An old intranet musing to weigh and consider.

If you wonder how/why fusion works, or how/why the Fusor works, look here first.
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Richard Hull
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An old intranet musing to weigh and consider.

Post by Richard Hull »

Yanked from the distant past I represent some thoughts worth, as Bacon in his essay "On Studies", advises us to "weigh and consider". Note: this only deserves to be a FAQ as it pressures one to ponder some physics at the core level as relates not only to fusion but what makes thing "go" in the universe.

I am going to go off into a bit of core thought regarding nature and how things are done, or at least seem to be done.

Nature is usually thrifty and goes about doing things in the most efficient manner and utilizes processes which are the least disturbing and most enduring over the long haul.

As has been written for years, it is felt that the stars utilize fusion for their energy output and this process is a rather rare process occurring in a microscopic fraction of a star's mass near the core. It is felt that gravitational confinement fusion is at work in this process.

Nothing new here.

If we really grub at the core of all that is real in the universe, we see that all of man's efforts to create energy is one of making "batteries" designed to down-convert energy from available resources. In only a few cases are we making full use of free energy sources. In most free energy cases, we are taking a higher form of radiant energy and down-converting it to lower forms of heat or electrical energy. Still the energy, itself, is free (sunlight IR, UV etc. Regardless, 100% of all the energy man uses, creates, or down converts is of stellar origin. Period!

I have long believed that there are only only two intrinsic forms of available energy in the universe and they are potential energies, as normally viewed, and they are the result of the very existence of two things, and two things only. Matter and charge. matter contains deep sub-potential energies only recently tapped. (binding energies in the form of fake or apparent, yet measurable mass) I further believe that with entropy being what it is the E=MC^2 equation is a unidirectional equation, outside of common stellar interiors and rare energetic nuclear events.

Mass can only be converted to energy and not vice-versa. Anti-matter in this universe is so created, yet is rapidly destroyed by real matter annihilation. These secondary reactions result in a reduced EM energy pair of photons and the identical particle count as before the E to M event.

Here is where the deep thinking comes into play.

I feel that all forms of EM radiation and magnetism are the result of space being filled with CHARGED MATTER. With the appearance of mass and charge came two potential energies which are still here and in concert with charge and mass create 100% of all radiant energy, magnetism and a host of second order effects which our science may think are nascent. I believe they are not.

Among these are, magnetism, magnetic fields, EM radiation from the lowest frequency RF right up through the hardest Gamma radiation. None of these have an original or nascent form within the universe, They are hand-me downs, the result of the unlocking of the cocked hammers of the potential energy guns of Gravity and Electrostatic forces. The ONLY nascent forces outside of the nucleus. These forces exist by virtue of matter and charge which are truly nascent.

It must be remembered that charge is not energy. It is only potential energy when viewed against at least one other charge. It can be "kinematicized" or go kinetic only when nascent potential energy forces the charges either apart or together. Likewise, mass and its inherent gravitational potential energy connection can only go kinetic when aggregates of bulk matter are attracted. The two forces work at different steps in nature, but between the two, all motion, all magnetism, all radiation has come forth. As these nascent energies are finite, the universe perpetually spends itself as matter degrades and energy is spent to heat nothing on a universal scale. Almost 100% of all this kinematic effort of spending the potential energies of the nascent charge and mass is created in stars.

What little energy to mass conversion which occurs in the universe is done mostly in stellar cores or in nova or supernova reactions. Nature uses gravity to do all her energy work on the macroscale and electrical forces of charged particles to create the actual radiation which warms and again scatters lesser and lesser amounts of matter out into the void, re-cocking the gravitational potential energy gun to ever feebler and feebler levels over vast time and spatial volume scales. Don't get me wrong, EM radiation, once created, solely by potential energy sources, can and does also have the capability of doing things. (motion, let loose orbital electrons, nuclear reactions, etc.) But, these are all step-down, net energy losing process as the photon degrades.

So, the only way we might hope to do fusion looks like either a gravitational scheme or an electrostatic one. At least that is the way I see it. Electromagnetic confinement is an "also ran" that nature found wanting due to its secondary nature and paucity of action and even its counteraction to her other great potential energy force, CHARGE. It is like trying to use a cars exhaust to power it. EM is dead matter, and like Humpty-Dumpty man can't put it back together again. Certainly not to his power making advantage.

Fusion and fission is the process of turning matter's binding forces into energy. To do it well, we must make use of extant cocked potential energy sources. As we don't handle gravity well with quadrillions of tons of mass, the electrostatic connection looks like the only valid, NATURAL path. We do it here at great loss.

Now to ponder on as to how to do this on a scale where it looks like a battery, and to do it not efficiently, but for nearly free. It would be nice if we didn't have boil water in our battery anymore either.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Rex Allers
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Re: An old intranet musing to weigh and consider.

Post by Rex Allers »

Richard, thanks for sharing your musings.

Quite often in your post you use the term "nascent". Maybe that is obvious for most in context, but I'm not sure. Could you possibly give us a more specific definition of what you mean by that? Is it consistent throughout the post?

Apologies if most already got it.

I admit I'm still digesting what you have shared. My aging brain is noticeably less sharp than it used to be -- harder to grasp and forgetful. Oh well. Play the hand with what you got.
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Richard Hull
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Re: An old intranet musing to weigh and consider.

Post by Richard Hull »

For me nascent is..... pre-existing, naturally accepted and omni-present. Something that is primal or came first.

For instance, light (EM radiation) and magnetism could never be part of the universe until the electron or whatever charge is was formed. In short, light and magnetism is a by-product of potential energy reactions. No charge = no EM radiation or magnetism. Common matter(gravity) + charge = kinematics...An active universe that we observe today.

I have tried to form a process where their was a very dark age of the universe when there were only quarks, then an age of the mesons, and then a much longer age of matter, one that we are in now. Magnetism is generated only when charge is in uniform motion. EM radiation and photons are when charge experiences a rapid change of motion. (accelerates or decelerates). for me, there is no chicken or the egg scenario here.

Quarks, gluons, etc are not part of the proton. They are the precursors of matter, the proton. They evolved into the proton a totally new and separate entity. We only detect them when temperatures (energy) equivalent to their long gone age are formed within the diameter of the proton (colliders). They are born again, but into a cold universe. As the energy dissipates around them, they disappear in a universe that has left them behind in a far more universally energetic age.

It is all about the devolving nature of the universe's energy. The current loss mechanism is via EM radiation. This is often referred to as the heat death (entropy). Interestingly, as energy devolves, biota tends to evolve as there is just enough EM energy on many rocky, orbiting slag heaps to roll the chemical dice a lot as long as you aren't in an active nuclear environment. It is as if the universe is now ready to contemplate itself in middle age...If I may wax eloquent.

In the beginning it was a noisy crying baby unstable and as yet unformed. As matter formed things became much more calm and the first generation of stars provided the 92 element diversity of matter in the universe. Later, still, biology could begin with a multiplicity of chemical reactions working constantly and at random. Is the universe becoming aware of itself through its sentient creations in middle age??

If this sounds religious it is not, I assure you. I will give you philosophical, however. All science is just the more advanced step-child of natural philosophy. As science advances our knowledge we must not abandon our human penchant for a natural philosophy of wonderment around it.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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