Hi Horace, I had read about the absence of magnetic deviation too (as well as the rest of Bill's excellent and remarkably complete experiment reports), it is not incompatible with the ion refocussing water bump (sounds better than pimple) hypothesis I posted earlier. You would not expect the bump height or position to depend on the magnetic field, only on the electric field distribution, which is barely affected by the ions when current is low. The ion flow itself would be deviated, but it would still refocus, at least locally(*), on the unmoved water bump so the dark spot in the dry ice mist would also be unmoved.
Of course this relies on my wild speculation that a bump was mistaken for a dimple in Bill's laser relection test, which may be totally wrong. It is however based on the plausible hypothesis that at such low (nA) current levels the charged water surface is more likely to raise locally towards the oppositely charged tip (or more likely towards the first incoming ions, after which it would self-maintain by being attracted to more incoming ions due to its raised position) rather than recess due to particle impact. Regards, Michel (*) assuming the bump hypothesis is confirmed, a current distribution test would be interesting, to determine whether all the current goes to the dark spot or if we have a more classical wide spread, in which case the widely spread ion flow would only be refocused locally by the water bump. It would be tricky to do though. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Horace Heffner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 2:08 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Filament ion jets >I just got around to reading the experimental results at: > > http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/airexp.html > > I was surprised to see: "- I can't see any effects from a 3/4" > neodymium magnet. At 10nA, the magnetism around each thread must be > incredibly small." > That's an indication the ratio of q/m is very > small. A very tiny current still makes for a large deflection if q/m > is large. Looks like you have a large molecular chain made of polar > molecules, maybe made of H20 or CO2 or both, with very high > resistance. If the chain is water, the conduction would actually be > proton conduction, protons tunneling between water molecules in the > form of H3O+. > > Regards, > > Horace Heffner >
