Cowlix Wearing my mind on my sleeve

Saturday, March 09, 2002
Fusion update

The press release from Science has more details on the reports of cold fusion being achieved by the team led by Rusi Taleyarkhan:

The experiments performed by the Science researchers suggest that nuclear fusion might occur in bubbles created by "acoustic cavitation," a phenomenon studied for nearly a century. In acoustic cavitation, the pressure of a sound wave creates and collapses bubbles in a liquid. The first part of the wave is a tension wave, which stretches the liquid and pulls apart a space for bubbles to form when the liquid is bombarded by energetic particles like neutrons. A second compression wave follows close behind, squeezing and bursting the bubbles, which then emit a brilliant but extremely brief flash of light called sonoluminescence.

Sonoluminescence's exact cause is still somewhat mysterious, but many researchers believe that the shock waves of the collapse generate high temperatures and pressures in the bubble's gas, which releases a burst of energy. Scientists have learned to trap single bubbles within a sound wave, causing them to swell and shrink and emit light in a regular fashion.

Temperatures inside these bubbles can be as high as 5000-7000 degrees Kelvin, about as hot as the sun's surface. But, recent experiments by a number of researchers suggest that bubble temperatures can reach even higher temperatures--closer to the heat needed for nuclear fusion--if the original bubbles are very small and allowed to grow rapidly before collapse.

Note the temperature in the above - this is not cold fusion, as the original news reports were saying.

Subsequent to publication, another team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory attempted to reproduce the results and reported that they have not yet seen signs the neutron emission that would be produced from fusion, but the original team looking at the ORNL data disagrees and says there was in fact fusion detected by the ORNL team. Both agree there is more work to do.

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