Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe,
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The essentialness of water to life is self-evident to all inhabitants of our planet.
Wherever liquid water flows, life is possible,
and thus cosmologists are on a never-ending quest
to detect watery worlds similar to Earth.
The human body is said to be composed of "mostly water"
and of course water is vital for the body's functioning.
Within the electric universe community,
water’s electrical properties and their relationship to the structure of water,
is a subject of great interest in growing research.
At past Thunderbolts project meetings,
Dr. Gerald Pollack has presented his thesis on structured water,
and the apparent relationship between water’s electrical charge
its inter-molecular structure and its surrounding environment.
Pollack has proposed what he describes as "EZ water"
an "Exclusion Zone" of water which has a negative charge.
A new scientific paper may lend credence to these notions and if valid,
could have ramifications reaching well beyond the earth and life sciences,
affecting all of cosmology.
In this episode physicist Eugene Bagashov
introduces the controversial research to the Thunderbolts audience
and begins outlining the important questions the paper may raise.
I would like to discuss a recent paper published a few months ago
in the World Journal of Applied Physics.
To be honest, when I first read it, I was quite shocked
as I believe its contents might have a wide range of highly important implications
for physics, including astrophysics and also chemistry and biology,
and maybe other branches of science as well.
Now before I begin talking about the paper itself,
I should note that the journal where this paper was published,
is only a couple of years old,
and it does not look very credible, at least to my eye.
Of course, in general I am advocating for more academic freedom
and certanly do not mean that this is a bad Journal just because it's new,
but I've read the text of the paper carefully and there are a few hints here and there
that might indicate (on) a certain lack of a review process.
Just as an example, in the last section of the paper,
the author provides very important results of a group of "scientists from Israel,"
but he never gives any actual reference to their work to verify his words.
And it seems that the author performed this research alone,
so in the end we're basically left to rely on his goodwill, if you like,
and to believe that the experiments that he performed, were done properly
and that his judgement about their implications is reasonable.
So, in general I would advise a very careful and skeptical approach
to the results reported in this paper,
especially given its already mentioned potential importance.
Well, since I've already stated my general concerns,
from now on I'm going to proceed with the description of the results
provided by the author, pretty much taken at face value.
And after that I'll describe my own vision of the possible implications of these results,
again implicitly supposing that they are genuine.
The paper deals with the properties of charged water.
So essentially, the author has been performing a series of different experiments,
in comparing the behavior of uncharged versus positively or negatively charged water.
Uncharged water was stored in closed aluminum containers
and to charge it positively, the author was either treating it with gaseous oxygen,
or filtering it through silica gel.
The oxygen was supposed to absorb some of the electrons from the water
and silica gel absorbs hydroxyl ions,
thus leaving the water with excess positive charge.
Negatively charged water was obtained by either treating the uncharged water
with gaseous hydrogen or by filtering it through the activated carbon.
The hydrogen was supposed to provide additional electrons to the water
and carbon absorbs hydrogen ions from it.
thus leaving the water with excess negative charge.
By changing the intensity or duration of any of these procedures,
the researcher was able to control the resulting electric potential of the water.
Now let's take a look at the reported findings.
The first result that the author reports
is the significant change in ultraviolet absorption spectra of charged water.
One can see that charged water absorbs much more UV light than uncharged one
and the spectrum itself significantly depends on the sign of the charge.
In particular, the positively charged water demonstrates a sharp peak
with the maximum shifted into the shortwave area,
and the negatively charged one demonstrates a flatter peak,
shifted slightly into the longer wave area.
It is interesting that the paper also contains UV absorption spectra of DNA solutions
in positively and negatively charged water which also differ.
The second result is a change in mechanical behavior of charged water,
namely when it is flowing out of a narrow gap,
the stream of positively charged water rotates counterclockwise
and the stream of negatively charged water rotates clockwise.
The author also mentions that the solutions of surface active substances
demonstrate behavior similar to the positively charged water
both in their UV absorption spectra and in flow dynamics.
And the solutions of surface-inactive substances behave like negatively charged water.
It looks like the solutions themselves are acquiring different charge,
depending on the interaction of the dissolved substance with water.
At least that is what the author suggests.
The third result is a different behavior of solutions
prepared with the use of water with different electric potential.
In particular, the evaporation of solutions of salts
leads to the formation of different crystal forms, depending on the charge of the water.
One example is the evaporation of a positively charged solution
which leads to the formation of large cubic crystals of mono-potassium phosphate,
while the negatively charged water evaporates,
leaving thin needle-like crystals of the same substance.
The author also shows that the copper powder behaves differently
in the water with positive and negative charge.
In the negatively charged water it forms typical dendritic Lichtenberg patterns
on the bottom of a container,
while in positively charged water, it remains a bit more inert.
The fourth result is a significant change in surface tension of charged water.
The author shows that the negatively charged water
has much lower surface tension than the positively charged one.
I'll remind you that surface tension is the parameter that determines
how hard it is to spread the liquid, so to speak.
So liquids with high surface tension would tend to be more lumped as one might say,
concentrating in isolated droplets and thus having a lower surface area,
while liquids with low surface tension can be more easily spread
and their droplets are more likely to join into a continuum.
So the positively charged water, having a higher surface tension, tends to be more lumped,
while the negatively charged water with lower surface tension, tends to be more spread.
The author demonstrates this in a petri dish,
where the negatively charged water covers its bottom completely,
spreading over all of its area,
while the positively charged water concentrates in isolated droplets.
Another experiment to demonstrate this change in surface tension,
is performed with starch powder.
When it is deposited on top of the negatively charged water in the dish,
it covers all of its surface in less than two seconds,
and thus is able to remain afloat.
But when it is deposited on top of the positively charged water
it accumulates at the deposition site and quickly sinks because of that.
The author also performs a pretty staggering experiment,
where he shows that the steel needles,
when placed on the surface of negatively charged water, sink immediately.
But on the surface of positively charged water,
they can remain afloat for up to 12 hours.
He also mentions that the same effect can be achieved
with uncharged water and charged needles.
In this case, a negatively charged needle would sink
and the positively charged needle would not, at least for some time.
The fifth result is the change in the ability of water to hydrate polymers.
In particular positively charged water hydrates polymers of biological origin
faster than the negatively charged one.
To demonstrate that, the author puts some starch powder in two bottles:
one with positively charged water and the other with negatively charged water.
After half an hour at room temperature,
the starch swells in the bottle with positively charged water
and does not swell in the bottle with negatively charged water.
The author also notes that the bottles themselves were made of polymer,
polyethylene in particular,
and it seems that the positively charged water can penetrate through it easier
than the negatively charged, or uncharged water,
since he noted that the positively charged water
was able to partially evaporate, even from a closed bottle.
And the sixth result that the author describes,
is the change in the freezing temperature of water, depending on its charge.
Here he does not perform any experiments but describes some other people's results.
Remember that note I made before about scientists from Israel.
So it is well known that perfectly pure uncharged water
can stay liquid up to very low temperatures something like -42 or even -48ºC,
so called supercooled water.
It does not turn into ice, because there are no centers of crystallization in it,
which are usually represented by various impurities.
So the ice crystals in pure water cannot find any starting point for their growth.
The author adds to this that the impurities must always be charged,
either initially or because of their interactions with water itself.
So the lack of these charges inside the water volume
seems to reduce its ability to crystallize,
which means it might be fruitful to study
the freezing of charged water in the first place.
The researchers that the author mentions, were studying the freezing of water droplets
deposited on surfaces with different electric charge,
and they've supposedly found that the uncharged pure water
froze at the temperature of -12.5ºC,
while the negatively charged water froze at lower temperature of -18ºC,
and positively charged water froze at the higher temperature of only -7ºC.
The author even goes as far as to state that the charge might
change the heat capacity and thermal conductivity of water.
So, to sum up all these results,
the paper states that the electric charge of water influences:
1) its ultraviolet absorption spectrum;
2) its mechanical behavior (namely the direction of rotation of the stream);
3) the behavior of water solutions;
4) its surface tension;
5) its interaction with polymers,
namely the ability to hydrate them and penetrate through them;
and 6) its freezing temperature.
Overall, the author suggests
that the charge of water actually changes its internal structure,
which in its turn determines the observed differences.
I'd like to note that, although I have certain doubts
about some statements that have been made in this paper,
the good thing about all of this is that
it all can be quite easily experimentally verified or falsified,
and I definitely hope to see more research in this area in the coming months or years.
So even if the author is wrong we will probably know soon enough.
In our next episode, Eugene will offer an extensive thought-provoking analysis
on the far-reaching ramifications of this theoretical pathway,
including its significance for manufacturing and industry,
for biology, and for all of the space sciences,
perhaps demanding entirely new attempts to understand our universe.