What's so Special about Relativity Anyway?

[3l]

Hi Folks:

There seems to be some confusion about the issue of
relativistic electron beams.
Everbody and his dog can recite the mass energy relation but hardly anyone can tell a person about the light barrier or anything
else about Einstein's work. When a Fusor is turned on and makes neutrons then E=mc^2 comes into effect. This is where
public schooling falls down badly...people know the formula but don't know how to use it. With out going into total detail the equation deals with what happens when mass is created or destroyed. When mass disappears such as when a U235 breaks up or when two deuterium ions fuse into helium + products.the mass is released as energy. The kinetic energy is equal the mass
times the speed of light squared. Why is the speed of light so important ? It is the OBSERVED by experimental means as the speed limit of the universe we live in. Accelerators and cyclotrons have verifed the speed limit to exquiste precision.
If a particle goes to or above .5 C it is defined as relativistic.
The problem has been at what voltage does an electron gather
the velocity of light?

So let's see:

The velocity of light is 3.00 X 10 ^8 m/sec
The mass of the electron is 9.109 x 10^-31 Kg
1ev=1.50 X10^-19 J

According to Classical Physics
KE = 1/2 MV^2
KE= 1/2 (9.109 X10-31 Kg) (3.00 x 10 ^8)^2
Ke= 4.099 x 10^-14 J
ev= 4.099 x 10^-14 J) / (1.602 x 10^-19 J / ev)
ev=640,123.81 volts.

So we can easily get there with stuff availible to amateurs.
VDG generator, Multipliers,Marx Telsa coil ect.
However the voltage is even less than that because the speed of light cannot be attained by any particle.

WHAT'S THAT!

Yes as a particle approaches the speed of light it gains mass.
That is what special relativity is all about. The energy equation is just a result of Einstein's discovery that any object cannot go faster than the speed of light. Matter cannot exist at the speed of light so nature preserves the natural order by preventing that matter from reaching the speed of light by piling on more matter
Slowing it down. We can get to 99 % of light even 99.9999999%
But we cannot get to the speed of light.
So to answer your question the voltage to make relativistic electrons is below 640 kv.

Although higher than the usual run of the mill voltages.
It could be done.
marx has been run at 1mev
telsa at 1mev.
multipliers at 5 mev

I hope this clears this up...Ok? :>/

Bonus Question: Who can tell me why the classical KE formula and E=mc^2 look so close...What happened to the 1/2?

(Still a Physics teacher at heart)

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Richard Hull]

Of course at 600 kev the mass of the electron is insignificantly affected as far as fractional masses of itself goes. The Lorentz Fitzgerald relation for mass at relativistic speeds really shows no significant fraction of a single e unit mass gain until really closer to the speed of light than .5C.

The reason we call it relativistic at a slug speed like .5C is that if you are trying to thread the eye of a needle with an electron beam that travels 30 meters through a mag field, the tiny additional mass will need to be accounted for. For moderately impressive mass gains you would need to hit 99.99%C.

For amateurs and electrons, this higher speed is something amateurs can't do.

Richard Hull

[3l]

Hi Richard:

Fortunately CA does not require anything close to 99.99 % the speed of light.
This process uses the speed of the electron rather than it's mass....ramping up its mass would serve no purpose.
Happy results have been done at 10% or less of that speed. The point of the disscussion was to show how easily the electron could be accelerated to high velocty. Most stuff a amateur would be interested in would be in the 2-100kv region.
I was countering a myth that it could not be done in anything less
than a mile long accelerator like SLAC.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[jst]

I beleive, once you pass about 1MEV, you are already in the .9c speed range. And, we hobbyists are already getting ready to go into the MEV and BEV range. The work discussed on this forum pretty much signals that.

But I just had an unpleasant thought. If you accelerate a "particle" thru a 1ev field, it acquires 1ev... Regardless of Its Mass. So unless CA is in fact a WFA structure, where something like 2000 electrons pull a proton along, there is no way we're going to see 4MEV.

More importantly while I treat a WFA device as a kind of plasma transformer, like any other which has 90+% efficiency, I am concerned that CA may not be that efficient. The efficiency levels of various devices plays directly to the issue of "engineering" break even or even sustained fusion.

[3l]

Hi Joe:

WFA is based on the CA process.
The efficientcy of Ca is 90% + in accelerating ions.
This is a charge balancing act one electron to one +1 proton.
A mass of 2000 electrons will pull along 2000 protons.
I think that what is confusing people is how electrons slow down.
An electron can only slow down by collision. Same with the ion.
No collisions no change in velocity. An electric coupling between a high speed particle and a lower speed one will take place over time. It is not instantanious. But a plasma is already at high velocity anyway...it's only problem is dirrection. The plasma ions are moving randomly the moving electron provides a dirrection.
So the velocity change is not that great and the electron does not slow at all.
The energy for the 4 mev proton comes from the energy of the plasma itself...The mass of the plasma has more than 4 mev of total energy in it ...it's just random. The electron merely harvests it.
Think of it as a one turn plasma transformer.
The "strong force" is given free rein here.
Once the electron interacts with the +1 ion the velocity keeps the ion from catching the electron and the ion will goto the velocity of that electron. The veloctity to do that is in the 1000 volt range minimum, any slower it will recombine at some point.


Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Adam Szendrey]

I've posted the same thoughts regarding the CIEC thruster in the topic "A Farnsworth style neutron generator device", but it may be more appropriate to post them here.

When deuterons get close to the speed of light their mass increases exponentially, and so does the energy required to accelerate them. Using c.a. deuterons could be accelerated to extremely high speeds using a moderate power electron beam source.

Deuterons consist of a proton and a neutron. Accelerating the proton will accelerate the whole ion so actually the mass difference is about 4000 fold! That means that with a 2000 eV electron beam a deuteron beam of 8 MeV can be created. That is quite something!

Some questions came to my mind regarding this..
As the mass of the ions increase when approaching relativistic speeds, a longer path is required to reach higher energy levels right (though the mass of the ions and electrons increase by the same proportion their charge stays constant)? The length of this path becomes infinite if we want the ions to move at the speed of light.
My concern is...at very near c deuterons will have quite large mass, and so will the electrons though still 2000 times lighter. How heavy should deuterons be to collapse into eachother (gravitational force gets stronger then the coulombic repulsion)?
What would happen then? Fusion? At those masses that would give out extreme amounts of energy in the form of mass difference! Which brings me to my next question...
If two particles are moving at very near the speed of light and they fuse, will mass difference be as many times higher as many times the particles are heavier?

Adam

[grrr6]

I think the mass difference will be the same once they slow down, so it is proportional to whatever the mass difference becomes at the higher speed. A proton still has the rest mass of a proton no matter what. Likewise for other stuff. So the fusion ash will still produce the same energy release.

The gravity does not need to overcome the whole repulsive coulomb force, only part of that, because at high velocity, ions moving in the same direction produce a magnetic field, and the magnetic field produces an inward force. I believe the forces are equal when v=c, so when you add gravity to the mix, it must be lower than that. How much I do not know, but I could try to figure it out.

[Adam Szendrey]

What i mean is that in the beam the deuterons are moving along, in the same direction at the same speed on paralell paths, as they approach c.

Ofcourse due to the immense acceleration and speed a quite strong magnetic field will be produced as you have said, which "pushes" the ions towards eachother. So does the gravitational force which ofcourse can be neglected at low speeds.
So as deuterons speed along they get closer and closer on paralell paths as they are getting close to c , until they reach a point when they fuse, but they don't slow down actually, since the energy for this fusion is not provided by the energy of colliding ions, but is provided by the magnetic and gravitational froce between them.
Now this would produce a helium (for simplicity) ion that has the same speed as the two fused deuterons right? I mean why would it slow down? They will simply require a longer path to increase their speed further.
When these helium ions are created they can also fuse right? The coulombic repulsion will be even a less problem for them due to their larger mass. And so on...sort of a chain reaction. The beam would become extremely dense and massive in a very short time, and also very thin, just a thread and would release unbelievable amounts of energy (even if the mass defect does not increase proportionally, if it does then i have no idea what would happen).

But due to the very high density of the string a very strong gravitational field would develop, bending the released gamma photons path to eventually circulate around the beam. Like the effect horizon of a black hole, but this would be a "black tring". I wonder what would happen to the beam's electrostatic and magnetic field (theoretically those consist of photons too).

And yes, the rest mass of the ions will not change (exept if they fuse) but then the relativistic mass does not need to be taken into account? When calculating the mass defect one simply uses the same values at relativistic speeds too?

Adam

[Richard Hull]

I am confused. If you have a beam of protons moving at .99c relative to what we might want to call the fixed obsever that the speed is taken relaitve to, he would indeed measure a current and a mag field related to the movement of the beam

However, would the side by side .99C protons see this increased mag and grav field mysteriously build about them with zero relative velocity? I would think not. I would think that their relative mass and magnetic properties would be as if at rest to each other as they fly along together and the coulomb force would still rule just as it did before.

If not, then there is indeed a preferred frame of reference and relativity is broken.

Richard Hull

[jst]

Instant one track minded question

So if electrons can provide the vectoring for a 4MEV wallop to a proton ( inside a plasma that is probably less than .001" across ), how do we flip this so that a 4MEV proton does the same to an electron ( i.e. a 8BEV electron )? Can we do this iteratively; as in electrons vector protons which vector electrons which vector protons and so on 'til we start popping singularities inside fusors ( dancing images of the primary singularity powering Romulan warbirds appear here ).

If we can do that at anywhere near 90% efficiency Larry, I guarantee you a working fusor becomes a matter of some pretty trivial engineering.

[Adam Szendrey]

Ooooops....i'm sorry..i feel a bit dum..it's absolutely true that the ions are stationary relative to eachother... I guess i didn't think it over enough.
Is it possible to create two beams that are paralell (and are pretty close to eachother) , and accelerate them to different velocities? Say one has a velocity of 0.9 c the other 0.99 c that should provide quite a difference due to the exponential curve right? Just trying to save my butt here lol.

Adam

[3l]

Hi guys:

First off there is not enough mass for anything gravidic.
The only way to gravidic effects large scale is to get enough mass to close the Schartzchild radius.
This little 19Th century equation is neglected by all folks who wanted to block the heavy ion fusion work at Fermi Lab...they thought a mini black hole pollution would occur! WRONG..WRONG..WRONG :>)

2nd off the ions in Ca get no where near the speed of light so an outside reference is not necessary.

3rd the ions in a fusor are not at rest in a fusor focus...not hardly!
So when the electron comes thru there is the energy the fusor has "pumped" them to.

4th there are few collisions between the ions and the electrons.
Why?
The plasma is very thin and is mostly empty space.
The electron is tiny so the collisional crossection is low.
The 10 % loss is what happens in the worst statistical case of a dirrect hit on an ion (small) or missing all the ions in the plasma ball.(more likely).

5th A correction the strong force is not given free range but rather the electric force is given free range. if the strong force was employed the range would be too short to grab an ion in a plasma. The columbic range is far longer enabling an electron to interact with a ion at relatively long distance. Me Bad! :>*


Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[guest]

Hi guys,
Interesting post, I would like to back up a bit though.
A plasma transformer you say. That gives me an idea.

If an electron beam can give a plasma direction then can an electric field?

What if I built a fusor that had two inner grids, then made plasma around the first grid and then turn off that grid. The plasma would now see a potential difference pointed at the inner second grid.

Do I now have a 4mev pulse of pure deuterium ions?

Re-loading could be a problem.

Jim T

[Frank Sanns]

Larry,

So what happened to the 1/2? I think i knew at one time but it escapes me now.

[jst]

I'm afraid your wrong about the blackhole proposition. The new Hadron facilility being built in Switzerland is expected to be able to form blackholes ( temporarily... by collission... and they disintegrate {Hawking radiation} on their own in a very short period) by 2007.

But I wouldn't mind speculation on how we can cascade the CA effect. With that, we will be containing fusion plasmas, and perhaps someday forming and sustaining singularities. The deformation of space-time via high energy alone is not unknown. And the resultant gravity well has an origin that is of such small radius that the gravitic effects wouldn't be noticeable from the outside of our current fusor spheres.

[3l]

Hi Guys:

To Joe:
The problem was that the mass vs the radius was not enough for Fermi lab. I have heard nothing about Switzerland tho.

To Jim:
Reloading a virtual cathode / fusor is not any problem . As soon as the pulse passes thru the electric field will busily rebuild the plasma ball.

There are many apps for the Ca stuff such as singularity and nuclear synthesis of the elements by fusing them together.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusoe Tech

[grrr6]

I suppose you could take any amount of mass, and if you could squeeze it enough it would become a black hole. Although the Schwarzschild radius for two hydrogen atoms is 4 E-54 meters. Soooo, I just don't see how any accelerator, no matter how big, is gonna be able to do that. Thats 25 orders of magnitude smaller than the atoms themselves.

On what time scale did they expect it to decay?

[Richard Hull]

A single particle process might involve 90% efficiency, but all the steps needed to get to there, all the operating energies of support gear and then back to usable output would put any competing process just about where the fusor is...OR, if joy of joys, 5 orders of magnitude (100,000 times) better than the fusor, leaving it only .00001% efficient.

There is a big difference in touting 90% efficiency for one step in a complicated process to do fusion, but quite another where the engineers and bean counters are standing, while tapping their toes, and looking at a COP of .00001%. It is COP and COP alone that will put power on the electrical grid.

90% efficiency of one of 36 processes to get from square one to fusion energy flowing on the grid is not a win, but just a single process buried in a sea of other processes where little trouble is encountered.

Richard Hull

[jst]

Good questions! Answer... I dunno

My understanding, is that this whole proposition originates in cosmic ray observations, where energy levels happen to be so high, that micro-singularities are believed to form. As this is a collision effect, there is literally nothing to sustain the singularity, so it disintegrates in hawking radiation.

Whats unique about fusors, and the Farsworth compactron tube, is that with WFAs capable of hitting those energy levels ( or so we speculate ) and the ability to pump baryons/leptons into the singularity, it may be possible to create and sustain a singularity at will.

Of course, this is waayyy ahead of ourselves here. I'll be more than happy to see Larry's CA device cascade to the 100+MEV electron beams I'm looking for. From there sustained and fully contained fusion would be no big deal. Or so I "speculate".

[3l]

Hi Richard:

I tend to think you are right.
Mini black hole stuff leaves me wanting.
I am a simple needs guy ....neutrons are good enough for me.
So far CA has generated neutrons and fast particles but no fusion yet that I can see in the research.
I was told by Dr Dyson himself that that object (MBH) would need a minimum of two tons of matterial in order to stay put permanently.
The size was into a space of a argon atom.
What good is a microsecond black hole anyway?
Besides the darn things if you feed them exceed the mass -radius requirements and blow up.
Not cool at all!
I tend to the far out but more far in practical sense.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[jst]

Larry:

Oh Yeah of little faith

You just show us how to cascade these CAs, and we'll warm up my sewer pipes

As for blackholes, lets wait on the Large Hadron Facility. If they do it by collision we'll know how to do it to what energy level... nice academic physicist report in hand.

[Sammael]

Singularities:

Pros-
get a decent sized, stable singularity, with high hawking radiation output. Feed it mass (anything will do, here is your super nasty nuclear garbage disposal) that matches its hawking radiation output (E=MC2 after all) and you have total mater to energy conversion. (yay, holy grail found, if we can get it to work right)

Cons-
How do you hold a singularity? What are there properties- I think they are only mass and spin, so you couldn't hold it magnetically. You couldn't sit it on anything. Just about the only way to hold it is gravitationally. Would be a great orbital power plant, but it couldn't be used on earth.

Super Cons-
Experimenting with singularities on earth can be hazardous to our health. A singularity created in a lab with sufficient size to gravitationally absorb more mass than hawking radiation dissipated when surrounded by densities found here on earth would:
1. Start to fall.
2. Go through any concievable containment vessel, and right through the floor, gobbling up mass on the way.
3. Very quickly find itself at rest at the center of earths gravity well, happily munching away, thereby increasing its ability to consume matter.
4. Eat earth completely in a very short time.

This might just be me worrying like the physicists who thought trinity would spread its chain reaction to the atmosphere. But at some point, someones gonna fuck up big with something...

[Adam Szendrey]

Well...maybe so....Scientist have always played around with the unknown, and that unknown was turned into a weapon quite shortly..only then (if it was ever) used as a peacefull servant for the civilization.
After a certain point, experimenting with the unknown could get rough on the experimenter...and his/her sorroundings. A fusor has the "ability" to "run-away". These are usually not dangerous events (though they produce a short burst of nuclear and EM radiation)..but who knows? If the the researcher is unfortunate enough it can be worse....if the required circumstances are met, though the probability is very low.

We don't really know anything about singularities...only theories. Experimenting with such an entity CAN be dangerous as you have described. One must make a choice...not to try it or to try it? This also may become the question: "To be or not to be" if we are unlucky.
Humanty may find itself fooling around with such powers it cannot even understand. Imagine...being able to manipulate the fabric of space-time freely! This is another dangerous thing if done without caution. A powerfull gravity shockwave can destroy just about anything...or simply displace a cubic mile of rock from under a city...or the city itself by creating a wormhole...Though these are quite far out thoughts...rather sci-fi, but to this date most of the sci-fi stuff (considered foolishness by the masses since the media told them so) of the "old days" became reality.

Adam

[Richard Hull]

Of course, no one can make a singularity to experiment with so the points are moot.

Richard Hull

[Adam Szendrey]

Well, no one who we know of, or we just don't know the way yet...though it might happen. Who would have thought 200 years ago that there will be (thermo)nuclear bombs...

Adam