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Bubble Fusion Researcher Faces Fraud Trial
An anonymous reader writes "In 2001, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan shocked the world by claiming he had successfully produced a positive net energy bubble fusion reaction; cold fusion. The New York Times reports that a congressional hearing is now under way against Taleyarkhan, even though Purdue University has already cleared the scientist of any wrongdoing. Dr. Taleyarkhan said last night in an e-mail message that the subcommittee's report represents 'a gross travesty of justice.' He asked, 'Where are the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the Asian community during this episode that has caused this biased and openly one-sided smear campaign?' You can view the full (colorful) e-mail at Dailytech."
WOW, that's a loaded statement. Let me correct a few things:
1. Taleyarkhan didn't report his research until 2002.
2. I have never seen a source that claims that sonofusion is currently net positive. That's an incredibly difficult feat to achieve, and has been an active point of research.
3. Bubble Fusion is NOT Cold Fusion any more than a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor is. In fact, the reaction is hotter than hades. (About 10 megakelvins, or about as hot as the center of the sun.)
This is a bit of a misstatement. According to TFA, the Congressional subcommittee that's responsible for funding various scientific endeavors into new energy sources asked Purdue to review its finding. So Purdue reopened the case, and is again putting Taleyarkhan through the wringer.
On a side note, shouldn't this be listed under "Science" rather than "Hardware"?
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Congress is in on it too! In the pockets of big (evil) theoretical science! I mean, why else would they want to have a hearing for this man?
I've done summer research for my Physics degree on Sonoluminescence, and I can definitely attest that it isn't a waste of grant money. I've read Dr. Taleyarkhan's sork, and I can say that a little deuterated water, some radiation detectors, and a piezo-electric speaker is a pretty cheap way to try to do fusion. So what if it never is going to achieve break-even? So what if only a few neutrons of fusion are produced, if any at all?
Sonoluminescence is really one of the easiest, cheapest ways to achieve simultaneously high pressures and high temperatures in a controlled fashion. Seriously. All you need is a jar of (ideally "de-gassed" or boiled) water, a piezo-electric speaker, something to drive it with at a certain frequency, and another microphone to detect when you are in resonance. Heck, you don't even need a microphone (by the end of the summer, I had developed my sense of hearing that I could detect the resonance and achieve the sonoluminescence without a microphone and a scope).
Trust me, people don't understand sonoluminescence well enough yet to actually rule out the possibility that enough heat and pressure occur to produce a few fusion reactions. These are a few of the something like a half-dozen theories on the source of the light of sonoluminescence: the Casimir effect (relativistic accelerating refractive index interfaces... more unlikely than sonofusion), Bremsstrahlung radiation, smeared spectral lines, and plain old Blackbody radiation.
I am glad some research money went to this guy. I say he should get more! I mean, this is NOTHING like cold fusion, and I believe that money should be spread out when it comes to fusion research, not just concentrated into a money-hole like the ITER project, which if it produces any positive net-energy, it will be from burning the $100 bills of the tax-payers (not just US tax-payers, either).
Which is interesting. The Asian community is a "victim", if you will, of positive racism. Meaning, folks automatically assume they are smarter than the rest of us. Who was the Asian guy on "American Idol" or one of those clones who wanted to sing and he was complaining that folks thought he was a chemist and not a singer? I thought that was a perfect example of that form of prejudice. It's the same in Silicon Valley. I once read somewhere that Indian expatriates have an easier time getting venture funding than us lazy dumb Americans.
It's the same in other areas (Liberal and Fine Arts) where having an English accent makes you more credible. Isn't interesting that all of the American Idol clones have a guy with an English accent?
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As far as congress, they are simply doing what will get their faces, and more importantly their names in the media, so that they will win their next election. They would be getting free campaign advertising out of it, more than money can buy. They look like they are serving the public interest, when there are more pressing issues, which are more difficult to navigate politically. This issue is 'safe'. If they 'convict' the guy, they come out as heroes; if they've suffered an innocent man, then there is little political fallout, in terms of election, special interest group ( and no, pressure from the scientific community is not strong enough to motivate congress ), corporations who finance their campaigns... and they still get their names in the papers and on TV.
It's basically a popularity competition... <sigh> I guess representative democracy is the least worst form of government that has been shown to work. Personally, I'm in favor of direct democracy.
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It's called the Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen cycle.
Just as a chemical catalyst reduces the energy needed to perform a chemical reaction, and allows certain reactions to take place that couldn't happen directly, so does a nuclear catalyst allow nuclear reactions to take place at lower energies than would otherwise be needed.
This also explains why oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon are so common, as well.
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