Talk-Polywell.org

Yes.. that was my point. It's stupid to speculate on "what we don't know that we don't know". Unless you meant something else in that first part.

We do not know what we do not know.

And to say that they would make the biggest splash on the basis of us not knowing what we do not know about them.. How do you know I don't have a working FRC-based machine next to me? ..

I addressed EMC2's position (and perhaps Lockheed Skunkworks) as being the most likely to make a splash because they have built a proof of concept machine and tested it. I think you may be a bit outdated here. General Fusion is probably the only transparent company that has built a proof of concept...

The models, starting from matched experiments, may be useful for extrapolating limited design changes, but the greater the design changes the more uncertain the models become. Hmm, I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions on what computational plasma physics is necessarily about. Sure, it'd be a...

Of the different relatively low budget efforts, I think the Polywell may make the biggest splash in 2014 . Geeneral fusion and DPF may both be restrained by technical/ engineering challenges in building test/ proof of concept models. I have no idea where Tri Alpha may be. I disagree because of just...

The particle-in-cell method is basically approaching simulations with a kinetic (instead of fluid) route. You track computational particles (which represent a large number of real particles) in phase space such as f(x, y, z, vx, vy, vz), although coordinates may be different for simpler calculations...

Again? They did that when I was applying to grad school.. it was super unhelpful.

On the other hand, all wallets open with strings attached. You work for venture capitalists, you'll have to watch out for their own financially self-centered interests. You work for the defense department, you'll have to watch out for "national-security-centered" interests. You work for the governm...

Wow, the conspiracists here. Look.. scientists who work on fusion research aren't people who are easily bought and shut up. Just take a look at the small but steady stream of people who go into plasma physics. We're not going into it because we think it pays big bucks (condensed matter) or that it's...

On the other hand, all wallets open with strings attached. You work for venture capitalists, you'll have to watch out for their own financially self-centered interests. You work for the defense department, you'll have to watch out for "national-security-centered" interests. You work for the governme...

If you want to do PIC simulations, you will have to use Fortran or C++. MatLab is okay because it's basically C++ (or can translate out to C++), but you'll want to eventually use one of the two big number cruncher languages. If you're doing this as an example, I would say Fortran is much easier to j...

Wouldn't it also make sense that contractors may purposely withhold research advances to milk government money? It just seems more probable that profit-based companies are acting in the interest of profits..

I think something that can't be forgotten is that there is also a use for FRCs outside of fusion. It's also used to study magnetic reconnection, plasma propulsion, etc. To get similar investors, I think we have to provide possible secondary functions of Polywell that would be in high demand, especia...

Is General Fusion still seeking to prove net gain this year? I remember them mentioning stability issues in their spheromak balls..

Are you Matthew Carr?