Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

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Richard Hull
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Richard Hull »

Don, I think you are all over the place again with wild theory that hasn't the science behind it and certainly no experiment performed here for critical review.

Again let's keep this about a possible exploding wire experiment and not about what we think we might find or a causitive agent, since we have found nothing, (no experiment yet), and thus, no need to explain any results.

Richard Hull
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The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Doug Browning »

I have to respectfully disagree. Oppenheimer-Phillips theory is well worked out, available in the literature, and can be readily merged with at least static Pinch induced pressure.

Some of the subtleties of dynamic shock waves may be a stretch, granted. Probably not a factor for just surface absorbed 2D reactions though.

One will need a sensitive electron multiplier RGA to analyze the vaporized wire residuals to see any isotope shift effects if this occurs. (deuterium changed to 1H, the biggest clue, but difficult to differentiate from background unfortunately, and the metal wire isotope increased by a neutron if it's stable) (One might try to feed deuterium into the turbo vent port to reduce 1H background I suppose, along with a thorough bakeout. Expensive though. One could possibly put two turbos in series to reduce the required deuterium leak/vent rate, if no hydrogen leaks off the turbo motor wire enamel.)

Even conventional fusion results would benefit from an RGA of course.
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Chris Bradley »

Richard Hull wrote:
> Don, I think you are all over the place again with ...no experiment performed here for critical review.

Don Bowen wrote:
> I have to respectfully disagree.

How can you disagree with that statement!? Show us the experiment, then!

If you had, even, some even-slightly related experimental experience to illustrate your reply, that could help us understand where you're coming from....
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Doug Browning »

I've never heard of anyone doing experiments without some ideas as to what the expected results were. How can you know what to measure for? Who would fund such endeavers? If I already had such results in hand, I wouldn't be offering them in public for DIY, I would be off to the patent attorney.

There is no "rocket science" in increasing the pressure term (from the Pinch effect) in the Oppenheimer-Phillips equations. This effect was already proposed as a cause of CF effects long ago, it just didn't make the numbers. I didn't invent it.

The electron mediation of the Coulomb barrier idea also was an old idea proposed for CF explanation:
Hagelstein, Peter L.; Michael, McKubre; Nagel, David; Chubb, Talbot; Hekman, Randall (2004) (PDF), New Physical Effects in Metal Deuterides, Washington: US Department of Energy, http://web.archive.org/web/200701061851 ... ndix_1.pdf

I did speculate on what the Pinch effect might do for that, but I now realize it is unlikely to help.
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Chris Bradley »

So, are you disagreeing with something you thought Richard said, or something he *actually* said?

Don Bowen wrote:
> If I already had such results in hand, I wouldn't be offering them in public for DIY, I would be off to the patent attorney.


Best to re-consider what the nature of this 'open source - amateur experimental' forum means, then...
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Doug Browning »

I am disagreeing with:
"I think you are all over the place again with wild theory that hasn't the science behind it and certainly no experiment performed here for critical review."

I didn't invent the theory, there are journal papers on it:

Oppenheimer, 1995, page 192 cf. Note on the transmutation function for deuterons, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Melba Phillips, Phys. Rev. 48, September 15, 1935, 500-502, received July 1, 1935.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1995). Alice Kimball Smith, Charles Weiner. ed. Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections (reimpressed, illustrated ed.). Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804726205, 9780804726207

and it is based on prior experimental results:
"considering experiments with the Berkeley cyclotron showing that some elements became radioactive under deuteron bombardment.[2]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheime ... ps_process

It's not all over the place, it was proposed early on as a means to explain CF results (no He or radiation), but it didn't work out numerically big enough. I just added Pinch pressure for making the equation numbers better.

"An early explanation invoked the Oppenheimer–Phillips process at low energies, but its magnitude was too small to explain the altered ratios.[150]"
"Huizenga, John R. (1993), Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century (2 ed.), Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-855817-1"
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion"

And the reason I have been posting has been in the spirit of open DIY. But if that is not appreciated, I will remove myself. It is becoming all too clear why no progress occurs in the fusion field.
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Carl Willis »

The defining pathology of the cold-fusion camp is once again on display: lopsided attention paid to theorizing a mechanism for phenomena that are not qualitatively established and stand a good chance of not even existing. It's like proposing a gastroenterological or psychosocial explanation for why Sasquatch poop is not found on the forest floor: a phenomenon is assumed to exist, and people then take a flypaper approach to theoretical accommodation. Ideas are flung around willy-nilly to see what sticks.

So it's a reaction with deuterium that produces no neutrons. Aha, they say, must be stripping (Oppenheimer-Phillips), despite there being no other basis for that proposal and certainly no basis in conventional nuclear physics. But no tritium is found. So OP falls off the flypaper. Aha, they say, must be successive neutron capture that produces helium, once again without any foundation. But no gamma rays are found, so that falls off the flypaper and they try to get something else to stick. "Aha! Electron capture!" All these clowns use the language of established physics, but betray fundamental misunderstanding of it at every turn. All the while a raft of supposed phenomena await even basic phenomenological description. Now what was it you were saying about a lack of progress?

-Carl
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Doug Browning »

I am not, nor have I at any time been defending CF or LENR or whatever. I am generally quite sceptical of the area. I will say I admire the courage and tenacity of some of the practitioners, but I do not see much hope there. But good luck to them, and I would certainly welcome any approach that successfully does produce energy without radiation or even without a thermal cycle.

Oppenheimer-Phillips doesn't produce any tritium (at least not with Palladium as I was suggesting?), I don't follow what you are suggesting there, unless you are saying deuterium + deuterium via O-P, which clearly doesn't make any sense ( the second reactant needs a stronger affinity for the neutron). There was no intentional pinch effect present either with early CF. And the O-P effect did not numerically support CF, I would consider it as one more count against CF.

I was merely saying that the Pinch effect pressure on a wire loaded with deuterium could enhance the rate numbers for an O-P effect between 2D and palladium. Or looking at it from another angle, one would expect to see some kind of results from an O-P lowered barrier before reaching sufficient pinch currents to do full blown D+D fusion. So instead of the 70 MegaAmpere currents required at Sandia, something interesting might be seen at 10,000 Ampere currents using DIY capacitor discharges.

The combination of a meaningful pinch effect with a deuterium loaded wire is apparently something of a new area, and it would seem worthwhile to explore any effects that might be relevant. Whether they were tried on and didn't fit for CF is really irrelevant.
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Carl Willis »

What I am saying is that detailed theories for cold fusion are unscientific, premature because the phenomenon lacks publicly-accepted definition and because many claimed instances plausibly don't even exist.

This thread was about how one might look for fusion (in the standard DD sense) in an exploding wire. Standard, scientifically-accepted, DD fusion that has an easily-detectable neutron yield.

Yet for some reason, you insist on stuffing the thread with speculative explanations for hypothetical observations that are all part of the unscientific "cold fusion" mythos. I will not let that camel's nose into this tent.

-Carl
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Doug Browning »

D+D pinch fusion in the wire will require enormous currents, well beyond what DIY techniques can muster. There are straight forward calculations in the Sandia papers on what it will take (no burn wave, just volume compression mode in a small wire). Only if there is some reason to expect lower pinch current effects would one even bother with this experiment.

Heaven forbid if someone ever suggests that CF is caused by plasma physics! No more ITER.

I will lay off on the CF "mythos", due to the apparent irritation it seems to cause, it was just a convenient research area to find some effects that might be relevant. If there are any other processes that might give interesting effects at lower pinch currents than the Sandia level (other than melting the expensive wire), I for one would still be interested in hearing about them.
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by hjerald1 »

Richard,
This concept is related to the approach of using explosively compressing UD3 in order to provide "trigger" neutrons for fission weapons. It has been postulated (by those not privy to classified information), that this technique is used by (at least) the US, Pakistan, and China in current nuclear weapons.

Apparently there is an open source publication by the Chinese describing the technology:

"Fusion Produced by Spherical Explosive", in Shock Compression of Condensed Matter 1989. Proceedings of the American Physical Society Topical Conference Held in Albuquerque, NM August 14-17, 1989; Schmidt, SC; Johnson, JN; Davidson, LW; Eds. 1990.

One can imagine that the exploding wire approach has also been looked at by (and classified by) nuclear weapons groups in a number of countries.

Jerry
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by hjerald1 »

A Google search reveals publications concerning neutron production via exploding wires of metal deuterides.

I have wondered for some time about the use of electromagnetic forming or “magneforming” via high power pulsed magnetic fields to promote D-D fusion in metal deuteride targets. Amateurs have used pulsed magnetic fields to produce shrunken coins and the internet reveals numerous approaches to building equipment which could be adapted to metal deuteride experiments.

But Google again provides references to neutron production from applying pulsed magnetic fields to various deuterides.

It is quite likely that both technologies have been examined in detail by nuclear weapons researchers as part of efforts to develop alternate methods of neutron production for fission weapon initiators (including UD3 mentioned in my earlier post).

However it would be fun for the Fusor community to use their collective neutron detection capability and examine either of these approaches.

Jerry
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Edward Miller »

UD3 is VERY interesting. Tough space for the amateurs, tread lightly.

[Edit: Added this part]
I wonder if a similar hydride might be made with non-fission elements that would still see the benefits of this configuration. Also I wonder what their input is in order to produce neutrons with UD3. FWIW there is a scientist that was loading up palladium metal with deuterium using electrolysis and hitting it with a decent laser that was getting good results. Not a significantly closer to break even but interesting. I'll find his paper....

From what I've found briefly DT trigger outputs are 10E8 in 100 ns pulse. That seems small.
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Re: Fusion in an exploding, (imploding) wire?

Post by Edward Miller »

The only thing more interesting than reading about fusion is reading about how people have tried a variety of fusion initiators to ignite fission explosions. The comments run the same range of detail and crazy as our own fusor board. Interestingly enough though it does seem that pulsed D2 tubes are used as initiators...

http://forden.armscontrolwonk.com/archi ... ed-herring
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