Fusion with Z-machine scientific technology
The Great Era
Monday, August 1, 2006
http://french.epochtimes.com/news/6-7-17/4604.html
http://french.epochtimes.com/news/6-7-31/4666.html
The texts of the first two articles I published in La Grande Epoque
( 3.5 billion degrees using the Z-machine, aneutronic fusion )
( military applications. The "clean" bomb, without radioactivity or waste )
The next article will be devoted to the applications of thermonuclear fusion to propulsion and interplanetary travel
To subscribe for free and receive the newspaper in pdf
Do not hesitate to send your comments to the newspaper's editorial staff by writing to:
The texts of the first two articles I published in La Grande Epoque
( 3.5 billion degrees using the Z-machine, aneutronic fusion )
( military applications. The "clean" bomb, without radioactivity or waste )
The next article will be devoted to the applications of thermonuclear fusion to propulsion and interplanetary travel
To subscribe for free and receive the newspaper in pdf
:
Do not hesitate to send your comments to the newspaper's editorial staff by writing to:
For months I have been fighting to manage to draw people's attention to this "Z-machine" story. There is such indifference, such deafness in the mainstream media, scientific or non-scientific, that one wonders what to do. I have installed various files on my site, including a fairly in-depth analysis of the paper published by Haines by Deeney in Physical Review Letters dated March 24, 2006, an analysis that is not accessible to the average person. It was therefore necessary to present one or more summary articles, more accessible to the general public. I chose to do so in a web-journal: "La Grande Epoque" which in principle is translated into 9 languages and distributed in 20 countries. I did my best. I hope this article "will be successful" and that eventually the foreign correspondents of this newspaper could translate it, in which case I have readers who could take on the work, for free. Pass the message on wherever you can. It will be noted that the paper is illustrated... with drawings (but one can trace back to the photos that inspired me by using the associated web addresses). The editorial staff of this web journal indeed rightly fears possible attacks over image rights issues.
Web journals are developing more and more, as are free newspapers, distributed just about everywhere, living off advertising. In some press outlets it is reported that major newspapers like Libération, France-Soir, l'Humanité would be in difficulty and no longer selling. Just deserts. The press has become totally corrupt, in the pocket of various powers. People say to themselves "why support a newspaper that lies to me, brainwashes me, misinforms me, reports no new ideas and wallows in mediocrity?".
In fact, certain news items appear only on the Internet. Futura Science was the first information outlet to reveal to the French the existence of scientific work of the first order. The "Mainstream Press" subsequently timidly picked up the info in a few lines, but without going into depth. They all reproduced the same photo, without a word of commentary.
The mystery photo
There is no longer any scientific investigative journalism and for more than twenty years the columns of Science et Vie, la recherche, Science et Avenir, Pour la Science, Ca m'Intéresse, etc., have been closed to me. Same for television panels and radio.
It is therefore on sites like mine and in forums like Agoravox that the public has been able to glean some information. If you want to find the 450 responses that followed an article, go to Agoravox and, in the search engine, type "gramat" (the military research center in the Lot). It is only in this file that this word is found. You will land immediately on the right page.
Since journalists no longer do their job or are no longer the mouthpieces of groups like Lagardère, Dassault, it is the citizens who take over, something Joël de Rosnais had very clearly perceived when creating Agoravox (etymologically: "the voice that makes itself heard in the public square").
Attacks over rights referring to images constitute points of vulnerability for the web press and for any "wild media". By continuing to illustrate my future articles in this web-press with drawings I will get around this difficulty, all the more so since a simple click will allow one to trace back to the original documents.
The full article, entitled:
The greatest discovery since the invention of fire
The Z-machine: three and a half billion degrees in the laboratory.
has either already appeared or is about to appear in issue 81 of La Grande Epoque. Make it known, if only to motivate the editorial staff to take the next three. I have designed a presentation consisting of successive files:
1 - Aneutronic fusion. The fantastic temperature breakthrough: more than three billion degrees at Sandia in 2005
2 - First application: thermonuclear bombs that can be primed without A-bombs, with a simple explosive attacking a "magnetocumulative generator"
3 - Second application: propulsion, interplanetary travel.
4 - Third application: non-polluting electric generators, producing no radioactivity, burning a fuel that exists in abundance, everywhere (in the oceans): lithium.
I hope these articles will find an audience and that readers, fed up with Zidane's moods or the remarks of Sarkozy and Ségolène, will not skip over them saying "it's too complicated".
In parallel, "counter-fires" are being lit. Readers announce to me that my scientific work (cosmology branch) is being violently criticized, dissected in forums, by people who, as usual, hide behind pseudonyms. A Futura Science reader writes to me "Pseudonyms are to protect oneself (...). Besides, you yourself are registered on Futura Science under a pseudonym..."
Admittedly, if one can consider that JPPETIT1937 is... a pseudonym. That shows the level of intoxication into which scientific debate, or what claims to be such, has sunk.
The pseudonym allows one to "protect oneself" ( a reader )
It has reached the point where expressing oneself in these forums under one's own name amounts to standing out. Things become shocking when pseudonyms are used to formulate criticisms, display peremptory opinions or launch attacks with complete impunity.
Yet the scientific world has laws. At least, in principle. Debates are supposed to be managed in seminars. To those who pontificate at length across pages under pseudonyms I will say:
- What is your name? In which laboratory do you work? Who is the head of your seminar, so that I can get in touch with him, arrange a date, come ( at my own expense ) and come hear your arguments in person and answer you in front of your colleagues.
Such questions generally remain unanswered, for various reasons. The most common is incompetence. The Agoravox forum was filled with learned remarks from "scientists" who turned out to be nothing but polytechniciens fresh out of their school and... doing a DEA.
Elsewhere illustrious unknowns develop arguments backed by calculations done "on the corner of a table", referring to fields where they set themselves up as experts, lining up a few stupidities along the way that show they have not even understood what it was really about, have a false idea of the experiments they comment on. They state definitive conclusions in new fields, which we do not master.
Why this systematic anonymity?
Speaking of seminars, know that I have a request that has been running since... October 2005, addressed to one of the great French scientific strongholds. Three follow-ups: no answer. Following a phone call to the director of the Institute in question:
- I was precisely in the process of preparing an answer for you. - Which will be? - Which will probably be negative. I was looking for the best arguments....
After ten months he is probably still looking. Courage, know it, is not the dominant virtue in our "scientific community". I would even say that the dominant character trait is cowardice, flight, avoidance. In the journals, the dilatory responses of anonymous referees ( supposedly to preserve their independence ) allow organized gangs to block new ideas (these same groups created the journals, which allows them to publish in complete peace of mind! ). Seminars remain. But when those in charge play dead, what can one do?
The mode of expression behind the mask of the pseudonym, in the forums, merely prolongs this general cowardice.
I asked a friend to set up a science forum, with well-specialized sections, including one on Z-pinches, but where:
- One can only participate under one's true identity
- The information concerning the participant ( age, degrees, assigned lab, thesis reference, published work ) will appear at the bottom of each post.
The posts will link to a page containing the fellow's full curriculum vitae and his list of publications.
That way, at any moment one will know who is speaking. Because this anonymity is starting to get tiresome...
The Z-machine: what is the news from the front? One remembers that the French Z-machine, the ECF, installed in the military laboratory of Gramat, in the Lot, had quickly been located.
The French Z-machine, from Gramat, Lot
Designed by the engineer Jean-François Leon, it develops 2.5 million amperes, versus 18 for the machine of Gerold Yonas, installed at Sandia Laboratories, New Mexico, USA. The armament engineer who had reported its existence to us said that, in his view, there no longer seemed to be much activity around this device. The reason is simple. Leon had built a project for a machine developing 60 million amperes ( versus 27 for ZR, successor to the Sandia Z-machine, which will be operational in early 2007 ). Cost: 50 million euros. Officially it was still to develop "an X-ray generator". But in France, any approach that could allow one to dabble in fusion other than within the framework of ITER and Megajoule is simply unthinkable.
In 2002, thesis completed, Mathias Bavay ( Supelec ) asked to be able to continue his research. Answer: no funding. Logical consequence, departure to the USA, to Albuquerque.
Jean-François Léon, faced with his machine development project, was given the answer:
- We do not want to "sprinkle", to disperse credits. Everything must go to the big projects, like Megajoule.
He too left abroad.
The hype I am generating worries the military. One of my informants:
- Impossible to get near this machine. At Gramat the room is sealed and the site is classified defense secret, it is "closed".
But what is the status of this machine. Here is a call for tenders dating from 2004.
Military research sometimes resembles a tunnel of which only one of the two entrances would be heavily guarded
When one sees fine talkers ( anonymous ) issuing learned opinions on the forums concluding
- While maintaining the course in big projects like ITER I think we should pursue in parallel research on machines of the Sandia Z type...
one feels like saying:
- It would still be necessary for the only existing French machine to be in working order. Not only does that seem far from being the case but there are no longer any physicists to put around it, capable of working on such machines. They all left years ago... to the United States!
Readers have approached popular science magazines, demanding coverage, more than three months after the announcement made at Sandia. No echo. Approaches to elected officials, to Presidential candidates. Automatic reply: "Pay ten euros and join the support committee for the election of..."
Even if "the public authorities" were to become concerned, for example by gathering opinions from recognized scientific figures, French and foreign, here is what it would produce in a Council of Ministers:
- Well, what emerges is that this story of... Z-pinch, of inertial confinement fusion, this quest for aneutronic fusion would apparently be an interesting theme, from various angles. We have heard the positive report of important scientific figures, French and foreign. As the budget mentioned remains relatively modest it seems that something should be done in this direction....
- It's fusion, so that falls under the CEA, right?
- Yes. It seems that a small initial envelope should be defined and these people asked to set up a research effort in this direction.
- I follow the Internet forums a bit. Before the Mainstream Press echoed, oh very faintly, and dragging its feet, this new research theme, it was a retired Cnrs researcher, a certain Jean-Pierre Petit who had made quite a fuss about this affair. Apparently he had even put together a small team.
- All these people are retirees. Unless I am mistaken, Petit no longer has any responsibilities. These people are no longer active.
- But.....
- The people at the CEA are competent in matters of fusion, it seems to me. Let us say that this researcher, a retired astrophysicist, will have had the merit of drawing attention to this subject and we will be grateful to him. But this affair now falls to the institutions and to genuine professionals. Petit was never a specialist in fusion and hot plasmas, as far as I know? And if his companions are presentable, on the other hand this gentleman seems to me to be dragging along a certain number of skeletons...
- Well, in conclusion we allocate an envelope and transmit to the CEA. Next question?
That is how it will happen and the affair will fizzle out for various reasons. The people to whom this affair will be entrusted will not want to saw off the branches on which the colleagues involved in the ITER and Mégajoule projects are sitting. People will be put on this affair who will not have the required skills ( those people left for the United States years ago ). It is indeed about plasmas, but "new" plasmas, very "out of equilibrium" where the ion temperature is 120 times higher than the electron temperature. It is unprecedented. A plasma subjected to a field of 4500 teslas and under a pressure of 90 megabars. One can say that this is a new physics and that to tackle such a subject one would need at the very least people with the stature of a Sakharov, not simple engineers.
I am preparing a participation in an exhibition at the Palais de la Découverte in Paris that will begin in October where I will present my Egyptology work. I now know how the faces of pyramids were erected, after in situ examination of the limestone casing of the Rhomboidal pyramid, located in the middle of the desert, south of Cairo. I will explain that on my site if I have a minute, photos to back it up. I am in contact with a Parisian and we should in principle redo the description starting from animations.
Translations of the comic strips now arrive almost every day, but Sam Buisseret, 24, living in Brussels, now helps me ( on a voluntary basis ) with technical questions. Who knows? I might find the time to create others, now.
Besides that, more and more readers report broken links on my site. Impossible now to install page counters. I will take care of all that in September. The responsibility lies with my host, AXINET. My site was completely crashed in early July, files inaccessible for almost a week. But perhaps it is not the effect of chance.
The French Z-machine, Mathias Bavay's thesis
The basic principles of MHD machines
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