Talk-Polywell.org

I wounder if it could be applied to a cylindrical, or by extension, a toroidal geometry? You could always propose the idea at JET or IGNITOR to give it a shot. It would be pretty cool to hear that one of those beat the break-even point before their bigger ITER sister fires first plasma. ;) "Sorry g...

...most of the issues in the "technical challenges" section seem to stem from the maximum current issue. (e.g. anything mentioning a 100 mile coil) Most of the issues also focus on utility storage of energy, not for movable applications. I hope you can imagine that a 100 mile coil buried undergroun...

If you trust wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMES They are very efficient, up to 95% energy out/energy in, but also expensive. I guess the main losses (and cost) are being caused by the cryogenic system needed to keep the SC coil at temperature. Get that out of the loop (something not infea...

the term is layman (from brick layer? not sure of the etymology.) but layman's terms are usually thought to be an oversimplification, and on the contrary that is an excellent analogy! that is _exactly_ how it is, and a much better description than _i_ did! What can I say, I watched a lot of Stargat...

ah yes, on the point of magnetic fields, inductance and what not tend to work towards opposing changes in the magnetic field. so it would take work to create the field, and the it would take work to destroy it (or you could simply take out out of superconducting mode), and more generally it would t...

It seems the Navy is pushing some radical new techs on their ships. Not a bad thing, if you look at what's being developed, the new generation of warships is going to be completely electrified. Powered from a Polywell, free electron lasers for missile defense and close range capabilities, and railgu...

Stoney, I suggest you study up on relativity theory, and a bit of calculus. gamma = 1/sqrt(1-V^2/C^2) energy = gamma*M0*C^2 momentum = gamma*M0*V at light speed gamma = 1/0 = infinity, which with a little calculus reduction with 0 mass gives a finite non zero energy and momentum. True, that was the...

[So I guess the next question is to understand why/whether you think those 'maximum speeds' (relative to lab-frame, of course) will be the same for two runs in the same accelerator for two beam currents of different intensity. As far as I understand special relativity, they are not: If a particle b...

I can assure you that to continue to underestimate the Chinese industrial skills shall be the Western world's undoing in the early part of the 21st century. (...) But they learn, boy do those guys learn! They make me think of the US in the 60's - a real 'have a go' spirit, not afraid of making thei...

Imagine one of these mounted on board of a ship powered by a Polywell.

If we only had photon torpedoes and a sticker marked 'ENTERPRISE', we'd be in the ballpark.

Isn't that one of the major problems we've been having with spaceflight over the last century? Everything is based on heat engines, prime movers, and Newton's Third Law. Chuck something out the back, and you get an equally-sized push forward. Chuck something down a pipe, and the little paddlewheel i...

Tom Ligon wrote:Superconductors are neat, but if you can't make an electromagnet out of them they're not nearly so useful.

You mean like this?

http://prometheusfusionperfection.com/2 ... t-success/

Yep, that guy should be on these boards somewhere too.

I like to think that this man has harnessed one of our primal urges and converted into money, and again into progress. And frankly, I don't see anything wrong with that. Don't forget that the adult entertainment industry is huge (especially on the internet), and using such an industry as seed money...

http://www.superconductors.org/265K.htm I hope we can get things like this done reliably. Temperatures down to -18C (255K) can be achieved with standard refrigeration gear, like your home freezer, and need only simple working fluids to transport the coolants to the business end of your SC. Not exac...

For illumination the filament needs to be run white HOT. For electron injection I suspect you could run the filament only red hot, for a much longer life. In either case the expected filament life would greatly exceed the run time for an experiment. I worked with ion laser tubes (Spectra-Physics) a...