Talk:Bubble fusion
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Does anyone know how you'd harness the energy from Bubble Fusion? It doesn't make sense to me naturally since the liquid that the cavitation is taking place in is kept at room temperature and fusion is theoretically contained entirely inside the collapsing bubbles. That's something I've never seen addressed in any article on Bubble Fusion that I've read. It'd be a nice addition to the piece.
- Well the heat generated by fusion is absorbed by the water, but the amount of fusion that actually goes on is very small.
- "If you were to tile the world with these devices and let them run for an hour, there'd be enough thermonuclear energy to heat a cup of coffee 1 degree," Moss told UPI. "The likelihood that you could produce energy you could use is very, very slim -- but I'm not saying zero." [1] (http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=05032002-125237-1797r) - Omegatron 13:27, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
- The interest at this time is mainly scientific, and I seriously doubt if it can ever be scaled up. However, from Nuclear fusion we have the easiest fusion reaction:
(1) D + T → 4He (3.5 MeV) + n (14.1 MeV)
- Most of the energy is in the neutron, which will escape the device. :pstudier 19:30, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)
- I always wondered if it could be scaled down. They say the diameter of the bubble is ~100 µm or so max. I envision millions of little spherical tanks etched into an integrated circuit running in parallel. From the waveforms and videos I've seen, it looks like the bubble actually wants to resonate at a higher frequency, in the MHz or so (slow-mo video (http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/suslick/images/matula.singlebubble.2cycles.mpg)). Which would mean... on the order of a millimeter (http://www.google.com/search?&q=1500+m%2Fs+%2F+1+MHz) diameter tank. So I guess not millions...
- But what do I know? I'm sure my imagination is about as true to real science as Chain Reaction. - Omegatron 21:20, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
I'm really not confident to include this in the article itself, but I wonder if someone could take the information from the BBC Horizon documentary broadcast on 17/2/05 and incorporate it into the article. They got Putterman to attempt to replicate the exiperiment, but he failed to detect any fusion neutrons. (See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/experiment_prog_summary.shtml)
The movie Chain Reaction, while discussing sonoluminescence, did not directly address fusion. Instead, the scientists were pursuing a cheap method of producing gaseous hydrogen. The centerpiece explosion of the movie was an explosion of hydrogen gas, not a nuclear explosion.
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I encourage the authors of this Wikipedia entry to take a look at some of the new sonoluminescence results which are the antecedent of this article:
http://www.physlink.com/News/030805CollapsingBubbles.cfm
They've confirmed that the surface of these collapsing bubbles are four times as hot as the surface of the sun. This does seem to confirm that the inside of the bubbles really may be as hot as the center of the sun.
- To pick a nit, the surface of the sun is 5780K, its center is probably many millions of degrees. If the bubbles were this hot at the center, they would be emitting easily detected X-Rays. Interesting story, if I have time later, I will incorporate it into the main article. pstudier 19:24, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
:-)
http://www.impulsedevices.com/index.html - Omegatron 19:42, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)