New results

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JoeBallantyne
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Re: New results

Post by JoeBallantyne »

From what I have seen, I think Steven is sincerely trying the best he can.

Is he there yet? No. Is he close? No.

But does that warrant deleting this thread?

Not IMO.

Joe.
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Rich Feldman
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Re: New results

Post by Rich Feldman »

I'm standing with Steven and Joe here. Nobody needs to open the thread if they don't want to.
It doesn't have questionable links to URL's that have nothing to do with fusors or nuclear science, in first post by a just-registered user.
All models are wrong; some models are useful. -- George Box
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Taylor Romain
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Re: New results

Post by Taylor Romain »

I agree with Joe that the post should remain up, and OP should provide more details about their setup. It appears to differ from the typical demo Fusor system, which is generally built with stainless steel conflats or vacuum rated jars. Exploring alternative approaches to building demo fusors could benefit the community. I’d be particularly interested in seeing a wider view of the setup, including the power supply and the safety mechanisms in place.
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: New results

Post by Dennis P Brown »

As one of the people posting on his work since he started a while ago, I have treated his posts as attempts to do a new approch. His work is terribly sloppy, he often uses unsupported statements, and ignores people that try to guide him. Hardly an example of proper work but he is trying and posting his attempts. He should work on his English and attempt to express himself more clearly - I can see why this makes reading his posts rather difficult to follow. Yet he hasn't broken any rules and is certainly doing some original work.
Ignorance is what we all experience until we make an effort to learn
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Joe Gayo
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Re: New results

Post by Joe Gayo »

Maybe I recall incorrectly, but at one point there was an objective to keep threads similar to this one in the "New User" area.

I'm not sure how valuable that is in practice.
steventw
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Re: New results

Post by steventw »

Well I did the math
If readings are correct it’s putting out 2.8 more power out than putting in
And that’s not even using proper fuel…
I’m confident I have detector setup correctly

I am reading and listening to everyone
But I’m going by what I am seeing with my experiment
If wasn’t prob wouldn’t of read manual for detector and got setting right so soon
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: New results

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Measuring heat output from any device is difficult to get accurate and is a science in of its self. Even experts have, at times, fooled themselves and got it wrong - Fleischman is a great example and he was a chemist that should have know better. Your making a typical mistake even some scientist make - want to believe results and not measuring carefully.

Your claim that air is undergoing fusion is impossible - period. Your measurements have been noise (typical for such a powerful RF source like an open plasma.)

Your setup has so many issues it is hopeless to deal with your problems much less address measuring accurate power in vs. power out. That would require a water bath for your chamber, very accurate power meters and temperature gauges and those you do not have and have not done. All you'd find is your net output energy is below your measured input energy.

Again, you have been told you haven't measured any neutrons and refuse to do proper testing. Now claiming a totally ridiculous power output based on extremely inaccurate methods (since you are claiming net power we know your methodology is incorrect.) To do that level of fusion you would be dead.

You are wasting everyone ones time posting nonsense since you continue to refuse to do the simplest test using your neutron detector - do that would demonstrate your measuring only noise. I will not waste any further time on your nonsense since you refuse to do the only test that matters.
Ignorance is what we all experience until we make an effort to learn
steventw
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Re: New results

Post by steventw »

I run plenty of test and adjusted settings till was getting no “noise”

So till I use deuterium or some sort proper fuel I guess your not going to even care about any sorta result
Atmosphere isn’t 100% oxygen….
There are other things in it that are fusable
I’m betting ill get even better result when just use proper fuel
But given how it went with mix of things around us
I’m not Gona run another test till I can afford enough lead sheeting to protect myself…
Promised doctor id get a check up before run another test anyway to be sure im not Gona kill myself with to much exposure
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Richard Hull
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Re: New results

Post by Richard Hull »

I have demurred from comment to this point, as my thoughts were in line with Dennis' wise, fusion science based, comments immediately above.

This fellow was giving it a try with a seemingly decent neutron detection system. He reported what is obviously EMI/RFI noise as neutron counts. It seems now he is just trying our patience. His detections are noise and his assumptions on air fusion are beyond the pale of any studied and informed person attempting to do science, much less nuclear fusion.

"Them's hard sayins", as stand-up comedian "brother" Dave Gardner, an old southerner from the 60's would often say when speaking of something a person or folks did not want to hear, but was true.

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
William Turner
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Re: New results

Post by William Turner »

Joe/Rich/Taylor/Dennis,

By all means, let's keep filling a technical forum with garbage.

Will
Daniel Harrer
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Re: New results

Post by Daniel Harrer »

Will: I am with you if this becomes the norm and/or certain users start lots of similar discussions. But right now I see not much issue because it is contained within a single thread. At worst it is useless and can be ignored, at best they (steventw) learn something from it.
Frank Sanns
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Re: New results

Post by Frank Sanns »

One never quite knows where an original post will lead. Sometimes good technical content results so I tend to let things play out.

It seems appropriate at this time to move the topic. It will not be deleted as it may be instructional for other members .

The topic is now here in New User Chat Area as it is more appropriate here than in the technical results area.


ALSO: See my post in the ANNOUNCEMENT section at: viewtopic.php?t=15767
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
JoeBallantyne
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Re: New results

Post by JoeBallantyne »

Will - pretty harsh words for someone who has never posted about any actual hardware that they have built. Where is your fusor? What hardware have you put together and tested? In all your posts on fusor.net, nothing about anything that you built. Steven at least has built something and run it. Which is more than anyone here can say for you - at least based on what you have reported here. (Unless of course William Turner is just an alias and you are actually someone else...)

Steven - you have had a lot of different folks from fusor.net chime in on this thread trying to help you out. Many of whom have built working fusors, and some of whom have built extremely powerful fusors. You would do well to listen to the advice you have been given. If you continue to claim that you can fuse air, you will just demonstrate your complete ignorance of the physics of fusion, and completely turn people off from trying to help you further. (It should be pretty obvious from some of the earlier posts in this thread, that this is already happening.)

You spent some significant $$ investing in a good neutron detection system. But it appears you are ignoring the advice you got earlier in this thread about how that system works - which is that unless you get energies above a certain threshold in the output of the tube, you aren't measuring neutrons with the tube at all. (see post viewtopic.php?p=104374#p104374) Which from the pictures you have posted, you aren't getting any counts above said threshold. Which means you aren't doing fusion. Which everyone on this site would agree with. You aren't doing fusion. In which case, if you are somehow getting more power out than you are putting in (which you aren't despite what you might think/calculate), it is not due to fusion, but some other new fantastical phenomenon that makes power out of thin air.

You will find that folks patience runs out real quick once you continue making claims of fusion with no actual supporting data. Patience runs out even faster for claims of Q>1. Which you are now making. Again with absolutely no supporting data.

It is great that you built something, and that you got a neutron detection system. You need to become an expert in using that system properly and in understanding the data it gives you.

Most neutron detection tubes are designed to detect thermal neutrons - I am not sure about your exact setup - but I expect it likely also will best detect thermal neutrons. Which means that you MUST use a moderator (2 inches or so of HDPE around your tube) with your tube. The one test that is accepted as conclusive for neutrons here at fusor.net, is if your neutron count rate inside a moderator is several to many times, the background count rate that you get with the tube outside a moderator. Having the count rate fall to background while running your fusor when you pull the tube out of the moderator and then rise significantly when you slide it back in, shows you are counting thermal neutrons and not something else.

Joe.
steventw
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Re: New results

Post by steventw »

Hi Joe.

I know initial results were most likely thermal neutrons when was getting readings around 400,000 counts
I read through manual extensively on how to configure properly and it said if want it to detect fast neutrons can use 2 - 3 inches of water to slow them down enough for detector to read.
So I did 2 inches roughly seen thick Perspex lid cause also wax can slow down apparently according to manual.

Water went up 20 degrees had a temp gauge In it.
And over a million counts and was putting out roughly 23kv steady for 30seconds
Atmosphere is not just oxygen
It’s a mix of a lot of gases.
Some fusable some not.
I recon if I had actually put straight fusion fuel into it it would be a lot higher and prob do a bit of damage radiation wise to myself.
So got to save up for proper shielding and some sorta fuseable fuel source.
I don’t know what gases are fuseable any help would be good if I was easy to get just off shelf somewhere.
Could get argon from dads work shrugs
JoeBallantyne
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Re: New results

Post by JoeBallantyne »

Hi Steven -

You are still off in fantasy land deluding yourself that what your detector is counting has something to do with neutrons. Most likely what you are counting are x-rays. Which most definitely are NOT neutrons. Your device will make many orders of magnitude more x-rays than neutrons. That is pretty much true for most fusors - even those that DO make neutrons.

A few quick google searches should have been enough to enlighten you. Let me do them for you.

Type in "composition of air" to google. Top link is the NOAA site. On the page (https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/atmosphere) linked to on that site it says:

Chemical makeup of the atmosphere EXCLUDING water vapor
Gas Symbol Content
Nitrogen N2 78.084%
Oxygen O2 20.946%
Argon Ar 0.934%
Carbon dioxide CO2 0.042%
Neon Ne 18.182 parts per million
Helium He 5.24 parts per million
Methane CH4 1.92 parts per million
Krypton Kr 1.14 parts per million
Hydrogen H2 0.55 parts per million
Nitrous oxide N2O 0.33 parts per million
Carbon monoxide CO 0.10 parts per million
Xenon Xe 0.09 parts per million
Ozone O3 0.07 parts per million
Nitrogen dioxide NO2 0.02 parts per million
Iodine I2 0.01 parts per million
Ammonia NH3 trace
These percentages of atmospheric gases are for a completely dry atmosphere. The atmosphere is rarely, if ever, dry. Water vapor (water in a gas state) is nearly always present, up to about 4% of the total volume.

Chemical makeup of the atmosphere INCLUDING water vapor
Water Vapor Nitrogen Oxygen Argon
0% 78.084% 20.947% 0.934%
1% 77.30% 20.70% 0.92%
2% 76.52% 20.53% 0.91%
3% 75.74% 20.32% 0.90%
4% 74.96% 20.11% 0.89%
In the Earth's desert regions (30°N/S), when dry winds are blowing, the water vapor contribution to the composition of the atmosphere will be near zero. Water vapor contribution climbs to near 3% on extremely hot/humid days. The upper limit, approaching 4%, is found in tropical climates.


Next, search for the following on google "fusion cross section graph"

The first image that pops is this one (note that pretty much all the first images are identical}.

fusion-xsecs2.png

If you look at the list of elements on the graph with which you can actually do successful fusion you find the following:

deuterium-tritium (DT)
deuterium-deuterium (DD)
deuterium-helium3 (DHe3)
proton-boron11 (PB11)

A proton is just a hydrogen nucleus. Note that NONE of the fusion isotopes other than hydrogen show up in the list of the elements that make up the air in our atmosphere. Deuterium and tritium are both isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium has 1 proton and 1 neutron in its nucleus. Tritium has 1 proton and 2 neutrons in its nucleus. He3 is helium 3, and has two protons and 1 neutron in its nucleus. It is DIFFERENT from He4 (normally abbreviated He) which is standard helium, which has 2 protons and 2 neutrons in its nucleus.

Hydrogen only fuses at a rate reasonable for an on earth fusion reactor with boron11. Boron is NOT present in our atmosphere. (It is NOT in the list of elements that make up our air.) Plus you need to have voltages on the order of 500kV to fuse boron and hydrogen - ideally even higher. You are running at 23kV. 20x lower than where you need to be for PB11 fusion. Furthermore hydrogen is a tiny fraction of what is in air - 5 hydrogen molecules out of 10 million other molecules. Finally, PB11 fusion is aneutronic, which means its primary reaction makes NO neutrons at all. So even if you were somehow magically doing PB11 fusion, (without any boron, and at voltage levels 20x too low, and with tiny concentrations of protons), your detector wouldn't detect neutrons anyway because PB11 fusion doesn't make neutrons. It makes He4 nuclei - ie: alpha particles. Which you would have to detect INSIDE your chamber which you aren't even trying to do. So PB11 fusion is most definitely NOT happening in your device.

Water vapor can make up to 4% of the atmosphere in the most humid places on earth. (Not where you live, as you don't live in a tropical rain forest.)

Let's for arguments sake, say that you have a 4% concentration of water vapor in your device. Deuterium is present in water in the oceans at a level of about 1 deuterium atom for every 6400 hydrogen atoms.

So we take 0.04 (4 percent) divided by 6400, and we get 0.00000625 as a very rough estimate of the fraction of deuterium in the air in your device in the absolutely most humid possible configuration.

That is nothing dude. Nothing at all.

We have a hard time doing fusion when we have deuterium at concentrations of 0.95 - 0.98 in the gas in our devices.

For you to think that you are getting neutron counts at hundreds of thousands of counts per minute when your deuterium concentration is much much less than 6.25 ppm, is just absolutely ridiculous.

The only element present in air that is fusible at rates reasonable for a fusion reactor on earth, is deuterium, and in normal air its concentrations are literally 100,000 times TOO LOW to result in any reasonable amount of fusion.

Steven, please report clearly on what the documentation you have says is the energy level output by your tube when it detects a neutron. I am sure that is outlined in your docs. Then please figure out how many of your counts were actually AT or ABOVE that energy level. I fully expect that when you do that correctly, you will find that you are getting somewhere between 1 and 15 counts per minute. Which is what background neutron counts typically are.

Furthermore, you need to buy yourself some deuterium - or at least get some deuterium oxide (heavy water) and a PEM cell so you can make your own deuterium gas.

You also need to get a good vacuum gauge, so that you can report an accurate value for the pressure present in your device when you run it.

Joe.
Last edited by JoeBallantyne on Sun Jan 26, 2025 2:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
steventw
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Re: New results

Post by steventw »

What if water vapour gets in and the current through wires splits
JoeBallantyne
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Re: New results

Post by JoeBallantyne »

Steven -

Your sentences are sometimes very terse. It makes what you are asking or saying hard to understand. Also, ending posts with "shrugs" is a little strange. It gives the impression that you either don't care about what you are doing, or you don't care what other people are telling you. Neither of which makes folks inclined to help you.

I assume, you were asking, what if any water vapor that gets into your device gets disassociated into oxygen and hydrogen, and then the hydrogen gets ionized. Well, my analysis covered that case. In that case, the levels of fusible ions of deuterium (the only ion in the chamber that is fusible) are too low to make measurable fusion. Hydrogen won't fuse at 23kV. Deuterium will. But you don't have enough deuterium in air to have measurable amounts of fusion or neutrons.

Joe.
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Richard Hull
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Re: New results

Post by Richard Hull »

Joe,

You did a wonderful love's labor on the atmosphere post. I am afraid all your love's labor was for naught on Steven. He obviously knows nothing of fusion, doesn't due suitable self directed learning and refuses to take advice from those of us who have done fusion and known how to detect and measure it.

Joe, there are some folks who just will not put forth the needed scientific effort and understanding here. Still, your wonderful efforts directed at Steven's education are applauded. I haven't the patience of Job that you exhibit.

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
steventw
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Re: New results

Post by steventw »

Well I guess ya gona criticise even more when I say only 8kv power in
And 23kv out if did Math right
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Richard Hull
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Re: New results

Post by Richard Hull »

8kv and 25kv are not power they are voltages. Learn electricity to the level of a 12th grade physics student or home electrician. Misuse of technical terms in the sciences is a dead giveaway that an amateur is at hand.

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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Liam David
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Re: New results

Post by Liam David »

I am reminded of the idiom "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."


This thread has devolved into:

{ridiculous claim or fundamental misunderstanding}

{attempt to correct said claim or misunderstanding}

{the occasional comment requesting an end to the madness}

(repeat ad infinitum)


I acknowledge that no one is obligated to open this thread, but there has to be some minimum acceptable standard for receiving feedback and not making such ridiculous claims.

Also, it's disheartening to see that this thread is constitutes a significant fraction of this forum's current activity, ebbs and flows aside. I proposed it be locked and left as an example that speaks for itself. It's gone on too long.

Some people cannot be helped.
JoeBallantyne
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Re: New results

Post by JoeBallantyne »

Unfortunately, at this point, I must concur with Liam.

Lock it.

Joe.
John Futter
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Re: New results

Post by John Futter »

steventw
I appreciate your efforts / ideas- BUT! these need to be backed by accepted science that most of us on this site have been taught or are used to!!!
we have been very accommodating but it is gettig to be a bit OTT
"Ad nauseam" has come to mind
Ryan Ginter
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Re: New results

Post by Ryan Ginter »

I hate to pile on, but I've shared the same sentiments for some time now.

One of the key aspects of the scientific process is discussion within the community. I strongly oppose the censorship of ideas, even those that we as a whole may believe to be carried out in vain.

HOWEVER, at least some level of scientific competency needs to be demonstrated. This is a scientific forum after all, we aren't here to play make-believe scientists.

Until Steven can demonstrate a willingness to learn the most basic of fusion principles, I don't see any further value in acting as though his work fits in amongst the rest of the forum.

Sorry Steven, I don't say this with any ill will towards you, however, you must come to realize that your work is unacceptable to those who dedicate themselves to real science. I hope you will take this as a sign and observe the fallacies highlighted by everyone. Should you put in the effort to learn the most basic of principles required for this type of project, I'm certain everyone will be ready to listen and engage once more.
Last edited by Ryan Ginter on Sun Jan 26, 2025 5:42 am, edited 2 times in total.
steventw
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Re: New results

Post by steventw »

IMG_5176.jpeg
IMG_5175.jpeg
IMG_5174.jpeg
IMG_5172.jpeg
IMG_5170.jpeg
IMG_5165.jpeg
IMG_5166.jpeg
Well you know what they say if it’s repeatable 3 times

Also got the 0 result when next to it off 3 times 2 at start 1 at end

Sorry photos not in order
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