Cold Fusion?

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Lex_Mortis

Not here
Sep 2, 2002
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The Netherlands
A buddy of my told me some people succeeded to make Cold Fusion work for 1.2secs. I've searched the internet for any prove, but didnt find anything.. Can someone confirm or deny this? :confused:
 
RE:

think i saw that on a discovery program
cant remember exactly what the context on the proggy was prolly sustainable power

in theory it is possible but practice is a little different









now lets wait for thur to post as i need the next chapter in lord of the rings :P
 
I believe that this was achieved yeah, as i think i also saw some kind of TV program about it.

I think it requires a rediculously big set of apparatus to do it though and, as u said, its only been achieved for a second or so.
 
lol not another one! Every few years it seems a hair-brained scientists claims to have solved the fusion problem. As far as I know the most recent one was in early 2002 some time...a american scientist says he had achieved fusion by passing high intensity sound waves through acetone (nail polish remover). However his claims have not been verified, I myself am sceptical. Anyway even if he could...big deal, for cold fusion to be used as an energy source these conditions need to be held constant so the reaction can be sustained and controlled...this is the hard part! At the moment the best method which is producing promising results involves plasma being contained by powerful, highly focused lasers.

if there has been an even more recent claim, I'm not aware of it...

getting fusion to occur isn't the problem, indeed with many nuclear weapons the fission reaction is triggered by nuclear fusion (thermonuclear bombs), it is sustaining the high temp/pressures that is posing the problem.

Cold fusion is seen as possible by a few scientists and as bollox by most. Here I agree with the majority because open minded as I am I cannot see how low energy nuclear fusion could occur. Consider the case of nuclear fusion in U235: thermal neutrons are easily absorbed by U235 to induce fissionwith the emission of other neutrons to sustain a chain-reaction. However, the deuteron has a positive charge so two deuterons do not fuse together at "room temperature (cold)" because of their repulsive coulomb force. This repulsive force must be overcome in order for the short-range nuclear force to fuse the deuterons. Now the potential barrier here is in the order of 6*10^8 K, which is,....well fucking massive. There is no getting around this force the only way to overcome it is by energy....shit loads of it, ie. high temperatures and pressures. You cannot argue with this at all. Cold fusion....bollox. Quite often scientists who promote cold fusion say it is possible because of certain quantum mechanical effects.....which I doubt they know much about. I do however:)...back to my last example: according to quantum mechanics the energy in this coulomb force potential barrier will have some distribution in its kenetic energy and also particles will have some small probability of "tunneling" through the barrier. However, even including these effects the fusion temperature will still be around 10^8 K, at these temperatures all atoms are fully ionized and matter can only exist in its 4th state...plasma. Surprise surprise and guess where all the serious fusion research is, yep u guessed it plasma confinement. In the Sun this plasma is confined to sustain fusion reactions by the HUGE gravitational field. Here on Earth we cannot match the gravitational field so serious experiments use laser or magnetic confinement of the plasma.

....Nail polish and soundwaves...fuck sake what a twat, how did that get in the papers, thought they would have learned their lesson after the big 1989 cold fusion bollox.

Foxy slaps them for being thick twats!
 
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Hmmm, was this not an extension of the research into sonoluminescence?

I guess if cold fusion was reality, it would have been verified by now. Still, I'm curious, how does a basically low energy soud wave produce a flash of light, and temperatures in excess of 50,000 K?

I.
 
yeh thats right Winty basically a few scientists got real excited about sonoluminescence, since it appeared they could achieve high teperatures of a few thousand K, as u said, quite easily. They thought this phenomena could be a road to cold fusion. Bollox basically, quirky as the phenomena is it has not been shown to produce temperatures anywhere near the massive 10^8 K needed for fusion. Also these temperatures only occur along with a bright flash of light for an incredibly small space of time...not a sustained temperature. Some group did say however they had achieved fusion by this method, but when verification was attempted nobody could reproduce their results. Basically what is more likey is that their experiments and results were shite.

In ans to ur question: sound waves excite molecules in tiny bubbles in the acetone or whatever, over a period of time. Eventually the molecules become so excited and the density of the bubble is such that it implodes and the energy is released mainly in visible and IR wavelengths...giving rise to the brief flash and heat. Interesting enough but not useful for fusion in my opinion.

What is interesting are experiments such as those done at the princeton TFTR reactor where temperatures of 510 million C have been achieved, setting new world records and comparable to the conditions required for fusion...all done in controlled, tested and verified experiments.

In my opinion cold fusion and hot bubbles etc is just pop-science and they def. do not create conditions required for fusion to occur. However it may keep readers of the Sun ammused during their tea-breaks etc. :):P
 
I thought you only required about 150-200milllion C for fusion, im sure thats the case with the faster fusion rate deuterium tritium mix that JET project was using rather than only deuterium, making it slightly more practical :lol: However I reckon theres no chance coldfusion will ever work although that doesnt mean people should give up trying just make sure they dont spend too much money on it :)

Been a while since I did any research on the subject for uni so im probably wrong, ive succesfully managed to block out all the other horrifying stuff I learnt on my degree :D
 
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lol I know what you mean MyM :)

yeh you right, the exact temperature changes depending on what materials are used and what methods are being employed. The figure I gave was the theoretical amount of energy in K required for the fusion of the given particles. As you showed in your post in practice the actual temperatures for different experiments have a range of values...all around a few hundred million degrees C.:)
 
better with hot lovin:D


the fusion problemis indeed intersting. its 1 of the rare problems where u know its something which will work, u just gotta figure out how.
Personaly i think its a energy problem, science has tons of theories which will work in practise,but they need energy levels not possible atm.
 
You are in luck if you are interested in cold fusion cos one of my mates is doing a post-doctorate relating to cold fusion. I was talking to him last week, can’t put it all in here but I’ll give you a summary lol. He is looking at one of the standard cold fusion experiments where you immerse two pieces of metal, a palladium cathode (negatively charged) and a platinum anode (positively charged), in a beaker containing a conductive solution of D2O (heavy water), containing LiOD (lithium deuteroxide). An electrical current is passed through the solution between the two metal conductors. Deuterium is released from the heavy water at the cathode, where it either tries to escape as a gas or enters the crystalline atomic structure of the palladium (lattice). This allows a very high concentration of deuterium to be achieved in the palladium without having to apply very high gas pressure.

What he is researching is how two deuterium nuclei can approach close enough to fuse at room temperature, according to the usual understanding this should not occur even in palladium. Apparently the amounts of excess heat the experiment are consistent with the change in energy that results when heavy hydrogen is converted into helium-4.

Anyway he has been working on this for a good few years now and what he thinks is that this particular effect is related to subtle differences between the fusion processes, associated with the helium-4 reaction. He hasn't been able to explain the reaction seen in his experiment yet and nor has any other scientist....yet. I told him to get his lazy hippie ass in gear and solve it or I'd fart on his head.

If this does turn out to be a fusion reaction and not some other more exotic thing going on it is quite exciting because no high-energy gamma radiation (deadly to humans) is released.

So in answer to your question: they are still working on it…
 
they had it going for 0.1 seconds or something in the middle of the atlantic a few months ago - was on the bbc news site
 
Yeh as far as I know they have been able to do several experiments so far in which the excess heat generated is consistent with that of a fusion reaction between elements in the reaction. They are exotic reactions that have only been discovered relitively recently and whether fusion reactions are actually occuring and how the reaction could be sustained and contained has not been shown yet. Don't quote me on that but that's as much as I know without reading up on it. If you have a link to that latest news you saw I'd be interested to see it m8 :bounce: