Researchers report bubble fusion results replicated ~ Cold fusion no longer confusion

The Inquirer UK ^ | Friday 21 January 2005, 08:10 | Nick Farrell:

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

BOFFINS FROM the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Purdue University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) have managed to replicate controversial cold fusion experiments.

A March 2002 an article in Science (Vol. 295, March 2002), indicated that boffins had managed to use bubble fusion successfully, but this data was questioned because it was made with imprecise instrumentation.

Now Physical Review E is publishing an article by the team of researchers stating that it has replicated and extended previous experimental results and this time has used the right instruments. Cold fusion is a bit of a holy grail in the science world because if it could be made to work, it could produce a lot of energy without having to have a large amount of energy to start it.

Scientists have managed to do it in the past, but it always required more energy to be put into it than could be taken out, which is defeating the point a bit. A press release going into the details can be found here. µ

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Impulse Devices' Computational Efforts

We intend to dramatically accelerate the pace of technical advancement, both in our own laboratory and with the contract physicist's working on computational modeling. The computer simulations are being conducted in the Los Alamos area by six former National Laboratory physicists with over a hundred years combined experience including over fifty years combined experience in the laser fusion program.

Preliminary simulations indicate plasma temperatures of 9 keV and peak pressures over 1 Gbar. These conditions result in a predicted yield of 1.6E8 DD fusion reactions/collapse at a 100kHz collapse frequency in an liquid surround. The code used was torture tested by simulating sonoluminescence in water to establish that the code could be reasonably used as a predictive tool.

[GOPJ]

Isn't that a puffin? Or something like that...

I though a "boffin" was some sort of flightless bird akin to a penguin.

[hopespringseternal]

Actually, acheiving fusion isn't that hard. Anyone could build an inertial electrostatic containment device in their garage that would produce a neutron flux indicative of (D-D) fusion.

Of course, you have to put far more energy in than you would get out.

While it is significant that they have verified a form of cold fusion, it does not follow that we are necessarily any closer to fusion as an energy source.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Yes, but as your handle says....Hope Springs Eternal!!!!

[Doctor Stochastic]

"Too Cheap To Meter"

[Quix]

Thanks.

Didn't think it was quite the same but couldn't put my finger on the difference, off the top of my head.

Cheers.

[Boot Hill]

Doesn't any of this set off alarm bells for you?

• The company claims they can produce electrical energy for only 5-10% of current costs....YET....they think they will only be able to capture $100 billion of a $2 trillion world energy market???

• "scientists contacted by the Business Journal said the business plan may be too good to be true." (That's how you say "fraud" without risking a lawsuit.)

• "The company raised $830,000...[from] private investors in the Bay Area" (Secret funding.)

• "[The company] is keeping details about its research secret...[and] has not published the results of its research in peer-reviewed scientific journals, leaving many scientists dubious." (If they have the funding and its too secret to talk about, why are they talking about it?)

• An expert in the field, William Moss, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore and a ground-breaking scientist in the field of sonoluminescence, says: "his calculations show that even if he were to tile the earth with flasks containing sonoluminescing bubbles, he would get only enough energy from fusion in one hour to heat a cup of coffee one degree." (You ignore a man like that at your own peril.)

EATB, I've watched technical fraud here in Silicon Valley from before there was a Silicon Valley and, in my opinion, this scheme by Impulse Devices Inc, has fraud written all over it in big red capital letters. Not failure, I mean FRAUD!

--Boot Hill

[Swordmaker]

This is done with sound waves...


And God said, "Let there be light!"

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I am not ready to buy their stock, that is for sure......

The research report details may be a scientific fact, but the next step is a Biggie.... that of boiling water !!!

[Boot Hill]

Don't invest unless they're willing to surrender their passports first!

--Boot Hill

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Yep, see Boot Hill's comments.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[Centurion2000]

Any idea what the Max temp is on the Sun, I am sure it is way lower than this.....

About 15 million in the core for Hydrogen fusion (starts at 10 million Kelvin).
Helium fusion starts around 100 million.
Then Helium to Carbon fusion.
Carbon to Oxygen fusion starts around 600 million Kelvin.
Then Oxygen to Silicon fusion starts around a billion.
And then finally Silicon to Iron fusion at around 3 billion Kelvin.

After that, you cannot get fusion to yield energy ever.

Silicon to Iron fusion is what makes Supernovae.

Quick rundown on it The net result is that in a fraction of 1 second of time, an iron core about the size of the Earth and a bit over 1 solar mass collapses to a ball of neutrons about the size of the county of Kalamazoo. The rest of the core (fusing the lighter elements in successive shells) also begins falling inward, although the star's envelope remains totally obvlivious to what's happening inside. Neutron degeneracy pressure4 suddenly halts the collapse of the innermost neutron core, which then rebounds a bit like a suddenly released compressed rubber ball, sending out a shock wave that plows through the surrounding zones where fusion is still occuring. The shock wave compresses and heats these zones, the energy released from fusion becomes explosive and the star suddenly explodes as a supernova

Links

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/stars-evolve.html

http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/rbc/a1/lec14n.html

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the links......I need to go back thru my book, 100 Billion Suns.....fascinating stuff.

[ArGee]

The big trick will be: can they make it happen with the liquid at an operating temperature sufficient to generate steam (to power a turbine), and with the energy input being significantly less than the energy output

You've answered the one question - it will be possible to contain the reaction. I agree with your question - will the fuel be cheap and plentiful enough.

Shalom.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Neutron degeneracy pressure4 suddenly halts the collapse of the innermost neutron core, ...

The Pauli Excusion Principle strikes again, but hard. Of course, the Pauli Exclusion Principle is what keeps us from falling into the center of the Earth.

[MeanWestTexan]

Yes, the bird is a "puffin." We figured it out in an earlier series of posts on this thread.

[GOPJ]

I saw a puffin at Sea World last week. When they're underwater, they "fly" -- just like a bird in the sky. It's the strangest thing... On land, they look like a penguin.

Yes, the bird is a "puffin." We figured it out in an earlier series of posts on this thread.

[ckilmer]

the press release from Rennsaler is dated for spring of 2004. They took their results to the feds last fall along with several others and the Feds looked at their stuff and turned them down.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From post #67:

*****************************************************************

Cold fusion researchers put a rosier spin on the report. "The greatest vindication for the cold fusion community was that, instead of being treated like cripples, lepers, and idiots, we were treated like normal scientists in the handling of this review," says Michael McKubre, an electrochemist at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. "Just the fact of the review has heightened the level of discussion. There's been a huge upswing in interest in funding cold fusion research." Adds MIT theorist Peter Hagelstein, "A door has been opened by the reviewers. Whether anybody actually manages to go through it remains to be seen."

The DOE report does not recommend setting aside government money for research into cold fusion. Rather, it identifies areas of research that "could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field"—specifically, characterization of deuterated metals and the search for fusion in thin deuterated films—and recommends that agencies consider funding individual proposals in those areas. Considering individual proposals is nothing new, says Jim Decker, principal deputy director of DOE's Office of Science. "We have always been receptive to research proposals. We make decisions on funding research proposals on the basis of peer review and relevance."

DOE's summary of the reviews can be downloaded from the Web at http://www.science.doe.gov/Sub/Newsroom/ News_Releases/DOE-SC/2004/low_energy; the reviewers' individual reports are available at http://newenergytimes.com/DOE/DOE.htm.