View 359 April 25 - May 1, 2005 (original) (raw)
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Thursday, April 28, 2005
On the fusion story:
April 28, 2005
Itty-Bitty and Shrinking, Fusion Device Has Big Ideas By KENNETH CHANG
In a surprising feat of miniaturization, scientists are reporting today that they have produced nuclear fusion - the same process that powers the sun - in a footlong cylinder just five inches in diameter. And they say they will soon be able to make the device even smaller.
While the device is probably too inefficient to produce electricity or other forms of energy, the scientists say, egg-size fusion generators could someday find uses in spacecraft thrusters, medical treatments and scanners that search for bombs.
The findings, by a team at the University of California, Los Angeles, led by Dr. Seth J. Putterman, are being reported in the journal Nature.
The minifusion device accelerates hydrogen atoms and slams them together to produce helium. Unlike earlier claims of tabletop fusion - "cold fusion," in 1989, which suggested that energy could be produced by running electricity through water and metal plates, and "sonofusion," in 2002, in which collapsing bubbles supposedly heat gases to starlike temperatures - this report is not being greeted with skepticism.
"I think it's very persuasive," said Dr. William Happer, a professor of physics at Princeton.
Dr. Michael J. Saltmarsh, a retired scientist who worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, said the energy of the particles emitted by the collisions convincingly matched what was expected for fusion. Dr. Saltmarsh was one of two Oak Ridge scientists who said they were unable to detect the signatures of fusion in the 2002 sonofusion experiment.
So we won't be powering the nation from this. Not for a while anyway.
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I am at the gate having got past TSA without Incident other than having to remove my shoes then put them on in a narrow passage blocking impatient people. It was not disclosed why I had to take off my Shoes. mysterious areas the ways of TSA.