Ok, so after doing a little more research, I'm not sure if there is anything to be alarmed about, at least in the immediate sense.
From the description you quoted on the ORMUS factor, it doesn't sound like they are actually adding purified ORMUS to the end product. The description just says that the plants are grown in sea beds known to have a high concentration of ORMUS minerals. There are a couple of unknown factors here. First of all, we don't know how much ORMUS these plants actually absorb and how much is passed on in the end product after processing. I think they are just using the term "ORMUS" as a new-age marketing gimik.
Secondly, nobody seems to know just what ORMUS is. It is not exactly the same product that David Hudson patented and promoted. Here is some information:
_http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/faq.htm
Question: How can I get some of the monoatomic White Powder Gold?
Answer: It has not been conclusively demonstrated whether the strange materials David Hudson identified are monatomic or not. Some scientists have suggested that the only way they could have the properties that they have is if they are di-atomic or greater.
Since we do not wish to prejudice the scientific process we have decided not to call them monatomic unless this issue is resolved. Instead we call them m-state or ORMUS elements. The “m” in m-state could mean monatomic, microcluster or even manna. You can read a scientist’s explanation of why these elements should not be monatomic at:
paranorm.htm#diatomic
Apparently, David Hudson used the term "White Powder Gold" as a generic term for all of the precious metal elements in their m-state form. Hudson never made very much of the white powder of gold because his ore source had relatively little m-gold in it.
David Hudson's colleague who did the 41 day fast was using a powder composed of several m-state elements with less than 1% of the powder being white gold. The current thinking of most experts, including Hudson, is that once the m-state is dried out into a powder it is much less easy for the body to assimilate.
It is possible to purchase m-state gold in a relatively pure form as a wet precipitate. Many of the people who have tried the m-state gold for a length of time do not like it for a variety of reasons. Some feel that it makes them lethargic. Some feel that it puts them so much in the moment that they forget to do the things which are important to make their lives work. One long-term researcher claims that the m-gold "locks" a person into their present condition, whatever that may be.
The easiest way to get m-state gold is to use the Wet Method on Dead Sea salt as the resulting precipitate is claimed to be 70% m-gold and 30% magnesium.
So, it looks like the easiest/cheapest way of producing ORMUS is through an extraction method from sea salt. Here is one description of this process:
_http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/ormus/ormus2.htm
_http://www.quantumbalancing.com/make_ormus.htm
I'm not going to go into the details here, but I will say that the extraction process sounds quite dangerous and involves the use of lye. I wonder just what sort of chemical cocktail this is really creating? It doesn't sound like there has been much if any evaluation on the health properties of this stuff - which is scary in itself.
So, if we assume for a moment that the ORUMS made from this extraction process really is "monoatomic gold", just what is monoatomic gold anyways? I can't seem to figure this out. The terminology is extremely confusing and I wonder if that is not by design. The new-age "enlightenment" websites all make really outrageous word-salad claims as to what it is and what the properties of this stuff are. They use scientific terms interchangeably with new-age jargon, so you're left wondering just what the heck we're dealing with.
I think the one common ground in all of this is gold - in some form. From what I've gathered, there doesn't appear to be much of a difference between Hudson's monoatomic gold/m-state gold/ORME which is the basis for ORMUS and the literature I've found on gold nanoclusters/microclusters or "nano gold". There is no standardized scientific naming to describe these gold configurations yet, but "nano gold" or nanoclusters seems to be the most common in the scientific literature. Typically in scientific literature they describe which gold nanocluster(s) they use in the experiment, but not always.
Gold nanoclusters will assemble into different shapes with differing electrical properties depending on the number of gold atoms in the cluster. The properties of these clusters can differ substantially from the original properties of gold itself based on the research. I believe that if ORMUS does contain gold nanoclusters, it has them in a large variety of configurations, not just one specific cluster, but further research would have to determine this for sure. Here are some interesting articles on the topic on gold nanoclusters:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070116131214.htm
ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2007) — Using different experimental techniques, two separate and independent research groups in collaboration with a team from the Center for Computational Materials Science (CCMS) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have unveiled the size-dependent evolution of structural and electronic structural motifs of gold nanoclusters ranging in size from 11 to 24 atoms. The experiments, in conjunction with the theoretical analysis performed by the Georgia Tech team, show near perfect agreement pertaining to the cluster structures occurring in the experiments. Understanding the electronic and geometric structures of gold nanoclusters is a key step towards understanding their behavior under different conditions, such as their use as nanocatalysts or in certain medical applications. The results appear in separate papers in The Physical Review B and in the journal ChemPhysChem.
In its bulk form, gold is treasured for its property as a non-reactive metal. Its use in electronics, dentistry, jewelry and art, depends on this inertness. But at the nano scale, when gold clusters contain only a small number of atoms, gold shows very different properties, which exhibit chemical reactivity that make them potent catalysts. Because their chemical and physical properties depend greatly on their physical structures, significant efforts have been invested by scientists to determine what the most stable configurations of gold clusters are in this size range. Understanding this is of great importance for elucidating the chemical properties of these clusters and in research aiming to discover the physical patterns that govern how the clusters are put together.
Between 2000 and 2002, a Georgia Tech team, led by Uzi Landman, director of CCMS, Regents’ and Institute professor, and Callaway chair of physics at Georgia Tech, predicted that negatively charged gold nanoclusters, up to 13 atoms in size, would exhibit two-dimensional, flat structures. The appearance of two-dimensional structures for such relatively large metal clusters is unique to gold, and the researchers showed that it is related to the strong relativistic effects for this metal. When these predictions were verified experimentally, research in Landman’s group and in other places focused on what happens when the nanoclusters are even larger.
"We wanted to know, what happens after 13 atoms,” said Landman. “What happens when these clusters become three-dimensional and what is their structural motif?” For the past few years, scientists at the CCMS have made theoretical predictions about the structures of gold nanoclusters in the larger size range. Now, working with two independent experimental groups, Landman and his collaborators have found firm evidence pertaining to the size-dependent structural development of these nanoclusters.
One of these collaborations involved researchers from the University of Freiburg and the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials, both in Germany, and a scientist from the University of Jväskylä in Finland. The Freiburg team performed photoemission experiments, in which a laser is shot at the gas-phase cluster causing it to eject an electron. Measuring the energy profiles of the emitted electrons using lasers of different wavelengths allowed the researchers to gain knowledge about the occupied electronic energy levels in the clusters. The distribution of these levels depends on the specific geometric arrangement of atoms in the clusters. Indeed, the theoretical analysis of the correlation between the distributions of the electronic energy levels and the atomic spatial arrangements allowed the researchers to determine the clusters’ electronic properties, as well as geometric structures.
In the other collaboration, the Georgia Tech researchers worked with a team from the Rowland Institute at Harvard University. They used electron diffraction, a technique in which a beam of electrons is fired at the clusters, causing the electrons to scatter. By measuring the intensity of the scattered electrons and comparing it to the change in momenta of the electrons caused by their collisions with the atoms of the clusters, they obtaines information about the spatial arrangements of the atoms in the clusters. Theoretical analysis of the interference patterns in these measured intensities allowed them to determine the clusters’ structures.
"It turns out that close to all the stable structures that were found through our theoretical analysis of the photoemission measurements were the same as those that emerged from analysis of the electron scattering experiments,” said Landman. “In our analysis we have used first-principles electronic structure calculations based on density-functional theory, in conjunction with structural optimization techniques. This is likely the first time that two separate and independent experimental tools, in conjunction with a common theoretical analysis, have shown such a high degree of agreement in the challenging area of structural determination of nano clusters.”
To avoid any bias, and ensure that the groups’ analyses weren’t being unintentionally influenced by knowledge of each other, neither experimental group saw the results of the other until the publication of their respective papers.
The results of the Georgia Tech collaborative investigations with the European group are published in the journal ChemPhysChem Volume 8, (2007), and those obtained from the collaboration with the Rowland Institute are published in The Physical Review B volume 74, (2006).
Through this comparison between experiment and theory, the teams found that the clusters start out as two-dimensional structures till 13 or 14 atoms in size, changing to three-dimensional hollow cages from about 16 atoms, and developing a face-centered-cubic tetrahedral structure at 20 atoms, resembling the bulk gold crystalline structure. However, at 24 atoms the gold clusters take an unexpected capped tubular cigar shape.
"These results assist us not only in determining the structures of the clusters, but also provide insight into the factors that underlie their self-assembly,” said Landman. “In some ways, we are determining the ‘structural grammar’ of these gold nanoclusters and by understanding that, we may better understand what motifs appear as we continue to search for the structures of clusters larger than 24 atoms.
The Georgia Tech team consisted of Uzi Landman and research scientist Bokwon Yoon. The collaborations consisted of Pekka Kosiken, Bernd Huber and Michael Moseler from the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials and the University of Freiburg, Oleg Kostko and Bernd von Issendorff from the University of Freiburg and Hannu Hakkinen from the University of Jyvaskla. The Rowland Institute team was made up of Xiaopeng Xing and Joel H. Parks.
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/studies/report-114306.html
“While gold nanoparticles are being used by so many researchers – chemists, materials scientists and biomedical engineers – no one understood their molecular and electronic structures until now,” said Robert Whetten, a professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Physics and School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “This research opens a new window for nanoparticle chemistry.”
Gold and sulfur atoms tend to aggregate in specific numbers and highly symmetrical geometries. Sometimes these clusters are called “superatoms” because they can mimic the chemistry of single atoms of a completely different element.
Researchers commonly use gold nanoparticles because they are stable and exhibit distinct optical, electronic, electrochemical and bio-labeling properties. However, understanding the physicochemical properties of such clusters is a challenge, according to Whetten, because that requires knowledge of their atomic structures.
A significant advance came in late 2007 though, when Stanford University researchers reported the first-ever total structure determination of a 102-atom gold cluster. The X-ray structure study revealed that pairs of organic sulfur (“thiolate”) groups extracted gold atoms from the gold layer to form a linear thiolate-gold-thiolate bridge while interacting weakly with the metal surface below. These gold–thiolate complexes formed a sort of protective crust around the nanoparticles.
“This discovery contradicted what most chemists believed was going on – which was that the sulfur atom merely sat atop the uppermost gold layer, bound to three adjacent metal atoms,” said Whetten.
With the experimentally determined structural coordinates, an international team of researchers from Georgia Tech, Stanford University, the University of Jyväskylä in Finland and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden set out to determine the electronic principles underlying the 102-atom gold compound and others like it. The team conducted large-scale electronic structure calculations in supercomputing centers in Espoo, Finland; Stockholm, Sweden; and Juelich, Germany.
The researchers found that the 102-atom gold cluster was a “superatom” with a core of 79 gold atoms arranged into a truncated decahedron: two pyramids with pentagonal bases joined together into a faceted shape, but with the pyramids’ tips chopped off. Around the core, 23 gold atoms formed an unusual pattern, joining the thiolates in shapes that resemble handles.
The results confirmed the “divide and protect” structure first predicted by team member Hannu Häkkinen, a professor at the University of Jyväskylä and former senior research scientist at Georgia Tech in the laboratory of Uzi Landman. Häkkinen and Henrik Grönbeck of the Chalmers University of Technology previously proposed that a cluster of 38-atom gold contained a central metallic core of 14 gold atoms and a protective layer of 24 gold atoms bound to sulfur.
“In 2006, we predicted that gold atoms in this bonding motif were divided in two groups – those that made the metal core and those that helped to protected it,” explained Häkkinen. “Now there was evidence that this was true.”
In the study reported in PNAS, the researchers found that the clusters were stable because the surface gold atoms in the core each had at least one surface-chemical bond and the gold core exhibited a strong electron shell closing.
With the 102-atom gold cluster, each gold atom in the cluster donated one valence electron. Forty-four of those electrons were immobilized in bonds between gold atoms and thiolates, leaving 58 electrons to fill a shell around the “superatom.” In this configuration, the cluster wouldn’t benefit from adding or shedding electrons, which would destabilize its structure. This process is similar to what happens in noble gases, which are chemically inert because they have just the right number of electrons to fill a shell around each atom’s nucleus.
Associated with the filled electron shell, the gold-thiolate compound also had a major energy gap to unoccupied states. The calculated energy gap between the highest occupied molecular orbital and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital states for the 102-atom compound was significant – 0.5 electron volts. Metals typically have a gap of zero, so this gap indicates an atypical electronic stability of the compound, explained Whetten.
Besides the 102-atom compound, the researchers also determined the electronic structures for 11-, 13- and 39-atom gold cluster compounds. They found that the 11- and 13-gold atom clusters form closed electronic shells with 8 electrons and the 39-atom gold clusters with 34.
“The theoretical concepts published in this paper provide a solid background for further understanding of the distinct electrical, optical and chemical properties of the stable mono-layer-protected gold nanoclusters,” said Whetten, whose funding for this research came from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. Former Georgia Tech graduate student Ryan Price and current graduate student James Bradshaw also contributed to this work.
The study also shows that experimentally well-characterized, structure-resolved, thermodynamically stable species of thiolate-, phosphine-halide-, and phosphine-thiolate-protected gold nanoparticles share common factors underlying their stability.
Once this initial work was completed, the researchers started predicting the structures of other stable gold cluster compositions that are still awaiting a precise structure determination.
In the March 26 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the research team predicted the structure for a cluster containing 25 gold atoms. They determined that the structure was comprised of an icosahedron-like 13-atom gold core protected by six “V-shaped” long units, creating a “divide and protect” composition. The structural prediction was recently confirmed by another group’s experimental work.
“We now have a unified model that provides a solid background for nanoengineering ligand-protected gold clusters for applications in catalysis, sensing, photonics, bio-labeling and molecular electronics,” said Häkkinen.
Additional authors on the PNAS paper included Michael Walter, Jaakko Akola and Olga Lopez-Acevedo of the University of Jyväskylä; and Pablo Jadzinsky, Guillermo Calero and Christopher Ackerson of Stanford University.
Like I said in my last post, there is a lot of research going on with gold nanoclusters and DNA. Certain gold nanoclusters seem to have a strong binding affinity for DNA, which makes them useful in a lot of applications. It looks like they are trying to evolve some new technology using gold nanoclusters, but what will come out of all this research isn't entirely clear. The common reason for these studies is "medical applications".
As far as writing to Mike Adams about the dangers of ORMUS, I would point out that this is mostly a new-age marketing gimik in the context of these foods. But I would also bring up some of the reactions people have had to taking ORUMS. There are some pretty damning descriptions here:
_http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/realthing.htm
Here is another crazy story about ORMUS. I'm not sure whether to believe it. It makes these people sound like addicts!
_http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-25/columns/gold-fever-at-the-raw-spirit-festival-addicted-to-ormus/1#comments
There is another ORMUS "addict" letter here:
_http://educate-yourself.org/lte/colloidalgoldgroupie23nov06.shtml
Given all of this, I don't think there is really a need to mention Laura or any channeling sources to Mike. I think a broad elucidation of the facts is all that is needed.
Good luck!
