“These are the lies you were taught about electricity: That the electrons themselves have potential energy, that they are pushed or pulled through a continuous conducting loop and that they dissipate their energy in the device. My claim is that all of this is false.” – Derek Muller (Veritasium)
The quotation above is taken from the video below from the Veritasium YouTube channel. This, and the follow up video are proof that electricity does not consist of a flow of electrons. Moreover, they give some clues at least as to what is actually happening. Ideas from the vortex physics of Konstantin Meyl will complete the picture to give a credible explanation for the phenomenon.
At 2:12 we have: “There is no continuous conducting wire that runs all the way from a power station to your house. No, there are physical gaps, there are breaks in the line such as in transformers [..] Electrons cannot possibly flow from one to the other.“
Furthermore, with respect to alternating current: “If the electron flow is in two directions then why does the energy only flow in one direction?“
At 8:20: “People seem to think that you are pumping electrons and that you are ‘buying electrons‘ (from a power company) which is just so wrong. [..] It’s quite counter-intuitive to think that the energy is flowing in the space around the conductor, but the energy which is travelling through the field is going quite fast” – Dr. Bruce Hunt
“It’s the fields and not the electrons that carry the energy” – Muller
11:07 – Under-sea cables that were coated in an insulator and then encased in an iron sheath (for protection) did not perform well.
A transformer (right) consists of two coils of wire separated by a gap. Electricity (whatever it may be) flows through the coil on the left and radiates a field shown as two straight(!) lines which then induces a current by somehow interacting with the wire on the right.
Well the only thing a ‘field’ can interact with is another field. People will say that an electric field can set a charge in motion but a charge is only characterised by its own field and any interaction is totally dependent upon that field.
Assertion: Electricity is some sort of ‘field movement’ within the wire and surrounding insulator. This field extends beyond the wire in some form or other and is able to induce similar movements in the other half of the transformer.
Vortex physics
In the vortex physics of Konstantin Meyl, field movement is described by some slightly modified versions of the Maxwell-Heaviside equations and can adopt several interesting shapes. Helical fields (right) are common, as are ring vortices (smoke rings) and spherical vortices (electrons).
Electric and magnetic fields are inextricably entwined via ‘movement’ at right angles and ‘movement’ is innate to both types of field; ‘static’ fields are an illusion.
Electric fields will propagate easily within a conductor and insulating material will favour the movement of the magnetic component, leading to characteristic patterns of field movement.
The image below is from Viktor Schauberger and depicts the flow of water in a wooden pipe but will serve to illustrate the flow of an electromagnetic field in an insulated wire.
The wire is conductive and favours a helical flow of an electric field whereas the insulating cable favours the construction of magnetic ring vortices. The field vectors for the electric and magnetic fields are at right angles to each other as required.
Similar patterns are observed in the flow of blood (a partially ionised fluid) in the arteries, in vast ‘plasma’ clouds in space (Thunderbolts project) and in weather patterns in our atmosphere (Birkeland currents). These currents are self organising along the lines of a least energy principle and highly efficient, losing very little energy.
So what is electric current?
Forget about electrons for minute and imagine all manner of field turbulence within a battery as various chemicals react. All this activity amounts to a sort of electromagnetic ‘pressure’ the energy wants to go somewhere.
Now attach an insulated wire and an inviting conduit has appeared. The turbulence enters the wire and begins to self-organise according to local conditions. A helical electrical component forms down the conductor and a magnetic ring vortex proceeds down the insulating sheath.
When these formations get to the light bulb, the ambient conditions have changed and are less favourable for the maintenance of the structures that have been hitherto so stable. The lack of a proper insulator and a less conductive filament cause the whole structure to break up and reformat as an altered field geometry, releasing, in the process field structures that are interpreted as ‘energy’.
Some structures are transmuted directly to photons and emitted with a characteristic spectrum whilst others are caught up in existing field vortices and will manifest as ‘heat’ (vortex gains and losses) . Some of the energy in ‘hot’ vortices will reconfigure as infra-red photons and fly away at the speed of light.
Note that within this formulation, there is no transmutation from electron to charge to force to matter and back to energy as all of energy, charge and matter are really the same thing, namely field activity.
The video comments explained
Transformers
There is no need for electrons here. Field movement travels along a wire and its surroundings. Vortices are discharged from the wire and travel towards the receptor coils. They enter these structures and begin to self-organise in a way that is encouraged by the geometry of the coil.
Movement is intrinsic to electromagnetic fields and somehow a ‘current’ is formed.
The structure of the field in between the transformer coils is almost irrelevant as the flow will reformat within the wires anyhow. This ‘must’ happen as the laws of physics must be obeyed and the current must flow according to local conditions.
Think of pumping water into a hose pipe and waving it around. Whatever the state of the water when it was outside the hose and whatever the nature of the waving, the water will form its own flow profile and can really only go one way or the other along the pipe.
Mainstream physics will talk about the field ‘inducing’ a current in the receptor coil but here the field literally flows from one wire to another. Like water.
How do fields carry energy?
They are not static but literally flow from one place to another.
Watch videos of ring vortices in water to see that they can clearly carry a lot of energy. Similarly a magnetic ring vortex will contain a great deal of electrical energy and this will be made available for use at the other end of the wire somehow.
So it is very likely true that the bulk of the energy is carried in the insulating cable as speculated in the video.
The imagining that fields are either static or vibrating entities does make it hard to consider that energy is transmitted and that it is transmitted in one direction only but the image of a moving ring vortex is surely compelling.
Electrons cannot possibly flow..
No, but field vortices can as they are not tied to ‘matter’.
Undersea cables
The magnetic ring vortices are an integral part of the flow geometry and they perform better in an insulator.
A big current needs a big cable and proportionally sized vortices are required which means a proportionally larger insulator sheath. It is no good just spraying a coating on the cables. The insulation isn’t to stop the electrons falling out but to allow an enclosing vortex structure to form which lends stability and efficiency to the whole flow.
A thin insulator does not allow the rings to form properly; the signal is distorted and the flow starts to break up and dissipate into the salt water.
“If the electron flow is in two directions (alternating current) then why does the energy only flow in one direction?“
Conjecture: With alternating current, the ring vortices are of alternating polarity (direction of spin) but still travel in the same direction. The electrical field vector within the conductor alternates between the forward and backward direction but this is not where most of the energy is held.
The ‘energy’ is contained within the vortex and not in it’s speed of travel or the direction of spin. For most purposes, the transmutation from vortex to energy is a crude breakdown of structure and is agnostic of the spin direction.
Why is alternating current more efficient than direct current?
It is claimed that this is because it is transmitted at a higher voltage and that this voltage is created via transformers.
Guessing now: The transformer somehow translates between a high rate of low energy vortices to a lower rate of high energy vortices. Energy transmission is related to energy content of vortices whilst energy loss is proportional to the number of vortices. Energy loss is via ‘surface loss’ from the rings.
The idea of ‘voltage’ is of limited use here.
What is discharge?
Several mentions of discharge (of electrons) or charge loss are made along with suggestions of field induction (the capacity to move electrons); these are a standard part of the vocabulary of physics and electronics and all no doubt have different laws to help quantify their behaviour.
Within the framework of vortex physics, however, these are all the same phenomenon, that is to say, the movement of field vortices:
- Discharge: Field Vortices going where you don’t want them to.
- Charge loss: Electrons cannot disappear completely but vortex structures can
- Induction: The change in geometry of a field structure caused by a different conductive environment
None of this has anything to do with electrons.
The second video
The diagram shows part of the experimental setup. A battery (capacitor) is placed in a circuit with a light bulb and the connecting wires stretch out to a distance of one light-second (actually much smaller) so that the ‘electricity’ is assumed to take one second to complete the circuit. See here: How electricity actually works
When the experiment is performed and the current switched on however the light comes on almost immediately and at least much sooner than it takes for light to travel around the circuit.
How does this happen? The answer is that as field currents start to flow around the circuit they will discharge into the air around the wire and form a de facto field which expands radially at close to the speed of light and eventually impacts upon the supply wire to the light bulb.
These vortices enter the wire and start to flow according to local conditions thereby creating a ‘current’, that is to say a structured flow of field energy.
Several commentators remark that this current should be infinitesimal, however, it turns out in practice to be strong enough to illuminate the light bulb.
What is going on?
Envisaged by classical physics is an electric field such as illustrated here, possibly coupled with an accompanying magnetic field that similarly decreases in field strength in proportion to the distance from the wire. The impact on the receiver wire will be small.
As soon as this field impacts the wire however, current flows in the wire and produces its own field which starts to interact with the first (transmitter) . Ignore the plus and minus signs here, the point is that the two fields are interacting over a region that is much larger than just the second wire itself.
Consider then this possibility: The electric and magnetic fields together form a helical vortex structure around the wires with the transmitter forming an outward spiralling vortex and the receiver hosting an inward spiral.
Energy then flows from one vortex to the other, the inverse square law is not appropriate and sufficient energy flows to light the bulb.
The vortex from the transmitter expands at close to the speed of light and impacts the second conduit. The current is small first but it creates its own vortex which expands at a similar speed, harvesting more and more energy as it does so.
At first, a doubled radius of the second vortex means a rough doubling of the energy gathered and hence a doubling of the current formed.
A unified field forms with a simplified form shown right and the rate of energy transport from one wire to another is .. anybody’s guess! It is likely that ultimately the ‘induced’ current drops off in approximate proportion to the distance purely on geometrical grounds.
This isn’t a ‘law’ though but a general principle as what is measured is always some sort of average which has been interpreted via a measuring instrument.
Note the contra-rotation of the helical fields and imagine what this would look like when extended over the whole circuit. The rotation is always the same way with respect to the current. An extended ring vortex is formed around the whole circuit and this is already known to be a highly stable structure.
Ok, now consider the screenshot from the second video:
The green line shows the current in the transmitter wire and the yellow shows the current in the receiver. The green arrow points to the time that the switch was turned on; the transmitter current shoots up almost instantaneously.
The current in the receiver though shows a linear increase up to the point of the yellow arrow which represents the current that initially drives the light bulb. Thereafter there is a sharp increase as the current completes the entire circuit.
The vortex model can be said to predict the linear increase but the classical model cannot. What would be expected by established theory is a sudden but ‘infinitesimal’ current which would then remain stable at a very low point.
Conduction within nerves
If conduction within wires is largely by means of ring vortices then maybe the same is for the transmission of nerve impulses?
Many papers find that there is a relationship between the speed of propagation of nerve impulses and the thickness of the insulating sheath surrounding a nerve; the thicker the myelin sheath, the faster the signal propagation:
Local modulation of neurofilament phosphorylation, axonal caliber, and slow axonal transport by myelinating Schwann cells – de Waegh, Brady
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1371237/
As with the undersea cables, a thicker sheath allows the free and unconstrained development of ring vortices whilst a thin sheath necessitates a deformation or stretching of the vortex to fit within the sheath, Additional surface area means additional ‘field drag’ (also known as friction) which leads to energy loss and slower propagation.
Summary
Electricity is the continuous flow and transmutation of energy fields from one environment to another. The geometry and conductive properties of that environment in conjunction with the principles of vortex physics characterise the flow.
Within this landscape, various patterns emerge and the simplest of these such as voltage, current and field ‘induction’ have been adopted as standard but none of them have a particularly sound basis in reality, being largely artefacts of the measuring instruments themselves.
Other patterns such as ring or helical vortices on the other hand are theoretical constructs that have not been measured and yet give a greater and more consistent understanding of the phenomena that we actually observe.
Related pages:
References:
The website of Konstantin Meyl – http://meyl.eu
About vortex physics and vortex losses – Konstantin Meyl
https://www.k-meyl.de/go/Primaerliteratur/About_Vortex_Physics_and_Vortex_Losses.pdf
Scalar waves – Konstantin Meyl
https://www.amazon.com/Scalar-Waves-Konstantin-Meyl/dp/3980254240
Interview with Konstantin Meyl – YouTube
https://youtu.be/tKTkpC-DHZ8
The big misconception about electricity – Derek Muller (Veritasium YouTube)
https://youtu.be/bHIhgxav9LY
How electricity actually works – Derek Muller (Veritasium YouTube)
https://youtu.be/oI_X2cMHNe0
Local modulation of neurofilament phosphorylation, axonal caliber, and slow axonal transport by myelinating Schwann cells – de Waegh, Brady
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1371237/