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Cold Fusion in a Breadbox Instead of a Bottle
rawbytes writes "For the last few years, mentioning cold fusion around scientists has been a little like mentioning Bigfoot or UFO sightings. After the 1989 announcement of fusion in a bottle and the subsequent retraction, the whole idea of cold fusion seemed a bit beyond the pale. But that's all about to change. A very reputable, very careful group of scientists at the University of Los Angeles (Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski, Seth Putterman) has initiated a fusion reaction using a laboratory device that's not much bigger than a breadbox, and works at roughly room temperature. This time, it looks like the real thing." From the article: "Scientists have gotten fusion to occur in the laboratory before, but for the most part, they've tried to mimic conditions inside the sun by whipping hydrogen gas up to extreme temperatures or slamming atoms together in particle accelerators. Both of those options require huge energies and gigantic equipment, not the sort of stuff easily available to build a generator. Is there any way of getting protons close enough together for fusion to occur that doesnt require the energy output of a large city to make it happen? The answer, it turns out, is yes."
Thursday April 28, @16:57
...when I see multiple peer-reviewed articles reporting that others have been able to duplicate this experiment. :P
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
It was reported on in the press (MSNBC) and Slashdot had a lively discussion here and slashdotted a UCLA server. There is more at a (hopefully non-slashdotted) UCLA website.
The article clearly notes that this is nowhere near break-even. Yet, as it notes, there are many applications beyond positive energy production. If it is a good source of neutrons, then it is well worth the effort.
I am optimistic. We have a slightly-puritanical mindset that we have to work for everything. Well...we are coming upon an easy and elegant solution to our energy problems. Even fission needs to be explored more as we find newer ways to contain the radiation (nuclear batteries lasting years could come soon if we get over our hangups).
Transcend Humanity. Please.
That's a pretty heady group.
Putterman is particularly famous for his work on sonoluminescence.
Funnily enough, this is not really the core research of Putterman, his earlier work has largely been in the area of blackbody radiation, sonoluminescence and certain related quantum phenomena.
More technical details would be nice.
Apple -> Intel
Transmeta go out of business
Cold fusion
What the hell can happen next? My money's on Bill Gates being found dead with a grapefruit up his arse up a crack whore alley...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
It's not super clear, but I don't think it's a contradiction. Saying "don't expect fusion to become readily available" doesn't mean that it won't, just that you shouldn't expect it. Saying "it really may not be long" doesn't mean it will happen soon, just that it could.
The summary of that is, "readily available fusion could happen soon, but don't count on it."
you forgot the most important part: "For the time being". That means that, in the future (perhaps not very long), things could change. She doesn't contradict yourself unless you take words out of context. :]
First: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/2 7/1930218
2 8/1518226
0 7/1635251
Second: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/
And now Third: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
OMG, I'm on slashdot!!
/sorry
//had to
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
I know that I would give more weight to the CSM's coverage of this story than I would, say, Fox News, The Washington Post or Slashdot.org.
McGuyver did this in Ep. 26 with a matchbox, two cotton buds, a filling from his tooth and some scotch tape.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
From the article:
Instead of using high temperatures and incredible densities to ram protons together, the scientists at UCLA cleverly used the structure of an unusual crystal.
That crystal wouldn't happen to be Dilithium would it?
I don't mind dupes. The whining about dupes I could live without though.
:)
Seriously. If you see a dupe, don't read it. I didn't see this the first and second times, so this is cool for me
My other car is first.
Is this the first tripe article ever!br>br> No, most of the articles on slashdot are tripe. Yet for some reason we all keep coming back.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Let's see -- they've talked about cracks in the electrodes, and stressed crystals.
...
Can we make a better fusion device using precise fabrication tools? -- produce exactly the right materials and spacing to create tiny little accelerators, artificial crystals, to optimize this procedure?
If so, can we make a "sea urchin" with a few thousand such little accelerators, all pointed precisely at a tiny pellet -- a miniature version of the giant laser devices currently being built?
Build the capacitor, the accelerators and the fusion core all on a little chip, wind it up
If so there'd be a nice pellet for for a fusion pellet gun to use to drive an Orion-type spacecraft. Even if it DID take more energy to manufacture than it'd produce, it'd be one heck of a good way to store energy for, um, rapid decomposition devices (things that go boom).
Or, a wholly different approach --
I've always wondered what would happen if someone manages to cause fusion to occur between a couple of Bose-Einstein Condensates.
Make them out of, on the one hand, tritium atoms, and on the other hand, deuterium atoms. Result, one large 'atom' of each element. Very large. Then clap your hands. Fusion?
Or better yet, use condensates of boron and hydrogen, of course.
The boron-hydrogen method is described as currently being worked on (not using Bose-Einstein condensates -- using something like the Philo Farnsworth accelerator), if I read it correctly, here:
http://www.focusfusion.org/energy2.html