new fusion start-up

[emmetb]

I’m thinking to invest in this new dutch start-up company:
http://www.convectron.eu/en/technology/ball-lightning-model/
🙂

The guy behind it is very tenacious. I know already in the 80s they were trying to generate fusion in a ball-lightning by discharging large currents (from a bank of submarine batteries) in normal atmospheric conditions.

Now they claim they have a working model of the natural phenomenon of ball lightning:

The Convectron model treats vortex plasma in ball lightning as a charged superfluid. Lightning discharges form fireballs when electrons condense in the ground state for bosons. This collective state becomes relativistic at binding energy mc2 = 511 keV. Fusion reactions of deuterium nuclei already start at a few percent of this energy.

Any ideas what that means?

They are seriously offering stock, prospectus and everything available in three languages.
From the prospectus:

The proof-of-principle amounts to demonstration of steady-state fusion in vortex plasma at a stable position
in a controlled atmosphere. Once formed by the ignition process, gas jets channel the plasmoid to a con-
toured reactor vessel with controlled gas circulation as disclosed in the first Convectron patent (see Figure 2).

In the reaction chamber, the high-energy fireball is positioned by a gas jet consisting of a non-reactive carrier
gas, mixed with a small amount of deuterium. For positional fine-tuning, additional electric or magnetic
fields may use net charge or bosonic diamagnetism of the ball. Diffusion from the surrounding gas mixture
fuels the ball with deuterium, removing helium and other reaction products quickly by turbulent diffusion.
Inside the plasma vortices, deuterium nuclei are accelerated to energies which make fusion reactions inevita-
ble. The power output of a ball with given energy content can be regulated by variation of the deuterium
concentration in the non-reactive carrier gas. By scale rules of the boson model, natural deuterium concentra-
tion of moist air can support fireball fusion power at levels of 10 to 100 watt, corresponding to an average
electric light bulb. Useful energy production at 0.1 to 1 megawatt power levels requires raising the fuel con-
centration with a factor 100 from 1 to 100 parts per million. In this way the energy used in the ignition circuit
is regained within a few seconds. As long as the gas stream around the fireball supplies deuterium and re-
moves the produced helium, the fusion process continues.

The energy of the emitted particles and radiation can be absorbed in a water shield which directly converts it
into steam. The steam produced can generate electricity in a conventional way. The reaction stops by cutting
fuel injection as with the throttle a of car engine. A mixing unit for controlling fuel injection that was devel-
oped by the Predecessor in cooperation with a well-known Dutch supplier of industrial gases, was opera-
tional during the ignition tests with supersonic wind tunnel and capacitor banks at KEMA High-Power Labo-
ratory.

Any thoughts?

[Aeronaut]

I don’t know about the theory- didn’t read every word on the page. We’ve discussed ball lightning fusion here somewhere, and I’ve seen this idea look better, more credible, every year. The page looks credible and the proposed plant looks large enough to get serious investor attention. Now, about Dutch investment law, I’m clueless.

[emmetb]

Aeronaut wrote: I don’t know about the theory- didn’t read every word on the page. We’ve discussed ball lightning fusion here somewhere, and I’ve seen this idea look better, more credible, every year. The page looks credible and the proposed plant looks large enough to get serious investor attention. Now, about Dutch investment law, I’m clueless.

I guess it’s pretty flexible ’cause i just bought 1 share 🙂

[Breakable]

This is ****** crazy techno-babble and pseudo-science. How do i buy stock?
[Such language. – Moderator]

[Rezwan]

What’s up with the badinage (cussing), and why is this under social marketing?

It should be under “contenders” or “weird science.” I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and put it under contenders for now.

[emmetb]

Breakable wrote: This is ****** crazy techno-babble and pseudo-science. How do i buy stock?
[Such language. – Moderator]

You just subscribe. You get voting rights and a newsletter. I’ll let you know what is decided on the next shareholders meeting 😉

[emmetb]

Rezwan wrote: What’s up with the badinage (cussing), and why is this under social marketing?

It should be under “contenders” or “weird science.” I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and put it under contenders for now.

I was mainly interested in the fact that they seem to have no problem to keep emiting shares. Note they already emited for about half a million dollars which funded their initial experiments during the 1980s. Also, it seems there is no problem for a private person to invest in them.

[Aeronaut]

emmetb wrote:

What’s up with the badinage (cussing), and why is this under social marketing?

It should be under “contenders” or “weird science.” I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and put it under contenders for now.

I was mainly interested in the fact that they seem to have no problem to keep emiting shares. Note they already emited for about half a million dollars which funded their initial experiments during the 1980s. Also, it seems there is no problem for a private person to invest in them.
Investing in LPP and or FFS is governed by US investment law. Apparently your outfit isn’t.

[Breakable]

emmetb wrote:
I was mainly interested in the fact that they seem to have no problem to keep emiting shares. Note they already emited for about half a million dollars which funded their initial experiments during the 1980s. Also, it seems there is no problem for a private person to invest in them.

Yes, this should be very interesting, in case of funding problems.
PS:Sorry for the strong language – but it just used to convey strong emotions (probably no children were harmed in this process)

[emmetb]

Aeronaut wrote:

What’s up with the badinage (cussing), and why is this under social marketing?

It should be under “contenders” or “weird science.” I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and put it under contenders for now.

I was mainly interested in the fact that they seem to have no problem to keep emiting shares. Note they already emited for about half a million dollars which funded their initial experiments during the 1980s. Also, it seems there is no problem for a private person to invest in them.
Investing in LPP and or FFS is governed by US investment law. Apparently your outfit isn’t.
Apparently not. And this is the interesting part because it might represent a possibile loophole to get around the accredited investor rule: start a subsidiary company abroad which will offer shares, online, to whoever wants to invest (also smaller investors who would fall inbetween donators and investors: let’s call them invators 😉 ) this company would do nothing else but to reinvest the money back into the US, and fund LPP’s next round of experiments.
[edit – i just thought of an even better name for the innovators, we can call them: white-pawns… Man! I’m really on a roll here! 😉 ]

[Breakable]

emmetb wrote:
Apparently not. And this is the interesting part because it might represent a possibile loophole to get around the accredited investor rule: start a subsidiary company abroad which will offer shares, online, to whoever wants to invest (also smaller investors who would fall inbetween donators and investors: let’s call them invators 😉 ) this company would do nothing else but to reinvest the money back into the US, and fund LPP’s next round of experiments.
[edit – i just thought of an even better name for the innovators, we can call them: white-pawns… Man! I’m really on a roll here! 😉 ]

While I am clearly all about investment in LPP and fusion, I would caution about going trough the loopholes. They are for Rich and powerful – not for ordinary folk. You should discuss it with a lawyer – actually two lawyers minimally – one German and one from USA. Another issue is that the credibility of LPP will take a hit from this funding approach as well as the funds provided will probably just trickle rather than flow for some time.
And of course I would not be very surprised if our ball lightning manufacturers would get sacked by some government agency when they get a little more attention. This said – I would love to see this implemented and would love to be involved in investment promotion campaign.

[emmetb]

Breakable wrote:
While I am clearly all about investment in LPP and fusion, I would caution about going trough the loopholes. They are for Rich and powerful – not for ordinary folk. You should discuss it with a lawyer – actually two lawyers minimally – one German and one from USA. Another issue is that the credibility of LPP will take a hit from this funding approach as well as the funds provided will probably just trickle rather than flow for some time.
And of course I would not be very surprised if our ball lightning manufacturers would get sacked by some government agency when they get a little more attention. This said – I would love to see this implemented and would love to be involved in investment promotion campaign.

There are many investment firms all over the world that do nothing else than this. If you wanted, you could be invested in some halal starbucks franchise on an artificial island of the cost of dubai, tomorrow. I’m not a legal expert, and, sadly, i’m neither rich nor powerful. Yet i would strongly object to the suggestion that we constitute “ordinary folk” 😉 Of course, to do this right, one would need to speak to lawyers of both nations.

[Aeronaut]

The term “maquiladora” (hope I spelled that right, it’s pronounced ma-key-a- dora), loosely translated, means “right across the river, where the labor and environmental laws are far more favorable”. :shut:

[emmetb]

I had a brief email exchange with the founder (you know; being a shareholder and all 😉 )

Now i’m not *completely* convinced anymore it’s all pseudoscience.

I would say they’re being very sparse in the details (which is probably an indication that it is indeed pseudoscience… but still… they’re a commercial enterprise asking for 32M EUR with this stock emission).

I asked specifically for a comparison with the FF concept. From the brief (yet polite and well phrased) answer that i got i made out that they claim that, as oposed to FF and Z-pinch, electrostratic fields play an important role in their approach to accelerate the plasma (some kind of weird mix; electrostatic inertial fusion in magnetically self confined plasmoids?).

Truth be told I find those ball lightnings fascinating. Extremely rare but by now uncontested phenomenon. Especially the extreme variant got some attention also in ICOPS 2006:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/webnews/ieee_plasma_balllightening.htm

It would be nice if some more informed people on this forum could shine their light over this. Are these guys really up to something here?

[emmetb]

The more i read about this, the more I become convinced that this is definitely *not* pseudoscience. One reason for this is because of two documents posted on their website, dating back to the 80’s. The discussion, at the time, was between the dutch scientific establishment and the founder of Convectron. Basically, the structure of the arguments brought to bear against the proposed plasmoid model mirrors the arguments that were being used on wikipedia discussion forum against Eric Lerner’s explanation of the plasmoid formation and decay in the DPF. Especially the virial theorem is mentioned a lot. To my (formally untrained eyes) this means people were puting mathematics *before* observation. Saying that something cannot exist because the formulas don’t predict it. We know that is a definite mind-killer. Indeed, the reply of the guy seems reasonable: the other guys are using oversimplified mathematics, we have more advanced theories explaining that etc. etc. Mind you, this discussion took place back in the 80’s!

Now my question is: when they mention plasma filaments consisting of electrons condensed in their ground state, are they speaking of more or less the same mechanism as Eric Lerner when he mentions the strong magnetic field effect? ‘Cause, in that case, their model, besides remarkable differences, also shows a striking similarity with the plasmoid model used by LPP…

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