Wednesday, May 13, 2009

the other kind of fusion

Who knew there was another kind?

There's natural fusion, which powers the stars.

Plasma-based fusion, which attempts to replicate natural fusion and is the only approach that has had significant funding for decades.

Cold fusion, which had been taboo for so long that only people on the margins of science studied it, except in France and Japan.

And now I'm hearing about laser-based solid fusion, which works as such: ultra dense hydrogen isotopes + lasers = huge amounts of energy + non-radioactive waste (helium, presumably). Worth the read.

2 comments:

Jed Rothwell said...

Your assertion that only people in France and Japan studied cold fusion is incorrect. Thousands of scientists replicated cold fusion at hundreds of labs, including several leading U.S. national and university labs. Researchers in this field have published 3,000 papers. Roughly one-third are by U.S. authors. Italy is second.

You are also incorrect that people "on the margins" of science studied cold fusion. It is just the opposite. Most researchers are distinguished, established professors or Fellows of the Institute. They were able to study this because they had clout and funding. cold fusion experiments take expertise, a fully equipped lab, and they cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. People on the margin cannot perform them.

You can learn a great deal more about cold fusion here:

http://lenr-canr.org

shaun said...

Your point would be more convincing if you didn't sound like the type of person on the margins of science.

I periodically look into the progress of LENR research and have so far been disappointed by the lack of proper funding and preponderance of amateur efforts. I'm hopeful that the DOE's decision to lift the ban on LENR research funding will lead to real progress in the area.