Talk-Polywell.org

POPS is being strangled. Go to the bottom of this paper:

http://www.ofes.fusion.doe.gov/more_htm ... -final.pdf

so if pops would work with iec fusion. how much do you think it would cost for a regular person to build one in his garage?

rexxam62 wrote:so if pops would work with iec fusion. how much do you think it would cost for a regular person to build one in his garage?

A few hundred dollars at most. You are talking RF in the 100 KHz to 30 MHz range. Maybe 100 to 300 W (with allowances for copious losses) for a 10 to 50 KV low current grid supply (under 100 mA).

The hard part is getting enough signal out to phase lock the system.

I've been following IEC fusion blogs for 18 months now, just lurking and never joining in. Except I donated $100.00 to EMC2 and signed a petition to persuade the US congress to keep the funding going. I think I understand about 80% of the theory of operation and maybe 10% of the math. One thing I am curious about if anyone can explain it. How does the POPs system differ from the advanced fusor designs Philo T. Farnsworth built. The kind where a 100 MHz frequency was used to make the plasma and electrons swap places in the core. For that matter, what is the present state of the patents on Farnsworth's later designs.

choff,

I'm not aware of Farnsworth using a 100 MHz signal for particle swapping. Do you have a link?

The Farnsworth patents have all run out.

http://www.rexresearch.com/farnsworth/fusor.htm, check under the 'Advanced Fusor' section with the photo of the model rumored to be self-sustaining.

choff wrote:http://www.rexresearch.com/farnsworth/fusor.htm, check under the 'Advanced Fusor' section with the photo of the model rumored to be self-sustaining.

I tracked down the source as much as I could:

http://fusor.net/board/download_thread. ... 1039968536

The information is not solid. In addition there is no certainty that the device ever operated.

Doubtful it was ever self sustaining.

I was almost going to start a thread on this same idea a few weeks back. After reading up on some of the earlier work done by the fusor teams the only conclusion i could come to as to how they managed to achieve such high rates of fusion compared to other similar designs was that they somehow stumbled upon a form of POPS or ion cloud synchronization. It is debatable whether or not they had full comprehension of the processes involved, but upon hearing that they were using 100mhz to excite core means they were definitely on the right track. Im surprised how little of this information got out in the open, maybe it was simply overshadowed by the machine itself, maybe its a conspiracy

Either way, very interesting stuff....

Keegan,

As far as I'm aware Dr. B. always conceived of his reactor as a continuous device. At least that was my impression from his published papers.

I believe he saw the MIT stuff before he died. (No proof of that but Tom Ligon was real excited when I pointed the paper out to him). So maybe his thinking changed.

In any case some folks who are way up on the POPS phenomenon are working on the experiments. I expect that POPS will be included in the test regime at some point.

I don't know if you are on my list:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IEC_Fusion/

but I just sent out links to some plasma physics papers. The papers tend to show that the plasma wants to self organize. Tokamaks of course require a "flat" plasma. Any self organization disrupts operation.

The Bussard Reactor works with nature. Aiding the self organization of the plasma.

If we get Dr. B's reactor working, people will be amazed at how the Tokamak people could stay so stupid for so long.

Alot of people assume Dr B proposed a pure steady state, which is helpfull if you are trying to educate the public on how it works without confusing them too much. In his 1990 patent he described the mechanism behind an acoustic compression regime at the core. While this is now proven to be incorrect i believe he was pretty switched on to the fact there would be oscillations at the core, but that all his time and energy went to establishing the more fundamental mathematics and design of the machine.

Yeah the tokamak is looking more stupid with each day that passes. But the public who pay for it dont know that. The institutions that produce their engineers pretty much guarantee that they wont look outside the box. Thats why people like to employ them.

Keegan,

It is not just the plasma which oscillates. The electron beams bunch.

I'd like to grind through the math and make sure the idea is sound, but I think the combination of "wakefield acceleration", POPS and "phased arrays" will create a functioning Bussard reactor that is continuously pulsed.

The fundamental idea is to make an antenna which will drive TM waves through the coils (so the wave front is shaped not to hit the coil). The wakefield process then sets up electons and ions so they race in after the EM wave. This pumps the ions towards the center in a beam as they ride between the electron waves. Creating a "chirp" wave form is probably going to be necessary so the ion group velocity can slip behind the light wave and get hit again by the next wave - the electrons won't have a problem going relativistic almost instanty.

I've got a book on antenna synthesis, so that's one more thing to figure out.

But first I want to prove the basic system will be stable if I don't hit it with a hammer. If that is ok, then I'll look into what shape and size of hammer I want!

(for anyone interested, I helped build http://www.eurekalert.org/features/doe/ ... 060602.php the AWA some 12 years ago.)

Excuse my ignorance on the subject to interject, does the polarisation of the wave (If I've got the terminology right.) factor in this at all ?

I'm just reminded of my earlier days fiddling with ameatur radio and accidently making a circular polarised ariel without realising what I was doing at the time.

drmike wrote:I'd like to grind through the math and make sure the idea is sound, but I think the combination of "wakefield acceleration", POPS and "phased arrays" will create a functioning Bussard reactor that is continuously pulsed.

The fundamental idea is to make an antenna which will drive TM waves through the coils (so the wave front is shaped not to hit the coil). The wakefield process then sets up electons and ions so they race in after the EM wave. This pumps the ions towards the center in a beam as they ride between the electron waves. Creating a "chirp" wave form is probably going to be necessary so the ion group velocity can slip behind the light wave and get hit again by the next wave - the electrons won't have a problem going relativistic almost instanty.

I've got a book on antenna synthesis, so that's one more thing to figure out.

But first I want to prove the basic system will be stable if I don't hit it with a hammer. If that is ok, then I'll look into what shape and size of hammer I want!

(for anyone interested, I helped build http://www.eurekalert.org/features/doe/ ... 060602.php the AWA some 12 years ago.)

Since the maximum electron beam energy contemplated is on the order of .2 MeV that would give an accelerator size of 2mm. Can it be built that small?

How frequently can you do shots?

I would think that for what we are trying to accomplish RF modulation of the DC accelerator supply is probably more tractable.

Hopefully all the frequencies can be phase locked together to get them all playing in harmony.