 853.2 to 856.2 mW; Naudin: 'There is NO Overunity here'; recovered online by the Investigator
2000-11-18MEG v2.1 replication tests 9 W lamp run: 6.76 W out vs 3.25 W total input (2.08) or 1.5 W after subtracting the control board (4.5); Tektronix THS720P; 6 Dec 2000 heat note
2001The Lifter v4.0 experiment Hexagonal, 36 cells, 32 g, 820 x 700 mm; 81.4 W hover, 132.9 W flight; comparison chart of Lifters 1-4
2001Lifters performance analysis: experimental data index Index of tube, enclosed-box, Faraday cage, mineral oil, smoke and gamma tests; updated 2004
2001Worldwide Lifters replications log book 351 self-registered builds by 4 Oct 2006; includes Xie Xuejun (17 Jun 2006): lifter 'go down as air was pumped out'
2001-10-10The story of the Lifter project Chronology from Brown (1928) through TdT Lifters and Naudin's replications
2001-10-10Lifters experiments home page Claims more than 350 replications and a 250 g Maximus II lifting 60 g (22 Jan 2003)
2001-10-10Lifter project: patents, publications, references, links NASA, TdT, Brown and Bahnson patents; Loder AIAA-2002-1131
2001-10-17The Transdimensional Power3 Lifter1 experiment 2.3 g; 18 W (40 kV, 450 uA) to hover; 23.9 W with 1 g payload
2001-11-18Replication of the NASA 2D asymmetrical capacitor thruster (ACT) Campbell US 6,317,310 design; 65 rpm at 1.22 W in air; relays a June 2001 TdT vacuum test at MSFC
2002Lifter theory: Force/Power optimization Naudin, listed on ResearchGate; not opened
2003Test of a TRUE Lifter with its wire in a vacuum tube Plate linked to tube, 910 g torsion hanger, 25 kV; page says a true Lifter 'fully enclosed in a box will not move'
2003-03-06Unlinked Lifter with the wire in a vacuum tube Foil 200 x 20 mm rises toward a 25 kV wire sealed in a bulb tube, about 1 uA; geometry not recorded
2003-05-08The CFR project: high temperature plasma electrolysis (index) Lists CNAM, Hohls, Boulder and other replications in Naudin's words; deep read; updated 2007
2003-05-08Cold Fusion Reactor experimental test results (cfrdatas) Replication of 7 May 2003 after Mallove's protocol, 'fully replicable'; run table is an image
2003-05-21CFR low and medium power tests (cfrtpwr.htm) Low power 0.988; medium power 23,714 J in, 35,767 J out (1.51) over 82 s; recovered by the Investigator
2003-05-22CFR calibration page (calib.htm) Resistive heater: 56,525 J in, 55,700 J out (0.985); recovered online by the Investigator
2003-06-05CFR v3.3 with filtered power supply (cfr33.htm) Tests at 182, 212, 259 V DC; numbers in images
2004-03-01MAHG project index Logbook: v1.0 COP 2.43, v2.0 COP 5.26, COP 21; 'fully based on the Irving Langmuir discovery'
2004-03-01MAHG genesis page (mahg1.htm) Moller contract with Frolov's Faraday Lab; Frolov's 82% smoothed DC vs 124-250% pulsed; recovered by the Investigator
2005-05-23MAHG tests index and long runs (tests/index, lrtests) Runs 11-37 pulsed 224%; 2 h about 240% (875 W out); pure-DC blank runs 38-40: 64%
2005-06-20MAHG high-efficiency pulsed tests (pultests.htm) Battery plus MOSFET, up to 1153% at 5% duty; input as scope 'average voltage and current'
2005-06-28MAHG v2.0: one hour tests with a COP of 21 5% duty, 51 Hz, two dataloggers; figures only in the saved text
2005-07-08MAHG radiation check (mahg2e.htm) Gamma-Scout counter during run 87: 'no anomalous radiations'
2008-06-12Water Fuel Cell researches Replication attempt of Meyer's cell; resonance tests, bubbles; no energy balance
2009-02-152SGen: tiny solid state generator Ferrite toroid plus magnet; LED load said to be powered from core demagnetisation; no voltage or phase data
2009-12-26Steorn Orbo motor replication and tests TEST 7: 400 mA input unchanged on loading; Larsko 'measured COP = 4.75' and Naudin's '4.75 is NOT A COP' on one page
2010-05-28KAPAGEN: the Tariel Kapanadze generator Up to 2100 W of lamp light (7 Jun 2010); input not given
2012-12-28GEGENE: Tesla bifilar coil generator Induction cooker driving a pancake coil; 18 tests listed by title, including calorimetric #3 and closed-loop #4 (Romero UK) and #9; no results in the folder
2012-12-28The WFC booster (Meyer cell driven by GEGENE) HHO test series list; no results in the text
2013DLE-TEST25: regenerative loading with Bedini's unipolar motor Input 'drops dramatically' and RPM 'doubled' under load; 2.3 W on the LED spot
ndBiTT 'Independent Third Party Test' report (Thane Heins) Naudin's later test, Slideshare; not opened
ndReGenX regenerative acceleration generator replication Slideshare: 'reduced power input as coils are added'; not opened
ndGFS UAV Coanda saucer Naudin's later project, cited by a 2020 WASET CFD paper; not opened
ndNaudin's reply to Bishop (meg/criticofsb.htm) Linked from the MEG index; not read
Patents and patent office (14)
1928T. T. Brown patents (GB 300311, US 2,949,550 and later Brown-Bahnson patents) Listed on Naudin's Lifter pages
1999-02-16FR 2 789 818 A1: Chargeur de batterie rapide Cornille and Naudin; applicant AES S.A.; 1.3 F bank in 30 s instead of 83 s; granted as B1; deep read pp.1-17· AES patent applicant
2001-03-21US 2005/0057116 A1: Electrical Power Source Cornille and Naudin; 'efficiency of more than one', 338% for an assumed multiplier of 200; one voltage trace, 500 V to 1750 V; deep read· AES patent applicant
2001-03-21FR 2 822 590 (A1, B1): French grant of the electrical power source Same family; granted text (INPI) not obtained· AES patent applicant
2001-11-13US 6,317,310 (Campbell, NASA): 2D asymmetrical capacitor module The design Naudin replicated; NASA's TechFinder said no prior working prototype
2002US 6,362,718 B1 (MEG; Patrick, Bearden, Hayes, Moore, Kenny) and legal events Lapsed and reinstated 2006; assigned to Magnetic Energy Ltd; security agreement to Colmac Holdings Ltd (Canada) 2006-06-12; fees paid to 2013· Bearden and Magnetic Energy Ltd, patent holders
2002US 6,411,493 and US 2002/012221 (NASA asymmetrical capacitor patents) Excerpts quoted on Naudin's Lifter references page
2002WO 02/073218 (Cameron, Transdimensional Technologies) Naudin notes its theory is 'fully inspired' by Cornille's 1998 review of Newton's third law· TdT, commercial party
2002-09-26WO 02/075912 A1 (PCT of the electrical power source) International search report and written opinion not obtained· AES patent applicant
2004-04-01US application 10/472,714 legal events Assigned to AES (recorded 2004-01-02); abandoned 2006-06-27 for failure to respond to an Office action (Espacenet)
2004-08-10US 6,775,123 B1 (Campbell, NASA): cylindrical asymmetrical capacitor devices 'Thrust is substantially and significantly reduced in vacuum'; adds a gas supply for vacuum use
2020US 11,511,891 B2 / WO 2020/159603 (Buhler, Exodus Propulsion) 'Asymmetrical electrostatic pressure'; vacuum-chamber force claims; snippets only· Exodus Propulsion, commercial
Government records (10)
1988Talley, AFAL-TR-88-031 (Veritay for the Air Force) No thrust at static DC in vacuum; force only during breakdown; known second-hand via NASA/ISR, ARL and Wikipedia
1991Talley, PL-TR-91-3009 (Phillips Laboratory) Follow-on report; not found in DTIC or NTRS
2002-10-31ARL tests landing page hosted by Naudin Bahder and Fazi, published with permission; links only
2003-06ARL-TR-3005, Force on an asymmetric capacitor (Bahder and Fazi) Three lifters and a wire at 30-37 kV, 0.5-1.5 mA; basis 'not understood'; vacuum 'the most pressing question'; deep read
2004NASA/CR-2004-213312, Asymmetrical capacitors for propulsion (Canning, Melcher, Winet, ISR) Four devices in air, nitrogen, argon; no vacuum force at one-sixth-turn resolution; Device 2 moved one-eighth turn with a large arc at 5.5e-5 Torr
2004-06NASA/TM-2004-213283, MSFC barrel-shaped asymmetrical capacitor (Campbell et al.) 'No NACAP performance was observed in vacuum'
2004-07ISR asymmetrical capacitor thruster: experimental results (AIAA, NTRS 20040085936) Canning, Cole, Campbell, Winet; 'no force was measured in a vacuum'
2005Dstl Lifter report Full report behind the slides; not found
2005-04-20Dstl 'Unconventional Science' slides (R. L. Jones, UK MoD) Lifter section: helium no lift, nitrogen like air; slide 37 'order of magnitude' claim; charts read as page images give ion bound 2-5 times weight· defence horizon-scanning interest
2011Quantum Potential Corp., 'Is ablation responsible for asymmetric capacitor thrust in vacuum?' NASA SBIR report cited by Porcelli and dos Santos Filho; not opened
Company and business records (3)
1998Advanced Electromagnetic Systems (AES), SIREN 419 785 985 Formed to 'develop and sell' electromagnetic generators; Cornille president 2014-21; last accounts 2015; 0 employees; struck off 2021-03-08 (Pappers, Societe.com)
2006Colmac Holdings Ltd registry file (Canada) Secured party on the MEG patent; not reached
ndWeb page naming Naudin AES R&D director (greatdreams.com) Google snippet only, not opened
Witness accounts and correspondence (7)
2000-12-02Bearden e-mail to Rothwell and Fox (reprinted by ZPEnergy, 2021) Says Naudin reached COP 7.3 in a third build; announces a DoD-linked university replication and a certified-lab test, names withheld· MEG inventor and patent holder
2002-10-05THS720P measurement error with non-sinusoidal waves (Flickinger, Tektronix support) RMS of a power waveform 'has no value'; 'no such thing as RMS watts'
2003Naudin private communication to EarthTech Source for his adding post-power-off evaporation to CFR output; cited by Little and Luce
2008-04-17Naudin's e-mail to Horky 'a possibility of a measurement artifact (not a measurement error)'; load 'only a bit warm'; quoted in Horky p.29
2010-01-04Steorn CEO statement on Naudin's Orbo (via PESN and ZPEnergy) 'in no way a valid replication of Orbo ... almost certainly not OU'· Steorn, selling Orbo licences
ndT. T. Brown's letter (ARL-TR-3005 Appendix B) Equal torque in air and transformer oil up to about 300 kV; torque logs against solar, lunar, sidereal time; a dome lifting '110% of its weight'; undated, no raw data· originator's own account
ndFlickinger note to the jlnlabs group (megnot01) COP above 1 only with non-linear loads such as varistors, not with linear resistors
Experiments and replications by others (26)
1996Honda R&D oil-immersed capacitor test (relayed by Musha) 62 g glass-disc capacitor in oil, 8 kV AC pulses; weight loss 0.9 +/- 0.63 g; no controls described
2000Mizuno and Ohmori, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 39, p.6055 Plasma electrolysis, up to 200% in some runs; cited on Naudin's page
2000Stein, 'Electrokinetic Propulsion: The Ionic Wind Argument' (Purdue) At least 0.31 mN at 17 kV in 1.3e-3 Pa, known only through Losonc; not obtained
2001-06Transdimensional Technologies vacuum test of the NASA ACT at MSFC Naudin's one-sentence relay with photo link; no pressure, voltage or result· TdT, commercial party
2002-06Bishop, 'In Disdain of Garbage Physics' (SFU and TRIUMF) MEG v3.0: input formula disputed by Smith; 500 V, 44 mA implies about 11 kohm, not 100 kohm; saved by the Investigator
2003Frolov (Faraday Lab) MAHG tests for Moller About 130%; 82% with smoothed DC, about 250% with half-wave pulses ('possible mistake'); via Naudin's mahg1 page· contracted party
2003-07-03Gravitec/NASA NSSTC high-vacuum video (Serrano) Rotation at 1.72e-6 Torr and 45 kV, 'weaker than at atmospheric pressure'; held back until 2007; Naudin's page read, video not obtained· Gravitec, patent holder
2003-07-15EarthTech: Replication of Naudin's replication of the Mizuno experiment (Little and Luce) 15 Dewar runs, Clarke-Hess meter; COP2 average 0.98 excluding stirrer-off runs 9-11; Naudin-style cooldown column 1.27-1.77
2004Tajmar, 'The Biefeld-Brown effect: misinterpretation of corona wind phenomena' (AIAA J. 42) Sealed-box and low-pressure tests, no force beyond corona wind; deep read
2004Cirillo, Dattilo and Iorio, ICCF-11 Mizuno-type cell, COP 1.31-1.41 at 350 V; cited by Kowalski et al.
2004Mizuno, Chung, Sesftel, Aoki, 'Generation of heat and products during plasma electrolysis' (ICCF-11) 'In most cases, no excess heat or hydrogen is observed'
2004Buhler, 'Exploratory research on the movement of high voltage capacitors' (J. Space Mixing) Reports vacuum force values (snippet); not opened· later Exodus Propulsion founder
2005Fauvarque, Clauzon, Lalleve (CNAM), 'Abnormal excess heat observed during Mizuno-type experiments' COP about 1.35 at 350 V, up to 1.41, after cathode preconditioning; known from Kowalski's pages; report not read
2005Dattilo, Iorio, Cirillo, 'Transmutation of metal in confined plasma in water' (ICCF-12) Linked from Naudin's CNAM item; not a heat balance; not obtained
2005Kowalski, Little and Luce, 'Searching for excess heat in Mizuno-type plasma electrolysis' (ICCF-12) Mean COP 1.00, standard deviation 0.02; splashing and foam droplets named
2005Mizuno and Toriyabe, 'Anomalous energy generation during conventional electrolysis' (ICCF-12) Explosive event, estimated heat 800 times input; same electrolyte and cathode metal
2005Slaughter, Colorado Mizuno-type tests (via Kowalski) Mean 0.90 +/- 0.2 at 500-700 V; 30 later attempts 'not successful'
c.2005CNAM Paris CFR replication (Naudin's nfrcnam page) 'Full CFR replication at the CNAM in Paris', undated on the index; page not obtained
2006-03-15Boulder, Colorado CFR replication 'Successful' in Naudin's words; page not obtained
2006-09-19Ronald Hohls CFR replication (South Africa) 'Successful' in Naudin's words; page not obtained
2009Horky, MEG replication from Naudin's plans (Czech school project) COP 1.57-2.89 on apparent power; 0.69-1.26 on full supply power; 'I1-I2' row is I1 minus an undefined no-load current; unsourced claims of 2.5 kW closed-loop modules
2016Porcelli and dos Santos Filho, IET Sci. Meas. Technol. 10(4) Anomalous force on dielectric asymmetric capacitors, Clausius-Mossotti fit; abstract only
2020Tajmar and Schreiber, J. Electrostatics No force to +/-0.3 mg up to 10 kV; abstract seen by the Investigator; arbiter's check failed (HTTP 403)
2024Tajmar, Kossling and Neunzig, Sci. Rep. 14, 19427 Cited by Wikipedia for 'no replication / corona wind'; content not read
ndCFR replications by Morgan H. and Marissa C., and by an unnamed French lab Listed on Naudin's CFR index; reports not in the folder
Theory and analysis by others (14)
1997-04-27Epps, 'How did the Hendershot device work?' Non-reciprocal argument; Epps says it was 'definitely not a nonreciprocal system' at higher voltage in a test with Naudin
1998Cornille's review of Newton's third law Basis of the TdT patent theory per Naudin; not obtained
2000Bearden, Hayes, Kenny, Moore, Patrick, The Motionless Electromagnetic Generator paper About 2.7 per coil, claimed net 5.4; 'M RMS' scope readings; deep read pp.36-69· inventors and patent holders
2000Cornille, STAIF-2000 paper (Senior Physicist, AES) Snippet only
2001Anastasovski et al., MEG with O(3) electrodynamics (Found. Phys. Lett.) Supporting theory by others; not opened
2003Smith, critique of Bishop's 'Garbage Physics' Says Bishop used a wrong power formula; correct on the input formula per the arbiter
2007Musha, dynamical Biefeld-Brown effect from the ZPF (IAA, Aosta) Zero-point field account; relays the Honda test; deep read
2010Jelinek and Pekarek, Sisyfos critique of the Nova Paka MEG Poynting argument: mean output equals mean input; sound in outline, flawed in detail· avowed sceptics
2010Martins and Pinheiro, ion sources in nitrogen (arXiv 1009.6111) COMSOL simulation only, no experiment
2012Ianconescu, Sohar, Mudrik, analysis of the Brown-Biefeld effect (arXiv 1011.1393) Ion-drift model matches four lift points within about 6.5%; model current 22-40% high
2020Cornille, 'A review on electromagnetic propulsion by stimulated forces' (J. Aeronaut. Aerospace Eng. 9(2)) Newton's third law violated via the magnetic force and absolute motion; reports the Trouton-Noble series· co-inventor, AES principal
ndLosonc, charge and force distribution of the lifter in vacuum Zero net electrostatic force in vacuum; 'electro-gravity' by elimination; formulas missing
ndCornille, 'Replication of the Trouton-Noble experiment' (Academia) Lead, not opened
ndBiberian, 'Pressurized plasma electrolysis experiments' (JCMNS) Snippet: risk of splashed water droplets; places Clauzon at CNAM
Later accounts and media (13)
1998Mallove's anode-effect protocol (amasci anode.txt; Infinite Energy 4(20)) The protocol Naudin followed for the CFR
2003tigre450.chez.com summary of MEG v3.2 French page with a 9 W lamp; snippet only
2003-06-29Kowalski, item 73 'Reproducible excess heat' Run 28: 170 g evaporated, 1200 W in, 3093 W heat; Naudin's thanks to Clauzon, Fauvarque, Lalleve; deep read
2005PESN article on the MAHG (Allan and Akau) Source of Kowalski's item 289; not opened
2005New Energy Technologies no. 3 (FMAHG article) and arizonaenergy.org page Frolov-Moller report and a replication claim; not opened· Frolov's own magazine
2005-12Kowalski, ICCF-12 notes (270iccf12) Records Clauzon on preconditioning and CNAM COP 1.35-1.41; 'Clearly we have not replicated such results'
2006-04-02Kowalski, item 289 'A different claim for excess heat' MAHG 300% at 500 W and 1153%; source of net energy unexplained
2006-06-28Kowalski draft on positive results (300positive) Paris1 and Colorado2: 41 tests, mean COP 1.24, 'seems to be real'; draft
2009-06Steorn jury verdict (Ian McDonald) Attempts 'have not shown the production of energy'; via Neurologica and Wikipedia; jury's posting not opened
2009-12-28ZPEnergy article 3156, 'STEORN Overunity Device - Verified (Jean-Louis Naudin)' With comments including Steorn's rejection
2024-05-13Steorn liquidation reports (Irish Independent) Snippet only
2026Wikipedia, Biefeld-Brown effect 'Experiments ... both prove and disprove a force at very low pressure'; dates Talley's measurement 1988; deep read
Records named but not yet examined (14)
2001DoD-linked university MEG replication and certified-lab test Announced by Bearden 2 Dec 2000; no report found
c.2002Lifter v2, v3 and Maximus pages Scaling data to 194-250 g
2002Naudin MEG v3.0-v3.2 pages 404 on both domains; Wayback not reached
2003Naudin's 33-run CFR data table Run data behind the claim; image or sub-page not obtained
2003CFR v1-v4, cfrstir and other CFR sub-pages Stirring page bears on EarthTech's finding; not read
2003Lifter Faraday-cage, enclosed-box and ion-wind pages Listed in Naudin's data index; not obtained
2003Naudin's 'TT.Brown EKP device in MINERAL OIL' page Could bear on Brown's air-versus-oil claim
2005MAHG per-run data table Needed to test whether COP x duty cycle stays constant
2005Australian MAHG test mentioned by Frolov Not found
2006USPTO Office action for application 10/472,714 The unanswered action before abandonment
2013GEGENE test result pages (gegene07, 08, 13) Calorimetric and closed-loop tests by title only
ndBrown's vacuum notes 'Never published' per the ARL appendix
ndEP search report and opinion for EP 1389360 In the register's documents tab; not read
ndNaudin's reply to EarthTech Not found
Left out: the compiler's README, prior-art patent and bibliography lists on Naudin's index pages, mirror copies, saved page fragments, and the review's own AI-written analyses. Full catalogue: Naudin-JL sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: One asymmetric capacitor, its mirror image and an equal-capacitance dummy on a torsion balance with shielded leads in a grounded cage, from 760 to 1e-6 Torr at 10-50 kV, with bake-out, residual-gas analysis, polarity reversal, and force logged against pressure and current.
Deciding records: Gravitec's raw vacuum data and Brown's notes; Talley's Air Force reports; Naudin's 33-run CFR and MAHG per-run tables; the CNAM 2005 report; the USPTO Office action for application 10/472,714 and the PCT and EP search reports; any report of Bearden's announced DoD-linked MEG replication.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: it derives the ion-drift ceiling F = I d / mu, applies it to Naudin's four Lifters (Lifter 4: 2.01 mA over 30 mm gives about 0.30 N against 0.31 N weight), shows why 1 kg costs 2.5-4.2 kW, and sizes the static pull in the vacuum-tube test.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Contrarian On the vacuum force: 'It was not dismissed without testing; it was tested badly in both directions.' Low-sensitivity nulls, an undocumented Air Force null, and positives that are interested, unpublished or unobtained. contrarian.md, claim 1 verdict
Arbiter The MEG closed loop has been missing for about 26 years (Naudin, 13 Nov 2000: 'have not yet succeed'). It is a cheap test, so its absence is itself informative. arbiter.md, claim 3
Arbiter On plasma electrolysis: 'I do not have grounds to call the Mizuno-type effect refuted, and the record is not one-sided.' No positive report is shown to control for droplet entrainment. arbiter.md, QE revision section 4
Primer Excluding one mechanism is not identifying another: the vacuum-tube test ruled out ion drift, then credited the force to something new without sizing the static pull or recording the geometry. primer.md, section 7
QE The first arbiter pass dropped material that cuts for the inventor (the Trouton-Noble anomaly, Honda's oil test, Brown's air-versus-oil result, the CNAM replication) and called Naudin an 'unpaid hobbyist' without a source; all were restored or corrected. qe.md, verdict and recheck
AI noteThree vacuum events in Huntsville do not agree: Gravitec at NSSTC saw rotation (2003), NASA MSFC saw no performance (2004), and TdT's June 2001 test of NASA's thruster in the MSFC chamber has no recorded result.
Tesla's own 1899 diary records a storm-night signal he read as standing waves in the earth; it was never repeated, while his loss-free global power fails on measured losses.
Invention / theory background
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) built the polyphase induction motor and AC power system, the high-frequency Tesla coil and resonant wireless lighting. From Colorado Springs (1899-1900) and Wardenclyffe (1901-1917) he pursued a World System: ring the earth as a tuned circuit so receivers anywhere draw power. Around it sit his 1900 'self-acting engine', the bladeless disc turbine (1906-1913), the 1930s 'teleforce' beam and the papers sealed at his death in January 1943.
Ranking explanation
Meets all four criteria: an unrepeated storm-night observation in his own diary (A); open questions the arbiter left unsettled, from the 1943 papers and Wright Field photostats to the Allis-Chalmers report (B); guide loss, steam efficiency and coil resonance the reader can recompute (C); and deep influence on Moray, Bearden, TernionAG and the scalar-wave literature (D). More of its claims are settled, Established or refuted by calculation, than Morray-TH's or TernionAG's, but its open points are unusually well documented.
Key supporting elements
Tesla's diary for the night of 3 July 1899 records a receiver that kept responding at about half-hour intervals as a storm retreated beyond 200 miles: 'It showed clearly the existence of stationary waves'. Never repeated, never disproved by experiment.
His 1900 patent filing (US 787,412) gives the earth a lowest resonance near 'six per second'; the earth-ionosphere cavity rings at about 7.8 Hz. The Notes' editor quotes J. R. Wait (1974): 'an intriguing similarity' to ELF communications.
The resonant engineering is Established: polyphase motor, Tesla coil, wireless lighting, single-wire power, low-frequency signalling round the globe. The Corums' reconstruction finds his 1899 receivers 'more than adequate' for natural VLF signals.
The disc turbine runs: Lowenstein's sworn 1911 tests (102.8 bhp, Prony brake, condensate weighed) and later rigs (Hoya and Guha 2009, about 25 per cent), whose authors blame much of the shortfall on the nozzle, not the rotor.
Military interest in his papers is documented: 1945 photostats of the Trump-annotated exhibits sent to Wright Field and 'never returned' (Cheney quoting OAP letters), a 1981 Defense Department memo, and a 1983 FBI airtel on alleged Soviet access.
Key contradictions
Measured guide loss (2-3 dB per 1,000 km at VLF) leaves 10^-4 to 10^-6 of the power at the antipode; 1 MW sent reaches a 1 km^2 collector 10,000 km away as 3.6 mW. 'Almost without loss' fails by calculation.
In June 1900 Tesla had 'not as yet actually effected a transmission ... to a great distance'; in 1916 his Colorado receivers were 'Oh, 10 miles or so', longest signal about 30 miles. O'Neill's 26-mile, 200-lamp test cites no source.
His '18 million horsepower' was, by his own 1916 account, condenser energy discharged 'in an inconceivably small interval': his antenna store (550-660 pF at 4 MV) holds 4.4-5.3 kJ, about 0.3-0.4 microseconds at 13.4 GW.
His 1900 sink argument says 'what is converted is clear gain'; a Carnot calculation (300 K ambient, 77 K sink) shows restoring the sink costs exactly the work gained. Nichelson's bifilar 'voltage gain' rests on transmission ratios below 1.
The turbine test figures recompute to about 25-52 per cent of ideal expansion, against the 80-90 per cent Tesla stated; Allis-Chalmers (Dahlstrand, as quoted by O'Neill) reported about 38 per cent, with disc distortion.
User follow-ups (1)
Q19AnsweredAsked whether Tesla's lamps lit on short-circuiting copper bars (the hairpin) show Moray-style load adaptation, who named it, and whether underwater lighting survives salt water. Tesla matched lamps to bar positions, Karl Palsness named it in 2008, and no measured salt-water test exists.
Tesla's 'stout copper bar' experiments, which newer researchers call the 'Tesla hairpin' circuit: lamps short-circuited by a thick bent bar light from a spark discharge (1891 AIEE lecture, Inventions, Researches and Writings pp.194-195, Figs. 128-129), and lamps of different voltages burn properly in parallel on two stout bars (On Light, 1893, pp.36-37, Fig. 19a). Experimenters have lit nightlights and larger bulbs, even bulbs submerged in water. Is this 'adaptation to the load' (compare Moray's 'the draft of the current is adapted to the load')? Who named it the hairpin (Lindemann?) and what do modern replications measure? Does the underwater result survive in salt water, where mains AC would short?
Asked 2026-10-08 · answered 2026-10-08 · 5 min web search
A19Not Moray-style adaptation: Tesla fitted each lamp to its position on the bars, an adjustable inductive tap. The name traces to Karl Palsness (2008), not Lindemann; replications are mostly qualitative; no measured salt-water test was found.
Known
IRW pp.194-195: lamps shunting a thick bent bar light 'although they are short-circuited'.
On Light pp.36-37: different-voltage lamps burn in parallel only 'by carefully determining the positions'.
Earliest 'Hairpin Circuit': Palsness, Energetic Forum, 27 Dec 2008; Atlantis Rising No. 77 (2009) says he chose it; Lindemann only endorsed.
Kraakman's replication: four lamp types lit together after adjustment; counter 45-60 kHz; no nodes; no power measurements.
Palsness lit lamps in tap water (2009); Manning (2026) reports a photo of lamps held under salt water, unmeasured.
Inferred
Bar voltage V = L dI/dt: about 36 ohms per metre at 5 MHz and hundreds of amperes give hundreds of volts between clamps.
Reading A: position matching on a soft source, the opposite of Moray's one-lamp-or-fifty claim.
Reading B: a resonant circuit sharing stored energy among matched loads resembles Moray's capture, but nothing shows output above input.
Tap water barely loads a lamp, on mains too; salt water (about 20 ohms) should dim a lamp on the bars, while mains keeps it lit but drives large water current.
Open
A lamp with bare leads in fresh and 3.5% salt water, on the bars and on limited mains, measuring brightness and current.
Lamp voltages and input power as lamps are added; pre-2008 uses of 'hairpin'; the 2018 Liberty University poster.
Key point: Do the bars adapt to the load as Moray claims?
Supports
Several different-voltage loads run at once from one source.
Contradicts
Positions need careful adjustment; changing lamp order defeats it.
Key point: Does underwater lighting show non-ordinary current?
Supports
Lamps stay lit in tap water, and reportedly salt water, with no shock.
Contradicts
Mains does the same in tap water; no salt-water test gives concentration or brightness.
The inventor reviewed: polyphase AC, the Tesla coil, the World System, the disc turbine and teleforce · Raising money for Wardenclyffe (1899-1904) and later; seeking priority against Marconi
Born 1856; studied at the Real Gymnasium and at Graz; conceived the rotating field in Budapest in 1882; worked for Edison, then licensed his motor patents to Westinghouse. Lectured on high-frequency currents 1891-93, ran Colorado Springs 1899-1900 and Wardenclyffe from 1901; died in New York in January 1943.
Fritz Lowenstein
Tesla's assistant at Colorado Springs, named in 1904 as having made 'similar observations' of the 3 July 1899 effect; author of the sworn 1911 turbine test report · Tesla's associate
Gave Tesla's turbine test tables (102.8 bhp at 53.4 lb of steam per bhp-hour; 77 hp at 35 lb) with Professor Richards keeping the record. No account of his own 1899 observations has been found.
John J. O'Neill
First biographer (Prodigal Genius, 1944); source of the 26-mile, 200-lamp test, the Dahlstrand quotation and the claim that FBI agents took the papers · Friend and admirer
Journalist and friend of Tesla who wrote with his cooperation. Names no source for the 26-mile test; concedes records of the priority claims 'are not available'; his voltages are 5-10 times Tesla's own figures.
John G. Trump
Examined Tesla's papers in January 1943 and abstracted Exhibits A-Q, including the teleforce and Amtorg items · Government evaluator judging wartime value
NDRC/OSRD scientist. Judged the papers 'speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional' with nothing of 'significant value' or hazard; the only scientist known to have assessed them. His full report is not online.
Hans Dahlstrand
Allis-Chalmers engineer who reported the 500 kW disc-turbine trial · Manufacturer that tried and dropped the machine
Consulting Engineer of the Steam Turbine Department at Allis-Chalmers. Reported about 38 per cent mechanical efficiency, disc distortion and a need for gearing; known only through O'Neill's quotation.
Aleksandar Marincic
Editor of the 1978 Colorado Springs Notes; quotes Wait and Jackson on Tesla's earth resonance and lists Tesla's errors · Tesla Museum, which published the Notes
Wrote the scientific commentary of the Nolit, Beograd, edition. Says Tesla's expected resonances lie at much lower frequencies, in the earth-ionosphere cavity rather than the earth, and that high voltage was not needed.
James F. Corum and Kenneth L. Corum
Reconstructed Tesla's 1899 receivers; propose a Jovian origin for his 1899 signals; authors in Valone's anthology · Founders of Viziv Technologies and co-inventors on CPG guided-surface-wave patents
Tesla-coil researchers. Their 2003 papers describe an RF-biased coherer with negative resistance in the 8-22 kHz range; their 1984 table gives earth-ionosphere cavity Q of 3.8-7.8 (accepted) and 3.2-6.4 (from Tesla).
Oliver Nichelson
Advocate of a Tesla 'fuelless generator' (unipolar dynamo, bifilar coil); author of the 1990 voltage-gain measurement · Advocate; says commercialisation was blocked by industry
Presented 'Nikola Tesla's Later Energy Generation Designs' at the 26th IECEC (1991), calling it speculation; measured two 43-turn coils with M. King at Eyring Corp. in December 1990.
Evidence / artifacts (188 of 194 listed, 97%)
Own works and inventions (42)
1888'A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers', AIEE paper The rotating-field reasoning, synchronising and torque motors, polyphase transformer. Printed in Martin 1894, Part I; digest.
1889'Notes on a Unipolar Dynamo' Printed with the unipolar-dynamo chapters in Martin 1894, Part III; the machine Nichelson reads as Tesla's first fuelless design. Digest.
1891Exchange with J. J. Thomson on electrodeless discharge Electrostatic against electromagnetic explanation; Martin 1894 pp.417-430. Digest only; the deep read recommended by QE was not run.
1891-05-20'Experiments with Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency', AIEE lecture, Columbia College Infinite energy stored in the ether; electrodeless tubes; lamps lit across thick bars; energy 'in some more direct way from the medium' as a possibility. Whole text deep read (Opus). No 'wheelwork' passage in it. Includes the stout-bar experiment: lamps shunting a thick bent bar light 'although they are short-circuited' (IRW pp.194-195, Figs. 128-129; follow-up Q19).
1892London and Paris lecture ('wheelwork of nature') Printed in Martin 1894 (printed p.236, PDF p.261): 'a question of time when men will attach their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature'. Digest.
1892-12-21'On the Dissipation of the Electrical Energy of the Hertz Resonator', letter to the Electrical Engineer Reply to Bjerknes: air carries off energy as 'electric sound waves'; loss assumed to go as surface density squared times frequency, 'quantitative determinations' lacking. The word 'longitudinal' does not appear. Deep read.
1893'On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena', Franklin Institute and NELA lecture Proposes disturbing 'the electrostatic condition of the earth' to send 'intelligible signals or perhaps even power to any distance'; resonant rise 50-fold from 1,000 V. Separate PDF plus Martin 1894 (deep read pp.341-416). pp.36-37, Fig. 19a-c: 50 V and 100 V lamps and a tube burn properly in parallel on two stout bars only 'by carefully determining the positions' (Q19).
1893Mechanical and electrical oscillators, Chicago World's Fair Martin 1894 pp.505-520, digest only; Tesla said in 1900 the free-piston oscillator was the first element of his self-acting engine programme.
1896X-ray (Roentgen) letters and shadowgraphs Letters in Tesla Said (digest). Known shadowgraphs date to 1896, after Roentgen's 8 Nov 1895 announcement; Crookes-tube work from 1894 and the 13 March 1895 laboratory fire are reported [web, arbiter].
1896-03-08'Earth Electricity to Kill Monopoly', The World An early earth-power statement before Colorado; listed in the Tesla Museum bibliography (no. 14); text not read.
1897-04-06Lecture before the New York Academy of Sciences An Anderson-edited text exists on archive.org; not opened (time limit).
1898-11-17Electro-therapy paper on high-frequency oscillators Sliding contacts on stout conductors give 'any difference of potential, from a few volts to many thousands'; the stout-bar arrangement used as an adjustable tap. Known through Kraakman's 2017 quotation (follow-up Q19).
1898-1899Submarine-destroyer articles and the 1899 Electrical Review account Tesla Said, chronological compilation; digest.
1899-12-08Statement to the North American (Philadelphia) on the century's achievements Sent at I. Hawthorne's request and copied into the Colorado Springs Notes: the 'intelligent beings on a neighbouring planet' passage. A press statement, not a laboratory draft; that day's lab work has nothing on signals.
1899-1900Colorado Springs Notes 1899-1900 (laboratory diary; Nolit, Beograd, 1978) Read: 3-4 July 1899 ('It showed clearly the existence of stationary waves'); 24 and 30 July and 26 August arrester-spark entries (Tesla asks whether induction through the air, not earth conduction, causes them); 6 August water-pipe item omitted, only '550 feet' given; 1 January 1900 loop lamps about 60 ft away and 2 January lamps fed through the ground (distance unstated); '300,000 W set in movement'; 'feasibility ... almost beyond any doubt'. Not read: 3-7 January text, 3 July 'signals' entries. research/files.
1900-06'The Problem of Increasing Human Energy', Century Magazine Sink argument: 'what is converted is clear gain' (p.21) beside 'cannot hope to produce a self-acting machine ... for a long time yet' (p.22); his second law drops Kelvin's 'coldest', and his thermopile to outer space is an ordinary two-reservoir engine; 200 lb casting 'offset by an equal loss of the producer'; effects to about 600 miles; 'not as yet actually effected a transmission ... to a great distance' (p.32). pp.15-24 deep read; pp.15-33 read from the text layer.· Tesla, seeking funds or priority
1901-02-09'Talking with Planets', Collier's Weekly Colorado signals 'with such a clear suggestion of number and order'; 'could not decipher their meaning'; 'the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another'. Does not say numbers. Tesla Said deep read.
c.1901-1904World System prospectus Magnifying transmitter 'passed a current, sufficient to light more than 200 incandescent lamps, around the Globe'; 'a loss not exceeding a few per cent'. Known as O'Neill's quotation (pp.182-184).· Tesla, promotional document
1902Letter to R. U. Johnson on a fuelless generator Prompted by a New York Herald clipping of 9 June 1902 about Clemente Figueras; known through Nichelson's 1991 paper.
1904-03-05'The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires', Electrical World and Engineer Account of 3 July 1899: maxima 'in regularly recurring intervals' as the storm retreated to about 300 km; Lowenstein made 'similar observations'; power 'to any terrestrial distance and almost without loss'; 'ten million horse-power' of activity. Scan and transcription in research/files. Also in the 1904 Rankine file: a first 10,000 hp plant at 'one hundred million volts'.· Tesla, seeking funds or priority
1904-12Frank G. Carpenter interview 'With my transmitter I actually sent electrical vibrations around the world and received them again'. Known through the Corums' chapter in Valone (p.192).
1904-1905Kelvin fuel debate and 1905 World System articles Tesla Said: loss 'a small fraction of one per cent' over 12,000 miles; earth period 'twelve times a second'; 10,000 hp ready 'next fall'; stationary wave lengths of 25-70 km (Reply to Edison, p.95). Deep read.· Tesla, seeking funds or priority
1907'Tidal Wave' article and Mars-signalling articles Tesla Said deep read: 75,000 hp arc plant and a printed ratio of 16,400,000,000 that recomputes to 1.64e13.
1907Tesla-Poulsen priority letters Includes John Stone Stone's testimony that Tesla first saw the role of the upper atmosphere (Tesla Said pp.104-105, 182-183). Digest.
1907-06-21Letter: 'one hundred amperes around the globe' Printed 23 June 1907 (Tesla Said p.111); no voltage, frequency or method given.
1912'Disturbing Influence of Solar Radiation' Tesla Said; digest.
1915Statement that a voice was projected across the globe in 1899 Tesla Said pp.136-137; no laboratory record of it in the pages read.
1916Legal interview with his patent counsel (ed. L. I. Anderson, 1992) '18 million horsepower activities' were condenser energy 'discharged in an inconceivably small interval'; antenna 500-600 cm at 3.5-4 MV, 1,000 A; Colorado receivers 'Oh, 10 miles or so'; longest signal about 30 miles (Houston Street to West Point, before 1897); the field coil 'I cannot tell you' where; Long Island 'not yet quite ready'. Interview with counsel for patent litigation, not sworn. Ch. VI and Appendix III deep read. research/files.
1917Edison Medal speech Efficiency 'as high as 96 or 97 per cent'; known through O'Neill.
1919'My Inventions' autobiography (as The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla, c.1935 booklet; Penner transcription 1995) Budapest 1882 rotating field; Magnifying Transmitter and World System; 187-foot tower; 'about 100,000,000 volts' in 1893; the automaton theory. Text and PDF copies are one work. Digest.
1919-02'Famous Scientific Illusions', Electrical Experimenter Moon's rotation, Franklin's rod, wireless by 'true conduction'; Kelvin converted 1897; (1/4)^30 of 1000 kW printed as 115 billionth of a watt (about 0.9 pW); ground-current speed c/sin(theta). All pages deep read as images; web copy is the same work.
1919-10-12New York Herald interview on planetary signals Signals 'might have come from Mars' (Tesla Said pp.226-228).
1921Electrical World letter on signals from Mars 'A regular repetition of numbers' that 'must have emanated from Mars'; also ascribes others' 1919-21 signals to transmitter undertones. Tesla Said.
1925-1942Writings abstracted by Trump: Exhibit F 'New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy through Natural Media' Electrostatic generator and open-ended vacuum tube projecting particles, 'presumably electrons'. Abstract only (FBI file 2, pp.43-48); full text not seen.
1925-1942Exhibit J 'A Method of Producing Powerful Radiations' (Tesla's hand) Only description: a fluid jet creating 'a vacuous space around a terminal'. Trump abstract only.
1927Statement of a test with a 1,500 kW generator Current 'returning from the antipodes to its origin with undiminished strength'; the Corums elsewhere give 250 kW. Via Valone ch.12, p.194.
1929Herald Tribune interview Reporter's paraphrase: Tesla 'transmitted a considerable amount of electrical current to the other side of the earth' at Colorado. Tesla Said.
1931'Our Future Motive Power' and a sea-and-earth heat power plant Tesla Said and Hayes; digest.
1931-07-10Brooklyn Eagle: 'I have harnessed the cosmic rays' With New York American, 1 Nov 1933; no device or description. Known through Tutt (Valone ch.3).
1934'Possibilities of Electro-Static Generators' Tesla Said; digest.
1934-07Teleforce press statements and Tesla's July 1934 letter NYT 11 July 1934 ('10,000 planes 250 miles away', cited by Ventura); letter: 'Rays of the requisite energy cannot be produced ... Not so the agent I employ' (O'Neill pp.209-215).
1937-1938Prepared statement and Immigrant Welfare text 'Dynamic theory of gravity'; energy 'flashed through interstellar space to any distance without the slightest dispersion'; prize claim to the French Academy. Tesla Said p.281; O'Neill pp.214-215.
Patents and patent office (26)
1885-1886Arc lamp and dynamo regulator patents (US; CA 24,348) Collected US patents, digest; Canadian patent from the Google Patents search.
1888Polyphase and induction motor patents, US 381,968-382,282 The rotating-field system; Established by practice (arbiter claim 7).
1889US 406,968 Dynamo Electric Machine (unipolar) Two disks in opposite fields joined by a belt; no output figures. Separate PDF and in the collection; assignor of two-thirds to Peck and Brown.
1889-1890Thermomagnetic motor and pyromagnetic generator patents Collected patents and Martin 1894; digest.
1891US 447,921 high-frequency alternator; US 454,622 System of Electric Lighting; 455,069 Collected patents, digest.
1893Power-transmission patents, US 487,796 and 511,559-511,916 Collected patents, digest.
1894Reciprocating engine and oscillator patents, US 514,169, 517,900 (and 514,167-514,173) Collected patents, digest.
1894-01-09US 512,340 Coil for Electro-Magnets (bifilar coil) Built-in capacitance to neutralise self-induction; (50/0.1)^2 = 250,000 energy ratio; claims the purpose only, no gain. Deep read with page image; OCR prints 512,840.
1896-1897High-frequency apparatus patents, US 568,176-568,180, 577,670, 583,953; US 593,138 Electrical Transformer 593,138 is reprinted in Lindemann's appendix. Digest.
1896-1898British patents GB 1896/20981, GB 1897/24421, GB 1898/12866 Production of electrical currents; transmission systems (possible family of 645,576/649,621); circuit controllers. Titles from Google Patents.
1898Circuit controllers US 609,245-613,735 and telautomaton US 613,809 Radio control; Swiss family member CH 18652 (1898). Digest.
1900US 649,621 apparatus for transmission of electrical energy 'True conduction', quarter-wave coils. Deep read.
1900-03-20US 645,576 transmission through the natural media (air conduction) Terminals at 30,000-35,000 ft with 15-20 MV; 'model plant' 0.04 uF, 50 kV, 230-250 kHz; no energy budget. Deep read.
1900-06-15Austrian patent AT 9098 (insulating conductors) Google Patents title only.
1901US 685,012 liquid-air cooled resonators; US 685,953-685,956 stored-energy receivers Deep read pp.349-406.
1901US 685,957 and 685,958 apparatus and method for utilising radiant energy Charging a condenser from rays or particles; no rate or voltage. Reprinted by Lindemann. Deep read.
1901-06-01GB 1901/11293 utilisation of radiant energy Abstract: impulses through the natural media, one terminal to earth and one to an elevated body; probable family of 685,957/958. Espacenet original not viewed.
1901-07GB 1901/13563 and AT 16480 transmission of electrical energy AT 16480 (German text): two primaries 'almost in resonance' with secondaries, toothed disc, earth plate. GB has no text on Google.
1903US 723,188 and 725,605 (signalling) 'More than one hundred receivers' operated selectively; influence 'many hundreds of miles'. 723,188 incomplete: PDF p.415 duplicates p.414, claims missing.
1905-04-17FR 354,791 'Perfectionnements dans la transmission de l'energie electrique' Same title as 787,412; possible counterpart, not confirmed; original not viewed.
1905-04-18US 787,412 Art of Transmitting Electrical Energy Through the Natural Mediums Filed 16 May 1900. Earth of 'inappreciable resistance'; lowest 'six per second'; 0.08484 s; 471,240 km/s = (pi/2)c; wave lengths 25-70 km; checked on page image p.425. Cited by 431 later patents.
1909-1921Foreign turbine and other patents: AT 60332 (1909), FR 515388 (1913), FR 540616/540617 (1916), GB 186,082, GB 174,544, FR 549,259-549,261, FR 541113, FR 549628 (1921) Disc machine, fountains, valvular conduit, lightning rods, the 1921 turbine set, balancing, air transport. Titles only.
1913US 1,061,142 and 1,061,206 fluid propulsion and turbine Disk runner using adhesion and viscosity. Collected patents and Hayes.
1914US 1,119,732 apparatus for transmitting electrical energy 'Tens and even hundreds of thousands of horse-power' in a resonating circuit; about preventing leakage. Deep read.
1914-1928Later US patents: speed indicators and meters (Waltham Watch Co.), lightning protector 1,266,175, valvular conduit 1,329,559, aerial transportation 1,655,113-4 Collected patents, digest; 1,113,716 and 1,209,359 noted briefly in the deep read.
undatedCanadian patents CA 29537, 30172, 33317 Power transmission and current conversion; titles only.
Court and state records (3)
1904-1922Waldorf-Astoria (Boldt) v. Tesla, Wardenclyffe foreclosure and appeal (NY Supreme Court, Appellate Division, 2nd Dept) Mortgages to Boldt 1904 and 1908; action 1915; judgment 20 April 1922. Appendix III extracts read: Tesla's plant description (100 x 100 ft building, 400 hp engine, 187 ft tower, 'loss of not more than five per cent'; pp.163-181), Bingham's account of an open, rifled building with 'four truckloads' of papers on the floor (pp.235-247); full transcript not seen.
1915-04-08Defendants' Exhibit B: bill of sale, William N. Hallock to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Company Schedule 'including but not limited to': 200 kW alternator, two Babcock and Wilcox boilers, four lathes, '4 high-tension transformers in tanks', two submarine boats; no oscillator, condenser bank or coil. Counts differ from Tesla's 1922 memory; who drew it up is not stated. Transcript pp.309-312.· Conveys chattels to the creditor
1943-06-21Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. v. United States, 320 U.S. 1 Marconi four-circuit claim invalid; the Court did not decide who invented radio; summaries say Lodge and Stone were decisive. Opinion text could not be opened (HTTP 403).
Government records (15)
1925Bureau of Standards decline of Flowers's proposal (H. L. Curtis, J. H. Dillinger) Known only from Valone quoting Exotic Research Report (July 1999); no Bureau reply quoted.
1940-1983FBI file 100-2237 on Nikola Tesla (1998 FOIA release, two PDFs, 265 pp.) Redacted; pp.1-60 and 70-133 of part 1, pp.1-60 of part 2 deep read. The FBI says it never held the papers; it has a stake in O'Neill's claim that it did.· FBI
1943-01FBI teletypes and Hoover memo of 11 Jan 1943 Safe opened 7 or 8 Jan by Kosanovic, Clark and Swezey (a testimonial book and three photographs taken); Washington told New York to approach the State's Attorney and Surrogate Court.· FBI
1943-01-09Office of Alien Property Custodian seals Tesla's effects About two truckloads at Manhattan Storage (Gorsuch and a Fitzgerald); recorded in the FBI file.
1943-01-30John G. Trump's report and abstracts of Exhibits A-Q 'Speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional'; nothing 'of significant value' or hazardous; abstracts read in FBI file 2 (pp.43-48); the full report is not online.· Government evaluator (NDRC/OSRD)
1945FBI informant report placing Pvt Bloyce Fitzgerald at Wright Field FBI file 2.
1945-10FBI memos: 75 boxes and trunks still sealed; Wright Field men ask for access Rent about $15 a month paid for Kosanovic; a former protege and two men from a Wright Field research unit referred to the Custodian; the file does not say whether they saw the effects.
1950sFBI review of Manhattan Storage records Only recorded visit: 'Federal authorities' in January 1943 who 'had taken numerous photographs' (possibly microfilm).
1957-07-25FBI New York memo on a 'Tesla Set' newsletter Contains the FBI's paraphrase 'wall of force' for the 1934-40 teleforce claims.
1960-12-06FBI memo on a caller doing 'a research study for U. S. Air Force on subject of geophysics' Told O'Neill's FBI statement was untrue; referred to OAP. Earlier dated 1959 in error.
1981-02-09DoD memo 'Papers Recovered on the Death of Nicola Tesla' (Lt Col Allan J. MacLaren, OUSD R&E) Papers 'may contain basic principles which would be of considerable value to certain ongoing research within the DoD'.
1981-03FBI replies to the Defense Department Examined by OAP, OSRD, ONI and NRL; nothing of 'significant value'; the two letters disagree on release to Kosanovic (Feb 1943) or storage in 1945.· FBI
1983-08-18SAC Cincinnati SECRET airtel (Wright-Patterson AFB, Foreign Technology Division) Staff ('Butler', Soviet beam weapons) seek Tesla papers because the Soviets 'allegedly' had access; none found in WPAFB libraries.
2003FBI Vault, Nikola Tesla Parts 01-03 About 354 page objects against 265 pp. in the folder; Part 03 (Final) not read. Measured in Chrome, not saved.
undatedFBI 'List of persons associated with Nikola Tesla' Unsigned; includes O'Neill's report that the British approached Tesla through Baldwin and Chamberlain, range 200-250 miles. OCR poor.
Company and business records (7)
1904Kerr, Page & Cooper opinion on Tesla's patents Known only from Tesla's covering letter to Rankine: 'you will see that they are controlling' is Tesla's reading of the enclosed statement, and 'not less than $5,000,000' is his own sentence. The opinion's text is not in the saved scan; the catalogue lists the firm's reply.· Tesla's characterisation, soliciting money
1904-01-01Circular listing Tesla's US patents In the Smithsonian 'Nikola Tesla papers' scan (research/files).
1904-04-19Tesla to William Birch Rankine on financing Wardenclyffe Plant 'could now be finished in three to four months'; $100,000 needed; 'ten thousand dollars a day'; the Nikola Tesla Company 'has no liabilities'; investors 'about seven times' their money in the worst case; Morgan and Astor interests; Tesla Electric & Manufacturing Company ($5,000,000) shelved. Deep read.· Tesla, raising money
c.1912-1913Allis-Chalmers 500 kW disc-turbine trial (Hans Dahlstrand report) 60-inch rotor, 3,600 rpm, about 38% 'mechanical efficiency' (definition unstated), disc distortion, gearing needed. Known only from O'Neill's quotation; no original found.· Manufacturer
1935-04-20Tesla-Amtorg Trading Corporation agreement (Trump Exhibit Q) $25,000 for plans: 50 million volts, 'very small particles in a tube open to air', 100 miles or more, at least 350 miles per second. Abstract only; no Soviet reply in the file.
c.1990s'Tesla Pumps Generating Sales in the Multi-Millions' (unsigned, in Hayes) Promotional; no sales or test data.· Promotional
n.d.Westinghouse contract ($1,000,000 and royalty waiver) O'Neill's account; also 133 Hz changed to Tesla's 60 Hz (Penick essay).
Witness accounts and correspondence (8)
1899-07-03Fritz Lowenstein's 'similar observations' Named by Tesla in 1904 as second observer; no account by Lowenstein found.
1925-07-16John B. Flowers's 10-page proposal to test Tesla's system Sketch A (60 Hz world system), Sketch B (300 m electrical ring model), a balloon with standing waves at 29 Hz; arithmetic consistent. Quoted in a 1999 newsletter via Valone.
1936-1938Tesla's letters to British Government representatives (Trump Exhibit H) 28 Aug 1936, 26 Oct 1937, 15 Dec 1937, 5 Apr 1938 offering a particle beam for a fee; reply 7 Jan 1938 'a polite expression of disinterest'. Abstract only.
1943Abe Spanel's statement to the FBI Informant on the risk to Tesla's formulae; FBI file 2.
1943-01Bloyce Fitzgerald's statements to the FBI Tesla said wireless experiments 'completed and perfected'; a model costing 'more than ten thousand [dollars]' in a Governor Clinton Hotel box; 'some eighty trunks'. The Trump party later found 'standard electrical measuring instruments'.· Informant, stake unclear
1945-08OAP letters on photostats sent to Wright Field (Holliday, Houle, Shaulis) Trump-annotated exhibits forwarded to the Equipment Laboratory, 'please return'; 'never returned' per Cheney. Known through Cheney's quotation in the FBI file.
1970Letter on 'Mr. Tesla's notes blowing down the street' as junk men dismantled his equipment Second hand; does not name Wardenclyffe. FBI file 1.
1976Letter (writer redacted) enclosing Design News article Writer's view that Tesla's standing-wave claim 'was erroneous and involved techniques similar to Project Sanguine'. FBI file 1.
Experiments and replications by others (26)
1911Waterside (Edison) station demonstration of the 18-inch turbine 200 hp at 9,000 rpm, 125 psi, 38 lb steam per hp-hour (Tesla's figures; journalist read the gauges). Hayes.
1911-07Lowenstein's sworn report on Tesla turbine tests 102.8 bhp at 18,000 rpm, 53.4 lb steam per bhp-hour (Prony brake, condensate weighed, record by Prof. C. D. or C. B. Richards); 77 hp at 35 lb. Recomputes to about 25-52% of ideal. In Hayes; deep read.· Tesla's associate
1952Armstrong ten-disc turbine 1.11 hp, 14 per cent; via Hoya and Guha 2009.
1965W. Rice, J. Eng. Power 87, 29-36, and Beans Small disc turbines; later units 20-35 per cent; via Hoya and Guha.
1973-1982R. Golka, Project Tesla, Wendover AFB, Utah (US Air Force contract) 51 ft coil, 130 ft tower, 'twice Tesla's original power levels'; used for lightning simulation; no cavity or distance result. Via Van Voorhies and Grotz (Valone).· Project promoters
1976Design News article on Project Tesla (Snigier) Golka and Bass, Wendover, 20 MV discharges, 'based upon the unpublished notes of Nikola Tesla'. Enclosure in FBI file 1.
1979-1987Rauscher and Van Bise ELF magnetic measurements (Valone ch.14) Portland, San Leandro (30.5 Hz), seven cities; 3.16 Hz earthquake precursor '84% accuracy' with no statistics; three coil wire lengths printed.· Hold detector patent 4,724,390
1984Corums' comparison of cavity Q (Grotz Fig. 4) Accepted Q 3.8-7.8; Q from Tesla's disclosures 3.2-6.4; 0.20-0.30 dB/Mm. In Valone.
1986Golka-Grotz proposal to excite the earth-ionosphere cavity Predicts 46 pT at 7.8 Hz from 150 kW and '90-94 per cent efficient' without calculation; 'about 6% per round trip'. No result reported.· Project promoters
1986Lamp lit in the hands of Lindemann and Tom Brown near Eric Dollard's coil No instrument readings. Free Energy Secrets.· Advocate
1988Sutton and Spaniol: cavity Q 'as high as 1000' Magnetic measurement 3-30 Hz, International Tesla Symposium; 'confirmed by others' via personal correspondence. Reported by Van Voorhies; paper not obtained.
1988Corum, Corum and Spaniol, 'Concerning Cavity Q' Low Q 'does not necessarily limit' wireless power; reported by Van Voorhies; not obtained.· Corums, CPG/Viziv interest
1990-12-10Nichelson and King, Eyring Corp.: 'A Special Case of Voltage Gain' Two 4-inch, 43-turn coils (Fuelless says 3-inch); S21 peaks 0.18 at 19.1 MHz and 0.97 at 11 MHz, transmission ratios below 1; '929%' should be 946%. Deep read.· Advocate
c.1990sTrinkaus, Son of Tesla Coil Oil-immersed close-coupled coil to over 2,000 V from 12 V; tubes lit at 5.4-12 W input; no light-output data. Deep read.· Sells booklets and kits
c.1990sValone's homopolar generator trials Closed circuit about 380 A; output and motor power within 1 W (Valone pp.261-267). Digest.
c.1999Cairns, The Tesla Disc Turbine Half-size model, two no-load speeds (20,000 rpm at 1.75 bar; about 50,000); no torque or power data; 9.75-inch machine a design only. Deep read.· Advocate
2000Lindemann's build of Gray's 1975 patent US 3,890,548 'Doesn't perform anything like what was described'; 'negligible' energy recycled; no data.· Advocate
2003Corum and Corum, 'Tesla's Colorado Springs Receivers' (Tesla Memorial Society) Reconstructed 1899 receivers: RF-biased coherer with frequency-selective negative resistance, 'more than adequate' for natural VLF signals, 8-22 kHz. research/files.· Corums, CPG/Viziv interest
2003Corum and Corum, 'Nikola Tesla and the Planetary Radio Signals' (NASA Radio JOVE copy) Jovian and Io-modulated emission as a hypothesis for 1899 signals; Io events of 22 July 1899. Not read in full.· Corums, CPG/Viziv interest
2008-12-27Karl Palsness, 'Tesla's Stout copper bars "Hairpin Circuit"', Energetic Forum thread 3546 Earliest use of the name found. Bars 3/8 in x 4 ft, 10 kV furnace-ignition transformer, 100 W and 60 W halogen lamps; bars held by hand; lamp lit in tap water (video 27 Feb 2009). No voltage, current or power measured: 'we can not meter this energy'.
2009Hoya and Guha, Tesla disc turbine test rig, Proc. IMechE Part A 223 92 mm rotor, 140 W at 25,000 rpm, about 25% efficient; nozzle losses dominant. research/files.
2010-2018Guha group papers on Tesla turbine flow (Guha and Smiley 2010; Guha and Sengupta 2012-2018) Listed on the author's site; not downloaded.
c.2016Davy Oneness, lamps lit 'under salt water' on the hairpin circuit A fluorescent and a 12 V lamp in series held under salt water with bare hands, no shock. One published photo report (Manning, Substack, 22 Jun 2026); no concentration, lead insulation or brightness given.· Reported by an advocate writer
2018E. Alvarez-Cespedes, 'Tesla Hairpin Circuit' poster, Liberty University research symposium Undergraduate poster; parts list only from a search snippet; PDF refused to curl and has no text layer, so any measurements are unread.
c.2018N. Kraakman, Tesla Hairpin Circuit replication (Waveguide) 15 kV 30 mA neon transformer, 1000 pF, 22 mm bars: 12, 50 and 110 V lamps and an 8 W tube lit together after careful adjustment; wrong order fails. Counter 45-60 kHz; LCR 182.23 uH, about 100 times the geometric estimate; no nodes; no power measured.
n.d.Project Sanguine ELF transmitter tests (US Navy) About 1 W radiated from about 2.6 MW input; used by the reviewers for the launch problem [web].
Related work by others (19)
1871Houston, 'On a New Connection for the Induction Coil' One pole earthed, one to a large insulated conductor: sparks drawn 30 feet away. Pre-Tesla earth-and-elevated-capacity observation. Digest.
1872Elihu Thomson and Houston experiment Cited by Vassilatos as an earlier sighting of the 'radiant' effect.
1892-12-14Bjerknes resonator experiments, Electrical Engineer The work Tesla answered with his Dissipation letter; not in the folder.
1902Clemente Figueras generator (New York Herald, 9 June 1902) The clipping that prompted Tesla's letter to R. U. Johnson; via Nichelson.
1930s-1980sMoray and Baumann radiant-energy devices Linked to Tesla by Vassilatos and Lindemann; no instrumented neutral test in the folder.
1930s-1990sDoczekal, Schaeffer and Serogodski (DE 42 44 016) and Wiseman self-acting engines Claimed working models in Lindemann's 1995 article: Doczekal (Austrian patent 'NR. 155744', 1939, 'well above' Carnot), Schaeffer and Serogodski (DE 42 44 016 A1), Wiseman's HEAT books (Eagle Research address and price printed); no power-in or power-out figures.
1973Edwin V. Gray demonstrations (National Tattler, 1 and 8 July 1973, Tom Valentine; Probe the Unknown; NewsReal 1977) Magnet thrown 2 ft from a 6 V battery; bulbs, a TV and radios from a motorcycle battery; witnesses Hackenberger (EVGray) and C. V. Wood Jr.; nothing metered. As quoted by Lindemann.· Company officers and promoters
1975-1987Gray patents US 3,890,548, 4,595,975, 4,661,747 Reproduced in Lindemann's appendix (digest only); 4,595,975 also printed as 4,595,977.
c.1980s-2008Hobby Tesla-coil guides: TESLA-EQ sheet, solid-state coil TCL3 (Information Unlimited), J. Kelly 'Tesla Coil Theory' (2008) Design formulas, a flyback coil lighting a 20 W tube, spark-gap coil practice; no Tesla claims tested. Digests.
1987Rauscher and Van Bise detector patent US 4,724,390 Named in the Valone chapter.
c.1990sNichelson's 'quantum energy' chapter and Bass's 'longitudinal' waves (Valone) Nichelson: per-electron 3.1e-14 eV, not 19-190 MV (unit error). Bass: E parallel to B, zero Poynting vector, 'without attenuation' asserted. Deep read with page images.
c.1990sVassilatos, 'Rosetta Stone' chapter Unidirectional impulses as a shield-penetrating 'shocking field'; under 100 microseconds painless; reprinted by Lindemann (deep read).· Advocate
1991Nichelson, 'Nikola Tesla's Later Energy Generation Designs', 26th IECEC Unipolar dynamo and bifilar coil as a fuelless generator, called 'speculation'; cites Elsasser; earth-capacitor 1.6e11 J should be 1.6e10. Deep read.· Advocate
c.1991-2006Nichelson, 'The Second Law Thermodynamics and Tesla's Fuelless Generator' Displacement-current device 'with no expenditure of energy'; quotations omit Tesla's 'continuous pumping out'; sizing example stores 0.0125 J against 0.025 J needed. Deep read.· Advocate
1994-1995Lindemann, 'Thermodynamics & Free Energy' and 'Tesla's Self-Acting Engine', Journal of Borderland Sciences An 'Etheric Energy Field' breaks the second law; First Law 'an outmoded, intellectual MODEL'; mechanical equivalent of heat 'not known'; a self-acting cycle with no condenser (refuted by calculation); two-phase heat-pump concept from Tesla's 1900 text. Free Energy Secrets reprints, deep read pp.137-156.· Advocate
2005-2009Resonant wireless-power patents citing US 787,412 (MIT/WiTricity: Karalis, Joannopoulos, Kurs; Energous; Ut-Battelle 2009) Near-field non-radiative coupling, the short-range relative of claim 3. Of 431 citing patents. A citation is not an endorsement.
2015-2019CPG Technologies / Viziv / Texzon guided-surface-wave patents and tower (Milford or Waxahachie, Texas) US 9,923,385, 9,857,402, 9,882,436 and about 140 rows citing 787,412; J. F. and K. L. Corum founders and co-inventors; no published field measurement found. Hackaday 2019; Viziv site redirects.· Patent holders, fundraising
n.d.Tewari and DePalma rotating-magnet generator 'Twice as much hydrogen' by electrolysis, one second-hand sentence in Lindemann 1994; no set-up or citation.
n.d.Moray, Radiant Energy pamphlet, p.19 'The draft of current is adapted to the load': one lamp or fifty with no retuning; the comparison Q19 weighs against Tesla's position-matched lamps. From the Morray-TH project files.
Later accounts and media (23)
1894T. C. Martin, The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla Compilation of the 1888-1893 papers and lectures; all 18 chunks digested, pp.341-416 deep read.
1910-1912Turbine press: Electrical Review, NY Times, Scientific American, ENR, Popular Mechanics, Technical World; Maule 1912; Stockbridge Reprinted by Hayes; '10 hp per pound'; '80 to 90 per cent' to a journalist. Hayes dates Stockbridge 1920; internal evidence 1910-11.
1917-07Wire copies: Rogue River Courier (20 July), Bridgeport Evening Farmer (26 July) Found, not read (time).
1917-07-19The Sun (New York): tower 'Demolished as Precaution' Federal Government had it dynamited, suspecting use for spying. Chronicling America.
1917-08-05The Sun feature 'Destruction of Tesla's Tower' Repeats the Government story but says whether the buyer was the Government 'is not known'.
1944J. J. O'Neill, Prodigal Genius 26 miles, 200 lamps, 'higher than 95 per cent' with no source named (p.171); Tesla's 1900 caveat on p.172; FBI 'opened the safe' (p.244); voltages 5-10 times Tesla's own; priority claims with records 'not available'. Deep reads pp.109-135, 153-185, 209-221.· Friend and admirer
1974-04J. R. Wait, IEEE Trans. Communications COM-22 no. 4 (ELF special issue) Tesla's experiments have 'an intriguing similarity with later developments in ELF communications'. Quoted by Marincic; not seen directly.
1978A. Marincic, commentary in the Colorado Springs Notes Tesla predicted 6, 18, 30 Hz against the measured 8, 14, 20 Hz; 'never able to carry out the experiments'; standing waves 'cannot be significant' for the arrester sparks; the 2 January 300 kW is circulating energy, active power smaller by the Q-factor; credits Tesla on excitation-dependent wave type.· Tesla Museum, publisher
1981M. Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time (pages in FBI file 2) Source of the 1945 Wright Field photostat account; probable source of the 'Project Nick' chain.
1984J. T. Ratzlaff (comp.), Tesla Said Tesla's letters and articles 1888-1939; all 20 chunks digested, deep reads PDF pp.60-140, 219-233, 279-285.
c.1990sJ. A. Hayes (comp.), Tesla's Engine: A New Dimension for Power Turbine anthology with Lowenstein's report and Dahlstrand quotation; deep read pp.129-188.· Compiler promoting Tesla turbines
1998-10-14T. Penick, 'Nikola Tesla, Master of Imagination' (EE 155 essay) Life from Britannica, Cheney and O'Neill; carbon-button lamp '20 times as efficient' with no test. Digest.
1999-07Exotic Research Report (Flowers 1925 quotation) Source Valone cites for the Bureau of Standards episode; not obtained.
2000P. A. Lindemann, The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity Gray's circuit and Tesla's transmitter as 'radiant energy'; 99% lost, 'output 100 times greater' claimed; Gray's 1974 raid and 1976 SEC plea (book's account); US 787,412 reprinted (no gain claimed); back-cover blurbs by Constable, Desborough, Rauen. Deep reads pp.1-79 and 137-156; p.148 has no text layer.· Advocate, Clear Tech
2000PBS, 'Tesla - Master of Lightning: The Missing Papers' Quotes Trump; tells 'Project Nick' (Brig. Gen. L. C. Craigie, Wright Field) with no source; papers to Kosanovic in 1952.
2002T. Valone (ed.), Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature Anthology; deep reads of Tutt (ch.3), Van Voorhies (ch.7: 'Tesla's worldwide wireless power concept remains unverified'), Grotz (ch.9), Corum (ch.12: 7.5 Hz, ring effect 1.17 at 5 kHz), Rauscher (ch.14), Nichelson, Bass, Flowers; Terbo, Puharich and Niagara chapters digest only.· Advocates
2009J. Manning, Atlantis Rising No. 77, report on the 2009 AEPC meeting Palsness 'prefers the Hairpin Circuit' to Tesla's 'Two Stout Copper Bars'; Lindemann quoted. Live site blocked; read from the Wayback copy (research/files/q19-ar77).· Advocate writer
2017N. Kraakman, 'A Brief History of the Tesla Hairpin Circuit / Stout Copper Bars' (Waveguide) 'Nikola Tesla himself never used the term'; origin of the name unknown to him; quotes Tesla's 1898 tap; names Lecher lines as the mainstream relative.
2019-11-20Hackaday, 'Texas Tesla Tower Titillates' Viziv tower near Milford, TX; Zenneck surface wave; no measured results.
2023EEVblog forum, 'Tesla Hairpin circuit - curious phenomenon' Engineers read it as transmission-line or inductive-loop behaviour; tungsten hot-to-cold resistance about 8; 'doubtful that any of the lightbulbs are near nominal power'. No measurements posted.
2026Wikipedia, Wardenclyffe Tower Boldt demolished it for scrap; calls the government story a rumour (citing Cheney 2011, Anderson 2002).
n.d.J. D. Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics, on Tesla's earth-resonance estimate About 6 Hz against 6.6 Hz for a perfectly conducting sphere, per Marincic; the Mathematician could not reproduce 6.6 Hz.
undatedT. Ventura, 'Tesla's Death Ray: A Reconstructive Postulate' Focused 'longitudinal' electrostatic wave with a Fresnel lens; -15 V against -30 V without derivation. Digest.
Records named but not yet examined (19)
1856-1943Nikola Tesla Museum archive, Belgrade 163,911 call numbers in 548 boxes, seven units (Legal Affairs & Finance; Plans and Drawings ...); no online viewer.
1899-1900Colorado Springs raw charts and the Tesla Museum originals No trace record, distance log or sferic frequency for 3 July 1899 is known.
1903US 723,188 full claims from the patent office Missing from the collected-patents PDF.
1911Professor Richards's turbine test log Only Lowenstein's tables survive in the folder.
c.1912-1913Allis-Chalmers company records (Wisconsin / Milwaukee County Historical Society) Would hold Dahlstrand's original report; not searched.
1915-03-30Foreclosure Exhibit A: Tesla-to-Holmes bill of sale and schedule Would show which Wardenclyffe apparatus was listed, against Tesla's 1922 list and Exhibit B.
1917Wardenclyffe salvage records and 1917 Navy or Justice orders on Long Island radio stations (NARA RG 38, RG 60) Would decide between government demolition and commercial scrap.
1925Flowers's own document and Bureau of Standards (NIST) files Not obtained.
1930sUK National Archives, War Office reference 84/T/3458 Tesla's beam offer to Britain, as quoted by Valone.
1939Austrian patent 155744 (Doczekal) Lindemann says it claims efficiency above Carnot 'with or without condenser'; the patent office record could check it.
1943-1952NARA RG 131, Office of Alien Property Tesla case file Should hold Trump's full report and the exhibits.
1943-1952Manhattan Storage and New York Taxation Department records Who saw the sealed effects and when they were released; the inventory, against Tesla's 1922 list, would show whether Wardenclyffe's special apparatus went to storage.
1945-1948NARA RG 342 (Wright Field) and Brig. Gen. L. C. Craigie papers; Lt Robert E. Houle correspondence Would show what was done with the 1945 photostats and whether 'Project Nick' existed.
1973-1988Golka's Wendover contract reports; Radio-Electronics (Feb 1981); the 28 Oct 1986 proposal; 1988 New Energy Technology Symposium proceedings Would show whether the coil was ever used to excite the cavity.
1974-1989Gray records: Los Angeles County court and DA files, SEC file, Zetech records, Sparks (Nevada) death record No document in the folder.
1990Eyring Corp. raw network-analyser traces Needed to recheck the bifilar 0.97 peak (half-wave resonance of about 13.7 m of wire).
1990s-2008Tesla Coil Mailing List, KeelyNet and Usenet archives; Palsness's 2008 video descriptions Would show whether 'hairpin' was used for Tesla's stout bars before December 2008 (follow-up Q19).
2015-2026Viziv/CPG field-strength data; Texas SOS filings (Texzon, Viziv, CPG); FCC experimental licences No published measurement found.
variousLibrary of Congress Tesla Papers finding aid; Columbia University Rare Book Library Tesla collection LOC search returned HTTP 503; Columbia not reached.
Left out: six further groups of Tesla Said items, digested but bearing on no claim (1890 hysteresis and Swinburne letters, 1891 Thomson controversy, 1901 variable-capacity and wireless-light items, 1908-1912 forecasts, 1914-1919 patent wrappers, 1919-1925 moon and balloon articles); the other 400-odd patents citing US 787,412; web copies and search snippets (History.com, a salt-water YouTube title, the NVtronics thread behind a login, Energetic Forum thread 11044's untested proposal, social media, X-ray and Marconi summaries); textbooks and reference pages used only for teaching; duplicate copies. Full catalogue: Tesla sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Repeat 3 July 1899 with a recording, non-threshold VLF receiver and logged lightning positions, or search sferic-network archives for half-hour modulation of distant storms; and measure field strength against distance (10-1,000 km) from a grounded quarter-wave resonator near 100 kHz, against 2-3 dB per 1,000 km.
Deciding records: The Tesla Museum's Colorado charts and 1943 papers; NARA RG 131 (Trump's full report) and RG 342 (Wright Field, Houle letters); the Kerr, Page & Cooper opinion itself; foreclosure Exhibit A and the Manhattan Storage inventory; 1917 salvage or Navy orders; the Allis-Chalmers report; Viziv/CPG field data; Lowenstein's own account.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: half-hour maxima from a storm moving 20-60 km/h imply a 5-15 kHz wave; compare 40-60 dB lost over 20,000 km with the 0.0011 dB per 1,000 km Tesla's 'small fraction of one per cent' needs. Step 6 turns 18 million hp into a 4.4-5.3 kJ antenna store released in about 0.3-0.4 microseconds.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Never properly tested for the 3 July observation: the data, a relay playing with a threshold adjusted several times, cannot be read as a stationary-wave amplitude pattern, and alternatives (mode fading, storm cells, sunset) are not excluded. The antipodal power claim fails on the guide's measured loss. arbiter.md, Claim 1
Arbiter Correcting its own earlier reading: Tesla's 1900 text argues 'what is converted is clear gain'; restoring the sink costs exactly the work gained. A hypothesis stated in good faith from a heat-as-fluid picture, not a hoax; Nichelson's reading was closer to the text than first said. arbiter.md, QE revision A
Contrarian No evidence that a negative experiment, a reanalysis or censorship of results stopped Tesla's wireless programme. Rejection of the strong claims was by non-adoption, not by controlled test; Wardenclyffe ran out of money. contrarian.md, How the claims were rejected
Arbiter In the 1916 interview with his own counsel Tesla claims no Colorado test beyond about 10 miles and says Wardenclyffe 'was not yet quite ready'. His stake ran towards claiming more, so this weighs against O'Neill's 26-mile account; it was not sworn testimony. arbiter.md, QE revision F4 and F9.9
Investigator Wardenclyffe's end has competing accounts: The Sun (19 July 1917) says the Federal Government dynamited the tower as a wartime precaution; its 5 August feature says the buyer is unknown; Anderson (1992) says it was destroyed for commercial development after foreclosure. sites.md, Leads for review 4; research/2026-10-08-chronicling-america.md
AI noteIn April 1935 Tesla signed a $25,000 agreement with the Soviet trading body Amtorg for plans of a 50-million-volt particle projector; it survives only as John Trump's 1943 abstract in the FBI file.
Rank 28Whittaker-ET
down from 27B - Open questionC - TestableD - InfluentialPrimer · Arbiter · Sites log · SourcesCard updated 2026-10-09 10:58
A leading mathematician wrote in 1902 that steady gravity can be cancelling longitudinal waves in light's medium: correct mathematics, a source of 'scalar wave' lore, unmentioned in his later History.
Invention / theory background
Edmund Taylor Whittaker (1873-1956), Cambridge then Edinburgh, showed in 1902-03 that solutions of Laplace's and the wave equation can be built locally from simple waves, and suggested gravity is carried by longitudinal waves, perhaps far faster than light, in the medium of light. In 1904 he wrote any electromagnetic field with two scalar potentials. His History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity (1910; 1951; Vol. 2 1953) records older pulsation models of gravity and, in 1953, light-speed gravity.
Ranking explanation
No anomalous experiment and no suppression story (no A): Stoney answered the idea in print within a year, and Whittaker's own 1953 History adopts light-speed gravity. It scores on open questions (B: a tensor-form shared medium, a common-phase oscillation of g), on what a reader can compute (C: example.py, Stoney's flicker to the 1.75 arcsec bending) and on influence (D: twistors, scalar-wave literature). Like Ives and Meyl: B, C and D without A; above Su-CC's local ether.
Key supporting elements
The theorems hold: all three reviewers verified the integral solutions and the plane-wave decomposition independently; the 1904 potentials reproduce the Lienard-Wiechert field to 12 digits. The 1903 integral is an acknowledged ancestor of Penrose's twistor theory.
The 1903 sum (2 dmu/pi mu) sin(mu(Vt - r))/r really is +1/r inside the front: a steady Newtonian potential can be written as waves whose time dependence cancels (arbiter: Established as mathematics).
Whittaker named the waves longitudinal in his own words in 1902 ('a gravitational force perpendicular to the wave-front'); Wangerin's 1903 review read it the same way. McCrea (1957) says it 'anticipated some features of general relativity'.
In 1953 Whittaker gave gravity an exact medium reading: for light a static field acts as a medium of varying permittivity and permeability (Copson 1928), which gives the measured 1.75 arcsec bending. FitzGerald's aether 'structure' became Einstein's 'curvature'.
'An identical property of the medium' fits the measured equal speeds of light and gravity (GW170817) as well as GR does. His History records relatives: Bjerknes' in-phase pulsating spheres attracting by the inverse square, Korn 1898, Larmor 1895, Riemann's aether.
Key contradictions
The full sum is sgn(Vt - r)/r: -1/r outside the front, so the source changes sign at t = 0 and the field is steady only inside r < Vt. Whittaker printed only the inside case.
Stoney (1903): each constituent force flickers, with 1/r and 1/r^2 parts, cancelling only for one exact 1/mu spectrum, an assumption 'so overwhelming' in improbability. Whittaker's reply, if any, has not been found.
Observed gravitational waves are tensor (transverse) at speed c: LVK finds no non-tensor polarization, GW170817 bounds the speed, PSR B1913+16 matches GR to 0.2 percent. 'Longitudinal' follows from choosing a scalar potential, not from nature.
'Standing wave' is not Whittaker's word; it enters through Barrett (1993), Bearden and Titleman. A real standing wave makes g oscillate; keeping the inverse square to 1e-8 at 1 AU needs a period near 257 days at wave speed c.
Whittaker's own 1953 History: Laplace's case for far-superluminal gravity is not 'very plausible', gravity and gravitational waves travel at c, and the single scalar potential was rightly dropped. Neither volume mentions his 1902-03 note; it is neither repeated nor withdrawn.
User follow-ups (1)
Q07AnsweredIs gravity a longitudinal standing wave in the medium that carries light? Whittaker proposed this in 1903, but gravity's measured waves are tensor waves, not longitudinal.
Speculative: is gravity a longitudinal standing wave in the same medium that carries light? First report exactly what Whittaker wrote about gravity: the closing pages of his 1903 Mathematische Annalen paper (longitudinal waves, propagation of gravity), the 1904 two-scalar-potentials paper, and his later gravity/electromagnetism papers (e.g. 'On electric phenomena in gravitational fields', Proc. R. Soc. A, 1927). Then weigh the idea against: the equal speed of gravity and light (GW170817, which constrains but does not by itself separate a medium from spacetime); LIGO/Virgo polarization tests (tensor vs breathing/longitudinal modes); the Hulse-Taylor quadrupole orbital decay; composition-independence tests (Eotvos, MICROSCOPE); and the Dicke 1957 / Puthoff polarizable-vacuum model, in which gravity is a change in the vacuum dielectric (epsilon = K epsilon0, mu = K mu0). What would a standing, rather than travelling, longitudinal wave predict that an experiment could detect?
Asked 2026-10-07 · answered 2026-10-07 · 5 min web search
A07Whittaker did propose it in 1903: the steady pull of a mass as a sum of longitudinal waves whose motion cancels, carried by the medium of light. Today gravity's speed equals light's, but its waves are tensor, not longitudinal.
Known
1903, pp. 353-355: the potential is a sum of outgoing longitudinal waves, sgn(Vt−r)/r: steady 1/r only behind the front.
1903: "an identical property of the medium" carries gravity and light; speed "may be enormously greater".
The 1902 MNRAS note (62, 617-620) states the idea first.
The 1904 paper never mentions gravity.
1927: Maxwell's equations in Schwarzschild's field, within GR.
GW170817: wave speed equals light's to −3e-15/+7e-16.
LIGO-Virgo: no non-tensor polarization. PSR B1913+16 decay is 0.9983 ± 0.0016 of GR.
Ibison: the Dicke-Puthoff model radiates 2/3 of GR's power.
MICROSCOPE: all materials fall alike to 1e-15.
Whittaker's 1951 History records gravity from in-phase pulsation of the medium: Bjerknes, Leahy, Korn 1898, Larmor, Riemann 1861.
Vol. 2 (1953), bk 149-183: gravity and its waves travel at c; Laplace's case is not "very plausible". Neither volume mentions his 1902-03 idea.
Vol. 2, bk 157-158: in a static field light obeys Maxwell's theory in a medium of varying permittivity and permeability (Copson 1928); curvature replaced FitzGerald's aether "structure".
Inferred
"Standing" is not Whittaker's word (Barrett 1993, Bearden). Any speed fits a static field, so only moving sources test it.
Equal speeds fit a shared medium as well as GR. The published scalar Dicke-Puthoff model radiates 2/3 of GR's power (Ibison), which the pulsar rejects.
A "longitudinal standing wave" is closer to Bjerknes-Korn-Larmor in-phase pulsation than to Whittaker 1903. Neither version has been properly tested.
A literal standing wave would make g oscillate in time or vary in space. Clocks would oscillate too if light shares the medium.
Open
Whittaker's 1944 Endeavour article "Old and new ideas of gravitation" is unread.
Oscillating-g searches (ultralight dark matter, gravimeters, pulsar timing) have not yet tested a specific standing-wave model.
Key equations
Whittaker 1903
Modern form
Meaning
∫₀^∞ (2dμ/πμ) sin(μVt−μr)/r
sgn(Vt−r)/r
1/r inside the front, −1/r outside
∇²V = 0 ⇒ ∇²V = k²∂²V/∂t²
static field fits any speed 1/k
the waves fix no speed
(Dicke 1957, Puthoff)
ε = Kε₀, μ = Kμ₀, light speed c/√K
gravity as vacuum refractive index
Key point: Do gravity and light share one medium?
Supports
Same speed to 1e-15 (GW170817).
1903: "identical property of the medium".
Contradicts
Waves are tensor, not longitudinal; scalar PV radiates 2/3 of GR.
Integral solutions of Laplace's and the wave equation, and every finite wave solution as plane waves in all directions (1903)
Establishedlocal, real-analytic; global form not proved and not needed
Two scalar potentials F and G give the field of moving electrons (1904)
Establishedas a reformulation of Maxwell-Lorentz theoryNot testable as statedlater 'hidden longitudinal scalar wave' reading, absent from the paper (root: Riemann 1861)
A static 1/r potential is a sum of waves whose time dependence cancels
Establishedmathematics; sgn(Vt - r)/r, steady only inside the front
The constituent waves are physically real, with a 1/mu spectrum (Stoney's objection)
Never properly testedargued against in 1903, not measured; not suppressed
Gravitational waves are longitudinal and may travel enormously faster than light
Tested, not supportedlongitudinal/scalar radiation (LVK finds no non-tensor modes; a small scalar admixture is still allowed); his own 1953 History puts gravitational waves at cTested, not supportedspeed far above c, for waves (GW170817); static-field speed untestable
One medium carries both light and gravity
Never properly testedgeneric form, indistinguishable from GR so far; his 1953 History gives GR's static-field medium readingTested, not supportedscalar polarizable-vacuum form (Ibison, one analysis)
Gravity as a longitudinal standing wave (a hypothesis put to the review, Q07)
Not testable as statedno frequency, amplitude, coupling or medium givenNever properly testedconcrete versions: in-phase pulsation (Bjerknes/Korn/Larmor) or a genuine scalar standing wave
The aether as the seat of fields; in 1951-53, the vacuum or space-time may fitly be called aether
Historically superseded but instructivematerial aetherNot testable as statedvacuum-as-aether, a terminology choiceEstablishedthe underlying vacuum physics
Author of the 1902 note, the 1903 and 1904 papers and both volumes of the History; proposed undulatory, longitudinal gravity in the medium of light, and in 1953 described gravity at the speed of light
Born Southport 24 October 1873, died Edinburgh 24 March 1956. Trinity College, Cambridge, Second Wrangler 1895, Fellow 1896; pupils included Bateman, Eddington and Jeans. FRS; RAS Secretary 1901-06; Royal Astronomer of Ireland 1906; Edinburgh chair 1912; Catholic convert 1930; Copley Medal 1954. Later papers on electromagnetism inside general relativity (1921-1940).
G. Johnstone Stoney
Critic: wrote the 1903 MNRAS 'Examination' that praised the mathematics and rejected the physics
1826-1911, M.A., Hon. Sc.D., FRS; the physicist who named the electron (Investigator's note).
C. A. Bjerknes
Author of the pulsating-spheres model: bodies pulsating in phase in a fluid attract by the inverse square, the nearest ancestor of a 'longitudinal standing wave' gravity
Not in the review files beyond Whittaker's report of his 1876-77 papers (Gottinger Nachrichten, Comptes Rendus).
E. T. Copson
Author of the 1928 point-charge result that Whittaker's 1953 History uses to show a static gravitational field acts on light as a medium with epsilon = mu = (r+1)^3/[r^2(r-1)]
Not in the review files beyond that citation (Proc. R. Soc. A 118, 1928, p.184, not read); the review notes, from memory with medium confidence, that he was Whittaker's student and colleague at Edinburgh.
W. H. McCrea
Obituarist (1957): read the 1902-03 result as an anticipation of propagated gravity in general relativity; recorded the daily-press attention · colleague and obituarist (the mathematician's interested-party note); no commercial stake
Cosmologist and Whittaker's former colleague (Investigator's note); wrote the J. London Math. Soc. obituary with a full bibliography.
Jaume Navarro
Historian who used the Fisher Library letters to explain Vol. 2's treatment of Einstein and Whittaker's commitment to the aether
Academic historian; History of Science 59 (2020) and Notes and Records 79 (2025). Leaves the antisemitism question unsettled for lack of evidence. His characterization is now set beside Whittaker's own framing in Vol. 2.
Thomas E. Bearden
Brought Whittaker's 1903-04 papers into the scalar-wave literature (mid-to-late 1980s) with the 'standing waves' reading · patent applicant for devices based on his scalar-potential theory (provisional application noted by the Investigator)
Not in the review files beyond the Investigator's snippets; see review/Bearden.
Mark Titleman
Living author developing Whittaker's potentials into a theory of gravity and electromagnetism; repeats Barrett's 'standing waves' sentence
Not in the review files beyond his preprints: arXiv 2205.08309 (2022-2026) and Qeios 2023, with four open reviews averaging 3.25.
Evidence / artifacts (124 of 131 listed, 95%)
Own works and inventions (19)
1902-07-14On the General Solution of Laplace's Equation and the Equation of Wave Motions, and on an undulatory explanation of Gravity MNRAS 62, 617-620, doi 10.1093/mnras/62.9.617. First statement of the gravity idea: force 'perpendicular to the wave-front'. Read by the Investigator from page images on OUP; not in the project folder.
1903On the partial differential equations of mathematical physics Mathematische Annalen 57, 333-355. Scan with no text layer; all journal pp. 333-355 read as page images; gravity passage section 5 part 5, pp. 353-355, read by four readers.
1903-11-12On an expression of the electromagnetic field due to electrons by means of two scalar potential functions Proc. London Math. Soc. (2) 1 (1904) 367-372. All 6 pages deep-read; Lienard-Wiechert field reproduced to 12 digits by the deep reader. No gravity, no longitudinal waves.
1910A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vol. 1 (1910 first edition; revised and enlarged 1951) 1910 Longmans: digest plus four passages compared. 1951 Nelson: Ch. V, VIII, IX, XIII and gravity passages deep-read; preface keeps 'aether' for the quantum vacuum; mentions his own work only at bk 409 (the 1904 F and G).
1921On tubes of electromagnetic force Proc. R. Soc. Edin. 42, 1-23. Known from Synge 1958.
1927On Hilbert's world-function Proc. R. Soc. A 113, 496-511. Synge doubts its finite light-pulse claim; Vol. 2 cites it among variational developments (bk 170).
1927-09-23On electric phenomena in a gravitational field Proc. R. Soc. A 116, 720-735. Maxwell's equations in the Schwarzschild field, inside general relativity. Section 1 read by the Q07 follow-up; rest not read; not cited in Vol. 2 Ch. V. A deciding record per the arbiter.
1928Note on the law that light-rays are the null geodesics of a gravitational field Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 24, 32-34. Known from McCrea and Synge; cited in Vol. 2 (bk 165).
1928The influence of gravitation on electromagnetic phenomena J. London Math. Soc. 3, 137-144 (also Nature 121, 1022). Compares EM in a gravitational field to a medium with variable permittivity and permeability, 'not quite perfect' (Synge's summary). Not read.
1928On the potential of electromagnetic phenomena in a gravitational field Proc. R. Soc. A 120, 1-13. McCrea bibliography.
1933With W. O. Kermack and W. H. McCrea, On properties of null geodesics Proc. R. Soc. Edinb. 1933. Listed in the Wikipedia bibliography (Q07 follow-up); not read.
1935Relativity, gravitation and world-structure Observatory 58, 179-188. McCrea bibliography.
1937The relativity theory of protons and electrons Observatory 60, 14-23. McCrea bibliography.
1921-1940On distance in curved space; On Gauss' theorem and the concept of mass in general relativity; On the relations of the tensor-calculus to the spinor-calculus Three papers among the ten summarised by Synge 1958; the Gauss's theorem paper (1935) is cited in Vol. 2 (bk 194).
1943The aether: past and present Endeavour 2, 117-120. Not online; cited by Navarro 2020.
1944Old and new ideas of gravitation Endeavour 3, 39-42. Not online; cited by Navarro 2020 at p.41. The arbiter's first deciding record for whether he kept the wave-gravity idea.
1949From Euclid to Eddington Later view of the aether and relativity. archive.org copies are lending-only.
1953A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vol. 2: The Modern Theories 1900-1926 In the project folder since 2026-10-07. All 15 chunks digested; Ch. V 'Gravitation' (bk 144-196) deep-read with page images: gravity and gravitational waves at c, single scalar abandoned, Copson medium law, flat-space alternatives; no mention of his 1902-03 note. Other chapters digest or text search.
variousWhittaker and Watson, A Course of Modern Analysis Textbook chapter on Laplace's equation ('Whittaker's integral'); named in the primer's further reading.
Contemporary responses (1903-1904) (5)
1903-06G. Johnstone Stoney, Examination of Mr. Whittaker's 'Undulatory Explanation of Gravity' from the Physical Standpoint MNRAS 63, 424-428. Praises the mathematics; rejects the physics: constituent forces 'flicker' with 1/r and 1/r^2 parts and cancel only for one 'overwhelmingly' improbable spectrum. Postscript on Mercury. Read from page images.
1903Wangerin, review JFM 34.0827.01 (Jahrbuch ueber die Fortschritte der Mathematik) Summarises the gravity section as 'longitudinal waves ... with very great speed in a medium'. Read on zbMATH.
1903Lampe, review JFM 34.0839.01 of Stoney's critique Records Stoney's dissent 'from the physical standpoint'. Read on zbMATH.
1903-06-11Nature 68, 144, Diary of Societies Probably the meeting notice for Stoney's paper; behind a login wall.
1903-1904Index and abstract entries for the exchange HathiTrust phrase search 'Whittaker's undulatory': 88 hits (MNRAS index, International Catalogue, Fortschritte der Physik, Year-book of Learned Societies). Hits not opened.
Related work recorded in Whittaker's History, Vol. 1 (25)
1675Newton: conjectured aether whose density gradient might cause gravity; action at a distance as an absurdity Royal Society paper 1675, Principia Scholium, Opticks queries as cited by Whittaker; 1951 PDF pp.16, 21 (bk 18-19, 28-29). No speed given.
undatedHuygens: Cartesian vortex of subtle aether particles round the Earth as the cause of gravity 1951 PDF p.21, bk 28.
1713Cotes: gravity treated as instantaneous 1951 PDF p.22.
1759Aepinus: gravity as a residual of nearly balanced electric forces 1951 PDF pp.32-33.
1760-1761Euler: aether-pressure gravity, 'Constant - 1/r' 1951 PDF p.56.
1782Le Sage: ultramundane corpuscles, gravity by shadowing 1951 PDF pp.22-23; no speed given.
undatedLaplace: gravific fluid, speed 'at least a hundred million times greater than that of light' 1951 PDF p.110, bk 206-207; Whittaker calls it 'evidently in the highest degree questionable', and in 1953 'not very plausible'.
undatedElastic-solid aether and its longitudinal mode (Fresnel, Stokes, Poisson, Navier, Green, Cauchy, Kelvin, MacCullagh) 1951 Ch. V, PDF pp.71-81, deep-read: the longitudinal mode made infinitely fast, zero-speed or absent so it never showed in optics.
1846-1851Faraday: Thoughts on Ray-Vibrations (1846) and the aether with 'other uses than simply the conveyance of radiations' (1851) Vol. 1 PDF pp.103-104, text layer only. Whittaker: 'the origin of the electromagnetic theory of light'. Earliest one-medium-several-jobs statement in the folder.
1853Riemann: gravity and electrostatics from the aether's resistance to compression 1951 Ch. VIII deep read.
1861Riemann lectures (Hattendorff 1875, p.330): scalar potential as aether density 1951 bk 291: Lorenz-type condition read as a continuity equation; field energy hard to match. Root of the later density-wave reading of Whittaker's potentials.
1864Maxwell's abandoned attempt to trace gravitation to the medium 1951 Ch. VIII: 'I cannot go any further in this direction' (medium would need enormous intrinsic energy).
1867L. Lorenz: retarded potentials and an electromagnetic theory of light Following Riemann's 1858 proposal of finite-speed electrical action; 1951 Ch. VIII deep read, PDF pp.140-142 (bk 267-271). The Lorenz condition is the one Riemann read as aether continuity.
1872Tisserand: Weber-law gravity gives 14 arcsec per century at Mercury 3/8 of the 38 arcsec excess; 1951 bk 207-208.
1876-1877C. A. Bjerknes: pulsating spheres in an incompressible fluid attract by the inverse square when in phase Gottinger Nachrichten 1876; Comptes Rendus 84 (1877). Reversal beyond a quarter wavelength if the medium is compressible. 1951 PDF p.149.
1879-1880W. M. Hicks: the mathematics of the force between pulsating spheres Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 3, 276 and 4, 29. The exact retarded law is here; not read.
1884A. H. Leahy: in an elastic medium (long wavelength) like phases repel Trans. Camb. Phil. Soc. 14, 45. 1951 bk 285.
undatedKelvin: vortex atoms imply gravity acting instantaneously 'Since Laplace's investigations ... believed to be instantaneous'; 1951 PDF p.154, bk 294-295, deep read.
1890Levy: Riemann-law gravity gives 3/4 of Mercury's excess 1951 bk 207-208.
1895Larmor: gravitation from vacuous electrons with free periods in the fluid aether Phil. Trans. 186, 697; 1951 only, bk 286.
1896Kelvin: electrostatic changes propagated by condensational (longitudinal) aether waves Nature 1896; contested by FitzGerald in a private letter to Heaviside (one party's account). 1951 Ch. VIII.
1897Michelson: no dependence of light speed on height above the Earth 1951 PDF p.202.
1898A. Korn, Eine Theorie der Gravitation und der elektrischen Erscheinungen Berlin. Pulsating slightly compressible spheres in an incompressible fluid give Newtonian forces. 1951 footnote, PDF p.149.
1899Planck: compressible aether subject to gravity, compressed round the Earth 1951 PDF p.200.
1909-1910Witte versus V. Bjerknes exchange on pulsation forces Cited in 1951 without content.
Related work recorded in Whittaker's History, Vol. 2 (1953) (23)
1894FitzGerald: 'Gravity is probably due to a change of structure of the aether, produced by the presence of matter' Vol. 2 bk 157, page image. Whittaker: FitzGerald's aether became Einstein's space-time, and 'structure' became 'curvature'.
1895Lehmann-Filhes: finite-speed gravity Filed with Laplace under 'not very plausible' assumptions (bk 149, fn 6).
1898P. Gerber, retarded gravitational potential fitted to Mercury (1898; reprinted Ann. d. Phys. 52, 1917) Z. f. Math. u. Phys. 43, 93; bk 148, fn 7. The speed-near-c gloss is the deep reader's [memory, high], not Whittaker's.
1900H. A. Lorentz, Considerations on gravitation Proc. Amst. Acad. 2, 559. Le Sage's corpuscles replaced by very-high-frequency electric waves; a net force needs electromagnetic energy 'continually disappearing'; then Mossotti-type unequal charges, about 1e-35 (bk 149-151, page images). Not read directly.
1905-1906Poincare: relativity requires gravity propagated at the speed of light, not contradicted by observation Comptes Rendus 140, 1504; Palermo Rend. 21, 129. Vol. 2 bk 151, page image; developed by Minkowski and de Sitter.
1907Planck and Einstein 1907: all energy gravitates; the principle of equivalence Berl. Sitz. 1907, 542; Jahrb. d. Radioakt. 4, 411; Eotvos 1891 cited for equal inertial and gravitational mass (bk 151-152).
1909-1910H. Bateman: variable quadratic form for light in a gravitational field Proc. L.M.S. (2) 8, 223. Credited by Whittaker before Einstein-Grossmann (bk 154-156): Whittaker's priority framing.
1911-1912M. Abraham: light speed c(x, y, z) as the gravitational potential Lincei Atti 20, 678; N. Cimento 4, 459; bk 153, page image. A scalar theory recorded by Whittaker.
1911-1912Planck's second theory: zero-point energy 'The first appearance in theoretical physics of the doctrine of zero-point energy' (bk 103-104, text layer).
1912-1914G. Nordstroem, gravitation theory Named with references only (bk 151-157); the label 'scalar' is the primer's, not Whittaker's.
1912-1915G. Mie, field theory of matter The potentials are 'physical realities' in Mie's theory (bk 154); bears on the two-potential theme.
1913Einstein and Grossmann, ten potentials g_pq Z. f. Math. u. Phys. 62, 225. 'The abandonment of the time-honoured belief that a gravitational field can be specified by a single scalar potential-function'; the one-third-work argument (bk 156-157).
1914E. Cunningham: aether with velocity c at every point Whittaker: 'an objective aether is not necessarily foreign to the point of view of the principle of relativity' (bk 248, text layer).
1916W. Nernst: the aether everywhere occupied by zero-point energy Bk 104, text layer. Root of the 1951 preface's 'so rich in physical properties'.
1916-1922Einstein 1916 and 1918, Eddington 1922: gravitational waves Cited for 'gravitational waves are generated, which are propagated outwards with the speed of light' (bk 183, page image).
1919-1947Eclipse measurements of light deflection Table of 1.61 to about 2.24 arcsec against 1.75; Whittaker in 1952: 'there is a discordance' (bk 180-181). Later radio and VLBI work resolved it in GR's favour (primer, memory).
1920E. Wiechert: FitzGerald's aether structure as a change of dielectric constant Ann. d. Phys. 63, 301 (bk 158). Not read.
1922A. N. Whitehead, flat-space gravity propagated at c, with Synge's 1952 study Synge, Proc. R. Soc. A 211, 303 (bk 175). Will (1971) later ruled it out by Earth tides (deep reader's memory).
1925D. C. Miller, ether-drift residuals Proc. Nat. Ac. Sci. 11, 306. Rosen's flat-space programme 'claimed' it might account for them (bk 175).
1946A. S. Eddington, Fundamental Theory (edited by Whittaker) Offered a Mach-principle reason for the Mossotti-type charge imbalance (bk 151, page image).
1951A. G. Walker, flat-space model with one Newtonian potential Nature 168, 961. Reproduces GR's perihelion advance and light bending (bk 181-182). Whittaker: 'It is unwise to accept a theory hastily'.
1908-1922R. Hargreaves, integral form of the field equations and potentials of a moving electron Bk 250-252, text layer; no link found to Whittaker's 1904 F and G.
Experiments and observations by others (9)
2003Bertotti, Iess and Tortora, Cassini radio test of light bending Nature 425, 374: gamma - 1 = (2.1 +/- 2.3)e-5 (physicist, web search summary).
2003Kopeikin-Fomalont Jupiter speed-of-gravity measurement Reported c within 20 percent; Will and Samuel dispute what it measured. Arbiter web check.
2007Kapner et al., Eot-Wash short-range inverse-square test PRL 98, 021101: no departure to 56 micrometres; a later test to 52 micrometres (arXiv 2002.11761, fetched by the arbiter; Kapner itself known from that check).
2016Weisberg and Huang, PSR B1913+16 Orbital decay 0.9983 +/- 0.0016 of the GR quadrupole value (arXiv 1606.02744).
2017LVK, GW170817 and GRB 170817A Gravitational-wave speed equals c within -3e-15 to +7e-16 (arXiv 1710.05834). Rules out 'enormously greater' for waves.
2018Parkes Pulsar Timing Array search for an oscillating potential from ultralight scalar dark matter 26 pulsars 2004-2016, no significant signal, nanohertz band, one model (arXiv 1810.03227). Not a search for a Whittaker-type wave.
2021LVK, Tests of GR with GWTC-3 'no evidence for ... non-GR modes of polarization' (arXiv 2112.06861).
2022Touboul et al., MICROSCOPE final results All materials fall alike to about 1e-15 (arXiv 2209.15487).
2026-10-06Jin and Zheng, breathing-mode limits from GWTC data (preprint) Breathing amplitude near tensor amplitude disfavoured in three events; smaller scalar parts still allowed (arXiv 2610.08588; not peer reviewed).
Later accounts and media (8)
1956G. F. J. Temple, Biographical Memoir of Whittaker Biog. Mem. FRS 2, 299-325; full bibliography. Seen in Google results only.
1957W. H. McCrea, obituary in J. London Math. Soc. 32, 234-256 The 1902-03 result 'anticipated some features of general relativity' and 'attracted attention in the daily press of the time'. Read (PDF text).
1958J. L. Synge, Whittaker's Contributions to the Theory of Relativity Proc. Edinburgh Math. Soc. Ten papers summarised; no mention of the 1902-03 idea or the aether. Read (PDF text).
2003A. Warwick, Masters of Theory (ch. 5) Cambridge aether school; source of 'convinced that gravitation and electromagnetism were ultimately connected'. Not read.
2020-11-03J. Navarro, Whittaker, Einstein, and the History of the Aether History of Science 59, 287-314. Uses the Fisher letters; GR's low standing in the early 1950s shaped Vol. 2; antisemitism left unsettled. Abstract only (paywalled); its Poincare-Lorentz point is confirmed on Vol. 2's own text (bk 40).
2025J. Navarro, Edmund T. Whittaker, physics and Catholicism Notes Rec. 79, 195-216, open access. Searched for aether and gravitation, not read in full.
2026Wikipedia, Bibliography of E. T. Whittaker Read in the Q07 follow-up; no edits since May 2026.
Later work built on Whittaker's mathematics (7)
1904H. Bateman, extension of the integral to the wave equation Whittaker's pupil; known from Mason and Barrett notes.
1989R. S. Ward, Twistors in 2+1 dimensions Cites JFM 34.0827.01 (zbMATH: 26 citing documents).
2014Thompson, Swearngin and Bouwmeester, Linked and Knotted Gravitational Radiation J. Phys. A 47, 355205 (arXiv 1402.3806): linearised gravitational waves built from the 'Whittaker solution'; tensor waves, no medium.
2015Berthel et al., scalar Whittaker potentials in plasmonics Phys. Rev. E 92, 033202: the 1904 method in ordinary optics.
2016-2025Other twistor and wave papers citing Whittaker 1903 Nicolas 2016; Pantilie 2017; Banjai et al. 2017; Martin 2018; Baird and Wehbe 2018; Adamo, Mason and Sharma 2023; Baumann et al. 2025 (zbMATH list).
variousHitchin (on Atiyah), Mason (Oxford notes), J. Barrett (Chameleon Twistor Theory), arXiv 1312.4020 Each traces the Penrose transform back to Whittaker 1903. Google snippets.
Related work by others: aether, scalar and longitudinal gravity (10)
1911-03-23C. F. Brush, A Kinetic Theory of Gravitation Nature 86, 130-132: aether waves, longitudinal allowed, a wave form of Le Sage. Read on rexresearch.
1911-03-30Oliver Lodge, reply in Nature Calls it a modified Le Sage theory; screening and other objections.
1917T. J. J. See, Electrodynamic Wave-Theory of Physical Forces, vol. 1 Wave theory of gravitation; on archive.org; not opened.
1926-1929C. F. Brush, free-fall and calorimeter papers (Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc.) and 'Gravitation' (1929) Claims heat-generating silicates fall slower, about 1e-5 over 122 cm; Bureau of Standards check announced. One source (rexresearch compilation).
1957R. H. Dicke, Gravitation without a principle of equivalence Polarizable-vacuum idea: gravity as a vacuum dielectric. Cited via Wikipedia and Q07.
1998T. Van Flandern, speed of gravity at least 2e10 c from missing aberration Cited by the contrarian and physicist from memory; answered by Carlip 2000.
2000S. Carlip, Aberration and the Speed of Gravity Phys. Lett. A: in GR aberration is almost exactly cancelled, permitting c_g = c (arXiv gr-qc/9909087, abstract).
2002H. E. Puthoff, polarizable-vacuum model of gravity Known via the Wikipedia 'Polarizable vacuum' page (which labels it fringe; that label is the source's).
2003M. Ibison, Investigation of the polarizable vacuum cosmology PV model radiates 2/3 of GR's power, so it fails PSR B1913+16 as published; one analysis from within the Puthoff group (arXiv astro-ph/0302273).
2014Khmelnitsky and Rubakov, oscillating potential from ultralight scalar dark matter Cited from memory (medium) by the reviewers; the model the 2018 pulsar-timing search tested.
Scalar-wave and standing-wave readings of Whittaker (12)
1981 onT. E. Bearden, writings on Whittaker's potentials 'Solutions to Secrets' (1981), energy-from-vacuum PDF using the 'standing waves' sentence, a provisional patent application, video series. Google snippets; see review/Bearden.· patent applicant for devices based on his scalar-potential theory
1993T. W. Barrett, Electromagnetic Phenomena Not Explained by Maxwell's Equations Source of the 'they are standing waves' sentence quoted by Titleman.
1997Munera and Guzman, longitudinal currents in Maxwell's equations Apeiron. Known from Munera 2019.
2001Trovon de Carvalho and Rodrigues, The Non Sequitur Mathematics and Physics of the 'New Electrodynamics' Proposed by the AIAS Group Critique of the AIAS/Bearden use of Whittaker; known from Titleman's citation.
2018H. A. Munera, periodicity critique of the 'general solution' Known only as reported by Titleman 2023.
2019H. A. Munera, Neo-Cartesian unified fluid and field theory J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 1251, 012038: 'agrees with Whittaker' on longitudinal waves; argues composition-dependent gravity. Read (PDF text).
2022S. Darmos, Strong evidence for composition-dependent gravity from Cavendish experiments, with a published response ResearchGate; snippets only.
2022-2026M. Titleman, The Duality of Whittaker Potential Theory arXiv 2205.08309, v11 25 Sep 2026: gravity and EM from longitudinal waves; MOND and more. Abstract read.
2023-05-24M. Titleman, Representations and Implications of Papers Written by E.T. Whittaker in 1903 and 1904 Qeios Y3D1HM; 4 open reviews, mean 3.25. Read.
2026-07M. Titleman, Gravitation Due to Scalar Potentials and Black Holes ResearchGate; not opened.
undated'Files on Scalar Electromagnetics' (critique of Bearden, author not identified) Scribd: says Bearden 'appropriated' Whittaker's work in the mid-to-late 1980s (that source's characterization).
variousCurrent 'longitudinal standing wave' papers: Meyl (Scalar Waves), Gouveia 2025, 'Theory of the Gravitational Constant Part IV', CCSE in/out matter waves Google snippets; none opened; none cites a measurement separating them from GR.
Records named but not yet examined (6)
1902-1903Daily-press coverage of the undulatory gravity result McCrea: it 'attracted attention in the daily press'. Targets: British Newspaper Archive, Times Digital Archive, Chronicling America, Trove.
1903Whittaker's reply to Stoney, if any Not found anywhere, including both volumes of the History.
1903Fortschritte der Physik v.59 abstract of Whittaker and Stoney HathiTrust hit not opened; also an unidentified 'Journal v.30 (1919-20)' hit.
1911-1931US Bureau of Standards check of Brush's silicates; Brush papers at Case Western Reserve Result not located.
1918-1956Fisher Library, Toronto, Edmund Taylor Whittaker Papers, MS COLL 00219 11 boxes: letters to his son J. M. Whittaker (Box 5, 22 Sep 1953), writings, autobiography (Box 11). Finding aid PDF not downloaded; only the owner can obtain.
1928E. T. Copson, point charge in the field of a point mass Proc. R. Soc. A 118, 184: source of the epsilon = mu = (r+1)^3/[r^2(r-1)] law in Vol. 2 (bk 158). Named by the arbiter as a deciding record; queued for the Investigator.
Left out: Whittaker's Analytical Dynamics (mentioned only in passing), his unrelated self-citations in Vol. 2 (small divisors 1917, de Sitter world 1931), works cited only inside Titleman (Yurth 2007, Laszlo 2003), and two secondary snippets on the Fisher boxes (McCartney 2019, Maidment 2021). Full catalogue: Whittaker-ET sources.
What would settle it · Try it yourself
Deciding experiment: Detection or tight exclusion of scalar, breathing or longitudinal gravitational-wave polarization with a network able to see it; and, for standing-wave forms, a search for a common-phase oscillation of g at one frequency (gravimeters, atom interferometers, pulsar timing) correlated with an optical-clock modulation at the same frequency.
Deciding records: Whittaker's 1944 Endeavour article 'Old and new ideas of gravitation'; the Fisher Library papers MS COLL 00219, especially the Box 11 autobiography; the 1902-03 newspaper articles; any reply to Stoney; the 1927 Proc. R. Soc. A 116 paper; Copson (1928); Hicks (1879-80) on the retarded pulsation force.
Try it yourself: Run example.py: Part 2 sums Whittaker's waves to +1/r inside the front and -1/r outside, Part 3 shows Stoney's flicker, Part 5 finds the 257-day period, Part 7 gives Bjerknes' 4d/c bound (33 minutes Sun-Earth), Part 8 turns Copson's 1953 medium law into the 1.75 arcsec bending.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Vol. 2 (1953) is the inventor's own published view: gravity and gravitational waves at c, Laplace's superluminal case implausible, the single scalar dropped. It agrees with the modern tests but is not a recantation: he neither retracts nor repeats 1903. Weight moves toward 'gave it up'; a medium conviction survives. arbiter.md, QE revision 2, How this bears on the verdicts and Absence of evidence item 1
Arbiter The Q07 hypothesis has two homes to keep apart: Whittaker 1902-03, the origin of 'gravity as waves in the light medium', and Bjerknes-Korn-Larmor, the origin of 'gravity from in-phase longitudinal oscillation of a medium'. 'Longitudinal standing wave' is closer to the second: an oscillating near-field with common phase. arbiter.md, QE revision, Where the Q07 hypothesis lives best
Mathematician Every scalar-potential wave is automatically longitudinal: the force -grad V lies along the direction of travel. Maxwell's waves are transverse because their fields are curls. So 'identical property of the medium' does not carry over from light to gravity. mathematician.md, 4.3
Contrarian The idea was published in two major journals and answered in print within a year; no sign of suppression. The maths won, becoming a tool for gravitational radiation itself, but as tensor waves with no medium; the physical picture lost. contrarian.md, section 2
Investigator Stoney's 1/r component is a concrete point: each constituent force falls off as 1/r, like radiation, and cancels only in the sum. If the constituents were real and the cancellation inexact (recent switch-on, moving source, spectrum cut-off), time-varying 1/r forces would remain. That inference is the Investigator's, not Stoney's. research/2026-10-07-oup-mnras.md, section 2
AI noteWhittaker was RAS Secretary when his gravity note appeared and when Stoney's rebuttal was read there; fifty years later both volumes of his own History of exactly this subject leave the note out, while adopting light-speed gravity.
Themes at a glance
Themes gather projects by idea rather than by person. A project can belong to several themes. Theme map: 3, 2026-10-10.
Living things as emitters or receivers of radiation: Lakhovsky's oscillating cells, mitogenetic rays, Kilner's aura, Hieronymus, early electrotherapy and Moray's apparatus.
ABC
Never properly testedmitogenetic, aura and therapy claims; Lakhovsky's cell-as-circuit strong form Refuted by calculation
Force laws and induction questions where textbook electrodynamics is said to be incomplete: Ampere, Weber, unipolar induction, Heaviside, Distinti, Wheeler.
BCD
ContestedHeaviside and Kennard results Established; extra force terms Never properly tested; several rival theories Internally inconsistent
Thrust or weight change by electrical, magnetic or rotational means: Biefeld-Brown, Podkletnov-type rotors, Hooper's coils, St Clair, Searl.
ABC
Never properly testedreported weight and thrust effects, including a static-DC force in high vacuum; Lifter air thrust as non-ion-wind Tested, not supported; Searl mechanism Refuted by calculation
Experiments seeking motion through a medium: Michelson-Morley, Silvertooth, Wallace's Venus radar, Sagnac and GPS arguments, null and positive reports.
ABC
Tested, not supportedreported drift detections (Wallace c+v); Silvertooth derivation Internally inconsistent; null results Established
How honest experimenters fool themselves: N rays, unblinded observation, scope-sampled input, unmetered batteries, single-witness demonstrations, and the controls that catch them.
CD
Tested, not supportedN rays, the classic case; lessons drawn across every theme
The Zetetic flat-earth case, Rowbotham 1865 to modern wikis, set against sightlines, refraction, rotation tests, gravity and the NASA reports it cites.
ABCD
Tested, not supportedstrong form, no curvature; flat earth with a definite metric Refuted by calculation; low-sight-line sightings Never properly tested (refraction never measured)
Devices claimed to give more than metered input or draw usable power from an unmetered source, compared across every family.
ABCD
Never properly testedwhole-system net gain for most devices; several strong forms Refuted by calculation
39
Ranked Themes
Ranked by the same four criteria as projects; D here also weighs how many projects the theme gathers.
Theme 1Pulsed and spike over-unity circuits (and back EMF)
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential22 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 13:02
Pulse and spike circuits are easy to build, and several published gains rest on volts times amps read on pulsed waveforms (Ainslie; possibly Correa, Gunderson and Naudin). Across twelve core projects the deciding test, a whole-system energy log, has never been run on a core device by a neutral party.
Headline verdicts of the 22 member projects: Plausible, untested1Never properly tested14Refuted by calculation6Internally inconsistent1
Theme background
Cut the current in a coil and its collapsing field throws a high-voltage spike (back EMF, L di/dt). Edwin Gray's capacitor-discharge motor (1973), John Bedini's spike-charging motors (from 1984), the Correas' pulsed glow-discharge tubes (patents 1995-96), Rosemary Ainslie's MOSFET heater (2002), Ronald Stiffler's coil circuits, Graham Gunderson's Lenz-aiding generators and Chris Sykes's bucking coils all claim that spikes, capacitor dumps or cancelled Lenz drag return more than the source supplies. Patrick Kelly's compendium and Peter Lindemann's books spread the circuits; forum builders copied them, reporting no energy measurement (NRGFromTheVac), charge-battery ratios (Sriphan) or measured COP 0.82 (a Sykes replicator).
Where mainstream physics went
Engineering uses the same effects daily: flyback converters, energy-recovery motor drives and snubbers return coil energy, and resonance multiplies voltage by Q. Energy conservation and the passivity theorem limit any fully metered circuit of coils, capacitors and resistors to output no greater than input. No neutral laboratory tested the core devices, so residues stand unexamined: Correa runs at 104-146 percent on corrected input, McKay's meter readings on Gunderson's transformer, Stiffler's one calorimetry run, Sweet's signed 1986 notes, interested witnesses.
Ranking explanation
It meets all four criteria. Its central claim is Never properly tested rather than refuted, with named witnesses (Crosby's Maize, Mallove, McKay) and residues the arbiters left open (A, B); every member's deciding test is a bench measurement a reader can make (C); and it gathers twelve core and ten related projects, tying for the most core members of any Ranked Theme (D). Its nearest neighbours, radiant-energy collectors and gas-discharge anomalies, share Gray and Correa but gather fewer core projects.
Key supporting elements
Recovery is real: Gray's patents, Bedini's spike charging and Babcock's flyback drive return collapsing-coil energy to a battery or capacitor, and their arbiters rate recovery Established (Gray-EV, Bedini-John, Babcock-Paul).
Correa: after the arbiter recomputed Table 7 with drive-pack power X times I, four runs still read 104-146 percent, unexplained; Mallove's 2001 letter reports 50 W in and about 500 W of shaft output (Malove-Eugene).
Gunderson: Mark McKay, PE, a friend with no commercial stake, reported two analysers and a Tektronix scope agreeing on 1.53 W in and 9.43 W out (COP 6.16), later 0 W in; one forum source, no published waveforms.
Stiffler: one water-calorimetry run on his copy of Ainslie's heater gave 1,581 J heat on 1,199 J input (CEC 1.319); heat losses would raise it. No DC blank, unstirred tube, ratio scales with entered mass, RF pickup not excluded.
Sykes-Chris: Sweet's signed, dated 1986 notes (Sykes's transcription of anonymous scans, pages missing) name the meters and record 111.32 W out on a stated 1 mW in on 4 June, 'observed by 3 persons', unnamed; the contrarian urges a re-run.
Key contradictions
Ainslie: no stated operating point gives 1.13 W in and 17.5 W of heat; the input came from a 1.2 microsecond window, the gate battery was omitted (ratio 10.8 with it); the published 1.22 MJ should read 1.05 MJ.
Correa: Table 7's 'drive pack watts' is the loss in the ballast resistor; on drive-pack terminal power the runs are 57-146 percent, median about 92; Table 8's 3,485 percent does not reproduce; the authors admit methods differ up to tenfold.
Gray-EV: the Crosby letter gives 7,460 W out on 26.8 W (278:1) beside 'efficiency exceeds 99%'; TRW's Donald Cronin saw a mid-1974 run that 'ran for about 10 seconds and then everything blew'; the patents claim only partial recovery.
Passivity: in any fully metered passive circuit, average input power is at least load power, which refutes Lenz-cancelling gain (HiIQ-Youtube, Sykes-Chris); Gunderson's magnets hold at most about 500 J against 34 kJ per hour of output.
Kelly-Patrick: NBS measured Newman's motor in 1986 for the Patent Office, the adverse party, at the court's order, and found input above output every time; Newman's side disputed the method, and how NBS treated the MHz back spikes is unread.
Timeline (10)
1921Tousey's Medical Electricity (third edition; first 1910) shows an induction coil's apparent output above input and explains it by arc-voltage collapse and meter weighting. · Tousey-Sinclair
1973-09Crosby Research Institute letter (J. A. Maize) reports Gray's motor gave 10 hp on 26.8 W of battery draw; press reports a Los Angeles DA raid in July 1974. · Gray-EV
1984-09Bedini and Ron Cole build the N-pole motor, 'a test motor for energy recovery', the start of the spike-charging lineage. · Bedini-John
1986-05Sweet's VTA notes: 19.15 W on 0.023 mW at the 24 May demonstration Goldes and Roberts reportedly attended; 111.32 W on a stated 1 mW, 4 June, three unnamed observers. · Sykes-Chris
1986NBS, testing Newman's motor for the Patent Office at the court's order, makes 77 measurements: input exceeds output at every condition, efficiency 27-77 percent (court opinion's figures). · Kelly-Patrick
1995-09Correa patent US 5,449,989 issued: battery-to-battery 'breakeven efficiencies' of hundreds of percent by four accounting methods. · Correa
2002-10Ainslie and co-authors publish the heater result in Quantum: about 17.5 W of load heat from 1.13 W of battery power over 16.5 hours. · Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann
2002-11SEAS proposes an independent Z-Prize evaluation of the Correa PAGD device; terms are not agreed and no report follows the 16 November meeting. · Malove-Eugene
2016Gunderson's Magnetic Implosion Transformer: McKay reads COP 6.16, then zero input; Gunderson says he is 'still in the process of validating'. · Gunderson
2018Sriphan et al. publish charge-battery COP of 1.33-2.13 for a Bedini-type charger in a journal; no whole-system figure is given. · Bedini-John
Core propositions and verdicts (7)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Coil spikes and back EMF can be captured and returned to a battery or capacitor
Establishedas recovery of energy the source supplied: Gray's patents, Bedini's spike charging, Babcock's flyback drive, Ainslie's back EMF, Lindemann on GrayNever properly testedthe actual recovery fraction or efficiency of Gray's and Bedini's devicesRefuted by calculationrecovery as a source of net energy (Gray strong form, Ainslie, Babcock net-source reading)
A pulse or spike circuit returns more energy than the whole system draws
Never properly testedwhole-system net gain: Bedini, Correa, Gunderson's 2016 reports, Stiffler's ECAT, NRGFromTheVac, Gray's real machine, Mallove's 10x, Kelly's pulse devices, Pappas's own 1991 paper and 1998 '20% excess heat' letter, Naudin's MAHG COP 5-21 and the Cornille-Naudin patent's 'efficiency more than one'; no neutral test, none shown dismissed untestedRefuted by calculationAinslie heater net gain; Gray's 10 hp on 26.8 W; Benitez 1918 design (Kelly); Gray's devices as a closed-ledger gain (Lindemann)Tested, not supportedKelly's Joule Thief lux test; Newman motor (NBS 1986, commissioned by the adverse party, report partly read), both in Kelly-Patrick
The published over-unity tables and test letters hold up on their own numbers
Internally inconsistentCorrea Tables 5 (run 5) and 7; Ainslie's energy column and patent Examples 2-3; Gray's Crosby letter (278:1 beside 'exceeds 99%'); Bedini's charge-battery COP as over-unity evidence; the Cornille-Naudin US patent's multi-cycle formulas (Naudin-JL)Refuted by calculationCorrea Table 7 as printed and Table 8 as an energy balance
Bucking, partnered or aiding coils cancel the load's Lenz drag on the input
Establishedweak form: reduced coupling and reflected load (HiIQ-Youtube); conventional loading effect on drive power (Gunderson acoustic patent)Plausible, untestedweak form: less reflected load and stray field (Sykes-Chris); little real input power at resonance (Gunderson)Refuted by calculationstrong form, no reaction or net gain in a passive circuit (HiIQ-Youtube, Sykes-Chris); magnets as the energy source (Gunderson)Never properly testedstrong form in a nonlinear, resonant or magnet-assisted device (HiIQ-Youtube); Gunderson's 2016 COP 6 and zero-input reports
Pulsed MOSFET heater circuits put more heat into the load than the supply provides
Never properly testedthe reported ratios as measurements: Ainslie 15.5 (10.8 with the gate supply), Stiffler CEC 1.319; no neutral calorimetry or DC blankRefuted by calculationnet gain once battery and gate supply are counted (Ainslie)Internally inconsistentAinslie's published 1.22 MJ energy figure
Pulse and resonant circuits give voltages and currents far above the supply's, which meters can misread as power gain
Establishedspikes and step-up (Pappas, NRGFromTheVac capacitor above battery, Kelly resonance, Smith voltage by Q, Meyer's Electrical Particle Generator step-up by induction); apparent excess as a meter artefact (Tousey)Refuted by calculationreading the voltage gain as power gain (Smith-Don air-core coils; Pappas resistance ratio)Not testable as statednet power gain of Meyer's Electrical Particle Generator: no input or output quantity is given (Meyers-Stan)
The surplus comes from the vacuum, aether, radiant energy or an ambient field
Not testable as statedzero-point, Bloch-wall, aether, 'cold electricity', Energy Lattice and unseen-medium accounts (Bedini, Correa, Stiffler, Lindemann, Mallove, Ainslie, Gray, Sykes); Bearden's 'active vacuum' for the MEG Naudin replicated (Naudin-JL)Refuted by calculationnamed reservoirs at the claimed power: atmospheric supply for Gray's 7.46 kW; positron carriers and atmospheric tap (NRGFromTheVac); atmosphere, radio, vacuum (Kelly)Establishedweak form: an identified and metered inflow can give COP above 1 (Kelly-Patrick)
Flyback energy captured in a capacitor and reused; ordinary recovery that returns only stored energy.
Plausible, untestedthrust
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Rosemary Ainslie
Inventor of the MOSFET heater circuit reported at 16-18 times gain · Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann
South African researcher; patent application 1998-99, Quantum article 2002, 2009 reprint. Reports that Stellenbosch refused a demonstration and companies attended tests; she disclaims a closed system.
John Bedini
Originator of spike-charging motors (N-pole motor, SSG) · Bedini-John
American audio-electronics designer; N-pole energy-recovery motor with Ron Cole (1984); back-EMF recovery patent US 6,545,444 (2003). The BM3 group's 2008 build manual carries his method.
Paulo N. and Alexandra N. Correa
Co-inventors of the pulsed abnormal glow discharge (PAGD) circuit · Correa
Canadian inventors (Labofex); patents US 5,416,391, 5,449,989 (1995) and 5,502,354 (1996). Interested parties as patent holders; all four accounting methods are their own; the 10x figure is Mallove's.
Edwin V. Gray
Inventor of the capacitor-discharge motor and back-EMF capture patents · Gray-EV
Patents 1975-87; per press, sold shares to some 800 investors, raided July 1974 (22 July likely), charged 1975 (conspiracy, grand theft, securities); a promotional feature says he pleaded guilty in 1976 to two minor securities counts.
Graham Gunderson
Inventor of the solid-state Lenz-aiding generator and acoustic patent · Gunderson
Inventor from Spokane, Washington; patents filed 2006 and 2008; assignees Magnetic Power Inc. and Chava have a stake. In 2016 said 'still in the process of validating' and 'not quite sure why it works'.
Mark McKay
Witness to the 2016 Magnetic Implosion Transformer readings · Gunderson
Professional engineer and Gunderson's friend of about ten years, not a commercial party; reported COP 6.16 and a zero-input reading on Energetic Forum thread 13945.
Chris Sykes
Author of the bucking-coil Guidelines and the hyiq.org video · Sykes-Chris
Independent experimenter running hyiq.org and the aboveunity.com forum; Guidelines to Bucking Coils v2.7 (2016). Writes 'Not Free Energy' and 'Energy can not be created or destroyed' beside excess-output claims.
Ronald R. Stiffler
Inventor of ECAT and SEC coil circuits; ran the Ainslie calorimetry copy · Stiffler
Interested party: sold SEC boards, courses and licences through Stiffler Scientific (c.2007-2011). A Ronald Stiffler died 2018-11-12; identity with the inventor is an inference. His 'Dr.' title is not established.
Eugene F. Mallove
Reporter of the Correa 50 W in, 500 W out observation · Malove-Eugene
Editor and publisher of Infinite Energy and cold-fusion advocate; the Correas' editor and fund-raiser, so a party with a stake in their success. Sole observer of the 10x figure.
Donald Cronin
Eyewitness to a failed Gray motor run, about mid-1974 · Gray-EV
TRW staff scientist quoted by AP in 1975: 'It ran for about 10 seconds and then everything blew.' Source of the 'violate all the laws of physics' remark first credited to the Deputy DA.
Lineage
Lindemann (2000) reread Gray's patents as Tesla's radiant energy; a forum post lists NRGFromTheVac's inventor as a Gray/CSET replicator; the blog author (chadj2) names Sweet and Searl as precedents, unsourced.
Bedini's 1984 N-pole motor led to the SSG and the BM3 group's 2008 manual; Bearden co-authored Bedini's 2006 book, Evans credits the motor to spacetime torsion, and Naudin built and posted Bedini machines.
Stiffler's ExHeatExp (c.2009) is a close but not identical copy of Ainslie's heater circuit, running at 1.49 MHz rather than her 143-200 kHz.
Sykes reads Sweet's 1986 VTA as a bucking-coil device; the arbiter notes the documented device has one output coil at 90 degrees, not a bucking pair.
Mallove promoted and edited the Correas' PAGD work; Aspden offered an aether-strain interpretation, and the inventors cite his force law for the ion force (Never properly tested); Frolov cites the Correa 483 percent.
Kelly's compendium relays Bedini, Ainslie, Benitez and Don Smith circuits; Joel Lagace's later document, by an interested author, attributes a capacitor scheme to Smith without source or date and claims 200 to 950 percent.
Key evidence (12)
2002-10Ainslie et al., 'Transient energy enhances energy co-efficients', Quantum Load heat about 17.5 W against 1.13 W battery input over 997 minutes; input from a 1.2 microsecond scope window; deep-read in full· Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann
2002ABB and BP tests and Cape Hope Metrology Laboratory calibration, Ainslie circuit Named by Ainslie (Quantum p.8): Cape Hope calibrated instruments; ABB confined to instantaneous power, BP battery duration; companies only approved use of their names; no result stated anywhere· Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann
1995-09-12Correa, US 5,449,989 Energy Conversion System, Tables 5-8 Four battery-accounting methods, 96-3,485 percent; Table 7 recomputed by the arbiter at a median near 92 percent; patent scan and printout read· Correa
2001-06-14Mallove letter: 50 W DC in, about 500 W shaft out from PAGD One letter on a Correa-run site; shaft-power method not stated· Malove-Eugene
1973-09Crosby Research Institute letter, signed J. A. Maize 10 hp at 1,100 rpm on 26.8 W; 'exceeds 99%'; tested for Pan World Enterprises; read from page images. The full test reports were not found· Gray-EV
1975-07-07AP item, Progress Bulletin (Pomona): Cronin's account of a failed run TRW scientist; Japanese firm with instruments 'packed it all up'; Deputy DA Mitchell Harris on investors; page image· Gray-EV
2018Sriphan et al., J. Electrochem. Energy Convers. Storage 15(4) 041002 Charge-battery COP 1.33-2.13; replication COP column disagrees with its own joule columns; no whole-system figure· Bedini-John
2016McKay posts on Gunderson's Magnetic Implosion Transformer Energetic Forum thread 13945, pages 1 and 5 read: 1.53 W in, 9.43 W out, later 0 W in· Gunderson
1986-06Floyd Sweet VTA lab notes (Roberts, signed by Sweet), as transcribed by Sykes 4 June: 111.32 W out, stated 1 mW in, 'observed by 3 persons', unnamed. 24 May (Goldes and Roberts present, per web summaries): 19.1544 W on 0.023 mW. Transcribed from anonymous scans, pages missing; scans not obtained· Sykes-Chris
c.2009Stiffler, ExHeatExp water calorimetry of an Ainslie-type circuit 1580.593 J heat against 1198.759 J input, CEC 1.319; one run, unstirred 20-25 mL tube, 1.49 MHz oscillation· Stiffler
1986NBSIR 86-3405, National Bureau of Standards test of the Newman motor Tested for the Patent Office, the adverse party, at the court's order; Newman's side disputed the method. 'At all conditions tested, the input power exceeded the output power'; summary read, MHz-spike treatment unread (image-only PDF)· Kelly-Patrick
1921Tousey, Medical Electricity and Rontgen Rays, p.156 coil experiment 40,000 V at 150 mA indicated from about 600 W primary, explained by arc-voltage collapse; deep-read· Tousey-Sinclair
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Drawing the boundary round one battery: Bedini's charge-battery COP ignores the primary; Lindemann's 100:1 may compare output with spark-gap loss, not battery draw, and his '99% lost' is backwards (2 Va / V0, 1-7 percent); Ainslie omitted the gate battery.
Volts times amps on pulsed or reactive waveforms: Ainslie's 1.2 microsecond window, Correa's possibly rms meters, Kelly's 'COP=1.5', a sub-degree phase skew (Gunderson: possible, not shown), and possibly mean V times mean I, overstating COP by 1/duty (Naudin's MAHG, unconfirmed).
Mislabelled columns: Correa's 'drive pack watts' is ballast loss; Ainslie's 'Joules' is instantaneous watts times elapsed time, not an integral.
Battery voltage or a short run as an energy meter: Gunderson's one-hour run used 6.2 percent of the battery; Sriphan's 7.07 Ah out against 5.34 Ah in needs an unknown starting charge.
Counting circulating or returned energy as output: on the court's account Hastings counted Newman's MHz back spikes as output (a double count is the physicist's inference, Kelly-Patrick); Correa's 100-350 J pulses in a 17.5 mF series capacitor.
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: On any one device, power everything from a calibrated DC supply or a coulomb-counted battery, gate driver included; put the load in a calorimeter with a DC blank; integrate v(t)i(t) at adequate bandwidth for hours; then close the loop with the source removed. Every core arbiter names a variant of this test.
Deciding records: Ainslie's raw scope data and the ABB, BP and Cape Hope reports; the Crosby/Maize test report; Labofex report S3-001 and the SEAS evaluation notes; Sriphan's raw data; later pages of overunity.com thread 15395; Gunderson's USPTO file wrappers; Stiffler's 'Measurements for SEC Exciters'; Naudin's MAHG per-run table.
Try it yourself: Run Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann's example.py: it simulates the heater at each stated frequency and duty, and none gives 1.13 W in with 17.5 W of heat. Then run Correa's example.py, which recomputes Table 7 with drive-pack power X times I instead of (X - Y) times I.
Open questions
What produced the four Correa Table 7 runs that still read 104-146 percent on corrected input: rms meters on pulsed currents, charge-versus-discharge accounting, battery effects, or something else?
Why did Ainslie's load temperature rise by about 11 K in the last 37 minutes at steady battery voltage, and what was the circuit's operating state during the run?
Was McKay's zero-input reading on Gunderson's 2016 transformer a phase or bandwidth artefact, returned reactive energy, or neither? No waveforms were published.
What did the Crosby meters measure in 1973, and was the Japanese firm that left after Cronin's failed run the same Pan World party?
No replicator of the Bedini, Stiffler or Sykes circuits has reported calorimetry or a whole-system log; one builder of Sykes's three-coil design reported COP about 0.82, another 'isn't OU'. What would a neutral test show?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter None of the four methods supports gain once drive-pack input is counted at X times I, but no neutral test, closed loop or calorimetry exists. The inventors' accounting is refuted, not the possibility of a real test. Correa, arbiter.md, QE revision, Changed verdicts
Arbiter No stated operating point gives 1.13 W in and 17.5 W of heat. The 55 percent duty Kelly describes predicts about 18 W in and 18 W of heat, matching the measured heat but not the measured input. Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann, arbiter.md, Reconciling the numbers
Arbiter The 'whole-system ratio 0.63' read from Sriphan's Table 2 is withdrawn: those figures are charge-battery means. The paper gives no system-level figure, so whole-system COP stays Never properly tested. Bedini-John, arbiter.md, QE revision 1
Arbiter The 'violate all the laws of physics' remark is withdrawn from the Deputy DA: AP gives it to TRW's Donald Cronin, who had watched a run fail after ten seconds. A prior-based dismissal by a prosecutor is not on record. Gray-EV, arbiter.md, QE revision, item 1
Contrarian With 1 in 10 builds working and loading, loose coupling and winding direction all required, any failure can be attributed to the build: the effect is real when it appears and a build error when it does not. Sykes-Chris, contrarian.md, section 3
AI noteStiffler's copy of Ainslie's heater oscillated at 1.49 MHz, not her 143-200 kHz, yet his CEC 1.319 is the only water-calorimetry attempt the review found for that family: one run, no DC blank, unstirred, RF pickup not excluded.
Theme 2Radiant energy from the environment (antenna-and-ground collectors)
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential16 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:56
A box wired only to an antenna and a ground, lighting lamps before named witnesses, is the purest free-energy claim and the easiest to bound by arithmetic. This card weighs Moray's witnessed demonstrations, Tesla's 1901 collector, Gray's cold electricity and modern builds against what an antenna can actually collect.
Headline verdicts of the 16 member projects: Established1Never properly tested11Refuted by calculation3Historically superseded but instructive1
Theme background
Tesla patented an 'apparatus for the utilization of radiant energy' in 1901: an insulated plate and a condenser charged by particles from the sun and the air. T. Henry Moray of Salt Lake City showed a box wired to antenna and ground lighting lamps from 1925 to 1938, crediting cosmic radiation and a secret one-way 'valve'. Edwin Gray's 1973 capacitor-discharge motor was read by Peter Lindemann (2000) as Tesla's radiant energy, 'cold electricity'. Don Smith (1994-2005) claimed kilowatts from the Earth's ambient field; Kelly, Vassilatos and hobby builders such as Radiant_One carried the ideas on.
Where mainstream physics went
An antenna is a receiver: its power is field strength times effective aperture. A 1 mV/m broadcast field on a 1 MHz dipole gives about 31 microwatts; the fair-weather field (100 V/m, 2 pA/m^2) about 0.2 nanowatt per square metre; cosmic rays (4.8e-5 W/m^2 at most) fall about a billion times short of Moray's 50 kW. Resonance raises voltage, not power. Unexplained: what lit Moray's witnessed, never-metered lamps, and the untested Gray and Smith reports.
Ranking explanation
It ranks among the leading themes because it joins a large witness record (Moray's about 30 named witnesses, many his associates, reaching us through family-edited books; the REA reports and the Army's 1936 report not obtained) with the cleanest calculation against its stated source. Tests were offered and not completed by both sides; Millikan, NASA, the AEC and the Patent Office dismissed without one. Pulsed overunity gathers more projects; gas discharge has better laboratory physics.
Key supporting elements
Morray-TH: about 30 named witnesses (many Moray's associates) report lamps lit from antenna and ground on about 25 occasions, 1925-38, including Jensen's 1963 sworn account of a 1938 Securities Commission inspection; all reach us through family-edited books.
Morray-TH: the sealed 1928 run lasted 157.9 hours at about 110-120 W by lamp ratings (17-19 kWh, about 500 kg of lead-acid); REA engineer Wood (1939, via 1944 Senate testimony) called Moray 'essentially honest', with no measurement.
Tesla and Vassilatos-Gerry: US 685,957 (1901) charges a condenser from the air, Established at tiny power (Tesla arbiter). Vassilatos's arbiter: Tesla's 1892 six-foot impulse report Plausible, untested; Lemstrom's auroral glow Established as reports.
Gray-EV and Linerman-Peter: Crosby's J. A. Maize reported 7,460 W on 26.8 W of battery draw (1973 letter, promoter-side). Gray-EV arbiter: as physics Refuted by calculation (278:1); the letter Internally inconsistent ('exceeds 99%'); real performance Never properly tested.
Smith-Don: 12 V at 300 mA in, 120 V at 80 A out (1996 suitcase), per Smith, measured by an audience-picked engineer; workshop independently listed, tape unreviewed. Kelly-Patrick: resonance as voltage or current amplifier Established.
Key contradictions
Morray-TH: no power was ever metered; every wattage is a sum of lamp ratings, the detector was withheld, and the 1928 ground was a mains-bonded house water pipe. Hidden feed, ground path and priming are not excluded.
Tesla and Gray-EV: the fair-weather field gives a 1 km^2 collector 100 m up about 0.03 W (Tesla arbiter); Gray's 7,460 W would need about 3.7e7 km^2, some 7 per cent of Earth's surface.
Smith-Don and Kelly-Patrick: Smith's core formula 1/2 C V^2 f^2 has the wrong units and impedance at resonance equals R, not zero; Plauson's 100 aerials of 100 m^2 each would collect about 2.6e-4 W (Kelly arbiter).
Gray-EV and Linerman-Peter: Gray's own patents claim only partial back-EMF recovery with no figures; TRW's Donald Cronin watched a mid-1974 test that 'ran for about 10 seconds and then everything blew' (AP, 1975).
Radiant_One_Youtube: the record holds no measured LED output power, the author writes 'No overunity performance is suggested or implied', and he reports that the circuit's RF upsets his own meters.
Timeline (10)
1871Houston earths one induction-coil pole and draws sparks from metal 30 ft away and a room below (pipe-connected, per his 1876 account); historians later read it as pre-Hertz radiation. · Morton-Wall
1900-06Tesla's Century article: 'what is converted is clear gain' from the ambient medium, but no self-acting machine 'for a long time yet'. Arbiter: Refuted by calculation, a good-faith hypothesis. · Tesla
1901Tesla's US 685,957 and 685,958: apparatus and method for utilising radiant energy, an insulated plate and condenser charged by charged particles. · Tesla
1925Moray begins demonstrating his antenna-and-ground box; Strawberry Valley field run follows in 1926, 26 miles from the last power line. · Morray-TH
1928Moray's sealed endurance run, 157.9 hours at about 110-120 W, witnessed by his patent agent Hayes; Harvey Fletcher writes 'I am just as puzzled as ever'. · Morray-TH
1932-12Patent Office action rejects claims of Moray's application Serial No. 550,611; the file's contents are now missing, per his family. · Morray-TH
1939The Rural Electrification Administration pays and equips Moray (Feb 1939 to Feb 1941); engineer Wood reports in August, known from 1944 Senate testimony; no measurement. · Morray-TH
1973Gray's capacitor-discharge motor demonstrated in Los Angeles; the Crosby letter claims 10 hp on 26.8 W; the District Attorney raids his company in July 1974. · Gray-EV
1996Don Smith reports a suitcase unit giving 120 V at 80 A from 12 V at 300 mA at a workshop of 18 July 1996. · Smith-Don
2000Lindemann's The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity reads Gray's devices as releasing Tesla's ether-borne radiant energy. · Linerman-Peter
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
A device wired only to an antenna and a ground delivered usable power (lamps, motors, kilowatts)
Never properly testedMoray's witnessed lamps, never metered (Morray-TH, Kelly-Patrick, van Vlaenederen Koen, and Tesla's arbiter for Gray, Moray and Baumann devices); Smith's 1996 suitcase; Radiant_One strong form
The source is cosmic, solar or other radiation from space captured by the collector
Refuted by calculationkilowatts from any known radiation (cosmic rays, starlight, broadcast RF, neutrinos) for Moray; 60 GW from the auroral electrojet drawn to a ground screen, not radiation captured by an antenna (Vassilatos)Not testable as statedunknown oscillating radiation with no frequency or flux (Moray); waves 'cut out of space' with no design (Larken)
Resonance builds up energy in the collector, not only voltage
Internally inconsistentresonance as a source (Moray); Smith's f-squared energy formula and unitsRefuted by calculationzero impedance at resonance; net energy proportional to f squared (Smith)Establishedweak form: resonance magnifies voltage and current by Q (Smith-Don, Kelly-Patrick)
'Cold electricity' or radiant energy is a distinct, ether-borne form of electricity
Not testable as statedno measurable definition (Gray, Lindemann, Mallove, the NRGFromTheVac thread); neutral ether gas (Vassilatos)Tested, not supportedinstantaneous propagation outside Maxwell: signal timing matches c (Linerman-Peter)Plausible, untestedTesla's own 1892 report of an impulse effect felt at six feet, partly stopped by an insulated plate (Vassilatos-Gerry)
Net work can be drawn from the ambient medium with no gradient (Tesla's self-acting engine)
Refuted by calculationTesla's 1900 partial-gain step ('clear gain'), revised 2026-10-08 from not refuted; a good-faith hypothesis, with his caveats 'no known perfect converter' and no self-acting machine 'for a long time yet'; engine on ambient heat alone (Lindemann)Never properly testedTesla's 1902 and 1931-33 statements of harnessed 'cosmic energy', no device or witness
An earth rod supplies energy to the load (ground electrons)
Never properly testedstrong form: no output power measured (Radiant_One)Plausible, untestedweak form: earth rod as an RF return path on this build (Radiant_One)Refuted by calculationPerreault's claim 5, Moray-style valve chain: lamp-scale power from antenna and earth plus trace radioactivity, by energy budget, with the caveat that the inventor supplies no source numbers (Perreault-Bruce)Plausible, untestedthe same secondary-emission cascade with external power (Perreault-Bruce)
Establishedevents as documented: Moray's REA episode 1939-41 (Morray-TH); Gray's 1974 raid and 1975 charges (Linerman-Peter; Gray-EV calls them press-level documentation)Never properly testeddismissed without testing in Moray's standoff (Morray-TH); suppression as the reason Gray's venture ended (Linerman-Peter)Not testable as statedbroad organised conspiracy (Morray-TH); the DA case as suppression of Gray, motive unsupported (Gray-EV, which calls Never properly tested a mislabel here)
Ambient 'fuelless' energy and radiant energy claims from Tesla's 1900-1933 statements and later advocates.
Never properly tested3 July 1899 stationary-wave observation; loss-free global power Refuted by calculation; coil, motor, lighting, disc turbine Established
Cites Moray's over 50 kW and Swenson atmospheric devices.
Never properly testedfree power
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
T. Henry Moray
Inventor of the Radiant Energy device; demonstrated it 1925-38 · Morray-TH
Salt Lake City, 1892-1974. Claimed an Uppsala doctorate (no record found under 'Moray'). Author of Beyond the Light-Rays and The Sea of Energy; sought patents, investors and funding; later sold the Cosray therapy device.
Nikola Tesla
Patented the 1901 radiant-energy collector; argued for energy from the ambient medium · Tesla
1856-1943; polyphase motor, Tesla coil, Colorado Springs and Wardenclyffe. Raising money in 1904 and financially dependent in 1931-33, when he said he had harnessed 'cosmic energy'.
Edwin V. Gray
Inventor of the capacitor-discharge motor and conversion tube called 'cold electricity' · Gray-EV
Born 1925 (Lindemann's book also gives 1923); patents 1975, 1986, 1987. EVGray Enterprises sold shares to about 800 investors (an interested party); raided 1974, charged 1975. Died 20 April 1990 per VA-derived records; advocates give 1989 and 1993.
Peter A. Lindemann
Author who reads Gray's cold electricity as Tesla's radiant energy · Linerman-Peter
Born 1951; Borderland Sciences vice president 1987-99; sells the book and co-founded Clear Tech (an interested party). Says a motor built to Gray's principles 'doesn't perform', giving no build details.
Donald Lee Smith
Claimed kilowatts from the Earth's ambient field by resonant coils · Smith-Don
Spring, Texas; 'Energy Consultant' and CEO of TransWorld Energy (commercial stake). Lectured 1994-2005; filed Mexican application NL02000035 A in 2002, later discontinued. Education not in the review files.
Gerry Vassilatos
Author of the Tesla 'Radiant Energy' and HAARP-electrojet thesis Lindemann builds on · Vassilatos-Gerry
Described by his publisher as a New York City high school science teacher; wrote Secrets of Cold War Technology (Borderland Sciences, 1996); his books are sold by that publisher.
Harvey Fletcher
Witness to Moray's 1928 demonstration; proposed the endurance test · Morray-TH
Bell Telephone Laboratories physicist, later dean at BYU. Wrote 'I am just as puzzled as ever' (1928); in 1957 said Moray agreed to a New York test and did not come, which Moray denied.
Orin Tugman
Critic of Moray · Morray-TH
Head of physics, University of Utah; stake: university standing, Moray stock sold in his state. His May 1940 letter (quoted in the 1944 Senate staff report) says Moray never showed him a demonstration in 12 years; 'a very clever hoax'.
Franklin P. Wood
REA engineer who evaluated Moray in 1939 · Morray-TH
REA staff (the REA paid Moray; a stake). Halleck, an REA opponent, quoted the report in 1944 to ridicule it: 'unmitigated ass, crackpot ... essentially honest ... stumbled on to something that he himself cannot understand'. Probable Technocrat, not proven.
Donald Cronin
Eyewitness to a failed Gray motor test, about mid-1974 · Gray-EV
TRW Systems staff scientist (AP, 1975): 'It ran for about 10 seconds and then everything blew'; said a Japanese team with instruments then left. Otherwise not in the review files.
Lineage
Moray's books reproduce Le Bon's Evolution of Matter (1905) almost verbatim in their physics pages; his cascade of resonant stages linked by a one-way valve resembles Wien's quenched spark gap (Morray-TH).
Lindemann builds on Vassilatos's chapter on Tesla's 1889-92 impulse work to read Gray's cold electricity as Tesla's radiant energy (Linerman-Peter, Vassilatos-Gerry).
Lindemann's 1995 Self-Acting Engine article builds on Tesla's 1900 sink paragraph and names working models with no power figures (Tesla).
Perreault's leaflet models a multi-stage radioactive valve chain fed from antenna and earth on Moray's valve, which he says was germanium-based (Perreault-Bruce).
Radiant_One frames his earth-rod circuit as Moray-style ground-energy extraction; the oscillator descends from Stiffler's SEC-15 and the Slayer exciter (Radiant_One_Youtube).
Kelly's guide compiles Moray, Plauson, Smith and Barbosa-Leal and was the main public channel for Smith's documents (Kelly-Patrick, Smith-Don).
Key evidence (12)
1892-12-21Tesla, 'On the dissipation of the electrical energy of the Hertz resonator', The Electrical Engineer Impact of the air felt at six feet or more, not entirely stopped by an insulated metal plate; the only primary text found behind Vassilatos's Radiant Energy· Vassilatos-Gerry
1900-06'The Problem of Increasing Human Energy', Century Magazine Tesla's sink argument for energy from the ambient medium, with his caveats· Tesla
1901US 685,957 and 685,958, apparatus and method for utilising radiant energy Tesla; insulated plate, condenser and ground; no output figures· Tesla
1928Witness statements on the sealed 157.9-hour run Hayes, Fletcher and others, printed in Moray's books; lamp ratings, no meter· Morray-TH
1936-12-08Shinkle's Army Ordnance report on a Moray demonstration Known from War Department index sheets; NARA RG 407· Morray-TH
1939-08Franklin P. Wood's report to the REA Quoted in part; full report and REA files (RG 221, Carmody Papers) not obtained· Morray-TH
2000FBI file 917273 on Moray (74 pages) Released 2000; a 2013 request drew 'No Records'· Morray-TH
1973-09Crosby Research Institute letter (J. A. Maize) 10 hp on 26.8 W, 'efficiency exceeding 99%'; promoter-side, internally inconsistent; the test reports themselves not found· Gray-EV
1975US 3,890,548, Gray's pulsed capacitor discharge electric engine 18 capacitors at 3,500 V; no power, efficiency or capacitance figure; a 'static floating flux field' harness with no stated function· Gray-EV
1975-07-07AP report on the Gray case (Progress Bulletin, Pomona) Cronin's failed-test account; Deputy DA Harris on reluctant investors· Gray-EV
1996-07-18Tape of Smith's suitcase demonstration Load, meters and whether the battery was disconnected are unknown; not reviewed· Smith-Don
c.2015Ground Energy Extraction (GndNrgEx) Circuit 1.1 schematic and videos radiant_one channel, 2015-18; 30 mA earthed and unearthed; videos 4, 6, 7 and 8 missing· Radiant_One_Youtube
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Lamps are not power meters: Moray's and Kelly's wattages are sums of nameplate ratings, and one Moray witness said the bulbs 'burned cold except ... a hot spot about the size of a dime' (Morray-TH, Kelly-Patrick).
Resonance multiplies voltage and circulating reactive power, not delivered energy; Smith's Q-magnified volts and Moray's 'resonance sustains energy' both treat it as a source (Smith-Don, Morray-TH).
Drawing the ledger so an input is left outside: Lindemann's 100:1 is output over arc loss, not output over input (Linerman-Peter).
Volts times amps misreads pulsed and RF loads, and RF upsets meters: Kelly's own 'COP=1.5' and Radiant_One's readings carry unquantified error (Kelly-Patrick, Radiant_One_Youtube).
Unexcluded ground paths: Moray's 1928 ground was a mains-bonded water pipe; Radiant_One's 2015 supply may have been mains-earthed (Morray-TH, Radiant_One_Youtube).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Meter one collector in a mains-isolated site with a driven-rod ground: power meter, spectrum analyser and calorimetry on the load for 24 hours, with antenna-less, dummy-detector and floating-plate-of-equal-capacitance blanks (Morray-TH, Radiant_One_Youtube).
Deciding records: Moray's FBI file 917273, Shinkle's 1936 report (NARA RG 407), Wood's full 1939 REA report, the 550,611 file wrapper; the Crosby/Maize test reports and the 1975 court file (Gray); Smith's 1996 tape.
Try it yourself: Run Morray-TH's example.py: it compares Moray's own figures with cosmic rays and sunlight, shows resonance raises voltage not power, and sizes the batteries. By hand: S = E^2/377 at 1 mV/m on a 12,000 m^2 aperture gives about 31 microwatts.
Open questions
What fed Moray's lamps in 1928 and 1938? A hidden feed, the mains-bonded ground path and priming were never excluded, and the box was never metered.
What was Moray's valve? Gas gaps firing at a set voltage pass energy stage to stage 'much like a bucket brigade' (pp.55-56), not necessarily rectifying (p.139; Kelly p.610: 'not rectifiers'); no valve was ever examined (Morray-TH Q16, Kelly-Patrick).
Does an earth rod outperform a floating plate of equal capacitance, as Radiant_One says a real ground matters? The control has never been run.
What did Crosby's Maize meter in 1972-73, and what did the instrumented Japanese team measure before it left?
What does Smith's 1996 workshop tape show: the load, the meters, the engineer, and whether the battery was disconnected?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter About 30 named people on about 25 dated occasions say they saw lamps lit with no visible source. That is strong evidence the effects occurred as seen. What it cannot settle, because no one metered the leads, is where the energy came from. Morray-TH, arbiter.md, Claim 1
Physicist The 1938 capacitor test is the most informative single observation: 100 W through a lead carrying under 0.1 A needs over 1 kV. It matches Moray's 'high voltage, low current' description, and equally a hidden high-voltage source. Morray-TH, physicist.md, Physics of the witness record
Arbiter The Contrarian's 'Plausible, untested' for the US 685,957 collector and the Mathematician's 'Refuted by calculation in magnitude' are the same finding: it works at watt-scale-per-km^2 power and does not work at useful power. Tesla, arbiter.md, Claim 4
Arbiter The calculation refutes the ambient-field source named in Smith's documents; it cannot refute 'this suitcase ran at 9.6 kW from some other hidden source', which is a measurement question the tape and a bench test would decide. Smith-Don, arbiter.md, Claim 3
Arbiter The Contrarian correctly said the experiment as run cannot distinguish 'ground supplied some LED power' from 'the supply supplied all of it'. That point is the most important epistemic one: lack of a surplus is not proof that no ground contribution exists, only that none is shown. Radiant_One_Youtube, arbiter.md, Where the reviewers' arguments were stronger
AI noteMoray's valve is not simply a rectifier: Sea of Energy p.139 says it passes energy 'in only one direction at a time ... without necessarily changing from H.F. or A.C. to D.C.' (Morray-TH follow-up Q16).
Theme 3Gas-discharge and cold-cathode anomalies
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential21 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 11:05
Sparks and glowing tubes gave physics the electron, the plasma and the radio oscillator, and they still carry claims of energy from nowhere. This card puts the measured discharge physics of Crookes, Langmuir, Trichel and others beside the Correa, Moray and Pappas energy claims.
Headline verdicts of the 21 member projects: Established7Plausible, untested1Never properly tested9Tested, not supported1Refuted by calculation3
Theme background
Feddersen photographed oscillating condenser sparks in a rotating mirror (1857-62). Crookes showed cathode-ray shadows and heating in high-vacuum tubes (1879), and Schuster and Hemsalech timed metal vapour crossing a spark gap on moving film (1899). Steinmetz explained arc oscillators (1914-23), and Tonks and Langmuir found plasma oscillations in mercury arcs (1929). Trichel recorded corona pulses (1938). Farnsworth tried to make multipactor electron multiplication into an amplifier (1934-39). Outside institutions, Moray built a cold-cathode 'valve' into his antenna box (1925-38). The Correas patented pulsed abnormal glow discharge (PAGD) tubes (1995-96), and Pappas patented a spark-gap coil (1996).
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics absorbed the discharge itself: Paschen breakdown, avalanches, space-charge pulsing, plasma oscillations, negative-resistance arc oscillators and electrons as the cathode-ray carriers. No neutral lab tested the energy-gain claims; critics argued from energy conservation. Still unexplained in these files: the Correas' sealed high-vacuum tubes and their plate-area effect, Rich's unlike-metal polarity asymmetry, Tonks and Langmuir's two-state arc and Langmuir's paradox, and simulated Trichel pulses about ten times wider than measured ones.
Ranking explanation
It ranks with Pulsed Over-unity and Radiant Energy Collectors because it meets all four criteria. No neutral lab has tested the Correa, Moray or Pappas net-energy claims (A). Langmuir's paradox, the sealed-tube area effect and Rich's polarity asymmetry are still open (B). A reader can build a relaxation oscillator or recompute the Correa tables (C). It gathers eleven core projects, over half mainstream, so established physics and anomaly claims sit side by side (D).
Key supporting elements
Correa: a DC-fed, ballasted cold-cathode tube does self-pulse (Established), and the data vary systematically with pressure, plate material and ballast. A tube sealed at 2e-6 Torr fired at 287 V, outside Paschen's law; no neutral test of that exists.
Langmuir-Irving: Tonks and Langmuir's plasma-electron frequency (8980 sqrt(n) Hz) and ion sound waves are Established. Their idea that the oscillations cause Langmuir's paradox is Never properly tested, with partial support from Merrill and Webb (1939, abstract).
Fedderson-Daedalus: in Rich's 1917 films, unlike-metal gaps fire about 2 to 11 times more trains on one polarity, while a Cu-Cu control is symmetric (z = 3.4-10). Nobody has repeated it or dismissed it.
Morray-TH: about 30 named witnesses, REA engineers among them, saw an antenna-and-ground box light lamps rated 0.1 to about 8 kW (1925-38). Moray withheld the detector stone in every recorded examination except possibly 1938.
Willams-Crookes and Thompson-JJ: Crookes's shadows, magnetic deflection, heating and negative charge are Established. Thomson's 1897 e/m showed the carriers were electrons, so this discharge anomaly was settled by experiment.
Key contradictions
Correa: on true drive-pack power (X x I), Table 7's 218-563% becomes 57-146%, median about 92%. Table 8's 3,485% does not reproduce. The 0.5 MeV ions are Refuted by calculation: 560 V supplies about 0.1 J, not 86.4 J.
Pappas-PT: the 'infinite then negative gain' argument is Internally inconsistent, because a resistance ratio is not a power gain. Read as the gas's plasma frequency, his bursts are off by about eight orders of magnitude in electron density.
Morray-TH: a detector alone cannot supply net power (Refuted by calculation). Kilowatts from radioisotope conversion would need at least 58,000 Ci, and no witness reported that much radiation. Perreault reports no apparent radioactive material in surviving tubes (method not stated).
Malove-Eugene: the 50 W in, 500 W out PAGD figure comes from one observer, with no raw data. Pulse voltage times RMS current can read ten times a low-duty true average. A 2002 independent test never happened.
Steinmentz-Charles: his 1914 claim that the arc's lag loop supplies the oscillation is Historically superseded; by 1917 he credited negative resistance fed from the supply. Discharge oscillators convert supplied power, and his budgets close.
Timeline (10)
1859Feddersen photographs oscillating condenser sparks in a rotating mirror (his papers run 1857-1862; one web source dates the demonstration 1859). · Fedderson-Daedalus
1879-08Crookes's Sheffield lecture 'On Radiant Matter': shadows, magnetic deflection, heating and phosphorescence from cathode streams at about a millionth of an atmosphere. · Willams-Crookes
1897Thomson measures e/m of cathode-ray corpuscles: the carriers are electrons, not charged gas molecules. · Thompson-JJ
1899Schuster and Hemsalech's moving-film spectra: air lines first, then metal lines slanting across the gap at 400-1500 m/s. · SchusterAndHemsalech
1914Steinmetz calls the arc's 'reversed hysteresis loop' the energy source of sustained oscillation; by 1917 he attributes it to negative resistance. · Steinmentz-Charles
1917D. L. Rich (Phys. Rev. 10) finds unlike-metal spark gaps start more readily on one polarity, ordering Fe, Bi, Zn, Cu. · Fedderson-Daedalus
1925Moray begins witnessed demonstrations of his antenna-and-ground box with its secret cold-cathode valve (to 1938). · Morray-TH
1929-02Tonks and Langmuir, 'Oscillations in Ionized Gases' (Phys. Rev. 33): plasma-electron and ion oscillations, and radio noise from mercury arcs. · Langmuir-Irving
1938Trichel reports regular negative-corona current pulses (Phys. Rev. 54); Farnsworth files his multipactor amplifier patent (granted 1939). · Trichel
1995Correa PAGD patents granted (1995-96); Mallove later reports about 50 W in and 500 W shaft out from his March 2001 visit (the August 2000 visit was preliminary). · Correa
Core propositions and verdicts (7)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Sparks, arcs and cold-cathode tubes oscillate or self-pulse, drawing their energy from the supply
EstablishedCorrea relaxation oscillation; Feddersen's T = 2 pi sqrt(LC); Steinmetz's arc fed by its source; Trichel pulses in air; Pappas's spikes 10-100x the averageHistorically superseded but instructiveSteinmetz's 1914 lag loop as the energy source
The mechanisms of the glow: electrons carry the cathode stream, plasmas oscillate, space charge quenches the avalanche
EstablishedCrookes's observations; Thomson's electron; Tonks-Langmuir plasma frequency; Trichel weak form (ion space charge quenches)Historically superseded but instructiveCrookes's carriers as gas molecules and a distinct 'fourth state'; zero group velocity as a general statementPlausible, untestedTrichel strong form: negative-ion clearing alone sets the period
Discharges show anomalies the standard laws do not reach
Never properly testedCorrea sealed 1e-6 Torr tubes and plate-area effect; Rich's polarity asymmetry; Langmuir's paradox and two-state arc; spark vapour as moving matter rather than a luminosity frontNot testable as statedCorrea's 'new emission mechanism' beyond Fowler-Nordheim
Pulsed discharge circuits return more energy than they draw
Never properly testedCorrea net gain in general; Mallove's 10x PAGD figure; Pappas's net-energy experiment (1991 paper not obtained)Refuted by calculationCorrea Table 7 as printed and Table 8 as an energy balance; Pappas's resistance-ratio 'gain'Internally inconsistentCorrea Table 5 run 5 (6,750%); Pappas's 'infinite then negative gain' argument
Discharge particles carry anomalous energy or force
Refuted by calculationCorrea's 0.5 MeV ions (claimed surplus divided by the ion count)Internally inconsistentCorrea's '100x vacuum arcs' (force divided by DC, not pulse, current)Never properly testedCorrea's 245 dyn reaction force; Aspden's law as its explanationTested, not supportedCrookes's impact-momentum mechanism for the paddle wheel
Cold-cathode multipliers and valves work as devices (Farnsworth multipactor, Moray valve)
Establishedmultipactor multiplication mechanism; radioisotope direct conversion at microwatts (Moseley 1913)Never properly testedFarnsworth's tube as an amplifier; Moray's valve 'preceded the transistor' (Morray-TH arbiter: Never properly tested / Not testable as stated)Not testable as statedMoray's valve 'preceded the transistor', as stated without a surviving device or circuit (Morray-TH)Plausible, untestedMoray's detector stone, rectifier-type or radium-bearing (arbiter's wording)Refuted by calculationMoray's detector alone as a net power source; radioisotope conversion at kilowatts
The surplus comes from the aether, the vacuum or 'massfree' radiation
Not testable as statedCorrea zero-point or aether source; Mallove's 'massfree' electricity; van Vlaenederen's Phi photoelectric effectNever properly testedTesla-coil far effects (experimental part); Correa 'power from space' (Aspden); Correa and Chernetsky devices
Standard corona onset, loss law, air breakdown at small gaps and impulse time lag; the conventional baseline for discharge anomalies.
Establishedvisual corona law
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Paulo N. and Alexandra N. Correa
Inventors of the pulsed abnormal glow discharge (PAGD) tube and its circuits · Correa
Labofex laboratory, Concord, Ontario, from about 1987. US patents 5,416,391, 5,449,989 and 5,502,354. Paulo is a former graduate student of Arthur Axelrad (Toronto). They publish in their own Journal of Aetherometric Research.
Eugene F. Mallove
Promoter and sole observer of the 50 W in, 500 W out PAGD figure · Malove-Eugene
Leading cold-fusion advocate, author of Fire from Ice (1991). Visited the Correa lab in August 2000 and March 2001. Wrote 'Tesla and the Aether' (2003). Died in 2004.
Mike Carrell
Witness to a December 1999 open-box PAGD demonstration; wrote the Infinite Energy overview · Correa
Retired RCA engineer. His 2007 reprint relays Correa-supplied oscillograms and is not a test. He wrote that the Beckman rms meters were 'probably not giving accurate readings because of the low duty cycle'.
William Crookes
Demonstrated cathode-ray effects as 'radiant matter', a fourth state of matter · Willams-Crookes
Gave the 1879 Sheffield lecture; Stokes refereed his Phil. Trans. work favourably. His notebooks (Science Museum MS/0410) are unavailable because they register slight radiation. An obituary quotes him saying radiant matter 'now passes as electrons'.
Lewi Tonks and Irving Langmuir
Theory and measurement of plasma oscillations in mercury arcs · Langmuir-Irving
General Electric Research Laboratory. Phys. Rev. 33, 195-210 (1929). The authors called their own correlation runs 'inadequate'. Langmuir's notebooks at the Library of Congress are unexamined.
Charles P. Steinmetz
Explained the arc oscillator and line surges · Steinmentz-Charles
GE chief consulting engineer and AIEE fellow, an insider. He published on arcs and cumulative oscillation from 1898 until his death in 1923, and corrected his own 1914 lag-loop account by 1917.
Arthur Schuster and Gustave Hemsalech
Timed metal vapour in the spark on a spinning film · SchusterAndHemsalech
Schuster F.R.S., Manchester. Their 1899 paper was refereed by Crookes ('an important step'). In 1901 Hemsalech found the self-induction effect weakens some metals' lines and strengthens others'.
T. Henry Moray
Inventor of the Radiant Energy box and its cold-cathode valve · Morray-TH
Salt Lake City, 1892-1974. Demonstrated the box 1925-38 and withheld the detector in every recorded examination except possibly 1938. The physics pages of his books largely reproduce Le Bon (1905).
Panagiotis T. Pappas
Inventor of the spark-gap PAP-IMI coil and its energy-creation claims · Pappas-PT
Greek physicist who published on the Ampere force (Nuovo Cimento B 1983; Phys. Lett. A 1985). His 1991 IECEC paper 'Energy Creation in Electrical Sparks' was not obtained. One source reports his death in 2026.
Gervais W. Trichel
Discovered the regular negative-corona pulses named after him · Trichel
1898-1990. Army officer, Berkeley PhD 1938, then Ordnance rockets and Chrysler (1947-63). His corona papers stop after 1939; his arbiter finds the career change best supported of four explanations (also wartime secrecy, suppression, commercial secrecy), not proven.
Lineage
Thomson (1897) reread Crookes's radiant matter (1879) as electrons from the cathode; an obituary quotes Crookes saying radiant matter 'now passes as electrons'.
Schuster and Hemsalech (1899) argued against Feddersen's 1862 view of the spark's oscillations, holding that metal vapour, not air, carries the later swings.
Tonks and Langmuir's ion 'electric sound waves' (1929) led to Bohm-Gross (1949) and ion-acoustic work; Baalrud (2009) offers ion-acoustic instability for Langmuir's paradox.
The Correas explain PAGD with Aspden's mass-ratio force law (Aspden-Hearld); Mallove published and promoted them; van Vlaenederen attributes their anomaly to a Phi photoelectric effect.
Moray's valve as a threshold gas gap passing energy stage to stage resembles Wien's quenched gap (follow-up Q16); multipaction fits its cold cathode but gives no net energy (Q17), linking Farnsworth-PT.
Perreault's corona-wire valve claims Moray lineage, and Dollard endorses Farnsworth's multipactor as free energy; their arbiters find no measurements behind either claim.
Key evidence (12)
1879-08-22Crookes, On Radiant Matter (Sheffield lecture) Read in full with page images; numbers behind the demonstrations are in unavailable notebooks· Willams-Crookes
1899Schuster and Hemsalech, The Constitution of the Electric Spark (abstract) Read with page images; the full 1900 paper (Phil. Trans. A 193, 189-213) and its plates unread· SchusterAndHemsalech
1917D. L. Rich, Oscillatory Spark Discharges between Unlike Metals, Phys. Rev. 10, 140-155 University of Michigan dissertation; tables checked against page images; gap length not recorded; no replication found· Fedderson-Daedalus
1929-02Tonks and Langmuir, Oscillations in Ionized Gases, Phys. Rev. 33, 195-210 17-page scan read with page images; the June 1929 Note (Phys. Rev. 33, 990) paywalled and unread· Langmuir-Irving
1934-10Halloran, RADIO magazine on the Farnsworth multipactor Borderland Sciences reproduction: '25 watts out from 25 watts in', 100 W before cathodes failed; geometry unconfirmed· Farnsworth-PT
1938Trichel, negative corona, Phys. Rev. 54, 1078 Known through Sattari, Castle and Adamiak's account, an abstract and Loeb 1939; not in the folder· Trichel
1939Merrill and Webb: oscillation regions coincide with scattering regions Abstract only; the one partial test of the oscillation explanation of Langmuir's paradox· Langmuir-Irving
1991Pappas, Energy Creation in Electrical Sparks, IECEC vol. 4, pp.416-423 The decisive energy-balance paper; not obtained; a search for its title returned a legal-removal notice· Pappas-PT
1995Correa PAGD patents (US 5,416,391; 5,449,989; 5,502,354) 44-page web printout plus OCR of two scans; Tables 5-8 and 12-16 recomputed in deep reads; motor figures absent· Correa
2001Perreault, Nuenergy: inspection of tubes said to be Moray's p.12: 'there does not appear to be any radioactive material in them'; method unstated; tubes still exist by his account· Morray-TH
2007Carrell, The Correa Invention (CPAGD.pdf reprint) Reprint of Infinite Energy articles relaying Correa oscillograms (out/in ratio 101); closed-loop test data 'not publicly available'· Correa
2010Sattari, Castle and Adamiak, Numerical Simulation of Trichel Pulses (ESA 2010, K4) Read in full; simulated periods about half the measured, pulse width about ten times literature values· Trichel
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Counting the wrong input: the Correas' 'drive pack watts' is the ballast loss, (X - Y) x I, not the pack's output X x I (Correa).
Reading pulsed power with RMS meters: pulse voltage times RMS current can read ten times the true average at low duty cycle (Malove-Eugene; Correa's Beckman meters, mode unstated).
Using batteries as meters: the Correas let batteries rest 15 minutes where makers advise 24 hours, and surface charge inflates apparent gain (Correa).
Applying a law outside its regime: Paschen's law at 1e-6 Torr, Fowler-Nordheim with the average rather than the local field (Correa), a resistance ratio read as a power gain (Pappas-PT).
Circular numbers: the 0.5 MeV ions are the claimed surplus divided by the ion count (Correa); the 2700 K vapour temperature follows from the assumed sound-speed premise (SchusterAndHemsalech).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: A neutral lab runs a PAGD tube, or any discharge circuit claiming gain, from a calibrated DC supply into a resistive or calorimetric load. It measures wide-bandwidth true mean power at both ports for hours, then closes the loop. The data are published raw. This one run decides the Correa, Mallove and Pappas energy claims together.
Deciding records: The Correas' raw records and Labofex report S3-001; the SEAS/Loder evaluation notes; Pappas's 1991 IECEC paper; gamma spectroscopy of Moray's surviving tubes and FBI file 917273; Langmuir's Library of Congress notebooks; Crookes's notebooks MS/0410; Lama and Gallo (1974); the full Schuster-Hemsalech 1900 paper.
Try it yourself: Run Correa's example.py: share the claimed 86.4 J among 1.3e15 ions, then compare with the most 560 V can give them (about 0.1 J). Steinmentz-Charles's example.py shows an arc oscillator's energy arriving from the supply through negative resistance.
Open questions
Do the Correas' sealed 1e-6 Torr tubes, and breakdown voltage falling with plate area, survive residual-gas analysis inside the tube and edge-field controls?
Does Rich's unlike-metal polarity asymmetry replicate, and does it vanish in inert gas (surface films) or persist (cathode emission)?
Do Tonks-Langmuir oscillations reach the 20 V or more that Dittmer says is needed to explain Langmuir's paradox? The authors' own detector saw millivolts, with unknown coupling.
What did Pappas's missing 1991 IECEC paper measure, and what was removed from search results under its title?
Is the vapour Schuster and Hemsalech timed moving matter or a moving front of light? A gated Doppler measurement on a six-jar spark would decide.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Correa net gain stays Never properly tested, not Tested, not supported: the authors' own data were recomputed, which is not an independent test. The inventors' accounting is refuted, not the possibility of a real test. Correa, arbiter.md, QE revision, Changed verdicts
Arbiter The physicist is right that conventional artefacts are unexcluded; the contrarian is right that this is not a refutation, since no data beyond two numbers exist. A claim of this form is settled by measurement, not argument. Malove-Eugene, arbiter.md, Final verdicts, Claim 1
Arbiter A correct, historically important statement of plasma physics; its experiments are honest but weak, and the specific explanation of Langmuir's paradox remains open. The authors themselves recorded the small amplitudes that cut against their explanation. Langmuir-Irving, arbiter.md, Verdict table and QE revision, Revised headline
Arbiter A conventional, honest vacuum-tube patent: no over-unity claim and no conflict with mainstream physics. The weakness is evidential, not theoretical: no data in the document and no neutral test on record. Farnsworth-PT, arbiter.md, Overall
Arbiter The lecture's demonstrations nearly all hold up today. What failed was the explanation of the carriers as residual gas molecules, and the decisive evidence against it is experimental (Thomson 1897, e/m), supported by calculation. Willams-Crookes, arbiter.md, Overall judgement
AI noteMoray called his valve one-way, passing energy 'without necessarily changing from H.F. or A.C. to D.C.' (Sea of Energy p.139), between resonant tank stages. The arbiter's 'rectifier-type' wording awaits correction at the next update.
Theme 4Suppression and gatekeeping: the documented record
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionD - Influential26 projectsCard updated 2026-10-10 14:16
Many inventors in this collection say their work was blocked, seized or buried, and some of those blocks are on record. This card sets the documented events beside the claimed motives and names the files, many still unread, that would tell them apart.
Headline verdicts of the 26 member projects: Established3Never properly tested11Tested, not supported3Refuted by calculation7Internally inconsistent1Contested1
Theme background
The pattern runs from 1887, when Post Office engineer William Preece blocked a paper by Oliver Heaviside and his brother, to the present. Moray's patent rejections, his smashed device, and the FBI and REA files; the 1943 sealing of Tesla's papers; the 1974 Los Angeles raid on Gray's motor company; Wallace's refused papers and NSF proposal; the USPTO's withdrawal of Mills's allowed patent; and Eskridge's account of surveillance. The inventors, their families and promoters (Vassilatos, Kelly, Lindemann) carried the suppression reading; the records come from agencies, courts, archives and newspapers.
Where mainstream physics went
Science settles such disputes by peer review, patent examination requiring proof the device works, and replication. Historians accept the Heaviside block as documented, and the reviews find ordinary explanations for most other cases: securities enforcement, missing money, routine destruction of abandoned patent files, editors' judgement. Left unexplained: why specific files went dark (Moray's 74-page FBI file and lost REA reports, Tesla photostats Cheney says Wright Field never returned, the USPTO's 'outside inquiry'), and why no neutral test was ever run.
Ranking explanation
Ranks among the top themes on criteria A, B and D. It is one of the broadest themes (seven core, nineteen related members), and its open questions are unusually decidable, by documents rather than apparatus. It sits below the pulsed, radiant-energy and gas-discharge themes, which have anomalous results to weigh, and above Scalar Waves, whose government strand (the 1987 CIA memo) shows interest, not suppression.
Key supporting elements
Heaviside: Preece, Arthur Heaviside's superior, blocked the brothers' April 1887 paper; an IET notebook notes parts 'blocked by Preece'; Preece's draft calls the work 'dreadful twaddle'. Loading coils were confirmed in 1899 and AT&T feared Heaviside's prior publication.
Morray-TH: 1944 Senate testimony says Frazer, described there as a WPA investigator, spent two years 'threatening' Moray; the FBI interviewed Moray in 1951; 72 of 74 FBI pages were released in 2000, later 'No Records'.
Tesla: Cheney's book pages in the FBI file quote OAP letters: Wright Field asked for photostats of the Trump-annotated exhibits in 1945 ('never returned', per Cheney). A 1981 Defense memo says the papers might hold principles 'of considerable value'.
Mills-Randal: a USPTO examiner allowed a hydrino patent after seeing results and samples; it was withdrawn in 2000 after an 'outside inquiry', and nobody involved in the withdrawal had reviewed the application before the allowance notice.
Wallace-Byran: the PRL editor admitted a 'mistake' in rerouting his 1969 paper; the Spectroscopy Letters editor cited 'very negative reader reaction' and anonymous calls; McVittie complained of Shapiro's secrecy about radar methods (a 1970 letter paraphrased by Wallace).
Key contradictions
Gray-EV: the 12 counts were conspiracy, grand theft and securities violations; two DA investigators were Gray investors; the DA cited trouble finding complainants; a promotional feature says Gray pleaded guilty to two minor counts. Nothing links the DA to automakers.
Morray-TH: tests were offered and not completed by both sides. Moray withheld the detector in every examination and declined Eyring's wattage test; critics never insisted on a meter. The arbiter calls this a standoff, not a proven suppression.
Eskridge-Amy: Tajmar, whom she accused (her assertion, no source) of being funded to publish nothing, offered to test her samples and she did not send them; his group publishes detailed nulls. None of the records she named has been examined.
Wallace-Byran: Spectroscopy Letters printed four Wallace papers and then a rebuttal; he also published in Found. Phys., Rev. Sci. Instrum. and J. Chem. Phys. The NSF letter was a funding refusal citing 'fatal conceptual difficulties', not a test.
Tesla: the file contradicts 'the FBI seized the papers' (the Alien Property Custodian sealed them), though 'no FBI involvement' overstates it. Wardenclyffe ran out of money; The Sun (1917) says the government dynamited it 'as a precaution'; later accounts, scrap.
Timeline (10)
1870-03Bedford test, agreed in advance with sketches signed by both referees, shows curvature (refraction unmeasured); Hampden calls the ruling 'monstrous', then threatens and libels Wallace (jailed 1875). · Flat-Earth
1887-04Preece blocks the Heaviside brothers' telephony paper (before submission or by rejection; sources differ). The Electrician series stops and editor Biggs is removed in October; cause never established. · Heaviside
1895-03Tesla's South Fifth Avenue laboratory burns. Vassilatos says dynamite sabotage; accounts found say the fire began on the floors below (ordinary fire or arson); no account mentions dynamite. · Vassilatos-Gerry
1899-09Campbell's loading-coil test on a 46-mile cable confirms the inductance Preece had opposed; Pupin is paid for the patent, Heaviside nothing. · Heaviside
1932-12Patent Office action finds Moray's tube inoperable; another demands proof of 'a natural source of electric wave energy'. · Morray-TH
1939Moray's device is smashed during REA tests: the family names Frazer, Frazer says Moray did it. A 1940 shooting follows (family account). · Morray-TH
1943-01The Alien Property Custodian seals Tesla's papers on 9 January; John Trump examines them and judges them speculative, with no workable new principles. · Tesla
1969PRL reroutes Wallace's radar paper to a second referee, then the editor admits a 'mistake'; Shapiro says the data do not exist in the form asked. · Wallace-Byran
1974-07Los Angeles DA investigators seize Gray's prototype, plans and books; securities and theft charges follow in May 1975. · Gray-EV
2000-02The USPTO withdraws Mills's allowed hydride patent after an 'outside inquiry'; the Federal Circuit later upholds the Director's authority, not the physics. · Mills-Randal
Core propositions and verdicts (7)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
The documented acts of resistance happened as recorded (blocked papers, patent rejections, agency refusals, raids, charges)
Establishedas documented history: Preece's 1887 block; Moray's patent rejections and NASA, REA and AEC responses; Gray's 1974 raid and 12 counts filed in 1975
EstablishedHeaviside's loading condition: blocked 1887, tested 1899 onward; cause of the 1887 Electrician cancellation never established (Maxwell)Historically superseded but instructiveLe Bon's resistance: documented disagreement, no suppression found, though the Academy's refereeing archive is unread; Heaviside's 1893 Royal Society rejection, a partly fair rigour objection to operator calculus, later resolved (Maxwell)Tested, not supportedWallace's c+v (strong form); Le Bon's priority for universal radioactivity
Specific, dated acts of suppression occurred: sabotage, violence, surveillance, a funder's shutdown
Never properly testedMoray's 1939 smashing, 1940 shooting and 1943 threat; Eskridge's surveillance and burglary; Farnsworth's ITT ending; Tesla's 1895 laboratory fire as dynamite sabotage (Vassilatos; ordinary fire and arson compete); Ternion's suppression thesis; checkable records unreadEstablishedTernion's financial end, as history: 1937 board minutes cite 'complete lack of further funds', deficit 10.2 times share capital, 1938 creditor calls and 1952 deletion confirmed in the SHAB; later commerce under other names
Patent offices dismissed these inventions on theory, without a neutral test
Never properly testedMills's kW release: dismissed at patent offices on theory, elsewhere tested by affiliates and a few outsiders with mixed results; Moray's 'dismissed because of orthodoxy': tests offered and not completed by either side, though Millikan, NASA, the AEC and the Patent Office dismissed without a testNot testable as statedSmith's Patent Office 'metering group'; file wrappers not obtained
An organised establishment or unnamed powers suppress such work in general
Not testable as statedbroad form in every member that makes it; Wallace's editorial hostility documented in quoted letters, organised suppression not established; Vassilatos's unsourced '1915 court award' to Marconi, against the documented 1943 ruling; Flat-Earth's 'agencies hide the shape and space travel is faked'Tested, not supportedFlat-Earth: NASA and Army documents as stating a flat, nonrotating earth as a description; read against the primary texts, the plane is a stated, quantified local approximation
FBI files, Trump 1943 report, Project Nick and the fate of Tesla's papers, weighed against what the records show.
Never properly tested3 July 1899 stationary-wave observation; loss-free global power Refuted by calculation; coil, motor, lighting, disc turbine Established
1870 Wallace wager and litigation, academic non-replies to Carpenter, agency-concealment claims weighed against the documents read.
Tested, not supportedstrong form, no curvature; flat earth with a definite metric Refuted by calculation; low-sight-line sightings Never properly tested (refraction never measured)
Heaviside's resistance from Preece, editors and Royal Society, vindicated later; single-source account weighed.
Establishedfield equations
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
William Preece
Post Office engineer who blocked the 1887 Heaviside paper · Heaviside
Senior Post Office official, Arthur Heaviside's superior; publicly called self-induction the enemy of clear transmission. Wrote 'He must be met somehow' after Heaviside's 1873 duplex paper (Bruton; unseen); his draft reply to Kelvin calls the work 'dreadful twaddle'.
Biggs
Editor of The Electrician, removed in October 1887 · Heaviside
Supported Heaviside but declined his anti-Preece letters for fear of libel; later hinted his removal was prompted by that support (his own account, in one secondary source).
Felix J. Frazer
Investigator on Moray's REA engagement, accused of smashing his device · Morray-TH
Described in 1944 as a WPA investigator who spent two years 'assisting, begging, cajoling and threatening' Moray; probably a Technocracy economist (identity not proven). His counter-account, that Moray destroyed his own device, survives only through the family.
Henry Eyring
Critic whose wattage test Moray declined · Morray-TH
Said to be 'convinced there was no demonstrable evidence' (AEC, 1970); viewed a demonstration in 1963. His accounts conflict across 1925, 1963, 1965 and 1970.
John G. Trump
Examined Tesla's papers in January 1943 · Tesla
Government evaluator judging wartime value; abstracted Exhibits A-Q, including teleforce and the 1935 Amtorg agreement; found 'no new, sound, workable principles'. His is the only evaluation on record by a scientist who saw the papers; full report not online.
Ran Novell
Los Angeles DA investigator in the Gray case · Gray-EV
Told TATTLER 'All he has is a starter motor run by some batteries' and admitted no one in the DA's office had tested the motor; said the warrant came from a disgruntled former employee's complaint.
Donald Cronin
TRW staff scientist who watched a Gray test about mid-1974 · Gray-EV
Says the run 'ran for about 10 seconds and then everything blew'; the 'violate all the laws of physics' remark is his, not the DA's. Also says a Japanese research firm came with instruments and left after a test.
Irwin I. Shapiro
Led the Lincoln Laboratory radar analysis Wallace disputed · Wallace-Byran
Corresponded with Wallace 1968-69; wrote that the data 'did not exist in the form' requested. Published a reply in Scientific Ethics (1985) that no reviewer has located.
Martin Tajmar
Tester Eskridge accused, without a source, of publishing nothing · Eskridge-Amy
Publishes detailed superconductor nulls and artifact analyses; offered to test Eskridge's samples, which she did not send.
John Hampden
Challenger who lost the 1870 Bedford wager to Wallace · Flat-Earth
Declined to look through the instruments; called Walsh's ruling 'monstrous'. Bound over in 1871 for a letter 'menacing' Wallace's life, jailed after the 1875 libel trial; recovered his stake in Hampden v. Walsh (1876).
Lineage
Moray's books drew on Le Bon; the sons say Le Bon's book was withdrawn from libraries and the FBI asked about it in 1942, a family-only claim to check in file 917273 (Morray-TH, LeBon-G).
Lindemann's account of Gray's raid (Linerman-Peter) and Vassilatos's 'Houses' (Vassilatos-Gerry) retell press and promoter material; neither adds a primary record of motive.
Kelly repeats Moray's lost patent files and prints a USPTO 'special interest' list of free-energy applications, provenance unconfirmed (Kelly-Patrick).
The Maxwell project's Heaviside history rests on Hunt (2012), which Belrose (2014) largely paraphrases; the Heaviside project adds Bruton and IET catalogue entries.
Eskridge's central disappearance case is Ning Li, whose record fits illness and injury best and leaves loss of funding, a technical stall and classification open (Eskridge-Amy).
Key evidence (12)
1876-01-17Hampden v. Walsh, 1 QBD 189 Agreement held a wager; the depositor recovers his stake; no finding on the experiment or on Wallace's conduct, against the later claim that a court found Wallace 'cheated'· Flat-Earth
1887IET notebook SC MSS 005/I/1/12 and Preece's draft SC MSS 022/VII/526 Parts 'blocked by Preece'; 'dreadful twaddle'. Known from Bruton (2018) and catalogue descriptions; letters not read· Heaviside
1932-12-23Patent Office action on Moray's application Inoperability; 'No natural source of electric wave energy is known to the Examiner and proof ... is required'· Morray-TH
1943-01-30Trump's abstracts of Tesla's Exhibits A-Q, in the FBI file Teleforce outline, British letters, 1935 Amtorg agreement ($25,000); judged unworkable· Tesla
1944Printed Senate hearing on the REA, 78th Congress (investigators' report and Slattery interview) pp.1344-1345 and 1370-1376: Frazer 'assisting, begging, cajoling, and threatening' Moray; REA payroll Feb 1939 to Feb 1941; Slattery likens the claims to a mail-fraud case; partly read; staff hostile to Slattery· Morray-TH
1975-07-07AP profile of Gray (Progress Bulletin, Pomona) Cronin's failed-test account; Deputy DA Harris on investigators who invested; read from page image· Gray-EV
1978-02NSF rejection of Wallace's $159,512 proposal Holstein: 'no reason to abandon the conventional ... theories'; quoted by Wallace in a letter· Wallace-Byran
1981-02-09MacLaren memo, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Papers 'may contain basic principles ... of considerable value'; FBI replies say it never held them· Tesla
1985Shapiro's reply, Scientific Ethics 1(2), 10 Answers Wallace's coverup charge; bears on the claimed admission; not located· Wallace-Byran
1996-09-24Willis and Harper v. Meyer, Fayette County CVH19930292 Judgment for two dealers, $40,515.72 garnished; Meyer alleges the judge ruled the cell 'only electrolysis' (his account, no second source); decision transcript not obtained; exhibits destroyed 2014· Meyers-Stan
2000FBI file 917273 on T. Henry Moray 74 pages reviewed, 72 released to one requester; not on the FBI Vault; a 2013 request drew 'No Records'· Morray-TH
2000-02-17USPTO withdrawal of application 09/009,294; Federal Circuit 2002 Allowed after examiner saw samples; withdrawn after an 'outside inquiry' on physics grounds· Mills-Randal
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Confusing refusal, dismissal and test: Moray withheld his detector; Eskridge declined Tajmar's offer; Hampden refused to look in 1870; Baird's 1885 reply to Carpenter ('doubtless thoroughly investigated') was dismissal without engagement, not a test (Flat-Earth).
Garbled OCR moving a quotation: 'violate all the laws of physics' was first given to a prosecutor; the page image gives it to Cronin, an eyewitness to a failed run (Gray-EV).
Reading silence either way: no police report of Moray's 1940 shooting is what the family's own account predicts, so it neither confirms nor refutes the event.
Popular retellings outrunning documents: 'the FBI seized Tesla's papers' (the file says otherwise); 'the Supreme Court found Tesla invented radio' (beyond the 1943 holding); 'a court found Wallace cheated' (Hampden v. Walsh decided wager law only).
Weighing interested accounts unequally: tabloid, family and promoter books on one side, agency letters and evaluators with institutional stakes on the other.
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Not a laboratory question. The single step that would move most members is a neutral, metered test of a claimed device with the inventor's cooperation: the test that Moray, his critics, Gray, the DA and Eskridge each left unrun.
Deciding records: FBI file 917273 (Moray); NARA RG 221 REA reports, RG 131 and RG 342 (Trump report, Wright Field); STE council minutes 1887; LA DA and court files on Gray; USPTO file wrapper for 09/009,294; Shapiro's 1985 reply; ITT board minutes; Eskridge's 2020 cease-and-desist; Gilman and Smithsonian files on Carpenter's 1885 challenge.
Try it yourself: Run Heaviside's example.py: it tabulates attenuation for bare, loaded and distortionless lines, the calculation Preece's block kept out of print. Then, for any case, list the documented event, the stated reason, each party's stake and the record that would show motive.
Open questions
What is in the 72 released pages of FBI file 917273: Moray's 1940 shooting report, the alleged FBI assailant, the 1942 Le Bon enquiry?
What did Wright Field do with the 1945 photostats of Tesla's exhibits, and what research did the 1981 Defense Department memo mean?
Who made the 'outside inquiry' that withdrew Mills's allowed patent in 2000?
Was the 1887 Heaviside paper blocked before submission or rejected by the Society of Telegraph Engineers? The council minutes would show.
What do the LA DA and court files show about Gray's plea and the investors' brochure?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Contrarian Preece's draft is better evidence of conviction plus stake than of bad faith. A model-based objection (the KR law right for slow cable signalling, wrong for telephony) would explain the dispute without suppression. Heaviside, contrarian.md, Investigator findings, Finding 3.3
Contrarian Observed, partly checked, never measured, never replicated, never opened by a neutral party. The decisive test was never run by anyone, and the surviving record shows both sides declined to set it up. Morray-TH, contrarian.md, Overall assessment
Arbiter The documented facts (raid, charges, eventual plea) fit ordinary investor-protection enforcement and also fit suppression, so they do not discriminate; a prosecution says nothing about whether the motor works. Gray-EV, arbiter.md, Claim 5
Contrarian No evidence that a negative experiment, a reanalysis or censorship of results stopped Tesla's wireless programme. Rejection of the strong claims was by non-adoption, not by controlled test; Wardenclyffe ran out of money. Tesla, contrarian.md, How the claims were rejected
Physicist She declined a test offered by the person she accuses (her assertion, uncited) of suppressing results. A group publishing detailed artifact analyses is the opposite of 'publishing nothing'. Eskridge-Amy, physicist.md, Claim 4, b
AI noteTwo Los Angeles DA investigators who 'went down to see' Gray's motor invested their own money for a while, then got it back (Deputy DA Harris, AP 1975): weak evidence against a prior-set suppression plan; neither reading is shown.
Theme 5Scalar and longitudinal waves
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential17 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 11:05
Scalar and longitudinal waves are the most widely shared idea in alternative electromagnetics, from Tesla's 'electric sound waves' to a DIA memo and peer-reviewed gauge-wave papers. This card sets the members side by side: which forms fail by calculation, and which anomalies are still open.
Headline verdicts of the 17 member projects: Established1Never properly tested7Refuted by calculation5Internally inconsistent2Not testable as stated1Contested1
Theme background
Maxwell's equations allow only transverse waves in empty space, and the potentials A and phi carry a gauge freedom. Whittaker (1903-04) wrote the field from two scalar potentials; Tesla called his high-frequency effects 'electric sound waves'. Bearden read hidden longitudinal waves into Whittaker, and a 1987 DIA memo summarised his E = 0, B = 0 wave. Meyl added a potential-vortex term with waves up to 1.618 c; van Vlaenderen made the scalar S physical; Handwerker, Dollard, Dunning-Davies and Minderle offered their own longitudinal waves.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics keeps Gauss's law: in charge-free vacuum div E = 0 makes plane waves transverse, as Coulomb-law and photon-mass tests support. A potential with E = B = 0 is pure gauge and exerts no force. Longitudinal fields are accepted in near fields, waveguides and plasmas; Aharonov-Bohm (Tonomura 1986) showed the loop integral of A is physical. Left open: the Monstein-Wesley pattern, reproduced by sceptics in 2013 who rejected Rebilas's ground explanation; a near-zone or ground-current cause is undecided.
Ranking explanation
It meets all four criteria: an anomaly reproduced by sceptics (Monstein-Wesley), cheap bench tests (Meyl's kit, Handwerker's coil), open theory in refereed journals (Minotti-Modanese), and seventeen members. It ranks below gas discharge and radiant-energy collectors because most of its core propositions fail by calculation and its anomalies sit inside the near field. It ranks above natural frequencies for breadth and a live mainstream research line.
Key supporting elements
van Vlaenederen Koen: sceptics rebuilt the Monstein-Wesley ball antenna in 2013, found a pattern closer to Monstein-Wesley's theory than their own, rejected both explanations and wrote 'a yet-unidentified mechanism'.
van Vlaenederen Koen and Minderle-Thomas: Minotti and Modanese (EPJ C 2023) develop a physical scalar field and propose a detection circuit; Reed and Hively (2020) report preliminary copper-penetration tests (their own report; Hively holds the antenna patent).
Maxwell and Minderle-Thomas: potentials act physically through the Aharonov-Bohm loop integral (Tonomura 1986), and Heaviside did push potentials out of the core of the theory, so the premise that they were demoted is historically right.
Meyl-Konstantin and Handwerker-Roberto: the bench effects are real; the IGF reproduced Meyl's LEDs and feedback. No cage measurement or clean wire-removed control exists; Meyl's manual says unplugging the cable darkens the receiver LEDs; the IGF's lit without the sender sphere.
Government: a 1987 DIA memo in CIA's STARGATE release shows US intelligence reviewed scalar waves for submarine communication, naming Bearden as 'a chief proponent'. It is evidence of interest; the memo itself says 'existence is not proven'.
Key contradictions
Bearden, Dollard-Eric and Distinti Robert: in a charge-free vacuum div E = 0 forces k.E = 0, sono free longitudinal plane wave; Distinti's end-on -6 dB vanishes once the dropped scalar-potential term is restored (0.3 percent residual at 100 wavelengths).
Government: A = grad S with phi = -dS/dt gives E = B = 0 for any S, so zero energy; Bearden's two cancelled beams carry nothing, or are ordinary radio damped to 5.5e-18 after 1 km of seawater.
Meyl-Konstantin and Dunning-Davis-J: superluminal speeds fail on their own algebra; Meyl's E = v x B and H = -v x D hold only for v = c, and the c*sqrt(3) wave violates the authors' own eq. 5 (ratio -1/3).
Meyl-Konstantin and Handwerker-Roberto: with LEDs removed and a low-harmonic oscillator the IGF found Meyl's effects 'no longer exist'; Handwerker's tests were all at 0-2.5 m, inside lambda/2pi = 17.3 m, where an ordinary near field explains them.
van Vlaenederen Koen and Tesla: with charge conserved, S is source-free, so ordinary antennas make none (the author's 2001 preprint concedes it); Tesla never wrote 'longitudinal' in the pages read; later authors added it.
Timeline (10)
1891Tesla's 1891-92 lectures picture high-frequency effects as electrostatic 'electric sound waves' in a particle medium, rejecting transverse ether waves. · Tesla
1900Tesla's patent filing US 787,412 gives a 'mean velocity' of 471,240 km/s for the surface passage, later read as (pi/2) c and as longitudinal propagation. · Linerman-Peter
1903Whittaker writes solutions of the wave equation as plane-wave superpositions and, in 1904, the moving-electron field from two scalar potentials F and G. · Whittaker-ET
1987-12A DIA memo to Dr. Vorona, probably dated 22 December 1987 (handwriting partly ambiguous), summarises E = 0, B = 0 scalar waves and says 'existence is not proven'. · Government
2001-08IGF tests of Meyl's two-coil kit: the companion report finds that with LEDs removed and a low-harmonic oscillator the effects 'no longer exist'. · Meyl-Konstantin
2002Monstein and Wesley report longitudinal waves from ball antennas (EPL 59); Bray and Britton dispute the theory in a 2004 Comment. · van Vlaenederen Koen
2011-03Handwerker's paper claims longitudinal magneto-dielectric waves from a Tesla coil; his site and documents vanish in 2013. · Handwerker-Roberto
2013Butterworth and colleagues rebuild the Monstein-Wesley apparatus, reproduce the pattern and leave its mechanism unidentified. · van Vlaenederen Koen
2020Dunning-Davies and Norman's quaternion preprint derives a Temporal Field and scalar waves at c*sqrt(3). · Dunning-Davis-J
2023Minotti and Modanese (EPJ C) develop gauge waves with E = B = 0, detectable if current is not locally conserved, citing van Vlaenderen and Waser 2001. · van Vlaenederen Koen
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
A longitudinal electromagnetic wave travels through charge-free empty space
Refuted by calculationas a free vacuum wave, by div E = 0 (Bearden, Dollard's L.M.D. wave, Distinti's far field, Handwerker's vacuum reading)Tested, not supportedas an experimental claim, since Gauss's law is itself tested (Meyl, Bearden)Never properly testedexistence in extended theories (zzz-Unknown); direct far-field polarisation measurement (Distinti)
A Tesla coil, ball antenna or two-coil kit transfers power or signal by a longitudinal wave distinct from the ordinary near field
Establishedweak form: radial electric near field and resonant capacitive coupling (Handwerker, Meyl kit)Never properly testeddistinct wave, no discriminating control (Handwerker); Monstein-Wesley pattern (van Vlaenderen, Minderle); Meyl's Faraday cage; Correa 'massfree' radiation (Mallove)Tested, not supportedscalar interpretation and 500-1000 percent over-unity of Meyl's kit
A pure-potential wave with E = 0 and B = 0 is physical and carries energy or signal
Establishedas mathematics only: pure gauge (Government); pure-gauge longitudinal A-modes exist (Minderle)Refuted by calculationcarrying energy or a signal (Government, Dunning-Davies); Bearden's two cancelling beams through seawaterNot testable as statedas a physical wave or non-EM seawater carrier, no coupling named (Government, Dunning-Davies)Never properly testedthat such modes carry gravity (Minderle)
Adding a physical scalar field (S, T or Sigma) to Maxwell's equations gives new, measurable physics
Plausible, untestedvan Vlaenderen's self-consistent extended theoryNever properly testedS measurable (van Vlaenderen); physical Sigma field (Handwerker)Internally inconsistentDunning-Davies' Temporal Field T as written (gauge-dependent); Handwerker's Sigma constructionRefuted by calculationvan Vlaenderen's gauge 'circularity' argument; Handwerker's claim that vector Maxwell is incomplete
Scalar or longitudinal waves travel faster than light ((pi/2) c, 1.618 c, c*sqrt(3), instantaneous)
Internally inconsistentMeyl's 1.618 c derivation; Dunning-Davies' c*sqrt(3); van Vlaenderen's a >> c selectionRefuted by calculationDollard's faster-than-light release and infinite current; Meyl's bench 1.5 c as an inference from a frequency ratioTested, not supported(pi/2) c dielectric propagation (Dollard); instantaneous propagation (Lindemann); neutrinos above c (Meyl)Never properly testedTesla's 471,240 km/s figure, no replication or raw data (Dollard)Not testable as statedsuperluminal communication from longitudinal waves (zzz-Unknown)
Whittaker's 1903-04 scalar potentials contain hidden longitudinal waves and an infinite energy exchange
EstablishedWhittaker's decompositions as mathematics, no energy content (Whittaker, Bearden)Not testable as statedthe longitudinal reading, absent from the paper's text (Whittaker); infinite energy as a vacuum reservoir (Bearden)Refuted by calculationinfinite energy read as stored field energy (Bearden)
Tesla's effects are longitudinal 'electric sound waves', not transverse electromagnetic waves
Historically superseded but instructivethe 1891-92 particle-medium picture (Tesla); longitudinal light (Handwerker)Tested, not supportedthat transverse waves do not exist or carry no energy far (Tesla; Hertz and all radio)Internally inconsistentlater longitudinal energy transport with zero Poynting flow (Bass, Valone, Vassilatos, in the Tesla review)
Establishedloop-integral form, by Aharonov-Bohm experiments (Maxwell); potentials from one phase-like function (Minderle, weak form)Not testable as statedA as a local physical entity classically (Maxwell); a physical webers-valued ether chi (Minderle)
Tesla's electrostatic 'electric sound waves' later read as longitudinal or scalar waves.
Never properly tested3 July 1899 stationary-wave observation; loss-free global power Refuted by calculation; coil, motor, lighting, disc turbine Established
Scalar potential functions and longitudinal waves; the mathematical source later scalar-wave claims cite.
Never properly testedQ07 hypothesis of longitudinal standing-wave gravity (Not testable as stated); static 1/r wave sum and 1904 potentials Established
Longitudinal radiation claimed from omitted scalar-potential term; -6 dB end-on dipole prediction.
Not testable as statedmass and gravity models
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Thomas E. Bearden
Chief proponent of scalar-wave weapons and vacuum energy; source of the E = 0, B = 0 wave the DIA memo summarised · Bearden
Lt Col (the memo's title); Huntsville, Alabama; Fer-de-Lance briefing on 'Soviet Scalar Weapons'; The Final Secret of Free Energy (1993); co-inventor of the MEG and spokesman for the company developing it.
Konstantin Meyl
Potential-vortex theory, scalar waves up to 1.618 c, and a two-coil demonstration kit · Meyl-Konstantin
Born 1952; Dr.-Ing. Stuttgart 1984; professor of power electronics at Furtwangen from 1986, retired 2018. Sells kits, books and devices through INDEL GmbH (an interested party in the kit).
Koen J. van Vlaenderen
Made the Lorenz-gauge scalar S a physical field with longitudinal waves and a J S force · van Vlaenederen Koen
Dutch electrical engineer; Institute for Basic Research affiliation 1999-2018; papers 1999-2016, the 2001 one with Andre Waser; R&D at Ethergy B.V., with no patents or products found.
Roberto Handwerker
Claimed longitudinal magneto-dielectric waves from a Tesla coil and water-vessel antennas · Handwerker-Roberto
Dr. Eng., DELTA Ingegneria, Milan; announced products and lectured in Verona (2011); his site, documents and video channel disappeared in 2013, for reasons the record does not settle.
Eric Dollard
Dielectric induction at (pi/2) c and a telluric longitudinal magneto-dielectric wave receiver · Dollard-Eric
Wrote for the Journal of Borderland Research (BSRF) 1986-1990 and an undated telluric-wave typescript; his books are not in the folder. Education and career: not in the review files.
Jeremy Dunning-Davies
With Richard L. Norman, derived a Temporal Field and scalar waves at c*sqrt(3) from quaternion Maxwell · Dunning-Davis-J
Retired mathematics and physics lecturer, University of Hull. Co-signed the 2017 AJMP neutron-synthesis paper; Norman is Scientific Advisor to Thunder Energies, whose neutron source that paper tested, an interested party.
Thomas Minderle ('Montalk')
Gauge choices hide longitudinal electrogravitational waves; displacement current read as that radiation · Minderle-Thomas
Self-published author (montalk.net, scalarphysics.com); 2014 paper, 2007 article, 2008 book and a 2026 draft. Education and career: not in the review files.
Nikola Tesla
Source of 'electric sound waves' and the 471,240 km/s figure later read as longitudinal waves · Tesla
1856-1943; polyphase AC, the Tesla coil and resonant wireless lighting; Colorado Springs 1899-1900 and Wardenclyffe 1901-1917. Never used 'longitudinal' in the pages read.
Gerhard W. Bruhn
Principal critic of Meyl and van Vlaenderen
Mathematician, TU Darmstadt (GWUP member). Argued Meyl's equations give only transverse waves at c, and that van Vlaenderen's sources conserve charge only if S is a source-free wave; both points upheld by the arbiters.
Herbert Weidner
Tester of Meyl's kit for the IGF
IGF Waldaschaff; co-author of the six-author report (Sept 2001) and sole author of the 10 Aug 2001 analysis finding the effects vanish with LEDs removed; the IGF invited Meyl to repeat the tests.
Lineage
Bearden built on Whittaker's 1903-04 scalar potentials, reading hidden longitudinal waves into them; Whittaker's own plane-wave terms are transverse and he called F and G polarisation components (Whittaker-ET, Bearden).
The 1987 DIA memo summarised Bearden's description; Dunning-Davies and Norman later cite the CIA-released memo as proof of concealment, though it says 'not proven' (Government, Dunning-Davis-J).
Dollard, Lindemann and Handwerker read Tesla's 471,240 km/s and 'electric sound waves' as longitudinal or superluminal waves; Tesla used neither word in the pages read (Dollard-Eric, Linerman-Peter, Handwerker-Roberto, Tesla).
Handwerker took his scalar Sigma from Arbab and Satti, who say Maxwell's equations are 'still exact'; Dunning-Davies took T from P. M. Jack's quaternion form (Handwerker-Roberto, Dunning-Davis-J).
van Vlaenderen and Waser's 2001 S field is cited by Minotti-Modanese and parallels Hively's work; Minderle's gauge-hidden waves and the DIA memo use the same A = grad chi construction (van Vlaenederen Koen, Minderle-Thomas).
Meyl retells Kelvin's 1897 visit to Tesla with 'longitudinal' wording and a verdict that Tesla's own 1919 account does not contain (Meyl-Konstantin).
Key evidence (12)
1903Whittaker, solutions of Laplace's and the wave equation (1903) and two scalar potentials for moving electrons (1904) Plane-wave terms are transverse; Lienard-Wiechert field reproduced to 12 digits; no longitudinal waves in the text· Whittaker-ET
1900Tesla, US 787,412 (filed 1900) 'Mean velocity of about 471,240 km/s' for the surface passage; equals 150,000 pi; no derivation or experiment· Linerman-Peter
1987-12DIA memo on scalar waves to Dr. Vorona (CIA-RDP96-00792R000500240001-6) Handwritten date 12/22/87, partly ambiguous, 1987 probable; E = 0, B = 0 wave; submarine communication; Bearden named; 'existence is not proven'; partly redacted (SG1B)· Government
undatedStaff note to Col Buzby excerpting Bearden's 'Star Wars Now' (CIA-RDP96-00792R000500240002-5) Excerpts Bearden's paper of 24 April 1984: two out-of-phase beams penetrate seawater; detection only at a 4-8 T magnet pole; full paper not opened· Government
undatedDollard, telluric-wave typescript (EPDPaper) Defines the L.M.D. wave and 'counter-velocity' (pp.20-22); no frequencies, drawings or data; Part Three (San Andreas) missing· Dollard-Eric
2001-08IGF report on Meyl's kit (Sept 2001) and Weidner's companion analysis (10 Aug 2001) Effects reproduced, then gone with LEDs removed and a low-harmonic oscillator; companion recovered from the Wayback Machine· Meyl-Konstantin
2002Monstein and Wesley, longitudinal waves from ball antennas, EPL 59:514 Comment by Bray and Britton and Reply (EPL 66, 2004); Rebilas 2008; known by abstract and title; data not read· van Vlaenederen Koen
2013Butterworth, Allison, Cavazos and Mullen rebuild of Monstein-Wesley Pattern reproduced; Monstein-Wesley theory and ground-current explanation both rejected; 'a yet-unidentified mechanism'· van Vlaenederen Koen
2011-03Handwerker, longitudinal dielectric waves in a Tesla coil (TESLA-THEORY-2 pp.5-23) Tests at 0-2.5 m, 2.755 MHz; readings beyond meter scale; capacitance printed in mH; no screen or distance control· Handwerker-Roberto
2020Dunning-Davies and Norman, quaternion Maxwell preprint Temporal Field T and c*sqrt(3) scalar wave; the derived wave fails the paper's own eq. 5· Dunning-Davis-J
2023Minotti and Modanese, EPJ C 83:1086 Peer-reviewed gauge-wave theory with a proposed detection circuit; cites van Vlaenderen and Waser 2001; no detection reported· van Vlaenederen Koen
2019Hively and Loebl, Physics Essays 32:112-126, reporting copper-penetration tests 'Thousands of skin-depths of solid copper', known from Reed and Hively, Symmetry 12:2110 (2020); authors' own preliminary tests; Hively holds US 9,306,527; paywalled, not read· van Vlaenederen Koen
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Near field read as a new wave: Handwerker's tests sat inside lambda/2pi, where strong radial electric fields are expected; a longitudinal claim needs a distance scan well beyond it and a grounded screen (Handwerker-Roberto, Meyl-Konstantin).
Gauge artefacts treated as physical: a potential with E = B = 0 exerts no force on any charge, and T or div A change with the gauge chosen (Government, Dunning-Davis-J, Minderle-Thomas).
Speed from one quantity: Meyl's 1.5 c was inferred from a frequency ratio, though his own rule needs both wavelength and frequency measured (Meyl-Konstantin).
Brightness or apparent power read as real power: eye-matched LEDs, 49/(233-223) as '490 percent', resonant V x I as gain (Meyl-Konstantin, Linerman-Peter).
Authority chains: wording attributed to Tesla, Kelvin or the CIA that the primary texts do not contain (Tesla, Meyl-Konstantin, Dunning-Davis-J).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: A neutral Monstein-Wesley or Tesla-coil test: battery-isolated receiver, distance scan from 0.3 m to well beyond lambda/2pi, buried versus elevated antenna with ground-current control, a grounded screen, and gated-burst time of flight. Standard theory predicts the longitudinal pattern collapses beyond the near zone and the speed is c.
Deciding records: Monstein-Wesley 2002 full text with Bray-Britton and Rebilas; the Butterworth 2013 paper; Hively-Loebl 2019 report; IGF correspondence after August 2001; the redacted CENTER LANE/DT files and Bearden's full 'Star Wars Now'; Dollard's missing Part Three; Handwerker's E-book and the Lumen notices.
Try it yourself: Run the Government example.py: the memo's scalar wave gives E = B = 0 for any S, and Bearden's cancelled beams fall to 5.5e-18 after 1 km of seawater. By hand: take E = E0 cos(kx - wt) pointing along x and compute div E; then divide 471,240 by 299,792.
Open questions
What produces the Monstein-Wesley pattern that the 2013 sceptics reproduced, rejecting both Monstein-Wesley's theory and Rebilas's ground explanation, and does it survive beyond lambda/2pi with ground currents controlled?
Does nature ever supply the non-conserved current a physical S field needs, and would the Minotti-Modanese circuit detect it?
What does a measured Faraday cage, or a removed link wire, do to the transfer in Meyl's kit and Handwerker's coil?
Do the redacted DIA and CENTER LANE files hold any test or assessment, or only collected proponents' material?
How did Tesla obtain 471,240 km/s: computed from pi/2 and 300,000 km/s, or measured?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Write down the force on a test charge from the S field. The answer is zero identically. To keep the idea alive the proponent must name a new coupling term and its strength. Government, arbiter.md, Claim 1, What would settle it
Arbiter Gauss's law forbids a source-free longitudinal vacuum wave, but that is the theory under challenge; the verdict is Tested, not supported, because Gauss's law is itself an experimental result and no experiment has found such a wave. Meyl-Konstantin, arbiter.md, Claim 3
Arbiter A claim with no definition cannot be refuted by calculation, only shown to be undefined. As an experimental claim the L.M.D. wave is testable and has never been tested with a discriminating control; the tests run cannot discriminate. Handwerker-Roberto, arbiter.md, section 3, Claim 1
Contrarian All parties agree on the condition: S needs non-conserved sources. The claim and its critics agree on the mathematics and disagree about whether nature ever supplies the source. van Vlaenederen Koen, contrarian.md, section 3
Mathematician Put H = -v x D into E = v x B: E = (v^2/c^2) E, true only if v = c. Meyl's own starting equations rule out the arbitrary speed his scalar waves need. Meyl-Konstantin, mathematician.md, section 0
AI noteTesla's 471,240 km/s is exactly 150,000 pi, (pi/2) x 300,000, and 0.08484 s at that speed is about the earth's circumference: a surface-path figure, not a measured signal speed (Dollard and Lindemann arbiters).
Theme 6Natural frequencies and resonance of matter
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential12 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:53
That every molecule absorbs at its own frequencies is textbook physics, founded by Tyndall's gas measurements. Whether a field tuned to a substance's natural frequency changes it beyond heating, splits water cheaply, transmutes elements or yields energy is the claim this card weighs, and the record splits sharply.
Headline verdicts of the 12 member projects: Established2Never properly tested5Refuted by calculation4Internally inconsistent1
Theme background
Tyndall (1859-68) found that compound gases absorb radiant heat strongly and put it down to resonance between the wave's period and the periods of the atoms in the molecule. Tesla's high-frequency circuits (1891-1900) showed resonant voltage rise. In 1931-36 Kassner patented sharp 'natural frequencies' of dipolar substances, financed by Ternion AG. Moray said his device was tuned to 'the oscillations of the universe' and, about 1959, that resonance turns silver into cadmium. Lakhovsky (cells), Meyer and Larson (water), Pappas (gas eigenfrequencies) and Brown (a resonant radioactive tank) carried the idea into medicine, fuel and energy.
Where mainstream physics went
Tyndall's resonance became molecular spectroscopy: quantum dipole transitions, sharp in gases and broadened or shifted in liquids. Dipolar liquids show broad Debye relaxation, water's loss peak near 20 GHz. Microwave heating was industrialised from the 1940s as heating. Changing bonds or nuclei needs quanta of eV to MeV, not radio quanta. Left open: no one has swept Kassner's bands with his detector, non-thermal microwave effects were still argued in 2013, and Tesla's bifilar-coil measurement is unexplained.
Ranking explanation
Criteria A, B, C and D. Like Scalar Waves, its central claim was never properly tested and the Ternion record goes dark with named, unread archives; it sits just below because Scalar Waves gathers more projects and core members. It ranks above Life and Radiation because its deciding test is a one-afternoon permittivity sweep a reader could commission, and because its founding core, Tyndall's absorption measurements, is an Established success that sets a clear baseline for the untested claims.
Key supporting elements
Tyndall-John: compound gases absorb radiant heat tens to thousands of times more than air (CO2 972, ammonia 5,460, olefiant gas 6,030 at 1/30 atmosphere); the arbiter rules molecular origin and resonance selection Established.
TernionAG: Kassner's water band near 1.5 cm is real Debye relaxation, his 1936 disc-resonator theory reproduces within about 1 percent, and his own 1934 French patents tie his natural frequencies to Debye theory.
Tesla: resonant voltage rise, wireless lighting and single-wire power are Established; in a 1990 bifilar-coil measurement the lumped model overstates the capacitance about 150-fold, an unexplained observation kept in the record.
TernionAG: the idea persisted: Arnold (filed 1945, a trained dielectric chemist) and Heller (Nature 1959, 'No temperature increase') claimed frequency-specific effects; high-frequency catalyst heating cuts electrolysis overpotential by 100-200 mV (Niether 2018, abstract).
Lakhovsky George: a co-signed 1924 note reports three geranium tumours treated with his 150 MHz oscillator necrosing while sixteen untreated ones kept growing; known only from quotations, heat not controlled; ruled Never properly tested, not refuted.
Key contradictions
TernionAG: a Debye band (Q about 0.3) is 170 times broader than Kassner's 2 percent band; his 1932 rule wavelength = 3 x diameter fits no Bessel root with eps = 1 (Internally inconsistent), agar cases only with unstated loading.
TernionAG: sharp-line claims in cells and nucleic acids at 26-90 GHz were looked for and not found (Gandhi 1980; Gos 1997, controlled repeat); this is class evidence, not a test of Kassner's own bands.
Morray-TH: resonance has no source term, so 'resonance sustains or creates energy' is Internally inconsistent; silver to cadmium needs a neutron or a 9.8 MeV proton, 5.8 million times bubble-collapse kT, and no datum exists.
TernionAG, Larson-Tyson and Pappas-PT: an 18.6 cm photon carries 6.7e-6 eV, about 3,850 times below kT; changing bonds by single radio quanta is Refuted by calculation in all three projects.
Brown-Paul and Tesla: resonance multiplies voltage, not power. Brown's kilowatt tank holding about 0.1 mW of decay is Refuted by calculation; a bifilar gain is Tested, not supported (ratios below 1), Nichelson's gain comparison Internally inconsistent.
Timeline (10)
1859Tyndall finds oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen nearly transparent to radiant heat while compound gases and vapours absorb it strongly. · Tyndall-John
1861Magnus (1861/62) finds no absorption by water vapour and blames films on the rock-salt windows; the dispute runs on through Buff, Lecher and Pernter to spectroscopy. · Tyndall-John
1868Tyndall's Heat, a Mode of Motion: absorption is molecular, selected by resonance between wave period and the periods of the atoms; liquid and vapour absorb alike. · Tyndall-John
1891Tesla lectures on high-frequency currents (1891-93): resonant circuits, voltage rise, wireless lighting; the bifilar coil patent follows in 1894. · Tesla
1924Lakhovsky's 150 MHz oscillator: a co-signed note reports three treated geranium tumours necrosing against sixteen growing controls. · Lakhovsky George
1931Kassner's German priority (9 Dec 1931) for altering the energy content of dipolar substances at their natural frequencies; Ternion AG is founded at Glarus in April 1932. · TernionAG
1934Kassner's French patent FR 786,294 places his natural frequencies 'in conformity with the dipole theory of Debye': relaxation, not sharp resonance. · TernionAG
1945Arnold files US 2,522,082 on a critical frequency at the centre of anomalous dispersion; the examiner cites Kassner. Goodrich and Firestone announce their heating-patent purchase. · TernionAG
1960Moray's Radiant Energy (4th ed.): the first stage is excited by an external source, then sustained by 'harmonic coupling to the cosmic wave frequencies'. · Morray-TH
1980Gandhi and colleagues sweep 26.5-90 GHz on cells, DNA and RNA: 'Sharp spectra reported by other workers were not observed'. Gos repeats the yeast work in 1997: no consistent difference. · TernionAG
Core propositions and verdicts (6)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Molecules absorb radiation selectively, by resonance between the wave and their own internal periods, and absorption per molecule is unchanged by compression or condensation
Establishedmolecular (not film) origin and resonance selection, now read as quantum dipole transitionsPlausible, untestedweak form, broadband absorption per molecule independent of density and phase, ten non-water vapours, Tyndall's data onlyTested, not supportedstrong form, band-by-band invariance across phase including waterHistorically superseded but instructiveether entangled in the molecule; periods-of-atoms mechanism
Dipolar liquids, cells and gases have sharp natural frequencies of their own
Establishedwater's broad Debye band near 1.5 cm (TernionAG)Never properly testedKassner's sharp bands in electrolytes, serum, colloids; Pappas's burst spectrum shifting when only the gas changesTested, not supportedanalogue sharp lines in cells at 26-90 GHz (class evidence, TernionAG)Plausible, untestedsoft form: cells respond to selected frequencies, as Lakhovsky meant it; Not testable as stated in his version, which gives no frequencies (Lakhovsky)Refuted by calculationLakhovsky's cell as an LC filament ringing on cosmic power; Pappas's eigenfrequency read as the electron plasma frequency
Resonance lets weak, low-frequency fields alter chemical bonds or transmute nuclei
Refuted by calculationsingle-photon or weak-field bond change (TernionAG, Pappas-PT); Larson's bond-angle bending (energy scale); Moray's silver-to-cadmium mechanismNever properly testedMoray's transmutation as an experiment: no datum existsNot testable as stateda coherent collective mechanism, never defined (TernionAG)Establishedresonance breaking structures at bond energies, sonochemistry, tuned-light isotope separation (Morray-TH)
Resonance supplies or multiplies energy: a tuned circuit captures ambient energy or sustains itself
Establishedresonant voltage rise V = Q x V_in, not a power gain (Tesla)Internally inconsistentresonance as a source, no source term (Morray-TH)Refuted by calculationkilowatts from known radiation (Morray-TH); output beyond decay power (Brown-Paul)Tested, not supporteda bifilar-coil gain above theory; measured values below 1 (Tesla)Internally inconsistentNichelson's gain comparison as a gain: X_L/R with R silently 1 ohm, a reactance in ohms (Tesla)Never properly testedBrown's resonant benefit at microwatt to milliwatt level
A resonant field splits water on less energy than electrolysis
Refuted by calculationtotal work below dG = 237.1 kJ/mol or a closed cycle (TernionAG); Meyer's resonant rise to 20-40 kV in conducting water; Larson's gas cheaper than electrolysis if H2/O2Established100-200 mV overpotential cut at a heated catalyst, a rate effect (TernionAG, abstracts only, one group per mechanism; the microwave-ceria group holds a patent application, an interested party)Plausible, untestednet energy gain at a heated catalyst with the field power counted (TernionAG)Never properly testedKassner's standing or radiating field on electrolysis; Meyer's gas per joule; Larson's unmetered energyNot testable as statedMeyer's resonance in the electrode gap (no dimensions, frequency or data)
Never properly tested3 July 1899 stationary-wave observation; loss-free global power Refuted by calculation; coil, motor, lighting, disc turbine Established
Resonant tuned circuit with radioactive core said to sustain and amplify oscillations.
Refuted by calculationstrong forms
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
John Tyndall
Measured selective absorption of radiant heat by gases and vapours and explained it by molecular resonance · Tyndall-John
1820-1893, professor at the Royal Institution, London. Rock-salt-windowed tube and thermopile from 1859; On Radiation (1865), On Calorescence (1866), Heat, a Mode of Motion (1868), Six Lectures on Light, New Fragments (1892).
Magnus
Critic: found no absorption by water vapour and blamed films on the windows · Tyndall-John
Published contrary results in 1861/62; held that hydrogen conducts heat like a metal; a later paper contesting Tyndall's vapour results is noted, unanswered, in Heat. Education not in the review files.
Ernst E. W. Kassner
Patented sharp natural frequencies of dipolar substances and plate resonators to drive them · TernionAG
German engineer; Ternion patents 1931-36 (Ternion AG of Glarus: capital CHF 100,000, research account CHF 1.12 million by 1936, loan-financed, lenders unnamed; liquidation voted December 1937); later Vibranic and General Infra; deceased by 1962. Education not in the review files.
Orlan M. Arnold
Later claimant of a sub-thermal effect at a 'critical frequency'; Kassner cited against him · TernionAG
1904-1989, dielectric physical chemist (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1936; J. Electrochem. Soc. 1938), later Chrysler research. US 2,522,082; lost In re Arnold (1950) and Arnold v. Watson (1955-56) on breadth, not physics.
John H. Heller
Claimed frequency-specific, non-thermal chromosome effects at 27 MHz; his patent cites Kassner · TernionAG
New England Institute for Medical Research; Nature 183:905 (1959) with Teixeira-Pinto on garlic root tips; US 3,095,359. Nothing more is in the review files.
Gandhi and colleagues
Testers: swept millimetre-wave absorption of biological samples for sharp lines · TernionAG
Bioelectromagnetics 1:285 (1980): 26.5-90 GHz on DNA, RNA and cell suspensions with temperature control and frozen samples; no sharp spectra found. Known from the abstract; nothing more is in the review files.
T. Henry Moray
Said his device was tuned to the oscillations of the universe; claimed resonance transmutation · Morray-TH
1892-1974, Salt Lake City. Demonstrated his Radiant Energy device 1925-38 before about 30 named witnesses, never metered; his books' physics pages largely reproduce Le Bon, Glasser and Preston.
Nikola Tesla
Developed high-frequency resonant circuits, resonant voltage rise and the bifilar coil · Tesla
Born 1856; studied at Graz; polyphase motor licensed to Westinghouse. Lectured on high-frequency currents 1891-93, ran Colorado Springs 1899-1900 and Wardenclyffe from 1901; died in New York in January 1943.
Georges Lakhovsky
Held that each cell is an oscillating circuit with its own frequency; built the 1924 oscillator · Lakhovsky George
1869-1942; Odessa School of Arts and Crafts, then the Sorbonne. Railway and telephone engineer; Radio-cellulo-oscillator 1923, Multiple Wave Oscillator 1930-31; emigrated to New York 1941.
Stanley A. Meyer
Claimed resonant splitting of water in a pulsed capacitor cell · Meyers-Stan
1940-1998, Grove City, Ohio; a 'businessman and free-lance inventor' in his own brief. A 1996 Fayette County judgment went to two dealers ('gross and egregious fraud', as the press reports it); Meyer said the judge ruled the cell 'only electrolysis'.
Lineage
Kassner quoted Debye's relaxation-time formula, and his 1934 French patents call his natural frequencies Debye relaxation frequencies, a broad band he described in the language of sharp resonance (TernionAG).
Arnold (filed 1945) restated Kassner's idea as a critical frequency at the centre of anomalous dispersion; the examiner cited Kassner's US 2,089,966 against him (TernionAG).
Heller's 1959 patent and Raytheon's microwave patents (Spencer 1945, Copson 1954) list Kassner's patents as references; Raytheon framed the same fruit-juice application as heating (TernionAG).
Moray's resonance-transmutation pages follow Glasser's 1944 X-ray text, adding the silver-to-cadmium sentence, and turn Preston and Porter's Leyden-jar discharge into atomic disintegration; he cites Tesla's mechanical oscillator as precedent (Morray-TH).
Tyndall's resonance between wave period and atom periods passed into molecular spectroscopy, where quantum dipole transitions replaced the mechanism and kept the selectivity (Tyndall-John).
Puharich's earlier patent claimed resonant water splitting at 80-100 percent and a 114.9 percent return, a unit slip (corrected about 63 and 77 percent); it is weighed as Meyer's prior art (Meyers-Stan).
Key evidence (12)
1865Tyndall, On Radiation (Rede Lecture) Absorption at 1/30 atmosphere, air = 1: CO 750, CO2 972, NH3 5460, olefiant gas 6030, SO2 6480; copper-plate source; checked on page images.· Tyndall-John
1868Tyndall, Heat, a Mode of Motion (3rd ed.), Ch. X-XIII Molecular resonance argument; ten liquid and vapour pairs with one rank order (water vapour not testable unmixed); source-dependent 5.8-20.3 percent in a 4 ft tube.· Tyndall-John
1934-09-28GB 417,501: process for altering the energy content of dipolar substances Ternion AG's anchor patent, 24 claims: natural frequencies, 2 percent bands, serum near 90 cm, electrets, milk, juice, crossed-Nicols readout.· TernionAG
1934FR 786,294: ultra-short-wave emitter acting on dipolar substances Kassner resident in England; p.1 ties the natural frequencies to Debye relaxation. Pages 1-2, 15, 17-20 read.· TernionAG
1936-07-02GB 483,062: plate circuit element systems and plate oscillators Kassner's Bessel-mode disc-resonator theory with energy and load-resistance formulas, verified correct; void application.· TernionAG
1980Gandhi et al., millimetre-wave absorption spectra of biological samples Bioelectromagnetics 1:285; 26.5-90 GHz, temperature control, frozen samples; 'Sharp spectra reported by other workers were not observed'. Abstract only.· TernionAG
1997Gos et al., controlled repeat of the yeast-growth resonance Bioelectromagnetics 18:142; 41.68-41.71 GHz with concurrent controls: 'no consistently significant differences'. Abstract only.· TernionAG
c.1953-55Arnold v. Watson trial exhibits and file wrappers D.D.C. trial about 1953-55, judgment 1955, appeal 237 F.2d 584 (1956); NARA RG 21, RG 276; Serial 110,469 and 576,245; the only known place an evidential test of a Kassner-type principle may be on file.· TernionAG
1924-07-26Gosset, Gutmann, Lakhovsky and Magrou, C. R. Soc. Biol. 91:626-628 Three Pelargonium crown galls treated with the oscillator necrosed from about day 16; sixteen controls kept growing; no field, distance or temperature recorded. Known from quotations; original not obtained.· Lakhovsky George
c.1959Moray, Isotopes in Ionic Recovery of U3O8, pp.20-26 Current, rays and sound 'in step' with a substance's natural frequency change silver to cadmium; no mathematics or datum; surrounding passages follow Glasser (1944) and Preston and Porter (matched on snippets); the silver-to-cadmium sentence is added.· Morray-TH
1960Moray, Radiant Energy (4th ed.), p.116 First stage 'excited by an external energy source', then sustained by 'harmonic coupling to the cosmic wave frequencies'.· Morray-TH
1990-12-10Nichelson and King, Eyring Corp., 'A Special Case of Voltage Gain' A standard and a bifilar 43-turn coil; S21 peaks 0.18 at 19.1 MHz (standard) and 0.97 at 11 MHz (bifilar), transmission ratios below 1; one afternoon, interested author; raw traces missing.· Tesla
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Relaxation is not resonance: calling a broad, overdamped Debye band (Q about 0.3) a 'natural frequency' makes it sound like a sharp tunable line. Checking Q separates them at once (TernionAG).
Resonance raises voltage, not power: V = Q x V_in stores and circulates energy but adds none. Moray's harmonic coupling, Brown's tank, Meyer's 20-40 kV and Nichelson's 'voltage gain' all confuse the two.
More intensity gives more quanta, not bigger ones: a radio photon carries micro-electronvolts against bond energies of electronvolts and nuclear changes of MeV (TernionAG, Morray-TH, Pappas-PT, Larson-Tyson).
Heat is the usual confound: a 10 K local temperature error doubles a reaction rate at 80 kJ/mol; Kassner's foods warmed 2.5-4.5 K, and Heller's letter gives no conductivity to rule heating in or out (TernionAG).
Numbers that look like measured frequencies can be formula outputs or coincidences: Kassner's chemistry wavelengths match hydrogen fine structure; Mills's 27.2 eV resonance table is uninformative without the count of candidates tried (TernionAG, Mills-Randal).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: A thermostatted 0.1-3 GHz permittivity sweep of water, 1 percent salt, milk, juice and serum with an empty-cell control and a rebuilt crossed-Nicols detector: a narrow line tracking the sample would be the first measured sharp natural frequency in a liquid. For the energy claims, meter total input power, field power included, against output (TernionAG, Morray-TH, Meyers-Stan).
Deciding records: The Arnold v. Watson trial exhibits (NARA RG 21, RG 276); Ternion's 1936 minutes and lenders (Landesarchiv Glarus); Goodrich and Firestone test data; the Eyring Corp. raw network-analyser traces of the bifilar coil; Magnus 1861/62 and Lecher and Pernter 1880/81 raw data; Moray's notebooks.
Try it yourself: Run TernionAG's example.py: step 5 shows a Debye band's half-maximum points a factor 13.9 apart (Q about 0.3) against the claimed 2 percent band; step 6 compares an 18.6 cm photon with kT and an O-H bond. Morray-TH's example.py shows resonance raising voltage but not power.
Open questions
Does any liquid, serum or colloid show a narrow line that tracks the sample between 0.1 and 3 GHz? No one has swept Kassner's bands with his crossed-Nicols detector (TernionAG).
Is serum's conduction crossover near 89 cm what Kassner called his 90 cm band? It is a smooth change of regime with no peak, offered by the mathematician as a hypothesis (TernionAG).
Did resonant exposure preserve food or change colloids against heat-matched and off-resonant controls? No four-arm blind test is on record (TernionAG).
What do the Arnold v. Watson exhibits hold, the only known place where an evidential test of a Kassner-type principle may be on file?
Do the 11 and 19 MHz peaks of the 1990 bifilar-coil measurement match half-wave resonance of the wire, and why does the lumped model overstate capacitance 150-fold (Tesla)?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Claim 1 is ruled Never properly tested, not Refuted: a calculation refutes a stated mechanism, and the patent states none; it claims an optical readout with no spectrum. The Q argument shows the two kinds of band differ, not that the sharp one is absent. TernionAG, arbiter.md, Where the reviewers agreed, disagreed, ruling 1
Primer Relaxation is not resonance. Calling both 'natural frequency' makes a broad, overdamped Debye band sound like a tunable sharp line. Checking Q separates them at once. This is the most useful single lesson in the project. TernionAG, primer.md, section 7, Wrong, and why the mistakes are instructive
Arbiter From the mathematician: a free damped oscillation cannot grow, its peaks fall by exp(-pi alpha / omega_d), so 'violent enough' needs an external drive the text does not supply; Q multiplies amplitude, not available power. Morray-TH, arbiter.md, Investigator findings (2026-10-08), section 2, 5e
Arbiter Molecular origin and resonance selection are Established, with the quantum dipole-transition picture replacing the resonance-of-periods language. The weak form rests on Tyndall's own tight but single, unrepeated pairs, so it stays Plausible, untested independently. Tyndall-John, arbiter.md, Claim 5
Arbiter From the mathematician: decays are a Poisson process uncorrelated with the tank phase, so a passive source adds noise, not a resonant drive, unless a nonlinear gating element is present. Accepted as an argument, not a measurement, hence not Refuted. Brown-Paul, arbiter.md, Claim 1
AI noteKassner's 'most effective' chemistry wavelengths, 2.74, 9.25 and 27.75 cm, match hydrogen's fine-structure intervals to 0.3 percent: very likely calculated, not measured, though the patent says only 'term differences of hydrogen' (TernionAG).
Theme 7Life and radiation
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - Testable14 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:53
Do living things send and receive radiation, and can a tuned field heal? This card sets Gurwitsch's and Rahn's mitogenetic rays, Kilner's aura, Lakhovsky's oscillating cells and the healing machines of Tousey, Moray, Hieronymus and Pappas side by side, with the cheap blind tests that were never run.
Headline verdicts of the 14 member projects: Never properly tested8Refuted by calculation3Internally inconsistent1Not testable as stated1Contested1
Theme background
From 1890 to 1940 radio, x-rays and radium suggested that life itself might be electrical and radiant. Tousey's 1910-1921 textbook gathered the high-frequency, x-ray and radium therapies of his day. Kilner (1911) said a dye screen made a body aura visible. Gurwitsch (1923) found 'mitogenetic' ultraviolet from onion roots, which Rahn put before English readers in 1936. Lakhovsky called cells tiny radio circuits and built oscillators (1923-1934). Moray's Cosray (1949), Hieronymus's eloptic analyzer (1949) and Pappas's PAPIMI coil (1996) carried the idea into patents.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream science kept what it could measure: tissue conducts by ions and radio-frequency current heats it (Tousey); cells give off ultra-weak light, near-UV to near-infrared rather than far ultraviolet (Rahn); pulsed microwaves can be heard (Frey effect, Government). Lakhovsky's reviewers add modern work: 200 kHz Tumor Treating Fields (secondary coverage and a company press release) and radio noise disorienting robins (Engels 2014). Unexplained: the 1924 geranium necrosis, the contested 1937 NRC null, and any frequency-specific, non-thermal effect.
Ranking explanation
The theme scores on anomalous results never put to a neutral test (Lakhovsky's geraniums, Rahn's quartz-glass series, Kilner's haze), questions the arbiters left open, and cheap tests a reader could run (a blind aura trial, a wired-plant box, an afterimage check). It gathers seven core projects, but no core claim has an independent, protocol-agreed replication (Julius's pairs and two small PAPIMI pilots are partial or unreplicated), and several mechanisms fail undergraduate arithmetic, holding it below themes with stronger instrument records.
Key supporting elements
Lakhovsky George: the 1924 note co-signed by surgeon Gosset and Pasteur plant pathologist Magrou: all 3 treated crown-gall geraniums necrosed from about day 16, none of 16 controls; rival Kotzareff called it the only experimental study of its kind.
Rahn-Otto: ultra-weak photon emission from living tissue is Established, and series with built-in controls look strong on their face: Julius's 56 quartz-glass fibroblast pairs (1.92 against 1.01), 15 of 15 cornea pairs.
Pappas-PT: two small sham-controlled pilots (Viti 2023, n = 32; Keilani 2025, n = 20) report effects; at the maker's figures induced fields shift a cell's membrane voltage by tens to about a hundred millivolts.
Kilner-Walter: observers in Chicago, the US and Graz reported a haze; in Kilner's own 1920 account, a methylene-blue screen handed over unwittingly three times showed nothing (informal, uncounted); he published his failures and retractions himself.
Tousey-Sinclair: radio-frequency deep heating and x-ray treatment of surface skin cancer are Established; Tousey himself reported the negative literature and his own failed and fatal cases beside his successes.
Key contradictions
Lakhovsky George: a salt-water chromosome filament has a quality factor of about 1e-6 to 4e-6 against about 50 for copper, so it cannot ring; cosmic rays supply 8 or more orders too little power; passive collars catch microwatts.
Rahn-Otto: Hollaender and Claus's two-year NRC study (Bulletin 100, 1937) found 'all the attempts have yielded negative results'; a 6.1 eV photon cannot come from a 0.14 eV reaction step.
Hieronymus-TG: violet or UV emission from elements at room temperature fails by about 52 orders of magnitude; Hite traced the related Pathoclast's 'stick' to an oscillating amplifier, with no correlation to samples.
Kilner-Walter: de Fontenay and de Rochas in Paris saw nothing with Kilner's own screens; H. C. S. found the haze stronger round a hand-towel than a person; every diagnosis rests on one unblinded observer.
Pappas-PT: untreated rat fractures healed faster (Leisner 2002). Morray-TH: the 785-patient Cosray tally has no controls and rows that do not add up; the family's 1946 treatise has alpha, beta and gamma penetrating half an inch of lead: gamma only.
Timeline (10)
1911Kilner publishes The Human Atmosphere: a dicyanin screen reveals a three-layer haze round the body, used to read sex, temperament and disease. · Kilner-Walter
1921Third edition of Tousey's Medical Electricity, Rontgen Rays and Radium (first 1910) gathers high-frequency, x-ray and radium therapies with clinical claims. · Tousey-Sinclair
1923Gurwitsch reports mitogenetic radiation: onion root tips speed cell division in a neighbouring root through quartz but not glass. · Rahn-Otto
1924-07Gosset, Gutmann, Lakhovsky and Magrou report crown-gall geranium tumours necrosed by a 150 MHz oscillator; never repeated. · Lakhovsky George
1931Lakhovsky files for the Multiple Wave Oscillator (US 1,962,565); de Cigna later reports the best-documented clinical series (Vienna, 1937). · Lakhovsky George
1936Rahn's Invisible Radiations of Organisms; in 1937 Hollaender and Claus's NRC Bulletin 100 reports two years of negative results. · Rahn-Otto
1949Patents granted to Moray's Cosray electrotherapeutic apparatus (US 2,460,707, February) and Hieronymus's eloptic element analyzer (US 2,482,773, September). · Morray-TH
1963FDA misbranding action against a Cosray device ends in a default judgment, contested by the company; the court did not rule on efficacy. · Morray-TH
1996Pappas's US patent 5,556,418 for pulsed magnetic induction (PAPIMI); the device is later listed on FDA Import Alert 89-08 (entries published 2009 and 2018). · Pappas-PT
2025Keilani's Vienna sham-controlled pilot on post-COVID fatigue reports benefit, after Viti's 2023 heart-rate-variability pilot; neither replicated at scale. · Pappas-PT
Core propositions and verdicts (7)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Living cells emit weak radiation that speeds division in other cells (mitogenetic rays)
Establishedweak form: ultra-weak light from tissue, near-UV to near-IRNever properly tested190-260 nm emission, and the division effect under a protocol both sides acceptRefuted by calculationone far-UV photon per event from neutralisation or hydrolysis
The human body carries a visible aura that shows health and disease
Plausible, untestedweak form: screen-primed observers report a hazeNever properly testedstrong form: an objective body emanation; the diagnostic methodInternally inconsistentclaim on the aura's physical nature, 1911 argument: outside the visible spectrum yet seen through a visible-light screen
Cells are oscillating circuits, and disease is a cell pushed off its frequency
Refuted by calculationstrong form: salt-water LC filament powered by cosmic raysPlausible, untestedsoft form: cells respond to selected frequenciesNot testable as stateddisease as oscillatory disequilibrium, no frequencies given
High-frequency and pulsed-field devices heal disease, including cancer
Establishedradio-frequency deep heating (Tousey)Never properly testedcures by Tousey's high-frequency currents, Lakhovsky's oscillator, Moray's Cosray, Pappas's cancer claims, Ternion's applicatorsPlausible, untestedPAPIMI pain, heart-rate and fatigue effects at adequate scaleTested, not supportedPAPIMI fracture healing, one controlled rat studyInternally inconsistentLakhovsky's 'no contra-indication' as printed beside five post-treatment haemorrhage deaths (whether the device caused any death is Not testable from this record); Moray's 785-patient Cosray tally
The healing effect is a resonance or energy gift, not heat or ordinary current
Refuted by calculationsingle radio-quantum chemistry (Pappas); passive collars as an energy supply (Lakhovsky); cosmic rays as body heat (Lakhovsky)Never properly testedgeranium necrosis, heat neither shown nor excluded (Lakhovsky); resonance-specific preservation and growth (Ternion)
Elements and living things radiate an energy that wires conduct and an operator senses (eloptic energy)
Refuted by calculationviolet or UV photons from elements at room temperature; prism dispersion scaleNever properly testedoperator identification of elements; wired dark-room plants staying greenTested, not supportedelement-dependent stick, on the related Pathoclast only (Hite)
Establishedmicrowave hearing (Frey effect); body as an ionic conductorNever properly testedLeduc's electric sleep in man (Tousey); radio transmitters disorienting pigeons (Lakhovsky)Tested, not supportednerve impulse as a scalar standing wave (Meyl); acupuncture-point cortex finding (Mallove): retracted by five of eight authors, contested by three, never independently replicated; the label rests on the authors' own later view, not an independent test; resonant neutrino-electron cross-section (Ruderfer)Refuted by calculationfocused standoff ELF (Government); neutrino scattering as a detectable ESP channel with the 1980 neutrino sea (Ruderfer; ESP itself not judged)
Life as ATP process powered by terrestrial radiation; consciousness from dimitant asymmetry in mid-brain.
Not testable as statedunitary field
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Alexander Gurwitsch
Discoverer of mitogenetic radiation (onion roots, 1923); head of the school behind most positive results · Rahn-Otto
Russian biologist; his school's 1932 monograph is the source of most numbers in Rahn's book. Otherwise not in the review files.
Otto Rahn
Advocate and experimenter who brought mitogenetic radiation to English readers · Rahn-Otto
1881-1957; Professor of Bacteriology at Cornell 1927-1949; wrote Invisible Radiations of Organisms (1936), printing the energy objection and his detector failures himself.
Alexander Hollaender (with W. Claus)
Critic and tester: ran the two-year National Research Council study that found nothing · Rahn-Otto
Wrote NRC Bulletin 100 (1937) and 'The problem of mitogenetic rays' (1936). The bulletin itself was not read in the review. Otherwise not in the review files.
Walter J. Kilner
Inventor of the dicyanin aura screen; sole observer in nearly every account · Kilner-Walter
1847-1920; Cambridge-trained physician (MRCP 1883), in charge of electrotherapy at St Thomas's Hospital, London, 1879-1893. His publisher Rebman sold the screens with the book.
Guillaume de Fontenay
Tester: tried Kilner's screens in Paris with de Rochas (1911-12), saw nothing, and proposed two blind tests · Kilner-Walter
Wrote the March 1912 Annales des Sciences Psychiques review; sympathetic to the aura, he called his failure 'a reservation, not a denial'. His blind designs were never run.
Georges Lakhovsky
Theorist of the oscillating cell; builder of the Multiple Wave Oscillator · Lakhovsky George
1869-1942; engineer born near Minsk, trained in Odessa and at the Sorbonne, working in Paris; moved to New York in 1941. Held railway, telephone and therapy patents.
Sinclair Tousey
Author of a medical-electricity textbook (1910-1921); clinician reporting high-frequency and x-ray cures · Tousey-Sinclair
1864 to about 1937; Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons 1888 (one snippet); New York and Garden City practice; seven US patents 1911-1925; papers at the New-York Historical Society.
T. Henry Moray
Patentee of the Cosray electrotherapeutic apparatus · Morray-TH
Salt Lake City, 1892-1974; known chiefly for his Radiant Energy device. His sons wrote the 1946 radioactive-applicator treatise, which says 'no special shielding' is needed.
T. Galen Hieronymus
Inventor of the eloptic element analyzer · Hieronymus-TG
1895-1988; electrical engineer at Kansas City Power and Light from 1919. Said openly that the detector's mechanism 'is not known'.
Panagiotis T. Pappas
Inventor of the PAPIMI pulsed-induction device · Pappas-PT
Greek physicist and mathematician in Athens; published on the Ampere force law (Nuovo Cimento B 1983). One Greek source says he died in 2026.
Lineage
Rahn reported Gurwitsch's school; the work continued in the USSR to at least 1955 and returned under new names as biophotons (Popp, from 1976) and ultra-weak photon emission.
Kilner had worked on N-rays before the aura; Boddington revived his screens as 'Aurospecs' goggles about 1929-31.
Devices are still sold under the Lakhovsky name, a present-day Colysa SA among the sellers (a stake; no succession from the 1929 COLYSA documented); Rigaux and de Cigna carried its clinical use in the 1930s.
Hieronymus came from the Abrams radionics tradition and rebuilt a Pathoclast; Campbell built an analyzer from the patent alone in 1956.
Pappas's 1989 'ions by remote action' patents with Cure were described as applying Nordenstrom's electrochemical cancer method; PAPIMI descends from them.
Moray's Cosray tube carried a uranium or carnotite coating, while his book, as the physicist reads it, condemned radium therapy, the medical fashion Tousey's textbook had recorded.
Key evidence (12)
1911Kilner, The Human Atmosphere (and second edition, 1920) Case lists, screen method, failures and retractions; 1911 read in full; 1920 edition read in part (no local scan; Tables 3, 4 and 6 too garbled to use)· Kilner-Walter
1912-03De Fontenay, L'Aura humaine et les ecrans du Dr Walter J. Kilner Paris trials with Kilner's own screens: nothing seen; two blind tests proposed· Kilner-Walter
1921Tousey, Medical Electricity, Rontgen Rays and Radium, third edition 1361 PDF pages, OCR; high-frequency results pp.544-647 deep-read; support and contrary reports side by side, no controls· Tousey-Sinclair
1924-07-26Gosset, Gutmann, Lakhovsky and Magrou, C. R. Soc. Biol. 91:626 3 treated crown-gall geraniums necrosed, 16 controls did not; no randomisation, blinding or temperature stated· Lakhovsky George
1936Rahn, Invisible Radiations of Organisms Protoplasma-Monographien IX; the Gurwitsch school's results, counter data and the energy objection· Rahn-Otto
1937Hollaender and Claus, NRC Bulletin 100 Two years with biological and physical detectors, all negative; protocol contested by the Gurwitsch tradition; not obtained· Rahn-Otto
1937-07De Cigna, communication to the Vienna International Congress of Short Waves Best-documented Multiple Wave Oscillator series, with histology and radiographs; co-treatments; 'six cases are not sufficient'· Lakhovsky George
c.1940-1959Photo Actinia Oxygen Therapy by Electric Reaction (Cosray booklet) Unsigned tally of 785 treated, no control group or follow-up; row sums do not match the totals· Morray-TH
1949-09-27Hieronymus, US Patent 2,482,773 Element radiations, prism scale, touch detector and the wired dark-room plant observation; no measured data· Hieronymus-TG
1996-09-17Pappas, US Patent 5,556,418, Method and Apparatus for Pulsed Magnetic Induction Spark-gap discharge into a flat coil over the patient; 'infinite then negative gain' argument· Pappas-PT
2005-06-10FDA letter to Panos Pappas Significant-risk classification; lists animal deaths and a fatal myocardial infarction during treatment; the regulator's account· Pappas-PT
2023Viti et al. (2023) and Keilani et al. (2025), sham-controlled PAPIMI pilots n = 32 and n = 20; positive effects on heart-rate variability and post-COVID fatigue; no conflicts declared· Pappas-PT
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
One unblinded observer who holds the hypothesis judging faint, threshold-level effects: Kilner's haze, Hieronymus's finger stick, the Gurwitsch yeast detectors (Kilner-Walter, Hieronymus-TG, Rahn-Otto).
Total energy instead of energy per event: a 6 eV photon from a 0.14 eV step, or chemistry from a 1e-6 eV radio quantum (Rahn-Otto, Pappas-PT).
Borrowing a formula without its hidden conditions: a tuned circuit needs a good conductor and a power source, and a wet chromosome has neither (Lakhovsky George).
Case series with no denominator or control, and combined treatments that cannot be separated (Tousey-Sinclair, Lakhovsky George, Morray-TH).
Reading peak values as power: a 0.001 percent duty cycle makes peak power 100,000 times average (Pappas-PT). Tousey called his coils' excess apparent and explained it by arc-voltage collapse; the arbiter finds his Oudin account, omitting reactive power, incomplete (Tousey-Sinclair).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Blind, sham-controlled trials with rules fixed in advance: Kilner's person against a warm towel or nothing behind a curtain; coded element vials for a Hieronymus analyzer, powered and unplugged; a randomised 150 MHz crown-gall repeat with in-gall thermometry; Rahn's quartz-glass test with a calibrated UV-C positive control in two laboratories.
Deciding records: NRC Bulletin 100 (1937); the 1924 C. R. Soc. Biol. note and de Cigna's Genoa files; the BMJ review of 6 January 1912; Pappas's 1991 IECEC paper and the FDA adverse-event records; Hieronymus's autobiography data tables (pp.228-267); the Cosray FDA case file (NARA RG 88).
Try it yourself: Run Lakhovsky George's example.py: a salt-water filament gives Q about 4e-6 against about 50 for copper. Rahn-Otto's example.py compares a 6.1 eV photon with 0.14 eV per sucrose event. Pappas-PT's example.py turns 40 kV and 60 J into a membrane shift of about 110 mV.
Open questions
What killed the 1924 geranium tumours: near-field heating, a non-thermal radio effect, or chance? Only a blind, randomised repeat with in-gall thermometry, sham and heated-only controls can tell.
Did the NRC study use the detector conditions the positive laboratories required, and is there any 190-260 nm emission from yeast, roots or blood?
Does a dicyanin-primed observer, blind, see more haze round a person than round a warm towel or an empty background?
Do the small positive PAPIMI pilots hold up in a large independent trial with checked blinding, and are any effects more than ordinary induced current or placebo?
Does the Hieronymus stick appear with the power off and still track the sample when the operator does not know what it is?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Dismissed without testing? No: it was tested by both sides. Was it properly settled? No: the only neutral, well-resourced negative is contested on protocol, and the positive results are unblinded and mostly lack error estimates. Rahn-Otto, arbiter.md, Claim 1
Arbiter The geranium note is a real four-author communication with a stated control group. Against it: three treated plants, allocation and blinding not stated, no field, distance or temperature. Far-field heating looks small, but near-field coupling is not excluded: heating is neither shown nor excluded. Lakhovsky George, arbiter.md, Claim 3
Arbiter The perceptual reading explains more of the record at no cost; the strong form has no independent support beyond Kilner's own reports. Nobody has tested a person against a towel or an empty background, blind, with a sham screen. Kilner-Walter, arbiter.md, section 4, claim 1
Physicist Mainstream physics rejects net energy gain and element-selective radio-frequency chemistry, yet the induced fields are strong enough to stimulate nerves and muscles: 'The patent's practical device may do something in tissue, but for reasons not in the patent.' Pappas-PT, physicist.md, section 4
Arbiter On Radiation Laboratories going dark about 1950: the record does not show a test being blocked; it shows no test being run. Commercial failure and practice-based circulation are best supported; regulatory pressure rests on the inventor's account alone. Hieronymus-TG, arbiter.md, Where the record goes dark
AI noteKilner's 1920 second edition is dated three months after his death, and Pappas's key 1991 energy paper surfaced only as a legal-removal notice in a Google search: decisive documents that outlived or eluded their authors.
Theme 8Electrodynamics beyond textbook Maxwell
no changeB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential26 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:54
Textbook electromagnetism leaves real gaps: the force between single current elements, what a spinning magnet's field does, how energy is booked. This card sets the founding papers beside the rival force laws and extra terms built in those gaps, and shows which hold up on the page.
Headline verdicts of the 26 member projects: Established5Never properly tested7Tested, not supported1Refuted by calculation6Internally inconsistent3Not testable as stated4
Theme background
Ampere (1820-26) built a force law between current elements, central and equal-and-opposite; Weber later extended it to moving charges. Maxwell (1856, 1865) instead put Faraday's lines of force into field equations, which Heaviside reduced to four vector equations in 1884; Whittaker (1903) rewrote the field with two scalar potentials. Kennard (1917) tested unipolar induction with a spinning condenser. Later outsiders claim Maxwell is incomplete: Aspden's mass-ratio term, Hooper's E = B x V, Meyl's potential vortex, van Vlaenderen's scalar field S, Distinti's New Electromagnetism, Evans's torsion, Wheeler's dielectric magnetism.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics kept Maxwell's field equations (Heaviside's form) with the Lorentz force, and settled light as an electromagnetic wave with Hertz (1887-88). For closed circuits Ampere's and the field law give identical forces (Ampere); where element forces break Newton's third law, field momentum balances the books (van Vlaenederen Koen). Left open: no neutral test of longitudinal forces on open circuit elements, and Maxwell's own remark that closed circuits cannot fix the force between single moving charges (Aspden-Hearld).
Ranking explanation
It ranks with the themes whose questions remain open in the record (B) and that a reader can calculate at home (C): the Ampere-Grassmann comparison, Kennard's 0.231 ratio and Hooper's predicted microvolts are each a short script. It gathers twelve core projects and work from Ampere (1820) to Evans (2010) (D). It sits below Scalar Waves and Natural Frequencies, whose members report more untested anomalies (A), and above Nuclear Anomalies because its open questions are sharper and cheaper to settle.
Key supporting elements
Kennard: a condenser spun inside a magnetised solenoid charges, reversing sign with current and rotation in every row; his rival Barnett wrote in 1919 that it 'has been confirmed'. Established: induction depends on rotation relative to an inertial frame.
Ampere: the bridge (hairpin) floating on mercury moves away from the source, as his k = -1/2 law predicts from collinear repulsion; shown by Ampere and de la Rive (Geneva, 1822), then reproduced by Graneau, Moyssides, Peoglos and Pappas.
Aspden-Hearld and Ampere: Maxwell's Treatise itself says closed-circuit experiments leave the force between single moving charges undetermined; any extra term that integrates to zero around a loop survives every closed-circuit test (Established as Maxwell's remark).
van Vlaenederen Koen: Minotti and Modanese (EPJ C 2023) develop the Lorenz-gauge scalar S, citing his 2001 paper (influence, not agreement; their circuit is a proposal, no detection); a 2013 Monstein-Wesley rebuild left a 'yet-unidentified mechanism', not testing S.
Heaviside, Maxwell and Whittaker-ET: Heaviside's four equations (from twelve of Maxwell's twenty) have Maxwell's 1865 sign problem effectively repaired; his R/L = G/C line was confirmed in the field from 1899; Whittaker's potentials reproduce the Lienard-Wiechert field to 12 digits.
Key contradictions
Ampere: for any closed source circuit the Ampere and Grassmann (field) element forces agree to every printed digit, so the bridge cannot choose between them; Assis and Chaib concede Grassmann fits only with the bridge's self-force, a standard term.
Wheeler-Ken: 42.4923 (180/phi^3) as the proton's true gyromagnetic ratio is Tested, not supported against NMR's 42.5775 MHz/T; his force formula D.V. = M1 x M2 / d^2 has no units and misses the 1/d^4 magnet falloff.
Meyl-Konstantin: E = v x B with H = -v x D holds only for v = c, as his book prints; H. Weidner's IGF companion report (10 Aug 2001): effects 'no longer exist' with LEDs removed and low-harmonic drive.
Evans-Myron: ECE sets F = A(0) T with a freely chosen spin connection; where it is zero it is Maxwell, elsewhere it gives no number differing from mainstream; its g-factor sits 4.2e-6 above experiment.
Hopper-WJ: at the same 13 A the reading rose from 15 to 100 microvolts when a resistor was added outside the winding, which B x V cannot do; his own formula predicts about 0.05 microvolts, not 5 to 15.
Timeline (10)
1822-09Ampere and de la Rive test the unexpected collinear repulsion of his k = -1/2 element law in Geneva; the Theorie follows in 1826. · Ampere
1865Maxwell's Dynamical Theory: twenty equations with displacement current and field energy; the ratio of units matches light's speed within about 5 percent. · Maxwell
1884Heaviside recasts Maxwell's theory as four vector equations in E and H, eliminating the potentials; in 1887 he gives the distortionless-line condition. · Heaviside
1903-11Whittaker writes the field of moving electrons with two scalar potentials, a reformulation later read as hidden longitudinal waves. · Whittaker-ET
1917-02Kennard's spinning condenser inside a solenoid charges; the solenoid alone gives about nothing; he argues against moving field lines and for a stationary aether. · Kennard
1969Aspden publishes a force law with a mass-ratio term in the slot Maxwell left undetermined (J. Franklin Inst.); Hooper's lab records microvolt B x V readings. · Aspden-Hearld
1990Meyl's Potentialwirbel: a 'potential vortex' term he says Maxwell dropped, later the basis of his scalar-wave kit. · Meyl-Konstantin
2003-05van Vlaenderen extends Maxwell's equations with the Lorenz-gauge scalar S, predicting a force J S along currents and longitudinal waves. · van Vlaenederen Koen
2004Distinti's Paradox 2 disk generator: one bench run of about 100-200 microvolts, offered against classical induction; a reviewer's Lorentz-force estimate from assumed inputs (about 180 microvolts) reproduces its pattern. · Distinti Robert
2010Evans and co-authors' Criticisms of the Einstein Field Equation: electromagnetism as spacetime torsion; Maxwell-Heaviside called incomplete. · Evans-Myron
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Closed-circuit experiments cannot fix the force between single current elements or moving charges
Establishedclosed-circuit forces from Ampere's law (Ampere); Maxwell's own remark on the undetermined term (Aspden-Hearld)Not testable as stateda unique element law from steady closed-circuit data (Ampere)
Extra force terms between current elements or charges exist (Ampere longitudinal force, Aspden's mass-ratio term, van Vlaenderen's J B_l force), with consequences such as Aspden's ion-hot plasmas
Never properly testedexistence: open-element and longitudinal-force tests by neutral parties (Ampere, van Vlaenederen Koen); Aspden's law itself, and his term as the cause of ion-hot plasmasInternally inconsistentAspden's derivation as a proof of uniquenessRefuted by calculationconsequence claim only, at first order: Aspden's four-case argument that the term heats plasma ions (zero first-order impulse per flyby); the full statistical case is open
The field law breaks Newton's third law between current elements, so it is defective
EstablishedGrassmann non-reciprocity at element level, as mathematics (Ampere, van Vlaenederen Koen)Refuted by calculationas a physical defect: field momentum balances it (van Vlaenederen Koen); 'needs an ad hoc self-force' and 'fails the bridge quantitatively' (Ampere)
Weber's velocity-dependent force law is a better foundation than the field concept
Plausible, untestedslow-regime unification of Coulomb, Ampere and induction, against Maxwell where they differTested, not supportedas a replacement for fields: no waves, not Lorentz invariant (also Historically superseded but instructive)
Unipolar induction depends on rotation relative to an inertial frame, not on field lines turning with the magnet
EstablishedKennard's condenser charging and the inertial-frame reading; Hooper's weak form, motional emf of a conductor moving through BTested, not supportedmoving-line theory, only relative motion of magnet and conductor matters (Kennard)Never properly testedHooper's measurable external E = B x V from drifting electrons; Distinti's Paradox 2 disk generator as an anomaly
Maxwell's field theory, in Heaviside's four vector equations or Whittaker's two scalar potentials, is a correct reformulation
Establishedfour-equation form and S = E x H as an integral conservation law (Maxwell, Heaviside); two scalar potentials as reformulation (Whittaker-ET)Internally inconsistentthe 1865 equations as printed, signs of (F) and (G), later repaired (Maxwell)Not testable as statedthe 'hidden longitudinal scalar wave' reading of Whittaker's potentials, absent from his paper (Whittaker-ET); 'action in the field' as local energy location (Maxwell)
Textbook Maxwell is incomplete: a dropped or hidden term (potential vortex, scalar S, torsion, New Electromagnetism) carries new physics
Plausible, untestedvan Vlaenderen's extended theory with S as a self-consistent theory; S measurable Never properly testedInternally inconsistentMeyl's derivation from E = v x B and H = -v x DRefuted by calculationMeyl's potential-vortex term b = B/tau2 with short tau2 acting in vacuum (div B not zero in dielectrics: Tested, not supported)Not testable as statedEvans's strong claim that electromagnetism is torsion (weak geometric form Historically superseded but instructive)EstablishedDistinti's New Magnetism formula, which is the Lorentz force plus convective induction; his 'B obsolete' reading Not testable as stated
Magnetism is something other than currents in a magnetic field (Ampere's molecular currents; Wheeler's dielectric voidance)
Establishedequivalence of currents and magnets (Ampere)Historically superseded but instructiveall magnetism as classical circulating currents (Ampere)Tested, not supportedWheeler's strong form, the force is dielectric not magnetic; renaming form Not testable as stated
Two-scalar-potential representation reproducing Lienard-Wiechert fields; plane-wave decomposition of solutions.
Never properly testedQ07 hypothesis of longitudinal standing-wave gravity (Not testable as stated); static 1/r wave sum and 1904 potentials Established
Magnetism as a separate interaction via massless spin-1 magnatons.
Not testable as statedether reading
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Andre-Marie Ampere
Author of the central current-element force law (k = -1/2) and the 1822 bridge experiment · Ampere
Began after Oersted's 1820 compass result; fixed k from null (equilibrium) experiments; his 1826 Theorie claims reliance 'solely on experimentation', though in 1820 he wrote the element law 'could not be found by experiment'.
James Clerk Maxwell
Founder of the field equations (1856, 1865); noted closed circuits leave the single-charge force undetermined · Maxwell
1831-1879; first Cavendish Professor at Cambridge (1871). Wrote twenty equations in Cartesian components; took his light-speed number from Weber and Kohlrausch's ratio of units.
Oliver Heaviside
Recast Maxwell's theory as four vector equations; distortionless-line condition · Heaviside
1850-1925; self-taught telegraph engineer, no degree; published mostly in trade journals. Preece obstructed his 1887 joint paper with his brother Arthur: blocked before submission (Hunt 2012, Bruton 2018) or rejected by the Society (1925 obituary).
Edmund Taylor Whittaker
Wrote the field with two scalar potentials (1903-04); historian of aether theories · Whittaker-ET
1873-1956; Second Wrangler 1895, Cambridge then Edinburgh. His 1953 History puts gravity and its waves at the speed of light and does not mention his 1902-03 gravity note.
Earle Hesse Kennard
Ran the 1912 and 1917 unipolar-induction experiments · Kennard
1885-1968; Rhodes Scholar, Ph.D. Cornell 1913, instructor at Minnesota 1914; candid about rejected runs; later wrote the 1922 NRC report on moving media.
Ken L. Wheeler
Holds that magnetic attraction is 'dielectric voidance' and that the golden ratio fixes a magnet's geometry · Wheeler-Ken
Author of Uncovering the Missing Secrets of Magnetism (3rd ed., 25 Sept 2014, 236 pp.); publishes on kathodos.com, YouTube and Substack; no peer-reviewed paper or patent found. Education not in the review files.
Harold Aspden
Revived Maxwell's undetermined term with an ion-electron mass-ratio force and a lattice aether · Aspden-Hearld
Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge; patent manager; published plasma papers in refereed journals (1969-1986) and self-published Physics Unified (c.1980).
Koen J. van Vlaenderen
Extended Maxwell's equations with the scalar field S and a longitudinal Ampere-type force · van Vlaenederen Koen
Dutch electrical engineer (Institute for Basic Research, later Ethergy B.V.); papers 1999-2016, some with Andre Waser; reports no experiment of his own.
Konstantin Meyl
Claims Maxwell dropped a potential-vortex term giving longitudinal scalar waves · Meyl-Konstantin
Born 1952; Dr.-Ing. Stuttgart 1984 on eddy-current couplings; professor of power electronics at Furtwangen 1986-2018; books 1990-2016.
Gerhard W. Bruhn
Critic of Meyl and of van Vlaenderen; showed S must be a source-free wave if charge is conserved
Mathematician at TU Darmstadt who wrote web critiques of several alternative-energy theories; his Meyl critique was printed beside Meyl's 2001 JSE paper.
Lineage
Ampere's central element law (1822) was extended by Weber to moving charges; Assis and Chaib (2015) champion both against the field concept (Ampere).
Maxwell took his light-speed number from Weber and Kohlrausch, measurers for the rival theory; Heaviside reduced twelve of the twenty equations to four (Maxwell, Heaviside).
Aspden revived the term Maxwell's Treatise left undetermined; van Vlaenderen, then Hively (patentee, US 9,306,527, Gradient Dynamics) and Minotti-Modanese, built on the Lorenz-gauge scalar S (Aspden-Hearld, van Vlaenederen Koen).
Bearden brought Whittaker's 1903-04 potentials into scalar-wave writing with a 'standing waves' reading that is not in Whittaker's papers (Whittaker-ET, Bearden).
Kennard answered Barnett's moving-line view; Su (2005) and Chyba et al. (2025) re-examine the same experiments; Hooper placed his E = B x V in the unipolar-induction lineage (Kennard, Hopper-WJ).
Wheeler takes his conjugate dielectric and magnetic vocabulary from Eric Dollard, after Steinmetz (Wheeler-Ken, Dollard-Eric).
Key evidence (12)
1822Ampere's 1820-1826 papers and Theorie, translated in Assis and Chaib, Ampere's Electrodynamics (2015) Read selectively with deep reads of Ch. 6-7, 21-22 and Parts VI-VIII; Theorie Sec. 29.2 onward unread; authors are Ampere-Weber partisans· Ampere
1864-12-08Maxwell, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field Read on page images: twenty equations, two printed sign errors, the 5 percent light-speed match· Maxwell
1885-01Heaviside, 'Electromagnetic Induction and its Propagation', The Electrician (1885-87) The four vector equations and energy flux; primary texts read as OCR on archive.org, not saved· Heaviside
1903-11-12Whittaker, field of electrons by two scalar potential functions Read; reproduces the Lienard-Wiechert field to 12 digits· Whittaker-ET
1917-02Kennard, On Unipolar Induction (Phil. Mag. (6) 33, 179-190) Read; ratio 0.242 against 0.231; the -6.22 V0 charge not reproduced from his own rule· Kennard
1919-10-10S. J. Barnett, A Report on Electromagnetic Induction (Trans. AIEE) Read; the former rival says Kennard and Pegram confirmed the corollary· Kennard
1969Aspden, paper in Journal of the Franklin Institute 287, 179 The force law with the mass-ratio term; named as deciding, not obtained· Aspden-Hearld
1995-07Millis and Williamson, NASA TM-106963 Flat self-cancelling coils, not Hooper's 4020-wire bundle; no weight change within 0.02 g on 555 g; capacitor readings 'too erratic'· Hopper-WJ
2001-09IGF Waldaschaff, Experimente zum Nachweis von Skalarwellen Six testers of Meyl's kit: resonant Lecher-line transfer, about 45 percent efficiency, no over-unity, no Faraday-cage measurement printed· Meyl-Konstantin
2003-05-21van Vlaenderen, A generalisation of classical electrodynamics for the prediction of scalar field effects Read; every identity checked symbolically; no magnitude for S· van Vlaenederen Koen
2007Distinti, Inductance Modeling Using New Electromagnetism (M.S. thesis, Fairfield University) Deep read pp.36-79; trace inductance within 2-5 percent of his own LCR readings; with-plane values are corrected readings· Distinti Robert
2010Evans, Eckardt, Crothers and Pendergast, Criticisms of the Einstein Field Equation 548 pp.; digest plus three deep reads; no AIAS papers, device data or peer-reviewed material in the folder· Evans-Myron
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Comparing a new law with a cut-down textbook: Distinti's anomalies drop the convective induction and scalar-potential terms; the Ampere book calls a standard self-force term ad hoc.
Reading element-level physics from whole-circuit data: net forces on complete circuits cannot tell Ampere's law from Grassmann's or exclude Aspden's term (Ampere, Aspden-Hearld).
Starting equations that hold only in a special case: Meyl's E = v x B with H = -v x D force v = c; Evans's resonance appears only after a complex radius.
Reading microvolt signals as new fields without controls: Hooper's readings follow an outside resistor; Distinti gave no classical estimate for Paradox 2, and a reviewer's Lorentz-force estimate reproduces its pattern (Hopper-WJ, Distinti Robert).
Matching numbers picked with the target known: Aspden's alpha and mass ratio, Wheeler's golden-ratio proton constant, Evans's underived Lamb-shift radius.
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: A neutral, pre-registered measurement on an open circuit element or isolated charges, where Ampere's law, Aspden's mass-ratio term, van Vlaenderen's J S force and the field law differ: for example an electron beam passing a trapped ion, plus independent repeats of Graneau-type longitudinal-force tests.
Deciding records: Aspden, J. Franklin Inst. 287 (1969); Graneau 1983 and 1985; Pegram 1917 and Kennard's 1913 Phys. Rev. paper; Distinti's ni.pdf and homopolar.pdf; the Hively-Loebl 2019 test report; Evans's AIAS papers 63, 93 and 94 and the Bruhn and Hehl-Obukhov critiques.
Try it yourself: Run Ampere's example.py: a closed loop acting on one element gives the same force under Ampere (k = -1/2) and Grassmann. Then Kennard's example.py: 25 A and 1150 turns give about 1606 gauss and the 0.231 ratio, and div(v x B) = 2 omega B.
Open questions
Is there any measurable quantity on which Ampere's and Grassmann's element laws differ? Exploding-wire fragmentation (Graneau) is the only candidate cited, and it needs a controlled analysis of thermal and magnetic-pressure effects (Ampere).
Does nature contain a free scalar field S? Its theory is self-consistent, but nothing has detected it; the Minotti-Modanese detection circuit has not been built (van Vlaenederen Koen).
Did Kennard use an unstated boundary assignment, or does his printed solution slip? His -6.22 V0 charge has never been reproduced (Kennard).
Is Distinti's Paradox 2 signal fully accounted for by v x B plus contact and thermoelectric effects once the real geometry and speed are used?
Does a force between isolated charges of very different mass, of size (M/m)vV/c^2 times Coulomb, exist (Aspden-Hearld)?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter For complete loops the two laws give the same net force; they differ only in how they split it among elements. Most of the dispute is therefore about what can be measured on pieces of a circuit, not on whole circuits. Ampere, arbiter.md, Reading guide for the reader
Contrarian All parties agree on the condition: S needs non-conserved sources. The claim and its critics agree on the mathematics and disagree about whether nature ever supplies the source. van Vlaenederen Koen, contrarian.md section 3
Arbiter Two readings are open: Kennard used a boundary assignment not stated in the paper, or the printed solution has a slip. On the second, the measured 0.242 would exceed the Lorentz value by 50 to 60 percent. I do not infer a real effect from this. Kennard, arbiter.md, 9.1
Primer His two 'new' laws, written out carefully, turn out to be the ordinary textbook laws in different clothing. Where he gets correct numbers, that is why. Distinti Robert, primer.md, 1. The idea in one paragraph
Mathematician Equation (D) contains the velocity of a moving conductor with no stated reference body, so the equations implicitly hold in one preferred frame; Lorentz and Einstein, not Maxwell or Heaviside, resolved this. Maxwell, mathematician.md claim 5, adopted in arbiter.md (Claim 5) and primer.md section 4
AI noteMaxwell's light-speed match used Weber and Kohlrausch's ratio of units, measured for Weber's action-at-a-distance theory, the rival that Ampere's modern champions still prefer to Maxwell's field.
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential18 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:53
Cold fusion is the one free-energy-adjacent claim with Navy laboratory reports, a DIA assessment and reported 2023 federal funding behind it, yet no neutral, protocol-fixed test. This card sets it beside hydrinos, neutrino seas and a century of transmutation claims, and asks what each record actually shows.
Headline verdicts of the 18 member projects: Established2Never properly tested8Refuted by calculation3Internally inconsistent3Not testable as stated1Contested1
Theme background
Reports of nuclear change without nuclear-scale energies run from Thomson's helium and neon out of bombarded salts (1913) and the 1920s transmutations by arc and discharge, through Fleischmann and Pons's excess heat in palladium loaded with deuterium (1989) and Mizuno-type plasma electrolysis of light water (replicated openly by Naudin), to the Navy's China Lake and SPAWAR programmes and the 2009 DIA report. Beside them stand theories: Mills's hydrinos (hydrogen below its ground state), Znidarsic's transitional velocity, Ruderfer's neutrino sea, Santilli's hadronic fuels (via Dunning-Davis), and Brown's gamma transmutation of nuclear waste.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics holds that two nuclei at room temperature almost never tunnel through their repulsion, and that d+d fusion would give neutrons, tritium and gammas far above anything seen. A 1989 DOE panel found cold fusion unconvincing; a 2004 review split on excess heat. Standard quantum mechanics allows no hydrogen state below n = 1. Not settled: the China Lake heat-helium correlation; NASA's 1996 excess in Mills's cell (authors could not exclude recombination); Hagen's EPR spectrum (ordinary fit not excluded).
Ranking explanation
It meets all four criteria. Reported anomalies (China Lake heat and helium, NASA 1996, Hagen's EPR) are Never properly tested rather than refuted, and a 2023 ARPA-E programme, known from search snippets, would show the question institutionally open. It ranks below Electrodynamics beyond Maxwell for breadth: only five core members, and the theories offered for it (Mills, Znidarsic, Ruderfer) fail their own calculations. It ranks above Ether drift, whose central detections were Tested, not supported.
Key supporting elements
Government: China Lake (Miles, Bush, Johnson 1996, a Navy report) found excess heat in 7 of 8 Pd-B runs and helium-4 matching heat in 30 of 33, at 1e11 to 1e12 atoms per second per watt, bracketing the fusion value.
Government: DIA says cells need several hundred hours of loading, so fast 1989 replications were not a fair test; the arbiter keeps this as the claim's strongest point. ARPA-E's 2023 funding of eight LENR projects is known only from snippets.
Mills-Randal: NASA Lewis (Niedra et al. 1996) measured up to 11 W excess on 60 W input in a company cell; recombination explains it only at an efficiency the data 'marginally admit'.
Mills-Randal: W. R. Hagen, a TU Delft EPR specialist declaring no company funding, recorded a structured multi-line spectrum in 11 samples, with no nitrogen or transition-metal ions found.
Znidarsic-Frank: the inventor reported his own marginal 1997 result and his 1998-99 nulls openly; Thompson-JJ: his helium from bombarded solids was never independently replicated or refuted, so it stays Never properly tested.
Key contradictions
Government: 1 W of ordinary d+d needs 1.9e12 neutrons per second; CR-39 tracks imply about 1e3 (order of magnitude, assumed detector efficiency). Miles admits Pyrex air-helium leaks and an unsolved 'reproducibility problem'.
Brown-Paul: photonuclear transmutation of Cs-137 and Sr-90 is Established, untested at plant scale; but his 24,000-year example, probably Pu-239 (arbiter's inference), becomes Pu-238 (87.7 years) under (gamma,n), not safe within months.
Mills-Randal: EarthTech (1997) ran the light-water nickel cell 164 hours with a recombiner and found no excess heat; the derivation of states below n = 1 is Internally inconsistent; kW reports are company-hosted.
Rutherford-Ernest: 1920s transmutation claims by ordinary means (Miethe's gold, Smits's mercury, Paneth and Peters's helium from palladium) failed on retest or were withdrawn: 'the presence of an element has been mistaken for its creation'.
Znidarsic-Frank: Vt equals alpha c/2, so the 'derivations' of h and alpha return their inputs; the nuclear sound speed is about 45 times Vt. RuderferM: resonant neutrino scattering fails against Borexino, Super-Kamiokande and SNO.
Timeline (10)
1913Thomson reports helium and neon from salts bombarded by cathode rays and will not call it transmutation until other explanations fail. · Thompson-JJ
1926Paneth and Peters report helium from hydrogen in palladium; they withdraw it after finding glass reabsorbs air helium. Smits withdraws lead-to-mercury the same year. · Rutherford-Ernest
1974Ruderfer proposes resonant neutrino-electron scattering, about nine orders above standard theory, to explain the solar-neutrino deficit (as restated in 1980; the 1974-75 papers are unread). · RuderferM
1989Fleischmann and Pons announce excess heat in Pd/D cells; fast replications are mostly negative and a DOE advisory panel finds the evidence not convincing. · Government
1996China Lake report TP 8302 correlates heat with helium-4; NASA Lewis measures up to 11 W excess in Mills's light-water cell (TM-107167). · Government
1997EarthTech runs Mills's light-water cell 164 hours with a recombiner: no excess heat. Znidarsic reports a marginal result he 'cannot now repeat'. · Mills-Randal
2000-02The USPTO withdraws an allowed Mills patent application after 'an outside inquiry', the Group Director objecting that it contradicts known physics. · Mills-Randal
2004A second DOE review splits about evenly on excess heat; two thirds are unconvinced of nuclear reactions. · Malove-Eugene
2009DIA report DIA-08-0911-003 says LENR 'has begun to be accepted' as reproducible; it grew from a SPAWAR workshop of its contributors. · Government
2023-02ARPA-E announces $10 million for eight projects to determine whether LENR could underpin energy technology (known from search snippets). · Government
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Electrolytic cells produce anomalous excess heat: palladium loaded with deuterium, or Mizuno-type plasma electrolysis of light water
Never properly testedPd/D: no neutral, protocol-fixed, blind multi-lab test (Government); tested many times with reviewers split (Malove-Eugene). Plasma electrolysis: Naudin's own 33 runs, and the CNAM (1.35-1.41) and other positive reports, against droplet loss and post-run accounting (Naudin-JL)Tested, not supportedstrong form, repeatable useful power (Linerman-Peter; its arbiter calls the wider claim Contested, a label outside the scale); Naudin's method as replicated by EarthTech and in the Texas cell, COP about 1.0 (EarthTech average 0.98 excluding runs 9-11, stirrer off) (Naudin-JL)
An unknown nuclear process yields helium-4, particle tracks and transmuted elements in cells
Never properly testedhelium correlation disputed, CR-39 tracks examined mainly by their authors (Government); Urutskoev titanium foils (DLHotson); transmutation without electric input (Malove-Eugene)Tested, not supportedMallove's 'irrefutable evidence of nuclear reactions' (contested)
Elements can be transmuted by discharges, arcs, electron beams or resonance at chemical-scale energies
Tested, not supported1920s claims by Miethe, Smits, Wendt-Irion, Paneth-Peters (Rutherford-Ernest); discharge-tube helium and neon (Thompson-JJ)Never properly testedThomson's helium from bombarded solids; Riding-Baly; whether Moray's assayed gold is real or artefact (Morray-TH); later biological transmutation (Pappas-PT)Refuted by calculationnuclear origin by these energies: Na or K to helium by keV electrons (Thompson-JJ); nuclear origin of Moray's gold yields; silver-to-cadmium resonance transmutation as a mechanism (Morray-TH)
Hydrogen can fall below its ground state into hydrinos, releasing about 100 times combustion energy
Internally inconsistentMills's derivation of states below n = 1Refuted by calculationsub-ground states of hydrogen with a finite-size protonNever properly testedhydrino identification of the lab anomalies (for the EPR, an ordinary fit not excluded by a blank), and kW energy release; the light-water cell overall, by a neutral partyTested, not supportedlight-water Ni-K2CO3 cell in the EarthTech 1997 repeat (NASA 1996 ambiguous)
A new mechanism lets nuclei pass the Coulomb barrier at low energy, or makes cheap nuclear fuels
Not testable as statedZnidarsic's extended spin-orbit force (no range or strength)Refuted by calculationVt as the nuclear sound speed (Znidarsic-Frank); Santilli's Zn-70 fuel (Dunning-Davis-J)Never properly testedMo-100 fuel and waste neutralisation (Dunning-Davis-J); hydrino-catalysed fusion (Mills-Randal)
A sea of neutrinos interacts strongly enough with matter to explain the solar deficit or supply usable energy
Tested, not supportedRuderfer's resonant scattering (Borexino, SNO); Weber's enhancement (Morray-TH)Historically superseded but instructiveRuderfer's proposal while the Davis deficit stood unexplainedRefuted by calculationRuderfer's 1980 sea at 2.3e9 K; neutrino harvesting at standard coupling (Meyl-Konstantin, Morray-TH)
Gamma beams or fusors can transmute waste or release net nuclear energy cheaply
Establishedphotonuclear transmutation of Cs-137 or Sr-90 as nuclear physics (Brown-Paul); fusor D-D neutrons (Vassilatos-Gerry)Plausible, untestedphotonuclear transmutation of waste at plant scale (Brown-Paul)Refuted by calculationBrown's photon-only net electricity and $5 million plant for MCi inventories in monthsTested, not supportedFarnsworth's 1966 self-sustained fusion (best runs at Q about 1e-5)
Explains LENR, biological transmutation and neutron synthesis by removing the Atomic BEC label.
Not testable as statedepo model
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
M. H. Miles
Lead author of the China Lake heat-and-helium report (1996) · Government
Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake; ONR-funded programme from 1992, work from 1989; first reported helium in March 1991. Wrote 'We have not been able to solve the reproducibility problem'.
Pamela Mosier-Boss
DIA report contributor; first author of the CR-39 triple-track papers · Government
US Navy SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific, San Diego; Pd/D co-deposition work with Szpak; answered Kowalski's 2008 critique in print; with Forsley re-examined the tracks in 2021. A party with a stake in the field.
Randell L. Mills
Hydrino theorist; founder of BlackLight Power / Brilliant Light Power · Mills-Randal
By his book's own account an MD (Harvard) with chemistry and engineering study. Runs the company selling the technology since 1991; it reports over $150 million raised; no product sale found.
Wilfred R. Hagen
EPR specialist who measured the claimed molecular-hydrino signal · Mills-Randal
Department of Biotechnology, TU Delft; co-author with Mills (2022, 2024, 2025), declaring no company funding. Called his fit 'semi-quantitative' and a broad signal of 'origin and nature unknown'.
Frank Znidarsic
Proposer of the transitional velocity Vt for LENR and gravity effects · Znidarsic-Frank
Registered professional engineer, Johnstown, Pennsylvania; research as a spare-time programme beside a power-engineering career. Filed a 1997 patent application with no grant found; reported his own null results.
Martin Ruderfer
Neutrino-sea theorist (resonant scattering, solar deficit, psi) · RuderferM
Engineer and physicist at Dimensions, Inc., New York; published in PRL, Am. J. Phys. and Lett. Nuovo Cimento to 1975, later in fringe-adjacent outlets; one source gives his death in 1982.
Paul M. Brown
Proposer of gamma-ray transmutation of nuclear waste (Wired, 1999) · Brown-Paul
Nucell Inc. and Nuclear Solutions; resonant nuclear battery patent US 4,835,433 (1989). CV credentials unverified; died 2002. No data on the transmutation scheme are on record.
Eugene F. Mallove
Advocate who called cold fusion experimentally established · Malove-Eugene
Author of Fire from Ice (1991); edited Infinite Energy and ran a cold-fusion business, so a party with a stake. His own 2003 paper says the nuclear-ash hypothesis 'has not been proved'.
Friedrich Paneth
Claimed helium from hydrogen in palladium (1926), then withdrew it · Rutherford-Ernest
With Peters. His later work showed glass reabsorbs air helium in a day and releases about 1e-9 cc when heated in hydrogen; with leaks excluded, no more than 1e-10 cc.
Beverly Barnhart
Prepared the 2009 DIA report on low-energy nuclear reactions · Government
DIA/DI, Defense Warning Office. The report names five LENR-researcher contributors and carries no data of its own. Education and career: not in the review files.
Lineage
Fleischmann and Pons's 1989 Pd/D cells led to the China Lake and SPAWAR Navy programmes, whose researchers (Miles, Mosier-Boss, McKubre, Forsley) supplied most of the 2009 DIA report (Government).
Mallove, editor of Infinite Energy, championed cold fusion and tied it to the aether and to the Correas' discharge tube (Malove-Eugene).
Znidarsic built his Vt on cited LENR reports (Mosier-Boss 2007, Arata, Rothwell's 50 nm domain) and says Miley invited him to present at the American Nuclear Society in 2000 (Znidarsic-Frank).
Mills proposed hydrino-catalysed fusion of deuterium; NASA's 1996 authors named fusion of shrunken atoms as one hypothesis for his cell (Mills-Randal).
Moray cited Rutherford's 1919 nitrogen disintegration as proof 'the alchemists were right' and claimed cheaper splitting of many nuclei (Morray-TH).
Naudin openly replicated Mizuno and Ohmori's plasma-electrolysis cell; EarthTech's Little and Luce, who had failed to replicate Mizuno in 1998-2000, rebuilt Naudin's set-up in 2003 and later co-authored a null with Kowalski (Naudin-JL).
Key evidence (12)
1996Miles, Bush and Johnson, China Lake TP 8302: anomalous effects in deuterated systems Excess heat up to 0.52 W; helium-4 consistent with heat in 30 of 33 runs; admits air helium in Pyrex. Hosted by lenr-canr.org, a supporters' archive.· Government
2009DIA-08-0911-003, Technology Forecast: worldwide research on LENR Five named LENR-researcher contributors; 54 endnotes, 16 tracing to them; no data of its own.· Government
2021Mosier-Boss and Forsley, CR-39 detectors in Pd/D co-deposition: nuclear tracks or artifacts? JCMNS 34(1):32-58; claims 14.1 MeV neutrons and outside examination by NASA and Russian Academy experts. Abstract only; claimants' own journal.· Government
2003-07Little and Luce (EarthTech), replication of Naudin's Mizuno-type plasma-electrolysis reactor 15 Dewar runs, Clarke-Hess meter, 10 mg balance: COP2 averages 0.98 (excluding runs 9-11, stirrer off); adding evaporation after power-off, as Naudin did, gives 1.27-1.77, which EarthTech calls double counting.· Naudin-JL
2024Gillespie et al. (Texas Tech), Helium detection in technical materials arXiv:2405.02307; untreated 316 steel holds 15-240 pmol of helium-4, equal to 34-552 J of d+d heat. Abstract read.· Government
1996-02Niedra et al., NASA TM-107167: replication of Mills's light-water cell Gains 1.06-1.68, up to 11 W excess on 60 W, cell on loan from Hydrocatalysis; recombination not excluded.· Mills-Randal
1997EarthTech light-water Ni-K2CO3 cell repeat 164 hours with a palladium recombiner; no excess heat within about 10 percent.· Mills-Randal
2022Hagen and Mills, EPR of the claimed molecular hydrino 11 samples, g = 2.0046, 'semi-quantitative' fit; sample supplied by the company; Bruker duplicate known only from Mills's preprint.· Mills-Randal
1930Rutherford, Chadwick and Ellis, Radiations from Radioactive Substances, sec. 74 Six 1922-26 transmutation-by-ordinary-means claims and how each was answered; the authors are the side whose theory forbids them.· Rutherford-Ernest
1999-03New Energy News, Znidarsic's RF-superconductor runs 'No anomalous energy was observed'; rotation at most about 1,000 rpm.· Znidarsic-Frank
1974Ruderfer, resonant neutrino-electron scattering papers (Lett. Nuovo Cimento 10; Phys. Lett. 54A, 1975) Source of the cross-section about nine orders above standard theory; not obtained.· RuderferM
1999-02Platt, Wired: Brown's gamma-ray transmutation of nuclear waste Says Brown 'showed' it; tests 'soon' at Illinois or MIT; no data; no test result found.· Brown-Paul
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
An element found is not an element made: Ramsay's neon from a leak, Paneth's helium reabsorbed by glass (Rutherford-Ernest), Miles's helium in Pyrex and helium stored in steel (Government), fire-assay gold (Morray-TH).
Calorimetry: counting post-power-off evaporation on top of heat already counted, or droplets as vapour (84 J/g instead of 2260 J/g), inflates plasma-electrolysis COP; no positive report seen in the review shows a droplet control; the CNAM report is unread (Naudin-JL).
Explaining failed replications by an unspecified incubation time makes a claim close to unfalsifiable until the protocol is fixed in advance (Government arbiter).
Circular derivation: Znidarsic's Vt already contains h and alpha; Mills's hydrino Raman and EPR 'predictions' rescale measured H2 constants (Znidarsic-Frank, Mills-Randal).
Reports from interested parties presented as neutral: DIA's notes trace to its contributors; Mills's kW calorimetry is company-hosted by hired observers or co-authors (Government, Mills-Randal).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: A pre-registered, blinded, multi-lab run of one fixed Pd/D loading protocol for 500+ hours, with about 0.1% calorimetry, helium-4 measured against heat (2.6e11 atoms per joule) in pretreated metal hardware, a light-water null cell and an independent neutron counter (Government).
Deciding records: ENEA RT/2002/41/FUS in full; the CNAM report (Fauvarque, Clauzon, Lalleve 2005); the NASA and Russian CR-39 examiners' reports; ARPA-E LENR project results; IIT Kanpur's hydrino replication results; Thomson's 1922 deflagrated-metals paper; Ruderfer's 1974-75 scattering papers; the USPTO file wrapper of Mills's 09/009,294.
Try it yourself: Run Government's example.py: it computes 2.6e11 helium atoms per joule of d+d heat and the steel helium background. By hand: 1 W of d+d heat on the neutron branch needs about 1.9e12 neutrons per second; compare a typical laboratory neutron counter's background.
Open questions
Is the heat-helium correlation real once air and steel helium are excluded by pretreated, blanked hardware and a light-water control?
What do the ARPA-E LENR projects (eight, $10 million, 2023) and the IIT Kanpur hydrino replication find?
What is Hagen's structured EPR signal, given a hydrogen-free control run through the same purification?
Did Thomson's own 1922 test settle his helium from bombarded solids, and were the Riding-Baly results ever retested?
Did the CR-39 tracks come from 14.1 MeV neutrons, and if so where did the tritium for d+t come from?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter An effect that explains away failures by unspecified incubation is close to unfalsifiable until the protocol is fixed in advance. Neither side has supplied a pre-registered protocol run blind by independent labs; that is why 'never properly tested' fits the heat claim better than 'tested, not supported'. Government, arbiter.md, Claim 2, Arbitration point 2
Arbiter The hydrino verdicts answer different questions: Mills's derivation is internally inconsistent; a sub-ground state with a finite-size proton is excluded by calculation; whether the lab anomalies behave as Mills says has had no neutral test. Mills-Randal, arbiter.md, Claim 2, Where they differ
Arbiter The 1930 book's general argument is energy scale, nuclear binding of several million volts against chemical energies, and that 'the presence of an element has been mistaken for its creation'. Its authors are the group whose theory says it cannot happen. Rutherford-Ernest, arbiter.md, section 6
Contrarian The strongest positive items for Mills are not the ones the book emphasises: the NASA excess heat, Thermacore, the Glumac DSC, the structured EPR spectrum and the helium-mobility peaks deserve a neutral laboratory. Mills-Randal, contrarian.md, section 4
Arbiter Znidarsic reported his own marginal (1997) and null (1998-99) results openly. All three reviewers credit this, and it is recorded as pertinent evidence in his favour as an experimenter. Znidarsic-Frank, arbiter.md, section 1, point 8
AI noteIn 1926 Paneth and Peters reported helium made from hydrogen in palladium, then withdrew it: glass reabsorbs air helium. Seventy years later the China Lake cold-fusion report names the same air-helium problem in its Pyrex flasks.
Theme 10Gravity control and antigravity
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - Testable13 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:53
Capacitors that push without exhaust, superconducting discs that lose weight, coils that cancel gravity: the claims are old, cheap to test, and mostly never tested under their original conditions. This card sets Brown, Naudin's Lifters, Podkletnov, Hooper, Searl and St Clair side by side, with the nulls and arithmetic.
Headline verdicts of the 13 member projects: Never properly tested7Refuted by calculation4Internally inconsistent1Contested1
Theme background
Claims that electricity, magnetism or rotation can change weight or give thrust without exhaust run from Piggott's charged balls (1920) and T. Townsend Brown's high-voltage 'gravitor' capacitors (British patent 1928) through Hooper's self-cancelling coils (1969-71), Searl's 'levity disc' and Seike's coils, to Podkletnov's rotating superconducting disc (1992), Poher's pulsed discs, Naudin's openly metered Lifters (2001 on), St Clair's 'hyperspace' patent applications (2002-2006) and a 2021 NASA memorandum on a spinning bismuth rotor. Carriers include lone inventors, the compiler 'Rho Sigma' (1977), NASA engineer Richard Eskridge and his daughter Amy.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics treats gravity as spacetime curvature sourced by mass-energy; laboratory fields curve it immeasurably little (about 8e-42 per square metre at air breakdown, per the StClairJohn arbiter's calculation), and a closed system cannot push itself. Capacitor thrust in air is collisional ion drift: Naudin's Lifters weigh 0.3 to about 1.3 times its straight-path ceiling; curved paths raise it. Unexplained: whether any static force survives in clean high vacuum, Brown's unpublished vacuum notes, and Podkletnov's original rig, never rebuilt.
Ranking explanation
It meets A, B and C: Podkletnov's original disc, the 2015 Marshall test and the static-DC vacuum force on asymmetric capacitors are Never properly tested, and Naudin's published Lifter currents, Searl's voltage or the bismuth alignment can be checked on paper. Naudin's metered, buildable device lifts it above Ether drift, whose questions are mostly closed by nulls. It stays below Nuclear anomalies, whose excess-heat record is larger and Contested. Breadth: five core members, eight related.
Key supporting elements
Sigma-Ro and Naudin-JL: Brown's 1973 letters say vacuum thrust 'continued, even when there was no vacuum spark' and report equal torque in air and oil; Gravitec's 2003 NSSTC video (1.72e-6 Torr, 45 kV) shows rotation. Interested parties, no raw data.
Eskridge-Amy: the NASA memorandum's 211 g bismuth rotor lost 0.3 g spun one way and, after disassembly and reassembly, gained 0.3 g (7 Oct 2016); the memorandum first suspected buoyancy or air currents, and the effect faded on repeats.
Eskridge-Amy and Znidarsic-Frank: Podkletnov's original was never copied. Published nulls were static (Ning Li 1997) or slow and unpowered (Hathaway 2003, 400-800 rpm against 5,000); NASA Marshall's rotating-disc replication was never completed.
Hopper-WJ: NASA's 1995 test used flat coils, not Hooper's 4020-wire bundle, and its capacitor readings were 'too erratic'. Gibson's 1969 readings do rise with current, but as I^3.8 on dry ice, not the model's I^2, and track supply voltage.
Sigma-Ro: Seike's 1984 Physical Society of Japan abstract reports a Moebius-wound coil losing 0.059 to 0.291 g at 2 to 6 A; Saxl, a trained physicist, published a charge-dependent torsion-pendulum period in Nature (1964).
Key contradictions
Naudin-JL, Sigma-Ro: Naudin's Lifters weigh 0.3 to about 1.3 times the straight-path ion-drift ceiling F = I d / mu. In vacuum Talley (1988) saw force only during breakdown, Tajmar (2004) none without corona, NASA MSFC (2004) 'No NACAP performance'.
Eskridge-Amy: the Gallerati 2022 review reports Lorincz and Tajmar found an electromagnetic artifact in Poher-type devices (double Faraday cage; primaries unopened); the memorandum's force law predicts about 2000 times less than 0.3 g; no spin-zero control rotor.
Hopper-WJ: at the same 13 A, Gibson's reading rose from 15 to 100 microvolts when a resistor was added outside the winding, which B x V cannot do; NASA saw no weight change within 0.02 g on 555 g.
Sigma-Ro: Searl's centrifugal electron voltage is 6.5e-9 V at 1,000 rpm, 11 to 13 orders below the claimed 1e5 V; Hathaway and Williams (2021) saw no weight change on charged 1 kg conductors within 2 g.
StClairJohn: none of the three St Clair craft was built; a static field plus a radio wave leaves only radiation recoil, 3.3 micronewtons per kilowatt, and a closed electrostatic system has only internal forces.
Timeline (10)
1920Piggott reports that large positive electrostatic discharges hold small silver balls suspended, a local neutralising of gravity; reviewers find ordinary electrostatics fits the magnitudes. · zzz-Unknown
1928Brown's British patent 300,311 says the force on his capacitor 'is believed to be derived solely from the gravitational field', with no data. · Dunning-Davis-J
1956Interavia reports 2 ft discs at 50 kV moving at 17 ft/s, results 'highly classified'; after 1957 the book records nothing more from industry. · Sigma-Ro
1969Hooper's 4020-wire non-inductive generator gives microvolt capacitor readings that he takes as a gravity-like field; patents granted 1971-72, after his death. · Hopper-WJ
1992Podkletnov reports 0.05-2% weight loss over a rotating YBCO superconducting disc; a 1997 preprint is withdrawn amid a dispute with Tampere University. · Eskridge-Amy
1995-07NASA Lewis (Millis and Williamson) tests four flat self-cancelling coils: no weight change within 0.02 g on 555 g. · Hopper-WJ
2001Naudin publishes Lifter builds with their voltages and currents; ARL builds three lifters in 2003 and calls the vacuum case 'the most pressing question'; 351 self-registered builds by 2006. · Naudin-JL
2002St Clair files patent applications (2002-2006) for craft lifted by electromagnetic stress-energy and 'hyperspace permittivity'; none built; record goes dark after 2008. · StClairJohn
2003-07Gravitec's video at NASA's NSSTC shows rotation at 1.72e-6 Torr and 45 kV (interested party, no raw data); in 2004 NASA MSFC reports no vacuum performance. · Naudin-JL
2016-10A 211 g bismuth rotor at NASA Marshall loses 0.3 g, then gains 0.3 g after reassembly with reversed spin; the effect fades; the data are 'rudimentary and preliminary'. · Eskridge-Amy
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Asymmetric high-voltage capacitors (Biefeld-Brown, Lifters) produce thrust, and that thrust is a gravity effect or survives in vacuum
Establishedthrust in air as an ionic (electrohydrodynamic) effect, quantitative model incomplete (Sigma-Ro, Frollov-Alexander); Lifters fly in air, reproducibly (Naudin-JL)Tested, not supportedvacuum non-ionic thrust: Talley 1988, Tajmar 2004, not at Brown's 70-220 kV (Sigma-Ro, Frollov-Alexander); Lifter air thrust as 'not simply ion wind' (Naudin-JL); Brown electrogravitics from a secondary source (Dunning-Davis-J)Never properly testeda static-DC force in high vacuum, 'tested badly in both directions; not dismissed untested' (Naudin-JL); Brown's solar, sidereal and lunar torque correlations (Sigma-Ro); Brown as listed in Eskridge's survey (Eskridge-Amy)Refuted by calculationNaudin's wire-in-vacuum-tube tests as evidence: ordinary electrostatic pull is the same order as the foil's weight (Naudin-JL)Not testable as stated'electro-gravity by elimination' (Losonc, a paper in Naudin's folder; Naudin-JL)
Rotating or pulsed superconductors reduce weight or emit a gravity impulse (Podkletnov, Poher)
Never properly testedoriginal conditions: 5,000 rpm, RF drive, composite disc (Eskridge-Amy); the exact RF rig by a neutral party (Znidarsic-Frank); the 64c impulse speed (van Vlaenederen Koen); the 2015 Marshall test (Eskridge-Amy)Tested, not supportedreduced versions (static, slow, no RF) and the Poher device under shielding (Eskridge-Amy); nearest tests (Znidarsic-Frank); weight effect with null replications and caveats (van Vlaenederen Koen)
Never properly testedthe reported 0.3 g effect itself; the gyroscope-orbit prediction (Table 1); Alzofon's DNP in its own regimeRefuted by calculation'the data match the theory': about 2000 times too large at 0.2 T and 300 K, assuming thermal alignment only (no microwave saturation described); not every spin-weight couplingInternally inconsistentPOAMS in application: three results for one nucleusTested, not supportedthe NMR variant (Dresden 2024)
Electric charge or strong electric fields change weight (Saxl's pendulum, charged bodies, Piggott's balls, driven plates)
Tested, not supportedHathaway and Williams 2021, 2 g on 1 kg (about 0.2% sensitivity, so smaller effects not excluded); two Saxl repeats, mechanical explanation; both known from abstracts only (Sigma-Ro)Internally inconsistentinferring gravity from a torsion pendulum's period (Sigma-Ro)Never properly testedPiggott as a gravity effect, magnitudes fit electrostatics (zzz-Unknown); artificial gravity from driven fields (Minderle-Thomas)
Hooper's self-cancelling coil field (E = B x V) cancels weight and could give antigravity
Tested, not supportedflat coils, room temperature and iced (NASA 1995)Never properly testedpulsed FIG. 3 coil, superconducting version, liftRefuted by calculationgravity as electric polarization: 20 or more orders short at attainable fields
Searl's spinning-ring disc generates huge voltages, outputs more than its input and flew weightless in 1952
Refuted by calculationthe centrifugal-electron mechanism and output above input (Sigma-Ro)Internally inconsistentthe quoted voltage figures as a set (Sigma-Ro)Never properly testedweightlessness and the 1952 flight, one undated second-hand account (Sigma-Ro); Searl as surveyed (Eskridge-Amy); the antigravity reading of the disc (Frollov-Alexander)Plausible, untested1e5 V from some source (Sigma-Ro); a conventional Lorentz-force reading (Frollov-Alexander)
Electromagnetic fields can lift or propel a craft without reaction mass by acting on spacetime (St Clair, Holt)
Refuted by calculationstatic field plus radio wave, and closed-system electrostatic thrust (StClairJohn)Internally inconsistentimaginary angular momentum and grooved-rotor lift; the 1e12 amplification (StClairJohn)Never properly testedbuilt devices: none built or measured (StClairJohn)Not testable as statedHolt's EM-gravity tuning, no equations (Government); Znidarsic's propulsion, no magnitude (Znidarsic-Frank)
Equal masses of different materials weigh differently (Brush)
Tested, not supportedstrong form, 1e-4 to 1e-5: Eotvos, torsion balances, MICROSCOPENever properly testedBrush's own zinc-bismuth and drop results, never repeated in vacuum; air added mass matches
Cites Brown, Laithwaite, Sweet-Bearden antigravity and variable-mass claims as achieved.
Refuted by calculationscalar-wave energy
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
T. Townsend Brown
Inventor of the 'gravitor' asymmetric capacitor · Sigma-Ro
Worked with Paul A. Biefeld at Denison University; six US patents 1934-1965; vacuum tests 1955-59, notes never published. Per Rho Sigma's 1977 book: a 1950 Navy repeat before Admiral Radford 'succeeded', lift 'still quite small'; founded NICAP 1956.
Jean-Louis Naudin
Lifter builder and open replicator; a party with a stake · Naudin-JL
French experimenter; ran JLN Labs (1996-2013), publishing voltages and currents of his Lifters and replications of others' devices; co-inventor with Patrick Cornille on two patents assigned to AES. Education not in the review files.
Eugene Podkletnov
Source of the rotating-superconductor 'gravity shielding' claim · Eskridge-Amy
Reported 0.05-2% weight loss over a rotating YBCO disc (1992, 1997); 2001 patent and impulse-generator paper with Modanese; withdrawn preprint and Tampere dispute. No visual record of the original was found.
William J. Hooper
Inventor of the motional electric field generator and B x V gravity theory · Hopper-WJ
1895-1971; Berkeley PhD 1925; Professor of Physics, Principia College, 1931-1964. President of Electrodynamic Gravity, Inc., assignee of his patents; died before either was granted.
John R. R. Searl
Inventor of the spinning-ring generator and 'levity disc' · Sigma-Ro
Per the Barret Report, an electrical fitter, Midlands Electricity Board, 1949. A hedged second-hand 1984 letter says he was prosecuted and detained in 1982-83; a web summary instead cites a jailing for pylon damage (1983).
John Quincy St. Clair
Applicant for five 'hyperspace' propulsion patent applications · StClairJohn
Hyperspace Research Institute, San Juan, Puerto Rico; self-filed, no assignee; copyright registrations of his tetrahedron diagram 1996-2008; record goes dark after 2008. Education and career not in the review files.
Richard H. Eskridge
First author of the NASA POAMS memorandum; possibly the unnamed first-hand voice describing the 2015 Marshall test in Amy Eskridge's Q&A (identity unconfirmed) · Eskridge-Amy
33 years at NASA Marshall; retired 2016 as Chief Technical Advisor of the Propulsion Research Lab; co-founder of the Institute for Exotic Science, a party with a stake in the research.
Amy Eskridge
Advocate and lecturer on superconductor gravity research · Eskridge-Amy
1987-2022; UAH chemistry graduate; co-founder and president of the Institute for Exotic Science, which sought investment for this research. Published no paper, patent or data.
Erwin J. Saxl
Charged torsion-pendulum experimenter · Sigma-Ro
Privately financed; published in Nature (1964) and, with M. Allen, in Physical Review D (1971) on eclipse period changes. Two later repeats (1992, 1998) found no anomaly.
Martin Tajmar
Tester of Biefeld-Brown thrust, Poher-type devices and Alzofon's claim · Eskridge-Amy
TU Dresden. No thrust once corona wind was excluded (2004); with Lorincz, an artifact in a Poher-device replication (as Gallerati 2022 reports); 2024 NMR test of Alzofon's claim, null with a heating artifact.
Lineage
Biefeld and Brown's capacitors were relayed by Rho Sigma's Ether-Technology (Sigma-Ro) and cited by Frolov and Dunning-Davies; Transdimensional Technologies' Lifter and NASA's Campbell patents followed, which Naudin replicated openly from 2001 (Naudin-JL).
Podkletnov's disc led to the Podkletnov-Modanese impulse generator (2001), then Poher's pulsed discs; a 2015 Marshall test of one is described by a speaker possibly Richard Eskridge, unconfirmed (Eskridge-Amy).
Znidarsic reads Podkletnov's 3 MHz and 1/3 m as his transitional velocity (Znidarsic-Frank); van Vlaenederen cites Podkletnov's impulse speed as his Phi radiation (van Vlaenederen Koen).
Osborne and Pope's 2003 angular-momentum theory became the 2021 NASA POAMS memorandum, funded under a Space Act agreement with Quantum Machines (Eskridge-Amy).
Hooper's patents are cited by later thrust patents (PST Associates 2005, Banduric); Bergier said Rho Sigma's report led to Hooper's company, which the 1968 filing date contradicts (Hopper-WJ, Sigma-Ro).
Podkletnov's report drew Ning Li (UAH, with NASA Marshall) into superconductor gravity work; her 1997 static test was null; after a 2001 DoD contract (Amy's slide) she published nothing past 2002, an open case (Eskridge-Amy).
Key evidence (12)
1928Brown, British patent 300,311 (gravitor) Ratio 'may at times ... be even as high as a million to one', force 'believed to be derived solely from the gravitational field'; no data, voltage or thrust figures.· Dunning-Davis-J
1973Brown's letters to Schaffranke (14 Feb and 5 Apr 1973) Vacuum tests below 1e-6 mm Hg at 70-220 kV; thrust persisting without sparks; equal torque in air and oil; notes unpublished. Brown reports his own work.· Sigma-Ro
1983Gibson, The All-Electric Motional Field Generator and Its Potential Only raw 1969 data: 7-15 microvolts at 10 A; 15 versus 100 at 13 A with added external resistance; dry-ice run. Gibson was a company officer with a stake.· Hopper-WJ
1995-07Millis and Williamson, NASA TM-106963 Four flat self-cancelling coils, ambient and iced: no weight change within 0.02 g on 555 g; accelerometer null; capacitor readings 'too erratic'.· Hopper-WJ
2001Naudin, The Lifter v4.0 experiment and Lifter comparison chart 32 g, 36 cells, 2.01 mA at 40.5 kV, 81.4 W to hover; the arbiter's ion-drift ceiling for 30 mm is about 0.30 N against 0.31 N weight.· Naudin-JL
2002St Clair's five US patent applications (2003/0197093 and four others) Self-filed, Hyperspace Research Institute; one sentence and one unscaled photograph are the only experimental material; applications abandoned.· StClairJohn
2003Hathaway, Cleveland and Bao, rotating-superconductor test 400-800 rpm against Podkletnov's 5,000, no RF drive; null to 0.001%; arXiv gr-qc/0404005.· Eskridge-Amy
2003-06Bahder and Fazi, ARL-TR-3005, Force on an asymmetric capacitor (US Army Research Laboratory) Three lifters and a wire lift at 30-37 kV; basis 'not understood'; ballistic ion wind three orders too small, ionic drift the right order; vacuum 'the most pressing question'; deep read.· Naudin-JL
2004Tajmar, Biefeld-Brown effect: misinterpretation of corona wind phenomena AIAA Journal 42, 315; sealed-box and low-pressure tests, no force beyond corona wind; deep read in Naudin-JL, abstract in Sigma-Ro.· Naudin-JL
2004-06Campbell et al., NASA/TM-2004-213283 (MSFC asymmetrical capacitor) 'No NACAP performance was observed in vacuum'; with the ISR report (rig blind below one-sixth turn) the main institutional vacuum nulls; Gravitec's 2003 video and raw data not obtained.· Naudin-JL
2015NASA Marshall records of the Poher-type pulsed YBCO test Notes, accelerometer traces and million-frame film described by a first-hand voice in Amy Eskridge's Q&A; no NASA report found.· Eskridge-Amy
2021-11NASA/TM-20205010911, A Study of the POAMS Theory Eskridge, Nelson, Schoenfeld; Space Act work funded by Quantum Machines, an interested party; 211 g bismuth rotor, 0.3 g on 7 Oct 2016; read in full.· Eskridge-Amy
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Ion wind taken for gravity: Brown called air thrust 'largely ambient ion momentum transfer', and vacuum force came with breakdown (Talley; Sigma-Ro); ARL's 'three orders too small' is the ballistic model, not collisional drift (Naudin-JL); Poher-type artifact (Gallerati 2022; Eskridge-Amy).
Ordinary forces of the claim's size: Piggott's electrostatic force is about the ball's weight (zzz-Unknown); static pull matches the foil in Naudin's vacuum-tube test (Naudin-JL); air added mass matches Brush's pendulum shift (Brush-Charles); buoyancy near the bismuth rotor (Eskridge-Amy).
Missing controls: no spin-zero rotor (Eskridge-Amy), no dummy winding or reversed current for Seike's coil (Sigma-Ro); Hooper's readings tracked supply voltage, and the Fisher-Hooper gravity-meter signal returned with a buzzer alone (Hopper-WJ).
Nulls that change the conditions: static or slow discs for Podkletnov (Eskridge-Amy), flat coils for Hooper (Hopper-WJ), lower voltages for Brown (Sigma-Ro). They test a neighbour, not the original claim.
Forces inside a closed system cannot move it: St Clair's segmented electrode pairs are internal forces (StClairJohn); Searl's output figures exceed any input by many orders (Sigma-Ro).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: A neutral, blind weighing with the supply on board and a dummy device: an asymmetric capacitor, its mirror and an equal-capacitance dummy on a torsion balance in a grounded cage, 760 to 1e-6 Torr up to Brown's 100-200 kV, with bake-out, gas analysis and polarity reversal (Naudin-JL, Sigma-Ro); and Podkletnov's rig at 5,000 rpm with RF drive (Eskridge-Amy).
Deciding records: Brown's 1955-59 vacuum notes; Gravitec's raw vacuum data; Talley's Air Force reports; the 2015 Marshall notes, traces and film; Quantum Machines' V5 rotor data; Hooper's Experimental Notes and file wrappers; the Barret Report and Reading court files on Searl; St Clair's file wrappers.
Try it yourself: Run Naudin-JL's example.py: F = I d / mu gives about 0.30 N for Lifter 4 (2.01 mA, 30 mm) against 0.31 N weight. Sigma-Ro's example.py: Searl's ring at 1,000 rpm gives 6.5e-9 V against 1e5 V. Eskridge-Amy's example.py: bismuth alignment at 0.2 T is about 2000 times short of 0.3 g.
Open questions
Is there any static force on an asymmetric capacitor in clean high vacuum? Talley and Tajmar did not test at Brown's 70-220 kV; Gravitec (2003) and MSFC (2004), both in Huntsville, disagree; Brown's notes are unpublished (Sigma-Ro, Naudin-JL).
Does a rotating, RF-driven YBCO disc at 5,000 rpm change weight? NASA Marshall's replication was never completed, and a 2025 attempt by Robertson has no reported result (Eskridge-Amy, Znidarsic-Frank).
What did the 2015 Marshall pulsed-superconductor test record, and does the 0.3 g bismuth effect survive a spin-zero control rotor in a sealed housing (Eskridge-Amy)?
Does Hooper's 4020-wire generator give a reading independent of external resistance and supply symmetry, with the detector outside the grounded box (Hopper-WJ)?
Does Seike's 1984 coil weight loss reverse with current and vanish for a non-Moebius dummy winding (Sigma-Ro)?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Talley's force appeared during breakdown, which matches Brown's own thrust 'bursts' at every vacuum spark; the only unexplained part is Brown's statement that thrust persisted without sparks, for which he gives no numbers. Not dismissed untested: tested, but not at his conditions. Sigma-Ro, arbiter.md, Claim 1
Contrarian On the vacuum force: 'It was not dismissed without testing; it was tested badly in both directions.' Low-sensitivity nulls, an undocumented Air Force null, and positives that are interested, unpublished or unobtained. Naudin-JL, contrarian.md, claim 1 verdict
Arbiter Within the memorandum's own framework the reported 0.3 g is about 2000 times what its force law predicts for the available alignment. That refutes 'the data match the theory', not every conceivable spin-weight coupling; the 0.3 g itself stays Never properly tested. Eskridge-Amy, arbiter.md, claim 3 and QE revision A2
Arbiter Under B x V a resistor in series outside the winding cannot change the reading at fixed current; Gibson's tables show it does. The arbiter calls this the strongest internal evidence in the record (for an artefact), yet still not a controlled test. Hopper-WJ, arbiter.md, section 2 (Claim 2) and section 8.4
Arbiter The momentum-conservation argument for a closed system is the strongest single argument against St Clair's craft, independent of any detail of the patents. The absence of a record after 2008 is an absence of testing, not a negative test. StClairJohn, arbiter.md, Claim 4 and Absence-of-evidence analysis
AI noteBergier (1978) says the 1972 Rho Sigma report 'led to the creation' of Electrodynamic Gravity Inc., Hooper's company; but its patent was filed in April 1968 and Hooper died in February 1971.
Theme 11Ether drift and the preferred frame
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - Testable19 projectsCard updated 2026-10-10 14:17
If light's speed changes with the direction of travel, there is a medium or preferred frame to move through. This card weighs every reported drift detection, from Miller to Silvertooth's 378 km/s toward Leo and Wallace's Venus radar, against the nulls and the Sagnac and GPS arguments.
Headline verdicts of the 19 member projects: Established6Never properly tested1Tested, not supported3Refuted by calculation3Internally inconsistent2Not testable as stated4
Theme background
Michelson and Morley (1887) looked for Earth's motion through the luminiferous ether and found a fringe shift below a twentieth of the 0.4 expected. Lorentz explained it by contraction. Others kept looking: Miller on Mount Wilson (about 10 km/s), Sagnac's rotating loop (1913), Michelson-Gale (1925). Later outsiders reported positive results: Wallace read 1961 Venus radar as light at c+v (1969), Silvertooth's standing-wave interferometer gave 378 km/s (1986), Kelly and Gift read Sagnac and GPS timing as light at c-v and c+v.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics reads the nulls (Michelson-Morley, Kennedy-Thorndike, Ives-Stilwell, resonators near 1e-17) as no detectable preferred frame, and computes Sagnac and GPS corrections within relativity (von Laue 1911). The one-way speed of light remains a synchronisation convention, and a Lorentz ether is empirically equivalent. Left unexplained: Miller's drift (answered by reanalysis, not repetition), the 1935 22 km/s gap between campaigns, Marett's sidereal-aligned signal, and the Venus radar refit never run.
Ranking explanation
It meets A, B and C: specific positive reports (Silvertooth, Wallace, Miller, Shtyrkov) never put to a neutral, controlled repetition, plus open questions a reader can calculate in an afternoon. Gravity control, of similar size, now sits just above: Naudin gave it a buildable, metered device with a test record in both directions. It ranks above Lorentz ether and relativity, which gathers more core projects but whose ether reading has no measurable difference. Six core projects.
Key supporting elements
SilverTooth: 378 km/s lies within 2% of the CMB dipole (369.82 km/s), striking but without error bars of little meaning (arbiter). Marett reproduced a sidereal 12-hour signal, attributing it to temperature and pointing, a cause never tested under control.
Wallace-Byran: a first-order ballistic effect matches his residuals in size (about 5 ms at 10 km/s). Ash, Shapiro and Smith (1967), as Wallace quotes, found USSR residuals systematically negative, up to five times the quoted error; cause unidentified, not c+v-specific.
zzz-Unknown: Miller's Mount Wilson drift was answered by Shankland's 1955 reanalysis, not by repetition; Michelson-Pease-Pearson 1935 recorded unexplained cyclic drifts and a 22 km/s gap between campaigns, never resolved.
Gift-Stephan: one-way light speed is a convention, and "Michelson-Morley disproved the ether" overreaches; a Lorentz ether survives the null by design (Contrarian's strongest case, arbiter-endorsed). SilverTooth's arbiter agrees: round trips cannot fix the one-way speed.
Kelly-AG: Wang et al. (2003) found the shift in a moving fibre loop follows fibre length times speed, not enclosed area; one group, about 11% precision, no independent replication found.
Key contradictions
SilverTooth: under his eq. (5), opposed beams add wavenumbers (k1 + k2 = 4 pi/lambda), so the signal cancels. His 1972 one-way test is a null per Roberts and Schleif (unread); his 1976 two-laser test, another apparatus, was null.
SilverTooth: Marett reports a large offset, the opposite sign, and the same 12-hour pattern in solar time following room temperature: "a very elaborate thermometer" (his conclusion). Krisher et al. (1990) set a 100 m/s one-way limit (possibly synchronisation-dependent).
Gift-Stephan and Kelly-AG: c - v east and c + v west follow from assuming c in the Earth-centred frame, a circular step; relativity predicts the same delays, and rigid uniform translation gives zero Sagnac shift.
Wallace-Byran: source-velocity tests without radar reduction find no c+v (Alvager 1964, k below 1e-4; Brecher 1977, below 2e-9). His own Fig. 1 puts constant c nearer Newcomb's tables: Tested, not supported, a weak test (Newcomb's error unstated).
Very-Frank, Lodge-O and Lorentz-HA: full drag fails Michelson-Gale and Fizeau; Lodge's discs dragged no light (viscous drag only; he held irrotational ether motion optically undetectable); Stokes's no-slip ether is internally inconsistent (Note 66).
Timeline (10)
1887Michelson and Morley find a fringe shift certainly below one twentieth of the 0.40 expected, probably below one fortieth. · Lorentz-HA
1893Lodge's spinning steel discs drag no light: below 1/200 as rigorous proof, probably below 1/1000, both 1893. A bound on viscous drag, not on every ether motion. · Lodge-O
1904Brace finds no double refraction in moving water at a reach of 10^-12, against about 2e-11 predicted for a rigid electron. · Lorentz-HA
1925Michelson-Gale measure Earth's rotation with a Sagnac loop: 0.230 fringe against 0.236 predicted. · Kelly-AG
1935Michelson, Pease and Pearson's light-speed campaigns record unexplained cyclic drifts and a 22 km/s gap between campaigns, never resolved; nothing ties it to an aether. · zzz-Unknown
1955Shankland's reanalysis attributes Miller's Mount Wilson drift (about 10 km/s, reported from 1925) to local temperature and statistical fluctuation; the data were not re-run. · zzz-Unknown
1969Wallace argues in Spectroscopy Letters that 1961 Venus radar ranging fits c+v better than constant c; Shapiro's Jan 1969 letters, relayed by Wallace, call the data inconsistent with ballistic theory. · Wallace-Byran
1986Silvertooth reports 378 km/s with Leo on the horizon from a slide-mounted standing-wave interferometer; one value, no data or error bars. · SilverTooth
2003Wang and colleagues measure a Sagnac-type shift in a moving fibre conveyor loop; they state the gyroscope's own uniform ride along the conveyor caused no shift. · Kelly-AG
2012Marett's replication of Silvertooth reproduces a 12-hour signal, which he attributes to room temperature and laser pointing; that cause was not put to a controlled test. · SilverTooth
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
The classic ether-drift experiments (Michelson-Morley, Kennedy-Thorndike, Ives-Stilwell, Airy's water telescope) find no motion through an ether: no experiment has detected absolute motion
Establishedthe null results and their bounds; with Ives-Stilwell they fix contraction and clock rate (Ives)Refuted by calculationthe nulls (Airy, Michelson-Morley) as proofs that the earth is at rest, as inferences: a moving earth with Fresnel drag predicts Airy's null (Flat-Earth)
Contraction in a stationary ether accounts for the nulls: Michelson-Morley (an upper bound, not a zero: 1887 certainly below 1/20 of 0.40 fringe, probably 1/40; 1905 below 1/100) and Brace's double refraction
Establishedcontraction with time dilation as the observable ratio (Lorentz-HA)Not testable as statedcontraction as a dynamical effect of absolute motion through an ether: same predictions as special relativity (Lorentz-HA)Historically superseded but instructive"Michelson's experiment proves the contraction": valid only as a conditional (Lorentz-HA)Tested, not supportedrigid and constant-volume electrons against Brace's null; margin about 20, model-dependent (Lorentz-HA)
Rotation is detectable from inside: the Sagnac effect, Michelson-Gale and the GPS east-west correction
Establishedthe measured delays; equally predicted by relativityRefuted by calculationthe extension to rigid uniform translation (Kelly-AG strong form)Refuted by calculationSagnac and Michelson-Gale as a fixed ether that relativity cannot handle: relativity gives the same first-order result, as Ives's own 1938 paper does (Ives)Tested, not supportedthe counter-claim that the earth does not rotate relative to the local inertial frame: Michelson-Gale, Foucault, ring lasers (Flat-Earth)Not testable as statedearth at rest as a coordinate choice; locally the equivalence is respectable, globally it needs a rotating cosmos no source models (Flat-Earth)
Sagnac, GPS and radar timing show a physical one-way light speed of c - v and c + v, so an ether is detected
Not testable as statedcircular: c in the Earth-centred frame is assumed, c +/- v comes back outEstablishedweak form only: round trips cannot fix the one-way speed (SilverTooth)
Tested, not supportedas detection of absolute motion (SilverTooth, zzz-Unknown)Never properly testedSilvertooth's original run, Shtyrkov's aberration and Marinov's 303 km/s (status from a Wikipedia entry only): single reports, no neutral replication, not dismissed without testingNever properly testedthe Silvertooth ruby-laser repeat proposed in Aspden's book (79-cycle figure reproduces); never run, so no result exists (Aspden-Hearld)Not testable as statedthe unsourced 3000 m/s variation (zzz-Unknown)
Light from a moving source or mirror travels at c+v (Wallace's Venus radar reading)
Tested, not supportedstrong form, by source-velocity tests and canal-ray Doppler dataTested, not supportedWallace's Fig. 1 claim that c+v fits Newcomb's tables better: the figure shows constant c nearer; a weak, non-discriminating test (yardstick coarser than the effect, c+v matched to his own integration)Never properly testeda neutral joint refit of the early multi-station radar data with a free ballistic parameter
An ether dragged along by the Earth or by moving matter explains the nulls
Internally inconsistentStokes's no-slip dragged ether (Lorentz-HA)Tested, not supportedfull drag (Michelson-Gale, Fizeau); Lodge's disc test for viscous (rotational) drag only, not every ether motion: Lodge held irrotational motion optically undetectableNever properly testedVery's bound shell as he states it, with no formulaPlausible, untestedPlanck-Lorentz condensed ether, as a mathematical model; provisional, physical assumptions unreviewed (Lorentz-HA)
Michelson-Morley, Airy, Sagnac and Michelson-Gale cited as showing no earth motion; as proofs of rest, Refuted by calculation.
Tested, not supportedstrong form, no curvature; flat earth with a definite metric Refuted by calculation; low-sight-line sightings Never properly tested (refraction never measured)
Addresses Michelson-Morley via Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction and the unmeasurable one-way light speed.
Internally inconsistentclock effect demands an ether
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Ernest W. "Bud" Silvertooth
Reported 378 km/s ether drift with a standing-wave interferometer (1986) · SilverTooth
1916-2000. Caltech physics graduate, Paramount optical engineer, 1941 Academy technical award; standing-wave sensor with S. F. Jacobs (1983). Printed his own 1976 two-laser null, a different apparatus from 1986.
Bryan G. Wallace
Argued 1961 Venus radar shows light at c+v · Wallace-Byran
1933-1997, St. Petersburg, Florida; worked with Eckerd College colleagues. Four Spectroscopy Letters papers 1969-71; The Farce of Physics (1993). Not a professional astronomer by his own account.
Stephan J. G. Gift
Reads GPS, Sagnac and radar timing as light at c - v and c + v · Gift-Stephan
Electrical engineer at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad (2018 title page). Physics Essays 2001, J. Sci. Explor. 2006, 2018 preprint.
A. G. Kelly
Argued the Sagnac effect applies to uniform straight-line motion · Kelly-AG
Alphonsus G. Kelly, Irish electrical engineer with a long Electricity Supply Board career, PhD 1966; died 30 July 2005. Institution of Engineers of Ireland monographs.
H. A. Lorentz
Explained the Michelson-Morley null by contraction in a stationary ether · Lorentz-HA
Nobel laureate 1902. The Theory of Electrons (Columbia lectures 1906, 2nd ed. 1916) treats Michelson-Morley, Brace and Einstein; corresponded with Miller.
Dayton C. Miller
Reported a small positive drift (about 10 km/s) on Mount Wilson
Not in the review files beyond his drift result, his correspondence with Lorentz (1906, 1921, 1926) and Shankland's 1955 reanalysis.
R. S. Shankland
Led the 1955 reanalysis attributing Miller's signal to temperature and statistics
Not in the review files beyond the Reviews of Modern Physics 27, 167 (1955) paper.
Doug Marett
Replicated Silvertooth (2011-12) and attributes the signal to thermal and pointing drift · SilverTooth
Toronto experimenter (conspiracyoflight.com) who says he hoped the effect was real; logged room temperature and laser lock voltage for 18 months. Proposes the thermal explanation.
Irwin I. Shapiro
Led the Lincoln Laboratory radar analysis Wallace disputed; an interested party in that dispute · Wallace-Byran
Co-author of Ash, Shapiro and Smith (AJ 1967); replied to Wallace in Scientific Ethics (1985), not located.
Ruyong Wang
Measured the moving-fibre conveyor shift (2003-04) · Kelly-AG
Not in the review files beyond the Phys. Lett. A 312 (2003) and PRL 93 (2004) papers with Zheng, Yao and Langley; they did not claim a conflict with relativity.
Lineage
Silvertooth's 1986 result was taken up by Marinov, Wesley and Whitney (own absolute-motion programmes), Aspden's 1987 note, Hotson's epo aether, Boyd's essay and Marett's replication (SilverTooth, DLHotson, zzz-Unknown).
Gift builds on Wallace's 1969 radar test, the Kelly and Marmet 414 ns GPS argument, Su's local-ether model and Shtyrkov's aberration data (Gift-Stephan).
Kelly's line-integral Sagnac formula follows Post (1967), whom he cites; von Laue derived the effect within relativity in 1911 (Kelly-AG).
Wallace revived Ritz's emission theory; Tolman (1912) read canal-ray Doppler data against emission variants, and his book proposed a transverse canal-ray clock test; Ives-Stilwell (1938) tested that quantity longitudinally, Hasselkamp (1979) transversely (Wallace-Byran, Tolman-R).
Ruderfer proposed a rotating Mossbauer absolute-motion test (1960, unread) and retracted it in his 1961 erratum: first-order rotating experiments cancel. Preikschat's 1968 rotor gave 2.0 +/- 5.2 cm/s, the null both theories predict (RuderferM, Ives).
Flat-earth sources, the TFES Airy and Michelson-Gale-Pearson pages among them, cite Michelson-Morley, Airy, Sagnac and Michelson-Gale for a motionless earth, the reverse of the drift-seekers' reading (Flat-Earth).
Key evidence (12)
1887Michelson and Morley, ether-drift interferometer Shift certainly below 1/20 of 0.40 fringe expected; as given by Lorentz and Wikipedia· Lorentz-HA
1904Brace, double refraction in moving matter 4.13 m of water; Brace's paper says "30 metres of water" for the light path (28.5 m is a secondary Wikipedia figure); sensitivity 7.8e-13, null· Lorentz-HA
1935Michelson, Pease and Pearson, light-speed campaigns (Irvine Ranch) unexplained cyclic drifts; 299,774 vs 299,796 km/s, a 22 km/s gap between campaigns never resolved; via a web page· zzz-Unknown
1955Shankland et al., new analysis of Miller's interferometer observations Rev. Mod. Phys. 27, 167; temperature and statistical fluctuation· zzz-Unknown
1964Alvager et al., speed of gamma rays from fast pion decays CERN; source at v/c above 0.9997; bound k below 1e-4· Wallace-Byran
1969Wallace, Radar Testing of the Relative Velocity of Light in Space Spectroscopy Letters 2, 361; read as page images· Wallace-Byran
1976-05Silvertooth, Electromagnetic radiation, relativity, and anomalous red-shifts Applied Optics; two-laser one-way test, 79 cycles expected, no phase shift observed· SilverTooth
1986-05Silvertooth, Experimental detection of the ether Delta 0.25 mm, 378 km/s, Leo on the horizon; no data, error bars or dates· SilverTooth
2003Wang, Zheng, Yao and Langley, moving fibre-optic conveyor Phys. Lett. A 312, 7; shift follows fibre length times speed· Kelly-AG
2012Marett, A Replication of the Silvertooth Experiment 12-hour signal, opposite sign; Marett attributes it to room temperature and pointing (his attribution, cause not tested under control)· SilverTooth
2018-06Gift, preprint with Shtyrkov's geostationary aberration (Fig. 5) Kazan 1998-99, Intelsat 704; no error bars; Shtyrkov's own papers not obtained· Gift-Stephan
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Feeding in a clock-synchronisation convention and reading it back as a measured one-way light speed (Gift-Stephan, Kelly-AG, SilverTooth claim 1).
Long-path optics drift with temperature and laser pointing, which can mimic a sidereal-looking signal; Marett attributes his signal to this, and Shankland so attributed Miller's, a reanalysis defenders contest (SilverTooth, zzz-Unknown, Lorentz-HA).
One value with no error bars, run counts, dates or raw data, and readings judged by eye with the setting chosen by the experimenter (SilverTooth 1986, Shtyrkov's Fig. 5 via Gift-Stephan).
Carrying a closed-loop result to a straight segment or rigid translation, where the loop sum cancels (Kelly-AG large-disc limit, Silvertooth's segment shift).
Comparing an unfitted formula with a fixed old ephemeris; equally, a fit that assumes c cannot by itself test c against c+v (Wallace-Byran).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: An instrumented repeat of Silvertooth's standing-wave test: lock-in readout, thermally controlled and pointing-monitored laser, a rotating table to separate sidereal from solar and thermal patterns, declared run times, raw data published. Alongside it, a neutral refit of the 1961-66 Venus radar data with a free ballistic parameter.
Deciding records: Silvertooth's original data and Nature 322:590 letter; Shapiro's 1985 Scientific Ethics reply and the Lincoln Laboratory and AFCRL radar data; Miller's raw data for an independent thermal reanalysis; Shtyrkov's primary papers; Michelson-Pease-Pearson 1935 campaign records. Shankland 1955 and Roberts 2006 reanalyses of Miller (Lorentz-HA).
Try it yourself: Run SilverTooth's example.py: v/c = lambda/(2 Delta) gives 378 km/s for 0.63 um and 0.25 mm, then opposed beams give node spacing exactly lambda/2 for any speed. Then Kelly-AG's example.py: the loop integral of a constant velocity is zero.
Open questions
Why did Marett, Marinov and perhaps Wesley see a CMB-scale signal aligned with sidereal time if the apparatus should be blind? No rotating-table test has been run (SilverTooth).
Would a neutral joint refit of the early multi-station Venus radar data with a free ballistic parameter find anything? Nobody has published one (Wallace-Byran).
Does Shtyrkov's 20-arcsec seasonal aberration of a geostationary beacon exist? Nobody is on record as trying to replicate it (Gift-Stephan).
Would an independent thermal-model reanalysis of Miller's raw data reproduce Shankland's conclusion, and what caused the 1935 22 km/s gap (zzz-Unknown, Gift-Stephan)?
Does Wang's moving-fibre result hold for a second group and in a vacuum (hollow-core) fibre (Kelly-AG)?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Recomputed with SymPy: the relative phase changes by k1 + k2 = 4 pi/lambda per unit of slide travel, with the velocity cancelling, so D1 and D2 stay in phase for every speed. A correct derivation from the real geometry would revert the verdict to Never properly tested. SilverTooth, arbiter.md, Recomputed item 2 and Claim 3
Contrarian The size of Wallace's 3 ms is the natural scale of a first-order ballistic effect: the strongest honest observation in his favour. The same fact makes it testable, and the radar-specific question was never put to a neutral test. Wallace-Byran, contrarian.md, Claim 1
Arbiter The one-way speed of light is a convention; textbooks saying c is the same in all directions state a convention plus two-way measurements. Gift is right there. He is wrong in saying this detects anything. Gift-Stephan, arbiter.md, Claim 1
Arbiter Miller's programme was answered by re-analysis, not repetition, and defenders contest it. Michelson-Pease-Pearson 1935 recorded unexplained cyclic drifts and a 22 km/s gap between campaigns: a real metrology anomaly, though nothing ties it to an aether. zzz-Unknown, arbiter.md, Claim 4
Arbiter Wang's zero-area and figure-8 loops show the shift follows fibre length times speed, not enclosed area, which matches Kelly's line-integral form. Wang and co-authors did not claim a conflict with special relativity. Kelly-AG, arbiter.md, Claim 1
AI noteLorentz's Brace margin is a factor of about 20, not 200: the arbiter rendered p.228, which prints 10^-12; a reviewer's 1e-13 came from a garbled text layer (Lorentz-HA).
Theme 12Lorentz ether and relativity alternatives
no changeB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential14 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 11:05
Every relativity experiment can be read two ways: no preferred frame, or a real ether whose effects on rods and clocks hide it. This card follows the second reading from Lorentz and Poincare through Ives and Builder to the modern challengers who say GPS, Sagnac or radar reveal it.
Headline verdicts of the 14 member projects: Established5Tested, not supported2Refuted by calculation2Internally inconsistent2Not testable as stated2Historically superseded but instructive1
Theme background
Lorentz (Columbia lectures 1906; book 1909, second edition 1916) and Poincare (Gottingen, 1909) kept a stationary ether: bodies moving through it contract, clocks slow, and a local time hides the motion, so Michelson-Morley comes out null. Einstein took the same transformation as a statement about space and time. Tolman's 1917 text called the ether unnecessary and weighed Ritz's emission theory. Ives read his 1938 clock-slowing measurement as Larmor-Lorentz ether physics; Builder defended the ether presentation in 1958. Later outsiders went further: Wallace's c+v emission theory, Su's planet-carried local ether, Gift's and Kelly's c-v readings of GPS and Sagnac.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics kept the Lorentz transformation and dropped the ether: with exact factors a Lorentz ether predicts what special relativity predicts, so the choice rests on economy. A cosmic rest frame exists and is measured (CMB frame, Sun at about 370 km/s; Builder-G), but no dynamical effect of it: preferred-frame tests are null near 1e-17 (light-speed anisotropy) and parts per billion (clock slowing). Left open: reciprocity-free variants, the Pobedonostsev-Parshin deficit, the unrun Venus radar refit.
Ranking explanation
It meets B, C and D: nine core projects, from Lorentz and Poincare to Su and Gift, and calculations a reader can do by hand. It has little of A: its central reading matches relativity by construction, and its distinctive predictions (Su's cavity term, Wallace's c+v) were tested and not supported. It ranks below gravity control, whose weight and thrust reports remain untested anomalies, and above wireless and earth resonance, which gathers fewer projects.
Key supporting elements
Lorentz-HA, Poincare-Henri, Builder-G: a Lorentz ether with exact contraction and clock slowing was never refuted by experiment; it predicts what relativity predicts and, in the Poincare arbiter's words, lost on parsimony, not on a refutation.
Ives: Ives and Stilwell (1938, 1941) measured moving clocks slowing by the Larmor-Lorentz factor; Robertson (his referee, later author of the NAS memoir's assessment) judged Ives's 1937 transported-clock ether theory valid and completely equivalent in substance to special relativity.
Builder-G and SilverTooth: a one-way light speed cannot be measured without first choosing how to synchronise distant clocks (Established); that convention is exactly what lets an ether theory reproduce every relativity result.
Wallace-Byran and Tolman-R: a neutral joint refit of the 1961-66 Venus radar data with a free c+v parameter has never been run; Tolman's 1917 book said Ritz's optical emission theory had no laboratory test.
Lorentz-HA and Ives: ether variants that drop reciprocity remain Never properly tested; Pobedonostsev and Parshin (1989) reported a clock-slowing shift 40-82% below relativity at 150-300 keV, unreplicated and unrebutted.
Key contradictions
Su-CC: the local ether's one distinctive lab prediction, a cavity anisotropy of about 5e-13, is bounded near 1e-17 by Herrmann et al. (2009), 4e4 below it; annual aberration is Tested, not supported (Su concedes his model cannot yet reproduce it).
Gift-Stephan and Kelly-AG: c - v east and c + v west follow from assuming c in the Earth-centred frame, a circular step; relativity predicts the same delays, and Kelly's rigid-translation Sagnac claim is Refuted by calculation.
Wallace-Byran and Tolman-R: source-velocity tests needing no radar reduction find no c+v (Alvager 1964, below 1e-4; Brecher 1977, below 2e-9), so Ritz-type emission theory is now Tested, not supported.
Builder-G: his two force formulas for the same relative velocity describe one situation in two frames; a Lorentz boost matches them to machine precision, so the inference to an absolute frame is Refuted by calculation.
Ives: his 1949 charge that relativity is internally inconsistent is Refuted by calculation from his own equations, which are term for term the Lorentz transformation with differently set clocks.
Timeline (10)
1887Michelson and Morley find a fringe shift certainly below 1/20 of the 0.40 expected; Voigt publishes a transformation equivalent to Lorentz's, which Lorentz later says escaped his notice. · Lorentz-HA
1906Lorentz's Columbia lectures (The Theory of Electrons, 1909): Einstein "simply postulates what we have deduced"; the 1915 notes concede t' was the real time. · Lorentz-HA
1909-04Poincare's Gottingen lecture The New Mechanics: relativity principle within an ether, apparent local time, contraction of the Earth by 1/200,000,000. · Poincare-Henri
1917Tolman's textbook derives relativity from two postulates, calls the ether unnecessary, and notes that Ritz's emission theory has no optical test. · Tolman-R
1938Ives and Stilwell measure the second-order Doppler shift of hydrogen canal rays and read it as Larmor-Lorentz clock slowing in a fixed ether. · Ives
1958Builder's Ether and Relativity answers Dingle: relativity's clock retardation gives absolute velocity a causal role, though no experiment can measure it. · Builder-G
1961Ruderfer retracts his 1960 rotating Mossbauer ether-drift proposal: first-order effects cancel, so it cannot separate Lorentz's theory from relativity. · RuderferM
1969Wallace argues 1961 Venus radar fits c+v better than constant c; his own Fig. 1 puts constant c nearer Newcomb's tables, a weak, non-discriminating test. · Wallace-Byran
2006Gift's J. Sci. Explor. paper reads Roemer and Doppler timing as ether detection (GPS in 2018); with Su's local ether (2000-2006) and Kelly's undated Sagnac paper (2003 or later). · Gift-Stephan
2009Herrmann et al. (Berlin rotating cavities) bound lab-fixed anisotropy near 1e-17, about 4e4 below Su's predicted cavity term. · Su-CC
Core propositions and verdicts (7)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Contraction, clock slowing and the Lorentz transformation are real, measured effects
Establishedtransformation, dilation, contraction (inside the full transformation)
These effects are caused by motion through a real but undetectable ether, whose frame and time are the true ones
Not testable as statedsame predictions as special relativityHistorically superseded but instructiveas the 1900-1938 positionNever properly testedvariants that drop reciprocity (Lorentz-HA)
The one-way speed of light is a convention; only round trips are measured
Establishedweak form, as conventionality of synchronisationNot testable as statedas a physical one-way speed other than c (Ives), or as a rebuttal of contraction (SilverTooth)
Sagnac, GPS and radar timing show light at c - v and c + v, so an ether is detected and relativity falsified
Not testable as statedcircular ether reading; identical first-order predictionsTested, not supportedether detected, SR falsified (Gift-Stephan)Refuted by calculationrigid-translation Sagnac (Kelly-AG); 'SR cannot handle rotation' (Ives)
Light speed depends on the source's motion (Ritz and Wallace emission theory, c + v)
Tested, not supportedstrong form, by source-velocity tests (Alvager, Brecher)Tested, not supportedWallace's 1961 eight-point comparison: his Fig. 1 puts constant c nearer Newcomb; not a discriminating test (Wallace-Byran)Never properly testedneutral refit of early Venus radar (Wallace-Byran); Ritz in 1917 (Tolman-R)
Alternative to relativity: keeps an ether, bound-ether drag, c never stated relative to a frame.
Tested, not supportedfixed-size light particles
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
H. A. Lorentz
Built the stationary-ether electron theory with contraction and local time; compared it with Einstein's postulates · Lorentz-HA
Nobel laureate 1902. The Theory of Electrons: Columbia lectures 1906, first edition 1909, second edition 1916 with Notes dated 1915 conceding t' was the physical time.
Henri Poincare
Presented the relativity principle within Lorentz's ether in his 1909 Gottingen lecture · Poincare-Henri
Wolfskehl lecture of 28 April 1909, French in Sechs Vortrage (1910), English in The Monist (1913, posthumous); died 1912. The lecture names Lorentz and Abraham, not Einstein or Minkowski.
Herbert E. Ives
Measured clock slowing with Stilwell and read it as Larmor-Lorentz ether physics; rebuilt relativity and gravity in ether language · Ives
1882-1953, Bell Telephone Laboratories physicist and television pioneer; Johns Hopkins doctorate 1908; NAS member 1933; papers on the ether 1937-1953.
G. Builder
Defended the ether presentation of special relativity against Dingle · Builder-G
Physicist at the University of Sydney; the 1958 Australian Journal of Physics paper gives no first name. Two earlier papers (Aust. J. Phys. 10) were not read.
Herbert Dingle
Critic whose 1957 Nature letter on the clock paradox Builder answers
Astronomer, as the Builder primer describes him. His letter (Nature 179:865-866) was not read; his argument is known only through Builder's paraphrase and a web summary, which differ.
Richard C. Tolman
Author of the 1917 relativity text that called the ether unnecessary and weighed emission theories · Tolman-R
Career from Berkeley through war work, the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory and Caltech to the Manhattan Project. In 1912 he read canal-ray Doppler data against emission variants.
Bryan G. Wallace
Revived Ritz's emission theory and argued Venus radar shows light at c+v · Wallace-Byran
1933-1997, St. Petersburg, Florida; worked with Eckerd College colleagues. Spectroscopy Letters papers 1969-71; The Farce of Physics (1993).
Ching-Chuan Su
Originator of the local-ether model: light at c relative to an ether tied to each planet or the Sun · Su-CC
Born 1955; electrical engineering degrees from National Taiwan University; professor of electrical engineering at National Tsing Hua University from 1985; local-ether papers 2000-2006.
Stephan J. G. Gift
Reads GPS, Sagnac and radar timing as light at c - v and c + v relative to Earth · Gift-Stephan
Electrical engineer at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad. Physics Essays 2001, J. Sci. Explor. 2006, 2018 preprint; endorses Su's hierarchy of ethers.
A. G. Kelly
Argued relativity has no role in the Sagnac effect and that light is not c relative to a moving disc · Kelly-AG
Irish electrical engineer with a long Electricity Supply Board career, PhD 1966; Institution of Engineers of Ireland monographs; died 30 July 2005.
Lineage
Lorentz credits the transformation to Voigt (1887) and its interpretation to Einstein; Poincare only for the electron's stress; Larmor is named once, in the 1909 preface (Lorentz-HA).
Builder (1957-58) and Prokhovnik continued Ives's ether reading; Dingle and Janossy were later dissenters. Ruderfer's 1960 Mossbauer proposal led to Preikschat's 1968 rotor test; his 1975 appendix in Moray's book cites Ives (Ives, RuderferM).
Wallace revived Ritz's emission theory, which Tolman had weighed against canal-ray Doppler data in 1912 and left without an optical test in 1917 (Wallace-Byran, Tolman-R).
Gift builds on Wallace's 1969 radar test and Su's local ether; Beckmann proposed the same local-ether postulate in 1986, apparently independently of Su (Gift-Stephan, Su-CC).
Kelly's Sagnac formula follows Post (1967). Su re-analysed Kennard's and Barnett's rotating-magnet experiments; Kennard read them as favouring a stationary aether, though in 1912 he said his method cannot separate Lorentz from Hertz (Kelly-AG, Su-CC).
Key evidence (12)
1887Michelson and Morley, ether-drift interferometer Shift certainly below 1/20 of 0.40 fringe expected, probably below 1/40; as given by Lorentz· Lorentz-HA
1909Lorentz, The Theory of Electrons (2nd ed. 1916, Notes dated 1915) Contraction, local time, deformable electron; pp.238-239 on Einstein; Note 72* concession· Lorentz-HA
1909-04Poincare, The New Mechanics (Gottingen lecture) The Monist 23:385-395 (1913), Halsted translation; deep read in full· Poincare-Henri
1917Tolman, The Theory of the Relativity of Motion Ether unnecessary; section 46 proposes the canal-ray clock test; Ritz has no optical test· Tolman-R
1938Ives and Stilwell, An Experimental Study of the Rate of a Moving Atomic Clock JOSA; H-beta canal rays 6,788-18,350 V, shift lambda0 beta^2/2, about 5% statistical; Part II 1941 to 43 kV· Ives
1957Dingle, The 'Clock Paradox' of Relativity Nature 179:865-866; the letter Builder answers; not obtained· Builder-G
1958Builder, Ether and Relativity Aust. J. Phys. 11:279-297; no text layer, read from page images· Builder-G
1969Wallace, Radar Testing of the Relative Velocity of Light in Space Spectroscopy Letters 2, 361; page images. Quotes Ash, Shapiro and Smith 1967: station fits 7.10 Crimea against 0.97 and 1.57, unexplained; Standish 1974 unexplained systematics. Fig. 1 puts constant c nearer Newcomb than c+v· Wallace-Byran
1986Silvertooth, 'Experimental detection of the ether' (five pages; journal reported as Speculations in Science and Technology 10(1) 3-11, one secondary report) One reported value, about 378 km/s east-west, within about 2% of the CMB dipole; no data or errors. Never properly tested; Marett reproduced a sidereal signal once, attributing it to heat and pointing; the often-cited Nature 322:590 (1986) is a missing primary document, not read· SilverTooth
1989Pobedonostsev and Parshin, canal-ray second-order Doppler repeat SPIE 1121, pp.36-41; shift 40-82% below relativity at 150-300 keV; no systematic budget· Ives
2009Herrmann et al., rotating optical cavity test Phys. Rev. D 80, 105011; lab-fixed amplitudes about 1e-17, bounding Su's cavity term· Su-CC
–Lorentz, undated treatise defending the ether concept Noord-Hollands Archief 364, item 398; date and content unknown· Lorentz-HA
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Calling a null result proof of one explanation: "Michelson proves the contraction" (Lorentz), "verifies" (Poincare), "almost positive proof" (Jeans); contraction alone was never enough, as Kennedy-Thorndike showed.
Feeding in a clock-synchronisation convention and reading it back as a measured one-way light speed (Gift-Stephan, Kelly-AG, Ives 1949).
Treating frame-dependent numbers, such as the force on a moving charge, as evidence of an absolute frame (Builder-G).
Carrying a closed-loop Sagnac result to a straight segment or rigid translation, where the loop sum cancels (Kelly-AG).
Resting confidence on early contested data: Lorentz accepted the deformable electron in 1909 on Bucherer alone; Poincare's "ascertained" overstated the 1909 mass evidence (Lorentz-HA, Poincare-Henri).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Only a preferred-frame (Lorentz-violating) signal separates an ether from relativity: rotating-cavity, clock-comparison and Ives-Stilwell-type tests, now null near 1e-17 and a few parts per billion. For emission theory, a neutral refit of the 1961-66 Venus radar data with a free c+v parameter (Wallace-Byran).
Deciding records: Dingle's 1957 Nature letter (Builder-G); Lorentz's undated ether treatise (NHA 364 item 398) and his 1909-1927 Einstein letters; Sechs Vortrage (1910) for Poincare; Pobedonostsev-Parshin's 1989 raw data and Ives's Library of Congress papers; Shapiro's 1985 Scientific Ethics reply (Wallace-Byran).
Try it yourself: With Builder's numbers (c = 1, v = 0.6, rod 1 light-second contracted to 0.8): light takes 2.0 s out and 0.5 s back in ether time, slow clocks record 2.0 s, so the round trip gives c. Then run Su-CC's example.py: contraction cancels the 62 Hz cavity term.
Open questions
Do ether variants that give up reciprocity predict a measurable difference? Bischoff van Heemskerck's modified Ives-Stilwell test (2023) is the one concrete proposal found, untested (Lorentz-HA).
What lies behind Pobedonostsev and Parshin's 40-82% clock-slowing deficit at 150-300 keV: viewing-arm misalignment, or something else? No replication or rebuttal is on record (Ives).
Two unread records: what Dingle argued in 1957 (Builder's paraphrase and the web summary differ; Builder-G), and what Lorentz's undated treatise defending the ether says (Lorentz-HA).
Would a neutral joint refit of the early multi-station Venus radar data with a free c+v parameter find anything? Nobody has published one (Wallace-Byran).
Do the reported positive signals hold up: Silvertooth's 378 km/s (SilverTooth), Shtyrkov's annual satellite aberration (Gift-Stephan), both Never properly tested, and Ruderfer's 1979 'Detection of Absolute Motion from Atomic Timekeeping Data', unread (RuderferM)?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The Lorentz ether theory makes the same predictions as special relativity; it lost on parsimony, not on a refutation. No experiment detects absolute motion, and the ether's 'true time' is Not testable as stated. Poincare-Henri, arbiter.md, Claim 2
Arbiter The neo-Lorentzian literature (Bell, Janossy, Prokhovnik, Ives, Mansouri-Sexl, Schmelzer) is empirically equivalent to special relativity where it keeps the full transformation; the mainstream label 'unfounded' is a Wikipedia characterisation, not a test result. Lorentz-HA, arbiter.md, Claim 6
Arbiter The impossibility of one-way light-speed measurement is the synchronisation convention; it is what lets an ether theory match special relativity, and it is a real teaching point. The 'superiority' of the ether presentation is an untested opinion. Builder-G, arbiter.md, Corrected claim list item 6
Arbiter Ives's 1945 conservation-law route to relativity is the most instructive: it shows how little of special relativity is extra. The relativity principle is carried by its premises, so 'superfluous' is not shown. Ives, arbiter.md, Claim 3
Arbiter Tolman's 'ether unnecessary' is an economy argument, not a measurement: Not testable as stated, given empirical equivalence with a Lorentz ether. Tolman-R, arbiter.md, Claim 5
AI noteLorentz's own book credits the transformation to Voigt (1887), whose paper he says escaped his notice for years, and credits Poincare only for the electron's stress; Larmor appears once, in the preface.
Theme 13Wireless power and earth resonance
no changeA - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential8 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:55
Tesla wrote in his own diary that a retreating storm showed 'stationary waves' in the earth, and built a tower to send power around the globe on them. This card sets that night, Houston's earlier earth-connected sparks, Dollard's telluric waves and the HAARP reading against what the earth-ionosphere guide loses.
Headline verdicts of the 8 member projects: Established2Never properly tested4Refuted by calculation1Internally inconsistent1
Theme background
In 1871 Edwin Houston earthed one pole of an induction coil to a gas pipe and drew sparks from metal 30 feet away and in a room below. Tesla proposed in 1893 to disturb 'the electrostatic condition of the earth' to send signals or power; at Colorado Springs (1899-1900) and Wardenclyffe (1901-1917) he tried to ring the earth as a tuned circuit. Eric Dollard (1986-1990) recast it as dielectric and telluric waves; Gerry Vassilatos (1996) read Colorado Springs as an 'ether engine' and HAARP as an auroral power test.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream radio kept the earth as a waveguide: the earth-ionosphere cavity rings near 7.8 Hz (Schumann modes) and carries VLF signals worldwide. But the guide loses 2-3 dB per 1,000 km at VLF, so 1 MW sent reaches a 1 km^2 collector 10,000 km away as about 3.6 mW. Short-range resonant coupling works. Left unexplained: what Tesla's receiver recorded on 3 July 1899, never repeated with a recording instrument.
Ranking explanation
It ranks mid-table, just behind Lorentz ether and relativity and ahead of alternative gravity. It has a real, unrepeated observation in an inventor's own diary, a cheap bench and field programme a reader can run, and Tesla's wide influence; but its central power claim fails cleanly by calculation, and the theme gathers four core projects, fewer than the leading themes. Alternative gravity, below it, meets only two criteria; gravity control and ether drift, above it, have larger experimental records.
Key supporting elements
Tesla's diary for 3 July 1899 records a receiver responding at about half-hour intervals as a storm retreated beyond 200 miles: 'It showed clearly the existence of stationary waves'. Never repeated, never disproved by experiment (Tesla).
Tesla's US 787,412 puts the earth's lowest resonance near 'six per second'; the cavity rings near 7.8 Hz. Marincic, the Notes' Tesla Museum editor, quotes J. R. Wait (1974): Tesla's early experiments show 'an intriguing similarity' to ELF communications (Tesla).
Resonant engineering is Established: Tesla coil, wireless lighting, single-wire power, global low-frequency signalling (Tesla); single-wire capacitive coupling (Frollov-Alexander); resonant two-coil links (Meyl-Konstantin); quarter-wave line resonance and surge formulas (Steinmentz-Charles).
Houston's own 1876 account says sparks came 'from any metallic objects in the neighborhood of the coil, and, indeed, in adjoining rooms'; whether any of it was radiated was never asked or measured (Morton-Wall).
The auroral electrojet is real (up to half a million amperes, about 50 A induced in Alaskan pipelines) and HF heating modulates it into ELF/VLF waves; the book's HAARP prototype figures match the operator's history (Vassilatos-Gerry).
Key contradictions
Measured guide loss (2-3 dB per 1,000 km at VLF) leaves 10^-4 to 10^-6 of the power at the antipode; 'almost without loss' fails by calculation (Tesla).
In June 1900 Tesla had 'not as yet actually effected a transmission ... to a great distance'; in 1916 his Colorado receivers reached 'Oh, 10 miles or so'. O'Neill's 26 miles and 200 lamps cites no source (Tesla, Vassilatos-Gerry).
Sixty gigawatts from the electrojet to a 12-acre screen fails three bounds: aperture (0.4-5 kW), induction (about 3 MW), and current through air (Vassilatos-Gerry).
Dollard's tower energy 'lost to hysteresis of the aether' is accounted for by radiation resistance (about 36.5 ohm for a quarter-wave monopole), and contradicts his own Steinmetz quotation (Dollard-Eric).
A collinear 'longitudinal magneto-dielectric' plane wave is forbidden in source-free space by div E = 0 and div B = 0; Dollard's 'counter-velocity' has units of 1/(length x time), not a velocity (Dollard-Eric).
Timeline (10)
1871-06Houston earths one coil pole to a gas pipe and draws sparks from metal 8-9 ft away, an engine 30 ft away and a room below. · Morton-Wall
1876Houston and Thomson's tests answer Edison's 'etheric force' as induction; Houston restates the 1871 reach as 'adjoining rooms'. · Morton-Wall
1893Tesla's lecture proposes disturbing the earth's electrostatic condition to send signals 'or perhaps even power to any distance'. · Tesla
1899-07Night of 3 July at Colorado Springs: Tesla's receiver responds as a storm retreats; he reads 'stationary waves' in the earth. · Tesla
1900Tesla files US 787,412 (granted 1905): earth's lowest resonance near 'six per second', signal speed 471,240 km/s, (pi/2)c. · Tesla
1904-03Electrical World article claims power 'to any terrestrial distance and almost without loss'; Wardenclyffe tower unfinished, financing failing. · Tesla
1917Wardenclyffe tower destroyed; accounts compete between wartime demolition by the government and commercial salvage after foreclosure. · Tesla
1987-1988Dollard's Journal of Borderland Research articles place transmission in the space between conductors and give dielectric induction a speed of (pi/2)c. · Dollard-Eric
1996Vassilatos's Secrets of Cold War Technology calls Colorado Springs an 'ether engine' and HAARP a test to draw 60 GW from the electrojet. · Vassilatos-Gerry
2003James and Kenneth Corum reconstruct Tesla's 1899 receivers: 'more than adequate' for natural VLF signals at 8-22 kHz. · Tesla
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Tesla observed stationary waves in the earth on the night of 3 July 1899
Never properly testedunrepeated; a threshold relay, no trace record; Lowenstein's account not found
Power can be sent to any distance through or around the earth almost without loss
Establishedglobal low-frequency signalling, as guided radiation, not conduction (Tesla)Refuted by calculationpower 'almost without loss' to the antipodes, 'undiminished strength' at VLF (Tesla); 10 kW of lamps at 26 miles (42 km) by radiation (Tesla, Vassilatos-Gerry)Never properly testedthe reported tests as historical events: O'Neill's 26 miles, current 'around the globe' (Tesla, Vassilatos-Gerry); the 26-mile test as earth conduction (Vassilatos-Gerry); ELF cavity storage with high Q (Tesla)
Colorado Springs worked as an engine drawing energy from space
Establishedhigh-Q resonator, 1,100 A circulating current, streamersInternally inconsistent100 MV and 10,000 hp given as 1899 results; they were a 1904 planNever properly testedenergy 'drawn from space', disconnectable: no energy accounting by anyoneRefuted by calculationstrong form: a resonator running seconds to minutes without supply (Q/omega time constants of microseconds to milliseconds)
Earth-connected and resonant apparatus delivers effects and power at a distance
EstablishedHouston's sparks through a pipe-connected network (Morton-Wall); single-wire capacitive coupling, his home test 3.3 per cent out, no gain (Frollov-Alexander); two-coil kit as resonant circuits with a conducting return (Meyl-Konstantin); line resonance (Steinmentz-Charles)Never properly testedfree-space or 'radiant energy' reading of Houston's sparks (Morton-Wall); 'free' single-wire power (Frollov-Alexander); Faraday cage, direct speed and Tesla's full-scale apparatus, never built (Meyl-Konstantin)Refuted by calculationresonant efficiency above 100 per cent (Frollov-Alexander)Tested, not supportedscalar interpretation; 500-1000% over-unity, the 490% record within probe-skew noise (Meyl-Konstantin)
Earth and Tesla-coil signals include a non-electromagnetic or longitudinal wave
Refuted by calculationDollard's collinear 'counter-velocity' wave in free space; a vacuum-longitudinal reading (Handwerker-Roberto)Tested, not supportedsource-free longitudinal wave in vacuum (Meyl-Konstantin; its arbiter counts Gauss's law as an experimental result, not a calculation)Not testable as statedthe same wave in matter or guided structures; the sub-harmonic series (Dollard-Eric)Establishedweak form: near-field electric effects of a Tesla coil (Handwerker-Roberto)Never properly testedstrong form of L.M.D. waves (Handwerker-Roberto)
Earth signals travel faster than light, at (pi/2)c
Tested, not supportedmodern signal timing; historical figures explained as artefactsNever properly testedTesla's 471,240 km/s itself: no raw data or neutral replication
Earth-coupled telluric receivers can reject interference and warn of earthquakes
Plausible, untestedDollard's ground-aerial receiver with filters and reference aerial, as engineeringNever properly testedseismic warning by this systemTested, not supportedgeneral electromagnetic earthquake precursors, contested
Transmitter energy not returned or turned to heat is lost somewhere other than radiation, or can be drawn back from the ionosphere
Refuted by calculationDollard's 'not radiated' (radiation-resistance budget); 60 GW from the electrojet to a ground screen (Vassilatos-Gerry)Not testable as stated'aether hysteresis' as a separate loss (Dollard-Eric)Establishedradiation resistance as a principle (Steinmentz-Charles); HAARP as a conventional HF heater (Vassilatos-Gerry)
Colorado Springs stationary earth waves, power through the earth, Wardenclyffe; Tesla's own words versus advocates.
Never properly tested3 July 1899 stationary-wave observation; loss-free global power Refuted by calculation; coil, motor, lighting, disc turbine Established
Single-wire resonant power line, Tesla transformers and standing waves.
Never properly testedfree power
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Nikola Tesla
Proposer of power through the earth; observer of the 3 July 1899 effect · Tesla
1856-1943; polyphase motor, Tesla coil, Colorado Springs (1899-1900) and Wardenclyffe (1901-1917). Was raising money for Wardenclyffe in 1899-1904 and seeking priority against Marconi, so an interested party in his own claims.
Edwin J. Houston
Author of the 1871 earth-connected coil note · Morton-Wall
Secondary-school science instructor in Philadelphia (Central High School). With Elihu Thomson answered Edison's 'etheric force' in April 1876, with a priority stake in doing so. Gave no battery, dates or measurements in 1871.
Elihu Thomson
Houston's colleague; credited by his biographer with the 1871 observations · Morton-Wall
Woodbury's 1944 biography (Thomson's credit at stake) says Thomson made them and Houston 'took sole credit'; Houston's note names no assistant. Thomson's notebooks at the APS, which would decide, were not read.
Fritz Lowenstein
Tesla's assistant, named as second observer of 3 July 1899 · Tesla
Tesla wrote in 1904 that Lowenstein made 'similar observations'. Also author of the sworn 1911 turbine test report. No account of his own 1899 observations has been found.
Aleksandar Marincic
Editor of the 1978 Colorado Springs Notes · Tesla
Of the Tesla Museum, which published the Notes. Lists Tesla's errors: the resonances lie at much lower frequencies, in the earth-ionosphere cavity rather than the earth, and high voltage was not needed.
James F. and Kenneth L. Corum
Reconstructed Tesla's 1899 receivers · Tesla
Tesla-coil researchers; founders of Viziv Technologies and co-inventors on guided-surface-wave patents citing Tesla, so interested parties. No published field measurement from their Texas tower was found.
John J. O'Neill
Biographer; source of the 26-mile, 200-lamp test · Tesla
Journalist and friend of Tesla; Prodigal Genius (1944). Says he pieced the test together from 'fragmentary material' and names no source.
Eric Dollard
Recast Tesla's wireless as dielectric and telluric waves · Dollard-Eric
Electrical experimenter in the Tesla and Steinmetz tradition; Journal of Borderland Research articles 1986-1990; his videos and papers are sold by the same publisher as Vassilatos's books.
Gerry Vassilatos
Author of the 'ether engine' and HAARP-electrojet thesis · Vassilatos-Gerry
Described by his publisher as a New York City high school science teacher; Secrets of Cold War Technology (Borderland Sciences, 1996); his books are sold by that publisher.
Charles P. Steinmetz
Mainstream engineer of line resonance and radiation resistance · Steinmentz-Charles
General Electric's chief consulting engineer; published on arcs, transmission-line resonance, surges and radiation resistance from 1898 to 1923. Dollard cites his quotation of Kennelly on retardation loss.
Lineage
Houston's 1871 earthed coil predates Tesla's earth-and-elevated-capacity scheme and is listed in the Tesla review as related prior work (Morton-Wall, Tesla).
Dollard builds on Tesla's (pi/2)c figure and on Steinmetz's line and radiation theory, reading Steinmetz's retardation loss as aether hysteresis (Dollard-Eric, Steinmentz-Charles).
Vassilatos credits Dollard with reproducing Tesla's impulse effects and cites his 1985 line interferometry, no data given; both are published and sold by Borderland Sciences (Vassilatos-Gerry, Dollard-Eric).
The 200 lamps at 26 miles in Vassilatos trace to O'Neill's 1944 reconstruction from the World System prospectus (Vassilatos-Gerry, Tesla).
Meyl and Handwerker each present Tesla-coil links as Tesla's longitudinal radiation; Meyl's patent describes a resonant capacitive link needing a return line (Meyl-Konstantin, Handwerker-Roberto).
Modern resonant wireless-power patents (MIT, WiTricity) and the Corums' guided-surface-wave patents cite US 787,412 (Tesla).
Key evidence (11)
1871-06Houston, 'On a New Connection for the Induction Coil', Journal of the Franklin Institute Gas-pipe earth and lecture table; sparks at 8-9 ft, 30 ft and a room below; no battery, dates or measurements· Morton-Wall
1876-01Houston's account of the 1871 and December 1875 experiments, JFI 'Any metallic objects ... in adjoining rooms'; engine wired to the water pipes; null tests with electroscope and galvanometer· Morton-Wall
1899-1900Colorado Springs Notes (Nolit, Beograd, 1978) 3-4 July 1899 entries read; 3 July 'signals' entries and 3-7 January 1900 text not read· Tesla
1899-07-03Lowenstein's 'similar observations' Named by Tesla in 1904; no account by Lowenstein found· Tesla
1904-03-05'The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires', Electrical World and Engineer Tesla's public account of 3 July 1899; power 'almost without loss'· Tesla
1905-04-18US 787,412, Art of Transmitting Electrical Energy Through the Natural Mediums Filed 16 May 1900; 'six per second'; 471,240 km/s; wave lengths 25-70 km; cited by 431 later patents· Tesla
1916Tesla's legal interview with his patent counsel (ed. Anderson, 1992) Colorado receivers 'Oh, 10 miles or so'; 18 million hp as microsecond condenser discharge; not sworn· Tesla
n.d.Dollard, System for the Reception and Transmission of Telluric Waves (typescript) Claim-style text with no drawings, frequencies, spacings or test data; Part Three (seismic warning) absent from the file· Dollard-Eric
1996Vassilatos, Secrets of Cold War Technology (Borderland Sciences) Colorado Springs as 'ether engine'; HAARP prototype hardware; '60 Gigawatts' from the electrojet· Vassilatos-Gerry
2003Corum and Corum, 'Tesla's Colorado Springs Receivers' RF-biased coherer with negative resistance, 8-22 kHz; authors with a commercial stake· Tesla
2015-2019CPG Technologies / Viziv guided-surface-wave patents and a tower in Texas Patents cite US 787,412; the tower is placed at Milford or Waxahachie in different sources; no published field measurement found· Tesla
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Resonance raises voltage and circulating current by Q, not delivered energy: 1,100 A circulating at Colorado Springs is not power received elsewhere (Vassilatos-Gerry, Frollov-Alexander).
Unexcluded conduction paths: Houston's engine was wired to the water pipes, and Meyl's kit link goes out when the cable is unplugged, so 'wireless' effects ran partly through wires (Morton-Wall, Meyl-Konstantin).
Stored energy read as power: Tesla's '18 million horsepower' was a 4.4-5.3 kJ antenna store released in about 0.3-0.4 microseconds (Tesla).
Retellings that grow: O'Neill's unsourced 26-mile test, and forum versions of Houston that change the year, the person and the reach (Tesla, Morton-Wall).
Losses renamed instead of measured: Dollard's 'aether hysteresis' and 'counter-velocity' replace a radiation budget and an attenuation constant (Dollard-Eric).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Repeat 3 July 1899 with a recording, non-threshold VLF receiver and logged lightning positions (or search sferic-network archives for half-hour modulation from distant storms), and measure field strength against distance (10-1,000 km) from a grounded quarter-wave resonator near 100 kHz, against 2-3 dB per 1,000 km.
Deciding records: The Tesla Museum's Colorado charts and 1943 papers; Lowenstein's own account; Viziv/CPG field data; Dollard's missing Part Three and drawings; Thomson's notebooks at the APS; current measurements into a grounded screen at Gakona during an active aurora.
Try it yourself: Run Tesla's example.py: half-hour maxima from a storm moving 20-60 km/h imply a 5-15 kHz wave; then compare 40-60 dB lost over 20,000 km with the 0.0011 dB per 1,000 km Tesla's 'small fraction of one per cent' needs. Vassilatos-Gerry's example.py bounds the 60 GW electrojet claim.
Open questions
What did Tesla's receiver record on 3 July 1899: stationary waves, mode fading, storm cells or sunset effects? Only a recorded repeat or a sferic-archive search would say.
Was any of Houston's 1871 sparking radiated rather than conducted through the pipes? Frequency and field were never measured.
Is the earth-ionosphere cavity Q about 5, 50-100 or as high as 1000 as a power store? The reported figures are incompatible.
Did Dollard's telluric receiver ever exist, and does his missing Part Three give numbers that make it testable?
Why was Wardenclyffe destroyed in 1917: wartime demolition or commercial salvage after foreclosure? Newspaper accounts disagree.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Never properly tested for the 3 July observation: a relay with a threshold adjusted several times cannot be read as a stationary-wave amplitude pattern. The antipodal power claim fails on the guide's measured loss, whatever the transmitter. Tesla, arbiter.md, Claim 1
Contrarian No evidence that a negative experiment, a reanalysis or censorship stopped Tesla's wireless programme. Rejection of the strong claims was by non-adoption, not by controlled test; Wardenclyffe ran out of money. Tesla, contrarian.md, How the claims were rejected
Arbiter Houston's note is an early, unmeasured record of capacitively loaded sparks and pickup by nearby grounded metal, 15 years before Hertz. The 'radiant energy' reading is the free-energy community's; no energy was ever measured, so data neither support nor refute it. Morton-Wall, arbiter.md, Summary of final verdicts
Arbiter Dollard does define 'counter-velocity' (EPDPaper p.21), reversing the reviewers' 'undefined'; but Gauss's laws forbid his collinear free-space wave, and its dimension is not a velocity. In matter or guided structures it stays Not testable as stated. Dollard-Eric, arbiter.md, QE revision
Investigator Wardenclyffe's end has competing accounts: The Sun (19 July 1917) says the Federal Government dynamited the tower as a wartime precaution; Anderson (1992) says it was destroyed for commercial development after foreclosure. Tesla, sites.md, Leads for review 4
AI noteTesla's 471,240 km/s in US 787,412 equals 150,000 pi to five figures (471,239): (pi/2) times a rounded 300,000 km/s, which suggests a computed figure rather than a measured one (Dollard-Eric arbiter).
Theme 14Alternative gravity theories
no changeB - Open questionD - Influential24 projectsCard updated 2026-10-10 14:16
Is gravity curved spacetime, or a push, a flow, a refractive index, a wave or an entropy gradient? This card sets ten rival pictures, from Whittaker's 1902 waves and Brush's pendulums to Verlinde's entropic force, against drag, gravitational-wave speed and free-fall measurements.
Headline verdicts of the 24 member projects: Established1Never properly tested8Tested, not supported2Refuted by calculation5Internally inconsistent3Not testable as stated5
Theme background
Brush (1910-29) revived Le Sage's push gravity in wave form: atoms cast inverse-square shadows in an isotropic flux. Whittaker (1902-03) showed a static 1/r field can be built from longitudinal waves in the light medium. Hilgenberg (1933) made gravity ether flowing into masses as sinks. Ives (1939) and Su (2001) recast general relativity's results as optics in an ether. Aspden (c.1980) derived G from a vacuum lattice; Dunning-Davies and Minderle made gravity a scalar wave or potential; Evans (2010) attacked Einstein's equation; Verlinde (2010) proposed an entropic force.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics took gravity to general relativity: curvature, tested by Mercury's perihelion, light bending, Shapiro delay, binary-pulsar decay and gravitational waves (2015) moving at c to about 1e-15 (2017), with free fall independent of composition to about 1e-15 (MICROSCOPE). Push gravity was dropped over drag and heating. Left open: gravity at the quantum level, dark matter on galaxy evidence, and why the field equations have a thermodynamic form (Jacobson 1995).
Ranking explanation
It meets B and D: ten core members, open questions, chiefly entropic gravity and a shared light-gravity medium. It ranks below gravity control, Lorentz-ether relativity and wireless earth resonance, with anomalies (A) or reader tests (C). The only core laboratory measurements are Brush's; air added mass matches his pendulums to roughly 20-40 percent, viable but not proof. Most theories copy general relativity by construction or rest on an unknown constant. It ranks above pathological science and ether models of matter.
Key supporting elements
Whittaker-ET: the 1902-03 mathematics is correct: a static 1/r field is a sum of waves that cancel inside an expanding front. His 1953 History records that a static field acts on light as a medium (Copson), exact general relativity.
Su-CC and Ives: an optical index n = 1 + 2GM/(c^2 r) gives 1.75 arcsec bending and the Shapiro and GPS delays; Ives (1939) got the exact Schwarzschild form from ether assumptions with nothing fitted.
Hilgenberg-OC: the river model (Painleve-Gullstrand coordinates) shows space flowing into a mass at sqrt(2GM/r) is exact mathematics, equivalent to general relativity for static masses, so his sink picture is a recognised analogy.
Verlinde-Erik: Newton's law follows algebraically from area-law bits, equipartition and the Unruh temperature; Jacobson (1995) derived Einstein's equations as an equation of state; lensing of 33,613 galaxies agreed with the 2016 model, a first step.
Brush-Charles: shadowing by small absorbers does give 1/r^2 and mass proportionality; his drop test, bismuth ahead by about 1e-5 s in identical containers, has an open cause (air currents possible, not demonstrated), unreplicated and never run in vacuum.
Key contradictions
Brush-Charles, zzz-Unknown: push flux at c drags Earth 18.6 m/s per year; at 2.5e6 m/s orbit stops in 13 years (first-order) or about 1 hour; at 7e6 c, zzz-Unknown's Laplace speed (Whittaker-ET: at least 1e8 c), heating is 6e40 W.
Whittaker-ET and Dunning-Davis-J: GW170817 holds gravitational-wave speed to c within -3e-15 and +7e-16 and detectors see tensor modes; Whittaker's own 1953 History states gravity at c; the Dunning-Davies document set itself gives waves at c.
Aspden-Hearld: his retardation law matches Mercury's 43 arcsec per century only with the distribution chosen to match general relativity (another choice gives 28.7); his G uses a parameter tuned to G and is 0.1 percent low.
Verlinde-Erik: the Newton derivation is calibrated (G set by bit count, 2 pi picked for F = ma); the 2016 model underpredicts 452 isolated dwarfs above 100 km/s (Pardo) and, per MOND advocates Lelli et al., needs lowered mass-to-light ratios.
Brush-Charles and Evans-Myron: pendulums of 1910 (radioactive substance) and 1923 were 6 to 13 times more sensitive and saw nothing, against the general pendulum form, not Brush's zinc-bismuth pairing; Crothers's no-detection forecast fell to GW150914.
Timeline (10)
1902Whittaker (MNRAS 62) suggests gravity is longitudinal waves in the medium of light, perhaps far faster than light; Stoney's 1903 reply praises the mathematics and rejects the physics. · Whittaker-ET
1922Brush's zinc-bismuth pendulum paper (Proc. APS 61) reports a period difference of about 1 in 32,000, about 1 in 16,000 in weight per unit mass; vacuum test declined. · Brush-Charles
1933Hilgenberg's Vom wachsenden Erdball: gravity is ether flowing into every mass as into a sink, and swallowed ether becomes new matter. · Hilgenberg-OC
1939Ives derives the exact Schwarzschild line element from three ether assumptions, 'of purely optical significance', with no non-Euclidean geometry. · Ives
1953Whittaker's History Vol. 2 states that gravity travels at the speed of light and never mentions his own 1902-03 note. · Whittaker-ET
1966Aspden states a 2.587 GeV graviton mass, later used in Physics Unified (c.1980) to compute G; the related 2.60 GeV resonance went unconfirmed in 1978. · Aspden-Hearld
2010-01Verlinde posts 'On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton': gravity as an entropic force on holographic screens. · Verlinde-Erik
2010Evans, Eckardt, Crothers and Pendergast's Criticisms of the Einstein Field Equation says the equation is invalid and gravitational waves are 'destined' to go undetected. · Evans-Myron
2014-05Minderle's A Brief Introduction to Scalar Physics makes gravity beta times div A, beta 'unknown to me'; a spherical capacitor's displacement current becomes electrogravitational radiation (refuted by calculation). · Minderle-Thomas
2017GW170817 arrives 1.74 s before its gamma-ray burst, bounding gravity's speed to c within about 1e-15, after the first wave detection in 2015. · Dunning-Davis-J
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Gravity is a push from an isotropic flux of particles or waves, with matter casting inverse-square shadows (Le Sage)
Refuted by calculationthe mechanism as described: orbital drag and heatingTested, not supportedthe essay's sub-light gas, which would have slowed the planets (zzz-Unknown)
Gravity is longitudinal or scalar waves in the medium of light, possibly faster than light
EstablishedWhittaker's mathematics: static 1/r as cancelling waves, steady only inside r < VtNever properly testedthe constituent waves as physically real (Stoney's objection); the concrete 'standing wave' versions (in-phase near-field pulsation; a genuine scalar standing wave) as named gravity models; Minderle's g from div A, with beta unknown; plate and sphere radiation (Monstein-Wesley 2002, disputed by Bray-Britton 2004)Tested, not supportedtensor-only detections and GW170817 against longitudinal or scalar radiation and speeds above c, though strictly longitudinal modes are only weakly constrained and a small scalar admixture remains allowed; DLHotson's instantaneous gravityNot testable as statedthe 'longitudinal standing wave' form, with no frequency, amplitude or coupling; DLHotson's epo-chain mechanism
Gravity is ether or space flowing into masses, each a sink
Plausible, untestedweak form: flowing space as a reformulation of general relativity, no new predictionNever properly testedstrong form: a consumed ether with a sink force law, which Hilgenberg never wrote down in anything readRefuted by calculationincompressible carried-along sink flow (r^-5); not Hilgenberg's readingInternally inconsistentRoos's flow gravity as Roos states it: a non-viscous ether cannot give a 1/r^2 force (Sigma-Ro)Not testable as statedcontrollable ether flow as a general idea (Sigma-Ro); the 1904 ether-current gravity of Blount and Smith, which has no equations (Flat-Earth)
Gravity acts as a refractive index or medium for light, so spacetime curvature is not needed
Establishedthe numbers (1.75 arcsec, Shapiro and GPS delays, Mercury in Ives), which are general relativity's own, by constructionNot testable as stated'no curvature needed' and the ether-and-force reading: identical numbersPlausible, untestedrefraction by a gas as the cause of solar light bending (zzz-Unknown)Never properly testeda shared light-gravity medium in a form that differs from general relativity (Whittaker-ET)Tested, not supportedthe scalar polarizable-vacuum (Dicke-Puthoff) form of a shared medium: one analysis (Ibison 2003) gives 2/3 of general relativity's radiated power against binary-pulsar decay (Whittaker-ET); Su's lab-fixed cavity anisotropy of 5e-13 to 7e-13 against about 1e-17 (Herrmann et al. 2009, an incidental test) (Su-CC)Internally inconsistentSu's redshift formula used for quasars at Phi/c^2 = 4.1, outside its own weak-field domain (Su-CC)
Never properly testedstrong form: a literal thermal force; the neutron argument is contested, no discriminating measurementPlausible, untestedweak form: gravity's equations have a thermodynamic structure (Jacobson 1995); the Einstein-equation sketchNot testable as statedNewton's law and inertia 'derived': constants calibrated, no differing predictionTested, not supportedthe 2016 Emergent Gravity successor: dwarfs, mass-to-light ratios, early/late-type split
Gravity is an electrodynamic or vacuum-lattice effect, and G can be calculated
Not testable as statedAspden's lattice mechanism; Meyl's gravitation; Losonc's 'electro-gravity by elimination' for a vacuum capacitor force (a paper in Naudin's folder)Internally inconsistentG as a parameter-free derivation; Mercury's perihelion from retardation, coefficient chosen to matchTested, not supportedthe 2.587 GeV graviton; G as a number, 0.1 percent lowRefuted by calculationgravity as electric polarization, 20 or more orders too weak (Hopper-WJ)
Einstein's field equation is invalid, and black holes or far-field gravitational waves cannot exist
Internally inconsistentEvans's dual Bianchi identity argument, strong formRefuted by calculationthe 62-metric test, which is circularTested, not supported'gravitational waves will not be detected' (GW150914); Mills's and Gift's denial of wavesPlausible, untestedweak form: spacetime may carry torsion (standard Einstein-Cartan theory)
Weight is not a simple pull of mass: free fall depends on what a body is made of or on electric potentials, or weight is the ground accelerating upward (Universal Acceleration)
Tested, not supportedBrush's strong form at 1e-4 to 1e-5 (pendulums 1910 and 1923, Eotvos, MICROSCOPE)Never properly testedBrush's drop result and exact zinc-bismuth pairing, never repeated in vacuum; Minderle's electrically altered potentialRefuted by calculationGift's composition-dependent free fall, coupling as writtenTested, not supportedUniversal Acceleration as the origin of weight on a flat earth: Airy's 1856 Harton pendulums (net gradient about 1.2e9 times UA's), the GPS clock offset in the operator's specification, latitude, tides, orbits (Flat-Earth)Internally inconsistentparts of the UA page as written: the Davis plane used both as explanation and alternative; tides (Flat-Earth)Establishedlocal equivalence of acceleration and a uniform field, which UA uses as global proof (Flat-Earth)
Gravity as superposed longitudinal waves in the light medium (1902-03); pulsation-gravity history.
Never properly testedQ07 hypothesis of longitudinal standing-wave gravity (Not testable as stated); static 1/r wave sum and 1904 potentials Established
Universal Acceleration and 1904 ether currents replace gravity; UA Tested, not supported against Airy 1856 and GPS clocks.
Tested, not supportedstrong form, no curvature; flat earth with a definite metric Refuted by calculation; low-sight-line sightings Never properly tested (refraction never measured)
Newtonian-type gauge theory with spin-0 gravitons replacing general relativity.
Not testable as statedether reading
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Edmund Taylor Whittaker
Proposed undulatory, longitudinal gravity in the medium of light (1902-03) · Whittaker-ET
1873-1956; Second Wrangler 1895, FRS, RAS Secretary 1901-06, later at Edinburgh. His History (1951; Vol. 2 1953) adopts gravity at the speed of light and omits his own note.
G. Johnstone Stoney
Critic: 1903 MNRAS examination of Whittaker's undulatory gravity · Whittaker-ET
1826-1911, FRS, the physicist who named the electron. Praised the mathematics and rejected the physics: the constituent forces would 'flicker'. No reply from Whittaker has been found.
Charles F. Brush
Revived push gravity in wave form and measured material-dependent weight · Brush-Charles
1849-1929, Cleveland engineer made rich by arc-lighting dynamos. From 1910 argued from his private laboratory for wave push gravity; pendulum and drop experiments published in Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc.
Ott Christoph Hilgenberg
Proposed gravity as ether flowing into masses as sinks (1933) · Hilgenberg-OC
1896-1976, Berlin engineer, formerly an oil-prospecting geophysicist; founder of expanding-Earth theory. His 1937/38 thesis was rejected mainly over conflict with relativity, per advocates' accounts; the faculty file is unread.
Ching-Chuan Su
Originator of the local-ether model with gravity as an optical index · Su-CC
Professor of electrical engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan; Ph.D. National Taiwan University 1985. Published 2000-2006 in Eur. Phys. J. C, Europhys. Lett. and J. Electromagn. Waves Applic.
Harold Aspden
Derived G and a graviton mass from a vacuum lattice aether · Aspden-Hearld
Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge. Self-published Physics Unified (c.1980); the primer gives a long IBM UK patent career from model recall, medium confidence.
Myron W. Evans
Lead author of the 2010 attack on Einstein's field equation; Einstein-Cartan-Evans theory · Evans-Myron
Welsh chemical physicist; from about 2003 developed ECE theory, published mostly through his own Alpha Institute for Advanced Study. Co-authors Eckardt, Crothers and Pendergast.
Jeremy Dunning-Davies
Argued with Richard L. Norman that gravity is a superluminal scalar wave in the aether · Dunning-Davis-J
Retired mathematics and physics lecturer, University of Hull. Norman is a Thunder Energies adviser, and both co-signed a 2017 company-run experiment: interested parties for that work.
Erik Verlinde
Proposed gravity as an entropic force (2010) and Emergent Gravity (2016) · Verlinde-Erik
String theorist, Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Amsterdam; Spinoza Prize 2011. Co-author of the 2021 lensing test of his own model, an interested party there.
Thomas Minderle
Proposed gravity as the divergence of the vector potential of a scalar-superpotential ether (2007, 2014) · Minderle-Thomas
Writes as 'Montalk' and self-publishes (montalk.net, scalarphysics.com); education and career not in the review files. A 1987 CIA memo had reviewed the same pure-potential wave; his 2026 draft apparently moves gravity from div A to a condensate amplitude.
Lineage
Brush revived Le Sage's push gravity in wave form; Gregorio's 1892-95 ether-pressure theory came earlier with a different mechanism; Boyd's essay retells the Le Sage-Laplace picture (Brush-Charles, zzz-Unknown).
Barrett, Bearden and Titleman read Whittaker's 1904 potentials as hidden scalar waves (Titleman extends them to gravity); 'standing wave' is their word. Dunning-Davies uses Whittaker's 1903 integral; Bjerknes pulsating spheres are nearer ancestors (Whittaker-ET, Dunning-Davis-J).
Verlinde built on Jacobson's 1995 equation of state and Padmanabhan's equipartition work, whose December 2009 paper predates his; Makela claimed his own model implies Verlinde's postulates (Verlinde-Erik).
Aspden's retardation route to Mercury repeats Gerber's 1898 pattern, a law tuned to the perihelion, with Seeliger's objection applying in kind (Aspden-Hearld).
Su's local ether shares Beckmann's 1986 postulate; Gift, a preferred-frame proponent, calls Su's nested ethers 'a reasonable working hypothesis'; Ives in 1939 had already recast Schwarzschild as ether optics (Su-CC, Ives, Gift-Stephan).
Sigma-Ro gathers Todeschini, Roos and Hilgenberg as push or sink-flow ether gravity offered as groundwork for gravity control (Sigma-Ro, Hilgenberg-OC).
Key evidence (12)
1902-07Whittaker, undulatory explanation of gravity MNRAS 62, 617-620; force along the wave direction; with the 1903 Math. Ann. 57 section 5, read as page images· Whittaker-ET
1903-06Stoney, Examination of Mr. Whittaker's 'Undulatory Explanation of Gravity' MNRAS 63, 424-428; constituent forces flicker; requires an 'overwhelmingly improbable' spectrum· Whittaker-ET
1922-11Brush, Discussion of a Kinetic Theory of Gravitation, II; and Some New Experiments in Gravitation Proc. APS 61, 167-183; zinc-bismuth pendulums matched by weight in air; drop test in identical containers; OCR of page images· Brush-Charles
1933Hilgenberg, Vom wachsenden Erdball 56 pp., self-published, Berlin; ether-sink gravity; no force law in what was read· Hilgenberg-OC
1939-05Ives, The Behavior of an Interferometer in a Gravitational Field JOSA 29, 183-187; exact Schwarzschild line element from ether assumptions; deep read· Ives
c.1980Aspden, Physics Unified Sabberton, Southampton; eq. 163 gives G from g = 5063; retardation and perihelion in Ch.2; deep-read· Aspden-Hearld
2001Su, A wave-propagation model for gravitational effects on light deflection and radar echo time J. Electromagn. Waves Applic. 15, 259-268; n_g = 1 + 2GM/(c^2 r)· Su-CC
2010Evans, Eckardt, Crothers and Pendergast, Criticisms of the Einstein Field Equation 548 pp.; digested; preface, Ch.2 sections, Crothers's Ch.3 and Ch.4 sections deep-read· Evans-Myron
2010-01Verlinde, On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton arXiv:1001.0785; JHEP 04 (2011) 029; digested in full, Sections 2-6 deep-read· Verlinde-Erik
2014-05Minderle, A Brief Introduction to Scalar Physics Version 0.2, 23 May 2014, 48 pp., self-published; g = -beta grad div A, beta 'unknown to me at this time' (p.21); spherical-capacitor radiation in ch.6.4· Minderle-Thomas
2017LIGO-Virgo-Fermi-INTEGRAL, GW170817 and GRB 170817A arXiv:1710.05834; delay 1.74 s; gravity speed minus c between -3e-15 and +7e-16 of c· Dunning-Davis-J
2022MICROSCOPE final equivalence-principle result arXiv:2209.15487; eta(Ti, Pt) about 1e-15; no voltage applied, so silent on Minderle's electric form· Minderle-Thomas
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Reproducing general relativity's numbers by construction (a postulated factor 2 in the index, the Schwarzschild form in ether words) and counting the match as support; the distinguishing content lies only where nothing is computed (Su-CC, Ives).
Calibrating a constant to the known answer, then calling the result a derivation: Aspden's g tuned to G and his distribution chosen for 43 arcsec; Verlinde's 2 pi and G defined by the bit count (Aspden-Hearld, Verlinde-Erik).
Leaving the key coupling unstated so nothing can be computed: Minderle's beta 'unknown to me', Brush's x in 1/D^(2+x), Hilgenberg's missing force law and swallowing constant (Minderle-Thomas, Brush-Charles, Hilgenberg-OC).
Answering one objection by retuning while leaving another untouched: Brush moved his wave frequency from very low (1911) to above cosmic rays (1929) to avoid heating, and never estimated drag (Brush-Charles).
Small material effects measured in air: buoyancy and added mass are 1e-4 effects per bob, and their zinc-bismuth difference is the size of Brush's signal; the vacuum control was declined (Brush-Charles).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Detection or tight exclusion of scalar, breathing or longitudinal gravitational-wave polarization with a network able to see it, which bears on Whittaker, Dunning-Davies, Minderle and Evans; beside it, Brush's zinc-bismuth pendulum and drop tests repeated in vacuum.
Deciding records: Whittaker's 1944 Endeavour article and Fisher Library papers; Hilgenberg's 1931 and 1939 booklets and the 1967 swallowing-constant manuscript (Runcorn papers or estate); Brush's 1921-1928 Proc. APS papers and any Bureau of Standards report; page images of Aspden's eq. 163 and p.151.
Try it yourself: Run zzz-Unknown's example.py Part C: how fast a push-gravity flux stops the Earth in its orbit. Then Verlinde-Erik's example.py: bits, Unruh temperature and equipartition give F = GMm/R^2, and G cancels against its own definition.
Open questions
Is there a small scalar (breathing) admixture in gravitational waves? Current detector networks still allow one, and strictly longitudinal modes are only weakly constrained (Whittaker-ET).
Would Brush's drop-test result, bismuth ahead inside identical containers, survive in vacuum? Air added mass cannot explain it, and nobody repeated it (Brush-Charles).
Does entropic gravity predict decay or decoherence of ultra-cold neutron gravitational states? Kobakhidze and Chaichian et al. disagree, and no measurement discriminates (Verlinde-Erik).
Did Hilgenberg ever write a force law and a swallowing constant? The 1931 and 1939 booklets and the 1967 manuscript sent to Runcorn are unread (Hilgenberg-OC).
Would a common-phase oscillation of g show in gravimeter, pulsar-timing or clock data? PPTA's 26-pulsar search for one scalar dark-matter model found nothing at nanohertz; it was not a search for a Whittaker-type standing wave (Whittaker-ET).
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The drag calculation is generic and needs none of Brush's missing equations: any push from an isotropic flux at c on a body moving at v gives drag of order (v/c) times gravity, 18.6 m/s per year for Earth. What is refuted is the class of model. Brush-Charles, arbiter.md, Claim 2
Contrarian The strongest honest case for a shared medium: equal speed to 1 part in 10^15 is exactly what a shared medium predicts. It is also what general relativity's shared light cone predicts, so GW170817 does not separate them. Whittaker-ET, contrarian.md, Claim 4
Arbiter A genuine standing wave obeying the scalar wave equation gives r^2 F = 1 + (kappa r)^2/2, so it mimics Newton only if its period is months or longer, and then g should oscillate everywhere in step: a definite, searchable prediction. Whittaker-ET, arbiter.md, Claim 4
Arbiter F = T grad S has curl grad T x grad S, so it is conservative only if the gradients are parallel, and nothing in the paper guarantees that (Visser). On neutrons, two published camps disagree about what the picture predicts; no measurement discriminates. Verlinde-Erik, arbiter.md, Claim 1
Arbiter A sink pushed by the stream gives inverse square and forces dM/dt = mu M with G = mu^2/(4 pi rho_e). With universal mu it fails the ephemeris limit by about 1e4: a consequence of a reconstruction, not Hilgenberg's stated prediction, and not the verdict. Hilgenberg-OC, arbiter.md, Claim 1
AI noteAir carried along by the bobs (added mass, Bessel 1828) matches Brush's zinc-bismuth pendulum difference to roughly 20-40 percent: viable, not proof, and his effect varies with pendulum length. He declined a vacuum run: 'I can confidently answer no.'
Theme 15How claims go wrong (pathological science)
no changeC - TestableD - Influential31 projectsCard updated 2026-10-10 14:17
Most claims in this collection fail not through fraud but through measurement: an eye that knows the expected answer, a scope sample read as average power, a lamp rating read as delivered watts. This card gathers those recurring errors and the cheap controls that catch them.
Headline verdicts of the 31 member projects: Never properly tested15Tested, not supported4Refuted by calculation8Internally inconsistent2Not testable as stated2
Theme background
The classic case is Rene Blondlot, a respected Nancy physicist who in 1903 read a faint spark's changes as a new radiation, N rays, and measured its refraction and wavelengths by eye. About 120 scientists published about 300 papers on them; in 1904 Robert Wood secretly removed the prism and Blondlot's readings continued. The same patterns recur across the collection: Kilner's aura screens, Rahn's biological detectors, Hieronymus's touch-drag analyser, unmeasured refraction behind flat-earth sightings (Parallax, Flat-Earth), and pulsed circuits whose gain rests on scope samples, volts times amps or unmetered batteries (Ainslie, Bedini, Correa, Kelly, Meyl, Naudin, Stiffler).
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream practice answers with blinded, randomised sham-versus-real trials, instrument detectors in place of the eye, energy budgets, and power computed as the average of voltage times current. The N-ray brightness change is put down to physiology, but that rests on a secondary source (Blondlot arbiter). Left open: how large expectation effects are under the exact protocols, and whether mundane real effects, such as a spark's sensitivity to humidity or sound, lay beneath some reports.
Ranking explanation
It is the third largest theme, after the umbrella themes on the aether and free energy, but only Blondlot is core; the rest each add one lesson, so it is broad but shallow on D. It is strong on C: the checks (an energy budget, the true mean of v times i, a blinded sham arm) are ones a reader can run. It is weak on A and B, its central case long settled, so it sits mid-table.
Key supporting elements
Blondlot: Wood removed the aluminium prism in the dark and the reported spectrum continued. Blondlot's own wavelengths, if photons, give transmission below 10^-8900 through his 1.5 cm aluminium plate (arbiter, CXRO data).
Meyl-Konstantin: the December 1999 record gives 49 mW out, 233 mW in, 223 mW idle; '490 percent' divides 49 by the 10 mW above idle. The arbiter computes 21 percent gross; about 56 ps of probe skew equals 10 mW.
Kelly-Patrick: NBS, testing Newman's motor in 1986 for the Patent Office (an adverse party) at the court's order, found input above output at every condition; Hastings's COP 8 counted MHz back spikes as output. Newman's side disputed the method.
Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann: the 1.22 MJ total is instantaneous watts times elapsed time, not an integral; input came from a 1.2 microsecond scope window on a 0.25 ohm shunt; no stated operating point gives 1.13 W in, 17.5 W heat.
Hieronymus-TG: Campbell, an editor who promoted the topic, reported a 1956 build from the patent that worked unplugged, best for young girls; ideomotor effects predict both. Known via the Investigator's keyword reading only.
Key contradictions
Blondlot and Naudin-JL: no fraud is shown; both printed their own nulls (Blondlot's thermopile tests; Naudin's 'no overunity' for the Bedini gate in closed loop). Blondlot fell by failed replication, not suppression; his 1904 Leconte prize honoured his whole work.
Kilner-Walter: a lady unwittingly handed a methylene-blue screen in place of dicyanin could not see the aura (1920, three times); the screen mattered, so expectation alone was not enough, though body-specificity stays untested.
Hieronymus-TG: Campbell also reported that the analyser fails with a defective tube, plugged in or not (via the Investigator), which cuts against a purely ideomotor reading; the arbiter keeps both observations, unreconciled.
Rahn-Otto: the 1937 NRC negative was contested by proponents and no protocol both sides accept was ever run; the weak form, ultra-weak light from living cells, is Established.
Radiant_One_Youtube and Stiffler: RF really does upset meters (Established), so the inventors' warnings are not empty; but a DC supply plus calorimetry needs no RF probe (Stiffler arbiter).
Timeline (10)
1870-03Wallace's equal-height test, Old Bedford River: middle mark 5-6 ft above the line, as a globe predicts (umpire 5 ft, Wallace 5.5, arbiter's sketch scaling 6); refraction unmeasured. · Flat-Earth
1903-02Blondlot reads a spark's orientation change near an X-ray tube as polarization, then reassigns it to a new radiation, N rays. · Blondlot
1904Wood visits Nancy, secretly removes the prism and swaps a file for wood; the readings continue. Kelvin, Crookes, Lummer and Rubens also report failures (secondary source). · Blondlot
1912-03De Fontenay reports Paris trials with Kilner's four screens: observers saw nothing matching; he proposes two blind tests, still not on record as run. · Kilner-Walter
1924-07Lakhovsky and co-signers report three treated geranium tumours necrosed, sixteen untreated grew; known via a 1925 seller-site press quotation and citations; unreplicated, not controlled for heat. · Lakhovsky George
1937Hollaender and Claus (NRC Bulletin 100): two years with biological and physical detectors, 'all the attempts have yielded negative results'; proponents contest the protocol. · Rahn-Otto
1956Campbell reports in Astounding a Hieronymus analyser built from the patent alone; it works unplugged and depends on the operator (via the Investigator's notes). · Hieronymus-TG
1986-06NBS report for the Patent Office, at the court's order, on Newman's motor: 'At all conditions tested, the input power exceeded the output power'. Newman's side disputed the method. · Kelly-Patrick
1999-12Meyl's St. Georgen record, 49 mW out of 233 mW in, is published as 490 percent over-unity. · Meyl-Konstantin
2001-08IGF (Weidner) reproduces the kit's LED glow and transmitter load, explains them by LED clipping and harmonics, finds no over-unity; Meyl, the kit seller, calls IGF 'questionable'. · Meyl-Konstantin
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
N rays are a physical radiation, seen as a brighter glow, refracted and diffracted with wavelengths of 8-18 nm
Tested, not supportedWood's prism removal and file swap; failed replications elsewhere (secondary source)Refuted by calculationwavelengths, penetration and dispersion on Blondlot's own numbers
An unblinded observer judging a faint signal (glow, haze, finger drag) reveals a real effect
Tested, not supporteda new radiation raising the glow seen by the eye (Blondlot), on failed replications by Kelvin, Crookes, Rubens, Lummer and a physiological finding (secondary source, lower weight)Not testable as statedN rays as protocolled: only the sensitive observer, not demonstrable to an audiencePlausible, untestedperceived brightness as a psychological effect (Blondlot); screen-primed observers report a haze (Kilner); electrovibration (Established in general) as the cause of Hieronymus's stickNever properly testedKilner's objective body-specific aura; his two hidden-site trials (one exact hit, one near miss; about 1-3 percent per random guess, probably several times more for his procedure; cue channel, no sham); his heredity tables (parent-child 15 of 15, siblings 5 of 9; a small dataset worth a blind repeat); element dependence of the drag with Hieronymus's patented analyserTested, not supportedelement dependence of the drag on a Pathoclast only (Hite, via the Investigator), not the patented analyser
Pulsed-circuit gains measured by scope samples, volts times amps or idle subtraction show net energy
Refuted by calculationAinslie net gain; Correa Table 7 as printed (also Internally inconsistent; on drive-pack terminal power X x I its runs are 57-146 percent, median about 92); Kelly's LM2587 'COP 1.5' as a mean DC power ratio; Naudin's MEG sustained gain, if all energy enters by the electrical portsNever properly testedAinslie's ratio as a measurement; Correa's general net-gain claim (no neutral test, closed loop or calorimetry); Stiffler ECAT gain; Gunderson COP 6 reports; Naudin's MEG 'apparent COP' as real power (every check on file points to measurement error) and MAHG COP 5-21Tested, not supportedMeyl's 500-1000 percent over-unity and scalar reading of the kitEstablishedfor the opposite statement, Tousey's: apparent coil output above input is a meter artefact, no over-unity
Battery-charging and battery-run devices show energy gain without a whole-system meter
Internally inconsistentBedini charge-battery COP as over-unity evidenceNever properly testedBedini whole-system COP and 5-day 9 V run (figures 4.4-6.6 times the battery rating)
Witnessed demonstrations or stated outputs without metering establish a device's power
Refuted by calculationBrown's patent text, '23 amperes at 400 volts into a resistance load', no method given: about 5e7 times the decay powerNever properly testedMoray's lamps (nameplate sums, never metered; about 30 named witnesses on about 25 dated occasions 1925-38, many associates, some state and REA officials, known through the family's books; a neutral whole-device test offered, not completed; batteries disfavoured for 1928 and 1938, hidden feed, ground path and observer error not excluded); Meyer's dune buggy; Larson vapor-only engine runsTested, not supportedNewman's motor, NBS 1986 for the Patent Office at the court's order, partly read, method disputed by Newman (in Kelly's compendium)
Fitted constants, numerical coincidences or formulas never checked for units confirm a theory
Refuted by calculationGardi's alpha formula and g-2 value; Hotson's R-squared from freely assigned integers and the 137 recurrenceTested, not supportedEvans's ECE g-2; Wheeler's 42.4923 as the proton's true gyromagnetic ratioInternally inconsistentSmith's energy law, f versus f squared, four printed answers (a formula, not a fitted constant)Refuted by calculationSmith's strong form, net energy proportional to f squaredEstablishedSmith's weak form, reactive power circulating at rate f, which delivers no net energy
Uncontrolled case series and small trials show biological or clinical effects
Never properly testedLakhovsky's 1924 geranium test and clinical cures; Rahn's mitogenetic speed-up under a protocol both sides accept; Reiter and Gabor's inhibitory 2900-3200 A band and 3340 A parthenogenesisTested, not supportedReiter and Gabor's 3200-3500 A band (in Rahn's book), by Gurwitsch's rival school only: same detector class, no error limits in Table 18; their glass-transmission, 2800 A and antagonism results were not answered
Unblinded sightings with unmeasured refraction, misread NASA reports, arithmetic errors; one-party tests with no second account.
Tested, not supportedstrong form, no curvature; flat earth with a definite metric Refuted by calculation; low-sight-line sightings Never properly tested (refraction never measured)
Sweeping unitary principle asserted as confirmed with citations lacking data; hypothesis stated as established.
Not testable as statedunitary field
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Rene Blondlot
Discoverer of N rays, the classic case · Blondlot
Nancy physics professor; first measured the speed of radio waves in 1891 within 1 percent; reported N rays 1903-04, printed his null tests openly; Leconte prize 1904 for his whole work; retired 1910.
Robert W. Wood
Tester who removed the prism in Blondlot's lab · Blondlot
American physicist; in 1904 removed the prism in the dark and swapped a file for wood. His Nature report is not in the folder; known via a secondary source.
Heinrich Rubens
Berlin physicist cited by both sides · Blondlot
Blondlot cites an ambiguous private letter as agreement; his own later failure to find N rays is known only from a secondary source. Not independent evidence either way from the book.
Walter J. Kilner
Physician who saw the human aura through dye screens · Kilner-Walter
London hospital physician; every diagnosis rests on him as the single, usually informed observer; in his N-ray period he explained erratic needle deflections as rays striking only at times.
de Fontenay
Sympathetic Paris tester of Kilner's screens · Kilner-Walter
With de Rochas, used Kilner's four screens and saw nothing matching (1912); called it 'a reservation, not a denial' and proposed two blind tests.
John W. Campbell
Independent builder of the Hieronymus analyser · Hieronymus-TG
Editor who promoted the topic, no commercial stake found; reported in Astounding (June and August 1956) a build from the patent: operator-dependent, works unplugged, fails with a defective tube. Known via the Investigator only.
Alexander Hollaender
Critic of mitogenetic rays · Rahn-Otto
Wrote a 1936 critical review; with Claus ran two years of tests for NRC Bulletin 100 (1937), all negative; the bulletin itself was not read in the review.
Patrick Kelly
Compiler who warns of the V x I error and then makes it · Kelly-Patrick
Author of the largest free-energy compendium; warns that volts times amps is not power for pulsed loads (pp.1089-1091), yet reports his own converter at 'COP=1.5' from such readings (p.1259).
Poynt99
Forum analyst of the Ainslie circuit · Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann
Traced the circuit and reported measurement artefacts, including a probe-ground position that differed between publication and build (forum record, low reliance).
Jean-Louis Naudin
Open replicator who published results for and against · Naudin-JL
French experimenter who ran JLN Labs (1996-2013); hosts and promotes the devices and co-invented two patents assigned to AES (a stake). Scope-read MEG gains, yet printed 'NO Overunity' and '4.75 is NOT A COP' against himself.
Lineage
Kilner explained erratic needle deflections in his N-ray period as rays falling on the needle only at times; Nickell's link of Kilner to N rays is a sceptic's characterisation (Kilner-Walter).
Stiffler's CEC 1.319 calorimetry used a close but not identical copy of Ainslie's circuit, and the same forum critique of probe grounding bears on both (Stiffler, Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann).
Kelly's compendium relays Ainslie's heater as environmental energy (Ainslie's own text claims no closed system), Smith's resonance formulas and Newman's COP 8 (Kelly-Patrick).
Meyl's textbook relays third-party devices (Bedini, Testatika and others) as second-hand figures, with his own doubts on some (Meyl-Konstantin).
Naudin replicated Bearden's MEG and Bedini's Magnetic Gate; his own closed loop found no over-unity in the Gate, and his MEG closed loop is still missing after about 26 years (Naudin-JL, Bedini-John).
Flat-Earth continues Rowbotham's (Parallax) Bedford sightings. Wallace's 1870 test and Oldham's 1900-01 repeat found the globe's offset; the zetetic side answered with Clifton's 1904 photograph (negative not held). None measured refraction (Parallax, Flat-Earth).
Key evidence (12)
1905Blondlot, "N" Rays (English translation of the 1903-04 notes) Observing rules, refraction and wavelength tables, null thermopile tests, about 40 photographic trials with one failure· Blondlot
1904Wood's report in Nature on his visit to Nancy Prism removal and file-for-wood swap; known only through a secondary source (Wikipedia, N ray)· Blondlot
1912-03De Fontenay, L'Aura humaine et les ecrans du Dr Walter J. Kilner Annales des Sciences Psychiques 22, pp.74-84; Paris negative trials; two proposed blind tests· Kilner-Walter
1920-09Kilner, The Human Atmosphere, second edition p.58: unwitting methylene-blue sham screen, aura not seen, three times; no counts beyond that· Kilner-Walter
1924-07-26Gosset, Gutmann, Lakhovsky and Magrou, C. R. Soc. Biol. 91:626-628 3 treated geranium crown galls (6, 33, 9 h) necrosed from about day 16; 16 untreated grew. Primary not obtained: known from a 1925 press quotation on colysa.ch (a seller, a stake) and citations in Kotzareff 1931 and Roussakow 2013· Lakhovsky George
1937Hollaender and Claus, NRC Bulletin 100 Two years, biological and physical detectors, all negative; protocol contested by proponents; bulletin not obtained· Rahn-Otto
1956Campbell's Hieronymus machine articles, Astounding (June and August) Build from the patent alone; operator-dependent; works unplugged; fails with a defective tube. Read by the Investigator by keyword search only; not downloaded or re-read by reviewers or the arbiter· Hieronymus-TG
1986-06NBSIR 86-3405, Report of Tests on Joseph Newman's Device Made for the Patent Office (an adverse party) at the court's order; 'At all conditions tested, the input power exceeded the output power'; summary read, handling of the MHz spikes unread; 77 measurements, 27-77 percent per the court opinion; Newman's side disputed the method· Kelly-Patrick
1993-02-28Perkins Technology meeting note on Meyer's water fuel cell Perkins's characterization (a party that wanted to proceed): no water-fuelled engine shown on three UK expert visits (1990, 1992); via the stanslegacy.com advocacy archive's transcription· Meyers-Stan
1999-12Scalar-wave transmission power record, TZ St. Georgen 6.7 MHz; 233 mW in, 223 mW idle, 49.1 mW out; read as 490 percent, gross 21 percent· Meyl-Konstantin
2001-08-10Weidner (IGF), Analyse eines Teslaschwingkreises Reproduced the LED glow and transmitter load; explains them by LED clipping and third-harmonic resonance; no over-unity; with LEDs removed the effects 'no longer exist' (translated). Gaps: no cage measurement, no wire-removed control, eye-matched LED brightness. Companion to, not later than, the six-author report. Meyl, the kit seller, calls IGF a 'questionable private institute'· Meyl-Konstantin
2009Ainslie et al., electric heater experiment (2009 reprint) 17.5 W heat against 1.13 W scope-derived input over 16.5 h; raw oscilloscope data not in the folder· Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
A detector that knows the answer: an eye at threshold judging an expected change, with no blinding or sham arm (Blondlot, Hieronymus-TG, Rahn-Otto's biological detectors); Kilner hid the site in two trials, but kept a cue channel and no sham.
Unbalanced energy books: short scope windows, volts times amps, idle subtraction (Ainslie, Kelly, Meyl, Correa); mean V times mean I at low duty, a hazard Naudin's 1/D pattern fits but does not prove; nameplate watts (Moray); primary battery ignored (Bedini).
Rescue rules and missing data: failure blamed on the tester (Blondlot, Bedini, Stiffler); fading effects, an unpublished test (Eskridge-Amy); a patent output with no method (Brown-Paul); a 2015 caption stronger than 2011's 'below unity', with no bridging data (HiIQ-Youtube).
Numbers fitted, then offered as confirmation: constructed constants (Gardi-Lori, Wheeler-Ken, Evans-Myron), a near-perfect R-squared from freely assigned integers (DLHotson); formulas whose units fail (Smith-Don).
Wrong or missing yardstick: a c+v fit to the author's own integration, not Newcomb's tables (Wallace-Byran); refraction invoked by both sides, never measured (Parallax, Flat-Earth); wire capacity left out of Trowbridge and Sabine's comparison (Fedderson-Daedalus); 'already confirmed' without data (Baranski-Leo).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: A blinded, randomised sham-versus-real trial scored by an instrument, not the observer: a third party switches source or sham while a photometer reads the same target (Blondlot arbiter). For circuits the same idea is a DC supply metered over the whole run plus calorimetry, with a dummy-load arm.
Deciding records: Wood's 1904 Nature note and the Berlin reports; Blondlot's Comptes Rendus originals; NRC Bulletin 100 (Rahn); the full NBSIR 86-3405 (Newman); Ainslie's raw oscilloscope data; the BMJ review of Kilner, 6 Jan 1912.
Try it yourself: Run Blondlot's example.py: it turns his own grating table into photon energies, then into Boltzmann factors and aluminium transmission. Then, for any pulsed claim, compute mean power as the average of v(t) times i(t), not average V times average I. For a sighting over water, Flat-Earth's example.py gives the refraction coefficient k a globe would need.
Open questions
Was there a real but mundane effect, such as humidity, draughts or sound acting on a delicate spark, behind Blondlot's spark photographs? Nobody tested it separately.
How large is the expectation effect on dim-light judgments under Blondlot's exact viewing rules? The primary physiological studies were not found.
What effective duty and input actually produced Ainslie's 17.5 W of heat? The raw waveforms that would decide it are not available.
Would a protocol both schools accept show mitogenetic speed-up of cell division (Rahn-Otto)?
How do Campbell's 'works unplugged' and 'fails with a defective tube' fit together (Hieronymus-TG)?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The episode is the reverse of the suppression story: the Academy honoured Blondlot. The claim failed through lack of independent replication, not through blocked publication. Blondlot, arbiter.md, Where the contrarian and critics each get the benefit of the doubt
Primer Each measurement looked fine alone. Combine wavelength with source and penetration and the set is impossible by hundreds to hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude. Checking claims against each other with standard laws is a powerful, cheap test. Blondlot, primer.md, section 7
Arbiter The unwitting sham screen is the nearest thing on record to a blind sham-screen trial. It supports 'the dicyanin screen matters, and expectation alone is not enough', and does not test whether the haze is body-specific. Kilner-Walter, arbiter.md, section 11.7 Additions to claims 1 and 2
Arbiter The measurement rule does not make the device untestable: the SEC15-3 is DC powered, and a battery supply plus calorimeter needs no RF probe. Stiffler, arbiter.md, Disagreements and rulings, item 4
Mathematician Wallace's design is robust: uniform refraction multiplies both angles by (1 - k) and leaves the 1:2 ratio, and a level error shifts both marks equally. Only refraction varying along the path or with height can change it. Flat-Earth, mathematician.md, section 1.2
AI noteIn Blondlot's lens table the blank entries fall exactly at the thresholds where an image could exist, what an observer who knew the expected index would produce (mathematician, via the Blondlot arbiter).
Theme 16Ether models of matter
no changeB - Open questionD - Influential20 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 10:45
If space is filled with a medium, perhaps matter is made of it: electrons as knots or whirls, mass as dragged ether, atoms as condensed ether. Eleven core projects, from Thomson and Lodge to Hotson and Gardi, try it, and the card shows where each attempt can be checked.
Headline verdicts of the 20 member projects: Established3Never properly tested1Tested, not supported5Refuted by calculation4Not testable as stated5Historically superseded but instructive2
Theme background
Victorian physics hoped to build matter from the ether. Thomson's vortex rings (1883) and his electromagnetic mass made inertia a property of the field; Lodge (1908) concluded that all mass is ether, at about 1e12 g/cm3; Mendeleev (1902) made the ether a chemical element lighter than hydrogen; Larkin (1903) replaced it with a sea of Thomson's corpuscles; Very (1919) built electrons as spinning spheres of aura. Later writers kept the programme alive: Hilgenberg's ether turning into new matter (1933), Aspden's vacuum lattice (c.1980), Wallace's mass circulating at c (1993), Hotson's electron-positron sea (2002) and Gardi's lattice (2017), later Planck granules.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics kept one piece: a moving charge's field adds inertia that rises with speed. But relativity gives every mass the same velocity factor, the 4/3 problem needed non-electrical stresses, and the electron is point-like below about 1e-18 m (Lodge-O, Thompson-JJ). Most proton mass is now strong-field energy. Left unexplained: why particle masses and alpha have their values, and why vacuum energy is far below simple estimates, the size of Lodge's mismatch.
Ranking explanation
The theme ranks on depth of ideas (D) and breadth: eleven core projects across 140 years, with founders of mainstream physics (Thomson, Lodge, Mendeleev) beside independent writers. Open questions remain (B): ether-to-matter conversion has never been measured, and mass as circulation at c is plausible but untested. It lacks the anomalous laboratory records (A) that lift themes on discharges, gravity control or radiant energy, and most strong forms were overtaken by the electron's measured smallness.
Key supporting elements
Thompson-JJ: a charge's own field adds inertia, (2/3)e^2/(ac^2), and that inertia rises with speed: Established classical electrodynamics. Lodge-O's arbiter adds that most of a proton's mass is field (QCD) energy, though that is not Lodge's claim.
Mendeleev-D: his zero group of inert gases is right (now Group 18) and his kinetic arithmetic is correct apart from one misprint; Werner's 1905 table also left spaces lighter than hydrogen, so the idea was not an outlier then.
Lodge-O: dense ethers were respectable: Larmor and FitzGerald thought them possible and Nature (1907) found 'nothing paradoxical'; his arithmetic from 1e12 g/cm3 is right, and his 1920 ether index gives the full Einstein light bending.
Wallace-Byran: rest mass as internal circulation at c is Plausible, untested in general; zitterbewegung (Schrodinger 1930) is a mainstream relative, and at a radius of 1.93e-13 m the spin comes out right.
Aspden-Hearld: one integer (1843) and lattice geometry gave alpha^-1 = 137.0359 and m_p/m_e = 1836.152; a post hoc, model-prescribed revision (137.035953) agreed with c.1980 data. Hilgenberg-OC: ether-to-matter conversion has never been measured either way.
Key contradictions
Lodge-O, Thompson-JJ: the electron is point-like below about 1e-18 m, so no 1e-13 cm ball holds its field energy; Thomson's numbers give 3/4 mc^2, the 4/3 problem he left unresolved. Very-Frank: his electron carries 1/150-1/250 of the measured spin.
Mendeleev-D: a gas with his numbers carries waves at c/184, and only longitudinal ones, so it cannot carry light; by his own escape criterion the Sun cannot hold the ether he says it accumulates.
Lodge-O: if 1e33 erg/cm3 of ether gravitates, it is 1.9e41 times the measured dark-energy density, with an expansion rate near 780 per second; the density itself moves with an unmeasurable electron radius.
Aspden-Hearld and Gardi-Lori: constant formulas fail modern precision: Aspden's alpha is about 3,800 standard uncertainties off; Gardi's alpha and g-2 are Refuted by calculation, her 2.39 eV neutrino is excluded by KATRIN (below 0.45 eV).
DLHotson: 660 MeV per epo contradicts his own 1.022 MeV threshold, and tau as a minimum time fails against the Z width; Hilgenberg-OC: the 1933 growth rate (1.9e-9 per year in GM) fails lunar-ranging limits near 1e-13 per year.
Timeline (10)
1883J. J. Thomson's treatise on vortex rings: atoms as linked vortex rings in a perfect fluid ether; up to six vortices on a circle are stable. · Thompson-JJ
1897Thomson's corpuscles (electrons), the same from every source; he later argues their whole mass may be electromagnetic, about 1e-13 cm across. · Thompson-JJ
1902Mendeleev's essay makes the ether a chemical element x, about one millionth of hydrogen, in a zero series above hydrogen (English 1904). · Mendeleev-D
1903Larkin's Radiant Energy and Its Analysis: Thomson's corpuscles saturate space and replace the ether as the carrier of all radiation. · Larken
1908-02Lodge's Royal Institution discourse, The Ether of Space: matter is made of ether, density about 1e12 g/cm3 (derivation in Phil. Mag., April 1907). · Lodge-O
1919Very's The Luminiferous Ether: electrons as spinning spheres of aura, all mass electrical, light as electron-sized ether-particles. · Very-Frank
1933Hilgenberg's Vom wachsenden Erdball: ether flowing into masses is gravity, and swallowed ether becomes new matter, so planets grow. · Hilgenberg-OC
c.1980Aspden's Physics Unified derives alpha, the proton-electron mass ratio and G from a vacuum lattice and a 2.587 GeV graviton. · Aspden-Hearld
2002Hotson's Infinite Energy series: a Bose-Einstein condensate of negative-energy electron-positron pairs builds photons, nucleons, atoms and gravity (Part 3, 2009). · DLHotson
2017Gardi's A Medium for the Propagation of Light Revisited: an electron-positron lattice, later Planck-length granules with Jeff Yee, yields particles and constants. · Gardi-Lori
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
All mass is electromagnetic: inertia is the field, or bound ether, that a charge carries
Establishedfield inertia that rises with speed (Thompson-JJ; velocity-dependent inertia, Poincare-Henri)Historically superseded but instructivethe whole electron mass electromagnetic at a radius near 1e-13 cm (Thompson-JJ, Lodge-O, Jeans-JH, Poincare-Henri)Tested, not supportedpure electromagnetic mass (Lodge-O, Poincare-Henri); one kind of electron, all mass electrical, against the positron and neutron (Very-Frank)Refuted by calculationextension to the mass of atoms, by Thomson's own counting (Thompson-JJ); size and binding (Very-Frank)Not testable as statedbound ether as a physical substance (Thompson-JJ)
The ether is a material substance with weight, an atomic weight or a definite density
Refuted by calculationMendeleev's gas carrying light (waves at c/184, longitudinal only); Lodge's 1e12 g/cm3 as gravitating vacuum energyInternally inconsistentMendeleev's x about 1e-6 of hydrogen at 2,250 km/s (the Sun cannot hold what he says it accumulates)Not testable as statedLodge's density as a property of space (set by an unmeasurable radius); Mendeleev's weak form; the essay's gas in zzz-UnknownHistorically superseded but instructiveMendeleev's ether element as a 1902 question (Mendeleev-D; also as zzz-Unknown cites it)
Particles are vortices, knots or spinning spheres of the medium
Historically superseded but instructiveThomson's vortex atom (Thompson-JJ); Very's rotating electron as an idea (Very-Frank)Not testable as statedthe electron as a singularity in a uniform ether (Lodge-O)Refuted by calculationVery's rotating electron as the real electron: spin and size (Very-Frank)Internally inconsistentVery's printed rotation numbers (Very-Frank); Thomson's 'seven vortices unstable' against his own equations (Thompson-JJ)
Space is a sea of particles (corpuscles, electron-positron pairs, granules) that replaces the classical ether
Historically superseded but instructiveLarkin's corpuscle sea (Larken); Dirac's literal negative-energy sea (DLHotson)Tested, not supporteda stationary electron sea, by Michelson-Morley (Larken); a detectable-frame aether (Gardi-Lori)Not testable as statedHotson's epo condensate as zero-point energy (DLHotson); Gardi's Planck-granule form (Gardi-Lori)Refuted by calculationHotson's pair-production conservation premise and tau as a minimum time (DLHotson)Internally inconsistentHotson's reinterpretation at three named steps and 660 MeV per epo against his 1.022 MeV threshold (DLHotson)
Composite models built from the medium give particle masses and structure
EstablishedBoyd's Klein-Gordon-type equation with free K, as mathematics only: the standard equation, no new content (zzz-Unknown)Plausible, untestedrest mass as internal circulation at c, in general (Wallace-Byran)Tested, not supportedHotson's composite nucleon; Gardi's neutrino-scale energies; Wallace's force deviation below 1.1e-14 mRefuted by calculationWallace's circulation at his stated radius (spin 34 times low) and his pion of electron-positron pairs (mass budget)Internally inconsistentGardi's composite proton and neutron (charge and spin counting)Not testable as statedHotson's 9180-pair numerology; Gardi's post-hoc K fits as predictions; Wallace's unified theory as a whole; Boyd's Klein-Gordon-type equation with free K as a mass prediction (zzz-Unknown)Never properly testedspin, gravity and nuclear forces from Wallace's mass-in-cell program (no equations or code available)
The medium's geometry yields the constants of nature (alpha, m_p/m_e, G) with no free parameters
Tested, not supportedAspden's alpha and m_p/m_e as exact results, and his G at today's precision (Aspden-Hearld)Historically superseded but instructiveAspden's revised, post hoc 137.035953, within 0.7 sigma of c.1980 data; his first 137.035915 was already 3.2 sigma off (Aspden-Hearld)Internally inconsistentAspden's 'no free parameters', G as parameter-free, and his lattice sum (1/alpha about 152, not 137, by the Ewald convention) (Aspden-Hearld); Distinti's derived electron mass, circular (Distinti Robert)Refuted by calculationGardi's alpha formula and g-2 value (Gardi-Lori)
Ether is converted into new ordinary matter, and matter returns to it
Never properly testedexistence of ether-to-matter conversion at any rate (Hilgenberg-OC)Tested, not supportedHilgenberg's 1933 exponential growth rate (Hilgenberg-OC)Not testable as statedVery's matter-radiation cycle (Very-Frank); Larkin's return of matter to corpuscles (Larken)
The medium's pressure or flow causes gravity and inertia, and bends light by refraction
Refuted by calculationBoyd's push-gravity gas as given: about 6e40 W of heating for the Earth if absorbed, or orbital drag in about 13 years at his sub-light speed (zzz-Unknown)Tested, not supportedthe sub-light version, which would have slowed the planets (zzz-Unknown)Plausible, untestedrefraction as the cause of solar light bending: the arithmetic works, no distinguishing test (zzz-Unknown)Not testable as stated'reproduces all of relativity': nothing computed beyond one deflection angle (zzz-Unknown)
Unitary field of mirror-image dimitants as substratum from which fields and particles evolve.
Not testable as statedunitary field
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
J. J. Thomson
Discoverer of the electron; vortex atoms and electromagnetic mass · Thompson-JJ
Showed cathode-ray corpuscles are the same from every source and part of every atom (1897); developed field mass, the plum-pudding atom and positive-ray analysis.
Oliver Lodge
Argued that matter is ether and estimated its density · Lodge-O
Physicist (1851-1940), radio pioneer, then Principal of Birmingham University; Royal Institution discourse of 21 February 1908; ether-drag disc experiments 1893-97.
Dmitri Mendeleev
Made the ether a chemical element in the periodic table · Mendeleev-D
Russian chemist who built the periodic table and predicted gallium, scandium and germanium; from 1872 worked on gases under a commission whose aim, per Stewart 2019, was the nature of the ether.
Edgar L. Larkin
Replaced the ether with a sea of Thomson's corpuscles · Larken
Popular astronomy writer and observer (New Windsor 1880-88, Knox College 1888-1900, Lowe Observatory 1901-04); his observing logs have not been found.
Frank W. Very
Built electrons from a spinning aura and light from ether-particles · Very-Frank
American astronomer (1852-1927); read his ether paper to the American Astronomical Society on 20 August 1918; printed in the Swedenborgian New-Church Review.
Ott Christoph Hilgenberg
Ether-sink gravity and ether converted into new matter · Hilgenberg-OC
Berlin engineer (1896-1976) and former oil-prospecting geophysicist; founded expanding-Earth theory in 1933.
Harold Aspden
Vacuum-lattice aether yielding constants and particle masses · Aspden-Hearld
Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge; long career as a patent manager; self-published Physics Unified (c.1980).
Donald L. Hotson
Electron-positron condensate as the substance of everything · DLHotson
Land surveyor with no physics degree, self-taught; published in Infinite Energy (issues 43, 44 and 86, 2002-2009).
Bryan G. Wallace
Dynamic ether with all mass circulating at c; mass-in-cell model · Wallace-Byran
American (1933-1997), St. Petersburg, Florida; worked with Eckerd College colleagues; Spectroscopy Letters papers 1969-71 and Found. Phys. 1973; Natural Philosophy Alliance member; author of The Farce of Physics (1993).
Lori Gardi
Light and particles as waves in a lattice or granule aether · Gardi-Lori
Her ResearchGate page lists Western University and a prostate-biopsy image-registration project; co-wrote particle papers with Jeff Yee (2018-19).
Lineage
Thomson's electromagnetic mass was quoted by Lodge (1908) for 'all mass is the ether's'; Very (1919), Jeans, Poincare and Lorentz worked within the same all-electrical mass programme.
Larkin (1903) took Thomson's 1897 corpuscles and made them a sea filling space in place of the ether.
Boyd's Subquantum Plenum (zzz-Unknown, 2002 or later) traces its aether gas to Mendeleev's 1902-04 ether element and to Tesla as retold by Vassilatos.
Hotson (2002-09) built his epo sea by reading Dirac's 1928 negative-energy solutions literally, the step physics replaced with antiparticles.
Gardi co-wrote with Jeff Yee (2018-19), including a paper meeting Distinti's electron model (Distinti Robert); Wallace cites de Broglie's 'small clock' for mass circulating at c.
Key evidence (12)
1883Thomson, A Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings Ring-interaction mathematics with printed errata; 'seven unstable' contradicted by his own equations; Part IV deep-read in the QE revision· Thompson-JJ
1903Larkin, Radiant Energy and Its Analysis Corpuscle sea replacing the ether; Lowe Observatory; published with Southern California Academy of Sciences support· Larken
1904Mendeleev, An Attempt Towards a Chemical Conception of the Ether English translation of the 1902 Russian essay; zero series, x about 1e-6 of hydrogen; page images checked· Mendeleev-D
1907-04Lodge, The Density of the Aether, Phil. Mag. 13, 488-506 The derivation of 1e12 g/cm3 found by the Investigator and read by all three reviewers; Larmor's letters in Appendix B· Lodge-O
1908-05Lodge, The Ether of Space, North American Review 14-page printing of the 21 February 1908 Royal Institution discourse; read in full, with pp.2-9 and pp.10-14 deep-read and page images checked· Lodge-O
1919Very, The Luminiferous Ether Westwood Occasional Papers No. 2 and New-Church Review; rotating electron, all mass electrical; second scan unread· Very-Frank
1933Hilgenberg, Vom wachsenden Erdball 56 pp.; growth law mu about 5e-17 per second; OCR pp.1-18 and two page images read by the Investigator· Hilgenberg-OC
1967Hilgenberg, manuscript on the swallowing constant of the ether stream Sent to S. K. Runcorn; the one place he may give the ether swallowed per unit mass per unit time; Runcorn papers or estate· Hilgenberg-OC
c.1980Aspden, Physics Unified Sabberton, Southampton; 212 pages OCR'd; deep reads of pp.7-36, 54-80, 94-200 with equations checked on page images· Aspden-Hearld
1993Wallace, The Farce of Physics Dynamic ether, mass circulating at c, mass-in-cell model; the 1973, 1982 and 1986 papers with the program equations not obtained· Wallace-Byran
2002Hotson, Dirac's Equation and the Sea of Negative Energy, Parts 1-3 Infinite Energy issues 43 and 44 (2002) and 86 (2009); epo condensate, 9180-pair nucleon, tau octaves· DLHotson
2017Gardi, A Medium for the Propagation of Light Revisited, and later papers with Yee Electron-positron lattice, then Planck granules; Geometry of Particles energy formula and Table 5.1 reproduced by QE· Gardi-Lori
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Circular derivations: the measured value enters as an input and comes back as a result: Thomson's radius chosen to fit the mass, Wallace's cell radius equal to the classical electron radius, Gardi's fitted constants (Thompson-JJ, Wallace-Byran, Gardi-Lori).
A free size sets the answer: Lodge's density moves from 1e10 to 1e12 g/cm3 and beyond with the assumed electron radius, so the number is not a determination (Lodge-O).
Retrodictions offered as predictions: Aspden's psi thresholds after the 1974 discovery, Gardi's K values assigned after masses were known, Hotson's octave fits judged by R-squared (Aspden-Hearld, Gardi-Lori, DLHotson).
Composite particles with charge or spin left uncounted: Gardi's proton of four electrons and a positron gives -3e; Ainslie's 1836 adds and removes an unseen 1.5 (Gardi-Lori, Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann).
A gas or fluid asked to carry transverse light: Mendeleev's ether gas has no shear stiffness, so its fastest wave is longitudinal and 184 times slower than light (Mendeleev-D).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Most members fail on the same missing step, a mass or dimensionless constant predicted before measurement (Lodge-O, Gardi-Lori, Aspden-Hearld arbiters). The one open experiment is a direct satellite and lunar-laser limit on secular change of the Earth's GM, which bears on ether-to-matter conversion (Hilgenberg-OC).
Deciding records: Wallace's 1973, 1982 and 1986 papers with the mass-in-cell program; Hilgenberg's 1967 swallowing-constant manuscript; Lodge's Liverpool notebook for November 1893 and the Larmor-Lodge letters; Very's second scan and the October 1918 New-Church Review printing; Mendeleev's promised article on absolute zero.
Try it yourself: Run Lodge-O's example.py: the ether density cancels out of the electron's field mass, and adding Lodge's assumption that the whirl speed equals the electron's speed gives a density that rises steeply as the assumed radius shrinks.
Open questions
Can any ether model produce a dimensionless number, such as alpha or m_p/m_e, as an output rather than a fit? Lodge-O's arbiter names this the test of the electron-as-singularity idea; none exists.
Does ether, or anything, convert into ordinary matter at any rate? Hilgenberg's 1933 rate is excluded, but conversion as such has never been measured (Hilgenberg-OC).
Is rest mass internal circulation at c, as zitterbewegung suggests? Plausible, untested in general; Wallace's stated radius fails by 34 in spin (Wallace-Byran).
Lodge's 1.9e41 vacuum-energy mismatch is the usual size of the modern zero-point-energy problem, which mainstream physics has not resolved either (Lodge-O).
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Most of a proton's mass is field (QCD) energy, so 'mass is field energy' survives in a different theory and is not Lodge's claim. Lodge-O, arbiter.md, Claim 2
Arbiter Under relativity a mass rising as gamma says nothing about whether the mass is electrical. Thompson-JJ, arbiter.md, Claim 2
Arbiter The idea is not crazy; the realisation is quantitatively off by 34 at its stated size, and its authors treat its size as a free input. Wallace-Byran, arbiter.md, Claim 3
Arbiter The record shows the essay was widely printed and not suppressed; no one ran a test aimed at his gas, because the essay proposes none. Mendeleev-D, arbiter.md, Overall in one paragraph
Arbiter 3e25 W of rest energy, 8% of solar luminosity, is a requirement on the ether, not a refutation; nobody has detected any such reservoir. Hilgenberg-OC, arbiter.md, Claim 2
AI noteThomson printed in 1883 that seven vortices on a circle are unstable, but his own equations give a zero root at seven; Cabral and Schmidt (1999) showed the heptagon stable, and a 2008 water-vortex experiment confirmed the ranges.
Theme 17Zero-point and vacuum-sea energy
no changeB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential15 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:54
Empty space really does hold zero-point energy: the Casimir force is measured. This card asks what the members' reviews found when inventors tried to draw power from it, and where a granted patent, a gas-flow test and a magnet generator left the question.
Headline verdicts of the 15 member projects: Never properly tested9Refuted by calculation3Internally inconsistent1Not testable as stated2
Theme background
Planck's 1911-12 zero-point energy led Nernst (1916) to suggest the aether is filled with it; Lodge (1908) had already given the ether 1,000 tons per cubic millimetre and vast stored energy. Dirac proposed a filled negative-energy sea in 1930, which Hotson (2002-09) revived as an electron-positron condensate. Bearden (1993 onward) called potentials free vacuum flux and patented the MEG (2002). Haisch and Moddel, from stochastic electrodynamics, patented gas flow through Casimir cavities (2008). Many device inventors name the vacuum as their source.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics accepts the zero-point field: the Casimir force and cavity-shifted atomic levels are measured. But the vacuum is the field's lowest-energy state, so there is no lower state to drain it to, and the Casimir force is conservative: a closed cycle returns zero. Left unexplained: the cosmological constant problem, the vacuum-energy mismatch with gravity (Whittaker-ET); estimates depend on the cutoff, about 1e41 times dark energy at the electron radius (Lodge-O).
Ranking explanation
It has open questions (an unexplained infrared signal in the Haisch-Moddel tests, the MEG's never-run supply-removed test), checkable arithmetic and wide reach: twelve of fifteen members name the vacuum, space or ether as an energy source. It ranks above water fuel because those questions are still live, and below ether models of matter, which gathers more members and deeper theory. It lacks criterion A: its only controlled tests were the proponents' own.
Key supporting elements
Haisch-Bernard: the zero-point field, the Casimir force and cavity-shifted atomic levels are real, measured physics; the arbiter rates Forward's Casimir force Established and finds the patent's SED arithmetic (455 A, 6.6e15 Hz, Bohr-orbit balance) correct.
Haisch-Bernard: 2012 infrared from gas in nanopores was 'clearly observed'; controls excluded Joule-Thomson cooling, turbulence and adsorption; friction fit poorly, not excluded ('None of these clearly fit the data'). Henriques (2014): 'some evidence' for xenon, none with pre-excited xenon.
Bearden: the MEG patent reports COP 1.7 to 2.6; builder Naudin reported 1.75 (the arbiter computes 2.08 from his later total input); the EPO granted a self-powering claim in 2013. The supply-removed run testing a vacuum source was never done.
DLHotson: the Dirac equation's four solutions, read as particles and antiparticles, are Established mainstream content (not Hotson's reading); Dirac's 1930 hole theory was the filled sea Hotson revives, and the size of the vacuum energy is a real puzzle.
Lodge-O and Whittaker-ET: the cosmological constant problem is real and unsolved; the historian Kragh reports that Lodge 'has been called a remote ancestor' of the quantum vacuum, a label he cites from others: resemblance, not a test.
Key contradictions
Haisch-Bernard: the patent assumes ('we assume') a 1-10 eV shift; the ordinary atom-wall shift at 50 nm is about 1e-9 to 3e-8 eV (helium to xenon). A position-dependent energy returns zero over an in-and-out loop.
Haisch-Bernard: the 2012 signal was about 1000 times below prediction, strongest for helium and uncoated plastic (the reverse of prediction), and 'the power out was less than the power in', in the authors' words.
Bearden: the magnet named as fuel holds 7-22 J, 0.09-0.27 s at the claimed 82 W. Naudin-JL: 100 kohm at 512 V takes 1.31 W, not 10.28 W; either the load was 11-13 kohm and ran hot, or current over-reads.
DLHotson: his zero-point energy of 660 MeV per epo comes from one input and clashes with his own 1.022 MeV threshold; the epo condensate names no observable, so it cannot be tested.
Kelly-Patrick and Morray-TH: for every named ambient source (vacuum ground state, atmospheric electricity, radio, cosmic rays) the power budget falls short by orders of magnitude. Unnamed sources, as in Correa's zero-point or aether explanation, give no number to test.
Timeline (10)
1908Lodge's The Ether of Space gives the ether a density of 1e12 g/cm^3, 1,000 tons per cubic millimetre, with enormous stored energy and no extraction route. · Lodge-O
1916Nernst, after Planck's 1911-12 zero-point energy, suggests the aether everywhere might be filled with zero-point energy (as Whittaker's History reports). · Whittaker-ET
1930Dirac proposes a filled sea of negative-energy electrons, the picture Hotson later revives. · DLHotson
1984Forward's Physical Review B paper: a Casimir foil-stack battery; he calls the field probably conservative, so no unlimited extraction. · Haisch-Bernard
1993Bearden's The Final Secret of Free Energy says potential is ordered energy flowing from the vacuum; Cole and Puthoff publish 'Extracting energy and heat from the vacuum'. · Bearden
2002Bearden and co-inventors' MEG patent US 6,362,718 is granted; Hotson's Dirac-sea articles appear in Infinite Energy 43 and 44. · Bearden
2004The USPTO rejects the MEG continuation as violating thermodynamics and asks for a demonstration; none is given and the application lapses in 2005. · Bearden
2008-05Haisch and Moddel's US 7,379,286, Quantum Vacuum Energy Extraction, is granted; within weeks it is assigned to the University of Colorado. · Haisch-Bernard
2012-03Dmitriyeva and Moddel test gas flow through nanopores: an infrared signal about 1000 times below prediction, power out below power in. · Haisch-Bernard
2019-05Moddel and Dmitriyeva's Atoms review lists detailed balance and the exit 'potential hill' as unresolved; no later gas-flow experiment appears. · Haisch-Bernard
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
The zero-point field is real and acts on matter: the Casimir force
Establishedthe Casimir force (Forward, in the Haisch-Bernard folder)
Gas flowing through Casimir cavities, or moving cavity walls, gives continuous net power from the vacuum
Refuted by calculationthe 1-10 eV shift and net power over a flow cycle; moving walls, a conservative force over a closed cycleTested, not supported2002, 2012, 2014 and 2019 attempts; 2012 power balance, out below inNever properly testedweak form (sub-eV shift, flow-driven infrared); FIG. 8 asymmetric absorber, never built
Real devices run on a hidden vacuum or zero-point inflow (MEG, coil pulses, discharge tubes, pulse circuits)
Refuted by calculationMEG sustained self-powered output with the magnet as fuel (Bearden); over-unity as principle (Dunning-Davies); named reservoirs including the vacuum ground state (Kelly); sustained gain from a passive magnet-biased core, if all energy enters by the electrical ports (Naudin-JL)Never properly testedMEG supply-removed run as the test of a vacuum source (Bearden); the 'apparent COP' as real power, evidence on file pointing to a measurement error (Naudin-JL)Not testable as statedunnamed or unquantified vacuum source (Bearden and Naudin-JL on the active vacuum, Bedini, Correa, Kelly, Znidarsic)Tested, not supportedZnidarsic's 1998-99 reactive-to-real power rigEstablishedweak form: an open system can exceed COP 1 if its source is real and identified (Kelly)
Zero-point energy is the negative-energy Dirac sea, a condensate of electron-positron pairs
Historically superseded but instructivethe literal filled seaNot testable as statedthe epo condensate and 'zero-point energy is negative energy'Internally inconsistent660 MeV per epo against his own 1.022 MeV threshold
A potential or static field is an inexhaustible energy source that can do net work
Internally inconsistentenergy equals potential (J against J/C) (Bearden); 'unlimited source' with conservation kept (Frolov)Refuted by calculationinfinite energy read as stored field energy (Bearden); static field doing net work round a closed cycle (Frolov)Establishedweak form: a time-varying field does net work, paid for by the switcher (Frolov)
Space or the ether stores an enormous energy density
Not testable as statedLodge's density as a property of space; vacuum as aether (Whittaker)Refuted by calculationas gravitating vacuum energy, about 1.9e41 times the measured dark energy (Lodge)
A collector or station draws power from energy in space (Tesla, Moray)
Refuted by calculationkilowatts from known radiation (Moray); resonator self-running for seconds without supply (Tesla station)Never properly tested'energy from space' at Colorado Springs, no energy accounting by anyone (Vassilatos); primed or hidden feed (Moray)Not testable as statedunknown radiation with no stated coupling, including the vacuum-energy reading (Moray)
1951 discussion of zero-point oscillations of the quantum vacuum as ether-like.
Never properly testedQ07 hypothesis of longitudinal standing-wave gravity (Not testable as stated); static 1/r wave sum and 1904 potentials Established
Claims extraction of gravitational or vacuum energy through scalar waves.
Refuted by calculationscalar-wave energy
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Bernard Haisch
Co-inventor of US 7,379,286; zero-point-field theorist · Haisch-Bernard
Calphysics Institute and Digital Universe Foundation; co-author with Rueda and Puthoff of zero-point-field inertia papers from 1994. Said in 2009 they had 'not yet been able to prove anything in the laboratory'.
Garret Moddel
Co-inventor; ran the only published gas-flow test (2012) and the 2019 assessment · Haisch-Bernard
University of Colorado Boulder faculty; declares a Jovion stockholding in 2019. Later moved to Casimir-cavity metal-insulator-metal devices reporting anomalous current offsets (Phys. Rev. Research 2021).
Olga Dmitriyeva
First author of the 2012 test, co-author of the 2019 review · Haisch-Bernard
PhD, University of Colorado, 2012, on heat from hydrogen isotopes loaded into palladium (LENR), with the zero-point radiation test run alongside.
Harold E. Puthoff
Stochastic-electrodynamics theorist cited by the patent and by Bearden; ran a synchrotron cavity-shift test · Haisch-Bernard
Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin. His group's synchrotron tests of cavity ground-state shifts were 'so far without success' (2002). Co-author of Cole and Puthoff 1993, which no reviewer read.
Robert L. Forward
Author of the 1984 Casimir foil-stack battery paper · Haisch-Bernard
Hughes Research Laboratories; the paper was funded by the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory and Hughes Aircraft. He treated the vacuum field as probably conservative.
Thomas E. Bearden
Theorist of vacuum flux as free energy; co-inventor of the MEG · Bearden
Of Huntsville, Alabama; author of The Final Secret of Free Energy (1993) and spokesman for Magnetic Energy Ltd. Filed a declaration with the USPTO in 2004 tying the MEG to the vacuum.
Donald L. Hotson
Reviver of the Dirac sea as zero-point energy · DLHotson
A land surveyor with no physics degree, self-taught; wrote three Infinite Energy articles (2002, 2009). Editor Zebuhr's commentary (IE 86) that he was pushed out of physics is the one account of resistance; no documents found.
Jean-Louis Naudin
MEG replicator, the main outside build on record; an interested party · Naudin-JL
French experimenter, JLN Labs (1996-2013). Reported COP 1.75 (Nov 2000); the arbiter computes 2.08 on his later total input. Said measurement artifacts remain possible; never closed the loop. Stake: co-inventor on two patents assigned to AES, formed to sell generators.
Shawn Riley
USPTO examiner who rejected the MEG continuation and required a demonstration · Bearden
Art unit 2838. Rejected all 14 claims in 2004 as violating the first and second laws. Not otherwise in the review files.
Oliver Lodge
Early estimator of the ether's density and stored energy · Lodge-O
Author of The Ether of Space (1908). The historian Kragh reports that he 'has been called a remote ancestor' of the quantum vacuum.
Lineage
Kragh, a historian, places Lodge's ether energy (1908) beside Nernst's zero-point aether (1916) among forerunners of the quantum vacuum, and reports that Lodge 'has been called' its remote ancestor: resemblance, not descent (Lodge-O, Whittaker-ET).
Hotson revives Dirac's 1930 filled sea and recasts it as an electron-positron condensate that is the zero-point energy (DLHotson).
The Haisch-Moddel patent builds on Boyer's and Puthoff's stochastic electrodynamics and on Cole and Puthoff (1993); Bearden cites Puthoff (1989) and Cole and Puthoff too (Haisch-Bernard, Bearden).
Floyd Sweet's vacuum triode, Bearden's 'Method 1' vacuum device, recurs as evidence in Kelly, Frolov and Dunning-Davies; no neutral test of it is on record (Bearden, Kelly-Patrick, Frollov-Alexander, Dunning-Davis-J).
Moddel's later Casimir-cavity metal-insulator-metal devices (2021) follow the patent with a different mechanism; third-party patents (2018-2023) cite Haisch-Moddel (Haisch-Bernard).
Naudin built Bearden's MEG from 2000 and hosted other vacuum-attributed devices; Horky (2009) says, without a source, that he joined Bearden's team, yet also that he worked independently (Naudin-JL).
Key evidence (12)
1908O. Lodge, The Ether of Space Ether density 1e12 g/cm^3 and energy per cubic millimetre; arithmetic from the assumed density checks out· Lodge-O
1984R. L. Forward, Extracting electrical energy from the vacuum by cohesion of charged foliated conductors, Phys. Rev. B 30, 1700 Foil-stack battery; field treated as conservative; deep-read in the project folder· Haisch-Bernard
1993D. C. Cole and H. E. Puthoff, Extracting energy and heat from the vacuum, Phys. Rev. E 48, 1562 The inventors' basis for 'no thermodynamic violation' and the non-thermal reservoir premise behind FIG. 8; unread by every reviewer· Haisch-Bernard
1993-02-09T. E. Bearden, The Final Secret of Free Energy, with 1994 updates Potential as vacuum energy flow; collector scheme; no measurements reported· Bearden
2002-03-26US 6,362,718, Motionless Electromagnetic Generator Patrick, Bearden and three others; Fig. 8 COP 1.7-2.6 measured by the patentees; magnet named as fuel· Bearden
2004-01-23USPTO rejection of continuation 10/081,847 Examiner Shawn Riley; first and second laws; demonstration required; applicants asked to defer it; abandoned 2005· Bearden
2000-11-07J. L. Naudin, MEG v2.0 and v2.1 replication pages 'The measured COP is 1.75'; v2.1: 6.76 W out on 3.25 W total input (2.08 as the arbiter computes), 4.5 after subtracting the control board; Bearden's 7.3 is Bearden's own figure· Naudin-JL
2002D. L. Hotson, Dirac's Equation and the Sea of Negative Energy, Parts 1-2 (Infinite Energy 43-44), Part 3 (86, 2009) Zero-point energy as half an epo per mode, 330 MeV per mode, a single frequency for every mode· DLHotson
2008-05-27US 7,379,286, Quantum Vacuum Energy Extraction (Haisch and Moddel) 21 pages, all deep-read; claims 'release then re-intake' with no net-gain figure; FIG. 8 asymmetry in no claim· Haisch-Bernard
2012-03Dmitriyeva and Moddel, Test of zero-point energy emission from gases flowing through Casimir cavities, Physics Procedia 38, 8-17 He, Ar, N2, Xe through 0.1-0.4 micron pores; signal about 1000 times below prediction· Haisch-Bernard
2019-05Moddel and Dmitriyeva, Extraction of Zero-Point Energy from the Vacuum, Atoms 7, 51 Detailed balance and exit 'potential hill' unresolved; pore-size trend in the predicted direction· Haisch-Bernard
–DTIC or DARPA final report for SPAWAR grant N66001-06-1-2026 Named by the arbiter as deciding why the gas-flow line went quiet after 2012· Haisch-Bernard
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Treating a position-dependent energy as a source: a potential returns zero over a closed loop. Forward said so in 1984; the gas-flow patent, moving walls and static-field schemes miss the return stroke (Haisch-Bernard, Frollov-Alexander).
Assuming the size of an effect: the patent's 1-10 eV shift is stated, not calculated, and is seven to ten orders above ordinary atom-wall shifts (Haisch-Bernard).
Naming the vacuum without a flux, coupling or number, so no budget can be checked (Bedini-John, Correa, Kelly-Patrick, Znidarsic-Frank); the 1999 zero-point-field mass link puts no ZPF quantity in any equation (van Vlaenederen Koen, Not testable as stated).
Reading oscilloscope RMS power on non-sinusoidal waveforms as true power; builders report MEG excess only with nonlinear loads, and Flickinger saw nothing with linear loads (single sources, uncontrolled) (Bearden, Naudin-JL).
Mixing units or quantities: energy treated as potential, J against J/C (Bearden); spin angular momentum treated as energy (DLHotson).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: A neutral lab runs the Haisch-Moddel pore-size scan (0.05 to 10 micron) with non-cavity controls, metered pump power and closed calorimetry: a cavity effect switches off for large pores, heating does not. For the MEG, the patent's self-powered loop run with the supply removed for hours.
Deciding records: The DARPA or DTIC final report for SPAWAR grant N66001-06-1-2026, the Hathaway Research test report, full texts of Cole and Puthoff 1993; the MEG inventors' raw v(t) and i(t) data and the EPO 2007-2009 replies. Any report of the DoD-linked university MEG replication Bearden announced in December 2000 (Naudin-JL).
Try it yourself: Run Haisch-Bernard's example.py: estimate the Casimir-Polder shift U = 3 hbar c alpha/(8 pi z^4) at the centre of a 0.1 micron gap (z = 50 nm) for helium, argon and xenon and compare with 1 eV. Then, by hand, how long do 7-22 J of magnet energy last at the MEG's claimed 82 W excess?
Open questions
What produced the 2012 gas-flow infrared signal that no conventional source clearly fit? In 2019 the smallest pores gave the most helium signal, which the authors read as a cavity effect or as more friction; no matched-flow-resistance control was run.
Would the FIG. 8 asymmetric absorber work if the zero-point field is a non-thermal reservoir, as Cole and Puthoff (1993, unread by every reviewer) argue?
Does a MEG built to the patent keep running with its supply removed? This test, independent of instrument method, has never been run; Naudin was trying to close the loop in 2000 and had 'not yet' by 2008 (Naudin-JL).
Why did the gas-flow line go quiet after 2012, with Jovion's site showing an empty Progress link? The DARPA final report would show.
Why is the gravitating vacuum energy so much smaller than zero-point estimates (about 1e41 times for a cutoff at the electron radius)? The cosmological constant problem is unsolved in mainstream physics.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The verdict rests on size, not geometry: the patent never computes the shift, and the ordinary atom-wall energy at 50 nm is 1e-9 to 3e-8 eV, seven to ten orders below the assumed 1-10 eV. Haisch-Bernard, arbiter.md, QE revision, section 2
Primer The inventors deserve credit for candour: the co-inventor's papers list the conventional explanations, state power out was below power in, and call the data inconclusive; Haisch said nothing was proven in the lab. Haisch-Bernard, primer.md, sections 4 and 7
Contrarian No evidence of funding or publication being blocked. The only negatives are the proponents' own, with weak instruments: the claim failed to give a clear signal in every attempt known, and the attempts were not designed to be decisive. Haisch-Bernard, contrarian.md, How the idea fared
Arbiter Two descriptions of one fuel, both by the patentees: the 2000 patent names the magnet's flux; the 2004 remarks name the vacuum. The energy budget refutes the first; the untested supply-removed run addresses the second. Neither has a measurement behind it. Bearden, arbiter.md, Investigator findings, Where they differ, item 4
Arbiter A claim can only be refuted against a source that is named. For the vacuum ground state, atmospheric electricity, radio and the microwave background the budgets fall short; for an unnamed source the field has not been asked for a number. Kelly-Patrick, arbiter.md, Claim 1
AI noteHotson's 660 MeV zero-point energy and the reviewers' 105 MeV are the same quantity, h/tau and hbar/tau, differing only by 2 pi; both exceed the 1.022 MeV pair threshold he relies on.
Theme 18Water as fuel
no changeA - UntestedC - Testable6 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 13:01
A car that runs on water is the best-known free-energy promise, and thermodynamics prices it in one line. This card sets Meyer's cell, Realm's bent-water vapour and the HHO builders against that price, and shows that the one cheap measurement that would decide them was never made.
Headline verdicts of the 6 member projects: Never properly tested4Refuted by calculation2
Theme background
Splitting water by electricity is ordinary electrolysis; the claims here say a pulsed, resonant or field-tuned drive does it for less. Puharich patented resonant splitting in 1983. Stanley Meyer of Grove City, Ohio, patented a 'Water Fuel Cell' (1982-94) in which water is the dielectric of a resonant capacitor, and promoted water-fuelled cars until his death in 1998. Kelly's compendium gathers Boyce, Cramton, Hasebe, Spiros and HHO booster builders. Realm Industries (Stehl and Larson, 2007-10) claimed plates bend the water molecule into a storable fuel vapour. Frolov relays Russian electrolysis claims.
Where mainstream physics went
Electrochemistry fixed the price: at least 237 kJ per mole of hydrogen as work (1.23 V per cell), 286 kJ with heat (1.48 V), and burning returns at most 286 kJ, so water is the ash of hydrogen. Practical cells reach 60 to 80 percent. Left unexplained in these files: Puharich's gas above the Faraday limit for his stated current, Nagypal's excess, Perkins's flame at under 1 mA, and what Realm's gas was. None was measured against input energy.
Ranking explanation
It ranks with Zero-point energy and Magnet motors, themes whose strong claims fall to calculation. It earns A for measured oddities never rechecked (Puharich, Nagypal) and records that went dark (NIST's evaluation, the 1996 court file, Realm's destroyed cylinders), and C because every claim yields to a one-line Gibbs or Faraday check. Zero-point ranks higher on open questions and depth of ideas; three core members limit breadth here.
Key supporting elements
Kelly-Patrick: Puharich's gas was analysed by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry in two laboratories, the most careful measurement in the water chapters. Its 10.80 cc of hydrogen is 1.4 to 2.1 times what the stated current allows; unexplained.
Meyers-Stan: Hindley, Laughton and Griffin (1990) saw a cold cell make gas from tap water at under 0.1 A; Perkins Technology (1992) saw dissociation under 1 mA; Nagypal measured 2-4 times Faraday at 20 mA. None measured input energy.
Meyers-Stan: thermodynamics leaves a real window. Drawing ambient heat, a cell's gas can hold up to about 1.2 times the electrical work (285.8/237.1 kJ/mol), and a pulsed drive could beat a poor DC drive of the same cell. Never measured.
TernionAG: high-frequency fields measurably lower electrolysis overpotential at a heated catalyst (Niether 2018, Serra 2020; abstracts, one group each). Net gain with the field power counted is untested.
Larson-Tyson: no neutral test of Realm's gas exists; bomb squads destroyed the only cylinders unsampled in 2011, and the prosecutor said the fraud case did not allege a fraudulent scientific process, which neither validates nor refutes the physics.
Key contradictions
Kelly-Patrick: implied cell voltages sit below the 1.23 V floor (Boyce pulsed 0.125 V, Cramton 0.063 V; Hasebe 9 to 10 times below). Meyer's 5 gallons per hour on about 1 W needs 84 kW.
Meyers-Stan: at kHz tap water is a resistor, so the cell's Q is under 4 and resonance cannot build 20-40 kV. Meyer's own 1983 Fig. 16 shows DC beating pulses; his 1995 table, units corrected, is Faraday at 40 A.
Larson-Tyson: RC circuits do not resonate; a 22 kHz quantum is a billion times too small to bend water. Vapour cannot be stored at 1-100 psi, 25 C; Realm's 2009 PCT says the process 'could result' in H2 and O2.
Kelly-Patrick: 3 L/min of HHO holds 0.36-0.43 kW, not the 4-5.5 kW claimed; Cramton's saving is 42-73 times the gas's energy. A 2008 Murdoch thesis: 18 percent saving at low load, mostly under 5, worse at high load: combustion effect.
Meyers-Stan and Kelly-Patrick: Puharich's 114.9 percent divides by 22,400 cc of mixed gas per mole instead of 33,600. Corrected, his measured gas is 63.5 percent of the Gibbs ideal and returns 138 J for 180 J in.
Timeline (10)
1978-08Hasebe US 4,105,528: 116 cc/s of gas at 2.8 V and 30 A, 'over 20 times' Faraday; no measurement method given. · Kelly-Patrick
1983-07Puharich US 4,394,230: resonant water splitting in 0.9 percent saline; gas analysed in two laboratories; '114.9 percent' from a gas-volume slip. · Kelly-Patrick
1990-06Meyer's core water-capacitor patent, US 4,936,961, is granted; Example 1 gives geometry and 26 V but no gas volume or power. · Meyers-Stan
1990-10Hindley, Laughton and Admiral Griffin watch the Grove City cell make gas from tap water at low meter currents (Electronics World, Jan 1991). · Meyers-Stan
1991-06NIST's energy-inventions office reportedly finds the cell 'a net consumer of energy' (Spy, Dec 1991; Heard cites a Lewett letter of 28 Jun 1991); file not obtained. · Meyers-Stan
1992-10Perkins Technology bench visit: dissociation from about 10 V at under 1 mA, vessel at room temperature; Project TACO planned, record stops Feb 1993. · Meyers-Stan
1996-09Fayette County judgment for two WFC dealers against Meyer; $40,515.72 garnished. The decision transcript is not obtained; exhibits destroyed 2014. · Meyers-Stan
2007-10Stehl and Larson (Realm Industries) file US 2009/0092540: plates at an 'RC resonating frequency' bend water's bond angle into a storable vapour. · Larson-Tyson
2010-06Co-inventor Tyson Larson, 28, is killed in an explosion at Realm Industries, Simi Valley; Stehl is indicted the same year for investor fraud. · Larson-Tyson
2011-09Three TyLar gas cylinders are destroyed by bomb squads without sampling, removing the one chance to identify Realm's gas (EPA POLREP #2). · Larson-Tyson
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
A pulsed, resonant or field-driven cell splits water for less work than the Gibbs floor (237 kJ/mol, 1.23 V per cell)
Refuted by calculationas printed: Boyce, Cramton, Hasebe, Meyer's 5 gal/h, HHO generators (Kelly-Patrick); Meyer's 20-40 kV resonant gain and charge-free bond breaking (Meyers-Stan); Frolov's 'no primary power' (Frollov-Alexander)Never properly testedthe measurements themselves (Kelly-Patrick); Meyer's gas per joule above DC (Meyers-Stan); Goriatchev's 1500 percent and Kanarev (Frollov-Alexander)Internally inconsistentMeyer's 1983 patent text that pulsing 'enhances considerably' the splitting, against its own Fig. 16; the arbiter's QE-revision verdict, not yet weighed by the reviewers (Meyers-Stan)Establishedordinary electrolysis; drawing ambient heat, the gas can hold up to about 1.2 times the electrical work (Kelly-Patrick; TernionAG, not novel)
Puharich's resonant splitting returned more energy than it used (91.3 and 114.9 percent)
Internally inconsistentthe printed figures, a gas-volume slip; corrected about 63 and 77 percent (Meyers-Stan, Kelly-Patrick)Refuted by calculationas a net surplus on the measured gas (Kelly-Patrick)Never properly testedthe underlying 80-100 percent claim by neutral parties (Meyers-Stan)Establishedthe measured 63.5 percent Gibbs yield, an ordinary result (Kelly-Patrick)
A frequency matched to the cell or the molecule weakens or bends water's bonds
Refuted by calculationRealm's kHz 'RC resonance' bending the angle (Larson-Tyson); single-photon or laboratory-field bond change (TernionAG)Internally inconsistentRealm's units, tuning variables and polarity (Larson-Tyson)Never properly testedelectrolysis assisted by a resonant standing field or radiated RF at Kassner's bands (TernionAG)Establishedhigh-frequency overpotential reduction at a heated catalyst, a rate effect (TernionAG)Plausible, untestednet energy gain of field-assisted electrolysis with the field power counted (TernionAG)Not testable as stateda collective bond-weakening mechanism (TernionAG)
The gas is a new stored fuel (bent-angle water vapour), not hydrogen and oxygen, and is safer
Refuted by calculationstrong form: condensation, no barrier to relaxationNever properly testedidentity of the gas; the only sample destroyed; best reading H2 + O2Tested, not supported'safer', on uncontrolled incidents
Engines and closed split-and-burn loops run on water as a net fuel
Refuted by calculationwater as net fuel (Meyers-Stan); the self-sustaining loop, an arbiter's verdict not yet weighed by the reviewers (Meyers-Stan); HHO generators and Spiros's loop (Kelly-Patrick); closed electrolysis cycle (TernionAG); Freedman alloy (Linerman-Peter)Never properly testedMeyer's dune buggy (Meyers-Stan); Realm's vapour-only engines (Larson-Tyson)Internally inconsistentMeyer's 'not perpetual motion' beside 'does not create energy' and zero-point energy (Meyers-Stan)
Hydrogen from an on-board electrolyser improves an engine's fuel economy
Never properly testedHHO booster mpg reports (Kelly-Patrick)Plausible, untestedbattery-electrolyser hydrogen supplement, no free energy (Meyers-Stan)Establishedengines can burn hydrogen in general (hydrogen supplementation); says nothing on mpg (Larson-Tyson)Plausible, untesteda plate-stack gas fuelling or supplementing an engine, for Realm's apparatus (Larson-Tyson)
Meyer's cell was examined and found to be ordinary electrolysis (1996 Ohio court)
Tested, not supportedcourt experts, from secondary sources; weaker than a controlled test (Kelly-Patrick, Linerman-Peter)Never properly testeda fraud judgment on a sales contract is not a physics test; the decision is not obtained (Meyers-Stan)
Cites Filimonenko, Kanarev and Goriatchev electrolysis efficiency claims.
Never properly testedfree power
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Stanley A. Meyer
Inventor of the Water Fuel Cell; patentee who sold dealerships and profit-sharing certificates (interested party) · Meyers-Stan
1940-1998, Grove City, Ohio. Water-cell patents 1982-94; his own counts vary (13 US in his brief, 25 to 42 elsewhere). Coroner: cerebral aneurysm. His twin brother Stephen, present, recalls him saying 'They poisoned me' (Columbus Dispatch, 2007).
Andrija (Henry K.) Puharich
Author of US 4,394,230 (1983), resonant water splitting, cited by Meyer's US 4,798,661 · Meyers-Stan
M.D., LL.D. His 1987 typescript says the drive circuit came from his electrostimulation of hearing. Nothing in the files links him to Meyer personally.
Patrick J. Kelly (Edward Dickson Williams)
Compiler of the Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices, whose water chapters gather Boyce, Cramton, Hasebe, Spiros and booster builders · Kelly-Patrick
Ran free-energy-info.com (interested party). Says Channel 4's 'It Runs on Water' started his interest. Died 11 July 2020.
William A. Stehl
Co-inventor of Realm's bond-angle process; defendant in an investor-fraud case · Larson-Tyson
Per the prosecutor, a high-school graduate without a degree. Ran companies from Saranac Lake, NY. Alford plea 2014; reportedly sentenced to 12 years.
Tyson Larson
Co-inventor; killed in the 17 June 2010 explosion at Realm Industries, aged 28 · Larson-Tyson
UCLA B.S. in biology, 2004; worked on Stehl's process at his family's company; Cal/OSHA called him Realm's head chemist.
Michael Laughton
Witness at Grove City (1990); probable author of a 1992 report on Meyer's patents; named by the Sunday Times as the 1996 court expert · Meyers-Stan
Professor, Dean of Engineering, Queen Mary College, London. Whether his view changed between 1990 and 1996 is open.
Admiral Sir Anthony Griffin
Witness in 1990 and 1992 who sought UK partners for Meyer's cell (stake in proceeding) · Meyers-Stan
Former Controller of the Navy. Lectured on 'Water as Fuel' (1993); his claim that electrolysis needs three times the hydrogen's energy is wrong for practical cells.
Tibor Nagypal
Vienna builder whose 1991 letter reports 2 to 4 times Faraday; offered to distribute the cell (stake) · Meyers-Stan
Built a 600 V plate cell giving 0.5-1 cc of gas per minute at about 20 mA. Wrote that he could not reproduce Meyer's waveforms.
George P. Lewett
NIST correspondent on Meyer's claims; his letter of 28 Jun 1991 is cited by Heard (2000) · Meyers-Stan
Placed at NIST's Office of Energy-Related Inventions in the Investigator's notes from memory (medium confidence). The office's 'net consumer' finding is known only as quoted by Spy (1991); the file is not obtained.
Dan Raftery
Outside critic of Realm: said the application looked like electrolysis · Larson-Tyson
Chemistry professor at Purdue University; spoke to the VC Star in 2010 from the application and news reports, without seeing the apparatus.
Lineage
Meyer's US 4,798,661 (1989) cites Puharich's US 4,394,230 as prior art for resonant water splitting (Meyers-Stan).
Meyer's cell seeded a builder lineage: Lawton's 2006 replication, Lammertink's scrap-steel replication project, and Kelly's chapter 10 builds (Meyers-Stan, Kelly-Patrick).
Stan's Legacy, a Meyer archive, files Realm's patents as prior art; R2D2 LLC's 2022 'structurally altered gas molecule' application cites Realm (Larson-Tyson).
Frolov relays Goriatchev's pulsed electrolysis, Kanarev, Latchinov's 1888 high-pressure cell and Filimonenko's 1957 heavy-water electrolysis, without numbers or method (Frollov-Alexander).
The TernionAG essay claim extends Kassner's dipolar-resonance principle to water electrolysis; Kassner himself wrote nothing on electrolysis or bond energy (TernionAG).
Key evidence (12)
1983-07-19Puharich, US 4,394,230 and 'Cutting the Gordian Knot of the Great Energy Bind' 0.9 percent saline, about 600 Hz, 98.8-100 mW for 30 min; 10.80 cc H2 and 5.40 cc O2 by GC/MS in two laboratories; read from page images· Kelly-Patrick
1990-06-26Meyer, US 4,936,961 Method for the Production of a Fuel Gas The core water-capacitor patent; geometry and 26 V, no gas volume, power or run time· Meyers-Stan
1991-01Hindley, 'Free energy for ever?', Electronics World + Wireless World Eyewitness account of Oct 1990 with Laughton and Griffin: gas at 'no greater than a tenth of an amp', cold cell; editor says it 'has more holes in it than a sieve'· Meyers-Stan
1991-06-04Tibor Nagypal letter, Vienna 600 V plate cell, about 20 mA, 0.5-1 cc/min (2-4 times Faraday); 'can't reproduce' the waveforms; prospective distributor· Meyers-Stan
1991-06-28NIST Office of Energy-Related Inventions evaluation and Lewett letter 'a net consumer of energy, not an energy producer' as quoted by Spy (Dec 1991); Heard (2000) cites the 28 Jun 1991 letter; a government agency's characterisation, method unseen; file not obtained· Meyers-Stan
1992-10Perkins Technology visit notes and Project TACO plan Bench run 8 Oct 1992: about 10 V, under 1 mA, room temperature; Feb 1993 note: no water-fuelled engine shown on three UK visits· Meyers-Stan
1995-01-01Meyer, WFC Independent Test-Evaluation Report (binder) Meyer's own compilation; energy table pp.59-60 at 12.5 V and 40 A matches ordinary electrolysis once units are corrected· Meyers-Stan
1996-09Fayette County decision transcript and Final Judgment Entry, Willis and Harper v. Meyer Would show the court's findings and expert evidence; exhibits and depositions destroyed 18 Jun 2014· Meyers-Stan
c.2000-2018Boyce, Cramton, Lawton and HHO booster reports in Kelly's chapter 10 Boyce 211-1,200 percent, Cramton 6 L/min for 12-36 W, booster mpg claims; no flow method or true-power input· Kelly-Patrick
2009-04-03Realm Industries, WO 2010/039283 A2 The inventors 'acknowledge that the process ... could result in the production of hydrogen gas (H2) and oxygen gas (O2)'; read to [0088]· Larson-Tyson
2011-09-18EPA Region 9 POLREP #2, Strategic Sciences experimental fuel cylinders TyLar gas MSDS says compressed hydrogen; cylinders shot at Devore 15 Sep 2011 without sampling· Larson-Tyson
2025Puteanus et al., 'Efficiency improvement by pulsed water electrolysis: An unjustified hope', IJHE 113 Argues pulsing cannot beat DC for a standard cell model; some earlier gains came from mean V times mean I· Meyers-Stan
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Reading volts times amps from meters as power on pulsed or reactive drives: rms or mean meters miss the true average of v times i (Kelly-Patrick, Meyers-Stan, Puharich's own 'no watt meter').
Using 22.4 litres per mole for mixed H2 and O2: one mole of water gives 33.6 litres of gas, a factor of 1.5 that creates Puharich's surplus (Kelly-Patrick, Meyers-Stan).
Counting the ambient heat T dS as work: a cell between 1.23 and 1.48 V draws heat from its surroundings, so gas holding up to about 1.2 times the electrical work is ordinary, not over-unity (Kelly-Patrick, TernionAG).
Treating water as an insulator and an RC time constant as a resonance: the ratio of permittivity to conductivity, independent of geometry, decides both (Meyers-Stan, Larson-Tyson).
Never measuring the gas: no flow method, no composition analysis, a pressure gauge or bubbles as the only output (Kelly-Patrick, Larson-Tyson).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: One 100-second bench run of a Meyer-type or Realm-type cell: a power analyser integrating v times i at the supply, net charge through the cell, gas in a burette analysed by gas chromatography, a plain-DC control in the same cell, and a calorimeter. Compare gas with Faraday (0.686 L per amp-hour) and 285.8 kJ/mol with input.
Deciding records: USPTO file wrappers of US 4,936,961, 5,149,407 and Realm's 11/973,170; the NIST Office of Energy-Related Inventions file (1991); the DTI/Queen Mary (Laughton) report of 1992; the Fayette County decision transcript; the EPO search opinion on EP 2209550; the Korean consignee of TyLar gas.
Try it yourself: For any claim, compute the implied cell voltage: input power divided by (2 x 96,485 C x moles of H2 per second). Below 1.23 V breaks the Gibbs floor. Meyers-Stan's example.py computes the cell Q from water conductivity; Kelly-Patrick's example.py rechecks Puharich's gas against Gibbs and Faraday.
Open questions
Puharich's 10.80 cc of hydrogen exceeds the Faraday limit for his stated 25-38 mA over 30 minutes (5.2-7.9 cc): was the current, the duration or the volume wrong, or is the yield genuinely super-Faradaic? (Kelly-Patrick)
Were Nagypal's 2-4 times Faraday and Perkins's sustained flame at under 1 mA real, or meter artefacts? Neither was repeated with net charge measured. (Meyers-Stan)
Does a pulsed drive beat a poor DC drive of the same cell, within the ceiling of about 1.2 times the electrical work? Puteanus et al. argue no for a standard cell model; Meyer's cell was never measured. (Meyers-Stan)
What was Realm's gas, and did the 2011 South Korean consignee receive or analyse earlier product? (Larson-Tyson)
What did NIST, the DTI/Queen Mary experts and the 1996 court's experts actually measure, and did Laughton's view change between 1990 and 1996? (Meyers-Stan)
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter One calibrated bench test has been possible since 1990 and costs little. Its absence is the central fact of this project. Meyers-Stan, arbiter.md, section 12
Arbiter A calculation can only refute if the stated input is the whole input and the stated gas flow is the real flow. Neither is disclosed, so the claims as printed are refuted if the numbers are right; the numbers themselves are untested. Kelly-Patrick, arbiter.md, Claim 5
Contrarian The inventors never measured the one thing the whole project turns on: what the gas is. The only sample that could have been analysed was shot by bomb squads unsampled, so the central claims are mostly never properly tested, not tested and failed. Larson-Tyson, contrarian.md, section 0 Headline
Primer Energy is a state function. Calling a process 'not electrolysis' does not change the price of splitting water: at least 237 kJ/mol whatever the route, and burning returns at most 286 kJ/mol. Water is the ash of burning hydrogen. Meyers-Stan, primer.md, section 7
Arbiter A closed cycle gains nothing; the heat-pump half of the Q05 hypothesis is correct and ordinary. A saving in electrical work must be paid at least in full by real power delivered into the water. TernionAG, arbiter.md, claim 11 (2026-10-08 section)
AI noteKelly's preface says Channel 4's 'It Runs on Water', which started his interest, aired in the 1980s; the Meyers-Stan review dates that documentary (Arthur C. Clarke narrating) to 17 Dec 1995.
Theme 19Permanent-magnet motors and generators
no changeA - UntestedC - Testable10 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:54
A permanent magnet pulls with no power supply, so inventors tried to make it run a motor. In Flynn-C and Gunderson the flux switching is Established; four projects (Bearden, Gunderson, Kelly-Patrick, Naudin-JL) carry reports of COP above 1, none with a neutral measurement of all power in and out.
Headline verdicts of the 10 member projects: Established1Plausible, untested1Never properly tested6Tested, not supported1Refuted by calculation1
Theme background
The idea is that a permanent magnet, which pulls without any supply, can do continuous work if its flux is switched, gated or shielded at the right moments. Howard Johnson's 1979 patent and Floyd Sweet's 1987 vacuum triode fed the builder tradition that Patrick Kelly's guide compiles. Charles Flynn patented coil control of magnet flux paths (2001); Bearden's group patented the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator (MEG, 2002), which Jean-Louis Naudin replicated openly online from 2000; Graham Gunderson patented a magnet-biased holed toroid (2010); Paul Babcock a fringe-field motor (2014). Ken Wheeler offers a rival account of magnetism.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics treats a permanent magnet as a small, fixed energy store: forces between rigid magnets and iron are conservative, so net work round a closed cycle is zero, and releasable energy is joules, (BH)max times volume. Flux switching, magnetic amplifiers, latching relays and hybrid steppers are standard engineering. It has not explained individual reported readings (MEG COP 1.7-2.6, Gunderson's 9.5 W at zero input) because no neutral lab measured them.
Ranking explanation
It sits beside Water fuel and Atomic batteries: each has a central claim that a short energy budget refutes and the reader can check (criterion C). It outranks Atomic batteries on criterion A: the MEG demonstration the USPTO required (2004) and never got, Naudin's MEG loop, unclosed through 2008, and Gunderson's single-witness zero-input reading are documented, never neutrally tested. It sits below Water fuel because two of its seven core projects (Flynn, Babcock) claim no over-unity at all.
Key supporting elements
Flynn-C: flux switching is real magnetic-circuit engineering. The two-path model reproduces the patent's 'flux doubles' (1.98) and its 'twice' as field-building energy (1.99); latching relays and hybrid steppers use the same magnet-bias effect.
Bearden, Naudin-JL: patentees report MEG COP 1.7-2.6 (10-75 V). Naudin's replication: v2.0 'measured COP is 1.75' (Nov 2000); v2.1 6.76 W out against 3.25 W total input (arbiter: 2.08; 4.5 if the control board is excluded).
Gunderson: engineer Mark McKay, with two power analyzers and a Tektronix scope, reported 1.53 W in and 9.43 W out (COP 6.16), then about 0 W in with 9.5 W out an hour later (July 2016, one witness).
Babcock-Paul: holding a coil at zero current as a magnet passes removes its drag, though the idle coil gives no thrust; flyback recovery is standard switched-reluctance practice. Weak form: Established principle, untested in this geometry; the patent never claims over-unity.
Kelly-Patrick: Wang's 5 kW generators reportedly passed a Chinese six-month test (2008). Kawai's patent (17 V x 1.15 A; 60.52 kg-cm, 100 rpm) gives 19.55 W to 62.15 W by the arbiter's arithmetic; torque method, pulsed-input averaging unstated.
Key contradictions
Bearden: the patent names magnet flux as fuel; its 38.7 cm^3 magnet holds about 7-22 J, which 82 W excess would exhaust in 0.09-0.27 s. Applicants asked to defer the USPTO's 2004 demonstration, then let the application lapse.
Gunderson: about 983 cm^3 of magnets hold at most roughly 25-500 J by energy product; one hour at 9.5 W is 34,200 J, 68 to over 1,000 times more. A one-hour run uses only 6 percent of the battery.
Naudin-JL: a 100 kohm load at 512 V peak dissipates 1.31 W, not the 10.28 W shown, yet ran 'only a bit warm'. No calorimetry or closed loop since 2000. Naudin's closed-loop test of Bedini's Magnetic Gate: 'no overunity'.
Flynn-C: in the patent's own comparison the blocking coil needs exactly the same MMF and steady I^2R as a coil-only device (ratio 1); the 'twice' is stored field energy that returns. Flynn's magnet B ceiling is refuted.
Wheeler-Ken: at fixed shape a magnet's field scales with its remanence, so N52 gives more field than N42 at every distance with the same depth profile, refuting 'higher gauss gives a shallower field'. His 'dielectric' formula has no units.
Timeline (10)
1987Floyd Sweet's filmed VTA demonstration: 10 V x 31.2 uA in, 112.5 V x 4.7 A out claimed, Bearden reading a wattmeter; no neutral test followed. · Kelly-Patrick
2000-11Naudin's open MEG v2.0 replication: 'measured COP is 1.75'; his closed loop stops 'after a while', and he still reports 'not yet' in 2008. · Naudin-JL
2001-06Flynn's US 6,246,561 granted (filed 1998): coils switch a magnet's flux between two paths; no output-above-input claim. · Flynn-C
2002-03US 6,362,718, the MEG, granted to Patrick, Bearden, Hayes, Moore and Kenny; it names the magnet's flux as the energy source. · Bearden
2004-07USPTO final rejection of the MEG continuation as violating thermodynamics; the demonstration requested is never supplied; abandoned 2005. · Bearden
2008-04Kelly reports Wang's 5 kW magnet generators passed a Chinese government six-month test; no tester or data named. · Kelly-Patrick
2010-11Gunderson's US 7,830,065 B2 granted for the magnet-biased holed core; it lapsed for unpaid fees in 2022. · Gunderson
2014-09Wheeler's 3rd edition of Uncovering the Missing Secrets of Magnetism: magnetism as 'dielectric' action, no quantitative measurement. · Wheeler-Ken
2014-10Babcock's US 8,860,273 B2 granted for an external-field interaction motor; no test data; later expired for unpaid fees. · Babcock-Paul
2016-07McKay posts COP 6.16, then 0 W in and 9.5 W out, for Gunderson's Magnetic Implosion Transformer; no waveforms published since. · Gunderson
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
A permanent magnet can be the net energy source of a motor or generator (magnet as fuel, or continuous rotation from magnets alone)
Refuted by calculationMEG self-powered output with the magnet as fuel (Bearden); magnets as source (Gunderson); magnet-only closed-cycle rotation and magnet-supplied energy (Kelly-Patrick); static 'free flux' as primary power (Flynn-C); sustained net gain from a passive magnet-biased core, if all energy enters by the four electrical ports (Naudin-JL)Tested, not supportedBedini's Magnetic Gate, by Naudin's own closed-loop test, 'no overunity effect' (Naudin-JL)
Magnet-biased switching needs less coil effort or energy than an electromagnet alone (Flynn's 'twice')
Establishedgeneral bias effect in hybrid actuators (Flynn-C)Refuted by calculationcoil MMF or steady I^2R saving in the patent's comparison, ratio 1 (Flynn-C)Plausible, untestedFlynn's factor of 2 in coil power, as Kelly's arbiter rates it; Flynn-C's own arbiter replaced this label after its deep reads (Kelly-Patrick)
Never properly testedMEG reported COP (Bearden, Linerman-Peter); Naudin's MEG 'apparent COP' as real power, no calorimetry or closed loop, the evidence on file pointing to a measurement error (Naudin-JL); 2016 zero-input reports (Gunderson); Sweet, Wang, Perendev, Johnson, Adams (Kelly-Patrick)Tested, not supportedMEG, limited to two small builds without the specified core: Lawton and a Malaysian prototype (Kelly-Patrick); Steorn's Orbo, by Steorn's own jury in 2009, which Steorn disputed (Naudin-JL)Not testable as statedMEG COP 3.44 at 100 V, an extrapolation (Bearden); Heins COP 39.6 (Kelly-Patrick)
Cutting back-EMF or recycling flyback energy lets a magnet motor run on much less electrical power
Establishedzero-current coils remove drag, in principle and untested in this geometry, at the cost of the idle coil's thrust; flyback recovery as a technique (Babcock-Paul); spike harvesting as recovery (Bedini-John)Plausible, untesteda few percent gain in this motor (Babcock-Paul)Refuted by calculationinput below mechanical output, the literal strong form (Babcock-Paul)Not testable as statedthe charitable strong form, lower losses than some baseline: no baseline or number given, and never tested (Babcock-Paul)
Magnets draw power from the environment or vacuum: Sweet's Dirac sea, Bedini's opened Bloch wall, Bearden's broken symmetry
Not testable as statedno equation, flux or coupling given (Kelly-Patrick, Bedini-John, Bearden); Bearden's 'active vacuum' as the MEG's source (Naudin-JL)
Textbook magnetostatics misdescribes what a magnet is or holds (Flynn's B ceiling; Wheeler's dielectric magnetism)
Refuted by calculationmagnet B_max ceiling (Flynn-C); 'higher grade gives shallower field' and fixed 1.236 R ring (Wheeler-Ken)Tested, not supportedattraction is dielectric, not magnetic (Wheeler-Ken)Not testable as statedvortex technology and the 'permanent battery' (Wheeler-Ken)
Magnet-motor designs beat conventional motors in efficiency, torque or thrust per kilogram
Plausible, untestedfringe-field thrust outside the air gap (Babcock-Paul)Never properly testedthrust-to-weight (Babcock-Paul); a named Flynn motor against a named conventional one (Flynn-C)Not testable as stated'better than many currently used motors' (Flynn-C)
Surveys magnet motors and alternators (Johnson, Adams, Methernitha) as examples.
Never properly testedfree power
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Thomas E. Bearden
Co-inventor and spokesman of the MEG; theorist of vacuum-fed open systems · Bearden
Wrote from Huntsville, Alabama; The Final Secret of Free Energy (1993); filed a USPTO declaration in 2004. Has a stake as co-inventor and company spokesman. Education and career are not in the review files.
Charles J. Flynn
Inventor of US 6,246,561, coil control of permanent-magnet flux paths · Flynn-C
Of Greenwood, Missouri; assignee Magnetic Revolutions LLC, current assignee QM Power Inc. Holds six earlier magnet patents cited on the front page. Other details not in the review files.
Paul M. Babcock
Co-inventor of the fringe-field motor US 8,860,273 (with D. J. Babcock and P. N. Smith) · Babcock-Paul
Of Flyback Energy, Inc., which projects 2-8 percent switch savings and disclaims over-unity. Presented the motor at a 2012 conference (snippet, unverified). Other details not in the review files.
Graham Gunderson
Inventor of the holed-toroid and magnetostrictive patents and the 2016 Magnetic Implosion Transformer · Gunderson
Said in one source to have worked for Mark Goldes (Magnetic Power Inc., Chava) for many years; built at night alongside a full-time job; 2016 conference panellist. Interested party.
Mark McKay
Sole witness to the 2016 COP 6.16 and zero-input readings · Gunderson
Professional engineer and Gunderson's friend of about ten years; not a commercial party. Reported on the energeticforum thread with two power analyzers and a Tektronix scope.
Patrick J. Kelly
Compiler of The Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices, the theme's largest catalogue · Kelly-Patrick
Pen name of Edward Dickson Williams (died 11 July 2020). Argues magnet power comes from the environment; keeps his own caveats on Perendev, Johnson and magnet-only motors.
Ken L. Wheeler
Author of a rival theory of magnetism as dielectric action · Wheeler-Ken
Writes and sells Uncovering the Missing Secrets of Magnetism (3rd ed. 2014); no patent or peer-reviewed paper found. Interested party as author and seller.
Jean-Louis Naudin
Open replicator of the MEG (COP 1.75) and host of many magnet-motor pages (JLN Labs) · Naudin-JL
French experimenter, 'my own and private lab'. Stake: promotes the ideas; co-inventor on two patents assigned to AES, formed to sell electromagnetic generators. Published adverse results too: Magnetic Gate, magnetic amplifier 'NO Overunity'.
Shawn Riley
USPTO examiner who rejected the MEG continuation and required a demonstration (2004) · Bearden
Primary examiner, art unit 2838. The rejection is the agency's characterization. Not otherwise in the review files.
Dave Lawton
Builder whose MEG test found no change when the magnet was removed · Kelly-Patrick
Builder reported in Kelly's guide (also a Meyer-cell replicator); his MEG used laminated iron, not the specified core. Other details not in the review files.
Lineage
Bearden cites Floyd Sweet's vacuum triode as his first overunity example; Kelly's guide sets Sweet, Flynn, Wang and the MEG side by side as magnet devices.
Mark Goldes funded Sweet's VTA work in the 1980s and later promoted Magnetic Power Inc. and Chava, assignees of Gunderson's patents; one source says Gunderson worked for him for years.
Babcock's patent cites Bedini's US 6,392,370 as prior art. A Google snippet of an emediapress page puts a Paul Babcock on a 2016 panel with Gunderson and Lindemann; that he is the patentee is unconfirmed.
The EPO found the MEG's structure already in US 4,006,401 (1977); its novelty was only the self-powering feedback, the one feature never demonstrated.
Wheeler borrows Eric Dollard's conjugate dielectric and magnetic vocabulary and Steinmetz's dual field convention.
Naudin replicated Bearden's MEG openly from 2000 and hosted Bedini, Mini-Romag, Adams and Steorn Orbo pages; Horky's 2009 Czech MEG was built from Naudin's plans.
Key evidence (12)
1987Sweet VTA filmed demonstration 10 V x 31.2 uA in, 112.5 V x 4.7 A out, 'power factor measured to be 1'; builder's transcription; video not watched· Kelly-Patrick
1999-09-27Naudin, Bedini Magnetic Gate closed-loop note Naudin's own closed-loop tests show 'no overunity effect'; the gate acts as a preloaded magnetic spring· Naudin-JL
2000-11-18Naudin, MEG v2.1 replication tests 9 W lamp: 6.76 W out vs 3.25 W total DC input, or 1.5 W after he subtracts the control board; arbiter: stated 100 kohm load at 512 V gives 1.31 W, screen 10.28 W· Naudin-JL
2001-06-12US 6,246,561 B1, Flynn, controlling the path of magnetic flux 42 claims, 32 drawing sheets; no measurement; 'twice' only in the description· Flynn-C
2002Tektronix support reply relayed by Jon Flickinger Scope 'RMS power' on non-sinusoidal waveforms is 'bogus'; Flickinger found excess only with MOV loads· Bearden
2002-03-26US 6,362,718 B1, Motionless Electromagnetic Generator COP about 1.7-2.6 at 10-75 V by the patentees; magnet flux named as the fuel; demagnetisation conceded· Bearden
2004-07-26USPTO final rejection of continuation 10/081,847 Examiner Shawn Riley; rejected on thermodynamics; model or demonstration required; abandoned 2005· Bearden
2010-11-09US 7,830,065 B2, Gunderson holed-core generator Granted with 'improves the efficiency' claim; description says magnets are 'spent'; lapsed 2022· Gunderson
2014-10-14US 8,860,273 B2, External Field Interaction Motor Babcock, Babcock and Smith, Flyback Energy; drawings read as images; no measurements, dimensions or efficiencies· Babcock-Paul
2016-07-11McKay report, energeticforum thread 13945 1.53 W in, 9.43 W out; then 0 W in, 9.5 W out; 20 magnets, 12.7 Ah battery, about 800 V peak at 50 kHz; page 1 confirmed· Gunderson
2020Gardi, homemade Hall-sensor test of magnet 'throw' N42 magnets 5 mm to 2 in, south pole: 1.44 V maximum for every size, zero at the equator; no greater throw for a stronger grade; known from a secondary wiki summary, video not viewed; sensor saturation possible· Wheeler-Ken
–Dave Lawton MEG test Laminated-iron version; magnet removal made no difference; reported in Kelly's guide· Kelly-Patrick
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Volts times amps on spiky or resonant waveforms taken as real power: scope 'RMS power' in the MEG patent, RMS V x RMS I for Klingelhoefer, phase-sensitive resonant readings at 800 V for Gunderson (Bearden, Kelly-Patrick, Gunderson).
Input counted at one port only: the oscillator or logic supply, a second current path, only the primary winding's heat (Heins), or an undefined no-load current subtracted, as in Horky's MEG table (Kelly-Patrick, Bearden, Naudin-JL).
Force or static flux read as a supply of work: only changing flux induces EMF, and a conservative magnet force does no net work round a cycle (Flynn-C, Kelly-Patrick).
Runs too short to separate battery energy from excess: one hour at 9.5 W is 6 percent of the battery; battery voltage recovery read as charging (Gunderson, Kelly-Patrick).
Nonlinear loads and open-circuit spikes treated as output power: MOV loads in MEG builds, 'coil shorting' voltage relabelled as power (Bearden, Kelly-Patrick).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: A neutral lab builds one MEG and Gunderson's 2016 transformer, integrates deskewed v(t) i(t) at every port including drive and logic supplies, calorimeters a linear resistive load, repeats with the magnets replaced by non-magnetic spacers, then runs the closed loop with the supply removed for hours.
Deciding records: Gunderson file wrappers 11/336,337 and 12/327,719; MEG parent file 09/656,313 and the EPO papers; any report of the DoD-linked MEG replication Bearden announced in December 2000; Naudin's MEG v3.x pages; Magnetic Energy Ltd corporate records; any record of China's 2008 test of Wang's generator; Flyback Energy and QM Power dynamometer data; Sweet's 1987 video frame by frame.
Try it yourself: By hand: how long do 7-22 J (the MEG magnet) last at 82 W? What does Naudin's stated 100 kohm load dissipate at 512 V peak (P = V_rms^2 / R)? Then run Flynn-C's example.py (coil MMF ratio 1, field-energy ratio 1.99) and Gunderson's example.py (magnet energy bound, battery share, watts from a small phase error).
Open questions
Was the MEG ever neutrally measured? Bearden's DoD-auspices university replication (announced Dec 2000) reportedly stopped over a non-circumvention agreement, per a search summary (Bearden). Horky (2009) claims, unsourced and without data, a 2.5 kW closed-loop Bearden module (Naudin-JL).
Was Gunderson's zero-input reading a phase or bandwidth artefact, or something else? No waveforms were published, and the record goes dark after 2016 (Gunderson).
Do Flynn-type flux-switching motors or Babcock's fringe-field motor beat conventional motors on a dynamometer? Flynn/QM Power test data were not searched for (web quota exhausted); the Babcock record has only Flyback Energy's switch-product statements (Flynn-C, Babcock-Paul).
What, if anything, did China's 2008 test of Wang's colloidal-magnet generator measure (Kelly-Patrick)?
Does a magnet or graphite piece spin off one pole in a fixed sense, as Wheeler reports? It is the one report his arbiter flags as not obviously covered by textbook forces (Wheeler-Ken).
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter Two descriptions of one fuel, both by the patentees: the 2000 patent names the magnet's flux and concedes demagnetisation; the 2004 remarks name the vacuum. The energy budget addresses the first; the untested supply-removed run addresses the second. Neither has a measurement behind it. Bearden, arbiter.md, Investigator findings, Where they differ, item 4
Arbiter The MEG closed loop has been missing for about 26 years (Naudin, 13 Nov 2000: 'have not yet succeed'); it is a cheap test, so its absence is itself informative. Every internal check on the numbers on file points to a measurement error. Naudin-JL, arbiter.md, Claim 3
Arbiter The energy bound is decisive: a magnet of the size Sweet, Gray and Kawai used holds at most about 11 J of releasable energy (true stored energy about half). So if any output was real, the magnet is not the source and the quoted input is not the whole input. Kelly-Patrick, arbiter.md, Claim 3
Arbiter Nothing was tested and failed on this record, and no source shows anything being dismissed without testing or blocked. The patent text does not claim output above input; any over-unity use is from outside. This is an ordinary patent with ordinary claims. Flynn-C, arbiter.md, Contrarian's categories and Reconciling item 7
Arbiter Counter-arguments from the inventor's side are instrument reports, which can be tested directly, so they do not overturn a calculation; they set up the test: a closed loop, or a coulomb counter on the battery with the magnets replaced by spacers. Gunderson, arbiter.md, Claim 2
AI noteGunderson's own patent says the magnets are 'spent' (para 0040) yet promises 'no consumption of natural resources' (0036); over the years the stated source moved from magnets to zero-point, ambient energy and the Earth's field.
Theme 20Atomic and radioactive batteries
no changeC - Testable4 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:55
Radioactive decay really does make electricity, and has since Moseley's 1913 radium cell. This card asks why three inventors claimed watts to kilowatts, or 80 percent efficiency, from sources whose own decay power is microwatts, and what a calculator can settle without a laboratory.
Headline verdicts of the 4 member projects: Never properly tested1Refuted by calculation3
Theme background
Atomic batteries turn decay or fission energy straight into electricity, with no steam cycle. Moseley charged a radium bulb to a reported 150 kV in 1913 (a Wikipedia figure; his paper is unread); betavoltaic cells later powered pacemakers. Paul Brown patented a resonant nuclear battery (1989) and later proposed gamma transmutation of waste; Bruce Perreault patented an alpha fusion valve on radon and germanium (2010) and tied it to Moray; Liviu Popa-Simil proposed nanometre conductor-insulator stacks harvesting fission fragments (2007). Moray's family and advocates put radium in his detector stone.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics treats direct conversion as real but small: output can never exceed the source's decay power, activity times energy per decay, and betavoltaics reach single-digit percent while RTGs give about 5 to 7 percent. High efficiency needs volts per collected charge, as in vacuum-gap fission electric cells, not millivolts (Popa-Simil arbiter). Left open: what Brown measured as 23 A at 400 V, the alpha-germanium reaction rate below 9 MeV, and whether Anufrienko's reported 25 percent was a measurement.
Ranking explanation
It ranks at the foot of the Ranked Themes beside Magnet motors and Water fuel: like them its strong claims fail an energy budget a reader can compute, but has fewer anomalies to weigh. No member offers a measurement of the radioactive-source power claims. Moray's witnessed demonstrations and blocking record (Morray-TH) concern his box, not a metered radioactive source; Brown's INEL evaluation and Idaho suit left no test data. Its value is criterion C: the decay-power ceiling settles most claims.
Key supporting elements
Brown-Paul, Morray-TH: direct conversion is Established physics. Moseley's 1913 radium cell reportedly reached 150 kV at 0.01 nA (Wikipedia; paper unread), about 1.5 microwatts; betavoltaic and alphavoltaic cells deliver microwatts to sub-milliwatts at single-digit efficiency.
Popa-Simil: other groups measured charge build-up in layered stacks under radiation; Klassen et al. report three orders of magnitude gain from thinner insulators, and one second-hand sentence reports 25 percent conversion by Anufrienko et al. (definition unknown).
Perreault-Bruce: radon daughters plate out on a negative electrode, alphas knock electrons from surfaces and Ge-72(alpha,n) is real nuclear data; nine NASA NTAC patents and a 2021 Chinese radon battery cite his patent (citation, not corroboration).
Brown-Paul: photonuclear transmutation of Cs-137 and Sr-90 is Established physics. In Wired, Park called the scheme not far-fetched and Schiffer said gamma rays could shorten isotope lives; Schiffer warned of enormous excess heat, Doolen of high cost.
Brown-Paul: Brown named the right energy source (ionisation work) and the right budget, 'Beta flux >= i^2 R' in his Fig. 7; his circuit formulas are correct.
Key contradictions
Brown-Paul: the patent's 23 A at 400 V into a resistance load is 9.2 kW, from a 1 mCi radium needle plus 300 g of uranium and thorium giving about 0.15 mW: short by about 5e7.
Perreault-Bruce: Ge-72(alpha,n) absorbs energy (Q = -6.06 MeV); the patent calls 6.06 MeV a threshold (true threshold 6.40 MeV). A biased radon cell's 1 kV supply delivers 11 to 29 times the radon's decay power (0.114 W per curie).
Popa-Simil: electrical work is charge times voltage, so a cell held below 10 mV converts at most about 0.03 to 0.3 percent; the inventor's patent calls 84 percent 'simply the efficiency of ionization energy stopped'.
Brown-Paul: radiation in a metal wire adds about 1e-20 of the free carriers, so no measurable current amplification; photon-only transmutation cannot yield net electricity because the beam must exceed the neutron separation energy.
Morray-TH: a kilowatt radioisotope source needs at least 58,000 Ci; no witness recorded radiation at Moray's device, and Perreault saw no radioactive material in surviving tubes (no method given).
Timeline (9)
1913Moseley charges a radium-emanation bulb, reportedly to 150 kV at 0.01 nA (Wikipedia; paper unread). Brown cites him; the Investigator links him to '1913' experiments Moray's 1968 proposal cites. · Morray-TH
1968Moray proposes a radioisotope-excited cascade at about 1 W per pound, a modest-power concept close to RTG performance. · Morray-TH
1988-02Brown files US 4,835,433 (Nucell Inc.); granted May 1989. A November 1988 Deseret News report, via the physicist, says Idaho's Department of Finance sued Peripheral Systems over the stock offering. · Brown-Paul
1990Brown's Tesla Symposium paper claims 0.25 W/cm3 'preliminary data' from Kr-85 with no data table, and admits frequency instability and material degradation. · Brown-Paul
1999-02Wired reports Brown's gamma transmutation of nuclear waste, Nuclear Solutions, a $5 million plant and tests 'soon'; no results found. · Brown-Paul
2007Popa-Simil presents nano-hetero CIci stacks at NSTI-Nanotech, efficiency 'may be higher than 80%', from a SRIM simulation only. · Popa-Simil
2007-05Perreault files the Alpha Fusion Electrical Energy Valve, granted 2010 as US 7,800,286; it lapses in September 2014 for an unpaid fee. · Perreault-Bruce
2012Popa-Simil's roadmap asks for funding and records 'I have never published because of lack of coherent data' on his 1984-95 work. · Popa-Simil
2026A mainstream MDPI review (Gabbar et al.) calls CIci-type conversion 'mainly conceptual ... patent-stage', with 0.85 as an ideal ceiling. · Popa-Simil
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Radioactive decay can be turned directly into electricity at microwatt to milliwatt scale
Establishedbetavoltaic and alphavoltaic cells, Moseley 1913, ionisation conduction in gases and junctions (Brown-Paul, Morray-TH); radiation-induced charge separation (Popa-Simil)Plausible, untestedPerreault's low-power radon alpha-electron cell
Resonance, feedback or cascading in the circuit sustains or improves the output of a radioactive source
Never properly testedBrown's resonant benefit at microwatt level; Perreault running unassisted on decay powerRefuted by calculationPerreault's thermal positive feedback (decay rate does not depend on temperature)Plausible, untestedMoray's 1968 radioisotope cascade at modest power
Alpha particles on germanium release net energy by 'alpha fusion'
Refuted by calculationnet energy: Q = -6.06 MeVNever properly testedwhether the reaction runs at a measurable rate at 6.4-8.8 MeVInternally inconsistentthe printed nuclear equations
Nanometre conductor-insulator stacks convert fission-fragment energy to electricity at over 80 percent
Refuted by calculationstrong form at the paper's millivolt cell voltageNever properly testedweak form, a useful fraction of 1-25 percent, never built and measured
Radiation absorbed in a current-carrying metal conductor amplifies its current and lowers its resistance
Refuted by calculationmetal wire, carrier fraction about 1e-20Establishedionisation conduction in gases, insulators and junctionsInternally inconsistentBrown's flux-cutting mechanism against his own energy statement
Headline power densities: 0.25 W/cm3 from Kr-85 (Brown) and a theoretical 5000 kW/cm3 (Popa-Simil)
Refuted by calculationKr-85 electrical at 10 percent efficiency or less; sustained 5000 kW/cm3 fuel readingPlausible, untestedKr-85 thermal readingNot testable as statedboth numbers as printed (thermal or electrical, 'theoretical' undefined)
Moray's detector stone (his 'valve') held radium or radioactive material that drove it
Plausible, untesteda radium-bearing stone; radon-daughter plating on tube cathodes; microwatt scale onlyNever properly testedthat Moray's stone worked that way
Radium chloride and radioactive elements in the valve stones.
Never properly testedbox demonstrations and hidden-feed question
Scientists / relevant people (9)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Paul M. Brown
Inventor of the resonant nuclear battery; proposed gamma transmutation of waste · Brown-Paul
Self-reported PhD; CV lists work at AECL Nordion, Oak Ridge and Battelle, five US patents, IECEC talks 1991-92; credentials unchecked. Nucell Inc. assignee, later Nuclear Solutions (interested parties). Died April 2002.
Bruce A. Perreault
Inventor of the Alpha Fusion Electrical Energy Valve; Moray tube owner · Perreault-Bruce
SonoMagnetics Alternative Energy Research Trust, Dorchester NH. Patent applicant planning a commercial generator (interested party). Relays the 1990 Foster account and inspected surviving Moray tubes.
Liviu Popa-Simil
Proponent of nano-hetero CIci direct conversion · Popa-Simil
Earlier at the Institute of Atomic Physics, Magurele; reports 1984-95 direct-conversion work, unpublished. He and co-author I.L. Popa-Simil own LAVM LLC, Los Alamos, and the patents (interested parties); later turned to LENR.
H. G. J. Moseley
Built the first nuclear battery, 1913 · Morray-TH
Radium-emanation beta cell, Proc. R. Soc. A 88 (1913); a reported 150 kV at 0.01 nA (Wikipedia figures; paper unread). Cited by Brown and, as identified by the Investigator, in Moray's 1968 proposal.
T. Henry Moray
Radiant Energy inventor whose detector stone is said to hold radium · Morray-TH
Salt Lake City inventor, 1892-1974; demonstrated an antenna-and-ground box 1925-38. Family and advocate accounts put radium in the stone; none is a measurement. His cascade 'valve' is a gas gap firing stage to stage, a one-way coupler (follow-up Q16).
Arthur Glenn Foster
Witness to pressing Moray detector material, 1990 · Morray-TH
Described as 'Principal Engineer'; his 11 April 1990 account of radium-doped pellets flashing under pressure is relayed only by Perreault. No contract, contractor or letter found.
Charles Platt
Journalist; Wired 1999 article on Brown's waste transmutation · Brown-Paul
Not in the review files beyond the byline.
John Schiffer, Robert Park, Gary Doolen
Physicists quoted in Wired on Brown's transmutation idea · Brown-Paul
Argonne, American Institute of Physics and Los Alamos respectively, per Wired; Park called it not far-fetched, Schiffer warned of enormous heat, Doolen of costly gamma rays.
Klassen, Yershov, Anufrienko et al.
Russian groups testing conductor-insulator stacks · Popa-Simil
Their InTech 2013 chapter reports insulator-thinning gains and a 25 percent figure second-hand; they cite Popa-Simil and run related programmes (interested parties).
Lineage
Brown's 1987 reference is titled 'The Moray Device and the Hubbard Coil were Nuclear Batteries'; only the title is in the review files, so his argument is unknown (Brown-Paul).
Perreault calls his leaflet circuit a continuation of his patent and of Moray's valve, drawing on Betz's 1954 recollection; by 2014 he wrote that Moray's power came from 'the circuitry, not the valve' (Perreault-Bruce).
Moray's 1968 proposal cites experiments of 1913 that the Investigator identifies with Moseley's radium cell, the root of every member (Morray-TH).
Popa-Simil places CIci in the fission electric cell line (Linder 1946, Safonov 1957, Ursu 1978-88), and his roadmap cites his own 1980 paper with Ursu (Popa-Simil).
Eremeev proposed photoneutron transmutation of Sr-90 and Cs-137 in 1999 (cited via the contrarian, source unopened; any link to Brown unknown); laser-Compton and Gamma Factory work continues the idea (search listings only) (Brown-Paul).
Key evidence (12)
1913Moseley, radium beta cell, Proc. R. Soc. A 88, 471 150 kV at 0.01 nA from Wikipedia's Atomic battery page; the paper itself was not read· Morray-TH
1989-05-30US 4,835,433, Brown (Nucell Inc.) 23 A at 400 V at 86 kHz into a resistance load from 1 mCi radium plus U and Th; no input power or efficiency. Front page read; body via Google Patents· Brown-Paul
1990Brown, Tesla Symposium paper and figure sheets Kr-85 0.25 W/cm3 'preliminary data'; voltmeter and ammeter, no phase or wattmeter; admits frequency instability and material degradation· Brown-Paul
1990-04-11Foster account of pressing radium-doped Moray pellets Quoted in Perreault's Nuenergy (2001) p.30; letter and contractor not found· Morray-TH
1999-02Platt, Wired: Brown's gamma transmutation of waste Quotes Park, Schiffer, Doolen; promised tests at Illinois or MIT; no data· Brown-Paul
2007Popa-Simil, Nano-Hetero Structure for direct energy conversion, NSTI-Nanotech 4-page SRIM simulation, no measurement; Eq.1 errors· Popa-Simil
2010US 7,800,286 B2, Perreault, Alpha Fusion Electrical Energy Valve Read in full; no measurement of current, power or radon activity; lapsed 2014· Perreault-Bruce
2010US20100061503A1, Popa-Simil (filed 2009; abandoned) Para 0121: 84 percent is an 'upper conversion efficiency estimator' needing 'experimental buildup'; FIG. 15 beam test proposed, no results· Popa-Simil
2013Klassen et al., InTech chapter on direct conversion Ideal-efficiency theory; Yoshida device 1e-5 to 0.01 percent; Anufrienko 25 percent reported second-hand· Popa-Simil
2006Anufrienko et al. primary papers (Russ. Chem. J. 2006; 2008) Source of the 25 percent figure; unread, definition unknown· Popa-Simil
c.1988INEL evaluation of Brown's battery and Idaho lawsuit Known from a Deseret News report via the physicist; what INEL ran is unknown· Brown-Paul
undatedPerreault, unread documents: HF-box-lab-tests.pdf, Radon Gas is the Ultimate Fuel pp.3-26, Harnessing Cosmic Energy May hold the first measurements; not obtained· Perreault-Bruce
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Treating circulating or reactive current as output: Brown's 23 A at 400 V was measured as volts times amps with no phase or wattmeter, so a volt-ampere reading of tank current cannot be ruled out (Brown-Paul).
Counting current, not power: a biased radon gas cell passes milliamps, but its 1 kV supply does the work (Perreault-Bruce).
Counting energy deposited as energy converted: the 84 percent is a stopping fraction, not a conversion efficiency (Popa-Simil).
Ignoring the sign of a Q-value: 6.06 MeV is the cost of Ge-72(alpha,n), not a release. The patent calls it a threshold; the primer says the inventor read it as a gain, which the arbiter leaves unestablished (Perreault-Bruce).
Assuming mixing nuclides or heating a source raises decay output: activities add and decay rates do not depend on temperature (Brown-Paul, Perreault-Bruce).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Build the device as described and meter real power: input and output RMS voltage and current with phase, over days, against a control with the radioactive material removed or replaced by an activity-matched source. Any real output above the source's decay power, about 0.14 W per curie of radium, would be an anomaly.
Deciding records: The full US 4,835,433 file and any INEL report; Perreault's HF-box-lab-tests.pdf and USPTO file wrapper 11/744,769; Anufrienko et al. 2006 and 2008; Popa-Simil's file wrappers; gamma spectra of surviving Moray tubes.
Try it yourself: Compute the decay-power ceiling: activity in becquerels times energy per decay. Brown-Paul's example.py does it for the patent (about 1e-4 W against 9.2 kW); Perreault-Bruce's example.py computes the Q-value; Popa-Simil's example.py derives the e V / W bound.
Open questions
What did Brown measure as '23 A at 400 V': a reactive tank current, a transient or real power? The patent gives no method.
Was Anufrienko et al.'s 25 percent a measurement, and at what voltage? A volt-to-kilovolt design with thick or vacuum insulators might escape the millivolt bound.
What is the real Ge-72(alpha,n) rate at 6.4 to 8.8 MeV? No measurement below 9 MeV was found; a Se-75 gamma spectrum would show it.
Do surviving Moray tubes carry radon daughters such as Pb-210, as the radium-stone accounts imply? Perreault's inspection gave no method.
Why did all three inventors' records stop without a measurement: lapsed or abandoned patents, unpublished data, or no funding?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter All reviewers' strong-form arguments reduce to energy conservation, and the patent's own sentence gives the number: about 5e7 more output than the radium, uranium and thorium can release. Brown's resonant benefit at microwatts remains Never properly tested. Brown-Paul, arbiter.md, Claim 1
Primer Resonance stores energy; it does not make it. A high-Q circuit lowers the power needed to keep it going, but that power must still come from somewhere. Many free energy designs treat a high circulating current as if it were output. Brown-Paul, primer.md, section 7
Arbiter Energy release is excluded by the mass table, no experiment needed. The contrarian's best case survives: the Ge-72 target and threshold are real nuclear data, alphas above 6.40 MeV exist, so a few neutrons and Se-75 would be made, detectable by gamma spectrum. Perreault-Bruce, arbiter.md, Claim 1
Arbiter The inventor reports 1984-95 direct-conversion work, a negative DARPA liquid-electronics result and 'never published because of lack of coherent data'. Single-source, his own words; they weigh toward experiments done but unpublished, without data on any CIci stack. Popa-Simil, arbiter.md, absence-of-evidence analysis (amended)
Arbiter Three family-side or advocate-side items put radium in Moray devices; none is a measurement. A radium-bearing stone is Plausible, untested and implies a microwatt source, not kilowatts; a cathode gamma spectrum would test it. Morray-TH, arbiter.md, Investigator findings 2026-10-08, section 4
AI noteBrown's Kr-85 target of 0.25 W/cm3 needs about 113 atmospheres of pure radioactive krypton even at 100 percent conversion, yet his paper calls Kr-85 environmentally the most acceptable isotope for power.
Selected Themes
Named by the owner for a full card whatever their rank.
Selected themeAether Theory
B - Open questionD - Influential42 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 14:45
The aether built modern field theory: Maxwell's displacement current, Lorentz's contraction and clock slowing were all derived in it. This card compares what each family of aether was asked to do, which versions were tested and failed, and which survive only because they predict nothing different.
Headline verdicts of the 42 member projects: Established8Never properly tested12Tested, not supported4Refuted by calculation9Internally inconsistent2Not testable as stated5Historically superseded but instructive2
Theme background
Maxwell (1865) needed a medium for field energy and light. Light is transverse, yet an elastic solid also carries compression waves; MacCullagh's aether (1839) resists twisting but not compression, so carries only transverse waves (Whittaker-ET). Lorentz (1909) derived contraction and slow clocks in a stationary ether. Others gave it substance: Mendeleev a gas element (1902), Lodge a 1e12 g/cm^3 fluid (1908), Brush a sea of waves powering gravity. Ives, Builder, Kennard and Ruderfer kept a hidden Lorentz ether; Whittaker (1951) called the quantum vacuum an aether. Revivals (Aspden, Su, Gift, Gardi, Dunning-Davies, Mallove, Boyd) claim detectable frames, constants or energy.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics kept the aether's mathematics and dropped the medium: Tolman's 1917 book calls the ether unnecessary by economy, not by measurement. Field energy, displacement current, the Lorentz transformation and time dilation are Established; a cosmic rest frame is measured (the CMB dipole), but no laboratory ether wind through it is seen. Left unexplained or unweighed: whether a hidden Lorentz ether differs from relativity in any measurable way, Silvertooth's single 378 km/s run, and Kennard's absolute-rotation reading.
Why it matters
A Selected Theme because it is the umbrella under which most of the archive's physics sits: twenty core projects, from Maxwell and Lorentz to self-published revivals, rest on a medium in space. It shows where aether thinking produced lasting physics, where specific aethers were refuted by calculation or experiment, and where an aether equivalent to relativity remains a matter of interpretation. Its detailed experiments and models live in the narrower Ether drift, Lorentz ether and Ether models of matter themes.
Key supporting elements
Maxwell: reasoning from an ethereal medium, he introduced displacement current and energy stored in the field, both Established, and identified light as an electromagnetic wave, confirmed by Hertz in 1887-88.
Lorentz-HA and Ives: the transformation, contraction and clock slowing Lorentz derived in a stationary ether are Established; Ives and Stilwell measured moving atomic clocks running slow (1938, 1941), now confirmed to about 1e-9.
Builder-G and RuderferM: an absolute ether frame is compatible with special relativity, and Ruderfer showed a rotating Mossbauer test cancels at first order under both theories (Established), so no mechanical or optical test has excluded a hidden ether.
Kennard: his 1917 rotating condenser charged with the sign and size Lorentz's theory predicted (Established), the solenoid alone giving about nothing; the claimed 5% agreement is Plausible, untested, since his own rule gives 0.15-0.16, not 0.231.
SilverTooth: his 1986 interferometer gave 378 km/s with Leo on the horizon, about 2% from the CMB dipole; Marett reproduced a sidereally modulated signal once but attributed it to room temperature and laser pointing; no neutral, controlled test exists.
Key contradictions
Gift-Stephan, Gardi-Lori, Malove-Eugene, zzz-Unknown: claims that an ether wind was detected or relativity falsified are Tested, not supported; so is Su-CC's lab-fixed cavity anisotropy, against Herrmann's 2009 rotating cavities, with a geometry-equivalence caveat still open.
Mendeleev-D, Brush-Charles, zzz-Unknown: a gas ether light enough to pass through matter carries waves at only about c/184, none transverse; gravity as a push from absorbed aether waves implies heating (6e40 W for Boyd's form). Both Refuted by calculation.
RuderferM and Lodge-O: Ruderfer's 1980 neutrino-sea ether (2.3e9 K) and Lodge's 1e12 g/cm^3 ether, read as gravitating energy, are Refuted by calculation; Aspden-Hearld's lattice-derived alpha, about 3,800 standard uncertainties off, is Tested, not supported.
SilverTooth: under the paper's own equations the first-order signal cancels, so the apparatus should not respond to an ether wind (Internally inconsistent); Krisher's 1990 maser link puts one-way anisotropy about 3,800 times below 378 km/s, with a conventionality caveat.
Lorentz-HA, Builder-G, Ives, Kennard: an ether built to match relativity adds no prediction, so each arbiter rates the ether frame itself Not testable as stated, and Builder's inferences from it Internally inconsistent or Refuted by calculation.
Timeline (10)
1865Maxwell's Dynamical Theory: twenty equations with displacement current and field energy in an all-pervading ethereal medium; light is an electromagnetic wave. · Maxwell
1887Michelson and Morley find no ether wind: at most 1/20, probably under 1/40, of the expected fringe shift; Lorentz's ether must explain the null. · Lorentz-HA
1902Mendeleev proposes the ether as a chemical element, a zero-series gas about one millionth the weight of hydrogen (English 1904). · Mendeleev-D
1902Whittaker suggests gravity is carried by longitudinal waves in the medium of light, possibly far faster than light (1902-03). · Whittaker-ET
1908Lodge's Royal Institution discourse, The Ether of Space: a stationary continuous ether of density about 1e12 g/cm^3 carrying all strain. · Lodge-O
1909Lorentz's Theory of Electrons keeps an ether of 'a certain degree of substantiality' and says Einstein postulates what Lorentz deduced. · Lorentz-HA
1917Kennard's unipolar-induction experiment argues for motion relative to a stationary Lorentz aether; Tolman's book calls the ether unnecessary. · Kennard
1938Ives and Stilwell measure the second-order Doppler shift of moving hydrogen ions and read it as clock slowing in a fixed ether. · Ives
1951Whittaker's revised History says the quantum vacuum is rich enough to keep the word aether; Dirac asks 'Is there an aether?' in Nature, which Ives answers in 1953 (Ives). · Whittaker-ET
1986Silvertooth reports a one-way standing-wave detection of absolute motion, 378 km/s toward Leo, from one reported run. · SilverTooth
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Space holds a medium whose rest frame laboratory optics can detect (an ether wind)
Establisheda cosmic rest frame exists and our velocity to it is measurable (CMB dipole 369.82 +/- 0.11 km/s; Builder-G claim 4), not to be credited to a causal etherTested, not supporteddetectable-frame or mechanical ether (Maxwell, Gardi-Lori, Builder-G, Malove-Eugene); ether detected and SR falsified (Gift-Stephan); ether-drift records (zzz-Unknown); lab-fixed cavity anisotropy (Su-CC); Silvertooth's absolute-velocity readingNever properly testedSilvertooth's original 1986 run; Marinov's 303 km/s (Gift-Stephan)
The effects the ether was invoked to explain (contraction, slow clocks, rotation-dependent induction) are real
EstablishedLorentz transformation, clocks and c (Lorentz-HA); moving clocks run slow (Ives); clock retardation (Builder-G); induction depends on rotation relative to an inertial frame (Kennard)
A hidden ether frame, equivalent to relativity, is the physical cause of those effects
Establishedcompatibility only: an absolute frame is equivalent to SR (Builder-G); rotating Mossbauer test cancels under both (RuderferM)Not testable as statedether frame as physical cause (Lorentz-HA, Builder-G, Ives, Kennard, RuderferM, Maxwell's Lorentz-type ether, Aspden-Hearld's lattice, Gardi-Lori's undetectable form)Historically superseded but instructiveLorentz's self-assessment; Ives's ether-over-Einstein position; Kennard's stationary-aether reading
The aether is a material substance with stated properties (gas element, dense fluid, particle sea, bound shells)
Refuted by calculationMendeleev's light-carrying gas (strong form); Lodge's density as gravitating energy; Ruderfer's saturated and 1980 neutrino seasNot testable as statedLodge's density 1e12 as a property of space; Boyd's essay aether (zzz-Unknown)Never properly testedVery-Frank's bound-ether shell mechanism; Lodge's inertia from densityHistorically superseded but instructiveMendeleev 1904 as a 1902 question (also zzz-Unknown)Plausible, untestedPlanck-Lorentz condensed ether as a mathematical model, physical assumptions unreviewed (Lorentz-HA, provisional)Internally inconsistentStokes's incompressible, irrotational, no-slip dragged ether (Lorentz-HA claim 8, Lorentz's Note 66)
Gravity is an aether process: a push, an inflow or longitudinal waves
Refuted by calculationpush by penetrating waves or particles (Brush-Charles, zzz-Unknown)Tested, not supportedlongitudinal or superluminal gravity waves (Whittaker-ET, Dunning-Davis-J)Plausible, untestedHilgenberg-OC's ether flow as a reformulation of GR (weak form); his consumed-ether strong form Never properly testedNot testable as statedVery-Frank's pulsation mechanism; Aspden-Hearld's gravity mechanism
Devices or natural processes can draw usable energy from the aether
Never properly testedCorrea PAGD and 'power from space' (Malove-Eugene, Aspden-Hearld); Mallove's dynamic aether and Tesla's global powerRefuted by calculationover-unity as a principle (Dunning-Davis-J); Brush's neutral-point paradox (Brush-Charles)EstablishedBrush-Charles weak form only: a fall's energy belongs to the Earth-body system (textbook), not a Brush departure; his strong aether-reservoir form Not testable as stated
Constants of nature (alpha, particle masses) follow from an aether model
Tested, not supportedAspden-Hearld's alpha and m_p/m_e (thousands of standard uncertainties off); Gardi-Lori's particle-cluster energiesRefuted by calculationGardi-Lori's closed-form alpha
1951 argues the quantum vacuum is rich enough to keep the word aether; history of ether models.
Never properly testedQ07 hypothesis of longitudinal standing-wave gravity (Not testable as stated); static 1/r wave sum and 1904 potentials Established
Rejects the Maxwell-Hertz transverse ether for a medium of particles carrying electrostatic effects.
Never properly tested3 July 1899 stationary-wave observation; loss-free global power Refuted by calculation; coil, motor, lighting, disc turbine Established
Velocities absolute relative to an ether; gravity as induction in flowing ether.
Not testable as statedmass and gravity models
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
James Clerk Maxwell
Built field theory on an all-pervading ether while disclaiming its mechanism · Maxwell
1855-56 fluid analogy for Faraday's lines of force; 1865 Dynamical Theory with displacement current, field energy and light as an electromagnetic wave.
Hendrik A. Lorentz
Kept a stationary ether and derived contraction and clock slowing from it · Lorentz-HA
The Theory of Electrons (lectures 1906, preface 1909, notes 1915): the exact transformation, the deformable electron and his own account of why he treated local time as auxiliary.
Oliver Lodge
Advocate of a dense, stationary ether of which matter is made · Lodge-O
Physicist, radio pioneer and Principal of Birmingham University; gave The Ether of Space at the Royal Institution on 21 February 1908.
Dmitri Mendeleev
Proposed the ether as a chemical element · Mendeleev-D
Builder of the periodic table; his 1902 essay adds a zero group of inert gases and a zero series holding the ether gas x.
Edmund Taylor Whittaker
Historian of the aether; proposed wave-carried gravity in 1902-03 · Whittaker-ET
Cambridge then Edinburgh; History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity (1910, 1951, Vol. 2 1953); in 1953 adopted light-speed gravity and omitted his 1902 note.
Herbert E. Ives
Experimenter who read time dilation as slowing in a fixed ether · Ives
Bell Telephone Laboratories physicist (1882-1953); Ives-Stilwell experiments 1938 and 1941; re-derived relativity in ether language from 1937 to 1953.
Martin Ruderfer
Neutrino-sea ether; showed a rotating Mossbauer test cannot decide · RuderferM
Engineer and physicist at Dimensions, Inc., New York, active in print 1949-1983; his appendix in Moray's Sea of Energy cites Ives.
Ernest Wilbur Silvertooth
Claimed laboratory detection of absolute motion · SilverTooth
Caltech B.S. (physics, per an unsourced wiki biography) and Paramount optical engineer (1916-2000); 1986 paper names partial sponsorship by the Air Force Rome Air Development Center and DARPA.
Richard C. Tolman
Mainstream endpoint: the ether is unnecessary · Tolman-R
His 1917 book shows Maxwell-Lorentz theory is Lorentz covariant and calls the ether 'unnecessary', an economy argument rather than a measurement.
Berlin rotating-cavity experiment (2009); the Su-CC arbiter uses its lab-fixed amplitude limit to rate Su's predicted cavity anisotropy Tested, not supported.
Lineage
Maxwell's ethereal medium became Lorentz's stationary ether; Lorentz derived contraction and slow clocks in it, and Einstein, in Lorentz's words, 'simply postulates what we have deduced'.
Ives's ether reading of time dilation was taken up by Builder (1958) and Ruderfer, whose appendix in Moray's Sea of Energy cites Ives as proof that an ether is admissible.
Boyd's Subquantum Plenum essay (zzz-Unknown) builds on Mendeleev's 1904 ether gas and on Tesla as retold by Vassilatos.
Mallove promoted the Correas' PAGD device as aether energy; the Correas cited Aspden's 1969 paper in their patents.
Su's local ether shares its postulate with Beckmann (1986), and Gift argues independently from GPS timing for an Earth-bound frame.
Dunning-Davies and Norman draw on Whittaker's two scalar potentials and on Tesla for their physical aether and scalar waves.
Key evidence (12)
1865Maxwell, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field Twenty equations (A)-(H); field energy and displacement current Established, but the printed set is Internally inconsistent (signs of (F) and (G)); page images checked in QE round 2· Maxwell
1904Mendeleev, An Attempt Towards a Chemical Conception of the Ether English translation of the October 1902 Russian essay; deep read pp.1-59· Mendeleev-D
1908-02-21Lodge, The Ether of Space (North American Review, May 1908) Royal Institution discourse: density 1e12 g/cm^3, elasticity 1e33, matter as ether· Lodge-O
1909Lorentz, The Theory of Electrons (2nd ed. 1916 with 1915 notes) Chapter V and Notes 72*-86 deep read: transformation, contraction, Kaufmann, Brace, Einstein· Lorentz-HA
1917Kennard, On Unipolar Induction: Another Experiment and its Significance as Evidence for the Existence of the Aether Rotating condenser in a 1150-turn solenoid; ratio 0.242 against 0.231; checked against page images· Kennard
1938Ives and Stilwell, An Experimental Study of the Rate of a Moving Atomic Clock Second-order Doppler shift of hydrogen canal rays; deep read in QE round 1· Ives
1953Whittaker, History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vol. 2 Gravity at c, Copson's medium form of GR, 'an objective aether is not necessarily foreign' to relativity· Whittaker-ET
1958Builder, Ether and Relativity (Australian Journal of Physics 11, 279-297) Reply to Dingle; all 19 pages read as images; deep read pp.5-8· Builder-G
1961Ruderfer, comment on first-order terrestrial ether drift using Mossbauer radiation Rotating-rotor test cancels at first order under contraction theory and relativity· RuderferM
1986Silvertooth, Experimental detection of the ether Standing-wave interferometer, 0.25 mm slide, 378 km/s; no errors, dates or place; modern retyping read· SilverTooth
2009Herrmann et al., rotating optical cavity isotropy test Lab-fixed second-order anisotropy limit used against Su's local-ether prediction· Su-CC
2003Mallove, Tesla and the Aether (Infinite Energy 48) Dynamic aether article; the PAGD figures (50 W in, about 500 W out) come from Mallove's own letter of 14 June 2001 on a March 2001 visit, unreplicated, no raw data: Never properly tested (Malove-Eugene arbiter); interested party as editor and fund-raiser· Malove-Eugene
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Reading an aether frame into equations that take the same form in every frame: Builder-G's inference from velocity-dependent forces is Refuted by calculation, and Gift-Stephan's c - v reading of GPS is circular.
Building the aether to give null results, then counting the nulls as support: Aspden-Hearld's lattice follows the laboratory, and Very-Frank's bound shells never derive the null.
Assigning a density or temperature to the medium without checking what it would do gravitationally or cosmologically (Lodge-O, RuderferM, Mendeleev-D).
Reporting one run with no error bars, dates or place as a measurement of absolute motion (SilverTooth; Marinov's 303 km/s in Gift-Stephan).
Deriving constants with free choices, then calling them parameter-free: Aspden-Hearld's summation convention and Gardi-Lori's circular identities.
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Repeat Silvertooth's one-way standing-wave interferometer with lock-in readout, a thermally controlled, pointing-monitored laser and a rotating table separating sidereal from thermal patterns. It is the one ether claim tied to a number (378 km/s) that a hidden Lorentz ether would not produce, though his arbiter finds that by the paper's own equations the apparatus should not respond at all.
Deciding records: Silvertooth's run logs and Marett's data; Kennard's apparatus notes for the condenser-alone run; Ruderfer's 1979 detection claim and phasor derivations; Whittaker's reply, if any, to Stoney's 1903 Examination and any 1903-1927 development of his wave-gravity idea.
Try it yourself: Run Mendeleev-D's example.py: from his kinetic-theory formulas, a gas of x about one millionth of hydrogen moves at about 2,250 km/s, and light at c is 184 times the fastest wave such a gas can carry, a longitudinal one.
Open questions
Is there any measurable difference between a Lorentz ether and special relativity, or is the choice of simultaneity convention the whole of the difference (Builder-G, Lorentz-HA, Ives)?
What produced Silvertooth's 378 km/s, so close to the CMB dipole, and Marett's sidereally modulated signal, which Marett himself attributed to room temperature and laser pointing?
Does Kennard's theoretical ratio 0.231 survive an independent solution of the two-shell problem, given the arbiter found about 0.15-0.16 from his own rule?
Why did Whittaker leave his 1902 wave-gravity note out of both volumes of his History while adopting light-speed gravity?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter A preferred frame compatible with all null results exists in principle, Lorentz aether theory being observationally equivalent to special relativity; Aspden's E-frame follows the laboratory near matter, which makes laboratory nulls automatic. Aspden-Hearld, arbiter.md, Claim 3
Arbiter Nothing in mainstream physics would have to change for Kennard's claims 1-5; they are the mainstream view today. Claim 6 as an aether claim adds an entity the experiment cannot distinguish from the inertial-frame reading. Kennard, arbiter.md, section 8
Arbiter Einstein's 1920 'space without ether is unthinkable' does not support a Lorentz ether, since Einstein's ether has no velocity and so cannot supply an absolute velocity. Builder-G, arbiter.md, QE revision
Mathematician A Lorentz-invariant vacuum has an energy-momentum tensor proportional to the metric and no extractable energy; a neutrino sea at rest in a preferred frame would define that frame. Ruderfer's ether, invisible yet tappable, carries a tension he does not resolve. Ives, mathematician.md, Question 1 step 3 (relayed in arbiter.md)
Arbiter Lodge's 1920 refractive-index account of light bending gives the full first-order Einstein deflection; it is an effective-index description equivalent to weak-field GR, so it neither supports nor refutes an ether. Lodge-O, arbiter.md, QE revision verdict table
AI noteWhittaker's 1953 History records that Einstein's space-time is FitzGerald's aether with 'structure' renamed 'curvature', and that in a static field light obeys Maxwell's equations in a medium of varying permittivity.
Selected themeDisintegration of Matter
B - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential11 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 13:02
The discovery that atoms break down and hold enormous energy is both textbook physics and the root of many free-energy claims. This card sets Le Bon's universal dissociation beside Rutherford's and Soddy's transformation theory, and asks what the record says about releasing that energy at will.
Headline verdicts of the 11 member projects: Established6Never properly tested1Tested, not supported1Refuted by calculation3
Theme background
Between 1879 and 1913 the indivisible atom gave way. Crookes's radiant matter (1879) became Thomson's electron (1897); Becquerel's uranium rays (1896) and the Curies' radium showed atoms giving off energy with no fuel. Rutherford and Soddy explained this in 1902-03: atoms of some elements transform into others, releasing energy of their own about a million times chemical. Le Bon generalised it: all matter slowly dissociates, and atoms are vast stores of intra-atomic energy. Rutherford asked whether a detonator or gravity might trigger decay; Soddy foresaw energy released at will. Moray later drew on Le Bon.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics absorbed the core by 1913: decay is spontaneous and exponential, its energy is the atom's own (later nuclear mass defect), and atoms are electrons around a nucleus; Sommerfeld's 1923 textbook (Summerfield) prints Rutherford's disintegrations and helium's mass defect (its heat figure misprinted tenfold, per its arbiter). Release at will came through collisions and fission, new events, not faster spontaneous decay. Left open: the Rutherford-Compton gravity test, Bumstead's X-ray heating of lead, Thomson's bombarded-salt helium, Le Bon's warmed-metal emanation.
Why it matters
A Selected Theme because alternative and mainstream science share its founding record. Le Bon's intra-atomic energy and Moray's matter-to-energy claims grew from the 1896-1905 debate that Rutherford and Soddy settled, and the question both sides asked, whether atomic energy can be released at will, has a documented answer for radiation triggers and open records for gravity and Bumstead's heating. It is the historical root of the Free Energy and Nuclear Anomalies themes.
Key supporting elements
Becquerel-Henri: uranium's spontaneous emission needs no light or heat and, for uranium, is steady over years; replicated by Schmidt, Marie Curie, Kelvin's group and Rutherford. Reading it as disintegration came later, from Rutherford and Soddy.
Rutherford-Ernest and Soddy: radium's heat, about 100 cal/h per gram (Curie and Laborde 1903; modern 123-147 with products); Rutherford's 3.7e9 cal/g for radium through its products, stated not derived in 1913, matches the radium-chain mass defect (3.6e9).
Thompson-JJ: corpuscles (electrons) are the same from every source, with e/m about 1.7e7 emu/g, and are constituents of atoms; Rutherford-Ernest: the nuclear atom (1911) and nitrogen disintegrated by alphas (1919, product identified 1925).
LeBon-G: his gram-of-matter arithmetic is exact (5.0e12 J, a gram moving at c/3), about 18 times below mc^2 (9.0e13 J/g), yet the right order for matter's stored energy before Einstein; he was right against Becquerel on polarisation.
Soddy: nuclear energy release, called real but unsolved in 1920, was achieved by other routes in 1932-45; his isotopes and displacement rules (1913) are Established.
Key contradictions
LeBon-G: background leaks he read as all matter dissociating were traced to radioactive impurity, radon and cosmic rays; he predicted, hedged as 'very problematical', that radium metal would never be isolated; Curie and Debierne isolated radioactive radium metal in 1910.
Becquerel-Henri: his 1901 'no contradiction' with energy rests on a beta-only estimate that misses the alpha energy absorbed inside the source, undercounting output by several orders of magnitude, up to about 1e5.
Rutherford-Ernest: radiation triggers tried 1903-1928 failed at stated limits: radon's decay constant held to 0.05 percent over a thousandfold dilution; Hevesy's 800 mg of radium on uranium changed nothing by 0.1 percent. Most limits are from Rutherford's group or collaborators.
Lakhovsky George: his lead sphere stopping radium is not borne out; Gran Sasso decay constants show no time dependence at 3.5 ppm, where cosmic flux is about a million times lower (a modulation test, not a surface comparison).
Mendeleev-D: his 1902 view that atoms are indivisible and not transmutable, with radioactivity read as ether, was overtaken by the electron, the nucleus and transmutation (1897-1919).
Timeline (10)
1879-08Crookes's Sheffield lecture 'On Radiant Matter': a fourth state of matter of negatively charged molecules in high vacuum. · Willams-Crookes
1896Becquerel finds uranium salts fog wrapped plates with no excitation; Le Bon announces 'black light' (Comptes rendus, 27 January). · Becquerel-Henri
1897Thomson shows cathode-ray corpuscles are the same from every source and part of every atom; Le Bon denies polarisation of uranium rays against Becquerel. · Thompson-JJ
1902Rutherford and Soddy explain radioactivity as atoms transforming into other elements, by an exponential law, with energy of their own (1902-03). · Soddy
1904Rutherford's Radio-activity (sec. 206): a slight external force might 'detonate' decay, and gravity might influence it; a one-month dilution test finds no radiation trigger. · Rutherford-Ernest
1905Le Bon's L'Evolution de la matiere: all atoms slowly dissociate toward the ether; atoms hold vast intra-atomic energy (English 1907). · LeBon-G
1910Curie and Debierne isolate radium metal, and it is radioactive, against Le Bon's chemical theory of radioactivity. · LeBon-G
1911Rutherford's nuclear atom: nearly all mass and positive charge in a tiny centre, from alpha scattering in gold foil. · Rutherford-Ernest
1913Soddy names isotopes; Thomson reports helium and neon from bombarded salts and will not call it disintegration until other explanations fail. · Thompson-JJ
1919Rutherford disintegrates nitrogen with alphas; with Compton he plans a gravity-and-decay test that 'the outbreak of the war interfered with'. · Rutherford-Ernest
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Atoms of some elements disintegrate spontaneously, one by one, by an exponential law
EstablishedRutherford, Soddy, Becquerel (weak form), Le Bon (weak form: some atoms disintegrate)Historically superseded but instructivestrong form as worded in Becquerel-Henri's claims.md (no decay, independent of chemical form); his 1901 paper does not claim it and reports polonium decaying
The energy of radioactivity is the atom's own and vastly exceeds chemical energy
Establishedtransformation; 100 cal/h per gram; matter holds energy of order mc^2; decay power collected as microwatts (Brown-Paul)Refuted by calculationBecquerel's 1901 'no energy problem'; Le Bon's 6,800 million hp as the yield of ordinary matter; Brown-Paul's kilowatts from a resonant tank holding 0.1 mW of decayHistorically superseded but instructiveLe Bon's magnitude (5.0e12 J per gram at c/3, about 1/18 of mc^2), with no E = mc^2 and no mechanism
The energy or the decay is driven from outside the atom (space, ether, cosmic waves)
Establishedthe opposite, for radium's energy: it is the atom's own; external-energy theories (Crookes 1899, Kelvin 1903, Curies 1902) answered by experiment, lead-shielded calorimetry and heat tracking the emanation (Rutherford claim 2, Soddy C2); lead cannot exclude every penetrating medium (Rutherford's contrarian)Historically superseded but instructiveCurie's space-energy aside (Becquerel: never directly tested in the sources reviewed; unnecessary given the energy accounting); radioactivity as ether accumulation (Mendeleev)Not testable as statedMendeleev's ether reading as offered: no solubility, flux or energy predictedNever properly testedMendeleev's reading as an ether claimTested, not supportedLakhovsky's cosmic waves as a trigger of radium decay, indirectly by decay-constant constancy (energy-source reading Refuted by calculation)Internally inconsistentLakhovsky's lead-sphere thought experiment as printed (25 m in diameter, then 25 m thick; penetration limits of 2, 7 and 11 m)
Establishedelectron (Thomson), nucleus (Rutherford, Soddy)Tested, not supportedopposing claim: atoms indivisible and not transmutable (Mendeleev)Historically superseded but instructiveCrookes's carriers as charged gas molecules
Spontaneous decay can be triggered or its rate changed by an outside agent
Establishedrate invariance under heat, pressure, fields, chemistry (electron capture refined)Tested, not supportedtriggers by radiation at stated limits; Curie-Danne 1904 temperature effect (Rutherford); claimed solar rate modulation (Soddy: disputed, weakly)Never properly testedmodern modulation claims by an agreed neutral protocol (Rutherford: contested, not evaluated); gravity (Rutherford-Compton 1919 plan); Bumstead's X-ray heating of leadNot testable as statedtrigger by an unspecified external force
Establishedby other routes, induced reactions and fission, 1932-45; artificial disintegration 1919Plausible, untestedas Soddy stated it in 1920Historically superseded but instructiveSoddy's 2-4 MV alpha route
Elements can be transmuted by ordinary chemical, electrical or discharge means
Tested, not supportedRamsay-Cameron copper to lithium (Soddy, Rutherford); Miethe, Nagaoka, Smits and others (Rutherford); Collie-Patterson-Ramsay discharge tubes (Thomson); Fittica phosphorus to arsenic (Mendeleev)Refuted by calculationnuclear origin of the gold reported by J. E. Moray's Research Institute (1963-70), and resonance transmutation (Morray-TH); tens-of-keV electrons transmuting salts, a strong form Thomson did not claim; Ramsay-Cameron mechanism (Soddy)Never properly testedThomson's helium and neon from bombarded salts; whether the Institute's assays are real gold from the process; Riding-Baly 1925 helium and neon from nitrogen (Rutherford)
Builds on decay energy being tapped for electricity; alpha, beta and gamma sources.
Refuted by calculationstrong forms
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Ernest Rutherford
Co-author of the disintegration theory; nuclear atom; posed the detonator and gravity questions · Rutherford-Ernest
Author or co-author of his project's primary documents (1904, 1906, 1913 books; 1911 paper; 1930 book with Chadwick and Ellis; 1919 letter with Compton); his students ran most tests. Called atomic energy release 'moonshine' in 1933 (one newspaper cable).
Frederick Soddy
Co-author of the transformation theory; named isotopes; foresaw energy released at will · Soddy
Author of Matter and Energy (1911) and The Interpretation of Radium (4th ed. 1920); the word isotope was suggested to him by Margaret Todd (1913). Also wrote on economics, outside this review.
Henri Becquerel
Discoverer of uranium rays (1896) · Becquerel-Henri
His 1901 Nature article reports three components of the radiation and the 'no contradiction' energy remark; his 1896 Comptes rendus notes and Nobel lecture are not in the folder. Credited Le Bon in 1900, dropped the credit in 1903 (Martins).
Gustave Le Bon
Proponent of universal dissociation and intra-atomic energy · LeBon-G
French physician (1841-1931), author of The Crowd; experimented from about 1894 to 1908 in his private laboratory; about 15 Comptes rendus notes; The Evolution of Matter (1905) and The Evolution of Forces (1907).
J. J. Thomson
Showed the electron is part of every atom; reported helium and neon from bombarded salts · Thompson-JJ
Eleven primary works in the folder, from Vortex Rings (1883) to Positive Rays; his 1922 Proc. Roy. Soc. A paper on deflagrated metals is unread, so its result is unknown.
William Crookes
Named radiant matter, the fourth state of matter (1879) · Willams-Crookes
London chemist and physicist. His Sheffield lecture's demonstrations hold up; the carriers proved to be electrons. A later statement that radiant matter 'now passes as electrons' is known from one obituary quotation (Dyer 1920).
Marie Curie
Radium chemist; source of the 'energy from space' aside
In the Becquerel-Henri folder the space-energy aside appears only in Duncan's 1902 Harper's retelling; Rutherford's 1913 book reports the Curies' 1902 external-energy view (Rutherford-Ernest). Isolated radioactive radium metal with Debierne in 1910 (LeBon-G).
George de Hevesy
Tester of a radiation trigger · Rutherford-Ernest
In 1922 exposed uranium to gamma and beta rays from 800 mg of radium for six weeks and found no change as great as 0.1 percent (1930 book, Sec. 76). Not otherwise in the review files.
Henry A. Bumstead
Reported X-rays heating lead about twice as much as zinc (1906) · Rutherford-Ernest
Thomson's 1906 text places 'Professor Bumstead' at the Cavendish Laboratory (Thompson-JJ deep read, p.343). His only hypothesis not in conflict with the facts was that X-rays break up atoms of some elements. No replication or refutation found.
Thomas Henry Moray
Inventor whose books reprint Le Bon's dissociation pages without credit and claim resonance transmutation · Morray-TH
Salt Lake City inventor (1892-1974). His Radiant Energy, in a printing labelled 1926 but compiled after 1945, reproduces Le Bon's text with credits missing. The 1963-70 gold assays were his son John E. Moray's Research Institute's: two controls, no replication.
Lineage
Crookes's radiant matter (1879) was reinterpreted by Thomson (1897) as electrons coming from the metal, not the gas.
Thomson's 1903 Harper's article supplied the Rutherford-Soddy transformation answer that Becquerel's 1901 Nature article lacked.
Le Bon quoted Rutherford's St Louis address on external energy sources; the sentence is real but cut from Rutherford's argument against external sources (Rutherford-Ernest, claim 7a).
Moray's Radiant Energy (a printing labelled 1926, compiled after 1945, and the 1945 printing) reproduces Le Bon's radioactivity pages nearly verbatim, with the credits to Le Bon, Rutherford and Crookes missing (Morray-TH).
Lakhovsky's cosmic universion waves revive the external-source idea for radium that Becquerel's and Mendeleev's records already show superseded.
Brown-Paul's betavoltaic and gamma-transmutation proposals build on decay energy being the atom's own.
Key evidence (12)
1879-08-22Crookes, On Radiant Matter (Sheffield lecture) 23 pages, read in full with page images; notebooks MS/0410 unavailable because they register slight radiation· Willams-Crookes
1901-02-21Becquerel, Nature 63, pp.396-398 Scanned, read from page images: three radiation components, mass-loss and 'no contradiction' energy argument· Becquerel-Henri
1903Curie and Laborde: radium gives about 100 cal per hour per gram Known through AIP and Nobel lecture pages; heat independent of temperature (Curie and Dewar)· Becquerel-Henri
1904Rutherford, Radio-activity, 1st ed., sec. 204-206 Detonator and gravity sentences, p.339; radium-dilution trigger test, pp.357-358; weight changes of radium not confirmed· Rutherford-Ernest
1906Bumstead, heating of metals by Roentgen rays, Amer. J. Sci. 21 Lead heated about twice zinc; conclusions sections read in the saved text; intensity calibration not checked· Rutherford-Ernest
1907Le Bon, The Evolution of Matter (tr. F. Legge) 489 PDF pages, deep reads of the dissociation, radium and over-unity chapters; French original 1905· LeBon-G
1913Thomson, Rays of Positive Electricity Mass 22 and mass 3 lines; helium and neon from bombarded solids, with his caution· Thompson-JJ
1919-12Rutherford and Compton, Nature 104, 412: radioactivity and gravitation Abstract only; method for emanation decay at different places; war interrupted the plan· Rutherford-Ernest
1920Soddy, The Interpretation of Radium, 4th ed. Deep reads of PDF pp.153-165 and 268-300: radium energy budget, isotopes, nuclear energy release· Soddy
1922Thomson, Proc. Roy. Soc. A 101:290, deflagrated metals Title and date confirmed; the result that would answer the 1913 helium question is unread· Thompson-JJ
1930Rutherford, Chadwick and Ellis, Radiations from Radioactive Substances, Sec. 76 and p.319 Upper limits for radiation triggers; 'gravitational fields ... looked for' without a cited reference· Rutherford-Ernest
1999Collins et al., triggered decay of hafnium-178m2 by dental X-rays, PRL 82, 695 About 4 percent rise in decay lines claimed; Argonne retest (Ahmad 2001): 'No induced decay was observed', limit over five orders lower; LLNL 2008: 'statistically marginal and inconsistent' (follow-up Q18)· Morray-TH
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Counting only the radiation that escapes: Becquerel's beta screen missed the alpha energy absorbed inside the source (Becquerel-Henri).
Reading background leaks from radioactive impurity, radon and cosmic rays as decay of ordinary matter, without a same-geometry blank (LeBon-G).
Mixing mean life and half-life: Soddy's 'periods' are mean lives, 1.44 times the modern half-lives (Soddy).
Transmutation claims without blanks: lithium traced to the glass (Ramsay-Cameron, Soddy), arsenic in commercial phosphorus (Fittica, Mendeleev-D); for Thomson's helium, occlusion is the standard explanation but not demonstrated (Thompson-JJ).
Treating an energy budget as a refutation of a trigger: it rules out cosmic waves as the source, not as a trigger (Lakhovsky George).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Compare the decay rate of a long-lived alpha emitter at two gravitational potentials (mountain and sea level) against a same-laboratory control, the test Rutherford and Compton planned in 1919; and repeat Bumstead's lead and zinc heating with monochromatic X-rays and calorimetric dosimetry.
Deciding records: The body of Rutherford and Compton, Nature 104, 412 (1919), and Cambridge MS Add.7653 notebooks; Bumstead's full 1906 paper; Thomson's 1922 paper and CUL MS Add.7654 notebooks; Le Bon's Comptes rendus notes of 5 April and 5 August 1897.
Try it yourself: Run Soddy's example.py: rebuild one gram of radium's heat from decay energies (about 25 cal/h for radium alone, 123-147 with products) and compare with coal. Becquerel-Henri's example.py shows how his beta-only estimate undercounts the output.
Open questions
Did the Rutherford-Compton gravity measurements ever run? The 1930 book says gravitational fields were looked for without positive result, but cites nothing.
What produced Bumstead's factor of two between lead and zinc, and why was it not followed up?
What were the helium and neon from Thomson's bombarded salts, and what did his 1922 paper find?
Can any agent other than a nuclear collision change the spontaneous decay of an alpha emitter? Only radiation triggers were tested, to stated limits; claimed triggering of the hafnium-178m2 isomer shrank on retest (Morray-TH, follow-up Q18).
Does Le Bon's warmed-metal emanation that rest renews survive a blank-corrected, radon-monitored repeat? It was never neutrally tested.
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter No one has triggered spontaneous decay of an alpha emitter, whereas projectile-induced reactions and neutron-induced fission are triggered nuclear transformations; they are new events (a collision), not a change in the spontaneous rate. Rutherford-Ernest, arbiter.md, Claim 7
Arbiter The 1930 sentence that gravitational fields were looked for is the authors' summary claim, not a cited measurement: pertinent evidence that some looking was done and found nothing, from a party with a stake. It does not match the 'interrupted by war' record. Rutherford-Ernest, arbiter.md, QE revision section 7
Arbiter In equilibrium a radium decay with its daughters releases about 24 MeV, mostly as alpha energy absorbed inside the source where Becquerel's screen cannot see it. His inference from tiny mass loss to 'no energy problem' is wrong whatever the numbers. Becquerel-Henri, arbiter.md, QE revision item 3
Contrarian I found no experiment that tested Le Bon's own protocols neutrally and published a failure with data. The objections on file are reinterpretations and a general light-leak suspicion. LeBon-G, contrarian.md, section 9 (as quoted in the LeBon-G entry)
Arbiter The energy-budget refutation only refutes cosmic radiation as the energy source; Lakhovsky's wording is that of a trigger, and a trigger is testable: underground, decay constants of Ra-226 and K-40 showed no time dependence at about 3.5 ppm. Lakhovsky George, arbiter.md, Claim 5
AI noteRutherford's detonator and gravity sentences, often credited to his 1905 or 1906 texts, are already in the project's own 1904 first edition (sec. 206, p.339), as his arbiter's QE revision corrected.
Selected themeFlat vs. Round Earth
A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential1 projectsCard updated 2026-10-10 15:51
The flat-earth case starts from real sightings over calm water and a fair point: refraction was invoked, never measured. It is also the clearest worked lesson in how to design a test whose answer does not hang on an unmeasured nuisance parameter.
Headline verdicts of the 1 member projects: Tested, not supported1
Theme background
In 1838 Samuel Birley Rowbotham ('Parallax') watched a flagged boat over six miles of the Old Bedford River and concluded still water is flat. His Zetetic Astronomy (1865; 3rd ed. 1881) built a north-centred disc, a small near sun, sunset by perspective and a motionless earth. Hampden's 1870 wager with Wallace, Carpenter's One Hundred Proofs (1885), Lady Blount's Universal Zetetic Society, the Koreshans' concave rival (1897), Voliva's Zion, Dubay, the Flat Earth Society wiki and Rob Skiba carried it on (all from Flat-Earth).
Where mainstream physics went
Textbook geodesy keeps Rowbotham's 8-inch rule but adds refraction: hidden heights scale by (1 - k), k averaging 0.13 yet -4 to +16 near the ground (Hirt 2010). Foucault, Michelson-Gale and ring lasers show rotation; Airy 1856 and GPS clocks measure mass gravity; WGS 84 is a rotating ellipsoid. Left unexplained: k on the low-sighting days, never measured, and why Airy's Harton excess is about 34 percent larger than the modern mean density predicts (Flat-Earth primer and arbiter).
Why it matters
A Selected Theme because it is the rare alternative-science case where the movement ran its own tests and both sides signed the same record. All four criteria apply: a documented wager and its litigation, one narrow open question (k unmeasured), arithmetic any reader can redo, and a century and a half of influence. It also teaches the general lesson: compare a ratio, not an absolute, when a free parameter could fake the answer.
Key supporting elements
The sightings are real: Rowbotham 1838 and 1870, the Nab light-ship, Naylor 1894, about 20 Koreshan sightings 1896-97 and Clifton 1904 need k of 0.4 to 1.0 on a globe, never measured on those days (Flat-Earth arbiter 9.1).
Refraction was invoked, not measured, in every historic test; the arbiter calls Blount and Smith's 1904 retort that critics 'blow both hot and cold' a legitimate logical point (Flat-Earth).
Rowbotham's '8 inches times miles squared' is the correct small-angle drop and most of his arithmetic is right; his 1872 preface calls some first-edition evidence 'not entirely satisfactory' (Flat-Earth arbiter, claim 1).
Clifton, Dallmeyer's operator, saw the sheet's lower edge from 2 ft at six miles in 1904 and wrote that 'unless rays of light will travel in a curved path' the water is level; he also called conditions 'very unfavourable' (Flat-Earth).
Replies to Carpenter's 1885 challenge (Gilman, Baird of the Smithsonian, Proctor's postscript) were dismissal without engagement, not tests, as the contrarian and arbiter both record (Flat-Earth).
Key contradictions
Wallace's 5 March 1870 equal-height test: sketches signed by both referees (Carpenter 'under protest'). The arbiter scales them to 6 ft +/- 1.5 ft offset, excluding a plane and k above 0.3; Wallace, the winner, read 5 1/2 ft (Flat-Earth).
On the north-centred flat map, southern distances come out 2.1 to 2.6 times the globe's; scheduled Johannesburg-Perth flights of about 10 h would need about 1,850 km/h on the flat-map distance (Flat-Earth arbiter, section 1).
One sun height cannot fit equinox noon elevations at several latitudes (3,938, 3,109, 2,393 mi); the movement's own 1893 table gives 3,585, 3,105, 2,390, and Naylor conceded the angles 'far more nearly correspond with the common theory' (Flat-Earth).
Airy's 1856 Harton pendulums found gravity 1.00005185 times greater 1,256 ft down, about a billion times a uniformly accelerating floor's prediction; the GPS clock offset follows from mass gravity, per the operator's own specification (Flat-Earth).
Michelson and Gale (1925) observed 0.230 +/- 0.005 fringe against 0.236 predicted for a rotating earth; Rowbotham's vertical gun cannot resolve the 0.3 to 2 m Coriolis drift a globe predicts (Flat-Earth arbiter 9.2).
Timeline (10)
1838Rowbotham's Old Bedford River sighting: a flag stays in view over six miles. Two versions by him: 3 ft flag (1865), 5 ft flag (1881). · Flat-Earth
1856Airy's Harton Colliery pendulums measure gravity larger by 1.00005185 at 1,256 ft depth. · Flat-Earth
1865Rowbotham publishes Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe; third edition 1881. · Flat-Earth
1870-03Hampden-Wallace wager: equal-height test on 5 March; Walsh rules curvature 'five feet, more or less'. Libel and wager litigation follow until Hampden v. Walsh (1876). · Flat-Earth
1885Carpenter's One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is Not a Globe, Baltimore; letters to Johns Hopkins, the Smithsonian and Proctor. · Flat-Earth
1897-03Koreshan Rectilineator survey at Naples, Florida: a concave-earth rival read from 4 1/8 miles of stepped sections. · Flat-Earth
1901H. Yule Oldham reports his 1900-01 repeat of Wallace's design to the British Association: middle mark 'about six feet above the line of sight'. · Flat-Earth
1904-05Clifton photographs a sheet across the Old Bedford from about 2 ft at six miles; Lady Blount publishes it (1905); the negative is not held. · Flat-Earth
1925Michelson and Gale measure the earth's rotation with a 207,836 m^2 light loop: 0.230 fringe against 0.236 predicted. · Flat-Earth
2015Dubay's 200 Proofs and Skiba's Testing the Globe series; Skiba's 2017 balloon footage judged 'hard to tell'; Behind the Curve gyroscope report follows in 2019. · Flat-Earth
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
Still water is a plane over miles, so the earth is not a globe (strong form)
Tested, not supportedWallace 1870, Oldham 1900-01; refraction measured in neither
Tested, not supportedrotation: Michelson-Gale, Foucault, ring lasersTested, not supportedorbit: aberration and parallax, from memory, not in folderRefuted by calculationAiry, Michelson-Morley, Rowbotham's gun and star tubes as proofs of rest (as inferences)Not testable as statedrest as a coordinate choice
Sun and moon are small and near; sunset by perspective or upward-bending light
Refuted by calculationperspective sunset; Rowbotham's 700-mile sunTested, not supportedsizes and heightsNot testable as statedElectromagnetic Acceleration, no value of betaHistorically superseded but instructive1904 two-vortex ether currents
Tested, not supportedAiry 1856 gradient, GPS clock offset, latitude, tides, orbitsInternally inconsistentparts as written (Davis plane, tides)Establishedlocal equivalence of acceleration and gravity
The Koreshan concave earth (Rectilineator survey, 1897)
Never properly testedone run by the colony; a constant 0.12 arcsec per-step bias would mimic itTested, not supportedNaples Bay mid-stake as support for 8 in/mi^2 concavity
The whole project: Zetetic case, Bedford Level, rotation, gravity and NASA-report claims weighed against measurements.
Tested, not supportedstrong form, no curvature; flat earth with a definite metric Refuted by calculation; low-sight-line sightings Never properly tested (refraction never measured)
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Samuel Birley Rowbotham ('Parallax')
Founder of Zetetic astronomy; Bedford canal sightings from 1838 · Flat-Earth
Born about 1816 (uncertain) in Cheshire, died 1884 (WikiTree, user-contributed, sources unchecked). Secretary of the Manea Fen community from 1838; paid lecturer for over thirty years. The historian Garwood calls him 'a self-educated quack inventor' (her characterization).
John Hampden
Challenger in the 1870 wager (stake: £500 on flat water) · Flat-Earth
Wrote The Popularity of Error (1869); declined to look through the instruments. A week's imprisonment for want of sureties (Stratford, July 1871, Daily News via Epsilon); six months in Chelmsford Gaol after 1875 (Schadewald). Recovered his stake (1876).
Alfred Russel Wallace
Accepted the wager and designed the equal-height test (stake: £500; winner) · Flat-Earth
Asked Lyell before accepting. Repaid £500 after Hampden v. Walsh and called the affair 'the most regrettable incident in my life' (My Life, 1905). His wider career is not described in the review files.
William Carpenter
Hampden's referee in 1870; author of One Hundred Proofs (1885) · Flat-Earth
A journeyman printer (Wallace's description) and zetetic lecturer. Signed the 1870 sketch 'under protest'; argued that equal steps in the telescope meant a straight line, a mathematical error.
John Henry Walsh
Umpire and stakeholder of the 1870 wager · Flat-Earth
Editor of The Field. Authorised in writing by Hampden (Epsilon WCP5561); ruled on 18 March 1870 for curvature 'to the extent of five feet, more or less'. Hampden later called him Wallace's nominee.
Lady Elizabeth A. M. Blount
Led the Universal Zetetic Society; published the 1904 Bedford photograph · Flat-Earth
Edited the Earth Review and Earth; co-wrote Zetetic Astronomy: The Sun's Motions (1904) with Albert Smith; published Flat or Spherical? (1905). Other background not in the review files.
E. Clifton
Photographer of the 11 May 1904 Bedford sheet · Flat-Earth
Operator for Dallmeyer, which sold the camera; the zetetic account calls him a 'globularist'. Wrote that conditions were 'very unfavourable' with shimmering vapour. Two accounts differ on who commissioned the photograph.
H. Yule Oldham
Repeated Wallace's equal-height test in 1900-01 · Flat-Earth
M.A., a Cambridge geographer (not R. D. Oldham the seismologist). His 23-line British Association abstract of 1901 is the only record; no heights, weather or photographs survive in it.
Cyrus R. Teed ('Koresh')
Leader of the Koreshan Unity; concave-earth rival to the flat earth · Flat-Earth
Co-author with U. G. Morrow of The Cellular Cosmogony (1898), reporting the 1897 Rectilineator survey and 1896-97 optical tests run by the colony itself. Other background not in the review files.
Rob Skiba
Leading 2015-2019 advocate; Testing the Globe articles, videos and balloon launches · Flat-Earth
1969-2021; filmmaker and actor (his own site). Called his own tests 'inconclusive' and wrote 'I cannot prove any conspiracy at work here'. Died of COVID-19 in October 2021.
Lineage
Hampden took up Rowbotham's Bedford claim for the 1870 wager; Carpenter, Hampden's referee, wrote One Hundred Proofs (1885); Lady Blount's society and journal carried Rowbotham's case into the 1890s-1900s (Flat-Earth).
The Koreshans' 1897 line of sight 'curvilineating slightly upwards' is the same 1/R upward-bending rule as the Flat Earth Society's 2023 Electromagnetic Acceleration (Flat-Earth mathematician, via primer).
Skiba's Chicago and balloon tests revisit Rowbotham's long-sightline argument with modern cameras; the meteorologist and optics professor in his own material concede looming (Flat-Earth).
Key evidence (12)
1865Rowbotham, Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe (1865; 3rd ed. 1881) The inventor's own works; Bedford chapter, gun and star-tube experiments, sun-height method deep-read; 700-mile sun and map scale fail on his own inputs· Flat-Earth
1870-03-26The Field 35(900): referee report, Coulcher's sketches, Walsh's decision Sketches countersigned by both referees (Carpenter 'under protest'); signals at 13 ft 4 in; Fig. 6 scales to about 6 ft +/- 1.5 ft (arbiter's measurement of a woodcut)· Flat-Earth
1870-04-05Rowbotham, Experimental Proofs ... Not Convex but Horizontal The inventor's rebuttal: the agreed disc by the telescope was not used; 'the money was neither won nor lost'· Flat-Earth
1893The Earth (not-a-Globe) Review, 1893-1897 Universal Zetetic Society journal; Naylor's 1894 Bedford repeat (needs k 0.8 to 0.9) and his concession on sun angles; G.M.'s sun table· Flat-Earth
1898Koresh and Morrow, The Cellular Cosmogony Koreshan Unity testing its own doctrine; Rectilineator run of 17 March 1897 and about 20 optical sightings needing k 0.36 to 0.99· Flat-Earth
1901-09-17H. Yule Oldham, Experimental Demonstration of the Curvature of the Earth's Surface BAAS Section E abstract, 23 lines; middle mark 'about six feet above the line of sight'· Flat-Earth
1904-05-11Clifton's Bedford photograph, in Lady Blount, Flat or Spherical? (1905) Camera about 2 ft above the water, sheet six miles off; needs k about 0.92 on a globe; the negative itself is missing· Flat-Earth
1856Airy, Pendulum Experiments in the Harton Colliery Phil. Trans. 146; gravity 1.00005185 +/- 0.00000019 times larger 1,256 ft down (net of height and rock)· Flat-Earth
1925Michelson and Gale, Effect of the Earth's Rotation on the Velocity of Light ApJ 61; 0.230 +/- 0.005 fringe observed against 0.236 predicted; 269 readings· Flat-Earth
2010Hirt et al., Monitoring of the refraction coefficient in the lower atmosphere JGR 115; k from -4 to +16 at 1.8 m over grass; cited work +1 to +18 over water· Flat-Earth
1972NASA TM X-2514, Angles of Attack and Sideslip from Radar Data 'Flat, nonrotating earth' limits the analysis 'to short-range, short-duration flights'; agency document, an interested party· Flat-Earth
2022-08-01IS-GPS-200N, Navstar GPS Interface Specification US GPS operator, an interested party; clock offset -4.4647E-10 reproduced by mass gravity; no 'flat' in 248 pp.· Flat-Earth
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Setting the refraction coefficient k to zero, then reading any sighting of a 'hidden' object as proof of flatness; a single low sighting cannot separate a plane from a globe with k about 0.6 (Flat-Earth).
Swapping tangent drop, hidden height and chord sagitta, or charging the drop from sea level with the observer's height omitted (heliograph 1894, Boston Stump, Carpenter, Dubay; their figures disagree by factors of 2 to 4) (Flat-Earth).
Reading 'level' as 'flat', and equal angular steps below the cross-hair as a straight line (Carpenter 1870); equal steps are the signature of a curve (Flat-Earth).
Choosing a light rule per argument: straight light for the canal, upward-bending light for sunset, which would lower the Bedford flag (Flat-Earth primer).
One-party tests with unnamed witnesses and no recorded weather: Rowbotham's two versions of 1838, the Koreshan survey, Naylor's levelled repeat, Skiba's balloon (Flat-Earth arbiter, section 5).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: Repeat Wallace's equal-height trio over the Old Bedford with temperature profiles at two heights and reciprocal vertical angles to measure k, plus a low-eye run (about 2 ft) at the same time. Globe: mid-point offset 6.0 ft x (1 - k) over six miles; plane: -k x 6.0 ft (zero only for straight light), so k must be measured.
Deciding records: Clifton's 1904 negative; Oldham's full report and photographs; the Koreshan field notebooks (State Archives of Florida N2009-3); English Mechanic v.80 letters; Skiba's raw balloon footage; Knodel's gyroscope data; the ten listed NASA, ARL and CIA documents not in the folder.
Try it yourself: Run the Flat-Earth example.py: the 8-inch rule, Rowbotham's 1838 flag (11.67 ft hidden at k = 0; k = 0.612 needed), Wallace's 6.00 ft sagitta, and the sun's height from three equinox noon elevations. Or take noon sun elevations on one meridian from an almanac.
Open questions
How large was k on the days of Rowbotham's, Naylor's, the Koreshans' and Clifton's low sightings? The arbiter's scaling of the 1870 sketch excludes k above about 0.3 at 13 ft; the low-eye sightings need 0.4 to 1.0 (Flat-Earth).
Is the Koreshan quadratic a real curvature reading or a repeated 0.12 arcsec instrument bias? The magnitudes match too well to wave away; the field notebooks may decide (Flat-Earth).
What did Clifton's 1904 negative show, and was the reflection of the sheet a mirage image (Flat-Earth)?
What do the ten listed NASA, Army and CIA documents not in the folder say in context (Flat-Earth)?
Airy's Harton excess is about 34 percent larger than the modern mean density 5.51 predicts (arbiter, memory, high confidence; Airy's value 6.566). It is the net of height and rock; the reason is not in the pages read (arbiter 9.4).
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The one genuinely open empirical question is small and narrow: how large k was on the days of the low-sight-line sightings. It was never measured. That it exists does not rescue the strong form. Flat-Earth, arbiter.md, overall result
Mathematician Wallace's design is robust: uniform refraction multiplies both angles by (1 - k) and leaves the 1:2 ratio, and a level error shifts both marks equally. Equal angular steps are the signature of a curved profile, not a straight line. Flat-Earth, mathematician.md, section 1.2
Physicist Refraction is not a hand-waving excuse: it is measured, large and variable, largest exactly where the zetetic observations were made, low sight lines over calm water. Each 'I could still see it' report needs the k a globe would require. Flat-Earth, physicist.md, section 0
Contrarian The anomalous visibility is Never properly tested: no controlled repeat with refraction measured. Not dismissed without testing; the tests run by the other side (Wallace, Oldham) came out for curvature. Academic replies to Carpenter were dismissal without engagement. Flat-Earth, contrarian.md, section 3 (rejection and verdicts)
QE Reviewer slips corrected at QE: Universal Acceleration's 6,000-year kinetic energy is about 5e7 times the sun's output over that time (not 1e11); a small near sun is no heat-budget problem (about 1.8 kW/m^2 from a 5,772 K disc); Michelson-Gale took 269 readings (not 263). Flat-Earth, qe.md, Recheck and Orchestrator fix
User follow-ups (1)
Q21AnsweredAsked for a low-budget, step-by-step experiment that proves a round earth with every assumption tested or declared. Star elevations, star timing and a measured-refraction sightline settle it if light travels straight, and two-hemisphere pendulums show non-parallel verticals without that assumption.
Design a step-by-step, low-budget experiment that proves a round earth from first principles, with no belief necessary and round earth as the only possible conclusion. Record every assumption the design makes (for example that the stars are far away) and, rather than assume it, test it within the experiment or state plainly that it remains an assumption.
Asked 2026-10-10 · answered 2026-10-10 · 2 min web search
A21Quadrant, cross-staff, watch, two thermometers and a bowling-ball pendulum (under about 150 dollars plus a southern partner) exclude near-dome flat models by large margins; the starlight steps still rest on light travelling straight beyond the atmosphere, which no cheap test reaches, so the light-free pendulum step carries the proof, resting on one declared assumption: a single uniform rotation.
Known
Pole-star elevation on a globe changes 1 deg per 111.2 km; a dome fitted at 30 and 45 deg (H = 4,440 km) predicts 53.1 deg where the globe gives 60, and 23.9 deg at the equator.
A 10 deg star pair on a dome 5,000 km up appears 5.0 by 7.1 deg at 45 deg elevation; far stars keep it within about 2 arcmin of refraction.
Any flat surface under one uniform rotation gives the same pendulum rate everywhere; predicted 9.66 deg/h clockwise at 39.94 N and 8.27 anticlockwise at 33.36 S, verticals at least 73 deg apart, R at most 6,510 km.
Measured: South Pole 2001, 24 h +/- 50 min; ASEE 2021 bowling ball, 8.09 vs 9.65 deg/h; its Argentina runs failed (faulty suspension).
TFES EA gives no beta and calls its bending more gradual than globe curvature; TFES pages on Polaris and the southern pole are empty.
Inferred
Thermometers at two heights give ray curvature from the air itself; corrected equal-height offset is L^2/8R on a globe, 0 on a plane, extending A3 to 10-20 km.
A plane with k near -1 (light bending upward) reproduces Wallace 1870, so refraction must be measured, not assumed.
Strictly, tuned laws can mimic anything; round is the only conclusion needing no extra law per instrument.
Open
No clean low-budget southern pendulum rate with controls was found; one must be made.
A3 for the space path and convex versus concave in the light-free step remain assumptions.
Step by step: Test the shape of the earth yourself (six steps, about $150)
Check your instruments, then measure: star separations high and low (are the stars far?), the pole star's elevation north-south, star timing east-west, a sightline over water with the air's bending measured by two thermometers, and Foucault pendulums in both hemispheres (no light used). Each step gives the globe and flat predictions to write down first, the assumptions it tests, and a decision rule.
Orchestrator's first draft (chat, 2026-10-10): a stars-far test by constant star separations; pole-star elevation north-south and star transit timing east-west with a home-made quadrant, cross-staff and watch; Foucault pendulum rates at two latitudes as a check using no light; an assumption register A1-A11. STEP F refined it into the procedure above (register A1-A12).
On A3 (light travels straight): a laser against a taut string settles it over tens of metres. Over long paths through air light bends measurably (k about 0.13-0.17 over land, more over water), and over water a laser alone cannot tell curvature from bending. A21's thermometer step extends the test to 10-20 km; starlight's path through space stays an assumption.
Correction to the first draft: it said a flat earth with far stars predicts no east-west timing shift. In that model the sky would turn about the zenith and no star would rise or set, so it fails at once; the procedure compares the globe with the near-dome model instead.
Corrections made from this answer (2026-10-10): on a plane, Wallace's middle-target offset is -k x 6.0 ft, not zero, so k must be measured; fixed in the Flat-Earth arbiter, physicist file and both cards. The South Pole 2001 pendulum page does give data (24 h +/- 50 min); arbiter note corrected.
The step-by-step page was added by the orchestrator on 2026-10-10 from the design in the research notes, after the first version of this answer gave no clear procedure.
AI noteA plane where light bends upward at 1/R and a globe with straight light predict the same sightings along the surface, so sightings alone cannot decide; distances, flight times, gravity and rotation sensors can (Flat-Earth mathematician 1.4).
Selected themeFree Energy
A - UntestedB - Open questionC - TestableD - Influential39 projectsCard updated 2026-10-09 12:55
Free-energy claims span a century and every kind of hardware, from Moray's antenna box to Bearden's magnet generator and Meyer's water cell. Across seventeen core projects the same pattern recurs: striking demonstrations and witness accounts, and almost never one complete measurement of energy in against energy out.
Headline verdicts of the 39 member projects: Never properly tested21Refuted by calculation14Internally inconsistent4
Theme background
The idea that a machine can deliver more than its metered input, or tap an unmetered source, runs from Tesla's 1900 ambient-energy argument and Moray's 1925-38 antenna-and-ground demonstrations through Gray's capacitor-discharge motor (1973), Sweet's VTA (1986), Meyer's water cell, the Correas' tubes promoted by Mallove, and Bearden's MEG (2002). Bearden and Kelly supplied the unifying argument: open systems fed by the vacuum or an ambient field. Naudin published open replications (1996-2013). Later families: Bedini's SSG, Ainslie's heater, Stiffler's SEC, Smith's coils, Sykes's bucking coils.
Where mainstream physics went
Mainstream physics answers with the first law and the passivity theorem: in any fully metered circuit of coils, capacitors and resistors with no source inside, average input power is at least load power. It accepts open systems with a metered inflow (heat pumps, solar cells) and real effects the claims draw on: flyback recovery, resonant voltage rise, displacement current. No neutral measurement explains Moray's unmetered lamps or Ainslie's 16.5 h run, metered only by its authors.
Why it matters
A Selected Theme because it is the umbrella over the largest cluster of reviewed projects and the question every family shares: was the energy accounted for at every port? It compares the families (pulsed circuits, antenna collectors, magnet machines, water fuel, vacuum energy, resonance) and sends the reader to their own theme cards. Its central claim is cheap to test, which makes the persistent absence of a neutral whole-system measurement the theme's most important fact.
Key supporting elements
Morray-TH: about 30 named witnesses on about 25 dated occasions, 1925-38, saw lamps lit from a box wired only to antenna and ground; the sealed 1928 run lasted 157.9 hours at about 110-120 W nameplate (delivered power unknown).
Bearden: the patentees report MEG COP of about 1.7 to 2.6; builder Naudin reported 1.75, and his v2.1 figures give 2.08 on total input (the review's ratio, apparent power); his loop-closure attempt 'stops after a while'. No neutral test exists.
Kelly-Patrick: the open-system point is correct physics; COP is not efficiency, and heat pumps and solar panels legitimately deliver more than the operator pays for (arbiter: weak form Established).
Sykes-Chris: Sweet's 1986 notes, known from an interested party's transcription (witness Goldes, Sweet's promoter), record 111.32 W out against 1 mW in; but meter V x I into a reactive coil is apparent power, and two stated inputs differ 43-fold.
Naudin-JL: the CNAM Paris group (2005) reported COP 1.35-1.41 in a Mizuno-type plasma-electrolysis cell after cathode preconditioning; a 2006 Kowalski draft called Paris1 and Colorado2 positive (41 tests, mean 1.24), 'seems to be real'. Reports not read.
Key contradictions
Bearden: the patent names the magnet's flux as fuel; its 38.7 cm^3 magnet holds about 7-22 J, so the claimed 82 W excess would exhaust it in 0.09-0.27 s. Later remarks name the vacuum, which this budget does not address.
Naudin-JL: EarthTech's rebuild of Naudin's reactor gave COP2 0.98; adding post-power-off evaporation gives 1.27-1.77, which EarthTech calls double counting. That Naudin did this rests on a private communication, so his own runs are not called refuted.
Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann: 17.5 W of heat from 1.13 W rests on a 12 mV average taken from large spikes over 1.2 microseconds; the patent's three bench tests use three methods and none shows net gain.
Meyers-Stan: a Fayette County court found for two dealers in 1996 (court experts, not a neutral lab; 'gross and egregious fraud' per Wikipedia); Meyer alleges the court audio was off. His 1995 table, corrected, gives 28.6 against 27.4 L/h: electrolysis.
Malove-Eugene: the 50 W in, 500 W out compares DC input with an unexplained shaft figure; the Correas wanted tests at their premises and refused NASA/Navy participants; the 2002 SEAS test stalled, the SEAS side known only through the Correas.
Timeline (10)
1928Moray's sealed endurance run, within his 1925-38 antenna-and-ground demonstrations: 157.9 hours at about 110-120 W nameplate, unmetered; Bell Labs' Harvey Fletcher is 'just as puzzled as ever'. · Morray-TH
1973-09Crosby Research Institute letter reports Gray's motor gave 10 hp on 26.8 W of battery draw; no test report has been found. · Gray-EV
1974-07Los Angeles DA raids Gray's company; 1975 charges: conspiracy, grand theft, securities. TRW's Cronin, quoted by AP in 1975, saw a mid-1974 run that 'blew' after about 10 seconds. · Gray-EV
1986NBS, at a court's order, finds input above output in all 77 measurements of Newman's motor. Sweet's transcribed notes give 111 W out on 1 mW in (meter readings). · Kelly-Patrick
1996-09Fayette County judgment for two water-fuel-cell dealers against Meyer; the decision itself has not been obtained. · Meyers-Stan
2001-06Mallove's letter reports 50 W DC into the Correas' PAGD tube and about 500 W of shaft output. · Malove-Eugene
2002US 6,362,718 granted for the MEG; Ainslie's heater article in Quantum claims about 17.5 W of heat on 1.13 W. · Bearden
2003-07EarthTech (Little and Luce) rebuilds Naudin's plasma-electrolysis reactor with a Clarke-Hess meter and balance: COP2 average 0.98; Kowalski, Little and Luce later report 1.00 +/- 0.02. · Naudin-JL
2004USPTO rejects the MEG continuation on thermodynamic grounds and requires a demonstration; the applicants' deferral request is refused, and the application is abandoned in 2005, reason not in the file. · Bearden
2015Sykes's partnered-coil video caption says 'Excess Output Energy can be obtained!'; his 2011 paper said 'below unity'; the only figure on record, 'COP 1.7', is a critic's attribution. · HiIQ-Youtube
Core propositions and verdicts (8)
Proposition
Verdict
From the arbiters of
COP above 1 breaks no law because the device is an open system fed by an outside source
Establishedweak form, an identified and metered inflow (Kelly-Patrick); the conditional that closed classical EM forbids overunity (Bearden)Refuted by calculationnamed reservoirs at useful power: atmospheric field, radio, vacuum (Kelly-Patrick); kilowatts from the ambient field (Smith-Don); cosmic radiation (Morray-TH)Not testable as statedan unnamed source with no flux (Kelly-Patrick); Bearden's hidden vacuum source; Stiffler's Energy Lattice; Bedini's Bloch-wall zero-point energy; Bearden's 'active vacuum' in Naudin's MEG replication (Naudin-JL)
A specific device delivered more measured power than it took in
Never properly testedMEG COP 1.7-2.6 (Bearden); PAGD 10x (Malove-Eugene); Gray's motor (Gray-EV, Linerman-Peter); ECAT 2.194 (Stiffler); Moray's lamps (Morray-TH); Smith's suitcase (Smith-Don); Ainslie's reading; earth-rod LEDs (Radiant_One_Youtube); Frolov's devices and Avramenko-plug 'free' power (Frollov-Alexander); MEG 'apparent COP' as real power, evidence on file pointing to a measurement error, MAHG COP 5-21, CNAM's 1.35-1.41 against droplet loss, the patent's 'efficiency more than one' (Naudin-JL)Tested, not supportedNewman motor, NBS 1986, and the MEG in two small tests (Kelly-Patrick); Meyl's kit at 500-1000% (Meyl-Konstantin); 2012 power balance, out below in (Haisch-Bernard); Naudin's reactor method as replicated by EarthTech and the Texas cell, the Bedini Magnetic Gate by Naudin's own closed loop, the Orbo by Steorn's jury (Naudin-JL)Refuted by calculationas stated: net gain (Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann); 10 hp on 26.8 W from batteries alone (Gray-EV; Kelly-Patrick rates Gray's 10 hp Never properly tested); Benitez 2,400 W, the patentee's paper example (Kelly-Patrick)Internally inconsistentthe Cornille-Naudin patent's multi-cycle formulas and three unreconciled energy sources (Naudin-JL)
A device can close the loop and run itself, or keep its own battery charged
Refuted by calculationsustained self-powered net output from a closed, fuelless cycle (Bearden); Meyer's water loop (Meyers-Stan); magnets as the source (Gunderson); closed cycles in conservative fields (Kelly-Patrick); net work per cycle from the field itself, no accounted input (Frollov-Alexander); sustained net gain from a passive magnet-biased core, if all energy enters by the four ports, and recycled atomic hydrogen as a source (Naudin-JL)Never properly testedthe MEG supply-removed run; Naudin's one loop-closure attempt stopped after a while (Bearden); battery kept charged indefinitely, relayed in the inventor's name (NRGFromTheVac); net self-recharge (Bedini-John); loop closure (Stiffler); the MEG closed loop, not achieved by Naudin in about 26 years (Naudin-JL)
Back EMF, flyback spikes or cancelled Lenz drag return more energy than the input supplied
Establishedas recovery of coil energy (Bedini-John, Gray-EV, Linerman-Peter); voltage boost above the battery, the inventor's own claim (NRGFromTheVac); weak form of reduced reflected load (HiIQ-Youtube)Refuted by calculationas net gain: Gray's strong form; Ainslie's back-EMF gain; passive bucking-coil strong form (Sykes-Chris, HiIQ-Youtube)Internally inconsistentcharge-battery COP as overunity evidence (Bedini-John); generator output counted as Lenz drag (Sykes-Chris)
Establishedvoltage magnified by Q (Smith-Don, Frollov-Alexander, Kelly-Patrick)Refuted by calculationefficiency above 100% in a passive network (Frollov-Alexander); net energy rising as f squared (Smith-Don); resonant gain to 20-40 kV in tap water (Meyers-Stan)Internally inconsistentSmith's energy formula, 1/2 C V^2 x f^2, in joules per second squared (Smith-Don)
Water can be split, or burned as fuel, for less energy than electrolysis requires
Refuted by calculationas printed: Meyer's figures and loop (Meyers-Stan, Kelly-Patrick); cheaper than electrolysis if the gas is H2/O2 (Larson-Tyson); a closed electrolysis-and-burning cycle, a hypothesis from an essay in the project folder and an earlier AI analysis (Morray note 12), never claimed by Kassner (TernionAG)Never properly testedmore gas per joule than ordinary electrolysis (Meyers-Stan); Larson's gas against a meter (Larson-Tyson)Tested, not supportedMeyer's cell in the 1996 court examination, from secondary sources (Kelly-Patrick, Linerman-Peter)
The energy is a distinct kind: cold electricity, radiant energy or massfree aether energy
Not testable as statedmassfree electricity (Malove-Eugene); Gray's Electro-Radiant Event (Linerman-Peter); the s-field, a theory of the blog author and commenters, not the inventor (NRGFromTheVac); Gray's 'cold' electricity (Gray-EV)Refuted by calculationpositrons as the carriers, the blog author's and commenters' theory; the inventor never mentions positrons (NRGFromTheVac); atmospheric supply of 7.46 kW (Gray-EV)Tested, not supportedinstantaneous radiant-energy propagation (Linerman-Peter)
Establisheddocumented events: Moray's REA years and inspections (Morray-TH); Gray's 1974 raid and charges (Linerman-Peter)Never properly testedsuppression as the cause (Linerman-Peter); 'dismissed without testing' (Morray-TH: Millikan, NASA, the AEC and the Patent Office did, but critics set conditions while the detector was withheld, and tests were offered and not completed by both sides); Frazer's 1939 smashing of the device and the 1940 shooting, one detailed published account, the sons' relaying Moray (the son did not witness the struggle); it also records Frazer's counter-claim that Moray smashed it himself, and Bearden's 1978 foreword blames an assistant he took for a Soviet agent; the 1944 Senate record confirms Frazer's 'threatening', not the hammer (Morray-TH); individual episodes (Kelly-Patrick)Not testable as statedglobal or organised suppression (Kelly-Patrick, Morray-TH); Gray's DA case as suppression (Gray-EV); Stiffler's diversion claim
Ambient energy, self-acting generator and 1900 sink argument corrected; Tesla's own claims versus advocates.
Never properly tested3 July 1899 stationary-wave observation; loss-free global power Refuted by calculation; coil, motor, lighting, disc turbine Established
Net power from a tank circuit after one start-up pulse; verification method lacks phase or input measurement.
Refuted by calculationstrong forms
Scientists / relevant people (10)
Name
Role in the theme
Background and contribution
Thomas E. Bearden
Theorist of vacuum-powered open systems; co-inventor of the MEG · Bearden
Wrote The Final Secret of Free Energy (1993-94); co-patented the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator (US 6,362,718, 2002; EP 1 446 862, 2013) and spoke for Magnetic Energy Ltd.
T. Henry Moray
Inventor of the antenna-and-ground Radiant Energy device · Morray-TH
Salt Lake City inventor (1892-1974); demonstrated the box 1925-38 to about 30 named witnesses; never let anyone examine his detector 'valve'; paid and equipped by the REA 1939-41.
Edwin V. Gray
Inventor of the capacitor-discharge EMA motor and conversion tube · Gray-EV
Patents US 3,890,548 (1975), 4,595,975 and 4,661,747; sold shares to some 800 investors; raided 1974. A plea to minor securities counts is reported by Lindemann's book and promoter-side features (1976 Newsreal; Valentine's 1977 NewsReal); court records not seen.
Stanley A. Meyer
Inventor of the Water Fuel Cell · Meyers-Stan
Grove City, Ohio (1940-1998); patented and promoted the cell from 1982, sold dealerships, and lost a 1996 Fayette County suit brought by two dealers.
Eugene F. Mallove
Advocate and sole observer of the PAGD 50 W / 500 W figure · Malove-Eugene
Editor and publisher of Infinite Energy and a leading cold-fusion advocate; the Correas' editor and fund-raiser; wrote 'Tesla and the Aether' (2003).
Patrick J. Kelly
Compiler of the largest catalogue of free-energy claims · Kelly-Patrick
Pen name of Edward Dickson Williams, per a 2020 FESIG memorial video, which also reports his death on 11 July 2020; compiled the 2,481-page Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices, calling much of it hearsay; main public channel for Smith's documents.
Floyd Sweet
Inventor of the Vacuum Triode Amplifier, cited across the theme
His 1986 notes, known from an interested party's transcription, report 111 W out on 1 mW in by meter V x I (phase unmeasured); Bearden calls the VTA overunity, Kelly gives it the largest COP, Sykes models on it.
Rosemary Ann Ainslie
Author of the heater-circuit over-unity claim · Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann
Patent priority ZA 98/0541 (1998); 2002 Quantum article claiming about 17.5 W of heat on 1.13 W; reports that Stellenbosch refused a demonstration and that companies gave limited tests.
Jean-Louis Naudin
Replicator who published his numbers for others' devices · Naudin-JL
French experimenter; ran JLN Labs (1996-2013), rebuilding the MEG, the Mizuno reactor and Moller's MAHG; published adverse results, though his Orbo page says both 'overunity effect' and '4.75 is NOT A COP'. Education not in the review files.
Alexander V. Frolov
Surveyor of others' devices; tester of Moller's atomic-hydrogen generator · Frollov-Alexander
Faraday Lab; the review holds his 1994 single-wire note and 2003 survey, mostly second-hand reports. On the MAHG he saw 82% on DC and 124-250% with pulses and said a mistake was possible. Education not in the review files.
Lineage
Tesla's 1901 radiant-energy patents and impulse work were read by Lindemann (via Vassilatos) as the source of Gray's 'cold electricity'; Tesla's own patent credits charged particles from the sun.
Moray's books follow Le Bon's 1905 matter-dissociation pages nearly verbatim (compared with a transcription and snippets, not the editions Moray used; no conclusion on intent); Radiant_One framed his earth-rod circuit as Moray's.
Floyd Sweet's VTA became Bearden's 'Method 1' overunity device, Kelly's largest COP claim, and Sykes's model for bucking coils, although the documented VTA has one output coil.
Stiffler's heater test is a close but not identical copy of Ainslie's circuit; like Frolov, he used the Avramenko two-diode plug; both heater reviews share the critique record. Kelly carried Smith's documents to the public.
Meyer's patent cites Puharich's 1983 resonant water-splitting patent; Kelly's water chapters start from Meyer.
Naudin rebuilt Bearden's MEG, Bedini's Magnetic Gate and the atomic-hydrogen generator Moller contracted Frolov's lab to test, and published his numbers; EarthTech in turn rebuilt Naudin's reactor.
Key evidence (12)
1928Moray's sealed 157.9-hour endurance run About 110-120 W of lamps, 17-19 kWh; witnesses Fletcher and Hayes; ground was a house water pipe; never metered.· Morray-TH
1973-09Crosby Research Institute letter on Gray's motor (J. A. Maize) 10 hp at 1,100 rpm on 26.8 W; 'efficiency exceeds 99%'; ratio 278:1. The test reports themselves are not found.· Gray-EV
1986NBS test of Newman's motor 77 measurements, input above output every time, 27-77 percent efficiency; NBSIR 86-3405, run for the Patent Office (an adverse party) at the court's order; summary read by the contrarian, handling of the MHz spikes unread; Newman's side disputed the method.· Kelly-Patrick
1986-06Sweet's VTA lab notes (transcription) Transcribed by Sykes, an interested party, from scans of unknown provenance; originals not found. Signed by Sweet, witnessed by Goldes (his promoter) and Roberts: 111.32 W out against 1 mW in (4 June), 0.023 mW in (24 May), unexplained 43-fold difference; multimeter V x I at about 400 Hz into a reactive coil, phase unmeasured; output read on lamps; a part withheld.· Sykes-Chris
1994Frolov's single-wire Avramenko-plug test 2 kV, 10 nF, 5 Hz spark: 0.1 W out for 3 W DC in (3.3%). Fails to support, though cannot exclude, a 'free' source; generator input with and without load not measured.· Frollov-Alexander
1996-09Fayette County decision, Harper and Willis v. Meyer Judgment for the dealers (CVH19930292, Judge Corzine); three court experts found 'nothing revolutionary' (Sunday Times); Meyer's own account (judge ruled it 'only electrolysis', court audio switched off) is an interested party's; decision not obtained.· Meyers-Stan
2000FBI file 917273 on Moray (FOIA release) 74 pages reviewed, 72 released to one requester in 2000; not public; a 2013 request drew 'No Records'. Unread. A 1951 FBI memo in a separate espionage file, read, records a 1929 Soviet visitor.· Morray-TH
2001-06Mallove letter on the PAGD tube 50 W DC in, about 500 W shaft out; one letter on a Correa-run site (interested party).· Malove-Eugene
2002-10Ainslie heater article, Quantum 17.5 W heat by DC matching against 1.13 W from scope averages; gate-battery method not stated.· Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann
2003-07EarthTech replication of Naudin's plasma-electrolysis reactor Little and Luce, 15 runs in a Dewar, Clarke-Hess meter, 10 mg balance: COP2 average 0.98 (runs 9-11, stirrer off, excluded); 'COP with Cooldown' 1.27-1.77, which EarthTech calls double counting.· Naudin-JL
2004USPTO rejection of MEG continuation 10/081,847 Examiner Shawn Riley (the agency's voice): violates thermodynamics; his windmill argument conflates COP with efficiency, though his demand for a large enough source is sound. Demonstration required; deferral asked and refused; abandoned 2005 for failure to respond, reason not in the file.· Bearden
c.2009Stiffler's heater calorimetry (ExHeatExp) 1580.6 J heat against 1198.8 J electrical input, ratio 1.319; one run, unstirred tube, no blank.· Stiffler
Full evidence lists are on each project's card and source catalogue.
Common pitfalls (5)
Scope 'RMS power' on non-sinusoidal waveforms overstates true power (Bearden, per a builder-relayed Tektronix reply). Mean V times mean I at duty D inflates COP by 1/D, a hazard that also fits a real effect (Naudin-JL); pulsed-power metering unexcluded (Malove-Eugene).
Leaving an input outside the ledger, or counting one twice: only the charge battery counted (Bedini-John), gate battery unmeasured (Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann), arc loss as output basis (Linerman-Peter), post-power-off evaporation added (Naudin-JL, per EarthTech's private communication).
Lamp nameplate ratings and bulb brightness reported as delivered power (Morray-TH, Kelly-Patrick, Stiffler's 12 W lamp); lit LEDs with no measured output power, and inputs from different videos and builds (Radiant_One_Youtube).
Resonant voltage rise or turn ratio read as power gain; Smith's 800 kV secondary could deliver at most 4.5 microamperes (Smith-Don).
Hand tuning 'until the effect appears' leaves no defined operating point, so any failed copy can be blamed on the build (Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann, Sykes-Chris, Bedini-John).
What would settle it · Open questions
Deciding experiment: On any one device (MEG, Bedini SSG, Ainslie heater, Meyer cell), a neutral lab integrates v(t) i(t) at every supply including drive circuits, or uses a coulomb counter or capacitor bank, measures output into a calorimeter for hours, then closes the loop with the supply removed.
Deciding records: Crosby test reports (Gray); MEG continuation file (Bearden); FBI file 917273 and REA files (Moray); the 1996 Fayette County decision (Meyer); SEAS notes (Correa PAGD); ABB and BP reports (Ainslie); Sweet's original notes; Naudin's 33-run reactor and MAHG tables and the CNAM 2005 report.
Try it yourself: Run Bearden's example.py: charging a 1 uF collector to 12 V costs 144 uJ and stores 72 uJ, and scope Vrms x Irms overstates power. By hand: how long do 7-22 J of magnet energy last at 82 W?
Open questions
What did Moray's antenna and ground leads carry? About 30 witnesses saw the lamps, nobody metered the leads, and the 72 released FBI pages and the Army records remain unread.
Would the MEG run with its supply removed, the one test independent of instrument method? The USPTO required a demonstration in 2004; Naudin's closed loop has been 'not yet' since 2000.
Do Sweet's 1986 notes survive in original scans, and would a rebuild with a battery oscillator and true-power metering reproduce 111 W?
Why do so many records go dark where a test would decide: Crosby reports, the Meyer judgment, the SEAS evaluation, NRGFromTheVacuum's channel, the 2002 Smith validation?
Did the Ainslie 16.5-hour run, or its 2009 hobbyist reproductions, include a coulomb count or calorimeter?
Top reviewer notes (5)
Arbiter The book contains almost no input-and-output measurement by a named independent party. The cheapest decisive tests are named by the book itself and have never been reported by a neutral party. Kelly-Patrick, arbiter.md, How the three reviewers compare
Arbiter About 30 named people on about 25 dated occasions say they saw lamps lit with no visible source. That is strong evidence the effects occurred as seen. What it cannot settle, because no one metered the leads, is where the energy came from. Morray-TH, arbiter.md, Claim 1
Arbiter The inventor's earliest document here states 'below unity' (2011), and the Guidelines carry 'Not Free Energy' and a 1 in 10 failure rate; beside them stand the 2015 caption 'Excess Output Energy can be obtained!' and 'COP 1.7' in the forum. HiIQ-Youtube, arbiter.md, QE revision section 4
Primer When two measurements disagree with a conservation law, first ask which measurement is weakest. Here it is a 12 mV average extracted by subtracting large positive and negative spikes over a few microseconds. Ainslie-Rosemary-Ann, primer.md, section 7
Arbiter On plasma electrolysis: 'I do not have grounds to call the Mizuno-type effect refuted, and the record is not one-sided.' No positive report is shown to control for droplet entrainment. Naudin-JL, arbiter.md, QE revision section 4
AI noteSeveral proponents qualified their own claims: Stiffler renamed 'Conversion' to 'Coherence', Sykes wrote 'Not Free Energy' of his alternator test, Kelly called his book even 'a work of fiction', and Naudin wrote '4.75 is NOT A COP'.
Other ranked projects (71)
Rank
Move
Project
One line
Why it's interesting
Headline verdict
Docs
30
▼ 1
Smith-Don
Don Smith's resonant air-core coil and capacitor 'free energy' devices: energy said to scale with frequency squared; no measurement on record, formulas fail units.
CD
Refuted by calculationstrong form, net energy proportional to f squared
Wheeler's claim that magnetic attraction is 'dielectric voidance' set by the golden ratio, with ferrocell and bismuth demonstrations the reader can repeat cheaply.
CD
Tested, not supportedstrong form, force is dielectric; ferrocell optics Established
Kennard's 1917 rotating condenser in a solenoid settled a unipolar-induction question; his 5 percent agreement with theory is not reproduced from his own rule.
William Hooper's non-inductive coil said to give a shield-proof motional electric field and gravity effects; own helper's data favour an artefact, record goes dark.
Tousey's 1910 medical electricity text: x-ray dose, high-frequency therapy, focal infection; his own bench test explains apparent coil over-unity as arc-voltage collapse.
ABC
Never properly testedhigh-frequency therapy benefits; x-ray cancer treatment Established
Handwerker's longitudinal 'L.M.D.' waves from a Tesla coil and quaternion Maxwell with a scalar field Sigma; effects are near-field coupling, discriminating test never run.
BCD
Never properly testedstrong form, distinct longitudinal wave
Realm Industries plate-stack patents claiming a bent-water 'vapor' fuel; the gas is best read as oxyhydrogen, with fatal explosions and fraud convictions.
BC
Refuted by calculationRC resonance bending the water molecule
Sommerfeld's Atomic Structure and Spectral Lines: a fine-structure formula that proved exactly right (Dirac 1928) from a wrong orbit picture; Weber-law rival.
Goodenough and Braga's glass-electrolyte cell plating lithium with energy 'conserved' by a capacitor-like voltage; an insider anomaly the critics asked data for.
Rowbotham's 1865 Zetetic Astronomy: a stationary flat Earth argued from level water and perspective; the reader can calculate the Bedford Level sights.
A. G. Kelly on the Sagnac effect and uniform motion; his circular derivations are correct, the uniform straight-line shift is refuted by his own formula.
BC
Refuted by calculationSagnac shift in uniform motion
Steinmetz's circuit mathematics for arcs, line resonance and surges; arc oscillation and line equations stand, his radiation-resistance numbers do not.
CD
Establishedarc oscillation and line equations; radiation resistance numbers Refuted by calculation
Tyndall's 1860s measurements showing water vapour and other compounds absorb radiant heat while air does not; the base of greenhouse physics, plus calorescence.
CD
Establishedgas absorption pattern and water vapour as blanket
Rutherford's founding record of radioactivity and the nuclear atom, plus open questions: externally triggered decay, gravity and decay rate, the beta-energy puzzle.
BCD
Establishedcore claims; detonator trigger tested, not supported
Stiffler's Spatial Energy Coherence coils and ECAT circuit reporting 8.25 W in, 18.11 W out; no measurement method, replication or loop-closure test on record.
AC
Never properly testedECAT gain 2.194; Energy Lattice Not testable as stated
John St. Clair's five hyperspace patents: opposed coils making negative mass, 'hyperspace energy' cables and charge-propelled craft; none built on record.
Crookes's 1879 radiant matter lecture: cathode rays as a fourth state of matter; the observations stand, the molecule reading was superseded by the electron.
CD
Establishedobservations; carriers were not gas molecules
Poincare's 1909 lecture 'The New Mechanics': velocity-dependent mass, relativity principle and Lorentz gravity; mostly established, evidence overstated, Mercury fit fails.
BD
Establishedvelocity-dependent mass and relativity principle
J. J. Thomson's corpuscle (electron), plum-pudding atom and positive rays; the electron is Established, the atom model and transmutation claims are not.
BD
Establishedcorpuscles and e/m; plum-pudding atom Tested, not supported
Lorentz's 1906 electron lectures: the transformation, contraction by molecular forces and the deformable electron in an immovable ether, with limits he states himself.
BD
Establishedtransformation and free-ether invariance; rigid electron Tested, not supported
Jeans's classical case against equipartition, with a time-symmetric atom and electromagnetic electron; escape and mass formulas stand, the specific-heat rescue failed.
BD
Historically superseded but instructiveclassical answer to equipartition; Jeans escape Established
1899 moving-film spark spectra showing metal vapour crossing a 1 cm gap in microseconds; a clean mainstream question a gated Doppler test would settle.
Houston's 1871 coil-with-earth connection and Wahl's 21-inch Morton coil: sparks from pipe-connected objects 30 ft away, an early 'etheric force' episode; quantities never measured.
BC
Establishedqualitative earth-and-conductor spark effect; any quantity Never properly tested
Soddy's two radium books: disintegration, isotopes and the heat of radium as stored atomic energy, with a few printed slips; mainstream-successful, nothing suppressed.
A Untested anomaly or documented resistance · B Open question the arbiter left unsettled · C Reader can test or calculate it · D Depth and influence in alternative science
What changed this run
New project: Flat-Earth (Zetetic case: Rowbotham 1865/1881, Hampden, Carpenter, Zetetic Review 1893-97, Koreshan survey 1897, Dubay, Flat Earth Society wiki, Skiba, and the NASA/Army reports it cites). It is a selected project and so gets a card whatever its rank. Ranked 13: criterion A applies for the documented 1870 Bedford wager and its aftermath and for a record of tests run by interested parties; B because the refraction coefficient on the days of the low-sight-line sightings was never measured; C because the reader can run sight-line and refraction calculations and the gun and sun-altitude arithmetic; D for its lasting influence in alternative circles. The arbiter's verdicts are mostly negative (strong form Tested, not supported; definite-metric flat earth and Rowbotham's sun heights Refuted by calculation), so it sits below Wallace-Byran and LeBon-G, whose headline verdicts are the same but whose anomalies are better documented, and above Malove-Eugene, Kelly-Patrick and Rahn-Otto, whose claims are untested rather than tested and failed.
All 101 reviewed projects (folders with arbiter.md) are ranked. Ranks 13-100 of run 15 are now 14-101; previous_rank is the run 15 rank.
Only Flat-Earth changed since run 15 (the task names it as the only changed project), so only Flat-Earth needs an entry. It is a selected project, so the first 20 non-selected projects are unchanged in order and membership.
Run history
Each run is saved as its own dated page, so the set of pages is the history.
Run
Date
Projects
What changed
Page
16
2026-10-10
101
Flat-Earth enters at rank 13; the 88 projects from old rank 13 down move one place; no other project changes order.
this page
15
2026-10-09
100
Naudin-JL enters at rank 16; the 15 projects from old rank 16 down move one place; no other project changes order.
Ten newly reviewed projects enter; Rahn-Otto, Linerman-Peter, Su-CC and Hilgenberg-OC join the top 20, and all existing projects keep their relative order.