Full Answer
What is cold fusion and how does it work?
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What is the current scientific thinking on cold fusion?
What is the current scientific thinking on cold fusion? That there is no such thing. It’s pretty thoroughly acknowledged that the original experiments by Fleischmann and Pons in the late 1980s, which is what generated all the hype about cold fusion, were flawed.
Can you explain what cold fusion is?
Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature.It would contrast starkly with the "hot" fusion that is known to take place naturally within stars and artificially in hydrogen bombs and prototype fusion reactors under immense pressure and at temperatures of millions of degrees, and be distinguished from muon-catalyzed fusion.
How much energy is released during fusion?
When large nuclei, such as uranium-235, fissions, energy is released. So much energy is released that there is a measurable decrease in mass, from the mass-energy equivalence. This means that some of the mass is converted to energy. Similarly, how much energy does nuclear fusion release? A typical fusion reaction releases about 18 MeV.
Is cold fusion energy possible?
There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur.
What is cold fusion in simple terms?
Definition of cold fusion : a hypothetical method for achieving nuclear fusion at low temperature (such as room temperature)
What would cold fusion do?
Cold fusion offers a new energy economy based on green power from energy-dense LENR. Cold fusion means it is economically-viable to recycle all waste, restore wilderness and waterways to pristine conditions, and keep a planetary biosphere from extinction. Hydrogen isotopes Protium, Deuterium, and Tritium.
Why is cold fusion not possible?
According to physics, fusion can't happen at temperatures lower than a few millions of degrees Fahrenheit. That is because protons are positively charged and repel each other. Bringing them close together in order to fuse them makes the repulsion forces stronger. This is known as the "Coulomb barrier."
How far away are we from cold fusion?
One estimate suggests maybe 20 years. Then fusion would need to scale up, which would mean a delay of perhaps another few decades.
Who invented cold fusion?
Martin Fleischmann, who in 1989 claimed to have discovered cold fusion, died in his home in England on Friday, August 3rd, following a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
How long has cold fusion been around?
It all got started in 1989, when electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons made the stunning announcement at a press conference at the University of Utah that they had tamed the power of nuclear fusion in an electrolysis cell.
Is cold fusion limitless energy?
Fusion promises a virtually limitless form of energy that, unlike fossil fuels, emits zero greenhouse gases and, unlike the nuclear fission power used today, produces no long-life radioactive waste. Mastering it could literally save humanity from climate change, a crisis of our own making.
Did People invent cold fusion?
On March 23, 1989, University of Utah chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced their "cold fusion" device to the world—sparking a scientific firestorm.
Is the sun cold fusion?
Topics: ** Cold Nuclear Fusion Powers the Sun. ** It is impossible for the Sun to be a gas sphere. ** The Sun is a plasma star with electric nuclear fusion.
How far is nuclear fusion away?
This article was originally published in The Oxford Scientist Michaelmas Term 2021 edition, Change. Nuclear fusion is supposedly 'always 30 years away'. It was however first theorised about a hundred years ago.
Is cold fusion the same as nuclear fusion?
Cold fusion, if it worked, would be a form of nuclear fusion. Although many nuclei can be fused, this subject normally refers to fusion of hydrogen isotopes deuterium or tritium to form helium.
Why is it called cold fusion?
The process was called cold fusion because the temperatures involved were far lower than any at which fusion had been known to occur. Today it is believed by most scientists familiar with the facts of the case that the procedures of Pons and Fleischmann were flawed and their conclusions mistaken.
What is a cold fusion bomb?
A cold fusion weapon was a nuclear weapon developed by incorporating alien technology to trigger a fusion reaction that resulted in the release of massive amounts of energy. None of the devices seen in Independence Day: Resurgence were mounted on missiles, instead requiring delivery by a bomber.
What language is cold fusion?
(ColdFusion was written in C and C++ until version 6.0 — the first Java-based version of ColdFusion — was released in 2002.) New Atlanta licensed BlueDragon around 2001 and made it available as a commercial product, eventually creating a . NET implementation of CFML.
Which is most likely why many scientists reject the cold fusion theory?
Which is most likely why many scientists reject the cold fusion theory? There is too much waste involved in the process. Cold fusion experiments have been conducted at room temperature only.
What is cold fusion?
Cold fusion is a field of condensed matter nuclear science CMNS, and is also called low-energy nuclear reactions LENR, lattice-assisted nuclear reactions LANR, low energy nanoscale reactions LENR, among others. Cold fusion is also referred to as the Anomalous Heat Effect AHE, reflecting the fact that there is no definitive theory ...
What is the purpose of cold fusion?
The excess heat can make hot water and useful steam to turn a turbine and produce electricity. Cold fusion devices are typically small table-top laboratory experiments, ranging in size from tiny test-tubes to small refridgerator-sized generators.
What is the process of transmutation?
Transmutation occurs when one element is transformed, or transmuted, to another element. The creation of elements by transmutation has been the dream of alchemists for millenia. Now, new energy scientists are able to create new elements in their labs using LENR techniques.
What is the Anomalous Heat Effect?
Cold fusion is also referred to as the Anomalous Heat Effect AHE, reflecting the fact that there is no definitive theory of the elusive reaction. The Fleischmann-Pons Effect of Excess Heat. When hydrogen, the main element of water, is introduced to a small piece of the metal nickel or palladium, a reaction occurs that can create excess heat ...
What is the energy of the central portion of an atom?
Accessing the energy of the central portion of the atom provides fusion-sized energy density, allowing for green human development and the opportunity to grow and explore the universe with long-term spacecraft power, and a fuel that makes up 99% of the universe. Researchers race to solve energy mystery.
Who discovered cold fusion?
The discoverers of cold fusion Dr. Stanley Pons and Dr. Martin Fleischmann holding a tiny cold fusion energy cell in 1989. Cold fusion describes a form of energy generated when hydrogen interacts with various metals like nickel and palladium. Cold fusion is a field of condensed matter nuclear science CMNS, and is also called low-energy nuclear ...
Is cold fusion dangerous?
and therefore must be some type of new nuclear mechanism, for cold fusion is not like today’s dirty and dangerous nuclear power.
What was the breakthrough in cold fusion?
The University of Utah, where both men were chemistry professors, ran the research along with the headline, “ Breakthrough process has potential to provide inexhaustible source of energy .”
What is a muon-catalyzed fusion?
A “muon-catalyzed fusion” is one known instance where a catalyst is, in fact, able to cause nuclear fusion.
What is the process that gives life to stars?
Ultimately, fusion (or “hot fusion”) is the process that gives life to stars. Under immense pressure and temperatures that reach millions of degrees, elements fuse together, creating heavier elements. As this happens, an immense amount of energy is released.
Is cold fusion the future?
Cold fusion is supposed to be “the energy of the future.”. It is a method of energy production that physicists have been bouncing about since the early 1900s, and it is said that, if it ever comes to fruition, this process will have three times as much energy output as it draws.
Do muons fuse hydrogen?
And when muons replace the hydrogen atoms’ electrons, they draw the hydrogen close enough to fuse it (yay!). Unfortunately, muons take a lot of energy to produce, and they are so fleeting that they don’t stick about long enough to produce more energy than goes into making them (boo).
Did Fleischmann and Pons replicate cold fusion?
While Fleischmann and Pons culpability is questionable (they claim that the university pushed them to announce the research so early, and they did endeavor to clearly state their limitations), nevertheless, the facts remain: They claim ed to have replicated cold fusion, but they could not explain the physics behind the process; their experiment was not clearly detailed, which made replication or assessment extremely difficult; the actual achievement was not only premature, it was clearly overstated; and there seemed to be inconsistencies in the findings that should have been addressed before they went to the press.
Cold Fusion Controversy
Since the announcement of a successful cold fusion reaction by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, two scientists at the University of Utah, in March 1989, the scientific community has been astir over the meaning of their experiments.
Patents vs Transparency
After the initial stir of excitement, it appeared that the announcement by Pons and Fleischmann was premature. The result of academic pressure to achieve prestige and the apparent withholding of some critical information to preserve their potential patent rights.
Cold Fusion Research
In 1994, Melvin Miles, working with the Navy at the time, discovered a palladium/boron alloy would also produce the 30-40% energy gain. Using a field theory paradigm, moving electrons pass through the “heat” of the heavy water, aligning and polarizing molecules as they pass.
Why don't scientists see cold fusion?
But scientists don't see it that way, because as they search, they gather other sorts of knowledge and pioneer technological innovations.
What is LENR in nuclear fusion?
The term LENR – low-energy nuclear reaction – now is used by some scientists "to avoid the stigma associated with cold fusion," according to Munday.
What happens when nuclei are close together?
If this happens, energy is released. The difficulty is that the positively charged nuclei repel each other. If there are a lot of nuclei close together — high density — and they have a lot of kinetic energy (high temperature), this reaction can happen.
When did they fuse helium?
Back in March 1989 , at a press conference in Salt Lake City, scientists Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Great Britain's University of Southampton made a startling announcement. The researchers had managed to fuse the atomic nuclei of a hydrogen isotope to create helium — the same sort of process that powers the sun — and they'd been able to do it at room temperature, without putting in more energy than the process produced, as this Wired retrospective from 2009 details.
Is cold fusion real?
But other researchers who tried to duplicate the experiments were unable to reproduce the results, or else concluded that they were caused by experimental errors, according to a 1989 New York Times article. "Most of the scientific community no longer considers cold fusion a real phenomenon," Peter N. Saeta, a professor of physics at Harvey Mudd College, wrote in Scientific American in 1999.
Does Google have any evidence of cold fusion?
The researchers ultimately published a 2019 Nature article in which they revealed that their efforts "have yet to yield any evidence of such an effect.".
Has cold fusion gone away?
Even so, scientists' interest in cold fusion has never completely gone away, and they've continued to do research on it. Though nobody has been able to prove conclusively that it can be accomplished, that work actually has yielded valuable knowledge in other ways.
What is cold fusion?from en.wikipedia.org
Not to be confused with Cold welding. Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature.
How does a cold fusion cell work?from en.wikipedia.org
The most basic setup of a cold fusion cell consists of two electrodes submerged in a solution containing palladium and heavy water. The electrodes are then connected to a power source to transmit electricity from one electrode to the other through the solution. Even when anomalous heat is reported, it can take weeks for it to begin to appear—this is known as the "loading time," the time required to saturate the palladium electrode with hydrogen (see "Loading ratio" section).
What is the efficiency of electrolysis?from en.wikipedia.org
One assumption made by Fleischmann and Pons is that the efficiency of electrolysis is nearly 100%, meaning nearly all the electricity applied to the cell resulted in electrolysis of water, with negligible resistive heating and substantially all the electrolysis product leaving the cell unchanged. This assumption gives the amount of energy expended converting liquid D 2 O into gaseous D 2 and O 2. The efficiency of electrolysis is less than one if hydrogen and oxygen recombine to a significant extent within the calorimeter. Several researchers have described potential mechanisms by which this process could occur and thereby account for excess heat in electrolysis experiments.
Why do nuclei repel each other?from en.wikipedia.org
Because nuclei are all positively charged, they strongly repel one another. Normally, in the absence of a catalyst such as a muon, very high kinetic energies are required to overcome this charged repulsion. Extrapolating from known fusion rates, the rate for uncatalyzed fusion at room-temperature energy would be 50 orders of magnitude lower than needed to account for the reported excess heat. In muon-catalyzed fusion there are more fusions because the presence of the muon causes deuterium nuclei to be 207 times closer than in ordinary deuterium gas. But deuterium nuclei inside a palladium lattice are further apart than in deuterium gas, and there should be fewer fusion reactions, not more.
What is the process of transmutation?from coldfusionnow.org
Transmutation occurs when one element is transformed, or transmuted, to another element. The creation of elements by transmutation has been the dream of alchemists for millenia. Now, new energy scientists are able to create new elements in their labs using LENR techniques.
What is the Anomalous Heat Effect?from coldfusionnow.org
Cold fusion is also referred to as the Anomalous Heat Effect AHE, reflecting the fact that there is no definitive theory of the elusive reaction. The Fleischmann-Pons Effect of Excess Heat. When hydrogen, the main element of water, is introduced to a small piece of the metal nickel or palladium, a reaction occurs that can create excess heat ...
Why don't scientists see cold fusion?from science.howstuffworks.com
But scientists don't see it that way, because as they search, they gather other sorts of knowledge and pioneer technological innovations.
How does fusion energy work?from climate.mit.edu
For scientists, making fusion energy means recreating the conditions of stars, starting with plasma. Plasma is the fourth state of matter, after solids, liquids and gases. Ice is an example of a solid. When heated up, it becomes a liquid. Place that liquid in a pot on the stove, and it becomes a gas (steam). If you take that gas and continue to make it hotter, at around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (~6,000 Kelvin), it will change from a gas to the next phase of matter: plasma. Ninety-nine percent of the mass in the universe is in the plasma state, since almost the entire mass of the universe is in super hot stars that exist as plasma.
What is the energy of nuclear fusion?from en.wikipedia.org
Energy released in most nuclear reactions is much larger than in chemical reactions, because the binding energy that holds a nucleus together is greater than the energy that holds electrons to a nucleus. For example, the ionization energy gained by adding an electron to a hydrogen nucleus is 13.6 eV —less than one-millionth of the 17.6 MeV released in the deuterium – tritium (D–T) reaction shown in the adjacent diagram. Fusion reactions have an energy density many times greater than nuclear fission; the reactions produce far greater energy per unit of mass even though individual fission reactions are generally much more energetic than individual fusion ones, which are themselves millions of times more energetic than chemical reactions. Only direct conversion of mass into energy, such as that caused by the annihilatory collision of matter and antimatter, is more energetic per unit of mass than nuclear fusion. (The complete conversion of one gram of matter would release 9×10 13 joules of energy.)
How does nuclear force affect the size of a nucleus?from en.wikipedia.org
When a nucleon such as a proton or neutron is added to a nucleus, the nuclear force attracts it to all the other nucleons of the nucleus (if the atom is small enough), but primarily to its immediate neighbours due to the short range of the force. The nucleons in the interior of a nucleus have more neighboring nucleons than those on the surface. Since smaller nuclei have a larger surface-area-to-volume ratio, the binding energy per nucleon due to the nuclear force generally increases with the size of the nucleus but approaches a limiting value corresponding to that of a nucleus with a diameter of about four nucleons. It is important to keep in mind that nucleons are quantum objects. So, for example, since two neutrons in a nucleus are identical to each other, the goal of distinguishing one from the other, such as which one is in the interior and which is on the surface, is in fact meaningless, and the inclusion of quantum mechanics is therefore necessary for proper calculations.
What is the problem with accelerator based fusion?from en.wikipedia.org
The key problem with accelerator-based fusion (and with cold targets in general) is that fusion cross sections are many orders of magnitude lower than Coulomb interaction cross-sections. Therefore, the vast majority of ions expend their energy emitting bremsstrahlung radiation and the ionization of atoms of the target. Devices referred to as sealed-tube neutron generators are particularly relevant to this discussion. These small devices are miniature particle accelerators filled with deuterium and tritium gas in an arrangement that allows ions of those nuclei to be accelerated against hydride targets, also containing deuterium and tritium, where fusion takes place, releasing a flux of neutrons. Hundreds of neutron generators are produced annually for use in the petroleum industry where they are used in measurement equipment for locating and mapping oil reserves.
What is the primary fuel used in artificial fusion?from en.wikipedia.org
In artificial fusion, the primary fuel is not constrained to be protons and higher temperatures can be used, so reactions with larger cross-sections are chosen. Another concern is the production of neutrons, which activate the reactor structure radiologically, but also have the advantages of allowing volumetric extraction of the fusion energy and tritium breeding. Reactions that release no neutrons are referred to as aneutronic .
What is ICF in physics?from en.wikipedia.org
Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a method aimed at releasing fusion energy by heating and compressing a fuel target, typically a pellet containing deuterium and tritium .
How much energy does fusion produce?from climate.mit.edu
Fusion energy, like fossil fuels, is a form of stored energy. But fusion can create 20 to 100 million times more energy than the chemical reaction of a fossil fuel. Most of the mass of an atom, 99.9 percent, is contained at an atom’s center—inside of its nucleus. The ratio of this matter to the empty space in an atom is almost exactly the same ratio of how much energy you release when you manipulate the nucleus. In contrast, a chemical reaction, such as burning coal, rearranges the atoms through heat, but doesn’t alter the atoms themselves, so we don’t get as much energy.
What is cold fusion?
Cold fusion is an attempt to get fusion to occur under less extreme conditions, possibly as a result of chemical reactions. Despite the flurry of publicity several years ago, cold fusion remains unrealized speculation for now. Answered by: Paul Walorski, B.A. Physics, Part-time Physics Instructor.
Why was cold fusion called cold fusion?
The process was called cold fusion because the temperatures involved were far lower than any at which fusion had been known to occur. Today it is believed by most scientists familiar with the facts of the case that the procedures of Pons and Fleischmann were flawed and their conclusions mistaken.
Why do nuclei need to be convincing?
Because the protons in nuclei are all positively charged, and like charges repel , nuclei need some convincing to get them to fuse. That convincing ordinarily involves high temperature and pressure, such as exists at the core of a star or under conditions created by a fission bomb.
Why is fusion difficult?
This makes fusion difficult to achieve. In the Sun very high levels of heat and pressure overcome the repulsion.
How does nuclear fusion produce energy?
Nuclear fusion can produce energy when the nuclei of lighter elements come together (fuse), creating larger nuclei. Energy is liberated when the total mass of the end products is slightly less than the mass of the lighter nuclei going into the process, with that difference in mass being converted to energy via Einstein's famous E=mc 2 ...
Is cold fusion a form of nuclear fusion?
Answered by: Paul Walorski, B.A. Physics, Part-time Physics Instructor. Cold fusion, if it worked, would be a form of nuclear fusion. Although many nuclei can be fused, this subject normally refers to fusion of hydrogen isotopes deuterium or tritium to form helium. When this happens energy is released.
How does fusion power work?
Fusion power is a proposed form of power generation that would generate electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions. In a fusion process, two lighter atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, while releasing energy. ... ×. 1.
What is general fusion?
General Fusion is developing utility-scale fusion power using a new, patent pending concept based on recent developments in Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF). It is the goal of General Fusion to demonstrate and commercialize this new clean, safe and economical concept by the end of the decade. 3.
