Decoding EVOs: A Deep Dive into Exotic Vacuum Objects

May 11, 2024

In his APEC presentation, “Decoding EVOs: A Deep Dive into Exotic Vacuum Objects,” Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project researcher Bob Greenyer connected decades of experimental anomalies—from Winston Bostick’s plasmoids and Ken Shoulders’ charge clusters to John Hutchison’s damaged metals, cavitation and ball-lightning-like discharges. His Fractal Toroidal Moment (FTM) hypothesis proposes that nested toroidal structures could provide a common architecture behind phenomena reported across plasma physics, LENR and materials experiments. Drawing on microscopy, elemental analysis and historical research, Greenyer explored possible implications for energy and propulsion, while acknowledging ideas that extend well beyond established toroidal and plasma physics.

A Metal Sample Opens the EVO Question

Greenyer begins with something tangible: a metal specimen attributed to Canadian experimenter John Hutchison. The sample combines steel and aluminum in a configuration that Greenyer argues is difficult to explain through ordinary melting or mechanical insertion. With aluminum removed from above part of the specimen, microscope imagery exposes the interface between the two metals, including a channel-like region around the steel. Greenyer proposes that an Exotic Vacuum Object, or EVO, formed around the ferrous material and locally altered the surrounding aluminum, allowing one material to move through another without the bulk heating expected from conventional melting. He goes further, suggesting that sufficiently rapid movement through this altered region could appear almost instantaneous. The sample itself and its unusual morphology are observations; the EVO mechanism and any teleportation-like interpretation are Greenyer’s proposed explanations.

That distinction is important because Hutchison-associated material has previously undergone conventional materials analysis. A study by Lawrence Murr, Sara Gaytan and M. I. Lopez examined an aluminum-alloy specimen attributed to the “Hutchison Effect.” The rod displayed striking macroscopic damage, with its end separated into plate-like fragments roughly 0.05 to 2 millimeters thick and torn strands resembling a frayed rope. Yet optical metallography, field-emission scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy didn’t reveal an unexplained metallurgical phenomenon. That study involved a different Hutchison specimen, so it doesn’t settle the origin of Greenyer’s steel-and-aluminum sample. It does illustrate why provenance, controls, independent laboratories and detailed materials characterization are critical when extraordinary mechanisms are proposed.

Greenyer’s EVO model reaches beyond mechanical deformation. He argues that sufficiently energetic structures may disrupt ordinary bonding, reorganize matter and potentially produce elemental changes. Carbon plays a recurring role in his interpretation because carbon-12 can be represented in nuclear-cluster models as three alpha-particle units. He connects that observation with carbon-rich deposits reported in several experiments and with his own microscopy of materials exposed to HHO flames and electrical discharges. In a 2019 tungsten experiment, for example, Greenyer interprets SEM and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, or EDS, results as indicating unexpected carbon and strontium. EDS can identify characteristic X-ray signatures associated with elements in the analyzed region, but elemental detection alone can’t establish how those atoms arrived there; demonstrating nuclear transmutation would require controls against contamination along with isotope measurements and an appropriate nuclear-energy balance.

From the Hutchison specimen, Greenyer moves into the theoretical framework he believes can explain these observations. He dedicates the presentation to the late Russian physicist Vladimir M. Dubovik, an important contributor to the modern theory of toroidal electromagnetic moments. Dubovik and A. A. Cheshkov published work on electromagnetic multipoles in 1967, and Dubovik’s later research helped formalize toroidal moments and unusual charge-current configurations. Greenyer sees this theoretical lineage as an important bridge between unconventional EVO experiments and established electrodynamics. But that bridge has limits: the existence of toroidal electromagnetic moments doesn’t by itself establish the more unusual material transformations that Greenyer attributes to EVOs.

From Bostick’s Plasmoids to Ken Shoulders’ Charge Clusters

A central historical figure in Greenyer’s presentation is plasma physicist Winston H. Bostick, who performed a series of striking plasma-gun experiments during the 1950s. In a 1956 Physical Review paper, Bostick described ionized matter projected across a magnetic field and used the term plasmoid for organized plasma structures generated in his experiments. His measurements included plasma velocities approaching 2 × 10⁷ centimeters per second, or about 200 kilometers per second—roughly 447,000 miles per hour. Greenyer highlights the number because it demonstrates that organized plasma structures can move at extraordinary velocities. It doesn’t, however, mean a spacecraft or its occupants could simply be accelerated to the same velocity under the same conditions; Bostick was measuring plasma, not macroscopic propulsion.

Bostick continued the work in his 1957 paper “Experimental Study of Plasmoids,” examining interactions between these organized plasma entities. His broader research explored whether laboratory plasma behavior could illuminate structures seen on astronomical scales. That history is important to Greenyer because it establishes that self-organizing, toroidal or vortex-like plasma structures aren’t inherently exotic concepts. Bostick’s plasmoids existed within experimental plasma physics decades before the term EVO came into use. Greenyer’s argument is that later researchers may have been observing related organizational principles at very different scales and under very different experimental conditions.

The next major figure is Ken Shoulders, whose work on compact charge structures became foundational to modern EVO discussions. Shoulders documented his experiments in the 1987 manuscript EV, A Tale of Discovery, archival material that’s preserved in the Kenneth R. Shoulders Papers at the Science History Institute. Shoulders initially called his objects “EVs” and later used “EVO” while describing highly concentrated electrical-charge structures that he reported generating, moving and interacting with materials. His work also produced patents involving high-charge-density entities. Greenyer sees Shoulders’ experiments as a crucial link between Bostick’s macroscopic plasmoids and the microscopic structures he believes appear in LENR and anomalous-materials experiments.

Greenyer is especially interested in Shoulders’ treatment of electromagnetic potentials and his descriptions of compact charge structures behaving in ways that don’t resemble ordinary electrical arcs. He proposes that Shoulders experimentally encountered structures that can be understood through toroidal electrodynamics. That’s an interpretive connection rather than an established identification. Shoulders’ documents and experimental apparatus are part of the historical record, and toroidal multipoles are established physics, but demonstrating that a Shoulders EV is specifically a toroidal multipole—or Greenyer’s Fractal Toroidal Moment—would require measurements capable of distinguishing that model from conventional plasma, discharge and surface-interaction mechanisms.

Toroidal Moments, Anapoles and Non-Radiating Structures

Toroidal electrodynamics gives Greenyer’s argument its strongest connection to mainstream physics. Toroidal dipoles constitute a recognized family of electromagnetic multipoles distinct in their current geometry from familiar electric and magnetic dipoles. Research has demonstrated toroidal excitations in metamaterials and other engineered systems, while anapoles can arise through interference among multipolar contributions, producing configurations with strongly suppressed far-field radiation. Modern research has also explored toroidal electromagnetic pulses in free space. So when Greenyer discusses toroidal electromagnetic structures and non-radiating configurations, he’s drawing on real areas of contemporary electrodynamics.

The connection to Dubovik is particularly significant. Work by Dubovik and other theorists helped establish a formal framework for toroidal moments and unusual charge-current configurations. Greenyer interprets these configurations as offering a possible theoretical basis for an EVO that can contain substantial internal electromagnetic organization while interacting differently with its surroundings than a conventional radiating source. In his model, a toroidal structure may effectively conceal aspects of its internal dynamics from ordinary electromagnetic observation while retaining concentrated effects near particular regions or singularities.

Greenyer also invokes the Aharonov–Bohm effect, one of the more counterintuitive experimentally established results in quantum physics. In simplified terms, the effect demonstrates that electromagnetic potentials can influence the quantum phase of charged particles even in configurations where the particles don’t pass through the classical magnetic field itself. Greenyer sees this as support for taking vector potentials seriously when analyzing EVO-like structures, and he suggests that suitable detectors based on quantum interference could eventually offer a way to detect effects that ordinary electric- and magnetic-field instruments miss.

But Greenyer carries these ideas considerably further than the established literature does. He proposes connections between toroidal structures, gravitational effects, inertia, matter reorganization and ultimately propulsion. Established work on toroidal excitations and anapoles doesn’t demonstrate gravitational beams, inertial modification, wormholes or faster-than-light transport. In fact, mainstream research describing freely propagating toroidal electromagnetic pulses treats them as electromagnetic structures propagating at the speed of light, not beyond it. For APEC, that distinction is especially relevant: the underlying electrodynamics provides interesting tools and possible experimental directions, but propulsion claims have to be demonstrated separately.

MFMP Experiments Lead Toward the Fractal Toroidal Moment

Greenyer traces his own path toward the Fractal Toroidal Moment through years of work with the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project (MFMP). One example is the “LION” reactor associated with the late Neil Crichton-Gould, which incorporated materials including nickel, diamond and deuterium. Greenyer says microscopy of recovered reactor material revealed organized structures that reminded him of spirals, rings and galaxy-like formations. He began classifying recurring forms by different “orders,” eventually treating them as possible manifestations of nested structures rather than isolated surface artifacts.

A major turning point came in 2017 during work in Suhas Ralkar’s laboratory in Mumbai. Greenyer recorded ultrasonic cavitation and studied the behavior of collapsing and interacting bubbles. Some of the observed structures appeared toroidal, with vortex-like and helical characteristics. Cavitation itself is well understood to generate extreme localized conditions during bubble collapse, including shock waves, high pressures and transient hot spots. Toroidal bubbles and vortical fluid structures are also well-known phenomena. Greenyer’s additional proposal is that the organizational geometry seen in cavitation provides a macroscopic analogue of magnetohydrodynamic and electromagnetic structures appearing elsewhere in his research.

The experimental trail widened to include abrupt electrical discharges, dielectric barriers, HHO flames, plasma vortices, spark transmitters and ball-lightning-like events. Greenyer became particularly interested in the damage these processes leave behind: rings, craters, tracks, cellular patterns and nested structures visible through optical and scanning-electron microscopy. Rather than treating each experimental platform as unrelated, he began asking whether a common self-organizing mechanism could produce similar signatures across cavitation, plasma discharge and LENR systems.

By February 17, 2020, Greenyer says he’d developed this idea into the Fractal Toroidal Moment. The model takes toroidal organization and recursively nests related structures—a “wheel within a wheel within a wheel” architecture. Greenyer proposes that successive levels of organization concentrate coherent electromagnetic and material behavior around a central phase singularity. His hypothesis draws inspiration from legitimate research into toroidal moments, orbital currents, solitons and coherent quantum systems, but FTM itself isn’t an established extension of those theories. It’s Greenyer’s proposed synthesis intended to explain recurring patterns that he believes he’s observed across otherwise disparate experiments.

Ball Lightning, Nested Structures and Materials Analysis

Experiments with Dutch researcher Henk Uren provide some of the most visually striking evidence in Greenyer’s presentation. Greenyer describes electrical-discharge systems involving materials such as iron, copper, zinc and insulating components that produced ball-lightning-like phenomena and unusual marks on nearby surfaces. Fused quartz and metal samples were subsequently examined for microscopic structures. Greenyer classifies the resulting patterns by increasingly complex “orders,” arguing that they show nested organization consistent with his FTM model.

Hexagonal organization is particularly important in his interpretation. Greenyer argues that an order of six produces an especially stable configuration and draws attention to six-fold patterns appearing in experimental samples. In microscopy images, he identifies cellular structures, vortices and nested rings that he interprets as successive levels of a self-organizing toroidal system. He also draws parallels to hexagonal patterns elsewhere in nature. Such visual similarities can be useful for generating hypotheses, but geometry alone can’t demonstrate a common physical mechanism: hexagonal packing and vortex forms can emerge from many unrelated processes.

The materials analysis raises a more testable set of questions. Greenyer describes experiments in which EDS indicated elemental distributions that he considers anomalous, including carbon, strontium, calcium, boron, iron and copper associated with particular microscopic structures. He argues that the composition sometimes varies systematically with the apparent size or “order” of the structure. Within the FTM model, a larger nested configuration would generate a stronger central region, potentially producing heavier nuclei. That’s a specific nuclear interpretation of the microscopy data, and it demands evidence beyond morphology and conventional EDS.

A rigorous transmutation test would need to establish the starting composition of every material, characterize contaminants and experimental blanks, repeat the process under controlled conditions, and use techniques capable of determining isotopic composition with high precision. If new elements were genuinely being synthesized, isotope ratios could be especially informative because they could potentially distinguish newly produced material from environmental contamination or redistribution of existing elements. Greenyer’s microscopy provides candidate targets for that kind of testing; it doesn’t, by itself, establish nuclear synthesis.

From Cold Metal Effects to Coherent Matter

Greenyer uses indium to illustrate what he believes may be an intermediate stage in EVO-driven material disruption. Pure indium melts at approximately 156.6°C, but in an experiment involving an HHO jet, he says indium foil became unusually flexible and rubber-like before subsequently heating and melting as other material appeared. Greenyer interprets the temporary flexibility as a change in bonding rather than simple thermal softening, and he compares it with Hutchison’s historical claims of “jellified” or unusually deformable metals.

In Greenyer’s proposed sequence, an EVO’s effects intensify through different levels. Lower-energy interaction might affect polarization or relatively weak intermolecular forces; stronger interaction could disrupt ionic, covalent or metallic bonding; still stronger effects might reach the nucleus. He uses this progression to connect cold deformation, fragmentation, machining-like effects and reported elemental changes. It’s an attractive unifying model because it places several categories of anomaly on one continuum, but each stage needs independent measurements before the sequence can be established experimentally.

Greenyer also draws comparisons with electrical-discharge machining, or EDM, in which precisely controlled electrical discharges remove material from conductive workpieces. EDM is an established industrial process whose macroscopic operation doesn’t require EVOs to explain it. Greenyer’s proposal is instead that compact self-organizing charge structures may form within the discharge and participate in the microscopic material-removal mechanism. That makes EDM potentially interesting as a controlled experimental platform: its electrical parameters, electrodes, dielectric medium and material removal can all be measured with high precision.

The presentation also ventures into coherent matter. Greenyer points to a Lockheed Martin patent concerning coherent matter-wave beams and vector-potential-induced phase synchronization. The patent is real and explicitly discusses matter-wave coherence and the Aharonov–Bohm effect, but a patent documents a claimed invention rather than proving the proposed system operates at every stated performance level. Greenyer’s larger suggestion is that EVOs may spontaneously create highly coherent states of matter, potentially resembling aspects of Bose–Einstein condensates or other organized quantum systems. That remains speculative, particularly when applied to microscopic features observed in room-temperature experimental materials.

The Propulsion Question

For an APEC audience, the obvious question is whether any of this can produce thrust. Greenyer approaches that possibility through the behavior of organized plasma and electromagnetic structures rather than through a conventional rocket model. Bostick’s approximately 200-kilometer-per-second plasmoid measurements provide a dramatic historical example of rapidly moving organized plasma. Greenyer asks whether a deeper understanding of such structures could eventually allow matter or fields to be coupled to similar dynamics for propulsion.

He also proposes that an EVO could create unusual boundary conditions around matter. Tornadoes and vortices appear repeatedly as analogies because they combine rotational organization, pressure gradients and relatively stable boundaries around energetic internal flow. In Greenyer’s model, a sufficiently coherent toroidal electromagnetic structure might similarly separate an internal system from its environment. He extends that possibility toward reduced interaction with surrounding matter and eventually toward inertia or gravity. Those steps are conceptual extrapolations, not experimentally demonstrated propulsion effects.

The presentation becomes still more speculative when Greenyer discusses concentrated energy transport, matter-to-energy conversion, wormhole-like behavior and faster-than-light implications. He cites reports of unusually large amounts of electrical power apparently traveling through extremely small conductors and suggests that an EVO could carry energy in a form not limited by ordinary current density. Claims on the order of tens of kilowatts through an approximately 8-micrometer conductor would be extraordinary and would require independently replicated voltage, current, calorimetric and field measurements before they could be treated as established.

What makes the propulsion question scientifically useful is that Greenyer’s model can, in principle, be separated into smaller experimental claims. Researchers don’t need to begin with FTL travel. They can ask whether the proposed structures exist, whether they have measurable electromagnetic signatures, whether they produce forces inconsistent with conventional plasma dynamics, whether those forces scale predictably with electrical parameters, and whether independently built apparatus reproduces them. If those intermediate effects aren’t demonstrated, the propulsion extrapolation has no experimental foundation. If they are, they’d provide a much firmer basis for investigating the larger implications.

Hutchison and Uren Samples Under the Microscope

Greenyer returns to physical evidence near the end of his presentation with a comparison that he considers especially important. He describes a 2022 brass specimen produced during Henk Uren’s experiments and subsequently examined by scanning-electron microscopy in Prague on August 17, 2023. Within what he calls a triangular “disruption zone,” Greenyer identifies an organized cellular or hexagonal array along with smaller vortex-like structures. These patterns become a reference against which he compares much older material.

The second set consists of Hutchison-associated samples whose provenance Greenyer dates broadly to approximately 1979–1982. He says the specimens came through researcher George Hathaway and hadn’t previously undergone the same comparative analysis. In SEM imagery, Greenyer identifies dark deposits that he describes as ferrosilicon, regularly spaced circular features associated with crystal grains, and structures whose centers show different elemental signatures. Some smaller features are described as iron-rich, while larger structures include copper-rich centers.

Greenyer then scales images from the Uren and Hutchison specimens and argues that the spacing and morphology of what he calls monopole structures are remarkably similar despite the samples having been produced

From Anomalies to Testable Experiments

Greenyer’s presentation ultimately argues that phenomena reported across plasmoid research, electrical discharges, LENR, cavitation and unusual materials experiments may be different manifestations of a common underlying structure. His Fractal Toroidal Moment model attempts to connect those observations with established research on toroidal electromagnetic moments while extending the concept into far more speculative territory involving transmutation, energy conversion and propulsion.

The strongest next step isn’t another theoretical extension, but experimental discrimination. Greenyer has accumulated physical samples, microscopy images and proposed geometries that can be subjected to independent analysis. Controlled replication, isotope measurements, calibrated energy balances and blinded comparison of experimental and control samples could determine whether the reported structures represent unusual physics or more conventional materials processes.

That approach also fits the open-science philosophy Greenyer has pursued through the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project. During the presentation, he said samples could be made available to laboratories willing to establish material-transfer agreements, define their analytical methods and openly publish their results. Independent laboratories reproducing the same effects would carry considerably more weight than visual similarities among individual specimens.

For APEC, that leaves Greenyer’s presentation with an appropriately open-ended challenge. The Fractal Toroidal Moment isn’t an established theory of EVOs or propulsion, but it generates specific questions that experiments can address. If the recurring structures Greenyer identifies are reproducible—and if their electrical, material and nuclear signatures survive rigorous controls—the next task is to determine what physics actually produces them.