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."

Comments

Clearing Up Confusion

[AKAImBatman]

In 2001, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan shocked the world by claiming he had successfully produced a positive net energy bubble fusion reaction; cold fusion.

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.)

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.

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"?

Re:Clearing Up Confusion

[AKAImBatman]

Cold Fusion is "cold" because it has a relatively low energy input for the energy output. In addition, the apparatus can be initiated at room temperatures. Sonofusion, OTOH, requires a great deal of energy to be poured into the system before obtaining any energy back out. The apparatus also does not "start" at room temperatures, but receives powerful sonic waves to initiate the reaction. If you scaled it up to the size and complexity of Tokamak, you'd end up with a similar energy budget and "extremely hot" design. (Assuming that sonofusion is a viable concept to begin with.)

You need to remember, Tokamak is basically a REALLY LARGE Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor. It uses different technologies to accomplish its goal, but both devices perform plasma confinement to achieve fusion.

Re:Clearing Up Confusion

[gr8_phk]

One remark: any fusion will be hot in your sense.

Not necessarily. Using kinetic energy to overcome the electrostatic repulsion of nuclei would be hot. Finding a way to lower the barrier or tunnel through it need not be hot. The original cold fusion concept involved palladium saturated with hydrogen - a state that wasn't well understood at the time and may well be different than considering a 2 atom system in a hot low density environment. Anyway, I always thought "cold fusion" meant not using huge kinetic energy to make it work regardless of the scale.

On another note. I always found it interesting that D+D = He4 fusion is rejected by the physicists because the resulting He4 would have too much energy and eject a neutron to become He3. So why then does He4 constitute 90-something percent of the naturally occurring helium? What is the reaction that is supposed to produce this atom? It's just a question, I'm not claiming anyone is right or wrong with this. I really want to understand where it is supposed to come from.

Sonoluminescence is very, very cheap.

[Robotbeat]

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).

CNO cycle - nuclear catalyst

[wowbagger]

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.