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The man who experimentally discovered HDCC (high density charge
clusters), I was told in Salt Lake City, was Kenneth Shoulders. The
HDCC were discovered by using a scanning electron microscope. A
cluster is like a particle whose q/m ratio is enormous. The kinetic
energy acquired by a cluster, even when the potential difference is
only 100 volts, is huge. HDCC were discovered by observing microns-
size holes "drilled" by clusters in metallic foils.
Aware potential usefulness of clusters Shoulders started a patenting
procedure. His lawyer, however, suspected the the patent might be
classified. To prevent this a self-published notebook, describing all
findings, was produced and distributed to a number of people. They
said that names of those who received private copies were on a disk
which crashed. That is how numerous patents of Ken Shoulders,
according to Hall Fax, were allowed to remain public. I do not know if
this story is correct but it becomes credible in light of what has just
been posted by Richard (see below). By the way, go to Google and
ask for "charge clusters." The first item will be that of Ken
Shoulders
and his son.
On Sunday, Mar 9, 2003, at 14:05 US/Eastern, Richard Lindgren wrote:
During the Reagan years the government funded many projects under the
"Star Wars Missile Defense System". One of the projects was to
construct
an electron beam at several GeV energies consisting of a chain of
pulses that would tunnel its way through the atmosphere with each
succesive pulse clearing the way ( basically making a region of
reduced
air density)for the one after it. The beam would be able travel 100 of
times further than normal. Each pulse consisted of kilolamps of
electrons generating a huge magnetice field that would self focus the
beam through the air. This was built and tested at LLNL in Livermore
CA
using a 50 MeV, not GeV, beam about 15 years ago. It never worked.
When
the beam was sent out into the air various instabilities dominated its
behavior. I do not know the current state of the art of this type of
plasma/beam physics. A lot of theoretical work was also done at the
Naval Research Laboratory.
Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
Does it make any sense to think that a very large number of electrons
(billions) can stay together (despite the mutual repulsion) when they
circulate rapidly forming a small "toroidal vortex?" The nonuniform
magnetic field, created by them, is said to produce confining forces.
It would be like a large "classical" atom without a nucleus (a
cluster
of charges, if you prefer).