February 17, 2005
Fusion
From BBC News comes the story of a guy who invents a device that does Nuclear Fusion but he can't get no respect. The BEEB misses the point and ignores an American inventor who did the same thing a while ago. bq. Nuclear fusion 'put to the test' It is three years since Professor Rusi Taleyarkhan made the controversial claim that he had achieved one of the holy grails of science - nuclear fusion. bq. Since then, he has grown tired of the scepticism of his fellow scientists. bq. "My lab has been audited, my instruments have been audited, my books have been audited, the data speaks for itself. Professor Taleyarkhan (Oak Ridge National Laboratory -- no slouch there) is using the technique of Sonoluminescence and is generating Neutrons from his reactions -- proof positive of Nuclear Fusion. The problem(s) (two actually) are: #1) - the BEEB is missing out on the fact that the Prof is not getting excess energy out of this reaction. He has to pump in more energy than he will extract. What people are looking for (and spending the big bucks for) is a process where more energy is recovered than is put into the system. This is theoretically possible and is a very major holy-grail for physicists everywhere. Can you say Instant Nobel Prize? If you want to try your hand at Sonoluminescence, kits are available here for a bit more than $3K. Here is a description of the phenomenon (actually very cool!) #2) - is that an American -- Philo Farnsworth -- invented a device that uses different principles but performs Nuclear Fusion on demand. Flip a switch and poof -- Fusion (and Neutrons.) First patented in 1953 and refined and demonstrated in 1959, the fusor worked then, still works fine now and people are building them commercially as Neutron sources. Hobbyists are building them to play with. Again, the problem of more energy in than out limits their use to Neutron production and not an energy source... You can read about Philo's work on this at the Farnovision Chronicles. A good resource for hobby Fusor experiments is Fusor.net Philo was also the inventor of another technology. You may have heard of it -- television.
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