F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

[Steven Sesselmann]

[Chris MB said....What does your theory say about why the fusion cross-section curve is as it is - i.e. why do we see fusion generally fitting a function predicted by quantum tunnelling theory down to quite low kinetic energies (much lower than you might expect if particles were trying to get back to some ground level)?

Or put it another way, why will you need 100keV when fusion can be detected in plasmas of just a keV or two?

Also, at the other end, why do deuterons smash each other up at >~2MeV rather than simply have yet more opportunity to take the 'path' back to lowest potential?]

Chris,

Yesterday my son, who is in year 12 at high school came to me with a homework question. the question was "Why is the gravitational potential energy "Up" written as a negative number?"

I knew immediately that my answer would probably get him into trouble, so I convinced him to find the answer in the text book, and apparently the end point, or zero potential energy was conveniently put at infinity, the argument for this was that it was difficult to establish the zero point for potential energy in the other direction. In classical Newtonian physics, one might have chosen the center of the Earth, but then that point would have potential energy above the center of the sun, and if the center of the Sun was chosen then why not the center of the galaxy, and so on.. where does it end?

So it was decided to call infinity for zero gravitational potential.

Now, if I had done my sons homework, he could have expected a big "F", because I would have turned potential energy on it's head.

Energy is a simple scalar number E and E/c^2 is an objects mass, it matters little what kind of energy it is, potential, kinetic, thermal etc.. just energy does nicely.

So let's break it down even further, let's talk about energy per nucleon. All material objects can after all be broken down into nucleons.

For arguments sake, lets use the following approximations.

Nucleon mass (proton)......... 938Mev/c^2
Nucleon mass (Deuterium)... 936Mev/c^2
Nucleon mass (Helium 3)...... 934Mev/c^2
Nucleon mass (Nickel 62)......930Mev/c^2

Now to find the electrical potential energy of these nucleons, all we need to do is divide them by c^2, so the picture we get is that helium has a higher potential than Nickel and Deuterium has a higher potential than helium etc..

Now conventional physics places the proton on a pedestal and refers to mass defect, and binding energy, to explain the other nuclei, but in my theory there is no such thing.

The energy of an object is it's potential, and there isn't anything complicated about that, the only interesting observation is that we as observers are not at the top of the potential energy scale, we are made from relatively massive nuclei, and we happen to reside in a potential energy well, so where are we?

Well if we could count the number of nucleons in our body and work out the mass per nucleon we could establish our own potential, however i think we already know the answer.

We know that protons have a higher potential than us, because if we let go of a proton it actually falls up, yes...nothing to do with Archimedes, it falls up, because it's potential energy is higher than ours and it doesn't belong here, neither does deuterium, helium and the other light elements. The only way we can keep them here at ground potential is to bottle them up and watch them fly around like crazy hitting the inside of the cylinder walls (we call this pressure, but it's actually potential energy).

There is reason to believe that ground potential and the potential of Ni62 (930Mev) is one and the same thing. this is because the elements either side of this have higher electrical potential per nucleon.

Before answering Chris's question specifically, we might ask, Why do nuclei fuse?

Nuclei fuse in an effort to get back to their natural electrical potential equilibrium. Take for instance free floating Deterium molecules, they will not fuse, because they happily exist in their natural potential (this actually means falling up unless we confine them), but when we confine the molecules and heat them up, we are removing them away from their natural potential, remember heating them increases their potential even more, and we are not letting them go there.

This is where it is obvious that classical physics has got it wrong, smashing particles together faster and faster is not was causes the fusion, rather it is the brief moment when the particles stop moving, that actually causes the fusion event.

Increasing the velocity of a deuteron actually increases it's potential, and at some point you will be making it harder and harder to fuse, which I think answers Chris's third question.

In F.I.C.S. fusion, the objective is to take the molecule as far as possible below ground potential before ionizing it, thereby confining the ions to a potential energy well, before heating them and inviting them to fuse. The ions confined and heated below ground potential, have a lot more to gain by fusing, than ions heated above ground potential, and therefore ought to fuse more readily.

To answer Chris's first question...
As I have explained above, the Deuterons are not fusing in order to get back to ground potential (630Mev), they are fusing because they want to get back to Deuteron potential (936Mev), but to escape confinement and do this they have to trade off some energy (~2Mev) and settle for Helium or Tritium (934Mev).

To answer Chris's second question...
Providing two or more molecules of fusion reactive fuel are confined at a potential other than their natural potential, there is a probability of fusion. This probability as Lawson proposed is a function of temperature * number density * time

The only modification I would make to the Lawson factor is that temperature be defined as the difference in potential between the ion and the confinement.

Once again, by lowering the confinement chamber below ground potential, it should no longer be necessary to heat the plasma as much to achieve the same level of fusion. I need to look up how to convert voltage to temperature for deuterons.

If this post raises more questions than answers, I will as always try my best to answer...

PS: For you guys still at high school and Uni, stick to your text books, but never forget to ask What if? and Why not?

Steven

http://www.beeresearch.com.au

[JamesC]

>We know that protons have a higher potential than us, because if we
>let go of a proton it actually falls up, yes...nothing to do with Archimedes, it falls up

When you say it goes 'up' do you mean this in a gravitational sense? Do you propose to link gravity to potential in your theory. This is a demonstratable thing though right, I am pretty sure people would have noticed if protons fall up?

Beam me up scotty, just contain a bunch a protons to create an anti-gravity drive?

Since current theories are demonstrably false, ie qantum and gravity dont mesh, if we all just accepted the current theories as absolutes rather than mathematical constructs that just happen to fit our current experimental knowledge we could never move forward. What I like about your efforts steven is you are putting your money and efforts where your theories take you. Right or Wrong we will all learn something from the results.

Cheers,
James

[Steven Sesselmann]

James,

Some things do indeed fall up...

A single proton is the stable particle with the highest voltage potential, and if it was allowed to thermalize with our world at ground potential, it does indeed fall up.

ie. obtain sufficient kinetic energy to escape the earths gravitational field.

A change to our way of thinking, not to our laws of physics.

Steven

[JamesC]

Right so you mean two objects are equipotential when they have the same total energy, mass+kinetic+electrical. So obviously for the earth to be equipotential to a proton in this view the proton would be traveling at light speed but incredible mass energy. Not so much 'up' as in anti-gravity but as in not bound by earths gravity, actually earth would not like to collide with such a proton..would look like a light speed mini black hole?

[Steven Sesselmann]

James,

Not exactly..., two objects are equipotential when the nucleons are at the same energy potential.
A satellite in orbit around a planet is equipotential with the potential of the radius it is orbiting.

The nucleons in the water molecules of a cloud, hanging at 1000 meters are equipotential with the electrical potential at that height, however when they condense into water droplets, they fall to a lower potential and consequently appear as rain.

Gravitational potential and electrical potential actually comes together as one and the same thing, when you measure it from the zero point.

Electrical potential increases with height, which is why we have to add energy to elevate matter.

Take for example our Sun, it is at a much lower potential than the Earth, and I suspect that it has an electrical charge in the order of -1 Mev with respect to us the observers. Not surprising that it resembles a grid less fusor.

It should be possible to calculate the exact conversion between gravitational acceleration g and electrical potential.

Steven

[DavidStewartZink]

Thanks for some very interesting ideas! I think you err in suggesting that the experiment has a 50% chance of failure, failure in an experiment means that you didn't learn anything. The fusor may have a 50% chance of failure, but I'm pretty sure if there were a design with 100% chance of success according to common theory, we'd already have them. Don't get focused on one result, the point is incremental progress.

It seems to me that you are achieving charge separation in the cathode through temperature; fusion inside the cathode should certainly improve that situation!

It's asserted somewhere in the comments that fusion is random, of course that's not true. Fusion/fission/beta emission etc. all happen when the nuclei see a chance to fall to a state of lower energy. What's random in a fusor is achieving the conditions.

Two deuterons carry more energy than a threelium nucleus + neutron; it's just that it takes more energy than the savings to get the deuterons close enough to do the transform because of nuclear electrostatic repulsion. I think there's an interesting idea in manipulating the confinement so that the profit of fusing is increased by allowing the products to escape the confinement, but I think this version would take a very microscopic sharp-edged tunneling-scale confinement and I guess the deuteron will always escape better than the threelion. OTOH fusion always allows one nucleon to escape an electrostatic potential completely; perhaps there's a more subtle way to encourage fusion beyond more ions and more temperature?

The major part that seems weak in this design is the chance that a threelion will manage to exit through the decelerator tube. Presumably the nucleus is created with a certain amount of energy and a random velocity vector. Is the assumption that it will eventually leak out the hole, or is there something encouraging it?

I forget how temperature works on mixed gasses, but at the same velocity threelium will certainly have 50% more momentum than deuterium, which means that the decelerator tube could be tuned to allow He3 through but not D. However I'd expect a good portion of the product to thermalize to the point where it cannot escape.

From my point of view the weakness of the design as a fusor (but not as an experiment, I might do the same thing in an experiment) is that you are expending work on the decelerator tube, rather than setting it up to do regenerative braking, letting it do work for you. The moving + charges induce movement in electrons, slowing the plus charges and driving some other apparatus. In one version the escaping He3+ and D+ generate energy which is then used to separate (de-ionized) He from D and force the D back into the chamber (which is less work because it is uncharged); the question then becomes will there be enough He3 to overcome efficiency losses and show a profit? Assuming you don't have a clever way to keep D in the cathode.

anyway, my few cents

[Steven Sesselmann]

Dan and David,

Thanks for your thoughts and comments...

Time will show how efficiently FICS can separate charges, I have set up a data logger with LabView in an attempt to measure simultaneous voltage, current and neutron fluctuations during experiments.

No experiment yet, as my power supply has decided to pack up just at the wrong time.

Regarding comments that both of you made about isotropic emissions of charged particles, I have no proof to the contrary, and it may well be the case that particles are emitted isotropically.

What do we know about quantum tunnelling anyway?

I am a strong believer, that water runs down hill......,

....stand in the shower, and watch how every drop of water eventually makes it down the drain, how did that tiny drop, bounce off your nose, hit the wall, slide down the side, across the floor and into the drain?

How does it know, does it have a brain?

No, but for some reason the drop just knows that it's future is down the drain, or at a lower potential if you prefer.

So too, I believe that quantum tunnelling between two deuterons will only take place when and if the opportunity to escape arises. Inside the FICS cathode, the game is rigged, there is really only one direction for the particles to escape confinement, and it is through the hole.

So my guess is that a larger number of the charged particles will find the hole. If so, conservation of momentum dictates that the neutron should go in the opposite direction.

It will be interesting to see if we will be able to measure any anisotropy...

Steven

[Richard Hull]

The neutron is a result of fusion and has a well known energy of ~2.4 mev. Compared to either deuteron's momentum, the conservation of momentum in the colliding particles really doesn't effectively enter into the equation as related to the direction of neutron emission as the neutron, itself, never had a relationship with the deuteron's momentum. If so, which deuteron's tiny momentum will direct the 2.4mev neutron? Remember D:D fusion is 50:50 event with 4 chunks of debris in the 2 events. This is why in all D-D fusion, at energies we can claim for the deuterons, all neutron emission is observed to average out to be isotropic in nature. This tends to go for all the other particles as well. The charged ones, to be turned or "herded", would need applied steering energies in excess of their own at time of formation.

If you were stripping, (Deuterons with greater energy than 3mev), then that might be another matter, causing some anisotropic emission of the neutrons as this would be a momentum event and not a normal fusion event. For this to significantly manifest itself, you would be forced into a beam-target scenario.

Richard Hull

[Chris Bradley]

David Stewart Zink wrote:
> It's asserted somewhere in the comments that fusion is random, of course that's not true.
Yet more guesswork of yours on the established facts of science?

Fusion is by well-understood [well, at least well-modelled] random tunnelling processes. There is no longer any scientific debate on that.

All scientifically rigorous experiments have a 50/50 outcome: Either you disprove the null-hypothesis, or you don't. One or other....

[Steven Sesselmann]

Another well established fact is that no amount of hand waving and speculating will settle the debate, and only well executed experiment will put the baby to rest.

I have two newly acquired sensitive bubble detectors that I intend placing at 90˚ angles above and beside the cathode. The experiment can be repeated several times by switching the bubble detectors around. By this method it should be possible to establish weather or not there is anisotropy in the emission of neutrons.

Richard, my earlier reference to conservation of momentum had nothing to do with the collision of the particles, I agree 50 keV vs 2.4 Mev is negligible, my point is that the fusion products He3 + n or T + P must be ejected diametrically. It is simply unthinkable that a lone particle would take off in a random direction at 2.4 MeV from a standing start.

Now onto quantum tunnelling..., a particle will not tunnel through a potential barrier unless it can gain something by doing so, just as a prisoner will tunnel out of jail to gain his freedom (people on the outside hardly ever tunnel into a prison), so my hypothesis is, because the FICS cathode offers only one route of escape, the reactions that take place, are those that will have a dimetric axis aligned with the aperture.

I doubt that any prisoner would bother tunnelling if the warden left the gate open...

Thats my hypothesis, and may the experiment settle the debate.

Steven

[Chris Bradley]

Steven Sesselmann wrote:
> my point is that the fusion products He3 + n or T + P must be ejected diametrically. It is simply unthinkable that a lone particle would take off in a random direction at 2.4 MeV from a standing start.
> Now onto quantum tunnelling..., a particle will not tunnel through a potential barrier unless it can gain something by doing so, just as a prisoner will tunnel out of jail to gain his freedom (people on the outside hardly ever tunnel into a prison), so my hypothesis is, because the FICS cathode offers only one route of escape, the reactions that take place, are those that will have a dimetric axis aligned with the aperture.


I find that to be your most engaging hypothesis yet, Steven!

I'd like to make a couple of points, though:

Firstly, I don't see any reason to presume that tunnelling might not have taken place even if the outcome is 'null'. To use your anthropological examples, a shopper might well tunnel their way into the shop through queues in the sales, but find there is nothing there worth exchanging money with, and leave the shop in an unchanged state. Once tunnelled, it would seem evident that however the nucleii rearrange themselves into a 'fused product' that they may not always rearrange quick enough to 'take advantage' of the situation in an optimum way because we know that DD rarely ends up as 4He+hv, yet this is the lowest energy state outcome. (I'm not arguing for this point, only that I don't see a counter-argument for it.)

Secondly, there is one classic experiment in physics for which we are still scratching around for a proper answer, and what you have described I think is, actually, very similar and may even provide an extra 'data point' for. This is the classic 'single-photon-through-a-double-slit'. As you may know, you get an interference pattern if you pass monochromatic light through a slit. But if you turn down the light until individual photons are passing through the slits, they still preferentially deflect into the same diffraction pattern, even though there are no other photons in the space around the slits to interfere with.

Taking those two points together may be revealing. You are claiming that a freshly fused atom will have some form of interaction *dependent on* what will happen to its optimum energy state *in the future*. That is not a classic interpretation, but it is one that I have also hypothesised. This would be one hypothesis for the outcome of the double-slit experiment; that the photons are interfering with the other photons, but past-and-future, rather than to-left-and-right. It is a temporal interference, rather than a spatial one.

Your hypothesis appears to be that the quantum tunnelling and nuclear fusion process may behave selectively according to future, temporal, influences rather than just spatial ones. I think that is an interesting hypothesis, and would not be excluded if you see anisotropic neutrons.