Focus Fusion?

[Reality Check]

OK, lets get into Lerner's 2012 paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3694746 ...

This is the paper that Eric is so proud of being read a lot on the journal web site. That is a measure of how well that paper was advertised or is available through Google. What matters more in science is the citations of a scientific paper. ADS gives 5 citations over 4 years. So probably not a revolutionary, breakthrough paper even given its specialist nature !

 

[Reality Check]

Ben M has finally raised some actual issues in physics, or at least in the history of ideas about the dense plasma focus. First, let’s look at the question of Bostick’s overall qualitative model, cited in my JOFE paper. This model says that the discharge create vortex filaments of plasma, which then , in the central pinch kink themselves up into a tiny plasmoid or ball of plasma, where the production of beams and the heating to fusion temperatures occurs.

Please give an accessible citation to Bostick’s overall qualitative model. ben m's criticism is that the citation in your paper is to an paywalled experimental paper. There seems no hint of a "qualitative model" in the abstract. What you describe looks like Bostick’s description of the production of plasmoids in dense plasma.
Plasmoids are not even mentioned in the abstract of X-ray fine structure of dense plasma in a co-axial accelerator!

 

[Reality Check]

Short paraphrase—plasmoids are the source of x-rays, high energy particles and neutrons(from fusion reactions).

A paraphrase that could be a misrepresentation of the paper unless The evolution of the plasmoidal structure in the pinched column in plasma focus discharge actually states that plasmoids are the source of "neutrons(from fusion reactions)". It is certainly not in the abstract.
Please confirm that P Kubes, et. al. actually states this, Eric L.

 

[Reality Check]

The reaction between a proton (hydrogen nucleus) and a boron-11 nucleus yields a single carbon-12 nucleus. This is too excited--has too much energy left over from the reaction--to stay together, so it splits up almost instantly into three helium nuclei--alpha particles.

it is surprising that you do not mention the consequences of having 11B and those 3 alpha particles, Eric L which you should know.

11B + α → 14N + n​

or for that matter the reactions:

11B + p → 11C + n
11B + p → 12C + γ​

A pure p + 11B fuel would create slow neutrons and gamma rays. I suspect they will be much fewer than and less energetic those from the D-T reaction.
You seem to be ignoring the need and thus cost for an pure p + 11B fuel to minimize radioactive waste.

 

[ben m]

Please confirm that P Kubes, et. al. actually states this, Eric L.

It does.

Eric has been reasonably forthcoming in this thread and I don't think that your browbeat-the-crackpot shotgun questioning is appropriate here, RC.

 

[BenBurch]

The technology for the LPPFusion nuclear fusion R&D project may be valid. But that web site includes some obvious woo, e.g. Cosmic Connection

• Plasma is not "99.99% of the matter in the universe".
  There is much more dark matter and dark energy than normal matter.
• "The discovery by Alfven and his colleague Carl-Gunner Falthammar of the basic role played by filaments of current in the cosmos in the formation of structure from stars up to galaxies laid the basis for understanding filamentation in the plasma focus device."
  Alfven and Carl-Gunner Falthammar were pioneers in plasma physics. It is that which could be cited as the basis for understanding filamentation in the plasma focus device as in any plasma.
• Alfven did not use plasma physics in his critiques of the Big Bang theory.
  Alfven used plasma physics in his invalid Plasma Cosmology theory.
• The incorrect assertion that coronal loops are plasmoids and "release energy in the form of solar flares" (these are magnetic reconnection events).
• A fantasy that quasars are plasmoids.
  Along with the insane logic of Herbig-Haro objects exist, look like quasars, do not involve black holes so quasars cannot involve black holes!

The validity of Focus Fusion becomes less likely when the President and Chief Scientist is Eric J. Lerner who is a denier of an expanding universe, e.g. persists in the ignorance that large scale structures cannot have formed in the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang when the consensus is that they can.

Fred Hoyle was a Cosmology "crank" too. But if he were alive and wanted to do a similar thing, most people wouldn't think twice about it. Yeah, Eric L is probably 100% wrong about his cosmology, that does not make him a charlatan or an imbecile.

 

[Eric L]

RC has gone a long way to making this thread unreadable, like anyone who tries to monopolize a discussion with multiple posts.

Before the thread become totally useless to all except dedicated scrollers, I’ll just answer a few points.

First, Ben m and RC’s sillyogism “If Lerner advocates an unpopular view in cosmology he is unreliable, crazy and so should be ignored in fusion” has nothing to do with science, which is not a game of popularity and faith. You can use the same logic with Alfven: “since Alfven devoted a great deal of his career to an unpopular view of cosmology, the rest of his work should be dismissed and the folk who gave him a Nobel prize were stupid.” Or you could equally well turn it around and say ”Since Alfven is a Nobel prize winner, his views on cosmology must be correct”.

But Ben m and RC are really just arguing that anyone who advocates unpopular views in any field should be shunned as a heretic. “You have to BELEIVE in the Big Bang, brothers, or you should go straight to hell” This is religion pretending to be science.

Actually science is done by experiment and observation not reputation and faith. People took the Wright brothers' science seriously –(and yes, they made serious advance in aerodynamics --) when they saw their airplane fly—they did not judge them on how popular their bicycles were.

Second, RC has confused radioactive waste with radioactivity. Yes, a DPF will produce radioactivity, but so does everything else. You are radioactive yourself RC--we all are. Radioactive waste is material that is radioactive at levels detrimental to human health. A focus fusion generator will produce no radioactive waste. Details here.

Third, Jean Tate, I don’t think a discussion of whether there is scientific evidence against the concordance cosmology should be discussed in a thread labeled Plasma cosmology. Right now there are lots of astrophysicists (although still a minority) who think the concordance model is invalid, but very few of them are also plasma physicists. The key question is whether there is a lot of valid evidence against the concordance cosmology, if there are valid alternative hypotheses that fit that evidence, or if concordance cosmology is just as undeniable as, say Maxwell’s equations. So I would suggest a thread entitled ”Is there evidence against the concordance cosmological model?” Or something like that.

By the way, the fact that a workshop devoted to this question could be held at a major astronomical conference is evidence that astrophysicists do not consider this question crazy, even if the great majority of cosmologists still work within the concordance model.But many wanabees on the web react to questioning the Big Bang theory as if we were questioning the existence of God. Maybe this is because some authors have used the the Big Bang theory to prove the existence of God--I don't know.

 

[Reality Check]

It does.

Thanks ben m.
I was worried about that paraphrase since the abstract mentions nothing about neutrons or fusion. A strange omission in a paper in a journal about fusion!

 

[Reality Check]

RC has gone a long way to making this thread unreadable, ...

I did not call you "unreliable, crazy". I did not say the web site delusions or your stance on the Big Bang means you "should be ignored in fusion". I asked question any one would ask.

• If the web site for a project contains delusions about some areas of physics then how can we trust the web site statements about another area of physics?
• If the Chief Scientist on a project is deluded about some areas of physics then how can we trust their assertions about another area of physics?

An actual calculation on your web site which is good, Eric L.
NO radioactive waste, detailed calculations. The things I find dubious are

• It assumes the need for pure H (reasonable).
• It assumes the need for pure 11B (is this even available?).
• It ignores the gamma rays produced.
• It is only for the Be electrodes - what stops neutrons and gamma ray irradiations the rest of the apparatus?
• No citation for "Secondary neutrons per aneutronic reaction (our calculation—some other estimates are as low as 1/1000)".

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Boron 11 is known commercially as "depleted boron". Why concern over gamma rays?

 

[Reality Check]

Boron 11 is known commercially as "depleted boron". Why concern over gamma rays?

Gamma rays cause damage at a cellular level and are penetrating, causing diffuse damage throughout the body. However, they are less ionising than alpha or beta particles, which are less penetrating.
At the very least this suggests the need for shielding (more cost).

One of the LPP Fusion claims is "Unlimited energy. If we take boron out of seawater, there is enough boron to last us a billion years at ten time’s current energy production rates." But that contains ~20% of 10B which produces neutrons on fusing.

On one hand: Depleted boron is a byproduct of the nuclear industry.. This suggests either dependency on the nuclear industry or somehow isolating 11B from seawater boron.
On the other hand: The p-11B reaction has been thought about for some time for use in fusion. Someone, somewhere, sometime must have done the cost analysis for establishing a source of 11B and found that it can be done economically. So where is the LPP Fusion citation?

 

[Eric L]

Boron-10 and boron-11 are easy to separate because they differ in mass by 10%. Chemical separation is possible. Also, you only have to get rid of the 20% B-10 to get pure B-11 since that is most of natural boron. Right now there is very little demand so it would be produced in lab quantities. But we have talked to potential suppliers and on an industrial scale separation would be very cheap.

This is only to increase fusion yield by 25%. The reaction of B-10 with hydrogen to produce a neutron has a negligible cross section. The main source of neutrons is the secondary reaction between helium and boron-11, which produces about 1/500 th of the total energy

 

[BenBurch]

Boron-10 and boron-11 are easy to separate because they differ in mass by 10%. Chemical separation is possible. Also, you only have to get rid of the 20% B-10 to get pure B-11 since that is most of natural boron. Right now there is very little demand so it would be produced in lab quantities. But we have talked to potential suppliers and on an industrial scale separation would be very cheap.

This is only to increase fusion yield by 25%. The reaction of B-10 with hydrogen to produce a neutron has a negligible cross section. The main source of neutrons is the secondary reaction between helium and boron-11, which produces about 1/500 th of the total energy

This looks easily scalable; http://www.google.com/patents/US5443732

 

[ben m]

First, Ben m and RC’s sillyogism “If Lerner advocates an unpopular view in cosmology he is unreliable, crazy and so should be ignored in fusion” has nothing to do with science, which is not a game of popularity and faith.

Read more carefully, Eric. Two points (read them both carefully).

• It is my belief that your cosmology ideas are something worse than "unpopular". I believe that your cosmology ideas are so obviously wrong; when I see that you are advocating an idea in spite of the evidence, I infer that you are capable of advocating ideas in spite of evidence. That's the specific thing that makes your cosmology reputation cross-over into your laboratory work. I see you are advocating a fusion idea, I want to know if you're doing so because of evidence or in spite of it.
  
• This does not mean "you should be ignored", and please note, as evidence, that I am not ignoring you. What I am doing is asking for better evidence than the evidence I see you have provided. If you are capable of constructing arguments that fooling you yourself, I don't want you to be able to take those same arguments and use them to fool me. Note the particular sort of statements I've questioned:
  • You say something like "Thus-and-such quantitative model <crappy citations> is the best explanation for decades of data<no citation>"---yes, that's precisely the category of statement which (in crackpot cosmology) is supported only by self-delusion. Should I believe it? (Note that I didn't ignore you. I dug through the references and asked for more.)
  • You say something like "this is sort of photograph that shows the plasmoid size <grainy photo that looks like it has many other interpretations>"---yes, again, that's precisely the sort of analysis where (in crackpot cosmology) self-deluded authors obtain the "numbers" that go into their models. It's not unreasonable for me to ask---I mean it when I say the photo doesn't appear to support your claim. What do you want me to do---should I assume you have done careful image analysis? Why should I assume that?

It's like the Boy Who Cried Wolf story, right? In the story shepherd-boy told a lie, and then another lie, and then for some reason he expected people to take him at his word again when his wolf-report was actually true. Maybe the boy should have anticipated this and brought a camera along for his third night in the hills. "I'm not going to ask anyone to accept my usual evidence this time, I'm going to nail everything down."

You can use the same logic with Alfven: “since Alfven devoted a great deal of his career to an unpopular view of cosmology, the rest of his work should be dismissed and the folk who gave him a Nobel prize were stupid.”

Why are we assuming and guessing? When possible, we actually evaluate things. Later in life, Alfven wrote down lots of vague-unsupported-speculations about cosmology, but wrote them in a way that tricked naive readers into thinking they were facts. If Alfven says that X explains Y well, you really really want to follow up and check the details before accepting that X explains Y well. If you do that to his (short, lucid) 1942 MHD paper it all checks out. If you do that to "Cosmic Plasma", it doesn't. Alfven is not a trustworthy writer, but also he wrote down parts of MHD correctly in 1942. Nothing odd about that.

 

[JeanTate]

<snip>

But Ben m and RC are really just arguing that anyone who advocates unpopular views in any field should be shunned as a heretic. “You have to BELEIVE in the Big Bang, brothers, or you should go straight to hell” This is religion pretending to be science.

I don't think so.

I think both are quite devoted to digging into the details of claims/papers/ideas/etc, to see how well they are self-consistent, consistent with relevant data, consistent with other claims/etc, etc.

They each have their own ways of going about this 'digging', of course.

Actually science is done by experiment and observation not reputation and faith. People took the Wright brothers' science seriously –(and yes, they made serious advance in aerodynamics --) when they saw their airplane fly—they did not judge them on how popular their bicycles were.

Does anyone disagree? I don't think so.

However, the way actual science is done includes scrutiny, checking, re-checking, and critiques. As I'm sure you'll agree. And welcome.

<snip>

Third, Jean Tate, I don’t think a discussion of whether there is scientific evidence against the concordance cosmology should be discussed in a thread labeled Plasma cosmology.

I agree. Thanks for clarifying.

Right now there are lots of astrophysicists (although still a minority) who think the concordance model is invalid, but very few of them are also plasma physicists. The key question is whether there is a lot of valid evidence against the concordance cosmology, if there are valid alternative hypotheses that fit that evidence, or if concordance cosmology is just as undeniable as, say Maxwell’s equations. So I would suggest a thread entitled ”Is there evidence against the concordance cosmological model?” Or something like that.

Hmm ...

Myself, I would much prefer to use phrases like "consistent with relevant data", "self-consistent", etc (than "is invalid", "valid evidence against", etc).

Also, I think a fair bit of work just getting agreement on basic terms would be well worth it; e.g. "the concordance model", "the concordance cosmology".

In any case, a thread such as you propose could become massively complicated ... after all, every mention of 'tension' in any cosmologically-relevant paper could count as 'inconsistent with (some) cosmological model'. After all, as I'm sure you'd be the first to agree, these 'tensions' are one of the key drivers of the science ... they lead to new observations, new models, new hypotheses ...

By the way, the fact that a workshop devoted to this question could be held at a major astronomical conference is evidence that astrophysicists do not consider this question crazy, even if the great majority of cosmologists still work within the concordance model.

FWIW, I think you have a rather unusual way of expressing things like this ... somewhat over-simplification (for the audience), downplaying important nuances, etc.

But many wanabees on the web react to questioning the Big Bang theory as if we were questioning the existence of God. Maybe this is because some authors have used the the Big Bang theory to prove the existence of God--I don't know.

This is rather over the top, don't you think?

Anyway, I thank you for your posts on focus fusion (the topic of this thread), hope to dig into them in the next few days, and maybe post some questions on what I learn.

 

[JeanTate]

<snip>

You can use the same logic with Alfven: “since Alfven devoted a great deal of his career to an unpopular view of cosmology, the rest of his work should be dismissed and the folk who gave him a Nobel prize were stupid.”

Why are we assuming and guessing? When possible, we actually evaluate things. Later in life, Alfven wrote down lots of vague-unsupported-speculations about cosmology, but wrote them in a way that tricked naive readers into thinking they were facts. If Alfven says that X explains Y well, you really really want to follow up and check the details before accepting that X explains Y well. If you do that to his (short, lucid) 1942 MHD paper it all checks out. If you do that to "Cosmic Plasma", it doesn't. Alfven is not a trustworthy writer, but also he wrote down parts of MHD correctly in 1942. Nothing odd about that.

This.

Eric L, I think ben m's post (well, the part I'm quoting) rather nicely shows what I was saying in my last post.

Good science requires that all claims (etc) be examined critically, right? Including Alfven's. Whether his papers (or other writings) are about plasmas, cosmology, or anything else.

 

[ben m]

Good science requires that all claims (etc) be examined critically, right? Including Alfven's. Whether his papers (or other writings) are about plasmas, cosmology, or anything else.

Right, but also with a sort of labor-saving aspect to it. Everything needs to be checked by somebody. Not everything needs to be checked by everybody.

For an extreme example, there are lots of derivations in Jackson's electrodynamics textbook which I have not checked for myself. I am very, very confident that I can use the results without checking and not come to regret it later. Jackson is a reliable person individually, plus I know the heritage of the textbook and the number of people who know its details inside out. The LIGO collaboration, sure, they wrote a paper and I am sure (from personal knowledge) that every sentence in it was read and agreed on by dozens or hundreds of people. (Which is not to say nobody made a mistake, but certainly that nobody made a glaring mistake.) When I'm reading a brand-new, small-audience, small-author-list paper? Yes, I'm on the lookout for errors, especially when the authors are outside their expertise (the data-analysis section of an instrument-builder's paper is sometimes dodgy, for example; or the places where a theorists' paper tries to sketch an experimental apparatus.) Everything should get checked by someone---sometimes by me.

 

[JeanTate]

Right, but also with a sort of labor-saving aspect to it. Everything needs to be checked by somebody. Not everything needs to be checked by everybody.

For an extreme example, there are lots of derivations in Jackson's electrodynamics textbook which I have not checked for myself. I am very, very confident that I can use the results without checking and not come to regret it later. Jackson is a reliable person individually, plus I know the heritage of the textbook and the number of people who know its details inside out. The LIGO collaboration, sure, they wrote a paper and I am sure (from personal knowledge) that every sentence in it was read and agreed on by dozens or hundreds of people. (Which is not to say nobody made a mistake, but certainly that nobody made a glaring mistake.) When I'm reading a brand-new, small-audience, small-author-list paper? Yes, I'm on the lookout for errors, especially when the authors are outside their expertise (the data-analysis section of an instrument-builder's paper is sometimes dodgy, for example; or the places where a theorists' paper tries to sketch an experimental apparatus.) Everything should get checked by someone---sometimes by me.

Yep.

And there are some sometimes quite subtle aspects to this, as I know from my own, entirely independent, research.

For example, in arXiv you often read a Comment (in the abstract page) like "Accepted for publication in (journal)", which leads you to think that the arXiv version is essentially the same as what you'll get if you penetrate the journal's paywall (there will be formatting differences, some grammar/spelling changes, etc). And I'm sure that in most cases this is so. HOWEVER it is not always! For example, mistakes happen, and the lead author posts a v1 draft instead of what was actually submitted (and accepted).

Then there's laxity due to extreme familiarity. For example, I've come across figures with ridiculously wrong axis labels, even in highly cited papers (e.g. should be log(sols), but is labelled sols) ... pros in the narrow field don't even see the error.

And wasn't it found, when machine checking became available, that a ridiculously high number of printed solutions were wrong (a book of integrals? I don't remember; many years ago now)?

Here's a bugbear of mine: "in press" or similar ... a citation/reference in a paper to one that has not yet been published. Sure, many such do, in fact, get published, often quite soon afterwards. HOWEVER I have come across rather too many which, it seems, were never published.

Then there's "the data this paper totally depends upon are available at this URL" (paraphrase, OK?). Really? I've found some real whoppers ... broken/bad links, totally different datasets, gibberish, ... Contact the lead author to get the real scoop? After all, their email addy is in the paper! Well, that often doesn't work either ... why would a scientist respond to a mere Jean Tate of no "institution"? and the email addy is dead, the author now works somewhere else, ...

I read one arXiv abstract which had the comment "Accepted for publication in (journal)" ... it was over two years' old, and no such paper had apparently been published, in (journal), or any other.

So, yeah, Jackson is surely reliable; for the rest?

 

[marplots]

Is there a mechanism for comments when a paper is posted online? I think this would be an excellent mechanism for post-publication peer review and quite valuable.

 

[Eric L]

changing the channel

I’m going to switch over to a new thread discussing “Evidence against concordance cosmology” which I’ll set up presently. I’ll monitor this thread to reply to concrete questions about our data and theory, but not to discuss “reputation-based” comments on our work or name-calling.

To reply to marplots on comments on papers, Researchgate does have this feature, but I don’t see it being used a lot.