Pocket Fusion

[Belinda Wong-Swanson]

Is this for real? Sounds a bit Santa Fe-Sedona New Age-y to me.

http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MTQ0OTQ 
<http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MTQ0OTQ>

*Scientists pocket the power of the sun*

The Calgary Herald, 28 April 2005 - A pocket-sized device that can
harness fusion, the energy source of the sun, with the help of crystals
no bigger than a sugar cube has been developed by scientists.

The "pocket fusion'' device, described Thursday in the journal Nature,
raises new possibilities in fields as diverse as space propulsion,
medical diagnostics, cancer treatment and the hunt for concealed weapons.

Scientists have struggled for decades to ape what happens in the sun and
harness huge temperatures to fuse atoms for energy generation --
potentially a cleaner alternative to the present nuclear-fission reactors.

But they have so far been unsuccessful at turning this into an
economically viable process.

Now Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski, a professor from Glasgow, and Prof.
Seth Putterman of the University of California, Los Angeles, describe a
breathtakingly simple way to fuse atoms with the help of a crystal.

Naranjo joked the advance "seems like magic'' and he now understands why
the starship Enterprise, in the television program Star Trek, was
powered by "dilithium crystals.''

Putterman wanted to call the technique "crystallic fusion,'' but
discovered, on holiday with his children, that Buzz Lightyear uses the
phrase in Toy Story when he declares: "Are you guys still using fossil
fuel -- haven't you discovered crystallic fusion power yet?''

Although pocket fusion already looks more convincing than earlier
controversial claims about cold fusion and bubble fusion, the team is
unsure how to turn it into the limitless source of energy that has been
promised by so many scientists for so long.

They fused atoms of deuterium -- heavy hydrogen -- using a pyroelectric
crystal to generate a beam of charged particles -- deuterium ions -- to
bombard a deuterium target.

"These crystals were discovered 2,000 years ago by the ancient Greeks,''
said Naranjo.

"It is the electrical analogue of a permanent magnet and if you heat or
cool it, you can build up a very large charge and a very large electric
field.''

With gentle warming, even by hand, researchers concentrated the field
made by the crystal at the tip of a connected tungsten needle.

The neutron emission is 400 times stronger than the usual background level.

"We are getting about 1,000 neutrons a second,'' said Naranjo. "The
amazing thing is that we are heating a crystal to 25C and getting this
very large fusion signal with no external power supplies.

"It is just a crystal with a needle. The simplicity is striking.''

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[Gary Schiltz-3]

Whether or not the claim is valid, there is indeed a blurb about it in
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7037/pdf/4341057a.pdf

// Gary

Belinda Wong-Swanson wrote:
> Is this for real? Sounds a bit Santa Fe-Sedona New Age-y to me.
>
> http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MTQ0OTQ 
> <http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MTQ0OTQ>

[Gary Schiltz-3]

Of course, even if "pocket fusion" proves viable, it would surely be
dwarfed by the discovery that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, long thought
to be extinct, has been rediscovered in Arkansas:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/28/woodpecker/index.html

// Gary

Gary Schiltz wrote:

> Whether or not the claim is valid, there is indeed a blurb about it in
> Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7037/pdf/4341057a.pdf
>
> // Gary
>
> Belinda Wong-Swanson wrote:
>
>> Is this for real? Sounds a bit Santa Fe-Sedona New Age-y to me.
>>
>> http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MTQ0OTQ 
>> <http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MTQ0OTQ>
>>
>
>