Cold Fusion Scientist Exonerated 171
Icarus1919 writes "New Scientist reports that the scientist who discovered a possible cold fusion reaction by bombarding a solvent with neutrons and sonic waves has recently been exonerated of accusations of scientific misconduct following the verification of his results by another scientist."
Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
I guess this is bad news for corn farmers? (Score:3)
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We will need all greenhouse gases we can get.
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That said, I do believe the computer and internet were driver by the cold war (ARPANET was originally a 'fast-response' network, IIRC).
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There's no theoretical barrier that makes sonofusion impossible. It's just a very difficult engineering problem. The more we learn about making very small bubbles hotter, the closer we'll be to getting something that does pass the break-even point.
And just for the record, very-large-and-very-hot fusion hasn't passed the break-even point either, AFAIK.
Moo (Score:2)
Was that post-mortem?
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No the solution is a large grant at regular intervals, for at least YOUR lifetime... But it will happen, I *promise*, and when it does, either we'll blow up the planet or have an inexhaustible supply of cheap energy, cats and dogs will be friends, women will want sex every day, and we'll be stinking rich!!! Yadda yadda yadda...
Re:Moo (Score:4, Funny)
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It's an easy mixup to make.
Re:Moo (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, and here i thought exxonerated mean having a bunch of oil spilled on you.
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The Saint Exonerated? (Score:2)
Re:The Saint Exonerated? and Doc Brown (Score:2)
Odd. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Odd. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Novel findings frequently take time to be accepted (Score:2)
"Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are "more numerous" than the natural numbers. In fact, Cantor's theorem implies the existence of an "infinity of infinities." He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers, and their arithmetic. Cantor's work is of great philosophical interest, a fact of which h
Re:Novel findings frequently take time to be accep (Score:2)
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Is it a common problem? How common is it?
Can you list 10 major scientific breakthroughs made in the past 300 years by "non-mainstream"
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For example, I just discovered that peanut butter cures cancer. But nobody will ever believe me.
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Scientific Breakthroughs that were first rejected (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Theory of Relativity wasn't well received at the time. In fact, Einstein didn't actually get a Nobel Prize for it. Instead, he received the prize for other work he did dealing with quanta. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureat es/1921/press.html [nobelprize.org]
2. Quantum Mechanics - Even Einstein didn't particularly like Quantum Mechanics and the search for the unified model. It was th
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In my experience, scientists are so bloodthirsty for new discoveries that we're willin
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Missing Option (Score:4, Insightful)
Physicists often over-simplify or inappropriately categorize things when trying to explain their papers to reporters (note that most journalism programs don't include courses on nuclear physics). Even if the reporter knows the difference between genuine cold fusion and sonofusion (keeping in mind that "cold" can be used somewhat ambiguously in regards to fusion), they might not expect their readers to and dumb it down themselves.
Most likely of all is the stereotypical Professor Frink sitting in his lab babbling excitedly away about how it works while the reporter sits there and nods. When he says something like, "While individual Alpha particles are created with energies of N electron-volts, the system temperatures are on par with hypothetical cold fusion scenarios," guess which two words out such a statement will actually get written down in the reporter's notes.
Taleyarkhan didn't claim he had caused cold fusion. He claimed sonofusion.
For all readers getting excited about Mr. Fusion and nuclear jetpacks, I hate to inform you that Taleyarkan's experiments, assuming they genuinely did induce fusion, fell far, far short of unity.
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Re:Odd. (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the problem with that is that it most likely cannot exist, a certain amount of kinetic energy is required at the atomic level for fusion - meaning a lot of heat for the fusing atoms.
I think cold fusion in general means that the average temperature of the reaction chamber is low. If I read the wikipedia article right, the technique used generates small superheated bubbles, but doesn't necessarily superheat the solvent, this I think it can be classified as cold fusion.
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Cold Fusion [wikipedia.org]
However such a thing may exist, and has been reproduced with difficulty, albeit on a small and commercially non-viable scale. It looks like it's hell on the components. And I suspect there are areas of high heat since it mentions parts melting.
Re:Odd. (Score:5, Funny)
It's easy to fuse hydrogen at room temperature, as long as you first replace the electrons in the atoms with muons. (Obtaining the muons is an exercise left to the reader.)
Re:Odd. (Score:5, Funny)
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I have a hunch that we'll see break even fusion from one of the cheap amateur style reactors way before we see it from the mainstream guys. The amount of money that's been invested in hot fusion means that any progress is going to
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At least physicists aren't quite as sadistic as Donald Knuth, who's infamous for slipping famous unsolved problems into the problem sections of his textbooks.
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Re:Odd. (Score:5, Informative)
Cold fusion is fusion that takes place when the fusing nuclei are at temperatures significantly below those required to overcome the Coulomb barrier. It has nothing to do with the temperature of the laboratory that the experiment takes place in, or the temperature of the majority of the mass of the apparatus. For example, we do not call tokomak's "cold fusion" because despite the fact that they sometimes use superconducting magnets and therefore are not just "cold" but positively cryogenic, the nuclei that do the fusing are HOT.
Any other use of the term "cold fusion" is terribly mis-leading for two reasons. One is that it invokes a completely arbitrary and unphysical division between various kinds of hot fusion, calling some kinds of hot fusion "cold" because someone happens to feel that it is important that some part of the apparatus that is not undergoing a fusion reaction is cold. The second reason is that it fails to distinguish between pressure-driven fusion of the kind claimed by Pons and Fleishman, and temperature-driven fusion which has actually been observed.
People who use "cold fusion" when they mean "sonofusion" are either honestly ignorant of the differences between hot fusion and cold fusion, or are being wilfully dishonest.
Despite the fact that neither Pons and Fleishman nor anyone else has ever been able to provide convincing evidence that pressure-driven fusion occurs between room-temperature nuclei, it is still the case that if anyone could figure out how to exert sufficient pressure, then the atoms would fuse, regardless of the amount of kinetic energy (that is, even at low temperatures.)
So there is a real distinction in the physics of "hot" and "cold" fusion, and in terms of that unambiguous and physically interesting distinction, sonofusion, if it happens at all, is almost certainly hot. Although if the centre of the bubbles really is as hot as they seem, it is a mystery as to why we don't see any neutron production in water, but only in more complex organic molecules--the phenomenon remains mysterious and there is still a lot of work to be done to reveal its secrets.
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I would venture a guess that he uses the term to describe that the coils used to create the magnetic containment-field are cooled until they become super conductive.
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Re:Odd. (Score:4, Informative)
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table top fusion? (Score:2)
"accusser" was once on his staff (Score:5, Informative)
false accusations: quite rare actually. (Score:3, Insightful)
So - the question of 'reputation': 'Hard to shake' the reports of a former team-mate? This is primary research, and the results are bloody testable. Screw reputation. This is cricism is expected, required and to be commended. Taleyarkhan is surely not surprised that folks are jumping on every issue that they can find. If his sonofusion is replicated then he will be a hero.
In life in general: *every* accuser of corruption is attacked as a liar. This is not fun - folks don't do this normally u
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"Would you like fries with that?"
Doesn't mean he's *right* (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, the New Scientist blurb is interesting in that Rusi seems to have been cleared of scientific fraud. The question, if I remember correctly, was whether the neutrons he was seeing were due to poor experimental techniques, contamination (accidental or purposeful), or simply weren't there in the first place. This blurb SEEMS to clear him of accusations of purposeful contamination and just making up the existence of neutrons. However, it doesn't mean that they were really there, and certainly not that he's really found thermal neutrons from fusion in his experiments. THAT will take a whole lot more "confirmation".
(IAAP, but haven't been following this conflict closely. The last I paid attention was at the ASA meeting last December in Hawai'i. So I'm sure someone will correct my--- inadvertent---mistakes. This is, after all, Slashdot.)
Re:Doesn't mean he's *right* (Score:4, Informative)
Taleyarkhan, R.P., Cho, J.S. et.al. Physical Review E. vol 69 pg 36109-1. The title is: 'Additional Evidence of Nuclear Emissions During Acoustic Cavitation.'
See also this blurb [aip.org]
Re:Doesn't mean he's *right* (Score:5, Informative)
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With the bubble fusion, the idea is that it is conventional hot fusion
Re:Doesn't mean he's *right* (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't die from a few hundret neutrons
There are really only two ways of interpreting the electrochemistry experiments at this point: (1) they didn't produce fusion; or (2) there are huge, fundamental mistakes in our understanding of the hydrogen atom (e.g., there's another state whose energy is lower than the normal ground state's).
Regarding (2): I don't think our understanding is fundamentally wrong. However I believe there are options no one really payed attention to. After all our first ideas about fusion comes from watching the sun. Our first attempt on fusion likely was the H-Bomb. Both are pretty hot fusion processes. They both are explainable with fusion reaction formulas, so we gain confidence that our formulas and our understanding of fusion and fission processes are viable. OTOH in such a fusion experiment we could imagine that 3 or 4 protons fuse etc.
Well, 40 years ago "high temperature" super conduction was physically impossible. If a scientist had claimed super conduction does exist on high temperatures as well, his colleagues had declared him mad. I think that fusion processes in analogous ways like super conduction might be possible, or in other words that the underlying principles might be similar.
angel'o'sphere
Re:Doesn't mean he's *right* (Score:5, Informative)
This is not quite correct, especially in the context of fusion in the solid state.
It is true that considered in complete isolation from everything else, the reaction d + d -> 4He is neutron free. But considered in complete isolation from everything else a great many things are true. For example, it is true that considered in complete isolation from everything else, you can drive your car the wrong way down a one-way street and not suffer any collisions. But I doubt that would stand up in court as a justification for claiming that driving your car the wrong way down a one-way street is perfectly safe.
In the case of fusion, for d + d -> 4He to occur, d + d -> 3He + n must also occur. And when d + d -> 4He occurs, the alpha particle carries off about 23 MeV, if memory serves. This is quite far above the neutron binding energy of most nuclei, which means that nuclear collisions as the alpha particle slows down can knock neutrons free. And such collisions produce a lot of gamma rays, too.
Believers in cold fusion are required to make up phenomena that might suppress these and other neutron and gamma production processes. Unfortunately, those phenomena always contradict what we know about solid state and nuclear physics. And by "know" I don't mean just "what we have a good theoretical understanding of" but also "what we are empirically certain of."
Finally, I'd like to point out a trivial falsehood in your post:
Well, 40 years ago "high temperature" super conduction was physically impossible. If a scientist had claimed super conduction does exist on high temperatures as well, his colleagues had declared him mad.
On the contrary, when a scientist actually did claim that super conduction exists at high temperatures his colleagues first reproduced the results and then gave him a Nobel Prize. That's what scientists do when people find the unexpected--try to reproduce the results, and if they do, reward the discoverer. No matter how astonishing and unexpected the results are. It is only when people make improbable claims with insufficient evidence that the question of their sanity is raised.
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Re:Doesn't mean he's *right* (Score:5, Interesting)
A New York Times article [nytimes.com] with more detail suggests they didn't even clear him of that, just of passing off his own work as independent replication. It sounds like no one's interests have been especially well-served here.
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And strangely enough, the NY Times article seems to ignore the November independent replication of the experiment mentioned in the New Scientist article. It sounds to me like NOBODY has the full story, and therefore both sources of information are rather suspect.
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Excess heat has been repeated (Score:2)
It's hard to figure out what exactly is going on, but this is a good overview [wikipedia.org]. Things are messy, P&F certainly made errors, both scientific and political, there are people who will say c
"another scientist" (Score:5, Informative)
First, I agree with the previous posters that this is not "cold fusion." The centers of the collapsing bubbles are very hot. Apparently hot enough to cause fusion.
The research I published was based on experiments conducted at Purdue University using a setup provided by Dr. Taleyarkhan. All equipment calibration, measurements, and data analysis were preformed by me and my students. We had full access to the equipment and we were very careful to make sure that there was nothing to contaminate our data.
People who have read the actual paper (Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, vol 95, p 736) would agree that the results published leave no room for doubt that the neutrons are caused by the collapsing bubbles in a deuterated fluid - the appropriate control experiments were performed - the statistics are significant.
The controversy comes because several well respected and talented physicists have not been able to reproduce Dr. Taleyarkhan's results in their own labs. This has led several people (including an editor from Nature Magazine) to conclude that Dr. Taleyarkhan must be faking his data.
I cannot explain why it has been so hard to reproduce the results in another lab except to say that null results are pretty easy to get in any sensitive experiment and it originally took Dr. Taleyarkhan several years to perfect his methods.
I suspect that all that is needed is a little more time and we will hear about several labs who have confirmed this work completely independently. Of course we are working on that very thing here at LeTourneau University.
Even if it takes some time to reproduce the results at another lab, having independent researchers come to Purdue and reproduce the experiments should be a big step in moving past the controversy.
Respectfully,
Dr. Ted Forringer
Assistant Professor of Physics
LeTourneau University
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Re:"another scientist" (Score:4, Informative)
> how close does this reaction come to break-even?
Lets see
So, not close.
> Does it look like the apparatus could be modified
> to pass this point (i.e. is the limitation based > on physics or engineering)?"
There is no physics limitation that I know of - it looks like a (hard) engineering question.
Respectfully,
Ted Forringer
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Well apparently everyone DOES NOT agree that there "can be no doubt" about such things. In fact, some very important physicists in the field vehemently DISagree. I find it also telling
The Saint II (Score:2, Funny)
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What went on behind the closed doors? (Score:5, Informative)
Pressure and Heat (Score:2, Funny)
Good thing it's not that easy! (Score:2)
Gosh, I hope not.
Just think what would happen if the hydrogen in the ocean water overheard and even a small percentage of them decided to go along...
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Been there, done that. Unfortunately my sample of hydrogen seems to be contaminated with Administratium [wikipedia.org] so the hydrogen formed a number of subcommittees to research the proposal. The initial reports look favourable, but it could be several years before a conclusion is reached...
With some work, ergs in out (Score:2)
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GET BUSY WITH THAT NOW!!!
Actual cold fusion (Score:2)
--
Get hot fusion: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Good (Score:3, Funny)
What about electric fusion!?! Proton 21 (Score:3, Informative)
The first successful experiment was performed on February 24, 2000 in a specially created and proprietary set up. In fact, the 5,000+ successful experiments in controlled nuclei-synthesis performed since 1999, using various targets made of light, medium, or heavy elements; have allowed the research team at EDL to comprehend and evaluate this unique scientific breakthrough.
The discovered process has been noted for its practical, environmentally friendly and extraordinary energy efficient attributes.
Two major outcomes have emerged from this process:
* First, the creation of an energy output far exceeding the initial impact.
* Second, the creation of an array of unique nuclei-synthesis elements. These new elements were tested by leading scientific laboratories in Ukraine, Russia, USA, etc, and their artificial origin was confirmed.
I knew it was real (Score:2)
Myself I'm a big fan of the idea that t
Finally... (Score:2)
Now all we need is for the pseudo-empiricist bigots to stop posthumously calling Stanley Meyer a charlatan as well, especially considering that he was poisoned in order to get him to stop engaging in his research.
There are a lot of things going on at the moment, research wise, which are outside the orthodoxy...and that doesn't mean they're not possible.
One of Einstein's most redeeming characteristics was his degree of humility. There are a lot of scientists who would do well
Highly persuasive evidence FOR 'real' cold fusion (Score:3, Informative)
Some of the biggest problems in cold fusion experiments has been long incubation periods, perhaps weeks/months, difficulty in calorimetry experiments for determining if heat was being generated, and replication.
Two techniques have been detailed by SPAWAR. The first is the using chemical co-deposition methods to combine Palladium and Deuterium, allowing a solid Palladium structure to form with Deuterium already 'mixed' in with it. Previously, weeks were often needed to allow absorption of Deuterium into the Palladium. Using the co-deposition technique, cold fusion effects become apparent within minutes, such as anomalous amounts of tritium, low-intensity x-ray radiation, and increased heat. This happens on a highly repeatable basis.
The second, highly outstanding experimental result is the use of nuclear industry standard CR-39 nuclear track detectors, which look like small pieces of plastic and are permently etched with tiny impact craters whenever a high energy nuclear particle hits them. Chemical reactions cannot produce the craters or tracks. The experiment involved placing a CR-39 track detector physically next to the Palladium-Deuterium electrode.
What resulted was the detection of some of the highest density counts ever seen on the detectors of high energy nuclear particles. Independent nuclear experts who have examined the CR-39 detectors recognized the signature tracks of protons and alpha particles, which, to be ejected from the atoms where they reside, require millions of volts - at least 1,000,000 times more energy than can be produced by any known chemical reaction. As a control experiment, exposed CR-39 detectors in a lithium solution without palladium in it resulted in only a sprinkling of tracks, randomly distributed and so few in number that they could be accounted for by background radiation.
The only surrounding energy sources were a few volts from the current applied through electrolysis; the second is an applied external electric field of about 6,000 volts. The particle tracks look identical to tracks made by nuclear particles that have at least 2 million electron-volts.
The really nice thing is is that you can almost see the tracks with your naked eye. Take the detectors elsewhere, to conferences etc, show others later; the tracks are permently etched evidence of nuclear reactions occuring in a Palladium-Deuterium benchtop setup.
The evidence here for Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion is now getting to the point where the scientific community has to seriously consider that Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion DOES exist under the right conditions, whether people want to accept it or not. Hard to replicate is not the same as impossible to replicate.
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Billions have been spent on less interesting thing stuff - like the expensive international space station for instance. Not really bang for buck for "interesting stuff done". Work on making space travel cheap and reliable _first_, then only do lots of work on space stations. Not the other way round. Doh.
Perhaps... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Who could have imagined that you'd need a techy background to understand articles posted on Slashdot?
What's next? A puerile sense of humor on Fark.com? And interest in current affairs for the BBC?
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(I live near LU, and my very competent boss is an alumni. It's just not somewhere you'd expect such findings to come from)
Re:Article is confusing! (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey, if you had a boss who knew what he was doing you'd brag about it, too.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
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Professor Farnsworth is a fictional character on Futurama. (He was no doubt named after the Real Farnsworth).
His tagline anytime he thinks of something is "Good News Everybody."
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From the article you link:
The Farnsworth Fusor is a high-temperature fusion device, just like sonofusion systems are high temperature fusion devices (if they really do produce fusion.)
Do not confuse "table top" wit
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of what Rider's papers discuss deals with the nonequilibrium aspect. That is, some fusion systems, fusion is attempted to be conducted at a lower energy by having a non-Maxwellian energy distribution in the plasma. That is, a Maxwellian plasma has most of the particles at a lower energy than the temperature would suggest, with the few high temperature outliers causing most of the fusion reactions. If you can only spend your energy accelerating particles to energies that stand a significant chance of fusing (without wasting it on bulk material that will still be too low energy), you can get a much higher rate of fusion. Rider goes on to show that, barring heavy use of selective removal of low energy particles for reacceleration, non-Maxwellian distributions of ion energies will rapidly decay to a Maxwellian equilibrium distribution. He also discusses energy loss mechanisms, and how formidable they are. In a later paper, he discusses more specific fusion systems and the problems inherent in them, and then proposes several possible systems that use resonant excitation or filtering of low energy ions for reacceleration to bypass the limitations his paper sets on fusion systems.
Anyways, back to sonofusion. The idea with sonofusion is not, to the best of my understanding, to get a non-equilibrium energy distribution. Rather, it is to get extremely high temperatures in a very small region of space, and then have A) the resultant neutrons seed cavities in the opposite nodes, and B) have energy from the reaction feed back into the wave, helping compress the opposite nodes at the same time that the input accoustic waves normally would. In short, Taleyarkan hopes to achieve a kind of sonofusion chain reaction in which accoustic waves self-maintain a strong degree of anisotropy due to the fusion reactions that they cause. Even if a chain reaction is shown to be impossible, the hope is to at least make a good neutron source.
At least, this is my understanding of what I've read; admittedly, it's been a while.
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This is completely different from global warming. Most of the field has been over the data many times, they get the same res