Bubble Fusion takes next hurdle

Heise onlin ^ | 18.07.2005 | Haiko LIetz

[The Duke]

"We found out that when comet-like streamers of bubbles formed the reactions would stop. Their irregular shape diminishes the bubbles' ability to compress the enclosed gas and subsequently prevents fusion reactions from occurring."

I hate it when that happens!

[flashbunny]

tag for later

[Arkie2]

Happens in champagne all the time.

[Zeroisanumber]

Huh huh... Butt.

[martin_fierro]

I'm studying Real Estate Bubble Fusion.

[randog]

Ho-hum. I used to create Bubble Fusion when my mom gave me a bath.

[spanalot]

Fascinating - always thought that there was substance tothe first reports of coldfusion.

The big question is can it be commercialized

[SteveMcKing]

Can they scale it up to power a home?

[Brett66]

Replication, an important step towards mainstream acceptance. I wonder if it's easily scalable and/or can be used for space propulsion?

[Arkie2]

Since hot fusion has always been 20 years out for the last 60 years I'm guessing it will take at least 20 years to bring this to fruition. ;^)

[HangnJudge]

The Physicists I know have widely panned this entire branch of research as a waste of resources. I find it extremely difficult to accept that meaningful fusion on an scale useful as a energy source can be achieved with this approach, much less that fusion is even occurring at all.

[Arkie2]

The Wright brothers were widely panned by experts in the field of manned flight. You should withhold judgement for a few more years at least until this plays out.

The article includes doubts from Seth Putterman who has said Taleyarkin's early experiments were flawed and has doubts about this experiment but even he says he expects eventual results from bubble fusion.

[HangnJudge]

We'll see, but my paltry 5 years of Nuclear Engineering training
is severely balking at the physics and the engineering.

[Arkie2]

What's the old saying? There's always something new under the sun? Appropriate in this case.

Even if sonoluminescence isn't fusion it's still a very interesting phnomenon worthy of research.

[Boiler Plate]

Now that is just perfect! A couple of Boilermakers inventing Bubble Fusion. Kinda like back to the future.

[ReadyNow]

Chinese to Butt: "Ah, so!"

[keithtoo]

Famouse Swedish-American Polka/Jazz Bubble Fusion empressario Lawrence Welk.

Nobody did bubbles like Lawrence Welk.

[Southack]

"The Physicists I know have widely panned this entire branch of research as a waste of resources. I find it extremely difficult to accept that meaningful fusion on an scale useful as a energy source can be achieved with this approach, much less that fusion is even occurring at all."

Nuclear fission gives off a very similar signature (e.g. a 2.5MeV neutron even) to what has been recorded in these experiments...and nuclear fission occurs *naturally*...so it's hardly surprising that it is being observed in a lab experiment.

They claim that they are observing fusion, and they *may* be right (certainly that's the path to grant money), but I'm skeptical. They may just be observing fission.

As for scaling this sort of thing up, there are hurdles. Bubbles can only exist so close to each other. If the density of fission events isn't high enough, then no amount of scaling will ever produce more energy than it consumes (e.g. a self-sustaining chain reaction).

As in the above experiment, they will have to keep injecting energy (e.g. ultrasound) to keep stimulating a few fission/fussion events.

[benjaminjjones]

All I need is some empty beer cans and a few banana peels.