Cosmology Curiosity

IEC for clean cheap nuclear energy

Dr. Robert Bussard is a PhD from Princeton and former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission.

The video on inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC) is 1.5 hours long. It was delivered by Dr. Robert Bussard last November 9, 2006.

Here's the abstract of the talk, from Google Video:

"This is not your father's fusion reactor! Forget everything you know about conventional thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature plasmas, steam turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a thing of the past. Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC), an old idea that's been made new. While the international community debates the fate of the politically-turmoiled $12 billion ITER (an experimental thermonuclear reactor), simple IEC reactors are being built as high-school science fair projects.

"Dr. Robert Bussard, former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission and founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2), has spent 17 years perfecting IEC, a fusion process that converts hydrogen and boron directly into electricity producing helium as the only waste product. Most of this work was funded by the Department of Defense, the details of which have been under seal... until now.

"Dr. Bussard will discuss his recent results and details of this potentially world-altering technology, whose conception dates back as far as 1924, and even includes a reactor design by Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of the scanning television).

"Can a 100 MW fusion reactor be built for less than Google's annual electricity bill? Come see what's possible when you think outside the thermonuclear box and ignore the herd."

A summary of the talk can be seen from Karl Schroeder's website. An excerpt:

"They're that small and lightweight. But most importantly, his primary design does not even produce nuclear radiation. A nuclear fusion reactor that doesn't produce nuclear radiation? Yes, you read that rightly. By fusion boron instead of hydrogen, an IEC device can produce pure electricity plus an exhaust of helium atoms--neutron free. Boron is literally as common as mud, so we'll never run out of it. And a fusion reactor that produces no radiation cannot be used to create nuclear weapons."

Dr. Bussard passed away last October 2007. The community that has developed is supposed to ensure that Bussard's work will continue to be pursued: EMC2 Fusion, IEC Fusion, etc.

Technorati Tags: Bussard, focus fusion, Google Tech Talks, IEC, inertial electrostatic confinement, nuclear energy, Robert Bussard

Focus fusion for cheap clean energy

Eric Lerner is the executive director of the Focus Fusion Society and president of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. in West Orange, New Jersey.

Last October 2007, Lerner presented in Google Tech Talks focus fusion as "the fastest route to cheap, clean energy."

Here's the abstract of the talk:

"To bring the whole of humanity up to the living standards of the developed world requires a new source of energy that is clean, inexhaustible and much cheaper than any existing source -- fossil, nuclear, solar or wind. Fusion with hydrogen-boron fuel, which allows direct conversion of fusion energy to electricity, can be that source. It could cut energy costs more than ten-fold. It produces no radioactive waste and would be safe enough to situate in residential neighborhoods.

"Of the three approaches to achieving hydrogen-boron fusion, focus fusion, using the dense plasma focus device, has experimentally achieved conditions that are closest to those needed for net power generation. It is the only approach that can utilize the high magnetic field effect, which reduces the cooling of plasma by x-rays, helping to achieve the multi-billion-degree temperatures needed for fusion. A currently-planned three-year, $2 million experiment, if funded, can demonstrate the scientific feasibility of focus fusion.

"This presentation will review the history and status of focus fusion and briefly compare it to the two competing approaches, Field Reversed Configuration (recently funded by Paul Allen) and Inertial Electrostatic Confinement, championed by Dr. Robert Bussard, a recent Google Tech Talk speaker.

"Speaker: Eric J. Lerner is President of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in West Orange, NJ and Executive Director of the Focus Fusion Society. He has been an independent researcher in plasma physics since 1979, and has become internationally known for his studies linking cosmic plasma phenomena and laboratory fusion devices, especially the dense plasma focus. He has developed original theories of quasars, large scale structure, the microwave background and the origin of light elements. He is the author of The Big Bang Never Happened, published in 1991 by Random House. In 2006 he was a Visiting Scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Chile."

Lerner incidentally is one of the prime advocates of plasma cosmology. It is an alternative cosmology that does away with the Big Bang.

Technorati Tags: cosmology, Eric Lerner, focus fusion, Google Tech Talks, pB11, plasma, plasma cosmology, plasma physics

[Off-topic] Wealth & religiosity

The Pew Global Attitude Project published earlier one of its survey results.

Excerpts from the 'Religion and Social Issues' portion --

"Global publics are sharply divided over the relationship between religion and morality. In much of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, there is a strong consensus that belief in God is necessary for morality and good values. Throughout much of Europe, however, majorities think morality is achievable without faith. Meanwhile, opinions are more mixed in the Americas, including in the United States, where 57% say that one must believe in God to have good values and be moral, while 41% disagree.

"The survey finds a strong relationship between a country's religiosity and its economic status. In poorer nations, religion remains central to the lives of individuals, while secular perspectives are more common in richer nations. This relationship generally is consistent across regions and countries, although there are some exceptions, including most notably the United States, which is a much more religious country than its level of prosperity would indicate. Other nations deviate from the pattern as well, including the oil-rich, predominantly Muslim -- and very religious -- kingdom of Kuwait."

The full report can be downloaded from here.

Can the above be the reason why the Bible said that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"?

country ranking, country wealth, Pew Report, religiosity, surveys, trends, wealth

Imagining the 4th spatial dimension

Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953) was a leading philosopher of science.

Among Reichenbach's teachers were Max Born, David Hilbert, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein.

On visualizing the fourth spatial dimension, Reichenbach in his The Philosophy of Space and Time tells us imagine the following:

"Let us assume that the three dimensions of space are visualized in the customary fashion, and let us substitute a color for the fourth dimension. Every physical object is liable to changes in color as well as in position. An object might, for example, be capable of going through all shades from red through violet to blue. A physical reaction between any two bodies is possible only if they are close to each other in space as well as in color. Bodies of different colors would penetrate each other without interference ... If we lock a number of flies into a red glass globe, they may yet escape: they may change their color from red to blue and are then able to penetrate the red globe."

Here's another way of imagining moving through another spatial dimension.

Imagine yourself as a two-dimensional creature in Flatland. And let's say you are in the middle of a circle and you were asked to move on the condition that you should remain equidistant to every point in the circle's circumference. Impossible, right?

It is actually possible. That is, if we consider an additional spatial dimension. By moving upward or downard (instead of left/right or forward/backward), one will then be able to move and yet remain equidistant to all the points in the circle's rim.

[Image: Wikimedia Commons]

Technorati Tags: 2D, 3D, 3rd dimension, Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland, geometry, metaphysics, 4th dimension, quantum, spatial dimensions