Talk-Polywell.org

Dr. Miller:
First of all, our work has been peer reviewed. An independent panel of experts has looked at these results. I don’t believe that there was anyone on the panel who has less than 40 years experience working with magnetic confinement. It included senior professors and people who have managed the fusion program. We asked them for their honest opinions and that’s exactly what we got. We are proceeding with our program in line with their recommendations.
Secondly, the talk-polywell blog has a large variety of people who post there. There are Phd plasma physicists as well people from the general public. I think that’s a good thing. Science needs to be accessible to people.
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Mr. Bowery:
Yes, there are neutrons and the numbers are consistent with the plasmas we are measuring. However, neutrons can be deceptive. A lot of fusion researchers have gotten in trouble in the past by relying on these types of measurements. You need to know where they come from and that's difficult to measure.

It sounds as if the scale of the experiment is such that you have to calibrate what you're seeing in terms of output, and they need additional data points at higher energies to really get a sense about the workability of the design.

The next obvious step is a continuous operation reactor (seconds to minutes) about the size of the WB-7.

Aero wrote:We know that they will have ion injection guns soon because the navy contracted for one (to be delivered) with keep-alive funding. That implies longer burn times, if not continuous operation.
And they said, "larger," so it should be a "Larger, continuous operating Machine."

TallDave wrote:

Mr. Bowery:
Yes, there are neutrons and the numbers are consistent with the plasmas we are measuring. However, neutrons can be deceptive. A lot of fusion researchers have gotten in trouble in the past by relying on these types of measurements. You need to know where they come from and that's difficult to measure.

We probably don't want to read too much into that "proceeding," but overall I find both the neutron counts and the healthy skepticism encouraging.

We are measuring plasmas

that's difficult to measure

You need to know where they come from and that's difficult to measure

dnavas wrote:

Aero wrote:We know that they will have ion injection guns soon because the navy contracted for one (to be delivered) with keep-alive funding. That implies longer burn times, if not continuous operation.
And they said, "larger," so it should be a "Larger, continuous operating Machine."

Guessing, I would expect them to be power (input) constrained, no?

-Dave

MSimon wrote:The question is:

are the neutrons coming from a beam-beam core reaction or are they coming from a beam - inventory gas reaction?

icarus wrote:Well, well this is some news.

Now lets see who else can reproduce these neutrons and determine if they are being produce as/when expected by the Bussard's theory.

Bussard had a good grasp on the physics of this process, I just hope the experiments do it justice. It is slightly worrying that it seems Nebel is proceeding along the lines of the peer-review committee. You know what they say about things designed by committee.

Bussard didn't get this thing to where it was by consulting a committee. Most times it is raw intuition from a gifted individual that trumps the reams of paperwork and good intentions of the "system" of institutional science. Nebel's got some big shoes to fill here.