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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.
Goes to show that sci fi is sci fact.
They should have been useing DI-lithium crystals. Stupid UCLA.
The most technical summary I have ever seen. Did they finally replace the approvers with a monkey?
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.
Submitter is confusing "pyroelectric" with "piezoelectric." Crystals used for oscillators, filters, and speakers use the piezoelectric effect.
They heated up the crystal to about 100 degrees celsius.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Nah, but how about warm fusion??
Mostly random stuff.
Old and busted: Mini fuel cell power
New hotness: Mini fusion reactor power
Creative Commons music that doesn't suck: emptydrum.com
Next week they will place that bad boy on a flux capacitor.
crap
eh, too bad it cant stop a 26 billion hits per nanosecond... oh wait, this is slashdot.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
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 [are] 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 observer. 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."
Do the editors even look at these things anymore?
That's kind of what people said about electrons and X-rays...about 150 years ago.
So think about that.
Going briefly over the available documents on this, it appears that this technique consumes orders of magnitude more energy than it produces. This would preclude energy generation as one of the potential applications, which is usually regarded as the most promising potential application of cold fusion. Most of the other potential applications mentioned in the articles use this as a neutron generator, but there are other well known ways of achieving that...
If we can get his webserver to produce more fusion!
I can see it now - "Slashdot - powering the world through mass action browsing."
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Of course, this is only useful if the energy necessary to heat the crystal is less than the energy taken back, otherwise you just get an energy waster.
Finally! That was the last missing part for my doomsday machine. Thank you guys...
-- This SIG was never meant to be.
Cold fusion can't be total BS if somebody is willing to bump off it's chief spokesperson.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
How can you possibly expect to get useful fusion reactions using a monolithium crystal?
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
"it said there were errors in the experiment and it in fact produced less energy than was added"
Did anyone claim otherwise? This is a novel way to produce fusion, I don't see any claims of net energy production.
I can build a Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor in my garage, too, and get fusion out of it. Just not 1/100 as much as I put in.
This is another (interesting) avenue of experimentation. No one's saying it's going to be producing power any time soon.
It's a fun physics experiment, but I don't think it is much use in the economic driven world.
That's an interesting conclusion to come to without getting the answers to your questions.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
Yes, they are fusing particles, but this is not power-producing fusion. To call it fusion will mislead a general audience.
What it is -- which is still very cool -- is a particle accellerator the size of a toaster. High energy accerators fuse atoms, but we don't usually call them fusion reactors.
So, we should be talking about a small particle accelrator that could be used for medical imaging and treatment, sensing, or spacecraft propulsion.
Seriously, except for the minor grammar/spelling error with "observer" (which is just a typical miss for our dear old editors here), this was a quality post with quality information and no question, news for nerds! If Slashdot could maintain this sort of quality (and perhaps even correct the spelling and grammar errors), I would be a much happier reader.
They call the study "Observation of nuclear fusion driven by a pyroelectric crystal".
Unless the submitter is one of the researchers, the submitter was correct.
Thanks for making me learn about those electric characteristics of chrystals though.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
"Although the amount of energy produced in this initial experiment was miniscule (~1E-8 jules), this technology could be used for things like microthrusters." ----------------- So, to get a good amount of energy, you'd need a beowulf cluster of these?
In 2002 there was a report claiming fusion due to cavitation. The article appeared in Science:
Science, Vol 295, Issue 5561, 1868-1873 , 8 March 2002 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1067589]
The method involves irradiating a liquid with sound. The acoustic waves can cause microscopic bubbles to form in solution (cavitation). When these bubbles collapse, their temperatures can become quite high. Done properly, in fact, these cavitations can lead to sonoluminescence (creation of light from sound). The creation of a plasma under these conditions has been confirmed. The Science article further claimed that neutrons were measured, indicating that fusion temperatures had been achieved. They were certainly not claiming this as a power source (yet), since energy input was much greater than output.
The interesting thing is the controversy that resulted, and, as far as I know, is still not resolved. Scientists worldwide are still split on whether or not fusion has really been achieved. It will take some time longer before we know for sure (altough the most recent reports I've read lean towards this really being fusion).
I'm bringing this up because it seems rather similar to what we have here. It is a high-profile announcement of fusion in a rather unusual setup. I anticipate that this will be met with much skepticism (rightly), and that it will take some time before we know "for sure" that it's really fusion.
Anyways, highly interesting results, and I'm looking forward for future confirmation/elaboration of these experiments. But I wouldn't get too excited, since these kinds of discoveries sometimes have subtle flaws (or mis-interpretations) that only become revealled when the full scrutiny of the scientific process is applied to them.
"The experiment did not, however, produce more energy than the amount put in"
So, how is this useful from a fusion / energy source standpoint?Ture, I hadn't thought about that. Even the article does point it out. But the difference with this technology and X-rays, is that we know where the technology comes from and have a decent idea why the fusion is occuring. 150 years ago, with X-rays and electrons, we had almost no idea why they were there, only that they were.
So I see this as more of a building on the basics invention, rather than something revolutionary.
Sig
just thought i would pass this along..
4 /n7037/su ppinfo/nature03575.html
Sorry, couldn't handle Slashdot effect.
Here's a link to Nature's server:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v43
naranjo@physics.ucla.edu
Last modified: Wed Apr 27 20:37:46 UTC 2005
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
Obviously it scales up really well, but there is some point in which lithium tantalate no longer becomes effecient and "DiLithium" will be phased in as its replacement.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
gnuman99 writes "A UCLA collaboration (Seth Putterman, Brian Naranjo and Jim Gimzewski) appear to have developed a fusion device powered by a Pentium, a type of silicon chip used in personal computers to generate heat. When charge is applied, such a chip produces a large thermal gradient on its surface. The UCLA researchers placed a Pentium-based webserver so that one side touched a website called Slashdot. A tiny CAT-5 cable is then connected to the internet. When the website about fusion is visited by thousands of geeks at once, a very large large load is produced on the server, ~25 billion hits per hour. This traffic volume is so high that it strips the heavier "one" bits in the packets from the "zeroes". The ionized packets are then accelerated by this field towards the central processing unit (CPU). They collide with it at such high energies that some fuse with the target. A measurement of almost 900 Kelvin was taken by an observer. This is way higher than the background! Although the amount of energy produced in this initial experiment was miniscule (~1E-8 jules), this technology could be used on things like Microsoft's website. There are pictures and movies on the UCLA's physics site contributing to the problem." Reader richmlpdx adds a link to coverage at MSNBC, in hopes that he can slashdot them too.
the crystal is subsequently heated...it strips the electrons from nearby deuterium atoms...the atoms then accelerated...they collide with it...
Who invented this thing? Rube Goldberg?
Just kidding and no offense to the researchers, this is awesome work. I just got a "Mousetrap" vibe reading the description.
It's late, I'm going home.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
don't they already developed this technology ?
But when I read this in the summary:
"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 observer. This is 400 times the background!"
The first thought that ocurred to me was, "holy shit, isn't this how that little incident at the Black Mesa Compound got started?"
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
... as was I.
Certainly, the research is about using the pyroelectric effect. The submitter was right about that.
What the submitter was wrong about was this:
"a type of crystal used in cell phones to filter signals."
That is, as the parent post correctly points out, using the piezoelectric effect. So it is informative, although it should have pointed out exactly in what part of the write-up was wrong.
(My other reply down as -1 Wrong. Sorry, Anonymous Coward.)
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I was going for the slightly rhetorical, slightly leading effect, but I guess I did not come off as such to you.
Sig
There was no explosion. Real fusion power should involved accidentally blowing up a neighborhood because it was tested in a warehouse (a la Chain Reaction). If there's no boom, it doesn't exist and no one will believe you.
Hey, they've had table top fusion devices that operate on charged particle acceleration to collide the nuclei. Don't cream over the "room-temperature" and "table top" buzzwords. This particular method is new, but the idea of room temperature fusion isn't. You see, the yield is still very low, it isn't anywhere close to breakeven needed to drive a power plant. And I'm especially entertained by the references to neutron "background." I think there is a little confusion here....neutron background had better be practically zero where people are working (neutrons are rare and aren't really part of the well-known background radiation that exists in the environment)...and you better get yields much greater than 400 times the background to get excited about it!
The reason these devices are interesting is the flow of Neutrons.
There are several applications in materials science where you want neutrons, but you don't want to send your sample off to Oak Ridge, and wait, or go through the paperwork to try to build a research reactor. This device would allow, for instance, in-house Neutron Diffraction experiments, which is similar to X-ray diffraction except that Hydrogens show up. You can see hydrogen loading in containment materials, migration in batteries, and other minor structural changes which are invisible to other analytic techniques.
The fact that they use fusion is nifty, but it's the neutron flux in a convenient package that makes this a way cool experiment.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Well if you RTFA you'll notice that the experiment cost more energy than it produced. As you "scale up", you produce a larger and larger net loss of useful energy.
So no, it's of absolutely no use in this economic driven world unless you happen to value pure science and the technologies that *might* come from this sort of research.
Extract says Conforming to Nature's copyright policy, we will wait until 2005 Oct 28 before posting the final preprint version on this site..
Might as well wait for tomorrow's dupe.
Extract also says Online supplementary materials to reside permanently on Nature's server Go pick on them ...
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
I woke up, jumped out of bed, shouted Eureka, and called my best friend and said, "Wouldn't it be amazing if we placed a lithium tantalate pyroelectric crystal so that one side touched a copper disc, and then subsequently placed a tiny tungsten probe at the center of the copper disc? Then we could heat the crystal and theoretically, a very large large electric field at the end of the tugsten tip, approximately 25 billion volts per meter, would be created!!! This field gradient shouldbe theoretically so high that it strips the electrons from nearby deuterium atoms. Then, the ionized deuterium atoms then could be accelerated by this field towards a solid target of erbium deuteride. They theoretically should collide with it at such high energies that some fuse with the target!!!! It could be used for something like microthrusters!!!" He wasn't my friend anymore after that. Which is why I didn't carry out the experiment.
New Scientist has a right up as well. The seemed to have written off the whole idea of using it to produce energy. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7315
but could someone put that through a babelfish and tell me what this guy said?
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?
CNN: News for non-nerds. News without big words.
o p.fusion.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/27/tablet
Holy Crap, no matter how much of a nerd you are you realize there are always bigger ones. Dude ions and erbin-somethin's collide and holy cow they make 900 other-sumpthins that's like 400 times the back-doo-dad!
That whole article could have been written in Esperanto for as much as I could get from it and I have a solid background in Compsci, EE, and sci.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Which one of these scientists will turn into the Hulk ?
And who knew i was using this technology everytime I lit my cigarette !
The Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor has been around since the 1960's, and is so easy to build that it is sometimes seen in high school science fairs. It is commonly available as a neutron source.
What would be "new" would be a net gain in energy, but like the fusor, that doesn't seem to be happening with this new device.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
What these guys have done is found a novel application of a relatively well-known means of generating extremely high electric fields. This is good, and may produce more compact, robust neutron generators than we currently have.
But it is clear from the article--and the basic physics--that this isn't a practical means of generating fusion power. This is just another hot fusion mechanism--it isn't "room temperature". The deuterium ions from the gas discharge are accelerated by the field and smash into the ErD surface with high energies.
The interaction cross-sections are such that virtually all of the D ions will slow down without fusing, and the energy that went into accelerating them will be only recoverable as heat, with the usual thermodynamic (in)efficiencies. The DD fusion cross-section just isn't high enough to overcome those losses.
Cool experiment, though.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Wow - what a find. Now I know why my 80 meter ham transmitter glows in the dark. Oh- wait - that's because of the electron tubes.
Farnsworth aside, I won't be satisfied until we have a Mr. Burns-ish "atom mill" where little nanotechnical robotic arms shove hydrogen atoms together to create fusion!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
George baby, I've got a great idea for the next film. You sittin' down? Good. It's about a Robot named ErD2 (erbium deuteride, or "erb" for short) and he's powered by nuclear fusion. Now here's the good part: We take advantage of his name ("erb") and have him talk with an incredibly annoying urban slang. (That's "Erb" as in the word "urban". Get it? Get it?) Now, he wants to put the slap down the shizzle manizzle and be bustin' caps with his frickin' "laser beams". What up, dawg?
[click]
Hello? George, you there? Hello? hello?
Is room-temperature fusion considered cold fusion or is that something else?
Is this the new requirment for getting funding for any project? " see it also can be used for homeland security ".. So can my damned shoes..
What a farce.
( oh, great project.. good work guys )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You can't get a Delorean up to 88 miles an hour on electric motors that would fit in a Delorean circa 1985!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence
There's been tonnes of this reported as fusion, but we can't prove/disprove it as of yet, and even if we could, we wouldn't know how to use it as a power source yet. Many people relate this to the fusion that's going on with Wintergreen LifeSavers if you bite down on them hard in a dark room.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Cold fusion thta takes more power than it generates is quite old news, going back to the 50s at least.
The question is not whether this one experiment was producing net power, but whether this method is even theoretically capable of producing net power. What's the potential here for something valuable?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Could that have been prevented by room temperature, small scale fusion?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
They had cold fusion back in the eighties. Personally, I'm waiting for the nucular powered cars - can't wait for the Chevy Trailblazer with a nuetron V8.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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
Deuterium is hardly specialized. The hydrogen in sea water is 1/6000 D. It is easily separated, and it's readily available by the truckload.
Any practical fusion process is likely to use deuterium rather than ordinary hydrogen because it's plentiful and far easier to fuse.
Ok, I'm not a physics geek so excuse my ignorance.
I was just thinking that this sort of fusion is not looked on as a great thing cause the input energy > than the output, but in countries where the temperatures are really high, can't this heat be used an another energy source to compensate for the loss of energy?
Or say volcanic heat etc?
Just some random thoughts.
Ghostbusting!!!
Dr. Peter Venkman: "Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back."
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Just imagine a beowolf cluster of energizer bunnies powered by those... thump, thump, thump, thump...
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.
Physicists look to crystal device for future of fusion
"Room Temprature"
Only if it's a room full of boiling water.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
They just need to rename it to "dilithium crystals" to make it more marketable.
Maybe they should require a year of marketing classes to go along with that physics degree.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle." - Philo of Alexandria -
Sounds like this is essentially a scanner that will bombard a target with neutrons and then eventually analyze the ones that bounce back. If so, one of these babies on top of a missile makes it possible, theoretically, to discriminate between balloons and real warheads.
This is my sig.
Will it run Linux?
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!
So, it produced 900 neutrons/sec. What is the supposed advantage to this technique? You can buy commercial off the shelf neutron generators that produce 100,000,000 neutrons/sec already.
http://vniia.ru/eng/ng/karotazh.html
No, DiLithium is a strange material in which anti-hydrogen and hydrogen can flow, and thus can be used to controll a anti-hydrogen hydrogen reaction, in it's crystiline form it also acts to channel the resulting energy in a particular direction(s).
:)
This is fusion, a pittfully low power technology used in impulse drives, which can only propel craft to a few fractions of the speed of light.
Hey you come to slashdot, you're gonna find a true geek
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)
Build a electrostatic fusor, as invented by Farnsworth (also invented tv). I admid it is a bit more involved science project, since you need deuterium, a big high vacuum chamber and several hundreds of kilovolts to start it, but you will get that geigerteller spinning.
Alas no invention yet how to get this to break even for energy input/output.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Yes. Of course you're right, and that's what the article said. However, the parent to my post seemed to be asking about the economic uses of this for the generation of useful energy. My reply was limited to that consideration.
Um, I think "bubble fusion" has also been proven to work. where deuterated acetone gas bubbles are formed and collapsed in an intense ultrasound environment.
Yep, looks like the Farnsworth Fusor AND the conventional rasterscan TV are both going down in the same era.
Not like they didn't have a good run as pretty much the ONLY kids on the block for each application.
The king is dead, long live the king.
Another one of those vague summaries with no real information...
You would be right, if there weren't already other ways of doing fusion without a tokamak or simlar devices.
Philo Farnsworth was doing table top fusion back in the 60's using tube techniques that were part of the outgrowth of his pioneering work in Television.
Check out fusor.net for details on the technique.
Look around on the Net, and you can find more articles on the device in question, including people who have built them to play around with. To the best of my knowledge, there is no practical appliction for a Farnsworth device, except the not-inconsiderable bragging rights that you have built your own fusion reactor (a line sure to have the babes just lining up).
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
... this one looks legit. The big indicator is that neutrons are given off.
Neutron radiation is very hazardous. One of the problems with the Utah cold fusion fiasco was the "dead graduate student" problem. Given the amount of fusion that was allegedly occuring, a lot of neutrons should be given off, so many that given the lack of radiation shielding, there should have been a lot of dead graduate students.
Since there were no dead graduate students, it was likely that no fusion was occuring.
Don't screw with the timeline -- they have to get through the monolithium phase on their own!
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)
you're right!
sad, but true: 90% of murders committed in the US are cold fusion related. much fewer are the murders committed for motives such as robbery, revenge, rage, not paying back your bookie, or randomly.
in fact the only explanation for current murder statistics is the success of cold fusion.
"...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
"a very large large electric field is produced at the end of the tugsten tip"
That must be really large if "very large" does not describe it adequately.
"Tugsten"?
First, it was cell phones causing brain tumors. Now this?!? I feel soooo much safer about calling. . .
;-)
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
you'd think people would stop confusing Jules with Joules
Instructions for building your own electrostatic confinement fusion device (aka fusor) are here.
Doesn't heating the crystal by definition make the reaction not room Temperature?
The original submitter has probably taken this from the
physnews@aip.org news release:
"The key component of the UCLA device is a pyroelectric
crystal, a class of materials that includes lithium niobate,
an inexpensive solid that is used to filter signals in cell
phones. "
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.
I can't wait until they come out with a very large large large electric field
What is notable about this device is that it can be practically mass produced. One problem with the FHF is that it's a rather complex beast and requires enormous input energy.
Even if the technology is found to be unable to produce sufficient amounts of energy to be valuable in that role, it could still be a great platform for studying fusion in the lab, and it could yield useful information for controlling fusion in the large scale research reactors that may eventually lead to scalable, cheap, and abundant energy production.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
Ok so I don't know how this thing works, but could we use it in combination with a Nuke power plant? Nukes heat up water and spin a turbine, why can't we also use that heat with some of these crystals and increase the power output of a nuke power plant?
What it said originally (though abbreviated) was There are pictures and movies on the University of California at Los Angeles' physics site." This is correct. The use of an abbreviation does not render the use of the definite article incorrect.
Name one idea that wasn't just building on the basics.
Self-referential sigs are rarely entertaining.
1. When heated, ...... so A) its not room temperature
2. The ionized deuterium atoms then accelerated by this field towards a solid target of erbium deuteride (ErD2). B) Temperature is a measure of the average kenetic energy of the particle well I think accelerating particles would increase their temperature and in this case by heaps.
So instead of dilitium crystals its pyroelectric cystals.
Scotty must have revealed far more than he realized when he gave us that transparent aluminum.
YOU HAVE LINKED TO one conspiracy theory journalist AND ONE pseudoscientific gibberish BASED ON ASSUMPTION THAT HYDROGEN ATOM NOT PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD BY QUANTUM MECHANICS.
OBVIOUSLY, CAN NEVER DISPROVE sufficiently elaborate CONSPIRACY. HOWEVER, hydrogen atom IS MOST BASIC PROBLEM SOLVED IN QUANTUM MECHANICS. HAS BEEN SOLVED FOR 70+ years NOW.
blacklightpower.com ASSUMES ALL THAT WORK ABSOLUTELY WRONG. INVENTS GIBBBERISH "fractional quantum numbers." TRUST ME, HYDROGEN ATOM QUANTUM MECHANICS WELL VERIFIED BY EXPERIMENT.
He was actually insulting the guy he sent the letter to (he had a hunch back and was short IIRC). Though your meaning still stands.
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.
I should have said, aren't a SIGNIFICANT part of background...I know there are a few of each of the non-exotic sub-atomic particles kickin' around everywhere...I just couldn't believe someone exclaimed "it's 400 times the background!" I mean, woo hoo, neutron background is pretty LOW, I hope they got several orders greater than that.
I sense that I am being mocked.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
I suspect that this technology will actualy scale up rather well, I imagine that they be made like computer chips, reaction unit photolithographicaly etched on to the Lithium Tantalate crystal wafer, they are all ready found in pyroelectric sensors ( they "see" heat and generate charge).
The only tricky part would be figuring out the reaction unit density, too many you would get a thermal run-away and the thing would melt, too few and the heat output wouldn't be self-sustaining.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Yes, I see now. It makes perfect sense.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Sorry, couldn't handle Slashdot effect. Perhaps you should give up on that whole room-temperature fusion thing and spend some time on your server, young man!
You know, that's pretty simple-minded thinking. And the direct causes of native peoples' subjugation at the hands of marauding, murderous Europeans were swords, guns and terrible diseases.
But what made us turn from wild near-apes with rather large foreheads into what we are now was farming, which led to writing, political centralization, and the rest of civilization.
So, our ancestors (culturally, if not genetically) beat up everyone else's ancestors because, at the start of it all, they were better farmers.
And we're not even really evolved from predators! We evolved from small, squirrelish lemurs who, if I remember right, were pretty much omnivorous, certainly not anything like the species of Carnivora. More recently, some of the Australopithecus apes were even vegetarian. Even when they hunted, our ancestors were much better gatherers than hunters, no matter what those cave paintings would have you believe.
But I suppose you were just making a point off the top of your head, which sounded good at first blush.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Na-ah, only if its a room full of boiling water at water level! Remember the definition of 100 degrees Celsius now.
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
It's often the military that creates these crisises in the first place.
I dream in binary.
It'd be bad enough if the guy was humorless. But he's also a moron, as he is apparenly unaware that we've developed techniques to handle and protect ourselves hazardous substances like poisons and radioactive elements.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
No Ponds and Fleischman jokes?
some people are rather naive about conditions in some parts of the world and what is required to actually correct them
in fact, most if not all problems in the third world can be traced to issues of:
1. security
2. education
3. infrastructure
other issues like freedom of the press, corruption, disease, etc. can almost be considered secondary to those big 3 issues
and, more than that, you really can't improve #2 or #3 without #1 in place first
i leave it to your imagination where security comes from
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Security comes from the junta.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
As far as I understood it... it very badly scales up. Straight road to standard, hot fusion reactors there. But what is important, it perfectly scales DOWN. Nuclear-powered nanobots anyone?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Because this development was featured in prestigious Nature, the world is taking notice. An Associate Press story is receiving widespread coverage by mainstream news organizations. Google News is showing major coverage by a wide range of news organizations worldwide. http://pesn.com/2005/04/28/6900088_UCLA_Cold_Fusio n/
UCLA website http://rodan.physics.ucla.edu/pyrofusion/ credits SlashDot for overwhelming their server.
Also worth note: Cold Fusion Goes Back to School at MIT - Colloquium to be held on Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus May 21, 2005. http://pesn.com/2005/04/20/6900085_Cold_Fusion_MIT /
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
The slave masters were predators, the slaves were farmers and workers. As far back as you go in history, there has always been the warrior class and the farmer class and its not always true that war increases the chances of survival. In fact, warrior clans and tribes usually have shorter lifespans than farmers. Now I will admit, war is what this country is founded on, and it did work in America, but I don't think it promotes the long term survival of the species or the individual. War is something that you'll eventually lose. Rome fell, remember? So war is ultimately a never ending conflict between two sides in which no one really ever wins or loses and both sides eventually lose. If you win now you could lose 100 years from now when we have a nuclear war and everyone dies. Now I admit most of us may not be around 100 years from now, but your kids might be around so you have to think longterm.
China and Japan have plenty of people, but they are less aggressive historically than Europe and the US. Before Africa was enslaved and ripped apart, it had plenty of people, before the USA was stolen from the natives, it was filled with people who werent very aggressive.
I'll admit that the most aggressive people are on top, but this also means that they are the most hated. How do you think the Average native American, African American, etc feels about being oppressed by aggression?
When you are aggressive towards others, even if those others arent naturally aggressive, over time it makes them become aggressive. This is the problem we have with terrorism. We attacked Iraq first, Iraq did not attack us first, so we just created millions of aggressive Iraqis who might have been passive if we had not expressed aggression toward them.
When you project aggression, you usually get an aggressive response in return. When you treat your neighbors like the enemy they'll eventually act like an enemy. This is whats happening in the middle east. This happened with the Native Americans, this happened with Black Americans, now I admit, all these other groups lost the battle of aggression and lost the wars, but you have to think long term. Can the USA really win every war forever? If we don't stop being aggressive then how are we going to handle an endless stream of terrorism, or even countries like North Korea or China? Aggression won't help against every country because some countries have literally nothing to lose, more people, and an ability to be more aggressive than us. North Korea would have no problem nuking us simply because their people are starving to death and if we nuke them its not going to have the same kind of effect as if they nuke us. If we get nuked our entire civilization will crumble, if they get nuked then its one less dictatorship. They don't have much to lose, and its the same way in the middle east. People in the middle east have literally nothing to lose by blowing themselves up to kill 10 of us. They know that one life of theirs is worth 10 of ours, and what we seem to not be able to figure out is, we are completely outnumbered and can never win every war. There are a billion muslims, billions of Chinese, and millions of North Korean soldiers. It's simply impossible for us to think we can win in a war against these people, we couldnt even win in a nuking contest. The only reason China isnt getting into a nuking contest is because they are in the capitalism contest instead, but a physical war with China right now would do more damage to us than to China and they know this. They simply don't fear our aggression, and theres lots of countries which don't fear our aggression and which are economically cleaning house as well. China is a real problem if you think we can continue to be aggressive because China is going to eventually become the next superpower and why do they need us once that happens?
Now that we are getting rid of social security, have as many children as you can.
But most people are too old to care. Young people might care.
But I'm thinking that if you could put one of these accelerators on top of a kill vehicle, it could sense, via neutron bombardment, which radar or infrared target was the real thing and which was the decoy.
This is my sig.
We're one step closer to Mr Fusion -- now all we need is the time-travelling DeLorean....
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I'm not talking about a perpetual energy source, I'm talking about a viable one. Whether it be coal, gas or nuclear the amount of energy put in (usually in the form of heat) is less than the amount of energy put out (usually as electricity). Otherwise a power plant would only consume energy which sort of defeats the point.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Actually, a googolplex is the number written as a one followed by a googol of zeros, & a googol is the number written as a one followed by one hundred zeros. So it's 10^googol, or 10^(10^100).
See these articles: Googol & Googolplex.
Yar.