Desktop Fusion Gaining Credibility

The picture above is of course from the movie Back to The Future, in which fusion becomes as common place as your coffee machine.

The New York Times is reporting that work on sonoluminescence fusion is gaining greater credibility. From the article:

Scientists are again claiming they have made a Sun in a jar, offering perhaps a revolutionary energy source, and this time even some skeptics find the evidence intriguing enough to call for a closer look.

Using ultrasonic vibrations to shake a jar of liquid solvent the size of a large drink cup, the scientists say, they squeezed tiny gas bubbles in the liquid so quickly and violently that temperatures reached millions of degrees and some of the hydrogen atoms in the solvent molecules fused, producing a flash of light and energy.

The experiment could conceivably shrink the science of fusion — slamming hydrogen atoms together, producing heat and light — from giant, expensive reactors to the tabletop.

If this turns out to work on smaller scales it would be very disruptive to the current Energy cartel power structure. So it will be interesting to see how long this research continues, or if they will at some point "stumble onto an unexpected constraint".

Pardon the cynicism, but the negative response to Fleischman and Pons was so rapid in concluding their experiments were faulty, that it become clear to me immediately that those in power do not want to see a cheap and powerful energy source be released. A respectable scientist would have said that until these cold fusion experiments were repeated in other labs there is no way to conclude their work was bogus. With oil reserves already at peak capacity, it's only a matter of time before we have to switch to alternatives. Hopefully, this new desktop fusion process can be scaled to cheap desktop use.

Posted by paul at March 3, 2004 03:02 PM | TrackBack