ELECTRODYNAMIC CONFINEMENT

    - a new field of science and technology ? 


    Arne Bergström

    Scientor Research & Development
    Essingekroken 9, S-112 65 Stockholm, Sweden
    phone +46 8 695 0600 fax +46 8 695 0312
    e-mail arne.bergstrom@scientor.se



           The principles behind most of the milestones of our technology - the steam engine, the electric generator, the nuclear reactor and others - were once given to us only in the form of some odd or minute phenomena. The phenomena were known but their importance overlooked for centuries, in some cases even millenia. Anyone who had observed the jumping lid over a boiling kettle could have invented the steam engine. Electricity was known in antiquity from sparks when rubbing amber (elektron) with fur, magnetism was known from strange, attracting stones from Magneta in Asia Minor. The existence of nuclear power could have been inferred from the problem of what kept the sun shining, but the right clue was given first in the form of some specks on Becquerel's photographic plates - again a minute effect, easy to overlook or discard.
           It is the opinion of the author of this page that presumably we do already know many of the cornerstones of future technologies in embryonic form as other odd or minute effects, the importance of which we do not yet realise. Or they may be mentioned in some scientific article as a passing remark, in which the author tries to reconcile it with what is known. (The reader who questions the last sentence should study the current litterature on sonoluminiscence, which clearly illustrates the conflict between the appropriate scientific attempt first to find a solution in known mechanisms, even if they have to be stretched, and at the same time not discarding a phenomenon which might be exactly such a new clue to something - maybe even experimental evidence of a radial polarisation wave according to the electrodynamic confinement mechanism described below.)
           It is also the opinion of the author of this page that presumably ball lightning is another such phenomenon which may contain seeds to future technologies. For this reason, the author has devoted some twenty years to the study of the ball lightning phenomenon, starting in the early 70's with the article "Electromagnetic Theory of Strong Interaction" (Phys Rev D 8 p 4394-4402, 1973). The advent in the early 90's of powerful computer programs for symbolic mathematics has now finally made it possible to solve the complicated system of nonlinear partial differential equations (Maxwell's equations plus conservation equations for charge, mass/energy and momentum) which govern the electrodynamics of the configuration studied in the earlier article.
           Surprisingly enough, it then turns out to be possible to perform an entirely analytical solution of the electrodynamic equations, and the solutions turn out to be simple analytical expressions in elementary functions. Furthermore, the solutions can be easily visualized and verified not to be in conflict with neither simple dynamic considerations, the Earnshaw theorem nor the virial theorem. In view of the considerable technological implications, the mechanism involved has first been published in the form of a patent application.


      Can Large Energies be Stored in Ordinary Air ?

      Analytical Solution of the Electrodynamic Equations

      "Electrodynamic Confinement", Patent Application PCT/SE96/00966

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