Reply To: No-go for cheap fusion?

[Lerner]

Vansig uses exactly the same analogy as I have in the lab—yes, right now Battleship is the current game. Contrary to what MTd2 is saying, we have really just begun to search the parameter space, because we only have had the repeatability we need since the end of December. The search is complicated by the phenomena of the pre-shock we ran into back six months ago, and the window to avoid this may be quite narrow. Our theory gives us guides, but since we have not yet fully understood the pre-shock, we need to do some careful experiments. Good science takes patience—something some fusion fans need to learn.

If you look at the patent we have, you can see that the only reason that a very small initial magnetic field can influence the very powerful ones in the pinch is because the axial field gets greatly amplified during the run-down and pinch. Introducing the field very late will eliminate this amplification, so will make the field’s effect insignificant.