Quote from Richard Hull
"For me, the instant I heard magnetics were involved in the polywell, I knew it had little chance, but still followed its progress, and now lack thereof, as it joined a myriad of other supposed world beater fusion systems that just won't die the natural death."
Funny that R. Bussard said the same thing. Of course he was referring to magnetic confinement of ions. His shorcut of concentrating on the magnetic confinement of electrons, and subsequently allowing the excess of electrons to take care of the ions is the difference. Whether that difference takes up the slack is hotly debated. It is interesting that he was manuvering while still suffering the limitations predicted by Rider, etc. The claimed breakthroughs with WB6 came years later.
The current lack of puplicly published progress certainly applies to continued Polywell research. At least the time and money scales is modest compared some other approaches (like Tokamac and laser ignition). In under 2 years and ~10 - 15 million dollers difinative answers are promised. Provided the research doesn't completly sink into a black program, the proponets will have to put up or shut up- or as RH said ,linger on the edge of death for a few decades while continually pushing forward conditional promises.
Dan Tibbets
Another futile fusion initiative - Rather local too!
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Dan Tibbets
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Richard Hull
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Re: Another futile fusion initiative - Rather local too!
As I noted, we are mere observers and suppliers of the money for folks to play with yet ever more promising magneitcs while promising fusion at some future date. "Trust them" just as I and others my age trusted their fathers and their fathers, fathers.
It is a given that someone will get fusion going some day, some where, with some process. Of course, that would also have been a viable statement in the fifth century, too.
Richard Hull
It is a given that someone will get fusion going some day, some where, with some process. Of course, that would also have been a viable statement in the fifth century, too.
Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Another futile fusion initiative - Rather local too!
But, Richard, I am not sure where your dismissal of magnetic techniques in combination with electrostatics comes from.
What you appear to be discussing with distain is the magnetic confinement of hot plasmas [which I'd not necessarily argue with you about!]. But this distain does not hold a light to a magnetic-IEC hybrid approach.
For example, I provided such an approach in;
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2854#p12364
which I note you didn't comment on.
When I discuss such ideas as an electro-X-magnetic scheme, I am, for sure, not thinking of magnetic donuts/bottles/boxes/tubes/buckets/&c., but in which magnetic fields can be used to enhance the behaviour of fast ions in electric fields so as to, for example [as per the link] reduce conductance losses.
A hybrid electro-X-magnetic scheme is, for sure, the intent behind Bussard's proposition so I do not understand why you say
>"the instant I heard magnetics were involved in the polywell, I knew it had little chance"
because there is no logical interconnection between magnetic fusion plasmas* and magnetically assisted IEC.
*(in which there are no 'e-fields' as such [Debye shielding and plasma frequencies notwithstanding])
What you appear to be discussing with distain is the magnetic confinement of hot plasmas [which I'd not necessarily argue with you about!]. But this distain does not hold a light to a magnetic-IEC hybrid approach.
For example, I provided such an approach in;
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2854#p12364
which I note you didn't comment on.
When I discuss such ideas as an electro-X-magnetic scheme, I am, for sure, not thinking of magnetic donuts/bottles/boxes/tubes/buckets/&c., but in which magnetic fields can be used to enhance the behaviour of fast ions in electric fields so as to, for example [as per the link] reduce conductance losses.
A hybrid electro-X-magnetic scheme is, for sure, the intent behind Bussard's proposition so I do not understand why you say
>"the instant I heard magnetics were involved in the polywell, I knew it had little chance"
because there is no logical interconnection between magnetic fusion plasmas* and magnetically assisted IEC.
*(in which there are no 'e-fields' as such [Debye shielding and plasma frequencies notwithstanding])
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Richard Hull
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Re: Another futile fusion initiative - Rather local too!
Anyone is welcome to use magneitc fields as they see fit based on any inspiration, hair brained scheme or logically crafted forethought. Please don't tell me about them, though. Surprise me....
Show me.
The polywell or any other magnetized IECF related device has yet to produce one single fusion that is readily verifiable by any second party via replication. People say much and claim much but show nothing.
We are saying we are doing fusion and showing we are doing fusion. Others about us are replicating our results by trying it themselves and finding our work correct and fully verified by their own results.
This is not the case with the polywell or any other combo Magnetic-IECF device. I am not saying that such devices will never do fusion. I just am saying they will never do power ready fusion as currently configured.
As for my animosity towards magnetism..........It goes back to my natural feeling that magnetism is a second order effect and as such can never play a role in energy generation involving first order operators such as charged particles which in flux generate their own disparate magnetic fields.
Richard Hull
Show me.
The polywell or any other magnetized IECF related device has yet to produce one single fusion that is readily verifiable by any second party via replication. People say much and claim much but show nothing.
We are saying we are doing fusion and showing we are doing fusion. Others about us are replicating our results by trying it themselves and finding our work correct and fully verified by their own results.
This is not the case with the polywell or any other combo Magnetic-IECF device. I am not saying that such devices will never do fusion. I just am saying they will never do power ready fusion as currently configured.
As for my animosity towards magnetism..........It goes back to my natural feeling that magnetism is a second order effect and as such can never play a role in energy generation involving first order operators such as charged particles which in flux generate their own disparate magnetic fields.
Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Another futile fusion initiative - Rather local too!
Richard Hull wrote:
> This is not the case with the polywell or any other combo Magnetic-IECF device. I am not saying that such devices will never do fusion. I just am saying they will never do power ready fusion as currently configured.
Certainly looks that way at the moment - no disagreements on the current state-of-the-art for IEC+M. I'm not even aware there are any other such proposals at the moment, save for the one you've mentioned. The only other similar one was [past tense; few results, no funding] the 'Penning fusion experiment' using a confined electron cloud for the same function as the electron cloud in 'the other' one you mentioned. I contacted the researchers on that project, but they had nothing to add further than the few reports [terms of the grant to publish such things, I'd presume] that were written on it.
> As for my animosity towards magnetism..........It goes back to my natural feeling that magnetism is a second order effect and as such can never play a role in energy generation involving first order operators such as charged particles which in flux generate their own disparate magnetic fields.
Sure, again I hasten to agree with you - but only insofaras the 'bulk input' of energy goes into fusible particles. However, crossed field devices like the cyclotron, magnetron and Penning trap show that electrostatics with a dose of 'magnetic encirclement' can do things that electrostatics on its own cannot. The input of energy into the ions in a cyclotron is electrostatic, but that can only happen because the guiding magnetic field keeps the ions 'in play'.
I am approaching the completion of a build which employs these principles and that I hope might go some way towards satiating your surprise. But in any case, whether my approach is sound or not, I think this principle of IEC+M has benefits yet to be understood in its applicability to fusion research, and that all variations and permutations of such devices have not yet been exhausted.
> This is not the case with the polywell or any other combo Magnetic-IECF device. I am not saying that such devices will never do fusion. I just am saying they will never do power ready fusion as currently configured.
Certainly looks that way at the moment - no disagreements on the current state-of-the-art for IEC+M. I'm not even aware there are any other such proposals at the moment, save for the one you've mentioned. The only other similar one was [past tense; few results, no funding] the 'Penning fusion experiment' using a confined electron cloud for the same function as the electron cloud in 'the other' one you mentioned. I contacted the researchers on that project, but they had nothing to add further than the few reports [terms of the grant to publish such things, I'd presume] that were written on it.
> As for my animosity towards magnetism..........It goes back to my natural feeling that magnetism is a second order effect and as such can never play a role in energy generation involving first order operators such as charged particles which in flux generate their own disparate magnetic fields.
Sure, again I hasten to agree with you - but only insofaras the 'bulk input' of energy goes into fusible particles. However, crossed field devices like the cyclotron, magnetron and Penning trap show that electrostatics with a dose of 'magnetic encirclement' can do things that electrostatics on its own cannot. The input of energy into the ions in a cyclotron is electrostatic, but that can only happen because the guiding magnetic field keeps the ions 'in play'.
I am approaching the completion of a build which employs these principles and that I hope might go some way towards satiating your surprise. But in any case, whether my approach is sound or not, I think this principle of IEC+M has benefits yet to be understood in its applicability to fusion research, and that all variations and permutations of such devices have not yet been exhausted.
Re: Another futile fusion initiative - Rather local too!
FYI
This is a PDF I have read several times now in my search for new
ideas to try.
It briefly outlines all the fusion approaches electrostatic/ magnetic and combined
(including polywell) problems and results. There are quite a few that may enhance a normal fusor.
Well worth the read.
Dustin.
http://www.askmar.com/Fusion_files/Magn ... nement.pdf
This is a PDF I have read several times now in my search for new
ideas to try.
It briefly outlines all the fusion approaches electrostatic/ magnetic and combined
(including polywell) problems and results. There are quite a few that may enhance a normal fusor.
Well worth the read.
Dustin.
http://www.askmar.com/Fusion_files/Magn ... nement.pdf
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Doug Coulter
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Re: Another futile fusion initiative - Rather local too!
Chris,
I think there are several reasons people are averse to magnetics, and it's a pretty long list.
For one thing, the $30 DVM everyone has doesn't measure that, you need the $400 thing you turned me on to (which was hard to find even though I had the money) -- and it was pretty illuminating how different the predictions of optimistic magnet manufactures are from reality, and how tough it is to get the fields the way you want them, really.
The jargon with mixed units is like a guild secret thing, and yeah, it's a whole new set of things to learn. Just like every wire is also a resistor, every magnetic conductor isn't perfect, and on and on as well.
Permanent magnets don't live well in vacuum either -- heat kills them fast. And plain old electromagnets make plenty of heat on their own. I've killed my share of NeFeB magnets at this game.
As Richard points out, there's been one heck of a lot of trash talked about using magnets on plasmas, none of which has truly paid off yet. Many idiot mistakes have been made with them for sure, for example the "magnetic heating" they use in a tokomak, where the plasma is the secondary of a transformer, just gets all the ions going in the same direction -- this is just dumb, like cars on a highway, when all the vectors match (all going the same way), no crashes, and in this case we want them.
And of course, you have to either live with the fact that a magnet does something quite different to electrons and ions of the same energy due to the mass difference and of course polarity -- you can use this to work for or against you and most don't get that. A field that would do interesting things for electrons in a fusor wouldn't do much to the ions at all....possibilities are there.
I could add more, but you get the picture. Bussard's thing really only would work in a cusp free situation -- a monopole, good luck making that work. Groups of charged particles are pretty squirrely to control with simple setups, they tend to have a mind of their own, even get into what I'd have to call emergent behavior when in crowds.
I agree about cyclotrons, and your thing needs a decent try -- have you yet posted about your patent application and the idea? I think it will get some interest here as a good use of magnetic fields.
I certainly thought it was worth a serious shot, though as you know already, it's going to be hard to get working with minimal test gear and realistic effort input at some point I think you're going to wind up in my lab/shop where we have the right tools for all that -- you're invited across the pond anytime.
One thing though -- even with electric fields, I still hear things that assume that just because I put X volts on an electrode, that's the speed all my ions are accelerated to.
Sorry fellas, that is just sloppy thinking, get out your faraday probes and energy spectrometers and prove that -- you'll find out, just like in vacuum electron tubes, that it's the NET Field that matters, including that from whatever charged particles you've got in there. And I'm going to be a pain in the ... until I quit hearing that bad assumption over and over. I happen to think (and just my opinion here) that it's going to be real important at some point.
We are working up some instrumentation on that one. We've made a pinhole camera, that can see charged particles, and/or X rays, we can put a Be foil over the hole and just see X rays too.
Add a small magnet, and we can see which polarity the particles are by which way the image shifts, as of right now, we can't be sure what we're seeing, but it's nice to see anything at all.
May be a surprise or two when we do that. As that project progresses, I'll put up some pix, it's really fun to play with on a wobble stick, but hard to get good pictures of, as auto-exposure tends to over expose the detail on the bright spot that is the main thing you see when pointing it at a fusor grid.
Magnets have their uses, but anything that pushes 90 degrees to the existing vector just messes up people's heads too easily, and doesn't really solve much in the way of containment, just changes the monkey motions on the way to loss of containment. That's been pretty well thrashed from linear Q machine on up to present. Combo E and H fields could be promising, but most can't intuit this well enough to come up with something workable. I sure see plenty smoke, mirrors, and arm waving around it, that all look like BS to me.
Seems like one of those things that *after* some one gets it working, it will be obvious in hindsight.
I am willing to be surprised.
I think there are several reasons people are averse to magnetics, and it's a pretty long list.
For one thing, the $30 DVM everyone has doesn't measure that, you need the $400 thing you turned me on to (which was hard to find even though I had the money) -- and it was pretty illuminating how different the predictions of optimistic magnet manufactures are from reality, and how tough it is to get the fields the way you want them, really.
The jargon with mixed units is like a guild secret thing, and yeah, it's a whole new set of things to learn. Just like every wire is also a resistor, every magnetic conductor isn't perfect, and on and on as well.
Permanent magnets don't live well in vacuum either -- heat kills them fast. And plain old electromagnets make plenty of heat on their own. I've killed my share of NeFeB magnets at this game.
As Richard points out, there's been one heck of a lot of trash talked about using magnets on plasmas, none of which has truly paid off yet. Many idiot mistakes have been made with them for sure, for example the "magnetic heating" they use in a tokomak, where the plasma is the secondary of a transformer, just gets all the ions going in the same direction -- this is just dumb, like cars on a highway, when all the vectors match (all going the same way), no crashes, and in this case we want them.
And of course, you have to either live with the fact that a magnet does something quite different to electrons and ions of the same energy due to the mass difference and of course polarity -- you can use this to work for or against you and most don't get that. A field that would do interesting things for electrons in a fusor wouldn't do much to the ions at all....possibilities are there.
I could add more, but you get the picture. Bussard's thing really only would work in a cusp free situation -- a monopole, good luck making that work. Groups of charged particles are pretty squirrely to control with simple setups, they tend to have a mind of their own, even get into what I'd have to call emergent behavior when in crowds.
I agree about cyclotrons, and your thing needs a decent try -- have you yet posted about your patent application and the idea? I think it will get some interest here as a good use of magnetic fields.
I certainly thought it was worth a serious shot, though as you know already, it's going to be hard to get working with minimal test gear and realistic effort input at some point I think you're going to wind up in my lab/shop where we have the right tools for all that -- you're invited across the pond anytime.
One thing though -- even with electric fields, I still hear things that assume that just because I put X volts on an electrode, that's the speed all my ions are accelerated to.
Sorry fellas, that is just sloppy thinking, get out your faraday probes and energy spectrometers and prove that -- you'll find out, just like in vacuum electron tubes, that it's the NET Field that matters, including that from whatever charged particles you've got in there. And I'm going to be a pain in the ... until I quit hearing that bad assumption over and over. I happen to think (and just my opinion here) that it's going to be real important at some point.
We are working up some instrumentation on that one. We've made a pinhole camera, that can see charged particles, and/or X rays, we can put a Be foil over the hole and just see X rays too.
Add a small magnet, and we can see which polarity the particles are by which way the image shifts, as of right now, we can't be sure what we're seeing, but it's nice to see anything at all.
May be a surprise or two when we do that. As that project progresses, I'll put up some pix, it's really fun to play with on a wobble stick, but hard to get good pictures of, as auto-exposure tends to over expose the detail on the bright spot that is the main thing you see when pointing it at a fusor grid.
Magnets have their uses, but anything that pushes 90 degrees to the existing vector just messes up people's heads too easily, and doesn't really solve much in the way of containment, just changes the monkey motions on the way to loss of containment. That's been pretty well thrashed from linear Q machine on up to present. Combo E and H fields could be promising, but most can't intuit this well enough to come up with something workable. I sure see plenty smoke, mirrors, and arm waving around it, that all look like BS to me.
Seems like one of those things that *after* some one gets it working, it will be obvious in hindsight.
I am willing to be surprised.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Another futile fusion initiative - Rather local too!
Doug Coulter wrote:
> the "magnetic heating" they use in a tokomak, where the plasma is the secondary of a transformer, just gets all the ions going in the same direction -- this is just dumb, like cars on a highway, when all the vectors match (all going the same way), no crashes, and in this case we want them.
Actually, it might be of interested to note that, on 'crank-over' of a tokamak, about a half of all the fusions are actually 'beam-target' as the ionised stuff is accelerated and the neutral stuff gets in the way. So just like a fusor then! If it wasn't for this process in a tokamak's 'start-up' cycle, then the plasma wouldn't get anywhere near hot enough. Even tokamaks rely on beam-target fusion!!
> it's going to be hard to get working with minimal test gear and realistic effort input at some point I think you're going to wind up in my lab/shop
Thanks for the support/confidence. Indeed, a point may come where I have to re-appraise matters of detection and instrumentation and I'd like to take up such kind offers, but I'm not looking to win any neutron-production trophies just yet so my initial diagnostic instrument for now will be "eye-ball Mk.1".
> even with electric fields, I still hear things that assume that just because I put X volts on an electrode, that's the speed all my ions are accelerated to. Sorry fellas, that is just sloppy thinking
I agree with you, and the effect of charge accumulations on e-fields. Not sure I've said otherwise, but just to clarify my point in reply to Richard; my inference was that it is only an e-field that can *do work* on a charged particle, a magnetic field cannot do work (except by induction, which is, as Richard alludes to, therefore a secondary production of an e-field in the particle's frame).
> Magnets have their uses, but anything that pushes 90 degrees to the existing vector just messes up people's heads too easily
Yeah, I'm with you on that. The evolving human perception, hunting game on the plains, never had to develop a sense of 'rotating' things. That's why we can get a feel for what would happen if you push a cow over, but if it's a gyroscope then it's entirely non-intuitive for our linear-physics evolved reptilian brain to figure out it wouldn't fall over! All the more reason to suspect there might be some processes/methods as yet not intuitively deduced in regards rotating solutions??!
> I am willing to be surprised.
Me too!!... I guess we'd not be doing this stuff unless we were trying to surprise even ourselves!
> the "magnetic heating" they use in a tokomak, where the plasma is the secondary of a transformer, just gets all the ions going in the same direction -- this is just dumb, like cars on a highway, when all the vectors match (all going the same way), no crashes, and in this case we want them.
Actually, it might be of interested to note that, on 'crank-over' of a tokamak, about a half of all the fusions are actually 'beam-target' as the ionised stuff is accelerated and the neutral stuff gets in the way. So just like a fusor then! If it wasn't for this process in a tokamak's 'start-up' cycle, then the plasma wouldn't get anywhere near hot enough. Even tokamaks rely on beam-target fusion!!
> it's going to be hard to get working with minimal test gear and realistic effort input at some point I think you're going to wind up in my lab/shop
Thanks for the support/confidence. Indeed, a point may come where I have to re-appraise matters of detection and instrumentation and I'd like to take up such kind offers, but I'm not looking to win any neutron-production trophies just yet so my initial diagnostic instrument for now will be "eye-ball Mk.1".
> even with electric fields, I still hear things that assume that just because I put X volts on an electrode, that's the speed all my ions are accelerated to. Sorry fellas, that is just sloppy thinking
I agree with you, and the effect of charge accumulations on e-fields. Not sure I've said otherwise, but just to clarify my point in reply to Richard; my inference was that it is only an e-field that can *do work* on a charged particle, a magnetic field cannot do work (except by induction, which is, as Richard alludes to, therefore a secondary production of an e-field in the particle's frame).
> Magnets have their uses, but anything that pushes 90 degrees to the existing vector just messes up people's heads too easily
Yeah, I'm with you on that. The evolving human perception, hunting game on the plains, never had to develop a sense of 'rotating' things. That's why we can get a feel for what would happen if you push a cow over, but if it's a gyroscope then it's entirely non-intuitive for our linear-physics evolved reptilian brain to figure out it wouldn't fall over! All the more reason to suspect there might be some processes/methods as yet not intuitively deduced in regards rotating solutions??!
> I am willing to be surprised.
Me too!!... I guess we'd not be doing this stuff unless we were trying to surprise even ourselves!
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Another futile fusion initiative - Rather local too!
Doug Coulter wrote:
> for example the "magnetic heating" they use in a tokomak, where the plasma is the secondary of a transformer, just gets all the ions going in the same direction
On this point, and my reply, I did previously post on this;
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6877#p47578
note how the actual thermonuclear fraction takes a long part of the pulse to crank up.
> for example the "magnetic heating" they use in a tokomak, where the plasma is the secondary of a transformer, just gets all the ions going in the same direction
On this point, and my reply, I did previously post on this;
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6877#p47578
note how the actual thermonuclear fraction takes a long part of the pulse to crank up.