Cold Fusion

russ_watters

The oxymoron is in the word "cold." Cold implies it requires very little energy. IE, you can catalyze it like a chemical reaction to require less activation energy. But there is no way to catalze a nuclear reaction. One way or another, you need to use ENERGY to force another neutron into an atom - lots of energy. There is a specific and unavoidable amount of activation energy in fusion. You used the word "pressure" - thats another form of energy. Still not cold fusion.

Lurch, thats an interesting possibility, but I would think it takes some energy to quantum teleport a proton. I don't know much about it though.

drag

Greetings !
Activation energy ?
We are limmited by their electrical
repulsion and the relevant electerical
potential energy (if we just consider
the nucleuses). But that's not too high
(4 KeV for two deutirium nucleuses if I
remember correctly, for example).

In addition, I think that by using certain
molecular structures you could bring
them relativly close without directly "paying"
for it - as a part of the internal potential
energy dynamics and then add just a bit of
energy if at all - to make'em fuse. Which
I believe is essentialy what cold-fusion
is all about - using the internal potential
energy shifts of an appropriate meterial.
That's what's implied by cold fusion tech today.
Nobody says it's totally "free" - it's
not against the laws of physics.
Of course it'll work. It's just highly
unlikely and you'll need a very huge
(and that's an understatement [;)]) tank
to actually get some measurable amounts
of energy this way.

Live long and prosper.

russ_watters

According to THIS site, a deuterium/tritium reaction requires 12.1KeV (the lowest) - but that corresponds to a temperature of 141 million K.

Since energy = temperature, you can't give a particle energy without heating it.

drag

Greetings !
No offense, but "heating a particle" is not
a sensible statement russ. Heat is the average
energy of a large amount of particles in
close proximity to each other.

There are 3 ways of containing a sustained
fusion reaction:
1. Gravitational confinement (like the Sun).
2. EM confinement (tokamaks and most other
current attempts).
2. Enertial confinement (particle beams,
current attempts include fusion using ultrasound).

Cold fusion is NOT dealing with a sustained
reaction, though it may and must indeed - in order
to really be useful to us(beyond basic
research [;)]), be self-sustaining in terms of
energy for the whole system.

Now, think of a room of plastic explosives
stacked up together and some hydrogen/deutirium/
tritium in the middle. We blow it all up - we
use the potential chemical energy of the explosives
in an appropriate chemical reaction. Possibly, some
of the explosion's energy will force some
particles to fuse (this is an EXAMPLE, I have NO
idea what will really happen - except a small
earthquake of course [:D]). Also, think of our
current sources of energy - we use the potential
chemical energy of essentialy - dead plants to get
some free energy for our use. So, cold fusion is
partially similar - we put some fusable element/s
in an appropriate material and trigger the
appropriate chemical reaction that will have
a strong enough effect to fuse the above element/s.
There is nothing theoreticly impossible about it,
as far as I can see.

Live long and prosper.

russ_watters

Actually, thats TEMPERATURE [;)]. Temperature = kinetic energy. So its not a stretch to call the kinetic energy of a single particle temperature. Its not quite the same, but its pretty damn close. Thats STILL kinetic energy. Kinetic energy = temperature. Still not cold fusion.

drag

Greetings russ !

Look, I understand what you mean. But,
cold fusion is not about free energy
as you implied above when you supposedly
explained the word "cold". It's about
achieving fusion without taking a whole
large bunch of atoms and heating them,
its more selective and targeted and what's
more important is the fact you can use
some sort of chemical reaction in a material
instead of direct prior self energy input - which
wouldn't be that effective. Anyway, scientists
are not that stupid to seek free energy,
wouldn't you agree ? [;)]

Live long and prosper.

sir-pinski

The problem with the idea of a chemical reaction is that they usually only involve electron-electron interactions. In fact I have never heard of a chemical reaction which involves the nucleus directly. I think it would be difficult if not impossible to think of a chemical reaction which would enable fusion to take place. Besides chemical reactions typically are much smaller in energy release than nuclear.

drag

Greetings !
Well, I believe the scientists try to use
some additions like EM and kinetic energy (sound
waves) additons. For example, if you can produce
a molecule where two hydrogen nuecleuses are very
close together, their repulsion is masked by
some electrons and the inner molecular balance,
and they can move even closer provided you
supply some additional forces, then you
can get relativly cheap fusion. You see, the
activation energy of fusion reactions of hydrogen
isotopes and the resulting energy differ by factors
of hundreds to phousands. The fusion reactors
we have today are so pathetic that they
can't even nearly sustain their own ops.
Cold fusion may prove to be a viable alternative.
(btw, I'm really no expert so I'm not sure
about the real current and past attempts to
achieve cold fusion, I'm just guessing how
and why it mught work.)
?

Live long and prosper.

sir-pinski

Presumably you are thinking along the lines of single bubble sonoluminescence. Last time I checked reasearchers were still not clear on the exact cause of the effect. It is in principle possible that fusion conditions exist in the bubbles but it's one thing to have that, and another to produce energy from it.

But you still have to overcome the coloumb barrier which is the problem. Also, because of the energy created in the reaction you can't describe it as cold. I suppose in principle if you could produce a very high density (without overcoming the fermi-pressure) then you could reduce the energy input required but this is not easy. Bear in mind that for stars to do this they require huge amounts of mass just to get the right conidtions. You also have the problem that you have to transfer that energy somehow, in most cases where you have energy releases of this type you have to heat up some form of coolant, so heat is involved.

Fusion is not an easy task and the progress that has been made is good. With any luck ITER could do the job. I personally do not think cold fusion even exists let alone being a viable alternative however if someone can concretely demonstrate at least the principles then maybe then it will have it's day.

Viper

Do you know what this is?

Attached Images

 

sir-pinski

A very tiny blurred almost unrecognisable picture of a light? [:)]

drag

What's wrong with your vision ?
It's clearly a snapshot of a missile
launch from some PC war game. [;)]

Viper

Ill give you a clue. Its a weapon from the newest version of a long running Real time stratergy video game.

FZ+

Hmm... it's called scud.gif....

Maybe that's a clue?

Oh, it's obvious, it must be a patriot missile array![6)]

sir-pinski

Ahhh I can see it now. hmmmm - don't tell it's supposed to run on cold fusion [:D]

Viper

No its a gla weapon, oops

Viper

Heres it a bit bigger