Free Republic

Close window Published online: 10 May 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060508-8 Bubble-fusion group suffer setback Team admits a mix-up with one of their neutron detectors.Eugenie Samuel Reich Rusi Taleyarkhan with his table-top fusion equipment in a lab at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he conducted research before coming to Purdue.Credit: U.S. Department of Energy file photo/Lynn Freeny A group of researchers making high-profile claims about fusion energy has admitted to accidentally using equipment different from that reported in their most recent paper. An erratum providing details of the mistake by Rusi Taleyarkhan of Purdue University and colleagues has been published in Physical...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Purdue University is investigating complaints about a scientist who claimed to have achieved "cold fusion" using sound waves to make bubbles in a test tube, the university said on Wednesday. Nuclear engineer Rusi Taleyarkhan's work has been controversial since he published a study in 2002 claiming to have achieved the Holy Grail of energy production -- nuclear fusion at room temperature. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun. If scientists can duplicate the results and harness the technology, tabletop fusion has the potential to provide an almost limitless source of cheap energy. Many labs are...

A technique that some scientists claim generates thermonuclear fusion in a benchtop apparatus works even without its controversial neutron trigger. So say the researchers who, since 2002, have reported that nuclear-fusion reactions can occur in a vat of chilled solvent agitated by ultrasound (SN: 3/6/04, p. 149: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040306/fob5.asp). If this method of sparking fusion proves to be valid—a big if, critics insist—it could lead to a remarkably simple, cheap, inexhaustible power source. Fusion reactions take place in the vat because clusters of bubbles form and then violently collapse, explains nuclear engineer and team leader Rusi P....

When acetone – better known as nail polish remover – is ultrasonically resonated and irradiated by neutrons, nuclear fusion will occur. That is the claim of the two young physicists Dr. Yiban Xu and Adam Butt from the American Purdue University. "Cavitation is the phenomenon in which liquid is fractured and a void is formed to form cavities composed of gas and/or vapour", explains Xu. If the acetone is put into resonance using a piezo-crystal, gas bubbles are formed which subsequently store potential energy in the acoustic field. To ensure that the bubbles get larger than a critical value, the...