Talk-Polywell.org

zbarlici wrote:
This is the same thing Bussard was saying in 2007. Man i wish so bad that wb7 didn't freakin vaporize itself. Was the government and the R&D industry unduly hard on Park & co? Is there anything to learn from this moving on forward?

Actually the situation is quite different now because the Polywell experimental knowledge is much improved compared to 2007. It was WB6 that failed after a handful of shots. The WB6 paper was not very convincing because of the small number of shots. WB7 and WB8 were built to study the well formation and fusion rates properly to continue the work that was interrupted with the WB6. In the PRX paper Park showed high beta and increased electron confinement for the first time, which is a necessary condition for a working Polywell. The Polywell is also much more widely known currently than back in 2007. So in this sense the possibility to obtain funding should be much better currently. The latest EMC2 patent appliacation is probably still being processed and this could be one reason that funding has not been yet found. Hopefully the patent application will be granted and EMC2 will finally find new funding.

zbarlici wrote: ...
This is the same thing Bussard was saying in 2007. Man i wish so bad that wb7 didn't freakin vaporize itself. Was the government and the R&D industry unduly hard on Park & co? Is there anything to learn from this moving on forward?

Actually, ut was WB6 that short circuited. Between the high current in the magnet windings and the high voltage on the magnet can surfaces, the discharge was probably impressive but far short of vaporizing the one foot diameter magrid. A small hole may have been burned through, or a section of the magrid may have been vaporized and/ or melted. Enough to seriously contaminate the vacuum vessel and totally render the magrid useless. It would be cheaper to build a new one. There was a lot of voltage and current, most of which probably came from the high voltage capacitor bank, but the arcing was probably fairly short either due to switches cutting off the test or capacitor bank depletion.

I suspect the damage may have been what you would see with a high voltage electrical line transformer short circuit.

Also, WB6 had four tests (failed during the last) with deuterium gas and efforts to measure fusion/ neutron production. But, there were probably hundreds of tests where deuterium was not used (either plain hydrogen or helium was presumably used) where measurements of density, electron confinement times (potential well depth and duration) and possibly other parameters were measured. WB7 repeated and expanded on these results and survived. It may have been modified to create WB7.1, which I believe modified the bridging nubs, either moving them further to the outside of the separate magnet cans or moving them entirely to the chamber walls- separate standoffs for each magnet. The results of these tests are closely held by EMC2 except for general comments such as WB7 confirming and possibly improving upon WB6. Further communications seem somewhat inconsistent, or at least difficult to compare with the limited amount of released information.

Dan Tibbets

Has anyone heard anything interesting on polywell in the last two weeks?

You mean last 2 years?

All I can say is that EMC2 is moving ahead, and currently working on simulations.
They are intentionally staying below the radar by choice. Nothing nefarious, just choosing to keep a low profile.

Maybe they could get Boeing to fund them, as a fun way to compete with Lockheed Martin.

ladajo wrote:All I can say is that EMC2 is moving ahead, and currently working on simulations.
They are intentionally staying below the radar by choice. Nothing nefarious, just choosing to keep a low profile.

Glad to hear that! Thanks for the info! Hope that they will get funding for the big builds soon!

EMC² should hire a PR Shark and make a crowdfunding effort.
That probably won't give them the $30M, but stranger things had happened with crowdfunds

They are moving forward. Still some remaining sim work to do, however they have enough analysis and conclusions now to start seeking support for the next work. The final sim work, if it has positive outcomes, will further support what they have now with the completed live research and the sim research they have been doing.

ladajo wrote:They are moving forward. Still some remaining sim work to do, however they have enough analysis and conclusions now to start seeking support for the next work. The final sim work, if it has positive outcomes, will further support what they have now with the completed live research and the sim research they have been doing.

Any clue as to what the next work will be exactly? I think their work on showing containment has been great, but it seems like they fell off a cliff after that much was accomplished.

Personal opinion : I feel that while Dr. Bussard was very confident in his ideas and technologies so he was willing to take risks and leaps in ideas.
Meanwhile Jay Park is slow and very methodical about his approach believing (and maybe rightly so) that a large setback could very well set polywell to a back burner to be lost when other methods will given time :succeed . But he does seem to be doing the science right as far as I can tell from his lectures. I just wish he was more of a charismatic individual, I believe that would help with his presentations Or maybe he needs a lead in guy for his lectures, you know to pump up the crowd.

Yes, he is very methodical, and careful about conclusions before the findings. You might say he is the Anti-Rossi

As for the next step. I am not able to say much at this point, he is working on a new paper for publishing. The work looks good in it.
They have some more sim work to do, the next phase if you will. Then after that, the intent is to go back to machines to further the previous machine work, and sims (Phase I and II). I am interested and excited about the prospect to moving back to machine based experimentation.
The overall project strategic path is (for now); sims, machine testing, machine demonstrator (break-even/possible net).
Again, Phase II sims are not done yet, and Phase I results are not completely analyzed, almost, however not complete.
There are some new things that have been learned, and further advanced plasma science (pending paper). There are probably some more to go.
The follow on lab work is also contingent upon continued, and even growing support. That effort is in progress now.
And yes, they prefer to keep a low profile still.

It seems that simulation methods have advanced so I wonder how far Park has been able to project performance. Patiently waiting...

Yes, I would say it is the most advanced 3D particle plasma sim out there. Part of the work has been to create the software. It runs on a multi-cell super computer. The outputs are impressive (and pretty).

Sims have greatly advanced. A while back we lost and airplane and was unable to find it from crash debris and witness statements. They came over to the sim and ran several scenarios and all suggested the location was different than what the witnesses stated. Started searching the different profiles and the second search site we found the aircraft. ( note: it crashed in the sound , and winds ,tides made location problematic.)
I have great faith in sims .