Nuclear Fusion Discovered

prostoalex writes "Both USA Today and The New York Times are reporting on research group from UCLA led by Seth J. Putterman which has discovered a form of nuclear fusion. The impact of the discovery? 'While the device is probably too inefficient to produce electricity or other forms of energy, the scientists say, egg-size fusion generators could someday find uses in spacecraft thrusters, medical treatments and scanners that search for bombs.' The findings are published in Nature magazine."

Comments

great result, but not really a "discovery"

[gevmage]

First of all, humans "discovered" fusion in 1953 with the first fusion bomb, or "hydrogen" bomb. What this speaks of is controlled fusion.

Secondly, this isn't fusion on even a battery scale; this is a few thousand atoms per second or so. So unfortunately, it's not a matter of scaling up to produce a reactor. The amount of energy being put into the system dwarfs by thousands of times the energy from fusion being put out.

Third, this isn't even the discovery of table-top laboratory scale fusion. As an undergraduate, I worked on a muon catalyzed fusion experiment at TRIUMF in Vancouver. By the time I was working on the experiment in 1994, the fusion reaction in the experiment was so well understood that it was being used to analyze other properties of solidified Hydrogen.

And I'm afraid it's a little bit of a dodge to say it's "at room temperature". The article doesn't say this, but presumably this takes place in a vaccum, where temperature is basically undefined in any conventional sense.

So a very nifty result, but not a discovery, I'm afraid. It will very likely be useful to study the fusion process, or perhaps other things as well.

Re:great result, but not really a "discovery"

[saw]

>Third, this isn't even the discovery of table-top laboratory scale fusion. As an undergraduate, I worked on a muon catalyzed fusion experiment at TRIUMF in Vancouver.

Just to be nit-picky: While the cell in which the muon catalyzed fusion takes place may fit on a normal table-top, it would take an awfully large table to hold the proton accelerator, the production target, and the system of vacuum pipes and magnets that decay the pions and select and degrade the muons.

Re:great result, but not really a "discovery"

[nietsch]

There is a feasible fusion generator that you failed to mention, invented in the '60 by the inventor of television, Philo Farnsworth.

Have a look at it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth-Hirsch_Fus or

"Unlike most controlled fusion systems, which slowly heat a magnetically confined plasma, the fusor injects "high temperature" ions directly into a reaction chamber, thereby avoiding a considerable amount of complexity.

When Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor was first introduced to the fusion research world in the late 1960s, the Fusor was the first device that could clearly demonstrate it was producing any fusion reactions at all.

It has since been abandoned as a potential fusion generator, since you still have to put in more energy than comes out of it (like every other fusion technology thus far). Some suggest this may be because it is too simple and offers less ways to spend lots of money on it (and acquire status and research grants by doing so).

And humans discovered fusion in the morning, when they opened their eyes and looked at the sun...

Re:great result, but not really a "discovery"

[merlin_jim]

I'd just like to add a few points.

This method of fusion has been known for at least a decade. But the energy efficiency is so low that it's just not a candidate for power generation. Like the article says, this is primarily targetted as a neutron source. It might be able to be scaled above the break even point, but not without some pretty innovative features.

The basic of it is you get a copper plate, attach it to a special crystal, heat it with a tungsten filament, and immerse it in deuterium gas. The heated crystal strips electrons from the deuterium gas, and the ions are accelerated towards an erbium-deuterium target.

I imagine most of your energy is lost as waste heat. And while this is cold fusion, this is not room temperature fusion. Cold fusion is any fusion that is not heat-pressure catalyzed. While heating is involved here, the energy from the heat pressure is not directly used to bring deuterium nuclei together...

Re:great result, but not really a "discovery"

[TripMaster Monkey]

Yup, a dupe from a post not 24 hours old.

Apparently Zonk is shooting for some sort of record.

Re:great result, but not really a "discovery"

[Andy Mitchell]

Muon catalysed cold fusion has looked like a good possibility for decades. However, as far as I'm aware, the problem is that the muons end up sticking to the fusion products too often rather than going on to catalyse the next fusion. As muons are short lived and "expensive" in terms of energy to produce this is not yet a practical source of power.

I seem to recall that in the forward to one of his books (probably 2010, or one of the other 2001 sequels) Arthur C Clarke talks about this as a possible source of power and that he describes it as working best at about 700C. Very cold compared to every other form of fusion that has been conclusively shown to actually work.

Re:great result, but not really a "discovery"

[retrev]

You should have read the articles more carefully. The /. summary was a poor one. It's a known, common fusion reaction used in many neutron sources...hurl deuterium ions at a deuterium target and you get helium and neutrons. The novel bit is how they accelerate it. They use pyroelectric materials to ionize deuterium gas and accelerate it at a target. This new method eliminates the need for large hi voltage sources, etc. allowing for miniturization of the system. (the prototype is about a foot long and a couple of inches in diameter but they are saying it should be little trouble to shrint the length of the cylinder to a few inches). Also, the reaction is started by chilling the unit slightly (even ice water should be enough) and then heating it to room temperature. It's allowing for smaller, safer, less expensive neutron sources.

Re:great result, but not really a "discovery"

[NardofDoom]

/looks at sun
//discovers fusion
///goes back to work

Re:great result, but not really a "discovery"

[Goldsmith]

Magnetically confined fusion plamas reached the "break even" point a number of years ago.

The point now is to make a fusion reactor which can get that energy out safely in a useful form for less than $1 billion in hardware. Also, they do inject high temperature ions into the chamber, it would be silly not to.

Finally, if you think expensive and complicated are what get physicists prestige, you don't know enough about physicists.

Re:great result, but not really a "discovery"

[grumpygrodyguy]

Dear Craig,

Since you're a knowledgeable physics guy, would you take a moment and respond to my question?

Is there any way to create a Bose-Einstein Condensate of 'fuseable' gas such that the density of the gas is so high that quickly transitioning the gas out of the condensate state would result in fusion?

I.e., if two tritium molecules occupy the same location in a quantum state and are quickly transitioned from that state could their 'proximity' to each other be enough to induce the fusion process without requiring them to have a lot of kinetic energy to overcome protonic repulsion?

If not, is it still possible in theory that if you packed 1000 tritium atoms into a space large enough to only contain a few dozen such atoms at ~Zero Kelvin, would fusion occur?

Thanks.

Slashdot: Nuclear Fusion Dupe Discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Coward writes "Both Slashdot and Slashdot are reporting on the same story about the discovery of a form of nuclear fusion at UCLA. The impact of the dupe? 'While the dupe is probably too inefficient to produce new discussion or other forms of insight, the editors say, it could already find uses ad revenue creation through hundreds of comments about it being a dupe.' The findings are published in anti-slash.org."

Re:Slashdot: Nuclear Fusion Dupe Discovered

[FortKnox]

The truely frustrating part is the moment I saw this a good 15 minutes ago (using my subscription plume to see stories early), I wrote an email immediately to the requested address (daddypants -at- slashdot) and told of the dupe.

This was 'supposed' to help them clean up dupes, yet we find that they are not only failing to check dupes, tehy are also failing to check the account so that those of us (that are paying, not being paid) can help out...

Dupe

[bunratty]

Now if Slashdot could only fuse duplicate stories into one...

Re:Dupe

[Deinhard]

The resulting story would be slightly shorter and there would be a brief flash of brilliance as energy is released.

Sad to see scientists stoop so low

[Anonymous Coward]

scanners that search for bombs

Heh. It's kind of a funny to watch us scientists who're interested in some particular natural phenonmenon to come up with the weirdest reasons why further research on the subject might help in the WAR AGAINST TERRORISM(!!1!one!).

No, actually it's not funny. It's sad.

Egg sized thrusters

[Matey-O]

And REALLY NEAT HANDWARMERS! 2 for $19.95! and If you act now, we'll throw in shipping for FREE! (Latitude and Longitude required for instant shipping...not available in no fly zones.)

Terms, conditions and Homeland Security restrictions may apply.

Re:Egg sized thrusters

[Rorschach1]

Pfff. We've already got nuclear hand warmers. Apparently a failed Russian space launch resulted in the loss of a radioisotope heater unit. Finally turned up in a guard shack, where the guards had been using it to keep their hands warm.

Wait a second...

[nighthawk127127]

What about Spider-Man 2? Precious tridium and all that? You're telling me that that wasn't proof of fusion? And on the big screen, no less!

Again?

[MaestroSartori]

Can you really discover something twice on consecutive days???

"My god, that discovery is even better than it was yesterday! I'm glad we discovered it again. Let's discover pepperoni pizza next!"

Only on Slashdot ;)

Repost

[shamowfski]

Doc Brown: "Marty we've gone back in time!" Marty: "No Doc, It's just a repost."

From the wrms-your-heart dept.

[fname]

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.

Weird

[AKAImBatman]

I would have thought that the editors would have gotten enough complaints about this being a dupe. Oh well.

What this device really is, is not so much of a fusion generator as it is a neutron source. Nuclear physicists use sources such as these for processes such as starting atomic reactions and changing elements. (e.g. You can make lead into gold with enough radiation. Although plutonium production is a far more useful change.)

A nuclear physicist I know suggested that the Sonofusion concept might be useful for the same reasons. Unfortuntely, we are quickly piling up ways of using fusion as neutron sources, but have yet to come up with a single one to produce energy. :-/

Time travel?

[Ira Sponsible]

Obviously this discovery can also allow previously posted articles to Travel Through Time and appear a day later.

Wow.

Seriously now, let's do something about this...

[RootsLINUX]

Why don't the /. administrators install some software that will help prevent these dupes from happening? For example, before allowing a /. admin to post an article, require a search of the past x days/weeks/months of /. posts and use document clustering to rank the top 5 or so most likely pages that are similar to the one about to be posted. Then before the /. poster makes his final decision, force him to look at the titles and summaries of those previous articles to make sure that he (or she..?) is not creating a dupe post. It's a simple and effective solution.

Re:Seriously now, let's do something about this...

[avandesande]

they already are breaking new ground here.... this has to be the worst dupe EVER

Re:Seriously now, let's do something about this...

[Chmarr]

Actually, we can make it even EASIER. All the system has to do is check the URLs in all the previous stories, and if they match, either exactly or just closely, with the URLs in the story-to-be-posted, a flag is raised that the poster has to review and confirm before the story's posted.

The next story will be available soon...

[gellenburg]

... Subscribers can get a chance to see it early!

Unsubscribers can get a chance to read it yesterday!

Re:The impact of the discovery?

[Thud457]

That's fission. Fusion would lead to fewer dupes.

i don't mind all of the dupes

[circletimessquare]

slashdot is a great site and a few dupes every now and then is NOT the end of the world as some spastic types would suggest

the only thing that puzzles me about dupes though is how it is possible that me, a very casual reader, is easily struck by their appearance, when an editor, supposedly editting their own website, fails to be struck by the duplication

i don't understand the mechanism by which that works

Re:i don't mind all of the dupes

[Veinor]

Simple: you only read the ones that interest you; editors must read much more. Therefore, editors are more likely to miss any given mistake than you are.

Re:First Dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever look up at the sun?

That's why the editors can't see the dupes.

For more information

[waldoiverson]

I remember reading an article in Wired back in 1998 that was fascinating. It talked about Cold Fusion, the historical *ahem* problems with theories, and the current research. I am not a physicist but still found this to be informative and interesting. Thanks to the internet, you can still find it here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion .html?pg=1

Let's see

[khrtt]

First of all, this is a dupe

Secondly, they haven't discovered fusion, they have invented a new type of fusion-based neutron generator. Several types of neutron generators are commonly known, and some are simple enough that you could build a working one in your garage. All of them use the same principle, more or less - high voltage, on the order of 100kV, accelerates deuterium ions into a deuterium (or tritium) containing target. So does this one.

The novelty is that they used a pyroelectric crystal to generate the high voltage. This makes the device small and self-contained, with no need for high-voltage electric machinery. All you do is heat-cycle the crystal with some 50 degree C temperature span, and you get fusion neutrons.

Note that like all fusion devices to date (other than bombs), this gadget produces a lot less fusion energy than is put in, and brings us no closer to having a fusion-based power source.

But it's a neat idea. And it makes a neat cheap laboratory neutron source.

Wow...

[Sialagogue]

It seems like somebody's discovering cold fusion just about every day now. . .

Pyoelectric != Piezoelectric

[rhizomania]

pyroelectric crystal [wikipedia.org], a type of crystal used in cell phones to filter signals.

The type of crystals used in cell phones are piezoelectric. While all pyroelectric crystals are piezoelectric, I suspect the converse may not be true.

Re:Fusion, time travel...

[dr_dank]

Fusion, time travel... Multiple posts. Cmon.

Thats what usually happens when they get Slashdot up to 88 miles per hour.

And humans discovered fusion in the morning, when

[dpilot]

Given the state of the modern patent system...

After patenting fusion, would you try to license or sue:

God, for infringing on your patent, with "billions and billions" of offending instances?

Everyone else on Earth, for receiving the benefits of the unlicensed fusion source?

homeland security applicatins

[khrtt]

It took me a while to realize what the heck neutron sources might have to do with homeland security. I think what they have in mind is detection of fissile material (i.e. uranium and plutonium, as in nukes).

You irradiate the baggage/cargo (or whatever) with neutrons, and check the outgoing neutron flux with a geigerzahler or some other neutron detector. If there is fissile material in the baggage, some of it would split, generating detectably more neutrons.

If you want to get cute about it, note that fission neutrons have lower energy than fusion neutrons. Then use a neutron detector that can differentiate neutrons by energy.

Now, you can probably detect neutron flux from spontaneous fission without any irradiation, but depending on type of fissile material and amount of shielding that flux might be too low to detect reliably. And you wouldn't be able to tell an isotopic neutron source from fissile materials. Not that isotopic neutron sources shouldn't raise suspicion if found in cargo/baggage.

The only real problem with a detector based on neutron irradiation is that you have to keep people the hell away from it:-).

Re:homeland security applicatins

[budgenator]

neutrons are a lot better for producing radiographs, for instance if you X-Ray a bullet you can see the bullet itself, the cartrige caseing, and a bit of the primer, with neutrons, you can easily see everything the X-Ray saw, but even the gun-powder grains grains inside the bullet's cartrige.

The difference is enough to tell the difference between a CD player boom-box, and a bomb inside a boom-box even when the explosive are hidden inside the batteries or capacitors.

A far as detecting fissile material I doubt that they need any help; when I had a thallium stress test, there was a sign telling us not to cross the border for a couple of days, without telling customs we had just had a stress test because they'd detect the radiation we were giving off.

Re:homeland security applicatins

[Andy Dodd]

Another reply to your post already commented on this, but neutron sources can be used directly for imaging of non-radioactive materials in a manner very similar to X-ray imaging, except that the capabilities of neutraon imaging are far greater. (For example, neutron imaging can find small stress fractures in metals that X-ray imaging cannot find.)

For a few decades, Cornell University ran a low-power fission reactor (unpressurized, approx. 100-200KW output power), and neutron generation for just such imaging techniques was the primary use for the Ward reactor.

Sadly, the reactor, one of the only low-power research reactors in the country, was shut down around 2000-2002. (I can't remember exactly, but it was the last half of my time as an undergrad there.)

Looking down into the containment pool to see the Cerenkov radiation coming from the core below was one of the most amazing sights I will ever see. (Cerenkov radiation is a bluish light that is emitted when a particle travels faster than the speed of light in the medium it travels through. In this case it was neutrons passing through the water at the bottom of the containment pool.)

"I was hoovering in the nude and..."

[pandrijeczko]

egg-size fusion generators

Who wants to be the first person who walks into a hospital A&E and tries to give a sensible excuse as to how one of those got lodged up his bottom?

Lead into gold ???

[willCode4Beer.com]

I think it would be easier to turn gold into lead.

Gold having an atomic number 79 compared to 82 of lead. Isn't it easier to fuse on extra protons and neutrons with an accelerator than it is to split off just a few. With the atomic weights 197 (Gold) and 207(Lead) You'll need to hit the gold with a hydrogen, a helium, and some extra nuetrons to turn it into lead.
To turn lead into gold, you need a way to strip off this little bit, or split, split, fuse, fuse, and pull out the extra in the middle step.

Just MHO.

I am not a nuclear (or nuclar for those from the red states) physicist. I will not be held responsible if you destroy the planet.

neutrons and cells

[micromuncher]

Though I find the (dup) article very cool, there are a couple things about neutron emitters...

1) as a propulsion source, ion emitters are cheaper/safer
2) from a safety PoV, neutrons don't interact too well with living cells (in any amount) - producing free radicals - almost impossible to shield against

Karma whoring

[digidave]

I'm going to go find the best comment from the previous story and re-post it here, thereby making myself look like a genious and simultaneously increasing my karma into the 'humongous' range.

I'll be right back.

Useful for neutrons, not power (and it's hot)

[digidave]

The following is *not* an informative comment by radtea from the previous story. I wrote this just now. Really.

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.

It's not cold fusion

[khrtt]

"Cold" fusion is when the nuclei fuse at "low" temperature. Not just the outside of the reactor that is cold, but the actual nuclei that fuse are "cold". When you're talking about the temperature of atoms, or nuclei, the temperature is the same as energy. This reactor accelerates the ions to high energy, so it's not "cold fusion".

The original "cold fusion" apparatus (the one that didn't work, or at least no one was ever able to replicate the experiment) used an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes in an electrolyte. Nowhere in the apparatus were the deuterium nuclei accelerated to high speed. The theory was that the current somehow induces the deuterium to infuse into the palladium electrode, where the deuterium nuclei get close enough to each other to fuse, without you having to clash them together at high energy.

That was the cool thing about it (pardon the pun). You didn't have to put much energy into the system, so you had more energy coming out than you had to put in, making it a feasable power source. If it worked:-).

Re:It's not cold fusion

[prefect42]

The definition I've seen of Cold Fusion is "the name for any nuclear fusion reaction that may occur well below the temperature required for thermonuclear reactions (millions of degrees Celsius)"

Sonoluminescence was one of the holy grails of cold fusion that had a rough ride, yet that proposed that the collapsing bubble *did* accelerate the deuterium, and I've yet to be convinced by any that don't claim to accelerate the particles in some way.

Re:It's not cold fusion

[crumley]

People are often sloppy when referring to temperature. According to thermodynamics, in a plasma temperature really refers to the width of the energy distribution of a population of particles.

A single particle doesn't really have a temperature, it has a kinetic energy. A mono-energetic beam of particles has a temeperature of 0 K, but what is usually referred to is the beam energy. The particles in a real beam don't have exactly the beam energy, but instead have a spread around it. A cold beam is a beam in which the particles are nearly mono-energetic (the spread is small compared to the beam energy). A hot beam is one where the spread in energy is large compared to the mean beam energy.

Cold in terms of cold fusion isn't as well defined, but personally I wouldn't call this cold fusion. I would call it table top fusion or a table top accelerator. This experiment is cold compared to the center of the sun, which is part of the reason that fusion yiled is so tiny.

Re:It's not cold fusion

[Andy Dodd]

In the example you describe (and the one described by this article), the definition you state for "cold fusion" does not hold.

In both cases, there is significant local heating. An atomic nucleus accelerated to relativistic speeds (article's example) can be considered to have an extremely high temperature.

In the case of sonoluminescence, the contents of the oscillating bubble become superheated due to adiabatic heating (If you compress a gas without energy loss to the outside, it will heat up. In the case of sonoluminescence, the bubble oscillates rapidly and its volume changes so rapidly and so significantly that the gases inside it become superheated.)

Some corrections to the parent

[Jace Harker]

The amount of energy being put into the system dwarfs by thousands of times the energy from fusion being put out.

They're not claiming it's self-sustaining. They're just claiming that it's novel, which it is, and that it's a neutron generator, which it is.

A commentary article in the current journal of Nature points out that "...portable neutron generators have found a wide range of applications, including welllogging for oil exploration, and the screening of baggage for airline security," but that "high-voltage power is required, and the apparatus is fairly complex."

This device is much simpler and more straightforward.

Third, this isn't even the discovery of table-top laboratory scale fusion.

True, but it is probably one of the simplest and most compact fusion/neutron generating techniques invented to date.

And I'm afraid it's a little bit of a dodge to say it's "at room temperature". The article doesn't say this, but presumably this takes place in a vaccum, where temperature is basically undefined in any conventional sense.

Please RTFA before you critique it. This method uses a pyroelectric crystal, heated presumably up to 100-200 Celsius or so, and a thin deuterium gas and a target made of erbium deuteride, both of which are presumably at or near room temperatures.

In any case, by "cold" fusion we typically mean "at temperatures easily maintainable in a lab," to distinguish from "hot" fusion which occurs at many thousands or millions of degrees.

Also, you should know that even in a "perfect" vacuum, temperature is and can be well-defined, usually by thermal radiation equilibrium with the enclosure. Even outer space has a well-defined thermal radiation background, which I think is within a couple degrees of absolute zero.

Re:Mumbo Jumbo

[geekoid]

"Mumbo, perhaps. Jumbo, perhaps not." -- Futurama.

I wish Slashdot would discover "fusion"

[bombadier_beetle]

... and fuse this duplicate story with the one from yesterday.

I mean, come on, Slashdot editors - if you don't even read your own website, why would you expect anyone else to? At least I don't feel guilty about adblocking ads.odsn.com.

Wow

[tsa]

But the device may one day become a cheaper and more precise way to screen airport baggage or to propel small spacecraft, say the device's creators.

If someone claims two applications of a new technology that are so exteremly unrelated to each other in one sentence I find it hard to take him/her serious. But hey, maybe it can be used to propel a car, cheaply and environmentally friendly.

Summary of the actual nature article

[francisew]

Their setup: The 'crystal' mentioned in the mainstream articles, is a z-cut lithium tantalate crystal (LiTaO3), with the negative axis facing outward onto a hollow copper block. A tiny tungsten probe (80 microns long and 100 nm wide) is then attached to the other crystal face. This probe acts as a tiny mast for the electric field so that there is a powerful electrical field at the tip of the probe. Then there were a bunch of fancy neutron-counters and single-photon counters bundled around it.

What they did: First they added deuterium gas (at 0.7 Pa) and then cooled the crystal down using liquid nitrogen (to 240 K). Then they used a little heater to increase the chamber temperature slowly.

What happened: Less than 3 minutes later, and still below 273 K (0 degrees Celcius), the neutron signal rose above the background level. There were x-rays coming from the probe tip, and a whole bunch of neutrons. After a few more minutes, the electric field was so strong that it caused arcing between the probe tip and the enclosure (because they kept heatingthe crystal, and the field thus kept getting stronger). The arcing stopped the process (and I'd guess it damages the crystal?).

They added a few links in the article to previous papers: a pdf describing the concept they are trying to harness, another pdf with more about how they use the crystals with the deuterium gas, and a brief abstract.

I think this is pretty cool. I bet/hope that before long (within 10 years), this will be powering small extrasolar probes.

Pretty neat stuff. I don't even mind dupe posts when they're on such important stuff.

wow

[cahiha]

Just a few days ago, there was another breakthrough in fusion. I distinctly remember seeing it on Slashdot. With not one, but two such methods, who knows how far we can go...

Re:A new weapon?

[Jim_Callahan]

Why would you waste a perfectly good fusion device to make a dirty bomb? Especially a fusion device which absorbs more power than it produces. The point of a dirty bomb is to, you know, explode. I guess you could powder the device with cesium and then hit it really, really hard with a sledgehammer...


Oh, and the department of defense funds this because the department of energy has no interest in higher-sensitivity methods of detecting fissile materials. They can find their fissile materials just fine with the technology they have, thanks.

Poor

[XDataBurn]

This was covered yesterday.

.XData

Predictions, predictions..... why?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I love the way the scientists make rash predictions about any discovery: "one day an egg-sized thruster...". Remids me of superconductors in the 1980s.

Sure, superconductors have proven useful for a **few** niche uses, but the big hype was all about superconducting power lines etc... Twenty years on and the only place I've really seen superconductors has been in my flying car.

Why do scientists, supposedly conservative types, make these wild predictions? Is it to hype for funding?

Ob. Snoop Dawg

[xRelisH]

I think what they have in mind is detection of fissile material (i.e. uranium and plutonium, as in nukes).

Are you fo shizzle about the fissile?
...
Sorry:)

Still smaller

[swordfishBob]

Yes, it's only about creating a controlled stream of neutrons, with a device the size of a toaster. It's a good step forward for that though.

aparatus for identifying unknown substances non-invasively can now be made cheaper and more portable.

Make it smaller still, and perhaps you could swallow a radiation source to treat bowell cancer on the way through, instead of irradiating your whole body from the outside.

Going briefly over the available documents on this

[coopex]

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...