Griffin did a presentation recently at the ESTC on Tesla's 'radiant matter' tubes. (Non-harmful single-wire Tesla X-ray tubes)
https://youtu.be/TOPIaFdn3XQhttps://griffingbrock.com/2022/12/14/teslas-single-wire-shadowgraph-recreated/Some details to note:
Mechanics:
- Beam tube is atmospheric with a relatively deep vacuum. No special fill gasses, just a turbomolecular pump capable of reaching 10^-6 to 10^-8 torr IIRC.
- Beam tube is single-wire with an aluminum cathode.
- The cathode degrades over time with a brown stain. Staining is front-surface only which suggests it is not simply acting as a getter.
- Tube performs best with high voltage rather than current. Tube-based amplifiers work but to a much lesser degree. Likely 50kv is the threshold voltage.
- Tube has largely been driven with an antique Diathermy machine (old-school Tesla coil) on the order of 300 watts.
- Tube will operate with continuous waves but seem to be much stronger under disruptive-discharge. This remains to be studied.
- Several tube shapes have been built, with varying effect on the beam spread but no change in character
- Front surface of the borosilicate glass becomes very hot, which suggests Bremsstrahlung (braking radiation) may be playing a part.
Properties:
- The beam activates photographic film, phosphorescent screens, and can be picked up via Geiger counters.
- It also triggers a dense 'fog' inside cloud chamber.
- Detectable range of the beam is on the order of 200-400ft with his current setup.
- No discernible effects have been observed on living tissue.
- The beam cannot be conventional X-rays, among other reasons that 5-10 Sieverts/hr would cause severe immediate radiation burns and is well beyond fatal at the doses received if they were conventional X-rays as we understand them. There is also no known instances of X-ray tubes being produced that lack an anode.
I've been working with him on some of these projects so I can answer some questions as well.
My personal assessment based on experiments thus-far is that the tube is acting as a high-energy Beta emitter (ie: electrons), somewhere in the 10-50MeV range. That explains the penetrating ability, shielding ability, lack of standard radiation-health effects, and some peculiar shielding perioerties (seems to shield by mass-density rather than material type).
A falsifiable experiment to help confirm would be using strong electrostatic+magnetic fields to attempt to deflect the beam in open-air. However these would have to be placed far from the tubes as the beams are deflected by electrostatic+magnetic fields inside the tube, the same as a conventional Cathode Ray.
If anyone has thoughts/theories or experiments to suggest please feel free. The more people involved, the faster we can characterize and understand this rediscovery.
"An overly-skeptical scientist might hastily conclude by scooping and analyzing a thousand buckets of ocean water that the ocean has no fish in it."
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Topic: Griffin's 'Radiant Matter' Penetrating Cathode Ray Tubes (Read 1119 times)
