[Tasmodevil44]

You can definitely get unlimited, infinite magnification with a copier by blowing it up forever ’til eternity. But clarity of resolution ? Blah ! 😛 Perhaps we should conduct some serious ignoble research on why the foundation is cracked and the pot is a little leaky. 🙂

[Tasmodevil44]

Jimmy T :

As for the ignobel prize awards, and the psycho – ceramic research on cracked pots, I’d like to go to that site and check it out. I’m pretty sure I’d get some totally riotous belly laughs out of the whole thing. 😆 🙂 :snake: 😛 Nothing quite like a healthy dose of good humor for the soul. 😆

[Tasmodevil44]

Here’s another really good book to read :

The book, published by Nelson Books, is titled, ” CAN A SMART PERSON BELIEVE IN GOD ? “, by Michael Guillen, who is both a scientist…… and a christian (although some people may find that hard to believe). Although I don’t subscribe to Guillen’s personal religious convictions, or patently absurd, childish fables like Adam and Eve, I do admire his open – minded optimism and humble wisdom in defiance of arrogance.

Woo ! This book is more than fun……excellent writing. Guillen does an excellent critique and expose of the mainstream science establishment and it’s terrible track record at proving itself wrong. Especially all the premature claims that all the main principles of physics have done already been discovered and that nothing new out there awaits us. He talks about the Einstein Revolution and how it totally transformed our way of thinking since Newtonian physics. He goes on to tell about the young physicist Thomas Young, who predicted that light consists of waves……and the reaction he first got from the Royal Society in London……and how they practically roasted him at the stake for being a feeble – minded crackpot : ” We now dismiss……the feeble locubrations of the author, ” one of the highly prestigious scientists sneered at him, ” in which we have searched without any success for some traces of learning or ingenuity. ” And yet the discovery later completely revolutionized all of physics as we know it today.

He also goes on to describe the utter folly and downright dangerous fallacy in worshipping science and reason as some kind of a god that is infallible. Michael Guillen states : ” I love science……but I don’t worship it. It’s not my god ” He then goes on to describe all the unintended consequences that have led to environmental pollution and other things by tampering and meddling with the forces of nature. Like the old T.V. commercial about Imperial Margarine from the early seventies which says, ” It’s not nice to fool mother nature ! “.

Woo ! Definitely good reading……more than fun.

Guillen also goes on to describe all the uncertainty to facts, reason and reality itself. And when it comes to the imperfection of human nature and uncertainty, Guillen definitely has plenty to say about that.

Although I still don’t quite buy into his personal religious beliefs, the book is a very good read.

Michael Guillen is a theoretical physicist and also a former ABC News science correspondent. He is the author of other books such as ” FIVE EQUATIONS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD “.

[Tasmodevil44]

To be trully scientific in the scientific method, science SHOULD BE both open – minded / analytically skeptical in it’s thinking……a healthy balance of both.

[Tasmodevil44]

Breakable stated that :

Rational being should consider lack of evidence as disproof, because there is no way you can prove a negative like ” there is no cold fusion “. You can only say ” we tried some things and things and they did not work “.

I can think of no better example of the closed – minded arrogance and dogma of the mainstream conservative science establishment than this one. It’s all due to a mental block caused by electrostatic coulomb repulsion which causes everybody to insist that extremely high temperatures is the only way to overcome it. Which is all just so much crap.

Truth is, cold fusion has done already been confirmed and validated beyond question in literally hundreds of laboratories all over the world. It’s a simple matter of quantum wave mechanics and quantum tunneling past the coulomb charge barrier. Why does it take so many people so long to figure out the most obvious ?

And it’s not always rational for arrogant and closed – minded conservative types to consider lack of evidence the same as disproof, either. That’s why the justice system (injustice system ?) is such a joke. Bad guys go unpunished due to lack of proof. Innocent people get punished because they can’t prove their innocence.

Closed – minded means exactly what it means. They have completely switched – off the main power switch to their brains and refuse to turn their brains back on. All too often, lack of proof or evidence is a lame excuse for not thinking and stubbornly refusing to see even when the evidence is before them in plain sight. It has often been said that seeing is believing, but the opposite is equally true : believing is also a way of seeing. Sometimes stubbornly closed – minded people have to first take a leap of faith and believe first before they can see even the most obvious of things.

I had done already figured out many years ago that extremely closed – minded conservative types are hypocrites. There is a certain amount of two – faced hypocrisy and double – standards to their mentality which itself is NOT scientific or truly rational. Because they preach to everybody else about proof and evidence, but never have to provide any themselves……they can make assumptions and jump to conclusions as much as they want to. I think that EVERYBODY should back themselves with proof and evidence……and NOT just everybody else.

[Tasmodevil44]

Whatever you mean by that 😉

[Tasmodevil44]

Come to think of it, there’s just no end to the creative ideas and ways you could possibly have hybrid FF reactor / other propulsion for a spacecraft to make it more flexible and versatile.

[Tasmodevil44]

Jolly Roger :

Perhaps if the gamma ray was specifically fine – tuned to react with the carbon nucleus. A frequency or wavelength that works well with one type of atomic nucleus may not work well for another. I know this is getting a little off the subject of the lithium, but I hope this helps provide some extra food for thought about the C 12 question.

[Tasmodevil44]

Jolly Roger :

Bouncing back to the subject of the carbon atom you mentioned earlier, another possible way you might get ordinary garden variety C 12 to go unstable and break apart is by photo – fission (instead of being able to use neutrons like you can with certain isotopes of heavy atoms, carbon absorbs more neutrons than it emits, causing the chain reaction to wind down to a stop. Trying to fission carbon with neutrons is like trying to burn wet wood soaked with lots of water). With photo – fission, absorption of a highly energetic photon is used to excite atoms enough to destabilize them. However, this requires a highly energetic gamma ray, and I don’t know if you could ever get more energy out by the E = MC2 mass conversion…… than the amount of energy it takes to produce the high energy gamma ray necessary to break carbon apart.

[Tasmodevil44]

Small atoms of low atomic numbers seem like a far more likely candidate than the preposterous idea I had for giving p – B11 an extra boost with highly improbable heavy atom fission such as thorium, uranium, americium, and etc. which would not only be hard to get to fission, but sap the plasma of thermal energy rather than add to it.

[Tasmodevil44]

Now that we have side – tracked away from the topic of lithium to carbon, I’d like to make another comment about the lithium :

Jimmy T stated that :

Look up the term ” Aneutronic Fusion ” in Wikepedia. Very close to the beginning is a section called ” Candidate Aneutronic Reactions ” where it discusses all the pluses and minuses of the various aneutronic reactions. It seems to me to be a very concise summary. It also reaches much the same conclusions as Mr. Lerner. That p – B11 is indeed the Holy Grail of fusion

Jimmy T, no one can deny that p – B11 is indeed by far the best candidate and Holy Grail of fusion. But I was thinking more along the lines of something that would NOT be a total substitute for hydrogen – boron11, but a partial supplement to it……something that would undergo ignition at far lower temperature……additionally preheat the plasma ahead of time……more than the electric power supply alone can provide……to help give the p – B11 reaction an extra energy boost. Which may be workable, or may not be.

[Tasmodevil44]

However, in large massive stars that are more massive than the sun, and burn more furiously at temperatures of 10 billion degrees or more, you do have such a thing as the carbon cycle. In this cycle, carbon absorbs a hydrogen proton to become a nitrogen. Then it absorbs a second proton to become an oxygen atom. The over – excited oxygen with too much energy to remain stable then fissions into a carbon and a highly energetic alpha particle of helium. The carbon then begins the cyclic process anew.

However, this carbon cycle is probably not as good as the p – B11 nuclear reaction. Because the plasma has to be heated much higher to 10 billion degrees (focus fusion p – B11 starts to happen at only one billion) or more, you have to put much more energy into it. And you have to pump more protons into the carbon cycle before it finally produces a single energetic alpha particle. Whereas p – B11 still produces three highly energetic alphas at the much lower temperature.

[Tasmodevil44]

Jolly Roger :

I have often asked the same question about carbon 12. So has belbear……and he got an explanation by Lerner already that the hydrogen – boron 11 reaction produces a type of very shortlived carbon 12 that is highly excited with extra energy and therefore highly unstable……and then fissions into three highly energetic alphas.

However, I have already brought up the suggestion in other posts already that there may be some other as yet undiscovered way to make ordinary common garden variety carbon 12 go unstable and break apart. You would certainly get many millions of times more energy out of a lump of coal this way than with conventional burning at a coal – fired generating plant.

One of my suggestions that I’ve already made somewhere in one of the other posts is that perhaps you could bombard a carbon nucleus with some kind of exotic subatomic particle that would act as a catalyst for the nuclear reaction. I have also suggested the possibility of perhaps anti – matter assisted fusion. What if an a particle such as an anti – proton reacted with the ordinary matter of the carbon atom ? Some of the nucleus would be annhiliated as pure energy. The remainder might be excited and pumped full of enough energy to break apart into energetic fragments.

The only problem with my highly speculative idea is that nobody has yet figured out how to mass produce sufficient quantities of exotic particles such as anti – matter for experimentation. But anti – matter assisted fission to break apart the C 12 nucleus is one possibility.

But I’m not too sure about injecting C 12 into the FF reactor. When it comes to X – ray emission cooling of the plasma, how much a particular atom emits is the square of the number of protons. So with boron it’s only 5 X 5 = 25 times, or the x – ray cooling equivalent of only 25 hydrogen atoms consisting of a single proton. But with carbon, you would have atomic number 6 X 6 = 36 times more X – ray emission losses than a hydrogen atom from the plasma you’re trying to heat.

That’s another reason I gave – up the other preposterous idea I had of trying to have a hybrid fission / fusion reactor like as in an H – Bomb. It works great for a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, where a plutonium bomb supplies the energy to initiate fusion, but the physics is totally incompatible with focus fusion. Not only is it virtually impossible to get thorium or plutonium or whatever else that is employed to undergo fission in the FF reactor…… as a way to further heat the plasma……the contamination of such high atomic numbers in the plasma would more than likely sap it of energy……rather than supply more of it. Nice open – minded thinking outside the box, but not very easy or probable.

[Tasmodevil44]

So for the most part, I’m still and open – minded optimist, even if most ideas outside the box don’t always work. While the pessimist predictions of the Malthusians may still turn out to be true in the long – run if population growth continues unabated……I still think that talented individuals such as Lerner and his researh team can contribute a lot of good to the world……provided that we implement more effective and widespread birth control becoming more prevalent in third – world developing countries.

I’ve noticed that closed – minded arrogance often sits and waits for the scientific facts and evidence to come to them…..and then accepts ” hand – me – down ” knowlege without question. On the other hand, I’ve noticed how the open – minded optimists actively seek – out and chase after the facts and knowlege……greatly expanding the frontiers of knowlege forward……and even occasionally overturning a few long – held and deeply cherished dogmas along the way.

[Tasmodevil44]

Lets take for example, the two German scientists who discovered uranium fission. They were convinced that a neutrally – charged particle like a neutron may have the best chance of triggering nuclear reactions when absorbed into a nucleus. So they systematically bombarded every chemical element in the periodic table……and failed.

At least, that is, until they came to uranium……the heaviest element found in nature. But what if they had been closed – minded pessimists and decided to prematurely call it quits, just because most atoms simply won’t fission ?

Examples like this demonstrate conclusively that maintaining the open mind of an optimist……combined with persistence and long – suffering perserverence……does indeed play a valuable role in our critical thinking……that it does indeed occasionally pay – off real big in increasing our physical understanding of the world around us. Even if such open – minded optimism often results in far more ” misses” than the occasional direct ” hits “.

So do I think that open – minded optimism plays absolutely no role in our advances in science and technology ? Not for one minute do I think such a thing ! ! ! To think otherwise is pure bunk, because the history of science and invention itself bears out all too clearly how visionaries like Henry Ford used this positive – thinking mindset to their advantage. You sometimes have to keep plugging away at ” hit or miss ” preposterous crackpot notions, tossing most of them out one by one……until you eventually get it right. If anything, the process of elimination tells you something about what will not work, narrowing it down to the few things that might work. It’s what you call basic research.

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