Talk-Polywell.org

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http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1339377&home=

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Any one know anything about this?

Passworded site. Do you have a different link?

kunkmiester wrote:Passworded site. Do you have a different link?

The content is this:

'Polywell Fusion' = Magnetically insulated grid based inertial electric confinement fusion

Best hope for the energy-hungry post oil-peak world: 'Polywell Fusion' technology may achieve P-B fusion, where the slightly negatively charged plasma is contained by a magnetically insulated electric grid. The aim is to have a reactor prototype in EU, taking Dr Bussard's pioneering path further.

Group members can check progress of collecting donations and then progress of prototype development. All are encouraged to make a donation, which is 100% used for prototype information

Forum for concept and technology discussions:
index.php

Concept video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 6673788606

Next target: perform numerical simulations for concept validation and for identifying ideal grid geometry. This requires 3-D Vlasov modeling of the plasma in the grid.

Status: Donation promisors' list of is being collected.
Contribution goal for this target: under analysis

Please write to the group owner's email address to make a donation pledge for reaching next target!

(indicate amount you are willing to donate and whether you wish to be published on donators' list or remain anonymous)

It's probably legit, but the emphasis on contributions raises red flags.

I wonder how people get the idea that they can make a contribution in their garage when Nebel needs several million and several professional man-years to extend the work of Bussard.

You're right to raise the question of whether it is legitimate. It would be wise to understand where such contributions would be going before anyone considers such a gift. Who would direct people to this forum with the likes of me and Art on it (where we use critical assessments as the tool for advancement )?



Art says;

I wonder how people get the idea that they can make a contribution in their garage when Nebel needs several million and several professional man-years to extend the work of Bussard.

I wonder how professional people in institutes make a contribution of new ideas compared with amateurs in their garages.

[Amateur = doing it because you love it and lust for a result. Professional = doing it for the money, so don't do the job too well else it might end and you'll have to find a new job.]

It is the individual that comes up with the ideas, not committees, universities or businesses, and that individual can come up with ideas in the comfort of their garage easier and more freely than in a committee meeting.

Which is the bigger contribution; the idea, or the build?

chrismb wrote:Art says;

I wonder how people get the idea that they can make a contribution in their garage when Nebel needs several million and several professional man-years to extend the work of Bussard.

I wonder how professional people in institutes make a contribution of new ideas compared with amateurs in their garages.

[Amateur = doing it because you love it and lust for a result. Professional = doing it for the money, so don't do the job too well else it might end and you'll have to find a new job.]

That's a good one. Doing physics for the money. Whew!

chrismb wrote:It is the individual that comes up with the ideas, not committees, universities or businesses, and that individual can come up with ideas in the comfort of their garage easier and more freely than in a committee meeting.

Which is the bigger contribution; the idea, or the build?

Bussard had the idea 40 years ago, so what are you still doing in your garage? If you don't care whether ideas can be built, just read sci-fi.

I don't know when Bussard started to think about what evolved into the Polywell, though he started funded research perhaps ~ 20-25 years ago. This was (I believe) after he gave up on the Riggatron -a variation on the Tokamac, either because he became convinced that it was a dead end and/ or he couldent get funding for it.

The Eurapean site quote sounds like they want to do computer modeling. I'm sceptical that it would solve much due to the claimed complexities, and disputed assumptions. EMC2 no doubt have some hard earned partial models derived from data, but without the data it would be difficult to validate them. I suppose that simple models (not requiring too much computing power) might be 'reverse engeenered'. Accepting current claimes and open discriptions. mathmatical models might be developed that wouldn't nessisarily prove the concept, but tightly define the various assumptions that must be true for the system to work. That would allow for tighter debate about certain issues that are generally discussed here, but on a more percise framework.
That could lead to focused research on specific issues on a parellel basis. Or it could lead to a confusing soup of topics viewed through different colored glasses (sort of like here).

Dan Tibbets

I agree, without a good amount of experimental data it will be nearly impossible to make a computer model that will prove or disprove the polywell basics.
Plus a donation group on Linkedin is pretty strange, considering the main purpose of that website is connecting employers with possible future employees.

Did anyone register to the group yet?

D Tibbets wrote:I don't know when Bussard started to think about what evolved into the Polywell, though he started funded research perhaps ~ 20-25 years ago.

Bussard claimed "Fundamental idea conceived in January 1983", so you're right that he worked on it not quite 25 years (as if it's OK to be playing in your garage for 25 years). You can trace the roots of the polywell back at least to Lavrent’ev in 1975 (34 years ago) and possibly Keller and Jones in 1966 or Sadowsky in 1969 (40-43 years ago). (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell#History)

Maybe they and FAMULUS should get together and start talking.

I would be willing to donate some not-negligable bucks to simulations that would be good for teaching purposes, showing what is SUPPOSED to happen. Maybe then FAMULUS could provide data to help validate said simulation.

I am not, however, currently willing to donate for a pig in a poke.

The originator of the Linkin Group seems familiar with this site. Let that person describe the plan of action here. Then I may donate.

a well meaning flake i think.

i'd rather give my money to Famulus - at least he seems really 'linked-in' to the science.

still, the extra buzz doesnt hurt.

Art Carlson wrote: That's a good one. Doing physics for the money. Whew!

It may not be much, but it does pay for one's lifestyle. If it were that bad, then physicists really would give up doing it as a profession and all work in their garages, free of budget, politics and programme hassles and earn some real money elsewhere to fund it for themselves. Just how science started out, in fact, pretty much all basic science has been done by the self-supporting amateur.

Bussard had the idea 40 years ago, so what are you still doing in your garage? If you don't care whether ideas can be built, just read sci-fi.

Yeah, but unfortunately Bussard's idea doesn't seem to be complete. What are the ideas for the "missing" elements that'd mean this thing would run continuously and chuck out over-unity power. Are you suggesting it already has all the ideas it needs to achieve this? No, of course not. There will be new ideas needed to be formed to make it work, and they are ideas just as likely to occur over the amateur's breakfast table as sitting at one's professional workstation. If it is *the right* idea over that breakfast table and this amateur makes a start on building the idea in the garage, then, if this were the case, they would be doing more that the professionals who are building something that doesn't have that key idea in it and that won't work. An inch in the right direction is better than a mile the wrong way. If an amateur does an inch and a professional lab does a mile, who is now closer to the objective? You'll only know in hindsight when you find out if they were going in the direction of a working thingy, so how can you be so sure the garage amateur contributes less until a working result is obtained? It is exactly that attitude which had driven a wedge between radical scientific thinking and the conservative establishment goal of sticking with conventions.

chrismb wrote:If it were that bad, then physicists really would give up doing it as a profession and all work in their garages, free of budget, politics and programme hassles and earn some real money elsewhere to fund it for themselves. Just how science started out, in fact, pretty much all basic science has been done by the self-supporting amateur.

Self-supporting independatly wealthy amateurs, you mean. Do you really want to go back to the days when science was a plaything of the aristocracy?

Now you know, that if there was any money in doing physics, it would just attract all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons

Your reward will come in the afterlife, like fusion (probably).

But (even quite high) science is more accessible to more amature's now, than ever before in history.

KitemanSA wrote:I would be willing to donate some not-negligable bucks to simulations that would be good for teaching purposes, showing what is SUPPOSED to happen.

kcdodd has some code, Art has some supercomputer time (subject to small print, of course) and you've got the money. Sounds like a team.

no i don't. hah. at least nothing groundbreaking. i'm just trying to stay in school right now.