cold fusion could save the world unfortunately it's got somewhat of a flaky reputation but today I have some quite remarkable news a group of physicists say they know how cold fusion Works theoretically someone just needs to do it and that's a welcome change from people with devices that don't work even theoretically so let's have a look when two small atomic nuclear join to form a larger one enormous amounts of energy can be released the problem with this new nuclear fusion is that Atomic nuclear or positively charged for them to fuse one has to overcome the
electric repulsion between the nuclei until the strong nuclear force takes over Crossing this so-called kulon barrier requires a lot of energy at first but the fusion itself frees more energy than it requires usually one tries to cross the Kon barrier like the sunas with enormous heat and pressure cold fusion in contrast is the idea that one doesn't need this that in that one can deposit the nuclei into some solid state material and that this will lower the electrostatic repulsion between them usually one uses dyum that's an isotope of hydrogen as the nuclei to fuse and
puts it in a metal like padium for the solid state object cold fusion has an unfortunate history of fraud hype and just bad science which we talked about in an earlier episode but it's not all bad science there's reliable evidence that some solid state materials actually do enhance nuclear fusion rates SB for example builds a device called the neutr that sends a low energy beam of deuterium into a titanium plate the deuterium accumulates in the plate until it starts to fuse this emits neutrons so they use it as a neutron generator however it's an example
of cold fusion just that the beam takes more energy to create than one gets out from the fusion there's also been tentative evidence that aiming a pulsed laser at the padium with duum Will stimulate Fusion for specific pulse frequencies this suggests that phonon excitations have something to do with it though this finding hasn't been replicated consistently the authors of the new paper now say there are three separate mechanisms for cold fusion each on its own is too small in effect but all three together could just make it work the first mechanism is in the atomic
range remember that the problem with nuclear fusion is the electric repulsion between the nuclei now imagine you could put a thin slice of negative electric charge between them then the nuclei wouldn't notice each other as they get closer something similar could happen in solid state lates near defects where the electron wave function becomes focused and forms a sort of Shield bu between the dyum nuclei in the paper they write that this can enhance the fusion rate by a whopping 25 orders of magnitude the second mechanism they discuss is nuclear resonance between several of the nuclei
that you want to fuse this can be triggered for example with the puled lasers that I mentioned earlier they say that the reason this works is that it causes a deformation of the nuclei that effectively lowers the energy you need to make them approach unfortunately creating this resonance eats up energy similar to what would be released during the fusion they conjecture however that similar resonances could exist at lower energy and estimate that this could lead to an enhancement of seven orders of magnitude of fusion probability the third mechanism they discuss in the paper is that
the presence of the larger nuclear in the material facilitates the fusion of the smaller nuclei by aiding a Quantum t ing process this superficially makes sense because we know that nuclei can Aid Quantum processes that are otherwise impossible for example an electron can normally not just emit a photon however put the electron in the vicinity of an atomic nucleus and that process can happen thanks to momentum exchange with the nucleus for cold fusion they say something similar takes place the small nuclei that you want to fuse can temporarily borrow energy from the surrounding nuclei fuse
and then give that energy back they estimate that this could lead to an increase of fusion rates upwards of 30 orders of magnitude take it all together they say and these effects can enhance the fusion rate in materials enough for it to produce net energy they also outline ways to test these individual mechanisms to learn more about them most importantly by using specific materials that have control amounts of traces of other elements in them if you've already forgotten half of what I said I made a quiz that lets you check how much you remember what
are we to make of this I suspect that the first effect the atomic one exists but happens too rarely the second one exists but e up too much energy and the third one I'm not sure exists which in other contexts is called the Holy Trinity that said I strongly support further studies on cold fusion because these are lowcost small lab experiments with a potentially huge payoff and if it works out Not only would we have basically unlimited clean energy we'd also have amazing material for Blockbuster movie it could be called Honey I Shrunk The Kon
barrier or The Man Who Knew Too Much About padium no I know Fusion actually I expect royalties last year I coincidentally noticed that if you you asked Google for my cell phone number it gave you an answer luckily I changed my number 3 years ago and the one that Google sped out was my old one but that was somewhat of an eye opener I've since signed up to incog who've been sponsoring this video you see each time you open a website it'll try to collect data about who you are and where you are and what
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