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Not only dose the device produce DC, it is dumping it into a Capacitor and the power for the grid will be bleed off from the Capacitors so from the perspective of the Inverter that will supply the grid their aren’t even any pulses, their is just a HVDC source that might have some variation in it’s voltage but is not dropping to zero 200 times a second so the whole premise of the thread is unjustified.

As for the grid becoming DC, that’s more likely to happen if Fusion fails because renewables like wind and solar are necessitating longer distance transmission lines and the technology for HVDC has become more economical then HVAC, but even then the ‘local’ grid would remain AC while the ‘backbone’ becomes DC.

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Lets distinguish between two things.

First the falsification of the current paradigm theory (BB) which occurs when the theory makes predictions irreconcilable with observations. Lerner’s recent Tolman surface brightness work dose this in my opinion, no possible modification of BB theory can accommodate this because he’s basically disproved the metric expansion of space and that IS the heart of the theory.

Second Lerner’s counter theory Plasma Cosmology which is really just a structure formation theory based on Plasma physics, not really a full Cosmology in my opinion. A full cosmology within which his plasma structure formation occurs would need to explain why their is no entropic heat death in an eternal universe and provide a detailed round-trip analysis of all mater and energy such that a universe resembling our own is maintained eternally (or at least periodically).

Disproving BB obviously dose nothing to establish the truth of Lerner’s theory unless his theory made significant and accurate predictions on the observation in question which invalidated BB, the classic example was Einsteins prediction (with high accuracy) of the deflection of starlight near the sun, it simultaneously disproved Newtonian cosmology and proved his own cosmology. Even if one agrees with Lerner’s Tolman brightness results it’s not a significant enough prediction of his theory that space is non-expanding, lots of other non-expanding cosmologies are possible.

Dark matter is kind of the same thing, Plasma Cosmology doesn’t have it, but neither do lots of other theories like MOND, disproving dark matter just disproves BB (or forces BB theories to create a Dark Matter free version of the theory which would be very hard because it would ruin Baryogenesis). So far Dark Matter has become a kind of whipping boy because it highlights so well the sloppy ‘epicycles’ logic of BB theory, “BB theory must have extra matter so theorists find the first plausible place where it might be, dig their heels in and if it can’t be detected just claim the matter is progressively weirder and more undetectable ad-infinitude.

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My simplistic math based on the numbers off Tim1’s Sankey flowchart shows that the combined collector efficiency is expected to be 80% and each collector is individually also shown at 80%.

Furthermore if efficiency of the combined power collection drops to below 61% then their is no longer a net surplus for the grid (the device would just manage to maintain self-cycling while throwing off lots of heat). If we assume 80% for the beam collector (the more mature technology) then the X-ray collection needs to be greater then 33% to still produce net power.

Naturally the net power output increases with higher efficiency, for each 1% increase in combined efficiency above the 61% floor the total net power output to grid increases by 263 kw or about 1/4 of a MW.

Any increase in Fusion output / input energy would of course change the break even points considerably.

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Chuctanunda wrote: No dark matter is of course consistent with the BBNH. Does anyone have any insight to share about the recent announcement confirming inflation by some signature in the background microwave radiation? It seems every few months someone announces something to get us ever more solidly behind the Big Bang. I am strongly persuaded by the BBNH, but find all these Big Bang confirming announcements at times challenge my confidence.

You should take thouse announcements with a grain of salt, the resent Inflation confirmation study was taken behind the woodshed recently when it was shows that their results could not distinguish between inflation and mere dust. The retraction never gets the same trumpeting as the initial finding announcement.

Personally I just ignore anything to do with CMB anisotropy, you can torture the CMB into telling you anything you want because the fluctuations their looking at are so absurdly tiny and subject to all kinds of error in extracting it from the background, we should be debating if these fluctuations are even real before basing cosmology on them. The only thing I think we can be confident about is that CMB is VERY isotropic black-body at temperature of 2.7K, which is consistent with BB and admittedly very hard to explain with an alternative.

P.M. Yes BB theory has become hopelessly dependent on DarkMatter to fill gaps in it’s predictions, it needs DM for nucleosynthesis and galaxy formation in reasonable time frame. The Often repeated flat galactic rotation is really not important to BB, that was just the key observation that let people concluded that their was more matter, initially BB theory was agnostic as to the type of matter but as Baryonic matter was ruled out the consensus retreated (and continues to retreat) into ever more undetectable forms of exotic matter.

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This the the kind of rubbish an administrator should be deleting from the forums, not posting. It’s not even relevant to BB theory.

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Another paper on modeling the merger of two white dwarfs.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0645

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The incredibly high temperature of this plasma combined with its mass begs the question “What is the heat source?”. The answer to THAT question is probably going to prove very upsetting to mainstream cosmology.

BTW: I’d consider that this finding supports my hypothesis presented here https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/877/ that nucleon-synthesis is reversed in break-down reactions occurring in hot plasma expelled by galaxies. The chewed up nucleons erroneous called ‘primordial’ matter (everything is primordial in an eternal universe) then cools and re-enters the galaxy. High mass of plasma and high temperatures were exactly what I predicted as well as the fact the composition would be contaminated to some degree with heavy elements. Likewise http://phys.org/news/2011-11-hubble-galaxies-ultimate-recyclers.html#nRlv supports the recycling flow of material.

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Some additional attempt to develop this concept on my part, though I am grossly under-equipped to do so thus any help assembling the raw data on densities, energy requirements etc which would be necessary to create even a semblance of a theory.

My research has identified so far 4 known mechanical mechanisms that could effectively reverse the process of Fusion and return ‘spent’ mater back to primordial fuel aka hydrogen. As particle physics is a very mature field I’m going to stick to know physics.

Photo-disintegration: The simplest to understand this is simply the process of an atomic nucleus absorbing a high energy photon and breaking apart, the process is endothermic and seems to be very capable of breaking up larger nuclei but it will take extremely high energy photons to break up the smaller nuclei.

Cosmic-ray Spalation: This is the process of fast moving nuclei or electrons crashing into other nuclei and breaking them up, I know Lerner focuses on this mechanism to explain the creation of Lithium without the need for the BB but I’m speculating that it can be used to break up nuclei all the way down to hydrogen.

Neutron Beta decay: Any neutron freed from a nucleus by the first two mechanisms should rapidly decay to a proton, electron and anti-neutrino. This is a fast decay taking only 15 minutes for it’s half-life so in a low density plasma it would be nearly impossible for a free neutron to rejoin a nucleus before decaying in this way.

Inverse Beta Decay: This is the absorption of a Neutrino by a Neutron to create a Proton and electron. While this process would seemingly be the ideal way to get rid of the neutrinos produced in fusion the legendarily low probability of neutrino collisions with atoms in even dense matter makes this unlikely. More likely in my mind is that most Neutrinos are annihilated by anti-neutrinos from the previously mentioned Beta decay process. The resulting gamma ray energy is then available for Photo-disintegration or other endothermic processes.

I’m going to try to get some rough back of the envelope calculations on how active these processes would need to be to balance the fairly well know rates of stellar fusion. Presumably the more matter is in the ‘decay’ portion of the loop the more slowly in can decay while still balancing fusion, conversely the hotter and more energetic the decay the faster it would proceed and the less matter would be needed outside of stars. I’m hoping that some kind of reasonable model can be constructed that has a reasonable matter density, reasonable temperature and produces an element mix matching observations.

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Interesting, scaling is certainly key but I’m having a having a hard time meshing these last few updates into a picture of how much progress has been made. Is their some way in which the results can be graphed along side earlier results and with comparisons to other projects (ITER & NIF) along with a ‘goal’ point to give a more visual sense of the progress?

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Glenn Millam wrote: CRACKPOT THEORY ALERT:

One thing I have wondered about since they found that the Universe is expanding at a faster rate is what could be causing it. Could it be that over time, areas in space are gaining overall positive charge (more protons than electrons) and this is causing a repellant effect, expanding the Universe faster as the forces grow over time? I do not have the physics chops to say what would cause this other than to think that maybe fusion in stars are producing proton waste at a slightly higher rate than electrons, and these protons are being blown out by solar winds to form plasma filaments that repel at long distances.

All those protons in the interstellar medium had to come from somewhere. The physicists who have downplayed Alfven’s theories over the years have assumed that interstellar medium is neutral electrically, thus plasma and electromagnetism does not play a large role in large scale physics like gravity does. These pictures say otherwise, but I don’t see people acknowledging it. I’d really like one of the smart people at LPP (maybe even Mr. Lerner?) look at this and write a few words of explanation.

Or perhaps a proton imbalance could come from some other phenomenon. “Thus the effective charge of an electron is actually smaller than its true value, and the charge decreases with increasing distance from the electron.”

I think if this were the case then electrons or matter with a net negative charge (when ever they happen to come about) would start to flow out of the Galaxies (due to the strong positive charge in intergalactic space) at considerable speed and this would lead to the breakup or at least some noticeable ‘puffing up’ of the galaxies in cosmologically short amount of time, as we do not see this it suggests to me idea is falsifiable on these grounds. Admittedly though I am no expert and may be way over my head.

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From my perspective their are three tiers of fusion ‘concepts’ that are distinguished not by their chance of technical success near or short term but rather by their cost range as a mature technology.

A good comparison might be the Steam engine, Internal combustion engine and Jet Turbine engine, they all do basically the same thing, turn hydrocarbons into rotary motion, but the power-2-weight ratios are such that their is virtually no overlap. The crudest simplest Internal combustion engine has more power density then any Steam engine, and likewise the simplest Jet turbine blows away the best Internal combustion engine. The tokamak and Inertial confinement systems are like Steam Engines, they will at best be very expensive and require obscene capitol investments. The other ‘indie’ concepts like poly-well, General Fusion etc are more like Internal combustion engines, they could undercut the price of the Steam engine level technology, but Focus Fusion stands alone as the Jet turbine of Fusion concept because it alone is not a heat engine which means it can undercut everything else on price and capitol cost once mature.

This is important because it means LPP would still have a viable business model developing FF if the tomorrow aliens descended from the sky and told humans exactly how to make a tokamak or Inertial confinement system that would yield net energy well into the optimistic range of what their developers hope for. Because that would effectively be like having a ‘good’ turn of the century steam engine their would be plenty of room to undercut and supplant it with a better technology. In fact I would expect interest and investment to INCREASE into all alternative fusion concepts, once their is one type of viable fusion it will stimulate the demand for Cheaper fusion. The reverse is not the case though, if FF or any of those middle tier alternatives comes to market first the tokomak folks are just Screwed as their concept can never hope to be competitive in any way, but I wouldn’t be surprised if shear inertia carries them years further.

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Well it looks like their is a testing scheme that will be conducted at CERN in the near future called AEGIS intending to do just this. It seems to consist of firing a beam of anti-hydrogen and seeing if it’s deflected up rather then down. http://aegis.web.cern.ch/aegis/experiment.html My point was that the experiment is JUST a matter of instrument sensitivity in a controlled lab environment which is something researchers are very good at doing. The ‘energetic’ part (making Anti-hydrogen) which is what’s expensive has already been done.

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JimmyT wrote:
There is no theoretical basis for believing that antimatter behaves any differently then regular matter with respect to gravity. But I’m no expert.

True but then again ALL that we know about gravity comes from observation of Matter (or bodies we believe to be matter), and we know we don’t REALLY understand what Gravity or any fundamental force really IS to Repulsion between Matter and Anti-matter would have a very alluring symmetry with electromagnetic charge being a kind of inverse of electromagnetic rules ware ‘like’ attracts and ‘different’ repels. It would very nicely explain why we see no nearby Anti-matter or any annihilation reactions. Though I find it hard to imagine this thought has not occurred to cosmologists before and been studied.

It’s not at all a hard thing to test if sensitive instruments are used, tiny amounts of anti-matter have been created in accelerators but I don’t believe any attempt has ever been made to weigh it. This is probably a good test to run just to make absolutely certain were not missing some hugely important piece of the picture.

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Well if you took the cycle time way down you might be able to largely eliminate the cooling system a normal system would need and just make due with passive air cooling. The power to weight ratio would be terrible and the instillation cost would still be quite high but that’s about the only way I can see the system being miniaturized. Radiation shielding is by far the biggest barrier to miniaturization, the reactor is producing weak Neutrons and X-Rays and even Radiation shielding is based on thickness so even a low cycling low powered system needs the same shielding as a normal system. It could NEVER go in something the size of a car or truck as even a reactor the size of a breadbox would need more then a ton of water around it based on the 1 meter of water and an inch of lead figure that Eric has sited.

About the only vehicle application I can see being viable would be a locomotive (typical diesel locomotive is 5MW electric output) and even that would require some work as a trains width is constrained such that after the shielding you have only about a meter across for the reactor to fit in, that might very well be too small but it’s in the realm of possibility.

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@Milemaster

I’m afraid none of those links are pertinent to having a PV device act AS a capacitor. Rather they deal with storing energy from PV in capacitors or creating “hybrid” capacitor/battery devices which will be hybrid like a hybrid car aka having a battery and capacitor in one package sharing load. I know the nature of the X-Ray collector resembles a capacitor with its numerous thin foils separated by insulation but that dose not mean it would be wise to try to make it serve double duty as one, assuming it is even possible which I am doubtful of. Given that designing the X-ray collector will be one of the key goals of the prototype development phase then the collector by definition can not be an off the shelf component. Nor is their any indication that anyone out their has the tech to make the current visible-light based PV cells act as capacitors that could be applied to an X-Ray collector.

Capacitors are NOT a serious technical challenge to prototyping a FF reactor and keeping the collector and capacitor as separate devices lets each one be optimized for one singular purpose. Efficiency is hurt not helped by combining functionality in the way you describe and higher cycle rates are another reason to have separate capacitors as any cycle limit in the capacitors can be solved by just adding more capacitors and switching between them. The only advantage I can see to a combined PV-Capacitor is weight reduction which might be a goal for a second generation system designed to be miniaturized for a vehicular application.

@BrianH

If you’ll examine my post you’ll see 1¢/kwh is not an estimate of any kind of cost of refueling, it’s an estimate of what price the market would BARE for refueling a FF reactor. I arrive at it by simply matching the fuel cost of a coal power-plant, the main energy source we want to eliminate. Coal is favored mainly because of its low up-front capitol costs, but its operating costs (of which fuel is only a portion) are actually quite high (Natural Gas is much the same having even lower capitol costs but higher fuel costs). Investors and Utilities consistently prefer energy sources with low capitol costs and high operating costs over the reverse (high capitol and low operating). So the best way to get FF adopted quickly and universally is to cut capitol costs to the bone and make all profit on fueling. Licensing worldwide non-exclusive rights to build and install the reactor will ensure the market delivers the reactor at minimum price, while maintaining a monopoly on fueling gives LPP a reliable revenue stream. As for what the fueling operation will cost I’d guess just a few grand mostly in labor unless isotopic separation of boron-10 and boron-11 is required.

If it were possible LPP should actually subsidize the instillation costs of the Reactor and make it up on the fueling. That’s the X-Box strategy, Microsoft loses $100 dollars for each box sold but makes it up on the games which are quite profitable. The best way to get rapid market penetration is shift cost in this way because the fundamental nature of capitalism will always favor delayed costs over present costs. Unfortunately LPP won’t have the manufacturing/instillation capacity to do this for some time so the free-2-build, fuel-monopoly scenario I propose is the best that can be achieved in the early adoption phase.

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