hello, i have been trying to locate information on German plasma research in the 1935-45 time frame. In particular anything on Von Ardenne and Ronald Richter(Argentina). I am sure there is a lot of unpublished material out there such as Scientific American letters from Richter etc. SA has released only one.
I have :
1. M. A. J. Mariscotti, El Secreto Atómico de Huemul,
Sudamericana-Planeta, Buenos Aires, Argentina (1985).
2. J. A. Balseiro, Report on the September 1952 Inspection of
the Isla Huemul Project, Comisión Nacional de Energía
plus a selection of online articles.
I am looking for someone with personal knowledge.
keywords: fusion plasma richter peron longitudinal electrodynamic
thanks,
bruce vicknair
General physics and advanced plasma research 1935-45
German plasma physics experiments in the period 1942-1945 was carried out by the SS in Poland. The highest known classification of security and funding - "Kreigsentscheidend" was awarded the project. The equipment, scientists and data were brought to Argentina at the end of the war. The experimentation appears to have produced an ion-mercury plasmoid used in aeronautics and explosives development, but the ultimate aim was to irradiate persons in order to change skeletal and cerebral chemistry.
Von Ardenne's laboratory was involved to some degree in the work, he had a representative at the two Ohrdruf tests in March 1945. Whatever Richter was doing in Argentina, it is unlikely that it would have been the search for fusion. The plasma physics project continued briefly at Lake Nahuel Huapi, and those of us who live in Argentina and take an interest in the subject believe that it has been transferred to a particular mountainous spot.
Von Ardenne's laboratory was involved to some degree in the work, he had a representative at the two Ohrdruf tests in March 1945. Whatever Richter was doing in Argentina, it is unlikely that it would have been the search for fusion. The plasma physics project continued briefly at Lake Nahuel Huapi, and those of us who live in Argentina and take an interest in the subject believe that it has been transferred to a particular mountainous spot.
ohrdruf, thanks for the information, i had not heard before any reference to bio-medical research relative to plamsa physics. how can you know so much about all of this? my interest is current day research on discoveries published by the Graneau's (father and son) on electrodynamic explosions, isbn 981-02-2284-X and published works on electricial discharges.
i work on this for the most part on my own. my "day job" is a controls systems specialist for a houston oil company.
have you ever heard of an engineer/physicist named Dr Frank Frungel? he wrote a book:
High Speed Pulse Technology Vol 1&2 1965
Dr Frank B.A. Frungel
Impulsphysics Association (post war employer? Hamburg-Zurich)
Academic Press New York
also... how do you know about the two von Ardenne people?
bruce
i work on this for the most part on my own. my "day job" is a controls systems specialist for a houston oil company.
have you ever heard of an engineer/physicist named Dr Frank Frungel? he wrote a book:
High Speed Pulse Technology Vol 1&2 1965
Dr Frank B.A. Frungel
Impulsphysics Association (post war employer? Hamburg-Zurich)
Academic Press New York
also... how do you know about the two von Ardenne people?
bruce
-
Andrzej Ditrich
- Member
- Posts: 1826
- Joined: 27 Sep 2004, 18:51
- Location: Gdansk/Sopot/Gdynia
- Contact:
i think you are correct on this, most of Richters work involved what is now called "ball plasma", "ball lightening" or plasmoids. The joke around BA about Richter using loudpeakers for plasma enhancement is false , the loudspeakers are used in the now well known method of measuring hypersonic flows. ( up to Mach 17, Frungel vol II pg 181)ohrdruf wrote: Von Ardenne's laboratory was involved to some degree in the work, he had a representative at the two Ohrdruf tests in March 1945. Whatever Richter was doing in Argentina, it is unlikely that it would have been the search for fusion.
on the detail of your post i can assume you either have:...
1. first hand knowledge
2. a diary
3. log books
to have a list of attendees for a test would require one of the above. a descendent of someone there would probably not know in detail who attended tests.
I can also add some well known facts:
1. Richter and von Ardenne worked together in Berlin on "advanced explosves"
2. von Ardenne signed off on Richters PhD
3. when asked about Richter, von Ardenne downplayed the work in Argentina, but later used the same methods in his own work for the Russians.
bruce
Where can I read more about this? What is your source? There are no informations about this around the town Ohrdruf in Thuringia.ohrdruf wrote:Von Ardenne's laboratory was involved to some degree in the work, he had a representative at the two Ohrdruf tests in March 1945...
with kind regards
Klaus-Peter from Thuringia
The Ohrdruf FHQ bunker has been sealed shut by US troops, the tunnels were blown and the whole area is today guarded by German military personell .. The information and documents from the investigation of the Ohrdruf FHQ has been classified by the US military.There are no informations about this around the town Ohrdruf in Thuringia
FYI: A scan of the small pulsed reactor in Lab #1
The "grand" reactor #2 was not completed. circa 1951-52.
This equipment was similar to that used in Berlin at von Ardenne's facility.
(resize photo 1-9-06)
bruce
This equipment was similar to that used in Berlin at von Ardenne's facility.
(resize photo 1-9-06)
bruce
- Attachments
-
- pulsed-mag_141.jpg (141.18 KiB) Viewed 10729 times
Last edited by witcher on 10 Jan 2006, 03:09, edited 1 time in total.
I have just run across this thread again. I apologize to everybody who was expecting an answer to their questions: the "Notify Me When A Reply is Posted" did not work, and so I assumed wrongly that it had died a natural death. I will respond tomorrow with information requested. I may have to reply by PM in one case.
Also, can someone please explain why this thread is a mile wide?
Also, can someone please explain why this thread is a mile wide?
Andrew
Most information available about the "Bell" project comes from the research of Polish investigator Igor Witkowski and is based on the partially declassified depositions in the case of State of Poland v ex-SS Obergruppenfuehrer Jakob Sporrenberg. In addition I have a few loose papers and the Argentine authorities have declassified a few documents.
The initial experiments began under code-name "Tor" (Gateway) in January 1942 and lasted until April 1945 when all concentration camp helpers and low grade German staff were executed by the SS at Pattag, this being the reason for the trial of Sporrenberg. In order to save his neck, Sporrenberg made a full confession of all he knew, and some of this information has been declassified by the Polish authorities.
In August 1943 "Tor" was divided into two projects, medical and biological: "Chronos" and "Laternentraeger". (These codewords are significant in National Socialist philosophy based on Egyptian Hermeticism.) The project was loosely known as "the Bell" after the nine-feet tall ceramic cover within which all experiments were made.
The work continued in a rehabilitated coal-mine near the town of Waldenburg (Walbrzch), part of the FHQ "Riese" system.
AEG was responsible for supplying the very high voltage electrical power under sub-project "Charite-Anlage". This project was header by Oberingenieur Dr Richard Craemer whose whereabouts since the last months of the war are unknown. It may not be a coincidence that AEG established a small laboratory on the roof of the Charite Hospital in Berlin prewar to study the effects of ball-lightning ("Kugelblitz").
The research programme was run by SS-E-IV and SS-U-13 teams finally under SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler. These studies were to analyze the effect of counter-rotating at very high speeds on a common axis two cylinders each filled with mercury amalgamate. The central axis was filled with a violet coloured metallic substance like thin jelly within a lead casing. There is mention from certain sources of a large crystal which needed to be activated by a Van de Graaff generator. (Von Ardenne had such a generator in his laboratory at Berlin-Lichterfelde). The tests were considered to be part of an "anti-gravity" project and aimed at producing certain plasmoids. The plasmoids had two definite uses, the machine in operation was found to produce an interesting side-effect and a fourth, major project was uncompleted when the Waldenburg experiments terminated in April 1945. It seems certain from a hint made by Sporrenberg, and from Argentine declassified intelligence documents, that the project came to Argentina at the end of the war. Since this project had the highest known classification of priority in the Third Reich it seems logical to infer that all operations in Argentina into "fusion technology" and similar such ideas, and all the hullaballoo about Ronald Richter's work, were to conceal the fact of the continuation of this secret Bell project. If Ronald Richter was a student of ball-plasma, we have the connection. There are indications that the project continues to the present day.
I think I might add a point about Peron and Argentina. Although the Allies (the United States and Britain) like it to be thought that they had an excellent relationship in South America, it is clear from Peron's book, and from the archive documents, that Brazil and Argentina in particular had identified the US and Britain as the main future threat to peace and stability in the region from about 1942. Argentina was involved in talks with Germany on this subject from mid-1942. In 1944, as a US declassified document proves, Argentina set aside one billion dollars for its defence budget and had stated openly that it would be "happy to receive German scientists, technicians and weapons technologies" once the war ended. It can hardly be a coincidence therefore that the Bell came down to Argentina: nor can it be doubted that the personnel arrived postwar in submarines and aircraft. In July 1945 the United States threatened to bring Argentina before the UN Security Council for "concealing from the United States knowledge of the movements of German U-boats in Argentine coastal waters", knowledge which the Argentine Admiralty was receiving from German sources in Argentina.
The evidence for the involvement of Baron Manfred von Ardenne in the Bell project is as follows:
(1) It is very probable that there was a Bell installation in the cellar below the chalet adjacent to Amt 10 at Ohrdruf. This is hinted at in the documents mentioned at (4) below. The purpose of this Bell installation may have been to produce a plasmoid which reacted with a common explosive (finely powdered coal dust and liquid air) to vastly expand its range and effect.
(2) Von Ardenne was involved in the production of a miracle explosive of some description. That is the evidence of Henry Picker: "Hitler's Tischgespraeche im Fuehrerhauptquartier 1941-1942" (First edition, Gerhard Ritter, Bonn 1951). Picker was the stenographer appointed by Martin Bormann to take notes of the conversation at Hitler's tea table. It will be seen from this book that Hitler visited the Ardenne laboratory on occasions to see how the work was coming along. It is clear that the bomb under construction - a "uraniumbombe" - was not an atom bomb. The German term for an atom bomb in common use at the time was "Uranbombe" and not "uraniumbombe". Hitler's description of how it would work indicates that the weapon cannot have been an atom bomb. It was to be fitted as the warhead of an intercontinental rocket - therefore the A9/10 - and consisted of a number of "uranium-bomben" which would be scattered far and wide by a conventional explosive.
(3) A strange explosive was tested at Ohrdruf on the nights of 4th and 12 March 1945. A number of modern German authors including Mehnen and Karlsch have attempted to prove that this was a rudimentary atom bomb. However, the eye-witness evidence contradicts any such possibility. It was a small scale test. 200 camp prisoners and 20 SS guards who got too close were scorched to death. Viewers were invited to watch the explosion through binoculars on a dark night (therefore there was no fire-ball). Witness Claere Werner (see 4 below) said: "There was a brightness like hundreds of lightning flashes, but red inside and yellow outside. Then came a tremendous hurricane gust after which it fell quiet. A witness stated that this was a '100 gram additive?. There was some kind of miscalculation of the extent of the explosion resulting in the deaths of up to 400 concentration camp prisoners and 20 SS guards who were assisting in the test. The bodies were burnt on a communal pyre and the ashes scattered across the Harz mountains." There was no residual fallout, although the Reichspost official made the rounds of nearby houses and ensured that all glassware was wiped clean. Claere Werner testified that on the night of 12 March 1945 she witnessed another, much smaller test. "I was told I must never mention anything I had seen, and particularly not the bolts of lightning."
(4) In 1962, the DDR authorities at Arnstadt questioned local residents who had been working at Ohrdruf in the period 1943-1945. These papers may be seen in the Arnstadt municipal archive. ALL deserve to be looked at and thought about very carefully. Claere Werner mentioned at 3 above was custodian of the Wachsenburg watch-tower situated in high ground a few miles NE of Ohrdruf. She mentioned a friend who worked at Arnstadt, Hans Ritter. He was employed by von Ardenne's Reichspost project and knew all about the forthcoming explosions and what precaustions were to be taken. It was Ritter who came round to clean the windows and glassware afterwards.
I trust this answers the various questions put above. I think it is important for the site managers to find some way to prevent posts being elongated in the ludicrous manner they are in this thread.
Most information available about the "Bell" project comes from the research of Polish investigator Igor Witkowski and is based on the partially declassified depositions in the case of State of Poland v ex-SS Obergruppenfuehrer Jakob Sporrenberg. In addition I have a few loose papers and the Argentine authorities have declassified a few documents.
The initial experiments began under code-name "Tor" (Gateway) in January 1942 and lasted until April 1945 when all concentration camp helpers and low grade German staff were executed by the SS at Pattag, this being the reason for the trial of Sporrenberg. In order to save his neck, Sporrenberg made a full confession of all he knew, and some of this information has been declassified by the Polish authorities.
In August 1943 "Tor" was divided into two projects, medical and biological: "Chronos" and "Laternentraeger". (These codewords are significant in National Socialist philosophy based on Egyptian Hermeticism.) The project was loosely known as "the Bell" after the nine-feet tall ceramic cover within which all experiments were made.
The work continued in a rehabilitated coal-mine near the town of Waldenburg (Walbrzch), part of the FHQ "Riese" system.
AEG was responsible for supplying the very high voltage electrical power under sub-project "Charite-Anlage". This project was header by Oberingenieur Dr Richard Craemer whose whereabouts since the last months of the war are unknown. It may not be a coincidence that AEG established a small laboratory on the roof of the Charite Hospital in Berlin prewar to study the effects of ball-lightning ("Kugelblitz").
The research programme was run by SS-E-IV and SS-U-13 teams finally under SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler. These studies were to analyze the effect of counter-rotating at very high speeds on a common axis two cylinders each filled with mercury amalgamate. The central axis was filled with a violet coloured metallic substance like thin jelly within a lead casing. There is mention from certain sources of a large crystal which needed to be activated by a Van de Graaff generator. (Von Ardenne had such a generator in his laboratory at Berlin-Lichterfelde). The tests were considered to be part of an "anti-gravity" project and aimed at producing certain plasmoids. The plasmoids had two definite uses, the machine in operation was found to produce an interesting side-effect and a fourth, major project was uncompleted when the Waldenburg experiments terminated in April 1945. It seems certain from a hint made by Sporrenberg, and from Argentine declassified intelligence documents, that the project came to Argentina at the end of the war. Since this project had the highest known classification of priority in the Third Reich it seems logical to infer that all operations in Argentina into "fusion technology" and similar such ideas, and all the hullaballoo about Ronald Richter's work, were to conceal the fact of the continuation of this secret Bell project. If Ronald Richter was a student of ball-plasma, we have the connection. There are indications that the project continues to the present day.
I think I might add a point about Peron and Argentina. Although the Allies (the United States and Britain) like it to be thought that they had an excellent relationship in South America, it is clear from Peron's book, and from the archive documents, that Brazil and Argentina in particular had identified the US and Britain as the main future threat to peace and stability in the region from about 1942. Argentina was involved in talks with Germany on this subject from mid-1942. In 1944, as a US declassified document proves, Argentina set aside one billion dollars for its defence budget and had stated openly that it would be "happy to receive German scientists, technicians and weapons technologies" once the war ended. It can hardly be a coincidence therefore that the Bell came down to Argentina: nor can it be doubted that the personnel arrived postwar in submarines and aircraft. In July 1945 the United States threatened to bring Argentina before the UN Security Council for "concealing from the United States knowledge of the movements of German U-boats in Argentine coastal waters", knowledge which the Argentine Admiralty was receiving from German sources in Argentina.
The evidence for the involvement of Baron Manfred von Ardenne in the Bell project is as follows:
(1) It is very probable that there was a Bell installation in the cellar below the chalet adjacent to Amt 10 at Ohrdruf. This is hinted at in the documents mentioned at (4) below. The purpose of this Bell installation may have been to produce a plasmoid which reacted with a common explosive (finely powdered coal dust and liquid air) to vastly expand its range and effect.
(2) Von Ardenne was involved in the production of a miracle explosive of some description. That is the evidence of Henry Picker: "Hitler's Tischgespraeche im Fuehrerhauptquartier 1941-1942" (First edition, Gerhard Ritter, Bonn 1951). Picker was the stenographer appointed by Martin Bormann to take notes of the conversation at Hitler's tea table. It will be seen from this book that Hitler visited the Ardenne laboratory on occasions to see how the work was coming along. It is clear that the bomb under construction - a "uraniumbombe" - was not an atom bomb. The German term for an atom bomb in common use at the time was "Uranbombe" and not "uraniumbombe". Hitler's description of how it would work indicates that the weapon cannot have been an atom bomb. It was to be fitted as the warhead of an intercontinental rocket - therefore the A9/10 - and consisted of a number of "uranium-bomben" which would be scattered far and wide by a conventional explosive.
(3) A strange explosive was tested at Ohrdruf on the nights of 4th and 12 March 1945. A number of modern German authors including Mehnen and Karlsch have attempted to prove that this was a rudimentary atom bomb. However, the eye-witness evidence contradicts any such possibility. It was a small scale test. 200 camp prisoners and 20 SS guards who got too close were scorched to death. Viewers were invited to watch the explosion through binoculars on a dark night (therefore there was no fire-ball). Witness Claere Werner (see 4 below) said: "There was a brightness like hundreds of lightning flashes, but red inside and yellow outside. Then came a tremendous hurricane gust after which it fell quiet. A witness stated that this was a '100 gram additive?. There was some kind of miscalculation of the extent of the explosion resulting in the deaths of up to 400 concentration camp prisoners and 20 SS guards who were assisting in the test. The bodies were burnt on a communal pyre and the ashes scattered across the Harz mountains." There was no residual fallout, although the Reichspost official made the rounds of nearby houses and ensured that all glassware was wiped clean. Claere Werner testified that on the night of 12 March 1945 she witnessed another, much smaller test. "I was told I must never mention anything I had seen, and particularly not the bolts of lightning."
(4) In 1962, the DDR authorities at Arnstadt questioned local residents who had been working at Ohrdruf in the period 1943-1945. These papers may be seen in the Arnstadt municipal archive. ALL deserve to be looked at and thought about very carefully. Claere Werner mentioned at 3 above was custodian of the Wachsenburg watch-tower situated in high ground a few miles NE of Ohrdruf. She mentioned a friend who worked at Arnstadt, Hans Ritter. He was employed by von Ardenne's Reichspost project and knew all about the forthcoming explosions and what precaustions were to be taken. It was Ritter who came round to clean the windows and glassware afterwards.
I trust this answers the various questions put above. I think it is important for the site managers to find some way to prevent posts being elongated in the ludicrous manner they are in this thread.
ultraviolet burns?
Part of an English translation[M. A. J. Mariscotti]. I have a pdf of the entire document but can't post it until I get the ok from author. It is a pdf so I'm not sure how to have the forum allow the .pdf extention.
It seems to me as though we have a jigsaw puzzle with a *LOT* of missing pieces and a *LOT* of wrong pieces.
I have read the Cook book but not Witkowski's.
I posted incorrect information as a sort of trap, Baron Manfred von Ardenne did not sign off on Richter's pdD. Just wanted to see if any of the principals were reading. guess not.
bruce
""
While work continued at a feverish pace, Dr. Richter busily collected instruments and equipment in Córdoba and
Buenos Aires. After the important meeting in which Perón decided the creation of the Huemul laboratory, Richter
took the opportunity to visit the San Miguel Observatory, a Jesuit institution in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and
met its director, Father Juan A. Bussolini. The Observatory dealt mainly with Solar physics, but it also
manufactured Geiger-Muller radiation detectors. Richter was favorably impressed when he saw them and ordered
some for the experiments he was conducting in Córdoba. There are no written records about these experiments.
However, in 1963, Richter wrote a letter to Scientific American in New York, reporting a discovery he allegedly
THE SECRET OF HUEMUL ISLAND Chapter
III
made in Córdoba, on October 3, 1949. The letter was never published. Yet, its content is interesting because it
throws light on Dr. Richter's scientific ideas (24).
The origin of the letter was an article published by H. W. Lewis in Scientific American (25) dealing with ball
lightning phenomena.
Ball lightnings, or balls of fire, are rather unusual atmospheric events which occur during heavy storms. "The evil
light" in popular jargon, consists of ionized matter, or matter in which electrons get loose from the atoms, giving
rise to uncompensated electrical charges. Thus, a ball of fire is a highly-electrified object, which, for reasons still
unknown, lives for a few seconds and, occasionally, even minutes. The few registered observations have been
described as a glowing suspended ball approximately a foot in diameter. The ball is reportedly capable of passing
through windows and going down chimneys. In the common sense of the word, a real phenomenon!
In his article, Lewis stated: "If some day it should be discovered that ball lightning consists of a stable plasma
configuration, such a discovery will be instrumental for a thermonuclear energy-production program."
Undoubtedly, this statement must have prompted Richter to write to the journal's editor: "Since I am not only one
but, to the best of my knowledge, the first one who put forward the concept of a ball-lightning-controlled fusion
reactor and even got some interesting experimental results (in 1948/52), I should like to contribute to the basic
problem of ball-lightning by putting forward an even more exciting (so I hope) concept".
In the following paragraphs of his letter to Scientific American Richter describes what he thinks is a promising
laboratory approach for studying this phenomenon and further on he makes reference to his experiments of October
3, 1949: "...when testing a self-confining plasma system, a tremendous but quite unexpected flash of visible and
ultraviolet radiation for the first time revealed the existence of a suddenly collapsing, energy-storing plasma
configuration."
Richter claimed that this observation proved the phenomenon's "electrodynamic" origin.
Therefore, according to this document, while Richter was still at his Córdoba laboratory before leaving for Huemul,
he experimented with man-made balls of fire in order to explore the possibility of obtaining confined and
controllable plasmas.
These and other lucubrations which at the time commanded his attention were recorded in a long report (26) which
his colleague and former assistant, physicist Wolfgang Ehrenberg, wrote upon his return to Munich in 1958.
The acquaintance with Ehrenberg dated back to the 1930's. In 1939 they had discussed the existence of confined
plasma and the cross-like configuration of a pair of electrodes perpendicular to a pair of magnetic poles. According
to Ehrenberg's paper, Richter had already experimented this configuration and had shown him a photograph of the
results.
Years later, in 1942 and `43, they worked together at the private laboratory of Baron Manfred von Ardenne in
Berlin. There, they studied the stability of detonating materials. Occasionally, they also made experiments by
bombarding pellets of fulminating lead and mercury with fast protons. For this, they used a small van de Graaff
accelerator in von Ardenne's laboratory.
In August, 1949, Richter asked the Argentine Government to contact his friend Ehrenberg, and a year later both
met again in Bariloche.(27)
Upon Ehrenberg's arrival, Richter showed him a film he had taken some months earlier where "the compacted
energy at the center of the cross" was clearly visible, that is, where the lines of force of a magnetic field crossed the
line between the two electrodes of a spark gap. This same scheme was later used at Huemul. It had apparently
been mounted and experimented earlier in Córdoba.
Thus while construction tasks progressed speedily on Huemul, Richter made experiments, gathered equipment and
personnel. Regarding the latter, Richter requested only two assistants from Europe: Jaffke and Ehrenberg. Dr.
Greinel was also incorporated for a while, but he did not last long (28), and Dr. Pinardi, also at Huemul for a short
time, was accused by Richter of indiscretion and was dismissed from the project in August, 1950.
""
Some Refs:
23. Interview with Admiral Pedro Iraolagoitia, on August 28th, 1979. Other information in this section on Iraolagoitia's
performance corresponds to the interview held on the above-mentioned date.
24. Other people shared this same view. One of them was Edward Teller, the 'father of the H Bomb'. In 1956, Gordon
Dean, who was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1951 and had been so upset by Perón's announcement
(see Chapter I), was invited by the then Captain Quihillalt, president of CNEA, to visit Argentina. Richter, who was
then living in the vicinity of Buenos Aires, requested an interview with Dean. The meeting took place at the Plaza
Hotel. "Richter walked in and told me that nobody understood him and that he wanted to go to the States. I told him to
send me his papers and I would see what could be done about it", Dean told Quihillalt. Six months later, Quihillalt
went to the States and met Dean. Dean told him he had given Richter's papers to Edward Teller who had returned
them with a note which said :'On reading the first line of Richter's papers one would think he is a genius; on reading
the second line one comes to the conclusion that he's nuts.'
Von Ardenne arrives at a slightly different conclusion in his autobiography : "My experience with this person
(Richter) was unfortunate. I had to dismiss him quite soon despite the shortage of personnel because of the war. He
used to mix fantasty and scientific facts in such a way that his work could not be relied upon." Von Ardenne also
recalls that "I had already heard by 1943 that Richter wanted to turn light nuclei into helium by applying discharges to
high-current gases". While acknowledging that Richter was moving in the right direction in this respect, Von Ardenne
felt that the way he acted was "unworthy of a scientist: Richter used to introduce theoretical speculations as scientific
facts and through the expediency of presenting a deceitful picture of the situation, he tried to obtain funds for his
experiments."
Still another informed opinion on this matter belongs to Prof. R. Furth, who supervised Richter's thesis in Prague. In a
letter to Peter Alemann (see ref. 17, Chapter IV), he stated : "My personal opinion is that Richter is a moderately
gifted scientist, with an excess of imagination and not enough self-criticism."
The author is grateful to Admiral Quihillalt for the description of his talks with Gordon Dean.
25. Letter from Colonel Gonzalez to his son, dated May 11th, 1952.
26. Felix Luna, "Argentina, de Perón a Lanusse" (Argentina, from Perón to Lanusse), Biblioteca Universal Planeta,
Barcelona, 1972.
27. Ibid 12.
28. Letter from Colonel Gonzalez to his son, dated July 31st, 1952.
29. Interview with Fidel Alsina, February 1st, 1979.
30. The generally accepted version is that Richter used accoustic energy from the loudspeaker as a contribution toward
increasing the temperature of plasma. This is an utterly nonsensical proposition, considering the minimal value of such
a contribution. However, when I interviewed Richter in 1979, he offered a different explanation : he had used sound to
measure - not to increase - the temperature of plasma as, he said then, "the speed of sound is proportional to the square
root of the temperature of the milieu through which it travels", which is correct. However, this method is quite
impracticable in such a non-homogeneous milieu. Furthermore, a pulsed sound source would have been required
which, according to Dr. Balseiro's testimony to the 1955 Investigating Committee, was not the case (see ref. 34).
When I pointed this out to Richter during our interview, he showed not the slightest indication of being annoyed and,
acknowledging that I was right, simply changed the subject.
Also during this interview, Richter repeated his well-known assertion that it was unnecessary for him to attain
extremely high temperatures. Among other ideas, he mentioned it is possible to inject deuterium into a vessel in order
to achieve extraordinary pressures. At the very limit, "a plasma will be formed and atoms will fuse". When I pointed
out to him there is no vessel or compressor in the world capable of withstanding such pressures, he replied : "That is
my secret."
It seems to me as though we have a jigsaw puzzle with a *LOT* of missing pieces and a *LOT* of wrong pieces.
I have read the Cook book but not Witkowski's.
I posted incorrect information as a sort of trap, Baron Manfred von Ardenne did not sign off on Richter's pdD. Just wanted to see if any of the principals were reading. guess not.
bruce
""
While work continued at a feverish pace, Dr. Richter busily collected instruments and equipment in Córdoba and
Buenos Aires. After the important meeting in which Perón decided the creation of the Huemul laboratory, Richter
took the opportunity to visit the San Miguel Observatory, a Jesuit institution in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and
met its director, Father Juan A. Bussolini. The Observatory dealt mainly with Solar physics, but it also
manufactured Geiger-Muller radiation detectors. Richter was favorably impressed when he saw them and ordered
some for the experiments he was conducting in Córdoba. There are no written records about these experiments.
However, in 1963, Richter wrote a letter to Scientific American in New York, reporting a discovery he allegedly
THE SECRET OF HUEMUL ISLAND Chapter
III
made in Córdoba, on October 3, 1949. The letter was never published. Yet, its content is interesting because it
throws light on Dr. Richter's scientific ideas (24).
The origin of the letter was an article published by H. W. Lewis in Scientific American (25) dealing with ball
lightning phenomena.
Ball lightnings, or balls of fire, are rather unusual atmospheric events which occur during heavy storms. "The evil
light" in popular jargon, consists of ionized matter, or matter in which electrons get loose from the atoms, giving
rise to uncompensated electrical charges. Thus, a ball of fire is a highly-electrified object, which, for reasons still
unknown, lives for a few seconds and, occasionally, even minutes. The few registered observations have been
described as a glowing suspended ball approximately a foot in diameter. The ball is reportedly capable of passing
through windows and going down chimneys. In the common sense of the word, a real phenomenon!
In his article, Lewis stated: "If some day it should be discovered that ball lightning consists of a stable plasma
configuration, such a discovery will be instrumental for a thermonuclear energy-production program."
Undoubtedly, this statement must have prompted Richter to write to the journal's editor: "Since I am not only one
but, to the best of my knowledge, the first one who put forward the concept of a ball-lightning-controlled fusion
reactor and even got some interesting experimental results (in 1948/52), I should like to contribute to the basic
problem of ball-lightning by putting forward an even more exciting (so I hope) concept".
In the following paragraphs of his letter to Scientific American Richter describes what he thinks is a promising
laboratory approach for studying this phenomenon and further on he makes reference to his experiments of October
3, 1949: "...when testing a self-confining plasma system, a tremendous but quite unexpected flash of visible and
ultraviolet radiation for the first time revealed the existence of a suddenly collapsing, energy-storing plasma
configuration."
Richter claimed that this observation proved the phenomenon's "electrodynamic" origin.
Therefore, according to this document, while Richter was still at his Córdoba laboratory before leaving for Huemul,
he experimented with man-made balls of fire in order to explore the possibility of obtaining confined and
controllable plasmas.
These and other lucubrations which at the time commanded his attention were recorded in a long report (26) which
his colleague and former assistant, physicist Wolfgang Ehrenberg, wrote upon his return to Munich in 1958.
The acquaintance with Ehrenberg dated back to the 1930's. In 1939 they had discussed the existence of confined
plasma and the cross-like configuration of a pair of electrodes perpendicular to a pair of magnetic poles. According
to Ehrenberg's paper, Richter had already experimented this configuration and had shown him a photograph of the
results.
Years later, in 1942 and `43, they worked together at the private laboratory of Baron Manfred von Ardenne in
Berlin. There, they studied the stability of detonating materials. Occasionally, they also made experiments by
bombarding pellets of fulminating lead and mercury with fast protons. For this, they used a small van de Graaff
accelerator in von Ardenne's laboratory.
In August, 1949, Richter asked the Argentine Government to contact his friend Ehrenberg, and a year later both
met again in Bariloche.(27)
Upon Ehrenberg's arrival, Richter showed him a film he had taken some months earlier where "the compacted
energy at the center of the cross" was clearly visible, that is, where the lines of force of a magnetic field crossed the
line between the two electrodes of a spark gap. This same scheme was later used at Huemul. It had apparently
been mounted and experimented earlier in Córdoba.
Thus while construction tasks progressed speedily on Huemul, Richter made experiments, gathered equipment and
personnel. Regarding the latter, Richter requested only two assistants from Europe: Jaffke and Ehrenberg. Dr.
Greinel was also incorporated for a while, but he did not last long (28), and Dr. Pinardi, also at Huemul for a short
time, was accused by Richter of indiscretion and was dismissed from the project in August, 1950.
""
Some Refs:
23. Interview with Admiral Pedro Iraolagoitia, on August 28th, 1979. Other information in this section on Iraolagoitia's
performance corresponds to the interview held on the above-mentioned date.
24. Other people shared this same view. One of them was Edward Teller, the 'father of the H Bomb'. In 1956, Gordon
Dean, who was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1951 and had been so upset by Perón's announcement
(see Chapter I), was invited by the then Captain Quihillalt, president of CNEA, to visit Argentina. Richter, who was
then living in the vicinity of Buenos Aires, requested an interview with Dean. The meeting took place at the Plaza
Hotel. "Richter walked in and told me that nobody understood him and that he wanted to go to the States. I told him to
send me his papers and I would see what could be done about it", Dean told Quihillalt. Six months later, Quihillalt
went to the States and met Dean. Dean told him he had given Richter's papers to Edward Teller who had returned
them with a note which said :'On reading the first line of Richter's papers one would think he is a genius; on reading
the second line one comes to the conclusion that he's nuts.'
Von Ardenne arrives at a slightly different conclusion in his autobiography : "My experience with this person
(Richter) was unfortunate. I had to dismiss him quite soon despite the shortage of personnel because of the war. He
used to mix fantasty and scientific facts in such a way that his work could not be relied upon." Von Ardenne also
recalls that "I had already heard by 1943 that Richter wanted to turn light nuclei into helium by applying discharges to
high-current gases". While acknowledging that Richter was moving in the right direction in this respect, Von Ardenne
felt that the way he acted was "unworthy of a scientist: Richter used to introduce theoretical speculations as scientific
facts and through the expediency of presenting a deceitful picture of the situation, he tried to obtain funds for his
experiments."
Still another informed opinion on this matter belongs to Prof. R. Furth, who supervised Richter's thesis in Prague. In a
letter to Peter Alemann (see ref. 17, Chapter IV), he stated : "My personal opinion is that Richter is a moderately
gifted scientist, with an excess of imagination and not enough self-criticism."
The author is grateful to Admiral Quihillalt for the description of his talks with Gordon Dean.
25. Letter from Colonel Gonzalez to his son, dated May 11th, 1952.
26. Felix Luna, "Argentina, de Perón a Lanusse" (Argentina, from Perón to Lanusse), Biblioteca Universal Planeta,
Barcelona, 1972.
27. Ibid 12.
28. Letter from Colonel Gonzalez to his son, dated July 31st, 1952.
29. Interview with Fidel Alsina, February 1st, 1979.
30. The generally accepted version is that Richter used accoustic energy from the loudspeaker as a contribution toward
increasing the temperature of plasma. This is an utterly nonsensical proposition, considering the minimal value of such
a contribution. However, when I interviewed Richter in 1979, he offered a different explanation : he had used sound to
measure - not to increase - the temperature of plasma as, he said then, "the speed of sound is proportional to the square
root of the temperature of the milieu through which it travels", which is correct. However, this method is quite
impracticable in such a non-homogeneous milieu. Furthermore, a pulsed sound source would have been required
which, according to Dr. Balseiro's testimony to the 1955 Investigating Committee, was not the case (see ref. 34).
When I pointed this out to Richter during our interview, he showed not the slightest indication of being annoyed and,
acknowledging that I was right, simply changed the subject.
Also during this interview, Richter repeated his well-known assertion that it was unnecessary for him to attain
extremely high temperatures. Among other ideas, he mentioned it is possible to inject deuterium into a vessel in order
to achieve extraordinary pressures. At the very limit, "a plasma will be formed and atoms will fuse". When I pointed
out to him there is no vessel or compressor in the world capable of withstanding such pressures, he replied : "That is
my secret."
stable Richter plasmoid
I think this US company is on to Richter's "secret".
http://www.electronpowersystems.com/Ima ... lained.pdf
http://www.electronpowersystems.com
http://www.electronpowersystems.com/Ima ... lained.pdf
http://www.electronpowersystems.com
-
Simon Gunson
- Member
- Posts: 784
- Joined: 23 Mar 2004, 01:25
- Location: Wellington, New Zealand
Dear Bruce,
Ronald Richter led President Peron's nuclear project from 1948 and based his laboratory on Huemul Island at Lake Nahuel Huapi in a region where scores of Nazis were supposed to have settled after the war. Lise Meitner is known to have written about Richter's work in Argentina in July 1950. Richter claimed to have invented a high temperature chain reaction which he dubbed a thermatron. Sound like plasma research to you?
Meitner dismissed this as a known reaction of Mercury. Does that help you track down his research.. I take it Bruce that you wish to recreate Richter's work. Care to tell us a little of your interest in return please ?
There was also other work by Richter in Silesia near the border with Czechoslovakia in a disused coal mine. This was associated with the SS and Skoda works. Let me know if you need more help. It seems the technology was associated with a still classified missile technology used to electronically disrupt the engines of B-17 bombers and the missiles became known as FOO fighters. They apparently did down several allied bombers.
Cheers Simon Gunson
Ronald Richter led President Peron's nuclear project from 1948 and based his laboratory on Huemul Island at Lake Nahuel Huapi in a region where scores of Nazis were supposed to have settled after the war. Lise Meitner is known to have written about Richter's work in Argentina in July 1950. Richter claimed to have invented a high temperature chain reaction which he dubbed a thermatron. Sound like plasma research to you?
Meitner dismissed this as a known reaction of Mercury. Does that help you track down his research.. I take it Bruce that you wish to recreate Richter's work. Care to tell us a little of your interest in return please ?
There was also other work by Richter in Silesia near the border with Czechoslovakia in a disused coal mine. This was associated with the SS and Skoda works. Let me know if you need more help. It seems the technology was associated with a still classified missile technology used to electronically disrupt the engines of B-17 bombers and the missiles became known as FOO fighters. They apparently did down several allied bombers.
Cheers Simon Gunson
Whoa ! Slow down there buddy. The "Foo-Fighters" were hardly any type of missiles, if you ever have read official reportings of this "phenomena", and know anything about missiles, you should be able to understand that this is no kind of missile. And AFAIK there is not a single official "Foo-Fighter" report that states there was an Allied A/C shot down by them.There was also other work by Richter in Silesia near the border with Czechoslovakia in a disused coal mine. This was associated with the SS and Skoda works. Let me know if you need more help. It seems the technology was associated with a still classified missile technology used to electronically disrupt the engines of B-17 bombers and the missiles became known as FOO fighters. They apparently did down several allied bombers.
HOWEVER
There were reports that some planes, especially when flying over the Frankfurt am Main area IIRC, had problems with their engines failing. There was shortly after this that the US intelligence released a memo saying that the Germans may be using weapons that could burn-out the engines of aircraft.