Bubble fusion
Encyclopedia
Bubble fusion, also known as sonofusion, is the non-technical name for a nuclear fusion
reaction hypothesized to occur during a high-pressure version of sonoluminescence
, an extreme form of acoustic cavitation. Officially, this reaction is termed acoustic inertial confinement fusion (AICF) (see ICF
) since the inertia
of the collapsing bubble wall confines the energy, causing an extreme rise in temperature. The high temperatures that sonoluminescence can produce raise the possibility that it might be a means to achieve thermonuclear fusion.
In the March 8, 2002 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science
, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan
and colleagues at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
reported that acoustic cavitation experiments conducted with deuterated
acetone
showed measurements of tritium
and neutron
output that were consistent with the occurrence of fusion. The neutron emission was also reported to be coincident with the sonoluminescence
pulse, a key indicator that its source was fusion caused by the sonoluminescence.
Shock wave simulations seem to indicate that the temperatures inside the collapsing bubbles may reach up to 10 megakelvins
, i.e. as hot as the center of the Sun. A 2008 study has provided data demonstrating bubble temperatures exceeding 100,000K and a pressure dependence that indicated temperatures above 106K could be expected under sonofusion conditions. Although the apparatus operates in a room temperature environment, this is not cold fusion
(as commonly termed in the popular press) because the nuclear reactions would be occurring at the very high temperatures in the core of the imploding bubbles.
The researchers used a pulse of neutrons in order to nucleate ("seed") the tiny bubbles, whereas most previous experiments started with small air bubbles already in the liquid. Using this new method, the team was able to produce stable bubbles that could expand to nearly a millimeter in radius before collapsing. In this way, the researchers stated, they were able to create the conditions necessary to produce very high pressures and temperatures. The sensitivity of the fusion rate to temperature, which is in turn a function of how small the bubbles get when they collapse, in combination with the likely sensitivity of the latter to fine experimental details, may account for the fact that some research workers have reported to see an effect, while others have not.
Taleyarkhan et al. also prepared identical experiments in non-deuterated (normal) acetone and failed to observe neutron emission or tritium production. Taleyarkhan claims his interest in bubble fusion began following a post-dinner chat with a friend, Dr. Mark Embrechts, in 1995.
equipment. They reported that the neutron release was consistent with random coincidence. A rebuttal by Taleyarkhan and the other authors of the original report said that the Shapira and Saltmarsh report failed to account for significant differences in experimental setup, including over an inch of shielding between the neutron detector and the sonoluminescing acetone. According to Taleyarkhan et al., when properly considering those differences, the results are consistent with fusion.
As early as 2002, while experimental work was still in progress, Galonsky, in a letter to the journal Science
expressed doubts about the claim made by the Taleyarkhan team. In Galonsky's opinion, the observed neutrons were too high in energy to be from a deuterium
-deuterium (d-d) fusion reaction. In their response (published on the same page), the Taleyarkhan team provided detailed convincing arguments and concluded that the energy was "reasonably close" to that which was expected.
In February 2005 the documentary series Horizon commissioned the collaboration of two leading sonoluminescence researchers, Seth Putterman and Kenneth S. Suslick
, to reproduce Taleyarkhan's work. Using similar acoustic parameters, deuterated acetone, similar bubble nucleation, and a much more sophisticated neutron detection device, the researchers could find no evidence of a fusion reaction.
In 2011, after many years of further research in the field of sonoluminescence, Seth Puttermann now writes:
"At acoustic frequencies of 1MHz, the bubble is smaller and the observed spectrum is now best fit by the transparent plasma model, and a temperature of about one million degrees."
And he concludes:
"The densities and temperatures which can be accessed with modest sound fields are extraordinary. One is tempted to wonder if bubble acoustics can be used to reach conditions for nuclear fusion….
Some optimism that cavitation will provide a route to fusion is provided by the observation that SL (sonoluminescence) enjoys a big parameter space."
In July 2005, two of Taleyarkhan's students at Purdue University
published evidence confirming the previous result. They used the same acoustic chamber, the same deuterated acetone fluid and a similar bubble nucleation system. In this report, no neutron-sonoluminescence coincidence was attempted. Once again, the neutron energies measured were not consistent with those of neutrons produced by a d-d fusion reaction. Charges of misconduct were raised, and Purdue University opened an investigation. It concluded in 2008 that Taleyarkhan's name should have appeared in the author list because of his deep involvement in many steps of the research, that he added one author that had not really participated in the paper just to overcome the criticism of one reviewer, and that this was part of an attempt of "an effort to falsify the scientific record by assertion of independent confirmation". The investigation did not address the validity of the experimental results.
In January 2006, a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters
by researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
reports statistically significant evidence of fusion: The initial news report, however, shows that the reaction does not always work correctly and it is not known what parameters change to cause the reaction to function properly or not function at all.
In 2005, three Russian scientists Smorodov E., Galiakhmetov R., Ilgamov M. conducted the experiments on shock compression of deuterium bubbles in glycerine. The results were published in monograph "Physics and chemistry of cavitation" (2008), where they demonstrated the existence of the neutron yield, which indicates the initiation of nuclear-fusion reaction in deuterium plasma. This enables the creation of fundamentally new types of reactors for nuclear fusion and the creation of new types of neutron sources.
In November 2006, in the midst of charges leveled at Taleyarkhan as regards his research standards, Dr. Edward R. Forringer and undergraduates David Robbins and Jonathan Martin of LeTourneau University
presented two papers at the American Nuclear Society
Winter Meeting that reported replication of neutron emission during a visit to the meta-stable fluids research lab at Purdue University. Their experimental setup was similar to the preceding experiments in that it used a mixture of deuterated acetone, deuterated benzene
, tetrachloroethylene
and uranyl nitrate
. Notably, however, it operated without an external neutron source and used two types of neutron detectors
. They claimed a liquid scintillation
detector measured neutron levels at 8 standard deviation
s above the background level, while plastic detectors measured levels at 3.8 standard deviations above the background. When the same experiment was performed with non-deuterated control liquid, the measurements were within one standard deviation of background, indicating that the neutron production had only occurred during cavitation of the deuterated liquid.
There is presently a growing body of evidences indicating that ultrasonic cavitation interferes with nuclear processes.
published a "special report" "silencing the hype" that called into question the validity of the results of the Purdue experiments. The report quotes Brian Naranjo of the University of California, Los Angeles
to the effect that spectrum measured in these sonofusion experiments is consistent with radioactive decay of the lab equipment and hence does not reliably demonstrate the presence of nuclear reactions.
The response of Taleyarkhan et al., published in Physical Review Letters, attempts to refute Naranjo's hypothesis as to the cause of the neutrons detected.
Doubts at Purdue University's Nuclear Engineering faculty as to whether the positive results reported from sonofusion experiments conducted there were truthful prompted the university to initiate a review of the research, conducted by Purdue's Office of the Vice President for Research. In a March 9, 2006 article entitled "Evidence for bubble fusion called into question", Nature interviewed several of Taleyarkhan's colleagues who suspected something was amiss.
On February 7, 2007, the Purdue University administration determined that "the evidence does not support the allegations of research misconduct and that no further investigation of the allegations is warranted". Their report also stated that "vigorous, open debate of the scientific merits of this new technology is the most appropriate focus going forward." In order to verify that the investigation was properly conducted, House Representative
Brad Miller
requested full copies of its documents and reports by March 30, 2007.
In June 2008, a multi-institutional team including Taleyarkhan published a paper in Nuclear Engineering and Design to "clear up misconceptions generated by a webposting of UCLA which served as the basis for the Nature article of March 2006", according to a press release.
On July 18, 2008, Purdue University announced that a committee with members from five institutions has investigated 12 allegations of research misconduct by Rusi Taleyarkhan. It concluded that two allegations were founded—that Taleyarkhan had claimed independent confirmation of his work when in reality the apparent confirmations were done by Taleyarkhan's former students and was not as "independent" as Taleyarkhan implied, and that Taleyarkhan had included an additional colleague's name on one of his papers who had not actually been involved in the research ("the sole apparent motivation for the addition of Mr. Butt was a desire to overcome a reviewer's criticism," the report concluded). Purdue University had previously said, in a press release in July 2005, that Butt's replication was independent from Taleyarkhan.
Taleyarkhan appealed the conclusions in the report, but this was rejected. He said the two allegations of misconduct were trivial administrative issues and had nothing to do with the discovery of bubble nuclear fusion or the underlying science, and that "all allegations of fraud and fabrication have been dismissed as invalid and without merit — thereby supporting the underlying science and experimental data as being on solid ground". A researcher questioned by the LA Times said that the report had not clarified whether bubble fusion was real or not, but that the low quality of the papers and the doubts cast by the report had made him lose all the credibility that he formerly had among the scientific community.
On August 27, 2008 he was stripped of his named Arden Bement Jr. Professorship, and forbidden to be a thesis advisor for graduate students for at least the next 3 years.
It should be noted however that the Kimberly-Clark
corporation who "has a long-standing relationship with Purdue University,", and who had accumulated a wide range of expertise and know-how in the use of ultrasonic cavitation in its industrial processes for the treatment of emulsions and stabilization of chemical compounds or monitoring of chemical reactions filed a patent application on the 5th of December 2007 for An ULTRASONIC TREATMENT CHAMBER FOR INITIATING THERMONUCLEAR FUSION. This patent application US 2009/0147905 A1 was published on June 11, 2009. It quotes Taleyarkhan's research and is partly based on some of the ideas already developed in the 1978 patent from Hugh G. Flynn.
This patent application, signed by a Kimberly-Clark research team of 8 members, covers a wide range of experimental devices for ultrasonic treatment of liquids of such various natures as organic solvents and liquid metals under a wide range of temperature, pressure, electric fields, etc.
Nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together, or "fuse", to form a single heavier nucleus. This is usually accompanied by the release or absorption of large quantities of energy...
reaction hypothesized to occur during a high-pressure version of sonoluminescence
Sonoluminescence
Sonoluminescence is the emission of short bursts of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by sound.-History:The effect was first discovered at the University of Cologne in 1934 as a result of work on sonar. H. Frenzel and H. Schultes put an ultrasound transducer in a tank of...
, an extreme form of acoustic cavitation. Officially, this reaction is termed acoustic inertial confinement fusion (AICF) (see ICF
Inertial confinement fusion
Inertial confinement fusion is a process where nuclear fusion reactions are initiated by heating and compressing a fuel target, typically in the form of a pellet that most often contains a mixture of deuterium and tritium....
) since the inertia
Inertia
Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. It is proportional to an object's mass. The principle of inertia is one of the fundamental principles of classical physics which are used to...
of the collapsing bubble wall confines the energy, causing an extreme rise in temperature. The high temperatures that sonoluminescence can produce raise the possibility that it might be a means to achieve thermonuclear fusion.
Summary
Sono-Fusion covers a wide range of hypotheses and experimental data conducive of the idea that ultrasonic cavitation in liquids (from water to liquid metals) may interfere with nuclear chemistry due to not yet well understood exotic processes happening at high temperatures and pressure in and around collapsing bubbles inside the liquid. The focus of sono-fusion has been mainly about reaching the fusion of deuterium nuclei through ultrasonic cavitation.Original experiments
US patent 4,333,796, filed by Hugh Flynn in 1978, appears to be the earliest documented reference to a sonofusion-type reaction.In the March 8, 2002 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science
Science Magazine
Science Magazine was a half-hour television show produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1975 to 1979.The show was hosted by geneticist David Suzuki, who previously hosted the daytime youth programme Suzuki On Science...
, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan
Rusi Taleyarkhan
Rusi P. Taleyarkhan is a faculty member in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University since 2003. Prior to that, he was on staff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee...
and colleagues at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology national laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle. ORNL is the DOE's largest science and energy laboratory. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville...
reported that acoustic cavitation experiments conducted with deuterated
Deuterium
Deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen, is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen. It has a natural abundance in Earth's oceans of about one atom in of hydrogen . Deuterium accounts for approximately 0.0156% of all naturally occurring hydrogen in Earth's oceans, while the most common isotope ...
acetone
Acetone
Acetone is the organic compound with the formula 2CO, a colorless, mobile, flammable liquid, the simplest example of the ketones.Acetone is miscible with water and serves as an important solvent in its own right, typically as the solvent of choice for cleaning purposes in the laboratory...
showed measurements of tritium
Tritium
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The nucleus of tritium contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of protium contains one proton and no neutrons...
and neutron
Neutron
The neutron is a subatomic hadron particle which has the symbol or , no net electric charge and a mass slightly larger than that of a proton. With the exception of hydrogen, nuclei of atoms consist of protons and neutrons, which are therefore collectively referred to as nucleons. The number of...
output that were consistent with the occurrence of fusion. The neutron emission was also reported to be coincident with the sonoluminescence
Sonoluminescence
Sonoluminescence is the emission of short bursts of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by sound.-History:The effect was first discovered at the University of Cologne in 1934 as a result of work on sonar. H. Frenzel and H. Schultes put an ultrasound transducer in a tank of...
pulse, a key indicator that its source was fusion caused by the sonoluminescence.
Shock wave simulations seem to indicate that the temperatures inside the collapsing bubbles may reach up to 10 megakelvins
Kelvin
The kelvin is a unit of measurement for temperature. It is one of the seven base units in the International System of Units and is assigned the unit symbol K. The Kelvin scale is an absolute, thermodynamic temperature scale using as its null point absolute zero, the temperature at which all...
, i.e. as hot as the center of the Sun. A 2008 study has provided data demonstrating bubble temperatures exceeding 100,000K and a pressure dependence that indicated temperatures above 106K could be expected under sonofusion conditions. Although the apparatus operates in a room temperature environment, this is not cold fusion
Cold fusion
Cold fusion, also called low-energy nuclear reaction , refers to the hypothesis that nuclear fusion might explain the results of a group of experiments conducted at ordinary temperatures . Both the experimental results and the hypothesis are disputed...
(as commonly termed in the popular press) because the nuclear reactions would be occurring at the very high temperatures in the core of the imploding bubbles.
The researchers used a pulse of neutrons in order to nucleate ("seed") the tiny bubbles, whereas most previous experiments started with small air bubbles already in the liquid. Using this new method, the team was able to produce stable bubbles that could expand to nearly a millimeter in radius before collapsing. In this way, the researchers stated, they were able to create the conditions necessary to produce very high pressures and temperatures. The sensitivity of the fusion rate to temperature, which is in turn a function of how small the bubbles get when they collapse, in combination with the likely sensitivity of the latter to fine experimental details, may account for the fact that some research workers have reported to see an effect, while others have not.
Taleyarkhan et al. also prepared identical experiments in non-deuterated (normal) acetone and failed to observe neutron emission or tritium production. Taleyarkhan claims his interest in bubble fusion began following a post-dinner chat with a friend, Dr. Mark Embrechts, in 1995.
Oak Ridge failed replication
The results were so startling that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory asked two independent researchers, D. Shapira and M. J. Saltmarsh, to repeat the experiment using more sophisticated neutron detectionNeutron detection
Neutron detection is the effective detection of neutrons entering a well-positioned detector. There are two key aspects to effective neutron detection: hardware and software. Detection hardware refers to the kind of neutron detector used and to the electronics used in the detection setup...
equipment. They reported that the neutron release was consistent with random coincidence. A rebuttal by Taleyarkhan and the other authors of the original report said that the Shapira and Saltmarsh report failed to account for significant differences in experimental setup, including over an inch of shielding between the neutron detector and the sonoluminescing acetone. According to Taleyarkhan et al., when properly considering those differences, the results are consistent with fusion.
As early as 2002, while experimental work was still in progress, Galonsky, in a letter to the journal Science
expressed doubts about the claim made by the Taleyarkhan team. In Galonsky's opinion, the observed neutrons were too high in energy to be from a deuterium
Deuterium
Deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen, is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen. It has a natural abundance in Earth's oceans of about one atom in of hydrogen . Deuterium accounts for approximately 0.0156% of all naturally occurring hydrogen in Earth's oceans, while the most common isotope ...
-deuterium (d-d) fusion reaction. In their response (published on the same page), the Taleyarkhan team provided detailed convincing arguments and concluded that the energy was "reasonably close" to that which was expected.
In February 2005 the documentary series Horizon commissioned the collaboration of two leading sonoluminescence researchers, Seth Putterman and Kenneth S. Suslick
Kenneth S. Suslick
Kenneth S. Suslick is the Marvin T. Schmidt Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, and Professor of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign...
, to reproduce Taleyarkhan's work. Using similar acoustic parameters, deuterated acetone, similar bubble nucleation, and a much more sophisticated neutron detection device, the researchers could find no evidence of a fusion reaction.
In 2011, after many years of further research in the field of sonoluminescence, Seth Puttermann now writes:
"At acoustic frequencies of 1MHz, the bubble is smaller and the observed spectrum is now best fit by the transparent plasma model, and a temperature of about one million degrees."
And he concludes:
"The densities and temperatures which can be accessed with modest sound fields are extraordinary. One is tempted to wonder if bubble acoustics can be used to reach conditions for nuclear fusion….
Some optimism that cavitation will provide a route to fusion is provided by the observation that SL (sonoluminescence) enjoys a big parameter space."
Subsequent reports of replication
In 2004, new reports of bubble fusion were published by the Taleyarkhan group, saying that the results of previous experiments have been replicated under more stringent experimental conditions. These results differed from the original results in that fusion was occurring for a much longer time frame than previously reported. The original report only showed neutron emission from the initial bubble collapse following bubble nucleation, whereas this report showed neutron emission many acoustic cycles later. The data, however, was less than stringent insofar as too large a window of measurement was used to determine a coincidence between neutron emission and sonoluminescent light emission. Furthermore, the energy of the detected neutrons was not consistent with neutrons produced from a fusion reaction.In July 2005, two of Taleyarkhan's students at Purdue University
Purdue University
Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...
published evidence confirming the previous result. They used the same acoustic chamber, the same deuterated acetone fluid and a similar bubble nucleation system. In this report, no neutron-sonoluminescence coincidence was attempted. Once again, the neutron energies measured were not consistent with those of neutrons produced by a d-d fusion reaction. Charges of misconduct were raised, and Purdue University opened an investigation. It concluded in 2008 that Taleyarkhan's name should have appeared in the author list because of his deep involvement in many steps of the research, that he added one author that had not really participated in the paper just to overcome the criticism of one reviewer, and that this was part of an attempt of "an effort to falsify the scientific record by assertion of independent confirmation". The investigation did not address the validity of the experimental results.
In January 2006, a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters , established in 1958, is a peer reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society...
by researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...
reports statistically significant evidence of fusion: The initial news report, however, shows that the reaction does not always work correctly and it is not known what parameters change to cause the reaction to function properly or not function at all.
In 2005, three Russian scientists Smorodov E., Galiakhmetov R., Ilgamov M. conducted the experiments on shock compression of deuterium bubbles in glycerine. The results were published in monograph "Physics and chemistry of cavitation" (2008), where they demonstrated the existence of the neutron yield, which indicates the initiation of nuclear-fusion reaction in deuterium plasma. This enables the creation of fundamentally new types of reactors for nuclear fusion and the creation of new types of neutron sources.
In November 2006, in the midst of charges leveled at Taleyarkhan as regards his research standards, Dr. Edward R. Forringer and undergraduates David Robbins and Jonathan Martin of LeTourneau University
LeTourneau University
LeTourneau University is a private, interdenominational Christian university located in Longview, Texas, United States with flagship programs in engineering, aeronautical science, business and education...
presented two papers at the American Nuclear Society
American Nuclear Society
The American Nuclear Society is an international, not-for-profit 501 scientific and educational organization with a membership of approximately 11,000 scientists, engineers, educators, students, and other associate members. Approximately 900 members live outside the United States in 40 countries....
Winter Meeting that reported replication of neutron emission during a visit to the meta-stable fluids research lab at Purdue University. Their experimental setup was similar to the preceding experiments in that it used a mixture of deuterated acetone, deuterated benzene
Deuterated benzene
Deuterated benzene , is a form of benzene in which the hydrogen atom is replaced with deuterium isotope . Deuterated benzene is a common solvent used in NMR spectroscopy....
, tetrachloroethylene
Tetrachloroethylene
Tetrachloroethylene, also known under its systematic name tetrachloroethene and many other names, is a chlorocarbon with the formula Cl2C=CCl2. It is a colourless liquid widely used for dry cleaning of fabrics, hence it is sometimes called "dry-cleaning fluid." It has a sweet odor detectable by...
and uranyl nitrate
Uranyl nitrate
Uranyl nitrate is a water soluble yellow uranium salt. The yellow-green crystals of uranium nitrate hexahydrate are triboluminescent.Uranyl nitrate can be prepared by reaction of uranium salts with nitric acid...
. Notably, however, it operated without an external neutron source and used two types of neutron detectors
Neutron detection
Neutron detection is the effective detection of neutrons entering a well-positioned detector. There are two key aspects to effective neutron detection: hardware and software. Detection hardware refers to the kind of neutron detector used and to the electronics used in the detection setup...
. They claimed a liquid scintillation
Scintillation (physics)
Scintillation is a flash of light produced in a transparent material by an ionization event. See scintillator and scintillation counter for practical applications.-Overview:...
detector measured neutron levels at 8 standard deviation
Standard deviation
Standard deviation is a widely used measure of variability or diversity used in statistics and probability theory. It shows how much variation or "dispersion" there is from the average...
s above the background level, while plastic detectors measured levels at 3.8 standard deviations above the background. When the same experiment was performed with non-deuterated control liquid, the measurements were within one standard deviation of background, indicating that the neutron production had only occurred during cavitation of the deuterated liquid.
There is presently a growing body of evidences indicating that ultrasonic cavitation interferes with nuclear processes.
Doubts prompt investigation
Reports as spectacular as the above arouse a lot of doubt. In March 2006, NatureNature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
published a "special report" "silencing the hype" that called into question the validity of the results of the Purdue experiments. The report quotes Brian Naranjo of the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
to the effect that spectrum measured in these sonofusion experiments is consistent with radioactive decay of the lab equipment and hence does not reliably demonstrate the presence of nuclear reactions.
The response of Taleyarkhan et al., published in Physical Review Letters, attempts to refute Naranjo's hypothesis as to the cause of the neutrons detected.
Doubts at Purdue University's Nuclear Engineering faculty as to whether the positive results reported from sonofusion experiments conducted there were truthful prompted the university to initiate a review of the research, conducted by Purdue's Office of the Vice President for Research. In a March 9, 2006 article entitled "Evidence for bubble fusion called into question", Nature interviewed several of Taleyarkhan's colleagues who suspected something was amiss.
On February 7, 2007, the Purdue University administration determined that "the evidence does not support the allegations of research misconduct and that no further investigation of the allegations is warranted". Their report also stated that "vigorous, open debate of the scientific merits of this new technology is the most appropriate focus going forward." In order to verify that the investigation was properly conducted, House Representative
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
Brad Miller
Brad Miller (congressman)
Ralph Bradley "Brad" Miller is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2003. District 13 includes all of Caswell and Person counties, and parts of Alamance, Granville, Guilford, Rockingham and Wake counties...
requested full copies of its documents and reports by March 30, 2007.
In June 2008, a multi-institutional team including Taleyarkhan published a paper in Nuclear Engineering and Design to "clear up misconceptions generated by a webposting of UCLA which served as the basis for the Nature article of March 2006", according to a press release.
On July 18, 2008, Purdue University announced that a committee with members from five institutions has investigated 12 allegations of research misconduct by Rusi Taleyarkhan. It concluded that two allegations were founded—that Taleyarkhan had claimed independent confirmation of his work when in reality the apparent confirmations were done by Taleyarkhan's former students and was not as "independent" as Taleyarkhan implied, and that Taleyarkhan had included an additional colleague's name on one of his papers who had not actually been involved in the research ("the sole apparent motivation for the addition of Mr. Butt was a desire to overcome a reviewer's criticism," the report concluded). Purdue University had previously said, in a press release in July 2005, that Butt's replication was independent from Taleyarkhan.
Taleyarkhan appealed the conclusions in the report, but this was rejected. He said the two allegations of misconduct were trivial administrative issues and had nothing to do with the discovery of bubble nuclear fusion or the underlying science, and that "all allegations of fraud and fabrication have been dismissed as invalid and without merit — thereby supporting the underlying science and experimental data as being on solid ground". A researcher questioned by the LA Times said that the report had not clarified whether bubble fusion was real or not, but that the low quality of the papers and the doubts cast by the report had made him lose all the credibility that he formerly had among the scientific community.
On August 27, 2008 he was stripped of his named Arden Bement Jr. Professorship, and forbidden to be a thesis advisor for graduate students for at least the next 3 years.
It should be noted however that the Kimberly-Clark
Kimberly-Clark
Kimberly-Clark Corporation is an American corporation that produces mostly paper-based consumer products. Kimberly-Clark brand name products include "Kleenex" facial tissue, "Kotex" feminine hygiene products, "Cottonelle", Scott and Andrex toilet paper, Wypall utility wipes, "KimWipes"...
corporation who "has a long-standing relationship with Purdue University,", and who had accumulated a wide range of expertise and know-how in the use of ultrasonic cavitation in its industrial processes for the treatment of emulsions and stabilization of chemical compounds or monitoring of chemical reactions filed a patent application on the 5th of December 2007 for An ULTRASONIC TREATMENT CHAMBER FOR INITIATING THERMONUCLEAR FUSION. This patent application US 2009/0147905 A1 was published on June 11, 2009. It quotes Taleyarkhan's research and is partly based on some of the ideas already developed in the 1978 patent from Hugh G. Flynn.
This patent application, signed by a Kimberly-Clark research team of 8 members, covers a wide range of experimental devices for ultrasonic treatment of liquids of such various natures as organic solvents and liquid metals under a wide range of temperature, pressure, electric fields, etc.
See also
- Cold fusionCold fusionCold fusion, also called low-energy nuclear reaction , refers to the hypothesis that nuclear fusion might explain the results of a group of experiments conducted at ordinary temperatures . Both the experimental results and the hypothesis are disputed...
- List of energy topics
- Chain ReactionChain Reaction (film)Chain Reaction is a 1996 American film starring Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Rachel Weisz, Brian Cox, Kevin Dunn and Fred Ward. It presents a fictional account of the invention of bubble fusion using sonoluminescence and the attempts by the United States Government to prevent the spreading of this...
, a movie portraying the discovery and attempted cover-up of a practical acoustic fusion reactor. - Mechanism of sonoluminescenceMechanism of sonoluminescenceSonoluminescence is a phenomenon that occurs when a small gas bubble is acoustically suspended and periodically driven in a liquid solution at ultrasonic frequencies, resulting in bubble collapse, cavitation, and light emission. The thermal energy that is released from the bubble collapse is so...
Further reading
- Smorodov E., Galiakhmetov R., Ilgamov M., Physics and chemistry of cavitation. Moscow, 2008
- "Bubble Power", Richard T. Lahey Jr., Rusi P. Taleyarkhan & Robert I. Nigmatulin, IEEE SpectrumIEEE SpectrumIEEE Spectrum is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE's description of it is:IEEE Spectrum began publishing in January 1964 as a successor to Electrical Engineering...
Magazine, May 2005 — Readable, quantitative, illustrated article- "Bubble Fusion Research Under Scrutiny", IEEE SpectrumIEEE SpectrumIEEE Spectrum is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE's description of it is:IEEE Spectrum began publishing in January 1964 as a successor to Electrical Engineering...
, May 2006, follow-up on May 2005 article
- "Bubble Fusion Research Under Scrutiny", IEEE Spectrum
- R. T. Lahey Jr, R. P. Taleyarkhan, and R. I. Nigmatulin, Sonofusion — Fact or Fiction? (PDF format)
- "Possible Sound-Induced Nuclear Fusion Posited" Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Press Release, March 5, 2002
- "Fusion controversy rekindled" BBC News, March 5, 2002
- "Fusion experiment disappoints" BBC News, July 2, 2002
- "Evidence bubbles over to support tabletop nuclear fusion device" March 2, 2004
- "Sound waves size up sonoluminescence". PhysicsWeb. February 5, 2002
- "Researchers Report Bubble Fusion Results Replicated" Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Press Release, March 2, 2004
- Harnessing bubbles to trigger nuclear fusion — 22 January 2005, Justin Mullins, New Scientist Magazine Issue 2483 (subscription required)
- Purdue findings support earlier nuclear fusion experiments — New positive bubble/sonofusion findings were detailed in a peer-reviewed paper appearing in the May issue of the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design. (July 12, 2005)
- Bubble Fusion takes next hurdle — The potential for cavitation to induce nuclear fusion lets physicists think in new directions of energy production. (July 18, 2005)
- "Sonofusion Experiment Produces Results Without External Neutron Source" PhysOrg.comPhysOrg.comPhysOrg is a popular science, research and technology news website specializing in the hard science subjects of physics, space and earth science, biology, chemistry, electronics, nanotechnology and technology in general. It is known for timely updates of scientific breakthroughs and press releases...
January 27, 2006 - "Using Sound Waves To Induce Nuclear Fusion With No External Neutron Source" (sciencedaily.com, January 31, 2006)
- "Bubble fusion: silencing the hype", Nature online, March 8, 2006 — Nature reveals serious doubts over reports of fusion in collapsing bubbles (subscription required)
- What's New, March 10, 2006 - failed replications
- "Bubble-fusion group suffer setback; Team admits a mix-up with one of their neutron detectors", May 10, 2006, news@nature.com (subscription required)
- "Purdue Bubble Wraps Sonofusion Inquiry Results", June 21, 2006 Photonics.com
- "Introduction to Sonofusion" Roger Stringham, October 2006
- "Practical Fusion, or Just a Bubble?", Kenneth Chang, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, February 27, 2007