About the Biefeld Brown effect

Biefeld Brown effect is one of the effects studied by "free energy" researchers. What happens that an asymmetry capacitor for which the electrodes are of different size starts to move in the direction of the smaller electrode. The so called emdrive (see this), which I have commented here and here, could be also based on this effect. The has been a lot of overhyping such as vehicles moving with light-velocity to Mars and the failure of momentum conservation by the Biefeld Brown effect is real.

The recent experiments carried out by Buhler's team using capacitors in vacuum chamber achieve a levitation in gravitational field of Earth (see this). If this is really the case, new physics is involved.

Standard physics based models for the effect are discussed here. The electric fields associated with the capacitors are about 30 kV/dm, which is about 10 per cent of the electric field 30 kV/cm causing dielectric breakdown in air. Note that the electric field of Earth 10-30 V/dm and therefore roughly by a factor 1/1000 weaker.

Brown makes several important statements, including:

1. The greatest force on the capacitor is created when the small electrode is positive.
2. The effect occurs in a dielectric medium (air).
3. The effect can be used for vehicle propulsion or as a pump of dielectric fluid.
4. Brown s suggeset that the effect involves ionic motion.
5. The detailed physics of the effect is not understood.

The models assume that the cm motion is due to the loss of energy and momentum to the environment and fail if the effect is possible in vacuum. The first model assumes ionic wind between the electrodes and predicts effect, which is 3 orders of magnitude too small. The model based on ionic drift is a rough order of magnitude model and predicts that the effect can have an order of magnitude consistent with the findings. The reason why the ionic wind predicts a smaller effect is that the absence of dissipation tends to reduce the effect since the ions arriving to the opposite electrode induce an opposite recoil.

The interview of Charles Buhler by Tim Ventura (see this) gives more details about what has been found in the experiments giving a thrust which is now around one g. Buhler's team has been developing the propellantless propulsion based on asymmetric capacitors understood in a very general sense, i.e. there are just two electrodes which are asymmetric. The work is completely independent of NASA and has been patented. From the interview I learned the following.

1. Electric field is more intense at the smaller electrode and is believed to make the effect larger.
2. The electrodes are cased which means that there is no leakage of charge between them. The claim is that this prevents all kinds of leakage currents between the electrodes. The system is also enclosed in high vacuum and this allows use of lower voltages. There are two types of charges involved. The free charge appearing in conductors and the bound charge appearing in insulators. The interpretation would be in terms of electrons. It is reported that at low voltage free charge dominates the effect and at higher voltages bound charge dominates. The interpretation could be in terms of ionization in high enough voltage in which bound charges go somewhere.
3. Mere charge and electric field are enough and there is no external energy feed. The mere existence of the electric field gives rise to the thrust. In the standard physics framework, this raises problems with the conservation laws of energy and momentum.

I have already earlier commented on the Biefeld Brown effect from the TGD point of view (see this, this and this).

1. In standard physics the center of mass of the system should remain at rest if the system is in vacuum and there is no charge leakage between the electrodes. The findings of Buhler's team demonstrate that there is a center of mass motion in vacuum.
2. Part of the electrostatic energy should go to the cm motion of the system. Where does the momentum and energy leaving the system responsible for thrust as the recoil effect go? In the experiments of Buhler's team it cannot go to the environment as it is understood in the standard physics. Therefore there should exist a momentum and energy exchange with some unidentified system, call it X. Charges and/or radiation should leave the capacitor to produce a recoil.
3. The findings suggest that the charges involved are conduction electrons at low voltages and bound electrons of insulators at high voltages and that the bound electrons increase the thrust dramatically. In the latter case an ionization of atoms is required.
4. If the charges leaving a given electrode return to the system, they can end up at the opposite electrode or return to the original electrode. It seems that the transfer to the opposite electrode cannot take place via standard physics mechanisms in the experiments of Buhler's team since the electrodes are cased. The charges must go to some third system, call it X, and return back to the electrode or opposite electrode.

   If the electrons leave some momentum to X, momentum is pumped to X and a recoil effect results. If the system X is between the electrodes and the pumping is more effective at the smaller electrode, the recoil effect generates an acceleration towards the smaller electrode.

What could TGD say about the situation? TGD predicts that besides classical gravitational fields of the Sun, Earth and other planets are responsible for very large values of effective Planck constant h_eff for ordinary particles located at the gravitational monopole flux tubes. The generalization of this proposal for electric fields is discussed here. Examples are electric fields of DNA, cell, ionospheres of the Earth and Sun, and also of large capacitor-like systems.

1. In the TGD basic model the third system is identified as the electric field body (FB) associated with the system. The key idea is that electronic momentum is pumped from the electrodes to their FBs: an electron is transferred to the FB, leaves some of its momentum to FB and drops back and in this way gives rise to a recoil. If the degree of quantum coherence is higher for the smaller electrode, the pumping at it is more effective. This gives rise to the Biefeld Brown effect, perhaps even in the situation when the dielectric is present. There is also a net transfer of electrons momentum to the positive electrode, which reduces the voltage while keeping the system neutral and provides in this way electrostatic energy to the kicked electrons.
2. The electrons would be transferred to electric monopole flux tubes of the electric field body (FB) of the capacitor-like system as dark electrons, just like protons in the Pollack effect (see this). Also the electric body of the Earth could be involved. The relevant part of the FB would be between the electrodes and the recoil momenta would be directed outwards from the capacitor-like system. The charge transfer via the FB to the opposite electrode would take place by an analog of the Pollack effect and its reversal.
3. If the electrostatic energy is used to generate the analog of the Pollack effect and the system remains neutral, a net negative charge is transferred to the positive electrode and no charge can accumulate to FB. A generalized Pollack effect in which the electrons return back to the electrode that they left makes pumping of momentum and energy to the FB possible and recoil effect results. If the pumping is more effective at the smaller electrode, cm acceleration towards the smaller electrode results.

Could macroscopic quantum coherence predicted by TGD explain why the smaller electrode gets a larger recoil momentum?

1. TGD predicts large scale quantum coherence and this could be highly relevant for the Biefeld Brown effect (see this). The electric Planck constant for a pair of charged particle with charge e and for charged system with charge is h_eff= h_em= Qe/β₀, where β₀= v₀/c≤ 1 is a velocity parameter. For the pair of capacitor plates would be given by h_em= Q²/β₀. h_em would characterize charged particles at the electric body of the system consisting of electric flux tubes, which can be also magnetic since electric flux tubes can obtained as small deformations of the magnetic monopole tubes!

   Note that one cannot exclude the possibility of Maxwellian half-monopole flux tubes having boundary, which I have proposed to be important in the temperature region above the transition temperature in the case of high Tc superconductors (see this).

2. Electric field strength rather than voltage is relevant for the effect. The charge Q of the capacitor as the electric flux Q= ∫ E• dS/ε₀ is indeed proportional to the electric field and this suggests that macroscopic quantum coherence might be important (see this). The effect could become large for strong field strengths suggesting that the transfer of charges to the electric body is a collective quantum effect proportional to the square N² of the number N of charges transferred. If the increase of voltage has been done by keeping the size constant in the experiments of Buhler's team, the dramatic increase of the thrust can be understood in this way.
3. For a particle of mass m, the electric Compton length Λ _em= h_em/m= 2πQe/β₀m serves as a good guess for the lower bound for the quantum coherence length and is for proton by a factor 1/2000 smaller than for electron. The first guess for the thickness d of the electric flux tube is as d=Λ_em= 2π Qe/β₀m. Here m would refer to electron mass. This would explain why the transfer of electrons is what matters in the experiments. Hitherto its assumed that only valence electrons can become dark having h_eff> h. These findings would require that also bound electrons of insulators involved can become dark.
4. Can one assume that the entire electrodes form quantum coherent systems or should one assume that only the flux tubes are such systems? Suppose that the latter option is realized. A natural first guess is that the flux tube radius d is equal to the electric Compton length so that one would have d= 2πQe/β₀m. The entire electrodes need not be quantum coherent systems.

   For instance, if the smaller electrode corresponds to a single flux tube, it decompose to smaller flux tubes near the larger electrode giving rise to smaller quantum coherent units with charge Q_large/Q_small= S_small/S_large and having therefore also a smaller values of electric flux and of Maxwellian electric field. Quite generally, the flux tubes from the smaller electrode would decompose in this way at the larger electrode.

5. The geometric asymmetry of the electrodes, or more precisely the convergence of flux tubes at the smaller electrodes, is believed to somehow explain the thrust towards the smaller electrode.

   Suppose that the flux tubes correspond to bundles of electric field lines as predicted by Maxwell's theory. Suppose that the flux tube acts as a quantum coherent unit. The charges Q(tube) of the flux tubes near the small resp. large electrode are in the ratio S_small/S_large of their areas. By quantum coherence the rate for the momentum transfer is proportional to Q²(tube) and is therefore larger near the smaller electrode. The transfer rates are proportional to the square of the charge per flux tube and in the ratio (S_small/S_large)².

   This predicts that the pumping of momentum and energy to the FB by generalized Pollack effect is more effective at the smaller electrode so that the acceleration is towards the smaller electrode if the monopole flux tubes are in the region between the electrodes.

6. In the experiments of Brown, the thrust is reported to be larger when the smaller electrode has a positive charge: I am not quite sure whether this is the case in the experiments of Buhler's team. The net electron current to the positive electrode is needed to reduce the voltage while keeping the system neutral. Since the electrons travelling to the positive electrode lose part of their momentum to the FB, this increases the effect when the smaller electrode is positively charged.

See the article About the Biefeld Brown effect or the chapter About long range electromagnetic quantum coherence in TGD Universe.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.