Episode description

Eric Lerner (President and Chief Scientist of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics) is our featured guest.

Topic: Plasma Focus Fusion: a form of clean fusion which might well become a game-changer for civilization. If the ongoing development is successful, it could completely re-write our future as compared to current expectations. It could do this for three reasons: it can provide us with more electricity than we currently use on this planet, it can provide it at only a fraction of a penny per kilowatt hour, and the third and bonus reason, it is clean energy. Clean in the sense that it does not produce any radioactive waste material at all. Being a small portable device, Focused Fusion would be ideal for space exploration within our solar system--possibly reducing travel time to Mars to under one month. As a secondary topic, Eric Lerner also talks about the growing body of evidence that the Big Bang Theory of the origin and large scale structure of the universe may be completely wrong. An uncomfortable thought to be sure.

Eric Lerner, President and Chief Scientist of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, has been active in dense plasma focus (DPF) research for 30 years. Beginning in 1984, he developed a detailed quantitative theory of the functioning of DPF. Based on this theory, he proposed that the DPF could achieve high ion and electron energies at high densities, suitable for advanced fuel fusion and space propulsion. Under a series of contracts with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he planned and participated in carrying out experiments that tested and confirmed this theory. In addition, he developed an original model of the role of the quantum magnetic field effect on DPF functioning, showing that this effect could have a large effect on increasing ion temperature and decreasing electron temperature, which would reduce unwanted X-ray cooling of the plasma.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 14, 2014 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 50 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on May 8, 2014.

Stephen Euin Cobb is an author, futurist, magazine writer and host of the award-winning podcast The Future And You. A contributing editor for Space and Time Magazine; he has also been a regular contributor for Robot, H+, Grim Couture and Port Iris magazines; and he spent three years as a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine. He is an artist, essayist, game designer, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation. Stephen is the author of Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science as well as A Brief History of Predicting the Future.