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Team Confirms UCLA Tabletop Fusion
An anonymous reader writes "A team of New York physicists has confirmed that a tabletop contraption made at UCLA does in fact generate nuclear fusion at room temperatures, using pairs of crystals and a small tank of deuterium. But unlike less reliable reports back in the 1980s, there's no talk this time of producing endless supplies of power. Rather, the technology could lead to ultra-portable x-ray machines and even a wearable device that could provide safe, continuous cancer treatment."
Its amazingly clear that not only have few of you RTFA, most have not even gotten past the title before you threw out a post.
Its a whole 4 sentences which make it clear that this is NOT a power source, and half the posts are talking about its potential as a power source.
Now if I could just find a way to bottle the power of human stupidity...
Is it just me, or did this article make the Renselaar folks seem like smug jerks? As in, "Yes, not only did we prove that it works, but we proved that we can do it a lot better than those toking, surfing, hippies!"
Ahem... or out of the country. Keeping tabs on one of the worlds largest nuclear stockpiles is a major, fulltime job and not one to be taken lightly.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
You missed the other key application... A cheap ready supply of neutrons is exactly what you need to transmute elements... Sadly, this includes the most common element transmutation carried out by mankind to date... U-238 to Pu-239. Cheap tabletop neutrons means cheap Pu-239 without the cost & mess of having a breeder fission reactor...
:(
This will make non-proliferation all the harder.
Erm, producing neutrons implies some sort of nuclear activity. Either fission or fusion of some sort of decay process (spontaneous neutron emission). By ruling out fission and neutron emission via decay, which are possible to do by knowing the inputs, you're pretty much stuck with fusion as an explanation for the output.
You make it sound like shuffling some neutrons around is easy. It's not. Producing a source of neutrons is a pretty nice feat by itself. However there's a very, very large difference between producing neutrons via fusion, and plonking down a SimCity 2000-esque, pollution-free, "Fusion Power Plant."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Another big difference is this team is announcing their results in a technical journal, not in a press conference.
It'll be interesting to see what comes of this.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Bottle the power of human stupidity? Sorry, you are too late. Look no further than the Vatican, Al Qaeda, or any other religions institution. Superstition, fear of death, and the promise of eternal life are all their tools, and with proper respect of their un-verifiable claims (faith), lack of reason, and willingness to submit you too can be their servant.
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
I think the point was that you don't even need to get to the inspections point...just blow it up while it's still on the ship. Accuracate placement is not a high priority with fission bombs.
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
[[Speedy particles smashing into each other have a lot of kinetic energy in the center of mass inertial system. This is nothing different than 'heat'.]]
/.'s groupthink and your post gets moderated higher than mine. ("He's louder so he knows better...") I infer from your arrogance that you probably have a PhD in theoretical physics - but you should've learned some communication skills, too :-)
Wrong. Heat is random motion.
Well, the 'smashing' part I explicitely stated accounts for the thermalization.
If simple kinetic energy was all it took to have heat, then any gas cloud out in space with a large velocity relative to us would be extremely "hot." But we all know intuitively that things do not change temperature just because they speed up. The air in a moving car is not hotter than the air in a parked car. Heat is the random motion of particles with respect to each other .
No, not 'respect to each other', in respect to the center of mass, as I wrote. Heat is the average kinetic energy of particles (in classical statistical mechanics).
The collision of a few particles doesn't qualify.
And why not? Care to explain?
When gas quickly depressurizes, it cools down. Ever wonder why? It's because as the gas escapes, the particles which are near each other tend to all move in the same direction (outward) and thus their random motions with respect to each other are decreased. Thus, the temperature drops.
Yes, the temperature drops. But the gas still carries the same amount of heat (transportation by photons excluded). Smash two nuclei, they interact, a hot ball of reaction products results and cools down as the particles move away from each other according to a law similar to pV=NRT.
The temperature drops, the amount of heat in this ensemble of molecules/atoms/particles stays the same.
Or consider how a rocket nozzle works by focusing the molecular motions in a particular direction (by forcing the gas through a small opening to increase the pressure and then into a cone to suddenly decrease it), thereby converting the high pressure and heat of the exhaust gas into directed kinetic energy.
What do you want to say with this paragraph?
Learn more before making these kinds of proclamations.
Sigh. Bold and derogatory statements like this activate