Talk-Polywell.org

See->

http://pop.aip.org/resource/1/phpaen/v20/i5/p052504_s1?isAuthorized=no

Doesn't sound applicable except as a transient startup condition.

Paywalls suck. Have to see if I can pull the full article at work.

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The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Was searching for Polywell news, one thing I did find was that ONR has a face book page where people have been asking about it. Personally don't have face book account so can't check it out.

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CHoff

Just make one for your cat or something?

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You can do anything you want with laws except make Americans obey them.

A cat showing interest in polywell
would trigger CIA surveillance for sure...

https://www.facebook.com/officeofnavalresearch
A single question about polywell, asking what many here want to know.

I asked this question:

How is the Polywell Fusion research doing? When will we see a Polywell powered ship?

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Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Everyone on this board is interested in nuclear physics, and has waxed poetic on the Orion nuclear pulse propulsion system at least once.

If we all aren't on a watch list already, someone(s) at FBI and DHS (and the foreign equivalents thereof) need to be fired for incompetence.

Pay it no mind. That is just the reality of life in a digital age.

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Vae Victis

No-one's ever argued a Polywell can't trap electrons.

...So what?

Where's the evidence that electrons can trap ions? That's what is important. But that is like trying to anchor a boat with a tooth-pick.

It makes it all the more difficult to interpret ANY claims on 'confinement' in a Polywell... does such a comment relate to the confinement of electrons (for which there are much better devices capable of confining higher density electrons), or of confining high energy ions with slow electrons? One must always presume the former, because there has never yet been evidence for the latter.

Chris,


Is this not just a question of scale? A dense enough collection of (e-)s will create a sufficiently negative potential to attract and retain in a corrosponding density (+)s. The trick is to find the balance of (e-)s to (+)s that do what you want I think. Too much (e-)s and you promote neutral generation. Too much (+) and you overwhelm the (-), not to mention promote (+) to (+) repulsion.

I think that the evidence that (e-) traps (+) is in the known results that Bussard/Nebel got fusion (n)s (more than once). This is also evident for anyone who runs a fusor. The only difference being virtual (electron cloud) to real (metal) negative potential. It is (e-)s for either that make it happen.

I don't think you thought your comment through fully.

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The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

There are many ways in which neutrons could have been produced in short discharges in previous Polywell designs (and that's not even counting how the near-statistically-insignificant neutron detection rates could have been jeopardised). Whatever the neutron detection rates of past, or present, Polywells, this in itself cannot show that ions trap electrons.

Ambipolarity reigns supreme. Where ions go, the electrons follow.

The idea that a teeny, slow, electron could somehow trap a fast moving ion is like trying to imagine a dog grabbing a 40 ton truck off the highway as it drives by. The Brillouin limit puts limits on how many 'dogs' you'd be allowed to set to that task, all at once. Without clear evidence of, even, the possibility it just seems a bit ridiculous, really.

A fusor doesn't remotely work by trapping electron charge. All free electrons are immediately shot into the outer shell by the electric fields between the grid and the shell. The original designs that tried to do this, Farnsworth's first design and later the ETW design, failed to produce any evidence of ion trapping, let alone actually produce any neutrons. They were complete failures.

Seven wolftrons trapping a moosion:

I guess we will agree to disagree then.

_________________
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)