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Originally Posted by Theseus
I have no idea what you mean by your term "burns" in the above quote.
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What Esteban means is if you are in the location of a buried metal object with a strong signal, and you are trying to detect it by using an antenna connected to an IC with an open gate, then then the amount of energy being sensed will be strong enough to cause a current overload in the IC, causing it to permanently malfunction, possibly accompanied by the smell of a burning IC. He says he knows this from his own field experience.
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Originally Posted by Theseus
FERF is a made-up term and has no real meaning or relationship to practical science or to long time buried metal.
You say you'd rather call it "the phenomenon" because it is complex and involves unknowns. Okay... but here are some FACTS that don't involve unknowns, but do relate to various metals buried in a soil environment. These facts are the result of my own experiments and study and have been corroborated many times over by other investigators in the same field of study.
Very little if anything is happening around the more noble metal buried in a soil environment. Even if two dissimilar metal are in actual contact with each other, as the corrosion of one or both takes place, the electrical contact between the two is broke and the corrosion that occurs is concentrated on each individually.
All corrosion is based on loosing electrons. No metal is pure and even the local environment can cause one part of the same piece of metal to become anodic to other areas on the same piece. One area looses electrons and corrodes while the area receiving the electrons is cathodically protected. The anodic area eventually becomes polarized and then the corrosion stops in that area. Then another anodic area starts.
Since no metal is truely pure, there are always anodic areas in the metal. Also if any metal gets struck hard or gets bent, that stressed area becomes anodic -- thus the name stress corrosion.
Charge carriers within a metal are electrons, and the charge carriers external to the metal are ions.
Questions are; do the ions that flow between the two metals concentrate themselves in any way in the soil (electrolyte) around and in the area of the more noble metal? If so, would this concentration form some sort of a charged area (a field, or "a phenomenon") in the soil that is significantly different from other areas of the soil where there are no noble metals?
What metallic ions flow away from the source immediately bond with any anions in the environment such as Cl, OH, SO4, etc. Thus forming a corrosion area around the metal. Today, there is no evidence to suggest they might escape into the atmosphere or hover above the ground.
In actually, there is little flow of metal ions between metals that are physically separated; as explained above. In a pile of iron or with other material, organic or metal, then iron corrosion products can coat them.
What about some of the most noble metals in the galvanic series, such as Platinum and Gold? Gold is probably considered to be the most noble of all metals and in that regard is thought to be the most inert. Yet if Gold or Platinum were in a suitable soil environment where they shared the same electrolyte with less noble metal, would they not enter into a typical corrosion process with other nearby less noble metal, just as readily as other metals? (Not that the Gold or Platinum would suffer any corrosion, but simply that it would enter into typical corrosion ion flows with other less noble and corroding metal.)
If gold or platinum were in contact with any other metal, -- Key thing is in contact - then the electrons would flow from the less noble metal to the more noble metal. The less noble would corrode as the electrons flowed. But the metal ions of the corroding metal mainly build up as a corrosion layer around the corroding metal. The corrosion layer consists of the metal ions of the corroding metal, any anions in the environment and the matrix (sand, gravel, etc.) that is in the area.
Gold and Platinum in most instances are very very reluctant to give up any of their electrons, thus they do not lose any metal ions.
The key point here is this: Most corrosion of metal is within and among the constituent area of the same piece. The interaction between two dissimilar metals that are not in physical and electrical contact is minimal at best, and certainly does not create a "field" or "a phenomenon" that has to this day escaped detection by rational science and scientific investigation.
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Hi Theseus,
What you report is true for experiments done with various metals in the soil, and will hold true for experiments that extend for well over a year of research. Much has been studied in this area by companies who bury pipes and cables for the utilities. They often design anodic protection systems to prevent corrosion of the buried pipes and cables.
But things begin to change when we look at metals that are buried for longer terms, say more than 20 years. And these changes become very noticeable when the metal is buried for thousands of years. Scientists have found that the corrosion chemistry is different when observing the minute corrosion effects over these long time spans. Gold, platinum and other metals that naturally resist corrosion show evidence of very definite corrosion, and migration of ions in the soil in trace amounts. The chemistry that causes this corrosion is not from other metals, but from cyanide that is excreted by microorganisms which live deep under the surface. This happens in trace amounts, and depends on proximity to the buried metal, and also depends on capillary action of rain cycles, or underground moisture movement to transport the ions away from the metal host. Subterranean microorganisms also excrete organic acids and sulfur complexes which can suspend the corroded metal ions during the time when they are below the surface. The observations of the scientists who study these corrosion mechanics show the metal ions usually migrate upward (vertically) toward the surface of the earth. The metal ions eventually bind with other constituents of the soil during the final 10-30 cm before reaching the surface. At the time they bind, they become compounds (In the case of gold, it combines with itself into a gold lattice to create a microparticle). Never have they ever found any evidence of these ions surviving at the surface of the soil or above it.
This "long-time buried" chemistry is capable of transporting trace amounts of ions from noble metals such as gold and platinum, measured in the sub-parts per billion in a soil sample. But even in these trace amounts, when the process continues for long enough, scientists have found some of these moving metal ions can precipitate into new gold nuggets at some distance from the host metal which is usually below the new nugget formations. This has been observed on very long time buried natural gold deposits (more than 50,000 years old). The time involved for these processes depends on the presence and concentrations of microorganisms that excrete cyanide, low molecular weight organic acids, and sulfur complexes. The time lapse also depends on annual rain cycles to provide the capillary action needed to draw the ions upward with the moisture. In ideal conditions created in a laboratory, more than 1 part per billion gold ion concentration can be measured in the soil after a month using simple methods. Gold ions can easily obtained by seeding a bucket of damp soil with gold pellets, then incubating the soil with known cyanide excreting microorganisms. This will create a strong gold ion concentration in the soil in one month, which usually takes more than a century when relying on the rain cycles and other fortuitous circumstances.
The mechanisms I described above are what scientists have observed. They did not report any observations of strange electrical activity in these locations of buried metal. But then, maybe they were not looking for electrical activities.
Best wishes,
J_P