Griffin's 'Radiant Matter' Penetrating Cathode Ray Tubes

[Hakasays]

Griffin did a presentation recently at the ESTC on Tesla's 'radiant matter' tubes.  (Non-harmful single-wire Tesla X-ray tubes)
https://youtu.be/TOPIaFdn3XQ
https://griffingbrock.com/2022/12/14/teslas-single-wire-shadowgraph-recreated/


Some details to note:

Mechanics:
- Beam tube is atmospheric with a relatively deep vacuum.  No special fill gasses, just a turbomolecular pump capable of reaching 10^-6 to 10^-8 torr IIRC.
- Beam tube is single-wire with an aluminum cathode.
- The cathode degrades over time with a brown stain.  Staining is front-surface only which suggests it is not simply acting as a getter.
- Tube performs best with high voltage rather than current.  Tube-based amplifiers work but to a much lesser degree.  Likely 50kv is the threshold voltage.
- Tube has largely been driven with an antique Diathermy machine (old-school Tesla coil) on the order of 300 watts.
- Tube will operate with continuous waves but seem to be much stronger under disruptive-discharge.  This remains to be studied.
- Several tube shapes have been built, with varying effect on the beam spread but no change in character
- Front surface of the borosilicate glass becomes very hot, which suggests Bremsstrahlung (braking radiation) may be playing a part.

Properties:
- The beam activates photographic film, phosphorescent screens, and can be picked up via Geiger counters.
- It also triggers a dense 'fog' inside cloud chamber.
- Detectable range of the beam is on the order of 200-400ft with his current setup.
- No discernible effects have been observed on living tissue.

- The beam cannot be conventional X-rays, among other reasons that 5-10 Sieverts/hr would cause severe immediate radiation burns and is well beyond fatal at the doses received if they were conventional X-rays as we understand them.  There is also no known instances of X-ray tubes being produced that lack an anode.


I've been working with him on some of these projects so I can answer some questions as well.



My personal assessment based on experiments thus-far is that the tube is acting as a high-energy Beta emitter (ie: electrons), somewhere in the 10-50MeV range.  That explains the penetrating ability, shielding ability, lack of standard radiation-health effects, and some peculiar shielding perioerties (seems to shield by mass-density rather than material type).

A falsifiable experiment to help confirm would be using strong electrostatic+magnetic fields to attempt to deflect the beam in open-air.  However these would have to be placed far from the tubes as the beams are deflected by electrostatic+magnetic fields inside the tube, the same as a conventional Cathode Ray.


If anyone has thoughts/theories or experiments to suggest please feel free.  The more people involved, the faster we can characterize and understand this rediscovery.

[Hakasays]

I especially enjoyed Griffin's recent 1940's-style 'documentary' clip
https://youtu.be/JoUMlPkeYBY

Anyone that knows him well knows it fits his style perfectly

[PhysicsProf]

I especially enjoyed Griffin's recent 1940's-style 'documentary' clip
https://youtu.be/JoUMlPkeYBY

Anyone that knows him well knows it fits his style perfectly

I watched the vid...
OK - is there any claim here of OU?
Is taking "x-ray" like images of body parts dangerous?  How do we know it's safe?

[Hakasays]

Is taking "x-ray" like images of body parts dangerous?  How do we know it's safe?

Subtlel and long-term effects remain to be seen.  I would not say harmless, but no deleterious health effects have been observed at this time.
All we can really say for certain at this point is that for the equivalent ionizing exposure that they are orders-of-magnitude safer than conventional X-rays (which by itself would be an industry game-changer).

is there any claim here of OU?

*probably* not, but if the rays are indeed >10MeV electron beams as fits some observations then there is a serious hole where that energy comes from.