Technical Paper

Dear Editor -

In a sense we welcome your re-printing of Mr. Nieborowski's articles ("Orgone charged photomultiplier tubes", IE#51 and "Orgone charged vacuum tubes", IE#54) because they indirectly permit a sharp differentiation between the biophysical model and theory we have proposed (Aetherometry, or the Aetherometric Theory of Synchronicity) and Dr. W. Reich's Orgonomy (or, a fortiori, lesser variations of the latter) - a differentiation that only accentuates the nonscientific quality of the Nieborowski articles.

We take this opportunity to subscribe entirely to Donald Hotson's views regarding your reprinting of the E. Sittampalam article (IE #53) - it degrades the quality of Infinite Energy. (Indeed, there is little doubt, if any, that photons cannot collide - that is one of the reasons why, in the aetherometric system, they are massfree - and, likewise, it is certain that nuclear fission cannot be the energy source driving stellar processes. ) The same can be said for the Nieborowski articles. They seem to be perfect candidates for publication by the College of Orgonomy, not IE. Their only saving grace is that they now oblige us to undertake a direct identification of the systematic errors inherent to that part of the body of electric observations made by W. Reich which he once hoped would buttress his Orgone theory.

We have so far refrained from systematically exposing these differences and the errors of observation and experimentation which W. Reich unwittingly committed to the framework of his Orgonometric system. Specifically, one of the reasons we have not published our experimental notes on these electrical phenomena reported by Mr. Nieborowski - which are, in part, a reproduction of a concatenation of observations originally made by W. Reich - is precisely because they fail to present material evidence for the case of "orgone-charged vacuum tubes", let alone for the existence of Orgone!! In other words, the original observations made by Reich were incomplete, had methodological faults, and in some cases were deeply in error. Nieborowski commits similar mistakes and thus perpetuates nonscientific lore - even though, we assume, it is not his intention to do so.

Publication of these results by IE forces us now to correct these very basic errors in observation and the paralogical conclusions that we see being perpetuated, specifically, in the most recent article of Nieborowski.

1.  The first of Reich's errors, upon which Nieborowski builds his case, is simply to assume that at 0.5 micron negative pressure, one has reached a vacuum where no Matter exists that may play a significant role. On the contrary, at such vacua, there are still well over a million billion molecules of residual gas within the vessel. If one applies an electric field (DC or AC) to such vacua, heavy ion and electron plasmas will readily form in response to it. Unless Orgone is just a misnomer for plasma, and unless plasma is somehow said to be massfree or noninertial (an obvious error), there is no reason to assume that plasma lumination (the generation of photons from the plasma discharge) serves as a marker, or an index, to some accumulation of Orgone inside the tubes. To make such assumptions is gratuitous and faulty. Plasmas do not accumulate inside vacuum tubes. Plasmas are formed by the polarization, in Space or in Time, of intramolecular constituents - electrons and heavy ions.

Might one then not still assume that it is not the accumulation of plasma, or even its generation, that matters, but the presence of a massfree energy that has the direct property of luminating, or producing light? That aside from the light production from plasmas, there is 'light production from Orgone'?? Out of gratuitousness, one might assume anything, but that is not science.

When one understands Aetherometry - and in particular its model for the production of inertial and electromagnetic effects - one understands how these are badly formulated questions because they already vitiate the problem by the way they are posed. For Orgone cannot be said to be the photon-transmitting stimulus and at the same time be the photon itself, or even that which generates the photon directly as an expression of itself. To assume such a gratuitous notion could only throw one back to the theory of electromagnetism, where there is a wave-particle duality to Light and it is Light that propagates across Space, or it is Light that is transmitted across Space. Why would one, then, need to invent a different theory ? - Orgone would just be Light, another misnomer, but this time for Light.

So, if Orgone exists at all, it cannot be merely another term for plasma, or for light. Its existence would then be merely semantic or superfluous. Moreover, to exist at all, Orgone must explain the production of light, the propagation of its stimulus, and still be distinct from a photon.

2.  This brings us, then, to the second of Reich's errors - which was to assume that lumination was a direct property of Orgone energy. This is what has effectively led all of his followers to become mired in the confusion between (primary) massfree energy (Orgone, so to speak) and photon energy (electromagnetic energy, so to speak): they cannot conciliate the local nature of photons with the implied identity between Light and Orgone.

But Light is not Orgone, and Orgone is not Light - as taught by the aetherometric method. Rather, Orgone is ambipolar energy - ie longitudinal massfree electric radiation - that confers, in its quality of an electric field, kinetic energy to massbound charge (electrons, heavy ions). Whereas Light is constituted by local photons that are shed by such massbound charges (or plasmas) upon their deceleration or loss of kinetic energy. Hence, upon application of an electric field, plasma(s) will form in suitably evacuated tubes, and their deceleration by inelastic collisions will produce light. The blue light or normal glow discharge that is observed is essentially generated by the electron plasma inside the tubes. It follows therefore that what is directly generating the observed Light inside those tubes is the electron plasma, not Orgone energy, and certainly not Orgone energy that has been accumulated inside them.

3.  Thirdly, what indirectly generates that Light is the applied electric field. If the field is truly electrostatic (including immobility relative to the fixed tube), no lumination is observed. Nieborowski confirms this fact, in his point #10, when he reports cessation of glow discharge inside the tube when the comb "was at rest". But if the electrostatic field is made to move and mimic an electrodynamic field, then lumination is observed. This is the basis of the phenomenon of the Wiggle Wave reported by R. Hull and C. Yost, and previously observed by Reich and by us. Nieborowski's observations with the moving hands, fingers, moving charge combs, etc, prove this point, which we, too, have repeatedly observed - just as we have observed its proper negative control with immobile isolated charges placed in the periphery of such test tubes.

4.  However, there are two distinct aspects to consider when the issue of the glow response to living beings - eg human bodies - is introduced into the present experimental context:

First, the human body is a source of ambipolar electric radiation, as we have shown experimentally with field-detectors designed for this purpose, and as an aetherometric analysis of Kirlian photography and its physical foundations indicates [1]; moreover, in the study of certain electrical interactions, the ambipolar field effect becomes significant at short distances from the body surface. This is why Nieborowski is confused when he states (in his point #10) that he has "seen other tubes that luminated spontaneously when the hand was at rest" - since, with the proper residual gas 'fill' and at very close distances or at contact, the ambipolar field effect becomes apparent by sourcing a glow inside the tube. But as Nieborowski effectively knows nothing about ambipolar radiation, the real Orgone, he remains unable to separate the ambipolar from the monopolar effects of the human body.

Secondly, the surface of the human body (or, more properly, every organ surface) is a reservoir of massbound monopolar charges, electrons in particular, and accumulates these charges all the better when it obtains them by friction with the ground on dry days, while the body is properly insulated.

These are two very different electrical aspects of living systems - their massfree ambipolar electrical field and their massbound electrostatic field. Thus, whereas (1) the ambipolar field is partially responsible for the discharge which living systems can exert upon an electroscope - whether charged positively or negatively [1-2], it is (2) the electrostatic massbound charge of living systems which is entirely responsible for their ability to charge electroscopes - with negative charge only - in dry environments.

What Nieborowski is observing in his plasma-lumination experiments is essentially only the effects of the electrostatic component of the field of his test-subjects, along with its variations in time, the effect of its discharge into water, etc. There is nothing anomalous to any of this; proper understanding of electricity suffices. And none of it is sufficient, or necessary even, for establishing the existence of Orgone energy. On the contrary, it does a great disservice to any scientific demonstration of the existence of Orgone energy - precisely by permitting physicists familiar with electrical phenomena and steeped in electromagnetic theory or the ZPE model to laugh at the primary errors that underlie such confused identifications and leaps of faith.

If Orgone is so willfully confused with the effects of electrostatic fields from monopolar charges - or any dynamic manipulation of these fields that mimics an electrodynamic field and induces electric fluctuations - then Orgone has found its third useless incarnation as a misnomer for massbound electricity, or, even more specifically, for massbound negative electricity.

5.  It follows from the preceding that all experiments conducted with insulated human subjects in dry atmospheres are experiments performed with bodies charged electrostatically to negative potentials of up to 15kV or more. This can be easily confirmed with calibrated high-voltage electroscopes - as we did back in the days when we reproduced Reich's original observations of these electrical interactions.

Now, it suffices for the electrostatic charges trapped on the hand moving over tubes evacuated in the micron range to have a potential of a few hundred volts, to observe the same phenomena of glow lumination that Reich reported, and others before him, like Crookes and Tesla. With properly tuned vacua, one can even employ this method to elicit field emission [3]. This was also apparently observed by Nieborowski, and corresponds to what he terms 'scintillations'.

We pointed out some of these facts regarding the effects of the electrostatic field (the ordinary electric field) in our response to J. DeMeo and his similarly erroneous conception of the electrical and electromagnetic properties of Orgone energy [4]. Nieborowski's observation that dipping the hand in water eliminated the effect for some time is proof of the electrostatically charged state of the human bodies employed by him in his experiments. Full body washing would make the effect disappear until the given subject established a new friction-polarized coupling with the ground. And if Nieborowski had checked the charge on the surface of the experimental body he would have found that the human subject in question would charge an electroscope before eliciting the plasma lumination and not charge it after washing with water and failing to elicit the plasma lumination. There can be no clearer proof of the electrostatic nature of the observations described in Reich's and Nieborowski's records. In contrast, the ambipolar field of human beings cannot be washed away by contact with water, even if cold water induces its contraction (our unpublished observations).

6.  And now we come to the crux of the argument as to why, had we been peer-reviewing this paper, we would not have suggested its publication: Reich did not evacuate his own tubes; nor apparently did Nieborowski. One cannot purport to perform studies - save for very preliminary ones indeed - with two tubes, one 'treated' and the other not, and conclude from their difference in response that the one placed inside an ORAC presented these lumination phenomena, and the other one, sealed ostensibly at the same pressure, did not. We have done these experiments ourselves with many tens of such tubes and can assure the reader that everything depends upon equal treatment and processing of vacuum tubes, and the relative variation between increasing sealed vacuum and increasing breakdown potential. When all such tubes are scrupulously made identical to each other and virtually completely clean of all contaminants, those that are sealed at submicron negative pressures require greater and greater potentials to elicit the normal blue glow of the electron plasma, just as those closed at increasing micron positive pressures present the phenomena at lower and lower potentials, with stronger and stronger positive ion columns, following precisely Paschen's curve. None of these tubes need to be inserted inside an ORAC or a Faraday cage, for the lumination to be observed in the Paschen range of pressures, with the very same manipulations. Nieborowski himself unwittingly confirms this fact when he reports similar lumination phenomena that he observed with ordinary commercial lamps (read his item #20). As we have shown for years in our laboratory, all these observations of glow production can be made even with ordinary fluorescent tubes. But we went further and observed them in tubes evacuated to micron and submicron pressures with a variety of residual gases: right after sealing them at the desired pressures - presto! - stimulation with a variety of electric sources (eg the knob of a moving charged electroscope, an electrostatically charged body, etc) resulted in glow production, without any exposure to an 'Orgone accumulator'! The phenomenon is reproducible and its conditions controllable, and none of the conditions require 'incubating' the tubes inside Orgone accumulators.

Nieborowski's linchpin - "that it takes an additional precondition to effect lumination via excitation: the tube has to be charged in an ORAC" - is, therefore, patently false. No such precondition exists, it is just an error due to nonsystematic observation and lack of proper controls.

This simple fact suggests that what is at stake when observing such glow lumination in certain vacuum tubes has nothing to do, indeed, with the accumulation of some massfree energy inside these tubes which can be excited to directly generate Light. Insisting that it does, as Reich prematurely did, and as Nieborowski repeats after him, has been one of the main reasons why physicists interested in studying the existence of Orgone energy - qua ambipolar radiation - have stayed away from Orgonometric theory and its interpretation of its own experimental approaches to the problem.

Moreover, from an experimentalist's viewpoint, the same simple fact also suggests that manufacturers of specialty tubes do not assure quality control - today any more than they did in Reich's time. One tube may be well cleaned for purposes of a breakdown at 1.5 kV at 0.5 micron pressure, another may not have been so well cleaned and presents evolution of contaminant gases shortly after being sealed, so its breakdown falls to 0.5 kV at a much greater positive pressure in the micron range. Or still, just as probably if not more so - as we ourselves found out - equally well cleaned tubes lose the vacuum because of a variety of other factors - the sealing operation is not carried out properly, or small cracks develop in critical joints, etc, etc. Commercially available glass itself, such as Pyrex, can come with microporous imperfections that produce slow leaks. So the simple reason why one of a pair of tubes sealed at 0.5 micron may be working with, say, a 0.5 kV potential from a moving electrostatic (ie trapped) charge, while the other is 'dead', is not that one was placed inside an ORAC and the other was not, but that the active tube under the same operational conditions (a given test potential, at a given distance, etc) had already lost some of its vacuum. The very fact that tubes sealed at various pressures permit, for a variety of potentials, immediate observation of the same phenomena clinches the case of one of the most basic errors committed by Reich - and reproduced in toto by Nieborowski. Nieborowski himself should have concluded to this loss of vacuum from his point #23, where he observes discharges with lumination intensities in the 'treated' tube that "looked like" the discharges of "a vacuum discharge at higher pressure", ie higher therefore than the nominal pressure at which the experimental tube had been sealed.

7.  Thus, the observations made by Reich and reproduced in part by Nieborowski are easily explained by a better grasp of what is known to conventional science, and do not warrant one to 'think' in terms of a glass vessel that contains Orgone energy and has accumulated more of it. The electric Aether effect, as Aspden has not ceased to point out, is the so-called inductive field effect - and effectively a moving charged body induces the propagation of such a field, when it itself is not moving because of an applied field. But the field effect is no more a property of living systems than it is one of massbound charge or Matter. Ambipolar radiation transmitted to such an evacuated tube will make it glow because it will impart kinetic energy to the electron plasma whose formation it induces. Moving trapped massbound charges mimic the effect of ambipolar radiation. But no ambipolar radiation is trapped inside that vacuum tube. It does not accumulate there. What may accumulate there can only be the latent heat of the residual molecules before they are plasma-polarized. And the higher the vacuum, the less molecular latent heat will be available per tube.

8.  These considerations bring us back to another problem of Reich's investigation into the electric properties of vacua and, unwittingly, of plasmas: that, apparently, he grouped, to the damnation of so many readers and experimenters, very distinct phenomena under the heading of 'Vacor tube phenomena'. The field-emission discharges one observes in bright-white pulsating plasmas, or the normal glow discharges obtained by applying a moving charged rod to an evacuated tube without any applied voltage, or the normal glow lumination obtained by proximity with an emitter of ambipolar radiation, or Reich's use of Vacor tubes to drive his OR Motor, are not the same physical phenomenon, nor can they be subsumed under the same rubric - certainly not by fiat or by gross similarities. This has been a terrible confusion that has led some Reichians to reduce our aPAGD work to some vague aspect of Vacor tubes, just as it leads Nieborowski to a nebulous interpretation of his observations of the effect of human bodies upon so-called vacuum tubes. And this confusion is to the detriment of any serious consideration of Reich's own case for a massfree energy having distinct electric and nonelectric properties.

Indeed, real unifications of scientific thought cannot proceed by edict-type identifications: they are syntheses, not confused identifications, not syncreses. All electrical discharges deploy plasma formation, but the plasma regimes of these discharges and their physical mechanisms are specific and rather distinct. It would advance us nothing to just decide one fine day to call them all 'Vacor phenomena'.

The eliciting of a glow discharge by the application of a moving (true) electrostatic field or an induction coil to the periphery of a micron-to-submicron range vacuum tube are ordinary plasma phenomena - and this is so even if ordinary electromagnetism does not know the functions associated with the ambipolar radiation underlying all induction fields. That under certain conditions this manipulation sources field-emission is still a different phenomenon [3], one that indeed can hardly be said to be ordinary when what confronts it are the existing quantum-mechanical explanations for field emission. Still, neither of these phenomena, whether ordinary or nonordinary (ie anomalous), may be confused with, or reduced to, vacuum-arc discharges that deploy cathode reaction forces from the electrodynamic interaction of self-ordering plasmas composed of charge-carriers with different masses (as the Graneaus and we, with the aPAGD, have observed - in compliance with Aspden's Law of Electrodynamics).

To call all these distinct physical interactions "Vacor lumination" adds nothing useful, while in fact subtracting all that is specific and scientific to each of them.

9.  It would have been much better for Orgonometry had Reich reserved the term "Vacor lumination" solely to operationally designate the plasma glow which arises when Vacor tubes are employed as energy sources in his OR Motor, as reproduced by these authors [5]. Then, it would have denoted a specific instance when ambipolar radiation is directly contributed by the 'vacuum state' inside those tubes, to accelerate in situ the luminating plasma (in the normal glow regime). And there would have been no need for the useless assumption that such ambipolar energy is accumulated inside those tubes. Moreover, what accumulates inside a Faraday cage or an ORAC, whether the apparatus is directly exposed to the Sun or buried in a dark, unheated basement, is not ambipolar radiation but the molecular latent heat that it generates.

10.  Had Reich isolated the concept of "Vacor lumination" properly, as per #9 above, then one might understand the element that might indeed link various plasma discharges in vacuo: how the glow discharge, whether normal or abnormal, presents a changing photon frequency which is a function of Paschen's Law, and how this phenomenon can be explained by a direct, in situ varying contribution of ambipolar energy from the 'vacuum state' [6].

11.  More remarkably still, our studies of auto-electronically pulsed abnormal glow discharges have identified, for the first time, the contribution of the 'vacuum state' to the anomalous acceleration of the electron plasma through so-called elastic collisions, and explained how this ties in with Aspden's model of an Aether Spin [7] sustaining the vortical organization of the plasma, and with our aetherometric model for the emission of ambipolar radiation from the 'vacuum state', from the latent energy that underlies the local fabric of Space and Time [6].

So, we would not be surprised if investigators like Haisch, Puthoff or Rueda were to reject Nieborowski's - or even Reich's - observations with respect to micron evacuated tubes, their treatment with Faraday cages or ORACs, and the observed plasma luminations. And by the same token, we would hardly expect a Reichian to function as an effective judge or peer of experimental and analytical Aetherometry. For Haisch et al will likely notice the same errors we have pointed out (no exposure to ORACs is needed in order to observe the glows under varied conditions and by proximity with diverse sources, tubes in that pressure range permit plasma formation, there is an (admittedly unexplained) Paschen curve for their breakdown, a slowly leaking tube would present identical glow effects at lower breakdown voltages, etc, etc), just as Reichians by belief will preclude performing the right controls on the experimental observations (testing a greater number of tubes, learning the art of tube building and contaminant-cleaning, employing varying vacua to calibrate the breakdown voltages, checking the test bodies with electroscopes and measuring, at least, the potential of their electrostatic fields, etc). The net result of this is that no real advance will be made by either side with respect to a scientific understanding of the dynamic Aether, how it behaves differently from the electromagnetic "Aether" of ZPF theories, how a component of its electrical manifestation is in effect what Reich meant by Orgone, how the electric nature of this dynamic Aether is massfree (noninertial) and ambipolar.

For, indeed, ambipolar energy does not accumulate inside ORACs, anymore than it accumulates inside evacuated tubes. It consists of a radiative electric field, sourced in the 'vacuum state', that can be dynamically elicited by a variety of manipulations to make different and pointed contributions to distinct plasma-discharge regimes. If there is no Space with zero temperature, and there is nonthermal, nonelectromagnetic energy everywhere in Space (Dark energy) that constantly regenerates the average temperature of Space as being the one that corresponds to the cosmic microwave background radiation, the only reasonable explanation for both facts is that the moving energy lattice of Space itself is capable of becoming an emitter of ambipolar radiation through some very fundamental processes still unknown to modern physics [8].

But even here, in this ambipolar intervention of the 'vacuum state', the observed lumination would remain, as always, simply and solely a plasma-lumination, the result of the deceleration of the massbound charges composing the plasmas, in particular the electron plasma.

Grasping these simple facts would do away with the many ghosts that presently haunt electromagnetic theory as much as they haunt uncritical reproductions of Reich's electrical manipulations of evacuated tubes. The advancement of science, its comprehension of massfree energy and a better grasp of the energetic structure of Matter and its interactions with the Aether, depend entirely upon sticking to facts and not fictions, myths or ghosts. There is no such thing as an open mind that sticks to fictions.

Sincerely,

Alexandra Correa, HBA
Paulo Correa, Msc, PhD

First published in Infinite Energy #55:48, 2004.

REFERENCES

1.  Correa, P & Correa, A (2002) "Fundamental measurement of biological energies 1: overview of bioenergetic investigations", Akronos Publishing, Concord, Canada, monograph AS2-28.

2.  Correa, P & Correa, A (1998, 2001) "Electroscopic demonstration of reverse potentials of energy flow able to draw kinetic and electric energies", Akronos Publishing, Concord, Canada, monograph AS2-04.

3.  Correa, P & Correa, A (1997, 2001) "A light-irreducible split-aether continuum encompassing production of black (HFOT) and thermal (LFOT) photons", Akronos Publishing, Concord, Canada, monograph AS2-11.

4.  Correa, P & Correa, A (2001) "To Be Done with (An)orgonomists: conversations with (hopefully!) the last one: a complete response to J. DeMeo's attack on Aetherometry" at www.aetherometry.com/Electronic_Publications/Politics_of_Science/tobedone.php

5.  Correa, P & Correa, A (2003) ""From Pulsed Plasma Power to the Aether Motor", An Aethera Production DVD, Aethera, NH, USA.

6.  Correa, P & Correa, A (2002) "Aether power from pulsed plasmas", Labofex Scientific Report LS1-25, Akronos Publishing, Concord, Canada.

7.  Aspden, H (1996) "Power from Space: the Correa Invention", Energy Science Report, No.8 , Sabberton Publications, Southampton, England.

8.  Correa, P & Correa, A (2000) "The cosmic background microwave radiation as evidence for cosmological creation of electrons with minimum kinetic energy and for a minimum of cosmic ambipolar massfree energy", Akronos Publishing, Concord, Canada, monograph AS2-17C.