Scientists in the U.S. and Japan Get Serious About Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions
It's been a big year for low-energy nuclear reactions. LENRs, as they're known, are a fringe research topic that some physicists think could explain the results of an infamous experiment nearly 30 years ago that formed the basis for the idea of cold fusion. That idea didn't hold up, and only a handful of researchers around the world have continued trying to understand the mysterious nature of the inconsistent, heat-generating reactions that had spurred those claims.
Their determination may finally pay off, as researchers in Japan have recently managed to generate heat more consistently from these reactions, and the U.S. Navy is now paying close attention to the field.
In June, scientists at several Japanese research institutes published a paper in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy in which they recorded excess heat after exposing metal nanoparticles to hydrogen gas. The results are the strongest in a long line of LENR studies from Japanese institutions like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Michel Armand, a physical chemist at CIC Energigune, an energy research center in Spain, says those results are difficult to dispute. In the past, Armand participated in a panel of scientists that could not explain measurements of slight excess heat in a palladium and heavy-water electrolysis experiment—measurements that could potentially be explained by LENRs.
In September, Proceedings magazine of the U.S. Naval Institute published an article about LENRs titled, "This Is Not 'Cold Fusion,' " which had won second place in Proceedings' emerging technology essay contest. Earlier, in August, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory awarded MacAulay-Brown, a security consultant that serves federal agencies, US $12 million to explore, among other things, "low-energy nuclear reactions and advanced energetics."
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 03 2018, @06:43PM (5 children)
This research is suggesting that under the right conditions, at relatively low temperatures, maybe hydrogen can fuse with electrons, making neutrons. It's not H + H = He.
But according to them, it's not Cold Fusion, nope! Well, it's definitely cold. Maybe proton + electron = neutron is not called fusion?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 03 2018, @06:50PM (2 children)
It's a hot research opportunity.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday December 04 2018, @12:05AM (1 child)
I don't think it is. The ridicule of "cold fusion" has been extremely toxic. It's hard to imagine people lining up to work in a field where they start with two and a half strikes against them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:51AM
I believe it was a pun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)
Wouldn't forming a neutron suck up energy rather than give off energy?
(Score: 2) by Lester on Monday December 03 2018, @09:47PM
They hit deuterium, hydrogen with 1 neutron and tritium, hydrogen with 2 neutrons. And get Helium plus a free neutron
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @07:19PM
But if this works without the hard radiation alleged in the current paper, it'd be interesting to see if one could put something like this on a chip. A self-powered CPU would be an interesting development.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Tuesday December 04 2018, @01:51AM
Chinese startup founded last week has developed a breakthrough in LENR shockingly comparable to the Japanese findings. "Glorious 5000 years of culture! 1950's were 5000 years ago!" Xi was quoted as saying.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:53AM
ECAT back in the fray?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:54PM
MacAulay-Brown is a support contractor to the Naval Research Lab and from the link you can see this is a support contract to the Plasma Physics Division where they have won a contract to provide up to $12M in support work. However, the Naval Research Lab is a working capital funded [fas.org] organization, which basically means their annual budget is $0 and they have to go out and bring in money much like a university does (as compared to other government research labs who have annual budgets appropriated by congress). This cold fusion stuff apparently was included into the statement of work (with a whole bunch of other stuff) of the support contract, but unless there is someone out there who will send the lab money to do that work, they certainly aren't going to do any because the Naval Research Lab doesn't get that kind of R&D money to award out like that (that would have to come from some place like the Office of Naval Research, or DARPA, or some other R&D funding agency).
So the best you can say about this is that, because someone included it into the contract SOW, if money comes in to do that kind of research, MacAuly-Brown can support that work under this contract. I wouldn't exactly consider that "the Navy is getting serious about this".