Ursula von der Leyen
The President of the European Commission
Rue de la Loi 170
B-1049 Bruxelles
Belgique
Dear Mrs. von der Leyen,
I happen to be a Brazilian scientist creating a new science and developing new conceptions of Hydrodynamics to upgrade capillarity on textbooks.
To be honest I never craved for fame or wealth, but as a farm boy, I like to face challenges and get through. I finished a full marathon in 3h23min during my master degree just after six months I started jogging for realizing the benefits to myself from fitness. During my PhD in the US, I ran two half-marathons and had two babies.
It took me more than two decades of exploratory analysis to fully portrait the scope of my scientific breakthrough. I bumped to a sort of technical and scientific gap regarding Hydrology being neglected more than a century to fluidic devices in the patenting system. It happens because Geologists/Soil Scientists only address natural porosities. Scientists from other areas trying to develop fluidic devices employing artificial porosities miss basic understanding from Soil Physics/Hydrogeology. I have four diplomas in Agricultural Sciences, as Technician, Animal Husbandry, Animal Nutrition, and PhD in Soil Science at the Penn State University, when Bill Clinton delivered his first speech for reelection at my graduation on May 10, 1996.
For my PhD I developed a complex spatial analysis combining geostatistics, nonparametric statistics, and GIS Techniques to measure dry and wet seasons, rainfall anomalies, and water balance for the Amazon Basin.
Returning home to Brazil after my doctorate, I endured a sordid job harassment. Then, to cope with this hardship I started helping my wife at home with her potted African violets by employing a basin for flooding and draining afterwards. Then to handle so many blooming plants I employed self-watering with a synthetic cord from the US. I realized that it could be a permanent and a stable interface not rotting and connecting saturated and unsaturated hydraulic zones. It bears an advanced porosity between the cylindrical fibers having spatial geometry of continuous pores organized longitudinally. In order to make this special porosity even more reliable I moved the pores inside the fibers. It was coined TUBARC, standing for tube + arc upgrading capillarity conception, which is restricted by the tube geometry contention. Wicking terminology highly employed in the fluidic devices in the patenting system is not even mentioned in the Hydrology literature, easily highlighting the boundaries of this technological and scientific gap.
Henry Darcy proposed Darcy’s Law in 1856 about Hydraulic Conductivity and afterwards in 1907 Edgard Buckingham proposed a change in the equation to Unsaturated Hydraulic Flow (Soil Physics, Jury et al., 1991, John Wiley). My first patent US 6,766,817 was easily issued because I employed this technical terminology from my Ph. D. in Soil Science that was absent more than a century in the patenting affairs.
Ground rock from mining reject is an artificial porosity bearing unknown properties. It is the first time that our planet earth in 4.5 billion of years must cope with a colossal amount of ground rock from huge mining operations, blatantly ignoring Hydrology and Soil Science.
The principle is so obvious: ‘solid rocks after grinding lose its mechanical support becoming granular and flows downward in the basin toward the ocean moved by a bounty water recharge’.
Vale is one of the largest mining company worldwide that built a railroad of about 530 km from the mountains of Minas Gerais State, Brazil, to the seashore docks delivering iron ore for export, which comprises around half of the matrix rock. Nevertheless, the wealthy company neglected a simple logistic of less than 2 km to dispose back adequately the mining reject to the pit ensuring permanently a safe mining operation in the landscape. As consequence of this blunder, so far it took 289 casualties from collapsing dams in Mariana and Brumadinho. Also spoiling the environment for releasing ground rock to the water basin impairing the water supply for thousands of Brazilians and the livestock.
Tragic Dam Collapse in Brazil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDwQv-mM3tk
Drone footage showing the damage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGaQ0vjHZE0Running uphill as fast as you can go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQMdyCuFAMs
Monitoring the mining residue dams proved to be useless, as the alarm did not even go off to alert and spare lives. This is the beginning of a mining situation that can last centuries to millennia getting always worse. In theory, near all rocks containing valuable minerals will be exploited by grinding to attend an ever-growing robust economic demand for metals. Just to provide some insights, a modern truck can carry, just in one trip up to 500-ton of rock showing how fast Brazilian mountains can be razed to the ground. Tropical soils took 5 to 50 million of years on its genesis providing a natural protection over the rock matrix from a continuous abundant water recharge which makes Brazilian agricultural powerhouse. Ground rock does not become soil overnight, as it takes thousands or millions of years.
Traditionally, Brazil is not a technical country. This is the reason why Brazilian talents flourish on soccer, samba, carnival, and agricultural production blessed by nature, very independent on government affairs. It is very unlikely that the Brazilian government would support the development of a new science, even for a Brazilian Scientist employee that had a PhD sponsored by the government in the US. It seems that dictatorship roots, cronyism, and nepotism prevents intelligent people in the chain of power, critical on wise decision-making. Intelligent people are honest because they are aware that nature cannot be deceived, even on deep underlying reasoning.
I would like to offer to the European Union the opportunity to develop this new science I called simply HYDROTECNOLOGY, the hydrological science of artificial porosity. There is no doubt that the reward is outstanding from fluid dynamics on artificial porosity upgrading many technologies related to mass flow.
I am available for relocation to Europe in case it becomes more suitable.
Three important areas need special attention:
1. Hydrology of ground rocks from mining residues. Mining operation is missing simple conceptions of Soil Science and Hydrology to apply on artificial porosity of ground rock. Mining dams of ground rock reject should be forbidden around the world. The present mining dams of ground rock reject must have hydric isolation until the granular material return to the pit.
2. Changing the Hydrology of potted plants on a self-irrigation system that can be adopted on packaging format. There is an opportunity to change the hydrology of potted plants since Babylonian time when man took plants from the ground and started growing them on containers.
Plant in the top https://youtu.be/oq5_2LMFTlM
Rooting in the middle https://youtu.be/E3d-JRg28p8
Water in the bottom https://youtu.be/dTD_f9ikqlI
The device was created using recycling material. Plants approve this new and modern growing system when basic conditions are supplied constantly, curbing the wetting and drying cycles of irrigation and developing new conceptions of hydrodynamics not yet in the textbooks. Apparently, simple to lay people, but it hides complex insights from Hydrogeology, Soil Physics, and Physiology; not claimed yet in the patenting systems regarding fluidic devices.
The device is a PORTABLE SELF-WATERING FLOWER POT SYSTEM made of plastic bottles.
3. Transfer of kinetic energy between longitudinal and rotating forces on continuous mass flow dynamics.
When a person perish flying on an airplane like a Boeing 737 Max, those two accidents taking 346 lives. It is a casualty associated to the risk of flying, even new airplanes are not supposed to fail going down that way. However, when 289 people perished from mine reject dam collapsing in Brazil; it is a human deplorable situation as people are wasted because a greed-mining corporation just did an irrational exploitation upstream. This is a very rude violation of human rights! People are living in place that requires less than a minute to run away saving their lives from a huge tsunami of a ground rock mass destroying everything on its way. Even worse, when more tragedies are required for DECISION MAKING because those wasted lives do not affect mining operation like flying passengers purchasing tickets!
Many lives can be spared, especially Brazilians, if you put together resources to help correcting mining operation for good around the world. Ground rock is granular and flows downhill as an artificial porosity always more and more abundant affected by human development dependent on metals from the solid rock.
Thanks for your attention, and I am looking forward to provide further input in case my proposal is of any interest.
‘A wise way to curb immigration to Europe is a broad effort to make our entire planet good for all of us.’
FYI: I am a bad hero needing no followers: I worked 22 years making no money, even I was a good student never flunked during 21 years of schooling, I got four diplomas, I speak three languages, I got a fair government job by contest. I was disposed after I got a scientific breakthrough and I was in the cover of the Ciência e Cultura. I got American patents shamefully violated by a conspiracy of reinvention, and even my first baby daughter kidnapped I found 31 years afterwards as soon as I knew that a female around was bearing my DNA. Honesty is really missing around the world!
King regards,
Campinas, October 14, 2019
Elson Silva, Ph. D.
Av. Dr. Júlio Soares de Arruda, 838
Parque São Quirino
CEP 13088-300 - Campinas - SP - Brazil
Phone 55 *19 3256-7265
Email: tubarc@gmail.com
p.s. This letter is posted on my blog for transparency.
