Cold Fusion?
Most recent answer: 12/16/2007
Q:
just what is the concept of cold fusion and is there any research going on now or has that idea been abandoned since the last it was in the news related to some claim from a utah researcher?
- sean (age 17)
colo spgs,co. usa
- sean (age 17)
colo spgs,co. usa
A:
Ordinarily nuclei have to be moving very fast to have enough energy to actually collide and fuse. That’s because they’re all positively charged, so they repel each other electrically. Getting that much enregy in the nuclei either requires getting them very hot or systematically accelerating them toward each other.
The idea behind cold fusion is that if there were some way of reducing the repulsion, then the nuclei wouldn’t need so much energy to fuse. One way to do that would be to have a heavy negative particle that would bind tightly to a positive proton, cancelling its electrical field except at very short distances. That actually is doable, but only with unstable negative particles that require a lot of energy to produce, and then rapidly disappear.
The initial, incorrect, experimental reports of cold fusion were unclear about how it was supposed to work. Then some theories were made up about how the electrons were supposed to play the role of heavy negative particles, even though they aren’t heavy and don’t bind very closely to the nuclei. These theories were also wrong. Most of the reputable scientific community has abandoned this area, although there are a few die-hards.
Mike W.
The idea behind cold fusion is that if there were some way of reducing the repulsion, then the nuclei wouldn’t need so much energy to fuse. One way to do that would be to have a heavy negative particle that would bind tightly to a positive proton, cancelling its electrical field except at very short distances. That actually is doable, but only with unstable negative particles that require a lot of energy to produce, and then rapidly disappear.
The initial, incorrect, experimental reports of cold fusion were unclear about how it was supposed to work. Then some theories were made up about how the electrons were supposed to play the role of heavy negative particles, even though they aren’t heavy and don’t bind very closely to the nuclei. These theories were also wrong. Most of the reputable scientific community has abandoned this area, although there are a few die-hards.
Mike W.
(published on 12/16/2007)