NEWTONIAN ELECTRODYNAMICS
REPORT ON AN IMPORTANT NEW BOOK
Hal Fox, NEN Editor
Peter Graneau & Neal Graneau, "Newtonian Electrodynamics," copyright 1995, illus., 132 figs, 19 tables, 146 refs, indexed, ISBN 981-02-2681-0, $58, (paper $36), World Scientific Publishing Co., Suite 18, 1060 Main Street, River Edge, NJ 07661, USA.
Peter Graneau, Northeastern University, Boston, and Neal Graneau, Oxford Univ., England, have documented the life's work of Peter and the not inconsiderable help and extension of this work by Neal. The book has two important messages: First, although the Lorentz force equations and Maxwell's equations provide excellent insight into electrodynamics, there are many cases where the abandoned Ampere equations are superior. Second, there are still many experimental anomalies that are not explained by any of the current scientific models and these anomalies deserve the attention of the scientific community.
Ampere's force equations are based on a model of a current element which is the electrical conductor, and on the concepts of Newtonian physics. The Lorentz and Maxwell's equations, although based strongly on Ampere's work, have as the current element the electrical current (now considered to be the discrete electrons) and include field forces which make these equations relativistic and non-Newtonian. [The reader who is not particularly thrilled with equations will want to read "Newton versus Einstein" by these same authors.]
The book is divided into seven readable chapters:
1. Evolution of the Nineteenth Century Newtonian Electrodynamics.
2. Experimental Demonstration of Longitudinal Ampere Forces.
3. Theoretical Developments.
4. The Nature of Current Elements.
5. The Railgun: Testbed of the Newtonian Electrodynamics.
6. Electrodynamics of Arc Explosions.
7. Electrodynamics in the Quest for New Energy.
In reading the book there were many important and new (to me) observations that should be of equal interest to both the professional and the intelligent lay reader.
Here are some of them:
"The abandonment of mutual attraction and repulsion between matter elements of electric conductors, and the violation of Newton's third law which this entailed, signalled the end of Newtonian physics. The Grassmann and Lorentz force laws required a new mechanics which was to become that of the theory of special relativity." Page 30.
"That not all electrodynamic forces in a metal are mechanical forces on the lattice must have something to do with the two types of bonds that (a) exist between positive and negative charges and (b) between charges and the solid body. This issue of bonding between charges and ponderable matter has still not been satisfactorily resolved even at the end of the twentieth century." Page 35.
The difference between equations formulated by Weber and those of Ampere were reconciled by a constant which had to have the dimensions of velocity. This constant had to have the value c = 3 x 10 E+10 cm/sec. "This constant became known as the velocity of light and it always emerges when the laws of electrostatics are combined with those of electrodynamics. ... This is how the velocity of light made its first appearance in the literature and Newtonian electrodynamics." Page 36.
The authors discuss the liquid mercury fountain which is an interesting experiment. An insulated cup with a sealed-in bottom electrode and with a copper ring electrode at the top of the cup is filled with mercury until the mercury engages the top conducting ring. When 500 to 1,000 amperes of current is made to flow through the mercury a mercury fountain is created. The results are easily explained with Ampere's law but not with the Lorentz field equations that are almost universally used today. Pages 78ff.
"... mechanical forces arising in electron-lattice collisions are negligibly small and are certainly unable to account for the longitudinal forces predicted by Ampere's law. ... The parallel existence of both ponderomotive and electromotive forces has become the hallmark of Newtonian electromagnetism." Pages 145-146.
In the chapter on the railgun: "From this example it must be concluded that the magnetic force on the railgun armature cannot be produced by field-energy impact. Here we have a practical example which reveals a serious flaw of relativistic electromagnetism. ... This is the greatest inconsistency of relativistic field theory." Page 169.
While working on a railgun experiment, the authors placed a ferromagnetic rod across the rails: "and observed that it rolled in the wrong direction toward the battery. This surprising behavior was perfectly repeatable. ... If this is correct, then our report here is the first public mention of a railgun armature being driven toward the current source. While not yet understood, the importance of this discovery cannot be over-stressed." Pages 188-189.
The authors quote from a paper that suggested that cold fusion was the first attempt to harness the energy of the sun except for systems that heat hydrogen fuel to high temperatures. "This is not true. Non-thermal fusion research has been in progress for over forty years with support from the U.S. and other governments. The arguments which have been made for and against cold fusion almost all ignore the large body of published information on plasma focus fusion, solid deuterium fiber fusion and capillary fusion." Page 233. The authors further discuss each of these developments.
The most important chapter of the book is Chapter 7: "Electrodynamics in the Quest for New Energy."
After laying the groundwork of profession understanding, including all of the appropriate equations, the last chapter reviews several research topics ranging from cold fusion to water-arc experiments. The message is that there are still many anomalies in experimental electrodynamics and that these anomalies should be pursued, rather than ignored, by the scientific community.
This reviewer is more of a generalist than a specialist, having spent the last seven years reading, reviewing, and publishing reviews of over 3,000 multi-disciplinary papers and books covering the areas of cold fusion and other new-energy systems and the relevant literature.
With this background, the following comments have been triggered by the challenges of this excellent book:
1. Ponderomotive forces may be the result of an energetic vacuum which couples with the electron flow or is the byproduct of the electron flow in matter in the presence of the energetic vacuum.
2. The Rowe Effect (energetics causes the vacuum to spawn proton-electron pairs) may be the source of the anomalous effects in water-arc explosions.
3. High-density charge clusters can be considered as a new form of matter that is yet to be thoroughly studied. It is suggested that high-density charge clusters are formed whenever there are electric arcs. The anomalies of high-density charge clusters (as disclosed in Ken Shoulders' U.S. Patent 5,018,180) may be the source of some of the anomalous observations.
This type of scientific investigation is not devoid of practical applications or limited to railguns and water-arc explosions. The knowledge developed in the book has been applied by Dr. Graneau to a very practical metallurgical problem which occurs in the refining of aluminum. The application of some of these concepts developed by the authors can save many millions of dollars a year in electrical power costs in just the aluminum industry. There are and will be many other valuable commercial applications of the study of Newtonian Electrodynamics.
If you are seriously interested in cold fusion and new energy developments, or if you are an electrical engineer, a scientist, or a teacher of science, this book is a must-read for you.
If you are an intelligent lay person or professional, you will find this book full of interesting insights into the history and practice of electrodynamics.
This reviewer wishes to thank these two authors for their contribution to the continued advancements that must be made in electrodynamics if we are to provide a new-energy technology to replace the currently unacceptable pollution of our planet by the burning of fossil fuels.