Team Confirms UCLA Tabletop Fusion 354
An anonymous reader writes "A team of New York physicists has confirmed that a tabletop contraption made at UCLA does in fact generate nuclear fusion at room temperatures, using pairs of crystals and a small tank of deuterium. But unlike less reliable reports back in the 1980s, there's no talk this time of producing endless supplies of power. Rather, the technology could lead to ultra-portable x-ray machines and even a wearable device that could provide safe, continuous cancer treatment."
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Incredible (and im not talking about the article) (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a whole 4 sentences which make it clear that this is NOT a power source, and half the posts are talking about its potential as a power source.
Now if I could just find a way to bottle the power of human stupidity...
could provide safe, continuous cancer treatment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Jerks (Score:3, Insightful)
Smuggling nuclear material... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahem... or out of the country. Keeping tabs on one of the worlds largest nuclear stockpiles is a major, fulltime job and not one to be taken lightly.
tabletop fusion (Score:3, Insightful)
The breakthrough would come should anybody ever figure out how to break even energetically in a tabletop fusion device, and I think it's quite possible that that will happen sooner or later.
Re:Key Application Overlooked (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed the other key application... A cheap ready supply of neutrons is exactly what you need to transmute elements... Sadly, this includes the most common element transmutation carried out by mankind to date... U-238 to Pu-239. Cheap tabletop neutrons means cheap Pu-239 without the cost & mess of having a breeder fission reactor...
:(
This will make non-proliferation all the harder.
Re:Key Application Overlooked (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IS this really FUSION? (Score:4, Insightful)
You make it sound like shuffling some neutrons around is easy. It's not. Producing a source of neutrons is a pretty nice feat by itself. However there's a very, very large difference between producing neutrons via fusion, and plonking down a SimCity 2000-esque, pollution-free, "Fusion Power Plant."
additionally... (Score:4, Insightful)
It'll be interesting to see what comes of this.
Re:Incredible (and im not talking about the articl (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A whole 2% are opened (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you missed the point... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm actually quite clueless about what they do in cases of large seizures, but I don't think it matters. It (likely) goes somewhere inland, and the cops/agents wouldn't likely look for a 'second' offense when they find a bale of cocaine.
I guess the beauty of that plan is that if it gets through, you could pay for the costs of the nuke with the proceeds of selling a bale of coke to the plastic surgeons in said *major metro area* before you detonate the bomb...
FWIW, The OP's point (joke) is well-made and scientific sniping isn't really necessary, although your knowledge does add to the discussion... Perhaps it was a bit mis-placed, though? I'm not trying to be a dick, just giving a little constructive criticism...
Re:Room temperature? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. Heat is random motion.
Well, the 'smashing' part I explicitely stated accounts for the thermalization.
If simple kinetic energy was all it took to have heat, then any gas cloud out in space with a large velocity relative to us would be extremely "hot." But we all know intuitively that things do not change temperature just because they speed up. The air in a moving car is not hotter than the air in a parked car. Heat is the random motion of particles with respect to each other .
No, not 'respect to each other', in respect to the center of mass, as I wrote. Heat is the average kinetic energy of particles (in classical statistical mechanics).
The collision of a few particles doesn't qualify.
And why not? Care to explain?
When gas quickly depressurizes, it cools down. Ever wonder why? It's because as the gas escapes, the particles which are near each other tend to all move in the same direction (outward) and thus their random motions with respect to each other are decreased. Thus, the temperature drops.
Yes, the temperature drops. But the gas still carries the same amount of heat (transportation by photons excluded). Smash two nuclei, they interact, a hot ball of reaction products results and cools down as the particles move away from each other according to a law similar to pV=NRT.
The temperature drops, the amount of heat in this ensemble of molecules/atoms/particles stays the same.
Or consider how a rocket nozzle works by focusing the molecular motions in a particular direction (by forcing the gas through a small opening to increase the pressure and then into a cone to suddenly decrease it), thereby converting the high pressure and heat of the exhaust gas into directed kinetic energy.
What do you want to say with this paragraph?
Learn more before making these kinds of proclamations.
Sigh. Bold and derogatory statements like this activate
Re:Room temperature? (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmm, I imagine coming in contact with a cloud of gas at 3 or 4 K going 10 to 50kps would probably feel "hot" by any reasonable definition. Probably a lot like a blowtorch. Heat *is* kinetic energy. The "intuitive" measure of heat and speed is simply because we deal with tame speeds in a relatively hot environment, and it's true that throwing a baseball 60 mph will not produce a recognizable change in temperature when it's caught. Part of the reason, of course, is that catching a baseball is a very elastic reaction. Your hand moves, followed by your arm, and eventually the energy is transferred down to your feet with a little energy bled off at each step. You may even produce more energy by tensing your muscles than the baseball imparts due to its kinetic energy. Other things like bullets, car crashes, etc. don't produce a lot of heat directly because most of the kinetic energy is lost in breaking or changing chemical bonds and deforming the colliding objects.
And, technically, the air inside your car has a different kinetic energy than the air outside your car. If both masses of air are measured at the same temperature at rest, a thermometer on the surface of the car will read higher than a thermometer in the car when the car is moving. Practically, this is why the space shuttle has ceramic insulating tiles on its re-entry surfaces. The atmosphere varies a lot in actual temperature, from relatively cold (below freezing) to very hot (but thin), but the heat generated on the space shuttle's surface is almost completely a function of the density of the atmosphere it's traveling through, e.g. the kinetic energy in terms of speed matters more kinetic energy in terms of temperature.
Re:A whole 2% are opened (Score:3, Insightful)
Although this is widely believed, it is not true. Placement is absolutely crucial to nuclear weapon effectiveness.
Nuclear detonations are large but still finite. Tactical weapons are deployed using highly accurate warheads because they must have a small CEP (on the order of a few hundred meters) to assure destruction of hardened targets. So called strategic weapons must be detonated at altitude to maximize damage.
Obstructions such as hills can greatly reduce the effect of overpressure. This was observed in Nagasaki, which was spared a large amount of devastation due to terrain. Thermal radiation can be stopped by terrain and even reduced by heavy clouds.
A small, or at least inefficient, nuclear detonation at sea level in a port will produce far less devastation than an optimally placed weapon. An interesting study of what might occur if New York suffered a hypothetical 150 kiloton detonation a ground level is found here. [atomicarchive.com] The result is 1.7 million casualties (800,000 dead) in a very densely populated city of 8 million. A detonation some arbitrary distance off shore of a less densely populated area, possibly mitigated by terrain and/or weather (Seattle, for instance,) would be far less effective. You might end up with total casually figures of a few hundred thousand. About average for a large scale carpet bombing operation during WW2.
My point is that placement is paramount to nuclear weapon effectiveness. Damage from haphazard detonations in ports will be relatively limited. More important is what happens after such an attack.