Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: erich on 14/08/2005 16:19:16
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Dear Folks:
I have been researching alturnative approaches to fusion power and started a correspondance with Clint Seward of Electron Power Systems involving fusion power a few months ago.
A new thread has evolved,one of the top lightning researcher in the world, Joe Dwyer at FIT, got his Y-ray and X-ray research published in the may issue of Scientific American,
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?ch...F9683414B7FFE9F
Dwyer's paper:
http://www.lightning.ece.ufl.edu/PDF/Gammarays.pdf
and according to Clint Seward it supports his lightning models and fusion work at EPS, Electron Power Systems
www.electronpowersystems.com/ .
He proposes applications as varied as home power generation@ .ooo5 cents/KW hr, cars, distributed power, airplanes, space propulsion , power storage and kinetic weapons.
And also provides a theoretic base for ball lightning:
Ball Lightning Explained as a Stable Plasma Toroid http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20020209/bob8.asp
Clint sent Joe and I his new paper on a lightning charge transport model of cloud to ground lightning (If your interested I'll send it,he did not want me to post it to the web yet). Joe was supportive and suggested some other papers and Clint is now in re-write.
It may also explain Elves, blue jets, sprites and red sprites, plasmas that appear above thunder storms. After a little searching, this seemed to have the best hard numbers on the observations of sprites.
Dr. Mark A. Stanley's Dissertation
http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~stanleym/d...ation/main.html
And may also explain the spiral twist of fulgurites, hollow fused sand tubes found in the ground at lightning strikes.
Not to blow my own horn, but I got them talking with my E-mail inquires!
Erich J. Knight
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Interesting. Speaking from complete ignorance, is Dwyer suggesting that the lightning produces a stable plasma in which fusion events occur? If so, does he suggest which events from the energies measured?
Sorry if the paper covers this, those two column jobs are hard to follow in the screen and my printer's not working!
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Hi Simmer:
No, this will explain it:
Subject Re: Lightning comes from Space
Posted by Edward Beuerlein on 2005-16-08 10:02
Hey all,
This topic reminded me of an article I read on NewScientist.com. The article is available only with a subscription(which I have) so I have posted the contents instead of a link(you need a username/password to read the article on the website).
Enjoy!
Lightning: Thunderbolts from space
* 07 May 2005
* From New Scientist Print Edition.
IN THE time it takes to blink, there are 10 flashes of fork lightning in the Earth's atmosphere. Each bolt travels at around a third of the speed of light, reaches temperatures as hot as the sun's corona, and carries about 10,000 times as much current as a household circuit. No wonder lightning triggers more than a third of North America's power cuts each year, and kills hundreds of people worldwide.
The sheer electrical power of lightning has had researchers baffled. In 1752, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite into a storm cloud and showed that it became electrically charged. But how the comparatively modest build-up of charge in a cloud has the strength to set off such an impressive light show has been something of a mystery. "Nobody understands what's going on here. You have a lot of people guessing, but we are really clueless. After a couple of hundred years, it's actually quite embarrassing," says Joe Dwyer, who studies lightning at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.
Now the mystery is about to be solved. X-ray emissions detected from lightning bolts have provided the first confirmation of a surprising and once controversial theory: that lightning comes from outer space.
Lightning is the release of pent-up charge stored in an electric field. In a thundercloud, electric fields are generated by collisions between ice particles (see "Icy origins"). The bulk of the charge is negative, inducing a positive charge in the ground thousands of metres below. Eventually the air between becomes ionised and conducts charge either from cloud to cloud or cloud to ground as a lightning bolt.
But there is a flaw in this explanation. Air only ionises spontaneously in electric fields of around 2500 kilovolts per metre. Centuries of often dangerous measurements with kites, balloons and aircraft have produced many measurements of fields in thunderclouds. (In 1753, a Russian scientist was killed as he tried to reproduce Franklin's kite-flying experiment.) But no one has ever found an electric field in a storm cloud that is anywhere near strong enough to ionise air molecules. The fields found are typically between 100 and 400 kilovolts per metre, less than a tenth of what is needed.
Some argue that lightning researchers have simply missed small regions of high field strength. The massive storms of the Great Plains in the US can be 10 kilometres high and span some 100,000 square kilometres. Even relatively small thunderstorms cover 2500 square kilometres. "If you have ever seen a research plane inside a cloud, it's just like a needle in a haystack," says atmospheric physicist Clive Saunders of the University of Manchester, UK. So it is possible that the strong fields are in there somewhere, far from the measuring devices. But an increasingly popular explanation is that the strong fields are not seen because they are simply not there. "The more measurements we make that don't see high fields, the less likely it is that we're missing them," says lightning modeller John Helsdon at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City.
A few years ago, lightning researchers began to look for some other way the electrical breakdown of air might be triggered, and they have identified a chief suspect: cosmic rays. These are highly energetic particles that zip through space at close to the speed of light. Thousands of them bombard every square metre of Earth's atmosphere each second, many having travelled intergalactic distances. In 1992, Alex Gurevich of the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow had proposed a way that cosmic rays might seed lightning. When a cosmic ray strikes Earth's atmosphere, it could hit an air molecule, ionising it and producing an extremely energetic electron. In the electric fields near a storm cloud, such an electron could be accelerated to near the speed of light, then hit and ionise other air molecules, producing more and more electrons in a chain reaction. The ensuing avalanche of electrons would ionise the air, allowing charge to flow. Gurevich called the idea "runaway breakdown".
“Thousands of cosmic rays bombard every square metre of Earth's atmosphere each second, many having travelled intergalactic distances”
The theory was originally considered fairly maverick, but in the absence of other explanations, it is now becoming mainstream. The main advantage of runaway breakdown is that it requires a far smaller electric field to get started - around 300 kilovolts per metre, similar to that routinely measured in storm clouds. And electrons moving near the speed of light emit energetic radiation such as X-rays and gamma rays, providing a way to test the idea. In 2001, Charlie Moore and his colleagues at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro found the first direct evidence for runaway breakdown when they recorded X-rays shooting from the "leader" of a nearby lightning bolt. The leader is the nearly invisible path of current that moves towards the ground in halting steps, each between 50 and 100 metres long. Each step is separated by a 50 microsecond pause. Usually, the leader is negative, but as it approaches the ground, positive charges collect and are drawn upwards. When these two paths meet, the circuit between ground and sky is complete and lightning is unleashed.
There had been anecdotal reports of lightning emitting X-rays for decades, but Moore's reports got researchers very excited. "Moore's observations got a lot of people thinking that maybe the energetic radiation was real. But it needed to be confirmed or denied. We still couldn't be sure it wasn't a mistake," says Martin Uman, co-director of the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing in Camp Blanding, Florida.
Dwyer, Uman and colleagues set out to test the theory a different way. They triggered lightning themselves by sending rockets up into storm clouds, which, says Uman, has some advantages over waiting for a natural strike. "You can wait a whole summer and only get a couple of lightning strikes close enough to see," he says. In 2002, following Moore's reports, they began watching their man-made strikes with an X-ray detector. To the team's amazement, of the 37 strikes captured in the summer of 2002, 31 emitted X-rays. It seemed that the rocket was setting off runaway breakdown, just as, perhaps, cosmic rays do in natural strikes.
Since the original observations, Uman, Dwyer and their collaborators have refined their measurements of the X-rays' energies. Last summer they recorded microsecond bursts of X-rays with energies of around 150,000 electronvolts. This energy coincides with the energy of electrons in a runaway breakdown cascade over a distance of about 50 metres - the typical distance for a step of the zig-zag of a lightning bolt. Dwyer was particularly pleased. "The stepping process determines where lightning will go and how it branches. But stepping has been very mysterious and no one knows exactly how or why it does it." Runaway breakdown explains this: the field builds up over a short distance in the air until breakdown is triggered, then the charge moves to the next location and the build-up begins again.
However, just as evidence has begun to pile up for runaway breakdown, some kinks have arisen in the theory that cosmic rays are setting off the cascades. In February, Thomas Marshall of the University of Mississippi in Oxford and colleagues reported a series of balloon measurements taken inside a mountain thunderstorm in New Mexico. They compared the timing and position of a lightning flash with the position of a remote balloon carrying electric field meters that they had sent into a storm cloud. Two lightning flashes happened just moments after the local electric field passed the runaway breakdown threshold of 281 kilovolts per metre.
Cosmic kick-off
But there was one puzzling observation. For one of the three strikes that the team studied, even though the local electric field grew to 345 kilovolts per metre it sat there for a full 40 seconds before lightning shot to the ground. Why the delay? "It may just be waiting for a bigger cosmic ray to kick it off," says Marshall. This points to a major unknown in the runaway breakdown theory: if runaway breakdown is triggered by cosmic rays, just how energetic must a cosmic ray be to do the trick?
Gurevich suggested in 2003 that you may need a particle with an energy of at least 1016 electronvolts. But a cosmic ray of this energy hits a square kilometre of Earth only once every 50 seconds: not often enough to account for the world's lightning activity. And when Dwyer recently went back and took a closer look at the energies of X-rays recorded from lightning leaders between 2002 and 2004, he found they pointed to runaway electrons with energies around 20 times smaller than those Gurevich predicted for a cosmic ray cascade. "It's very perplexing," says Marshall.
However, Dwyer's observations only apply to X-rays measured from lightning bolt leaders. Gurevich's cosmic ray predictions might still apply to the initiation of runaway breakdown up in the clouds. In summer 2003, Dwyer recorded a burst even more energetic than an X-ray burst, a gamma-ray burst, coming from the cloud above a lightning bolt. Such a high-energy event fits Gurevich's predictions much better.
“Researchers are convinced that lightning is caused by some kind of runaway breakdown and this could be triggered by cosmic rays”
Gamma-ray bursts in clouds have been well studied because satellites can see them from above. A team working with NASA's RHESSI satellite, for example, have reported seeing around 50 gamma-ray flares from the atmosphere every day, many with the 1016-electronvolt energies needed to match Gurevich's predictions. Originally, lightning theorists had only been interested in gamma-ray flashes because they believed they might be connected with another lightning mystery: sprites. These faint flashes of light dance above the clouds at an altitude of between 40 and 90 kilometres (storm clouds are 10 to 16 kilometres above the ground).
Sprite researcher Steve Cummer at Duke University has now compared the RHESSI results to radio emissions collected below the clouds at his research station in Durham, North Carolina. Very low frequency radio can be used to detect whether there has been a lightning bolt within about 4000 kilometres of a detector. Cummer says the strike positions and timing overlap with the gamma-ray signals RHESSI saw from above. What was more, of 26 gamma-ray flashes that Cummer studied up close, none was connected with a sprite. They all seemed to come from the height of thunderclouds rather than much higher sprite territory.
"Certainly it's looking like terrestrial gamma flashes are associated with processes that may have something to do with lightning initiation," says Cummer. But there are still some hiccups with the theory: there are not enough gamma-ray bursts to account for all the lightning activity on Earth, for example.
Nevertheless, researchers are convinced that lightning is caused by some kind of runaway breakdown, and the circumstantial evidence is that this could be triggered by a cosmic ray high up in the clouds. But so far, they cannot be sure that runaway breakdown is always sparked off by cosmic rays.
For Paul Krehbiel at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, researchers will have found the real "smoking gun" when they show that both lightning bolts and the cascades of particles triggered by incoming cosmic rays originate at the same position. To see this, researchers need field stations capable of detecting the showers of charged particles set off by cosmic rays as well as lightning. Gurevich and his colleagues have recently set up just such a station in Kazakhstan, and Dwyer and Uman are combining the power of 32 telescopes scattered over a square kilometre to capture the X-rays and the cascades close together. "Maybe we'll find bursts of gamma rays coming out of every thunderstorm," Uman says.
Dwyer would be very surprised to see the theory disproved now. "We know that runaway breakdown is occurring, and we know that lightning is occurring," he says. "Do these two things have anything to do with each other? That's just a question of being at the right place at the right time."
From issue 2498 of New Scientist magazine, 07 May 2005, page 30
Icy origins
At Clive Saunders's lab at the University of Manchester, UK, you don your coat on arrival. Saunders runs his own mini-thunderstorm in a huge walk-in freezer, with temperatures of -10 to -40 °C.
Inside, a whirl of invisibly small ice crystals hits a metal rod 4 millimetres across. The collision leaves both parties with an equal and opposite charge. It is this tiny interaction, with hail rather than metal, and multiplied millions of times over, that yields the massive electric fields inside a thundercloud.
Saunders's recent work with Eldo Avila at the National University in Cordoba, Argentina, shows that small symmetrical ice crystals tend to leave the hail charged positively, while large, irregular ones leave the hail with a negative charge.
In a storm cloud, the lighter, positively charged crystals would sail up on updrafts, leaving the negative larger crystals in the middle of the cloud. The result is layers of charge. Studies in the US have revealed a variety of charge structures, but in the simplest examples, thunderclouds collect a fat belt of negative charge in the centre of the cloud, with smaller regions of positive both above and below.
Erich J. Knight
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Thanks Erich :-)
That's a lot easier to follow (good old New Scientist, always kind to the hard of thinking)and sounds very plausible.
It does seem amazing that we're still not sure how lightning works but I've stopped being surprised at such gaps in our understanding of everyday things. Great scientists produce dazzling insights into the greatest mysteries of the universe - but when you look around we've hardly scratched the surface of our massive reserves of ignorance.
Good news in a way though, plenty of interesting work still to do! :-)
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Dear folks:
Here's an email that is very good news for Paul Koloc's and Eric Lerner's work on P-B11 fusion.
He's referring to a power point presentation given at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion . 1.) Prometheus II , 2.) Field Revered Configuration, and 3.) Focus Fusion http://www.focusfusion.org/about.html
It's by Vincent Page a technology officer at GE.
Email me and I'll send it to anyone interested.
from : Paul M. Koloc; Prometheus II, Ltd.; 9903 Cottrell Terrace,
| Silver Spring, MD 20903-1927; FAX (301) 434-6737: Tel (301) 445-1075
| Grid Power -Raising $$Support$$ -;* http://www.neoteric-research.org/
| http://www.prometheus2.net/%A0%A0%A0------ mailtopmk@plasmak.com
"Erich,
Thanks for your update,
A friend of mine, Bruce Pittman, who is a member of the AIAA, recently sent me a copy of the attached paper by Vincent Page of GE. Please keep in mind that I have never communicated with Vincent, but he found our concept to have the highest probability of success for achieving a commercial fusion power plant of any that he examined.
A program manager at DARPA submitted a POM for sizeable funding of extended research on our concept, both here and at Los Alamos National Laboratory. However, it didn't stay above this year's cut line for the budget funding priorities.
BTW, I agree with Cox that the analysis done by Chen does not fit the criteria of the EST plasmoid that Clint produces. The poloidal component of current in his toroid dominates his topology, which means that the corresponding toroidal field, which is only produced within the torus, also dominates. Consequently, the outward pressure on the EST current shell must be balanced by some external inward force. The toroidal component of current is weak and cannot produce the external poloidal magnetic pressure that would bring the toroid into stable equilibrium. If the plasmoid lasts for .6 seconds without change of shape or brightness level, then it must be continuously formed with his electron beam source. Otherwise, the plasma would decompose within microseconds.
By comparison, our PLASMAK magnetoplasmoids (PMKs) have negligible change in shape, size or luminosity over a period of one or two hundred milliseconds after the initial tens of microseconds impulse that forms them has ceased. That may not sound like much of a lifetime, but compare that to the decomposition of Lawrence Livermore's spheromak plasma within 60 microseconds. The other interesting thing is that we have recently produced PMKs of 40 cm diameter (under work sponsored by DOD), and with the installation of our new, additional fast rise capacitors, we expect to obtain lifetimes of seconds.
Cheers,
Paul "
This new work By Dr.Kuzhevsky on neutrons in lightning: Russian Science News http://www.informnauka.ru/eng/2005/2005-09-13-5_65_e.htm is also supportive. I sent it to Clint Seward and here's his reply:
"There is another method to producing neutrons that fits my lightning model that I have described to you.
It is well known that electron beams have been used extensively to produce neutrons, above electron energies of 10 MeV, well within the voltages reported in the lightning event. (An Internet search produced several articles that reported this). I do not pretend to have researched this extensively, and do not know the actual target molecules or the process, but it appears plausible from what the papers report, and is consistent with my lightning model.
The proposed method you sent to me is a lot more complex, and I would have to say I can not agree with the article as written without experimental results."
A New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy
Cheers, Erich
Erich J. Knight
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Having lightning discharges initiated by ionizing radiation sounds more than possible; it sounds inevitable. Any engineer who has tried to maintain a charge with ionizing radiation around knows it is impossible. The Geiger counter is a device than uses an ionizing-particle-induced discharge to measure the passage of the ionizing particle through the detector tube. One of the original radiation detectors is the electroscope, which measures charge loss due to ionizing radiation. So this is all very plausible.
Researchers are looking for a "smoking gun" in their research. I suspect they will find a whole armory. Cosmic rays, galactic heavy-ions, solar particles, gamma-ray bursts, and other cosmic radiation are likely candidates ro trigger lightning discharges. The stepped-avalanche can also trigger more. The x-rays being observed from lightning strikes have the ability to trigger more lightning strikes. Lightning frequently occurs in multiple strikes. The triggers for the multiple strikes are unlikely to be random. The discharge releases x-rays which can trigger more discharges, until an entire section of the cloud has been discharged. In fact, the lightning discharges in a thunderstorm could be using positive feedback from all the x-rays from adjacent discharges to trigger more discharges to keep the discharges going. I have seen continuous displays on the sides of thunderheads, at a safe distance, from an airplane.
"F = ma, E = mc^2, and you can't push a string."
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<b>Static electricity and lightning</b>. Even in science literature today false assumption are offered about the how our planet maintains its electrical neutrality. It is assumed that the average of 1,800 lightning storms that are continuously going on around the Globe are responsible for Earth's electrical neutrality. Wrong! Such lightening is an internal matter of the atmosphere and has no power to influence Earth's neutrality. The real neutralization process is, as mentioned afore, the natural strife of matter for electrical neutrality.
<b>Lightening is an internal matter of the atmosphere</b>. Neutral Earth is in an atmospheric shell, which is electrically unstable. Friction of air masses continuously produce static electricity. Earth is the meat in the sandwich, hot strikes and cold shrikes are in equal numbers. A hot strike discharges a load of electrons to Earth, whereby a cold strike takes a load of electrons from Earth. Horizontal lightening is a canceling out of opposite charges in the atmosphere without involvement of Earth. Hot lightening is an electron pile with narrow concentrated hot energy and that lights fires. A cold lightening is a broad cold collection of electrons on Earth's surface that further up concentrate in a hot pile. With other words, every lightening strike has a cold start and a hot end. If you heard about ball lightening, such a thing is fiction, medieval imagination.
http://www.justlogiclifescience.com/staticelectricity.html (http://www.justlogiclifescience.com/staticelectricity.html)
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Dear Folks:
This new finding of neutrons, in cloud to ground lightning by Dr.Kuzhevsky on neutrons in lightning: Russian Science News
http://www.informnauka.ru/eng/2005/2005-09-13-5_65_e.htm
Also lends support to the theories of Clint Seward of EPS.
Clint Seward just sent this update of their progress at http://www.electronpowersystems.com/ , A very nice time frame, if Clint can find the funding:
"Hi All,
The following is the annual update to the EPS progress toward a clean energy solution to replace fossil fuels. Below is a brief summary of where we are. Attached is an updated copy of the manuscript describing our project.
It remains clear that we have made and patented a new discovery in physics: a plasma toroid the remains stable without external magnetic fields. This is so far beyond the experience and understanding of plasma scientists today that, to say the least, we are having trouble convincing reviewers. We have completed the design of an improved neutron tube. This is what we have to build to demonstrate a clean energy source, and I plan to do the first steps in 2006, with a first demo in 2007 if all goes well.
Clint Seward, EPS
Chapter 27. Colliding EST Spheromak Neutron Tube
In 2005 we completed a detailed design of the apparatus we need for the first demonstration. This is possible because of two things. First, we understand the EST is really just a special case of a spheromak, a plasma ring that is being studied by others, except that the EST is high density spheromak, which will overcome the limitations of spheromaks for the clean energy application. Secondly, we can adapt the EST Spheromak to the well known neutron tube, by applying all of the pieces we have developed over the years.
We plan to do this by making a new, high energy neutron tube. There are several thousand neutron tubes in use in the US today that safely collide hydrogen ions to produce neutrons, which in turn are used for explosives detection, industrial process control, and medical testing. Figure 1 shows the neutron tube schematically. An ion source produces hydrogen ions (deuterium), which are accelerated to 110 kV, then directed to hit the target (also deuterium), a process which produces neutrons (see reference below).
Neutron tubes today are limited by the low density of the hydrogen ions. We plan to overcome this limitation by adapting the EST Spheromak to increase the ion density to produce a high output neutron tube. The EST Spheromak is patented jointly by EPS Inc. and MIT scientists who also have published papers confirming the physics and data. Since each part of the development has been done by others or by EPS, we anticipate that this will be an engineering project to produce a proof of concept lab demo in two years, with modest funding.
The major application is a high output neutron tube for clean energy applications. The high output neutron tube can be thought of as a heat generator to replace a furnace and/or generate electricity. Fuel costs for energy will 20:1 less than fossil fuel costs. Ultimately we plan to use the hydrogen/boron process to produce clean energy without neutrons.
The development is a scale up of work completed to date. We make EST Spheromaks in the lab and accelerate them. Each step has been shown to work individually, and we plan to adapt them to produce a lab demo in two years. Milestones:
1. Defining Patent: (Note: co-inventors are MIT scientists). 2000
2. Spheromak acceleration: 2001
3. Spheromak capture in a magnetic trap: 2006
4. Spheromak collision for a lab proof of concept demonstration: 2007
5. First neutron tube commercial prototype: 2008
6. First commercial product: 2009
Our best estimate at this time (December 2005) is that we will need 24 months and approximately $500,000 to demonstrate a colliding EST fusion process.
Reference: Chichester, D. L., Simpson, and J. D. “Compact accelerator neutron generators.” The Industrial Physicist. American Institute of Physics. http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-6/p22.html. December, 2003."
Also:
I am glad to see the interest in Vincent Page's presentation given at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion in other forums, (Below Is an excerpt). Vincent Page is a technology officer at GE!!
He quotes costs and time to development of P-B11 Fusion as tens of million $, and years verses the many decades and ten Billion plus $ projected for ITER and other "Big" science efforts:
"for larger plant sizes
Time to small-scale Cost to achieve net if the small-scale
Concept Description net energy production energy concept works:
Koloc Spherical Plasma: 10 years(time frame), $25 million (cost), 80%(chance of success)
Field Reversed Configuration: 8 years $75 million 60%
Plasma Focus: 6 years $18 million 80%
Desirable Fusion Reactor Qualities
• Research & development is also needed in
the area of computing power.
• Many fusion researchers of necessity still
use MHD theory to validate their designs.
• MHD theory assumes perfect diamagnetism
and perfect conductance.
• These qualities may not always exist in the
real world, particularly during continuous operation.
• More computing power is needed to allow use of a more realistic validation theory
such as the Vlasov equations.
• ORNL is in the process of adding some impressive computing power.
• Researchers now need to develop more realistic validation methods up to the
limits of the available computing power.
• Governments need to fund these efforts."
I sent this to Dr. Eastlund, one of the top guys in atmospheric plasmas,( father of HAARP) and he sent a most supportive reply, had worked with Paul Koloc at U of MD in the seventies.
I feel in light of the recent findings of neutrons, x-rays, and gamma rays in lightening, that these threads need to be brought together in an article.
You may have seen my efforts with my "Manhattan Project" article, which got published on Sci-Scoop and the Open Source Energy Network but rejected on Slashdot. The New Energy News will soon run an article on these companies efforts toward aneutronic fusion.
About a year ago, I came across EPS while researching nano-tech and efficient home design. I started a correspondence Clint Seward, Eric Learner, and Paul Kolac, sending them science news links which I felt were either supportive or contradictory to their work. I also asked them to critique each other's approaches. I have posted these emails to numerous physics and science forums. Discussion groups, science journalists, and other academics, trying to foster discussion, attention, and hopefully some concessus on the validity of these proposed technologies.
My efforts have born some fruit. Clint and Joe Dwyer at FIT have been in consultation on Clint's current charge transport theory for cloud to ground lightening.
I have had several replies from editors, producers, and journalists expressing interest. From organizations as varied as PBS, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, New Energy News, the Guardian (U.K), and the San Francisco Chronicle. However, none of this professional interest has resulted in a story yet.
I have been responding to all of the articles that filter in via my Google alerts on "fusion power". The most recent was the "Happy News" article by Kris Metaverso.
http://www.happynews.com/news/112220...ependently.htm
This post is a plea to the science writers among you to craft a story covering aneutronic fusion, the P-B11 efforts, Eric's high temperatures and x-ray source project, Clint's lightening theories, and DOD review, and Paul's review by GE. The minimal cost and time frame for even the possibility of this leap forward seems criminal not to pursue. If you read my Manhattan article, you may have noticed that I am not a writer. I am a landscape designer and technology gadfly wondering why this technology has never been put in the public eye.
My hope is that someone, more skilled, would step up to give a shout out about these technologies. Please contact me for copies of my correspondence with the principles, interesting replies and criticisms from physics discussion forums and academic physicists who have replied to my queries.
Thanks for any help
__________________
Erich J. Knight
"Religion Is Bunk " T. A. Edison
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Intersting. all i can say, Interesting