“BUBBLE fusion”, once hailed as a potential green-energy source, is mired in controversy again. Rusi Taleyarkhan, who claimed to have achieved nuclear fusion by popping bubbles in a solvent, has been found guilty of research misconduct.
In 2002, Taleyarkhan, then at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and now at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, claimed in Science that his team could create bubbles that trigger nuclear fusion by bombarding a cool solvent with neutrons and sound waves. When others failed to replicate the work, a Purdue committee investigated allegations of misconduct involving Taleyarkhan in 2006, and cleared him…
