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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.
... 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
Sonoluminescence: an Introduction
Single Bubble Sonoluminescence HOWTO
Actually after a while the walls of a tokamak have to be changed because neutrons makes them radioactive on the long run.
So yes this would produce radioactive material too, but a material less nasty and lesser material than a fission reaction.
Iraq: war to save the U
Our maximum temperature for sonoluminescence in water was about 280 kK (kilokelvin). Our maximum temperature for sonoluminescence in seeded water (water + hydrogen, for example, although we used water + argon and water + helium; both gave similar results) was around 100 kK. I'll readily believe the second number can improve to approximate the first, but the first just isn't close.
In other substances, nothing seemed quite as good as water. Glycerine and alcohol were both within a factor of two; everything else was lower. Lower molecular density seems to give higher maximum temperature (although I'd have to check the theory to verify this isn't just a coincidence), so trying liquid helium might be cute... but I can't believe it'll help much.
I've had this sig for three days.
It's not just sustainability, it's getting it to react. You need intense pressures, and the only ways to do this previously, require very large (read: industrial) bits of equipment, just for the proof-of-concept.
If you mean "fusion in general", I'll accept that.
If you only mean to refer to sonoluminescence, then no, you do not nead large and expensive industrial equipment - You can do it in your basement with roughly $100 in equipment (though having a low-end oscilliscope helps, you don't absolutely need it, you could get away with a simple analog meter).
Check out the Single Bubble Sonoluminescence HOWTO for a nice, detailed example of a functional experimental setup.
Not exactly rocked science - As the basic idea, you make a flask of degassed water resonate at roughly 25khz. Insert a tiny air bubble, and bingo, with a bit of trial and error, you have sonoluminescence.
Of course, I agree that getting energy out of such a system may take some doing, but as a proof of concept (and just a really cool experiment in general), any advanced-amateur EE geek would already have all the parts they need.
The paper's going to be in Physics Review E, not Physics Review Letters, which is where your link led. Check out the first two sentences of the article:
Physical Review E has announced the publication of an article by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Purdue University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) stating that they have replicated and extended previous experimental results that indicated the occurrence of nuclear fusion using a novel approach for plasma confinement.
This approach, called bubble fusion, and the new experimental results are being published in an extensively peer-reviewed article titled "Additional Evidence of Nuclear Emissions During Acoustic Cavitation," which is scheduled to be posted on Physical Review E's Web site and published in its journal this month.
I did a search at the Physics Review E site, but it's not there yet.
Nevertheless, like you, I feel that the arrival of a press release before the paper appears is something of a red flag - Especially in this particular subfield of physics.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
Maybe I haven't looked hard enough
It seems you didn't look at the press release at all. The sub-title of which being "Physical Review E publishes paper on fusion experiment conducted with upgraded measurement system". So, in case you have trouble interpreting that, what they are saying is that this has been peer reviewed, and it will be published, in a respectable journal.
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.