Physicist Claims First Real Demonstration of Cold Fusion
May 27, 2008 by Lisa Zyga
On May 22, researchers at Osaka University presented the first demonstration of cold fusion since an unsuccessful attempt in 1989 that has clouded the field to this day.
To many people, cold fusion sounds too good to be true. The idea is that, by creating nuclear fusion at room temperature, researchers can generate a nearly unlimited source of power that uses water as fuel and produces almost zero waste. Essentially, cold fusion would make oil obsolete.
However, many experts debate whether money should be spent on cold fusion research or applied to more realistic alternative energy solutions. For decades, researchers around the world have been simply trying to show that cold fusion is indeed possible, but they´ve yet to take that important first step.
Now, esteemed Physics Professor Yoshiaki Arata of Osaka University in Japan claims to have made the first successful demonstration of cold fusion. Last Thursday, May 22, Arata and his colleague Yue-Chang Zhang of Shianghai Jiotong University presented the cold fusion demonstration to 60 onlookers, including other physicists, as well as reporters from six major newspapers and two TV studios. If Arata and Zhang´s demonstration is real, it could lead to a future of new, clean, and cheap energy generation.
In their experiment, the physicists forced deuterium gas into a cell containing a mixture of palladium and zirconium oxide, which absorbed the deuterium to produce a dense "pynco" deuterium. In this dense state, the deuterium nuclei from different atoms were so close together that they fused to produce helium nuclei.
Evidence for the occurrence of this fusion came from measuring the temperature inside the cell. When Arata first injected the deuterium gas, the temperature rose to about 70° C (158° F), which Arata explained was due to nuclear and chemical reactions. When he turned the gas off, the temperature inside the cell remained warmer than the cell wall for 50 hours, which Arata said was an effect of nuclear fusion.
While Arata´s demonstration looked promising to his audience, the real test is still to come: duplication. Many scientists and others are now recalling the infamous 1989 demonstration by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who claimed to produce controlled nuclear fusion in a glass jar at room temperature. However, no one - including Fleischmann and Pons - could duplicate the experiment, leading many people to consider cold fusion a pseudoscience to this day.
But one witness at the recent demonstration, physicist Akito Takahashi of Osaka University, thought that the experiment should be able to be repeated.
"Arata and Zhang demonstrated very successfully the generation of continuous excess energy [heat] from ZrO2-nano-Pd sample powders under D2 gas charging and generation of helium-4," Takahashi told New Energy Times. "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers [J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008]. This demonstration showed that the method is highly reproducible."
In addition, researchers will have to repeat the experiment with larger amounts of the palladium and zirconium oxide mixture in order to generate larger quantities of energy.
via: Physics World and New Energy Times
Sep 23, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
critically dependent on material type and purity - can you imagine getting a transistor to work before understanding doping?
However who in their right mind would announce this without scientific confirmation. It is completely un-scientific even if they are correct. Worse yet, it is like one of those chain letters/emails. These are classified as a trojan horse virus. Until it has been scientifically tested this article should be treated as a computer virus.
It is also highly surprising that so many suppossedly great Japanese professors with comfy jobs are willing to risk their reputations on this; all this suggests that unless your in a position to confirm/deny it, looks like a wait and see from over here!
It would be pretty excellent if it was the real dea.
If helium was infact produced, then SOMETHING nuclear definitely happened.
Actually, the statement re. the production of helium was that of an OBSERVER.
The true telltale, of which there is here strangely no mention, would be the production of NEUTRONS.
Hm-mm.
No where in the article do they say helium was produced. They just CLAIM the temperature rose because of fusion, but made no measurement of helium production.
Not 'cold-fusion' but pretty nifty fusion device you can make in your garage...
"Make your own neutrons, scare your friends, irradiate your cats, punch a hole in spacetime, etc."
http://en.wikiped...ki/Fusor
I seriously want to build one though...
1. d d > 3He(0.82 MeV) n(2.45 MeV)
2. d d > p(3.02 MeV) t(1.01 MeV)
3. d d > 4He (23.8 MeV) (No gamma)
4. n*d M > fusion or fission (transmutation)
#1 has been used by Schlumberger since 1955 as a source for neutrons for well logging.
#3 is what was demonstrated in Osaka.
#4 has been demonstrated at NRL, and elsewhere in the US, as well as Italy, Russia, China, and Japan.
If you want to duplicate the equipment there is plenty of information on LENR, just Google LENR.
In particular, there is a great set of slides and a lecture on YouTube by Dr. Storms (ret.) from LANL.
(Just like US Judges declared dioxin in Agent Orange is harmless to the poor Asians in VN War. They were too tought for it, apparently!...ha ha)
do you have to refuel them only with water or do the palladium/zirconium also gets wasted after usage and you have to replace it?
You might want to start by eating the word "predecessor". Haha sorry just being a jerk myself.
I'm on board with the wait and see here though. I believe this is possible, and time after time what we know of science has been either proven or disproven. Why shouldn't this be one of those times? I am keen to see the data myself, but I see no real reason to simply disregard the reliability of this account.
if this is real, then upgrades will increase energy output i am sure.
( ironman here i come ! )
Here's hoping.
http://www.lenr-c...mena.pdf
it does menetion He4 wich would explain the lack even tryin to measure gamma radiation.
Replication of a similar experiment has been presented to the DOE in 2004 (appendix C of Hagelstein's document).
You can find additional information on cold fusion on wikipedia.
According to wikipedia article on Cold Fusion "There are over 200 reports of excess heat and 60 reports of anomalous tritium production". Although of caurse most remain sceptical there seem to be something there which certainly warants further investigation.
1) Falsification
It's really hard to imagine an elder Japanese professor, let alone one decorated by Emperor's medal, let alone one having a hall in his institute named in his honour etc. - to undertake such an adventure. What's the profit? Helping his nephew sell more ice-cream branded "Arata Corudu Fudjion"? On the other hand, his cost WILL be very high. Reputation in Japan still means more than money. Even if nobody proves it's a falsification but everybody fails to replicate the experiment - the professor will gain a very doubtful publicity at best.
2) Error
The guys were working for very long in the field. Dumb mistakes are very unlikely. The proof concept is pretty clever: since heat output measurement is prone to errors, they%u2019ve also measured He4 and made a control run with H2 instead of D2. How would you build a machine that, when you pump deuterium into it, emits helium and stays hot for 50 hours, but when infused with hydrogen (I guess they used same volume, pressure, temperature as for deuterium) %u2013 emits something different (say water vapour) and cools off fast??
3) Something real?...
Detection of the fusion by product HE4 is a gold standard for D2 fusion while nuetron detection is much more difficult with a small scale experiment. HE4 production would involve two fusion reactions, the first with D2 and D2 forming T3 and the second with T3 and D2 forming HE4.
The energy estimates by SNSN are extremely exciting. If this technology can be replicated on a larger scale independently, there is little that will stop its commercial development. I agree with many of the skeptics that multiple independent verifications and repeat measurements of the expereimental results need to be made, but I cannot help but get excited by the possibilities here. Historically, man has often discovered natural processes that do not meet our standard models and the pyhsics eventually catches up. If this works, there will be some fun times in the physics departments around the world getting a handle on what is going on.
After reading people's comments above, I see I'm not the only one who thought, "Oh, God...another Fleischman/Pons deal..." And the arguments seem to be the same. "Where are the neutrons? Where's the radiation?" The one thing everyone seems to agree upon, though, is that if--by ANY mechanism--you are physically fusing D2, your reaction product must necessarily be some isotope of He. Otherwise it's not really fusion, is it?
However, now it seems there are folks who have the more charitable view of "Hey, so maybe it's not 'fusion' per se, but an energy source is an energy source." So much the better! (Assuming, as someone above pointed out, that this isn't simply heat generated by pressure or the D2 "dissolving" into the Pd.)
My limited understanding of such things, though, suggests that the solution for proof would be simple: HOOK UP A GC/MS TO THE WHOLE D*MN THING!!
Mind you, I haven't been out of school so long to know that setting up such experiments can often be a dodgy process under even the best of circumstances. There may be practical/procedural obstacles of which I'm not aware, but assuming whatever difficulties could be overcome, it doesn't seem like it'd be a huge stretch to have a GC right there or a mass spec. nearby when you do the reaction. From there I would think it'd be really easy to say "OK, see here? Pure deuterium in...OK, now we run the reaction for a little while (some number of hours)...And now we open this wee valve, run it through our handy GC/MS here and...Voila! Look at that! Helium!!"
newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-Demo-Photos-AT.htm
I'm telling you, it's either a very stupid hoax ('cause it will not pay) or the beginning of mankind's new era.
Hora, H., G.H. Miley, and K. Philberth. Radiochemical Observations for Comparison of Uranium Fission
with Low Energy Nuclear Reactions LENR. in American Physical Society Meeting. 2008. New Orleans.
Radiochemical Observations for Comparison of Uranium
Fission with Low Energy Nuclear Reactions LENR
Heinrich Hora1, George H. Miley2, Karl Philberth3
1Department of Theoretical Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052,
Australia
2Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois,
Urbana, IL 61801, USA
3Thanning, 82544 Egling, Germany
Abstract
The discovery of nuclear fission by Hahn and Strassmann was based on a very rare microanalytical result what initially could not indicate the very complicated details of this
most important process. A similarity is discussed for the low energy nuclear reactions
(LENR) being proved from analogies of measurements of uranium fission. The
distribution of the elements with uranium fission is similar to the element distribution
with LENR. This was observed repeatedly and reproducibly with high density deuteron
concentration in palladium. This discussion is specifically focussed to the Maruhn-
Greiner local maximum of the distribution within the large-scale minimum if the fission
nuclei are excited. The consequences of the complications in uranium fission are
discussed in comparison with LENR with respect to the studies of a hypothetical
fissioning compound nuclear reaction via a concluded element 306X126 with double magic
numbers.
In fact, as Julian Schwinger argued several years ago, the most obvious explanation for Fleischmann-type anomalies is some sort of QUANTUM process like collective dipole-dipole interaction between deuteron sites in the metal.
If you dont understand this, you are probably not aware of the spatial extension (c. 0.3Angstrom ) of a hydrogen nucleus in the (approximately 3D-harmonic well) interstitial sites in transition metals.
BTW, the other "impossible" aspect of cold fusion claims, namely the absence of short-wavelength radiation is also easy to explain; any quantum amplitude distributed over many atomic sites forbids quanta with wavelengths much shorter than the coherence length.
The absense of neutrons may be explaned by its absorbtion at the place of origin. Neutron decays to proton and electron (i.e. hydrogen).
Neutron in cold reaction is cold too. It can't leave the place of fusion.
There is a myth in modern atomic physics that fusion requires high temperature.
It is an error. Fusion needs in hyperpressure for particles merging. It is neccessary to keep Rudolf Clausius's virial condition.
DT-fusion occurs not due to high temperature but despite it.
That is why "TOKAMAKs" are the clothes of naked king.
Cold super fusion was realized some years ago in Kiev, Ukraine, PROTON-2 nuclear lab (Vasili Adamenko group), the making of atomic nuclei having 1000 - 10000 a. u. mass by means of electric field hyperpressure.
Karim Khaidarov, physicist from Kazakhstan
many interesting papers on physics you can find on http://bourabai.kz/index.html
"Well I don't know, it does look cool, but there's no proof it's a real thing... I'll wait until few independent manufacturers manage to replicate it."
All the new technology in the world is of no practical use, if there are individuals or groups in control of the strings. Those practically-minded scientists will take these factors into consideration, as they are at least just as pertinent as are the technical aspects, of bringing a new technology to market. This is on-point to cold-fusion, because the successful scientists / group in this area will completely disrupt the existing global power structure, if it were to come to fruition in a replicable and practically-useful configuration. Those who neglegt this aspect are not Renaissance Men, but just science nerds. Renaissance Men will not be offended by that statement, but nerds may. I believe the chances are slim to none that even if a successful version were created, the technology would displace oil and gas. One of the reasons is the size of the automotive and other consuming industries. However, the downsizing of automotive makers may be a blessing because it decreases the resistance to adoption of the new technology. A global depression may be an opportunity in disguise. The best scientists are also students of history and politically-knowledgeable. Examples of politically-ignorant include Royal Rife, Thomas Henry Moray, Gerard Renault, and a long list of others.
This guy is my favorite
Very funny. The simple physics of a time piece are well documented. Hence most physicists could not care less about whether the watch is a casio or a Breitling. Hence physicists are generally not known for flashy watches or other cosmetic baubles. Now if you could get an atomic clock wrist watch then that would be something (and I don't mean one that tunes into the broadcast atomic time)!
Thanks for the energy numbers by the way! It more than makes up for the joke.
A new experiment was planned for july, 10th.
Technobabble.