Tom,
I want to add that recharging the battery is really strange.
When you take energy out of a magnetic field current direction does not change (much) but coil voltage reverses.
When you take current out of an electrostatic field voltage stays constant (roughly) and the direction of current changes.
So yeah. Flux capacitor it is. Until we get more data.
You can just feel it bucking and twitching and wanting to come alive.
Space Magnetism
Doc and Dolly owned (she may still have) an aging Masserati 4-door, and don't think I didn't offer to install PXL-1 in it for them! The whole nutty mess had too many parallels to a certain trilogy of movies.
I never thought PXL-1 was the right approach to make fusion, but I hoped, and still hope, it will be fired up again one day after the real work is done. It still has some things to teach us. I was not around for the WB5 work, but that was an improved PXL-1, I think with multiple guns. It might make a potential well in that hot-accel-grid configuration, but it should also work as a hot cathode machine.
I changed the programming to hold the magnets up until the voltage dropped to a managable level after that episode, so it was never repeated. It took a couple of weeks to repair all the damage.
There was apparently a pretty severe EMP associated with the event, because it took out a computer monitor and a couple of other things. It is not out of the question that some of the readings are false, but even if that current reading were an artifact, the behavior of the damper diode and contactor were distinctive. My gut tells me PXL-1 was essentially something like a 3-D electron storage ring. I've talked to people who have worked with those, and they're capable of some very similar tricks. This might give you guys some ideas.
Dr. Bussard always told me that I'd discovered something critical in Manassas Park, and I believe it was associated with this event. He got a critical insight from it, but I'm not sure what. But it also lured him into trying WB5. I think if he had gone straight to WB6 we might be building a big machine by now.
I never thought PXL-1 was the right approach to make fusion, but I hoped, and still hope, it will be fired up again one day after the real work is done. It still has some things to teach us. I was not around for the WB5 work, but that was an improved PXL-1, I think with multiple guns. It might make a potential well in that hot-accel-grid configuration, but it should also work as a hot cathode machine.
I changed the programming to hold the magnets up until the voltage dropped to a managable level after that episode, so it was never repeated. It took a couple of weeks to repair all the damage.
There was apparently a pretty severe EMP associated with the event, because it took out a computer monitor and a couple of other things. It is not out of the question that some of the readings are false, but even if that current reading were an artifact, the behavior of the damper diode and contactor were distinctive. My gut tells me PXL-1 was essentially something like a 3-D electron storage ring. I've talked to people who have worked with those, and they're capable of some very similar tricks. This might give you guys some ideas.
Dr. Bussard always told me that I'd discovered something critical in Manassas Park, and I believe it was associated with this event. He got a critical insight from it, but I'm not sure what. But it also lured him into trying WB5. I think if he had gone straight to WB6 we might be building a big machine by now.
I wonder if Christopher Lloyd will be around for that role... if the Polywell does work, somebody's gonna have to make a movie about it.Tom Ligon wrote:Doc and Dolly owned (she may still have) an aging Masserati 4-door, and don't think I didn't offer to install PXL-1 in it for them! The whole nutty mess had too many parallels to a certain trilogy of movies.
Without the plasma inside the magnetic field inside the magrid makes smooth arcs, the field being shaped rather like a funnel around the center of each magnet. When the plasma presses hard enough on the interior of the magnetic field the field lines at those points are bent in fairly sharp turns, less inclined to funnel electrons outside.So where does the Wiffle Ball Effect come from?
How does a plasma push on a magnetic field? When a charged particle spirals along a field line it produces its own magnetic field, counter to the field line it's spiraling along. Thus plasmas naturally produce a magnetic field counter to any external field. Or from another perspective, plasmas push out magnetic fields. A polywell device is intended to run at beta=1 conditions, plasma pressure = magnetic pressure.
With WB1-5 any electron that found its way through a cusp was lost. Unavoidable weakness of an open field line machine. In WB6 electrons which escape through a cusp in the wiffleball have a good chance of being directed back inside, or recirculated.For example, I don't understand "recirculation"
hmm, so the reason why you can't just plug the cusps with some kind of negative charged object/grid/space-charge is that it will draw out positive ions: the electron confinement must be entirely magnetic, and not electrostatic.
Also, in this document, page 18, Bussard mentions that 12.57 MW of injection power will cause 6.28 x10^5 MW of circulating electron power, which is a factor of 4x10^4 greater. So yeah, 50mA corresponds to a lot more actual current running around in the wiffleball, and a bunch of energy. http://www.askmar.com/Fusion_files/Some ... ations.pdf
Here's a question: if you add the alpha-energy-conversion grid and assosciated potential, won't that pull away all electrons that escape from the wiffeball, instead of recirculating them?
Is there a way besides using electrostatic potential to accelerate electrons into the machine? That way, you wouldn't have to charge the MaGrid as much, and then the energy losses to it would be less. I imagine it would still have to be somewhat positive or else the ions would flock to it. Though I suppose the recirculation wouldn't work, b/c the energetic electrons leaving the cusps would not be pulled by the e-field to loop back . . . or is the B-field responsible for the return of the recirculating electrons?
Also, in this document, page 18, Bussard mentions that 12.57 MW of injection power will cause 6.28 x10^5 MW of circulating electron power, which is a factor of 4x10^4 greater. So yeah, 50mA corresponds to a lot more actual current running around in the wiffleball, and a bunch of energy. http://www.askmar.com/Fusion_files/Some ... ations.pdf
Here's a question: if you add the alpha-energy-conversion grid and assosciated potential, won't that pull away all electrons that escape from the wiffeball, instead of recirculating them?
Is there a way besides using electrostatic potential to accelerate electrons into the machine? That way, you wouldn't have to charge the MaGrid as much, and then the energy losses to it would be less. I imagine it would still have to be somewhat positive or else the ions would flock to it. Though I suppose the recirculation wouldn't work, b/c the energetic electrons leaving the cusps would not be pulled by the e-field to loop back . . . or is the B-field responsible for the return of the recirculating electrons?
It is not just that. By using extra electrodes in the "dead space" it may be possible to channel the electron beams. The MIT guys were on to this.drmike wrote:OK, that makes sense. I was thinking they "go in circles", but it's more at "lossless".
Fortunately we have the shadow of the MaGrids to work with so we may get better beam characteristics with acceptable losses.
What we are trying to do is change the lensing of the electrostatic field from diverging to collimating. All the while keeping electrodes out of the reaction space.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
It is all about arranging the potentials and polarities of the various grids.Solo wrote:Here's a question: if you add the alpha-energy-conversion grid and assosciated potential, won't that pull away all electrons that escape from the wiffeball, instead of recirculating them?
The size of the B-field you need is dependent on well depth. B field goes up as the sqrt. of drive voltage for a given level of confinement.Is there a way besides using electrostatic potential to accelerate electrons into the machine? That way, you wouldn't have to charge the MaGrid as much, and then the energy losses to it would be less. I imagine it would still have to be somewhat positive or else the ions would flock to it. Though I suppose the recirculation wouldn't work, b/c the energetic electrons leaving the cusps would not be pulled by the e-field to loop back . . . or is the B-field responsible for the return of the recirculating electrons?
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.