Physicist Claims First Real Demonstration of Cold Fusion

www.physorg.com ^ | 05/27/2008 | Staff

[dennisw]

 

It's for real this time 

Arata is 84 year old retired professor emeritus. Look at his photo. He is not a liar plus he is not going to ruin his name and honor at age 84. He is old school Japanese where this is very important

Check out Mr. Arata. If he is good then this cold fusion is good

http://newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-Demo-Photos-AT.htm

http://newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-De

Check out---->>> Photos from Akito Takahashi (Added May 23)

 

 

 

Arata-Zhang LENR Demonstration
May 22, 2008

Photos from Akito Takahashi (Added May 23)

 

Arata-Zhang LENR Demonstration
By Steven B. Krivit
New Energy Times
May 22, 2008

OSAKA, JAPAN -- Against a monumental backdrop of bad publicity for cold fusion since 1989, researchers in Japan on May 22 demonstrated the production of excess heat and helium-4, the results of an historic low-energy nuclear reaction experiment.

Yoshiaki Arata receiving Preparata Award in 2007 Photo: S.B. Krivit

The mastermind behind the demonstration is Yoshiaki Arata, a highly respected physicist in Japan who has been the recipent of Japan's highest award, the Order of Cultural Merit, and is the first person to have performed a thermonuclear fusion experiment showing large amounts of d-d reactions in Japan. A lecture by Arata preceded the demonstration before a live audience in Arata Hall (named in his honor) at the Joining and Welding Research Institute at Osaka University. The demonstration took place in the Osaka University Advanced Science & Innovation Center with the help of Arata’s associate, professor Yue Chang Zhang of Shianghai Jiotong University. Professor Akito Takahashi of Osaka University was an eyewitness to the demonstration.

"Arata and Zhang demonstrated very successfully the generation of continuous excess energy (heat) from ZrO2-nano-Pd sample powders under D2 gas charging and generation of helium-4," Takahashi wrote. "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers (J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008). This demonstration showed that the method is highly reproducible."

Takahashi wrote that 60 people from universities and companies in Japan and a few people from other countries attended, as well as representatives from six major newspapers (Asahi, Nikkei, Mainichi, NHK, et al.) and two television stations.

In an earlier conversation with New Energy Times, Arata offered his perspective on "cold fusion" research, which he calls solid nuclear fusion.

"Some people say we have reached the end of science, that there are no more great discoveries that remain. In my view, nature always has more secrets to reveal," Arata wrote. "I always stay on guard not to be too possessed by my own current knowledge. History has shown us repeatedly, for example, the foolishness of denying 'heliocentricism,' which resulted from individuals adhering too strongly to their own knowledge or to what was common sense in the past."

New Energy Times will have a more complete report in the next issue on July 10.

Arata-Zhang Demo Announcement

 

[grey_whiskers]

I must confess I *would* like to see details of the purported mechanism, including temperature-dependent reaction rates -- the *nuclear* reaction wouldn't mind, but the chemical lattice which acts to get the deuterium 'in position' might.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

We already know, given detectable fusion at lower (but still hot) energies, that some tunneling is occuring, since we can detect any fusion at all. However, the rate at which tunneling occurs drops quickly with lower temperatures. At the temperatures of this experiment, given standard theory, the tunneling should be so unlikely that it is undetectable.

You might have added, that for chemical processes, if you drop the temperature, the conventional reaction rate drops too; and under certain conditions, tunneling makes up a goodly proportion of the overall reaction rate.

Whether this applies to nuclear processes (higher activation barrier) is beyond the scope of this post.

Cheers!

[Wonder Warthog]

"Um, WW, do you get upset if people call you Munder Morthog? Just askin’."

Not at all. Munder Deathpig---I kind of like it. Sounds kind of Viking-ish.

[Red Badger]

Was a neutron detector present for the demo?

They used a helium detector, IIRC....

[Red Badger]

If cold fusion is real, there is definitely tunneling going on, but it would have to be happening in a different way or under different conditions than we currently know about.

Tunneling? Or maybe a combination of this and a thing from fluid dynamics called the venturi effect. If two cars enter a tunnel at the same time, it's okay as long as the width of the tunnel is sufficient to accommodate both cars. But if the tunnel gets narrower and narrower they will smash into each other. Using the venturi effect, the cars get faster and faster as they go through the narrowing opening. When they smash together, instead of being destroyed, they merge into one car, or in this case, one atom of helium, and the "leftovers" become energy released as heat. Now that they are "one" car, or "one" atom, they take up less space than two cars or two atoms, so there is now room for the cars/2H atoms behind them to do the same thing in sequence, until you run out of cars/2H atoms.............But that's just my guess............

[Red Badger]

“If this were in fact fusion we would have to keep fission reactors going just to produce heavy water”

FROM WIKI:

Natural abundance

Deuterium occurs in trace amounts naturally as deuterium gas, written ²H2 or D2, but most natural occurrence in the universe is bonded with a typical ¹H atom, a gas called hydrogen deuteride (HD or ¹H²H).[4]

The existence of deuterium on Earth, elsewhere in the solar system (as confirmed by planetary probes), and in the spectra of stars, is an important datum in cosmology. Stellar fusion destroys deuterium, and there are no known natural processes (for example, see the rare cluster decay), other than the Big Bang nucleosynthesis, which might have produced deuterium at anything close to the observed natural abundance of deuterium. This abundance seems to be a very similar fraction of hydrogen, wherever hydrogen is found. Thus, the existence of deuterium is one of the arguments in favor of the Big Bang theory over the steady state theory of the universe. It is estimated that the abundances of deuterium have not evolved significantly since their production more than 14 billion years ago.[5]

The world’s leading “producer” of deuterium (technically, merely enricher or concentrator of deuterium) was Canada, until 1997 when the last plant was shut down (see more in the heavy water article). Canada uses heavy water as a neutron moderator for the operation of the CANDU reactor design. India is now probably the world’s largest concentrator of heavy water, also used in nuclear power reactors.

[kellynla]

BTTT

[Netheron]

Well, the Venturi effect exists due to the disturbance of a fluid medium between the cars (the air). At nuclei scales, there is no medium for the Venturi effect to occur in.

[Red Badger]

I would think that in the case of Deuterium, it IS the medium, since it is introduced as a gas...........

[Red Badger]

“It doesn’t make much sense to have a power plant solely to produce the fuel for a power plant.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

[JamesP81]

What benefit would cold fusion bring to the world if it did exist?

I think the idea isn't to have a fusion reaction that doesn't generate heat, but to have one that can be maintained at room temperature. As it is, the only large scale fusion reactors in use are hydrogen bombs, which require the detonation of an atomic bomb just to get the reaction started. I think the idea is to get a fusion reaction started without the whole nuclear blast thing.

[Netheron]

No, fusion occurs due to interactions between Deuterium atoms over distance scales that require that the atoms are in extremely close contact. Therefore, there is no room for any intervening atoms, therefore no medium is present.

[thackney]

I think the idea isn't to have a fusion reaction that doesn't generate heat, but to have one that can be maintained at room temperature.

That was my question. Nuclear power plants work by putting heat to work to generate steam to turn a turbine to turn a generator that provides electricity. Generating Helium is good for party balloons but not generating useful power.

A previous responder said cold fusion meant relatively cold as compared with other fusion reactors using heat similar to that of the sun, a heat level difficult to contain and use.

But a room temperature reaction provides no energy that we could easily convert into traditional power. Unless there was an associated flow of electrons that can be contained and directed, I don't understand how a truly cold (room temperature) reaction has any benefit beyond greater understanding of physics that might lead to another more useful discovery.

I am an engineer. I think in terms of application. If it generates hundreds of degrees of temperature rise instead of tens of thousands, that is useful. If it generates ten degrees of temperature rise, that is not, at least not for power generation.

[Red Badger]

...distance scales that require that the atoms are in extremely close contact.

Maybe this is where quantum theory meets physical world. The atoms are "forced" together, serially, like in a vise, under such pressure that they combine into a helium atom and release energy as heat, only under a controllable process that can be harvested. Maybe the palladium and zirconium dioxide act as the atomic "jaws" of the vise to produce this "fusion" slowly, instead of instantaneously in one "Big Bang"!............

[JamesP81]

But a room temperature reaction provides no energy that we could easily convert into traditional power.

I don't think the goal is a 'room temperature' reaction. I think the previous comment about it being cold relative to stellar temperatures applies. If the reaction can be made to operate at the sort of temperatures you find in a power plant's boiler, as opposed to the temperatures found in the center of a nuclear detonation, then you have something workable.

Personally, I remain highly skeptical. The last time someone crowed about cold fusion it turned out to be crap. The comments about true cold fusion making oil obsolete may be true in the long term, the thing that annoys me is that we have nuclear fission reactors that already do that. The enviros won't let us use them, however. And if this cold fusion experiment leads to practical applications, I'm sure they'll find a way to regulate it into oblivion like they have everything else that might actually work.

[djf]

It doesn’t make much sense to have a power plant solely to produce the fuel for a power plant.

That’s like saying it doesn’t pay to cut wood.
Just chuck the gasoline from the chain saw right into the fireplace.

Energy has many forms, and there are advantages/disadvantages to each.

[djf]

Probably has something to do with the quantum properties of the crystalline forms of palladium

When you start to get up into the heavier metals and actinide series, there’s alot of weird chit going on!

[Lazamataz]

Maybe, but I prefer the timecube.

Http://www.timecube.com

[Netheron]

Possibly. That’s the intuition most physicists seem to have, assuming that cold fusion exists, but we really don’t know.