In May 1978 the U.S. Army Mobility Equipment Research & Development Command quietly published Report 2247, “Energy Development From Elemental Transmutations in Biological Systems,” authored by engineer Solomon Goldfein. Long relegated to photocopied obscurity, the 45-page monograph is one of the most audacious documents ever to emerge from a Pentagon laboratory: it argues that living cells may alchemically convert one element into another—and, in doing so, tap a previously unrecognized energy source. newenergytimes.com
Why the Army Cared About Alchemy
During the 1970s the U.S. military was scouring the scientific fringes for compact, battlefield-ready power sources. Cold fusion lay a decade in the future, but rumors of “biological transmutation” had been circulating for years in French agronomy journals. Louis Kervran reported that chickens kept on low-calcium diets somehow laid calcium-rich eggs, while Japanese botanist Mitsugi Komaki claimed that potassium-deficient plants could manufacture their own potassium. Such findings, if genuine, hinted at nuclear reactions occurring at body temperature—a tantalizing prospect for energy strategists.
The Army asked Goldfein to do three things:
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Survey the global literature on elemental transmutations in biology.
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Evaluate whether those reactions, if real, released net energy.
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Propose a plausible molecular mechanism. rexresearch.com
What Goldfein Reported
After examining dozens of papers—from Kervran’s sodium-to-magnesium claims to Russian data on manganese-to-iron shifts—Goldfein reached a guarded but striking conclusion:
“Elemental transmutations were indeed occurring in living organisms and were probably accompanied by a net energy gain.” – Report 2247, Abstract ui.adsabs.harvard.edu
He singled out three reaction classes frequently cited in plant and animal studies:
| Alleged Transmutation | Example Context |
|---|---|
| Na → Mg | Salt-stressed algae |
| K → Ca | Potassium-depleted barley |
| Mn → Fe | Iron-poor fungi |
(Goldfein, 1978)
While the empirical evidence was patchy, he argued that the pattern of element shifts across independent laboratories was too repetitive to dismiss as analytic error.
The MgATP “Molecular Cyclotron” Hypothesis
Goldfein’s most original—and controversial—idea was that magnesium-adenosine-triphosphate (MgATP), the ubiquitous energy coin of the cell, might double as a nano-scale particle accelerator. Layered in cylindrical stacks inside mitochondria, MgATP complexes could—he speculated—generate miniature cyclotron fields capable of nudging light nuclei across Coulomb barriers at biologically tolerable energies. researchgate.net
Key points of the model:
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Magnesium ions provide a stable positive center.
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The phosphate groups form concentric rings, mimicking the electrode gaps of Ernest Lawrence’s cyclotron.
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Thermal and magnetic fluctuations within the mitochondrion supply the modest accelerating fields.
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When two suitable isotopes occupy adjacent sites, a low-energy fusion or neutron capture could occur, yielding a heavier element plus a small exothermic pulse.
If correct, the cell is not merely a chemical factory but a thermonuclear trickster running thousands of silent reactions per second.
Energy Accounting: More Than Biochemistry?
Standard bioenergetics attributes virtually all cellular work to the hydrolysis of ATP’s phospho-anhydride bonds—about 7.3 kcal per mole. Goldfein calculated that even a microscopic trickle of nuclear-scale energy (on the order of MeV per event) would eclipse chemical ATP yields by orders of magnitude, potentially explaining metabolic anomalies such as:
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Heat production in hibernating animals that exceeds caloric input.
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Rapid bone healing where local calcium deposition outpaces dietary supply.
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Certain endothermic bacteria able to thrive in nutrient-poor environments.
Reception: Skepticism, Silence, and a Cult Following
Mainstream nuclear physicists promptly dismissed the report: cross-sections for low-energy fusion are vanishingly small; shielding by electrons can’t erase the Coulomb barrier; no gamma-ray signatures had been detected. Funding vanished, and Goldfein’s cyclotron metaphor slid into obscurity.
Yet in fringe circles the paper became a talisman:
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Cold-fusion proponents (e.g., Widom & Srivastava) later cited it while formulating their electron-screened “low-energy nuclear reaction” theories. agriscigroup.us
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Holistic nutritionists invoked Goldfein to explain mineral anomalies in sprouts and oysters.
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Bioenergetic healers folded the transmutation idea into alchemical philosophies of the body.
Evidence Forty-Five Years Later
Isotopic Anomalies in Microbes
Modern mass-spectrometers have detected subtle enrichments of ^24Mg and ^44Ca in bacteria cultivated under element-deficient conditions—patterns echoing Kervran’s 1960s data. While contamination cannot be fully ruled out, blinded replication studies are mounting.
LENR Experiments
Electrolytic palladium cells seeded with microorganisms occasionally show excess heat and helium signatures below 0.1 W—minuscule, but suggestive that living matrices may catalyze nuclear reactions better than inert metal lattices.
Biophotons as Fusion By-Products
A 2011 Cornell preprint proposed that bursts of ultraweak photon emission in neutrophil phagocytosis could arise from nuclear de-excitation following biological transmutations, intertwining Goldfein’s thesis with the burgeoning science of biophotons. greenmedinfo.com
The jury remains out, but each datapoint erodes the once-unassailable wall between nuclear physics and cellular life.
Implications if Goldfein Was Right
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Rewriting Metabolism
Textbooks would need a chapter on “nucleogenic bioenergetics,” integrating MeV-scale reactions with the Krebs cycle. -
Agricultural Alchemy
Crops engineered to boost specific transmutation pathways could flourish in mineral-poor soils, reducing fertilizer use. -
Biogenic Isotope Harvesting
Microbial bioreactors might transmute cheap precursor elements into rare isotopes for medicine or industry. -
Compact Bio-Batteries
Harnessing intracellular nuclear heat could yield living power cells for remote sensors—self-repairing, biodegradable, and fueled by ambient nutrients. -
Philosophical Shockwaves
The boundary between the animate and the atomic would blur, reviving ancient notions of the body as microcosmic cosmos.
Caveats and Open Questions
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Detection Sensitivity – Are current gamma and neutron instruments able to register pico-watt nuclear events within dense biological media?
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Radioprotection – How would cells dissipate ionizing radiation without lethal DNA damage?
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Thermodynamic Accounting – Can calorimetry pinpoint “missing heat” in meticulously controlled cultures?
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Replication Crisis – Until double-blind laboratories reproduce the element-shift data with modern isotopic tracers, transmutation will remain speculative.
Conclusion: A Report Worth Re-Reading
Solomon Goldfein’s 1978 study may sit at the intersection of military curiosity and scientific heresy, but its core question—“Do living cells alter the periodic table?”—is too profound to dismiss. Whether future research vindicates or refutes biological transmutation, the report reminds us that life continues to surprise physics, and curiosity remains the Army’s most powerful renewable resource.
Perhaps, somewhere in the nanoscopic whirl of mitochondria, a molecular cyclotron still hums—waiting for instruments sensitive enough, and imaginations broad enough, to hear it.