![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tabletop cold fusion achieved!
Mar. 1st, 2006 05:25 pmA team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy NY) has achieved fusion of deuterium atoms using a battery-powered device. The official press release avoids talking about exactly what the "pyroelectric crystals" are made of.
EE Times dishes up the dirt: the device uses dilithium crystals! Yes, the crux of the fusion reactor is a pair of lithium tantalate crystals. Naturally the article leads off with a Star Trek reference (they know their audience).
Keep calm, folks: the device does *not* produce more energy than it consumes. The device achieves fusion without million-degree temperatures and it might be useful in medical applications where locally-created high-energy particles are desired, but it is not a power generator. Still, it is a gigantic step forward for science.
*Update* Today's Newsweek has an article about a guy who has invented a flying car. He says his next project will be "a desktop nuclear-fusion reactor". Apparently he hasn't heard yet that it's been done already.
EE Times dishes up the dirt: the device uses dilithium crystals! Yes, the crux of the fusion reactor is a pair of lithium tantalate crystals. Naturally the article leads off with a Star Trek reference (they know their audience).
Keep calm, folks: the device does *not* produce more energy than it consumes. The device achieves fusion without million-degree temperatures and it might be useful in medical applications where locally-created high-energy particles are desired, but it is not a power generator. Still, it is a gigantic step forward for science.
*Update* Today's Newsweek has an article about a guy who has invented a flying car. He says his next project will be "a desktop nuclear-fusion reactor". Apparently he hasn't heard yet that it's been done already.
