Tabletop cold fusion achieved!

[pyesetz]

A 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.

Comments

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Yay, we can now build a neutron gun using parts cannibalised from a couple of motion detectors, a heater, and a vacuum pump! Getting the deuterium is a little harder though.

[pyesetz]

Um, modern motion detectors use infrared instead of ultrasonic LiTaO₃, right?

I wonder: if you used mixed hydrogen from tap water, would it be 0.1% as effective, or would it just not work at all?

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think they are pretty much all PIR sensors now. Actually, you would only need ONE motion detector, since a motion detector needs TWO crystals in it to work. However, not all have lithium tantalite crystals, some have tri-glycine sulphate, so those might not work as well. Then there's questions of geometry and size, which I don't know. I sort of meant cannibalising the motion detector in a McGuyverish sense. ;-)

If you only used hydrogen from tap water, then the reaction would only be (1/6500)^2 as strong, 2E-8! The D+D->He3+n reaction has 2 deuterium nuclei going into it, so the rate of this reaction is proportional to the square of the deuterium abundance. And I don't think any of the other possible nuclear reactions could take place, except possibly D+T.

[danruk.livejournal.com]

how long before we get matter transporters so I can step to the Australian Outback with the flick of a switch of my home teleportation device?

[pyesetz]

You can't schedule innovation!  Home teleporters could be ten years away or a hundred; there's no way to tell.  The old joke is that "nuclear fusion has been '20 years away' since 1948".

You might find that going instantaneously from Toronto to the Outback in February would make you sick, due to the very sudden temperature, pressure, and humidity changes.  Perhaps you would need to make a few "hops" to intervening spots, with rests to let your body adapt on the way to kangaroo-land.