A RESEARCHER is standing by his controversial claim that bubbles popping in a simple tabletop experiment can produce nuclear fusion, the same process that powers the sun.
Two years ago, Rusi Taleyarkhan and his team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee caused a storm when they announced that they could make hydrogen nuclei fuse by forcing tiny bubbles in acetone to collapse when blasted with sound waves. Critics were quick to point out flaws in the work, especially when other team at Oak Ridge repeated the experiment and failed to find neutrons or tritium, the telltale signs of fusion.…
