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

[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.