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Speaker 1: Energy is everything. It powers our lives, propels our cars,

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Speaker 1: runs our massive data centers, our growing thirst for energy,

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Speaker 1: influences politics, It alters the climate, It sparks conflicts, and

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Speaker 1: it constrains the future of our civilization. Energy is also

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Speaker 1: very personal. Our bodies are made of vibrating particles, which

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Speaker 1: themselves are pulses of energy and quantum fields. So everything

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Speaker 1: is energy. And for decades now, physics have been promising

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Speaker 1: to unleash the energy source of the stars. Fusion, the

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Speaker 1: thing that makes our sun glow, but brought down to

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Speaker 1: Earth and mastered for our empire. So exciting and so

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Speaker 1: just around the corner. It's been twenty years away for

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Speaker 1: about eighty years now. So if hot fusion isn't just

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Speaker 1: around the corner, is there another way? If we don't

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Speaker 1: need to replicate the conditions inside the sun, What if

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Speaker 1: we could do it all at room temperature? What is

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Speaker 1: the physics of cold fusion? Is it all just Charlatan's

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Speaker 1: nonsense or is there real science there? And if not,

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Speaker 1: why is DARPA funding it? We'll dig into all of

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Speaker 1: that today on Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

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Speaker 2: Who this is? Kelly Wintersmith?

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Speaker 3: I study parasites and space, and in Virginia right now,

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Speaker 3: it is so cold that your fingers fused to anything

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Speaker 3: you touched that is slightly wet.

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Speaker 4: Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and my wife's favorite

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Speaker 1: piece of physics is a terrible movie called Cold Fusion

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Speaker 1: starring Keanu Reeves wearing a University of Chicago sweatshirt.

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Speaker 3: Ah. You know, my favorite movie is Keeves wearing anything,

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Speaker 3: because he's such a cutie.

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Speaker 1: That movie is so bad and so full of plot holes,

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Speaker 1: but Canna Reeves is great and he looks great in

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Speaker 1: that shirt, and hey, if he makes physicists look good

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Speaker 1: on the screen, I'm all for it.

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Speaker 2: Ah.

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Speaker 3: I've never seen that particular movie, but I'm not recommended.

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Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'll skip that one.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, So today we're talking about Cold Fusion, which

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Speaker 3: I'm excited about because I was under the impression and

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Speaker 3: I'll lay it out there now. My impression is that

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Speaker 3: Cold Fusion is an absolutely never gonna work, almost on

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Speaker 3: the edge of conspiracy theory kind of thing, and that

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Speaker 3: is my preconceived notion. And when I was looking at

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Speaker 3: your outline, I was like, oh, maybe maybe I'm gonna

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Speaker 3: be wrong. This will be an interesting conversation. And then

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Speaker 3: I was like, you know what, I don't want to

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Speaker 3: root it. I'm not going to do my homework. I'm

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Speaker 3: not going to look at this outline anymore. And so

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Speaker 3: I stopped looking at the outline. And so here's what

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Speaker 3: I want to know from you today, Daniel. There are

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Speaker 3: lots of different routes that people talk about for how

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Speaker 3: we might make fusion work. Yeah, if you had to

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Speaker 3: put your money on one route for how fusion might

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Speaker 3: eventually pan out as a way to run toasters, for example,

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Speaker 3: which route would you guess is the most likely to work?

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Speaker 2: And I'm going to guess it's not cold fusion.

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Speaker 1: No, how much of my money am I being forced

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Speaker 1: to invest in fusion in this ter Oh my gosh.

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Speaker 1: I think cold fusion is a dark horse there, and

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Speaker 1: I would not invest all of my family resources in it,

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Speaker 1: so I would have to go for some variant of

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Speaker 1: hot fusion. I think eventually we will make some kind

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Speaker 1: of magnetized fusion work, something like the Tokamax or eater. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: I think we will figure that out.

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Speaker 3: So you're betting against the many, many, many many lasers

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Speaker 3: all at once.

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Speaker 1: I am betting against. I love those and they're really fun,

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Speaker 1: and I want to flip that switch one time. I

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Speaker 1: imagine this like some really big, heavy red lever you

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Speaker 1: get to pull and it's really satisfying and then they

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Speaker 1: go zap. And I want to do that, But I

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Speaker 1: don't think that that's the most likely way to make energy.

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Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be disappointing if it was just like a

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Speaker 3: normal light switch or something, or a touchscreen button.

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Speaker 1: You know, I'm all about the tactile buttons. You know

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Speaker 1: it's going to give that haptic response, you know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I want it to be a big red

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Speaker 3: button that says lasers and you slam your hand down

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Speaker 3: on it or something.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, today we're not here to talk about

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Speaker 1: Kelly's fantasies of pushing big red buttons, though I share

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Speaker 1: that with you. Have you ever visited cern in the

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Speaker 1: control room that have a big red emergency button and

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Speaker 1: it's so tempting when you're on shift you want to

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Speaker 1: press it. And then in the visitors lounge they have

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Speaker 1: a mock up of it that you can actually press

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Speaker 1: that like it turns lights that make sounds that it's

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Speaker 1: so fun.

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Speaker 2: That's awesome, But no, I haven't. My daughter's been discerned.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, you should come sometime. Anyway, we're not talking

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Speaker 1: about pressing red buttons today. We are talking about trying

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Speaker 1: to achieve cheap and plentiful energy here on Earth via fusion,

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Speaker 1: specifically cold fusion. Is it just a Ponzi scheme? Is

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Speaker 1: it real? Could it ever actually work? Was the question

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Speaker 1: we've posed to our listeners who volunteer for this audience

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Speaker 1: participation segment of the podcast. So think about it for

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Speaker 1: a moment. Do you think cold fusion is impossible? Here's

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Speaker 1: what people had to say.

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Speaker 5: Couldn't you select cold fusion as a power source in SimCity? Well,

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Speaker 5: then there you go. I guess it's possible, And to

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Speaker 5: Daniel's credit, you also then get alien invasions. So everybody wins.

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Speaker 5: I guess except for the Sims.

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Speaker 2: Cold fusions a lot.

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Speaker 1: Because of.

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Speaker 6: Sic it's a thing that we know, because we can't

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Speaker 6: do fusion.

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Speaker 1: Here, I wouldn't know.

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Speaker 2: No, I don't think it's impossible.

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Speaker 1: Only as a plot device in a subpart movie.

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Speaker 6: Nothing is unpossible.

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Speaker 2: I say so because I have a deep thing inhumanity's

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Speaker 2: ability to grow and progress using the scientific method.

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Speaker 6: I know there was a kerfuffle about this before, but

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Speaker 6: can't sabe.

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Speaker 1: I leastly remember hearing that cold fusion might be possible

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Speaker 1: inside a giant gold doughnut.

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Speaker 4: Cold fusion is absolutely possible if you stick your tongue

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Speaker 4: to a flagpole in the dead of winter.

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Speaker 1: I don't believe we should say impossible to anything. Someone

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Speaker 1: someday will figure out how to overcome that hurdle. It

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Speaker 1: probably is, but I'm ever the optimist.

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Speaker 4: If cold brewing coffee is possible, so.

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Speaker 1: Is cold fusion.

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Speaker 6: I would say never say never.

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Speaker 4: I think hot fusion requires high temperatures the same way

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Speaker 4: my golf game requires a very large number of strokes.

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Speaker 4: If I were better at it, I would need fewer attempts,

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Speaker 4: which is kind of the equivalent of lower temperatures.

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Speaker 6: I suspect that cold fusion is impots because in order

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Speaker 6: to fuse, the particles have to be moving very quickly,

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Speaker 6: meaning high energy, which means probably hot.

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Speaker 2: I liked only as a plot device in a subpar movie.

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Speaker 1: That's Does that mean reality is a subpar movie?

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Speaker 6: Oh?

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Speaker 3: I mean it's a pretty pretty sub sub subpar movie.

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Speaker 1: If so, these were great answers I love that there

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Speaker 1: are people out there who believe, you know, the optimism

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Speaker 1: somebody someday will figure this out. It frustrates me that

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Speaker 1: cold fusion has been sort of polluted by a few

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Speaker 1: scam artists and bad experiences that the public had, so

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Speaker 1: it's seen as a totally disreputable line of research, even

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Speaker 1: though there are some possibilities there, as we'll talk about later.

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Speaker 2: Are we going to talk about those scam artists.

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Speaker 1: At some point? Oh, yes we are. We're going to

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Speaker 1: dig into the conspiracies.

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Speaker 3: Okay, good, because I think I've heard about those scam

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Speaker 3: artists mostly and that that's the news that's gotten to me.

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Speaker 2: All right, So let's let's start at the beginning. What

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Speaker 2: is fusion?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so fusion is the opposite of fission. Right. So, fission,

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Speaker 1: what happens in most nuclear reactors that we have really

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Speaker 1: mastered and produces huge amounts of reliable, stable energy for

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Speaker 1: humans on Earth, is when you take heavy nuclei and

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Speaker 1: you split them up like uranium splits up into smaller,

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Speaker 1: lighter nuclei and produces energy. Fusion is the opposite. That's

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Speaker 1: when you take too light nuclei like hydrogen, The lightest

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Speaker 1: possible thing just protons, and you squeeze them together to

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Speaker 1: make something heavy like helium, and then you confuse helium

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Speaker 1: together to make something even heavier. So fusion is when

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Speaker 1: you stick stuff together. And the interesting thing is that

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Speaker 1: when you stick stuff together, it releases energy as long

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Speaker 1: as that stuff is lighter than iron. If it's heavier

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Speaker 1: than iron, then when you break it apart, it releases energy. Basically,

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Speaker 1: moving your nuclei closer to iron always releases energy.

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Speaker 2: Fun Kell effect.

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Speaker 3: I memorize the words fusion and fission like their definitions

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Speaker 3: in reverse initially, and then I was so worried I

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Speaker 3: was going to get it wrong that there was like

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Speaker 3: a solid year there where I would do everything I

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Speaker 3: could to avoid needing to say the words fusion or

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Speaker 3: fission for fear of getting it wrong. And then I

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Speaker 3: finally got it straight in my head. But now I'm

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Speaker 3: going to be worried that I'm going to get it

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Speaker 3: mixed up again. But anyway, it's an episode on fusion,

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Speaker 3: so I'm pretty safe if I say fusion, all right.

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Speaker 1: Well, should we have a buzzer if you ever get

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Speaker 1: it wrong?

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Speaker 2: No?

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Speaker 1: No, So most of the time fusion is hard to

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Speaker 1: do because protons are positively charged and they don't like

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Speaker 1: to be near each other, like they repel each other

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Speaker 1: very strongly. Right, electromagnetism is a powerful, powerful force, and

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Speaker 1: so making this happen is not easy, and yet it

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Speaker 1: happens a lot. Like our star is an enormous ball

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Speaker 1: of fusion. People say it's an enormous ball of fire.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of misleading because fire is combustion, which requires

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Speaker 1: oxygen and an atmosphere. The sun is not burning in

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Speaker 1: that sense. The sun is fusing.

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Speaker 2: Well, actually, well.

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Speaker 1: We actually, I mean to hear. Accuracy is our game, right,

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Speaker 1: that's right. I love when people write in and send

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Speaker 1: us well actually emails like I sincerely unironically love that.

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Speaker 1: Please do it. Yes, So we want to strive for

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Speaker 1: total accuracy here. And so what's happening in the sun

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Speaker 1: is that the sun is mostly protons, right, mostly hydrogen

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Speaker 1: ions and those refusing to make helium. And it's not

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Speaker 1: quite as direct as like two protons make one helium atom,

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Speaker 1: because helium also needs neutrons to be stable, because if

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Speaker 1: you just had two protons and the helium nucleus, it

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be stable. Those protons would bust each other apart

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Speaker 1: because of the strong Colombic repulsion there, and so you

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Speaker 1: need neutrons to like buffer them a little bit. So

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Speaker 1: to make one helium nucleus, you need four hydrogen protons.

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Speaker 1: They start with four protons, two of them convert into neutrons,

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Speaker 1: and you end up with helium four, which is two

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Speaker 1: protons and two neutrons. So that's the biggest process in

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Speaker 1: the sun, hydrogen burning and.

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Speaker 2: Does that release a lot of energy.

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Speaker 1: That does release a lot of energy. It comes out

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Speaker 1: in terms of gamma rays, and there's neutrinos also. This

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Speaker 1: is why the Sun is like such a bright source

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Speaker 1: not just of light, but also of neutrinos. And neutrinos

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Speaker 1: are super cool because the Sun is mostly transparent to neutrinos.

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Speaker 1: So you make a neutrino in fusion, it flies out

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Speaker 1: of the sun. If you have a neutrino detector, you're

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Speaker 1: seeing that neutrino from inside the Sun. The Sun is

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Speaker 1: opaque to photons, so it makes photons when it fuses,

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Speaker 1: but those photons are absorbed and they just sort of

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Speaker 1: heat up the sun. And then the reason the sun

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Speaker 1: is bright in the sky, like why we see photons

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Speaker 1: from the Sun. It's not because you're seeing photons from

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Speaker 1: the fusion. You're seeing photons because the Sun is hot

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Speaker 1: and it's like a black body and it glows. So

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Speaker 1: here's another well actually moment for you. There's this bit

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Speaker 1: of pop side that says like it takes a photon

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Speaker 1: sixty thousand years to get from the center of the

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Speaker 1: Sun to the surface, which is like, I don't even

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Speaker 1: know what they're trying to calculate there. Photons don't go

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Speaker 1: from the center of the Sun to the surface. They

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Speaker 1: just like heat up the sun and then the sun

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Speaker 1: is hot, so it glows the way that like iron

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Speaker 1: in a furnaces, right, everything that's made of charged particles

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Speaker 1: and has a temperature glows. So there's your well actually moment.

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Speaker 3: We got to have a button for that too, or

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Speaker 3: at least a little like ticker thing to keep track.

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Speaker 3: Well actually, okay, And so when I first started hearing

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Speaker 3: about this, I felt a little confused about how you

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Speaker 3: go from that fact to running a toaster.

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Speaker 2: And so could you like make the little jump there

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Speaker 2: for us?

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Speaker 1: Oh? Yes, So fusion releases that energy right in terms

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Speaker 1: of photons or neutrons or gamma rays, all sorts. Of stuff,

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Speaker 1: and then you've got to capture it. So if you

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Speaker 1: wanted to build a device that would power your toaster,

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Speaker 1: you need to capture that energy and turn it into electricity. Right,

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Speaker 1: And so this is actually a big puzzle for fusion,

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Speaker 1: for like, even hot fusion. Even if we got like

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Speaker 1: fusion to work and some of the technologies we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about later, people have not spent a lot

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Speaker 1: of time or enough time thinking about exactly how to

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Speaker 1: transform that gamma ray or that neutron into Kelly's toast.

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Speaker 2: This is important.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that's a hard problem. We'll get to

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Speaker 1: that in just a minute. First, we have to understand

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Speaker 1: the difference between the fusion reaction that happens in the

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Speaker 1: sun and the fusion reactions that we're trying to do

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Speaker 1: here on Earth, which are slightly different. And the reason

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Speaker 1: is that fusion is really hard to make happen. Like,

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Speaker 1: in order to get two protons to fuse together, you

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Speaker 1: have to squeeze them really hard because they don't want

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Speaker 1: to be together. So essentially fusion requires high density and

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Speaker 1: high temperature. You got to get those protons going really fast,

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Speaker 1: and you need a lot of them near each other

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Speaker 1: and even still in the Sun, fusion is rare. It's

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Speaker 1: not like fusion is happening all the time. Fusion is

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Speaker 1: not like a fire which will rapidly consume all of

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Speaker 1: its fuel. Even in the Sun with very high temperatures

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Speaker 1: and very high density, fusion is rare, which is why

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Speaker 1: the Sun is going to last for billions and billions

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Speaker 1: of years, right. It doesn't just like all burn up

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Speaker 1: in an afternoon. And the rate of fusion is very

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Speaker 1: non linear with temperature. So like the hotter the star is,

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Speaker 1: the easier it is for it to make fusion happen,

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Speaker 1: the denser and the hotter it is. And so bigger stars,

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Speaker 1: which are hotter and denser at their core, have much

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Speaker 1: more fusion happening at their core. So like twice the

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Speaker 1: temperature doesn't mean twice the fusion. It's like four times

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Speaker 1: the fusion. It's something nonlinear. And so this is why

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Speaker 1: really big stars burn up much faster than really small stars,

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Speaker 1: because really small stars just have a little idy bit

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Speaker 1: of fusion. They're barely fusing, whereas big stars have a

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Speaker 1: much larger fraction of their fuel actually turning into fusion.

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Speaker 3: Like I say, i'd assumed, I mean I knew that,

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Speaker 3: but I guess I still assumed that fusion in our

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Speaker 3: sun wasn't rare because I still assumed it was happening

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Speaker 3: pretty darn off.

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Speaker 1: No, if you're a proton in the center of the sun,

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Speaker 1: you can go for billions of years without fusing with anybody.

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Speaker 2: Wow, yea lonely, I know exactly.

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Speaker 1: It's like Daniel wandering around a party and nobody will

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Speaker 1: talk to him.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I would talk to you, Daniel, I would tell people.

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Speaker 3: I bet there's lots of people wanting to talk to

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Speaker 3: Daniel at parties.

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Speaker 1: And this is a self sustaining process, right, because the

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Speaker 1: heat from fusion keeps the sun hot, keeps the core hot.

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Speaker 1: And this is what we call ignition, when the conditions

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Speaker 1: created by fusion make it favorable for fusion. And this

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Speaker 1: is exactly what we want to achieve here on Earth, right.

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Speaker 1: We want to have fusion, not just like once or twice.

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Speaker 1: We want fusion to happen often enough that the heat

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Speaker 1: produced by fusion heats up the whole system and then

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Speaker 1: makes fusion more likely, and then it just runs on

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Speaker 1: its own. That's what we call ignition, sort of like

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Speaker 1: the way at a campfire you don't have to burn

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Speaker 1: every individual stick one at a time, right, Once stick

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Speaker 1: sets the next one on fire, which sets the next

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Speaker 1: one on fire. It's a chain reaction.

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Speaker 2: What is the other word that they're trying to achieve,

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Speaker 2: break either.

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Speaker 1: Break even? Yeah, exactly. It costs energy to get this

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Speaker 1: thing going, right. You got to heat this thing up,

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Speaker 1: you got to start it, and so you got to

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Speaker 1: put in a huge amount of energy to warm this

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Speaker 1: plasma up to create these conditions, and so what they

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Speaker 1: want is that you get more energy out than you

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Speaker 1: put in. Obviously, otherwise why are even building this reactor.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so we've hit ignition, but hitting break even is

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Speaker 2: much harder.

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Speaker 1: So that's a little complicated. We'll talk about it in

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Speaker 1: a minute. There's two ways to do fusion. There's the

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Speaker 1: lasers and the magnets, And the lasers claim to have

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Speaker 1: achieved ignition, which is cool, magnetized fusion, which has like

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Speaker 1: the plasma has not yet achieved ignition, but neither of

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Speaker 1: them have achieved break even, where they're generating more energy

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Speaker 1: than they put in. And there's always some like accounting

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Speaker 1: fuzziness there, like which energy do you account? Do you count?

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Speaker 1: Just the energy that directly landed on the fuel or

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Speaker 1: do you count like all the energy needed to run

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Speaker 1: the whole system. We'll get there, But here on Earth

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Speaker 1: we're not trying to replicate exactly the same reaction that

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Speaker 1: happens in the Sun because that requires really high density

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Speaker 1: and really high temperatures. And so here on Earth we

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Speaker 1: try to fuse deterium and tritium, which are particular is

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Speaker 1: it hopes of hydrogen. So deterium is a proton plus

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Speaker 1: a neutron, and tritium is a proton plus two neutrons,

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Speaker 1: and so these are advantageous because fusion can happen at

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Speaker 1: a lower temperature for deuterium and tritium than they can

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Speaker 1: for just like pure protons. So those are the ones

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Speaker 1: that we're trying to achieve here on Earth.

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Speaker 3: And you led an absolutely fascinating episode on whether or

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Speaker 3: not we have enough touterium and tritium on Earth to

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Speaker 3: be able to power the whole Earth using fusion. So

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Speaker 3: listeners should go back and listen to that again because

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Speaker 3: I remember thinking that that was like totally fascinating, all

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Speaker 3: kinds of stuff that I didn't know before.

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Speaker 2: So I'm going to hit the daniels An awesome button.

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Speaker 2: Daniel is awesome, and.

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Speaker 3: I love that we're making a bunch of work for

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Speaker 3: our amazing audio engineer because I think every time we've

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Speaker 3: mentioned a button, our audio engineer probably is going to

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Speaker 3: come up with a different button.

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Speaker 4: Sound.

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Speaker 2: Thanks, Matt.

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Speaker 1: Very cool. And so to answer the question you asked earlier,

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Speaker 1: like how do we use this energy and actually turn

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Speaker 1: it into two? Well, depends a lot on the fuel

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Speaker 1: that we're using, Like, for example, if you have helium three,

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Speaker 1: then your fusion doesn't produce neutrons, and so the output

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Speaker 1: of the reaction depends on exactly the fusion you're making.

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Speaker 1: The reactions we're making, like magnetized fusion, do tend to

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Speaker 1: produce a lot of neutrons, and so people are working

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Speaker 1: on like how do you take these neutrons and turn

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Speaker 1: them into electricity? And the idea is to have like

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Speaker 1: a lithium blanket, like to wrap your reactor in lithium,

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Speaker 1: and because what happens when you hit the lithium blanket

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Speaker 1: with these high speed neutrons is it turns the lithium

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Speaker 1: into tritium, which is fuel for your reactor, plus a

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Speaker 1: bunch of photons, which are basically heat which then you

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Speaker 1: can use to heat up steam and turn a turbine

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Speaker 1: and create electricity for your toast.

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Speaker 2: Oh yay, And I hope there's avocado on the toast.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and maybe we can even grow those avocados using

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Speaker 1: heat lamps powered by the fusion.

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Speaker 3: And when we get back, we're going to go into

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Speaker 3: more detail about how exactly we are trying to do

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Speaker 3: hot fusion and back here on Earth.

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Speaker 2: And we're back and we are.

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Speaker 3: Talking about ways that we do hot fusion because we

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Speaker 3: don't have the benefit of being as hot as the

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Speaker 3: Sun here on Earth. And actually that's probably great because

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Speaker 3: I really like being alive. And so Daniel, how do

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Speaker 3: we try doing fusion here on the Earth.

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Speaker 1: So one's strategy for the hot form of fusion is

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Speaker 1: to try to replicate the Sun as much as possible, right, So,

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Speaker 1: unfortunately we don't have the Sun's massive gravity, which self

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Speaker 1: contains the fusion reaction over there in the center of

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Speaker 1: the Solar system. So instead we try to use magnets. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: this strategy is make a little magnetic bottle try to

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Speaker 1: contain the reaction because the reaction would be so hot

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Speaker 1: that like any other device you put it in, would

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Speaker 1: melt it, so you need some way to hold it

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Speaker 1: together kind of without touching it. And so a magnetic

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Speaker 1: bottle is very cool. And a magnetic bottle works because

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Speaker 1: the plasma you need for fusion is charged. Right, you

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Speaker 1: take a gas, you heat it up, it becomes charged particles.

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Speaker 1: And now you have another way to control those particles

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Speaker 1: because you can push and pull on them with electromagnetic fields.

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Speaker 1: So if you build magnetic fields in such a way

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Speaker 1: that charge particles are always bent, sort of the way

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Speaker 1: they are at a SuperCollider, then they just zoom around

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Speaker 1: in a circle. And so the magnetic fields of a

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Speaker 1: tokomac create these helical paths that keep the plasma from

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Speaker 1: hitting the walls. Instead, they spiral around, and so you

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Speaker 1: get this doughnut shaped chamber where the plasma zooms around

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Speaker 1: really high temperature, but it's also contained and so it

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Speaker 1: maintains its density.

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Speaker 3: I kind of love the idea that, like, I still

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Speaker 3: I still think about magnets as like a thing that

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Speaker 3: kids play with, you know, like a kid's toy, but

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Speaker 3: it does also end up being the case that, like,

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Speaker 3: if you can create the most amazing magnets on Earth,

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Speaker 3: you can probably create the cleanest power source that would

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Speaker 3: like save the planet, And I think that's kind of awesome.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, if you could build super powerful magnets, not only

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Speaker 1: could you make fusion much easier, but particle physics would

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Speaker 1: be much easier. We are like limited by the strength

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Speaker 1: of our magnets. Our magnets were a thousand times stronger,

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Speaker 1: then we wouldn't need huge tunnels, right, and so you

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Speaker 1: would learn so much about the universe if you invented

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Speaker 1: amazing magnets. So yes, somebody get on that. Remember, the

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Speaker 1: most powerful magnets on Earth are the explosive kind, right,

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Speaker 1: the ones where they like blow them up.

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Speaker 3: But yet that won't work for regular fusion power. That's

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Speaker 3: not going to help my alvocado toast.

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Speaker 1: But the theme here is somehow you got to get

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Speaker 1: your protons to fuse, and the way you do is

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Speaker 1: by getting them close together, which is hard to do.

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Speaker 1: So the strategy for magnetic fusion is squeeze them, get

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Speaker 1: them hot, and get them dense, and that's hard to

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Speaker 1: do here on Earth, and so we do by squeezing

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Speaker 1: our plasma with magnetic fields. And the goal here is

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Speaker 1: stick at the plasma to last a long time. If

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Speaker 1: you can get it stable, and you can get it

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Speaker 1: zooming around. Then those protons will bounce into each other

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Speaker 1: because they have lots of opportunities, and then eventually they

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Speaker 1: will fuse and then will produce energy and you'll reach

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Speaker 1: ignition and then it'll be hot and other protons will

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Speaker 1: fuse and Kelly will get her toast.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so you told me that fusion doesn't even happen

440
00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:22,840
Speaker 3: that often in the Sun, that you could have a

441
00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:26,960
Speaker 3: proton live for like a billion years without fusing, And

442
00:22:27,040 --> 00:22:29,840
Speaker 3: so now I'm feeling way more negative about our prospects

443
00:22:29,840 --> 00:22:32,439
Speaker 3: for fusion here on Earth because that seems crazy. And

444
00:22:32,520 --> 00:22:35,640
Speaker 3: so our plasma needs to be like hotter and more

445
00:22:35,680 --> 00:22:38,000
Speaker 3: dense than the Sun to have a chance for.

446
00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:41,240
Speaker 2: This to work. Those are hot, those are long odds.

447
00:22:41,600 --> 00:22:43,199
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't have to be hotter or denser than

448
00:22:43,240 --> 00:22:45,400
Speaker 1: the Sun, because remember we're going for an easier kind

449
00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:48,040
Speaker 1: of fusion, deterior and treatium fusion can be cold.

450
00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:49,760
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, exactly.

451
00:22:50,200 --> 00:22:52,960
Speaker 1: But the challenge here really is keeping the plasma going,

452
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:54,920
Speaker 1: because plasma is a bunch of really hot particles and

453
00:22:54,960 --> 00:22:58,920
Speaker 1: they're going really really fast and it's unstable. Like, yes,

454
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:01,640
Speaker 1: you have magnetic feet fields. But these things are a

455
00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:05,800
Speaker 1: gas with magnetic charges, and like gases already have turbulence

456
00:23:05,800 --> 00:23:09,160
Speaker 1: in them, now you add electric magnetic fields internal to them,

457
00:23:09,440 --> 00:23:11,959
Speaker 1: and the magnetic fields are trying to control the particles.

458
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:15,840
Speaker 1: A little instability very rapidly turns into a big instability,

459
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,720
Speaker 1: and so getting a tookomac to build a plasma and

460
00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:21,960
Speaker 1: keep it going has been the big challenge. The record

461
00:23:22,040 --> 00:23:25,440
Speaker 1: I've seen is twenty two minutes is the longest they've

462
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:28,480
Speaker 1: ever had a stable plasma, which is amazing because I

463
00:23:28,480 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: actually did plasma research one of my first experiences back

464
00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:34,240
Speaker 1: when I was in college, and back then it was

465
00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:36,960
Speaker 1: like less than a minute. So to see that progress

466
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:37,840
Speaker 1: is encouraging.

467
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:39,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome, and this.

468
00:23:39,320 --> 00:23:42,840
Speaker 1: Is basically the leading form of fusion research. There's a

469
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:45,600
Speaker 1: huge project called Eater which is being built in France,

470
00:23:45,640 --> 00:23:48,200
Speaker 1: which plans for its first plasma in the mid twenty thirties,

471
00:23:48,640 --> 00:23:51,960
Speaker 1: eventually a power plant in the mid twenty fifties. It's

472
00:23:52,080 --> 00:23:55,120
Speaker 1: costing like billions and billions, so the plant is make

473
00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:58,439
Speaker 1: it work, demonstrated actually can produce energy, and then somehow

474
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:01,160
Speaker 1: figure out how to shrink the cost us. But there's

475
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:04,040
Speaker 1: also a lot of exciting private companies jumping into this area.

476
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:07,359
Speaker 1: This company called Commonwealth Fusion and folks who are trying

477
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:10,679
Speaker 1: exciting ways to sort of bring the scale down, you know,

478
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:14,560
Speaker 1: lasers plus plasma, all sorts of crazy ideas which are

479
00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:16,879
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. So there's a possibility that like

480
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:20,040
Speaker 1: a fusion startup might crack this problem before the sort

481
00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:21,680
Speaker 1: of big government project.

482
00:24:21,960 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 2: I'm rooting for them, No Commonwealth Fusion.

483
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:28,679
Speaker 1: The other approach for getting protons together is not to

484
00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:31,719
Speaker 1: go for time, but to go for increased density. So

485
00:24:31,800 --> 00:24:34,760
Speaker 1: this is a laser approach, and it's called inertial confinement.

486
00:24:35,359 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: Rather than get into conditions you need for plasma and

487
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:40,119
Speaker 1: having them last long enough that the protons fuse, just

488
00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:43,760
Speaker 1: go for like really high density, very very briefly, and

489
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 1: the idea here is you have like a little pellet

490
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 1: of fuel and use zap it on all sides with

491
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:53,480
Speaker 1: a laser which explodes the outside of it and implodes

492
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 1: the inside, right, So it's like a little compression way

493
00:24:56,600 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: that shoots down towards the core of this little pellet

494
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:02,880
Speaker 1: and then it's dense. And I remember, fusion really depends

495
00:25:02,880 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: on the density and the temperature, so Now fusion happens

496
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:10,200
Speaker 1: really fast in the core. After like thirty nanoseconds of compression,

497
00:25:10,560 --> 00:25:12,639
Speaker 1: it goes from like the density of water to like

498
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 1: one hundred times the density of lead. And the fusion

499
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 1: happens faster than this pellet can blow itself apart. It's

500
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 1: really incredible. Wow.

501
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:22,159
Speaker 2: And then that would just happen over and over and

502
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 2: over again, and you would collect.

503
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:26,800
Speaker 1: It happens once. Right, you zap this pellet, you get

504
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:29,680
Speaker 1: a little burst of fusion, and then it's done. So

505
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,440
Speaker 1: in that sense, they've achieved ignition that like the pellet

506
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 1: has used itself up. But then you got to start

507
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: all over again with a new pellet, right, And so

508
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: this is the real challenge is that like you need

509
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:42,080
Speaker 1: like a production chain of all of these pellets. You

510
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 1: have to account for the energy you spent building these

511
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:46,960
Speaker 1: pellets in your accounting of like are we getting output?

512
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:49,600
Speaker 1: And you got to start over and over again. So

513
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 1: it's like a series of these little mini reactions.

514
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:53,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, so like if you're gonna have a power plant,

515
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:55,199
Speaker 3: you'd have to like over and over again be like

516
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:58,679
Speaker 3: pep collecting. That sounds like it would be complex.

517
00:25:58,840 --> 00:26:00,720
Speaker 1: That's actually what the laser sound like, have you been there?

518
00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:05,200
Speaker 2: It's incredible, King, No, I'm just really smart.

519
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:09,200
Speaker 1: So the current leading edge here is the National Ignition

520
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:12,120
Speaker 1: Facility has one hundred and ninety two lasers and it's

521
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: been doing really, really well. And this year in twenty

522
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:17,199
Speaker 1: twenty six, they reached a gain of four point one

523
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:20,840
Speaker 1: point three, which means the energy that came out relative

524
00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:23,919
Speaker 1: to the energy that they put in. But there's a

525
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:27,239
Speaker 1: couple of big asterisks there as Trisk number one is

526
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: that's not energy they captured. It's just like theoretically energy produced,

527
00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:33,720
Speaker 1: some of which would be hard to capture and some

528
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:35,919
Speaker 1: of which easier to capture. Is they're definitely not getting

529
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:38,439
Speaker 1: all of it. There's gonna be some efficiency factor in

530
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 1: front of the energy that comes out, And they don't

531
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 1: really account for all the energy they put in. They

532
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,680
Speaker 1: count for all the energy that landed on the target

533
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,640
Speaker 1: and was absorbed, right, not all the energy they spent

534
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 1: producing that energy, some of which landed on the target.

535
00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:57,680
Speaker 1: So it's like you have a tiny pixie cup and

536
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 1: you emptied a swimming pool on top of it, and

537
00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 1: then you only counted the water that landed in the cup.

538
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:05,679
Speaker 1: It's like all right, yeah, but the energy required to

539
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:08,439
Speaker 1: run the lasers is like more than one hundred times

540
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:12,159
Speaker 1: the energy that's delivered on the target. So you know,

541
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: there's some nice accounting here, and I'm all for salesman

542
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:19,840
Speaker 1: shipping science, but also let's be clear they're not producing energy, all.

543
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:23,719
Speaker 3: Right, We're not ready to make our toast using this

544
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:25,120
Speaker 3: method yet exactly.

545
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: And so both of these are trying to do the

546
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,040
Speaker 1: same thing, which is squeeze protons together. How do you

547
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:33,240
Speaker 1: get protons close enough that they will fuse, So either

548
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:36,119
Speaker 1: magnets or initial confinement with lasers, both of those are

549
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:38,120
Speaker 1: trying to do the same thing, and both of those

550
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:41,200
Speaker 1: require a lot of heat, right, And so naturally people

551
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 1: have wondered for a long time, is it possible to

552
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:46,640
Speaker 1: do fusion without that heat? Can we have some other

553
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:50,840
Speaker 1: way to squeeze protons together at room temperature? And that's

554
00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 1: the promise, that's the dream of cold fusion, and cold

555
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: fusion is not just a silly movie starring Keana Reeves

556
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 1: or a scam from the eighty It's a real area

557
00:28:01,560 --> 00:28:04,120
Speaker 1: of research and there are some possibilities here.

558
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:07,360
Speaker 3: Oh man, I imagine if you are studying cold fusion,

559
00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 3: you probably get a lot of a lot of people

560
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 3: who are skeptical. Okay, all right, so let's dig into

561
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:14,920
Speaker 3: the science here.

562
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:15,160
Speaker 2: Okay.

563
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:17,320
Speaker 1: So it's true, cold fusion gets a lot of flack,

564
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 1: and I've heard it described as confusion instead of cold fusion.

565
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:27,880
Speaker 2: But confusion, yeah, exactly. All right, So I'm guessing we're

566
00:28:27,880 --> 00:28:29,680
Speaker 2: not talking about deuterium and tritium anymore.

567
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:32,199
Speaker 1: No, we're not. We're just talking about wasting of protons

568
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:35,720
Speaker 1: closer together at room temperature. So one idea is to

569
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 1: use muons. So the idea is that if you take

570
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 1: a hydrogen atom and you take off the electron and

571
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:45,520
Speaker 1: you replace it with a muon, then the orbit of

572
00:28:45,520 --> 00:28:48,719
Speaker 1: the muon is going to be smaller than the electrons' orbits,

573
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 1: and that means essentially the atom is closer and so

574
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: you can get these things closer together. So protons with

575
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: muons around them are electrically neutral, so they get close

576
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 1: to each other, and the muons are close to the protons,

577
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:04,240
Speaker 1: and so that can effectively get the protons closer.

578
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 2: Together and you still get the same amount of power out.

579
00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 1: You still get the same amount of power out. And

580
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: the reason that muons get closer to the protons than

581
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: the electrons is that muons are much higher mass. They're

582
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 1: like two hundred times the mass of the electron, and

583
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 1: the radius of the lowest energy level depends on the mass.

584
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: And don't think about these things in terms of orbits,

585
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: because orbits are misleading. You know, this is a quantum

586
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:30,160
Speaker 1: object in the lowest stationary state, but still there's a

587
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: distribution of expected radii there and it depends on the

588
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:36,719
Speaker 1: mass of the particle. So muons get much closer to

589
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:39,480
Speaker 1: the protons because they are heavier. And this is actually

590
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:44,000
Speaker 1: something that's pretty well established, like you can make muonic hydrogen.

591
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: You can squeeze these things together. In the seventies and eighties,

592
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 1: they did these experiments and you get fusion and you

593
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:51,000
Speaker 1: get energy out.

594
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 2: So why not do that, Well, it's.

595
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:58,720
Speaker 3: Hot, wouldn't that make everything work better?

596
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:03,560
Speaker 1: Well, the problem is if you make this hot, then

597
00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 1: the muons are no longer bound to the protons, right,

598
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 1: you get plasma and then you're back to the same situation.

599
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 1: So that actually only works at lower temperature when the

600
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 1: muons are low energy and they're bound to the protons.

601
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 2: Right.

602
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 1: Okay, So you might be wondering, why aren't we all

603
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: eating muon toast right now, right, Why am I not

604
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast powered by muonic fusion? This thing

605
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: says they've made this work, And the answer is the

606
00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: same as sort of laser fusion. It works, but it

607
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,800
Speaker 1: doesn't produce energy because it costs a lot of energy

608
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: to make muons. Muons are not something you can find

609
00:30:35,600 --> 00:30:39,200
Speaker 1: around the way you can find protons. Protons are just hydrogen.

610
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 1: Hydrogen is the most abundant thing in the universe. It's

611
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 1: literally all around us. Not hard to find hydrogen, and

612
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:47,720
Speaker 1: so making a hydrogen source is not hard, although as

613
00:30:47,760 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 1: we said earlier, for like magnetic fusion, you actually need tritium,

614
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: which is harder to find anyway. Muons are not everywhere.

615
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: You've got to make them, and you've got to build

616
00:30:56,680 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: these muonic hydrogen essentially one at a time and put

617
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:03,520
Speaker 1: them together. And so nobody's cracked that puzzle, like how

618
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: do we make enough muonic hydrogen cheap enough so we

619
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 1: can actually recoup some of this energy and make money.

620
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: And there are companies. There's a company called acceleron Fusion

621
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: that's working on making high efficiency muon sources and dense

622
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:21,400
Speaker 1: fusion cells, and they've claimed like hundreds of hours of

623
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: continuous fusion in their prototypes, but they still haven't cracked

624
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 1: the puzzle of making it produce more energy than it

625
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: costs to build the fuel. Wow, because if you're spending

626
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:32,680
Speaker 1: a lot of money and energy making the fuel, then

627
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:36,280
Speaker 1: you know you're not actually producing energy, you're losing it.

628
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:41,880
Speaker 3: Okay, So definitely not conspiracy theory, but not making toast

629
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 3: yeah exactly.

630
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is like not a huge research effort,

631
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:48,920
Speaker 1: but there are definitely people working on this. It's the

632
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: kind of thing where like one big breakthrough could really

633
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 1: change the game for sure. So you know, cold fusion

634
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: is a legitimate area of research, especially in the muonic direction.

635
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 3: Okay, but this isn't the end of the outline, so

636
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 3: I'm guessing that means there's other ways.

637
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 2: To do cold fusion.

638
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: Oh yes, there are.

639
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 3: So let's take a break and when we come back,

640
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:09,240
Speaker 3: let's talk a little bit more about the history of

641
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 3: cold fusion and how it got its bad name.

642
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 2: Okay, and we're back.

643
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:34,760
Speaker 3: And as we mentioned at the top of the show,

644
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:39,200
Speaker 3: Kelly thought cold fusion was like conspiracy level bad science,

645
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 3: which now she feels really well and she being me,

646
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:44,480
Speaker 3: now I feel really bad about because it turns out

647
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 3: there are actually people studying cold fusion, and now I

648
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 3: feel like a jerk. So, Daniel, how did cold fusion

649
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 3: end up getting such a bad name.

650
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: Well, there's a famous nineteen eighty nine experiment that claimed

651
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: to have achieved energy production and they didn't use muons.

652
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:06,120
Speaker 1: They used another approach, which is again a legitimate concept,

653
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 1: and this is using palladium. So palladium is just an

654
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:12,360
Speaker 1: element and it forms a crystal and has this really

655
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 1: weird property that it will absorb hydrogen very happily, like

656
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: a lot of hydrogen. If you have like a cubic

657
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 1: centimeter or polydium, it can absorb nine hundred times that

658
00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:27,400
Speaker 1: volume of hydrogen into that crystal. It like loves packing

659
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: in the hydrogen, which is weird, and chemistry nerves would

660
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: be like, yay, cool. This is fascinating. But from a

661
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 1: physics point of view, this is important because this brings

662
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 1: protons together, right, It like holds them together. The whole

663
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 1: goal of fusion is like bring protons together in some way.

664
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 1: They either make them hot so they overcome the Colombic barrier,

665
00:33:46,680 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: or compress them with inertial confinement fusion, or make them

666
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 1: neutral and bring them close with muons. Palladium says, hey,

667
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 1: I can bring protons together, no problem. So for like

668
00:33:56,760 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: more than one hundred years, people have thought this might

669
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: be a way to achieve fusion at room temperatures. Just

670
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:05,760
Speaker 1: jam a bunch of protons into your palladium crystal and

671
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:08,800
Speaker 1: see what happens. And there's actually an experiment in the

672
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:13,360
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties Pinnett and Peters claim to have achieved fusion

673
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:16,879
Speaker 1: cold fusion using polladium. Later they had to retract these

674
00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:19,040
Speaker 1: results because they couldn't be repeated. But there's like a

675
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:23,400
Speaker 1: history of overblowing cold fusion claims that go back more

676
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: than a century.

677
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 2: What who are Penefan Peters.

678
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 3: Were they like serious physicists or were they just like,

679
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:32,200
Speaker 3: do you got to tell me more than that? Were

680
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:34,879
Speaker 3: they just dinguses who didn't like collect their data well?

681
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:36,800
Speaker 3: Or were they trying to like trick everybody.

682
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 1: These were real Austrian scientists, and I think they were

683
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:42,920
Speaker 1: doing careful work. Later they retracted their own report because

684
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: they realized they didn't understand the background of what they

685
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 1: were measuring from the air. They were turning hydrogen to

686
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:51,960
Speaker 1: helium right, and they weren't measuring the heat output. They

687
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:54,880
Speaker 1: were just measuring the helium and they mismeasured essentially how

688
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 1: much helium there was in the air. And so it

689
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: turns out the air it would just naturally occur helium

690
00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:03,680
Speaker 1: they were measuring, So like pretty big oops, but not

691
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:05,040
Speaker 1: scam artists as far as I know.

692
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:07,800
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, good on them for retracting their own paper.

693
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:11,160
Speaker 3: We all make mistakes sometimes, Sorry, Penethan Peters.

694
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:15,040
Speaker 1: And then a few years later a Swedish scientist, John Trenberg,

695
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 1: was trying to use palladium also, and he applied for

696
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: a patent based on his efforts. But because of Penethan

697
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 1: Peter's retraction, nobody was going to believe in cold fusion,

698
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:27,720
Speaker 1: and so his patent application was denied.

699
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, but had he actually made his measurements

700
00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 3: correctly or should his patent application have been denied because

701
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 3: there was no good science to back it up.

702
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:39,920
Speaker 1: Well, it turns out he was doing work which is

703
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:42,680
Speaker 1: very similar to the work that was done in nineteen

704
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:45,800
Speaker 1: eighty nine where cold fusion became famous. So this is

705
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 1: the work of Fleischmann and Ponds, and they used a

706
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 1: palladium electrode and deuterium and the idea is to do

707
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 1: electrolysis of heavy water. So you have the palladium lattice

708
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 1: and deuterium, and deuterium is just that isotope of hydrogen, right,

709
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: and so you force the hydrogen into the palladium lattice

710
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 1: and then you put it under a current. So that's

711
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:09,400
Speaker 1: why it's an electrode, and it makes these very high

712
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 1: densities and maybe that deuterium can overcome that Columbic barrier.

713
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:16,320
Speaker 1: That's the idea. So this is what Ponds and Flashman

714
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 1: did in nineteen eighty nine. They had this heavy water,

715
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 1: which means water with deterium in it, so that deterium

716
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:25,759
Speaker 1: is there to be absorbed into the lattice and then

717
00:36:25,920 --> 00:36:28,000
Speaker 1: they run the current and what they claim was to

718
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: see huge spikes in the heat produced. So unlike penethompeters

719
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:34,520
Speaker 1: and weren't measuring the helium, they were looking for the

720
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 1: heat and they calculated like how much heat could potentially

721
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,080
Speaker 1: be produced by any chemical reaction they're aware of, and

722
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:43,720
Speaker 1: this was much more heat than anything they could expect

723
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:46,120
Speaker 1: from chemistry. So they're like, wow, look at this. We

724
00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: have an experiment which is fusing and producing heat, and

725
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:51,440
Speaker 1: yet it's running at room temperature.

726
00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:51,799
Speaker 2: Okay.

727
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:55,279
Speaker 3: Well, so if it couldn't be explained by chemistry, I

728
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:57,280
Speaker 3: guess they're saying that, then it's explained by physics.

729
00:36:57,400 --> 00:37:00,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, but isn't physics and chemistry.

730
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:04,799
Speaker 3: Like yeah, that's kind of the same thing, isn't it.

731
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:05,040
Speaker 3: You know?

732
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see what you mean by chemistry. I mean

733
00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 1: like any non fusion process, right, okay, because you expect

734
00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:13,520
Speaker 1: you have like heavy water here, you have electricity, you

735
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: got some stuff that's going to happen, and you can

736
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 1: get heat produced. But we're talking about heat that could

737
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 1: not be produced by anything other than fusion, Okay. And

738
00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: so these guys went out with the story and University

739
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:26,719
Speaker 1: of Utah, where they were working, was very excited, and

740
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:29,400
Speaker 1: they put out a press release and they got a

741
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: lot of coverage, and for a moment, everybody thought, oh wow,

742
00:37:33,080 --> 00:37:36,439
Speaker 1: maybe cold fusion has been achieved, And so other labs

743
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:39,600
Speaker 1: in the United States very quickly went to replicate these results. Because,

744
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 1: as we talked about it in our episode about how

745
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,799
Speaker 1: science works, it's not just like peer review where you

746
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 1: like read the article and say does this make any sense?

747
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:50,319
Speaker 1: But the gold standard for science really is replication, and

748
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:54,240
Speaker 1: other people independently in a different laboratory with like slightly

749
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: different assumptions and different details, and like different temperatures in

750
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:00,279
Speaker 1: the outside, and you're in New Jersey instead of in Utah.

751
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:03,279
Speaker 1: If this is real physics, it should happen everywhere. But

752
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 1: no replication attempts succeeded. There were a couple where people

753
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:09,439
Speaker 1: are like, oh wait, maybe no, and so nobody could

754
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: reproduce these results. But of course this is still a

755
00:38:12,120 --> 00:38:15,239
Speaker 1: big deal. ColdFusion is like a very exciting and the

756
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:18,120
Speaker 1: claims are very strong. So the Department of Energy put

757
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: together the whole panel to review this in detail, like

758
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: what is going on. They studied this for a long time,

759
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 1: and they found that like, on one hand, nobody could

760
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:30,359
Speaker 1: reproduce these results, Like all the experiments that tried to

761
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:34,319
Speaker 1: reproduce this setup and the conditions exactly none of them

762
00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:37,319
Speaker 1: saw these heat flashes. And the guys who worked on

763
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:40,719
Speaker 1: the theory couldn't get the calculations to support what these

764
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:43,319
Speaker 1: guys were claiming, like even in theory, you shouldn't get

765
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: enough fusion to produce really any significant heat in this setup.

766
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:49,799
Speaker 1: And so the whole thing sort of fell apart, and

767
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: it was a tragedy because they got a lot of

768
00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:54,080
Speaker 1: pressed and so a lot of the public thought, Wow,

769
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 1: this is the wave of the future, and then we

770
00:38:56,600 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: discovered it turns out it's not real.

771
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:00,680
Speaker 3: So in the earlier case, it's like it was a

772
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 3: measurement error. They didn't measure something that they should have.

773
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:06,480
Speaker 3: But here it sounds like they are measuring something that

774
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 3: didn't exist, like heat that nobody else is finding. But

775
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 3: surely they must have expected that people were going to

776
00:39:14,200 --> 00:39:17,240
Speaker 3: try this and then would also not find the heat.

777
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:22,160
Speaker 3: And so what happened? Did they like not account for

778
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 3: the lighter that someone was holding underneath the device, Like,

779
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:26,359
Speaker 3: what is what's going on here?

780
00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:29,799
Speaker 1: It's a good question. The answer comes down to, chemistry

781
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:34,759
Speaker 1: is really hard, and effectively, they didn't correctly calculate how

782
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 1: much heat could be produced by non fusion chemistry effects,

783
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:41,319
Speaker 1: and it turns out there's more heat that can be

784
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 1: produced by chemistry in this situation than they expected, and

785
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 1: this led to them to underestimate the basically the chemistry

786
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:51,840
Speaker 1: contribution and to attribute the rest of this to fusion.

787
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 2: Well, the answer is chemistry is really hard.

788
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:58,399
Speaker 3: Then they have my sympathy, So I'm all right, it's

789
00:39:58,440 --> 00:39:59,080
Speaker 3: poor guys.

790
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:02,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, on the other.

791
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 3: Hand, check your work before you make a huge reason.

792
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:06,080
Speaker 3: Can you release a huge result?

793
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know, they never saw like the

794
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 1: smoking gun of fusion. They saw heat produced, but they

795
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:15,480
Speaker 1: also should have seen like neutrons produced, but they didn't.

796
00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:18,279
Speaker 1: So it's not like they had a unique setup and

797
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: it was doing cold fusion and nobody else could replicate

798
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 1: it because of some detail of their experiment. It just

799
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:27,439
Speaker 1: didn't even coherently make sense. And digging into it later,

800
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:30,640
Speaker 1: people discovered that like the way they calibrated their device

801
00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: and the way they were calculating what they expected from

802
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 1: non fusion sources was just wrong. And so that's too bad.

803
00:40:37,160 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: But you know, there was still a lot of excitement

804
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: about this, and though Ponds and Flashmen didn't have any

805
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:44,359
Speaker 1: more support in the United States, there was excitement around

806
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: the world and these guys got like ten million dollars

807
00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 1: piles of money from the government in France or in

808
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 1: Japan to go do their research and follow up, which

809
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:54,799
Speaker 1: I think is great. Like, you know, at the time,

810
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:56,799
Speaker 1: maybe there was some other way you could do it.

811
00:40:56,840 --> 00:40:58,720
Speaker 1: Maybe they were on the right track, like this definitely

812
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: is a prospect, but unfortunately they never achieved any results

813
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:03,719
Speaker 1: that were useful at all.

814
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 3: Summer all right, But there are some people who still

815
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:11,000
Speaker 3: had the guts to push forward. Even though the field

816
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:12,680
Speaker 3: has sort of gotten a bad name at that.

817
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:16,880
Speaker 1: Points, there are still people working on this stuff. Google

818
00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:20,840
Speaker 1: recently had a ten million dollar multi year project to

819
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: test some of these things. They're like, let's do this rigorously,

820
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: let's really calibrate our calorimeters, let's really understand the chemistry.

821
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 1: And in twenty nineteen they published a paper in Nature

822
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 1: saying there was no evidence of cold fusion, but they

823
00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 1: did improve their experimental techniques and they were able to

824
00:41:36,200 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 1: understand how you would measure it if it was there,

825
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 1: and so it showed that, like you can do careful

826
00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 1: science here. Although there's still a lot of challenges, there's

827
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:48,520
Speaker 1: still work happening in Japan and in Italy. There's private

828
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:51,680
Speaker 1: companies working on this kind of stuff, other people exploring,

829
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: So there are definitely people working on this. And just

830
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 1: last year I saw a call from DARPA four grand

831
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:01,760
Speaker 1: proposals about cold fusion. You know, like DARPA is famous

832
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 1: for being out there and like funding crazy things. So

833
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:07,359
Speaker 1: there's definitely like active interest and people are working on it,

834
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:09,880
Speaker 1: and if you have a good idea, there's money for it.

835
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:13,360
Speaker 1: But there's also the dark side of cold fusion, you know,

836
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: which is the conspiracy theories. There is some segment of

837
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:20,800
Speaker 1: folks out there pushing a story that Ponds and Flashman

838
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 1: did achieve cold fusion, that it was real, and it

839
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:26,840
Speaker 1: was for some reasons that never made sense to me,

840
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:30,799
Speaker 1: covered up by the government. I think the story is like,

841
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:33,440
Speaker 1: the hot fusion folks were getting a lot of money

842
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:36,279
Speaker 1: and the cold fusion would threaten that, and so the

843
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:39,680
Speaker 1: hot fusion people had a conflict of interest and they

844
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 1: were criticizing cold fusion because it challenged the mainstream narrative

845
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:46,319
Speaker 1: about hot fusion, et cetera, et cetera, and therefore it

846
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 1: was pushed aside. And if you're working on cold fusion,

847
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:51,399
Speaker 1: nobody would take you seriously. And you know, the real

848
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,160
Speaker 1: story is like, no, there was money for cold fusion.

849
00:42:54,200 --> 00:42:56,600
Speaker 1: There is money for cold fusion. If you have an idea,

850
00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 1: people are interested. There's private money, there's government money. That's

851
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,719
Speaker 1: definitely people looking into it. And Pons and Fleischmann's work

852
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 1: was analyzed it. They tried to replicate it, they tried

853
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: to understand it. It was given a fair shake, and yet

854
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:11,439
Speaker 1: there's still this you know, conspiracy that's like whold documentaries

855
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:13,759
Speaker 1: out there about like how the results were real and

856
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:15,960
Speaker 1: they were ignored by mainstream physics, and it's just this

857
00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:20,920
Speaker 1: like extension of anti science conspiracy theory nonsense. But you

858
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: know it's pushed by your usual set of grifters.

859
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:25,080
Speaker 2: Okay, well that's too bad.

860
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:28,719
Speaker 1: It's too bad. And so you know, mainstream science is

861
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: skeptical about this, like nobody's ever done this in an

862
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 1: effective way. But also people are skeptical about magnetic fusion

863
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:38,200
Speaker 1: and inertial confinement fusion, right, like neither of these have

864
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: shown that they actually will produce energy in any realistic way.

865
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 1: And there's money for both directions. There's definitely more money

866
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:48,160
Speaker 1: for hot fusion than there is for cold fusion because

867
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: I think it's shown more promise and there's like at

868
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:52,200
Speaker 1: least a theory of how it would work. People are

869
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:55,080
Speaker 1: still struggling to understand on the cold fusion side, how

870
00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: in principle you even would make this work. Like it's

871
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: more than just the engineering challenges. It's like, could you

872
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:04,080
Speaker 1: even produce enough energy in theory if you overcame all

873
00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:07,919
Speaker 1: the engineering challenges, and so there's definitely some obstacles there

874
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:10,920
Speaker 1: for cold fusion, but I would say not impossible. Right,

875
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:13,560
Speaker 1: it's a dark horse, but it's still possible, and there

876
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 1: are opportunities.

877
00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:16,520
Speaker 3: There, and people are following up on them and they're

878
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:17,319
Speaker 3: getting money for us.

879
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:18,240
Speaker 2: So correct.

880
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:20,759
Speaker 1: And so if you want to make Canu Reeves look

881
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:23,280
Speaker 1: good and make the premise of that movie sound maybe

882
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:26,359
Speaker 1: more realistic, then hey, invest in cold fusion or make

883
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 1: it work yourself. You could change the world.

884
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:31,399
Speaker 3: Daniel Keanu Reeves is doing a fine job looking good

885
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 3: on his own.

886
00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 2: He doesn't need anyone's help.

887
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:37,360
Speaker 1: Because you know, the promise of cold fusion is amazing.

888
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 1: If we could achieve cold fusion, then it might be

889
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:43,600
Speaker 1: possible to have really small, very safe reactors. You know,

890
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:45,440
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to have a bunch of lasers or

891
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 1: a bunch of hot gas. You could miniaturize them. You

892
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: could have like fusion inside your toaster, not just getting

893
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 1: electricity from the grid from some massive power plant. You

894
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:57,320
Speaker 1: could have like tiny little fusion reactors and everything. Instead

895
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:00,360
Speaker 1: of batteries, you could have fusion reactors. That would be awesome.

896
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 1: You know, your phone can have a fusion reactor in

897
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:06,000
Speaker 1: it and basically burn forever. That would be incredible, but

898
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 1: we're still far from that.

899
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:09,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. This is a serious science show. Yes,

900
00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:13,719
Speaker 3: that would be amazing. And I am excited that people

901
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:15,239
Speaker 3: are working on a lot of this stuff from a

902
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:16,920
Speaker 3: lot of different angles, because you never know what's going

903
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 3: to end up being the angle that works, and so

904
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:21,839
Speaker 3: it's good to have a lot of different brains working

905
00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:22,840
Speaker 3: in a lot of different ways.

906
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:26,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And we benefit from a diversity of curiosity

907
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,040
Speaker 1: and a diversity of optimism. And so get out there,

908
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:32,160
Speaker 1: people solve this problem for us. Kelly needs her toast.

909
00:45:32,560 --> 00:45:34,719
Speaker 3: I do, I do, and I'd like it to be

910
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 3: made in a clean way.

911
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:39,160
Speaker 1: All right, Thanks everyone for coming along on this latest

912
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 1: journey of curiosity.

913
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio.

914
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:52,800
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915
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:55,799
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916
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:58,640
Speaker 1: have about this Extraordinary Universe.

917
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:01,680
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918
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:04,680
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919
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920
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:08,920
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921
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:12,080
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922
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:13,320
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923
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:17,200
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925
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:21,200
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926
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:22,960
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