[NewCandle] Transmutation of aluminum to silver

[Nick Reiter]

Hi Keith,

Well isn't that the berries.  What a fascinating
story.  Yeah, I was surprised when I began doing EDS
on this batch.  The signals seem real, but as you
point out, replication with traceable pure materials
seems essential.

SIMS and glow discharge mass spec could quantify and
profile this to the nth degree, but I'll have to start
saving up now - SIMS could be doable for about $1000
from Evans Analytical, scans for two elements plus Al
and Si as references.

This coming week, I'll try some dissolution in HNO3
and see what I get.

Thanks for sharing this, and I appreciate obviously
that you didn't until now!

n

--- Keith Nagel <NewCandleAdmin at ipdiscover.com> wrote:

> Hey Nick,
> 
> Well, I'm sort of stunned and unsure what to say
> next...
> 
> I may regret this, but here goes.
> 
> There was once a research scientist who did work for
> one of the
> big beverage companies. His job was studying
> corrosion of aluminum,
> for the obvious reason that the products his company
> manufactured
> were stored in aluminum cans. He claimed to have
> discovered a process
> of transmutation, turning al to silver. In his
> basement were hundreds
> of mason jars, each containing a pair of aluminum
> plates submerged in
> a solution of aluminum nitrate. Slowly, over the
> course of months,
> the aluminum would corrode. After the plates had
> dissolved, he would
> collect the tiny crystals of silver.
> 
> How this story came to light was as follows. The guy
> died, without
> telling anyone what (if any) secret there was to the
> process.
> His children asked people for help, and came to my
> former employer
> and close friend for advice. He experimented with
> the process a bit,
> but could not make any solid claims of reproduction.
> 
> 
> Now, like all stories, there are some mitigating
> factors that must
> be considered. Firstly, it was claimed by the family
> that the guy
> bought a silver mine to "cover up" the silver
> transmutation process.
> And it is well known that the common method of
> silver mining is
> to dissolve the ore in nitric acid, then displace
> the silver from
> solution by allowing aluminum to corrode in the
> acid. The nitric
> acid becomes aluminum nitrate, and you get silver
> metal. So there
> is this prosaic explanation.
> 
> However, the claim was that it took a _long_ time (
> slow corrosion )
> to get the silver in easily measurable quantities.
> Also, there
> were words to the effect that you needed water from
> the bottom of
> a deep well, which we now know to be more
> concentrated in D2O.
> 
> Is this starting to sound familiar?
> 
> In fact, the very observations you are making now
> may be the ones
> that started our research scientist friend off on
> his adventure.
> 
> So, where do we go from here?  The obvious thing
> would be to start
> with known pure materials, to eliminate the
> possibility of contamination
> of silver which would plate out on the aluminum by
> the well known
> displacement reaction. HOWEVER, it should be noted
> that there is
> a strong chance that a certain amount of silver may
> be needed as
> a "seed" to get the process going. So negative
> results with pure
> materials may not mean the effect doesn't exist.
> Ideally, we
> may want ratios, silver in/out. This is not an easy
> experiment,
> due to the time involved, and the analysis required.
>  
> 
> I've been meaning to mention this story since you
> started writing
> about your al corrosion experiments, but frankly I
> was afraid
> that if I told you I would bias you to look for
> silver and so
> the results wouldn't be credible.  But here you are,
> with some
> silver results, so you ( and anyone else reading )
> gets the
> story...
> 
> K.
> 


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The blade and chalice guarding o'er Her gates. 
Adorned in the masters' loving art, She lies;
She rests at last beneath the starry skies.