Death of bubble fusion
In March 2002, Science published a controversial paper claiming to have seen nuclear fusion in a sonoluminescence experiment. Many in the scientific community immediately railed against the claim, completely unconvinced by the evidence (or lack thereof) in the paper. Other scientists in the same lab had been asked to repeat the experiment and had been unable to find any signs of fusion. Debate over the results erupted. Many saw the cold fusion fiasco being repeated. However, this time the research was published in one of the most respected scientific journals after peer review. It needed further consideration. So does bubble fusion exist?
A paper appearing in tomorrow's issue of Nature suggests that bubble fusion is extremely unlikely to happen. The energy poured in to the system by sound waves is primarily used to drive chemical reactions, with some of the remainder given off as light. Very little is left to run any sort of fusion reaction.
Meanwhile, the scientist who had been asked to repeat the experiment have spent the past few months trying and have still found no signs of fusion. These physicists, Dan Shapira and Michael Saltmarsh, at Oak Ridge National Labs, say they are able to explain the neutrons coming from the experiment, the original indicator of possible fusion, without ever needing to invoke any sort of fusion reaction. Their paper is currently under review at Physical Review Letters.
Although the verdict is not 100% certain, the escape routes for Taleyarkhan and co. (authors of the original Science paper) are narrowing by the day, with the original claim of bubble fusion likely to go down as one of the big mistakes in the scientific literature. Let's just hope that it doesn't destroy the careers of the junior researchers working on the project who may not have been responsible for pushing the claims of fusion.
