I read on google news that fusion is now easier to do by supercooling the element in a metal, true?

Question

Actually, the article was about speeding up decay time. If you supercool a radioactive element, apparently the decay time falls exponentially. The german guy said it also worked for the reverse process, fusion (the particles would fuse easier when supercooled). Does this have any implications for fusion research, bla bla bla?

here is the link

http://www.scenta.co.uk/scenta/news.cfm?cit_id=997468&FAArea1=widgets.content_view_1

Furthermore, I beleive that the supercooling has the effect of taking away some of this "resistance"----

in the article, it claims that fusion was easier with his particle collider, when he encased the nuclei in metal and cooled it.

I suspect that when you cool something, it does not "vibrate" as much on the quantum level, and therefore looses some of its "resistance" or immunity.

So if a fast atom came barreling toward these relatively "resistance free" atoms, it would produce fusion a lot easier.

It would be intriguing to see what happened...

if you had a hot container and then a superocooled container...with two outlets combine their nuclei in a chamber and see if there is any fusion flux. I definitely do not think this guy is a crack, and I think he's on to something.

2nd answerer, maybe by cooling it, you lower the amount of energy the atom has to put up an effective resistance?

So a hot atom, with all the energy it needs to exist, and more, can easily impregnate the cold atom?

It seems reasonable to me. Either way, research needs to be done in this area.

The repulsion force of the nuclei gets lost when they become one unit....eh?

inertial confinement, gravity machines, aliens...

what a stock.

Answer 1

I don't know about that. I'm generally skeptical about such claims--you might remember Pons and Fleischmann from a few years ago--but the basic problem seems to be overcoming the Coulomb repulsion between two nuclei. This usually requires quite a lot of kinetic energy, so repeatably measured fusion reactions to date have all been "hot".

There are some people experimenting with catalyzed fusion--that is, lowering the Coulomb energy barrier by interposing negative charge between the positive nuclei.

Answer 2

Never heard of this. But no, fusion will not work better supercooled. If you can look up the Lennard Jones potential.. actually here:
http://employees.csbsju.edu/hjakubowski/classes/ch331/protstructure/ilennardjones2.gif

As you can see, the particles experience what is basically a wall when they approach each other. To break past that barrier requires a lot of speed, which means a lot of energy, which in turn means a lot of high temperatures.

Space is pretty cold. There's a reason there's no fusion occuring in space except for hot dense stars. Fusion requires a lot of energy to get the particles close together.

As far as the article claiming any effects for fission, could you provide a link? It's almost impossible for external chemical changes to affect the way nuclear processes behave, except for one form of beta decay.