NUCLEAR fusion can be achieved by popping bubbles in nail polish remover, claims a team led by Rusi Taleyarkhan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
“If it is true, it is truly amazing,” says Andrea Prosperetti, who studies bubbles at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. For starters, it would allow physicists to study fusion on their bench tops, although this is already possible with low-power accelerators. More tantalising, but even more controversial, is the prospect of harnessing this form of fusion to produce clean energy.
Bubble fusion is already provoking comparisons with the cold fusion fiasco in 1989, when…
