Dear friends,
Though the
mainstream media and scientific establishment pretty well slaughtered cold
fusion when it first came out in 1989, literally hundreds of scientists have
continued passionately researching this topic, even in the face of intense
ridicule from their peers. Some
of these scientists have even been quite well known. Referring to the
first claims of cold fusion success, a November 16, 2004 Washington
Post article states, "Since 1989, hundreds of scientists working
in dozens of labs around the world have claimed similar results."
Though
important news like the below article in the Christian Science Monitor
continues to seep out, the new energy cover-up continues strong. The media
and general public don't question the fact that gas
mileage has not improved in over 60 years, while almost every other branch
of technology and engineering has had dramatic increases. The major gas
and oil companies clearly benefit by keeping the many new energy inventions
which have surfaced, including cold fusion, from becoming public knowledge.
For more excellent information on this topic, see our New
Energy Information Center. By spreading this important information, we
can and will build a brighter future for us all.
With best
wishes,
Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info
Team
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2005/0606/p25s01-stss.html
Sci/Tech
> Science & Space
June 06, 2005
Coming
in out of the cold: Cold fusion, for real
By Michelle
Thaller | csmonitor.com
PASADENA, CALIF. – For the last few years, mentioning cold fusion around
scientists (myself included) has been a little like mentioning Bigfoot or
UFO sightings.
After the 1989 announcement of fusion in a bottle, so to speak, and the subsequent
retraction, the whole idea of cold fusion seemed a bit beyond the pale. But
that's all about to change.
A very
reputable, very careful group of scientists at the University of Los Angeles
(Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski, Seth Putterman) has initiated a fusion reaction
using a laboratory device that's not much bigger than a breadbox, and works
at roughly room temperature. This time, it looks like the real thing.
Before going into their specific experiment, it's probably a good idea to
define exactly what nuclear fusion is, and why we're so interested in understanding
the process. This also gives me an excuse to talk about how things work deep
inside the nuclei of atoms, a topic near and dear to most astronomers (more
on that later).
Simply put, nuclear fusion means ramming protons and neutrons together so
hard that they stick, and form a single, larger nucleus. When this happens
with small nuclei (like hydrogen, which has only one proton or helium, which
has two), you get a lot of energy out of the reaction. This specific reaction,
fusing two hydrogen nuclei together to get helium, famously powers our sun
(good), as well as hydrogen bombs (bad).
Fusion
is a tremendous source of energy; the reason we're not using it to meet our
everyday energy needs is that it's very hard to get a fusion reaction going.
The reason is simple: protons don't want to get close to other protons.
Do you remember learning about electricity in high school? I sure do - I
dreaded it whenever that topic came around. I had a series of well-meaning
science teachers that thought it would be fun for everyone to hold hands and
feel a mild electric shock pass their arms. Every time my fists clenched and
jerked and I had nothing consciously do with it, my stomach turned.
In addition, I have long, fine hair, and was often made a victim of the Van
de Graf generator - the little metal ball with a rubber belt inside it that
creates enough static electricity to make your hair stand on end. Yeesh.
Anyway, hopefully you remember the lesson that two objects having different
electrical charges (positive and negative) attract one another, while those
with the same charge repel. It's a basic law of electricity, and it definitely
holds true when two protons try to get close together. Protons have positive
charges, and they repel each other. Somehow, in order for fusion to work,
you've got to overcome this repulsive electrical force and get the things
to stick together.
Here's where
an amazing and mysterious force comes in that, although we don't think about
it in our day-to-day lives, literally holds our matter together. There
are four universal forces of nature, two of which you're probably familiar
with: gravity and electromagnetism.
But there
are two other forces that really only come in to play inside atomic nuclei:
the strong and weak nuclear forces (and yes, the strong force is the stronger
of the two, the weak is weaker. Scientists really have a way with names, don't
they?) I'm going to focus on the strong force, as that's the one responsible
for nuclear fusion.
The strong force is an attractive force between protons and neutrons - it
wants to stick them together. If the strong force had its way, the entire
universe would be one big super-dense ball of protons and neutrons, one big
atomic nucleus, in fact.
Fortunately,
the strong force only becomes strong at very small scales: about one millionth
billionth of a meter. Yes, that's 0.000000000000001 meters. Any farther away,
and the strong force loses its grip. But if you can get protons and neutrons
that close together, the strong force becomes stronger than any other force
in nature, including electricity.
That's important- all protons have the same charge, so they'd like to fly
away from each other. But if you can get them close together, inside the volume
of an atomic nucleus, the strong force will bind them together.
The whole
trick with fusion is you've got to get protons close enough together for the
strong force to overcome their electrical repulsion and merge them together
into a nucleus. The sun does this pretty much by brute force. The sun
has over 300,000 times the mass of the Earth, which means there's a lot of
gravity weighing down on its core.
That pressure gets the sun's internal temperature up to several millions
of degrees, which means that particles inside the sun's core are flying around
at huge velocities. Everything is moving around so fast that protons sometimes
get slammed together before their charges have a chance to repel. The strong
force takes hold, and a new atom (helium) is born.
In this process, some of the mass of the protons is converted into energy,
powering the sun and producing the light that will eventually reach the Earth
as sunlight.
Scientists
have gotten fusion to occur in the laboratory before, but for the most part,
they've tried to mimic conditions inside the sun by whipping hydrogen gas
up to extreme temperatures or slamming atoms together in particle accelerators.
Both of those options require huge energies and gigantic equipment, not the
sort of stuff easily available to build a generator. Is there any way of getting
protons close enough together for fusion to occur that doesn't require the
energy output of a large city to make it happen?
The answer, it turns out, is yes.
Instead
of using high temperatures and incredible densities to ram protons together,
the scientists at UCLA cleverly used the structure of an unusual crystal.
Crystals
are fascinating things; the atoms inside are all lined up in a tightly ordered
lattice, which creates the beautiful structure we associate with crystals.
Sometimes those orderly atoms create neat side-effects, like piezoelectricity,
which is the effect of creating an electrical charge in a crystal by compressing
it. Stressing the bonds between the atoms of some crystals causes electrons
to build up on one side, creating a charge difference over the body of the
crystal. Other crystals do this when you heat or cool them; these are called
pyroelectric crystals.
The new cold fusion experiment went something like this: scientists inserted
a small pyroelectric crystal (lithium tantalite) inside a chamber filled with
hydrogen. Warming the crystal by about 100 degrees (from -30 F to 45F) produced
a huge electrical field of about 100,000 volts across the small crystal.
The tip of
a metal wire was inserted near the crystal, which concentrated the charge
to a single, powerful point. Remember, hydrogen nuclei have a positive charge,
so they feel the force of an electric field, and this one packed quite a wallop!
The huge electric field sent the nuclei careening away, smacking into other
hydrogen nuclei on their way out. Instead of using intense heat or pressure
to get nuclei close enough together to fuse, this new experiment used a very
powerful electric field to slam atoms together.
Unlike some previous claims of room-temperature fusion, this one makes intuitive
sense: its just another way to get atoms close enough together for the strong
force to take over and do the rest. Once the reaction got going, the scientists
observed not only the production of helium nuclei, but other tell-tale signs
of fusion such as free neutrons and high energy radiation.
This experiment
has been repeated successfully and other scientists have reviewed the results:
it looks like the real thing this time.
For the
time being, don't expect fusion to become a readily available energy option.
The current cold fusion apparatus still takes much more energy to start up
than you get back out, and it may never end up breaking even. In the mean
time, the crystal-fusion device might be used as a compact source of neutrons
and X-rays, something that could turn out to be useful making small scanning
machines. But it really may not be long until we have the first nuclear fusion-powered
devices in common use.
So cold
fusion is back, perhaps to stay. After many fits and starts, its finally time
for everyday fusion to come in out of the cold.
