[Alex Pollard]

In the test, the magnet reached 20 tesla

It did this while consuming only about 30 watts of energy — several orders of magnitude less than the traditional copper-conducting magnet that MIT had tested previously, which used 200 million watts

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/08/fusion-gets-closer-with-successful-test-of-new-kind-of-magnet.html

[Alex Pollard]

Eric debated very well. In the end it was just a disagreement about cosmology.

[Alex Pollard]

Blacklight Power is now known as Brilliant Light Power. They claim to generate more than 100kW from a “hydrino” process involving oxygen and a molten silver “catalyst”:

http://brilliantlightpower.com/suncell/

The SunCell® comprises six fundamental low-maintenance commercially available systems, some having no moving parts and capable of operating for a decade or more: (i) a start-up inductively coupled heater to first melt silver; (ii) a gas injector to inject hydrogen derived from water and an injection system comprising an electromagnetic pump to inject molten silver and a very stable solid source of oxygen that reacts with the hydrogen to form the hydrogen to hydrino catalyst; (iii) an ignition system to produce a low-voltage, high current flow across a pair of electrodes into which the molten metal and fuel are injected to form a brilliant light-emitting plasma; (iv) a blackbody radiator heated to incandescent temperature by the plasma; (v) a light to electricity converter comprising so-called concentrator photovoltaic cells that receive light from the blackbody radiator and operate at light intensity of over one thousand Suns; and (vi) a fuel recovery and a thermal management system that causes the molten metal to return to the injection system following ignition.

However there may be a conventional explanation. BLP should explain

• Why is a UV light-emitting (“black light”) process, as the “hydrino” reaction allegedly is, resulting in black-body radiation? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to capture UV light directly with photovoltaic cells?
• Why is it necessary to continually inject molten silver into the reaction chamber, why can’t a small pool of molten silver suffice?
• Does the molten silver absorb up to 20 times its volume in oxygen gas?
• Does the silver oxidise, releasing heat in the process? If so, could the amount of heat generated entirely explain the supposed power output of the device?
• Is molten silver cycled through the device? If so, is it cooled, and only cycled through the device after releasing its oxygen (known as “spitting”), thereby returning to a pure metal state, hence it is regarded as a “catalyst”? Does silver eventually get saturated with oxygen, and fail to “generate” more power, unless it is cycled? If so, is there an unavoidable “heat loss” as the silver cools and an oxidation reaction reverses?
• Has BLP actually established there is a net energy gain over the complete cycle? Does BLP believe that heat losses are merely a consequence of a lack of thermal insulation and problems with recovering heat from, or maintaining the heat in, molten silver? Or will heat losses eventually be found to be chronic, due to the absence of net energy gain?
• Has BLP considered, and done tests to exclude the possibility, that what they are seeing is actually the oxidation of silver and its reversal? Has BLP fully accounted for all the energy flows in their system?

[Alex Pollard]

Mills is still wowing audiences with impressive-sounding power numbers, but does he ever mention “net energy”?

I guess he is using short pulses so he can boast about high power levels i.e. energy divided by a brief time span.

If they put enough current through a material they can make it glow like the freakin’ Sun.

Black body power spectrum just sounds like it is hot, not that it is emitting a “hydrino” spectrum.

Pretty tragic that he has pulled in tens of millions of dollars.

[Alex Pollard]

Joeviocoe wrote:

….Can you provide a reference stating _______ cannot _________?

= formula for logic flaw.

You are asking someone to prove a negative. It is up to you to prove the affirmative. But I suspect if you tried, you will find out how wrong you are.

So you can’t provide a reference either.

[Alex Pollard]

Atomic mass of 3 could also be an isotope of helium. The SAFIRE documentary will be fascinating.

[Alex Pollard]

News out of NASA is that their tests of the EM drive space propulsion concept suggest it is a real effect.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

Discussion centres around using a compact reactor as is used in nuclear submarines to enable spacecraft to reach the Moon in as little as 4 hours and Mars in 3 months.

One problem may be that the heat dissipation requirements cannot be met when there aren’t unlimited quantities of sea water to cool the reactor.

But a bunch of 20MW Focus Fusion reactors could offer an excellent power-to-weight ratio yet run very cool, not relying on a steam cycle to operate.

Maybe NASA would be interested in supporting the development of Focus Fusion?

Regardless, taken with the reports of faster-than-light transmission thru the device, I think I can safely say we are now living in the future! Exciting times!

[Alex Pollard]

Question answered

[Alex Pollard]

By particle I mean a single microscopic particle of radioactive material, made up of millions of radioactive atoms, such as what was released in Fukushima. Can you provide a reference stating such a particle cannot induce cancer?

[Alex Pollard]

Yes in the video the guy goes to various places with above-normal radiation levels. The doses he receives are pretty trivial but at one point near Fukushima he removes his face mask because it’s probably “overkill”. Well I think that marks him out as foolish. Because getting a particle of plutonium or uranium stuck in his lungs will probably give him cancer. The chance of that is quite low but why take the chance? The *average* radiation dose is low because not everyone gets a bit of highly radioactive material stuck in inside them. But if one unluckily ingests that particle (breathes it, eats it) and it remains there, then all the radiation charts in the world won’t help, cancer is very likely. That is, the risk is much higher even though the average radiation does is not hugely more than otherwise. So there is a qualitative difference between bits of radioactive fuel being released into the environment vs other ionizing radiation of various types.

Do the xkcd numbers for Fukushima come from Geiger Counters? Or from air filters? I can’t tell from the xkcd references such as http://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/other/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/03/18/1303727_1716.pdf

Numbers from Geiger Counters won’t tell us the risk of ingesting a radioactive particle. The exposure number for 3 mile island is external exposure, so I presume they are omitting what I am talking about. And there is nothing in the chart about bio-accumulation of radioisotopes in Pacific fish. If xkcd were trying to down play the risks of uranium they couldn’t have done a better job.

[Alex Pollard]

There is a big difference between diffuse exposure to ionising radiation and a radioactive particle consisting of radioactive atoms with long half-lives constantly peppering away at a small volume of surrounding body tissue. The chart doesn’t appear to account for that qualitative difference and so understates the risk from nuclear fallout.

[Alex Pollard]

vansig wrote:

here is a nice chart we should all familiarize ourselves with,
https://xkcd.com/radiation/

That chart doesn’t distinguish between ionizing radiation such as an x-ray or beta particle, and radioactive material which one may breath and then have sitting in your tissues emitting for the rest of one’s life. The difference is enormous. I have no problem with one-off exposure to ionizing radiation, instead it is fallout from Fukushima etc which accumulates in the food chain, e.g. fish, and finds its way into our bodies, permanently, that worries me.

[Alex Pollard]

Not much discussion of the most likely cause of magnetic fields – large scale currents. Instead of the universe beginning with mass separation, why not with charge separation?

[Alex Pollard]

Do you actually believe that magnetic field lines break and reconnect, or is the term ‘magnetic reconnection’ just a poor description of another process?

[Alex Pollard]

Di Vita, thank you very much for your response.

The key issue seems to be the validity of macroscopic MHD. This in turn has profound implications for cosmology, wherein for instance, cosmic filamentary structures are not predicted, yet are abundant and are poorly explained using gas laws and gravity with some unexplained magnetic fields thrown in. The crisis in physics only deepens, now with the laughable fiction of “magnetic reconnection”.

My attraction to LPP has from the outset been motivated by Lerner’s challenge to the clear failures of mainstream cosmology, which is completely blind to the overwhelming importance of electrical forces in space.

The main reason why LPP has not received anything like the funding of Tri-Alpha or ITER is exactly this divisive question, the validity of mainstream plasma theory.

So for me it is a matter of intuition. Mainstream cosmology is wrong, therefore LPP could be correct in spite of mainstream opinion, and is in fact the only fusion concept with any realistic prospect of success, because it is not misled by false understandings of plasma behaviour.

[Author]

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