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Brian H wrote:

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I don’t mean to be nitpicking here, but i did meet many fusion-skeptics on a sust[ain]ability congress i attended last week in the Netherlands. They reason more or less as follows, we already have a fusion power plant: the sun. So all we need to do is catch more of its rays.

Tell them, “Yes, and there are immense amounts of gold dissolved in the oceans. Here’s a bucket. Go for it!”
Density, availability, cost, and distribution. Solar fails on all counts.
Well, yes, that was kind-of the point: there are different kinds of power, each with their specific niche. Just don’t assume that this is common knowledge.

So what about this then:
“How Green is it? Hands down the greenest form of energy for high power-density applications: no CO2, no nuclear waste, very small environmental footprint in terms of construction materials needed per MW, no storage and distribution problems, no problem with toxins as found in fotovoltaics, not in competition with land for agriculture and forrests.”

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On a related note, i would suggest a minor refinement in one of the paragraphs found on the FFS front-page:
“How Green is it? Hands down, the greenest energy imaginable. Greener than the greenest renewable. Much greener than conventional fusion. Clorophyll, bring it on.”
Into something along the lines of:
“How Green is it? Hands down, the greenest energy imaginable. Much greener than conventional fusion. The only greener alternative are trees, yet organic material can never yield the high power-density needed for our transportation and industrial needs. With Fusion for high power-density applications and Photosynthesis for sequestering CO2 mankind has a chance of developing a truly sustainable global economy.”
I don’t mean to be nitpicking here, but i did meet many fusion-skeptics on a sustability congress i attended last week in the Netherlands. They reason more or less as follows, we already have a fusion power plant: the sun. So all we need to do is catch more of its rays.

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Status and being one-up is certainly a driver. Given a choice of a $500K home in a neighborhood of $300K homes, or a $600K home in a neighborhood of $1M homes, most people choose the former.

It’s a story about us, people, being persuaded to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people that we don’t care about. (Tim Jackson; http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check.html)

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What might have taken place is charge separation…, 50% of the reactions in D+D fusion results in a fast proton, this proton is able to escape the hollow cathode through either of the two appertures, resulting in a diametric ejection of positively charged particles. These 1 Mev particles easily climb up the -50 to -100 Kv potential, and go to ground, thereby leaving the cathode with a negative charge. What I was able to do, was to turn off the power supply that supplied the negative potential to the cathode, and watch as the reaction continued by itself. It should however be noted, that I had a 30 watt ion gun running, which supplied a steady current of ions.

But why were there no bubbles?

Nevertheless, if it is true you have a plausible mechanism for charge separation maybe it is time to write a paper and submit it to a peer reviewed journal/conference? Or perhaps talk to somebody in academia to try and get them to cooperate with you and repeat your experiment?

In the meantime your patent is pending so that should provide adequate protection of your intellectual property.

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The argument put forth in the vid sounds logical

Sure but it is utter bullocks of course. In fact I’m so sick of people swallowing that populist b*&^^%$t. There they sit in the audience, nodding their heads in surprised concurrence to find out that so much of this internal struggle between their sefish greed and their christian duty that they were experiencing was actually wholy unnescesary! How convenient: mass immigration can never solve our problems!

Well, the guy is right about that fact; where he takes the argument from there is just self-serving retorics. And his presentation technique is not even original:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html

In the antropocene the main evolutionary pressure will be on the level of social systems, not the individual. It will be about the ability of societies to channel human potential into doing the things nescesary for our survival while avoiding wasteful conflict and, yes, also in managing the population pressure better. In the real world, there are roughly 3 possible outcomes to consider:
1. we will innovate ourselves out of this mess in some, as yet unforseen, way;
2. we slowly give up more and more of our dignity in other, as yet unforeseen, ways;
3. we cancel the playingfield with an all-out thermonuclear war.
Personally I would place my betting money somewhere halfway between 1 and 2, but that’s partly because i don’t expect to be around to collect my winnings when the dust settles on option 3.

Oh, and here’s a thought: if mass immigration won’t work why not have a lottery and mix a significant part of these gumballs. We might call that “mass alternation”. It would definitely help, because a healthy dosis of setbacks builds character, resourcefulness and hardens the individual whereas living inside a cocoon where populists tell you what you so desperately want to hear spells disaster. If we keep on allowing populists like that to spread their venomous ideas we are rotting the society from the inside out as we slowly turn people into complacent fools. We don’t need complacent fools! We need decent, hardworking folk, men and women that understand what is at stake and are willing to bring the sacrifices necessary to win a place for their children to carry on. Now if you ban immigration these people will stop coming altogether.

Ask not what your society can do for you, ask why you, as a mere individual, have earned the godforsaken right to burn your societies’ precious resources.

I know: I wouldn’t make it very far as a politician 🙂

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Propose a strategic alliance to Dick Weir of EEStor (http://www.theeestory.com/) 😉

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Well it’s no panacea. I don’t agree it renders these issues moot. I do agree that power is key, if that’s what you mean. Note he’s not solving anything; he’s setting a safe operating space. How to stay within that space he puts as a challenge and an oportunity for transformative change. His emphasis on change and human creativity puts him ahead of the curve: not too conservative, but not reckless either. Can’t help it: that sort ‘o stuff resonates with me 😉

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If LPP manages to demonstrate feasibility (or just establish new science with the strong magnetic field effect for example), there will most likely be a flurry of interest in theirs, but also in other, related, proposals.

It’s phase II that you should be worried about because that’s where the skeptics will most likely direct their arrows, and justifiably so, in particular they will: nag about electrode erosion, skin the “onion”, snifle about the ultra-fast-yet-to-be-invented switches with unheard of duty cycles. But this will all be fine. Because, and i completely agree with Tulse here, it puts you in the hands of the engineers (that’s what ITER is: it’s not big science, rather it is big engineering; and admittedly, a tiny bit of science as well 😉 ).

I’m not saying they can lean back and rake in the money after achieving phase I. But let’s face it: it would be a monumental contribution in it’s own right and, once replicated, would lend LPP a tremendous credibility.

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Why wait for others? Just start your own reality show: “LPP Fusion” 🙂 Just show, as vividly as possible, how the LPP crew is trying to save the world. Don’t be afraid to show also the trivial part. In fact these shows are made up of trivial stuff anyhow. People drilling holes, connecting cables, staring at scopes, that’s the stuff we wanna be seeing! That’s how people understand something *real* is happening. Then in 30 sec. mini interviews with the scientists you can spoon feed to your audience some of the real info you want conveyed.

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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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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?

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Lerner wrote: NIF is actually funded as a nuclear weapons simulation device, not as a step towards electric power generation. In theory, however, the knowledge gained, if it reached ignition, would help in desiging a inertial fusion power device using some other source of energy than foot-ball-field-sized lasers.

In the same way the US got reinvolved in ITER, after having withdrawn initially. For a large part this was because the entire contraption is one big neutron-source that is useful for breeding fissile material. This is something that the US cannot but stay involved in. Perhaps not so much for the prospect of clean power, but more from a nuclear weapons proliferation perspective.

Having said all this. Of course these facilities represent great science. Of course we’re all curious about what will be the results. Yet we should be curious for the right reasons.

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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.

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Breakable wrote:

And then a new matchhead is positioned within micrometers of the correct spot, and repeat. Uh-huh. The whole project is whacked.

They probably though about that, with their laser rulers and such….
It’s better than that even… Word has it that the director of NIF thought the whole thing up whilst clayshooting with his hunting buddies 😉

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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! 😉 ]

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