In part one of this story we mentioned how Isaac Newton, towards the end of his life was very interested in alchemy, changing lead and other base metals to gold, and how alchemy is a subset of transmutation, one element changing into another, something which is only supposed to happen in nuclear reactions.  We also noted that unstable radioactive elements decay (transmutate) over time into more stable non-radioactive elements.  When not occurring in a chain reaction explosive type scenario, the decay rate of various radioactive elements is considered to be a physical constant.  Very recently and strangely enough however, quite respectable scientists have reported that the decay rates of certain radioactive elements fluctuate precisely in time with the period of rotation of the interior of the sun.  I mention this just to point out that things are not always as set in stone as presented in textbooks.  Alright I’ve hemmed and hawed enough, I’ll just come out with it.  Chickens shouldn’t be able to lay healthy eggs in England.  I don’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed, I mean there isn’t enough calcium in the Britannia soil to form hard egg shells.  Yet there they are day after day, laying hard shelled eggs, utterly oblivious to the constraints of the laws of physics.  How can this be?

A French Professor by the name of Louis Kervran noticed this in the early 1960s and began writing about it. He also noted that chickens in England avidly peck at mica, a rock which is often very rich in potassium.

Going beyond his environmental observations, Dr. Kervan performed experiments where he gave chickens a diet devoid of both calcium and potassium and found that the chickens could only lay soft shelled eggs.  However, quite bizarrely, when he still withheld calcium but reintroduced potassium into their diet, within a day they were able to lay healthy calcium rich eggs.  What we appear to be dealing with here is nothing less than cold fusion chickens!

Dr. Kervan went on to document many more of these “biological transmutations” in a variety of plants and animals and present his findings in various books and scientific publications.  These results and/or similar findings have been confirmed by at least three separate groups of researchers.

1.  Prof. Pierre Baranger, chief of the Laboratory for Organic Chemistry at the ÉcolePolytechnique in Paris.  In reporting to the scientific community on his findings Professor Baranger commented,   

“My results look impossible, but there they are. I have taken every precaution. I have repeated the experiments many times. I have made thousands of analyses for years. I have had the results verified by third parties who did not know what I was about. I have used several different methods. I changed my experimenters. But there is no way out; we have to submit to the evidence: plants know the old secret of the alchemists. Every day under our very gaze they are transmuting elements. …”

2.  J.E. Zundel a chemical engineer at the Swiss Polytechnicum School of Zurich.  An Alchemy related website describes Mr. Zundel’s findings,

After many experiments, hundreds of analyses of tens of thousands of grains or plants J.E. Zundel (then Chemical Engineer of the Polytechnicum School of Zurich) confirmed these findings in a lecture in 1971 at the French Academy of Agriculture (Bull No. 4, 1972). He had then used chemical and physical methods of analysis. Later in 1979, Zundel, using the mass spectrometer at C.N.R.S (the Microanalysis Laboratory of the French National Scientific Research Centre), and neutron activation mass analysis at the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research in Villigen (Aargau), confirmed the increase for Calcium of 61% + or – 2% (average for both laboratories) that is absolutely beyond any statistical dispersion.

3.  Professor Hisatoki Komaki, Chief of the Laboratory of Applied Microbiology at a leading Japanese university.  The Japanese research team which confirmed Dr. Kervan’s findings were so impressed they went on to nominate him for a Nobel prize. 

There is a synopsis of historical findings on biological transmutation which may be found here and a website devoted to Professor Kervan, with many links to further reading, here.

It is difficult for me to know what to make of all this, and it is not something I see as having, for the moment at least, any day-to-day impact on people’s health, I just find it a fascinating topic.  I have trouble believing all the respected professionals and academicians looking into this were lying and it is difficult to dismiss their results as all in error.  Perhaps there is some undetermined means of gathering elements from the environment that has not been discovered.  If not, and the results are valid, well it turns much of physics and chemistry squarely on its head.  As Pons and Fleischman reported some time back perhaps there are low-energy, non-radioactive transmutations of elements (i.e. cold fusion).

As I said in starting this post though, getting to the bottom of this doesn’t strike me as overwhelmingly difficult, we are not talking calculus here.  Get a grade school class some chickens, like Kervan set up different diets, -calcium -potassium, -calcium +potassium, -potassium +calcium, -calcium, -potassium.  If the -calcium +potassium group is laying hard shelled eggs then Houston we have a problem.  Send the eggshells off to a lab for analysis and confirmation.  Similar experiments could be set-up for plant based biological transmutation claims.  Again, this really doesn’t seem to be such an intractable problem to resolve, considering the implications perhaps it needs to be further confirmed or put to rest post haste.

So after coming across all these biological transmutation findings I have to re-evaluate and say, maybe, just maybe that Professor Newton fellow wasn’t such a complete dullard after all.  Come to think of it you don’t suppose? … Naaahhh, he couldn’t of, no way.  Well in any event nearly all of Newton’s alchemy related writing were lost in a fire, how unfortunate.  Then again, and to get to the punch line, now I’m thinking of buying a goose this spring and feeding it lead.

Ciao,

Paul