Talk-Polywell.org

TallDave wrote:Hmmmm, no. Remember, WB trapping was not just discovered in WB-6. It goes all the way back to SCIFE and includes the intermediate machines. The counts are only one piece of evidence.

What is the other evidence? Where is it published?

Your quote regarding - 'line cusps' is this referring to containment in the absence of the Wiffle Ball inflation effect (difficult to guess out of context, I'm afraid I don't yet have access to the paper)? . Unless I misunderstood something, this is after going to high beta (= whiffle ball made). S...

A field line near one cusp will return to a point near another cusp, but it will take the long way around to get there, usually running into the containment vessel before it has a chance to recirculate. A lot of us thought so too, but it turns out the fields actually wrap pretty tightly because of ...

Hello Art, Bussard produced a report on the final runs of WB-6, which for a time was hosted on the UniWisc website, and is mentioned on Joe Strout's index page . While not exactly a peer-reviewed paper, it might give you some food for thought. You can now find it on Mark Duncan's excellent fusion p...

Even at high beta, the magnetic field will push on the plasma ball with different strengths in different places, making it lumpy. (I believe Bussard also used this word somewhere.) If an ion bounces off a surface that is not tangent to a sphere, it will return off-center. I don't think ions bounce ...

Do you mean this report? Meager. Conclusions, but not an iota of supporting data or references.

(Figured out how to use the URL tags now. Also figured out that Tony meant a different report.)

Pardon me for asking this Art, but if the ions are not oscillating through the centre of the potential well, then they must be orbiting in some elliptical orbit. If they orbit in this fashion, will not their energy of rotation be leeched by the EM field they travel through, causing them to spiral b...

In other threads I have explained why, given all that I know about plasma physics, I really, really expect the polywell *not* to work anywhere near well enough to be interesting for power production. Several times I have received responses along the lines that my theoretical ideas must be wrong beca...

I've started threads that are still running on cusp/whiffle confinement and recirculation. I think the only other really big stomach ache I have with the polywell is the idea of ion convergence. Rick Nebel has suggested that convergence may not actually be necessary, but it is usually invoked. (I am...

Whatever the sins of cusp confinement, it seems popular to absolve them by invoking recirculation. I see this concept to be just as weak as whiffle ball confinement. Remember that the particles are coming out from a very small spot and/or in a very narrow cone. Recirculation requires that this speci...

Looking at it from another perspective, you may, if you choose, ignore the effect of the magnetic field on the ions, but then the same electrostatic force that acts to pull the ions back in will act to pull the electrons out. If the magnetic field acts only on the electrons, it has to be twice as g...

This mantra has been repeated often, but it still doesn't make any sense. In what sense does a polywell "primarily" confine electrons while a traditional cusp primarily confines a neutral plasma? The polywell is "quasi-neutral", meaning that the fractional difference between the electron density an...

What do you mean by this? rnebel Joined: 24 Dec 2007 Posts: 41 Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:23 pm Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- to JMC: Since you are worried about Rider, let me suggest the following exercise. Let's assume that a Polywe...

More basically, it looks like the polywell should be classed as high beta cusp confinement. I'm not familiar with the details, but I know that this idea is as old as the hills and was rejected very early. Why is the polywell supposed to be better? Possibly it is the idea of using point cusps instea...

rcain wrote:Rider ... who we largely seem to have discredited

What do you mean by this?