Dr. Bussard passes

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

Dr. Bussard passes

John · Senior Member

Sorry to hear that news. Dr. Bussard always had challenging and innovative ideas. He'll be missed.

Andrew · Senior Member

The real sad thing is, that his work on the Polywell is now pretty much limited to internet enthusiasts.

Which equals: "WE ARE DOOMED" in regards of getting anything done.

Also, a tremendous understandings underlying the concept of Polywell's working went with him down the grave. There were a few other scientist, Dr.Krall if I recall, but they are not available at all.

GoogleNaut · Guru

Dr. Bussard will be missed. He had many innovative ideas and his contributions are too numerous to list...

His polywell fusor concept is very interesting--I was a bit scheptical of some of the scaling laws he stated--but they are still very interesting...

Andrew · Senior Member

His polywell fusor concept is very interesting--I was a bit scheptical of some of the scaling laws he stated--but they are still very interesting...

You know, most people give are more sceptical about the underlying physics of a supposedly fantastic machine AFTER the mind behind it died, not the other way around. Because now, his work in more difficult to research.

Of course an independent experiment would prove who is right, but that hell's chance of happening.

GoogleNaut · Guru

Well, personally, I feel that the possibility of his machine working (and the potential positive benefits of the machine if it did) warrants the expenditure of the money to find out for sure. To simply put the question to rest, if nothing else, warrants the expenditure of the sum of a $100 million or so, don't you think? I think the DOE can afford that--and who knows, it might even work. But we won't know for sure if we don't try. We will know muchy better whether it's practical if we take a shot at it...

I think that is worth my tax dollars--and frankly that's why I pay the DOE through the IRS...

As the [tax]paying customer here--I want this question answered by the DOE!

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

From my view his machine does come closest to mimicking the sun. The only way to find results is to scale up Polywell and built it to the scale he advocates and run tests . I'm sure someone will built it. Like anything in life it takes money to make the money it takes to build it, once fusor is operating you make money-it's that simple.

-- Edited by NUKE ROCKY44 at 21:29, 2007-10-16

Andrew · Senior Member

You two are wonderfully optimistic. From what I see, this thing will plummet down into the almost infinite abyss of crackpotism. The sad fact is, that Bussard never bothered to write down and publish scientific justification of his work, not since the goddamn embargo. Without that, Polywell is fringe science if we are hopeful.

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

NUKE ROCKY44 wrote:

From my view his machine does come closest to mimicking the sun.

Bruce, how do you figure that, if I may ask ?

IMHO, no fusion machine on earth mimicks the Sun, because we use heavy hydrogen isotopes or He-3, with only the Strong nuclear force being involved in the reactions, whereas the Sun burns protons, using either the weak nuclear force, or the catalytic CNO cycle (to a relatively small degree, as there isn't all that much C, N or O in the Sun yet....).

I agree with Andrew on the fringe assessment.

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

Well... I'm not an inertial electrostatic confinement fusor specialist.

The reason for my faith, is in his idea that magnetic confinement
favors his design and better than toroidal systems.

Of the main confinement regimes: Gravity, Magnetic, Inertial

Gravity; is out of the question since nobody can build a star(so far).

Inertial; nobody can derive electrical power for an exploding H bomb (fusion driven by x-rays from fission bomb explosion), Lasers, ion, electron beam can be used but they don't make sense economically.

Z-pinch is a competitive so-so,

Muon-catalysed fusion, cold fusion, bubble fusion spells 'goofy fusion' to me.

The only other source is an antimatter power plant reactor besides the fission reactor power plants now in use and antimatter power plants are still not near term.

What I meant 'mimicking of the Sun' is Direct Force Field Gravitational barring that its the 'Coulomb force' between electrically charged particles. Charged particles of opposite sign attract each other with direct forces; charged particles in electrical fields feel forces directly along field gradients-this is humanly capable technology.

Thus, fusion fuel plasmas could be held together efficiently by electrical forces and electrical fields this is called: 'ELECTRIC FUSION' Like he says, the Sun does a right-handed rule force derived from a central potential no matter what the particle motion is it always points to center and always pulling particles to the center.

Ok yea, little problem with breaking radiation (bremsstrahlung) but that can be solved in engineering.

The system is cheap to scale up and clean, holds the record for net power output of scale for IEC, no fission spent fuel processing hassles. Its better than chasing 'butterflies' in Tokamak in France(Iter).

Maybe I can review his abstract and do a report/interview with EMC2 corp. that would be an interesting project for the NS site and find out why shouldn't the embargo be lifted. I mean people need to be prosperous-right! wink

-- Edited by NUKE ROCKY44 at 07:40, 2007-10-18

GoogleNaut · Guru

As far as fusion goes, my money's on something completely different from nuclear power...it sounds incredible, but given several conditions, microscopic blackholes may end up being the power source of the future. The mathematics seems to suggest that evaporating blackholes are just about the most efficient way to generate electron-positron pairs--and if blackholes can be made from the basic 'stuff' of matter, this seems to suggest to me that microblackholes can be thought of as reasonably efficient matter to energy converters. The trillion dollar question of course is: how do you make them? And if you can make them, can you force feed them enough matter to 'amplify' your initial energy investment enough to make the whole thing worth while? [this is the recirculating power question.]

There are some powerful arguments why inertial electrostatic confinement fusion can't work--but it works well enough that it is used in a 'laboratory' setting in commercially available, small high-flux neutron generator tubes. Clearly something is going on inside these things...

And if someone wants to put up the cash to try a full scale machine out--well, why not. Here is a wonderful opportunity for Bill Gates or other billionares who care to take a shot at it--if it fails, then we know for sure that Bussard's ideas won't work. If it does work--great, the world gets a new power source, and Bill Gates (or some other investor) gets to license the hell out of the technology. A win-win situation!!

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

Future physics is just beginning with the fire-up of the Hadron Collider, but CERN hasn't rushed to start it up. I guess it's not till beginning of '08 yr.
It will take months to ensure the LHC is running optimum. Once it starts pumping data it will take years to understand the new species and processes given birth by LHD. Mini blackholes in my estimation exist but HR (BH evaporation) would kill any terrestrial BH unless you provide much more energy in trying to preserve it. I would think in the far future a human-made BH might be possible and no... it would not 'eat-up' our planet or the universe. That would be like a flea size (or less size) BH trying to ingest our sun. A delicate BH would be difficult to preserve. In a sense this science is far into the future, in the meantime Polywell fusion reactors should be made available if people are serious about cheap, clean and efficient fusion reactor power plants.

GoogleNaut · Guru

A flea sized blackhole would have the mass a small mountain--most of the blackholes I am interested in are going to be very, very small. Usually black hole masses for these beasties are so small, they measure in terms of their energies: in the case of the LHC produced black holes--a few tens to hundreds of TeV (trillion electron volts,) in the case of 'power prodcution' I would say the threshold are a few hundred MJ (megajoules)or a GJ (gigajoule.) These are much bigger but easier to 'force feed' some matter before they evaporate. I suspect that the threshold for power production will occur when atleast for a moment (a few femtoseconds ?) the rate of mass aquisition by the hole will exceed its Hawking evaporation losses--then it will grow. Shutting off the mass flow at that point (or more probably stagnation of flow by outward radiation pressure from the hole) will terminate its growth after which it will almost instantly radiate its aquired mass...

and if certain conditions pertaining to conservation of information content are true--then a non-charged blackhole may be expected to be an almost perfect emitter of electron-positron pairs--

Black hole power sources are still 'fringe' but I suspect that there is some interesting physics there...

Andrew · Senior Member

I agree with Andrew on the fringe assessment.

Actually, I believe this thing would work. The problem is that people with the appropriate skill, knowledge AND money to prove that it does, don't.

Science is sadly not free from politics, and everyone, or at least everyone with backing, is "chasing butterflies" in France as NukeRocky44 puts it.

Also, NukeRocky44 if you have an MSN address I have a couple of papers I've got that is from EMC2. I don't understand them, and most deal with theory, but you may still find them interesting.

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

Yes, Andrew my email: bru_b at shaw.ca (just replace 'at' with the proper symbol).

Something is sort of funny about this whole story now my boss (since I'm a 'hack writer' on these issues) is hot and bothered about doing a feature story.
So, now I have to wade through loads of information not to mention an interview with EMC2 corp. staff. So I could use any information to start with. weirdface

Andrew · Senior Member

I don't know much, but the google video is the best source. You can watch it here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

Home site:http://www.emc2fusion.org/