Eric Lerner's Focus Fusion Lecture

[pln2bz]

I've spoken about the Slashdot crew at great length in the past. I don't know if those comments have survived the recent server crash though, so it can't hurt to recap.

The Slashdot crowd are victims of a confluence of factors. They are largely engineers who have no training within the history or philosophy of science. They have a tendency to treat science as a cult (accurate predictions have no relevance to belief) and an arrangement of facts that can only be sorted out only by qualified individuals. More often than not, they lack a realistic view of the problem of the inferential step. These people tend to be prolific consumers of space sciences entertainment and over-the-top futurist predictions. They typically do not realize that what drives them to observe all of this is in fact little more than a sense of wonder (as opposed to an objective and careful search for truth). In other words, they are more likely to be astounded by a spectacular difficult-to-believe announcement than to wonder at whether or not it's in fact true. Controversy plays only a limited role in their views of science.

The people there tend to be highly pseudo-skeptical and idealistic in their views of peer review. They expect that any theory that challenges the mainstream should only be considered if it cannot already be explained by current theories. But what they don't realize is that this belief constrains their own ability to understand or judge the competing theories. Most of the time spent debating these people is spent convincing them to read things. Few arguments will actually base upon a discussion of the actual evidence. In other words, nearly all of the EU critics there have failed to read an actual book on the Electric Universe; when they do read one, they will oftentimes read it for the sole purpose of discrediting it. They look at the Thunderbolts webpages, and then claim that they shouldn't believe EU Theory because there is no long list of peer-reviewed journal articles at the end. They will oftentimes claim that the Electric Universe is not supported by peer review without apparent awareness of IEEE's yearly plasma cosmology publication. They will oftentimes advocate some proof for the Big Bang (like the CMB) without any awareness of any alternative interpretations.

Much of the problem is that most of the people there do not trust their own abilities to judge arguments related to space. You will frequently see the phrase "IANAP" (I am not a physicist) -- or something similar. Oftentimes, as in the case of Arp, they will allow scientists to convince them of things that can quite clearly be observed with their own eyes to be false, and they will permit this solely on the scientist's credentials. They have an unfortunate tendency to publicly ridicule people who appear to have a nuanced view of science, or who do not agree with conventional wisdom in some way ("cranky"). This serves as an unintended feedback loop too, since newbies who observe this ridicule will unconsciously internalize this over time to mean that they too will be ridiculed if they deviate in their beliefs from the mainstream. This is proven by psychological studies.

When posting on Slashdot, it's better to present some strong arguments and ask poigniant questions than to confidently assert some sort of knowledge. Also, be aware that most people will stop reading the comments section within a couple of days of the thread starting. I recommend including links to sites other than just http://www.thunderbolts.info.

To get the attention of the people there, it will be necessary to break the aura of invincibility surrounding conventional wisdom in science. Eric Lerner's device could actually pull this off. So could cold fusion, but that technology requires another $100 million to productize.

[Solar]

Quite unlike tokamaks wherein the plasma is 'confined' and attempts are made to stabilize the turbulent nature of the plasma - I think one of the most interesting and unique things about Lerner's approach with focused fusion, as he mentions in the talk, is that they worked with the plasma instabilities.

That, impressed me as original thinking.

Now if only the big bangers and relativist would get the same clue that perhaps Nature is already 'speaking' as opposed to 'telling' It what they think It 'should' be doing.

[StefanR]

they worked with the plasma instabilities.

Go with the flow, as it is sometimes said.

I found the movement of the whole quite nice too:

From down to up and from up to down
From out to in and from in to out
And all is going round and round



Or as some martial-arts would have it:
You don't have to "confine" your opponent, just "guide" him to where you want him to be.

[rduke]

Indeed...

I find it hysterical how the "paper" mainstream "intellects" demand technology based on the EU/PU theorems...

As I sit here with my ... "Zero point" energy device powering my home ...or my Turbo Singularity drive dark mater vehicle...

I do not know how I could live with out my "string" dissolving cleaning products, which even works in the yard tackling the weeds...

[Tzunamii]

Indeed...

I find it hysterical how the "paper" mainstream "intellects" demand technology based on the EU/PU theorems...

As I sit here with my ... "Zero point" energy device powering my home ...or my Turbo Singularity drive dark mater vehicle...

I do not know how I could live with out my "string" dissolving cleaning products, which even works in the yard tackling the weeds...

Dont forget the "Black Hole Document Processor" of which, no doubt, many Pentagon officials have spent an endless night using.

[jjohnson]

There is a very interesting animation of the plasma pinch process posted at http://www.focusfusion.org

[solrey]

Are you sure they haven't built a Warp Core?

Focus Fusion animation



Federation Power Generator/Warp Core

Just askin'.

[jjohnson]

Yep! This baby's goin' nowhere at Warp Anything. N.B. - This is only step 1 of 8.
It looks like they've built a miniature galactic jet there at the end, jets normal along the rotation axis.
Plasma scales! Look, Mathter; it'th alive!!
Lerner and his team seem methodic and pragmatic. I mean, who in NASA or CERN use Unistruts to build a plasma focus? With no government funding? And it creates a magnetic pinch on the second try? Without creating a black hole that ate Indianapolis or having a refrigeration breakdown or a magnetic mount failure? And do not have an agenda wherein Step 3 is something like, "and then we invoke the Master of Dark Energy for his blessing and a little more hidden mass to help hold this dang contraption together..."

They also have an EU section on their forum - there is a lot of mutual interest, at least by some on each side.

[trevbus]

Since the last post a lot of progress has been made including a recent mainstream-credibility-boosting publication in the world's most-cited plasma physics journal.

http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/a ... of_plasmas

As it happens I'm a shareholder. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that non-US persons are able to invest without being "sophisticated investors" ie being millionaires. You "just" need a spare US$10,000

[PersianPaladin]

This is very exciting. Many of my engineering friends are highly skeptical of the Electric Universe because there exists no technology to validate it. If you watch that Lerner video, he's very explicit that his device is a down-scaling of the astrophysical observation of Herbig Haro phenomena in a manner that is clearly compatible with the Electric Universe interpretation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Lerner is technically a plasma cosmologist rather than an Electric Universe advocate. But, my guess is that there is much common ground there. I'll be using every opportunity to include the title of Lerner's book ("The Big Bang Never Happened") in the same sentence as "$10 million grant".

If Lerner's focus fusion device becomes the world's new way of generating electricity over the next couple of decades, then EU critics will have to accept that two of conventional science's most prominent critics (Nikola Tesla and Eric Lerner) would then be largely responsible for the power that runs our appliances. In my own view, it's hard to over-estimate the importance of this announcement.

Bare in mind that the Dense Plasma Focus technology is nothing new, since it was basically used as far back as the 1960's by Mather and Filippov. Lerner et al have simply refined and tweaked this existing technology to try and produce net energy gains. They still have hurdles ahead, but they are making interesting progress.

[meemoe_uk]

I've just caught up with this and what Eric Lerner has been up to since then. His focus fusion community has a youtube channel now.

http://www.youtube.com/user/FocusFusion ... ture=watch

Which, amongst other things shows the success Eric's team has been having since they secured funding.
All riveting stuff for the EU community as the vids delve into the development of his 'quasar in a box' machine, and show its success.