Can one radiation emission trigger two full-sized detector responses? Eric Reiter says his gamma-ray and alpha-particle experiments reveal this effect, challenging quantum mechanics with a Threshold Model that attributes discrete detections to continuous energy absorption and threshold-triggered release.

Challenging Quantum Mechanics on the Workbench

The laboratory photographs in Eric Reiter’s presentation show radiation detectors, racks of nuclear-instrumentation electronics, and a LeCroy oscilloscope surrounded by cables. Some experiments sit inside a lead enclosure approximately one foot in diameter. On the oscilloscope, electrical pulses appear alongside measurements of their heights and arrival times. For Reiter, the crucial evidence is a peak in a timing histogram: two detectors responding close together more frequently than his calculation of random coincidences predicts.

Reiter approaches this problem as an instrument builder. His biography lists physics studies at Sonoma State University from 1977–1980 and a business, Computer Continuum, through which he produced laboratory and automation circuits and software from 1980–1995. That background runs through his research. He integrates detectors, adapts signal-processing electronics, writes acquisition software, and constructs experimental arrangements from both custom components and secondhand equipment. In the presentation, he describes buying much of his instrumentation used, including liquid-nitrogen-cooled germanium detectors.

His gamma-ray research began around 2000, after his friend and supporter Ken Kitlas suggested using gamma radiation to investigate the distinction between a spreading wave and an indivisible quantum. The resulting program has included different radioactive sources, detector materials, scattering surfaces, and geometries. Published accounts include a 2014 paper in Progress in Physics, a 2015 SPIE conference paper, and the 2022 Physics Essays article, Overcoming the Quantum Mechanics Measurement Problem by Experiment and Theory.

In his two-part presentation, A Serious Challenge To Quantum Mechanics, Reiter describes a challenge based on “history, theory, and experiment.” The experimental question is specific: can radiation associated with one emission produce two detector responses, each corresponding to approximately the full characteristic energy? He calls the reported result the “Unquantum Effect,” increasingly also using “Subquantum Effect.” His interpretation is that something continuous lies beneath the apparently discrete events recorded by the instruments.

Continuous Loading, Sudden Detection

Reiter’s starting point reaches back to the early development of quantum theory. He distinguishes Planck’s original treatment of material resonators from the later idea that light itself travels as indivisible photons. More directly, he builds on Planck’s 1911 second radiation theory, which permitted continuous absorption while retaining discontinuous emission. That historical model gave absorption and emission different roles. Reiter extends the distinction into a much broader proposal about what happens between the source of radiation and the material that detects it.

A second historical thread comes from Robert Millikan’s discussion of the photoelectric effect. In the passage reproduced in Reiter’s slides, Millikan considers whether an electron might already have stored nearly enough energy to respond, needing only a “minute addition” at the moment of illumination. For Reiter, this addresses the usual objection that a weak incoming wave would take too long to supply the necessary energy. An absorber that’s already close to its threshold wouldn’t have to begin loading from zero.

His analogy is a set of partially filled cups. Nothing visibly happens while they’re filling, but reaching the top produces an abrupt spill. An incoming contribution divided between two nearly full cups could make both overflow. Applied to detection, a spreading radiation wave could push two preloaded absorbers across their thresholds. The instrument would register two discrete events even though, in Reiter’s interpretation, the energy arriving during that particular interaction wasn’t packaged into two separate photons.

This isn’t a claim that energy appears from nothing. Reiter’s proposed accounting includes energy already present in the absorbers before the incoming radiation arrives. It’s also important to distinguish his hypothetical physical threshold from an electronic discriminator, which determines whether a recorded voltage pulse is accepted for analysis. One is a proposed property of matter; the other is an instrument setting. The theory depends on the first, while the experiments use the second to decide which events are counted.

Why Gamma Rays—and Why the Detector Matters

Reiter argues that earlier beam-splitter experiments with visible light didn’t provide the energy information needed for his particular test. A detector click establishes that a response occurred, but his argument also depends on how much energy that response represents. He therefore emphasizes pulse-height resolution: the ability to distinguish pulses associated with different deposited energies. His broader assertion that optical tests can’t distinguish the models is part of his challenge to existing experiments, rather than an established conclusion about all optical detection.

Two important combinations in his research are cadmium-109, with its approximately 88-kiloelectronvolt gamma line, and cobalt-57, with its approximately 122-kiloelectronvolt line, measured using sodium iodide scintillators. Reiter identifies a useful operating range where photoelectric absorption is prominent relative to Compton scattering. In his account, selecting the source and detector together is essential. Using a different radiation energy or detector material can make the reported effect much weaker or harder to distinguish from other parts of the spectrum.

The measurement chain turns radiation interactions into several complementary records. A scintillator produces light, a photomultiplier converts that light into an electrical response, and amplifiers prepare the pulses for measurement. Pulse-height selectors accept a defined range of amplitudes, while timing electronics identify closely spaced events. Reiter’s oscilloscope displays analog pulse shapes, pulse-height distributions, timing signals, and the distribution of delays between channels. He emphasizes seeing these records together so he can examine both the selected events and the quality of the underlying pulses.

Geometry is equally important. In a scattering arrangement, detectors observe different outgoing paths. In the tandem arrangement, radiation reaching the rear detector must first pass through a narrow or thin front detector. One documented configuration uses a custom scintillator only 4 millimeters thick. Other arrangements use commercially available components. The lead enclosure reduces environmental background, while separate measurements with the radioactive source removed establish the background coincidence rate to subtract from an experimental run.

Two Detectors, One Emission

Reiter organizes the central test into three stages. First, he measures background coincidences without the source. Second, he places the source between detectors to investigate its emission behavior under the chosen energy selections. Third, he rearranges the apparatus into the scattering or tandem geometry. Throughout, the instruments record how often each detector responds independently and how often selected responses occur within a specified interval. The distinction he’s pursuing depends on timing and energy together, not merely on observing two clicks.

A cadmium-109 control displayed in his lecture slides illustrates the calculation. The two detector rates are approximately 15,500 and 16,900 counts per second, and the coincidence window is 350 nanoseconds. From those inputs, Reiter calculates an accidental coincidence rate of 91.9 per second. The measured rate is 96.2 per second, producing a reported ratio of 1.047. He presents this near agreement as evidence that his random-coincidence calculation and counting method behave as expected in that control configuration.

The contrast is a cadmium-109 experiment shown on slide 28. Here, the selected detector rates are 269 and 8.2 counts per second, and the coincidence window is 300 nanoseconds. The slide reports a background-corrected coincidence rate of 0.0163 per second, compared with a calculated accidental rate of 0.000662 per second. Reiter reports the resulting ratio as 24.6 times chance. These are low absolute event rates, but a substantial excess relative to the particular random baseline he has calculated.

Other slides document separate configurations reporting approximately six times chance with cobalt-57 and 29 times chance with cadmium-109 scattered from germanium crystal disks. Those figures belong to different experiments and shouldn’t be combined into a single result. The common feature is a concentration of closely timed detector responses. Reiter argues that when the accepted pulses are sufficiently large, their coincidence reveals more than ordinary sharing of an incoming radiation event between detectors. That interpretation is the central claim the rest of his program attempts to develop.

Beyond Two-for-One

Reiter extends the argument by examining pulse-height spectra recorded only when another detector responds. In cadmium-109 measurements, he identifies features near 88, 176, and 264 kiloelectronvolts. These are coincidence-selected spectra, so a response in one detector is already associated with a triggering response in the other. A double-amplitude pulse in the recorded detector, combined with the trigger, becomes what he calls a three-for-one event. It isn’t three separately resolved clicks; it’s an interpretation of pulse amplitude and coincidence together.

His slides place sodium iodide data from July 2002 alongside a high-purity germanium example from May 2003. The latter is reported as approximately seven times chance. Reiter stresses that a feature can become visible in a coincidence-selected spectrum even when it isn’t apparent in the ordinary spectrum of all events. He also describes a possible four-for-one structure, but calls it a hint rather than treating it as equally established. The distinction matters because stronger pulse amplitudes don’t, by themselves, identify the process that produced them.

A separate sodium-22 experiment adds a third detector. Two bismuth germanate detectors sit in tandem along one annihilation-ray direction, while another detector registers a separate, higher-energy gamma emission used as a trigger. Reiter’s slide reports approximately 500 times his calculated triple-accidental rate. This isn’t simply a measurement of the familiar pair of oppositely directed annihilation rays. His claim concerns selected responses in the tandem detectors, associated with one annihilation-ray direction and conditioned on the additional trigger.

He also proposes a simpler, single-detector test. A cobalt-57 measurement dated March 28, 2024 uses a 25-microcurie source and a 3-inch sodium iodide detector. The displayed photopeak rate is approximately 494 counts per second, while a region around twice the characteristic energy contains 0.986 counts per second. Reiter calculates an accidental-pileup rate of 0.146 per second using a 300-nanosecond interval and describes the result as roughly six times chance after background correction. This test shifts attention from separate detectors to how overlapping contributions form a larger pulse within one measurement channel.

Turning an Anomaly Into Spectroscopy

Once Reiter believed he could repeatedly observe the effect, he began changing the materials and conditions around it. That led to what he calls “Photon Violation Spectroscopy,” documented in a patent application and later presentations. The proposed measurement isn’t simply whether an excess exists, but how its magnitude changes with crystal orientation, temperature, magnetic conditions, and source preparation. Those dependencies could potentially become a way to characterize materials, provided the signals proved reproducible and their physical origin could be established.

One example in the lecture deck reports a 44-fold enhancement after changing the orientation of silicon wafers. Reiter interprets this as sensitivity to electronic structure rather than conventional reflection from atomic planes. He also describes placing scattering materials in magnetic fields and comparing changes in their responses. In his account, ferromagnetic and diamagnetic materials behave differently, offering information about the character of the scattering electrons or bonds. The directly reported observation is a change in the measured signal; the proposed microscopic explanation is a further inference.

Temperature and source preparation provide other variables. The November slide deck reports a doubling of the effect when the beam splitter was cooled. It also describes an approximately fivefold difference between salt and metallic preparations of cadmium-109, with the salt preparation producing the larger effect. Reiter investigated these material states through crystallization and electroplating. He sees the results as evidence that the physical organization of the source influences the radiation’s subsequent interactions, not merely the total number of emissions recorded.

A cobalt-57 distance scan adds a geometrical dependency. At source-to-detector distances of 1.875, 2.25, and 2.5 inches, the displayed results are approximately 2.6, 5.5, and 4.4 times chance. Reiter calls the non-monotonic response a distance resonance and proposes that a spreading radiation wave can be better or worse matched to an absorber’s dimensions. He also acknowledges that these exploratory spectroscopy results haven’t all been repeated as extensively as his basic coincidence tests. They’re extensions of the program, rather than interchangeable confirmations of one measurement.

Extending the Test From Radiation to Matter

Gamma rays are only half of Reiter’s challenge. To investigate matter, he turns to the approximately 5.5-megaelectronvolt alpha emissions from americium-241. His apparatus places thin gold foil between transmitted and reflected detection paths, with silicon detectors recording the resulting pulses. He asks whether an emitted helium nuclear wave can produce correlated responses in both directions. The experiment is intended to test his account of matter-wave propagation, not merely extend the same scintillation-detector measurement to another radiation source.

The 2006 alpha experiment shown in the deck uses two Ortec detectors approximately 2 centimeters in diameter and 9 millimeters apart, together with two layers of 24-karat gold leaf. Slide 46 reports 102 times chance for half-height pulse pairs and four times chance for full-height pairs. Reiter automated the acquisition by communicating with the LeCroy oscilloscope through a General Purpose Interface Bus connection using QuickBasic. The resulting display plots the pulse heights of the two channels against one another, making their joint energy structure visible.

An August 24, 2025 experiment is a separate measurement. It uses a 4-microcurie americium-241 source, two layers of gold leaf, and a 100-nanosecond coincidence window. The slide shows approximately 9.2 hours of acquisition and 57 pulse pairs within the timing selection. Reiter reports 37 times chance for the broader selection, while a more restrictive pulse-height subset containing eight pairs yields a reported ratio of 5.5. Keeping those selections separate is essential: changing which pulses qualify changes the question being asked of the data.

Reiter interprets the alpha results as evidence that a helium matter wave can divide, preserve its identifying properties, and load separate absorbers. In that interpretation, it isn’t a conventional nuclear breakup into smaller particles. His strongest claim concerns pulse pairs whose inferred deposited energies exceed what he assigns to a single incoming alpha event. The direct record, however, remains a set of correlated electrical pulses. Establishing divided nuclear mass or charge would require additional measurements connecting those pulses to the physical carriers involved.

The 2026 Alpha-Scattering Experiments

The November deck introduces a newer alpha-scattering program that goes beyond the earlier split tests. Slides 51–62 compare angular count rates with scattering expectations and explore a geometry Reiter interprets as specular or Bragg-like reflection of a matter wave. This work is documented more extensively in the slides than in the supplied transcript. It adds a different experimental question: whether the relationship between foil orientation, detector position, and correlated counts reveals a reproducible angular structure.

The apparatus photograph shows glass collimating tubes approximately 18.8 millimeters long, with a 0.7-millimeter internal diameter, feeding a gold-foil arrangement between detector assemblies. One illustrated configuration places the foil at 30 degrees and the reflected detection direction at 60 degrees. The deck also distinguishes timing conditions: a displayed acquisition uses a 2-microsecond trigger window while counting coincidences within a narrower 400-nanosecond interval. That distinction separates which waveforms enter the record from which events qualify for the reported coincidence measurement.

An angular comparison is normalized so the theoretical and measured values coincide at 45 degrees. At 90 degrees, the plotted theoretical value is 2.7, while two measured counting selections give approximately 1.3 and 0.6 in the same normalized units. These are departures from the displayed comparison curve, not hundreds-fold changes in the absolute scattering rate. A separate plot presents coincidence-to-chance ratios ranging from 7.3 to 242 at selected foil orientations. The two plots measure different aspects of the experiment.

The absolute rates help explain that distinction. The 242-fold ratio accompanies a reflected rate of approximately 0.050 counts per second, while one 7.3-fold ratio accompanies about 0.558 counts per second. A larger ratio therefore doesn’t necessarily mean a larger reflected signal. Another angular plot explicitly selects the highest values at each angle, making the complete measurement set important to evaluating the proposed reflection peaks. Reiter also shows interference monitoring, underscoring how background behavior and acquisition conditions enter the interpretation.

A Wave Model of Charge, Mass, and Action

Behind these experiments is Reiter’s “Nature’s Ratio Principle.” He proposes that a spreading matter wave can retain characteristic relationships between charge, mass, and action without keeping each quantity concentrated in an indivisible object. A small region of the wave might contain only a fraction of the total charge and mass, yet preserve their ratio. In his picture, that relationship carries the wave’s physical identity through space until absorption produces another localized, threshold-sized event.

His slides apply this interpretation to familiar relationships involving matter-wave wavelength, the photoelectric effect, Compton scattering, magnetic deflection, and the Aharonov–Bohm effect. He doesn’t propose abandoning every successful numerical relationship associated with quantum physics. Instead, he argues that some relationships can be retained while changing what they imply about propagation. Charge-to-mass, action-to-mass, and charge-to-action ratios become central, while the familiar constants are interpreted as threshold values expressed during particular interactions.

Reiter also develops a beat-wave description, drawing on passages in Schrödinger’s work about wave envelopes and beats. He uses that structure to connect light, matter-wave behavior, and his proposed identity of charge. Related arguments extend toward spin, antimatter, and atomic structure. These are the more ambitious theoretical parts of the program. Rewriting familiar relationships provides a framework for interpretation, but a general account would also need to determine how the waves evolve, how absorbers load, and how particular detection probabilities follow.

A separate experiment illustrates his attempt to test the charge proposal more directly. Slide 65 shows an alpha-ray mass-spectrometer arrangement with a 1-tesla magnet and an electron-gun concept operating around 700 volts. Reiter reports resolving three helium charge states, but says the electron guns didn’t work well enough to perform the intended test of intermediate loading. He labels the work unfinished. It’s an experimental direction suggested by the model, not a demonstrated observation of continuously variable charge.

What the Measurements Establish—and What They Don’t

Reiter’s case has a substantial experimental component. He reports investigations using different isotopes, sodium iodide and germanium detectors, bismuth germanate scintillators, silicon detectors, multiple geometries, pulse-height selections, shielding, and source-removed background measurements. He has also looked at the pulse shapes themselves rather than relying exclusively on final coincidence totals. These controls deserve attention on their individual merits. The central question isn’t whether he has built apparatus and recorded unusual-looking distributions; it’s what physical explanation those distributions require.

The most consequential distinction concerns the meaning of “chance.” An accidental-coincidence estimate describes unrelated events that happen to occur close together. A complete prediction for a real apparatus must also include physically correlated processes. Scattering, secondary radiation, pulse overlap, and electronic coupling are therefore possibilities to calculate and test, not answers that can simply be asserted. Likewise, a large ratio above an accidental baseline isn’t, by itself, a complete demonstration that quantum mechanics forbids the observed events.

His broader theory also has to confront the quantitative results of quantum optics. Reiter challenges optical anticorrelation experiments and argues that detector preloading changes the interpretation of Bell tests. Modern Bell experiments, including the 2015 NIST-associated photonic test, specifically address major detection and locality limitations. To establish his alternative, Reiter would need to show how its detector states produce the measured correlations, or identify a precise, testable departure. Criticizing an assumption and supplying a successful competing prediction are different accomplishments.

The research assembled for this feature did not establish a decisive independent replication of Reiter’s central gamma-ray or alpha-particle claims. That isn’t the same as an experimental refutation, but it defines the present limit of the case. Repeated observations within one laboratory, replication by another group, and validation of a proposed mechanism are separate milestones. An unexplained result could justify further investigation without automatically confirming the ratio principle, eliminating entanglement, or overturning the full predictive structure of quantum mechanics.

The Experiment That Could Move the Debate Forward

Reiter’s proposed starting point for replication is comparatively concrete. His deck shows a cobalt-57 source, a narrow sodium iodide detector ahead of a larger one, lead collimation, two shaping amplifiers, timing single-channel analyzers, counters, a high-voltage supply, a pulser, and a four-channel oscilloscope. It’s a recognizable nuclear-spectroscopy arrangement rather than an apparatus requiring an entirely new technology. Its value is that another laboratory could address a defined measurement before attempting to resolve every implication Reiter attaches to it.

A decisive comparison would fix the energy selections, timing gates, geometry, and background treatment before examining the result. It would retain individual waveforms, document source-removed runs, and use electrical test pulses to characterize the acquisition chain. The measurements would then be compared with a model incorporating the source, radiation transport, detector response, and electronics. The critical outcome would be a reproducible excess in the joint energy-and-timing record that survives both instrumental checks and the complete conventional prediction.

Testing preloading would be a further step. Deliberately changing an absorber’s preparation, temperature, or excitation history could probe whether the proposed stored state changes the effect in a predictable way. A stronger Threshold Model would specify those changes numerically before the measurements were made. That would turn the partially filled cups from an explanatory analogy into a physical mechanism with measurable consequences—and distinguish the mechanism from ordinary changes in detector performance.

Reiter believes his existing measurements have already settled the underlying question. For other laboratories, the challenge remains to reconstruct the apparatus, reproduce the signals, and determine what they require. His presentation ends with an invitation that brings the argument back to its most practical form: “Do the experiment and argue with the experiment.” Whatever the eventual interpretation, that’s where his challenge is clearest—not in a declaration that quantum mechanics has failed, but in a set of detector signals another experiment can examine.

References

Presentation and Primary Sources

• A Serious Challenge to Quantum Mechanics — Eric Reiter; two-part presentation hosted by Tim Ventura.
• Lecture Slides for AltSci, November 12, 2026 — Eric Reiter; 71-slide presentation covering the Threshold Model, gamma-ray coincidence experiments, alpha-particle tests, and proposed spectroscopy applications.
• UnQuantum Physics — Eric Reiter’s research website, containing his biography, publications, lecture archives, experimental demonstrations, and Threshold Model materials.

Research Papers

• New Experiments Call for a Continuous Absorption Alternative to Quantum Mechanics — The Unquantum Effect — Eric S. Reiter; Progress in Physics, Volume 10, Issue 2, pages 82–88, 2014.
• New Experiments Call for a Continuous Absorption Alternative to the Photon Model — Eric S. Reiter; Proceedings of SPIE, Volume 9570, 2015.
• Overcoming the Quantum Mechanics Measurement Problem by Experiment and Theory — Eric Stanley Reiter; Physics Essays, Volume 35, Issue 2, pages 197–201, 2022.

Spectroscopy Patent Applications

• Photon Violation Spectroscopy — Eric Reiter; U.S. patent application publication US20050139776A1, published June 30, 2005.
• Particle Violation Spectroscopy — Eric Stanley Reiter; U.S. patent application publication US20080173825A1, published July 24, 2008.

Historical Foundations

• A New Radiation Hypothesis — Max Planck; presented February 3, 1911; English translation of the paper introducing continuous absorption and discontinuous emission in his second radiation theory.
• Einstein’s Photoelectric Equation and Contact Electromotive Force — Robert A. Millikan; Physical Review, Volume 7, Issue 1, pages 18–32, 1916.
• Electrons (+ and −), Protons, Photons, Neutrons, Mesotrons, and Cosmic Rays — Robert Andrews Millikan; revised edition, University of Chicago Press, 1947.

Coincidence Counting and Quantum-Mechanics Tests

• Accidental Coincidences in Counter Circuits — Carl Eckart and Francis R. Shonka; Physical Review, Volume 53, page 752, 1938.
• Experimental Evidence for a Photon Anticorrelation Effect on a Beam Splitter: A New Light on Single-Photon Interferences — Philippe Grangier, Gérard Roger, and Alain Aspect; Europhysics Letters, Volume 1, Issue 4, pages 173–179, 1986.
• On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox — John S. Bell; Physics Physique Fizika, Volume 1, page 195, 1964.
• A Strong Loophole-Free Test of Local Realism — Lynden K. Shalm and colleagues; Physical Review Letters, Volume 115, article 250402, 2015; publication record hosted by NIST.