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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.
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.
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...
Finally! That was the last missing part for my doomsday machine. Thank you guys...
-- This SIG was never meant to be.
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'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?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.
... 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!
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
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?
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
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.
Exactly. A single bit of technical data is unacceptable. At least they could have converted the units into something inteligible like library-of-congress-equivalent neutrons per football field.
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
Could that have been prevented by room temperature, small scale fusion?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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.
Physicists look to crystal device for future of fusion
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.
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!
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)
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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.
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
You're an idiot. The goal is to produce neutrons. This research, while expanding our knoledge of fusion and giving more researchers a fusion source, will never result in power generation.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
You should be moderated as funny or clueless, or perhaps both.
In case you haven't been paying attention for the past couple of centuries, and apparently you haven't, governments create the crisis, the military usually just ends up having to clean up the mess.
-- Should there be smoke coming out of my CPU?
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.
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