To explain: Ed Shoulders is not some ill-educated crackpot. He discovered a 'particle' he initially called Electron Validum, later changed to charge cluster. Some Russians independently made the same claim, calling them "ectons' or something.
Anyhow, they are transient structures of huge numbers of electrons briefly stuck together, somehow in defiance of mutual repulsion. They can go thru refractory material like butter and their concentraion of charge means they can bust thru a Coulomb barrier and transmute atoms. Shoulders says that various government types wanted to classify his patents as secret but he published his results in such a way as to prevent that.
