Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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billh
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by billh »

Or, it could just be that there is no clear path to success, but there are still tantalizing hints it just might work, and the Navy figures a small bet on a long shot with a big payout is a reasonable investment. I think this is the most likely explanation. And as long as the Navy is funding it, we will get no information beyond what we can infer from the continued existence of the program: that there is still some hope it might work. Which leaves me frustrated but optimistic. I choose to find it encouraging that so many groups are pursuing similar small bets on long shots. Maybe LM will hit the jackpot. I hope somebody does.

MSimon
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by MSimon »

If EMC2 said Polywell was a go there is more than enough money out there on the commercial side (GE - Westinghouse and others) to make it happen. In years past some of those boys and others have contacted me.

I expect a call again if that happens. The difficulty is the contracts people have with EMC2. They have a lot of brains tied up. I am under no such restriction.

If EMC2 even said the odds were good they could get funded - if they gave up "ownership". That was always the sticking point.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

mvanwink5
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by mvanwink5 »

"Ownership" does not stop countries.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

paperburn1
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by paperburn1 »

mvanwink5 wrote:"Ownership" does not stop countries.
http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/pro ... d=22047063
http://www.science.gov/scigov/result-li ... 7CDATE%7C0
he magnetic field structure in a Polywell device is studied to understand both the physics underlying the electron confinement properties and its estimated performance compared to other cusped devices. Analytical expressions are presented for the magnetic field in addition to expressions for the point and line cusps as a function of device parameters. It is found that at small coil spacings, it is possible for the point cusp losses to dominate over the line cusp losses, leading to longer overall electron confinement. The types of single particle trajectories that can occur are analysed in the context of the magnetic field structure which results in the ability to define two general classes of trajectories, separated by a critical flux surface. Finally, an expression for the single particle confinement time is proposed and subsequently compared with simulation.
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

TallDave
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by TallDave »

Interesting post classicpenny.
classicpenny wrote:There’s been enough time, people. The Polywell is not a difficult concept.
I have to disagree. PhDs who have worked in the plasma field for decades have a very hard time understanding the nuances of a driven, non-LTE machine. In fact I would go so far as to say virtually no one at DOE understands the technology.
Either we do not yet have a viable commercial Polywell because it can’t possibly work; or we do not yet have a viable commercial Polywell because a decisively large and influential group of business interests do not want it to work. Honestly, I have no idea which reason is operating here. I do not want it to be either reason; but there has definitely been enough time.
Not really. Much more likely that we simply don't know yet. Fusion is very, very hard and when you scale up a lot of times the fastest loss mechanism changes. As far back as the 1970s people thought they had something that could self-sustain indefinitely. Then they built it. :lol:
In 2008, a good friend of mine, who happens to have been a contract negotiator for the Navy, was having dinner with a friend of his who happened to be a staff judge-advocate in the Navy, with a law degree and a degree in nuclear engineering. My friend told the lawyer-engineer about the Polywell, and about the web site that I had up back then. Within 18 hours my website was completely GONE with no warning whatsoever – off the internet. When I called my server (Apple) about it, they told me that they had removed my website because I had “exceeded my data download allocation for the month.” In order for that to have happened, people would have had to download hundreds of thousands of copies of my Polywell book, which was available for download on the website, and certainly not a book for which there is any discernable demand that I have been able to see.
A year or two later, I built another –different- Polywell website. Shortly after I went on line, I received a phone call from a person who claimed to represent EMC2. He asked me not to advocate the contacting of Congressmen in support of the Polywell, because too many Congressmen and media people were harassing the Chief of the Office of Naval Research; he also asked me to remove the pictures of Dr Park and Dr Nebel from my website, and remove the San Diego EMC2 address. I complied with all of his requests.
Interesting. This comports with what Rick was saying -- they wanted to keep their heads down to avoid flack from DOE.
Business interests ARE terribly concerned about the potential of popular belief in global warming to place a VERY significant dent in the world’s demand for fossil fuel. They are so concerned about it that they have successfully convinced many congressmen and many media people to neuter any serious attempts to address global warming issues.
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Big Oil already pays hundreds of billions in taxes, carbon taxes don't faze them a bit; they pass the cost onto consumers and usage is fairly inelastic. Their profits are largely a function of what OPEC (an open conspiracy to fix oil prices) does, and with a few exceptions they're publicly owned. In fact, they are actually spending more money promoting the (largely speculative, there are no quantitative estimates of GCM predictive reliability, not to be confused with model error bars) specter of global warming (why not? it's good PR) than arguing against it -- Heartland (the best known skeptic org) has an anti-AGW outlay that would easily fit in the travel budget of the IPCC, barely gets a dime from oil companies, and doesn't remotely compare to what Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc., are spending promoting AGW.

Don't be confused by misleading reports (I'm looking at you Guardian!) that conflate all donations to organizations with skeptics with actual amounts spent promoting an AGW-skeptic viewpoint. The pro-AGW side outspends the anti-AGW side by a factor of something between 100 and 1,000 to 1 (including large chunks of taxpayer dollars).
Could it be that Business interests are not terribly concerned about the pathetic state of Polywell funding because that is EXACTLY what they want? Just asking….
No.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...

MSimon
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by MSimon »

Just to go completely off topic.

Anyone who has seriously looked at the "science" of AGW knows there is no there there.

Global temperatures have flatlined for the last 17 years according to the head of the IPCC.

IPCC Head Rajendra Pachauri Acknowledges 17 Year Stall In Global Warming

The modelers said that no warming for 15 years would be outside the 95% confidence interval of model predictions. So wher are we now? 97% ? 99% ? And what does it tell you about the models.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

DeltaV
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by DeltaV »

Fields (gravitational, magnetic, electrostatic, thermal, pressure, density, velocity, vorticity, evaporation, condensation, humidity, absorptivity, reflectivity, scattering, radiation, particulate concentration, chemo-reaction, ...) telling molecules/particles how to move.

Molecules/particles (water vapor, dust, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, neon, helium, methane, ...) telling fields how to bend.

Oh, yeah, bazillionth-order, nonlinear, massively-coupled, cusp-ridden, extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, ...

I don't see what their problem is.

Robthebob
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by Robthebob »

DeltaV wrote:Fields (gravitational, magnetic, electrostatic, thermal, pressure, density, velocity, vorticity, evaporation, condensation, humidity, absorptivity, reflectivity, scattering, radiation, particulate concentration, chemo-reaction, ...) telling molecules/particles how to move.

Molecules/particles (water vapor, dust, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, neon, helium, methane, ...) telling fields how to bend.

Oh, yeah, bazillionth-order, nonlinear, massively-coupled, cusp-ridden, extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, ...

I don't see what their problem is.
It's not that that bad. It's pretty bad, but not that bad.
Throwing my life away for this whole Fusion mess.

hanelyp
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by hanelyp »

The climate models might identify the chaotic attractors of the system, if they didn't have BS fudge factors baked in to cover details they don't understand.
The daylight is uncomfortably bright for eyes so long in the dark.

choff
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by choff »

When they start clearing trees and farming in Greenland again then we can say it's warmed up as much as a thousand years ago.
CHoff

Netmaker
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Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2010 8:17 pm

Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by Netmaker »

choff wrote:When they start clearing trees and farming in Greenland again then we can say it's warmed up as much as a thousand years ago.
Why yes, that's a great idea! We'll just wait until it's so totally obvious that even the idiots can't deny that climate patterns have changed.

Really though, just keep an eye on the insurance companies. They have skin in the game through crop failures, wildfires and flooding.

Also, keep an eye on that bastion of liberal elites - the US Military. They've been looking at the possible consequences of climate change for quite some time.

The Navy has a lot directly at stake (ship operations, humanitarian relief missions and port facilities) in a world of increasingly more violent storms and flooding.

mvanwink5
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by mvanwink5 »

in a world of increasingly more violent storms and flooding.
I like science fiction too. The big worry is not the world warming but the opposite, getting colder. The good news is that with higher CO2 levels, plants will do better in a cooling climate than they would have otherwise. With such an expanded world population, food production under colder conditions would be worrisome.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Netmaker
Posts: 78
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by Netmaker »

mvanwink5 wrote:
in a world of increasingly more violent storms and flooding.
I like science fiction too. The big worry is not the world warming but the opposite, getting colder. The good news is that with higher CO2 levels, plants will do better in a cooling climate than they would have otherwise. With such an expanded world population, food production under colder conditions would be worrisome.

Insurance companies aren't big into science fiction. They're more concerned about things that are going to impact their bottom line.

Granted, the military can go off the deep end at times. It's their job to be concerned about things that might/will impact national security and to make contingency plans to address them. That the military is making contingency plans to deal with the possible consequences of climate change should clue people in that it is something to be concerned with.

Note I said "can't deny that climate patterns have changed". Some people think that snowmageddons and global warming are mutually incompatible. They're not.

CO2 is only of benefit to plants if they have sufficient quantities of everything else they need to thrive - sunlight, water, nutrients, a functioning biome.... Much as human beings would not thrive in a world with a pure oxygen atmosphere. I take that to the extreme (pure oxygen) to make a point.

If in your discussion of the world getting colder you are alluding to the possibility of rising CO2 having precluded an ice age then I agree with that being a distinct possibility and that to date, if that has occurred it is a net positive. That doesn't mean it will remain so. You can easily starve under both extremes (too hot/not enough water or too cold).

choff
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by choff »

Note that I said when they start clearing trees for farming in Greenland again like a thousand years ago. The point being we aren't even close to being outside the temperature ranges of recorded history. You might want to investigate the history of the Club of Rome, they spoke of inventing global crises to push their eugenics agenda, climate disaster and population explosion amoung others.
CHoff

ltgbrown
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Re: Is the ABSENCE of news, news?

Post by ltgbrown »

choff wrote:When they start clearing trees and farming in Greenland again then we can say it's warmed up as much as a thousand years ago.
I hope you are aren't seriously suggesting that Greenland did not have an extensive ice sheet 1000 years ago. Perhaps you forgot the "one hundred" that should be in front of the the thousand to be even possibly close to truthful. From Wikipedia:

"The ice in the current ice sheet is as old as 110,000 years.[4] The presence of ice-rafted sediments in deep-sea cores recovered off of northeast Greenland, in the Fram Strait, and south of Greenland indicated the more or less continuous presence of either an ice sheet or ice sheets covering significant parts of Greenland for the last 18 million years. From just before 11 million years ago to a little after 10 million years ago, the Greenland Ice Sheet appears to have been greatly reduced in size."

In addition, "Some scientists predict that climate change may be near a "tipping point" where the entire ice sheet will melt in about 2000 years.[2]"

By the way, what the hell does this have to do with news (or the absence of it) about Polywell?
Famous last words, "Hey, watch this!"

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