Slashdot Mirror
Eric Lerner's Focus Fusion Device Gets Funded
pln2bz writes "Eric Lerner, author of The Big Bang Never Happened, has received $600k in funding, and a promise of phased payments of $10 million if scientific feasibility can be demonstrated to productize Lerner's focus fusion energy production device. Unlike the Tokamak, focus fusion does not require the plasma to be stable, does not produce significant amounts of dangerous radiation, directly injects electrons into the power grid without the need for turbines and would only cost around $300k to manufacture a generator. Lerner's inspiration for the technology is based upon an interpretation for astrophysical Herbig-Haro jets that agrees with the Electric Universe explanation."
Has the electric universe theory made any headway in offering a viable alternative to currently accepted cosmology? Last I heard it was a fringe pseudoscience based mostly on conjecture and magical thinking.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
This is brilliant. $600k isn't a lot to some people, yet there's a tiny sliver of a chance that the guy is on to something. So he gets funding from a private institution who will be absolutely minted in the very unlikely circumstance that he's right. The odd $600k wouldn't even scratch the surface for more traditional avenues of research where the numbers are into the billions, so there's no real loss either.
Plus, the chances of me getting a backer for my "buttered toast and cat" turbine are much improved. Fantastic.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
It's just a bit harder to take it seriously when the HTML title of the page is still set to "New Page 1"
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I thought it said Eric Lehnsherr for a second.
Congratulations, Mr. Lerner. You've been promoted from crackpot to fraud. Here's your paycheck.
It looks like the tech talk is slashdotted, but if memory serves (and I'm not a physicist, so my understanding is fuzzy at best) the idea is that the device (which has some resemblance to a large spark plug) sits in a chamber of has a large electrical current applied and exploits a sequence of unstable states to produce a small ball of plasma where the fusion takes place. The reaction produces X-rays and a directed stream of charged particles. The X-rays are collected by a sort of multilayer onion-like solar panel that converts them to electricity, and the charged particles also get converted directly to electricity. The device can be relatively simple since there's no need for steam turbines. A steady stream of electricity can be produced by repeating the reaction over and over, and storing the output in big capacitors (and part of the resulting energy is used to initiate the next pulse).
the p+B11 reaction [the one described here] forms 3 He nuclei [p+B11=C12 which splits into 3 He4] all the products are charged opening up an extra route of power generation that isn't solely thermal to electrical conversion however the reaction produces about half the energy per reaction of deuterium/tritium reaction and much higher energies to cause significant fusion.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
What is Slashdot's fascination with this guy? Seems like an article pops up every 3 months. As an undergraduate, I had the pleasure *cough* of working with Mr. Lerner when he came to use our plasma focus to do a p-B11 study for JPL. To get the required diborane gas, a nasty toxin, we had to evaporate decaborane, another nasty toxin. In the end, we had a mess to clean up in our chamber and an academic mess when Mr. Lerner embellished (or flatly misrepresented) the results of the experiment in publication. We had to lobby to get our names off the paper, but there's still a few copies of it floating around out there. Plasma focus technology has been around since the 60s (see the works of Mather and Filipov). They make cute neutron and x-ray sources, but not much more practical for fusion power production than these "bubble fusion" designs. I believe there's still a lot to be learned from the plasma focus, and I'm glad that someone is willing to pay for further research. And if we get p-B11 fusion working, that would be a great step forward too. But I wouldn't give this guy a nickel if his head were on fire, let alone $600,000.
when will these scientists give up and let me ruin the planet.
remember kids, if you stop using oil the terrorists win.
Sounds interesting, but I wish they'd named it after something other than a couple of Ford car models. Ford Fusion, Ford Focus, Focus Fusion?
If they'd wanted credibility, they shoulda gone for something like the Yaris Matrix or maybe the Fit Element.
"there is no hard evidence to support the big bang either."
Not sure what you mean by hard evidence, but um.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation seems to work for most people.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
The cosmic microwave background is as you would see from a closed universe with a period of expansion as current big bang theories say, but is also as you would see from an infinite, approximately homogeneous universe.
BTW, you can't use wikipedia for the debate between the big bang and electric cosmogonies because the debate between them is not only carried out on wikipedia itself but is carried out on almost purely religious grounds using information removal instead of competitive analysis of gathered information. If you use wikipedia for this you'll just end up believing the least scientific theory.
The biggest selling point of p-B11 is that it's aneutronic. But as any chemist will tell you, there's some amount of everything in everything else. You can't realistically get B11 without a little B10 mixed in, which even in the best of realistic circumstances will spew out enough neutrons to drop a human being in a few minutes. It's a lot cleaner than Deuterium-Tritium but it ain't aneutronic and when people find out, you're going to get the same "not in my backyard" public attitude that is strangling fission energy.
I can't really envision use of this technology in a home or small community without stringent
licensing to curb proliferation, taxation of manufacture, sale, possession and operation thereof
and the mandated remote control and monitoring of the device by the government.
There are also further ramifications to having 5MW or more of electrical power in the hands of an
individual. It could be used as a weapon or it could power improper research. The implications
of this device for our control paradigm get worse and worser as devices like that would see use
in developing countries where the control grid is still loosely meshed. Also it would serve to
empower the projects of rogue elites to defy us.
This is definitely not the kind of development our New World needs to see. This technology runs
counter to all our efforts to build a network of interdependence.
As always when these discussions come up you hear a bunch of "but what if it works, the benefits would be enormous". The problem with this type of logic is of course that it can be applied to ANY claim which promises great returns, no matter how patently absurd it is. Alchemy, perpetual motion, alternative medicine, intelligent design... etc... If you just promise big enough implications for your "science" and make the explanation sound complicated enough that people don't understand it, you will always have some suckers going "Even if there is just a 0.1% chance it works, the benefits will be a quazillion dollars." This is how these crackpots get their supporters, and as usual they will yell they are being suppressed and compare themselves to Galileo, Einstein or Boltzmann when anybody from the "dogmatic scientific establishment" (i.e anybody who actually has a clue about the subject ) points out it is bullshit.
Oh, and slash dot will give them front page publicity.
Before you get all up inz:
1) Fast ignition:
ICF is unlikely to ever deliver excess power after conversion efficiencies. NIF uses ~400 MJ to produce ~40 MJ out. Sign me up!
Fast ignition appears to reduce the required input power by about one order of magnitude. Progress in laser diodes appears to offer another. All of a sudden things look very interesting in the ICF world.
2) Magnetized Target Fusion
ICF has high-density (10 times lead -- consider that it started as hydrogen gas) and super-short confinement times. The problem is getting the density. Magnetic approaches have low density (almost vacuum) and long confinement times. The problem is getting the confinement time.
But what about the middle ground between the two? We already know how to confine for "some" time, and compress things "ok". It turns out there's an extremely interesting area of practical design in that grey area between the two extremes, in the performance area we had 20 years ago. MTF attacks that area in an interesting way.
3) Polywell
Let's give Bussard the props the guy deserves. I don't know if the Polywell is any better positioned for success than focus fusion, and I have funny feelings in my gut about all magnetic approaches, but if this guy says it's going to work I'm willing to cut him a whole lot of slack.
Maury
Maury
Equally bullshit. His polywell design wouldn't need any fusion if his claims were correct since it violates the second law of thermodynamics and could hence be used to build a perpetum mobile machine. In particular Bussard claimed that the monoenergetic velocity distribution in the plasma was periodically restored without input of energy. While his device was not a closed system, it can be shown that for such a phenomena to occur the device needs to lose an amount of energy related to the entropy reduction of the plasma ( a mono energetic energy distribution is the lowest entropy distribution possible ). This holds for ALL systems, not just closed ones. As an example, rather chaotic water is able to freeze into a very ordered ice cube by giving up some heat to the surroundings. What this means in practice is that maintaining a non-maxwellian ion distribution in a plasma requires energy. This holds for ANY plasma no matter how it is contained, and the amount of energy needed is given by how rapidly the entropy would increase without an energy input. As it turns out the cross section for fusion is rather small, even at the resonance energy Bussard was claiming to utilize, and it turns out that maintaining the non-maxwellian velocity distribution would require more energy than you could ever get from teh fusion reaction. A couple of notes:
a)This is true for ANY fusion scheme using the p-B reaction in a mono energetic velocity distribution. Even in a head on collision the chance for scattering is so much higher than the chance of fusion that restoring the monoenergetic distribution will require more energy.
b)This does NOT assume that the plasma is quasi-neutral, isotropic or anything like that. The conclusion follows directly from the ratio between the fusion cross section, the scattering cross section and the laws of thermodynamics.
c)It doesn't apply to thermal plasmas since they are at maximum entropy for their temperature. This is why it doesn't apply to Tokamaks, hydrogen bombs, or the Sun.
Bussard and his followers used to respond to this criticism by claiming whoever had come up with it had ignored some of the features of his design, or that they didn't properly understand it or some other similar claim. In reality it doesn't depend on his design. If the second law of thermodynamics is correct, and if the cross section for fusion is much smaller than the cross section for simple scattering ( and it is , even at resonance energies ) then maintaining a non-maxwellian velocity distribution will require more energy than p-B fusion produces.
1) Does this help my cereal stay crunchy in milk?
[ ] Yes!
[X] No!
If Yes, congratulations, you have made a valid contribution to society!
If No, fuck off, this has no bearing on real life. Get a haircut and a job, hippie.
AFAIK, Electric Universe doesn't even have a *hypothesis* to explain the cosmic microwave anisotropy. Which was, by the way, a huge vindication for Big Bang theory, since it was predicted in advance.
By the way -- has anyone else looked up CMEF, his source of funding? Right on the front page, a big pitch for cash:
The Company is privately offering 1,000,000 shares
Centre for Environmental and Energy Resources Sweden AB is raising funds, for demonstrate the scientific feasibility of Hydrogen-Boron fusion and production of net energy by selling shares. Please contact the company at arnold@cmef.eu to discuss investing.
Support a better future
You can help yourself, your country and future generations by supporting us (CMEF). You can assist us by sending a monetary donation. Any assistance you are able to provide will be appreciated. For more information click here
I'd be willing to wager that they don't have the $10m, and might not even have the $600k yet. In fact, their whole website is about how wonderful Focus Fusion and Lerner's work is. So, I mean, acting like you got a grant as though it's some sort of vindication of your technology when it's from what's virtually a fansite isn't exactly fair. It's just some Focus Fusion fans trying to raise money to fund it.
I'll just make a quick observation that the "Tree Power" guy managed to get funding, too.
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I also need US$ 600k for my research project. It would be for purchasing a pair of sharks. I cannot tell the details in an open forum, but it has something to do with defence. Maybe his plasma jet device could also be used, I have not thought it before yet... So far I stuck with a kind of focused light device... But I've already told too much, I have to finish.
It produced plasma stable structures which were then compressed. If was de-funded before it could be proven ( or disproven ).
Disclaimer: I worked on it.
It is really interesting to know that someone is willing to buy in to Lerner's plan. The rest of plasma physics community world are going to be thrilled by this development. Lately, exciting news concerning discharge based plasma technology are coming rapidly. At Sandia, the refurbised Z machine is up and running, Sandia is teaming up with the Russian to develop some next generation pulse generator using LTD technologies. The Plasma Focus guys in Warsaw are busy in some ICTP Trieste's initiatives on Plasma Focus, even in Singapore and Malaysia, there is a computational symposium on Plasma Focus being held. Not forgetting the Chillean group and also some remnants research groups scattered all over Europe. Definitely, things are not going to be the same. It is also feel good to know that people are looking for alternatives other than the gigantic ITER.
Eric Lerner is described in Wikipedia as "a popular science writer, independent plasma researcher and an advocate of plasma cosmology" - IOW, not actually a scientist, although he may well be knowledgeable; he has a BA in physics.
However, what really makes me think twice about this is the claim that they achieve fusion without any radioactive by-products, "only harmless Helium gas". How does one produce such a precise result in an environment that is "several billion degrees"? At that temperature the atoms will move about a bit, to say the least, and we are not even talking about pure deuterium; there will be highly energetic collisions all over the place, and a large amount of particle radiation will be produced, as far as I can see, and the reactor casing is bound to become radioactive.
This has all the hallmarks of a bogus project that has succceeded in milking some funding out of some gullible soul - in this case CMEF, a Swedish startup.
Once you get the suspicion that this is yet another bogus project, you begin to see signs all over the place: superficially it looks as if they have got some government grant in the US, that Eric Lerner is a scientist, and that the company is some well-established research-company (a search for "Lawrenceville Plasma Physics" on Wikipedia redirects to the article about "Eric Lerner") - IOW, the announcement is deceptive; if this was real, they wouldn't need to deceive.
And then of course there is the claim that "electrons are injected directly into the powergrid" based on some cosmological phenomenon, that is not yet well understood scientifically. In a Superman comic, perhaps, but not in real life. This is simply a flight of fantasy, unbound by the boring, mundane routine of real scientific research.
Unfortunately I've yet to see a single person dismiss the Electric Universe who was also familiar with it. From one of their main sites:
As author and EU theorist Wal Thornhill points out:
"If Arp and others are right and the Big Bang is dead, what does the Cosmic Microwave Background signify? The simplest answer, from the highly successful field of plasma cosmology, is that it represents the natural microwave radiation from electric current filaments in interstellar plasma local to the Sun. Radio astronomers have mapped the interstellar hydrogen filaments by using longer wavelength receivers. The dense thicket formed by those filaments produces a perfect fog of microwave radiation - as if we were located inside a microwave oven. Instead of the Cosmic Microwave Background, it is the Interstellar Microwave Background. That makes sense of the fact that the CMB is too smooth to account for the lumpiness of galaxies and galactic clusters in the universe."
Another mention of the subject is here and several more here with some reading. These took me about 30 seconds to find with a Google search for "+electric-universe +cosmic-microwave". So how hard have you worked to understand something before dismissing it or forming an opinion of it? Skepticism doesn't mean you don't even look into something because you dislike how it sounds or you can't see how the mainstream could be wrong.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Thus, something able to track the position of a star to within a milliarcsecond is able to measure distances out to 1000 parsecs (that is, a bit under 4,000 light years, only a fraction of the way to our nearest galactic neighbour).
Even the Gaia mission the ESA are sending up in a couple of years for this explicit purpose only gains about a factor of 50 on that, and that only lets us clearly measure the distance to three or four galaxies. Parallax is a nice base measurement, but unfortunately other methods are simply required to calculate distances to the vast majority of things we can observe.
Electrolysis of water
2 x H2O + 1.25 eV => 2 x H2 + 1 x O2
Ionization energy of atomic hydrogen
13.6 eV
Proton-boron fusion
1 x p + 1 11B => 3 x 4He + 8.7 MeV
So you're only off by around 5 orders of magnitude.
The electrolysis is by far the lowest-energy part of the process. The bulk of the energy in fusion research is spent energizing and containing the plasma, and the difficulty of collecting that much energy from your reaction products is the reason that no fusion project so far breaks even.
Besides, what dope thinks fusion causes dangerous radiation to begin with?
Are you saying you have a realistic design that doesn't?
sudo ergo sum
http://www.mhall119.com
Even if we re-estimate the size, the shape of the rotation curve (how fast things are moving relative vs distance from galactic centre) is still wrong, if we assume most of the stuff is visible (emits or absorbs light). Irrespective of our estimates of the size and distance of galaxies, the observed rotation curve means one of: a) GR is wrong. b) There's a hell of a lot of stuff we can't see (a lot more than we can see) and it's distributed differently (in a halo around galaxies). c) Forces other than gravity play a much larger part than current consensus theories suggest. The shape of galactic rotation curves was the original evidence for dark matter.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
"In particular Bussard claimed that the monoenergetic velocity distribution in the plasma was periodically restored without input of energy."
Ion upscattering was addressed pretty conclusively by Chacon here:
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PHPAEN000007000011004547000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
"In spherical Penning fusion devices, a spherical cloud of electrons, confined in a Penning-like trap, creates the ion-confining electrostatic well. Fusion energy gains for these systems have been calculated in optimistic conditions (i.e., spherically uniform electrostatic well, no collisional ion-electron interactions, single ion species) using a bounce-averaged Fokkerâ"Planck (BAFP) model. Results show that steady-state distributions in which the Maxwellian ion population is dominant correspond to lowest ion recirculation powers (and hence highest fusion energy gains). It is also shown that realistic parabolic-like wells result in better energy gains than square wells, particularly at large well depths (>100 kV). Operating regimes with fusion power to ion input power ratios (Q-value) >100 have been identified."
Here was Bussard's take:
"Ions spend less than 1/1000 of their lifetime in the dense, high energy but low cross-section core region, and the ratio of Coulomb energy exchange cross-section to fusion crosssection is much less than this, thus thermalization (Maxwellianization) can not occur during a single pass of ions through the core. While some up- and down- scattering does occur in such a single pass, this is so small that edge region collisionality (where the ions are dense and âoecoldâoe) anneals this out at each pass through the system, thus avoiding buildup of energy spreading in the ion population (Ref. 14). Both populations operate in non-LTE modes throughout their lifetime in the system. This is an inherent feature of these centrally-convergent, ion-focussing, driven, dynamic systems, and one not found (or even possible) in conventional magnetic confinement fusion devices."
You don't necessarily need to add energy to reorder a system, if reordering puts things back to their lowest energies. Consider some balls lined up at the bottom of a V-shaped well. You disorder them, they bounce around in the V but reorder at the bottom of the well again because that's their lowest energy point. It required energy to disorder them, but no additional energy was added to reorder them.
That's the cosmic microwave background radiation that they're trying to explain, not the structure of the cosmic microwave background radiation anisotropy. A "dense fog" doesn't cut it.
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