Small Scale Nuclear Fusion Achieved
Scientists say they have achieved small-scale nuclear fusion in a tabletop experiment, using tried and true techniques that are expected to generate far less controversy than past such claims.
Source: MSNBCThis latest experiment relied on a tiny crystal to generate a strong electric field. While the energy created was too small to harness cheap fusion power, the technique could have potential uses in medicine, spacecraft propulsion, the oil drilling industry and homeland security, said Seth Putterman, a physicist at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Putterman and his colleagues at UCLA, Brian Naranjo and Jim Gimzewski, report their results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Previous claims of tabletop fusion have been met with skepticism and even derision by physicists.
In one of the most notable cases, Dr. B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University in England shocked the world in 1989 when they announced that they had achieved so-called cold fusion at room temperature. Their work was discredited after repeated attempts to reproduce it failed.
Another technique, known as sonoluminescence, generates heat through the collapse of tiny bubbles in a liquid. Some scientists claim that nuclear fusion occurs during the reaction, but those claims have sparked sharp debate.
Fusion experts said the UCLA experiment will face far less skepticism because it conforms to well-known principles of physics.
"This doesn't have any controversy in it because they're using a tried and true method," David Ruzic, professor of nuclear and plasma engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told The Associated Press. "There's no mystery in terms of the physics."
0
Comments
We can only hope that it is real.