I watch the monitor while Taylor concentrates on the controls and gauges, especially the neutron detector they’ve dubbed Snoopy. “I’ve got it up to 25,000 volts now,” Taylor says. “I’m going to out-gas it a little and push it up.”
Willis’s power supply crackles. The reactor is entering “star mode.” Rays of plasma dart between gaps in the now-invisible grid as deuterium atoms, accelerated by the tremendous voltages, begin to collide. Brinsmead keeps his eyes glued to the neutron detector. “We’re getting neutrons,” he shouts. “It’s really jamming!”
Taylor cranks it up to 40,000 volts. “Whoa, look at Snoopy now!” Phaneuf says, grinning. Taylor nudges the power up to 50,000 volts, bringing the temperature of the plasma inside the core to an incomprehensible 580 million degrees—some 40 times as hot as the core of the sun. Brinsmead lets out a whoop as the neutron gauge tops out.
Taylor and about a dozen other young Fusioneers like him are STEM superstars in my book.
I think his Science Talent Search project this year was a fusor-based nuclear weapon detection system for checking cargo containers. Some city could owe this kid big-time one day.
Some time ago I e-mailed him asking him to donate or sell some of his ridiculously brilliant neutron detectors to focus-fusion/polywell.
I included links to the various fusion projects we follow around here in hopes he might read about them, but I got no response. Maybe he did though.
Tom if you talk to him again, get him to work on a polywell please lol. Which reminds me I have to go look and see what the other private polywell builder is doing on his blog....
Not sure if Mark has been funding challenged, or E-gun challenged. But he has not done much over the last couple of months besides play with his 3D printer, and express frustration about not being able to get his TV gun to work in the chamber.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)
Mark contacted me a few months back, apparently was going for some kind of funding. I warned him then that I may try to build a small Polywell myself once I retire.
I was looking at used electron microscopes on e-bay this week, hoping for an affordable one with EDS (a method of detecting what elements the beam is hitting). Then I looked at the article linked above, and there in Taylor's garage is a large dewar marked "Ortec" ... the very same model of x-ray detector used on the electron microscope I used to use. If I read that picture correctly, Taylor probably has the components for two x-ray spectrometers!
I've only communicated with Taylor over at fusor.net. The interesting thing about those young fusioneers is that when you read their communications on that forum you get absolutely no indication they are that young. You think you're reading posts by a senior fusion researcher with five decades behind them. Then you see some article and a picture and realize the truth. And then you feel SOOOO inadequate!
Ain't that the truth. My son at 8 and daughter at 12 are constantly blowing me away with his insights and connective thought chains.
I really need to figure out how to get them on an unbounded path to grow their minds to potential. I do not htink public schools (at least around here) are it.
But I also want them to dig into something they want, not something I want.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)
I recently found something interesting on Taylor Wilson's website:
Dense Plasma Focus:
This project started in Summer, 2011. The Plasma Focus, another form of Beam-Target Fusion Reactor, operated in a pulsed modality. Developed in the early 1960s independently by Mather and Filipinov, it uses a large capacitor bank to induce a discharge in fairly high (compared with that of a Fusor) pressure gas (1-10 Torr).
I wonder how far along he is on that project.
I also wonder how much he's thought about building his own Polywell. It seems a logical next step after a Farnsworth fusor. On the other hand, I suppose the DPF might be a shorter path to generating neutrons and medical isotopes, which are his stated research goals.
Temperature, density, confinement time: pick any two.
