Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Over the past year many luminaries have made clarion calls for a concerted effort to solve the energy crisis.  It is a crisis, with 300 million middle class Chinese determined to attain the unsustainable lifestyle we have sold them.  Their thirst for oil is growing at 30% a year, and can do nothing but heat the earth and spark political conflict.

We have been heating the earth since the agricultural revolution with the positive result of providing 10,000 years of warm stability.  But since the Industrial revolution we have been pushing the biosphere over the brink.  Life forces have done this before -- during the snowball earth period ( Cryogenian Period ) in  the  Neoproterozoic toward the end of the Precambrian - but that life force was not sentient!

Thomas Freedman of the New York Times has called for a  Manhattan Project for clean energy The New York Times> Search> Abstract.  Richard Smalley, one of the fathers of nanotechnology, has made a similar plea http://news.uns.purdue.edu/ html3month/2004/040902.Smal ley.energy.html.
 We are at the cusp in several technologies to fulfilling this clean energy dream.  All that we need is the political leadership to shift our fiscal priorities.

I feel our resources should be focused in three promising technologies:

1.  Nanotechnology: The exploitation of quantum effects is finally being seen in these new materials.  Photovoltaics (PV) are at last going beyond silicon, with many companies promising near-term breakthroughs in efficiencies and lower cost. Even silicon is gaining new efficienies from nano-tech: Researchers develop technique to use dirty silicon, could pave way for cheaper solar energy http://www.physorg.com/news 5831.html
New work on diodes also has great implications for PV, LEDs and micro-electronics Nanotubes make perfect diodes (August 2005) - News - PhysicsWeb   http://physicsweb.org/artic les/news/9/8/11
And direct solar to hydrogen,  I was told they have hit 10% efficiency and solved mass production problems:  Hydrogen Solar home   http://www.hydrogensolar.co m/index.html
And just coming out of the lab, this looks very strong, it brings full spectrum efficiencies to PVs:  UB News Services-solar nano-dots  
http://www.buffalo.edu/news fast-execute.cgi/article-p age.html?article=75000009

1a.  Thermionics:  The direct conversion of heat to electricity has been at best only 5% efficient.  Now with quantum tunneling chips we are talking 80% of carnot efficiency.  A good example is the proposed thermionic car design of Borealis. ( http://www.borealis.gi/pres s/NEW-GOLDEN-AGE-IBM.Speech .6=04.pdf  ) .  The estimated well-to-wheel efficiency is over 50%.  This compares to 13% for internal combustion and 27% for hydrogen fuel cells.  This means a car that has a range of 1500 miles on one fill up.  Rodney T. Cox, president of Borealis, has told me that he plans to have this car developed within two years. Boeing has already used his Chorus motor drives  http://www.chorusmotors.gi/ .
 on the nose gear of it's 767. (Boeing Demonstrates New Technology for Moving Airplanes on the Ground  http://www.boeing.com/news/ releases/2005/q3/nr_050801a .html )
  The Borealis thermocouple power chips http://www.powerchips.gi/in dex.shtml (and cool chips) applied to all the waste heat in our economy would make our unsustainable lifestyle more than sustainable.
You may find an extensive discussion on thermo electric patents at: Nanalyze Forums - Direct conversion of heat to electricity http://www.nanalyze.com/for ums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1006 &#2686

2.  Biotechnology: Since his revolutionary work on the human genome project, Craig Venter has been finding thousands of previously unknown life forms in the sea and air.  His goal is to use these creatures to develop the ultimate energy bug to produce hydrogen and or use of their photoreceptor genes for solar energy. http://www.venterscience.or g   Imagine a bioreactor in your home taking all your waste, adding some solar energy, and your electric and transportation needs are fulfilled.

3.  Fusion: Here I am not talking about the big science ITER project taking thirty years, but the several small alternative plasma fusion efforts and maybe bubble fusion - Is bubble fusion back? (July 2005) - News - PhysicsWeb
http://physicsweb.org/artic les/news/9/7/8 )

On the big science side I do have hopes for the LDX :    http://psfcwww2.psfc.mit.ed u/ldx/.

.
There are three companies pursuing hydrogen-boron plasma toroid fusion, Paul Koloc, Prometheus II, Eric Lerner, Focus Fusion and Clint Seward of Electron Power Systems http://www.electronpowersys tems.com/ . A resent DOD review of EPS technology reads as follows:

"MIT considers these plasmas a revolutionary breakthrough, with Delphi's
chief scientist and senior manager for advanced technology both agreeing
that EST/SPT physics are repeatable and theoretically explainable. MIT and
EPS have jointly authored numerous professional papers describing their
work. (Delphi is a $33B company, the spun off Delco Division of General
Motors)."
and
"Cost: no cost data available. The complexity of reliable mini-toroid
formation and acceleration with compact, relatively low-cost equipment
remains to be determined. Yet the fact that the EPS/MIT STTR work this
technology has attracted interest from Delphi is very significant, as the
automotive electronics industry is considered to be extremely demanding of
functionality per dollar and pound (e.g., mil-spec performance at
Wal-Mart-class 'commodity' prices)."

EPS, Electron Power Systems seems the strongest and most advanced, and I love the scalability, They propose applications as varied as home power generation@ .ooo5 cents/KWhr, cars, distributed power, airplanes, space propulsion , power storage and kinetic weapons.

It also provides a theoretic base for ball lighting : Ball Lightning Explained as a Stable Plasma Toroid http://www.electronpowersys tems.com/Images/Ball%20Ligh tning%20Explained.pdf
The theoretics are all there in peer reviewed papers. It does sound to good to be true however with names like MIT, Delphi, STTR grants, NIST grants , etc., popping up all over, I have to keep investigating.

Recent support has also come from one of the top lightning researcher in the world, Joe Dwyer at FIT, when he got his Y-ray and X-ray research published in the May issue of Scientific American,
http://www.sciam.com/articl e.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=1&articleID=00032CE5- 13B7-1264-8F9683414B7FFE9F
 Dwyer's paper:
http://www.lightning.ece.uf l.edu/PDF/Gammarays.pdf

and according to Clint Seward it supports his lightning models and fusion work at Electron Power Systems

Clint sent Joe and I his new paper on a lightning charge transport model of cloud to ground lightning (he did not want me to post it to the web yet). Joe was supportive and suggested some other papers to consider 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/~st anleym/dissertation/main.ht ml

And may also explain the spiral twist of some fulgurites, hollow fused sand tubes found in sandy ground at lightning strikes.

lightning produces thermonuclear reaction
This new work By Dr.Kuzhevsky on neutrons in lightning: Russian Science News http://www.informnauka.ru/e ng/2005/2005-09-13-5_65_e.h tm is also supportive of Electron Power Systems fusion efforts   http://www.electronpowersys tems.com/  .

Paul Koloc sent me an email that is very good news for Paul Koloc's and Eric Lerner's work on P-B11 fusion.

He refers 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 .

It's by Vincent Page a technology officer at GE! It high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion . 1.) Prometheus II http://www.neoteric-researc h.org/ , 2.) Field Revered Configuration, and 3.) Focus Fusion http://www.focusfusion.org/ about.html

He quotes costs and time to development as ten million, and years verses the decades projected for ITER and other Big science efforts.

The learning curve is so steep now, and with the resources of the online community, I'm sure we can rally greater support to solve this paramount problem of our time.  I hold no truck with those who argue that big business or government are suppressing these technologies.  It is only our complacency and comfort that blind us from pushing our leaders toward clean energy.

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.