Winston H. Bostick

Winston H. Bostick (March 5, 1916 – January 19, 1991) was an American physicist who discovered plasmoids, plasma focus, and plasma vortex phenomena. He simulated cosmical astrophysics with laboratory plasma experiments, and showed that Hubble expansion can be produced with repulsive mutual induction between neighboring galaxies acting as homopolar generators. His work on plasmas was claimed to be evidence for finite-sized elementary particles and the composition of strings, but this is not accepted by mainstream science.

Winston H. Bostick
Born(1916-03-05)March 5, 1916
DiedJanuary 19, 1991(1991-01-19) (aged 74)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
Known forplasmoids
plasma focus
Magnetic explanation of Hubble expansion
Scientific career
FieldsPhysicist
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Tufts University
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
Stevens Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisorArthur Compton

Biography

Winston H. Bostick, born in Freeport, Illinois, received both his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. His Ph.D. thesis on cosmic rays was completed under the direction of Nobel laureate Arthur Compton. While working at the MIT Radiation Laboratory from 1941 to 1948, he helped build a microwave linear electron accelerator. As an associate professor of Tufts University from 1948 to 1954, he researched magnetic pinch effects, which led to his later work on plasma pinch effects. His discoveries of plasmoids and other plasma-related effects began between 1954 and 1956 at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, where he continued to act as consultant. A 1956 New York Times front page story featured Bostick's "plasma gun".[1][2] He served as Professor of Physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology from 1956 until receiving Professor Emeritus status at his retirement in 1981, and as head of the physics department from 1968. While visiting Tijuana, Mexico in 1991, he died of lung cancer at age 74.[3]

Scientific contributions

In 1956 Bostick demonstrated the existence of "plasmoids", force-free, charge-carrying "strings".[4] Ten years later he postulated an electron composed of helical plasmoids forming vortex "loops" around a "ring", similar to the Parson Magneton.[5][6] Bostick maintained that this model could account for atomic structure, strong and weak forces within the nucleus, and that it was a physical basis for string theory, but this view received no support from the mainstream scientific community and is considered fringe science.

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gollark: Are you doing something *other* than just running coroutines with an event loop?
gollark: What? That sounds broken.
gollark: I think manually having to resume threads does make it more annoying.
gollark: No, `Threading`.

References

  1. William L. Laurence, "Physicist 'Creates' Universe in a Test Tube; Atom Gun Produces Galaxies and Gives Clues to Creation Cosmos 'Created' in a Test Tube", The New York Times, Wednesday, December 12, 1956.
  2. "Physicists Depict New Concepts Of Universe and Its Basic Laws", The New York Times, Sunday, February 3, 1957.
  3. "Dr. Winston Bostick, Atomic Physicist, 74", The New York Times, Friday, January 25, 1991.
  4. Winston H. Bostick, "Experimental Study of Ionized Matter Projected across a Magnetic Field", Physical Review, V104, N2, pp. 292-299 (Oct 1956).
  5. Winston H. Bostick, "Pair Production of Plasma Vortices", Physics of Fluids, V9, N10, pp. 2078-2080 (Oct 1966).
  6. Winston H. Bostick, "Mass, Charge, and Current: The Essence and Morphology", Physics Essays, V4, N1, pp. 45-59 (Spr 1991)
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