The Polywell: The Worlds Most Important Invention You Have Never Heard Of

[Ichingcarpenter]

magine a machine which produces cheap, clean, free electricity, with no carbon foot print. Imagine that we could purchase such a machine, install it in our business or apartment complex and, be done with purchasing energy from the grid. Imagine a company, selling these machines all over the world, licensing the technology. An invention like this would be akin to all other great inventions, the car, the computer, the phone. Such an invention would end global warming, fix energy poverty and, solve the energy crisis. It could change everything. If such an invention existed, it very well could be the greatest invention in human history. This was the dream of a physicist name Dr. Robert Bussard. In 1984, he came up with an idea for just such an invention. He called it the Polywell. For 20 years, the US government funded his research. Millions of dollars were spent in perusing this dream. Right before the funding was cut in 2005, Bussard claims to have a research break through. He spent the last years of his life fighting for research to be re-started. He died before this dream was realized. What has happened since is akin to a rumbling in the science community. The Navy has restarted funding and after a proof of principal study, has increased funding to the highest level in Polywell history. Have they found something? They are not saying. Real physicists only give the Polywell an outside chance of working. There is a growing movement of followers in the internet community; the Navy is keeping all results hidden from the public. What follows is an explanation of why the Polywell, might be the greatest invention that you have never heard of.

Introduction:

Dr. Robert Bussard received his PhD in Physics from Princeton University in 1961. In 1970 he went to work for Bob Hirsch in the Atomic Energy Commission the forerunner to the department of Energy. Together, they founded the US Tokomak Fusion program. Dr. Bussard saw fusion as the path to energy. Fusion is the nuclear process where atoms fuse together. In the process a small amount of mass is converted to energy; through Einsteins’ famous equation E=MC^2. Bussard worked on the Tokomak, but eventually gave it up as a lost cause. “…even some its proponents say, they don’t think it will ever be economic, but its’ really good science…” In the late 1970’s and early 80’s Dr. Bussard turned his attention to the Fusor.

SNIP


he Machine:

In the 50’s and early 60’s scientists were very excited by the Fusor as a possible energy producing machine. However, they had a problem. The Fusor had metal cages. These cages would conduct electricity. Much of the electricity created by the Fusor was sapped away, and leaked out through the cages. It seemed that nothing could beat this. Many people gave up on the Fusor as a fusion machine and started work on laser fusion or tokomak fusion. Bussard started to look at these devices and realized a possible change. He asked himself, how else can one make a big voltage drop? The idea of creating a point charge occurred to him. Imagine if you had a very strong negative charge in the center of a vacuum chamber. Charged Ions would see this, like a valley between two mountains. They would fall down the valley, build up enough kinetic energy and slam into one another in the center and fuse. How do we contain a cloud of electrons?

The solution was pretty ingenious. The idea was to contain the electrons with a magnetic field. This concept was nothing new. The tokomak contains ions, electrons, and everything else in a strong magnetic field. This field makes a ring, like a race track, for atoms to race around. Bussard needed a magnetic field which forced the electrons into the center, while giving them field lines which they could re-circulate on. Much like an interstate highway system, magnetic field lines act like roads electrons can re-circulate on. They “recharge” as they re-circulate. What he designed was 6 magnets in a cube. Here is a picture of this:





MORE OF THE STORY HERE INCLUDING THE SKEPTIC'S SIDE:

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/blog/9702-polywell-worlds-most-important-invention-you-have-never-heard.html

[lazarus]

1. that's a fairly poorly written article

Electricity that is both cheap and free?

The Navy's funding for this doesn't mean much. The government has been known to fund really silly pseudoscience before (men who stare at goats, for example).

[AlecBGreen]

6. perhaps they mean cheap to produce?

:shrug: you're right... poorly written

[Xipe Totec]

2. It's a little early for April fool's. n/t

[damyank913]

3. Yeah-I made one of these outta beer cans...

[old mark]

4. Anyone actually interested in reading more about this, try this site:

Link: http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php

Some people take this very seriously.

mark

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. Very Good Site I would also suggest their FAQ on it to bring

some up to speed on the language used and its meaning.
http://www.ohiovr.com/polywell-faq/index.php?title=Main_Page

From NBC Science

The mainstream approaches to commercial fusion would involve heating up plasma inside a doughnut-shaped magnetic bottle known as a tokamak, or using lasers to blast tiny bits of deuterium and tritium. The former approach is being followed for the $13 billion international ITER project, and the latter would be used by multibillion-dollar experiments such as the National Ignition Facility in the U.S. or HiPER in Britain.

Then there's the $1.8 million (yes, million) project that's just been wrapped up at EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. in Santa Fe, N.M. The experiment, funded by the U.S. Navy, was aimed at verifying some interesting results that the late physicist Robert Bussard coaxed out of a high-voltage inertial electrostatic contraption known as WB-6. (The "WB" stands for Wiffle Ball, which describes the shape of the device and its magnetic field.)

An EMC2 team headed by Los Alamos researcher Richard Nebel (who's on leave from his federal lab job) picked up the baton from Bussard and tried to duplicate the results. The team has turned in its final report, and it's been double-checked by a peer-review panel, Nebel told me today. Although he couldn't go into the details, he said the verdict was positive.

"There's nothing in there that suggests this will not work," Nebel said. "That's a very different statement from saying that it will work."

By and large, the EMC2 results fit Bussard's theoretical predictions, Nebel said. That could mean Polywell fusion would actually lead to a power-generating reaction. But based on the 10-month, shoestring-budget experiment, the team can't rule out the possibility that a different phenomenon is causing the observed effects.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/12/16/1718741.aspx


EMC2 fusion site:


http://www.emc2fusion.org/

Its not pseudo science BTW

[hunter]

7. I keep an eye on this technology. It doesn't seem too farfetched.

My own perfect power source would be something like this that was inexpensive enough to displace coal, but not so inexpensive that humans would flip out in another binge of consumerism, population growth, and environmental destruction like that which was fueled by oil.

Until humans learn some self control inexpensive energy sources are a huge threat to earth's environment. I'd be happy if this works, but I don't want it to work too well... Huge fleets of fusion powered container ships covering the seas and overflowing with cheap consumer crap is not my idea of utopia.

Nor do we need cities on every last square meter of desert coastline, made habitable by fusion desalinated seawater and inexpensive air conditioning.