Talk-Polywell.org

Having looked at Fig 6, I think some of the criticism might be misguided -- I don't see any metal in the way of field lines. I'm not sure about the reflectors/scrapers, based on the photos I think Bussard's were much closer, which tended to suck ions out. At the very least we should learn some inter...

Thanks for the Aussie slides! Interesting that there are so many WB-6 clones now. I agree, too many people seem to not know about Bussard's experience with closed systems, or are disregarding that. It's funny Joel would go that way, iirc his simulations suggested cusp-plugging from cold electrons. M...

I think Chacon's paper is still the gold standard on such distributions generally (not to say others haven't done some great work). Joel Roger's papers (presented at IEC conferences) are probably the best simulations of Polywells specifically (again, lots of good work by others). As Rick said, Chaco...

Which means IMO that WB is proven. Yes, I think the comments on confinement made that pretty clear as far back as WB-7. As Rick said, they can maybe live without ion focus, but without WB confinement they have nothing worth pursuing here and we should all move on. http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/vi...

I don't think it requires any new theory. I haven't followed any of the latest discussion (due to time constraints) but I think the fact Jim has always said to do this math you need to use the tools or relativity is salient here. Way back in 2006, he told Paul and I "you can't do the math that way"...

I dont know what cross field diffusion is, so please explain this to me. My understanding is that reflection isn't 100%, there's a random walk that allows some fraction of electrons to skip all the way to the coils. Rick seemed to think it was hard to predict in Polywells. I don't know how to predi...

Haha, NIF. "Now, if we can just figure out a way to set up these tests a billion times faster, we'll have clean energy! Maybe!" I fully realize that Obama could've adversely effected oil production at any time but hasn't Sigh. http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/03/03/obamas-war-on-drilling-o...

In any case, Woodward's mass fluctuation equation doesn't seem to be dependent on the relative velocity of the "far-off active mass", and the local forcing shouldn't be either, so I don't know where such a dependence would come from... certainly if inertia itself were velocity-dependent, we'd have ...

I think Acemoglu has it right -- for a few decades the Soviets grew despite their extractive political institutions (a lot of people thought they would surpass the United States by the 1990s) but ultimately extractive institutions create the wrong incentives while the inclusive political institution...

That gave me a funny thought: Iranian scientist : Great news, Ayatollah! We have perfected the Polywell fusion process -- and it is cheaper than fission! That means our fission plants are now totally superfluous for energy production! Ayatollah : Kill the traitor. Burn his research. Blow up his lab....

I just hope Mossad knows the difference between fusion and fission. :shock: There are easier ways to get neutrons. I assume this is basically a "look over here!" project to distract attention from their nuclear weapons research and let them say "see, our research is totally peaceful and stuff." Who ...

I understand your point, but the basic point of the singularity idea is that in almost all cases the transition to singularity happens very fast at a certain point, forestalling the K-III stage. So, you might only get K-III civilizations in a few galaxies, and the light from those galaxies still ha...

This article is written by the author of the book "Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking". When I was reading the article it reminded me of the content of the book so I wasn't surprised that it was by the same author. In his book he devotes one paragraph to...

pbelter wrote:Does Jim Woodward have a blog?

That would be nice. The email list tends to get filled with a lot of junk.

If the 8.1 PB&J option is exercised, that means IMO that DD is a fully viable (and then some). I'm going to assume you mean "viable" in the sense they got at least a few watts of fusion from WB-8 :) Getting that to work in a reactor-sized machine... fusion is hard. Glad to see you're still keeping ...