Reply To: Boron availability

[benf]

“Actually, preliminary calculations indicate the background plasma, the plasma in the whole vacuum chamber, will cool to something like 2,000 to 3,000 C between pulses. It just has to be hot enough to the boron will not precipitate out, which is a very complicated question of chemistry and dynamics. The electrodes propbaly have to be kept below 800 C to prevent rapid erosion.”

It seems some of my questions were already answered in this previous post by Eric Lerner, thanks…Alas, I’m not in physics or an engineer, but I do yearn to fix things that don’t perform quite right and will search far and wide for solutions. The physics of the bird cage formed by the momentum of plasma by a channelled magnetic field into a knot which then collapses or pinches, conjures a visual flood in my brain. In a bathtub drain or a tornado it’s the pressure difference between surrounding medium, angular momentum and the inside pressure that causes contraction into an accelerating vortex. How fast a spin you can get determines the concentration of energy. The bird cage analogy implies a fixed container whereas what we need is more motion and increased pressure gradients. The earth has magnetic field “lines” that are somewhat fixed to the poles because of the fixed rotation of the earth. But the energy accelerates at the poles and the fields get more confined, thus ions from solar storms accelerate to the poles when captured. I look for analogies like these in nature or other experiments I read about on the web, to try and grasp what’s going on with Focus Fusion. Indeed there’s a lot to learn, consider, explore. This is all very interesting and I’m glad there’s more funding coming to move things along. Can’t wait to see the results!