Reply To: A new way of generating electricity

[jamesr]

Brian H wrote: Second, temperature is measured in electron volts, and tiny-ness is FF’s friend

I’m not quite sure how you think the units you measure something in suddenly changes the physics of what going on, but I get your general point.

On a separate topic, one thing I came across today in a talk about astrophysical plasmas, was that in magnetic reconnection (ie where a a twisted or opposing field changes topology), the release of magnetic energy to the particles causes them to be accelerated to supra-thermal speeds. This mechanism of heating ions & electrons as the plasmoid forms could play a crucial role in the dynamics. In that you cannot consider the plasma in the plasmoid as it forms to have a specific temperature, as such, because the dynamic have forced it well out of a Maxwellian thermal distribution. The density and collisionality of the plasma probably means it will thermalise again within a very short time, so it may be insignificant, but then again this seed population of fast ions could propote more fusion, or on the other hand a population of fast electrons created by this process could promote extra bremsstrahlung & have a negative effect.

It seems the more I learn about plasma physics the less you can predict by simple analysis. The only way to really tell is to do a non-linear simulation to test the hypothesis, and even then it only tells you about the particular instabilities/modes that can be accounted for in whatever simplified model you are using.