More on Magnetic Fields

More detail from LPP’s March 31 report:

In our continuing tests of the influence of small axial (vertical) magnetic fields on the DPF and the angular momentum of the plasmoids, we noticed that the influence of the axial field coil (AFC) seemed to be shifting with time, and the control shots (with the coil turned off) kept getting better and better, as if FF-1 was remembering the effect of the magnetic field.  Indeed, that turned out to be the case.  The steel flanges that attach the vacuum chamber to the inner lower bus plate which supports it, and the plate itself, were both becoming magnetized by the field produced by the AFC, producing a magnetic memory.  These fields, now produced by a permanent magnet, were considerably greater than the field we started with, created by the earth’s field.  We measured these fields and found that they are nearly triple the 0.17 gauss we first measured between the electrodes of the DPF.

We now find that the control shots (which are no longer controls because of the permanent magnetic field) are producing about 10 times as many neutrons as the control shots generated before we magnetized the flanges.  This is additional evidence that the predicted angular momentum effect, in which the small fields add the spin needed to make a large plasmoid, is working.  However, more tests will be needed to confirm these hypotheses, and we will have to carefully take into account the permanent magnetization we are creating.  In the future, we may find it desirable to replace the flanges with those made from non-magnetic alloys of steel, but that will not be done in the near term.