Slashdot Mirror
Cold Fusion Scientist Exonerated
Icarus1919 writes "New Scientist reports that the scientist who discovered a possible cold fusion reaction by bombarding a solvent with neutrons and sonic waves has recently been exonerated of accusations of scientific misconduct following the verification of his results by another scientist."
The person accusing Taleyarkhan of misinterpreting data was one of his own post-docs. I wonder what that person has to say now? I think it's easy to make allegations and its difficult to shake the effects of false allegations.
First, the article title is VERY misleading. As others have pointed out, the question at hand is whether sonoluminescence can lead to fusion. In some peoples' minds, this is "cold" fusion, because the whole damned apparatus doesn't have to be a plasma. However, where the fusion is claimed to be taking place (in the middle of tremendously cavitating bubbles) *IS* in a plasma state (at least for part of an acoustic cycle). Thus, this might be better termed "locally hot" fusion or something. Or just "sonofusion", which everyone in the field seems to understand.
Second, the New Scientist blurb is interesting in that Rusi seems to have been cleared of scientific fraud. The question, if I remember correctly, was whether the neutrons he was seeing were due to poor experimental techniques, contamination (accidental or purposeful), or simply weren't there in the first place. This blurb SEEMS to clear him of accusations of purposeful contamination and just making up the existence of neutrons. However, it doesn't mean that they were really there, and certainly not that he's really found thermal neutrons from fusion in his experiments. THAT will take a whole lot more "confirmation".
(IAAP, but haven't been following this conflict closely. The last I paid attention was at the ASA meeting last December in Hawai'i. So I'm sure someone will correct my--- inadvertent---mistakes. This is, after all, Slashdot.)
I can assure you that Taleyarkhan is *not* stupid. The problem is, his main (or at least one of the originals) detractor is Seth Putterman, who is also decidedly *not* stupid. This is one of the few issues I feel a little more familiarity with than most slashdot readers, and nothing in this case is as clear-cut as "he's obviously dumb or a liar".
It's easy to fuse hydrogen at room temperature, as long as you first replace the electrons in the atoms with muons. (Obtaining the muons is an exercise left to the reader.)
Apparently, Purdue refused to state what the exact allegations investigated were, how many inquiries it conducted, or what its conclusions were based on. Hard to tell if the investigation's conclusions were arrived at fairly or were politically motivated. More details in this NYT article which I found from this blog entry.
Your definition of cold fusion is fusion happing at relatively low temperatures I take it?
Cold fusion is fusion that takes place when the fusing nuclei are at temperatures significantly below those required to overcome the Coulomb barrier. It has nothing to do with the temperature of the laboratory that the experiment takes place in, or the temperature of the majority of the mass of the apparatus. For example, we do not call tokomak's "cold fusion" because despite the fact that they sometimes use superconducting magnets and therefore are not just "cold" but positively cryogenic, the nuclei that do the fusing are HOT.
Any other use of the term "cold fusion" is terribly mis-leading for two reasons. One is that it invokes a completely arbitrary and unphysical division between various kinds of hot fusion, calling some kinds of hot fusion "cold" because someone happens to feel that it is important that some part of the apparatus that is not undergoing a fusion reaction is cold. The second reason is that it fails to distinguish between pressure-driven fusion of the kind claimed by Pons and Fleishman, and temperature-driven fusion which has actually been observed.
People who use "cold fusion" when they mean "sonofusion" are either honestly ignorant of the differences between hot fusion and cold fusion, or are being wilfully dishonest.
Despite the fact that neither Pons and Fleishman nor anyone else has ever been able to provide convincing evidence that pressure-driven fusion occurs between room-temperature nuclei, it is still the case that if anyone could figure out how to exert sufficient pressure, then the atoms would fuse, regardless of the amount of kinetic energy (that is, even at low temperatures.)
So there is a real distinction in the physics of "hot" and "cold" fusion, and in terms of that unambiguous and physically interesting distinction, sonofusion, if it happens at all, is almost certainly hot. Although if the centre of the bubbles really is as hot as they seem, it is a mystery as to why we don't see any neutron production in water, but only in more complex organic molecules--the phenomenon remains mysterious and there is still a lot of work to be done to reveal its secrets.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
No no... exonerated, not exhumed.
Ah, and here i thought exxonerated mean having a bunch of oil spilled on you.
Have you read my journal today?
Well, I am that "other scientist." It is nice to see good press for bubble fusion reach slashdot (no, I didn't submit it.)
First, I agree with the previous posters that this is not "cold fusion." The centers of the collapsing bubbles are very hot. Apparently hot enough to cause fusion.
The research I published was based on experiments conducted at Purdue University using a setup provided by Dr. Taleyarkhan. All equipment calibration, measurements, and data analysis were preformed by me and my students. We had full access to the equipment and we were very careful to make sure that there was nothing to contaminate our data.
People who have read the actual paper (Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, vol 95, p 736) would agree that the results published leave no room for doubt that the neutrons are caused by the collapsing bubbles in a deuterated fluid - the appropriate control experiments were performed - the statistics are significant.
The controversy comes because several well respected and talented physicists have not been able to reproduce Dr. Taleyarkhan's results in their own labs. This has led several people (including an editor from Nature Magazine) to conclude that Dr. Taleyarkhan must be faking his data.
I cannot explain why it has been so hard to reproduce the results in another lab except to say that null results are pretty easy to get in any sensitive experiment and it originally took Dr. Taleyarkhan several years to perfect his methods.
I suspect that all that is needed is a little more time and we will hear about several labs who have confirmed this work completely independently. Of course we are working on that very thing here at LeTourneau University.
Even if it takes some time to reproduce the results at another lab, having independent researchers come to Purdue and reproduce the experiments should be a big step in moving past the controversy.
Respectfully,
Dr. Ted Forringer
Assistant Professor of Physics
LeTourneau University