Future Energy eNews IntegrityResearchInstitute

Future Energy eNews IntegrityResearchInstitute.org Nov. 8, 2005

1) Energy Independence - Senators Reid and Lieberman create a firestorm with energy bills

2) Tesla's Drahtlose Elektrizitat - Wireless electricity transmission in German Nexus magazine

3) New Nanoscale Engine - Switches between two energy states

4) New Hydrogen Storage Method - Danish breakthrough improves stability and safety

5) Human Hands Emit Light - Biophoton discovery may have medical and healing applications

6) Invention Secrecy Activity - Fed of Amer Sci reports details but which are energy-related?

7) Powdered Metal: The Fuel of the Future - Nanosized metal flakes burn clean, are recyclable

1) Senators Reid and Lieberman Want Energy Independence for America

www.ApolloAlliance.org

Activities in Washington DC Give Us Hope of America's New Energy Future

At the same time, there are glimmers of hope and proactive proposals gaining momentum on the Hill.

Prominent figures in Washington, like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, have called for an Apollo Project for Energy. The project echoes Apollo Alliance's call for a massive commitment to support research and development necessary to develop alternative energy sources to free us from foreign oil by 2020.

Learn More About Senator Harry Reid's Plan: http://action.apolloalliance.org/ctt.asp?u=2413530&l=108168

Senator Reid joins a chorus of voices calling for proactive approaches to dealing with our perilous dependence on foreign oil. Representative Jay Inslee has proposed the New Apollo Energy Act. The act will invest in America's new energy future and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by including incentives for consumers to purchase fuel efficient vehicles. The act seeks to produce notable reductions in domestic oil consumption -- cuts of 600,000 barrels a day by 2010, 1,700,000 barrels by 2015, and 3,000,000 barrels by 2020.

Learn More About the New Apollo Energy Act: http://action.apolloalliance.org/ctt.asp?u=2413530&l=108169

Senator Joe Lieberman put forward a slate of legislative solutions to our energy crisis by unveiling a plan to break America's dependence on foreign oil. Senator Lieberman proposes to push the development and marketing of hybrid technologies and alternative fuel vehicles, and providing tax credits to help American manufacturers compete in this emerging market.

Learn More About Senator Lieberman's Plan: http://action.apolloalliance.org/ctt.asp?u=2413530&l=108170

Furthermore, Senator Barack Obama and Senator Richard G. Lugar are sponsoring a briefing on the future of the U.S. automotive industry in an era of historically high oil and gasoline prices. You can participate in this briefing tomorrow, Thursday, October 13th at 2:00pm EST at 902 Hart Senate Office Building.

Find Out More About the Briefing: http://action.apolloalliance.org/ctt.asp?u=2413530&l=108129

Leadership on the Hill reflects what the public knows: that the time for a solution is now. A recent poll by the Democracy Corps illustrated the public's continuing support for an Apollo-like crash program to achieve energy independence. According to their poll, two of the most strongly supported policy proposals in response to Hurricane Katrina were to:

1. Take steps to reduce our dependence on oil.

2. Make a massive commitment, similar to the Apollo project that put a man on the moon, to support the research and development necessary to develop alternative energy sources to free us from dependence on foreign oil within ten years.

Read the Poll

In the recent cover article of The Nation, Robert L. Borosage (Apollo Alliance Steering Committee Member) calls for a "real contract with America" in which Congress unleashes new energy for America. "In contrast to the Big Oil policies of the Administration that leave us more dependent on foreign supplies, pledge to launch a concerted drive for energy independence like the one called for by the Apollo Alliance. Create new jobs by investing in efficiency and alternative energy sources, helping America capture the growing green industries of the future."

Read the Article

For more information: www.apolloalliance.org

2) Teslas Drahtlose Elektrizitat (Tesla's Wireless Electricity)

Thomas Valone, Nexus (Germany) http://www.nexus-magazin.de/Artikel/01_Tesla.htm and Nexus (Autralia) http://www.nexusmagazine.com/

Overview

The Wardenclyffe Tower Centennial (1903-2003) is an opportunity to celebrate a monument to Nikola Tesla’s visionary genius. Recently, a resurgence of interest from prominent physicists has focused on the unusual method of pulsing a broadband Tesla coil at a repetition rate of 8 Hz to resonate with the Earth's Schumann cavity.[1][1] Nikola Tesla, the father of AC electricity, is responsible for recognizing that an atmospheric and a terrestrial storage battery already exists everywhere on earth, for the benefit of mankind. This is perhaps the “wheelwork of nature” that Tesla was referring to.[2][2] A century later, only a handful of visionary scientists recognize the untapped renewable reservoir of terawatts of electrical power (3000 gigawatts) that sits dormant above us, waiting to be utilized.

Background

In 2001, the Bush-mandated National Transmission Grid Study (NTGS 2001) was designed to identify the major transmission bottlenecks across the U.S. and identify technical and economic issues resulting from these transmission constraints. With deregulation of U.S. utilities and the lack of jurisdiction for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the U.S. is fighting an electrical energy crisis which right now, costs consumers hundreds of millions of dollars annually due to interregional transmission congestion. There is no longer any economic incentive nor any FERC eminent domain for states to provide rights-of-way, besides the lack of Federal compensation to utilities to build new transmission lines.

Historically, the creation of electrical utilities was beset with scandal, such as the six years of Congressional hearings starting in 1928 in which “thousands of pages of testimony revealed a systematic, covert attempt to shape opinion in favor of private utilities, in which half truths and at times outright lies presented municipal systems in a consistently bad light.”[3][3] Today, US AID funds the U.S. Energy Association to train utility representatives from the former Russian states on how to reliably monitor electricity usage and collect money from customers in their respective countries, while those economically challenged people struggle for sufficient wages.

At a Washington DC conference which this author attended, called “Implementing a National Energy Strategy: Breaking Down the Barriers” also sponsored by the US Energy Association (12/01), only the depressing news about unresolved US electricity headaches were discussed. Editor of Energy Daily, Llewelyn King finally concluded, “We are using 19^th century technology for electrical transmission.” He then called for a paradigm shift toward new technology and cited the “monster infrastructure problems” within the U.S. as compared to the developing countries. A year later (June, 2003) the US DOE held an emergency meeting with utility heads as a natural gas crisis looms from the lack of diversification of new electrical power generation facilities. “Innovation in new technology and renewable sources are needed in the long term to improve the environment and meet rising demand,” summarized an Investors Business Daily editor about the crisis.[4][4]

In November, 2002, the American Council for the United Nations University called for wireless energy transmission to circumvent the need for transmission lines as part of their “Millennium Project.” In cooperation with the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), the beaming of microwave energy and the creation of a world energy organization was seen to actively address the 2020 challenges to global electricity supply, especially in areas of massive urban concentrations.[5][5]

In 1940, “the United States prided itself on using half the world’s electricity.”[6][6] Since 1980, the U.S. has also doubled its dependence on foreign oil and doubled its electrical transmission grid inefficiency. From 31 Quads (quadrillion BTUs) generated, a full 2/3 is totally wasted in “conversion losses” with only about 11 Quads (3.7 trillion kWh) delivered to the end-user.[7][7] Instead of trying to build 2 power plants per week (at 300 MW each) for the next 20 years (only to have a total of additional 6 trillion kWh available by 2020), as the Bush-Cheney Administration wants to do, we simply need to eliminate the 7 trillion kWh of conversion losses in our present electricity generation modality.

History of Tesla’s Wireless Energy

The fateful decision in 1905 by J. P. Morgan to abandon Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower project on Long Island (after investing $150,000), was a result of learning that it would be designed mainly for wireless transmission of electrical power, rather than telegraphy. No more money was forthcoming for the project that Morgan initiated, even when the equipment cost alone cost about $200,000. Morgan believed that he would “have nothing to sell except antennas (and refused) to contribute to that charity.”[8][8] Tesla tried and tried for years until in 1917 the U.S. government blew up the abandoned Wardenclyffe tower because suspected German spies were seen “lurking” around it. With Edison as his willing ally, Morgan even publicly discredited Tesla’s name, so that all of the five school textbook publishers of the time removed any reference to him. Any wonder why even today, 100 years later, hardly anyone knows who Tesla is?

The rest of this article will present a physics and electrical engineering argument for a subsequently forgotten engineering alternative for energy generation and transmission.

As Tesla experimented with a 1.5 MW system in 1899 at Colorado Springs, he was amazed to find that pulses of electricity he sent out passed across the entire globe returned with “undiminished strength.” He said, “It was a result so unbelievable that the revelation at first almost stunned me.”[9][9] This verified the tremendous efficiency of his peculiar method of pumping current into a spherical ball to charge it up before discharging it as a pulse of electrical energy, a “longitudinal” acoustic-type of compression wave, rather than an electromagnetic Hertzian-type of transverse wave. It was therefore, more akin to electrostatic discharge than wave mechanics.

Tesla also planned to include a stationary resonant wave creation globally, within the earth-ionosphere cavity, as part of the wireless transmission of power. Examining the pair of 1900 patents #645,576 and #649,621 each using the same figure on the first page, we find in the first patent that Tesla has designed a quarter-wave antenna (50 miles of secondary coil wire for a 200 mile long wavelength). More importantly is the sphere on the top which is supposed to be a conductive surface on a balloon raised high enough to be radiating in “rarefied air.”[10][10]

As Tesla states,

“That communication without wires to any point of the globe is practical with such apparatus would need no demonstration, but through a discovery which I made I obtained absolute certainty. Popularly explained it is exactly this: When we raise the voice and hear an echo in reply, we know that the sound of the voice must have reached a distant wall, or boundary, and must have been reflected from the same. Exactly as the sound, so an electrical wave is reflected, and the same evidence which is afforded by an echo is offered by an electrical phenomena known as a ‘stationary’ wave – that is, a wave with fixed nodal and ventral regions. Instead of sending sound vibrations toward a distant wall, I have sent electrical vibrations toward the remote boundaries of the earth, and instead of the wall, the earth has replied. In place of an echo, I have obtained a stationary electrical wave, a wave reflected from afar.”[11][11]

Nikola Tesla's discovery of pulsed propagation of energy does not resemble the standard transverse electromagnetic waves so familiar to electrical engineers everywhere. Many engineers and physicists have dismissed Tesla's wireless energy transmission as unscientific without examining the unusual characteristics and benefits of longitudinal waves, which are the z-component solutions of Maxwell equations. Tesla wrote, “That electrical energy can be economically transmitted without wires to any terrestrial distance, I have unmistakably established in numerous observations, experiments and measurements, qualitative and quantitative. These have demonstrated that it is practicable to distribute power from a central plant in unlimited amounts, with a loss not exceeding a small fraction of one per cent in the transmission, even to the greatest distance, twelve thousand miles – to the opposite end of the globe.”[12][12]

Tesla was an electrical genius who revolutionized our world with AC power in a way that DC power could never have accomplished, since the resistance of any transmission lines, (except perhaps, superconductive ones), is prohibitive for direct current. He deserved much better treatment from the tycoons of his age, than to spend the last 40 years of his life in abject poverty. However, he was too much of a gentleman to hold a grudge. Instead, regarding the magnifying transmitter, Tesla wrote in his autobiography, “I am unwilling to accord to some small-minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. My project was retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time. But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.”[13][13]

Tesla’s World System

Tesla’s “World System” was conceptually based on three inventions of his:

1. The Tesla Transformer (Tesla coil)

2. The Magnifying Transmitter (transformer adapted to excite the earth)

3. The Wireless System (efficient transmission of electrical energy without wires)

Tesla states, “The first World System power plant can be put in operation in nine months. With this power plant it will be practicable to attain electrical activities up to 10 million horsepower (7.5 billion watts), and it is designed to serve for as many technical achievements as are possible without due expense.”[14][14] Tesla’s calculated power levels are conservatively estimated and recently updated with contemporary physics calculations by Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher. For example, Professor Rauscher shows that the earth’s ionosphere and magnetosphere contains sufficient potential energy, at least 3 billion kilowatts (3 terawatts) respectively, so that the resonant excitation of the earth-ionosphere cavity can reasonably be expected to increase the amplitude of natural “Schumann” frequencies, facilitating the capture of useful electrical power. Tesla knew that the earth could be treated as one big spherical conductor and the ionosphere as another bigger spherical conductor, so that together they have parallel plates and thus, comprise a “spherical capacitor.”[15][15] Rauscher calculates the capacitance to be about 15,000 microfarads for the complete earth-ionosphere cavity capacitor. In 1952, W. O. Schumann predicted the “self-oscillations” of the conducting sphere of the earth, surrounded by an air layer and ionosphere, without knowing that Tesla had found the earth’s fundamental frequency fifty years earlier.[16][16]

"All that is necessary," says Dr. James Corum, is that Tesla’s transmitter power and carrier frequency be capable of round-the-world propagation." In fact, Tesla (in the L.A. Times, Dec. 1904) stated, "With my transmitter I actually sent electrical vibrations around the world and received them again, and I then went on to develop my machinery." Dr. Corum notes in an article on the ELF (extremely low frequency) oscillator of Tesla’s that the tuned circuit of Tesla’s magnifying transmitter was the whole earth-ionosphere cavity.[17][17]

Corum explains that a mechanical analog of the lumped circuit Tesla coil is an easier model for engineers to understand.[18][18] From a mechanical engineering viewpoint, the "magnifying factor" can be successfully applied to such a circuit. "The circuit is limited only by the circuit resistance. At resonance, the current through the circuit rises until the voltage across the resistance is equal to the source voltage. This circuit was a source of deep frustration to Edison because voltmeter readings taken around the loop did not obey Kirchoff's laws!" As a result, Edison claimed such a circuit was only good for electrocution chairs.

Earth’s Renewable Energy

Tesla’s world system activates the earth’s renewable electrical storage battery which normally sits dormant except during lightning strikes. Regarding simply the electrostatic energy storage capacity of the ionosphere, Dr. Oleg Jefimenko, author of Electrostatic Motors, explains that during one electric storm, the atmospheric electric field dissipates at least 0.2 terawatts (billion kilowatts), indicating that the entire earth must have even more total available energy.[19][19]

Furthermore, the power loss experienced by Tesla’s pulsed, electrostatic discharge mode of propagation was less than 5% over 25,000 miles. Dr. Van Voorhies states, "...path losses are 0.25 dB/Mm at 10 Hz," which is so minimal it is difficult for engineers to believe, who are used to transverse waves, a resistive medium, and line-of-sight propagation modes that can dissipate 10 dB/km at 5 MHz.[20][20] The capacitive dome of the Wardenclyffe Tower, like the conductive balloon of Tesla’s ‘576 patent, is a key to the understanding of the longitudinal waves. Dr. Rauscher quotes Tesla, "Later he compared it to a Van de Graaff generator. He also explained the purpose of Wardenclyffe...'one does not need to be an expert to understand that a device of this kind is not a producer of electricity like a dynamo, but merely a receiver or collector with amplifying qualities.'"[21][21]

Only a few great physicists like Drs. Elizabeth Rauscher, James Corum, and Konstantin Meyl,[22][22] have realized that Tesla was very practical when he proposed the resonant generation and wireless transmission of useful electrical power. Tesla’s knowledge of atmospheric electricity transduction was so extensive and reliable that Jim Corum, who has been funded to continue Tesla’s work, recently told me, “You just have to do exactly what Telsa did and you will consistently get the same results he did.”[23][23] After returning from his experiments at Colorado Springs in 1900, Nikola Tesla stated, “If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations.”[24][24] In view of our present fossil-fuel-caused global warming, Tesla seems very prophetic from his vantage point of a century ago.

High Transmission Integrity and Low Loss

Tesla states, “As to the transmission of power through space, that is a project which I considered absolutely certain of success long since. Years ago I was in the position to transmit wireless power to any distance without limit other than that imposed by the physical dimensions of the globe. In my system it makes no difference what the distance is. The efficiency of the transmission can be as high as 96 or 97 per cent, and there are practically no losses except such as are inevitable in the running of the machinery. When there is no receiver there is no energy consumption anywhere. When the receiver is put on, it draws power. That is the exact opposite of the Hertz-wave system. In that case, if you have a plant of 1,000 horsepower (750 kW), it is radiating all the time whether the energy is received or not; but in my system no power is lost. When there are no receivers, the plant consumes only a few horsepower necessary to maintain the vibration; it runs idle, as the Edison plant when the lamps and motors are shut off.”[25][25]

These amazing facts are explained by Corum(s) and Spainol, “…the distinction between Tesla’s system and ‘Hertzian’ waves is to be clearly understood. Tesla, and others of his day, used the term ‘Hertzian waves’ to describe what we call today, energy transfer by wireless transverse electromagnetic (TEM) radiation…no one wants to stand in front of a high power radar antenna. For these, E and H are in phase, the power flow is a ‘real’ quantity (as opposed to reactive power), and the surface integral of E x H (Poynting vector) is nonzero. The case is not so simple in an unloaded power system, an RF transformer with a tuned secondary, or with a cavity resonator. In these situations, the fields are in phase quadrature, the circulating power is reactive and the average Poynting flux is zero – unless a load is applied. They deliver no power without a resistive load. These are clearly the power systems which Tesla created. The polyphase power distribution system was created by him in the 1880s and inaugurated at Niagara Falls in 1895. The RF transformer was invented and patented by him in the 1890s. Terrestrial resonances he experimentally discovered at the turn of the century. And, for the next 40 years he tried to bring through to commercial reality this global power system. Today, millions of us have working scale models of it in our kitchens, while the larger version sits idle.”[26][26] Note for a spherical, electrostatic pulse discharge, E is radial and H is helical since J is radial (longitudinal or irrotational current).[27][27] This is a total anathema to transverse wave physics textbook images of E and H which are normally perpendicular to each other.

Biological and Economic Impact

Another common criticism of the Tesla wireless power system is regarding its possible biological effects. Calculating the circulating reactive power, Corum(s) and Spainol find a density of a microVAR per cubic meter at 7.8 Hz, which is quite small, while it is well-known that such a frequency is very biologically compatible.[28][28] The authors also look at the present 100 V/m earth-ionosphere field and again find that raising it by a factor of 4 to 10 will pose no ill effects. (Thunderstorms do it all of the time around the world.)

In terms of economic theory, many countries will benefit from this service. Only private, dispersed receiving stations will be needed. Just like television and radio, a single resonant energy receiver is required, which may eventually be built into appliances, so no power cord will be necessary! Just think: monthly electric utility bills from old-fashioned, fossil-fueled, lossy electrified wire-grid delivery services will be optional, much like “cable TV” is today. In the 21^st century, “Direct TV” is the rage, which is an exact parallel of Tesla’s “Direct Electricity.”

Let us fulfill this prophesy of Tesla, making it a triumphal success, by supporting a philanthropic, international wireless power station installed on a remote island to electrify the whole world. The benefits, immediately making direct electricity available everywhere, are too numerous to count. With California electric rates up to 15 cents per kWh (double the US average) the old-fashioned transmission grid method is becoming too expensive to maintain.

Become educated about Tesla's wireless energy transmission discovery at www.IntegrityResearchInstitute.org and the Wardenclyffe Tower potential for transforming the world’s generation and delivery of electricity. Read Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla’s Science of Energy for more details about this and other fascinating aspects of Tesla’s inventions.

About the Author

Thomas Valone received his Master’s in Physics from the State University of NY at Buffalo (1984) and his Ph.D. in General Engineering from Kennedy-Western University (2003). He taught physics, AC electricity, microprocessors, digital logic and environmental science at Erie Community College in NYS (1982-1987), and is the author of several books and about 100 articles and reports. Presently, Dr. Valone is President of Integrity Research Institute a non-profit organization dedicated to energy research and public education. www.IntegrityResearchInstitute.org Email: iri@erols.com

3) The latest nanotech device: Venetian blinds

Kurt Kleiner 27 October 2005 NewScientist.com news service http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8224

A molecule that flips its arms like the slats on a Venetian blind might in future find uses in computer displays, computer memory, or even windows that become tinted at the flick of a switch.

Molecules whose shapes or movements can be easily controlled are important for nanotechnology. One kind that promises to be useful are those shaped in a helix that can be made to reverse its direction. When that happens the molecule is said to reverse its chirality.

Researchers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, were working with a helical polymer called polyguanidine. Polyguanidine actually switched chirality so easily that it was difficult to control. To try to make the helices more stable, the researchers stuck side chains of anthracene along the helical backbone.

One characteristic of chiral molecules is that they are optically active - when polarised light passes through them in solution, its plane is rotated one way or another, depending on the chirality of the molecules.

Switch point

The researchers found the new molecule rotated light, as expected, but that the direction of rotation switched depending on the solvent used. Raising or lowering the temperature of the solution above or below 38.5°C also caused a switch.

At first the researchers thought the chirality of the molecules was changing. But now they have discovered that the helices are staying put. Instead it is the anthracene side chains that are moving back and forth in unison, like shutters being opened and closed, or Venetian blinds being flipped up and down.

The flipping occurs because the molecule has two different states - one high-energy and one low-energy – and these are stable at different temperatures and in solvents with different polarities.

Prasad Polavarapu, a chemist at Vanderbilt and part of the research team, says the shutter action might some day make the molecule useful as a nanoscale engine, part of a computer display screen, or as a component in a computer memory. The molecule might also be attached to a glass substrate and used to instantly tint a window.

Journal reference: Angewandte Chemie International Edition (vol 44, p 2)

Nano-electronics boosted atom by atom
20 October 2005
Noise fine-tunes nanoscale sensor
15 October 2005
Micro-organisms may be turned into nano-circuitry
06 October 2005
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Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have invented a technology which may be an important step towards the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material.

With the new hydrogen tablet, it becomes much simpler to use the environmentally-friendly energy of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a non-polluting fuel, but since it is a light gas it occupies too much volume, and it is flammable. Consequently, effective and safe storage of hydrogen has challenged researchers world-wide for almost three decades. At the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet which enables storage and transport of hydrogen in solid form.

“Should you drive a car 600 km using gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel tank with a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normal gasoline tank”, says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department of Chemistry at DTU.

The hydrogen tablet is safe and inexpensive. In this respect it is different from most other hydrogen storage technologies. You can literally carry the material in your pocket without any kind of safety precaution. The reason is that the tablet consists solely of ammonia absorbed efficiently in sea-salt. Ammonia is produced by a combination of hydrogen with nitrogen from the surrounding air, and the DTU-tablet therefore contains large amounts of hydrogen. Within the tablet, hydrogen is stored as long as desired, and when hydrogen is needed, ammonia is released through a catalyst that decomposes it back to free hydrogen. When the tablet is empty, you merely give it a “shot” of ammonia and it is ready for use again.

“The technology is a step towards making the society independent of fossil fuels” says Professor Jens Nørskov, director of the Nanotechnology Center at DTU. He, Claus Hviid Christensen, Tue Johannessen, Ulrich Quaade and Rasmus Zink Sørensen are the five researchers behind the invention. The advantages of using hydrogen are numerous. It is CO2-free, and it can be produced by renewable energy sources, e.g. wind power.

“We have a new solution to one of the major obstacles to the use of hydrogen as a fuel. And we need new energy technologies – oil and gas will not last, and without energy, there is no modern society”, says Jens Nørskov.

Together with DTU and SeeD Capital Denmark, the researchers have founded the company Amminex A/S, which will focus on the further development and commercialization of the technology.

Human hands glow, but fingernails release the most light, according to a recent study that found all parts of the hand emit detectable levels of light.

The findings support prior research that suggested most living things, including plants, release light. Since disease and illness appear to affect the strength and pattern of the glow, the discovery might lead to less-invasive ways of diagnosing patients.

Mitsuo Hiramatsu, a scientist at the Central Research Laboratory at Hamamatsu Photonics in Japan, who led the research, told Discovery News that the hands are not the only parts of the body that shine light by releasing photons, or tiny, energized increments of light.

"Not only the hands, but also the forehead and bottoms of our feet emit photons," Hiramatsu said, and added that in terms of hands "the presence of photons means that our hands are producing light all of the time."

The light is invisible to the naked eye, so Hiramatsu and his team used a powerful photon counter to "see" it.

The detector found that fingernails release 60 photons, fingers release 40 and the palms are the dimmest of all, with 20 photons measured.

The findings are published in the current Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology.

Hiramatsu is not certain why fingernails light up more than the other parts of the hand, but he said, "It may be because of the optical window property of fingernails," meaning that the fingernail works somewhat like a prism to scatter light.

To find out what might be creating the light in the first place, he and colleague Kimitsugu Nakamura had test subjects hold plastic bottles full of hot or cold water before their hand photons were measured. The researchers also pumped nitrogen or oxygen gas into the dark box where the individuals placed their hands as they were being analyzed.

Warm temperatures increased the release of photons, as did the introduction of oxygen. Rubbing mineral oil over the hands also heightened light levels.

Based on those results, the scientists theorize the light "is a kind of chemiluminescence," a luminescence based on chemical reactions, such as those that make fireflies glow. The researchers believe 40 percent of the light results from the chemical reaction that constantly occurs as our hand skin reacts with oxygen.

Since mineral oil, which permeates into the skin, heightens the light, they also now think 60 percent of the glow may result from chemical reactions that take place inside the skin.

Fritz-Albert Popp, a leading world expert on biologically related photons at The International Institute of Biophysics in Germany, agrees with the findings and was not surprised by them.

Popp told Discovery News, "One may find clear correlations to kind and degree (type and severity) of diseases."

Popp and his team believe the light from the forehead and the hands pulses out with the same basic rhythms, but that these pulses become irregular in unhealthy people. A study he conducted on a muscular sclerosis patient seemed to validate the theory.

Both he and Hiramatsu hope future studies will reveal more about human photon emissions, which could lead to medical diagnosis applications.

6) Invention Secrecy Activity

The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 requires the government to impose "secrecy orders" on certain patent applications that contain sensitive information, thereby restricting disclosure of the invention and withholding the grant of a patent. Remarkably, this requirement can be imposed even when the application is generated and entirely owned by a private individual or company without government sponsorship or support.

There are several types of secrecy order which range in severity from simple prohibitions on export (but allowing other disclosure for legitimate business purposes) up to classification, requiring secure storage of the application and prohibition of all disclosure.

The Armed Services Patent Advisory Board (ASPAB), which performed security review of patent applications on behalf of the Department of Defense, was terminated in 1997 under section 906 of Public Law 105-85, and its functions were transferred to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DoD Directive 5105.62, 9/30/98, sect. 5.4.5).

7) Powdered metal: The fuel of the future

IF smog-choked streets test our love for petrol and diesel engines, then rocketing fuel prices and global warming could end that relationship once and for all. But before you start saving for the fuel-cell-powered electric car that industry experts keep promising, there's something you should know. The car of the future will run on metal.

So reckons Dave Beach, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, who has come up with a plan to transform the way we fuel our engines. Chunks of metal such as iron, aluminium or boron are the thing, he believes. Turn them into powder with grains just nanometres across and the stuff becomes highly reactive. Ignite it, and it releases copious quantities of energy. With a modified engine and a tankful of metal, Beach calculates that an average saloon car could travel three times as far as the equivalent petrol-powered vehicle. Better still, because of the way that this metal nano-fuel burns, it is almost completely non-polluting. That means no carbon dioxide, no dust, no soot and no nitrogen oxides. What's more, this fuel is fully rechargeable: treat your spent nanoparticles with a little hydrogen and the stuff can be burnt again and again. It could spell the start of a new iron age, and not just for cars. All kinds of engines, from domestic heating units to the turbines in power stations, could be adapted to burn metal.

Topping up your tank with what are essentially iron filings might sound bizarre, but vehicles can run on all sorts of materials, from methane to coal dust or gunpowder. So why not metal too? After all, burning a heap of powdered iron releases almost twice as much energy as the same volume of petrol. And replacing iron with boron gives you five times as much.

Rockets already use metal powder as fuel. A dash of aluminium gives extra oomph to the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters, for instance, and metal powder is used in rocket-powered torpedoes.

However, putting metal inside a rocket engine is a very different proposition from using it in a car engine. When granules of metals such as iron and aluminium come into contact with air, they become coated with a layer of oxide that must be removed before the metal can ignite. To kick off combustion in most metals, you need a heat source with a temperature of at least 2000 °C, which is high enough to vaporise the oxide layer and expose the bare, reactive metal beneath. That might be fine for a rocket, but it's not so simple for a car engine. Another problem is that once the vaporised metal oxide starts to cool, it solidifies and forms ash. While high temperatures and clouds of ash present no problems in a one-shot rocket, they create a serious mess for anyone trying to burn metal powder in an internal combustion engine.

Solomon Labinov, also a researcher at Oak Ridge, is all too familiar with this problem. In the early 1980s, while he was the director of an engineering institute in Kiev, Ukraine, he and his team tried burning micrometre-sized iron particles in an internal combustion engine. They modified the engine to work at high temperatures, but found that the oxide ash deposited on the pistons, cylinder walls and valves, clogging up the engine. They couldn't find a way round the problem and gave up.

Labinov subsequently moved to the US, and went to work at Oak Ridge. In 2003 he suggested to Beach and theorist Bobby Sumpter that they take a fresh look at the problem, this time using nanoscale particles.

In experiments they found that iron nanoparticles measuring about 50 nanometres across ignited far more easily than the larger granules of iron that Labinov had worked with: heating them to around 250 °C, or even just a spark, could do the job. And the more the researchers looked, the more they realised that the nanoparticles behaved in a very different way to their less finely divided cousins.

Nanoparticles burn much more easily because their surface area to volume ratio is huge. Iron reacts very readily with oxygen, so if a lot of it is exposed to air at the same time, oxidation can generate enough heat to ignite the metal spontaneously. To prevent this, nanoparticles are usually given a protective oxide coating during manufacturing. But even with an oxide layer, the huge surface area of these nanoparticles means that with just a little heat, it is easy for oxygen molecules to diffuse through and trigger combustion.

One consequence of this is that once the nanoparticles are ignited by a spark, say, they burn rapidly and the combustion temperature peaks at around 800 °C - hot enough to do useful work but not so high as to melt an alloy engine. And crucially, unlike the micrometre-sized particles, nanoparticles don't burn hot enough to vaporise or even melt. They just oxidise, leaving a heap of oxide nanoparticles. And that means no sticking to the walls of the cylinder, and no clogged engine.

The tidy heap of iron oxide left over from the combustion process gave Beach an idea: he realised that it would be easy to convert the iron oxide back into usable fuel. He heated the burnt fuel to 425 °C in a flow of hydrogen. The iron oxide particles were reduced to iron, and the hydrogen combined with oxygen to form water. Now the fuel was ready to burn again.

There was one more problem to solve if the particles were to have any real potential as fuel. Individually, nanoparticles burn in a flash, releasing all their heat in a millisecond or so. But to make the metal fuel useful in a wide range of engines, the rate of heat production should not be so fast that an engine cannot deal efficiently with the heat produced. In internal combustion engines, for example, each burst of combustion can last anywhere between 5 and 20 milliseconds. If heat is released any faster, the fuel is used below its maximum efficiency.

So the team attempted to limit how quickly their fuel burnt by pressing the nanoparticles into larger clusters. The idea was to limit both how fast oxygen could diffuse into the nanoparticles and how fast heat could flow out of them, so reducing the rate of heat release.

Beach and his colleagues found they could create nanoparticle clusters weighing anything from 1 to 200 milligrams each, and by adjusting their size, shape and density they could control the burn rate. While single particles would burn in just milliseconds, the largest clusters could take from 500 milliseconds to two seconds.

With the first stage of the research complete, the team now plans to design an engine that can run on the fuel. It would be relatively easy, Beach believes, to convert external combustion engines such as the gas turbines that power jet aircraft and vehicles such as tanks, or even those used to generate electricity in power stations. These engines might operate on metal fuel without too much difficulty, he suspects, though they would certainly need modifications to the fuel-delivery systems, and he would need to find a way to collect the spent fuel.

Another option is to use the fuel to power a Stirling engine, an efficient external combustion engine in which a fluid or gas in a cylinder is alternately cooled and heated to move a piston (New Scientist, 11 December 1999, p 30). Stirling engines are used in domestic combined heat and power units, for example, and for cooling satellites.

When it comes to cars, a Stirling engine is a possibility: NASA and a number of car manufacturers, including Ford, have already experimented with Stirling engines designed to power vehicles. But Beach also hopes it will be possible to use his metal fuel in an internal combustion engine. A modified diesel engine might be able to burn nanoparticle powder as a fuel, just as a conventional diesel engine uses a mist of diesel fuel.

Beach suggests that metal powder or clusters could be injected into the engine cylinders from a storage tank, possibly using a jet of air, which could also supply the oxygen for combustion. A spark plug would trigger ignition and burnt fuel would be carried from the cylinder by the exhaust gases.

Beach's team must also find a way to collect that spent fuel. One possibility is to store it in the fuel canister, with a movable membrane dividing the canister into two sections, one for fresh and one for spent fuel. The burnt fuel might be collected using a filter or, since iron oxide powder is ferromagnetic, an electromagnet. When a driver needed a top-up, the entire canister could be unclipped and exchanged for a fresh one at a filling station, and the used fuel would then be recharged.

“Scrapyards full of old cars could become fuel for the vehicles of tomorrow”

The result would be an engine similar to a conventional one, but which emits no carbon dioxide, harmful particulates or even nitrogen oxides. These compounds usually form in combustion at high temperatures, but Beach has shown that he can lower temperatures to about 525 °C by varying the size of the clusters. However, plenty of work is still needed to strike the right balance between temperature, speed of combustion and engine efficiency.

A vehicle running on metal fuel should please both drivers and environmental campaigners. Beach calculates that a fuel tank holding 33 litres of his iron fuel will power a car engine for the same distance as a 50-litre tank of conventional petrol or diesel.

There are still major drawbacks, however, the most significant of which is weight, according to Nathan Glasgow, a consultant at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think tank in Snowmass, Colorado. Although iron is a compact fuel compared to hydrogen, it is also extremely heavy, and even though its high energy content allows you to almost halve the size of a typical 50-litre fuel tank and still get the same energy out, a tank of fuel would weigh about 100 kilograms - more than twice as heavy as the petrol it replaces. And because the spent fuel is kept on board, unlike the polluting by-products of conventional fuel, this weight won't decrease as you drive - you must always lug the full load around. The weight of fuel will also add to the cost of shipping it back and forth to recycling facilities.

David Keith, a physicist at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, is satisfied that the technology itself is sound, but believes there are fundamental difficulties with iron as a fuel. Even if everything works perfectly, he says, the fuel is simply too heavy to be really useful.

So for the ultimate in clean, green driving, perhaps hydrogen really is the answer. After all, it packs over 12 times as much energy per kilogram as iron.

Beach is unconvinced. Of course hydrogen is important, he says, but you don't want to be filling your tank with it. "What we're saying is that metal fuel is a more convenient, safer, and more practical energy carrier than hydrogen." And it's true that engineers are still struggling to find ways to store hydrogen at densities high enough to make it a practical alternative to petrol. In contrast, metal fuel is stable at room temperature, so it is easy to store and transport. "We've got a solid at ambient pressure. So moving it around on freight cars or storing it for long periods of time isn't a problem," says Beach.

Besides, there's a potentially more serious problem with hydrogen-powered vehicles that the use of metal would sidestep. The water produced by hydrogen fuel cells is usually just allowed to escape into the atmosphere. Some climate scientists are concerned that the huge amounts of water vapour released by millions of hydrogen-powered cars and trucks would accelerate global warming.

Recycling metal oxide fuel with hydrogen also produces water vapour, but it would be generated at large recycling units rather than by vehicles out on the road. This means that it would be simple to collect the water and recycle it - perhaps even using electrolysis to convert it back into hydrogen.

It might even be possible to dispense with hydrogen altogether. If carbon sequestration becomes viable, carbon monoxide could be used to recycle spent metal fuel, creating carbon dioxide. Carbon monoxide is a common by-product of coal gasification - one of the technologies likely to become more important as the coal industry attempts to reduce its contribution to global warming. Use this carbon monoxide directly for recycling fuel and the industry would get more useful energy out of its coal than before.

Beach has even got some solutions to the weight issue. Use aluminium nanoparticles rather than iron, for example, and you get about four times as much energy per kilogram. With boron you'd get almost six times as much. Of course, since these metals cost more than iron, the fuel would be more expensive in the first place. Aluminium, for instance, costs about 15 times as much as iron.

Clearly it is very early days for metal power. The Oak Ridge researchers are still applying for grants to build a prototype engine, and Beach has yet to carry out a full analysis to find out whether his fuel could be cost-effective. The team also plans a series of experiments to optimise the size of its nanoparticles, as well as to investigate the best way to package, inject and collect the stuff in a real engine. And even if their work succeeds, who is going to buy the first metal-powered car when there's nowhere to fuel it, and who is going to build a network of fuel stations until there are cars to fill?

At the very least, metal-burning engines are another entry in the list of alternatives to oil. And whatever happens, Beach's remarkable idea does raise one interesting possibility. In the past, energy magnates have earned billions from coal, oil and gas fields. In the future, they could grow rich from scrapyards full of yesterday's cars, by transforming them into fuel for the vehicles of tomorrow.

[1][1] Valone, Thomas, Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla’s Science of Energy, Kempton, IL, Adventures Unlimited Press, 2002

[2][2] “..it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.” –Tesla addressing the Amer. Inst. of Elec. Eng., 1891

[3][3] Utility Corporations, Document 92, U.S. Senate, 70^th Congress, 1^st Session, 1928. See summary by Ernest Gruening, The Public Pays: A Study of Power Propaganda, New York, Vanguard Press, 1931.

[4][4] Stavropoulos, William “Natural Gas Woes Won’t Disappear Unless Government Acts” Investors Business Daily, Perspective, June 2, 2003

[5][5] “Wireless Transmission in Earth’s Energy Future” Environment News Service, Nov. 19, 2002, http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-19-01.asp

[6][6] Nye, David Electrifying America, Social Meanings of a New Technology, Boston, MIT Press, 1997, p. 387

[7][7] “National Energy Security Post 9/11” U.S. Energy Association, June, 2002, p. 34

[8][8] H.W. Jones, “Nikola Tesla, Generator of Social Change,” Proc. of the Inter. Tesla Symp., 1986, p.1-89

[9][9] Nikola Tesla, “World System of Wireless Transmission of Energy,” Telegraph and Telephone Age, Oct. 16, 1927, p. 457.

[10][10] International patents, as well as US patents, are now available online from http://gb.espacenet.com/espacenet/

[11][11] Nikola Tesla, “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy,” Century, June, 1900

[12][12] Nikola Tesla, “The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires as a Means for Furthering Peace,” Electrical World and Engineer. Jan. 7, 1905, p. 21

[15][15] Rauscher, Elizabeth, and W. Bise, “Harnessing the Earth-Ionosphere Resonant Cavity,” in Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla’s Science of Energy, p. 233

[16][16] W.O. Schumann, Z. Naturforsch, 72, p. 149-154, 250-252, 1952. (See also Jackson, J.D., Classical Electrodynamics, New York, J. Wiley, 1975, p. 363)

[17][17] Corum, James, and Ken Corum, “Tesla’s ELF Oscillator for Wireless Transmission,” in Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla’s Science of Energy, p. 219

[18][18] Corum, James, "Tesla & the Magnifying Transmitter: A Popular Study for Engineers," in Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla’s Science of Energy, p. 198

[19][19] Jefimenko, Oleg “Original Electrostatic Energy Resources, Electrostatic Generators, and Electrostatic Motors” Future Energy: Proceedings of the Conference on Future Energy, May 1, 1999, p. 70

[20][20] VanVoorhies, Kurt, “Prospects of Worldwide Wireless Power,” in Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla’s Science of Energy, p. 151

[22][22] Professor Konstantin Meyl sells a “Demo Set” that is a miniature dual dome like Tesla patent ‘576, a wireless longitudinal wave demonstration kit, available at http://www.k-meyl.de/Demo-Set/body_demo-set.html (Enter this link at www.freetranslation.com for English).

[23][23] Corum, James, private conversation, June 15, 2003.

[24][24] Nikola Tesla, 1900, as quoted in “Great Scientist, Forgotten Genius, Nikola Tesla” by Chris Bird and Oliver Nichelson, New Age, #21, Feb. 1977, p. 42

[25][25] Nikola Tesla, “Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the AIEE,” May 18, 1917.

[26][26] Corum, James, and M. Spaniol, K. Corum “Concerning Cavity Q,” Proceedings of the International Tesla Symposium, 1988, p. 3-15

[27][27] Jackson, J.D., p. 222 (See also Section 7.6 and 7.9 for pulse propagation through a highly dispersive medium like the ionosphere or magnetosphere.)

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