mchargue wrote:
My understanding is that we’re validating McNally’s 1975 observation that bremstrahlung can be reduced by raising field strength, which has a lot to do with why high input currents are critical to reaching unity. This was mentioned in the GoogleTalks and in the patent, if I remember correctly. At this point it’s a theory which seems to be proving out experimentally, but I may be wrong on that- the relative motion of ions and electrons are beyond my direct understanding of the process.
That’s kinda’ what I was thinking, which was why I mentioned it. It seemed to be ‘supporting evidence’ for the contentions made in the patent, and in the talk. I didn’t describe as well, though.
And my point, not explained clearly either, was that although they phenomena may sound similar, in that they involve consideration of electrons & ions separately. The effect of supersonic plasma on a dipole field (whether on laboratory or astrophysical scale), and McNally’s observed effect of bremsstrahlung are entirely different processes, and so is in no way ‘supporting evidence’.
The formation of a bow shock & magnetopause of a low density plasma around a dipole field, and the subsequent affect of the motion of ions & electrons around it are primarily collisionless processes. The particle motions are governed by the fields and in turn effect the field as per Maxwell’s equations, but they very rarely come close enough to each other to have binary collisions. NB. this kind of collisionless shock is also entirely different from supersonic shocks in air which is a purely collisional effect.
Bremsstrahlung is a collisional process where electrons must pass close enough to an ion to undergo a large angle scatter. The proposed effect in a large field is that the electron larmor radius is of the order of it’s de Broglie wavelength and so the electron’s energy is quantized, restricting the scattering energy change and so radiative process.
