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Eric J. Lerner (born May 31, 1947) is an American physicist, inventor, and entrepreneur. His career also includes social activism and science journalism. Lerner’s scientific work is focused on plasma physics, which includes both theoretical and applied aspects of fusion energy and cosmology.

Lerner is founder, president, and chief scientist of LPPFusion, a company whose prime mission is to develop a commercial nuclear fusion reactor.

As a writer, he is best known for his book, The Big Bang Never Happened published in 1991, where he challenges the Big Bang hypothesis.

Early professional career

Lerner received a BA in physics from Columbia University and started as a graduate student in physics at the University of Maryland, but left after a year due to his dissatisfaction with the mathematical rather than experimental approach there. He then pursued a career in popular science writing before beginning a series of investigations into the Dense Plasma Focus approach to building an experimental nuclear fusion reactor device.

Lerner is an active general science writer, estimating that he has had about 600 articles published. He has received journalism awards between 1984 and 1993 from the Aviation Space Writers Association. In 2006 he was a visiting scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

Fusion energy research and development

Since November 2009, LPPFusion has operated a working experimental fusion energy device FF-1 and in recent years, its modified successor device, called FF-2B These experimental fusion energy devices are distinct for the unique dense plasma focus (DPF) design which Lerner calls "focus fusion". A focus fusion machine such as the FF-2B contrasts with prevailing magnetic confinement (chiefly tokamak and stellerator) configurations and with laser-based, inertial confinement models. Lerner characterizes DPF "focus fusion" as exploiting “a series of natural instabilities in the plasma, with each instability further concentrating the plasma and the magnetic field produced by the currents running through the plasma. In the past few decades, substantial advances have occurred in understanding the basic physics of such instabilities through experiments and observations of space plasma.”

To date, the FF-2B device has achieved two of the three performance benchmarks -known as the Lawson criteria- required to achieve breakeven reactor performance including small amounts of net fusion energy. In the race to achieve commercial fusion energy, the FF-2B device has set several performance benchmarks, leading one commentator to identify LPPFusion designs as “Nuclear Fusion the easy way”.

LPPFusion

In 1984, Eric Lerner began studying plasma phenomena and laboratory fusion devices, performing experimental work on a machine called a dense plasma focus (DPF). NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has funded mainstream as well as alternative approaches to fusion, and between 1994 and 2001 NASA provided a grant to Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, the company of which Lerner was the only employee, to explore whether Lerner's alternative approach to fusion might be useful to propel spacecraft; a 2007 New York Times article noted that Lerner had not received funding from the US Department of Energy. He believes that a dense plasma focus can also be used to produce useful aneutronic fusion energy. Lerner explained his "Focus Fusion" approach in a 2007 Google Tech Talk. In 2013, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics was renamed LPPFusion.

On November 14, 2008, Lerner received funding for continued research, to test the scientific feasibility of Focus Fusion. On January 28, 2011, LPP published preliminary results. In March 2012, the company published a paper saying that it had achieved temperatures of 1.8 billion degrees, beating the old record of 1.1 billion that had survived since 1978. In 2012 the company announced a collaboration with a lab at the Islamic Azad University Central Tehran Branch in Iran.

In 2017, Lerner et al. published evidence of confined ion energies in excess of 200 keV, with the best “shot” having a mean ion energy of 240 keV ± 20 keV (nearly 3 Billion degrees C) which was reported as a record for any type of fusion device. Such temperatures are 200 times hotter than core temperatures of the sun.

Furthermore, among all fusion devices, the LPPFusion "focus fusion" design has achieved a new world record for purity in a fusion-producing plasma. Reducing impurity levels has long been extremely important in fusion research. Impurity elements can greatly increase radiation that cools the plasma, preventing the achievement of the high temperatures needed for fusion and eroding device components. According to Lerner, “LPPFusion’s reduction of plasma impurity levels are better than any achieved elsewhere, and this is a major step forward for fusion energy research.”

Significantly, the machine has achieved two of the three Lawson criteria (dubbed “nτT ”); namely, temperature, and confinement time (T and tau), leaving only the density metric (n) as the last barrier to achieving a controlled, fusion energy reaction. Among privately funded fusion devices that have published their research milestones, the LPPFusion device has the highest n,tau,T by a wide margin.

Also among private fusion efforts, the FF-2B device also has achieved the highest “wall-plug” efficiency, i.e. net energy produced in fusion reaction of its type. At a total development cost of $11 million-- $9 million of which mostly came from small investors—the LPPFusion device is far and away the most cost-effective investment in fusion energy, where billions are often the norm.

Aneutronic fusion energy

The chief operating advantage of a DPF design is that it is aneutronic, and thus generates negligible radioactivity as it generates electric energy. Radioactive contamination is a key liability in tokamak designs that some scientists have declared effectively disqualifies tokamaks as likely templates for commercial fusion energy.

Heretofore FF-2B utilizes a deuterium based fuel (D-D), for experimental purposes, but in early 2024 LPPFusion is scheduled to introduce a far more potent hydrogen-boron mixture (pB11), which fusion energy company TAE and Japanese company recently demonstrated to be a viable fuel for aneutronic fusion reactors.

Developments (2015-2022)

Significant re-designs of LPPFusion devices between 2015 and 2022 solved several challenges that aborted the full fusion process. One key barrier to reaching fusion thresholds is the contamination of debris – mostly metallic oxides—that infiltrate the plasma. This occurs when operating the LPPFusion reactors at ultra-high temperatures of nearly 3 Billion degrees C. Intensive investigation of the device focused on new coatings and materials, and resized components that eliminated reaction by-products that inhibited effective plasma phases in attaining a robust plasmoid, where the fusion reaction actually occurs.

Recent developments (2023)

Another further challenge needed to be addressed during this phase developing the FF-2B research reactor: achieving complete symmetry of plasma filaments that proliferate up the central anode of the device. The solution required the invention and engineering of capacitor switches that fire within a few nanoseconds of each other. That was achieved in the spring of 2023. As of June, 2023 the FF-2B began executing a series of trial “shots” in anticipation of heightened performance from the upgrades engineered in 2022–2023.

In October 2021, the company announced improved results with the latest version of its device, with reduced erosion and higher temperatures., notably,

...substantially increased... peak electric current in the machine to... 1.8 MA (million amps.)

LPPFusion notes that this peak electric current is now benchmarked at about half the magnitude needed to begin aneutronic fusion experiments with the proton boron fuel, which marks considerable progress. In late Fall 2023 further scientific investigations at LPPFusion sought to optimize high plasma temperature and density together with improved peak current and gas pressures, by utilizing mixes of deuterium and other gases. Once these optimal mixtures are achieved, the company will then

... transition to a mix with hydrogen and finally introduce small amounts of decaborane, our proton-boron fuel.  In this way, we have the best chance to ensure we will get measurable fusion yield with the first shots of our limited supply of decaborane.

In short, LPPFusion has advanced to the very cusp of experiments in aneutronic fusion energy. However, the company has also candidly tempered current aspirations by noting:

We can determine from our data that the plasmoid temperature was 33 keV (the equivalent of 360 million K). While that seems pretty toasty, (it’s 30 times the temperature in the center of the sun) it is cooler than our record of 200 keV and the 150 keV we need to burn proton-boron fuel. So, we need a factor of five jump in temperature, which would also bring our fusion yield above the record that we achieved back in 2016. With our new understanding of some key processes, we think we can achieve that pretty quickly.

Response from peers

In 2021, a committee of four senior scientists, led by the former head of the US government fusion program, Robert Hirsch, concluded that "LPPFusion has made an impressive effort to address Dense Plasma Focus (DPF) physics and engineering issues given the limited number of personnel involved", adding that the "program is vastly underfunded and merits a much higher funding level."

Cosmology

In his book, The Big Bang Never Happened, Lerner which rejects mainstream Big Bang cosmology, and instead advances a non-standard plasma cosmology originally proposed in the 1960s by Hannes Alfvén, the 1970 Nobel Prize recipient in Physics. The book appeared at a time when results from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite were of some concern to astrophysicists who expected to see cosmic microwave background anisotropies but instead measured a blackbody spectrum with little variation across the sky. Lerner referred to this as evidence that the Big Bang was a failed paradigm. He also denigrated the observational evidence for dark matter and recounted a well known cosmological feature that superclusters are larger than the largest structures that could have formed through gravitational collapse in the age of the universe.

An alternative plasma-based cosmology

As an alternative to the Big Bang, Lerner adopted Alfvén's model of plasma cosmology that relied on plasma physics to explain most, if not all, cosmological observations by appealing to electromagnetic forces. Adopting an eternal universe, Lerner's explanation of cosmological evolution relied on a model of thermodynamics based on the work of the Nobel Chemistry prize winner Ilya Prigogine under which order emerges from chaos. This is in apparent defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. As a way of partially acknowledging this, Lerner asserts that away from equilibrium order can spontaneously form by taking advantage of energy flows, as argued more recently by American astrophysicist Eric Chaisson.

Lerner's ideas have been rejected by mainstream physicists and cosmologists. In these critiques, critics have explained that, contrary to Lerner's assertions, the size of superclusters is a feature limited by subsequent observations to the end of greatness and is consistent with having arisen from a power spectrum of density fluctuations growing from the quantum fluctuations predicted in inflationary models. Anisotropies were discovered in subsequent analysis of both the COBE and BOOMERanG experiments and were more fully characterized by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and Planck.

Physical cosmologists who have commented on the book have generally dismissed it. In particular, American astrophysicist and cosmologist Edward L. Wright criticized Lerner for making errors of fact and interpretation, arguing that:

• Lerner's alternative model for Hubble's Law is dynamically unstable
• the number density of distant radio sources falsifies Lerner's explanation for the cosmic microwave background
• Lerner's explanation that the helium abundance is due to stellar nucleosynthesis fails because of the small observed abundance of heavier elements

Lerner has disputed Wright's critique.

Activism

While at Columbia, Lerner participated in the 1965 Selma March and helped organize the 1968 Columbia Student Strike.

In the 1970s, Lerner became involved in the National Caucus of Labor Committees, an offshoot of the Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society. Lerner left the National Caucus in 1978, later stating in a lawsuit that he had resisted pressure from the U.S. Labor Party, an organization led by Lyndon LaRouche, to violate election law by channeling profits of an engineering firm to the organization.

Lerner sought civil rights protection for immigrants as a member and spokesman for the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee. He participated in the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.

References

Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Misplaced Pages's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (November 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

1. Lerner 1992
2. https://www.lppfusion.com/peer-reviewed-papers/ Over almost a 40 year career Eric Lerner has published 27 papers published in peer reviewed journals and one book. He's been an invited speaker at five professional conferences. Eight of his papers are on the topic of nuclear fusion energy and plasma physics. Nineteen papers are devoted to cosmology and astrophysics.
3. Lerner has been awarded a comprehensive patent from the United states Patent Office (# US 7482,607 B2 “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PRODUCING X-RAYS, ION BEAMS AND NUCLEAR FUSON ENERGY). Five foreign patents have also been awarded.
4. Eric Lerner is founder president and chief scientist at LPP fusion in Middlesex NJ. https://www.lppfusion.com/team/
5. Vinod, Karthik (August 29, 2022). "Explained: The Deal With Eric Lerner Saying the Big Bang Didn't Happen – The Wire Science". Retrieved January 30, 2024.
6. Columbia Alumni Directory, 1988 edition, p.211
7. ^ E. J. Lerner (1991). The Big Bang Never Happened. New York and Toronto: Random House. pp. 12–14, footnote on page 388, 286–316, 242. ISBN 978-0-8129-1853-3.
8. Biography at the Space Show Archived November 24, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, 2006
9. Eric Lerner's biography page at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc.
10. ESO Senior Visits in 2006, activities Archived May 24, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, and ESO Santiago Science Colloquia and Seminars 2006
11. ^ Lerner et al. 2023
12. Tennenbaum 2020
13. Chang, Kenneth (February 27, 2007). "Practical Fusion, or Just a Bubble?". The New York Times.
14. Frisbee, Robert H. (1996). The NASA-JPL Advanced Propulsion Program (Report). p. 8, and JPL Contract 960283. hdl:2014/23572.
15. Patrick Huyghe, "3 Ideas That Are Pushing the Edge of Science", Discover Magazine, June 2008
16. A Novel Form of Fusion Power, The Economist, October 22, 2009
17. Lerner, Eric (October 3, 2007). "Focus Fusion: The Fastest Route to Cheap, Clean Energy" (video). Google TechTalks. Retrieved January 8, 2009.
18. "LPP Receives Major Investments, Initiates Experimental Project". Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. November 22, 2008. Retrieved January 8, 2009.
19. Lerner, Eric J.; Krupakar Murali, S.; Haboub, A. (October 2011). "Theory and Experimental Program for p-B11 Fusion with the Dense Plasma Focus". Journal of Fusion Energy. 30 (5): 367–376. Bibcode:2011JFuE...30..367L. doi:10.1007/s10894-011-9385-4. S2CID 122230379.
20. Lerner, Eric J.; S. Krupakar Murali; Derek Shannon; Aaron M. Blake; Fred Van Roessel (March 23, 2012). "Fusion reactions from >150 keV ions in a dense plasma focus plasmoid". Physics of Plasmas. 19 (3): 032704. Bibcode:2012PhPl...19c2704L. doi:10.1063/1.3694746. S2CID 120207711.
21. Halper, Mark (March 28, 2012). "Fusion breakthrough". Smart PLanet. Retrieved April 1, 2012.
22. Knapp, Alex (June 4, 2012). "U.S. Company Teams With Iranian University To Develop Fusion Power". Forbes.
23. E.J. Lerner, S.M. Hassan, I. Karamitsos, F. Von Roessel, Phys. Plasmas 24, 102708 (2017)
24. Ibid (6)-"World-Record Confined Ion Energy" Section
25. Ibid- "World-Record Confined Ion Energy" Section
26. Ibid (6) section Highest nτT Product Among Private Fusion Efforts"
27. Ibid (6) section “World Record Fusion Plasma Purity”
28. Ibid (6) “Highest nτT Product Among Private Fusion Efforts” section In common units, the FF-2B has achieved an nτT  of 3.4 ± 0.8 × 10 keV-s/m. TAE Technology’s C-2W device with a nτT product of 2.3 × 10 keV-s/m,  is a factor of more than 1,000 less than for FF-1, the earlier version of the FF-2B model.
29. Ibid (6) section “Highest Wall-Plug Efficiency Among Private Fusion Efforts”
30. Ibid (6) “Private Public Partnership for Fusion” section
31. Ibid (6), “Introduction—the Promise of p-B Fusion Fuel” section
32. Hirsch, Robert L. (2017). "Necessary and sufficient conditions for practical fusion power". Physics Today. 70 (10): 11–13. doi:10.1063/PT.3.3708.
33. Hirsch, Robert L. (July 1, 2015). "Fusion Research: Time to Set a New Path". Issues in Science and Technology. XXXI (4). Retrieved November 20, 2023.
34. Ibid, “Current Experimental Challenges and Path to Net energy” section
35. Magee, R. M.; Ogawa, K.; Tajima, T.; Allfrey, I.; Gota, H.; McCarroll, P.; Ohdachi, S.; Isobe, M.; Kamio, S.; Klumper, V.; Nuga, H.; Shoji, M.; Ziaei, S.; Binderbauer, M. W.; Osakabe, M. (February 21, 2023). "First measurements of p11B fusion in a magnetically confined plasma". Nature Communications. 14 (1): 955. Bibcode:2023NatCo..14..955M. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36655-1. PMC 9941502. PMID 36804939.
36. ibid (6)  “World Record Fusion Plasma Purity” section
37. ibid (6)  “World Record Fusion Plasma Purity” section
38. Ibid (6)” Current Experimental Challenges and Path to Net energy” section
39. Ibid (6), “Dense Plasma Focus (DPF)” Section
40. Wang, Brian. "LPP Fusion Increases Current and Reaches First Fusion Results | NextBigFuture.com". Retrieved December 9, 2021.
41. "Evaluation of LPPFusion Dense Plasma Focus Research - LPP Fusion". www.lppfusion.com. June 16, 2022. Retrieved December 10, 2023.
42. Chown, Marcus (July 2, 2005). "Did the big bang really happen?". New Scientist.
43. Prigogine, Ilya; Stengers, Isabelle (1984). Order out of Chaos: Man's new dialogue with nature. Flamingo. ISBN 978-0-00-654115-8.
44. Michael Chorost (January 21, 2012). "The Ascent of Life". New Scientist. 213 (2848): 35–37. Bibcode:2012NewSc.213...35C. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(12)60181-X.
45. ^ Stenger, Victor J. (Summer 1992). "Is the Big Bang a Bust?". Skeptical Inquirer. 16 (412). Archived from the original on September 25, 2006.
46. ^ Wright, Edward L. "Errors in "The Big Bang Never Happened"
47. ^ "Opinion | Big Bang Theory Makes Sense of Cosmic Facts; No Contradiction". The New York Times. June 18, 1991.
48. "Did the Big Bang Happen?". The New York Times. September 1, 1991.
49. Feuerbacher & Scranton. "Evidence for the Big Bang".
50. Macandrew, Alec. "The Big Bang is not a Myth".
51. A critique of the tactics of Eric Lerner mentioning him explicitly by name appears on Sean Carroll's blog, Preposterous Universe
52. "The Big Bang Never Happened: Dr Wright is Wrong". Archived from the original on January 8, 2016. Retrieved July 13, 2008.
53. Kasra Manoocheri, "Selma Interview: Eric Lerner", Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement web site, February 2007
54. "A Memorandum from the Strike Education Committee" Archived September 7, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, Columbia University archives, May 4, 1968. Lists Eric Lerner as one of the committee members.
55. Eric Lerner | Columbia University 1968
56. King, Dennis (1989). "Chapter 32". Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-23880-9.
57. Dennis King; Patricia Lynch (May 27, 1986). "The Empire of Lyndon LaRouche". Wall Street Journal (Eastern ed.). p. 1.
58. "Immigrants Mistreated, Report Says". Washington Post. January 17, 2007. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
59. Eman Varoqua, "Not Everyone Is A Terrorist", The Record (Bergen County, NJ), December 7, 2004
60. Harkinson, Josh (October 18, 2011). "Occupy Protesters' One Demand: A New New Deal—Well, Maybe". Mother Jones.

Bibliography

• Lerner, E.J. (December 1992). "Force-free magnetic filaments and the cosmic background radiation". IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science. 20 (6): 935–938. Bibcode:1992ITPS...20..935L. doi:10.1109/27.199554.
• Lerner, Eric J.; Hassan, Syed M.; Karamitsos-Zivkovic, Ivana; Fritsch, Rudolph (June 2023). "Focus Fusion: Overview of Progress Towards p-B11 Fusion with the Dense Plasma Focus". Journal of Fusion Energy. 42 (1). doi:10.1007/s10894-023-00345-z.
• Lerner, Eric J.; Hassan, Syed M.; Karamitsos-Zivkovic, Ivana; Fritsch, Rudolph (December 1, 2023). "What are the fastest routes to fusion energy?". Physics of Plasmas. 30 (12). doi:10.1063/5.0170216.
• Tennenbaum, Jonathan (July 29, 2020). "Focus fusion is hottest idea in nuclear energy (also in Chinese and Russian)". Asia Times. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
• Vinod, Karthik (August 29, 2022). "Explained: The Deal With Eric Lerner Saying the Big Bang Didn't Happen – The Wire Science". Retrieved January 30, 2024.

External links

• LPPFusion
• Focus Fusion Society
• The Big Bang Never Happened (archived)

• Scientists from Brookline, Massachusetts
• Writers from Brookline, Massachusetts
• 21st-century American inventors
• 21st-century American physicists
• Columbia College (New York) alumni
• Living people
• American science writers
• American socialists
• American cosmologists
• 1947 births
• Plasma physicists