Promethius Fusion Makes The BBC

[MSimon]

Famulus, who is doing all his work completely open source, out of his own pocket primarily, is getting publicity so VC's can be directed towards EMC2, working on the taxpayer coin and claiming proprietary ownership of the results.

I guess that's fair .... :?

Famulus, myself, and a physicist (who has frequented this board from time to time) worked on a proposal (documented at his site) for an independent SC Polywell experiment for a Euro VC organization.

So your speculation is not entirely correct.

[bennmann]

Some months ago, I submitted the MSNBC Cosmic log news story to the Engadget/Gizmodo news submission on their main page.

No idea if that helped lead them to this, but I can dream.

The people following of those two sites are Legion; they are a sleeping giant. I hope this woke them up.

[TallDave]

If I were a VC, I'd be waiting to see what happens with WB-8 before throwing a lot of money around. The loss scaling with B is still very questionable.

If WB-8.1 gets picked up, I would not be surprised if VC money starts showing up. If WB-9 gets picked up, there could be a lot more.

Good stuff FAMULUS, glad to see you're still moving along!

[TallDave]

Linkage is building....

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=fusion+s ... 2baa5e4530

[Tom Ligon]

I don't see a byline on the Gizmodo story, but it must be Quinn Norton. She interviewed me a few weeks back. I didn't say anything publicly because reporters hate leaks of their upcoming stories.

I expect she's a little PO'd that she was scooped, but she's the one who was there when Prometheus joined the Neutron Club, and she specifically went after the Polywell part of the story. I've been hoping an amateur would tackle Polywell.

Her reporting of my comments was necessarily spare. To expand a bit, per the motivation for this forum, if no funding had been forthcoming for the EMC2 effort, I think the basic work of WB7 could have been done by one or more amateurs with this forum's open source support. But with Nebel, Parks, and a few million bucks to play with, the amateur effort would be unlikely to beat what that team can do with hardware. Software is another matter ... and there are some good minds working on the problem at this level.

Quinn is kinda fun to look up. Her website is http://quinnnorton.com/. check out her presentation slides on body hacking!

[MSimon]

Linkage is building....

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=fusion+s ... 2baa5e4530

As of now: About 857,000 results

I got an e-mail from Rick and he is mystified/amused.

[krenshala]

I expect she's a little PO'd that she was scooped, but she's the one who was there when Prometheus joined the Neutron Club, and she specifically went after the Polywell part of the story. I've been hoping an amateur would tackle Polywell.

In my opinion she's got nothing to be PO'd about. Her writing was worlds above that of the article from BBC. It was actually quite refreshing to read something so well written. Of course, it also pointed out the poor quality most mainstream media sites seem to maintain on the internet these days. She also gave what to me has to be the best description of a plasma ... I'm so sick of journalists that describe it as a "gas made up of sub-atomic particles" or an "extremely high temperature gas".

[Robthebob]

I think Dr. N and co are going about it very formally, with very precise methods. They want to be the one to formally unleash it or put the nail in the coffin. At this point, i dont even care anymore, I just want to know definitely if it works or not!

After seeing Famulus is doing, i kinda want to see if i can make one as well. I dont know if my university has electron injectors, spare vac pumps, vac vessels, etc just around the place. If there are these things, I may just make one too.

Now, at such a backwater and amature level, what can i do that can be of any contribution if I was to actually do this?

I read the paper the sydney group did... not too much substance it seems. More feel the big part of it was they made a polywell fusor. Seems like with polywell, it's not too hard to make one work, but to study it and formally test things out, that's the hard part.

[krenshala]

... what can i do that can be of any contribution if I was to actually do this?

You could try something that would help understand the scaling laws for it. e.g., same size, but different B field or well depth, etc.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Congrats on getting the media attention Famulus. Hopefully people will become more aware that there are alternatives to ITER.

[MSimon]

Funny, US Main Stream media has ignored FAMULUS for a while. In typical fashion, this should perculate over to CNN and FOX in a few days as a minor in the SCI-TECH stuff.
Crazy, they guy lives in NYC, and London Mainstream picks it up first.

CNN has it:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/24/new.yo ... ear.hobby/

[DeltaV]

Funny, US Main Stream media has ignored FAMULUS for a while. In typical fashion, this should perculate over to CNN and FOX in a few days as a minor in the SCI-TECH stuff.
Crazy, they guy lives in NYC, and London Mainstream picks it up first.

CNN has it:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/24/new.yo ... ear.hobby/

"Bussard Reactor". The nameplate has been cast.

[Solo]

Cool! Famulus got a big PR break!
@Robthebob: Yeah, I'm half-tempted to try my hand a fusor. But I think I may just buy a plasma globe to get my 'oohh, pretty colors!' fix. I'm sure the Sydney group will come out with more - plasma physics just goes too darn slow though! (I guess you probably know that though...)

[MSimon]

Cool! Famulus got a big PR break!
@Robthebob: Yeah, I'm half-tempted to try my hand a fusor. But I think I may just buy a plasma globe to get my 'oohh, pretty colors!' fix. I'm sure the Sydney group will come out with more - plasma physics just goes too darn slow though! (I guess you probably know that though...)

If Famulus gets enough cash with this publicity he might just beat the Sydney group.

[vernes]

Same story I see:
http://news.discovery.com/tech/homemade ... n-nyc.html
and
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/06/no-sleep-til-fusion/