Successful Cold Fusion Experiment? 387
An anonymous reader writes "The italian economic journal 'Il sole 24 ore' published an article about a successful cold fusion experiment performed by Yoshiaki Arata in Japan. They seems to have pumped high pressure deutherium gas in a nanometric matrix of palladium and zyrcon oxide. The experiments generates a considerable amount of energy and they found the presence of Helium-4 in the matrix (as sign of the fusion). I was not able to find other articles about this but the journal is very authoritative in Italy. Google translations are also available."
Elium-4? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Elium-4? (Score:5, Informative)
It might come to a surprise to you, but not all words come from english; eventually it's the other way round.
Re:Elium-4? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Elium-4? (Score:5, Interesting)
So Latin "homo" "person" but Italian "uomo", Rumanian "om" and so on.
(The "h" in French "homme" has never been pronounced and is only there in the spelling by analogy with the Latin word).
In the time of the later Roman Republic and early Empire (when most of the famous Latin literature comes from) whether "h" was pronounced was a class thing; dropping "h"s was supposed to be a mark of ignorance or low status.
People insecure about their status would put in "h"s where they didn't belong (the poet Catullus has a whole poem mocking somebody who does this).
Even those who prided themselves on their education were already getting it wrong by then, though, and some of their mistakes got perpetuated:
"humerus" "upper arm" should be "umerus"
"anser" "goose" should be "hanser"
We can deduce a remarkable amount about how Classical Latin was pronounced; there's a good book about it:
"Vox Latina" by W Sidney Allen
Re:Elium-4? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that was certainly the most interesting etymological post I've seen on slashdot lately! Certainly more interesting than an article on physics posted in an Italian business magazine, which seems to have been the original topic.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's evidently based on Latin spelling; I presume that English pronunciation of the "h" in Latin words is based on the prior use of the original Latin "h" letter to represent the English sound in English words (similarly in other Germanic languages).
It must have been a non-trivial step for the original developers of writing systems for English, German etc to think of using the "h" symbol, which would have represented no actual sound in contemporary Latin-derived speech, to represent our
Well to heck with English spelling in English then (Score:4, Insightful)
It might come to a surprise to you, but not all words come from english; eventually it's the other way round.
That's all great and interesting and all, and the other posts on etymology are interesting too, but you see, the thing is, the Slashdot article summary is written in English, for a primarily English speaking audience. In English, the word begins with an "H".
I'm all for respecting the languages of others, but the English word is spelled "Helium". Or, do we now get to use the spelling and pronunciation rules of whatever language we choose?
Re:Elium-4? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
np: Saul Williams - WTF! (The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of NiggyTardust!)
H conservation! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:H conservation! (Score:5, Funny)
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They should have used Zdrogen. It's one better than Ydrogen.
I hope so. (Score:2)
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Bush and his Shadowy Masters(TM) are going to look pretty stupid if a cheap and plentiful power source suddenly appears. How much has the occupation of Iraq cost, so far? We may need to start working on getting that Lunar Helium, though. Maybe they should have invaded the Moon.
FRAUD ALERT -- Slashdot sucked in again! (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently the only purpose for this that has ever been found, however, is confusing Slashdot editors.
There are a large number of people claiming to be "working" on cold fusion. No one has ever been able to demonstrate anything interesting.
However, there are also a lot of schemes to steal investor money. In my opinion, this is probably fraud, as others have been.
Cold Illusion: Old story from February 2008 (Score:5, Informative)
It's an old story, from February 2008. Quote: ' "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers (J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008)..." '
Quote: ' "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.' My translation: "Please believe in this particular fantasy."
Apparently Slashdot editors don't do any research.
Re:Cold Illusion: Old story from February 2008 (Score:5, Interesting)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5214938694909002743&q=the+war+on+cold+fusion&ei=Exo4SOt6iJzhAsyLxN8D&hl=en [google.com]
Also watch the US Navy SPAWAR experiments:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2843914499166355574&q=spawar+%22cold+fusion%22&ei=4hk4SNzaMIvS4QLYy53pAw&hl=en [google.com]
It may not be "cold fusion" but they have proof of excess
heat and other signs of nuclear process.
Some of the scientists involved are well respected too.
Consider all evidence before passing final judgement.
Known for more than 40 years. (Score:4, Informative)
"Excess heat" is not a sign of nuclear fusion. It is a sign of something that has been known for more than 40 years, that Platinum and Palladium absorb Hydrogen, and sometimes heat is generated when experimenting with that.
Wikipedia: Palladium [wikipedia.org]. Quote: "Incredibly, when palladium is at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, it can absorb up to 900 times its own volume of hydrogen,
The people who "demonstrate" "cold fusion" never seem to be physicists. This Slashdot story is about someone who works for the Welding Research Institute at Osaka University.
Re:Known for more than 40 years. (Score:4, Insightful)
Two of the worst possible sources you could give (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing these videos bring to the table are constant allegations of conspiracy theories. These do not qualify as evidence worth considering before passing judgment. They ar
FRAUD ALERT -- Slashdot sucked in again! -- UPDATE (Score:5, Informative)
Yoshiaki Arata works for the Welding Research Institute of Osaka University. He is not a physicist, apparently.
Old story: He's been reporting this kind of thing since before October 13, 2006: A New Energy caused by "Spillover-Deuterium" [jst.go.jp]. Quote: "Intermittent operation over a period of two years using this structure proved the complete reproducibility of these results."
I hope no Slashdot reader invests in this. Would it be too much to ask Slashdot editor Scuttle Monkey [slashdot.org] to do a little research before he posts stories?
This is not the first complaint about Scuttle Monkey: Who is Scuttle Monkey? [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This link [iscmns.org] also says he has been nominated for a life member of the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science.
Now I am really confused... can you provide more details on him being a welder and not a physicist?
Re:FRAUD ALERT -- Slashdot sucked in again! (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, I also don't have any problem believing that platinum or palladium could have absorbed helium like a sponge from somewhere, and the hydrogen is merely driving it out and replacing it.
it's not the orientation that matters (Score:4, Informative)
The difficulty with getting them that close together is, of course, the fact that they strongly repel each other because they're both positively charged. The potential energy of two protons almost close enough to feel the strong force is roughly equal to the kinetic energy per particle in a gas at temperature of a million degrees or so.
That is, it requires a staggeringly huge force to push protons close enough, against their mutual electrostatic repulsion, for them to finally feel the strong force and fuse. This force hugely exceeds that available in chemical bonds of any type, in any arrangement. You can get that force by raising the temperature to a million degrees, which increase the momentum of the protons so much that they supply the force themselves, when they crash into each other. But any material at all would fracture, vaporize, disintegrate long before it supply that kind of force. Which means pretty much any kind of cold fusion that depends on solid-state material properties is impossible. It's all bullshit, the usual magic catalysis/perpetual-motion kind of scam.
There are ways to get fusion going at lower temperatures, the most interesting of which is to catalyze it with muons. Google muon-catalyzed fusion for more info.
wow, elium-4 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:wow, elium-4 (Score:5, Funny)
english.it (Score:5, Funny)
english.it.us (Score:4, Funny)
no, just west end London (Score:3, Funny)
Come on (Score:2)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Informative)
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At worst it's an unusual battery or energy storage/conversion device, and someone might later find a real use for it.
In contrast the hot fusion people have gone through billions of dollars, and what major advance have they produced?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Informative)
No, cold fusion is ruled out by basic Quantum Mechanics.
The electrons are irrelevant since their density is so low, and nuclei must be within 10^-15 m to fuse. This only occurs at temperatures of hundreds of millions Celsius. If these experiments were generating temperatures this high, one could easily tell because they would also emit X- and gamma-rays.
Explanation of "cold fusion" phenomena (if these experiments are real and reproducible) would require a significant modification of Quantum Mechanics. This is exactly why physicists are so quick to dismiss the experiments. Few papers have been published "ruling it out" because it's so simple. However here is one: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v63/p191 [aps.org]. The theoretical literature claiming to come up with exotic ways to allow the phenomena to happen are quite extreme, in my opinion.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Informative)
Muon catalyzed fusion is documented and reproduceable. It can also occur at room temperature or lower.
It's probably not viable as a power source though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion [wikipedia.org]
Tim.
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You say that like we should be impressed. "Wow!! HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of degrees!!!" Too bad any engineer can tell you that's just several keV. Everything from TVs to neon lighting can reach or exceed those voltages. That's the big problem with hot fusion proponents - all temperature and pressure, overlooking the simple matter of electric fields. It's no wonder they've nothing to show for the HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars spent. What idiots.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They restict you making alcohol fuels at home because you can drink it and they tax that a lot.
They don't at least in most places in the US restrict bio diesel or even cooking oil use.
Anyway cheap energy would be great and the goverment would love it.
You give me enough super cheap electricity and I will make you all the oil you want from water and air.
Not on
Two more reports... (Score:5, Informative)
http://physicsworld.com/blog/2008/05/coldfusion_demonstration_a_suc_1.html
A little more here:
http://newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-Demo.htm
Not a first hand account, but still.
Wouldn't that be nice? After years of delays for a new experimental fusion reactor (ITER) because they could not agree on where it should be built, a Japanese professor finds a way to get cold fusion to get work and the reactor is obsolete before built! Science can move ahead in strange and unpredictable ways as well...
Re:Two more reports... (Score:4, Insightful)
A big MAYBE: first the cold fusion experiment must be investigated, reproduced, etc, AND it obsoletes ITER only if it can be harnessed to produce energy, which is far from certain..
Look about high temperature supraconductors: at a time they were all the rage, but currently in many (most?) setup, it's old fashioned 'cold' supraconductors which are used because of issues with the 'high temperatures' one (britleness, ability to withstand high current, etc.)
A world changing experiment... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:A world changing experiment... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:A world changing experiment... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A world changing experiment... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A world changing experiment... (Score:5, Informative)
Reading the second article [ilsole24ore.com] does not give me confidence. It is the same old "we did this and that and got out some heat and some Helium." This also does not give confidence.
The article talks about Deuterium (Hydrogen-2) and Helium-4. Deuterium - Deuterium fusion should give rise to Tritium (Hydrogen-3 - which is radioactive) or Helium-3 plus a neutron (which is a form of radioactivity). Now, either of these products (Tritium or Helium-3) can themselves fuse (with each other or with Deuterium) to produce Helium-4, but these should also produce neutrons. Deuterium - Deuterium fusion to directly to Helium-4 is much harder to do (it has a very small cross-section), and its energy should come out as gamma rays.
So, they claimed no radioactivity (when there should have been neutrons or gamma rays produced) with an unlikely nuclear reaction (H2 + H2 -> He4) and it produced a moderate amount of heat (1 kilo Joule) without actually stating how much energy it took to run the apparatus.
It may be real, but the indications in this Italian economics journal are not encouraging.
Neutrons anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Neutrons anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Thus no Neutrons. Much safer.
Re:Neutrons anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, if it is a purely 2D->He4 reaction, there should be a significant gamma flux with a characteristic (IIRC) energy as the product nucleus relaxed, which should be fairly easy to verify, at least in a ballpark measurement.
choice of media? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Hype much? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, i don't understand much about Japanese or high temperature physics but as far as i can see, there isn't even a mention of Helium-4 in the article's English abstract or the picture and graph subtitles. This makes me wonder quite a bit about who put this hyperbolic spin on the story. Maybe the He-4 discovery is just a recent and unexpected find they decided to (too) eagerly emphasize?
Could someone who knows Japanese and some physics post his/her views on the article?
Peer-Reviewed Articles (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems unlikely to me that the first move an earnest discoverer of a new energy source in Japan would be to call an Italian newspaper. All the more since he seems to be working in academia and would thus have a strong incentive to publish in a peer-reviewed journal first (you don't get the Nobel prize for an article in "Il sore 24 ore"). But, here are the papers. Form your own opinion...
Re:Peer-Reviewed Articles (Score:5, Insightful)
But you do get to the front page of Slashdot!
More seriously, the established journals are often hideously slow in publishing stuff, and often dare to charge you for it, too. In the age of the Internet, all that can be dispensed with. You can get your discoveries and inventions published, peer reviewed, and communicated to the masses, all for free and without having to wait on some organization's release cycle.
You can also, of course, use the Internet to spread lies and misinformation, create fake peer reviews, and communicate all that to the masses, all for free and without having to wait on some organization's release cycle.
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I have learned not to blindly trust peer-reviewed articles. The trust in a certain process/result comes when you find more than one article about the same, preferably articles referring
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How about neutrons? (Score:5, Informative)
The article seemed to be sparse on the details of what was actually going on, but if indeed the only evidence that they had a fusion reaction happening is the presence of helium-4, then they may have just detected naturally occurring helium [wikipedia.org] that is present in the atmosphere (0.000524%).
A better test to see whether fusion reactions are taking place is to try to detect the a stream of neutrons which are being produced. The neutrons flux and the energy should be able to be used to differentiate the fusion neutrons from the background neutron sources, such as those caused by spontaneous fission [wikipedia.org] events of heavy elements like uranium. Also, nuclear fusion reactions tend to produce high-energy, or fast neutrons [wikipedia.org] (upwards of 14 MeV with deuterium-deuterium fusion) which isn't too common unless you have some type of nuclear reaction taking place. (Here's a list of important nuclear fusion reactions important fusion reactions [wikipedia.org] for those who are curious.)
Detecting helium on the other hand, seems not so out of the ordinary since there is helium in the atmosphere.
Re:How about neutrons? (Score:4, Informative)
2H + 2H ----> 4He
- no neutrons "lost" at all.
Re:How about neutrons? (Score:5, Informative)
The simple answer is that 2H + 2H --> 4He doesn't happen.
As shown in the link I posted to Wikipedia in my original post, you'll see that 2H + 2H --> 4He does not happen with any significance. In other words, that reaction doesn't happen enough to make it a significant source of the reaction. Nuclear physics doesn't exactly work like arithmetic.
The primary d-d reactions are listed as follows in the important reactions [wikipedia.org] section of the nuclear fusion article at Wikipedia:
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This table has to do with the probability of reactions of high-energy particles randomly smashing into each other.
The physics of cold fusion (if it exists) is unknown. As a wild speculation, the palladium nanomat
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Criteria_and_candidates_for_terrestrial_reactions [wikipedia.org]
You can see that the reactions with the "slower" neutrons (~2 MeV) are needed to produce the D+n->T transumtation that the article mentions. I don't think you can get ~14MeV neutrons sufficiently slowed down in this small geometry for them to contribute much to the transmutation. Now this is mentio
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There may be reasons that make detection problematic, but I don't think size is one of them, neither should their velocity/energy be because both are in the same order of magnitude.
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More info (Score:4, Informative)
Think for a moment! (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesnt that seem a bit fishy?
See me again when they actually published something somewhere...
some more info (Score:3, Informative)
Loro Voglio Moltissimo Bene (Score:2)
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Yes. It will be the day when they'll have nothing to lose any more.
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It will also be the day they go from having economic power to being rather subject to external powers.
Since the shift away from petroleum will be gradual, if not glacial, I hope they take the opportunity to reform their ideas. Failure to do so could result in creation of the world's largest glass bowl.
Cat got my tongue :( (Score:2, Funny)
Just an idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is more than only this experiment (Score:5, Informative)
Since cold fusion has such a bad reputation, they are calling it Low -Energy Nuclear Reactions. It's not only a better name, but it describes more accurately what those scientists are seeing: Transmutations and excess energy in low energy conditions.
The offical LENR webcine New Energy Times has all the info:
http://www.newenergytimes.com/ [newenergytimes.com]
It's still interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems likely that this will turn out to be a poorly-understood conventional exothermic chemical reaction. It might still turn out to be useful and/or enlightening. If nothing else, it serves to remind us that there's quite a lot of fairly basic chemistry that we haven't quite figured out yet.
More like... (Score:2)
meh
the ACTUAL peer reviewed article (Score:4, Informative)
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Read The Numbers... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you don't get Nobels for publishing Japanese cold fusion work in Italian economics journals. You don't get them from publishing any cold fusion work in any peer reviewed physics journal because they don't get published as such, for much the same reasons that make people claim absence of evidence is evidence of absence even though the evidence was only absent in some of the replications. You do, however, publish articles about Japanese cold fusion work in an Italian economics journal when a Japanese company is building cold fusion equipment in an Italian factory purchased from Fiat, said company having hired Pons and Fleischmann as design consultants.
Neutron flux is a sign of some fusion reactions, but not all. 2 * (1p + 1n) --> (2p + 2n): two deuterium go to one helium. The energy released is from the conversion of mass of two deuterium (2 * 2.014 = 4.028) into one helium (4.002). The difference (.026) is is given off as energy measured in ergs, calculated from the amount of mass "lost" in grams times the speed of light in a vacuum in centimeters per second times itself. The source of the energy is the release of binding energy in the nuclei; the binding energy required grows at a lesser rate than the number of nucleons. This is the mass difference stated in another way. The energy is this particular reaction comes.
And if cold fusion were as much a hoax as those educated by hearsay rather than science would have you believe, then you wouldn't have symposia on the subject at scientific conferences hosted by the selfsame journals that refuse the publish such articles unless they're written so speculatively as to seem almost fiction, and the phenonemon examined is called something else.
Regardless of the barriers caused by pathological disbelief masquerading as skepticism, or worse, education at the hands of the pathological disbelievers, over 3,000 articles peer reviewed articles on cold fusion have been published. Enough evidence has been accumulated to convince both the US Many and the US Dept. of Energy that the phenonenon is real, though inadequately understood, and deserved more investigation and funding.
Those who are so certain that cold fusion is bogus would probably be glad to know that once the bogus cold fusion reactors built at the bogus Fiat plant are primed they crank out 270 kiloboguswatts over 90 bogusdays with no additional input of energy.
Answer for yourself: if you had something important, but the mention of it made those who were the supposed experts in the field run screaming, just how would you go about bringing the knowledge out into the open without getting quashed? Through many different kinds of channels, a tiny bit at a time, which would by necessity mean some of the announcements would be of results and discoveries from some considerable time prior. The SETI people assert this is how alien contact and/or news of such would proceed and nobody blinks at that. Claim that this same process of being used on news of replicable tabletop physics and their eyes get stuck wide shut.
There's this thing called "science" and "research" (Score:3, Insightful)
Using Occam's razor, it's a whole lot more likely this guy's results are due to well-known chemical reactions, not anything nuclear.
Nuclear reactions are easily discerned by the generation of Gamma rays and neutrons. The fact that these were not mentioned in the article suggests nothing exciting is going on.
It's the density, stupid! (Score:3, Informative)
Unofficial translation (Score:5, Informative)
Italian reader
Moreover, the article is very focused on
telling the amazing story and embellishing
it with Japanese stereotype. The "Sole 24 ore"
is a well reputed economical journal, but
it is nothing about technical.
Indeed, they miss any reference to the original
news.
The revenge of the Samurai.
Yoshiaki Arata, 85 years old is a Japanese Professor Emeritus,
a leading pioneer of the advanced nuclear program in Japan and one of the fathers of research about hot fusion.
He is a strong NATIONALIST (he speaks only Japanese in public),
awarded by the Emperor and has now won his 20 years long battle as a Samurai.
He never gave up about the topic [cold fusion] since 1989, when Fleishmann and Pons announced a possible "constrained" fusion of deuterium inside a palladium cathode.
[They use] lightweight molecules, made traveling by a moderate anode-to-cathode electron flux in the fluid towards
palladium exhagonal structures.
There, they collide, pushing over themselves and trapping them causing the spontaneous pressure to reach million of atmospheres,
and then breaking nucleus, producing heat and finally converting into Helium-4.
A genuine nuclear fusion, obtained without the need of the big, high energy toroids as Iter, just like it happens
in stars.
Instead, they needed just a bottle with a little "heavy water" (easy to find in nature), a rare metal and the
same electric power you need at home.
Without radiations and with the final production of a inert gas, helium, useful to fill balloons.
Too beautiful to be true. Fleishmann and Pons shocked the whole community but they never managed to reproduce an experiment that would have changed
the life of humanity , if not in a few, sporadic cases.
They were defined cheaters, pretenders, not scientific, together with their entourage, up to being marginalized by the scientific community.
But samurai Arata went straight along the line. Also because
since the fifties he was amazed by the deuterium supercompression technique,
due to anomalies that happened using certain metals. So he decided
to take another line of research while working on low-energy fusion, the
one of electro-chemic. By simply pushing the deuterium inside palladium
nanoparticles with more and more atmospheres, up to creating the
same "crowded" situation and pressure increase of that experiment.
Today [5/22/2008] he made a public demonstration of his reactor in
Osaka, moving a Stirling engine with a few grams of palladium.
The reactor has been partially realized using ideas of Francesco
Celani and his group at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics
(INFN) in Frascati: the second-ranked laboratory actively working on Arata's line.
In the next few days Arata will try to increase the amount from 7 to 60
grams of palladium, expecting hundreds of Watts in thermal power, that is,
enough for your house lights for months.
But the very outstanding news, given in front of a multitude of scientific
reporters, someone coming even from the USA, is to have proved the production,
inside palladium hexagons, of a non-neglegible quantity of Helium-4,
the sign of deuterium transmutation and nuclear fusion.
This resulted in the reporters' crowd started talking about the "Arata
Phenomenon", a term he kindly accepted taking a bow, just like an old Samurai.
I call bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
One method of cold fusion which does work is to inject muons into the sample. Muons are like electrons, but significantly heavier. Their negative charge in combination with their large mass causes the nuclei of Deuterium molecules to move close enough to one another that quantum tunneling becomes a strong possibility and the nuclei eventually fuse. Unfortunately you lose a lot of muons either through radioactive decay ( muons are radioactive ) or because they get trapped by the positively charged helium nucleus produced. Consequentially you end up spending more energy to produce the muons than the fusion reaction produces.
Finally I like to add that achieving fusion is not very hard. The potentials required are only a few thousand volts, and desktop neutron sources based on fusion reactions have been available for decades. Heck, it is simple enough that hobbyists have built their own fusion devices. The difficulty is to get the fusion reaction to produce more energy than you need to sustain it.
Re:It's not Rocket Science! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's not Rocket Science! (Score:5, Funny)
That's why Slashdot has editors to clean up the submissions, and discard the dupes.
Oh, wait...
But whenever translating into English... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like this old, ridiculed experiment (Score:2)
It sounds a lot like this experiment with similar materials from around 2002 [newscientist.com], which was ridiculed.
Re:Sounds like this old, ridiculed experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article (and some other links in the comments), and assuming fusion really takes place, I would guess that this is some surface-related mechanism. Some unknown mechanism where the D-atoms are first adsorbed on the Pd, and then fusion takes place. If so it can very well be a relative slow process. I have not read the articles in much detail, I'm a chemist, not physicist. The articles also mention that imperfections in the Pd crystals appear to play a major role - again limiting the available area where such a reaction could take place.
And on top of it all, this reaction takes place at much lower temperature than most fusion reactions, thus the movement of the atoms is slower.
All in all, don't let the very slow kinetics put you off the idea that atomic fusion may take place, the most interesting fact reported is that the experiment produces energy over a long period of time and that I think is worth further investigation. First of all of course reproduction of the very experiment by some other scientists, and then improving the efficiency and figuring out what REALLY is going on.
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Isn't that like going to a Nationalist Socialist website to learn about the holocaust?
Ah, crap. Godwin. I always do this.
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Everyone knows those are unstable. What were you thinking?
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np: Saul Williams - WTF! (The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of NiggyTardust!)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So-called geeks! (Score:4, Funny)
Refusing to use fusion because it might one day affect the oceans is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Our current energy usage is destroying the planet now. It would be utterly insane to refuse to use a clean, non-destructive alternative just because over-use will start having some small impact some kilo- or mega-years in the future. Nothing is perfect. If this works (and I am, as I said, quite skeptical) then it would be vastly better than any known alternative.
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