An update on "sonofusion", an experimental technique that has been able to produce a nuclear fusion event by pulsing sound waves through bubbles in a liquid. Key quote from article: "...what this discovery does do right now is provide us with a friendly reminder that we can't assume that all the tools we'll have for fighting global problems have already been invented."
In a surprising feat of miniaturization, scientists are reporting today that they have produced nuclear fusion in a footlong cylinder just five inches in diameter. While the device is probably too inefficient to produce electricity or other forms of energy, the scientists say, egg-size fusion generators could someday find uses in spacecraft thrusters, medical treatments and scanners that search for bombs.
A tabletop experiment created nuclear fusion long seen as a possible clean energy solution under lab conditions, scientists reported. But the amount of energy produced was too little to be seen as a breakthrough in solving the world's energy needs.
Claims of cold fusion are intriguing but not convincing, according to the findings an 18-member scientific panel tasked with reviewing research in the area.
The U.S. Department of Energy has scheduled a hearing on the prospects for cold fusion, an indication that "something important has happened to grab the department's attention."
Fifteen years after the first controversial claims hit the headlines, cold fusion refuses to die. A small cadre of die-hard advocates argues that experiments now produce consistent results. The physics establishment continues to scoff, but some scientists who have been watching the field carefully are convinced something real is happening. And now the U.S. Department of Energy has decided that recent results justify a fresh look at cold fusion.
Cold fusion, briefly hailed as the silver-bullet solution to the world's energy problems and since discarded to the same bin of quackery as paranormal phenomena and perpetual motion machines, will soon get a new hearing from Washington.
Scientists are again claiming they have made a Sun in a jar, offering perhaps a revolutionary energy source, and this time even some skeptics find the evidence intriguing enough to call for a closer look.
Nuclear physicists split yesterday into camps of excitement and skepticism after a group of scientists announced it may have created nuclear fusion -- the awesome power that fuels the sun -- in a device the size of two coffee cups stacked one atop the other.
A new tabletop device said to generate a long-sought laboratory version of nuclear fusion has been called into question even before it was formally announced.