Friday, June 14, 2013

PLASMAS COMING?

This one was sent to me by Mr. K.L. in Australia, and when I read it, a number of things caught my attention, so I bring it to your attention, since I talked about Dr. Rossi and his E-Cat device just a few days ago:
Tech Breakthrough: Will Open Air Plasma Pave the Way for Practical Fusion Energy?
The first thought that struck me when reading this was that for all the various denials of the same, a whole lot of people seem to be doing a whole lot of research into forms of energy and energy storage that could be called “non-conventional” in the sense of falling outside the billions-consuming fusion and plasma technologies like tokamaks and giant magnetic bottles. We’ve talked about those projects-in-gigantic-science elsewhere on this website, so there’s no need to mention them again here, save to point out that the billions in expenditures to make those hot fusion reactors work, the billions to design and build the magnetic “bottles” to contain the plasma, may be, and I stress, may  be rendered obsolete if “cold fusion” technologies such as Dr. Andrea Rossi’s E-CAT device or similar technologies eventually are found to work.
But there’s one part of this in particular that grabbed my attention, and it was this:
“University of Missouri engineer Randy Curry has made a fascinating technology breakthrough: the ability to transmit high-energy plasma through the air.
“The University’s website reports:
University of Missouri engineer Randy Curry and his team have developed a method of creating and controlling plasma that could revolutionize American energy generation and storage. Besides liquid, gas and solid, matter has a fourth state, known as plasma. Fire and lightning are familiar forms of plasma. Life on Earth depends on the energy emitted by plasma produced during fusion reactions within the sun. However, Curry warns that without federal funding of basic research, America will lose the race to develop new plasma energy technologies. The basic research program was originally funded by the Office of Naval Research, but continued research has been funded by MU.(Bold emphasis in the original, italicized emphasis added)
Then there’s this at the end of the article:
“So we called Dr. Curry to find out more about his plasma energy breakthrough.
“Curry told us that his tech breakthrough can generate 6 inch plasma rings using “very little energy” – ’4,000 to 20,000 joules’ – and can send them 1 to 2 feet through open air using a self-controlling magnetic field.
“The plasma rings keep their size throughout the path it travels.
Usually, plasma rings last less than a millisecond. But Curry’s team kept plasma rings intact for “many tens of milliseconds”.
“We asked Dr. Curry what generation and storage applications his technology might have. His answer: “fusion“.
“Specifically, it is usually incredibly expensive to build fusion generators. His plasma generator – which operates ‘without large vacuum chambers or other expensive equipment’ – could make fusion energy practical.”
There is is again: “cold” fusion, plasmas at (to stretch things a bit), room temperature… shades (almost) of Dr. Ronald Richter in Argentina once again. Nor is the Navy/military interest in alternative energy unusual either. One need only recall the German Kriegsmarine’s interest in the unusual coil of Hans Kohler.
This little tidbit, that ONR has been sponsoring such research is another clue, folks, that while the public is being told that such models “do not fit any physics laws we know of” and therefore the phenomena observed by some scientists aren’t worth pursuing (usually accompanied of course with the implication that said scientists are either frauds, montebanks, or swindler, or simply doing “bad science”), the reality is, behind the scenes, someone is taking notice, and funding the improbable anyway.

Read more: PLASMAS COMING?

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