I'm slowly reading through the forum backlog from 2006, and thought I'd just make a note here. I'm intrigued by two posters in particular: wdavidb and H. Short. I have no first-hand familiarity with MKULTRA (thank God) but the rumours haunted me in a bad way even before I knew what it was. Then in the 90s a lot of stuff of both valid and dubious provenance has surfaced (Ewan Cameron, Bluebird, Tranceformation of America). What wdavidb says about memory and dissociation resonates with what I've read elsewhere. Let's just say that I'll never look at 'Joe 90' again the same way, and I'll be squeamish about watching Joss Whedon's 'Dollhouse'. There's stuff there that I *really* don't want to know about, but I think at some point it does cross over with this story - particularly via Deyo and the nuclear medicine / MKULTRA link that Langley uncovered. What wdavidb says about 'fields' also resonates, though it doesn't make sense rationally, but it's a point of view I've heard from other psi/mystical quarters, makes a certain amount of intuitive sense, and would dearly love to find a way toward understanding.
H. Short's post about MHD/EHD and toroidal magnetic fields here:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=110&p=5756#p5756
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=110&p=5789#p5789
clicks VERY strongly with the line I've been chasing on this thread about Deyo's saucers, Brown's 1958 disc vortex diagram, and what I intuit strongly (but can't rationalise) is a line from the cyclotron, to the magnetron, to Brown's discs, to the tokamak.
A toroidal magnetic field has no poles, as the lines are parallel with the circumference of the toroid - in other words the magnetic field takes the form of sheaths around the toroid, much like what an onion doughnut might look like. The value of this configuration lies in the fact that when you elongate the toroid, such as if you laid a doughnut flat on a table and then pulled up to stretch it into a long pipe shape, then you have a very large area of uniformly packed magnetic lines parallel to the circumference which are easily intersected in a perpendicular manner by electric lines of force radiating in a radial manner from the body of the device. Just imagine a stack of wagon wheels on an axle with their hubs as the body of the device, the spokes the electric lines, and the rims the magnetic lines. The generated force from this configuration is then in an axial direction thorough out the entire three dimensional sheath surrounding the device where the electrical and magnetic intersect.
Now knowing this little bit of ancient technology look around and ask yourself where can you find a lot of activity, mostly secret, utilizing billions of dollars on electromagnetic toroidal research? The answer is fusion, in the form of the Tokamak toroid. Billions poured in over the years but no fusion. Interesting coincidence.
Paul S.'EHD vs MHD': "toroidal" magnetic phenomena: The use of a toroidal design to generate properly aligned e and b fields is actually not very efficient for simple propulsion since the outer fields get pretty dispersed. What the toroidal field allows is a simple design to produce a field which will enclose the entire device. Everything within that field will experience the same force vectors acting on them down to the sub-atomic level. This would, in an example of a vehicle, eliminate acceleration stress - basically everything inside the field would be in its own gravity bubble. So, is Tokamak research perhaps also about something other than fusion? I don't know, but together with the above and your ongoing revelations about what Townsend Brown's life and research was really about, it is... interesting.
Two things: One, this comment about the key point of the toroidal field being that it encloses its generator, I think makes Deyo's claim a little clearer to me. I'm still not sure if this can be squared with conventional physics or not.
Two: Deyo points at Teller and Sakharov. What links them? The tokamak. And this at last gives me a halfway plausible reason why a giant like Teller could flush billions of dollars down the fusion hole if he knew of a better way: if the technology or at least the basic research science had a dual use for learning how to achieve fine control over other kinds of non-power-generating toroidal fields. Yet, fusion tokamaks evidently don't tear themselves from their labs and levitate, so it can't be the same principle, not even close - so how easily does the research transfer? But I am intrigued by the allegation that there *could* be a real 'conspiracy here'. It seems like a proposition we could investigate and either validate or invalidate, so we have the chance to do real research there.
I'm pretty unfamiliar with the hot-fusion research complex, and on the surface it seems incredible that anything could be hidden in such a glare of scientific rigor and publicity. But it's something I stand at least a chance of learning about. Does anyone who's closer to the beast think there's the remotest chance there could be a shadow where 'alternative toroidal magnetic field research' could be hidden, and pathways by which knowledge could be transferred in and out of such a shadow?
Edit: The first distinction that comes to mind is that in a cyclotron, magnetron and tokamak, the magnetic field is on the outside, and the electrons/waveform/plasma inside. Though the field is toroidal, it is inward focused. The EHD/MHD vehicle is the exact opposite of this, an outward directed toroid. The geometry is totally different.
The second distinction is that the tokamak stream is only one focus within fusion research, and I'm not sure it can be isolated. It's hard to see how, for example, laser fusion could have anything to do with toroidal field research at all.
My gut feeling is that most (possibly all) fusion research really is looking for fusion. But if there were any 'conspiracy' I would probably look not at the front-line researchers, but for funding sources. Who chooses what particular models get approved for funding? Theoretically the tokamak won out because it's most efficient. Is that in fact the case? Perhaps it is, but Bussard's frustration with the Polywell suggests it might not be. And note that once again, of all people in the hot fusion establishment, it's the Navy Research Lab that picked that one up. Are there any other splits within the establishment between tokamak and non-tokamak models? Or perhaps rather, between *magnetic confinement*, plasma-manipulation, and non-magnetic confinement models. Is it merely a lack of vision, the fact that most fusion researchers are familiar with the existing models? Or has a funding or evaluation framework been deliberately created to keep research pointed in certain directions?