Slashdot Mirror
Room-Temperature, Small-Scale Fusion at UCLA
gnuman99 writes "A UCLA collaboration (Seth Putterman, Brian Naranjo and Jim Gimzewski) appear to have developed a fusion device powered by a pyroelectric crystal, a type of crystal used in cell phones to filter signals. When heated, such a crystal produces a large electric charge on its surface. The UCLA researchers placed a lithium tantalate (LiTaO3) pyroelectric crystal so that one side touches a copper disc. A tiny tungsten probe is then placed at the center of the copper disc. When the crystal is subsequently heated, a very large large electric field is produced at the end of the tugsten tip, ~25 billion volts per meter. This field gradient is so high that it strips the electrons from nearby deuterium atoms. The ionized deuterium atoms then accelerated by this field towards a solid target of erbium deuteride (ErD2). They collide with it at such high energies that some fuse with the target. A measurement of almost 900 neutrons per second was observed. This is 400 times the background! Although the amount of energy produced in this initial experiment was miniscule (~1E-8 jules), this technology could be used for things like microthrusters. There are pictures and movies on the UCLA's physics site." Reader richmlpdx adds a link to coverage at MSNBC.
So what they're saying is that this technology just happens to have potential more or less exclusively in areas populated by companies/agencies that have a lot of money floating around for research grants, eh?
What a stroke of luck!
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
A UCLA collaboration ... this technology could be used for things like microthrusters...etc
I can see this being of use with solar sail vessels. But how close are we to fusion power stations?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Well then the general audience needs to pay attention and fucking learn something for a change.
Is there fusing? Then it's fusion. People need to learn that fusion != consumer power generation, and not be shielded from the hurty pointy owie truth.
So, build a sphere 100 meters in diameter. Plate the inside with micromachined crystals, copper, and tungsten widgets. Put the target in the center, complete with deturium. Heat up the outside of the sphere so all the crystals get warm. Now, you've got millions of these things firing fast deturium ions. Fusion takes place, things get hot, and the whole thing becomes self-sustaining. The problem is keeping the thing cool, so one attaches a power plant to it to get rid of the excess heat. So, why isn't this a good idea? Even if they're off by a factor of 10^8, that's only a hundred million, and just how tiny can the emitters be made?
You can see it here:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/atom-smasher2.htm
Anyhoo, while I find the experiment and subsequent discovery kind of interesting, it isn't anything terribly exciting.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Even if it didn't work on the megawatt scale, if it could work on the hundreds of watts scale, it could convert the heat from a CPU/GPU back into power.
There might be some very economical uses of this. A small lightweight source of neutrons that does not contain or produce any radiation before being activated might have some very nice (money producing) applications.
Also they stated that the energy production in the Initial experiment was less than it took to generate the fusion. This does not rule out variations or even a scaled up version (I would guess that simple scaleing would not work)
OOGG wish to clarify description of piezoelectric.
t ion=Forms.page&PageID=118
KEY ASPECT NOT CONVERT ENERGY. RATHER, RELATION BETWEEN mechanical strain & electric polarization, OR IN CASE pyroelectric BETWEEN electric polarization & thermal gradient.
EXPERIMENT USE pyroelectric CONVERT THERMAL GRADIENT into polarization = electric field.
http://www.cohr.com/Applications/index.cfm?fuseac
NOT NEED ENERGY CONVERSION FOR PIEZOELECTRIC APPLICATION. Cell phone filter (SAW=surface acoustic wave) USE COUPLING BETWEEN ELECTRIC FIELD & SOUND WAVE PROPAGATION FOR high-Q MICROWAVE/RF FILTER. NOT CONVERT ENERGY.
Our nuclear weapons have had this feature for years. We've known for a long time how to use electric fields to create neutron emissions for a long time. It has applications in forcing rapid decay of isotopes which otherwise left to themselves would take forever. The kick-start from high energy neutrons is why they use it in nuclear weapons.
Read U.S. Nuclear Weapons by Chuck Hansen, which is out of print unfortunately. Good coverage of the massive amount of information declassified since the dawn of the atomic age, at least where weapons are concerned.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
"...this technique consumes orders of magnitude more energy than it produces." ...because it takes energy to produce heat, right?
What about sources of heat that we don't need to fuel? Like reflected sunlight in a solar chamber, or molten rock closer to the center of the earth (or to volcanos, etc.)? Could we set up crystals like this to be heated via these methods, then capture the energy output somehow? What about adding these to other fueling methods that already produce great heat (like a nuclear plant) as augmentation?
IANAS (I am not a scientist), so this may be a stupid question.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
It is commonly available as a neutron source.
Can you provide me references on that, please? I use neutron sources in my research, and I'm not aware of a Fusor setup being used at any real neutron beamlines around the world. They are all either particle accelerators that produce neutrons via spallation (such as the upcoming Spallation Neutron Source), or are radiological/nuclear reactors (such as NIST, HMI, etc.). Despite the simplicity of the Fusor, it is not actually used as a neutron source by anyone. As far as I know, the flux is much too low and the system not efficient.
Doesn't heating the crystal by definition make the reaction not room Temperature?
Aye, one of my college professors ran NASA's fusion program in the 70s, and created the EFBT (Electric Field Bumpy Torus) fusion reactor. I don't know if you would call it a similar device to a tokamak - it used electric fields to stabilize the plasma instead of magnetic - but it also worked well.
I think any new method that could possibly draw money away from the tokamak model is a good thing. I think it is one of the reasons that fusion research has been so stagnant. When the Princeton TFTR was being built, the contractor dropped one of the tokamak's huge flywheels. To pay for its replacement, most other fusion research programs were cut entirely, such as the one at NASA Langley.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Ah... missing the point here. Nations with a high standard of living tend to have flat, if not declining birth rates.
Researchers have noted the phenomenon of falling birthrates in industrialized nations for many years, as children were no longer needed for manual labor on the farms, and and as woman acquire economic opportunities and access to birth control.
So once everyone has a decent standard of living birth rates will drop on their own.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
And don't forget about bubble fusion. Basicly, some researchers claimed they achieved tabletop fusion using ultrasound cavitation in deuterated acetone. Not everyone agrees that it was achieved yet, but the evidence looks pretty convincing to me.