quote{ WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., July. 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- Researchers at Purdue University have new evidence supporting earlier findings by other scientists who designed an inexpensive "tabletop" device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions.

The technology, in theory, could lead to a new source of clean energy and a host of portable detectors and other applications.

The new findings were detailed in a peer-reviewed paper appearing in the May issue of the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design. The paper was written by Yiban Xu, a post-doctoral research associate in the School of Nuclear Engineering, and Adam Butt, a graduate research assistant in both nuclear engineering and the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

A key component of the experiment was a glass test chamber about the size of two coffee mugs filled with a liquid called deuterated acetone, which contains a form of hydrogen known as deuterium, or heavy hydrogen. The researchers exposed the test chamber to subatomic particles called neutrons and then bombarded the liquid with a specific frequency of ultrasound, which caused cavities to form into tiny bubbles. The bubbles then expanded to a much larger size before imploding, apparently with enough force to cause thermonuclear fusion reactions.

Fusion reactions emit neutrons that fall within a specific energy range of 2.5 mega-electron volts, which was the level of energy seen in neutrons produced in the experiment. The experiments also yielded a radioactive material called tritium, which is another product of fusion, Xu and Butt said.
quote}

Table Top Nuclear Fisson

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!

Best Hubble Space Telescope Images

"Mars scientists and engineers are elated about a dust-busting blast that has struck the Spirit rover at its Gusev crater exploration site.

Turns out that a martian whirlwind – dubbed a dust devil – likely zoomed over the robot high up in the Columbia Hills. That fleeting flyby effectively cleaned Spirit’s solar arrays, giving the robot a new lease on life.

Engineers report that the rover’s power reading quickly shot up to almost as high as when the rover landed on Mars over a year ago."

LB

Spirit Gets A Dust Devil Once-Over

Decius wrote:
] The interesting thing about the statement "There is no such
] thing as absolute truth" is that if you could prove it, it
] wouldn't be true. In that sense it defines itself and explains
] itself. You can't even agree with it, because if you do,
] you'll have to admit that you must be wrong.

Not true... Just because there are no absolute truths, does not mean one cannot have beliefs. The concept of "no absolute truth" is a belief, not a truth and therefore not-contradictory. You can believe strongly in the properties of gravity, and for good reason. It does not mean you will not evolve this belief for a better reason if you find one. Truth is entirely dependent on perspective. We are incapable of perceiving all-things for all-times from everywhere in a consistent fashion therefore we are incapable of comprehending something which is "true" in a reality not fabricated in our own minds. When you speak of any truth, it is always a matter of a truth to who, and for what reason, which might not be something you believe. So, if you believe that it is true that there are no absolute truths, you can do so without conflict and wait for a perfect perspective to explain things differently.

RE: Agnost

For today's NYT, the editors were compelled to dwell at great length on the insidious behavior of school boards and administrators in Cobb County and in Dover, Pennsylvania.

Whereas earlier coverage simply tended toward comic uncordiality, the tone now has shifted from a mocking of harmless idiocy to a biting castigation of the curricular debasements in Cobb and Dover.

May the strongest survive? One can never be certain. But in this round of Alien versus Predator, it's clear enough that America's children are the defenseless prey.

"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

The first sentence sounds like a warning to parents that the film they are about to watch with their children contains pornography.

The third sentence, urging that evolution be studied carefully and critically, seems like a fine idea. The only problem is, it singles out evolution as the only subject so shaky it needs critical judgment. Every subject in the curriculum should be studied carefully and critically.

A leading expositor of intelligent design told a Christian magazine last year that the field had no theory of biological design to guide research, just "a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions." If evolution is derided as "only a theory," intelligent design needs to be recognized as "not even a theory" or "not yet a theory." It should not be taught or even described as a scientific alternative to one of the crowning theories of modern science.

The Crafty Attacks on Evolution

] SPOKANE, Wash. - David Atkinson spent 18 years designing
] an experiment for the unmanned space mission to Saturn.
] Now some pieces of it are lost in space. Someone forgot
] to turn on the instrument Atkinson needed to measure the
] winds on Saturn's largest moon.
]
] "The story is actually fairly gruesome," the University
] of Idaho scientist said in an e-mail from Germany, the
] headquarters of the European Space Agency. "It was human
] error %u2014 the command to turn the instrument on was
] forgotten."

Wow. That's depressing.

Yahoo! News - Professor's Saturn Experiment Forgotten

Scientists have confirmed that the Opportunity Mars rover has run across a meteorite, sitting within the robot’s exploration zone at Meridiani Planum.

“We have definitive word now... it's a meteorite,” Steve Squyres, principal science investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover program told SPACE.com. Squyres is based at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Mars Opportunity rover finds a meteor

DARMSTADT, Germany -- The first pictures revealing the surface of Saturn's moon, Titan, were shown from Europe's Huygens probe showing what look like drainage channels on the surface of what until today has been a planet totally hidden from view.

The first image, taken from an altitude of 16 kilometers, has a ground resolution of about 40 meters, said Martin Tomasko, principal investigator for Huygens' Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR). Tomasko said that Huygens research teams now have about 350 pictures to work with. [Scroll to the bottom of this story to see raw image files of the Titan descent taken by Huygens. All images courtesy of ESA/NASA/University of Arizona.]

Huygens Probe Returns First Images of Titan's Surface

This is so cool!

The Periodic Table like you have NEVER seen

] Researchers are reporting new evidence supporting their
] earlier discovery of an inexpensive "tabletop" device
] that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion
] reactions.
]
] The researchers believe the new evidence shows that
] "sonofusion" generates nuclear reactions by creating tiny
] bubbles that implode with tremendous force. Nuclear
] fusion reactors have historically required large,
] multibillion-dollar machines, but sonofusion devices
] might be built for a fraction of that cost.

Freakin cool

Evidence bubbles over to support tabletop nuclear fusion device