Hey all,
This is one of my first posts on the forum, but I have read quite a bit about the possibilities of sonofusion [incl. the supposed confirmation of its existence by all sorts of various sources]. I also read that Richard Hull dabbled in this a bit, but there was too much noise to actually get any results on testing.
I'm hoping to build a fusor with sonofusion in mind. I want to use the fusor as a neutron source and aim it at the deuterated acetone to increase the numbers. I have heard of this being done already, so I don't think I'll be doing anything too original.
Do you think this sort of setup is even remotely possible on a hobbyist budget? I'm mostly interested in testing it for myself so I can gain a better understanding of exactly how the whole thing works in actual application.
Are all the parts available? I haven't been able to locate any deuterated acetone.....
How would you measure if actual fusion occurred, considering you're already sending free neutrons directly into the area you would be measuring. It does seem like there would be ALOT of noise.
I've read alot about it, but it doesn't seem like too many privateers have given sonofusion a shot. Is it even worth the effort?
Thanks in advance~
-Brett
Sonofusion at home....
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BrettWilder
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Richard Hull
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
Brett, Sonofusion is certainly worth the effort, but I would be amazed if you beat a simple fusor with it based on what has been done and demonstrated so far.
Deuterated acetone is easy to obtain if you have the bucks.
http://www.wilmad-labglass.com/group/2147
The original sonofusion paper was highly contested due to the noise of which you speak. Since then better measurements and a couple of better handled repeat experiments have shown the original work did do fusion to the general satisfaction of the peers.
Sonofusion is a tough row to hoe instrumentation wise. The supposed need for seed neutrons is a definite noise source and bothers me a bit.
Richard Hull
Deuterated acetone is easy to obtain if you have the bucks.
http://www.wilmad-labglass.com/group/2147
The original sonofusion paper was highly contested due to the noise of which you speak. Since then better measurements and a couple of better handled repeat experiments have shown the original work did do fusion to the general satisfaction of the peers.
Sonofusion is a tough row to hoe instrumentation wise. The supposed need for seed neutrons is a definite noise source and bothers me a bit.
Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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BrettWilder
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
Richard! It's nice to hear from you. I've been reading your posts for years. Thanks for being so rad!
I read that paper as well, or at least parts of it on the net. I think that the neutron counts wouldn't be nearly as high as a really well-made fusor, but it's seems pretty obvious to me that "fusor" fusion will never hit the break-even point. It appears as if there's at least a handful of really smart physicists out there who believe that sonofusion is one of the possible avenues to accomplishing the almighty point where hot fusion gets real cold.
Want to help me build it? haha. [all i need is a winning lotto ticket!!! or at least a little better job!]
are there any working diagrams for sonofusion test reactors out on the net right now? I haven't been able to locate any plans so far.
-brett
I read that paper as well, or at least parts of it on the net. I think that the neutron counts wouldn't be nearly as high as a really well-made fusor, but it's seems pretty obvious to me that "fusor" fusion will never hit the break-even point. It appears as if there's at least a handful of really smart physicists out there who believe that sonofusion is one of the possible avenues to accomplishing the almighty point where hot fusion gets real cold.
Want to help me build it? haha. [all i need is a winning lotto ticket!!! or at least a little better job!]
are there any working diagrams for sonofusion test reactors out on the net right now? I haven't been able to locate any plans so far.
-brett
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Carl Willis
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
Brett,
THE man to speak to about sonofusion is Rusi Taleyarkhan at Purdue University, formerly from ORNL.
I visited him a couple weeks ago at his lab at Purdue. Many people have been concerned about the fact that neutrons are needed to "seed" the bubbles in order to use pressure / temperature regimes that give a higher compression when the bubble explodes. However, there is no mistaking the neutron signature (or the capture gamma signature) of fusion, which occurs well after the seed pulse dissipates when the bubbles actually implode. Dr. Taleyarkhan has not only the data, but videos of the experiments with and without deuterated acetone, that make it crystal-clear that fusion IS happening here.
The detector instrumentation is NOT beyond us hobbyists either. A plastic scintillation detector is used. Pulse-shape discrimination can be used to isolate neutron or gamma responses. Multichannel scaling records counts as a function of time, making it possible to see the seed pulse and its dieaway, and then the gaussian-shaped fusion neutron response and its dieaway.
The trick is in making the glass vessel. The acoustics are very tricky and thousands of dollars is spent simply on making glass vessels that are conducive to making spherical sonobubbles rather than oblate ones. There's the rub.
Taleyarkhan is looking for motivated grad students by the way...
-Carl
THE man to speak to about sonofusion is Rusi Taleyarkhan at Purdue University, formerly from ORNL.
I visited him a couple weeks ago at his lab at Purdue. Many people have been concerned about the fact that neutrons are needed to "seed" the bubbles in order to use pressure / temperature regimes that give a higher compression when the bubble explodes. However, there is no mistaking the neutron signature (or the capture gamma signature) of fusion, which occurs well after the seed pulse dissipates when the bubbles actually implode. Dr. Taleyarkhan has not only the data, but videos of the experiments with and without deuterated acetone, that make it crystal-clear that fusion IS happening here.
The detector instrumentation is NOT beyond us hobbyists either. A plastic scintillation detector is used. Pulse-shape discrimination can be used to isolate neutron or gamma responses. Multichannel scaling records counts as a function of time, making it possible to see the seed pulse and its dieaway, and then the gaussian-shaped fusion neutron response and its dieaway.
The trick is in making the glass vessel. The acoustics are very tricky and thousands of dollars is spent simply on making glass vessels that are conducive to making spherical sonobubbles rather than oblate ones. There's the rub.
Taleyarkhan is looking for motivated grad students by the way...
-Carl
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Alex Aitken
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
I doubt a fusor could be used, the timing of the neutron pulse is critical and the output would be too low anyway.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
The bottom line is, fusion in many areas and venues consistantly proves itself to be rather easy to do. Deceptively easy, of course. As I have said before, I have little doubt that biota does it at some level not yet appreciated.
Any one who can get their hands on 100 watts of electricity can demonstrate fusion in a number of easily constructed, if not moderately expensive, devices. But, again, it is produced at such a miniscule fraction of efficiency that the game usually stops right their. Fusion is not a runaway process, as witnessed by the fact it is never observed as such outside of stars and even then, it self moderates to a very low efficiency if the free gravitational energy is calculated out. Fusion is always less than unity, though in stars, it achieves ignition and continuous burn against a virtual forever crushing, heating and containment force of gravity. The energy output of fusion outside of stars is always far below that required to keep it going on a 24-7 basis.
Fission, unlike fusion is actually a form of free energy for us in that we are merely collecting the material like wood, but unlike wood, you don't even have to light it with seed energy to get it to burn.
Fission's energy is from the good old, ever reliable potential energy systems of the universe, long ago locked down in the U-235 or whatever fissionable du jour we choose, due solely to gravity, but retained under the secondary PE or created PE of the nuclear force.
I have always felt the nuclear force was a created or secondary PE much like magnetism. It came along later and was unavodable just as is permenant magnetism. I attach a proviso here.......This is for a time slice of the existence of the universe, our time slice! In distant future times, new PE sources may form as dictated by nature and conditions. Likewise, in those microtime frames at the beginning of the universe where things evovled quickly by even current geologic standards, things such as matter that we see today apparently behaved by the rules of their brief epochs. Of these things, both future and past, we can only speculate.
Currently, It is all a game of gravity and charge which are primal and pivotal, and all that is, and manifested as constituents of base level, realizable matter.
Each epoch trails off into the next, not in a flash, but in a smooth transition, relative to its time frame. I feel that a mesonic epoch just preceded ours, for mesons are about the only constituent hint of an ancient matter that can still be produced with currently usable universal dynamic energies on a universal scale. We are in the age of condesed matter where charge and gravity predominate. All charged mesons tend to decay and shed energy winding up ultimately as being electrons, and protons (condesable, charged matter).
Richard Hull
Any one who can get their hands on 100 watts of electricity can demonstrate fusion in a number of easily constructed, if not moderately expensive, devices. But, again, it is produced at such a miniscule fraction of efficiency that the game usually stops right their. Fusion is not a runaway process, as witnessed by the fact it is never observed as such outside of stars and even then, it self moderates to a very low efficiency if the free gravitational energy is calculated out. Fusion is always less than unity, though in stars, it achieves ignition and continuous burn against a virtual forever crushing, heating and containment force of gravity. The energy output of fusion outside of stars is always far below that required to keep it going on a 24-7 basis.
Fission, unlike fusion is actually a form of free energy for us in that we are merely collecting the material like wood, but unlike wood, you don't even have to light it with seed energy to get it to burn.
Fission's energy is from the good old, ever reliable potential energy systems of the universe, long ago locked down in the U-235 or whatever fissionable du jour we choose, due solely to gravity, but retained under the secondary PE or created PE of the nuclear force.
I have always felt the nuclear force was a created or secondary PE much like magnetism. It came along later and was unavodable just as is permenant magnetism. I attach a proviso here.......This is for a time slice of the existence of the universe, our time slice! In distant future times, new PE sources may form as dictated by nature and conditions. Likewise, in those microtime frames at the beginning of the universe where things evovled quickly by even current geologic standards, things such as matter that we see today apparently behaved by the rules of their brief epochs. Of these things, both future and past, we can only speculate.
Currently, It is all a game of gravity and charge which are primal and pivotal, and all that is, and manifested as constituents of base level, realizable matter.
Each epoch trails off into the next, not in a flash, but in a smooth transition, relative to its time frame. I feel that a mesonic epoch just preceded ours, for mesons are about the only constituent hint of an ancient matter that can still be produced with currently usable universal dynamic energies on a universal scale. We are in the age of condesed matter where charge and gravity predominate. All charged mesons tend to decay and shed energy winding up ultimately as being electrons, and protons (condesable, charged matter).
Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
-
BrettWilder
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
Haha, Richard, this is totally not about sonofusion anymore...
I'm glad you brought this up, however. I've been pretty infatuated with this topic myself lately. I tend to agree with you--it's pretty obvious that in the lifetime of our universe, various other particles were dominant at one point or another. mesons and muons and all those less-stable energies were probably more easily created than the bigger stuff we've got floating around today. there's been quite a bit of research that lends itself to this theory.
I think that this is all a matter of equilibrium. I dont have much experimental evidence to support this--I'm a community college dropout [i got bored, what can i say!?] with a whole bunch of reading and internet research backing my ideas. But I have been thinking lately that the whole universe is really just like a few drops of oil in water. When you drop the first drop in, it shatters when it hits the water, but over time it establishes its existence and equalizes, merging with the other oil drops as they randomly interact in the water. The core forces of the universe are eventually amplified over time as things collect. [ie gravity in a solar system or the formation of quarks/leptons/etc]. Things like the weak force seem to work like "shaking the pot," or mixing the oil and water back up.
I guess we'll find out in a few billion years hmm?
I really need to get back to work now! This is going to be a primary distraction from now on...
-brett
I'm glad you brought this up, however. I've been pretty infatuated with this topic myself lately. I tend to agree with you--it's pretty obvious that in the lifetime of our universe, various other particles were dominant at one point or another. mesons and muons and all those less-stable energies were probably more easily created than the bigger stuff we've got floating around today. there's been quite a bit of research that lends itself to this theory.
I think that this is all a matter of equilibrium. I dont have much experimental evidence to support this--I'm a community college dropout [i got bored, what can i say!?] with a whole bunch of reading and internet research backing my ideas. But I have been thinking lately that the whole universe is really just like a few drops of oil in water. When you drop the first drop in, it shatters when it hits the water, but over time it establishes its existence and equalizes, merging with the other oil drops as they randomly interact in the water. The core forces of the universe are eventually amplified over time as things collect. [ie gravity in a solar system or the formation of quarks/leptons/etc]. Things like the weak force seem to work like "shaking the pot," or mixing the oil and water back up.
I guess we'll find out in a few billion years hmm?
I really need to get back to work now! This is going to be a primary distraction from now on...
-brett
Re: Sonofusion at home....
As Marvin said, doing sonofusion with the fusor as neutron input source is impractical. The neutrons must be timed to coincide with the high-pressure pulse of the sonic wave, so we're talking micro or millisecond precision. I'm not sure how a fusor would do that.
On the other hand, don't listen to me! Just try it! That's the point of this board, isn't it? For crazy people like us, who just fling ourselves headlong into the water and then learn to swim.
On the other hand, don't listen to me! Just try it! That's the point of this board, isn't it? For crazy people like us, who just fling ourselves headlong into the water and then learn to swim.
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Brian McDermott
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
When I toured RPI, they were using a pulsed linac photoneutron source that, IIRC, put out 10^13 n/sec at the source. Since it was pulsed, the neutron background itself was more reasonable and managable. The neutrons themselves were used to trigger bubble formation, not to induce fusion reactions. Fast-response proton recoil scintillators were used to take measurements.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
Again, not a particularly easy to do setup. I had long realized from the paper that the neuts were there to spur bubble formation and the timing of the detectors was via delay to allow the torent of neuts to go away before detection occurred. Still, I, and I am sure others, would have felt a whole lot better if they had used an x-ray burst, an anvil dropped from a roof top or the reflected energy of a chemical explosive to trigger bubble formation rather than a blast of neuts.
I would, of course, say go for it if you have the bucks, time and inclination in that direction. I would of course also say that 1 in 10,000 reading this would pick up the baton and run with it.
Human rest inertia is great and gets greater with the added mass and baggage of the needed sacks o' dough, vast blocks of time and specialized machining and or instrumentation to reach the finish line. This is why the dispeptic theoreticians, computer modelers and dreamers out number the doers and movers and shakers, 10,000:1.
Richard Hull
I would, of course, say go for it if you have the bucks, time and inclination in that direction. I would of course also say that 1 in 10,000 reading this would pick up the baton and run with it.
Human rest inertia is great and gets greater with the added mass and baggage of the needed sacks o' dough, vast blocks of time and specialized machining and or instrumentation to reach the finish line. This is why the dispeptic theoreticians, computer modelers and dreamers out number the doers and movers and shakers, 10,000:1.
Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
-
BrettWilder
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
from the sound of it, this project might be over my head right now
do you think using the standard design for my fusor would still work well for this project later?
what i'm wondering is HOW i should design my fusor now to be best used if i am to try this experiment later..... right now i dont have the skills or the money, but i would like to at least put a notch in things for later.
does anyone have any thoughts on that?
-brett
do you think using the standard design for my fusor would still work well for this project later?
what i'm wondering is HOW i should design my fusor now to be best used if i am to try this experiment later..... right now i dont have the skills or the money, but i would like to at least put a notch in things for later.
does anyone have any thoughts on that?
-brett
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Richard Hull
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
Very little from a fusor project, except for the neutron instrumentation, will carry over into the sonofusion area. A sonofusion chamber is quite special.
Sonoluminescence can and has been done in a common boiling flask found in chem labs.
Sorry.
Richard Hull
Sonoluminescence can and has been done in a common boiling flask found in chem labs.
Sorry.
Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
-
drboblog.com
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
Dear Brett,
You seem like a technical guy.
We need some kind of flashy fusor/reactor/electrolysis for a promotional video.
We believe that information & technology can solve all our problems and we are working on spreading knowledge outside on the nerd community.
We where planing a cold fusion demo but the inventor is so slow...
Do you or your friends have something? We pay for shipment if we can borrow something for promotional video.
www.drboblog.com
peace out
You seem like a technical guy.
We need some kind of flashy fusor/reactor/electrolysis for a promotional video.
We believe that information & technology can solve all our problems and we are working on spreading knowledge outside on the nerd community.
We where planing a cold fusion demo but the inventor is so slow...
Do you or your friends have something? We pay for shipment if we can borrow something for promotional video.
www.drboblog.com
peace out
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Carl Willis
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
The thread here dates from 2005. It's now 2012. The best course of action for contacting the poster on something this old is to click his name, send a private message, and avoid bumping attention to a dormant thread.
Also, asking to borrow peoples' equipment to make a "promotional video" sounds like a non-starter. I suspect most in our community would share the mindset that if this stuff interests you, you should adopt a DIY mentality and get involved.
-Carl
Also, asking to borrow peoples' equipment to make a "promotional video" sounds like a non-starter. I suspect most in our community would share the mindset that if this stuff interests you, you should adopt a DIY mentality and get involved.
-Carl
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drboblog.com
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Re: Sonofusion at home....
Dear Carl,
DIY, not very helpful as I see it.
And FYI I do have some work in progress...
Ill send you some videos when its finished
Best Regards
/ Bob
Carl Willis wrote:
> The thread here dates from 2005. It's now 2012. The best course of action for contacting the poster on something this old is to click his name, send a private message, and avoid bumping attention to a dormant thread.
>
> Also, asking to borrow peoples' equipment to make a "promotional video" sounds like a non-starter. I suspect most in our community would share the mindset that if this stuff interests you, you should adopt a DIY mentality and get involved.
>
> -Carl
DIY, not very helpful as I see it.
And FYI I do have some work in progress...
Ill send you some videos when its finished
Best Regards
/ Bob
Carl Willis wrote:
> The thread here dates from 2005. It's now 2012. The best course of action for contacting the poster on something this old is to click his name, send a private message, and avoid bumping attention to a dormant thread.
>
> Also, asking to borrow peoples' equipment to make a "promotional video" sounds like a non-starter. I suspect most in our community would share the mindset that if this stuff interests you, you should adopt a DIY mentality and get involved.
>
> -Carl