Physicists Uncover Forgotten 1938 Fusion Breakthrough That Could Power the Future

Scitech Daily ^ | July 08, 2025 | Los Alamos National Laboratory

[BB62]

“Forgotten”???

ROFLMAO!!!

It was probably put in the archives right next to the Arc of the Covenant...

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

Hasn’t fusion been the “next big thing” since about 1989?

[SuperLuminal]

I am jealous!

[ckilmer]

Hmm is there a physicist in the house?

[Phoenix8]

Those guys were incredible..Neil’s Bohr, Mosley, Rutherford etc. Without modern technology like computers they made the great leaps of discovery.

[minnesota_bound]

Konopinski just had a notion...

[minnesota_bound]

Yep... that is how I would have done it but added a bit of Unobtainium...

FTA: They paired that beam with a thin, cobalt-alloy foil between the accelerator vacuum and target that effectively duplicated as best as possible Ruhlig’s 500 keV beam. As in 1938, the beam was directed at a target of deuterated phosphoric acid, with a liquid scintillator neutron detector tracking the neutrons of interest to gauge the secondary reactions.

[SunkenCiv]

Luis Alvarez discusses this a bit in his memoir (pp 193-194).

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