New Generation of Radiant Energy Devices

Nikola Tesla's Viewpoint

Brooklyn Eagle
(July 10, 1932)

I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device. Cosmic ray investigation is a subject that is very close to me. I was the first to discover these rays and I naturally feel toward them as I would toward my own flesh and blood. I have advanced a theory of the cosmic rays and at every step of my investigations I have found it completely justified.

The attractive features of the cosmic rays is their constancy. They shower down on us throughout the whole 24 hours, and if a plant is developed to use their power it will not require devices for storing energy as would be necessary with devices using wind, tide or sunlight.

All of my investigations seem to point to the conclusion that they are small particles, each carrying so small a charge that we are justified in calling them neutrons. They move with great velocity, exceeding that of light.

More than 25 years ago I began my efforts to harness the cosmic rays and I can now state that I have succeeded in operating a motive device by means of them. I will tell you in the most general way, the cosmic ray ionizes the air, setting free many charges ions and electrons. These charges are captured in a condenser which is made to discharge through the circuit of the motor. I have hopes of building my motor on a large scale, but circumstances have not been favorable to carrying out my plan.

Historical Background

The quest for radiant energy is not new. In fact, the Father of the 20th Century... Nikola Tesla experimented quite intensively with radiant energy and even devised a device to capture cosmic rays. Later, Tesla’s work was greatly expanded by the research and inventions of T. Henry Moray.

T. Henry Moray not only developed a super radiant energy receiver, but a strong case could be made that he was the original inventor of the transistor. The Moray Valve - patented in 1932 - is a semiconductive device that regulated voltage and current flows. The Moray Valve was a germanium based device whereas the transistor was silicon based (silicon is similar but less efficient than germanium for switching electrical currents).

Moray’s first cousin, Fletcher, knew all about the valve since 1925 when Moray developed it. Coincidently Fletcher worked for Bell Labs. It should be no surprise that Bell Labs was looking at semiconductive materials for switching currents.

Concurrently with the development of radiant energy receivers was attempts to artificially induce radiant energy. Much of this work was done by Lord Rutherford. In 1932 the first artificially accelerated decay transformation took place at the Cavendish Laboratory using the unstable metal.... lithium.

More recently, I published a brief article in the Extraordinary Science (Oct/Nov/Dec 1994) in the “Mail Call” column that “Cold Fusion” was a result of a special type of hydrogen reaction due to certain catalysts. I also submitted a paper on August 16th, 1994 stating that there was a thermoelectric effect (or “Peltier effect”) involved.

At the Tesla conference in April of this year I announced a totally unsuspected source of energy and how to harness it. More information will be released at this year’s Exotic Research conference in Phoenix, AZ.

My conference presentations and published writings point to the fact that I have rediscovered T.H. Moray’s suppressed technology. I will attempt to make clear in the coming days that an unconventional process to cause a clean nuclear reaction can be created and harnessed. I will soon show that a truly unique nuclear reaction can be converted to electrical power through alpha fission and thermoelectric effects. These two discoveries are revolutionary to both nuclear fission reactor and energy conversion technologies of present day science, respectively.

Nikola Tesla’s Radiant Energy System

Nikola Tesla was one of the most prolific inventors in the world’s history. His endeavors ranged from energy production to medical devices. In 1901 Nikola Tesla was one the first to identify “radiant energy.” Tesla said that the source of this energy is our Sun. He concluded that the Sun emits small particles, each carrying so small of a charge, that they move with great velocity, exceeding that of light. Tesla further stated that these particles are the neutron particles. Tesla believed that these neutron particles were responsible for all radioactive reactions. Radiant matter is in tune with these neutron particles. Radiant matter is simply a re-transmitter of energy from one state to another.

Figure 1 of US Patent No. 685,957 is a diagram of Tesla’s first radiant energy receiver. It stored static electricity obtained from the air and converted it to a usable form. Tesla’s invention is a simple version of T. H. Moray’s device. Moray’s device used a unique rectifier (RE-valve) to efficiently capture the static electricity from the surrounding air. Moray’s oscillator tubes utilized this high-voltage energy to generate an internal secondary “cold” nuclear reaction.

Stick an antenna up in the air - the higher the better - and wire it to one side of a capacitor. Connect the other side of the capacitor to a good earth ground. The potential difference between air and earth will then charge the capacitor. By connecting across the capacitor some sort of switching device so that the capacitor can be discharged at periodic intervals, you will have an oscillating electric output. Moray expanded on Tesla’s idea to use high-voltage to create ionic oscillation.

Tesla was fascinated by radiant energy and its free-energy possibilities. He called the Crooke’s radiometer, a device which has vanes that spin in a vacuum when exposed to radiant energy “a beautiful invention.”

He believed that it would become possible to harness energy directly by “connecting to the very wheel work of nature.” On his 76th birthday at his yearly ritual press conference, Tesla announced a “cosmic-ray motor” when asked if it was more powerful than the Crooke’s radiometer, he answered, “thousands of times more powerful.”

The New York American (November 1st, 1933 issue) announced Tesla’s invention in an article:

Device to Harness Cosmic Energy Claimed by Tesla

...This new power for the driving of the world’s machinery will be derived from the energy which operates the universe, the cosmic energy, whose central source for the earth is the sun and which is everywhere present in unlimited quantities...

Tesla’s free-energy concept was patented in 1901 as an “Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy.” The patent refers to “the sun, as well as other sources of radiant energy, like cosmic rays,” The fact that the device works at night is explained in terms of the night-time availability of cosmic rays. Tesla also refers to the ground as “a vast reservoir of negative electricity.”

Tesla ‘Harnesses’ Cosmic Energy

- from Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 2, 1933

Inventor announces discovery to displace fuel in driving machinery. Calls Sun main source.

A principle by which power for driving machinery of the world may be developed from the cosmic energy which operates the universe, has been discovered by Nikola Tesla, noted physicist and inventor of scientific devices, he announced today.

This principle, which taps a source of power described as “everywhere present in unlimited quantities” and which may be transmitted by wire or wireless from central plants to any part of the globe, will eliminate the need of coal, oil, gas or any other of the common fuels, he said. Dr. Tesla in a statement today at his hotel indicated the time was not far distant when the principle would be ready for practical commercial development. Asked whether the sudden introduction of his principle would upset the present economic system, Dr. Tesla replied, “It is badly upset already.” He added that now as never before was the time ripe for the development of new resources.

While in its present form, the theory calls for the development of energy in central plants requiring vast machinery. Dr. Tesla said he might be able to work out a plan for its use by individuals. The central source of cosmic energy for the earth is the Sun, Dr. Tesla said, but “night will not interrupt the flow of new power supply.”

 

UNITED STATES PATENT NUMBER 512,340

COIL FOR ELECTROMAGNETS

Nikola Tesla, Inventor

Figure 1 is a standard pancake coil (many Tesla coil builders are familiar with this style). Figure 2 is a bifilar coil, the crux of the patent where Tesla winds a dual wire and then connects the ends in a series (an interesting experiment for coil builders).

Tesla explains that a standard coil of 1000 turns with a potential of 100 volts across it will have a difference of .I volt between turns. A similar bifilar coil will have a potential of 50 volts between turns. In that the stored energy is a function of the square of the voltages the energy in the bifilar will be 502/.12 = 2500/.01 = 250,000 times greater than the standard coil!

How Tesla’s Radiant Energy Receiver Worked

From the electric potential that exists between the elevated plate (plus) and the ground (minus), energy builds up in the capacitor, and, after “a suitable time interval,” the accumulated energy will “manifest itself in a powerful discharge” that can do work. The capacitor, says Tesla, should be “of considerable electrostatic capacity,” and its dielectric made of “the best quality mica, for it has to withstand potentials that could rupture a weaker dielectric.”

Tesla gives various options for the switching device. One is a rotary switch that resembles a Tesla circuit controller, another is an electrostatic device consisting of two very light, membranous conductors suspended in a vacuum. These sense the energy build-up in the capacitor - one charging positive, the other negative - and, at a certain charge level, are attracted, touch, and thus fire the capacitor. Tesla also mentions another switching device consisting of a minute air gap or weak dielectric film that breaks down suddenly when a certain potential is reached.

Tesla received two patents for this radiant energy device:

US Patent No 685,957
Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy

US Patent No 685,958
Method of Utilizing Radiant Energy

Both patents were filed on March 21, 1901 and granted November 5, 1901. In these patents he explains:

The sun, as well as other sources of radiant energy throw off minute particles of matter positively electrified, which, impinging upon the upper plate, communicate continuously an electrical charge to the same. The opposite terminal of the condenser being connected to ground, which may be considered as a vast reservoir of negative electricity, a feeble current flows continuously into the condenser and inasmuch as the particles are ...charged to a very high potential, this charging of the condenser may continue, as I have actually observed, almost indefinitely, even to the point of rupturing the dielectric.

The Earth’s Electrostatic Charge

Tesla’s intent was to condense the energy trapped between the earth and its upper atmosphere and to transform it into an electric current. He pictured the sun as an immense ball of electricity, positively charged with a potential of some 200 billion volts. The earth, on the other hand, is charged with negative electricity. The tremendous electrical force between these two bodies constituted, at least in part, what he called cosmic energy. It varied from night to day and from season to season but it is always present.

The positive particles are stopped at the ionosphere and between it and the negative charges in the ground, a distance of 60 miles, there is a large difference of voltage - something on the order of 360,000 volts. With the gases of the atmosphere acting as an insulator between these two opposite stores of electrical charges, the region between the ground and the edge of space traps a great deal of energy. Despite the large size of the planet, it is electrically like a capacitor which keeps positive and negative charges apart by using the air as a non-conducting material as an insulator.

It has been calculated that the earth’s ambient state contains 1.6 x 10¹¹ joules or 4.5 megawatt-hours of electrical energy. In order to utilize this high-voltage energy you must do two things - make an energy sink and then devise a way of making the “sink” oscillate.

Zero Point Energy?

Such a “sink” has to be at a lower energy state than the surrounding medium and, for the energy to continually flow into it, the energy must be continually pumped out of it. Additionally, this “sink” must maintain a lower energy state while meeting the power requirements of the load attached to it. Electrical energy - watt-seconds - is a product of volts x amps x seconds. Because the period of oscillation does not change, either voltage or current has to be the variable in this system’s energy equation. Bifilar wound coils are used in the system because a bifilar wound coil maximizes the voltage difference between its turns, the current is then minimized.

A coil in our system, then, will be set into oscillation at its resonant frequency by an external power source. During the “zero-point” portion of its cycle the coil will appear as one plate of a capacitor. As the voltage across the coil increases, the amount of charge it can siphon will increase. The energy that is taken into the coil through the small energy window (zero-point), call it what you will, appears to be the key to the success of this system.

It is at this zero-point where energy is condensed into positive and negative components of current. When energy escapes from the “sink” the magnetic field collapses and a strong magnetic quake is created in it’s wake. A properly tuned system can capture and convert radiant energy in such a prescribed arrangement.

Direct Conversion of the Atom’s Energy

The radiant energy system is a self-oscillating capacitive system. Once it is set into oscillation, very little power is expended in keeping it going. Because it is an electrostatic oscillating system, only a small amount of charge moves through the system per cycle (low current). If the charge is used at a low rate, the energy stored in the system will be turned into heat at a slow rate enabling the oscillations to continue for a long period of time.

Tesla’s US Patent No. 512,340 - “Coil for Electromagnets” - is a very special coil design because, unlike an ordinary coil made by turning wire on a tube form, this one uses two wires laid next to each other on a form but with the end of the first one connected to the beginning of the second one. In this patent Tesla explains that the double coil will store many times the energy of a conventional coil. (See the lower figure page 16.)

Measurements of two coils of the same size and with the same number of turns, one with a single, the other with a bifilar winding, show differences in voltage gain. These bifilar coils can be explained solely on the basis of their electrical activity. A bifilar coil is capable of holding more charge than a single wound coil. When operated at resonance, the distributed capacitance of the bifilar coil is able to overcome the counter electromotive force (emf) normal to coils - inductive reactance.

Because of the electrical activity, a bifilar coil does not work against itself in the form of a counter - emf, the potential across the coil quickly builds to a high value. The difference between the turns becomes great enough that the energy is practically all potential, at this point, the system becomes an electrostatic oscillator.

Minimal work is done in my radiant energy system due to the absence of wasted displacement currents. As small heat losses occur, oscillations are maintained by surplus charge generated by atomic catalytic reactions, energy is siphoned from the kinetic moments of these charges.

Very low energy expenditure allows power delivery to an electrical load over an extended time period without an external fuel supply. After an initial input of energy from an outside source, the radiant energy electrical generator will operate as a very efficient device.

First Artificial Accelerated Decay Transformation

On April 28, 1932, at a meeting of the Royal Society, Lord Rutherford announced that two of the workers in Cavendish Laboratory, J.D. Cockcroft and E. T. S. Walton, had successfully demonstrated the release of excess radioactive energy from lithium elements and other light elements by protons entirely artificially generated by high electric potentials. The most surprising feature at the time was the relatively low voltage necessary. The generator installed had a peak voltage of about 750,000 volts, but artificial decay started at only one-sixth of this, 125,000 volts.

Indeed, later Rutherford, using deuterons (atoms of the hydrogen isotope of mass 2) instead of protons, pushed back the starting point to some 20,000 to 40,000 volts, which is well within the range of quite a small x-ray induction coil. The protons were generated in a long vertical hydrogen vacuum-tube, specially designed to withstand the high voltage, and with a window of the thinnest possible mica leaf at the end, through which they emerged to impinge on the target element being bombarded. The protons were estimated to have a velocity of one-thirtieth of that of light, and their range in air was only 1 cm. The bombarded substance was examined by the scintillations produced in zinc sulfide, through a screen thick enough to absorb the protons.

At 125,000 volts, bright scintillations, in every respect identical with those produced by the fastest normal alpha-rays of radioactive thorium, began to appear, and, as the voltage was increased, their number rapidly increased, but not their range or the brightness of the scintillations. At 400,000 volts, several hundred a minute were counted.

Radioactive Lithium Decay is Clean!

The proton, however, has only one-sixtieth of the kinetic energy of the alpha-particles produced. This showed that they merely pulled the trigger, and released energy could be produced from radioactive lithium. The scintillations were proved to be due to veritable alpha-particles of some 8.76Mev, which is practically the same as those of the radioactive thorium range 8.6 cm. in air, and somewhat faster than those from radium of 7 cm.

Though the term “fission” has since come into special use to denote the new type of disintegration which radioactive uranium and radioactive thorium undergo in certain circumstances, this artificial disintegration of isotopic lithium is pure and simple.

It is said that lithium of mass number 7 reacts with a proton of mass number one, momentarily to produce the unstable beryllium isotope of mass number 8, which splits into equal parts, giving two alpha-particles or helium elements. In this “fusion” to “fission” reaction, from 7 grams of lithium and one of hydrogen to 8 grams of helium, approximately, there is a loss of 0.0181 gram, equivalent to 17.1 Mev, due to the Aston fraction of hydrogen and lithium being so much greater than that of helium. This is in good accord with each of the two elements that results from the fission reaction, each split particles receiving some 8.76 Mev.

It is also said, some of the unstable beryllium elements produced from lithium, emit, during the fusion cycle, a gamma-photon of no less than 17 Mev, which at the time was an unprecedented energy for these rays, the subsequent fission into two helium elements then occurring with relatively little energy. By using deuterons instead of protons, the lithium isotope of mass 6, acts much like that of mass 7 with protons, but the energy released is even greater, namely, 22 Mev.

Energy Evolved from Isotopic Lithium

It is noteworthy that about 43 Mev is released per fusion to fission reaction. This may seem small compared to the 200 Mev released in the fissioning of a heavy isotope like uranium-235.

However, the released energy per mass of fuel is actually greater for the lithium reaction. Weight for weight, 43 Mev energy is some ten times the given out in the complete disintegration of radioactive uranium and thorium into lead and helium, in their natural radioactive change, and is twice as great as in their artificial decay in a nuclear reactor; but radioactive thorium less than 1 per cent of its mass undergoes accelerated decay (“fission”).

The bottom line here is that the disintegration of isotopic lithium by either protons or deuterons, affords, weight for weight, more energy than any other possible nuclear change. Additionally, the disintegration of radioactive uranium or radioactive thorium produces- deadly radioisotopic toxic by-products that nobody seems to know where to properly dispose of them. The disintegration of isotopic lithium yields pure helium as its by-product, this gas finds further use in other areas.

Lithium is the lightest metal, in fact, the lightest of all solids. It is actually lighter than cork and will float on water or oil. Whereas a cubic foot of aluminum weighs 169 pounds, a cubic foot of lithium weighs 33 pounds. Lithium is a very unstable metal and will easily combine with gases, especially tritium. Weight for weight radioactive lithium will yield two times more energy than radioactive uranium.

Peltier Effect Enhancement

When an electrical source is used to send current through two dissimilar metals, called a thermocouple, heat can be absorbed at the colder junction and given.off at the hotter junction. This is called the “Peltier effect.” It can be used either for cooling with the cold junction or for producing heat at the hot junction.

The heat energy given off at the hot junction is equal to the total heat absorbed by the cold junction along with all of the electric energy supplied to it. Thus, more heat energy is given off than the total electric energy supplied to the device.

In principle, many thermocouples in series, with cold junctions outside and hot junctions inside, could be used to pump heat from the lower temperatures outside to higher temperatures inside a building, theoretically the heat energy supplied could be greater than the electric energy supplied.

Unfortunately the effect is so small in most materials that too many couples are required for practical applications. Furthermore, the conduction of heat from hot to cold junctions severely limits the applicability of the Peltier effect, especially with metallic junctions. The discovery of thermoelectric semi-conductive materials has resulted in materials with sufficiently large Peltier effects for a number of practical applications. Recent research in what is now being called “cold fusion” hints to a way to produce greater levels of Peltier effects.

In the cold fusion cell the electrolyte serves as a junction between two dissimilar electrical conductors. Thus, the electrolyte becomes hotter than the electrical energy supplied. This heat is pumped from its ambient environment. This heat causes the catalytic cathode material to produce excess hydrogen. The electrolyte limits the conduction of heat from hot to cold junctions, resulting in an enhanced Peltier effect. The advantage here is the reduced thermal conductivity, for greater thermoelectric efficiency is obtained with a higher ratio of electrical to thermal conductivity.

Use catalytic metals like platinum, nickel or palladium for the electrode thermoelectric materials and you get an interesting catalytic effect. Now add a suitable electrolyte and what you have built is a breakthrough device that utilizes thermodynamic principles with catalytic properties.

Radiant Energy Devices

Clearly, when Tesla refers to his radiant energy device, he is not talking about an atomic reactor. He is directly converting ionized particles generated by radiant matter. It is not nuclear energy as we know it today. Radiant Energy is directly converted to electrical power! Tesla believed that the Sun generates highly charged particles and that radiant matter is a re-transmitter of energy. It is this transfer of energy that could be used for practical purposes.

Radiant Energy as herein used is that energy existing in the luminiferous of the Universe, kinetic and exercised in wave transmission and rendered sensible by conversion of its energy into a detectable frequency, the phenomenon of the transducer combined with fission. Radiant energy devices are means of using the energy released by the fission reactions taking place in the stellar crucibles of the universe.

I have designed an apparatus and method that will optimize reactions that are similar to what is explained in the above treatise. I designed special capture capacitors to take advantage of the released energy of nuclear reactions. The use of radiant energy to generate electrical power is no longer out of reach!

Inventors Beware!

It is my intent of this treatise and through my other writings to explain the many facets of “radiant energy” and how it is possible to draw power from it. I have notarized papers and articles predating similar claims made by others. The Moray lead formula is just one example. I advise all inventors who want proper public credit to do the same.

By reviewing history it is understandable why some inventions are not commercialized. It is economics, not science, that is the main factor. It will be remembered that alternating current was opposed by powerful financiers in Tesla’s time.

Michael Pupin, noted in his autobiography:

...captains of industry... who were afraid that they would have to scrap some of their direct current apparatus and the plants for manufacturing it, if the alternating current system received any support. A most un-American attitude... but ignorance and false notions prevailed in the early nineties, because the captains of electrical industries paid small attention to highly trained scientists.

Once again, we face Tesla’s battle with the organized opposition!

Radiant Energy power applications will be demonstrated... at the 1998 Exotic Research Conference (July 23-26) in Mesa, Arizona!!!