Slashdot Mirror
Fusion In Sonoluminescence (Again)?
srhuston writes "According to a story at the NY Times (first born child req'd, yadda yadda), 'Scientists are again claiming they have made a Sun in a jar, offering perhaps a revolutionary energy source, and this time even some skeptics find the evidence intriguing enough to call for a closer look.' This has been covered here before (First, second, third) but it looks like they claim that the latest round of experiments, using better detectors, 'offer more convincing data that the phenomenon is real'." The scientists involved come from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Russian Academy of Science; here's their press release.
So, the problem with extracting energy from this is still sustainability combined with total output right? The amount of energy invested in the system will have to be exceeded by the energy produced or else it is for naught. The things about traditional plasma fusion is that energy output is extensive, but the reaction cannot be sustained. Bubble fusion appears to be sustainable, but likely does not produce significant caloric heat......
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Cold fusion is just around the corner, why would we need this?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
*cough*google link*cough*
All I want to know is when I can throw garbage in the gas tank of a DeLorean to fuel it.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Willow worked out a spell to make a ball of sunshine. This would allow Buffy to easily kill vampires... not that she needs help killing vampires.
This is news? We've had canned sunshine in our gift shops here in Florida for years!
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
A SUN in a jar? If you think Darl is bad, just wait to see the look on Scott McNealy's face once everyone starts creating his server in their mayonaise jars.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
--------
Do you have Wireless-Enabled Hosting(tm)?
Well, at least this finally fills that ugly hole on Wednesday in the Slashdot weekly schedule:
Monday: Patch Windows
Tuesday: Stop SCO's latest plan
Wednesday: Invent Fusion
Thursday: Patch Linux
Friday: Watch LoTR while patching Windows
Since they got Fusion out of the way early today, I think I have a little time to go bash Infinium Labs some more. Tally ho!
Without understanding all the physics here, I think there may be something to this. One of the reasons chemists are kind of intrigued with sonochemistry (chemistry facilitated by sound) is that ultrasound generates "bubbles" (for lack of a better word) where the local temperatures can reach into the thousands of degrees of Celsius. You can do some really amazing chemical syntheses using ultrasound all because of the extremely high local temperatures generated. The same idea extends to using microwave ovens for chemistry. You can do lots of reactions in a microwave because of the intense and neatly condensed amount of heat generated.
So, there may really be something to this. It would be great if it did work out.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
...people standing around said jar start dieing.
I was so hoping this was an item about "the son of Jar Jar". My bad. "Meesa so sorry."
I've done a bunch of work in sonoluminescence. It's deeply cool, don't get me wrong. But the highest temperature we were able to measure was about an order of magnitude too low for fusion. Even if our measuring had an error factor of two or three (not impossible, since we had to dope the water to get high enough brightness for using a spectrometer), I'm far from convinced.
I've had this sig for three days.
So it'll produce infinitesimal, almost undetectable, amounts of energy. Very handy. Will hardly lower gas prices, though.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
In other news today, Hell has frozen over. Satan responded to the sudden freeze by noting, "Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Russian Academy of Science collaborating on nuclear research? Who would've thought it possible?"
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Yes, I did RTFA. I'm no scientist, but I've taken enough chemistry to know that what comes out must equal what goes in. What is this solvent? What is it made out of, and where is it produced? Isn't there a very good chance that a liquid this useful would be rare and/or toxic and dangerous? I have no idea, and the article doesn't address it.
We all have a right to be skeptical about an energy source that proposes to produce energy out of an otherwise non-reactive substance. Either way, the science of collapsing bubbles sounds pretty neat and could probably be used in far more fields than just energy production.
>>>JasonF, a scientist at NCSU, has created a perpetual motion machine!
"In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" - Homer S.
Young lady, in this house we obey the second law of thermodynamics!
how the end always is
The claim is that the bubbles create temperatures high enough to create fusion.
--- Ban humanity.
Fusion In Sonoluminescence
First the win a grammy for Best New Artist, and now they're experimenting with jazz. I, for one, welcome our new musically-experimental overlords.
... they squeezed tiny gas bubbles in the liquid so quickly and violently that temperatures reached millions of degrees and some of the hydrogen atoms in the solvent molecules fused, producing a flash of light and energy.
Please note that this is *NOT* cold fusion.
Iraq: war to save the U
can now be used to power your car! :)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
...is here.
But, if it is real, time to invest in jars.
When can I get my "Mr. Fusion" for my DeLorean?
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
It turned out that the secret to making this work was to use polywater as the liquid medium.
SIR, PUT THE BONG DOWN AND STEP AWAY PLEASE!
I know the stupid filter says "Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING" but I AM YELLING!
here's a link from a local paper.
An interesting quote from the article:"Willy Moss has been trying to reach that brass ring for a long time, and he's had way more money than Taleyarkhan and way more facilities," George said. "And when Taleyarkhan said he had neutrons, (Moss) sort of chimed in and said, 'No, no you don't,' because he was hard on the trail trying to get there first."
Seems there is a bit of anonymity here. In the defense of the researcher(s):The evidence now is "far more compelling," he said. "This time around, before publication took place, I deliberately involved a series of highly acclaimed physicists to come down to the lab and review the experimental setup and the way we were obtaining data and look at the experimental data."
After receiving positive reviews from them, he took the findings to the management of Oak Ridge, which conducted its own internal review, making the forthcoming publication "perhaps the most peer-reviewed paper in the history of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory," Taleyarkhan said.
One thing's for sure -- if it DOES go supernova, your tin-foil hat wont save you.
Don't we already have several technologies to replace oil? If this is working and could be used Great!
But when will it roll out and effect the everyday Joe?
Just curious why we're always pushing the limit higher, when we haven't pushed the bar up.
*DrugCheese rants*
"...a paycheck in everybody's pocket, and a fusion reator in every home!"
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
if this particular discovery bears fruit, it might be really cool, as the cost for implementing it appears much lower than other attempted fusion experiments. But, how much would a true power plant cost? Or, how much would a "home unit" cost, since distributing the grid would probably be a better long-term solution to our power needs.
Then come the obvious questions about environmental impacts, as energy = heat, and here is an energy source without effective limits, hence limitless energy, and limitless heat. Perhaps they can use some of this limitless energy to pump the generated heat out of the planet? (ie, big heat radiators? Energy recycling? Something totally out of my depth?)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"Going Supernova" requires a certain amount of mass. Our sun is too small. For a star the size of our sun, the death is a gradual swelling of the outer layers and a contraction of the core, resulting in a nebula with a white dwarf in the middle.
A drinking-cup sized chunk of fusion wouldn't have much umph at all. Considernig the processes going on are completely different from the kind in hydrogen fusion bombs, I'd say the worst explosion is from overheating and overpressurizing of the chamber - something like a handgrenade.
=Smidge=
$discovery is really cool. Once again, $scienceFictionAuthor was a visionary when he wrote about this concept in $book. I hope that we can come up with some practical applications using $discovery soon.
$wittySig
Sonoluminescence: an Introduction
Single Bubble Sonoluminescence HOWTO
It's just that the fuel will be water instead of gasoline.
I'm just waiting for the time when I can plug a box into my hot water heater and power the rest of my house.
In the words of the UPAC audience...
WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!
(sorry, i'm a nostalgic alum)
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I though Sunny Delight was "Sun in a jar"
When scientists are sure of their data, the first thing they do does not involve a press release. I'll be more convinced once I've seen it in a reputable journal
In other words, because you couldn't do it it's likely not possible? That's not the correct attitude if you practice the scientific method.
Instead of mouthing off, why not try and reproduce the results, then say what your results were?
Well, you better let it out! *click*
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
When I was an undergrad at BYU, I had a friend who was working in this field. He worked under a mountain (less background radiation from cosmic rays). Made measurements while running, and compared to background when not running. Sadly, back then ('96 or '97) there was less radiation when running than when not (*very* disturbing). I told him he should change his project from "fusion generator" to "radiation absorber". Of course, the field has had 7-8 years to develop since then, so hopefully things are better now. Still, you have to wonder if it could scale up to a useful level....
This process of sonofusion, you see uses sound waves to...
WHAT!!!!
I SAID IT USES SOUNDWAVES...
WHAT! WHAT!
Elementary! My Dear Watson! ;-)
An order of magnitude too low is also within merely one order of magnitude of success. What actual quantity was in the range? Degrees Kelvin? Joules:m^3? Order of *decimal* magnitude, logarithmic, other? In a statistically distributed energy system, an average miss by 0.1% might mask hits in 1% of the material, balanced by farther misses in the other 99%. And if you were really only 33% off, considering a 2-3x error margin, might their experiment not have been more precise in efficiency, and in measurement, offering a hit at the threshold?
When fusion is industrialized, I expect that some processes will far exceed the fusion thresholds, for their own specific reasons. The threshold is not a bullseye, but rather a welcoming shore of a virgin territory. News of our drawing ever nearer is tantalizing, but not discouraging, as we prepare to colonize the territory.
--
make install -not war
Perhaps I should clarify. We got these results when attempting to reproduce these results, which is why I doubt them. Our results were also consistent with our earlier results trying to estimate the peak temperature possible by sonoluminescence in a given fluid (which is, theoretically, unique for any particular fluid); both results were roughly an order of magnitude smaller than needed for fusion.
I've had this sig for three days.
Now my ghost in a jar doesn't have to read in the dark.
a pagan or holy handgrenade?
Halliburton think of this?
...tastes better than Bud.
Yes it would be nice if they had distributed pre-prints, and it would have spoken in their favour.
... the way they publicized their research speaks against them. In the end though I assume they arent lying, so their research will be published in Physical Review E which does seem to be peer reviewed.
The fact that they have sought and found independent corroberation speaks for them
You will soon be able to make up your own mind.
I'm just about a mile away from RPI... it's really nice that something is happening in Troy, NY (otherwise known as the "armpit of the country"). Something other than your usual crime, fires, vehicular accidents, etc.
;O)
Sorta wish that jar RPI claims they put a sun in was clear, though... anything to combat the perpetual cloud cover that seems to plague Central NY this time of year
ARG!! Must. Not. Answer...
A major difference between the sun and a large jar is mass and pressure. Stars must be larger than a certain mass threshold to be capable of a supernova event. At this time I forget what that threshold is but I do know that if Jupiter (sometimes considered a brown dwarf star) collapsed to become a true star it could not end its life in a supernova but it could produce nova events during its life span. The reason for this is that it does not have the mass to generate the inward pressure needed to suppress the outward pressure of the reaction. As the outward pressure builds up it will eventually become greater than the inward pressure, once it does it will become a nova. If the inward pressure is sufficiently powerful the star will begin to fuse higher elements (e.g. H+H=He, He+He=Li, etc.) and the outward pressure will exceed the inward pressure and in this case will result in a supernova destroying the star. A jar (or even an eventual facility based on this technology) simply is not massive enough to produce a supernova; this is what makes fusion as a power source so attractive. Without monitoring and adjustments the reaction simply ends. Our current fission systems do not require an artificial environment to make them function. I.E. the fission reactions have occurred naturally here on Earth and can have uncontrollable catastrophic results if not carefully monitored and adjusted.
NarratorDan
"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
If it can be used to subjugate the native population of Mars, I'll be happy. They need to be moved out so we have room for our steakfruit farms.
So inside this bubble of acetone vapor they get temperatures of 100 million kelvin.
Firstly, is it something where they could have a whole vat of these bubbles being created and destroyed with sonic waves constantly and through this vat you could have water pipes that would create steam and drive a turbine?
Secondly, is this something that could one day be the equivalent of Mr. Fusion. Where the thing just hums away in little brick house at the end of the block and all the electrical wires run from it (no way is any energy company going to let consumers have a free powerful energy source)
I think this is an intrinsically cool technology by itself, I just hope they can turn it into a viable energy source.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I thought they were not using gas. I thought they were just using acetone who's hydrogen had been switched with deuterium... And ( from an earlier slashdot story on this ) wasn't the acetone used to minimise the amount of gas emitted into the bubbles so that the point they collaped onto was smaller and so more energy intense?
Eat at Joe's.
http://scienceblog.com/community/article2389.html
If you got these results while attempting to reproduce the results stated? Really funny how you didn't mention that before. I mean you spent all that time trying to reproduce the results and you never mention it in your original post.
I'm guessing what really happened is you figured you worked close enough to the experiment you're talking about (and failed) yet figure if you couldn't do it no-one could.
Someone pointed this out, so in a quick hurry to hide your arrogance you quickly posted on your thread.
Your results don't cover any of the additional information included in the experiments or at certain lacking information, which if you had intended to try to produce the same results, you wouldn't have cut corners and would want to recreate the same conditions.
I think its all a load of baloney myself, but I do think your story and justification is too.
Does anyone remember this sonoluminescence article:t this.asp?c lip=%2Farticles%2F20011006%2Fclip%5Ffob3%2Easp
http://www.sciencenews.org/scripts/prin
what I found particularly funny/interesting is the last lines of the article, which read:
"Cavitation bubbles in synovial fluid may even explain the sound of "cracking" knuckles, he ventures. And if that's the case, he says, "I'd be willing to bet pitchers of beer that cracking knuckles will also generate small amounts of luminescence."
Ohh. That helps the credibility alot.
Free energy will only give 'Da Man' more resources with which to oppress 'De Odda Man'
Eat at Joe's.
People really in the know will affect the stock prices (institutional investors.) If this works well, it'll mean a massive change in international politics, technology, etc. Personally I won't believe it until fossil fuel purveyors stock prices start tanking (pun intended)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=XOM&t=5d
I've got my fingers crossed.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Read up a bit on fusors.
Desktop fusion isn't very hard. Hobbyists do it with stuff they build in their garages.
A sustainable fusion reaction (i.e. one which pays for itself with the energy it produces) is the hard thing.
How ironic is it that I just started reading Voodoo Science last night, and the first chapter deals with Cold Fusion. The author notes that with the wide discreditaion of Cold Fusion, the new Fusion in a Jar proponents are coming up with similar things - but with different names - to Cold Fusion.
I have a few questions for this type of fusion (Those of you who have read the book, or are up on the cold fusion controversy will get this):
1) Can I have a cup of tea?
2) How many neutrons are emitted over the background noise?
3) How is the health of the lab assistant? (Related to question 2).
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Desktop fusion is no big deal, after all - the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor (
Here's a link ) does this.
The fusor operates by accelerating deuterons in a static electrical field towards a central locus ('juicy nugat center')(grin).
The trick to a fusor is that there's a lot of possible factors to setting one up:
among other factors. more info is at a homebrew club of amateur experimentors
I've been tempted to try this, but my wife has overruled all discussion of it. She has something against hot neutron sources in the house when we have 3 small kids. Alas. (Especially since this thing emits the particles in 3 dimensions, so shielding would be significant.)
SO: MY QUESTION FOR THE EXPERIMENTERS: WHAT IS THE TOTAL ENERGY (JOULES) PUT INTO THIS EXPERIMENT VS. HOW MUCH EMITTED? Is this going to be another wildly inefficient methodology, or does it have advantages over Fusor or Tocamak designs?
-- Kevin J. Rice
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Please see my other postings in this thread.
Also, it's true, we didn't try to recreate the exact same conditions as in this latest paper, mostly because our work predates it; and I don't even know what there solvent is, so I can't even say for sure if we've tested that. But we did reproduce most of the earlier work that lead to the other fifty or sixty claims of 'fusion' in sonoluminescence, with consistent negative results; we also verified the (accepted) fact that solvent doesn't make a huge difference.
I've had this sig for three days.
That's Hawk , you Trekkie beeeotch!
This funny mod stuff not counting toward karma is killing me...
PLEASE, SOMEBODY FIX THE BROKEN SYSTEM.
This message brought to you by someone who has been BURNED by the karma system (jasonf)
Causing fusion is, in fact, not hard to do. Slash recently had such an article: College Freshman Builds Fusion Reactor. Unfortunately, it's getting the reaction to generate more energy than it consumes, is the problem. The bubbles may heat to 1 million degrees, but a few thousand atoms at a 1 million degrees will quickly lose its heat to the surrounding billions of atoms of matterial. This is why conventional reactors have been attempting to heat a large mass that is contained by magnets--the heat stays at those levels and hopefully enough heat can be tapped away to run some generators.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
Are we in a Bizzaro world or something?
1... 2... 5
3, sir 3
Right, 3!
"Neutrons are slippery little rascals," he said. "They can fool you. They can bounce and show up around corners you don't expect."
Yep, ran into three of them on the way to lunch this afternoon at the corner of Hargett and Fayetteville St.........
Basically, if you put a golf ball on top of a softball on top of a basketball and drop the 3-stack of balls onto the floor, then the golf ball will be sent upwards with dangerous force. A collapsing bubble seems similar to this, but I can't see right off how...
I wonder if you could make a gun by stacking 6 or seven ball bearings of decreasing size on top of each other so that when you hit the largest of them with a hammer the smallest would be fired like a bullet... Why couldn't you just use a cone shaped piece of metal with a weakly attached tip?
Eat at Joe's.
Going back to a previous story about the same subject and copying an +5 comment.
Yep. Less gas gives you higher temperatures, less light. It's a tradeoff. But for show-and-tell, more light is better. It's also much easier to figure out temperature with more light, and then project how temperature increases as the amount of gas gradually decreases; with no extra gas at all, trying to get a reliable spectrum was the most difficult thing I've done, and even then the error bars were huge. (For reference, with no extra gas at all, and degassed water, our original setup, as described, ticked a photomultiplier tube less than a million times a second. That's essentially the number of photons emitted over a significant (1% or so) portion of the sphere. Our next setup was built specifically to make that case more managable, but it was still sketchy.)
I've had this sig for three days.
IANANP
Even if you were, you still wouldn't necessarily know anything about supernovas. Nuclear physicists deal with atomic and subatomic particles and their interactions. Supernovas are generated by stars, which are a bit bigger than atoms. They are studied by astrophysicists.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Several years ago I did quite a bit of work with Sonoluminsecence for my high school's science and engineering fair. Made it to the State science fair (anyone interested - the parent's tutorial is a great place to start).
The bit I'm particularly interested in is the stream of bubbles being supplied to the flask. When we did our setup, we just used tap water and let the bubble form spontaneously (or in some cases visibly drawn downwards from the water's surface). Getting argon or some other gas artificially introduced is a great idea. I would just wonder how difficult is it to align the stream of bubbles.
I'm a science nerd, but this idea is almost enough for me to dust off the old apparatus and try again with this innovation.
I take my hat off to you!
I know this is real, They discovered this would work while Keanu Reeves was grinding away some metal. Now that was a great documentary
Good News:
Piping hot coffee or soup in seconds.
Bad News:
Everything metal in kitchen becomes mildly radioactive from neutron bombardment.
Good News:
Rats, mice, cockroaches hate the sound of a sonofusor in operation, emptying cities of vermin.
Bad News:
Sound also drives dogs into a frenzy of mindless leg-humping. Except Boston Terriers, whose tightly sutured little skulls explode.
Good News:
Leads to development of ultra-efficient (but low thrust) rocket motor that uses water as a reaction mass.
Bad News:
All water outside of Mars orbit turn out to be owned by Capella OmniVolatile GMBH, who charge a heavy fee, payable in increasingly rare Boston Terriers.
Stefan Jones
Ironically, your last sentence was almost word-for-word what I used to say as well!
Grape mimes stink alright, I guess! :p
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Considernig the processes going on are completely different from the kind in hydrogen fusion bombs, I'd say the worst explosion is from overheating and overpressurizing of the chamber - something like a handgrenade.
In any case, if there were an explosion, it has been shown that outrunning the shockwave would be a cinch.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
Imagine, in FFX world: A superloud Brown Note causes resonance in a BlitzBall stadium tank which causes the whole tank to explode in a thermonuclear BOMBA!
Is anyone else thinking what i am...what if we find a way to scale this down a bit...stuff the whole project into an empty deck of playing cards and use it as a power source for the ipod?..i hope noone else thought of that...i'm going to patent the idea...
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
The liquid is deuterated acetone. AFAIK, this is essentially nail polish remover doped with deuterium. Probably as brain-rotting as normal nail polish remover, only a bit more dense.
As a separate point, I don't entirely buy the "less radioactive waste" argument [...] In order for fusion to be commercially viable, ultimately the reaction has to turn a generator somehow, probably via heat generated by fast neutrons. He couldn't see how fast neutrons from a fusion reaction could be any less nasty than fast neutrons generated by a conventional fission reaction.
They aren't. But the energy also comes out as fast helium, which has a charge and is easy to decellerate, liberating heat.
The point is that, for a given amount of heat energy produced, there's a LOT less radioactive crud produced with fusion than with fission.
= = = =
However:
Let's stuff in some boric acid instead of heavy acetone and see if THAT works. It's a LOT harder to light off. But B-11 + H-1 -> 3 He-4 + LOTS of free energy and NO neutrons.
You do get a small amount of neutrons from other reactions that might take place in an environment that could light that reaction, such as B-11 + He-4 -> N14 + slow neutron, but those are very few and (at least in this case) very low energy.
= = = =
Now I'd prefer to run that reaction in a near-vacuum, excited with pulses at a microwave rate. The three He neuclei come off at very well-defined energies (and thus velocities). So you can design a decellerator in the form of a klystron and extract the power as microwaves - some of which you can recycle to pump the ignition reaction directly, the rest to rectify into more convenient electrical power. NOT a heat engine and VERY efficient.
Some of your particles will hit the structure, so from those you mostly get heat (though you might also scavenge some electricity by taking advantage of the current from the particles themselves and the secondary emission produced by the collision and the resulting x-rays).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think you're deep in the weeds.
Most radioactive waste from a fission power plant comes from decaying fission fragments - that is the left-over elements which are produced after the fissile material has split and released its energy in the form of the kinetic energy of the fission fragments which find themselves awfully close together with the same charge and not enough of the strong nuclear force to hold things together, plus the kinetic energy of the neutrons born from the fission process and some directly produced radiation.
These fission fragments then decay through a long decay chain up toward lead. Most of them have relatively long lives and produce high energy gamma so they create a problem.
Fusion power will also create fusion products - but those products tend to be more stable - grabbing neutrons from the stew and much more rapidly settling down into nuclides that are much less radioactive than those produced by fission.
Of course there ARE fast neutrons produced during the fission and fusion process. Neutrons born from fission are fast neutrons, very high energy. In all fission power reactors those neutrons have to be slowed into thermal equilibrium (lose a LOT of energy) by having elastic collisions with some material - say the hydrogen atoms in water (the material that slows the neutrons is called a "moderator") so they have a reasonable chance of interacting with another fuel atom and cause fission. U235 likes thermal neutrons to fission.
During the termalization process some neutrons will scatter out of the core, "leaking out" of the reactor core. And they interact with the primary shield. They make some things radioactive. The materials that go into reactor construction are choosen to reduce the nasty things that can get really radioactive - like, say, cobalt one of whose isotopes (Cobalt-60) decays giving off a very nasty gamma which lead doesn't shield particularly well. (another story).
So some materials will be irratdiated by the high energy neutron flux of a fission reactor and become radioactive. But the worst is done by the fission products of the reactor. Think one Curie of waste per watt of power at the end of core life as a thumb rule and remember that a Curie is one whale of a lot of radioactivity.
Is somebody going to get around to apologising to Fleishman and Ponds?
...sounds as if they're edging closer to my Red Bull and Pop Rocks experiments.
Maybe I shouldn't have kept my documentation on paper only. It took 5 weeks for my eyebrows to grow back.
I think I was the first to post a Simpsons quote in this thread too. Go figger.
Firstly, is it something where they could have a whole vat of these bubbles being created and destroyed with sonic waves constantly and through this vat you could have water pipes that would create steam and drive a turbine?
This would not generate any extra energy. It is simply using energy to cause vibrations that heat up water and generate steam. The change in phase causes a high enough pressure to cause a turbine to generate electricity. In each of those steps, energy is wasted (it's the law!).
What the article is talking about is supplying enough energy to facilitate a reaction that could cause two hydrogen atoms to form a helium atom. When this occurs, the mass of the helium atom is slightly less than the sum of the two hydrogen masses. Since thermodynamics says the mass had to go somewhere, we account for the loss with an increase in energy (a la E=mc^2). The amount of energy released by this reaction is theoretically substantially greater than the energy used to force the two atoms together. At least, that's the gist of it.
Don't confuse fusion with free energy,however. Fusion comes at a price, and it's the coversion of mass into heat that leaves you with two less hydrogens and one more helium, so there still is a fuel that is 'burned'. Luckily, our favorite proton-electron duo is the most abundant element in the universe.
ok, so, you did not recreate the conditions that these people claim to be needed for success and you use your failure to have the same outcome as a counter example?
that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
here...I am going to try to produce the same outcome....
*fills glass with water*....*places straw in water*...*blows into straw producing bubbles in the water*...*shakes glass at same time*....
nope, no fusion...those guys must be on crack.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
While all this looks good on the slashdot I will be more impressed when I see the math. Not that I will be able to understand it but I will, still the less, be impressed.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
BUBBLE FUSION, the apparent generation of fusion energy through theviolent collapse of bubbles in a liquid tank, has been reported in apaper about to be published in Physical Review E (Taleyarkhan etal., upcoming, probably March 2004). The paper, a followup to acontroversial report published two years ago(http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2002/split/5 79-2.html), reports"statistically significant neutron and gamma ray emissions" aftersound waves and pulsed neutrons hit a chilled liquid acetone tankspiked with deuterium fuel. The researchers (Rusi Taleyarkhan,formerly at Oak Ridge but now at Purdue, 765-494-0198,rusi@purdue.edu ) report the observation of flashes of light(sonoluminescence) as well as the emission of neutrons with energiesof less than or equal to 2.5 MeV---what you would expect if pairs ofdeuterium atoms were fusing together to produce energy in theirsetup. While the researchers describe various improvements to theirexperimental setup, in response to comments received in theiroriginal paper 2 years ago, critics (including Aaron Galonsky,Michigan State, galonsky@nscl.msu.edu, 850-267-8976 by phone untilApril 1) still have a number of concerns. According to Galonsky,the data for neutron emissions is lumped together with data ofgamma-ray emissions. While separating neutron and gamma-ray signalsis challenging, it is necessary to have a clean neutron-onlyspectrum to have an unambiguous demonstration of nuclear fusion.Willy Moss of Livermore (925-422-7302, wmoss@llnl.gov) says"Although I believe that thermonuclear sonofusion [not to beconfused with cold fusion] may not be impossible...I am still notconvinced... I believe that additional tests need to be done andmany should have been performed and discussed in the paper, forexample...if neutrons are being generated, then how about moving thescintillator further away from the sample to see if the signaldecreases, due to the decreasing solid angle of the detector?"(Other experts, Richard Lahey, RPI, laheyr@rpi.edu , 518-276-6614, aco-author on the paper; Mike Saltmarsh, Oak Ridge, 865-576-6915,saltmars@mail.phy.ornl.gov, co-author of a paper that attempted toduplicate the initial results but reported a null result---seeShapira and Saltmarsh, Phys Rev Lett, 19 August 2002)
Attending purdue university i read this today in our campus paper. The link to the article is here: http://www.purdueexponent.com/interface/bebop/show story.php?Date=2004/03/03§ion=campus&storyid=n uclearfusion
"Fistfull of Fusion"
I'm about one catchy guitar riff away from walking out of this cube and never looking back.
More fun than a Farnsworth fusor w/a fuel feed. Now the really neat part would be if it can be overdriven. Anyone remember the "oopsies" that may or may not have happened back when cold fusion 1st appeared. Hey!! Y'all watch this!! Nuke in a jar!
but in a jar. According to dictionary.com, a jar is: A cylindrical glass or earthenware vessel with a wide mouth and usually no handles.
Now, I am not a chemist, but I'm pretty sure that the "several million degrees" that a sun heats up to is enough to melt the glass.
I'm waiting until they can create more energy than they put in.
I reminds me of an old adage, "The best way to make a small fortune is to start out with a large fortune."
I hope some people don't eat the contents of the jar, the thought of having those people think the sun shines out of their ass is bad enough.... but giving them fuel for those thoughts is even worse!
So if you drop Frosty the snowman onto the floor, his head will pop off?
"and how did he manage to generate 1.21 gigawatts of electricity with only a steam engine? A giant capacitor?"
A FLUX capacitor.
DUH.
+++ATH0
If the countries involved in ITER ever agree on where to build the next experimental reactor.
Oh, wait.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
*cough*
...
*cough* *cough*
*cough* *cough* *cough* *cough* *cough* *cough* *cough*
*aaah-ahem*
*cough*
*cough* *cough* *cough* *cough* *cough* *cough*
*cough*
*aaah-ahem*
*cough* *cough*
*aaah-ahem*
Ahhh, that's better
You know, I'm sure glad that Keanu Reeves was able to teach all these eggheads something...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115857/
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
I wonder if these results may lead to legitimacy for the claims of Grigg's hydrosonic pump -- a boiler-sized device that claims to generate over-unity heat generation from cavitation. The creator claims that it generates sonoluminescene which is its primary source of power.
Of course, as with any supposed "free energy" device, there's a lot of claims like, "Scientists have done tests that verify that it works," but I've never seen any published papers on the fact, and the device has been apparently known in the "free energy" fringe for over ten years, and supposedly there are buyers already using it to heat their water for much cheaper than usual.
(I keep meaning to look up this guy. He supposedly lives in my hometown.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Can fast neutrons be captured by ordinary hydrocarbons (say, acetone) to turn some of their hydrogen into Deuterium?
And for the chemists: is it relatively simple (perhaps given energy & a catylist) to turn a solution of acetone, methane, and whatever you get from removing random hydrogen atoms from acetone, back into acetone?
Just how dangerous are fast neutrons? What are the risks of being near a Sonoluminescence micro-fusion reactor, if these experiments turn out to be repeatable and create surplus energy?
Is there any known way to capture some of the kinetic energy of the fast neutrons? (Preferably without setting off nearby fissile materials a-la the sheilding on a non-neutron Hydrogen Bomb)
Here is the article from Purdue, no need for NYTimes registration, heh. http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever/2004/0400302. Taleyarkhan.fusion.html
So is this like some sort of green lantern? Where can I get one? Do I have to buy the ring separately? Do I have to charge up the lantern first, or just stick my ring into it and yell that whack slogan about fighting bad guys in the dark of night with green light?
For an excellent account of Pons & Fleischman and the ongoing [scare-quote]science[/scare-quote] of cold fusion, check out Voodoo Science by Robert L. Park. It's a great insight into how researchers lose their dispassion in the pursuit of knowledge.
/. Specifically, consider poor Gilbert Levin, featured in the article linked to by this slashdot story, who, after 28 years, cannot admit to the fact that the 1976 Viking probe found no conclusive evidence of life on Mars.
/.'s take on the Supreme Court's 1993 Daubert ruling and Park's writing on the events that led up to it.
V.S. should be required reading in highschool. While I don't agree with him 100% of the time, Park sheds light on many famous and not-so-famous examples of pseudoscience, snake oil, and hysterical ignorance.
V.S. comes to my mind often when reading
Less humorous and more thought provoking is the contrast between
My other
I don't know how it works but triboluinescence is distinct from nuclear fusion - it's probably a chemical reaction of molecules in crystals generated by mechanical energy that emits light. I don't believe triboluminescence results from nuclear fusion.
I don't know if the humor was intended or not, so excuse my humor detector if so...
Issuing a press release to the general public before peer review just reeks of pseudoscience. "Look what we did! It's so cool that the respected journal would have covered it up! In your face, respected journal!"
Sure, what they claim may be possible, but I'll be much less likely to believe it until I see it validated by other scientists.
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
Unlucky, however, is that most (all, afaik) man-made fusion reactions don't involve that proton-electron duo.
They involve heavy hydrogen (deuterium, hydrogen with a neutron) and heavy-heavy hydrogen (tritium, hydrogen with two neutrons), which is much more rare. The result, by the way, is not just one helium - it's a helium and a neutron for a net mass loss of about 2AU per reaction.
The activation cost of fusion using normal water is much, much higher than when using heavy water. There are processes to produce both of these isotopes (tritium can be produced as a side-reaction from the fusion, but deuterium must be filtered from water), but they're not especially capable of producing large quantities easily. But we've got to crawl before we can walk; once we get controllable, sustainable, and energy producing fusion, then we can worry about switching over to a fuel source that will actually make it practical to use for power.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
What the article is talking about is supplying enough energy to facilitate a reaction that could cause two hydrogen atoms to form a helium atom. When this occurs, the mass of the helium atom is slightly less than the sum of the two hydrogen masses. Since thermodynamics says the mass had to go somewhere, we account for the loss with an increase in energy (a la E=mc^2). The amount of energy released by this reaction is theoretically substantially greater than the energy used to force the two atoms together. At least, that's the gist of it.
Grammatical nitpick: the atoms don't get together, check their new weight against the required weight of their new self, and discard the rest through energy in accordance with the regulations from the heavenly bureau of thermodynamics.
Other than that, seems spot-on to me.
What part of "Fusion Bomb" did you not understand? Go read about Edward Teller, multi-stage warheads, and thermonuclear warfare.
If the bubbles are not quite hot enough yet, how long do they survive for? is it long enough to detect, locate, aim and fire a high power short pulse laser at them to get them over the threshold? just a thought.
watch "the money masters" on google video
A few years back, a very bright fellow made a very effective pump with NO moving parts, it just used sound and a chamber of a very specific shape, like a bomb IIRC.
To me, that would be an obvious next step to get this form of fusion working, as it sets up a tuned, very tight focus of the sound energy in a standing wave, or at least in repeated pulses.
That half baked idea bequeathed to the people of earth if it pans out. (GPL2)
i can see it now, pink floyd sues fusion reactor makers everywhere for using their quadrophonic sound developed for concerts in the 60's. but seriously, the potential for sonoluminescence has some pretty heavy birth of the universe theory behind it. sci am feb/04 issue has an article theorizing that the initial soup of the universe was shaped by soundwave propagation caused by photons traveling the soup. maybe a combination of sound and mag trapped plasma, if it hasn't been done already, would be an interesting question?
...but I think his point is that you can make alcohol from woodmash (hempmash?) in the same way that you make bio-diesel.
This hempmash alcohol would drive the stills.
The ultimate source of energy for the entire process is absorbed solar radiation by the hemp.
Just for the record, I'd rather that everyone had an atomic pile in their homes and cars.
There actually is a town called Lederhose in Germany ??
Y=X
..
where Y is the number of lightflashes...
and X is the number of bubbles,
took me a year to figure this one out...
impressed now ?
If the inward pressure is sufficiently powerful the star will begin to fuse higher elements (e.g. H+H=He, He+He=Li, etc.) and the outward pressure will exceed the inward pressure and in this case will result in a supernova destroying the star.
Not always... (Layman's terms incoming)
A star basically starts out as a fusion/fission reactor. Fuse hydrogen into Helium, split Helium into Hydrogen, lather, rinse, repeat. Problem is while it takes a LONG time to actually see, stars can't continue this process forever. Eventually Helium overruns Hydrongen, and starts getting fused into the next element.
All these higher chain fusions generate energy for the star, albeit at a slightly higher cost. (Starts going to the next element faster, and faster, etc...) Until it either BLOWS, or gets to fusing to IRON...
Fusing to IRON doesn't produce energy, it Requires it. So, the star immediately condenses as it's gravity defeats outward pressure. This condenses the iron into an intensely packed ball that spins extremely rapidly. (Basically something the same mass as our sun packed into something as small as our moon)
These strange, peculiar, fast rotating magnetic objects act as radio beacons for the universe, perking receivers at radio telescopes for mere instants as the beam flashes by the earth... More Commonly known as pulsars.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
You're right that it couldn't happen, but our sun could go nova, and explode a lot of material out of it after becoming a white dwarf.e llardeat h/stellardeath_6.html
http://observe.arc.nasa.gov/nasa/space/st
As far as producing a nebula, do you think we're in one now? Hydrogen gas exists in a density of roughly one atom per cubic meter around the earth, which we think of as a vaccuum. As the sun continues to expel it's contents into space, they continue to expand outward; they don't have the gravity to stay together.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I dont know if i am noticing it more now or it is because Indians are actually doing better on the global stage. Rusi Taleyarkhan, the key player in this discovery/invention, obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1977. He came to the United States shortly afterward for graduate studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, located in Troy, N.Y. In addition, he obtained a master's degree in nuclear science and engineering in 1978 and a doctorate in the same field in 1982. In all this talk about foreign workers coming to the USA, their contribution to American and Global knowledge is left unmentioned. This I think is tragic. In my view USA provides the best platform in the world for intelligent, creative and hardworking people and by doing that US benefits and stays ahead of the pack of nations. How I wish India could emulate US of A and make the smart people across the world work in India.
The oil companies will probably morph into "the water companies", as oil disappears, and water becomes a scarcity. They'll either fuse water for energy, or sell any water from fusion. Being "the hydrogen companies" will be a natural stepping stone.
--
make install -not war
Scientists have long observed a phenomenon known as sonoluminescence, in which a burst of ultrasound causes a bubble in a liquid to collapse and emit a flash of light; some have speculated that the gases trapped in the collapsing bubbles could be heated to temperatures hot enough for fusion to occur.
So *that*s where siamese twins come from: parental over-anxiety. O c'mon you know it's funny! ...
Simply put, fusion is extremely temperature sensitive. The fusion rate goes as something like the 12th power of the temperature. In their paper they said that the peak temperature of the bubble depended on the temperature of the liquid, with colder liquid leading to higher peak pressure and temperatures - the neutrons only appeared with the liquid being cooler than 20 deg C or so. Unfortuately for them, they claim their equipment would allow only a relatively modest cooling (like -10 deg C or something). Now, it would seem to me that the first thing they could do would be to get a heavy-duty glycol chiller and cool that sucker down to -50 C. If the peak temperature changes by only 10% the fusion rate would go from bareley detectable to kilowatts and they wouldn't have to argue. The fact that they haven't done this is worrisome.
Second, they are doing D-D fusion. But if they would just bother to add a but of tritum they could do D-T fusion. As D-T fuses at much lower temperatures again they have a simple experimental change that would make for a HUGE increase in fusion output. If they just did either of these they wouldn't have to be arguing back and forth about a few neutrons; their biggest worry would be avoidning lethal doses of neutrons, and how to spend all that Nobel money.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
my girlfriend has a device that makes her glow pink by rapidly vibrating certain of her molecules. in fact she's had it for at least three years.
(e.g. H+H=He, He+He=Li, etc.)
:-)
Um, actually, He+He=Be, it's He+H=Li -> protons are conserved. Just thought I'd be pedantic and point that out
Deuterated acetone is fairly cheap (and less viscous than heavy water, so it is a good medium for cavitation). What would realy convince me would be repeating this experiments with partialy tritiated deuteroacetone. This would be hugely expensive (tritium is one of the most expensive common radionuclides) and unpleasant(because of the radioactivity of T). But D+T reaction has so much lower activation energy than D+D and it produces plenty of neutrons, so the detection should be so much easier, orders of magnitude above what they see right now.
(All common fission nukes and the fission parts of thermonuclear nukes are boosted with about half a gramm of T mixed in with D, to generate enough neutrons for complete fission of plutonium before the explosion spills it apart. Hiroshima non-boosted bomb had only 20% of theoretical yield. The infamous "Neutron bomb" is just a small boosted plutonium fission nuke, overboosted with excess T+D mix and without a reflector shield, so that excess of neutrons is produced and allowed to escape)
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
The description of this is spookily similar to the technology Keanu Reeves invented in the movie Chain Reaction.
In the movie Keanu achieves cold fusion by stabilizing a bubbling glass tank of water to produce hydrogen gas or "sonoluminescence" is they call it in the movie.
Weird.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
I'm obviously also for a possibly "infinite" source of energy, just like anyone else.
However, what if we (humanity) find such a source, it turns out to be the way the sun works, but it (as Murphy would tell you) doesn't really obey the laws you created for it to stay in its little jar?
What if it turned out that at second one we created fusion, but at second two those poor scientist realized "Oh shit, it's going hypercritical and is going to use the earth as a fuel source"? At second three there would be no you or me left to talk about it.
Just a thought...
A good source of energy is the equivelant of a good hot cup of tea.
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
OK, it's easier to fit one of those VIA EPIA boards in a jar, or PC104, but you can pick up a used Sparcstation at Weird Stuff or HalTed for under $100, so why not build yourself an attractive server?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
dude, Totally explain why it would*winkwink* go supernova. heh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Greetings. Meesa am Jojo Binkasa, Nephew of late engineer JarJar Binks. Meesa Unkle hadsa 65,000,000 credits in the Jedi bank of Tatooine whensa badsa things happendsa, and meesa needsa to find off-planet correspondent to transfer the money to the alliance. Plleeesa Helpsa meesa! Yousa are Meesa's Only Hope! May the Forsa be with yousa!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
hey, can you try your sonoluminescence in some petrol for me?
DOH! My physics professor would have me up front trying to defend that until I realized that the reaction doesn't balance out. Thanks. Oh, why does /. have no edit?
NarratorDan
"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
This seems to me what the Romulans used on there ships. This or something similar.
Fertiliser may come from animal waste, i.e, shit. It can be mined or most usually it can come from cooking nitrogen under pressure. (Haber process).
Can you imagine the chaos if /. had an edit? imagine how little sense my post would make if you could fix your post - and that's just a little typo. When people get into huge flame-wars it would be unintelligible(sp?).
Damn, everything I write sounds like I'm trying to prove you wrong, I just wanted to add this sentance to say it's all in good fun...
But how can you produce steam using acetone, boiling point 56.2 degrees Celsius? Once the acetone boils, no more bubbles collapsing.
Perhaps the neutrons or other exotic particles produced could be captured outside the liquid to produce energy, but that seems very difficult to me.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
The ball reaction depends highly on elastic collisions, and metal doesn't flex nearly enough...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
So that's how it's done! I always wondered. Now, I'm off to refuel my flying-saucer.
Stick Men
Of course that doesn't do too much. So you put a plutonium rod in the middle as a "spark plug." That gets some fusion going from the flood of neutrons, but most of what that does is just give more neutrons which would otherwise fly off and not contribute to the explosive force unless you surround the works with U-238, which fissions from the flood of neutrons.
And people call this a fusion device. This is relevant to the discussion of table-top fusion because even uncontrolled fusion is hard to get -- the original Teller idea of the "Super" which would be just sticking an A-bomb next to a tub of deuterium simply doesn't work, and it is a Good Thing because otherwise A-bomb explosions could start a fusion chain reaction in the Earth.
Well if we can master this, perhaps we can master warp drive. Just gotta watch out for the romulans :)
My Gawd WTF...
LOL, That bit about no edit in /. was supposed to be a joke. if one could edit posts at /. it would be a nightmare.
And I don't mind being wrong if it's true.
NarratorDan
"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
If you want to increase yield perhaps the way to go about it would involve pressurizing deutrinium gas above its' critical point. This would mean it wouldn't be a liquid but a very dense gas. On that note perhaps add two electrodes and energize the gas to create a plasma down the middle of the container. Since the plasma would exist only between the electrodes then the danger of damaging the container would be minimized.
The overall effect would be increased density due to pressure(resulting in more moles of gas fusing=greater output) and essentially decreased activation energy of fusion because the gas would be excited via the electrons. Well if anyone reads this tell me what you think. I think it all depends on if bubbles can be formed in a superdense gas, if not it might require artificial "bubbles" of bucky balls injected, or some sort of induced resonance that forms instataneous cavities, or something I haven't thought of yet. Just trying to be the 100th monkey.
...but fusion study.
If they can come up with an "approachable" fusion reaction, it should be much easier to look at. Yes, you're looking at it filtered through some liquid, but you can use different liquids to let you look at different things.
And that looking could lead to something useful to magnetic-confinement style fusion.
Or they just might figure out how to use this variety of fusion directly. Either way, a good thing.
And it does sound like this is a valid paper. The press release came AFTER someone decided to publish the paper after peer review, not before. Important distinction.
Fooz Meister
all well and good. but ...
... hmmmm.
... how about
what doesn't seem to matter at all is the facty
fact that fusion ALTERS matter. and as all know
matter is "what we're made of". everything around
us. now E=mc^2 is really quite a cool formula.
considering that 90% (or more, depends on your
typ) of information gathered by humans is visual.
and we can see because there is light. and light
travels at an finite speed
so after "reading" (skimming) the press release
i still can't find any indications that these
scientiscts have broken out of age-ol-thinking
going back to carnot and coulomb.
fusion as a viable "energy source" (what for
anyway?) will never be found thru theory of
age-ol-times.
to make fusion work we have to acknowledge the
fact that it isn't just like oil, coal or
something. fusion alters the cosmic make-up and
we have to realise that fusion might just have
a few freaky side-effects
time-space moving slower in the vicinity of a
fusion reactor? etc...
a fusion reactor will most prolly not just
produce energy/electricity but maybe also
gravitational fluctoasions in time-space, etc.
anyway, good luck, 'cause the univers seems to be
VERY stingy.