[ RadSafe ] Reactor in the Basement!

Tue Nov 21 16:27:59 CST 2006

RE: Claims of Fusion and Neutrons

Regarding the post by James below. To paraphrase Cuba Gooding Jr.'s  demand 
[ "Show Me the Money!" ] in his Oscar winning performance in the movie Jerry 
McGuire, we need to ask the Oakland science fair winner:

"Show me the neutrons"!!!

I daresay if you pump some deuterium gas into a chamber with a catalyst of 
some type, and hit it with 40,000 volts  you're going to get a flash of 
light. It isn't surprising he sees that "a small intense ball of energy 
forms". Is this fusion? . Is there an excess of energy in this experiment. 
Not proven, and not too likely if the work of Fleishman and Pons is any 
guide.

Gladly, for this young experimenter what he observed wasn't an explosion and 
he hasn't done himself any harm ---yet. Stay tuned. Coming soon  to a news 
report near you.

Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
Consulting Scientist
[203] 367-0791 [office]
email: radproject at sbcglobal.net

==============================

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <james.g.barnes at att.net>
To: <radsafe at radlab.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 5:08 PM
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Reactor in the Basement!

> Actually, this raises two issues I've always wondered about:
>
> 1)  "A few x-rays:"  I have always thought that energetic fusion generated 
> intense x- and gamma ray flux.  Is that true?
>
> 2)  Similarly, always though fusion resulted in intense neutron emission. 
> Is that correct?
>
> Jim Barnes
>
>
> -------------- Original message from cehn at aol.com: -------------- 
>
>
>> TEEN GOES NUCLEAR: He creates fusion in his Oakland Township home
>>
>> November 19, 2006
>> BY GINA DAMRON
>> (Detroit) FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
>>
>> On the surface, Thiago Olson is like any typical teenager.
>> He's on the cross country and track teams at Stoney Creek High School in
>> Rochester Hills. He's a good-looking, clean-cut 17-year-old with a 3.75 
>> grade
>> point average, and he has his eyes fixed on the next big step: college. 
>> But to
>> his friends, Thiago is known as "the mad scientist."
>> In the basement of his parents' Oakland Township home, tucked away in an 
>> area
>> most aren't privy to see, Thiago is exhausting his love of physics on a 
>> project
>> that has taken him more than two years and 1,000 hours to research and 
>> build -- 
>> a large, intricate machine that , on a small scale, creates nuclear 
>> fusion.
>> Nuclear fusion -- when atoms are combined to create energy -- is "kind of 
>> like
>> the holy grail of physics," he said. In fact, on www.fusor.net, the 
>> Stoney Creek
>> senior is ranked as the 18th amateur in the world to create nuclear 
>> fusion. So,
>> how does he do it?
>> Pointing to the steel chamber where all the magic happens, Thiago said on 
>> Friday
>> that this piece of the puzzle serves as a vacuum. The air is sucked out 
>> and into
>> a filter. Then, deuterium gas -- a form of hydrogen -- is injected into 
>> the
>> vacuum. About 40,000 volts of electricity are charged into the chamber 
>> from a
>> piece of equipment taken from an old mammogram machine. As the machine 
>> runs, the
>> atoms in the chamber are attracted to the center and soon -- ta da --  
>> nuclear
>> fusion. Thiago said when that happens, a small intense ball of energy 
>> forms.
>> He first achieved fusion in September and has been perfecting the machine 
>> he
>> built in his parents' garage ever since.
>> This year, Thiago was a semifinalist for the Siemens Foundation's 
>> National
>> Research Competition. He plans to enter the Science and Engineering Fair 
>> of
>> Metropolitan Detroit, which is in March, in hopes of qualifying to be in 
>> the
>> Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in New Mexico in May.
>> To his mom and dad, he's still reminiscent of the 5-year-old who toiled 
>> over a
>> kid-friendly chemistry set and, then at age 9, was able to change the 
>> battery in
>> his older brother's car. Now, in a small room in the basement, Thiago has 
>> set
>> up a science lab -- where bottles marked "potassium hydroxide" and 
>> "methanol"
>> sit on shelves and a worn, old book, titled "The Atomic Fingerprint: 
>> Neutron
>> Activation Analysis" piled among others in the empty sink.
>> Thiago's mom, Natalice Olson, initially was leery of the project, even 
>> though
>> the only real danger from the fusion machine is the high voltage and 
>> small
>> amount of X-rays emitted through a glass window in the vacuum chamber --  
>> through
>> which Olson videotapes the fusion in action. But, she wasn't really 
>> surprised,
>> since he was always coming up with lofty ideas. "Originally, he wanted to 
>> build
>> a hyperbolic chamber," she said, adding that she promptly said no. But, 
>> when he
>> came asking about the nuclear fusion machine, she relented.
>> "I think it was pretty brave that he could think that he was capable to 
>> do
>> something so amazing," she said.
>> Thiago's dad, Mark Olson, helped with some of the construction and 
>> electrical
>> work. To get all of the necessary parts, Thiago scoured the Internet, 
>> buying
>> items on eBay and using his age to persuade manufacturers to give him 
>> discounts.
>> The design of the model came from his own ideas and some suggestions from 
>> other
>> science-lovers he met online.
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