Talk:Bubble fusion

Harness energy from Bubble Fusion?

Does anyone know how you'd harness the energy from Bubble Fusion? It doesn't make sense to me naturally since the liquid that the cavitation is taking place in is kept at room temperature and fusion is theoretically contained entirely inside the collapsing bubbles. That's something I've never seen addressed in any article on Bubble Fusion that I've read. It'd be a nice addition to the piece.

Well the heat generated by fusion is absorbed by the water, but the amount of fusion that actually goes on is very small.

"If you were to tile the world with these devices and let them run for an hour, there'd be enough thermonuclear energy to heat a cup of coffee 1 degree," Moss told UPI. "The likelihood that you could produce energy you could use is very, very slim -- but I'm not saying zero." [1] - Omegatron 13:27, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

The interest at this time is mainly scientific, and I seriously doubt if it can ever be scaled up. However, from Nuclear fusion we have the easiest fusion reaction:

(1)

D

+

T

→

4He

(3.5 MeV)

+

n

(14.1 MeV)

Most of the energy is in the neutron, which will escape the device.  :pstudier 19:30, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)

I always wondered if it could be scaled down. They say the diameter of the bubble is ~100 µm or so max. I envision millions of little spherical tanks etched into an integrated circuit running in parallel. From the waveforms and videos I've seen, it looks like the bubble actually wants to resonate at a higher frequency, in the MHz or so (slow-mo video). Which would mean... on the order of a millimeter diameter tank. So I guess not millions...

But what do I know? I'm sure my imagination is about as true to real science as Chain Reaction. - Omegatron 21:20, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

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I'm really not confident to include this in the article itself, but I wonder if someone could take the information from the BBC Horizon documentary broadcast on 17/2/05 and incorporate it into the article. They got Putterman to attempt to replicate the exiperiment, but he failed to detect any fusion neutrons. (See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/experiment_prog_summary.shtml)

The movie Chain Reaction, while discussing sonoluminescence, did not directly address fusion. Instead, the scientists were pursuing a cheap method of producing gaseous hydrogen. The centerpiece explosion of the movie was an explosion of hydrogen gas, not a nuclear explosion.

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Reply: This is true. Putterman, an expert in sonoluminescence, was commissioned along with an independent expert in nuclear fusion detection, to thoroughly study the claims of R. Taleyarkhan. With help from Brian Naranjo, another sonoluminescence expert, the group concluded that no evidence of nuclear fusion could be found using the techniques of Taleyarkhan, and that he was simply misinterpreting the by-products of radioactive decay from lab equipment for the by-products of fusion. If you attend a soft condensed matter Physics conference, every expert outside of Taleyarkhan's group (regardless of their affiliation) will tell you that Taleyarkhan's group got it wrong, but that sonofusion is still a theoretical possibility that we may see at some point in the future.

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I encourage the authors of this Wikipedia entry to take a look at some of the new sonoluminescence results which are the antecedent of this article:

http://www.physlink.com/News/030805CollapsingBubbles.cfm

They've confirmed that the surface of these collapsing bubbles are four times as hot as the surface of the sun. This does seem to confirm that the inside of the bubbles really may be as hot as the center of the sun.

To pick a nit, the surface of the sun is 5780K, its center is probably many millions of degrees. If the bubbles were this hot at the center, they would be emitting easily detected X-Rays. Interesting story, if I have time later, I will incorporate it into the main article. pstudier 19:24, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

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Reply to above: No, you cannot detect any of the X-ray radiation because these photons are quickly absorbed by the surrounding fluid and do not reach your detectors. You would need to have a detector in the fluid itself and very close to the collapsing bubble on top of this. As of 2006, this would be a very difficult engineering problem and/or require more funding to accomplish than most of these small sonoluminescence/cavitation groups are being given.

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:-)

http://www.impulsedevices.com/index.html - Omegatron 19:42, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Rename?

Sonofusion seems to be the dominant term in use, especially in the literature. Should the article be renamed? Rei 20:29, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

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The RPI links do not work. Besselfunctions 01:34, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Successful sonofusion experiment, Jan 2006

http://physorg.com/news10336.html indicates that there was a successful sonofusion experiment, but I know way too little about this topic to update the Wikipedia article. Somebody who understands this should read the article and make appropriate changes, i.e. change the part about this being only "hypothesized".

Reply: This is not true, as every single sonofusion experiment to date that has claimed to be "successful" has later been shown to be incorrect or a misinterpretation of the data. While it isn't *theoretically* impossible to achieve sonofusion, noone has actually done it yet (every time a new claim is made, the experts either immediately see why the claim is incorrect OR many expert groups try to reproduce the results that are claimed and cannot).

Reply to reply: Check again--Taleyarkhan's results now have been verified. Whether or not this second group simply committed the same error remains to be seen; but to take the attitude that no one has ever verified Taleyarkhan's results and no one ever will, is absurd. -128.101.53.232 18:00, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I did not take the said attitude, so please re-read. And BTW, Taleyarkhan's interpretation that his data shows sonofusion is occurring has NOT been independently verified. In fact, it has been refuted again and again by all of the leading physicsts in the world that specialize in acoustic cavitation. After some of the best acoustic cavitation and nuclear physicists in the world all agreed that Taleyarkhan's group was either misinterpreting or falsifying data, a couple very smart (but not experts in this field) guys that are friends with Taleyarkhan visited his lab and were convinced by him to interpret the data the way he is interpreting it. I do NOT consider that an independent verification!!!

Cleanup needed

This article need neutralization and cleanup (maybe starting with the very long list of external links, which appear to include many irrelevant links). ---CH 11:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

As an example, the Patriot media anon near Bronx, New York just added a link to a news release from Pure Energy Systems News (PESN), which tends to be too credulous to be a reliable source of information.---CH 20:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I took a first pass at the external links. What a mess they were! Still needs more work if someone has the time. I find it troubling that half of them link to journals that require subscriptions. Sure makes it hard to clean those up when you can't see the source. The sealed Purdue report also makes one wonder just what in the world is going on. By the time we clean this article up enough to document the controversy in a neutral manner, it will all be obsolete. There's something to be said for deleting all the controversy coverage and just referring straight to the May 2006 IEEE article, which is quite well written. --UncleDouggie 08:17, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

This article needs to be more neutral. The experimental results are under review by Purdue University. Comments on the review should wait until the completion of the review. In any case the scientific method should be followed and not the political method.--Ron Marshall 21:20, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Ron, can you clarify? I can't even tell whether you agreeing with what I said or disagreeing. What do you mean by "political method"? ---CH 20:28, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

The review is completed, but you won't find it any easier to comment on as it's sealed. Guess that means the speculation can stay in. --UncleDouggie 08:17, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Ron, sonofusion is theoretically possible if the collapse of the bubble can be enhanced/optimized. This is why sonofusion research is given credibility. The problem is that noone has yet optimized the cavitation process to achieve sonofusion. If you talk to the experts in this field (Willy Moss, Ken Suslick, Seth Putterman, Brian Naranjo, Robert Apfel, etc, etc), all of them, no matter where they are from and who they are affiliated with, will tell you that sonofusion isn't impossible and they would *love* to see it achieved, however they will also all tell you that it has yet to be accomplished and that every single group (mainly Taleyarkhan's) that has claimed to observe sonofusion made a mistake in interpreting their data.

"Tabloid" Side Issues / Aspects

Argueing about whether or not DARPA funds were misused to support sonofusion research or not credited in certain publications has little, or nothing, to do with sonofusion. This isn't supposed to be a tabloid. Imagine going to the page on the internal combustion engine and finding a ton of useless babble regarding how funds may have been misused through the years to support engine research and so on.

Items recently added

The previous section seems to have wandered from Cleanup to the Science, but I thought I'd start a new section anyway in view of some fairly substantial changes, including a new section. This is mainly a review of what I have added.

I have known and corresponded with Taleyarkhan for a year or so now and so have rather an insider's view of things. One thing that is obvious is that this is a hotly contested subject and has in some ways achieved the character of war, with one side wishing to destroy the other. There are reasons for this, some more obvious than the others. Let me say first of all that hypothetical wrong doing by Taleyarkhan was not the only issue that arose in Purdue's investigation, and trying to conceal the details seems to be the cause of Purdue's silence, with unfortunate consequences.

Then there is a point to be noted, not that frequently mentioned, which I have added to one of the sections: some phenomena are insensitive to conditions and so are easy to replicate, while others are not. Bubble fusion is clearly one of the sensitive ones: hence one should not infer too much from failures to replicate. In fact, I have seen evidence that one of the much-touted failed replications was the consequence of visible departure of the conditions from the ideal.

Also, there is a paper that has been submitted for publication by a group at a different university (such is the fear of the people concerned that they will be attacked that their names are blacked out in the copy I have seen). This group used the same method as the one where it is claimed the neutrons are caused by Cf-252 and got the same result. You would have to assume a massive conspiracy to suppose all the positive results were due to this cause; far more 'parsimonious' as they say to suppose that some people did the experiment better than others.

I might add that Taleyarkhan has received the goahead from PRL to put his accepted paper disputing Naranjo into the physics preprint archive, so soon you will be able to see for yourselves the evidence that Naranjo's theory was wrong, or at least did not apply.

I come now to the matter of Reich's nasty article in the July 20 issue of Nature. It is difficult to see this as being anything other than an 'attempt to wipe bubble fusion off the face of the Earth'. If that sounds strong, look at the evidence -- the new section that I added and its links to my web page analyses. The editor of Nature seemed upset by my first article 'Nature on the Attack' and tried to maintain 'we have merely this and merely that ... ' -- all very innocent. I took up the challenge and analysed the text and, I believe, refuted everything he said. He has not come back to me since.

It would not have mattered so much had the editor accepted that the article did look like an unwarranted attack (the main argument for what they categorise as funding misuse, ascribed to Putterman, was fallacious, in fact, an assertion Nature has not disputed). But he has refused to budge, and that is a serious matter for science and for truth.

• It may seem that I have not adopted a neutral point of view. The problem is that I don't see that there is a point of view that can realistically defend Nature's position vis a vis the article (but let no one be deterred from trying!). The links given do include statements by Nature, quoting their response to the Nature on the Attack page in full. If anyone thinks it appropriate, the sentence concerning Nature's response could be expanded to give some detail.

It is unusual for reviews of the science to talk much of the political dimension, but these hostile articles in Nature (compare them with those in IEEE Spectrum) have had such a distorting effect on the science that they cannot be just written out of the picture. And the whole affair is of interest to historians of science and sociologists, as well.

Brian Josephson 14:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It's true the political side isn't usually touched upon in journals but it's discussed in things like New Scientist often enough. When it comes to NPOV, what matters is however we may feel, we ignore that as much as possible. Whether or not Nature's position can be defended, we simply present the position as accurately and neutrally (without editorialising or moralising) and any published response from a reliable source as appropriate (and bearing in mind that we shouldn't give undue weight to uncommon POVs). We also have to make sure to only include relevant content. For example, there is no really need to go in to much detail about problems between scientists or between scientists and journals per se unless they directly concern the article content. As this article is about 'bubble fusion' issues between Taleyarkhan, Nature etc should only be discussed in limited detail when they don't directly concern bubble fusion. More detail is best left for other articles. Nil Einne 07:45, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Duplication

I removed this paragraph as it was a duplication, it was discussed earlier in detail

An even more recent Nature article reports that colleagues at Purdue are skeptical of Rusi Taleyarkhan's previous findings. While it remains theoretically possible, it would now appear that "bubble fusion" has never been directly observed in nature, and that those who had their doubts regarding the Purdue group were correct to doubt initial claims.

Nil Einne 07:45, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

More replication?

http://www.letu.edu/opencms/opencms/events/Bubble_Fusion_Confirmed_by_LETU_Research.html — Omegatron 09:10, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Two papers? From [2]:

• "Confirmation of Neutron Production During Self-Nucleated Acoustic Cavitation", Edward R. Forringer, David Robbins, Jonathan Martin
• "Confirmation of Neutron Production During Self-Nucleated Acoustic Cavitation of a Deuterated Benzine and Acetone Mixture", Edward R. Forringer, David Robbins, Jonathan Martin (LeTourneau Univ) — Omegatron 02:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Removed speculation

Removed the following section for being unreferenced speculation. — Omegatron 03:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Methods of increasing fusion output

While many of the claims remain unverified at this time, many ideas exist to increase the rate of fusion. The experimental apparatus as conducted in experiments thus far produces energy about seven orders of magnitude lower than that which went into it. However, a number of factors suggest that this is unlikely to remain the case.

Acetone under the temperatures, pressures, and other initial conditions involved is unlikely an optimal solution; several orders of magnitude of efficiency improvement are likely by experimenting with different solutions and laboratory settings. Additionally, using a mix of deuterium and tritium will increase fusion yields by three orders of magnitude (as would simply running the apparatus for long enough, as D-D fusion breeds tritium).

An increase in reaction rate may scale up faster than linearly. As a bubble collapses, shocks bounce inward from the edges, encountering their own reflections and additively combining creating the great heat and pressure to the degree that sonoluminescence or sonofusion can occur. The neutrons from the fusion reaction seed new bubbles nearby, creating a bubble cluster containing over 1,000 cavitating centers which act more powerfully together than they would individually.

One of the most interesting propositions, however, is the potential for a new kind of fusion criticality in sonofusion. Given two acoustic anti-nodes (wherein one is at minimum stress while the other is at maximum stress), neutrons from one node will be released while the other is at maximum stress. Some neutrons will interact with their anti-node, creating a bubble cluster and amplifying the reaction. When it collapses in turn, some of its neutrons will do the same to the original node, leading to a self-sustained nuclear reaction. This possibility is yet to be validated, and still remains theoretical.

Sonofusion has some fundamental benefits compared to most other methods of fusion. Shock heating of the fuel leaves the electrons at almost the same velocity as the ions, and thus (due to their much lighter mass) at insignificant temperatures. As energetic electrons are one of the principal energy loss mechanisms in most fusion apparatuses (Bremsstrahlung radiation, recombination losses, line losses, etc), the sonofusion reaction doesn't lose energy as quickly as in such systems. Instead, it behaves largely as if only ions were being dealt with. At the same time, however, it has some fundamental limitations. The amount of dense, energetic area involved in sonofusion is typically tiny, limiting the amount of fusion reactions that can occur (currently about ten per bubble collapse).

realistic consequences of "bubble fusion"

considering the possibility that real fusion is occurring inside these bubbles, i was wondering if any research has been done on actual energy output and transmittance.... using basic equations the bubbles depending on size, heat transfer should give off energy from 1g tnt to 1kg? so the reaction vessel may have a hard time containing this and perhaps so would the building. i was wondering on the validity the claims when i recalled the scientist mentioned previously from a bbc doc, i believe the same one mentioned earlier? showed his fusion device and seemed like there was no sudden output of energy that should most likely damage the glass flask he was using, and perhaps also kill any bystanders. bubbles seemed to range from 1cm dia to 1mm hence 1g tnt to 1kg? but I’m not sure how losses to escaping neutron would change this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent

anyway these were crude calculations but no one has addressed the issue- e=mc2 to fusion in a glass flask. if there are experts out there it would be interesting to hear their comment. i hope i'm not breaking any rules here on wikipedia(not too many)- regards Alexander —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Darkmatterscientist (talk • contribs) 06:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC).