Re: electostatic confinment?

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Wed, 4 Aug 1999, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

> The approach is based on the Farnsworth's patent
> from 1950's.  Can somebody elaborate on this topic?

  Philo Farnsworth Biography
  http://www.songs.com/philo/

  Farnsworth and fusion (w/discussion group)
  http://www.songs.com/philo/fusion

  The Farnsworth Fusor (from Borderlands)
  http://www.songs.com/philo/fusion/vassilatos.html

  Farnsworth Patents (Bert P. hobbyist site)
  http://www.ticnet.com/bertpool/philo/philo.htm


The Farnsworth Fusor is a well-known device in the Fringe Science
community.  That doesn't mean it doesn't do interesting things.  A portion
of "fringe science" is composed of discoveries and devices which have been
mislabled as pseudoscience and relegated to the fringe by those who see no
need to actually review the evidence.  The Farnsworth Fusor produces
neutrons, so it refuses to remain limited to the Fringe.

The device is extremely simple.  In the working models that hobbyists have
built, two skeletal sphere-electrodes are made using thin SS wire, with
one sphere about 15cm diameter and a smaller one about 5cm, with the
smaller sphere positioned concentrically with the larger one (it's
supported by a metal post.)  The whole assembly is placed in a gas at very
low pressure.  High DC voltage of up to 20KV is applied between the
spheres, with the central sphere being negative. The device draws quite a
large wattage.  A small bright region appears in the center of the volume
enclosed by the smaller sphere.

But wait, there's something fishy about this description.  The smaller
sphere constitutes a Faraday Cage.  We might expect to see a
glow-discharge in the region between the inner and outer sphere, but
interior of the smaller sphere is a zero-field region.  There should be no
discharge there.

The two sphere-electrodes function as an ion gun.  The e-field between
them ionizes the gas by electron bombardment, and then the field
accelerates the resulting ions.  The concentric geometry causes the beam
of positive ions to come to a focus in the center of the device.  Ions are
trapped there and experience multiple collisions with the incoming ions.
Ions which miss the center will pass through and be reflected back towards
the center by the e-field between the concentric spheres.  For those ions
being heated by multiple impacts in the center, it's not really
electrostatic confinement.  It's inertial confinement combined with
ion-beam heating.

Apparantly some of the ions attain fairly high velocities.  When D2 gas is
injected, the device emits neutrons.



Questions I have for this group:  if colliding beams of D2 nucleii give
off neutrons, is fusion occuring?  If not, then at what energies would we
expect to see fusion, if at known lower energies we are seeing neutrons?

And whatever became of "MIGMA" and aneutronic fusion?


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William J. Beaty                                  SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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