Reply To: Nuplex.

[BSFusion]

@Joeviocoe,

Sorry, but YOUR OWN patent application does not dictate the conventions of common acronyms in science or engineering. The BSF acronym stands as a general concept to be Bubble SonoFusion.

Contrary to what you just said about common usage, the combination of letters “BSF” is not currently in wide use. In fact, if you Google “BSF” cross-referenced with “Bubble-confined Sonoluminescent-laser Fusion,” you’ll only get a few dozen hits, which is a lot more than the zero hits you get when you cross-reference it with “SonoFusion.” In this situation, the strongest logical argument is an appeal to the highest authority, ultimately: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” In summary, therefore, contrary to your *minority* opinion, the *majority* opinion of my patent application dictates, by default, how the BSF acronym gets used.

As far as I can tell right now… you have a unique “APPROACH” to an old idea. And you are the only one trying to call it something completely different.

BSF is not sonofusion, it is a hybrid of ICF that combines directed energy (laser) fusion with material confinement. It is important to realize that lasers are capable of generating much higher temperatures and pressures than chemical reactions, which, even for high-explosives, are only on the order of 0.5 eV (5500 K) and 500kBar. In comparison, the flux inside a BSF reactor, at the bubble’s surface, is expected to be at least a thousand times less intense than NIF’s laser, yet, even at this relatively low intensity, when BSF’s laser fires, the material near the bubble’s periphery is expected to obtain a temperature of around 90 eV (1,000,000 K) and a pressure of around 4 Mbar. In summary, BSF’s laser produces over 30 times the heat and pressure of TNT (~3000 C and ~50,000 atm.), way more intense than anything achievable by simple acoustical methods.

I did not imply there are “connections” between you and Taleyarkhan. I implied that the general concept of attaining fusion through Bubble Sonoluminescence has been tried before, and failed. I understand that your approach to this is very different. But you do have an uphill battle since much of the science has not been proven yet.

You seem to be WAY more worried about your patent being distinct, than the science being valid. All I am saying is that you need a lot more work and you NEED to get published. Until then, it is the same general concept that has been discredited.

I’m not worried about my patent being distinct – I know it is distinct. What troubles me is that you keep claiming (a false claim) that BSF is sonofusion. I think you might be confusing sonoluminescence with sonofusion. I mentioned several times that BSF relies on sonoluminescence, which is a valid scientific phenomena, distinct from sonofusion. In BSF, sonoluminescence (the blackbody radiation that is emitted from a hot, compressed gas) triggers an outgoing laser cascade, which, after returning with amplification, heats and compresses the fuel until, ultimately, it ignites. In summary, BSF is laser fusion, not sonofusion.

It is very likely that, although your approach is somewhat different, any device based on this would suffer the same problems as conventional bubble sonofusion that Professor Andrea Prosperetti of Johns Hopkins had encountered.

This is another red herring, since BSF is not sonofusion (SF). Some of the problems associated with SF that currently prevent ignition might be eliminated by increasing the scale, but scaling alone cannot overcome all deficiencies. SF experiments typically use bubbles that are around a million times smaller than what a fusion power plant would require. Personally, I think it is impractical to scale SF to the size necessary for successful ignition, but, to be fair, it is also reasonable to upgrade ones confidence about achieving ignition, burning and energy gain as the scale increases because the size of the hot-spark and surrounding fuel is larger (meaning slower heat loss) and the implosion would proceed with increased energy. In addition, the thickness of the mixed region and loss of the hot-spark region will become less serious, and once ignition occurs… In “crum.pdf,” Nigmatulin explained that while chemical reactions can be important limitations in SBSL experiments, they are overcome in Acoustic ICF experiments due to the significant additional energy available for compression. But why dwell on SF, which is a dubious approach, when a surefire approach, like BSF, holds so much more promise?