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Continued from page 33 bonds! So now there was metallic rhodium showing on the carbon, where before there After a certain period of months they all was no rhodium. quit and left United Technologies. Well, These GE people said, “Dave, if you are José Giner, who was the head of fuel cells the first one to discover this, if you are the at United Technologies, quit also and went first one to explain how to make it in this to set up his own firm, called Giner form, if you are the first one to tell the Incorporated, in Waltham, Massachusetts. world that it exists, then you can get a Tony and all the GE people went with him. _ patent on this." I said, "I'm not interested By the time our material got there, they'd in patenting this.” set up their own company in Waltham, so Then they told me that if someone else we contracted with them to build the fuel discovered it and patented it, even though I cells for us. was using it every day, they could stop me When our material was sent to them, the from doing it. I said, "Well, maybe I thodium, as received, was analysed as not — should patent it.” having any rhodium in it. Yet when they So, in March of 1988, we filed US and mounted it on carbon in their fuel-cell tech- worldwide patents on Orbitally Rearranged nology and ran the fuel cell for several Monatomic Elements. Now that is a weeks, it worked and it did what only mouthful, so, to make it short, we called it rhodium would do—and it was carbon ORMEs. You have ORME gold, ORME monoxide-stable. palladium, ORME iridium, ORME rutheni- After three weeks, they shut down the um, ORME osmium, or ORMEs. fuel cells, took out the electrodes and sent When we were doing this patent proce- them back to the same place that said there dure, the Patent Office said, "Dave, we was no rhodium in the original sample. need more precise data, we need more Now there was over eight per cent rhodium exact data, we need more information in the original sample. What happened about this conversion to this white powder was, it had began to nucleate on the carbon. state." One of the problems we had was It actually had begun to grow metal-metal that when you make this white powder and you bring it out into the atmosphere, it real- ly starts gaining weight. I'm not talking about a little bit of weight; I'm talking about 20 to 30 per cent. Now that normally would be called absorption of atmospheric gases: the air is reacting with it and caus- ing weight gain, but not 20 or 30 per cent. But, nonetheless, we had to answer the Patent Office. We had to come up with exact data for the Patent Office. So what we did was use this machine for thermogravimetric analysis. This is a machine that has total atmospheric control of the sample. You can oxidise it, hydro- reduce it and anneal it while continually weighing the sample under a controlled atmosphere. Everything is all sealed. We were getting short on funding and couldn't afford to buy one, so we leased one from the Bay Area from Varian Corporation. They sent it in to us and we set it up on computer controls. We heated the material at 1.2 degrees per minute and cooled it at 2 degrees per minute. What we found was that when you oxidise the material, it weighs 102 per cent; when you hydro-reduce it, it weighs 103 per cent. So far, so good. No problem. But, when it turns snow-white, it weighs 56 After a certain period of months they all quit and left United Technologies. Well, José Giner, who was the head of fuel cells at United Technologies, quit also and went to set up his own firm, called Giner Incorporated, in Waltham, Massachusetts. Tony and all the GE people went with him. By the time our material got there, they'd set up their own company in Waltham, so we contracted with them to build the fuel cells for us. When our material was sent to them, the rhodium, as received, was analysed as not having any rhodium in it. Yet when they mounted it on carbon in their fuel-cell tech- nology and ran the fuel cell for several weeks, it worked and it did what only rhodium would do—and it was carbon monoxide-stable. After three weeks, they shut down the fuel cells, took out the electrodes and sent them back to the same place that said there was no rhodium in the original sample. Now there was over eight per cent rhodium in the original sample. What happened was, it had began to nucleate on the carbon. It actually had begun to grow metal-metal per cent! Now that's impossible! When into the machine but at 300 degrees it machine and let it cool, it was exactly 56 you anneal it and it turns white, it only becomes magnetic. It is in fact a strong per cent. If you heated it, it would go less weighs 56 per cent of the beginning magnet. Then, after you get up to 900 than nothing, and if you cooled it, it would weight! If you put that on a silica test boat degrees, it loses its magnetism. You can go 300 to 400 per cent, but it always went and you weigh it, it weighs 56 per cent! If actually see if the interaction of the mag- _ back to a steady 56 per cent. you heat it to the point that it fuses into the netism with the magnetic field of the heat- We contacted Varian in the Bay Area glass, it turns black and all the weight ing element causes any change in weight. and said, "Look, this just doesn't make any retums. The heating element is bifilar-wound. It sense. There's something wrong with this So the material hadn't volatilised away. goes round and round the sample; then you § machine; something isn't right. Every time It was still there. It just couldn't be reverse it and wind it right back up so all we use the machine it works fine unless we weighed any more. That's when everybody the current runs against itself all the time. make the pure monatomic material, and, said, “This just isn't right; it can't be!” So, when a wire flows electricity there is a when we do, it tums snow-white and does- Do you know that when we heated it and magnetic field that forms around it, but _ n't work correctly any more." cooled it, and heated it and cooled it, and when you run the wire right next to it, Varian looked over our results and said, heated it and cooled it under helium or going in the other direction, it forms a mag- “You know, Mr Hudson, if you were work- argon, when we cooled it, it would weigh netic field in the other direction. The idea ing with the cooling of the material we 300 to 400 per cent of its beginning weight; is that the two fields will cancel. This is would say it is superconducting. But inas- and, when we heated it, it would actually the kind of wiring that is used in a televi- much as you are heating the material, we weigh less than nothing? If it wasn't in the sion to cancel all magnetic fields. The don't know what you've got." pan, the pan would weigh more than the designers of this machine wanted to elimi- I decided, well, I have had to leam chem- pan weighs when this stuff is in it! nate all magnetic field aspects to this. istry and I've had to learn physics, and now Keep in mind, these are highly trained When we put the magnetic material in I've got to learn the physics of supercon- people running this instrumentation, and the sample and ran it in the machine, there ductors. So I borrowed a bunch of gradu- they would come in and say, "Take a look was no response at all. There was no ate books on superconductivity and I began at this. This makes no sense at all!” change in weight when the material to read about superconductors. Now, this machine is so precisely became magnetic or lost its magnetism. designed and controlled that they have a Yet when our material was put in there and magnetic material they can put into this it turned white, it went to 56 per cent of its machine that is non-magnetic when it goes beginning weight. If you shut off the Continued in the next issue of NE 72 * NEXUS — White Powder Gold: A Miracle of Modern Alchemy — AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1996