Lightning comes from Space

Dear Folks:
I sent youall some of my correspondance involving fusion power a few months ago. A new thread has evolved, the top lightning researcher in the world, Joe Dwyer at FIT, got his Y-ray and X-ray research published in this months Scientific American,

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?ch...F9683414B7FFE9F


Dr. 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, http://www.electronpowersystems.com/

He proposes applications as varied as home power generation@ .ooo5 cents/KWhr, 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.electronpowersystems.com/Images/Ball Lightning Explained.pdf


Clint sent me his new paper on a lightning charge transport model of clould to ground lightning (If your interested I'll send it,he did not want me to post it to the web yet) and if Joe concurs with it's theory it could mean big press for EPS. 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.
Sprite paper:
http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~stanleym/d...ation/main.html


And may also explain the sprial 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 Knight
shengar@aol.com

 

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could you elaborate on how this would be done?

 

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Here's the link to Clint's proposal:

http://www.electronpowersystems.com/Images/6kw wp non prop.doe.pdf

Erich

 

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Well, if you'll excuse the elaboration, I have the requisite scientific American with the LIghtning article, and the point isnt that lightning comes from space, more that the seed that starts the chain of events that leads to lightning looks like it might come from space, i.e. is a cosmic ray.

 

Guthrie

Yes, my title was a little dramatic, but true, if the runaway breakdown is proved to be initiated by the high energy protons of cosmic rays.

Erich

 

2 words: Latent heat. Manifesting energy by the many kilotons per supercell. Thunderrstorms, and the energy potentials of high wind shears of saturated and non-saturated air are well undertsood. If you've ever been zapped from static electricity in slow dry air, you have had a fleeting inkling of what a supercell can do.

If you wish to believe you have been zapped from space when you are charged and ground out on a door handle, then enjoy the flight of fancy- after all, the phenomena is part of the fabric of the universe. But there's no need to overdramatize.

 

Clouds Come from Space Too

Looks like I have to update this thread with " Clouds Come from Space Too"


cosmic rays & clouds:

http://spacecenter.dk/cgi-bin/nyheder-m-m.cgi?id=1159917791|cgifunction=form

NEWS from spacecenter.dk

October 4th 2006
Getting closer to the cosmic connection to climate
A team at the Danish National Space Center has discovered how cosmic rays from exploding stars can help to make clouds in the atmosphere. The results support the theory that cosmic rays influence Earth’s climate.

An essential role for remote stars in everyday weather on Earth has been revealed by an experiment at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen. It is already well-established that when cosmic rays, which are high-speed atomic particles originating in exploded stars far away in the Milky Way, penetrate Earth’s atmosphere they produce substantial amounts of ions and release free electrons. Now, results from the Danish experiment show that the released electrons significantly promote the formation of building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei on which water vapour condenses to make clouds. Hence, a causal mechanism by which cosmic rays can facilitate the production of clouds in Earth’s atmosphere has been experimentally identified for the first time.

The Danish team officially announce their discovery on Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, published by the Royal Society, the British national academy of science.

The experiment

The experiment called SKY (Danish for ‘cloud’) took place in a large reaction chamber which contained a mixture of gases at realistic concentrations to imitate the chemistry of the lower atmosphere. Ultraviolet lamps mimicked the action of the Sun’s rays. During experimental runs, instruments traced the chemical action of the penetrating cosmic rays in the reaction chamber.

The data revealed that electrons released by cosmic rays act as catalysts, which significantly accelerate the formation of stable, ultra-small clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules which are building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei. A vast numbers of such microscopic droplets appeared, floating in the air in the reaction chamber.

‘We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons do their work of creating the building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei,’ says team leader Henrik Svensmark, who is Director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research within the Danish National Space Center. ‘This is a completely new result within climate science.’

A missing link in climate theory

The experimental results lend strong empirical support to the theory proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen that cosmic rays influence Earth’s climate through their effect on cloud formation. The original theory rested on data showing a strong correlation between variation in the intensity of cosmic radiation penetrating the atmosphere and the amount of low-altitude clouds. Cloud cover increases when the intensity of cosmic rays grows and decreases when the intensity declines.

It is known that low-altitude clouds have an overall cooling effect on the Earth’s surface. Hence, variations in cloud cover caused by cosmic rays can change the surface temperature. The existence of such a cosmic connection to Earth’s climate might thus help to explain past and present variations in Earth’s climate.

Interestingly, during the 20th Century, the Sun’s magnetic field which shields Earth from cosmic rays more than doubled, thereby reducing the average influx of cosmic rays. The resulting reduction in cloudiness, especially of low-altitude clouds, may be a significant factor in the global warming Earth has undergone during the last century. However, until now, there has been no experimental evidence of how the causal mechanism linking cosmic rays and cloud formation may work.

‘Many climate scientists have considered the linkages from cosmic rays to clouds to climate as unproven,’ comments Eigil Friis-Christensen, who is now Director of the Danish National Space Center. ‘Some said there was no conceivable way in which cosmic rays could influence cloud cover. The SKY experiment now shows how they do so, and should help to put the cosmic-ray connection firmly onto the agenda of international climate research.’

Publication data

Published online in “Proceedings of the Royal Society A”, October 3rd

Title: ‘Experimental Evidence for the role of Ions in Particle Nucleation under Atmospheric Conditions’.

Authors: Henrik Svensmark, Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen, Nigel Marsh, Martin Enghoff and Ulrik Uggerhøj.

For more information and supporting material: www.spacecenter.dk/media
Requests for interview and original article: press-requests@spacecenter.dk





More Earth and Space Weather Conections:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...ther_link.html


First Global Connection Between Earth And Space Weather Found

09.12.06


Weather on Earth has a surprising connection to space weather occurring high in the electrically-charged upper atmosphere, known as the ionosphere, according to new results from NASA satellites.

"This discovery will help improve forecasts of turbulence in the ionosphere, which can disrupt radio transmissions and the reception of signals from the Global Positioning System," said Thomas Immel of the University of California, Berkeley, lead author of a paper on the research published August 11 in Geophysical Research Letters.

Researchers discovered that tides of air generated by intense thunderstorm activity over South America, Africa and Southeast Asia were altering the structure of the ionosphere



And these are the best measurments for the % of low clouds caused by Cosmic Rays:

“… cosmic rays. These high-energy particles originate in outer space and in solar flares, and can have a small but significant effect on the weather, increasing the chances of an overcast day by nearly 20 per cent.
Giles Harrison and David Stephenson from the University of Reading, UK, examined 50 years of solar radiation measurements from sites all over the country, enabling them to calculate daily changes in cloudiness. By comparing this data with neutron counts - a measure of cosmic ray activity - for the same period, the scientists have shown an unambiguous link between cosmic rays and clouds (Proceedings of the Royal Society A, DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2005.1628).
"The odds of a cloudy day increase by around 20 per cent when the cosmic ray flux is high," says Harrison, amounting to a few extra days of cloudiness per year.”

http://www.newscientist.com/article....mg18925365.700



Erich J. Knight

 

Here's a link to the NASA report claiming that the supposedly stable ESTs on which the generator depends are in fact unstable.

http://hdl.handle.net/2002/13156

 

Be careful of any essay that says that an alleged physical fact can be easily seen. I remember one that said that there was no metallurgical reason not to mix tin with palladium in cold fusion experiments when tin is the most notorious of poisons of catalysts, right up there with lead.

Any theoretical analysis has to take in all relevant data to be correct, and an analysis that says that it takes a certain amount of repulsive force to keep streams of electrons or negatively charged particles together may not be correct because there is a phenomenon that allows particles of like charges to stack upon each other like beads on a string. Of course any reputable theoretician can make considerations like that go away for the sake of any paper.

Also, the NASA paper refers to claims of absolute stability that have not been made. EPS simply claims that their toroids last a lot longer than other types.

I think that the inability to scale up can be solved by using multiple toroids in the generating setup. If atmospheric pressure works well as a confining force, then maybe increasing the pressure will do the job. Maybe smaller hotter toroids are the answer.

 

05 Emails from Clint Seward & Eric Lerner

You may be familiar with Eric Lerner's work, Focus Fusion , His theories on quasars, his book, The Big Bang Never Happened are very interesting. I spoke with him, last year, about my concerns regarding EPS's fusion model. Below are his emailed points and Clint Seward's responses. Please share any thoughts you have.



"Hi Erich,

I glanced at the NASA analysis and the reply, neither of which address
the fusion application. A few points:

1)NASA is right that plasmoids, smoke rings of plasma can easily be
crated by many approaches. The photos don’t prove that anything else is
happening. As seen in our experiments, you need a lot of diagnostics to
understand what is going on in a plasma and the EPS experiments don’t
seem to use many other than the photos.

2)The NASA report pointed out VERY serious algebraic errors, leading to
errors of many orders of magnitude in Chen's work. This is of concern to
say the least.

3)NASA's stability analysis seems a bit simple minded, so I would not
fully trust it.

3) Shooting two plasmoids at each other will not necessarily lead to net
fusion energy. Dan Wells worked on this idea for quite some time, but he
also used an external magnetic field to compress the plasmoids when they
hit and to keep them together. The problem is that if to plasmoid hit
each other at high velocity, it is not clear that they will stick
together. If they merely collide or pass through each other, the
collision time will be short. With a velocity of 3x10^8 cm/sec, you only
have a collision time of a few nanoseconds with a plasmoid a few cm
across. To get net energy, you need to have about 3% of the particles
fusing. For pB11 this will require ion densities in excess of
3x10^22/cc. This is close to 100 times more than the densities claimed
by EPS. Also, this means that the initial energy has to be nearly a GJ--
a billion joules. That is a lot of energy. But to make it work, either
you have to get the density up by a factor of 100 or make the plasmoids
stick together for 100 times longer. There does not seem to be any
experimental or theoretical reasoning shown that would indicate that
much longer confinement times will happen.

Over all, the EPS project is at a much earlier stage of development than
focus fusion. They have some experiments with a few diagnostics and some
theoretical ideas, but they have not demonstrated even theoretically
that net energy could be produced. Our project has a detailed theory,
published for the most part in peer-reviewed journals (or favorably
reviewed through the NIST process), and experiments with good
diagnostics that confirms at least part of the theory. We are also
extrapolating from the huge data base of experimental studies with the
dense plasma focus.

Of course, they, like us would need money to do the diagnostics. But
they should at least demonstrate theoretically that they can reach break
even. I don't see how they can justify the 1% or 10% collision they
claim.

I hope this is of some use. That's all I have time for on EPS. Glad to
answer questions on focus fusion when you get them.

Eric Lerner"



And Clint's response:



"Dear Erich,

Thanks for the info from Eric Lerner. We have information to respond to each of his points.

1. First, be a bit careful of the NASA report. It was based on the papers we had published up until 1999. They did not include any information MIT gave in response to their comments and questions.

NASA was correct. You need a lot of diagnostics. We have proposals to our sponsors to fund the diagnostics. We shall see.

2. The NASA report did find algebraic errors. We corrected them all. But since it was not done before 1999 they elected not to include them or acknowledge them intheir report. In fairness, the reviewer, MSE engineering, did request further NASA funding to begin research into our technology, where they planned to include some of the information they omitted, but NASA did not fund any further work.

3a. NASA's stability analysis is not complete. MIT completed such analysis, and NASA elected to not include it in the report. MIT subsequently published it in a peer reviewed journal. That paper is on our website.

3b. Eric's concern about shooting plasmoids is well founded. Our method is much different, and we have found a way around this. Eric points out that it is not clear the plasmoids will "stick together." Actually, this is not the case. Well's data shows clearly that two toroids will indeed "stick together." Read his paper that I have referenced in our documents.

3c. Eric is correct as to the ion density. We can demonstrate that the ion density is in the range that he has noted. I might have sent you a copy of this paper, but will do so if you have interest.

3d. We have completed theory and density of the order of magnitude Eric is calculating. In addition, we have calculations, not yet published, that demonstrate that two toroids will adhere together, will persist for several seconds, and will pass break even. We can make this discussion available if you have interest, but caution that it is highly proprietary.

Eric is correct that from what we have published and from what he can see it looks like we are in an early stage. Actually, the EST is quite a bit further along. The theory is complete enough to show break even with a simple apparatus.

Hopefully this helps.

Clint Seward"




After posting to several Science, physics and Energy forums I collected up comments and questions and asked Clint Seward , to respond:

"Your most important point was that others have suggested that I should be
able to demonstrate a collision of EST's and even a level of fusion with a
few hundred thousand dollars and about a year. I agree. Here is what I
need to do:

1. Capture the EST in a way that I can measure them. I have designed a
method in the last two months that will do this.
2. Measure the density of the EST. This requirement is something everyone
is asking for, and will enable me to get serious funding from sponsors.
3. Collide two EST's. I have found a simple way to do this based on the
TRISOPS work by Wells.
4. Consulting work by Chen to verify the physics I have outlined for the
density.
5. Make and measure an EST based on Deuterium.
6. Collide two Deuterium EST's.

Each of these requires some cash outlays, so I am working them as I can get
resources. Several people, including yourself, are considering helpful
investments of $5k to $10k to 25K to 50K to 100k. Work will progress with
any investment, no matter how small. Capturing an EST is a $5k investment.

Your second most important point is that more people want to see more data
and even a video. I have many of these, but have not published them yet. I
have concentrated on the physics, which I feel I now know completely, and
can get confirmed. This is a smaller effort, about $15k.

You suggested an article from the SF Chronicle that you might send. Please
do.

Again, thanks for the call.

Clint Seward"

 

I keep getting the feeling that three toroids will do things that are substantially different from two toroids. They might help confine and stabilize each other.