Posted by John McHale
Most folks I talk to whether it be for stories in Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine or developing content for our conferences focus on what is the next disruptive technology, the one that will not only change the way we do business but affect people's culture and everyday life.
One that created a lot of buzz at our Military & Aerospace Electronics Forum last week was cold fusion. Dr. Frank Gordon, head of navigation and applied sciences at the U.S. Navy Space and Warfare (SPAWAR) command in San Diego discussed cold fusion and more in his keynote address at the conference.
Gordon described how scientists at SPAWAR San Diego recently ran the first demonstration that produced high-energy neutrons from low-energy nuclear reactions. These experiments "that have been replicated by others provide compelling direct evidence that nuclear reactions are occurring in the cold fusion experiments," Gordon said.
According to Gordon cold fusion could power the entire planet with just water from the oceans. Gordon said the next step will be "conducting more experiments and understanding the underlying physics."
Gordon also discussed how "scientists at several universities are taking advantage of nonlinear dynamics that inherently exists in most systems" to greatly improve capabilities.
"Biological systems are nonlinear and scientists have developed techniques" to take neurons out of leaches, place them on an encapsulated silicon substrate and then inject a solution to keep the neurons alive," he said. "After a period of time, the neurons start communicating with each other and techniques have been developed where the neurons can actually control basic operations without conventional software."
During his talk Gordon showed a demonstration where these leech neurons navigated a virtual maze.
Gordon said his group is "working on implementing nonlinear capabilities that mimic biological processes in computer chips to produce ultra low power electronics and new sensors with significantly improved capabilities."
This was just a taste of the some the fascinating work the Navy lab is working on. Gordon had the packed conference room riveted.
One attendee and a member of our conference advisory board told me that he thinks either Gordon is speaking science fiction or he has to got to go home and reorganize his "entire investment portfolio."
Call your broker, buddy.
"ran the first demonstration that produced neurons from low-energy nuclear reactions. In other words they are the first to demonstrate cold fusion"
ReplyDeleteIs this some test to see if anyone is reading your blog? This does not make any sense. Is it some hip joke I am totally missing?
The people at SPAWAR have done excellent work over the years, but they were not the first to demonstrate neutrons.
ReplyDeletePlease note that cold fusion has been replicated thousands of times in hundreds of major laboratories such as Los Alamos, BARC, China Lake and Mitsubishi. I have a collection of 1,200 peer-reviewed journal papers on cold fusion from the library at Los Alamos, plus 2,000 other papers from conferences, national laboratory reports and other sources. I have uploaded a bibliography of 3,500 papers, and several hundred full text papers here:
http://lenr-canr.org
Cold fusion has produced thousands of times more energy per gram of fuel than any chemical reaction, and it can probably generate millions of times more. In some experiments, it has reached temperatures and power density comparable to the core of a conventional fission reactor. So I think it has great promise for practical applications, although a great deal more R&D will be needed before it can be made into a practical source of energy.
To Don Foster.. are you wondering about "neurons" (should have been neutrons), or that the Navy is claiming success with cold fusion? If the latter, there are dozens of very reputable facilities around the world reporting reproducible cold fusion effect. The media is just gun shy to report on it much. So far.
ReplyDelete