chrismb wrote:I'm thinking that; let's say they were academic ornithologists and they'd been surveying a particular habitat for 50 years to get a glimse of the Lesser Spotted Winkywonk and anticipated it'd be another 50 years before they actually see one. An amateur up the road says he's spotted what might be some Winkywonk eggs in a different location. Would you think the academics would say "no, it can't be a Winkywonk egg because we've not seen any on our site for 50 years, we'd better stay here or we might miss it" or do you think they might, at least, take a few moments out of their day to go visit the amateur's site to take a look?
I'm just saying that tokamak researchers are JUST like these academics. They claim to be really interested in fusion energy, yet turn their backs and prick their noses up at anything else because they've got 'no resources' to look at anything else. Like, their timetable is soooo booked up for the next 50 years!!!
It's not a perfect analogy (fusion research is a different animal than ornithology) but I see what you mean. I suppose the main factor at play is whether one takes his job as a work of life, or just a revenue generator.
Another way to put the Bussard analogy: suppose Polywell didn't pan out. His work would still be so valuable in tearing thru the unknown of that IEC path, of shedding light on how and why it's a dead end.
alexjrgreen wrote:
At a rough guess you may be geographically close to each other. I reckon that between you, you could probably knock up a 1 inch cube polywell demo.
Sounds more difficult than a 12" Polywell!
But I don't think a Polywell will work, so why would I? And I've already nearly completed construction of my device, so don't need help there just at the minute. Thanks for thinking of me, though.
chrismb wrote:I've already nearly completed construction of my device
When's first fusion?
Fusion is unlikely with the particular kit I am building, as it is more just to show a novel ion acceleration and containment method and doesn't have magnetic fields strong enough to contain particles of fusible energy. (A simple increase of field strength and/or size would fix that, though.) My experiments are aiming to build stronger foundations and a slow evolution of understanding, rather than 'spark-in-a-can'/'magnetic-elephant' all-or-nothing kinds of experiments!
What's the point in trying for fusion if you don't even know what your contained media is doing [and/or whether you can keep it stable] at lower non-fusing energies? It seems daft to me to be building a Polywell that 'can do' fusion whilst no-one has actually mapped out the behaviour of ions at non-fusing energies - is it easier at higher energies to do this?!? Similar critisism of tokamaks - show a continuously confined 1keV hot plasma before trying for a 20keV fusing plasma - why would the latter be easier??
The lust for fusion seems to encourage the throwing out of good scientific procedure and the embracing of the random, unstructured methods of the Alchemists. I've no intent to fall into that trap, though the urge to rush headlong into a fusion experiment is very strong because the objective is so high profile....
Hmmm...my low-key comment was intended to elicit only low-key replies, but given the curious non-response, am I mistaken in that I am singularly alone in thinking that a device which may establish sound fundamentals of a continuous net-energy fusing device should be more exciting than one that simply, and inefficiently, blasts a few neutrons out?
OK, how about "yeah, neutrons in the New Year". Does that sound better? Just bear in mind it may not be the case, it may actually be a better result than that!
Science is dead. Long live sound-bites, media hype and instant gratification.....
I wasn't ignoring you. Your question seemed rhetorical and your comments reflective.
If your design works you're going to need a team to take it forward. You've probably got all that in hand already, but if not, there are people on this board who would be interested.
alexjrgreen wrote:I wasn't ignoring you. Your question seemed rhetorical and your comments reflective.
If your design works you're going to need a team to take it forward. You've probably got all that in hand already, but if not, there are people on this board who would be interested.
Thanks. Sure. Maybe I just outright misread these things sometimes but I still suspect my comment is largely true for the general public (the main board members here show different characteristics to the general public in this regard - you've already particiapted in the exchange!).
No, I don't have this in hand at all. I regard my project as already a failure as I have failed to get its principle recognised and find supportive help from others. *I* have had to develop it all by myself and I am not really well-skilled to do so, but now nearing completion so might as well finish this phase off myself now. Very tiring. Actually, it gets rather boring after a while as well. Promises that people would even just *look* at it in sufficient detail have fallen through. I will do what I can do, and I have no plan after that. If it is not understood, and/or if it doesn't work due to my experimental skills [lack of] then I'll be able to do no more.
I'll explain all the detail here at a suitable time. Good things keep!
alexjrgreen wrote:I wasn't ignoring you. Your question seemed rhetorical and your comments reflective.
If your design works you're going to need a team to take it forward. You've probably got all that in hand already, but if not, there are people on this board who would be interested.
Thanks. Sure. Maybe I just outright misread these things sometimes but I still suspect my comment is largely true for the general public (the main board members here show different characteristics to the general public in this regard - you've already particiapted in the exchange!).
No, I don't have this in hand at all. I regard my project as already a failure as I have failed to get its principle recognised and find supportive help from others. *I* have had to develop it all by myself and I am not really well-skilled to do so, but now nearing completion so might as well finish this phase off myself now. Very tiring. Actually, it gets rather boring after a while as well. Promises that people would even just *look* at it in sufficient detail have fallen through. I will do what I can do, and I have no plan after that. If it is not understood, and/or if it doesn't work due to my experimental skills [lack of] then I'll be able to do no more.
I'll explain all the detail here at a suitable time. Good things keep!
My mate (bless her) often uses the indirect approach and then complains when I do not automatically get what she thinks I should.
If you want help of the engineering kind I'll do as much as I can from a long distance. It helps to be just as thrilled with the build and debug as it is with device operation.
Let me know what you need.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
MSimon wrote:
If you want help of the engineering kind I'll do as much as I can from a long distance. It helps to be just as thrilled with the build and debug as it is with device operation. Let me know what you need.
Thanks for that. Initially I mentally set aside a good sum of cash to commission people to build me a custom vacuum chamber and power electronics. But this is the UK where people don't want to do anything challenging or different from their day-to-day, so I failed to find anyone to construct my chamber and people told me my spec for a drive circuit couldn't be built. So I've spent the last 18 months building them myself. Engineeringwise, this bit is done. What I think I would most need next, after I've run the experiments and if this is successful, is routes to dissemination. I'll do the experiments first, then let you know!...
MSimon wrote:
If you want help of the engineering kind I'll do as much as I can from a long distance. It helps to be just as thrilled with the build and debug as it is with device operation. Let me know what you need.
Thanks for that. Initially I mentally set aside a good sum of cash to commission people to build me a custom vacuum chamber and power electronics. But this is the UK where people don't want to do anything challenging or different from their day-to-day, so I failed to find anyone to construct my chamber and people told me my spec for a drive circuit couldn't be built. So I've spent the last 18 months building them myself. Engineeringwise, this bit is done. What I think I would most need next, after I've run the experiments and if this is successful, is routes to dissemination. I'll do the experiments first, then let you know!...
I'm very good at dissemination.
BTW next time you go around this type of deal let me know. I would have suggested off the shelf vacuum chambers (standard) from various suppliers.
Eventually I'd like to come up with a standard kit to sell or specify one.
Replication is the soul of science.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
rcain wrote:
Do you have a description of specific experiments you'll be carying out posted up anywhere?
No. But there are, actually, little 'easter egg' clues on this site whenever I've discussed what I personally think is viable. I'm not teasing to play a guessing game but if I get sound results then I'd like to put them in for publication and some such publishing journals prefer to, or even only, print results that have not appeared anywhere else. So I'll do the tests and all will be made clear in good time - success or otherwise. Good things keep. Fusion has too many stories of early announcements that turn out bad. I'm not intending to add my story to that long list.
