Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

[D Tibbets]

So I had a talk with my advising professor, Dr. Gilmore. He said the ball of plasma at the center has been observed. Streams of electrons leaving the center is still there.

This pinching effect (WB effect) he hasnt seen it, but then again his involvement with the project is limited.

I assume you are referring to the Polywell. I have little doubt that the Wiffleball effect is real. It has been accepted , at least by EMC2 and their reviewers (?), for at least ~20 years. The questions of piratically inducing and maintaining this state may be more uncertain., especially as the machine size is scaled up. The road block has been the electron current necessary to maintain this state, not the reality of the process.

Also, I flinch when I hear the Willball described as a pinch- a magnetic pinch. My understanding is that this is misleading. The cusps are not pinched down. The mirroring effect which is dependent on the angle of incidence of the charged particle is a property that does not change. What does change is the magnetic surface that is involved with this effect. The Wiffle Ball model is useful, but not accurate. The loss cone angles do not change (the holes do not get smaller, at constant B). Instead the holes remain the same size, but the ball inflates, so that the total surface area / cusp loss surface area ratio goes up, perhaps by a factor of ~ 100 or more. This is multiplied by the cusp confinement to get the "thousands of passes" confinement of charged particles (electrons)- ie: the Wiffleball trapping factor. This is analogous to using a funnel imagery. The throat of the funnel is unchanged (no pinch), but the collecting cone is cut off/ flattened out (the particle is mirrored back into the central plasma volume instead of bouncing further into the cusp) so that much less flow is collected relative to the size of the plasma ball/ Wiffleball surface. Any electron aimed almost at the center of the cusp still escapes as any bounce/ mirror effect only feeds it seeper into the cusp. It is the relative change in the total surface area to the effective cusp surface area that changes, not the absolute cusp surface area.

This is subject on how you define the cusp. You could also represent the total surface are as unchanging as the cusp surface areas decreases. This is the Wiffle Ball description and is not counter to using a pinch concept. But this ignores the funtional inflation of the plasma volume that is a basic tenet.

Dan Tibbets

[Robthebob]

@happyjack27: you know Dr. Gilmore?

@ladajo: no idea, when i asked him about how polywell works, like if Dr. Park or Nebel ever formally explained it to him, he's like okay, went through the basics, then he said in a very matter of fact way, "ball of plasma" at the center of the machine. Seems like he has seen this himself, this could be when the machine was running on low beta... he hasnt seen WB effect, and he said that emc2 needs to show that the losses out of the cusps (I wonder if he had taken recirculation in consideration) can be controlled.

@D Tibbets: that's how he's describing it, but then again, his involvement of the project is limited. It may be better for me to talk to his students, but then again, they may either not have much to say or cant say anything.

[ladajo]

Thanks, sounds more like he has heard about it, read about vice been to the lab for test runs. I might also add, that if he did see anything more than the average bear, it was before this current cycle. I offer that in public, the last J&A states that the review panel found no faults with theory and results. Which means IMO that WB is proven. And WB being proven has been offered up via other proof mechnisms discussed here before. One of which being the WB8 contract, and the other being WB7.1

Who knows, maybe Dr. Gilmore was associated with one of the review panels. Maybe not. You can always ask him.

Really, it would seem that the lastest work centers around a.) getting (e-)s in, and b.) scaling. Although, one can infer that the J&A offers hints that scaling may be tracking based on what has been seen to date. Review panel et, context, et. all.

But, who really knows...We should be seeing another $$$ cycle methinks. They have had enough time to burn up the $1.2M they got in the spring. One of the nice things aobut the $$ burn rate is that it also gives a sense of the next contract cycle. In rough terms, they used up WB8 base funding, and now are operating on the WB8 extension of $5.2M. So they have $4.0M to go before we see some contract action. of the $5.2M, figure about $1M for 12 months staffing costs, then toss in some other overhead and then the rest is experimental burn. So, by that estimate, we should be seeing another contracting round intitiated by spring/summer? Probably no later than Fall 13. But I would also expect that we will see some sort of choice between WB8 continues to give us drama, WB8 is good, but not good enough to activate the WB8.1 contract contingency and lastly WB8 is really good, enough that we will give WB8.1 a shot. In contract terms that would mean, current WB8 project plussed up again/or let to die, new contract to go DEMO with DD, or activation of WB8.1 clause (and cause for manic golf clap that DD is viable).

We will see.

[happyjack27]

@happyjack27: you know Dr. Gilmore?

happy [..] gilmore?

no, i don't know dr. gilmore.

[KitemanSA]

We will see.

Tick tock. No wait, this isn't the Rossi thread... Is it?

[ladajo]

I would like to think I apply the same objectivity to most things.

Rossi - Many reasons to think he is full of it
EMC2 - No reasons to think they are full of it
Focus Fusion - No reasons to think they are full of it
Space-X - No reasons to think they are full of it
and so on...

[jcoady]

This is multiplied by the cusp confinement to get the "thousands of passes" confinement of charged particles (electrons)- ie: the Wiffleball trapping factor.

What would the electron charge density look like inside the Wiffleball. Is it expected to be evenly distributed inside the Wiffleball or would it be expected to be higher near the outer wiffleball radius.

[happyjack27]

This is multiplied by the cusp confinement to get the "thousands of passes" confinement of charged particles (electrons)- ie: the Wiffleball trapping factor.

What would the electron charge density look like inside the Wiffleball. Is it expected to be evenly distributed inside the Wiffleball or would it be expected to be higher near the outer wiffleball radius.

my sims suggested the electrons form a sort of hollow sphere in the center (which spikes at the cusps). this makes sense, given gauss' law; a "hollow sphere of charge", as it were, represents a minimum-energy state. i believe this would suggest that the electric potential well is squarish at the bottom. some of the electrons would be part of this hollow sphere, some would cancel out the protons' charge density.

[ladajo]

I just checked https://www.fpds.gov again, it has been a while.
The latest posting has new completion dates for 9/30/13. Intersting that they have moved things up.

N6893609C0125 Sep 2012 Update

Looking at 2012 expenditures/activity we see a steady churn, to include the contract mod we saw about electron injection.

N6893609C0125 Summary

[mvanwink5]

Ladajo,
The report reason is administrative action, i.e. crossed i's and dotted t's changed to dotted i's and crossed t's. Parsing the tea leaves, they dropped WB "8.0" leaving WB "studies", without the "8.0". In other words throwing dogs bleached, dry bones. Make rock soup out of that, yum.

[ladajo]

Completion dates changed.
Now September, 2013.

[mvanwink5]

The previous report failed to update the completion date, so completion date was a year prior (report error). This date change could well be for when the newly added funds use is completed (runs out). In other words they added 12 months. This is looking more and more like a science project run by academics.

Back to conspiracy theory creation and wacking Zombiebots.

[ladajo]

Yes, I saw that as well. But also note that the admin update prior to that had the dates for 2014 final completion. Now it looks like they are going to have to finish the current work by September this year. Which would align them for next fiscal year and to start a new contract for what ever may be next. Demo??? Nothing?

[ladajo]

Of course, that still leaves the hanging chad of 8.1...

[mvanwink5]

Ladajo,
They did drop the 8.0 from wiffle ball plasma, but I am pushing it as these reports aren't truly worded carefully. On the other hand, the extension is true that you may not know it is 8.1, they may call it 8.0 when it is 8.1 due to lack of care, or may just say wiffle ball like this report.