Nuclear Metamorphosis
F.Cardone1 ,D.Bassani2
1ORCID: 0000-0001-9060-5916
Already member of the GNFM, Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica “F.Severi” Città Universitaria, P.le A.Moro 2, 00185 Roma, Italy
CNR, c/o Università La Sapienza di Roma,
00185 Roma, Italy
2ORCID: 0000-0002-1183-6183
Independent researcher, 12010 Cervasca, (CN), Italy
This manuscript was compiled on June 1, 2025
In physics, the transformation of atoms of particular chemical elements into others has been known since the first studies on the nuclear structure of matter.
Alchemists tried unsuccessfully to transform base matter into precious substances.
When knowledge about atomic nucleus structure was consolidated and the first neutron sources were developed, this transformation became possible, but with final results that were often radioactive and unusable from an economic and technological point of view.
The Nuclear Metamorphosis described here is a series of physical phenomena caused in matter by appropriate ultrasonic stresses.
Ultrasound is used, as known to be able to provide a sufficient energy into an adequate space and time region.
It occurs in both solid and liquid materials stressed by longitudinal pressure waves, also known as shock waves, leading to cavitation.
In these materials, when the energy provided reaches critical levels of density, for a given space volume and time interval, the phenomenon of nuclear metamorphosis can occur.
These observable events, which take place at microscopic level, can stress atomic nuclei of matter.
In fact, the atomic weight of matter nuclei is changed leading to the production of new atomic nuclei by their union (nucleosynthesis) or their separation (nucleolysis) without gamma rays generation; infact space and time – at microscopic level – can behave as elastic media which absorb or release the appropriate energy for these transformations, according to the energy conservation principle.
These transformations are made possible thanks to the occurrence of deformed space-time (DST) reactions produced by an appropriate “densification” of energy in space and time.
To achieve this goal, it exists an energy threshold that has to be overcome, and a maximum interval of time within which this energy must be released to the nuclear system, that is the material.
Critical volumes, that in solids are called Ridolfi cavities after their discoverer, and critical time lapses, called Yukawa time intervals, determine the values for these densities.
When the metamorphosis involves a number of nuclei, comparable to the Avogadro number, new elements arise and become detectable by analytical methods from over one part per billion (1 ppb).
Nuclei combinations and divisions free unbound protons and neutrons, that is basic components, which have no gamma radiations, hence they do not have any corresponding energy spectra.
The kinetic energy that these fragments lose, moving through the material where they where freed, causes a rise in temperature of the material itself, well above the corresponding value due to the energy – e.g. mechanic – used to obtain the densification: this effect has been clearly verified.
The fragments of metamorphosis coming from the material can be revealed, taking into account the efficiency of alpha and neutrons detectors, if the metamorphosis has involved a number of nuclei equal or greater than the Avogadro constant.
These fragments have peculiar kinds of distributions: anisotropic in space, asymmetrical in angles, asynchronous and aperiodical in time and energy inhomogeneous.
These characteristics, together with the often different and varied capabilities of detectors, make their measurement difficult.
As experimentally ascertained by facts the Nuclear Metamorphosis, as a whole process, preserves both the two laws of thermodynamics – on the electrical charges according to Clausius postulate - and the law of conservation of total energy.
Moreover it maintains the conservation of both the baryonic number and the law of the total energy when taking into account the production of neutrons and alpha particles coming out from the materials which are undergoing the metamorphosis.
1. History
In 1992 George Russ induced cavitation in metals and obtained the first evidence of anomalous nuclear phenomena; however he could not yet identify clearly the phenomenon of nuclear metamorphosis in matter, triggered by ultrasound and cavitation.
From 2000 Rusi P. Taleyarkhan performed several experiments with cavitation in mercury at Oak Ridge. In 2002 he was able to assess the first evidence of nuclear fragments set in motion by nuclear metamorphosis, but he did not achieve its correct identification and he even confused it with other phenomena.
In Italy in 2004, the Ministries of Research and Defence signed an agreement of cooperation which led to a close collaboration between the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and the Italian army (EI), in 2009 extended to the Atomic Energy National Agency (ENEA), today Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development.
In 2014 – 2015 this joint effort headed to the discovery of Nuclear Metamorphosis in all its aspects and the recognition of cavitation by ultrasound as its main triggering agent.
2. Concepts
In order to make both the nuclear metamorphosis and how it works more understandable, some useful concepts are listed below.
2.1 Ultrasound
If sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through any fluid or solid medium within a given unit of time, ultrasound is sound with “more frequent” waves within the same unit of time. Ultrasound is not different from sound in its physical properties, but it cannot be heard by humans.
Ultrasonic devices use frequencies from 20 kHz (20000 oscillations per second) to several Megahertz (millions of oscillations per second) and they are used in many fields. Medicine explores internal organs through ultrasound imaging; in metallurgy, ultrasound is used for degassing metals and detecting defects through non-destructive testing; in industry, they are employed for cleaning, mixing, accelerating chemical processes, measuring distances, and welding plastic materials; the first military use during World War II was the sonar.
Animal like bats and dolphins use ultrasound to locate their prey and obstacles.
A new technology is now facing the use of ultrasound: it can be used to trigger nuclear metamorphosis by both pressure and shock waves.
2.2 Cavitation
Cavitation is the formation, growth and subsequent collapse of bubbles in liquids.
This phenomenon was first detected in navy on propellers, in pumps, or at restrictions in a flowing liquid.
Cavitation is the collapse of vapour bubbles in volumes where the pressure locally drops below saturated vapor pressure.
In the case of water, it boils at 100°C at 1 bar atmospheric pressure, but it can boil at ambient temperature if pressure drops within the fluid. If the water pressure is low enough it will create vapour bubbles that will collapse when the pressure increases.
This implosion of the bubbles is called cavitation and is due to the change of phase (from gas to liquid) of water or any liquid.
This change releases an enormous amount of energy that can damage, usually pitting, even the most resistant and durable metals.
Cavitation can be induced in any matter, applying elastic shock waves of suitable power in order to bring about states of instability.
There are many types of bubbles collapse bringing to cavitation, depending on the distance from a solid surface.
The most suitable one for the nuclear metamorphosis aim is the spherical symmetrical collapse, or rather the collapse of a spherical bubble which maintains its shape until the end of its collapse.
Therefore, the implementation of the shock wave with a spherical collapse for a number of bubbles involving an Avogadro number of atoms is the main technical and technological issue.
In fact, the nuclear metamorphosis occurs among not the atoms inside the bubbles, but the atoms on the surface of the bubbles, following the collapse until its end when the right energy densification occurs.
In the case of bubbles in liquids the whole process is self-evident. In the case of solids it depends from number and dimensions of the Ridolfi cavities. The right way to put together shock waves and spherical collapse (inside the cavities) is for example by using plane pressure waves in opposite directions inside the solids.
2.3 Space-time
At the dawn of the XX century the geometry of the universe was still considered three-dimensional.
In the following years some eminent scholars and academics – Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré, Hermann Minkowski, Albert Einstein and others - fused time and the three dimensions of space into a single four-dimensional flat continuum, now known as Minkowski space time.
This interpretation rapidly gained acceptance in the scientific community and led to the general theory of relativity, in which space-time is curved by mass and energy.
In simpler words, general relativity is Einstein’s theory of gravity: instead of being an invisible force that attracts objects to one another, gravity curves – or warps – space. The more massive an object, the more it warps the space around it.
This theory has had a huge impact on the modern world.
Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons, for example, would be impossible without the notion that matter can be transformed into energy. And our GPS (global positioning system) satellite network needs to account for the deep effects of both special and general relativity.
2.4 Clausius Postulate
Broadly speaking, Clausius postulate, applied to electrical systems, can be seen as a first form of the law of conservation of their total electric charge; in the same way, nuclear metamorphosis obeys the law of conservation of the electric charge of the affected atomic nuclei. Therefore the “genesis” of alpha particles and neutrons is not the production and result of nuclear radiation, but fragments coming from nucleosynthesis and nucleolysis.
Clausius postulate can also be considered as the application of the second law of thermodynamics to electric charge systems, as atomic nuclei are. Namely, if there is no kinematic decoupling between charges and the field they generate, in the presence also of an electric charge gradient in the field reference system, electromagnetic emissions are absent, because there is no motion of the charges.
Therefore the nuclear metamorphosis can proceed with nuclei unions, called nucleosynthesis and with nuclei separations, called nucleolysis which produce in matter nuclei of elements absent before the metamorphosis.
2.5 Densification
Densification is obtained when inside the material energy density in space (depictable as a pressure) and energy density in time (representable as a power) reach critical values.
The critical values for these densities are given by energy thresholds, critical volumes (in solid called Ridolfi cavities, after their discoverer), critical time lapses (called Yukawa reduced potential) fixed phenomenologically and known for all interactions in particular the nuclear ones, hadronic and leptonic.
At macroscopic level the energy “densification” is the condition that induces the genesis of nuclear metamorphosis in a huge number of atomic nuclei, comparable to the Avogadro constant, which undergo a deformed space-time reaction at microscopic level.
If densification sticks to the two terms dictated by Clausius postulate, nuclear metamorphosis does not generate gamma radiation.
3. Applications
The applications of nuclear metamorphosis have been explored in some countries, but without a clear vision of how produce and use this phenomenon.
In Italy this issue has been been dealt with in a systematic way, giving rise to some technical results suitable for exploitation.
Nuclei combinations and divisions free unbound protons and neutrons, that is basic components, which have no gamma radiations, hence they do not have any corresponding energy spectra.
The kinetic energy that these fragments lose, moving through the material where they where freed, causes a rise in the temperature of the material itself, well above the corresponding value due to the energy – e.g. mechanic (say by ultrasound) – used to obtain the densification: this effect has been clearly verified.
3.1 Elimination of radioactive waste
The management of radioactive waste is one of the main problems of today's society.
Radioactive waste is mainly produced by nuclear industry, both civil and military, but in recent years also the waste produced during diagnostic tests in hospitals or in hydrogeological studies has raised great attention.
At the moment, the deactivation mainly consists in shielding, that is incorporating the waste into a large volume of material, or separating the radioactive fraction from all the rest of the material and, where possible, to concentrate it, and then deep geological disposal is needed.
However, these processes do not affect the lifetime of radio-active elements, only their concentration and so their specific activity (by volume or by mass): larger and larger deposits will be necessary in the future.
Currently recent researches suggest application of ultrasound to radioactive waste.
This method, that requires extremely short application time, allows the Metamorphosis of part of the radioactive nuclei into non-radioactive elements.
The theory able to explain this result based on the fulfillment of space-time deformation (DST), expressly looked for.
The process leading to nuclear metamorphosis shows a significant radioactivity reduction in systems containing radioactive nuclei after appropriate ultrasound treatments.
The application of techniques involving deformed space-time (DST) reactions can be a useful shortcut for the accelerated elimination of radioactive waste, keeping in mind that the normalisation of a radioactive substance induced by DST reactions is due to the transformation of its radionuclides in other stable nuclides, i.e. in stable elements, with the consequent decrease in the emitted radiations.
This process has been called neutralisation in order to distinguish it from other processes say transmutation or inertization.
These are the main applications, but the scenarios that could open up are substantially so big to include, for instance, the treatment of any industrial waste and garbage.
3.2 Rare earths production
When cavitation is induced in liquids, by applying elastic shock waves of suitable power, a state of instability is brought about which generates bubbles that violently collapse soon after.
This application of energy to a material leads to a variation of energy density and induces deformed Space Time (DST) reactions at microscopic level.
Their results are deformed space time (DST) transformations in the material, that is a change in the atomic weight of elements in the material without radionuclide production.
In fact both theoretical and experimental studies in the field of sonoluminescence have indicated that during the collapse of the bubble the temperature inside can be higher than one million degrees K and a very high energy concentration per unit time can be produced; in these conditions it has been argued that even thermonuclear reactions can occur.
Experiments on nuclear metamorphosis were made in a system containing an amount equal to one mole of mercury.
In this metal liquid at ambient temperature, nuclear metamorphosis produces solid state materials, even metallic, by means of mechanical pressure waves.
So a solid system with fewer degrees of freedom is generated by a liquid system with more degrees of freedom where some energy has been supplied.
This energy should increase the degrees of freedom of the system: however, the fact that the metamorphosis reduces them is only an apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
As a matter of fact, metamorphosis fragments, losing their kinetic energy, increase the temperature of the solid produced, preserving two laws: the second of thermodynamics and the conservation of total energy.
Clearly there seems to occur a macroscopic violation of the second law of thermodynamics: a liquid system receives energy, say by ultrasound, in order to get densification and stimulate its nuclear metamorphosis, and it partially transforms into a solid state system, made of different elements.
In other words, the degrees of freedom of the initial system decrease in the transition from liquid to solid, while its temperature increases.
However there is no violation of the second law of thermodynamics because the occurring reactions are of nuclear type, not chemical.
In short, the nuclear metamorphosis of mercury results in more orderly systems, with fewer degrees of freedom: solid state systems.
Ninety are the natural elements present on the Earth (2 are absent on Earth and are produced artificially): among them 28 are those produced by DST reactions from mercury, and among them six rare earths. This fact could be the starting point for a new way to produce them, thus also eliminating the troubles related to their supply.
4. Public’s perception
Since 2006, when CNR obtained patents on Nuclear Metamorphosis, the perception of this phenomenon has been burdened with problems of ambiguity and misunderstanding.
Initially its name was associated with the poem the “Metamorphoses” by Ovid, Roman poet; later it became necessary to distinguish this phenomenon with a new name from others already known.
However still today, 2025, the confusion between nuclear metamorphosis and nuclear transmutation persists.
Historically, the noun “transmutation” has been connected to pre-scientific events, when alchemists were obsessed with transforming substances.
In the 20th century major advances were made: the discovery of radioactivity, the identification of radioactive families, as well as the law of secular equilibrium, stated by E. Rutherford, who shows radioactive elements transforming one into another. However the term “nuclear transmutation” was still used for both natural and artificial transformation of atomic nuclei, how E. Fermi did independently of F. Joliot and the Curies. On the contrary, the metamorphosis is at the same time different from it and actually incorporating it. The ultimate question is this: Nature seems inclined to follow the nuclear metamorphosis as main phenomenon, as it were the rule, vice versa the radioactive transmutation seems to be the exception to Nature.
