Talk:Migma

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I am not a physicist, just an avid amateur scientist. I have been following the migma concept and think it deserves serious scientific consideration for the following reasons: 1. It does not require the preparation of any rare isotopes (the collection of which requires enormous energy resources). The articles I have seen named normal lithium and beryllium as the most likely fuel sources. Both are plentiful. 2. It does not produce neutrons. Therefore it does not produce secondary sources of radioactive contamination which result from the neutron bombardment of surrounding materials. This is the greatest problem facing both fission and fusion. 3. It does not involve a chain reaction. It is a sustained and fully controllable process, according to the descriptions I have read. This reduces the inherent dangers of energy production by many levels of magnitude. As an aside: it is not a candidate for another weapons program, which, of course, makes it very unattractive to many funding sources. 4. It can allegedly be manufactured on very small scales as well as larger installations. 5. It apparently produces an electrical potential directly; electrons are released to one collector and protons to another. This means that heat is not the main form of energy and that turbines and other moving parts are not involved. This would be a huge efficiency improvement over all other energy plans I have heard of. It seems to me that any one of these criteria should generate a great deal of interest in the scientific world and would be reason enough to devote a small portion of the billions of dollars that have been going into a great many other projects, which have so far led nowhere, or done as much harm as good.

Dave Lea 02:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)Dave Lea - Fish Creek, Wisconsin, USA


 * Migma has never been demonstrated to work as a net energy producer. And there's a body of theoretical work that suggests it can't be a net energy producer. So yeah, other than the fact that it doesn't work and maybe can't, it's amazing! Maury (talk) 22:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Guess at problems
I am a fusion scientist. I have not investigated the migma concept. But here is what I would guess:


 * 1) If the migma is a beam-on-beam concept.  The issue here is the beam instability.  If you fire two (+) beams at one another they rip each other apart.  Marshall Rosenbluth covered this topic well.  We would need a picture, the publications and supporting math to explain this here.


 * 1) Based on what I read here (http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/10755/title/Visionary-Physicist-s-Crusade-Serves-As-Lesson-In-Futility/) the migma was simpler than that, like just mixing two species.  In that case the electrostatic barrier would be the problem. You cannot just let two "hot" plasma clouds intermix and expect fusion power.  Todd Rider's thesis covers this well (but it is improperly cited here).


 * 1) The reason for this, specifically, is that the fusion cross section against the scatter cross section.  If scattering cross section is higher than your plasma flies apart faster than it fuses.  This leads to lots of mass loss (conduction losses).


 * 1) My understanding is that you are accelerating beams into a big box, and letting the hot plasma fly around.  If someone has more details please help me out here.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CCDD:E740:95F1:285:6120:E9B3 (talk) 14:45, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Necro-reply here, but in case this editor returns: I have updated the article to explain the design more in-depth. I think your questions above are now answered. Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:34, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Another meaning
What about the geological term migma (from μῖγμα) - "a mixture of solid rock materials and rock melt with mobility or potential mobility". I suppose there should be a disambig. --Al Silonov 12:22, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Good point. Can we disambig to the wikionary? Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:35, 5 May 2022 (UTC)