Posted on 03/03/2004 6:49:50 AM PST by 68skylark
Scientists are again claiming they have made a Sun in a jar, offering perhaps a revolutionary energy source, and this time even some skeptics find the evidence intriguing enough to call for a closer look.
Using ultrasonic vibrations to shake a jar of liquid solvent the size of a large drink cup, the scientists say, they squeezed tiny gas bubbles in the liquid so quickly and violently that temperatures reached millions of degrees and some of the hydrogen atoms in the solvent molecules fused, producing a flash of light and energy.
"It can do some interesting science stuff as is," said Dr. Richard T. Lahey, a professor of engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an author of a paper describing the findings that will appear in the journal Physical Review E.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
The experiment could conceivably shrink the science of fusion — slamming hydrogen atoms together, producing heat and light — from giant, expensive reactors to the tabletop.
When this team of researchers made the same claim in an article in the journal Science two years ago, many scientists reacted with skepticism, even ridicule. But new experiments, using better detectors, offer more convincing data that the phenomenon is real.
"We've addressed all the issues and now they all speak for themselves with far greater intensity than they did before," said Dr. Rusi P. Taleyarkhan, the scientist who conducted the experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and is a professor of nuclear engineering at Purdue University.
Skepticism remains, but Dr. Lawrence A. Crum, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington who was highly critical of the Science paper, said the new work was "much better" and deserved attention to determine whether the effect could be reproduced.
"It's getting to the point where you can't ignore it," Dr. Crum said.
For decades, physicists have dreamed of harnessing the ferocious alchemy of the Sun as a clean, limitless energy source. Most experiments have been conducted in giant, expensive reactors using magnetic fields to confine the ultrahot gases.
In contrast, the new experiment, which cost less than $1 million, uses the power of sound to create energy comparable to the inside of stars.
To many scientists, however, the phenomenon, nicknamed sonofusion, bears uncomfortable similarities to "cold fusion," which has now been discredited.
Sonofusion has already achieved more scientific respectability than cold fusion ever did, with two articles published in major journals.
And unlike cold fusion, sonofusion is based on known science. Scientists have long observed a phenomenon known as sonoluminescence, in which a burst of ultrasound causes a bubble in a liquid to collapse and emit a flash of light; some have speculated that the gases trapped in the collapsing bubbles could be heated to temperatures hot enough for fusion to occur.
Still, controversy enveloped the Science paper two years ago. The new research by Dr. Taleyarkhan and Dr. Lahey provides a much clearer picture of neutrons that are ejected when fusion occurs.
Many scientists like Dr. Glenn Young, head of the physics division at Oak Ridge, said the experiment was solid, but still incomplete.
"Neutrons are slippery little rascals," he said. "They can fool you. They can bounce and show up around corners you don't expect."
It does sound more credible than previous attempts.
I have that prollem all the time.
Show me the helium. Show me the neutrons.
And you can't get out more than you put in, you can only try to make sure that whatever you are putting in costs less than what you are getting out (amount of coal $$ < amount of revenue produced by electricity $$).
Smackdown.
In a most pure sense you are right. Since mass/energy will always remain constant. However in a fusion equation you get to use part of the mass in accounting for the energy coming out of the reaction. You are tapping into "energy" that is not usually accounted for by converting a small portion of the mass to energy. That my friend, is a whole lotta energy.
Depending on how you look at it, you ARE getting more energy than the quantity of thermodynamic energy you put into the process.
Now it remains to be seen if fusion is really going on here.
This has been around long enough for the Hollywood movie to have come and gone and been forgotten. Which is why I can't remember the title.
"Helium four was produced in a vacuum tight system and measured by mass spectrometry with no measurable accompanying radiation. This fusion product from a piezo driven, acoustic reactor forces deuterons into a metallic foil. We believe the reaction is the result of the adiabatic collapse of transient bubbles in D_2O. The collapse process forms high-density plasma jets that are further z-pinched and then implanted into the foil lattices where the DD fusion takes place. With no evidence of long range radiation, the mc^2 energy was converted to heat. The reactor gases were analyzed at levels as high as 500 ppm of ^4He, which is 100 times that found in air. The SEM, Scanning Electron Microscope, photos of target foil surfaces show evidence of violent activity identified as ejecta sites varying in size from 100 to 10000 nm in diameter. The ^4He, radiation, excess heat, and SEM measurements support the DD fusion explanation."
If this stuff is true,
then one of the wildest
tin foil subject heads
might get re-opened.
Sonoluminescence is
not uncommon in
biological
systems -- i.e., animals
and possibly us.
Pinkie-size marine crustaceans whose snappy noisemaking has already captivated scientists also stage some flashy pyrotechnics, researchers now find. While earlier experiments had shown that so-called snapping shrimp generate imploding air bubbles that make loud popping sounds (SN: 9/23/00, p. 199), a new study reveals that those collapsing bubbles emit flashes of light and may flare as hot as the sun's surface.If animals have
In the Oct. 4 Nature, Detlef Lohse of Twente University in Enschede, the Netherlands, and his colleagues present measurements of those light flashes. Using readings from a sensitive light detector called a photomultiplier tube, they offer the first evidence of a biological version of the phenomenon known as sonoluminescence. ... Cavitation bubbles in synovial fluid may even explain the sound of "cracking" knuckles, he ventures. And if that's the case, he says, "I'd be willing to bet pitchers of beer that cracking knuckles will also generate small amounts of luminescence."
It remains to be seen if these results are repeatable and credible. If so, I would expect these gentlemen to be heading to Oslo sometime in the future.
For what its worth, I had read about some similar experiments many years ago (15?) on one of those "alternative science/free energy" websites, well, it wasnt even on the web back then, it was a computer BBS. I just checked an they are still there, at www.keelynet.com.
Something about water being subjected to ultrasound, and then doing some real weird things like this.
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