Editor's Summary
28 April 2005
Fusion comes in from the cold
Many methods of reproducing nuclear fusion — the process that powers the Sun — at the table-top scale have been tried, but failed to convince. Remember 'cold fusion'? More recently, fusion linked to sonoluminescence is still controversial. Now comes a claim from the labs of the University of California at Los Angeles of unequivocal evidence of nuclear fusion in a simple room-temperature experiment. They report that gently heating a pyroelectric crystal — material that becomes charged when heated — causes ionization of a surrounding deuterium gas. The ions bombard a deuterated solid target with such energy that a large neutron signal is detected, a hallmark of deuterium fusion. Though not a viable power source, 'crystal fusion' may find application as a generator of neutrons for imaging technology.
News and Views: Technology: Warm fusion
A device that could fit in your lab-coat pocket uses nuclear fusion, and just a little heat, to produce neutrons. The advantages in simplicity and portability over conventional neutron generators could be considerable.
Michael J. Saltmarsh
doi: 10.1038/4341077a
Letter: Observation of nuclear fusion driven by a pyroelectric crystal
B. Naranjo, J.K. Gimzewski and S. Putterman
doi: 10.1038/nature03575
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (368K) | Supplementary information
