Fusion or Explosion

It may be difficult to separate "theory" from "application," but let''s see if this helps facilitate the discussion.
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Steven Sesselmann
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Fusion or Explosion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

As per Richards recent post, we clearly have it firmly embedded in our minds, that fusion is the result of a collision between two nuclei that repel each other, it is likely that we have come to this understanding as a result of the early experiments into fusion. But when I look at what is happening, it looks a lot more like an explosion process than a fusion process. After a small amount of heating, two particles end up flying in opposite directions with great velocity.

We all know that if you take a small amount of water, and seal it up in a closed kettle, one can gently heat it until the kettle ruptures, and when it does, all the energy is released at once, and the bits fly in all directions, not unlike the last stage of a fusion reaction!

It seems obvious, that it would be hard to smash water and kettles together, and get the same result, yet this is what we continuously attempt to do in fusion.

Why does the sealed water kettle explode?

It explodes because the molecules of steam want to be somewhere else, and nature is powerful...., very powerful, when something has a will of its own, it will find a way to get its will.

Atoms and Deuterons are no different, if they want to be somewhere else they find a way, even if it means that two Deuterons have to make a deal.

A conversation between two Deuterons D(1) and D(2) take place in a fusor...

D(1) "Its really hot in here"
D(2) "yes unbearable"
D(1) "let's get out of here"
D(2) "how, we are trapped, not enough energy to get out of this well!"
D(1) "there is a way, if you come close to me, I become a Helium and you become a neutron, and we will both have enough energy to escape"
D(2) "Brilliant...why didn't we think of that before?"

*** BANG!

Now in a standard fusor D(2) makes a clean escape, but D(1) ends up with an almighty headache

Steven

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Doug Coulter
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Doug Coulter »

Interesting way to describe quantum tunneling through a barrier into a lower stored-energy state....
.........

Theory already covers that fine. Else it would take megavolts to get to fusion even with D-D against Coulomb forces at "near-touching" distances
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Doug,

Yes, this is exactly what the Lawson criterion says, temperature, number density and time, nothing about smashing particles together.

So to rig the game, we need to lock up the plasma in such a state that the ions have no choice, but to fuse, that means we must trap them, but leave a door open for them to escape after they fuse.

Steven
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Frank Sanns »

Nature has a way of making us work hard to get over the energy hump before we get the prize.

In the case of chemisty it is the activation energy. In the case of fusion, energy is required to get the starting material moving so that tunneling can occur. Energy barriers no matter how you look at it. This is fortunate for us or many radioactive materials would unzip in a flash if tunneling were made too easy!

Frank Sanns
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Frank,

"Nature has a way of making us work hard to get over the energy hump before we get the prize. "

That's why Richard says the game is rigged, which is why we need a rigged apparatus to succeed at the game.

I say, "level the hump and watch them jump"

You ought to know what I mean...

Steven
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by John Futter »

Then again its all been done before

Gather a few hydrogen atoms together and their gravitational pull pulls more into a gas mass and if enough is gathered ignition takes place.
The atoms at the centre of the mass are so close that some fuse, the neutrons escape the immediate vicinity but go on with other products to excite the rest of the mass a bit further.
H atoms give up their being to be turned into energy
The process continues until most of the H atoms are used up but the burn products of H are still present (Red Dwarf) until almost all H is used up and the spent products gravitational pull stops any energy escaping and it collapses on itself

This the life of a star

now back to Stevens idea
all good to get H or its derivatives D and T to band close together.
Put close enough together a few will fuse and the energy output and energetic products will encourage others to fuse as well.

a bit like confinement ie H jail
So we have a few choices
if you have a large enough patch Gravity seems simple it creates itself.
With out the large patch,
two known techniques are favoured, electromagnetic and electrostatic confinement, or both that maybe, make up for the lack of size.

Note lack of size
Does size matter??
is ES or EM preferable or does G hold the trump card ??

Do things change at the atomic level??
Is there an advantage of making things smaller--all the way down to the atomic level ???

The above questions are what this site is all about

Nice one Steven
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Chris Bradley »

Steven Sesselmann wrote:
> A conversation between two Deuterons D(1) and D(2) take place in a fusor...
>
> D(1) "Its really hot in here"
> D(2) "yes unbearable"
> D(1) "let's get out of here"
> D(2) "how, we are trapped, not enough energy to get out of this well!"
> D(1) "there is a way, if you come close to me, I become a Helium and you become a neutron, and we will both have enough energy to escape"
> D(2) "Brilliant...why didn't we think of that before?"
>
> *** BANG!


hmmm. Let me put the conversation another way.

Two deuterons go to a deuteron nightclub to find a date. The first deuteron uses the tactic of just asking every deuteron it meets;
D(1); It's really hot in here, let's go back to my compound for a few gamma rays
D(2); No Way! What sort of deuteron do you think *I* am?
SLAP
D(1); It's really hot in here, let's go back to my compound for a few gamma rays
D(3); No Way! What sort of deuteron do you think *I* am?
SLAP
D(1); It's really hot in here, let's go back to my compound for a few gamma rays
D(4); No Way! What sort of deuteron do you think *I* am?
SLAP
D(1); It's really hot in here, let's go back to my compound for a few gamma rays
D(5); No Way! What sort of deuteron do you think *I* am?
SLAP
....
D(1); It's really hot in here, let's go back to my compound for a few gamma rays
D(1E8); sure thing!
BANG
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

John F,

I absolutely agree, the analogy works perfectly for the sun, and as you can work out, the particles do indeed have enough energy to escape the gravitational gradient of the suns gravitational field...

..., but when I started thinking about this some time ago, I realized a BIG problem!

The positive fusion products that are created near the surface of the sun, have more than enough energy to escape the suns gravitational confinement, ie. the velocity is much higher than escape velocity, but hang on to your seats.....

If protons keep escaping the Suns gravity, then the sun will be left with an infinietly large negative charge????

Ergo, if the protons created in the sun have around 1 Mev of kinetic energy, then it would be reasonable to assume that protons escaping from the sun, would leave the Sun with a net negative charge, which would would quickly reach a maximum potential voltage of -1 Mev, so that the majority of protons become confined electrostatically, not gravitationally.

So it turns out that the Sun is a giant fusor after all, running mainly on electrostatic confinement rather than gravitational as we first thought. The reason it actually works, is that it is so far away from us and other planets that even with -1 Mev it can't form an arch..., which is lucky for us.

It also becomes clear, that when the gravitational field becomes strong enough, the gradient becomes impossible for the fusion protons to climb, and at that point they see no point in fusing, and choose to get into bed with the electron instead, and form a neutron.

----

Chris,

Good one

I agree there must be some face slapping going on, especially sionce the particles are all the same sex.

----

On a positive note, a -1 Mev fusor is not beyond human engineering.

Steven
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Chris Bradley »

I avoided including that topic, as we are all liberally minded types here, I am sure (!). There are +ve ions and -ve ions, and the +ve and -ve probably have an easier time approaching each other. It seems that the forces involved are much the same, though, once they decide to strip off their electrons! A +ve deuteron has no electrons on, and I've seen a few, in nightclubs, who appear to try to emulate that charge-state. The more highly charged they are (less external sheath), the more -ve clothed types they attract, it seems! The best-clothed -ve charges seem to win out in such a scenario and the forces between the least clothed +ve's and the best clothed -ve's seem inevitable.

The general laws of physics appear to apply to quantum-dating as well!
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Starfire »

' they want to be somewhere else ' - why?
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Chris Roberts »

Steven, the biggest reason the sun does not run into that problem is that fusion does not occur on the outer layers of the sun. As per wikipedia:

"The core is the only location in the Sun that produces an appreciable amount of heat through fusion; inside 24% of the Sun's radius, 99% of the power has been generated, and by 30% of the radius, fusion has stopped nearly entirely. The rest of the star is heated by energy that is transferred outward from the core and the layers just outside."

Thus, any fusion products produced in the sun's core stop almost immediately, contributing to the heat of its surroundings. Even the fusion gamma rays are stopped within a few mm of their creation, since the density in the core is so high. Indeed that is actually one big advantage the sun has which I doubt any terrestrial fusion reactor will ever be able to use, the fact that virtually all the energy produced by fusion (with the exception of neutrinos) can remain in the reactor for a long time to further help things along. So all the excitement we see on the sun's surface is the energy of fusion long since passed, (it takes thousands of years for photons to work their way from the core to the surface) where by the time the energy boils its way to the top it has spread out into a nice, calm, thermal simmer. (relatively speaking of course)
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Chris,

For sure, the sun is a complicated beast, and there is a lot more going on than what meets the eye. One could do a thesis on the sun and still not have a clue what is really going on. For sure, I am no authority on the subject.

My pont still stands, that there must be some high energy protons attempting to escape the suns gravitational field, and when positive particles attempt to escape isotropically from a point, then an electrostatic gradient must form, which will in turn prevent the ions escaping.

This is just common sense, for every proton that actually escapes, the sun must become more negative, and as more and more protons escape, there must come a point in time, where no protons have enough energy to make the climb.

My guess is that this is what is happening in the corona, charged particles attempting failed escapes, and being sucked back in again by the electrostatic gradient, much like in a fusor.

Neutrons on the other hand, have no problem making climb, they don't see the electrostatic field, and easily escape the gravitational field. the isotropic emission of neutrons spreads outwards from the sun, and within around 14 minutes, the majority undergo beta decay, and become protons. It would be interesting to work out, if this is just about the time it takes a neutron to reach earth orbit. Probably fortunate for us, the earths magnetic field can better shield us from protons, than from neutrons.

We shall have to accept a bit of armchair physics on this topic, as experimentation is somewhat tricky.

To John Hendrons question above....;

John, as always you drive me crazy with your one line questions, I have been walking around for the last 24 hours, with a headache! There must be a rational answer to your question, but it eludes me. I stood in the shower this morning and watched the water run down the drain, and all the time I was thinking..."why does the water want to run down the drain?" even the drops that hit the walls eventually found their way to the drain, they wanted to go there, but why? After standing there for a very long time, there was a knock on the door....:"are you okay?" Me: "No, I can't figure out why the water is running down the drain"



Steven
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Dan Tibbets
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Dan Tibbets »

I don't know what you are trying to imply. Does using different descriptive terms change the physics of fusion? My understanding of fusion is that the strong nuclear force will become dominate and pull nuclei together, if and only if you can get them close enough together that the coulomb repulsion is overcome first. There is some fudging due to quantum effects, but basically that is the picture (except P-P fusion where the first step is mediated by the weak nuclear force- I don't know how that relates). That the subsequent fused nucleus is unstable and breaks down into daughter nuclei doesn't modify the original process. It is this subsequent breakdown -fission, that is exothermic in most (all?) cases. The comparison to Gibbs free energy is reasonable. By adding energy a stable compound or mixture- fuses into some intermediary coumpound, which then quickly breaks down into the final products which are at lower net energy (if it is an exothermic reaction). There has been a thread (in this forum?) concerning the appropiate use of the terms of fusion and fission. My impression is that the clearest distintion is that "fission" is used for nuclear processes in elemants heavier than iron, while "fusion" is used for lighter elements irregardless of what is actually going on.

The Sun doesn't ignite. In that sense it is like fusors. But it is the gravitational compression and heating that drives the reaction, not electrostatic acceleration. The fusion process is more of an energy expending stopgap method to delay the gravitational collapse. This is obvious when the nuclear fuel is exhausted and the star resumes gravitational collapse until some other physical process can establish a new equilibrium, or the star collapses completely, or it blows up (at least it's outer portions do).

Protons are a major component of Solar Wind, but the escaping plasma is neutral (same number of electrons are escaping also)

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/sun/wind.html

Dan Tibbets
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by JamesC »

>On a positive note, a -1 Mev fusor is not beyond human engineering.

Right, so you are implying a fusion version of the two-slit experiment where the the fusion products look ahead and change the state of how they behave based on what the configuration of space ahead of them looks like. Much like the way a photon chooses its path through a two-slit experiment to either interfere with itself or choose a specific path so may the nature of a fusion event be influenced by the field it finds itself within. Hence there-in may lie an opportunity to use some sort of quantum bias to rig the fusion game. Mighty interesting concept..

-- James
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dan,

The problem is that I can't understand your theory :-?

What is force?

Steven
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

James,

Excactly, you hit the nail on the head

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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

Funny you should ask...

Kent Farnsworth has mentioned to me many times that somewhere in the margin of the notes his father kept during the years when he was experimenting with fusion, he wrote: "we don't understand force."

That and 50c...

And, while I'm here, re: "fusion -v- explosion": I've always imagined the fusion of two hydrogen nuclei (protons) into a helium nucleus (two protons, fused) would, if you could actually see it, look like two soap-bubbles popping together.

You know what that looks like? You start out with two soapy spheres, and they bump into each other, and then you wind up with two near-spheres sharing one common surface (wall) between them.

Not an "explosion" really, just a gentle "pop." I guess some soap gets blasted out of the combination.

There's your other 50c...

--PS
Paul Schatzkin, aka "The Perfesser" – Founder and Host of Fusor.net
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"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Chris Bradley »

Steven Sesselmann wrote:
> What is force?

My explanation; viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6891#p47736
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Shifteh »

interesting theory, the sun having an - electric charge

ill have to talk to my cuz, astrophysicist know all lol
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Linda Haile »

(Steven asked 'What is force?')

Steven, force can be explained quite easily,

From Newton's Second Law of Motion, F=MA, we get M=F/A.

From Einstein's Theory of Relativity, E=MC^2, we get M=E/C^2.

If F/A=E/C^2 then F=EA/C^2,

so Force equals Energy times Acceleration divided by the Speed of Light squared.
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Lyn,

How does this explain action at a distance?

To understand force, I think we need to dig a bit deeper.

I suspect Time, the Past, the Present and the Future will be a feature of the understanding.

Steven
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Linda Haile »

Steven, My equation does state that force is a function of time, or time squared, to be precise.

(I'd suggest that without a tachyonic antitelephone we will never know if the past and future also play a part.)
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Starfire »

Lyn - this explains the effect of force acting - its resultant, but not the nature of force.
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Lyn,

Simply replacing the mass term in Newtons equation with E/c^2 is hardly a novel idea, and does nothing to explain why water runs down hill.

A leaf falls off a tree, and falls in some random motion only to land somewhere on the ground near the tree, it did this because the spot it landed was in it's future, and it had no choice.

What we refer to as the "present" is "ground state" in the electrical meaning and "at rest" in the gravitational meaning.

While any point or mass on the x, y, z, axis larger than zero is the past.

The t axis is a little tricker, it points inwards and downwards and towards the future, and can be emulated by negative charge.

The grid in a fusor is in the protons future, which is why I believe the proton is attracted to it.

My current thinking is that electrons are particles of the distant future, and protons particles of the past. As we humans are mainly made up from proton mass, our present is much closer to the protons present than the electrons, hence the huge difference in mass.

If this was the case, we would expect the mass difference between the electron and the proton to become smaller over time.

Protons are normally further in the past than our present ground state, but I know a way to send protons into the future, they won't like it there, and they will do anything to get back to the past, I suspect they will fuse...

Mind bending isn't it

Steven
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Re: Fusion or Explosion

Post by Linda Haile »

Steven, I assume then that photons, because they have no charge, can only exist in the present.

The reason I replaced the mass term in Newton's equation is because photons have no mass when at rest but they can exert a force and be subjected to forces , therefore force must be independant of mass.

This would suggest that mass itself is a manifestation of force.

Does this help to clarify things?
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