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Discuss the technical details of an "open source" community-driven design of a polywell reactor.

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hanelyp
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Post by hanelyp »

Wrong.

In an operating polywell the core contains a plasma that is almost neutral, with a small excess of electrons providing the electric well.

I expect that you could create the plasma structure in a polywell by creating and heating an initially neutral plasma and letting some excess ions escape, though I doubt that would be a practical method.

And what's with the nanotubes? I can't see them doing anything but hurt, dissipating energy from ions plowing through them, and any energy deposited by the collision in the fuel held.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Blood has plasma. We should use it for fusion as a ready made source.
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MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

at least in theory
Care to state the theory? And provide references. Plus a sample calculation or two?
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

KitemanSA
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Re: Question: Polywell has no plasma, right?

Post by KitemanSA »

Santoslhelpa wrote:Im economist

to get this straight

POLYWELL HAS N O P L A S M A IN CENTER
right?
WRONG.
A functioning Polywell will be filled with plasma. Indeed, the plasma density for a given field strength will be much higher in a Polywell than a tokamak.

D Tibbets
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Post by D Tibbets »

[quote="Santoslhelpa"]ions repel each other
when you pack the ion up i s u s p e c t that this problem gets solved or eased... [quote]

You are confused by the scale of things. A carbon bucky tube is a large molecule, and the structure is dependant on the electrons that form covalent bonds. These electron will shield the repelling charge of an approaching positive ion, but only until the ion passes the electron shells on it's way towards the nucleus of the atom. Then the ion sees the entire repulsive force of the target nucleus. It has to be traveling fast enough to have a small chance of reaching this tiny target inside the relatively huge electron confined space. In other words almost all of the significant action occurs at distances mush smaller than the electron orbitals around the nucleus. The atomic scales are too big, any molecules made up of atoms have even larger scales. Even having a soup of plasma with excess electrons doesn't effect the process much (if at all) There are quantum mechanical reasons why an electron will only come so close to a proton when it is orbiting it. A muon gets much closer because of it's increased mass, and it is this shorter distance that allows it to indeed provide significant shielding. For fusion to occur the approaching nucleus has to get close enough for the strong nuclear force to overwhelm the coulumb repulsive force.
Look up representations of of atoms. The nucleus is ridiculously smaller than the cloud of electrons that orbits it, and the size at which the strong nuclear force becomes dominate is also tiny compared to even the tightest electron orbits.

All that being said, cold fusion that does not involve muons (if real) confuses the issue.

Dan Tibbets
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MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Even having a soup of plasma
You see. I'm not near as dumb as I pretend to be.

Blood soup. The route to fusion. If we make sure the plasma fraction is not separated from the mix. And the blood should be extracted from high betas and alphas to get stronger interactions.

I'm a genius. But modesty prevents me from overemphasizing the point.

Now all you guys have to do is make it work.

BTW what is this unobtanium of which you speak? Can it be incorporated in banana tubes?
Last edited by MSimon on Sun Jul 25, 2010 10:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

D Tibbets
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Post by D Tibbets »

As mentioned, the Polywell does contain a plasma (ionized gas). In fact it is expected to be both hotter and more dense than the plasma in a Tokamak. What is different is the range of the speed (temperature) about the average speed and organized motions of this hot ionized gas. It is more ordered in a Polywell, versus nearly random in a Tokamak. This seems to be hard to swallow for some physicists, despite purpoted examples of this from vacuum tube technology.

Dan Tibbets
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WizWom
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Post by WizWom »

D Tibbets wrote: Look up representations of of atoms. The nucleus is ridiculously smaller than the cloud of electrons that orbits it, and the size at which the strong nuclear force becomes dominate is also tiny compared to even the tightest electron orbits.

All that being said, cold fusion that does not involve muons (if real) confuses the issue.
well, I like the Rydberg atom/molecule confusion route. It seems really cool, if nothing else.
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MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

It appears that our friend has taken his marbles and run home to mommy.

Poor baby.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

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