TinselKoil 04c: Full Power Sparks and Arcs; Psychic Vampires

[QIQrrr]

Good stability in the arc. What happens if you turn of the radio?

[TinselKoala]

I can concentrate a lot better?

The arc can be very stable. I intentionally tune the unit just a hair off resonance and set the gap at a max distance to produce the nice breaks and coronas. With exact resonance and/or a smaller gap the power arc is absolutely stable (until the electrodes melt!) and silent. And HOT! The thing is basically a spectacular and dangerous 500 watt room heater.

But it also radiates considerable power in the RF (the point of having the radio on in the background...)

[QIQrrr]

If you turn off the radio, does it inflict on the properties of the arc in any way?

[TinselKoala]

No, I don't think so. But I keep the radio pretty far away. Technically, in a very clean RF environment like a Faraday cage or screen room, it might be possible to detect the power drain from the coil's field when a remote receiver is turned on. And if there's stray RF from the receiver's IF section it might beat with the SSTC's freq.

In the next few days I will be implementing an audio modulation circuit in this driver, if I can figure out how to do it without blowing the audio source.

[QIQrrr]

Experiments have shown that it is possible to control plasma in tokamak reactors with the help of radio waves. Other experiments could involve lasers (maybe optical trapping), magnets and perhaps transverse waves of some kind. Are you familiar with the works of Hannes Alfven? Interesting field.

[TinselKoala]

Yes, somewhat, actually, and I agree, it's very interesting.

In this plasma, I believe the large-scale dynamics are dominated by thermal effects. The arc blows around from convection; the electrode wires get pitted and make little field concentrations; the heat is so intense in the tiny arc channel itself that I believe the N2 is burning to NOxes and the argon is glowing white.

 It will be interesting to see what happens when I apply this power to an evacuated tube with coils and magnets. Soon.

[QIQrrr]

Sounds plausible. Interesting indeed. If you're not familiar with the site: thunderbolts(.)info has a forum ranging from serious stuff related to plasma physics and electricity to the more exotic stuff. Anyway: looking forward to more videos. Stay safe.

[janne808]

Yes Alfvén is great. Coincidentally I'm putting together a general lattice framework for (magneto)hydrodynamic models on my sparetime..

[QIQrrr]

I'm home. In addition to Alfven you have Kristian Birkeland, Carl-Gunne Fälthammar and Anthony Peratt...and Tesla of course. All great scientists in the field of plasma physics and electricity - the future of modern science I think.

[TinselKoala]

Yes. Falthammar I don't know. Perrat...Perault, perhaps? Birkeland of course. And I dig the TB site and love the pictures of the days. I am a believer in the plausibility of the whole "electric universe" construct. My experience with electrostatics, pulsed power, and vacuum systems leads me to have the strong opinion that electrodynamics must be considered as a viable explanations for some of the features and phenomena we observe in space. Also in our own upper atmosphere.

For sure.

[QIQrrr]

Anthony Peratt: a graduate student of Hannes Alfven. Carl-Gunne Fälthammar succeeded Hannes Alfven as Professor of Plasma Physics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1975. I'm delighted to hear you've oriented yourself in the electric cosmological direction - this is the future. The old standard model is to narrow and limited and was an attempt to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo. Won't work.

plasma-universe(.)com

[TinselKoala]

You have an MHD model on spare time? Now that's interesting. I have unread emails from respected scientists in my inbox queue that have titles like "Swimming thru Spacetime"; I wonder if Swimming thru Sparetime, propelled by crossed E and M and the geometrics of the Poynting vector, is also covered in there. Sparetime Sleppian!

I suppose we had better be glad we can't actually drop an anchor into the ether...it would be snapped away at the "intrinsic" velocity of the Earth, less L-T framedrag.

[janne808]

It's all on discrete boltzmannian hexagon lattice spacetime. Hannes wouldn't approve, but what does he know about computers anyway.

[TinselKoala]

Well, er, OK.

(nods head sagely, scribbles something in little notebook)

How about the Correas? Chernetsky? The brothers Corum? Grebennikov? (just kidding about Grebby, he's cool).

[janne808]

I think I'll stick to Einstein and Boltzmann for now.

[harpbloke]

wow awesome !!!!!

hmmm spirit radio, this all reminds me of the movie white noise. ha

thanks for showing your amazing work

[TinselKoala]

White Noise, I'll have to look it up.

I just last night realized that two of my favorite movies were both directed by Darren Aronofsky and one of my least favorites was also directed by him. Pi and The Wrestler. And Requiem for a Dream was the wrong movie for a first date with a beautiful woman. Dammit.

And two other of my favorites were directed by Ridley Scott. No, three. No, four. Ah, fergeddaboudit.

(BR, Alien, and so forth.)

Thanks for watching, I'm glad you like my tinkering about.

[TinselKoala]

Spirit radio -- the modulation of the arc that happens around 6:10 or so is from me touching the timing capacitor of the PWM chip. I think this might cause the coil respond not to the radio in the room but rather to the broadcast itself. Late at night, after many hours of experimentation, when I tune it just right I know I can hear things, things that sound like voices, electric voices, but I can't quite make out what they are telling me.

I listen, but I still don't know.