"Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks

bill beaty, Fri Mar 30 2007, 02:58AM

Sparks leap between electrodes because of progressive ionization of the air. Once gas-breakdown has been triggered, the plasma contributes bare electrons via avalanche, and also creates UV radiation, both of which ionize the next bit of air into spark-stuff.

But there is a second little-known kind of spark. While in 1-atm air, electrons normally have very short trajectories, and can travel a cm or two before being halted. However, if electrons should travel across a voltage drop of approximately 1MV or larger, they suddenly are able to travel a hundred times further in air. At kinetic energy of around 1MeV or higher, electrons go relativistic (travelling at nearly the speed of light) and the collision rules are different. The air seems more transparent.

If such "fast electrons" should travel through an electric field, they gain far more energy than normal electrons would, since normal electrons experience far more 'air friction' via multiple collisions with air molecules. In other words, the fast electrons think that our air pressure is 0.01 atmosphere, and they behave more like a particle beam rather than an outbreak of fractal spark-plasma. With 100x less 'friction,' fast electrons are easily accelerated by fairly weak e-fields.

In addition, if they strike air molecules, fast electrons can create more fast electrons. This opens up the possibility of a different kind of spark, a spark based on an outbreak of a different kind of electron-avalance. Physicists refer to this by several names:

Runaway breakdown Link2
Electron runaway Link2
Runaway electrons Link2

Also see Link2 Link2, and the short wikipedia entry I wrote on this.

This bit of physics is increasingly in the news because it may explain some of the continuing mysteries of lightning. Lightning is not a conventional spark, since it occurs at far too low a voltage. But if cosmic background radiation (the geiger counter clicks) can easily supply a tiny amount of fast electrons, an immensely long spark might form via runaway breakdown rather than the usual UV and avalanche ionization. And this spark might grow despite a very weak environmental e-field present in storm clouds. Or said differently: because cosmic rays are present, lightning in a storm would strike at much higher frequency because the e-fields would not have to grow very large before a spark appeared to short them out again.


Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
..., Fri Mar 30 2007, 03:10AM

What exactly is the point of your post? Are you trying to get us to read your (tagged for missing cites) wikipedia article?

I remember reading an article saying that lightning is created by cosmic rays seeding lightning in SciAm over a year ago...

Are you trying to get our opinions? Our criticism? Random flames?
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
ragnar, Fri Mar 30 2007, 04:30AM

I think he's just trying to raise awareness and generate interest, which is fair enough... I subscribe to SciAm and hadn't caught the article on cosmic rays/lightning, any idea which issue?
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
CM, Fri Mar 30 2007, 03:50PM

Bill:

I appreciate you mentioning topics which you think might be of interest, such as the 1MV spark. I didn't know the above. Thanks. The following is strictly my personal opinion to help you survive newbie bootcamp here at 4hv. There seems to be some sort of ritualistic initiation rite that some newbies are put through here especially if you bring up topics that aren't generally found in a college text book. Progressive thinking isn't prohibited here, but it isn't encouraged much either (again, my opinion). Middle-of-the-road topics seem to be the safest topics because nobody gets upset at them or lables them pseudo-science... but if you choose to mention topics that are not already generally known science or can't be goggled... be prepared for a few members or moderators to give you a hard time. I concur that true nut-cases should be policed in order to keep this site sane, but sometimes the policing seems to be applied unevenly, or threads locked down on topics that members are still quite interested in. The good news is that 4hv.org has a level headed owner and this site is worth putting up with the ritualistic newbie arse-spanking. However, I think yours will be abbreviated since you are already well known in science circles. That being said, this is a great site and the run-away spark topic you posted is of interest to me since I have been working with sparks daily for the last couple years on my sky voltage antenna project. In fact, somewhere (if I can find it), there is a picture of my sky voltage antenna operating your 5kV 'soda' bottle corona motor. Link2 CM shades
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Steve Ward, Fri Mar 30 2007, 04:16PM

Are you trying to get our opinions? Our criticism? Random flames?


Perhaps he is simply trying to inspire some thought. (and dude, quit being the (first) one to nag)

This is why those big Russian marx generators were capable of enormous (100 meter IIRC) discharges from only 5MV output. I never even had a clue as to why until now.

I still suspect that your voltage source (creating the field of > 1MV) must still have considerable energy behind it, in order to actually create a proportionally longer spark. I mean, people have built little marx generators, capable of MV level discharges (of course, its always less than they thing due to stray capacitance having an initial charge of 0), but they dont generate 50' sparks or something. So what exactly happens in this case? Is the path bridged by a few electrons, but without sufficient energy we just dont get the bright spark?
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
WaveRider, Fri Mar 30 2007, 08:07PM


I agree that Bill's post poses some thought provoking questions. It is well known that ionising radiation can initiate discharges in gases (after all, this is how a G-M tube works). It would be nice if he did more than offer us a few scientific buzz-words and electrons that "think."

[MOD. EDIT: Removed off topic material.]
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Eric, Fri Mar 30 2007, 08:32PM

Steve Ward wrote ...

I still suspect that your voltage source (creating the field of > 1MV) must still have considerable energy behind it, in order to actually create a proportionally longer spark. I mean, people have built little marx generators, capable of MV level discharges (of course, its always less than they thing due to stray capacitance having an initial charge of 0), but they dont generate 50' sparks or something. So what exactly happens in this case? Is the path bridged by a few electrons, but without sufficient energy we just dont get the bright spark?

The bulk of the electrons actually have to gain ~1MeV of energy for the relatavistic effects to 'show' which would not happen with a 1MV accelerating potential since the electrons will collide with air and lose energy many times before crossing the potential drop. Of course you could do it in a vacuum if you built a DC linac.
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Fri Mar 30 2007, 09:28PM

It's not enough to have a very high E field to generate long sparks, you have to have enormous currents as well. You could have a lot of electrons, but without the current, they're not going to be moving with enough velocity to produce really big sparks.

My TC (provided that dielectric breakdown is 30kv/inch) can output ~4 foot arcs, which is over a million volts in my own garage, but they don't just suddenly explode into a huge 8 foot arc across the room because the current is just too low to saturate the volume. The only way I could achieve an 8 foot spark from a low power Tesla coil would be to have an enormous E field causing a stream of current inbetween the two charged surfaces, like a flyback causing a cloud of charge between the terminals but without arcing. This would require a huge current at ~2MV DC over the 8 foot span.

The way I see it, ionized paths only occur inbetween two highly charged surfaces, with a substantial lekage current inbetween them.
In the case of a source being one type of polarity (+ or -), and the sink being 0, you're uncovering opposite charges in the sink as you charge the source, so in effect you still have two highly charged surfaces, you're just moving charges around.
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
CM, Fri Mar 30 2007, 09:29PM

Wave:

Not sure some us follow your entire post, except the 'rant' part is pretty clear. I for one, think Bill has taken sufficient effort in explaining his line of reasoning. If you tell him what part you don't follow, I bet he might explain. Bill innocently commited the dreaded deed of a double-post because he has so much info to share. Reducing or characterizing his insightful comments down to a series of buzz-words simply isn't fair to him or accurate and tends to support my post above typical of the harsh and/or rough treatment some newbies receive who dare to stretch the 'thought' envelope. Here's a friendly challenge to you... if you sit back and listen to what Bill has to say over the next month, assuming he doesn't decide this has already become more trouble than it's worth, I'll bet you a nickle you will learn some very interesting things along the way, many have, including me. Back to the topic of sparks, when a storm is within 50 miles or so of my 3500 foot long antenna, the thick sparks produced are easily 2 inches, sometimes 3 inches, between spark electrodes, and are a bright blue color, discharging between 2-3 times per second, accompanied by sizzling sounds like bacon on a skillet and loud bangs! There doesn't have to be visible lightning in the air, just some dark clouds off on the horizon. I do 95% of my research during fair weather conditions, when the above begins to happen, that is usually when I close down the RV (aka my lab) and go seek safer shelter. CM shades
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
bill beaty, Sat Mar 31 2007, 04:02AM

Eric wrote:
> The bulk of the electrons actually have to gain ~1MeV of energy for the relatavistic effects to 'show'

Oops. Good catch. I was assuming electrons in vacuum.

So, what would some hobbyist-level "electron runaway" equipment look like? The basic requirement is to create a large, space-filling e-field, then provide a "seed" of high energy electrons to start the "runaway" avalanche. The phenomenon might occur at nanosecond time scale. So relative to nS, a large TC running at 10uS time scale (or 100uS) would behave as slowly pulsed half-wave DC. Placing a radioactive source on the main terminal of a large TC might produce some new discharge phenomena. But unless the runaway process can be triggered by quite low intensity of ionizing radiation (Torbernite samples, or lantern mantels,) some other means is probably required.

A more silly version: create a very large TC with a meters-wide main terminal. Then build a 1MV VandeGraaff-based particle accelerator having a high-vac drift tube (see the first diagram on Shawn's page brightscience.com Link2, also unitednuclear.com/fwa1.htm Link2 Then mount the entire linac inside the TC terminal. If the linac is a high-brightness source of fast electrons when compared to radioactive samples available to hobbyists, it has that much greater chance at sucessfully producing interesting changes in the TC discharge.

But do we need a VandeGraaff generator *and* a Tesla coil? Why not combine them? Let the TC act as a source of pulsed DC. Let's get rid of the VDG, since a TC has higher power output capability. Let's instead connect one end of a high-vacuum drift tube directly to a TC main terminal, with the other end of the tube projecting horizontally outwards from the TC terminal (connect a field-emission electrode within the drift tube to the TC terminal, of course. Or perhaps even use a hot filament.) The TC would need to put out far more than one megavolt, since we'd want to transiently produce at least a 1MV potential drop between the ends of the drift tube. The far end of the drift tube might need a foil window to more easily pass electrons, Lenard-tube style.

And so we've come full circle back to Nikola Tesla's single-electrode X-ray tube atop a tall TC. Very simple: a drift tube with an electrode at the HV end. (Perhaps enough electrons penetrate the glass wall at the far end to produce anomalous discharges?)

Scopeboy, about that photo you posted of a cyclotron beam. In the thread that was shut down? In answer to your question, yes, fast electrons only go a few tens of cm through air, so the obvious solution is to apply a 100M wide, volume-filling e-field to the yards of space outside the cyclotron. The cyclotron beam provides the fast-electron seeds. But if we wanted to see the huge long discharges, we'd have to put the whole cyclotron atop a tesla coil! That, or use a grounded cyclotron inside an enormously wide metal shell, then apply high voltage to that shell.


Anyway... during a negative half-cycle of the TC output, as the PD present along the drift tube rose high, some relativistic electrons would begin leaving through the foil barrier at the far end of the tube. There they would encounter the remainder of the TC's e-field, as well as encountering air molecules. They'd accelerate, and they'd also spawn more fast electrons via collisions with air molecules. Rather than producing a conventional plasma streamer, with luck the TC would produce an example of a "new kind of spark."

One problem I see in the above is that the relativistic avalanche might tend to bend and follow the e-field pattern near the TC. It might curve immediately downwards. On the other hand, particle beams in gas environments rapidly neutralize, so they tend to ignore e-fields, see papers about it: Link2 Finally, since the electron beam is composed of mobile electrons, it behaves as a long thin conductor connected to the TC. It would automatically develop an e-field along its length, as does any resistor. Also it would probably experience self-organization effects. What would this produce? Maybe the discharge would have some interesting structure. Like Red Sprites, etc.? Or ...since the particles move at nearly C, perhaps it would more resemble the beam from a searchlight. But why pursue theoretical prediction when empirical testing is more fun?!

One other person who intends to experiment in this topic is colleague Greg Leyh. See his page about this at wwwlod.org/LightningLab/LightningLab.htm Link2

Note again that physicists say that these phenomena occur at a length scale of many tens of meters. They weren't noticed until recent years, since most plasma physics experiments don't employ chambers 50M across. If a "runaway discharge" spark can be produced by a backyard TC, the discharge should end up being that long, at the very least.

And about the Wikipedia article. I pointed it out because it has a brief description as well as article links, including the link to that great article in Physics Today. But PT has removed their article from public view. That's probably why somebody tagged the WP entry as lacking references. Here's a mirror copy:

Runaway Breakdown and the Mysteries of Lightning
wwwphy.olemiss.edu/~jgladden/phys510/ spring06/Gurevich.pdf Link2

Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Steve Conner, Sat Mar 31 2007, 10:58AM

bill beaty wrote ...
But if we wanted to see the huge long discharges, we'd have to put the whole cyclotron atop a tesla coil!
Sounds like a great plan, except my apartment is kind of full already wink Seriously, if my mental model of these things is right, I think all that would happen is that the particle beam would stay the same length and would function as a seed for a regular looking Tesla coil discharge. I don't think it would be any different from what happens when you put a candle on a Tesla coil:
Candlezap
Of course I would love to be proved wrong suprised
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Sulaiman, Sat Mar 31 2007, 09:35PM

I remember reading that long arcs occur when dV/dT > 2.06 kV/us,
presumably to achieve some critical stay-alive arc current (I=C.dV/dT)
and 5 MV helps!

Hope this helps more than it confuses.
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Bored Chemist, Sun Apr 01 2007, 09:14AM

I read this bit "But there is a second little-known kind of spark. While in 1-atm air, electrons normally have very short trajectories, and can travel a cm or two before being halted. However, if electrons should travel across a voltage drop of approximately 1MV or larger, they suddenly are able to travel a hundred times further in air." and was a bit surprised.
There's stacks of data for beta particle ranges in air on the net so I collected some.
KeV cm range
18, 0.6
100, 11
156, 25
167, 26
249, 50
257, 50
500, 150
1000, 370
1710, 790
2000, 850
If you plot that out you will see there isn't a sudden rise, the data are pretty much on a nice smooth curve.

Since the effect doesn't seem to exist, I think discussing it is redundant.
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Sun Apr 01 2007, 07:38PM

So we can see the plot.
1175456322 135 FT22714 Beta
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
bill beaty, Mon Apr 02 2007, 12:45AM

Fascinating graph! Something is certainly wrong somewhere, eh?

Bored chemist wrote:
> Since the effect doesn't seem to exist, I think discussing it is redundant.

Heh. I suggest that your confidence is misplaced. Your response strongly indicates that you haven't bothered to read anything about the topic before stating that it doesn't exist. This is suprising when considering the links I provided.

Also, do I really have to point out that theories are falsified by experiment and not the reverse? If some phenomenon is well-verified by the plasma physics research community, then any theory-based falsifications such as your graph are flawed, by definition. To me they even resemble an attempt at the logical fallacy of "well-poisoning."

Did you click on any of the links? I made it easy by giving google-search links on keywords, and on the article in Physics Today. You'd have found a large variety of physics papers and abstracts about runaway breakdown and relativistic electrons. Yes, the thunderstorm effect is still controversial, but runaway breakdown itself is not. But if you are genuinely a "chemist," bored or otherwise, I suggest avoiding all the plasma physics papers. Instead take a look at the popular article about thunderstorms. Particularly consider figure 2. Here it is again:

wwwphy.olemiss.edu/~jgladden/phys510/ spring06/Gurevich.pdf Link2

And here again are those google searches.

Runaway breakdown Link2 (9K hits)
Runaway electrons Link2 (47K hits)

Looking at the graph, I probably misinterpreted Figure 2 in that article as not only determining the braking force experienced by individual electrons, but also having an effect on penetration distance. Doh!

Steve Conner wrote:
> Seriously, if my mental model of these things is right, I think all that would happen is that the particle beam would stay the same length and would function as a seed for a regular looking Tesla coil discharge.

Perhaps, but then you're ignoring avalanche effect, and it's avalanche which determines spark length. I hope you're at least slightly curious. I note that pseudoscientists preserve their pet theories, and they look for excuses to avoid empirical testing, while (amateur)scientists instantly want to see pet theories falsified (or even verified, but verification is far less common.) Faraday: "Let the experiment be made".

Even if the effect has been long demonstrated in plasma physics experiments, there's a good chance that the number of MeV seed-electrons attainable by hobbyist equipment is too low to trigger the long discharges or affect the look of TC streamers.

I have high-vac equipment, also glassblowing skills long unused. I have some new ideas for preventing the glass burn-through problem that Tesla was working on. But the largest TC I've built was a 30" desktop model (rotary synchro gap, NST-based, sold commercially.) My first TC I built in 1981 using an oil burner transformer.

Make no mistake, this drift-tube experiment has some dangers, at least similar to the "Atom Smasher" linac in old Scientific American.


[Edit: Removed off topic content]
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Mon Apr 02 2007, 04:37AM

I keep asking myself where is this going? Certianly we are chatting about a phenomonon, but is this turning into a project thread?

And if you want to prove an avalanche charge effect by use of a LINAC in a vacuum system, how does that experiment have any relavence at 1-ATM?

And if you're talking about particle beams, emerging from a vacuum system through a window of some type now you're dealing with two totally different sytems. Any particle or wave encountering two different substances encounters two very different impedances. We talked about this in Physics, along with the dispersion relations. This brings up many more complications, like particle particle interactions at 1-ATM, and friction.

So is this a research project which goes in the project thread? A chatting thread where we talk about theories that may be substantiated at a much later time? Or a general science thread or high voltage thread?
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Steve Conner, Mon Apr 02 2007, 10:16AM

We need to do is reconcile Bill's pleas that runaway breakdown allows huge discharges, with BC's empirical data, assuming neither is lying or wrong.

I think there is a simple explanation: BC's figures are for beta particles in air with no electric field. If a 2MeV particle can travel 8.5 meters before being brought to a halt, then a naive calculation suggests that if it were in an electric field of 235kV/meter, the field would add energy to it as fast as it was drained by collisions, and it would never stop. Of course, there are probably all sorts of relativistic horrors I don't know about, but I bet the fundamental argument still holds.

235kV/m is easily attainable by a hobbyist Tesla coil, but 2Mev beta particles are a different ball game. An electron accelerator built into a Tesla coil secondary might produce, say, 500keV particles and a 500kV/m field. You could build such a device and see whether the streamers got longer or changed direction when the electron gun was turned on.
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
bill beaty, Mon Apr 02 2007, 10:57AM

Steve wrote:
"then a naive calculation suggests that if it were in an electric field of 235kV/meter, the field would add energy to it as fast as it was drained by collisions,"

Exactly. The thunderstorm physics article uses Runaway Breakdown as an explanation of why lightning can be initiated at far below the 3MV/meter value for dielectric breakdown in air. In that environment, the avalanches would be triggered by *single* cosmic ray particles. Perhaps an HV drift tube can create a robust effect by providing a few more than that.

"Of course, there are probably all sorts of relativistic horrors I don't know about, but I bet the fundamental argument still holds."

There's also Beam Neutralization phenomenon seen in gas environments, also Gas Focusing, and the conductor effect from the presence of mobile carriers. I suspect that all three will tend to aid things, making the discharge even longer. Throw in the nonlinear emergent plasma stuff that makes lightning be fractal, and it's hard to say what it would do.

Hazmatt wrote:
"And if you're talking about particle beams, emerging from a vacuum system through a window of some type now you're dealing with two totally different sytems. Any particle or wave encountering two different substances encounters two very different impedances. We talked about this in Physics, along with the dispersion relations. This brings up many more complications, like particle particle interactions at 1-ATM, and friction."

That's the case if we're theorists. Experimentalists do things differently. Analogy: it's 1880, and I want to know if sticking a filament in an evacuated bulb can act as a light source. Perhaps many problems will arise which careful analysis could avoid. Or perhaps I'll stick a filament in an evacuated bulb and apply power just to see what happens. It's Edison science versus Langmuir science. Maybe any such projects benefit from both types of people?

About "project thread," I have no project to display. The real problem is that there's no section for "Amateur Science Projects" here. That's where proposed hobby setups never before built, and with unknown results, would belong. Otherwise, it's a tossup whether this goes under High Voltage or Tesla Coils.

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" -- Albert Einstein
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Eric, Mon Apr 02 2007, 08:17PM

Making a LINAC that 'fires' into air is not so hard to do. Check out this Lenard tube. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to build such a thing driven by ~1MV and use it as an electrode for a TC or perhaps a VDG. Arc dynamics are so complex I don't think you could predict how it was going to work without trying it.
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Bored Chemist, Tue Apr 03 2007, 05:47PM

OK, I was a bit hasty condemning this. Sorry.
I'm not pretending I read all that Bill wrote. On the other hand what he says (that what I wrote indicates I didn't read his stuff) doesnt make sense since roughly half the text I wrote was a quote from him.

Either there's something magic about 1MeV electrons or there isn't. They can't "remember" that they were spat out of a nucleus or launched from an accelerator. They behave in the same way.
I also think that the data I provided are quite clearly experimental whereas the topic you discuss is (at least from the point of view of most home experimenters) pretty theoretical.
Now I have read (and thought) a bit more about it, I accept that you might be able to get electrons to act oddly if you can launch them fast enough. A hydroplaning boat might be a bad analogy; once you have got it up to speed you can keep it running with a smaller power than you needed to launch it in the first place.

I still stand my my assertion that "if electrons should travel across a voltage drop of approximately 1MV or larger, they suddenly are able to travel a hundred times further in air. " is wrong unless you add the rather important detail that having been taken up to a high speed they are not left to coast, but are pulled along by a further potential drop.

BTW, 2MeV betas might be a bit tricky for the amateur scientist. However, 1.3 and 1.5MeV electrons are relatively (if you forgive the pun) easy to get. Unfortunately, unless you happen to have isotopically enriched 40potassium, the yield is lousy. At this point I wonder if that relativistic avalanche helps.
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
bill beaty, Fri Apr 06 2007, 12:03PM

Bored Chemist wrote ...

I still stand my my assertion that "if electrons should travel across a voltage drop of approximately 1MV or larger, they suddenly are able to travel a hundred times further in air. " is wrong unless you add the rather important detail that having been taken up to a high speed they are not left to coast, but are pulled along by a further potential drop.

*ADD* that important detail?! But that important detail is what this thread is about! That's the thread title. That's why I thought that you didn't read the thread before commenting.

What is your opinion of Figure 2 in that article?


In this thread we're talking about the fields surrounding a large tesla coil having an odd effect on megavolt electrons. In other words, "suddenly are able to travel a hundred times further in air" is only odd if for some reason you take it out of the context of this discussion and for some reason pretend that we're *not* talking about adding a large ambient e-field.

Very oddly, steve C. made exaclty the same mistake with his earlier cyclotron photo: he offered that particular photo in order to disprove all the physics papers describing runaway breakdown. But that photo lacks the large e-field which is the main feature of runaway breakdown. Seems like quite a large error to me, one that I wouldn't expect he or you to make.

Anyway...

Probably it will be against DOE licensing laws for hobbyists to experiment with radioactive sources which provide plenty of +1MeV electrons. A hot filament, or better yet, a cold cathode, when paired with a high-vac drift tube and a Tesla coil, would provide an enormous supply of such electrons. Cold cathode style x-ray sources apparently don't even require much more than a rotary vacuum pump. And various articles suggest that it isn't too hard to get those electrons out into the air: if the beam current is high enough, the portion of "fast electrons" not stopped by a glass wall will be significant.

One problem: if we put the drift tube on a large TC, we have to suppress any outbreaks of plasma streamers, yet keep the terminal voltage far above a megavolt. Another problem: dielectric heating of glass can "turn on" the electrolytic conduction effect, where if the wattage of a large TC is involved, would cause the glass to burn through and perforate within seconds. Careful shielding of portions of the drift tube would be needed, but the shielding geometry must still allow a multi-megavolt potential drop to exist within part of the drift tube. I have several ideas to try.


And again: experiments with megavolt x-rays and MeV electrons either require very thick and expensive shielding, or need a piece of farmland (with safety provided by distant remote control and video observationof the devices in operation.)

Heh. Does anyone here live in... Colorado Springs?

Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
quicksilver, Mon Jul 05 2010, 06:55PM

The guy is banned; the thread is history.
Interestingly the entries on "Runaway Breakdown" in "Wiki" (the encyclopedia that the public writes.....) are not written by the OP.
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
dmg, Tue Jul 06 2010, 06:01AM

proximity 3 wrote ...

There seems to be some sort of ritualistic initiation rite that some newbies are put through here especially if you bring up topics that aren't generally found in a college text book. Progressive thinking isn't prohibited here, but it isn't encouraged much either (again, my opinion). Middle-of-the-road topics seem to be the safest topics because nobody gets upset at them or lables them pseudo-science... but if you choose to mention topics that are not already generally known science or can't be goggled... be prepared for a few members or moderators to give you a hard time.

what?

anyway, since we are on the topic of ancient threads, anyone know what this guy got banned for?
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
803, Tue Jul 06 2010, 08:21PM

he pissed off everyone and became a rebel with CM. Then the problem was solved:-D by by
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
klugesmith, Tue Jul 06 2010, 08:28PM

On Fri Mar 30 2007, 08:50AM
CM wrote ...
...
There seems to be some sort of ritualistic initiation rite that some newbies are put through here especially if you bring up topics that aren't generally found in a college text book. Progressive thinking isn't prohibited here, but it isn't encouraged much either (again, my opinion). Middle-of-the-road topics seem to be the safest topics because nobody gets upset at them or lables them pseudo-science... but if you choose to mention topics that are not already generally known science or can't be goggled... be prepared for a few members or moderators to give you a hard time.
...
On Mon Jul 05 2010, 10:56PM (PDT = UT-7h)
proximity 3 wrote ...
There seems to be some sort of ritualistic initiation rite that some newbies are put through here especially if you bring up topics that aren't generally found in a college text book. Progressive thinking isn't prohibited here, but it isn't encouraged much either (again, my opinion). Middle-of-the-road topics seem to be the safest topics because nobody gets upset at them or lables them pseudo-science... but if you choose to mention topics that are not already generally known science or can't be goggled... be prepared for a few members or moderators to give you a hard time.
Troll alert!

"Proximity" is evidently a plagiarist, or CM by another name. I'm pleased that the practice he protests has persisted.
Re: "Runaway breakdown" for creating *really* long sparks
Chris Russell, Sat Jul 10 2010, 05:11AM

Sorry folks, but the truth is far less interesting. Both new posters to the thread were spambots; their text ripped from earlier posts so that they could link to their spammed sites in their signatures.

The OP of this thread is long gone; I'll go ahead and padlock this thread now, as no further useful discussion is likely to result.