Posted on 03/09/2002 2:38:10 AM PST by The Raven
Research could have weapons implications
By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writerOAK RIDGE - If bubble fusion works, will a bubble bomb be far behind? Rusi Taleyarkhan, lead scientist on the Oak Ridge research project, acknowledged this week that his work with collapsing bubbles is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - the central research arm of the Defense Department - because of its potential military applications. "The energy density of a reaction such as this is about a million times more than any known conventional explosive," Taleyarkhan said. "So if you can tap this and make it work, you've got yourself the making of a far superior military force than anyone else." Taleyarkhan is a senior scientist in Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Engineering Science and Technology Division. He began his work with sono-luminescence about five years ago with $100,000 in seed money from a special fund at ORNL. The research uses sound waves to generate bubbles that expand and collapse explosively, with the pent-up gas generating heat and energy in the process. "After getting the appropriate insights from that research that we did, some ideas came to me, and I wrote up a proposal for DARPA consideration," Taleyarkhan said. His was one of three proposals funded in a research competition by the defense agency. The promising work by Taleyarkhan and several colleagues was published this week in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The paper indicated the research team may have initiated nuclear fusion on a small scale by collapsing bubbles in a beaker filled with deuterated acetone. The preliminary results have drawn worldwide attention. Taleyarkhan said his immediate goals are to try to boost the scale of the experiment to test its capabilities as an energy source and to work with other scientists around the globe as they try to replicate the experiment and prove or disprove the techniques involved. He said DARPA is still funding his team's work, although the money has been spread thin to cover equipment needs and other costs. "They intend taking it to the next step," he said. Asked if he considers his research to be early weapons development, Taleyarkhan replied, "I like to keep an open mind because weapons can be used to protect yourself, too." When the question was rephrased, he noted, "I consider myself to be working on the early stages of net energy generation, which can then be used for anything you want. The same knife can be used to cut steak or make steak." Taleyarkhan said the defense agency has shown interest in possible weapons applications as well as using bubble fusion as a portable energy source. One of the Army's goals is to create an ultra-high-tech soldier over the next decade, equipped with an advanced body suit. The exo-skeleton would act as lightweight armor, sealing wounds if necessary, and provide a range of advanced communications and battle-sustaining capabilities. It will need a low-level power source, and Taleyarkhan said his research might fit that niche. "Something of this sort, with the high energy density, if it could be shielded and configured right, would be a major boon, not just for weapons, but also for life sustenance and the like," he said. The work with collapsing bubbles, however, is still very much in the basic research stages, and Taleyarkhan has built a team of experts near and far, including Richard Lahey of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and Robert Nigmutulin of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Taleyarkhan said a number of scientists previously involved in Russia's nuclear-weapons program supported the research effort. They provided insight on the implosion forces that take place as the bubbles collapse, and their knowledge obtained from weapons testing was important, he said. "Absolutely," he said. "The characterization, mathematically ... to be able to capture the overall physics of compression under those extreme states and to be able to have access to data, actually raw data, that make it meaningful. You've got to have something called 'equations of state,' which can only be obtained empirically through experiments. "There are some specialized series of experiments where you obtain the appropriate relationships between energy density and temperature. You've got to have that; otherwise it's garbage-in, garbage-out in a computer code. So they had access to that data from their weapons program."
Then, that finding advanced on through the special characteristics of yet a different brand of mint favored by Bill Clinton (and his girlfriends), and now we have COLD FUSION and NEW WEAPONS.
What is the koan of a tube?
Nope--that's a different phenomenon clled "triboluminescence".
I'm not sure if the "whole science of microscopic scale compressions" even has a name--if it does, then I haven't heard it. "If" sound waves could be coupled into Altoids, and "if" some light emission resulted, then the term "sonoluminescence" would apply to them--but I've never heard of anyone actually doing the experiment. But then, scientists have done some odder things than that in the pursuit of knowledge :^) .
Just from a strict definition point of view, "if" this variant of cold fusion turns out to be real, they will need to coin a new term for it, as "luminescence" is not the right moniker. Maybe "sonocompression".
"The energy density of a reaction such as this is about a million times more than any known conventional explosive," Taleyarkhan said. "So if you can tap this and make it work, you've got yourself the making of a far superior military force than anyone else."
Could someone please tell me what the destructive difference between this and your average everyday nuclear warhead would be? Thanks.
The most likely interest is in replacing fission reactors aboard subs & carriers with something much smaller & without the problem of large amounts of radioactive material falling into the ocean should something get broke.
I'd guess the navy would be happy to put bubble reactors into all the smaller ships that escort the carrier to extend their range to match the carrier, and remove the need for oil tankers except for the planes.
No radioactive fallout....just a big fireball.
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