Talk-Polywell.org

If I may quote myself , ...To maintain a non-maxwellian distribution will require electrons to be removed at one energy and replaced at another energy. At least one of those populations of electrons will have to have an energy near E_e... [/b] Isn't that percisely what occurs in the Polywell? The el...

I think it's a mistake to assume local quasineutrality only ends at the wall. It's also possible it ends at the cusps, which therefore eject electrons because the electron drive is injecting them. This seems more likely given the limited amount we know about the WB machine results. I didn't assume ...

I keep hearing about neutral plasmas, in the reactor and flowing out the cusps. But Dr. B. and others have stated the plasma is only QUASI-neutral. They have contended that there is sufficient excess negative charge in the reactor to keep the ions in. I may occasionally use the term neutral, but qu...

@chrismb: It's a pleasure to meet someone here who understands something about sheaths. My area of expertise is plasma-wall interaction generally and Langmuir probes specifically. It's just that I seem to spend so much of my time here explaining things like quasi-neutrality over and over again, that...

Usually I have to repeat myself a lot here, but I'm not sure I ever said this before: I have been arguing that the cusps have to be quasi-neutral, so that they will contain an equal number of ions and electrons. If there is a potential difference between the cusp throat and the wall, the electrons w...

"scientists have found a material even less able to conduct heat" than a vacuum?

Ho hum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-layer_insulation

alexjrgreen wrote:

Art Carlson wrote:At least as long as alexjrgreen refuses to calculate anything. I'm outta here.

Art, you're sitting on a grid computer. Of all the people here you're the most able to run the numbers.

For these questions, back-of-the-envelope is plenty good enough. Never use a grid computer when a napkin will do.

chrismb wrote:My goodness..... this exchange is such popycock.

Yep. At least as long as alexjrgreen refuses to calculate anything. I'm outta here.

I don't agree with the low density of electrons, but you'll no doubt explain why you say that. I am thinking low enough so that quasi-neutrality is not required. That is, the ratio of ion density to electron density is much less than 1. I am also thinking high enough that the electrons can produce ...

Mostly I see an over-exposed photo with a lot of stray reflections, under conditions I know next to nothing about. But we can work with that. I believe the claim was made that the light seen comes from the interaction of a low density of electrons with a low but nearly uniform density of helium. If...

The WB7 photo is the only objective evidence I have of how a polywell works, so if your calculations say the picture is impossible then I'm going to tell you that your calculations are wrong. My calculations don't say the photo is impossible. They say your interpretation of the photo is wrong. Then...

alexjrgreen wrote:The WB7 photo is the only objective evidence I have of how a polywell works, so if your calculations say the picture is impossible then I'm going to tell you that your calculations are wrong.

My calculations don't say the photo is impossible. They say your interpretation of the photo is wrong.

The electrons leave the central cusps in jets, not fans, because of the magnetic field and they're accelerating away so the jet density is much lower than that in the wiffleball. I usually talk of fans because I think the line cusps are more important than the point cusps, but the same point applie...

...Would it have been more acceptable to you if I had said "The confinement system for the electrons is the positive grid"? Sorry, but the party line is that the electrons are magnetically confined. At least that would work, albeit poorly. What you describe will not work at all. Wha?? The electrons...

The electrons leave the central cusps in jets, not fans, because of the magnetic field and they're accelerating away so the jet density is much lower than that in the wiffleball. I usually talk of fans because I think the line cusps are more important than the point cusps, but the same point applie...