Nexus - 0305 - New Times Magazine-pages

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because he couldn't believe it either. He worked on it another two for you at no charge until I can show you where you are wrong. months before he called me up and said, "Dave, you are right." When I can tell you where you are wrong, I'll give you a written That is how sceptical he was about it. He couldn't apologise to report. Then you will pay me US$60 an hour for the time I me. He is a German researcher with German pride, so he had his _ spent." This would have come to about US$12,000 to US$15,000 wife call and apologise to me. dollars. If this got rid of the curse, if this just got the thing He was so impressed that he went back to Germany to the — answered once and for all, it would be worth it. It was for me at Institute of Spectroscopy. He was actually written up inthe spec- _ the time. Do it, get on with it. ; _ troscopic journals as having proven the existence of these ele- Well, three years later, he said, "T can tell you it is not any of ments in natural materials in the southwestern United States. _ the other elements on the periodic table. We are educated; we are They're not journals that you would ever read, but I actually saw _ taught to do the chemical separation of the material and then send the journals and he was written up. it for instrumental confirmation.” They had no idea where this stuff was coming from, how we The example I use is rhodium because it has a unique colour in were producing it, what concentrations we had gone through or __ the chloride solution. It is a cranberry colour, almost like the anything. They had analysed just this small amount of powder. colour of grape juice. There is no other element that produces the The crazy thing about it was that all we had same colour in chloride solution. When my done was remove the silica and send the other rhodium was separated from all the other ele- stuff in. They were pretty unbelievable num- ments, it produced that colour of chloride. The bers. After we had come at this in every wa’ i s last procedure you do to separate the material we knew how, to disprove it, I decided tH 4 They had no idea oul bs to prorat es the acid oa and it pre- ee tey ee at ee) teat ners cmnobed empaptee 900 ause money solves everything, right? : . So, at 69 seconds, I stopped the bum. Ilet the | COMING f rom, how degrees for an hour, and that creates the anhy- machine cool down and I took a pocket knife . drous dioxide. Then you hydro-reduce that and dug that little bead out of the top of the elec- we were producing under a controlled atmosphere to get the ele- trode. When you shut off the arc, it absorbs tt what ment, and then you anneal away the excess down into the carbon and you have to dig down nee pices’ ner? hydrogen. into the carbon to get out this little bead of concentrations we So, we neutralised the acid solution and pre- metal. 4 io cipitated it out as a red-brown dioxide, So I sent this little bead of metal over to had bee through | which is the colour it is supposed to precipi- Harwell Laboratories in London. They or anything. They d tate. Then we —— out. = — it made a precious metals analysis of this bead. * under oxygen for an hour in a tube furnace, I got the report back: “No toate element had analysed just : then we Paceians it to this grey-white detected." Now this was one second before this small amount powder—exactly the colour rhodium should the palladium was supposed to start leaving. f : d in be as an element. Then we heated it up to Yet, according to neutron activation which 0 pow er. 1,400 degrees under argon to anneal away analysed the nucleus itself, there were no the material, and it turned snow-white. Now precious elements detected. This made this wasn't expected. This just isn't what is absolutely no sense at all. There had to be supposed to happen. an explanation here. Either this material had What John did was, he said, "Dave, I'm been converted to another element or it was in a form that we did- — going to heal il to the anhydrous dioxide. I'm going to cool it n't understand yet. So I decided I just had to get more informa- down. I'm going to take onc third of the sample and put it into a tion on it. scaled vial. I'm going to put the rest of the sample back into the I went to a Ph.D. analytical chemist, John Sickafoose, a man _ tube furnace and heat it up under oxygen, cool it back down, who was trained in separating and purifying individual elements _ purge it with inert gas, and heat it back up under hydrogen to out of unknown material. He was trained at lowa State —_ reduce away the oxides. The hydrogen reacts with oxygen, form- University and had a Ph.D. in metal separation systems. He's the ing water, and cleans the metal. I'll cool that down to the grey- man that Motorola and Sperry used in the state of Arizona tohan- —_ white powder. I'll take half of that and put it into another sealed dle their waste-water problems. He has worked with every ele- __ vial. I'll take the rest of the powder and put it back into the fur- ment on the periodic table, with the exception of four. He has nace. I'm going to oxidise it, hydro-reduce it and anneal it to the worked with all the rare earths, he has worked with all the man- = white powder. Then | will put it into a vial and send all three made elements. He has physically separated everything on the _vials to Pacific Spectrochem over in Los Angeles, one of the best periodic table with the exception of four elements. spectroscopic firms in the US." Coincidentally, I came to him to have him separate six elements; The first analysis came back: the red-brown dioxide was iron four of those were the elements he had never worked on. oxide. The next material came back: silica and aluminum; no He said, "You know, Mr Hudson, I have heard this story —_iron present. Just putting hydrogen on the iron oxide had made before. All my life—and I'm a native Arizonan, too—I have the iron quit being iron, and now it had become silica and alu- heard this story about these precious elements. Iam very minum. Now, this was a big sample. We'd just made the iron impressed with the way you have gone about this, with the sys- _ turn into silica and aluminum. The snow-white annealed sample tematic way you have approached it. I cannol acccpt any moncy __ was analysed as calcium and silica. Where had the aluminum because if I accept money from you I have to write you a written gone? : : , ; report. All I have to sell is my reputation. All I have to sell is my John said, "Dave, my life was so simple before I met you. This credibility. I'm a certified expert witness in the state of Arizona makes absolutely no sense at all." He said, “What you are work- in metallurgical separation systems." He said, "Dave, I will work ing with is going to cause them to rewrite physics books, rewrite 32 ¢ NEXUS AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1996