HEADLINE: Cold fusion rides again; Physicists scoff, but enthusiasts say they now have hard evidence that proves room temperature fusion is real. Bennett Daviss takes a closer look
BYLINE: Bennett Daviss.
Bennett Daviss is a science writer in New Hampshire
BODY:
FROM a distance, the plastic wafer Frank Gordon is proudly displaying looks like an ordinary microscope slide. Yet to Gordon it is hugely more significant than that. If he is to be believed, the pattern of pits embedded in this unassuming sliver of polymer provides confirmation for the idea that nuclear fusion reactions can be made to happen at room temperature, using simple lab equipment. It's a dramatic claim, because nuclear fusion promises virtually limitless energy.
Gordon's plastic wafer is the product of the latest in a long line of "cold fusion" experiments conducted at the US navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, California. What makes this one stand out is that it has been published in the respected peer-reviewed journal Naturwissenschaften , which counts Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and Konrad Lorenz among its eminent past authors (DOI: 10.1007/s00114-007-0221-7). Could it really be true that nuclear fusion can be coaxed into action at room temperature, using only simple lab equipment? Most nuclear physicists don't think so, and dismiss Gordon's pitted piece of plastic as nothing more than the result of a badly conceived experiment. So who is right?
The notion that cold fusion might be possible burst onto the scene in March 1989. That's when chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, working at the University of Utah, announced that they had run a table-top electrolysis experiment in which a fusion reaction took place, producing more energy than it consumed. A world of endless, virtually free fuel seemed to be in the offing - but not for long. Fleischmann and Pons's results quickly proved elusive in other research labs. The hapless pair were laughed out of mainstream science, and most nuclear physicists since have refused to give the slightest credence to the idea.
Not everyone gave up on cold fusion, however. Electrochemists Pamela Mosier-Boss and Stanislaw Szpak at the San Diego centre's navigation and applied sciences department were intrigued. Fortunately, so was Gordon, their boss, who provided limited funding for experiments. Mosier-Boss and Szpak have now run hundreds of tests at weekends and during their spare moments, and have published more than a dozen papers in various peer-reviewed journals (New Scientist , 29 March 2003, p 36).
Typically, these table-top experiments have involved lowering an electrode made of the precious metal palladium into a solution of an inert salt dissolved in "heavy water" - in which a large proportion of the hydrogen atoms are of the element's heavy isotope deuterium. In deuterium, the atomic nucleus contains a neutron in addition to the usual single proton.
When an electric current is passed through the solution, deuterium atoms start to pack into spaces in the palladium's lattice-like atomic framework. Eventually, after a period of days or weeks, there is approximately one deuterium atom for each palladium atom, at which point things start to happen.
Quite what happens or why isn't clear. Whatever it is appears to release more energy, as heat, than the experiment consumes. Proponents of cold fusion claim that the excess energy comes from a nuclear fusion reaction involving the deuterium nuclei.
To get a fusion reaction going normally requires temperatures of millions of degrees, to give the nuclei enough energy to overcome the repulsion between the positive charges of their protons. The result is that two deuterium nuclei combine to produce either tritium - an even heavier hydrogen isotope - plus a free proton, or an atom of helium-3 and a free neutron. Either way the reaction also liberates a large amount of energy.
There is, however, no consensus for how cold fusion might work, and with researc
Er, aren't significant figures supposed to tell you to what degree a measurement is accurate?
I mean, since there can't be any fractions of a person, if we know there are 50 people, we know that there are 50.0, 50.00, 50.000000000000 people, right?
Umm, seedlessness isn't a genetic modification. It's the result of intentionally selecting and breeding grape plants that produce grapes with less seeds than the average grape. This is done over several generations until no seeds are produced. Think Gregor Mendel and a Punnett square. It's the manipulation of pre-existing genetic information to achieve some desired end.
Genetic Modification is inserting (or deleting) pieces from the genome (DNA) of a certain whatever. Introducing pieces of new genetic material is certainly different from what you're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it works so well for Babies
Something buggy on Linux?!?!?!?!
What a liar, everybody knows that things can only be buggy on Windows.
HEADLINE: Cold fusion rides again;
Physicists scoff, but enthusiasts say they now have hard evidence that proves room temperature fusion is real. Bennett Daviss takes a closer look
BYLINE: Bennett Daviss.
Bennett Daviss is a science writer in New Hampshire
BODY:
FROM a distance, the plastic wafer Frank Gordon is proudly displaying looks like an ordinary microscope slide. Yet to Gordon it is hugely more significant than that. If he is to be believed, the pattern of pits embedded in this unassuming sliver of polymer provides confirmation for the idea that nuclear fusion reactions can be made to happen at room temperature, using simple lab equipment. It's a dramatic claim, because nuclear fusion promises virtually limitless energy.
Gordon's plastic wafer is the product of the latest in a long line of "cold fusion" experiments conducted at the US navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, California. What makes this one stand out is that it has been published in the respected peer-reviewed journal Naturwissenschaften , which counts Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and Konrad Lorenz among its eminent past authors (DOI: 10.1007/s00114-007-0221-7). Could it really be true that nuclear fusion can be coaxed into action at room temperature, using only simple lab equipment? Most nuclear physicists don't think so, and dismiss Gordon's pitted piece of plastic as nothing more than the result of a badly conceived experiment. So who is right?
The notion that cold fusion might be possible burst onto the scene in March 1989. That's when chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, working at the University of Utah, announced that they had run a table-top electrolysis experiment in which a fusion reaction took place, producing more energy than it consumed. A world of endless, virtually free fuel seemed to be in the offing - but not for long. Fleischmann and Pons's results quickly proved elusive in other research labs. The hapless pair were laughed out of mainstream science, and most nuclear physicists since have refused to give the slightest credence to the idea.
Not everyone gave up on cold fusion, however. Electrochemists Pamela Mosier-Boss and Stanislaw Szpak at the San Diego centre's navigation and applied sciences department were intrigued. Fortunately, so was Gordon, their boss, who provided limited funding for experiments. Mosier-Boss and Szpak have now run hundreds of tests at weekends and during their spare moments, and have published more than a dozen papers in various peer-reviewed journals (New Scientist , 29 March 2003, p 36).
Typically, these table-top experiments have involved lowering an electrode made of the precious metal palladium into a solution of an inert salt dissolved in "heavy water" - in which a large proportion of the hydrogen atoms are of the element's heavy isotope deuterium. In deuterium, the atomic nucleus contains a neutron in addition to the usual single proton.
When an electric current is passed through the solution, deuterium atoms start to pack into spaces in the palladium's lattice-like atomic framework. Eventually, after a period of days or weeks, there is approximately one deuterium atom for each palladium atom, at which point things start to happen.
Quite what happens or why isn't clear. Whatever it is appears to release more energy, as heat, than the experiment consumes. Proponents of cold fusion claim that the excess energy comes from a nuclear fusion reaction involving the deuterium nuclei.
To get a fusion reaction going normally requires temperatures of millions of degrees, to give the nuclei enough energy to overcome the repulsion between the positive charges of their protons. The result is that two deuterium nuclei combine to produce either tritium - an even heavier hydrogen isotope - plus a free proton, or an atom of helium-3 and a free neutron. Either way the reaction also liberates a large amount of energy.
There is, however, no consensus for how cold fusion might work, and with researc
you mean, an invisible series of tubes?
Er, aren't significant figures supposed to tell you to what degree a measurement is accurate?
I mean, since there can't be any fractions of a person, if we know there are 50 people, we know that there are 50.0, 50.00, 50.000000000000 people, right?
It doesn't seem like sig-figs is applicable here.
Like the pirate in that bar joke?
Arrrrrrrrgh.
Umm, seedlessness isn't a genetic modification. It's the result of intentionally selecting and breeding grape plants that produce grapes with less seeds than the average grape. This is done over several generations until no seeds are produced. Think Gregor Mendel and a Punnett square. It's the manipulation of pre-existing genetic information to achieve some desired end.
Genetic Modification is inserting (or deleting) pieces from the genome (DNA) of a certain whatever. Introducing pieces of new genetic material is certainly different from what you're talking about.
They've all gotten promptly dropped into the Recycle Bin.
Dude, that's how your parents find out! You've gotta Shift+Del.