Core Beliefs - Chapter 31 - New Power

Core Beliefs – Chapter 31 - New Power

It was October 2nd. The weather had turned nasty. A freak ice storm rolled through the Midwest.

Chris, Suchet, and Doug fitted the acrylic globe with the superconducting neodymium magnets. Each lab-quality magnet was ring-shaped, encased in a thermally insulated housing with fittings for the liquid nitrogen cooling system. Each assembly was almost 8 inches in diameter and four inches thick.

It wasn’t the reason Suchet had ordered the Acrylic ball or the magnets, but now it formed the foundation for exploring his dream.

The magnets were uniformly arrayed around the outside of the globe, crudely held in place with duct tape. A sense of urgency drove the crew, and they rushed to assemble the device.

“It is okay.” Suchet would admonish. “Once we prove the concept, we can modify and make a more finished unit.”

The beam generator was attached to the top of the globe using PVC pipe and plastic wire ties to keep the generator properly oriented and stable.

“You really want to hang thousands of bucks worth of a one of a kind of scientific wonder by PVC plumbing pipe?” Doug asked, with a bewildered expression.

“It will be okay!” Suchet brushed glue on another fitting, shoving the pipe into it. His enthusiasm was infectious.

“Suchet, we have to insulate the PVC, or the extremely low temps could make it brittle,” Chris insisted.

“The housing about the magnets will minimize the chill beyond the magnets!” Suchet said.

Chris sighed; his gut told him super chilled, -120 C, liquid nitrogen was going to be an issue.

“What about distortion of the beam?” Ellie asked.

“The clear acrylic material will minimally affect the beam,” Suchet assured.

It became apparent they were throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick. Only by trying could they tell if Suchet’s dream had any possible reality.

“Okay,” Ellie sighed. “Ready to attach the fittings to the globe?”

There were three penetrations in the sphere: one for the vacuum pump, another for injecting a gas, and the third, a heavy duty electrical terminal that connected a copper-wire mesh grid Doug had lined the interior of the two halves of the globe with, which would be connected to a bank of external capacitors, regulators, and an old 20KW heating element that Eldridge had dug out of a drier for keeping grains from mildewing.

***

At 1:00 in the afternoon, they turned on the vacuum pump, watching as the air was sucked from the globe. By 3:30, the internal pressure neared 5.5 microns, better than 99.9999% vacuum.

The small, low-temperature chiller was engaged, and the superconductors were chilled via liquid nitrogen pumped through aluminum tubing to minus 184 degrees F.

Frost accumulated, coating all the chilled surfaces.

Once at negative 120 °C, the desired temperature, they applied power to the magnets and spent the next hour measuring the magnetic field. Chris had been careful to use only non-ferrous materials near the globe to avoid magnetic-field interference.

***

It was time. Everything verifiable had been double- and triple-checked. The crew moved from the silo to the control room.

Suchet and Chris again reviewed the settings they wanted to use to generate hydrogen.

“Let us begin,” Suchet said.

They began advancing the power and reached the 80% target, then slowly edged upwards.

Ellie watched her computer screen along with a video monitor. “Cut the power!” she shouted.

Doug complied.

Chris and Suchet were at her terminal in no time.

 “I don’t think the data will show you what’s happening,” she said. “You have to watch the video.”

They backed up the HD digital recording and watched. Though magnets and frost obscured much of the globe’s surface, they could still see the black cloud forming inside. Chris realized it was closer to the beam generator.

“If we had formed antimatter at that location,” Suchet said, “it would have reacted with the shell, and we would have lost everything. We must determine how to move the development point to the center of the sphere.”

***

Three hours later, Suchet had two new equations, and Chris and Doug were programming them into the generator. Settings were adjusted, and at about 11:30 p.m., they were ready for another try.

The vacuum and the superconductors had been continuously running.

Powering the beam generator with the new frequency and power combinations, they were soon back at 80% power.

With no air or water vapor within the sphere, they saw no visible waves. At 91% power, a cloud began to form near the center of the sphere.

Suchet held the power and had the team triple-check the video feeds and as many sensors as they could.

One drawback of the setup was that all sensors were immersed in a strong magnetic field, making data collection erratic.

“Let us introduce the hydrogen,” Suchet said.

With the inside of the sphere in a vacuum, there were minimal molecules available for the beam to convert. Ellie had followed Suchet’s detailed instructions and prepared three very small gas cylinders, similar to the ones you would find in a CO2 gun, but smaller. Each was in a vacuum state. In each cylinder, she had placed microscopic amounts of liquid hydrogen. Once the hydrogen vaporized, the cylinders would have a positive pressure relative to the sphere. Suchet hoped the magnetic field would force the hydrogen to the center of the sphere, but there was no way to know for sure.

Holding things steady for ten more minutes, Suchet finally increased the power incrementally.

They were familiar with the black cloud turning solid and vanishing. This time, something different happened. The cloud appeared to collapse toward the center of the sphere. It got darker but never turned solid.

As the power approached 95%, sparks and electrical arcing materialized inside the cloud. A few flashes at first, followed by a rapid increase.

Fifteen minutes later, the interior of the sphere broiled in a dark, sparkling mass.

“Connect the capacitors,” Suchet said. “Open the regulator and let us see if we have current.”

Doug moved to a different terminal and, after a few keystrokes, said, “Ready to execute.”

“Execute,” Suchet whispered.

Doug depressed the command key. The response was instantaneous. An explosive lightning storm erupted inside the sphere.

“I have volts and amps!” Doug shouted.

The numbers showed the capacitors fully charged and the regulators outputting their maximum voltage of 10,000 volts. The amp load ramped to 80 amps, and in just a few seconds, the video showed the electric heater elements going from cold to red-hot, then melting.

The heater coils could not handle the massive power surge pouring through them. The circuit broke. The voltage and amps plunged to zero.

The lightning storm inside the sphere had diminished but remained active.

Stepping toward the large video monitor, the team watched, mesmerized.

Suchet calmly said to Doug, “Please reduce the power on the beam generator gradually.”

Doug returned to the terminal and did so, and to everyone’s amazement, the cloud and the lightning remained.

That is, everyone except Suchet. He gazed, smiled, “This is what I dreamed.”

“When will it stop?” Ellie asked.

“Only if the magnetic field collapses or matter is introduced into the vacuum.” Suchet looked at her. “Otherwise, I believe it to be a perpetual and an unending supply of power.”

“What was the lightning all about?” Doug asked.

“We established an electromagnetic field using 60-cycle current.” Suchet said, “This gave the superconductor field a polarity. The hydrogen atoms, as they converted to antimatter, reversed their polarity and generated a counter field, like forces opposing.”

He grinned, “It is like a primary school experiment where you place a coil of wire around an insulated high-voltage cable. Without physically touching the high-voltage cable, you induce a current. In reality, you are converting electromagnetic waves into current in the conductor.”

With eyebrows raised, Chris nodded.

“It is so simple,” Suchet said. “People have designed units to capture power from high-voltage lines and even radar beams, but those basically steal power from the source. What we have done is create our source. A source that does not depend on coal, nuclear, or vanishing fuels.”

His eyes widened. “This can change the world beyond any of our wildest dreams!”