Strange science takes time

Don Boyer Waialua, HI — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 03:06:31 GMT

"Bogus" implies deliberately faked or manipulated. This hard science just may be a wrong path. Science is full of them. They cause progress.

Strange science takes time

Fred, La Crosse, WI — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:45:17 GMT

Scientific breakthroughs come not from drilling where others have drilled their wells many times before, but by testing new ground. Most scientists choose the safe and secure path: they stay with the crowd in order to keep their academic tenure and government funding intact--university and government administration hates mavericks and risk-takers too. So, true scientific and technological progress has slowed as a result. Yes, mavericks are sometimes crackpots, but the men in this article are informed and competent scientists working at the frontiers of knowledge and are not demented crazies out to build perpetual motion machines; we need more of their kind, desperately--bravo and hats off to them!

Strange science takes time

Lee Bouton, Biddeford, ME — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:09:55 GMT

Whatever became of Fleischman and Pons "cold" fusion?

Strange science takes time

Adam (pronounced Ah-dumb) Chula Vista — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:20:40 GMT

Wow. Um... I'm, like, too dumb to understand what's being discussed. Fusion...is that something you put in your car and drive it? No, wait, you put it in your hair and comb it. I get it now.

Strange science takes time

anon, .sg — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:11:33 GMT

Proposing a bold hypothesis and testing it to see if it withstands refutation - isn't that what science is all about? The _experimentum crucis_ is what Cramer et al. are attempting, and I wish them luck.

There's nothing 'bogus' if it turns out that their hypotheses are falsified. Science will have gained by the *ruling out* of theories (like how Bell's inequalities famously ruled out local hidden variable theories in QM).

Strange science takes time

Rob — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:41:38 GMT

From what I've read ITER tokamak is taking funding away from a lot of more under-promoted promising alternatives. Fusion can be the trump card for solving the energy and greenhouse crises, but its just not taken seriously enough. The fusion bomb followed fission in less than 10 years. But fusion reactors taking 50 years plus?

Strange science takes time

R. C. Southern California — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:57:08 GMT

Too bad about Bussard. I believe he was on to something, but he left us prematurely. On another note, I wonder if the ring dye laser pictured is for sale, I need a few of the parts on it to get mine operational.

Strange science takes time

Steve White — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:18:44 GMT

As a physician scientist myself, I'm heartened to see that Dr. Cramer has received sufficient small, private donations to fund his project. With NIH and NSF funding relatively static and with the larger private donors generally funding more mainstream proposals, a 'distributed' model of funding of quirky, interesting projects by aggregating small donations for specific proposals might be a useful way to push science forward.

Strange science takes time

Onevoice, Frederick, MD — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:53:49 GMT

Great ideas, great experiments and great experimenters all. A breakthrough in any of these experiments would have profound effects on us all. Thankx for keeping us updated.

Strange science takes time

Bill Hensley, Houston, TX — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:20:09 GMT

It was inevitable that someone on this thread would ask whatever happened to cold fusion. The effect was difficult to reliably reproduce. Most experimenters failed to do so, and the ones who did couldn't tell you what they did to make it work. So the scientific community at large chalked it up to experimental error and moved on.

One difference between that and Bussard's Polywell is that the latter doesn't involve novel physics. It's mainly an engineering problem. The questions turn around whether it's possible to build a practical device that produces net energy.

My own opinion is that people were right to look into cold fusion, and right to drop it when it didn't pan out. I feel the same way about the Polywell approach to fusion. The upside is just too enticing to ignore it, even if the odds of success seem low. I'm glad to hear that the Navy has decided to restore a small amount of funding so they can try to validate Bussard's results.

Strange science takes time

John Doe, Seattle, Wash. — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:31:04 GMT

I thought Science was about building a consensus.

Strange science takes time

Kaelen Treesong, Springfield Oregon. — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:18:29 GMT

I think that there are no
wrong results in a scientific
investigation. Mistakes and
failures, are just part of
the process. How else would
one know, not to try the same
experiment again, exactly the
way it was previously done?
And as for achieving a working
fusion reactor, that's great.
But what are they going to
actually do with it? Have they
found the equivilent of
"dilithium crystals" already?
And then everybody forgot to
announce that discovery to the
world. Or are they really
going to use that marvelous
technology, to heat water to
make steam, that will drive a
mechanical generator?
And if so, what a waste.
So while the fusion reactor is
being developed, how about
someone, finding a way to use
all of that energy, that is
usually found in the heart of
a star, in a much more
efficient way.

Strange science takes time

Mark Wakely — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:22:48 GMT

Three cheers for the rogue scientists who trust their hunches, enough so that they're willing to turn a deaf ear to the naysayers. There was a time when inventors threw caution to the wind and tried all kinds of unorthodox procedures and techniques, often just to see what might happen. They understood that even failure can teach you something. Now, with big business sponsoring most of the research labs in both the private sector as well as in colleges and universities, the goal is less one of exploration and discovery than profit potential. Granted, research in some of the more esoteric fields require big bucks, but with so many research labs under orders to only pursue specific lines of research- the potentially profitable kind- diversity of research has been lost. Innovation for the sake of innovation now takes a distant back seat to the demands of the marketplace, which is great for consumers but lousy for pure science.

Strange science takes time

S.B. Stein E.B. NJ — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:42:17 GMT

I would love to see the work Dr. Bussard left us to be completed. It would be neat to have your own fusion generator for you house. You could look at a little gauge and see your are running low on fuel; flip through the instructions and find you are making fuel yourself if you catch the drift (ala Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future).

Strange science takes time

Frank, Dallas, TX — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:19:55 GMT

In the reverse-time causality experiment, it seems to me that the signal would "travel" backwards in time within the particle itself, until you reach the moment it left the emitter. Then, going forwards in time but following the other particle, you reach the point where the other particle's state is measured.

In other words, you are transmitting information over a distance at a speed that is "faster than the speed of light", but you are doing it without using speed at all: you're going backwards and then forwards in time to affect the present. You still can't affect the past, and the future can't affect the present, but the present can affect the present, even over a great distance.

Strange science takes time

Frank Glover Rochester, NY — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:56:36 GMT

Is all this cool, or what?

(As someone who's followed all of the above since learning of them in the last year or so.)

Strange science takes time

Jonathan Katz, St. Louis, Mo. — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:07:09 GMT

It was demonstrated (theoretically, but this theory is sound and well tested, based only on electrostatic interactions among particles and known nuclear cross-sections) that Bussard's devices cannot make net power---the particles scatter out too fast. Perhaps one will learn something useful by building them, but it won't be how to make fusion power.

Strange science takes time

John in Michigan, USA — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:35:23 GMT

@John Doe, Seattle: "I thought Science was about building a consensus." LOL, nice.

Strange science takes time

Bill Hensley, Houston, TX — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:59:55 GMT

Jonathan Katz:

Do you have a link to an article that discusses the theoretical limitations of IEC efficiency? Does it address the Polywell specifically? I wonder why Bussard & co persisted if it had been proven that their approach would fail.

Strange science takes time

Joe C — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:34:55 GMT

I can't wait to find out the results of the reverse-causality experiments, I'm so glad that you're on it Alan. The others, too, but I have a bet on that one ($10, but I'd bet a million that it's true).

Strange science takes time

R. A. Nebel, Los Alamos, NM — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:25:23 GMT

A quick comment on Mr. Katz's statement: I presume that he is referring to the work of Nevins and Rider from the early '90s. That work did not agree with the earlier papers of Bussard, Rosenberg and Krall which concluded that when you looked at the orbit averaged collisionality the system worked fine. Furthermore, the most complete treatise on this was published by Chacon, Barnes, Miley and Knoll in Physics of Plasmas in 2000. This work used the full bounce-averaged Fokker-Planck operator and concluded that IEC systems would indeed work.

So what should one conclude from this? When similar assumptions give you different answers, it means that the physics is sensitive to these effects (i.e. the devil is in the details). The only way to settle that issue is in the laboratory, which is what we intend to do. If we find that the collisionality is a problem, there are ways to innovate around it (see, for instance, Barnes and Nebel in Physics of Plasmas 1998).

Strange science takes time

Louis Savain, Houston, TX — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:01:53 GMT

John Cramer and all the so-called physicists who champion research in time travel are obviously crackpots. That they managed to obtain funding for their Star-Trek voodoo science is a sad commentary on the state of physics. Every physicist (or independent thinker) with a modicum of logic already understands that nothing can move in time or spacetime. None other than Sir Karl Popper (a friend of Einstein who introduced the notion of falsifiability to science) wrote in his "Conjectures and Refutations" that "spacetime is Einstein's block universe in which nothing happens".

Shame on Cramer and those who fund his crackpot science with the taxpayer's money.

Strange science takes time

Carlos Morlock, Port Saint Lucie, Florida — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 23:33:02 GMT

I wrote a question today to Wolf Blitzer of CNN for his up-coming Presidential debate about the promising IEC fusion process.

I wrote: Concerning the "Root Cause" to most of the world's problems (Addiction to fossil fuel). I hear vague promises about improved energy policy from all of the candidates left to right. But for the life of me, I do not understand why NO ONE is specifically talking about the late Dr. Bussard's Polywell WB-7 fusion reaction test's that will occur near March 08 in New Mexico (DOD Project)???

Wolf, I just do not get it. I am sitting at the edge of my seat, knowing that if they are able to replicate the results of the WB-6 reaction, unlike the Tokamak they will in affect have answered the physics questions necessary to solve the energy crises in a revolutionizing way. Cheap, Clean, Compact (non-radio active) fusion that can rapidly replace nuclear, coal, oil plants, around the world. Not to mention ship, train, rocket, tractor trailer engins, etc.

Kudos to MSNBC for taking a look at what could be the most serious event in the history of modern energy developement!

Strange science takes time

Robert Horning, Logan, Utah — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:38:11 GMT

In regards to attempting to get a question about Polywell fusion or any of these items asked in a presidential debate:

Try much harder in avoiding terms and phrasing the question that make it sound like you are a crackpot yourself. There are a whole bunch of worthy scientific investigations going on from studies of earth science, basic physics, engineering challenges for extracting energy from a huge variety of sources, or even space exploration in general that a more valid question to be raised is something more like this:

A number of major scientific investigations are now approaching costs that are reaching billions of dollars in terms of their overall funding levels. Among these include the development of the Ares/Orion rocket system, the ITER Tokamok experiment, and several others in unrelated scientific disciplines. Is it wise to continue funding of these major scientific and engineering developments at the expense of even considering other approaches that might work at a fraction of the cost to accomplish the same ultimate goals? How would you, as President, seek input from the scientific and engineering communities of our country and help fund alternative approaches to some significant research questions facing our country today? Do you believe that answers to these questions can come from only one source, or that parallel research approaches might be a waste of taxpayer money?

Now that is a solid question I would love to see a presidential candidate answer honestly.

Strange science takes time

Carlos Morlock Port Saint Lucie Florida — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:58:41 GMT

Wolf answers crackpots all the time! He wouldn't have a show if he didn't :)

If my question seems like it is coming from a crackpot to some, then maybe that is a good sign! There are many that have asked questions in science that seemed like "crazy questions and or ideas" to those that could not see or think outside the box, but indeed turned out to be viable solutions to many of life's problems.

What I did not want to do was ask the same old caned vague type of question that gets the same old kind of answer a non specific answer about a lot of technologies. Don't get me wrong I am interested in many developing sciences. But for me, after doing my own research and understanding what has taken place and is taking place with Dr. Bussard's IEC fusion process, it is clear that this is something that is SPECIFIC to what I consider to be "the root cause/bottleneck" fossil fuel addiction to many of the worlds problems.

The way you framed your question can not SPECIFICALY answer my question about why Dr. Bussard's possible solution is not being talked about on the campaign trail like other specific subjects. I am a very persistent individual. I can assure you that Wolf Blitzer and or candidates have read or heard about my SPECIFIC question by know ;)

Strange science takes time

Carlos Morlock Port Saint Lucie Florida — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:30:33 GMT

Concerning Mr. Hornings comments & opinion about my IEC Fusion question: Thank you for your kindness and Re-kindling of my desire for people to hear and know about Mr. Bussard's IEC fusion posibilities. I posted your "Solid Question" along with my "crackpot" specific question on CNN!!!
Hopefuly they will get asked ;)

Strange science takes time

M. Simon, Rockford, Illinois — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:58:53 GMT

For those of you wishing to get up to speed on the Bussard technology may I suggest:

http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/

The ultimate goal is direct conversion of the reaction energy to electricity using reversed linear accelerator technology.

Steam generation would be an intermediate step. If it was necessary at all.

Strange science takes time

TallDave — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:43:15 GMT

Re Katz and Nebel above:

For those interested, Science Magazine hosted another very technical discussion of IEC net power viability issue between Nevins/Carlson (who cite Rider's paper) and the Rostoker/Monckton team from Tri-Alpha, who are pursuing a different IEC design.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5375/307a

The TriAlpha guys (who are funded by Paul Allen, incidentally) seem to argue the magnetic field becomes important when the correct equation is used.

I will have to dig up that 2000 paper, I hadn't seen it before. Thanks Dr. Nebel for that comment, and best of luck to you and your team. The Polywell community will be following developments with great (but hopefully not intrusive) interest.

Strange science takes time

rob cain — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:02:20 GMT

To: R. A. Nebel, Los Alamos, NM (Sent Friday, January 11, 2008 4:25 PM)
in response to your response to:
Jonathan Katz, St. Louis, Mo. (Sent Friday, January 11, 2008 9:07 AM)

so, can the theories (models of collision, containment, cross-section, etc)) yet be resolved theoretically, even without experiment? have they been? or is that itself a ground for further theoretical research?

Strange science takes time

R. A. Nebel, Los Alamos, NM — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:33:01 GMT

To Rob Cain, M Simon and TallDave:
In general, some types of plasma theories work pretty well and others not so well. Plasma theories work pretty well for calculating equilibria and global stability. Transport calculations and kinetic calculations are considerably more suspect. The thing that raises the red flags about the collisionality calculations is that when you look at the Chacon work he sees a big difference between square potential wells (as assumed by Nevins) and parabolic potential wells. I would not have expected that result, and that tells me that none of these results are truly "generic". I think this issue has to be resolved experimentally. That's not to imply that these calculations have no value. What they do tell you is that collisions on the boundary are beneficial (they remove angular momentum) while collisions in the core can be a problem. This, of course, was known by Bussard and Krall a long time ago. It's also possible to affect these collision rates by techniques like gas puffing into the boundary (i.e. introducing neutrals).
Also, I would like to thank M Simon, TallDave and their fellow bloggers for their continued interest in this technology. We appreciate that a great deal, but as you might imagine we have been a little too busy to communicate very much with the on-line people.

Strange science takes time

Mark Duncan, Menlo Park, CA — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:51:25 GMT

Many of the papers relating to Robert Bussard's IEC fusion can be found at http://www.askmar.com/Fusion.html

Strange science takes time

Tom Ligon, Manassas, VA — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:00:55 GMT

Thank you, Dr. Nebel and team, for taking up this challenge! You already know I wish you all the best, and I congratulate you on the speed and efficiency with which you have gotten WB7 to this point!

Mark Duncan, I cannot think of a finer library of Inertial Electrodynamic Fusion reference materials assembled anywhere on the web that what you have put together. Your hard work at producing better graphics for these materials is epic. All, do visit Mark's website.

And MSimon and team, you guys just rock!

Strange science takes time

Tony Rusi, Issaquah, WA — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:49:06 GMT

The war in Iraq has raised the price of gasoline. That was the GOAL. They also caused long term NAVY Energy Research to be shut down, to pay for the War, this is what shut down Bussard's polywell fusion work.

If they wanted to lower gas prices, they would be drilling in Anwar, which has 30 years of fuel. They would be drilling on our coastlines, like Cuba is. They would be building oil refineries, but they have not built one in the USA in 30 years. They would be building nuke plants, but they have not built one for decades. The Neocons are making money with high oil prices. Cheney made 3000%.

On the Left, they want "Green Power". So where is the the Left in supporting biodiesel, cellulosic alcohol, and electric cars? You can buy an alcohol still today. You can buy a flex fuel car today that runs on e85, which is 85% alcohol and 15% regular gasoline. You can make you own e85 today. Why can't you buy e85 today? In some places with a vested interest like corn crops, you can. The only answer must be is that the Left is making money off high oil prices too.

Why did Trent Lott get paid by Nissan to take the flex fuel incentives out of the Recent US Energy Bill? Because the Japanese are behind the US automakers in Flex Fuel technology.

Read "Energy Victory" by Robert Zurbrin. Destroy OPEC now! The US Congress can destroy OPEC with the stroke of a pen, by mandating that all cars sold in the US be flex fuel. Write your Congress Critter! Your children's future depends on it.

Strange science takes time

Auntiegrav — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:53:02 GMT

There is nothing wrong with pursuing any of these ideas, and they illustrate the proper methods to advance our knowledge. The idea that we need to replace OPEC with something clean and abundant doesn't consider that we have other resources which are also getting scarce, and that if we had fusion power available in 1940, we wouldn't have a planet left by now. Thank the stupidity of our greed for the high price of oil and the chance to think about what we are really here for. We don't need a crash program. We need a program for Crash.

Strange science takes time

Aaron McEvoy, Denver, CO — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:50:39 GMT

To Dr. Nebel,

Are you implementing POPS into WB-7 and are Park and Co. still working on this at LANL? Also, is WB-7 an 8-cusp device? Also, many US universities are using gridded IEC devices since they are much easier to construct. Are there any promising programs out there using the WB design or similar configurations?

Strange science takes time

M. Simon, Rockford, Illinois — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:56:46 GMT

Auntigrav,

If we had this in 1940 we would start with mining the oceans for minerals. Second we would be in space big time. Lots of stuff in space. Mining the asteroid belt would be a reality.

Strange science takes time

Phillip J. Duncan, Long Beach, CA — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:46:34 GMT

It would seem that an economically viable fusion reactor might be a game changer when it comes to population sustainability of the earth. It would open up entire new sources of raw materials, such as the ocean mining mentioned by M. Simon. It would allow the use of all oil and natural gas to be dedicated to the manufacture of goods... including CO2 free and environmentally friendly ways of tapping into the almost unlimited unconventional shale and sand oil. It would allow for skyscraper farms with artificial sunlight. It would make the benign processing of the waste streams of society possible.

Main caveat being that the devil of fusion lies in the specific capital costs of producing a reactor. ITER for instance probably can succeed eventually at producing continuous net power, however the expectation now is that it is likely to still be economically infeasible because of the cost of the machine, even though the fuel would be nearly free. I don't believe the research into the Bussard reactor is progressed enough to have much of any idea how expensive a commercial device might be. The capital costs would need to work out cheaper than solar for it to be viable. The above scenarios, however, are based on coming much closer to achieving the old goal of "electricity too cheap to meter."

Even meeting that rather lofty goal, there would obviously be some upper limit to the sustainable population of the world... but it likely would prove to be far greater than what it would otherwise be.

It will be an exciting year to follow the work of the late Dr. Bussard. If Dr. Nebel is still following these comments, I'd be interested to know if the government money this time around came with any restrictions on publication, as was apparently the problem in the past.

Strange science takes time

Adam, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:58:22 GMT

With sufficiently cheap power the whole raw materials bugaboo becomes rather silly. Raw materials can come from straight dirt if one was so inclined. Look up "fusion torch" to see what can be done.

Of course we might run into issues with excess heat - but that's a different ball-game again.

Strange science takes time

Chuan Xihu Molson, WA. — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:36:13 GMT

Thank god Cramer could make it work. Read about Tesla work HUMMM Akira Kawasaki and The Les Case family were and are now in the history of some very good proof. The wave pool is corect but the usage was not. After a day when the stars roll up like a scroll many will know. in china we used Chi power in three laser and sonic in the particle beams this works. You won't like what it does. the DC power only needs be min. My left hand and arm are numb from the field of the Optic gen. We will use the same way if we let the Case family do what needs to be done. China is way ahead, But south Am. has a plant that is working too. Check out Qinghai China Chuan Xihu

Strange science takes time

Chuan Xihu, Molson, WA. — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:05:18 GMT

Anyone ever hear about a little company in Joplin MO. 1977 owned by teladyne who made the first litiuam rechargers closed by was the Motarola in Webb city,MO. They were looking for a long life battery. They got it. Where is the company to day? Owned by a few people eh. The studies still go on. It is great that there is hope for us after all. It soes seem strange that 8 people allwho work have worked with fusion have died. remember the 54 gallon carb. or the sears rachet wrench of 1964. They suddenly died. How about SFC Dir of San Jose, calf. 1988 stelth boomer from Auburn, WA. Died in a nursing home two weeks after his testing was takin over.My Friend Akira Kawasaki in Japan after Kobe shock wave took them out. The cost of power is not cheap. a fusion battery imploding will take out about one acre. Check out Kobe. Check out Wuhan falls 33,000 died after the release of fusion. not contained corredtly. We are tallking about mini dark holes????? Chuan Xihu

Strange science takes time

Joe — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:34:06 GMT

One of Fusion best kept secrets is the fact that all money for fusion research is just for that, Research and nothing more. There is no mandate by our government or the Department of Energy to achieve anything other than satisfy scientific curiosity, this is fact, that can be confirmend by simply asking them for their mandate. I know because I asked. They told me point blank they are not currently not required to develop anything that is useful. This is a fact. It's not about developing a fusion power plant. In fact even if by accident they developed or discovered a power device, they have no mandate to develop it into a power producing device. Got to love our taxes at work.

Strange science takes time

Robert M., Camp-Hill, PA — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:51:52 GMT

With time travel why hasen't anyone taken into consideration that we move around the earth axis very fast and through space around the sun so if you time travel backwards 6 months the earth six months earlier will be on the other side of the sun from where you enter that space time at and you won't be happy in empty space that far from oxygen and earth.. hope you have a nice space suit.. also with the causality experiment i hope his detectors account for this... otherwise even if it works it wont be detected.... feel free to email me with any comments rob.mcclintic@gmail.com

Strange science takes time

David Higgins — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:45:29 GMT

Philo T. Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an Idaho sharecropper. He spent most of the last decades of his life trying to continue development on the Farnsworth Fusor - a fusion reactor. The device worked and is being recreated today, but was never developed commercially. Robert Bussard and his company EMC2 were building an advanced version of this device, much more in the vein of Farnsworth's original design than the simpler IEC devices that are being built today by most people following the much simplified design of one of the people who worked in Farnsworth's labs. It works - and is even being developed as a commercial neutron source, but Farnsworth himself is still seen as such a 'Kook' that his name was used for the 'crazy old professor' in the cartoon = Futurama. He did - however, invent the electronic Television tube - in his sharecropper's cabin in Idaho. The ones that had been developed by the big companies were an un-workable electro-mechanical design; so RCA sent a spy to his little lab and stole the design from somewhat naive Farnsworth. It took many years and a lot of fighting for Farnsworth to receive any compensation at all for his work - and never really received the credit he deserved - his FUSOR work had to be carried out pretty much on his own till - like Bssard,he died but his work will live on.u

Strange science takes time

Parker Gabriel, Philadelphia, P.A. — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:55:01 GMT

Too many of the remarks posted here (thankfully, not all) read as though those who posted them think humans should stay on Earth and extinct each other and themselves--whatever happened to the spirit of exploration?

If we do become enough of a spacefaring society to be involved in an interstellar community of worlds and peoples, then the posts in question would read like manifestos of a "Back-To-Earth" terrorist conspiracy. Those who posted them, without specifying which ones or naming names, should all be ashamed of themselves.

Strange science takes time

Henry Gibson — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:36:54 GMT

The Farnsworth, Bussard, Hirsh and similar electrostatic confinement fusors actually produce and can produce a lot of neutrons in the right mode with deuterium.

Many cold fusion experiments at the University of Utah actually worked and put out a lot more heat than had been electrically pumped into them. A silicon transistor will not work if the silicon is contaminated with more than a few parts per billion of nitrogen or iron, so why should any blob of palladium work. Every catalyst can be poisoned by a small amount of some substance. The palladium probably made the process too expensive anyway. Just like the pure silicon for many solar cells makes solar power more expensive than either Canadian or French nuclear power as well as any coalfired powerplant in the US or china....

Strange science takes time

John Dope, Honolulu, HI — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:22:59 GMT

Ugh, scientists are so stupid. fusion is the easiest thing to make...i made a fusion generator in my basement. Talk about idiots!! im so sick of dumb people, im not goin to waste my breathe.

Strange science takes time

jp straley, hickory, nc — Mon, 26 May 2008 04:10:56 GMT

Those of you that think cold fusion is a joke -- it is not! Google "LENR" and you'll come up with the LENR-CANR site. A little reading and you will find that Low Energy Nuclear Reactions can be done in fairly simple apparatus, and that the experimental results are repeatable. My take is that the mechanism is not yet worked out, and that it has been somewhat difficult to make an apparatus work predictably in the lab--not every researcher has been successful. Machines to create the phenomena have been worked out, so that even moderately talented lab rats can probably measure a few neutrons from the reactor, as well as quantify the excess energy production.

If Bussard Polywell works out, LENR won't be a particularly useful approach to fusion except in isolated locations. But it is real.

Strange science takes time

Theodore Rigley, Omaha, Nebraska — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:40:03 GMT

Yes, yes, but what about the Brehmstrallung?

Strange science takes time

Matt Kaskowitz — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:37:54 GMT

According to Dr. Bussard, "cold fusion" is a phenomenon that falls under the category of "micro-fusion". Based on the laws of physics, it's not possible to "scale up" this micro-fusion curiosity. Scientists are not going to be able to create "cold fusion" power plants, or an otherwise significant source of energy from this.

Strange science takes time

wondering — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 12:36:16 GMT

How big is the WB-7 polywell? Is the chamber where the fusion takes place 1 cm from one side to the other or 1000 cm from one side to the other?

How big would one expect a 100 megawatt poly well to be?

Thanks,

Strange science takes time

Tom Ligon, Manassas, VA — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:23:29 GMT

The WB7 device probably has a magnet radius of about 0.3 meters and the vacuum vessel is probably roughly a meter across.

I would expect 100 MW power reactors to be 10-15 times bigger, in rough numbers. They won't fit in your car, but they would be small compared to the equivalent fossil fuel powerplant. The power conversion equipment required to utilize DC output fro p-B11 would a modification of existing substation equipment. If DD fusion were used, you would need heat exchangers, turbines, etc like a fossil fuel plant.

Strange science takes time

Michael, VA — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:20:37 GMT

Cramer's experiment seems to have a loophole whereby you could invoke paradox. By adjusting the detector on the slow light path (and expecting entaglement to do the same on the fast path), you are altering the result of photons that have already passed through the detector on the fast light path. So its doubtful this could work; if you have already got a result on the fast path, changing the slow path result can't change that past fact. If it did, you would just start getting definite results immediately before you began adjusting the fast path detector. Almost as if it was "anticipating" your adjustment.

Now, lets say you upped the delay to 10 seconds with a longer fiber cable. If this was working as expected, you would be "magically" unable to adjust the slow-path detector unless you had 10 seconds of prior feedback on the fast path detector that you were in fact going to adjust it, and which point you would be forced to adjust it. It sounds bizzare. If you violated the conditions you would be in essence causing a paradox. What is more likely to happen is the detection on the fast path will alter the conditions of the particle still on the slow path and the results it gets in the detector - in what manner I don't know. Instantaneous communication does not require time travel to be possible. It just means something gets there faster than the light does, and in all likelihood its not a signal through space, its an entangled particle which is already touching another particle on some other dimension at 0 distance. Even though they are at a physical X,Y,X distance. That's fine with me; extra dimensions are likely. But don't expect quantum entanglement to send messages back in time!

Strange science takes time

Matt Y, Boston MA — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 06:45:05 GMT

@ Robert M

Do keep in mind that this is not simply a matter of removing these particles from one time and dropping them into the same space in a separate time. This is more along the lines of the particles moving through time backwards, it is not removed from time, it would theoretically stay with the planet in it's past state.

Strange science takes time

Tom Kansas City, Mo — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:34:22 GMT

re: reverse time causality. What happens if you attempt to receive a laser pulse before you send it and succeed but then refuse to send the pulse?

Strange science takes time

Matt Kaskowitz — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:47:42 GMT

You would succeed in sitting there waiting for the laser pulse; without ever having received it. Depending on how patient you are, you might just leave in frustration.
Here's one: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood inside WB-8 during testing?

Strange science takes time

John Doe, Seattle, Wash. — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:52:34 GMT

The sad thing, is that this is based of Nikola Tesla work, and there are only a are people in the world who knew that much about it, and Bussard was one of them. So to say it's "new" science is false! Ideas like this work has brought us Alternating Current!!!! This is huge, people do not let this "slip into government hands" and only use for military applications!!!!

Strange science takes time

4tesla — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:54:54 GMT

Someone mentioned crackpot scientist, as in being a crackpot scientist is a bad thing. All science is a form of something strange and weird with a bit of crackpot built right in. Imagine trying to tell someone long ago about anything today known as electronics and they would have thrown you in the crazy ward. All present science came from those pioneers of yesteryear who were shall we say crackpots. They dared to try something different and weirder and where did it lead us to the modern world of technology. I guess your called a crackpot when you understand something but others don`t. Modern science is slowed because people are scared or even bullied with the threat of being called crackpot if they dare stray from the controlled modern day concept of science. Its like when geeks were bullied and made fun of because they were different yet most of your technology started from some geeks work. And people don`t understand what is modern controlled science, and whats funded and allowed out to the public in a completely controlled manner. But dare to invent something better beyond the controlled science society and all kind of troubles can happen, especially loss of funding if your well known. Frankly I admire the crackpot who dares to go further beyond the control. People have no idea it seems how much they are kept in the dark about so many technologies because of our modern day controlled society. They control what you get and what your taught, and they prefer you to stay as ignorant as sheep. But did you know this, maybe you were not taught it yet, you only know what your told right. Better teach yourself a bit perhaps. What is in the books, is only the least amount they want or rather let you know!