Speaker 1: Energy is everything. It powers our lives, propels our cars,
Speaker 1: runs our massive data centers, our growing thirst for energy,
Speaker 1: influences politics, It alters the climate, It sparks conflicts, and
Speaker 1: it constrains the future of our civilization. Energy is also
Speaker 1: very personal. Our bodies are made of vibrating particles, which
Speaker 1: themselves are pulses of energy and quantum fields. So everything
Speaker 1: is energy. And for decades now, physics have been promising
Speaker 1: to unleash the energy source of the stars. Fusion, the
Speaker 1: thing that makes our sun glow, but brought down to
Speaker 1: Earth and mastered for our empire. So exciting and so
Speaker 1: just around the corner. It's been twenty years away for
Speaker 1: about eighty years now. So if hot fusion isn't just
Speaker 1: around the corner, is there another way? If we don't
Speaker 1: need to replicate the conditions inside the sun, What if
Speaker 1: we could do it all at room temperature? What is
Speaker 1: the physics of cold fusion? Is it all just Charlatan's
Speaker 1: nonsense or is there real science there? And if not,
Speaker 1: why is DARPA funding it? We'll dig into all of
Speaker 1: that today on Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 2: Who this is? Kelly Wintersmith?
Speaker 3: I study parasites and space, and in Virginia right now,
Speaker 3: it is so cold that your fingers fused to anything
Speaker 3: you touched that is slightly wet.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and my wife's favorite
Speaker 1: piece of physics is a terrible movie called Cold Fusion
Speaker 1: starring Keanu Reeves wearing a University of Chicago sweatshirt.
Speaker 3: Ah. You know, my favorite movie is Keeves wearing anything,
Speaker 3: because he's such a cutie.
Speaker 1: That movie is so bad and so full of plot holes,
Speaker 1: but Canna Reeves is great and he looks great in
Speaker 1: that shirt, and hey, if he makes physicists look good
Speaker 1: on the screen, I'm all for it.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: I've never seen that particular movie, but I'm not recommended.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'll skip that one.
Speaker 3: But yeah, So today we're talking about Cold Fusion, which
Speaker 3: I'm excited about because I was under the impression and
Speaker 3: I'll lay it out there now. My impression is that
Speaker 3: Cold Fusion is an absolutely never gonna work, almost on
Speaker 3: the edge of conspiracy theory kind of thing, and that
Speaker 3: is my preconceived notion. And when I was looking at
Speaker 3: your outline, I was like, oh, maybe maybe I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be wrong. This will be an interesting conversation. And then
Speaker 3: I was like, you know what, I don't want to
Speaker 3: root it. I'm not going to do my homework. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to look at this outline anymore. And so
Speaker 3: I stopped looking at the outline. And so here's what
Speaker 3: I want to know from you today, Daniel. There are
Speaker 3: lots of different routes that people talk about for how
Speaker 3: we might make fusion work. Yeah, if you had to
Speaker 3: put your money on one route for how fusion might
Speaker 3: eventually pan out as a way to run toasters, for example,
Speaker 3: which route would you guess is the most likely to work?
Speaker 2: And I'm going to guess it's not cold fusion.
Speaker 1: No, how much of my money am I being forced
Speaker 1: to invest in fusion in this ter Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: I think cold fusion is a dark horse there, and
Speaker 1: I would not invest all of my family resources in it,
Speaker 1: so I would have to go for some variant of
Speaker 1: hot fusion. I think eventually we will make some kind
Speaker 1: of magnetized fusion work, something like the Tokamax or eater. Eventually,
Speaker 1: I think we will figure that out.
Speaker 3: So you're betting against the many, many, many many lasers
Speaker 3: all at once.
Speaker 1: I am betting against. I love those and they're really fun,
Speaker 1: and I want to flip that switch one time. I
Speaker 1: imagine this like some really big, heavy red lever you
Speaker 1: get to pull and it's really satisfying and then they
Speaker 1: go zap. And I want to do that, But I
Speaker 1: don't think that that's the most likely way to make energy.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be disappointing if it was just like a
Speaker 3: normal light switch or something, or a touchscreen button.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm all about the tactile buttons. You know
Speaker 1: it's going to give that haptic response, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I want it to be a big red
Speaker 3: button that says lasers and you slam your hand down
Speaker 3: on it or something.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, today we're not here to talk about
Speaker 1: Kelly's fantasies of pushing big red buttons, though I share
Speaker 1: that with you. Have you ever visited cern in the
Speaker 1: control room that have a big red emergency button and
Speaker 1: it's so tempting when you're on shift you want to
Speaker 1: press it. And then in the visitors lounge they have
Speaker 1: a mock up of it that you can actually press
Speaker 1: that like it turns lights that make sounds that it's
Speaker 1: so fun.
Speaker 2: That's awesome, But no, I haven't. My daughter's been discerned.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you should come sometime. Anyway, we're not talking
Speaker 1: about pressing red buttons today. We are talking about trying
Speaker 1: to achieve cheap and plentiful energy here on Earth via fusion,
Speaker 1: specifically cold fusion. Is it just a Ponzi scheme? Is
Speaker 1: it real? Could it ever actually work? Was the question
Speaker 1: we've posed to our listeners who volunteer for this audience
Speaker 1: participation segment of the podcast. So think about it for
Speaker 1: a moment. Do you think cold fusion is impossible? Here's
Speaker 1: what people had to say.
Speaker 5: Couldn't you select cold fusion as a power source in SimCity? Well,
Speaker 5: then there you go. I guess it's possible, And to
Speaker 5: Daniel's credit, you also then get alien invasions. So everybody wins.
Speaker 5: I guess except for the Sims.
Speaker 2: Cold fusions a lot.
Speaker 1: Because of.
Speaker 6: Sic it's a thing that we know, because we can't
Speaker 6: do fusion.
Speaker 1: Here, I wouldn't know.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think it's impossible.
Speaker 1: Only as a plot device in a subpart movie.
Speaker 6: Nothing is unpossible.
Speaker 2: I say so because I have a deep thing inhumanity's
Speaker 2: ability to grow and progress using the scientific method.
Speaker 6: I know there was a kerfuffle about this before, but
Speaker 6: can't sabe.
Speaker 1: I leastly remember hearing that cold fusion might be possible
Speaker 1: inside a giant gold doughnut.
Speaker 4: Cold fusion is absolutely possible if you stick your tongue
Speaker 4: to a flagpole in the dead of winter.
Speaker 1: I don't believe we should say impossible to anything. Someone
Speaker 1: someday will figure out how to overcome that hurdle. It
Speaker 1: probably is, but I'm ever the optimist.
Speaker 4: If cold brewing coffee is possible, so.
Speaker 1: Is cold fusion.
Speaker 6: I would say never say never.
Speaker 4: I think hot fusion requires high temperatures the same way
Speaker 4: my golf game requires a very large number of strokes.
Speaker 4: If I were better at it, I would need fewer attempts,
Speaker 4: which is kind of the equivalent of lower temperatures.
Speaker 6: I suspect that cold fusion is impots because in order
Speaker 6: to fuse, the particles have to be moving very quickly,
Speaker 6: meaning high energy, which means probably hot.
Speaker 2: I liked only as a plot device in a subpar movie.
Speaker 1: That's Does that mean reality is a subpar movie?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 3: I mean it's a pretty pretty sub sub subpar movie.
Speaker 1: If so, these were great answers I love that there
Speaker 1: are people out there who believe, you know, the optimism
Speaker 1: somebody someday will figure this out. It frustrates me that
Speaker 1: cold fusion has been sort of polluted by a few
Speaker 1: scam artists and bad experiences that the public had, so
Speaker 1: it's seen as a totally disreputable line of research, even
Speaker 1: though there are some possibilities there, as we'll talk about later.
Speaker 2: Are we going to talk about those scam artists.
Speaker 1: At some point? Oh, yes we are. We're going to
Speaker 1: dig into the conspiracies.
Speaker 3: Okay, good, because I think I've heard about those scam
Speaker 3: artists mostly and that that's the news that's gotten to me.
Speaker 2: All right, So let's let's start at the beginning. What
Speaker 2: is fusion?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so fusion is the opposite of fission. Right. So, fission,
Speaker 1: what happens in most nuclear reactors that we have really
Speaker 1: mastered and produces huge amounts of reliable, stable energy for
Speaker 1: humans on Earth, is when you take heavy nuclei and
Speaker 1: you split them up like uranium splits up into smaller,
Speaker 1: lighter nuclei and produces energy. Fusion is the opposite. That's
Speaker 1: when you take too light nuclei like hydrogen, The lightest
Speaker 1: possible thing just protons, and you squeeze them together to
Speaker 1: make something heavy like helium, and then you confuse helium
Speaker 1: together to make something even heavier. So fusion is when
Speaker 1: you stick stuff together. And the interesting thing is that
Speaker 1: when you stick stuff together, it releases energy as long
Speaker 1: as that stuff is lighter than iron. If it's heavier
Speaker 1: than iron, then when you break it apart, it releases energy. Basically,
Speaker 1: moving your nuclei closer to iron always releases energy.
Speaker 2: Fun Kell effect.
Speaker 3: I memorize the words fusion and fission like their definitions
Speaker 3: in reverse initially, and then I was so worried I
Speaker 3: was going to get it wrong that there was like
Speaker 3: a solid year there where I would do everything I
Speaker 3: could to avoid needing to say the words fusion or
Speaker 3: fission for fear of getting it wrong. And then I
Speaker 3: finally got it straight in my head. But now I'm
Speaker 3: going to be worried that I'm going to get it
Speaker 3: mixed up again. But anyway, it's an episode on fusion,
Speaker 3: so I'm pretty safe if I say fusion, all right.
Speaker 1: Well, should we have a buzzer if you ever get
Speaker 1: it wrong?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, So most of the time fusion is hard to
Speaker 1: do because protons are positively charged and they don't like
Speaker 1: to be near each other, like they repel each other
Speaker 1: very strongly. Right, electromagnetism is a powerful, powerful force, and
Speaker 1: so making this happen is not easy, and yet it
Speaker 1: happens a lot. Like our star is an enormous ball
Speaker 1: of fusion. People say it's an enormous ball of fire.
Speaker 1: That's kind of misleading because fire is combustion, which requires
Speaker 1: oxygen and an atmosphere. The sun is not burning in
Speaker 1: that sense. The sun is fusing.
Speaker 2: Well, actually, well.
Speaker 1: We actually, I mean to hear. Accuracy is our game, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. I love when people write in and send
Speaker 1: us well actually emails like I sincerely unironically love that.
Speaker 1: Please do it. Yes, So we want to strive for
Speaker 1: total accuracy here. And so what's happening in the sun
Speaker 1: is that the sun is mostly protons, right, mostly hydrogen
Speaker 1: ions and those refusing to make helium. And it's not
Speaker 1: quite as direct as like two protons make one helium atom,
Speaker 1: because helium also needs neutrons to be stable, because if
Speaker 1: you just had two protons and the helium nucleus, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be stable. Those protons would bust each other apart
Speaker 1: because of the strong Colombic repulsion there, and so you
Speaker 1: need neutrons to like buffer them a little bit. So
Speaker 1: to make one helium nucleus, you need four hydrogen protons.
Speaker 1: They start with four protons, two of them convert into neutrons,
Speaker 1: and you end up with helium four, which is two
Speaker 1: protons and two neutrons. So that's the biggest process in
Speaker 1: the sun, hydrogen burning and.
Speaker 2: Does that release a lot of energy.
Speaker 1: That does release a lot of energy. It comes out
Speaker 1: in terms of gamma rays, and there's neutrinos also. This
Speaker 1: is why the Sun is like such a bright source
Speaker 1: not just of light, but also of neutrinos. And neutrinos
Speaker 1: are super cool because the Sun is mostly transparent to neutrinos.
Speaker 1: So you make a neutrino in fusion, it flies out
Speaker 1: of the sun. If you have a neutrino detector, you're
Speaker 1: seeing that neutrino from inside the Sun. The Sun is
Speaker 1: opaque to photons, so it makes photons when it fuses,
Speaker 1: but those photons are absorbed and they just sort of
Speaker 1: heat up the sun. And then the reason the sun
Speaker 1: is bright in the sky, like why we see photons
Speaker 1: from the Sun. It's not because you're seeing photons from
Speaker 1: the fusion. You're seeing photons because the Sun is hot
Speaker 1: and it's like a black body and it glows. So
Speaker 1: here's another well actually moment for you. There's this bit
Speaker 1: of pop side that says like it takes a photon
Speaker 1: sixty thousand years to get from the center of the
Speaker 1: Sun to the surface, which is like, I don't even
Speaker 1: know what they're trying to calculate there. Photons don't go
Speaker 1: from the center of the Sun to the surface. They
Speaker 1: just like heat up the sun and then the sun
Speaker 1: is hot, so it glows the way that like iron
Speaker 1: in a furnaces, right, everything that's made of charged particles
Speaker 1: and has a temperature glows. So there's your well actually moment.
Speaker 3: We got to have a button for that too, or
Speaker 3: at least a little like ticker thing to keep track.
Speaker 3: Well actually, okay, And so when I first started hearing
Speaker 3: about this, I felt a little confused about how you
Speaker 3: go from that fact to running a toaster.
Speaker 2: And so could you like make the little jump there
Speaker 2: for us?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yes, So fusion releases that energy right in terms
Speaker 1: of photons or neutrons or gamma rays, all sorts. Of stuff,
Speaker 1: and then you've got to capture it. So if you
Speaker 1: wanted to build a device that would power your toaster,
Speaker 1: you need to capture that energy and turn it into electricity. Right,
Speaker 1: And so this is actually a big puzzle for fusion,
Speaker 1: for like, even hot fusion. Even if we got like
Speaker 1: fusion to work and some of the technologies we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about later, people have not spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time or enough time thinking about exactly how to
Speaker 1: transform that gamma ray or that neutron into Kelly's toast.
Speaker 2: This is important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that's a hard problem. We'll get to
Speaker 1: that in just a minute. First, we have to understand
Speaker 1: the difference between the fusion reaction that happens in the
Speaker 1: sun and the fusion reactions that we're trying to do
Speaker 1: here on Earth, which are slightly different. And the reason
Speaker 1: is that fusion is really hard to make happen. Like,
Speaker 1: in order to get two protons to fuse together, you
Speaker 1: have to squeeze them really hard because they don't want
Speaker 1: to be together. So essentially fusion requires high density and
Speaker 1: high temperature. You got to get those protons going really fast,
Speaker 1: and you need a lot of them near each other
Speaker 1: and even still in the Sun, fusion is rare. It's
Speaker 1: not like fusion is happening all the time. Fusion is
Speaker 1: not like a fire which will rapidly consume all of
Speaker 1: its fuel. Even in the Sun with very high temperatures
Speaker 1: and very high density, fusion is rare, which is why
Speaker 1: the Sun is going to last for billions and billions
Speaker 1: of years, right. It doesn't just like all burn up
Speaker 1: in an afternoon. And the rate of fusion is very
Speaker 1: non linear with temperature. So like the hotter the star is,
Speaker 1: the easier it is for it to make fusion happen,
Speaker 1: the denser and the hotter it is. And so bigger stars,
Speaker 1: which are hotter and denser at their core, have much
Speaker 1: more fusion happening at their core. So like twice the
Speaker 1: temperature doesn't mean twice the fusion. It's like four times
Speaker 1: the fusion. It's something nonlinear. And so this is why
Speaker 1: really big stars burn up much faster than really small stars,
Speaker 1: because really small stars just have a little idy bit
Speaker 1: of fusion. They're barely fusing, whereas big stars have a
Speaker 1: much larger fraction of their fuel actually turning into fusion.
Speaker 3: Like I say, i'd assumed, I mean I knew that,
Speaker 3: but I guess I still assumed that fusion in our
Speaker 3: sun wasn't rare because I still assumed it was happening
Speaker 3: pretty darn off.
Speaker 1: No, if you're a proton in the center of the sun,
Speaker 1: you can go for billions of years without fusing with anybody.
Speaker 2: Wow, yea lonely, I know exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like Daniel wandering around a party and nobody will
Speaker 1: talk to him.
Speaker 3: Oh, I would talk to you, Daniel, I would tell people.
Speaker 3: I bet there's lots of people wanting to talk to
Speaker 3: Daniel at parties.
Speaker 1: And this is a self sustaining process, right, because the
Speaker 1: heat from fusion keeps the sun hot, keeps the core hot.
Speaker 1: And this is what we call ignition, when the conditions
Speaker 1: created by fusion make it favorable for fusion. And this
Speaker 1: is exactly what we want to achieve here on Earth, right.
Speaker 1: We want to have fusion, not just like once or twice.
Speaker 1: We want fusion to happen often enough that the heat
Speaker 1: produced by fusion heats up the whole system and then
Speaker 1: makes fusion more likely, and then it just runs on
Speaker 1: its own. That's what we call ignition, sort of like
Speaker 1: the way at a campfire you don't have to burn
Speaker 1: every individual stick one at a time, right, Once stick
Speaker 1: sets the next one on fire, which sets the next
Speaker 1: one on fire. It's a chain reaction.
Speaker 2: What is the other word that they're trying to achieve,
Speaker 2: break either.
Speaker 1: Break even? Yeah, exactly. It costs energy to get this
Speaker 1: thing going, right. You got to heat this thing up,
Speaker 1: you got to start it, and so you got to
Speaker 1: put in a huge amount of energy to warm this
Speaker 1: plasma up to create these conditions, and so what they
Speaker 1: want is that you get more energy out than you
Speaker 1: put in. Obviously, otherwise why are even building this reactor.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we've hit ignition, but hitting break even is
Speaker 2: much harder.
Speaker 1: So that's a little complicated. We'll talk about it in
Speaker 1: a minute. There's two ways to do fusion. There's the
Speaker 1: lasers and the magnets, And the lasers claim to have
Speaker 1: achieved ignition, which is cool, magnetized fusion, which has like
Speaker 1: the plasma has not yet achieved ignition, but neither of
Speaker 1: them have achieved break even, where they're generating more energy
Speaker 1: than they put in. And there's always some like accounting
Speaker 1: fuzziness there, like which energy do you account? Do you count?
Speaker 1: Just the energy that directly landed on the fuel or
Speaker 1: do you count like all the energy needed to run
Speaker 1: the whole system. We'll get there, But here on Earth
Speaker 1: we're not trying to replicate exactly the same reaction that
Speaker 1: happens in the Sun because that requires really high density
Speaker 1: and really high temperatures. And so here on Earth we
Speaker 1: try to fuse deterium and tritium, which are particular is
Speaker 1: it hopes of hydrogen. So deterium is a proton plus
Speaker 1: a neutron, and tritium is a proton plus two neutrons,
Speaker 1: and so these are advantageous because fusion can happen at
Speaker 1: a lower temperature for deuterium and tritium than they can
Speaker 1: for just like pure protons. So those are the ones
Speaker 1: that we're trying to achieve here on Earth.
Speaker 3: And you led an absolutely fascinating episode on whether or
Speaker 3: not we have enough touterium and tritium on Earth to
Speaker 3: be able to power the whole Earth using fusion. So
Speaker 3: listeners should go back and listen to that again because
Speaker 3: I remember thinking that that was like totally fascinating, all
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff that I didn't know before.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to hit the daniels An awesome button.
Speaker 2: Daniel is awesome, and.
Speaker 3: I love that we're making a bunch of work for
Speaker 3: our amazing audio engineer because I think every time we've
Speaker 3: mentioned a button, our audio engineer probably is going to
Speaker 3: come up with a different button.
Speaker 4: Sound.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Matt.
Speaker 1: Very cool. And so to answer the question you asked earlier,
Speaker 1: like how do we use this energy and actually turn
Speaker 1: it into two? Well, depends a lot on the fuel
Speaker 1: that we're using, Like, for example, if you have helium three,
Speaker 1: then your fusion doesn't produce neutrons, and so the output
Speaker 1: of the reaction depends on exactly the fusion you're making.
Speaker 1: The reactions we're making, like magnetized fusion, do tend to
Speaker 1: produce a lot of neutrons, and so people are working
Speaker 1: on like how do you take these neutrons and turn
Speaker 1: them into electricity? And the idea is to have like
Speaker 1: a lithium blanket, like to wrap your reactor in lithium,
Speaker 1: and because what happens when you hit the lithium blanket
Speaker 1: with these high speed neutrons is it turns the lithium
Speaker 1: into tritium, which is fuel for your reactor, plus a
Speaker 1: bunch of photons, which are basically heat which then you
Speaker 1: can use to heat up steam and turn a turbine
Speaker 1: and create electricity for your toast.
Speaker 2: Oh yay, And I hope there's avocado on the toast.
Speaker 1: Yes, and maybe we can even grow those avocados using
Speaker 1: heat lamps powered by the fusion.
Speaker 3: And when we get back, we're going to go into
Speaker 3: more detail about how exactly we are trying to do
Speaker 3: hot fusion and back here on Earth.
Speaker 2: And we're back and we are.
Speaker 3: Talking about ways that we do hot fusion because we
Speaker 3: don't have the benefit of being as hot as the
Speaker 3: Sun here on Earth. And actually that's probably great because
Speaker 3: I really like being alive. And so Daniel, how do
Speaker 3: we try doing fusion here on the Earth.
Speaker 1: So one's strategy for the hot form of fusion is
Speaker 1: to try to replicate the Sun as much as possible, right, So,
Speaker 1: unfortunately we don't have the Sun's massive gravity, which self
Speaker 1: contains the fusion reaction over there in the center of
Speaker 1: the Solar system. So instead we try to use magnets. Essentially,
Speaker 1: this strategy is make a little magnetic bottle try to
Speaker 1: contain the reaction because the reaction would be so hot
Speaker 1: that like any other device you put it in, would
Speaker 1: melt it, so you need some way to hold it
Speaker 1: together kind of without touching it. And so a magnetic
Speaker 1: bottle is very cool. And a magnetic bottle works because
Speaker 1: the plasma you need for fusion is charged. Right, you
Speaker 1: take a gas, you heat it up, it becomes charged particles.
Speaker 1: And now you have another way to control those particles
Speaker 1: because you can push and pull on them with electromagnetic fields.
Speaker 1: So if you build magnetic fields in such a way
Speaker 1: that charge particles are always bent, sort of the way
Speaker 1: they are at a SuperCollider, then they just zoom around
Speaker 1: in a circle. And so the magnetic fields of a
Speaker 1: tokomac create these helical paths that keep the plasma from
Speaker 1: hitting the walls. Instead, they spiral around, and so you
Speaker 1: get this doughnut shaped chamber where the plasma zooms around
Speaker 1: really high temperature, but it's also contained and so it
Speaker 1: maintains its density.
Speaker 3: I kind of love the idea that, like, I still
Speaker 3: I still think about magnets as like a thing that
Speaker 3: kids play with, you know, like a kid's toy, but
Speaker 3: it does also end up being the case that, like,
Speaker 3: if you can create the most amazing magnets on Earth,
Speaker 3: you can probably create the cleanest power source that would
Speaker 3: like save the planet, And I think that's kind of awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you could build super powerful magnets, not only
Speaker 1: could you make fusion much easier, but particle physics would
Speaker 1: be much easier. We are like limited by the strength
Speaker 1: of our magnets. Our magnets were a thousand times stronger,
Speaker 1: then we wouldn't need huge tunnels, right, and so you
Speaker 1: would learn so much about the universe if you invented
Speaker 1: amazing magnets. So yes, somebody get on that. Remember, the
Speaker 1: most powerful magnets on Earth are the explosive kind, right,
Speaker 1: the ones where they like blow them up.
Speaker 3: But yet that won't work for regular fusion power. That's
Speaker 3: not going to help my alvocado toast.
Speaker 1: But the theme here is somehow you got to get
Speaker 1: your protons to fuse, and the way you do is
Speaker 1: by getting them close together, which is hard to do.
Speaker 1: So the strategy for magnetic fusion is squeeze them, get
Speaker 1: them hot, and get them dense, and that's hard to
Speaker 1: do here on Earth, and so we do by squeezing
Speaker 1: our plasma with magnetic fields. And the goal here is
Speaker 1: stick at the plasma to last a long time. If
Speaker 1: you can get it stable, and you can get it
Speaker 1: zooming around. Then those protons will bounce into each other
Speaker 1: because they have lots of opportunities, and then eventually they
Speaker 1: will fuse and then will produce energy and you'll reach
Speaker 1: ignition and then it'll be hot and other protons will
Speaker 1: fuse and Kelly will get her toast.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you told me that fusion doesn't even happen
Speaker 3: that often in the Sun, that you could have a
Speaker 3: proton live for like a billion years without fusing, And
Speaker 3: so now I'm feeling way more negative about our prospects
Speaker 3: for fusion here on Earth because that seems crazy. And
Speaker 3: so our plasma needs to be like hotter and more
Speaker 3: dense than the Sun to have a chance for.
Speaker 2: This to work. Those are hot, those are long odds.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't have to be hotter or denser than
Speaker 1: the Sun, because remember we're going for an easier kind
Speaker 1: of fusion, deterior and treatium fusion can be cold.
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But the challenge here really is keeping the plasma going,
Speaker 1: because plasma is a bunch of really hot particles and
Speaker 1: they're going really really fast and it's unstable. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: you have magnetic feet fields. But these things are a
Speaker 1: gas with magnetic charges, and like gases already have turbulence
Speaker 1: in them, now you add electric magnetic fields internal to them,
Speaker 1: and the magnetic fields are trying to control the particles.
Speaker 1: A little instability very rapidly turns into a big instability,
Speaker 1: and so getting a tookomac to build a plasma and
Speaker 1: keep it going has been the big challenge. The record
Speaker 1: I've seen is twenty two minutes is the longest they've
Speaker 1: ever had a stable plasma, which is amazing because I
Speaker 1: actually did plasma research one of my first experiences back
Speaker 1: when I was in college, and back then it was
Speaker 1: like less than a minute. So to see that progress
Speaker 1: is encouraging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome, and this.
Speaker 1: Is basically the leading form of fusion research. There's a
Speaker 1: huge project called Eater which is being built in France,
Speaker 1: which plans for its first plasma in the mid twenty thirties,
Speaker 1: eventually a power plant in the mid twenty fifties. It's
Speaker 1: costing like billions and billions, so the plant is make
Speaker 1: it work, demonstrated actually can produce energy, and then somehow
Speaker 1: figure out how to shrink the cost us. But there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of exciting private companies jumping into this area.
Speaker 1: This company called Commonwealth Fusion and folks who are trying
Speaker 1: exciting ways to sort of bring the scale down, you know,
Speaker 1: lasers plus plasma, all sorts of crazy ideas which are
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. So there's a possibility that like
Speaker 1: a fusion startup might crack this problem before the sort
Speaker 1: of big government project.
Speaker 2: I'm rooting for them, No Commonwealth Fusion.
Speaker 1: The other approach for getting protons together is not to
Speaker 1: go for time, but to go for increased density. So
Speaker 1: this is a laser approach, and it's called inertial confinement.
Speaker 1: Rather than get into conditions you need for plasma and
Speaker 1: having them last long enough that the protons fuse, just
Speaker 1: go for like really high density, very very briefly, and
Speaker 1: the idea here is you have like a little pellet
Speaker 1: of fuel and use zap it on all sides with
Speaker 1: a laser which explodes the outside of it and implodes
Speaker 1: the inside, right, So it's like a little compression way
Speaker 1: that shoots down towards the core of this little pellet
Speaker 1: and then it's dense. And I remember, fusion really depends
Speaker 1: on the density and the temperature, so Now fusion happens
Speaker 1: really fast in the core. After like thirty nanoseconds of compression,
Speaker 1: it goes from like the density of water to like
Speaker 1: one hundred times the density of lead. And the fusion
Speaker 1: happens faster than this pellet can blow itself apart. It's
Speaker 1: really incredible. Wow.
Speaker 2: And then that would just happen over and over and
Speaker 2: over again, and you would collect.
Speaker 1: It happens once. Right, you zap this pellet, you get
Speaker 1: a little burst of fusion, and then it's done. So
Speaker 1: in that sense, they've achieved ignition that like the pellet
Speaker 1: has used itself up. But then you got to start
Speaker 1: all over again with a new pellet, right, And so
Speaker 1: this is the real challenge is that like you need
Speaker 1: like a production chain of all of these pellets. You
Speaker 1: have to account for the energy you spent building these
Speaker 1: pellets in your accounting of like are we getting output?
Speaker 1: And you got to start over and over again. So
Speaker 1: it's like a series of these little mini reactions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so like if you're gonna have a power plant,
Speaker 3: you'd have to like over and over again be like
Speaker 3: pep collecting. That sounds like it would be complex.
Speaker 1: That's actually what the laser sound like, have you been there?
Speaker 2: It's incredible, King, No, I'm just really smart.
Speaker 1: So the current leading edge here is the National Ignition
Speaker 1: Facility has one hundred and ninety two lasers and it's
Speaker 1: been doing really, really well. And this year in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, they reached a gain of four point one
Speaker 1: point three, which means the energy that came out relative
Speaker 1: to the energy that they put in. But there's a
Speaker 1: couple of big asterisks there as Trisk number one is
Speaker 1: that's not energy they captured. It's just like theoretically energy produced,
Speaker 1: some of which would be hard to capture and some
Speaker 1: of which easier to capture. Is they're definitely not getting
Speaker 1: all of it. There's gonna be some efficiency factor in
Speaker 1: front of the energy that comes out, And they don't
Speaker 1: really account for all the energy they put in. They
Speaker 1: count for all the energy that landed on the target
Speaker 1: and was absorbed, right, not all the energy they spent
Speaker 1: producing that energy, some of which landed on the target.
Speaker 1: So it's like you have a tiny pixie cup and
Speaker 1: you emptied a swimming pool on top of it, and
Speaker 1: then you only counted the water that landed in the cup.
Speaker 1: It's like all right, yeah, but the energy required to
Speaker 1: run the lasers is like more than one hundred times
Speaker 1: the energy that's delivered on the target. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's some nice accounting here, and I'm all for salesman
Speaker 1: shipping science, but also let's be clear they're not producing energy, all.
Speaker 3: Right, We're not ready to make our toast using this
Speaker 3: method yet exactly.
Speaker 1: And so both of these are trying to do the
Speaker 1: same thing, which is squeeze protons together. How do you
Speaker 1: get protons close enough that they will fuse, So either
Speaker 1: magnets or initial confinement with lasers, both of those are
Speaker 1: trying to do the same thing, and both of those
Speaker 1: require a lot of heat, right, And so naturally people
Speaker 1: have wondered for a long time, is it possible to
Speaker 1: do fusion without that heat? Can we have some other
Speaker 1: way to squeeze protons together at room temperature? And that's
Speaker 1: the promise, that's the dream of cold fusion, and cold
Speaker 1: fusion is not just a silly movie starring Keana Reeves
Speaker 1: or a scam from the eighty It's a real area
Speaker 1: of research and there are some possibilities here.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I imagine if you are studying cold fusion,
Speaker 3: you probably get a lot of a lot of people
Speaker 3: who are skeptical. Okay, all right, so let's dig into
Speaker 3: the science here.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So it's true, cold fusion gets a lot of flack,
Speaker 1: and I've heard it described as confusion instead of cold fusion.
Speaker 2: But confusion, yeah, exactly. All right, So I'm guessing we're
Speaker 2: not talking about deuterium and tritium anymore.
Speaker 1: No, we're not. We're just talking about wasting of protons
Speaker 1: closer together at room temperature. So one idea is to
Speaker 1: use muons. So the idea is that if you take
Speaker 1: a hydrogen atom and you take off the electron and
Speaker 1: you replace it with a muon, then the orbit of
Speaker 1: the muon is going to be smaller than the electrons' orbits,
Speaker 1: and that means essentially the atom is closer and so
Speaker 1: you can get these things closer together. So protons with
Speaker 1: muons around them are electrically neutral, so they get close
Speaker 1: to each other, and the muons are close to the protons,
Speaker 1: and so that can effectively get the protons closer.
Speaker 2: Together and you still get the same amount of power out.
Speaker 1: You still get the same amount of power out. And
Speaker 1: the reason that muons get closer to the protons than
Speaker 1: the electrons is that muons are much higher mass. They're
Speaker 1: like two hundred times the mass of the electron, and
Speaker 1: the radius of the lowest energy level depends on the mass.
Speaker 1: And don't think about these things in terms of orbits,
Speaker 1: because orbits are misleading. You know, this is a quantum
Speaker 1: object in the lowest stationary state, but still there's a
Speaker 1: distribution of expected radii there and it depends on the
Speaker 1: mass of the particle. So muons get much closer to
Speaker 1: the protons because they are heavier. And this is actually
Speaker 1: something that's pretty well established, like you can make muonic hydrogen.
Speaker 1: You can squeeze these things together. In the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: they did these experiments and you get fusion and you
Speaker 1: get energy out.
Speaker 2: So why not do that, Well, it's.
Speaker 3: Hot, wouldn't that make everything work better?
Speaker 1: Well, the problem is if you make this hot, then
Speaker 1: the muons are no longer bound to the protons, right,
Speaker 1: you get plasma and then you're back to the same situation.
Speaker 1: So that actually only works at lower temperature when the
Speaker 1: muons are low energy and they're bound to the protons.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you might be wondering, why aren't we all
Speaker 1: eating muon toast right now, right, Why am I not
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast powered by muonic fusion? This thing
Speaker 1: says they've made this work, And the answer is the
Speaker 1: same as sort of laser fusion. It works, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't produce energy because it costs a lot of energy
Speaker 1: to make muons. Muons are not something you can find
Speaker 1: around the way you can find protons. Protons are just hydrogen.
Speaker 1: Hydrogen is the most abundant thing in the universe. It's
Speaker 1: literally all around us. Not hard to find hydrogen, and
Speaker 1: so making a hydrogen source is not hard, although as
Speaker 1: we said earlier, for like magnetic fusion, you actually need tritium,
Speaker 1: which is harder to find anyway. Muons are not everywhere.
Speaker 1: You've got to make them, and you've got to build
Speaker 1: these muonic hydrogen essentially one at a time and put
Speaker 1: them together. And so nobody's cracked that puzzle, like how
Speaker 1: do we make enough muonic hydrogen cheap enough so we
Speaker 1: can actually recoup some of this energy and make money.
Speaker 1: And there are companies. There's a company called acceleron Fusion
Speaker 1: that's working on making high efficiency muon sources and dense
Speaker 1: fusion cells, and they've claimed like hundreds of hours of
Speaker 1: continuous fusion in their prototypes, but they still haven't cracked
Speaker 1: the puzzle of making it produce more energy than it
Speaker 1: costs to build the fuel. Wow, because if you're spending
Speaker 1: a lot of money and energy making the fuel, then
Speaker 1: you know you're not actually producing energy, you're losing it.
Speaker 3: Okay, So definitely not conspiracy theory, but not making toast
Speaker 3: yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is like not a huge research effort,
Speaker 1: but there are definitely people working on this. It's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing where like one big breakthrough could really
Speaker 1: change the game for sure. So you know, cold fusion
Speaker 1: is a legitimate area of research, especially in the muonic direction.
Speaker 3: Okay, but this isn't the end of the outline, so
Speaker 3: I'm guessing that means there's other ways.
Speaker 2: To do cold fusion.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, there are.
Speaker 3: So let's take a break and when we come back,
Speaker 3: let's talk a little bit more about the history of
Speaker 3: cold fusion and how it got its bad name.
Speaker 2: Okay, and we're back.
Speaker 3: And as we mentioned at the top of the show,
Speaker 3: Kelly thought cold fusion was like conspiracy level bad science,
Speaker 3: which now she feels really well and she being me,
Speaker 3: now I feel really bad about because it turns out
Speaker 3: there are actually people studying cold fusion, and now I
Speaker 3: feel like a jerk. So, Daniel, how did cold fusion
Speaker 3: end up getting such a bad name.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a famous nineteen eighty nine experiment that claimed
Speaker 1: to have achieved energy production and they didn't use muons.
Speaker 1: They used another approach, which is again a legitimate concept,
Speaker 1: and this is using palladium. So palladium is just an
Speaker 1: element and it forms a crystal and has this really
Speaker 1: weird property that it will absorb hydrogen very happily, like
Speaker 1: a lot of hydrogen. If you have like a cubic
Speaker 1: centimeter or polydium, it can absorb nine hundred times that
Speaker 1: volume of hydrogen into that crystal. It like loves packing
Speaker 1: in the hydrogen, which is weird, and chemistry nerves would
Speaker 1: be like, yay, cool. This is fascinating. But from a
Speaker 1: physics point of view, this is important because this brings
Speaker 1: protons together, right, It like holds them together. The whole
Speaker 1: goal of fusion is like bring protons together in some way.
Speaker 1: They either make them hot so they overcome the Colombic barrier,
Speaker 1: or compress them with inertial confinement fusion, or make them
Speaker 1: neutral and bring them close with muons. Palladium says, hey,
Speaker 1: I can bring protons together, no problem. So for like
Speaker 1: more than one hundred years, people have thought this might
Speaker 1: be a way to achieve fusion at room temperatures. Just
Speaker 1: jam a bunch of protons into your palladium crystal and
Speaker 1: see what happens. And there's actually an experiment in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties Pinnett and Peters claim to have achieved fusion
Speaker 1: cold fusion using polladium. Later they had to retract these
Speaker 1: results because they couldn't be repeated. But there's like a
Speaker 1: history of overblowing cold fusion claims that go back more
Speaker 1: than a century.
Speaker 2: What who are Penefan Peters.
Speaker 3: Were they like serious physicists or were they just like,
Speaker 3: do you got to tell me more than that? Were
Speaker 3: they just dinguses who didn't like collect their data well?
Speaker 3: Or were they trying to like trick everybody.
Speaker 1: These were real Austrian scientists, and I think they were
Speaker 1: doing careful work. Later they retracted their own report because
Speaker 1: they realized they didn't understand the background of what they
Speaker 1: were measuring from the air. They were turning hydrogen to
Speaker 1: helium right, and they weren't measuring the heat output. They
Speaker 1: were just measuring the helium and they mismeasured essentially how
Speaker 1: much helium there was in the air. And so it
Speaker 1: turns out the air it would just naturally occur helium
Speaker 1: they were measuring, So like pretty big oops, but not
Speaker 1: scam artists as far as I know.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, good on them for retracting their own paper.
Speaker 3: We all make mistakes sometimes, Sorry, Penethan Peters.
Speaker 1: And then a few years later a Swedish scientist, John Trenberg,
Speaker 1: was trying to use palladium also, and he applied for
Speaker 1: a patent based on his efforts. But because of Penethan
Speaker 1: Peter's retraction, nobody was going to believe in cold fusion,
Speaker 1: and so his patent application was denied.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, but had he actually made his measurements
Speaker 3: correctly or should his patent application have been denied because
Speaker 3: there was no good science to back it up.
Speaker 1: Well, it turns out he was doing work which is
Speaker 1: very similar to the work that was done in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine where cold fusion became famous. So this is
Speaker 1: the work of Fleischmann and Ponds, and they used a
Speaker 1: palladium electrode and deuterium and the idea is to do
Speaker 1: electrolysis of heavy water. So you have the palladium lattice
Speaker 1: and deuterium, and deuterium is just that isotope of hydrogen, right,
Speaker 1: and so you force the hydrogen into the palladium lattice
Speaker 1: and then you put it under a current. So that's
Speaker 1: why it's an electrode, and it makes these very high
Speaker 1: densities and maybe that deuterium can overcome that Columbic barrier.
Speaker 1: That's the idea. So this is what Ponds and Flashman
Speaker 1: did in nineteen eighty nine. They had this heavy water,
Speaker 1: which means water with deterium in it, so that deterium
Speaker 1: is there to be absorbed into the lattice and then
Speaker 1: they run the current and what they claim was to
Speaker 1: see huge spikes in the heat produced. So unlike penethompeters
Speaker 1: and weren't measuring the helium, they were looking for the
Speaker 1: heat and they calculated like how much heat could potentially
Speaker 1: be produced by any chemical reaction they're aware of, and
Speaker 1: this was much more heat than anything they could expect
Speaker 1: from chemistry. So they're like, wow, look at this. We
Speaker 1: have an experiment which is fusing and producing heat, and
Speaker 1: yet it's running at room temperature.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Well, so if it couldn't be explained by chemistry, I
Speaker 3: guess they're saying that, then it's explained by physics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but isn't physics and chemistry.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, that's kind of the same thing, isn't it.
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see what you mean by chemistry. I mean
Speaker 1: like any non fusion process, right, okay, because you expect
Speaker 1: you have like heavy water here, you have electricity, you
Speaker 1: got some stuff that's going to happen, and you can
Speaker 1: get heat produced. But we're talking about heat that could
Speaker 1: not be produced by anything other than fusion, Okay. And
Speaker 1: so these guys went out with the story and University
Speaker 1: of Utah, where they were working, was very excited, and
Speaker 1: they put out a press release and they got a
Speaker 1: lot of coverage, and for a moment, everybody thought, oh wow,
Speaker 1: maybe cold fusion has been achieved, And so other labs
Speaker 1: in the United States very quickly went to replicate these results. Because,
Speaker 1: as we talked about it in our episode about how
Speaker 1: science works, it's not just like peer review where you
Speaker 1: like read the article and say does this make any sense?
Speaker 1: But the gold standard for science really is replication, and
Speaker 1: other people independently in a different laboratory with like slightly
Speaker 1: different assumptions and different details, and like different temperatures in
Speaker 1: the outside, and you're in New Jersey instead of in Utah.
Speaker 1: If this is real physics, it should happen everywhere. But
Speaker 1: no replication attempts succeeded. There were a couple where people
Speaker 1: are like, oh wait, maybe no, and so nobody could
Speaker 1: reproduce these results. But of course this is still a
Speaker 1: big deal. ColdFusion is like a very exciting and the
Speaker 1: claims are very strong. So the Department of Energy put
Speaker 1: together the whole panel to review this in detail, like
Speaker 1: what is going on. They studied this for a long time,
Speaker 1: and they found that like, on one hand, nobody could
Speaker 1: reproduce these results, Like all the experiments that tried to
Speaker 1: reproduce this setup and the conditions exactly none of them
Speaker 1: saw these heat flashes. And the guys who worked on
Speaker 1: the theory couldn't get the calculations to support what these
Speaker 1: guys were claiming, like even in theory, you shouldn't get
Speaker 1: enough fusion to produce really any significant heat in this setup.
Speaker 1: And so the whole thing sort of fell apart, and
Speaker 1: it was a tragedy because they got a lot of
Speaker 1: pressed and so a lot of the public thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is the wave of the future, and then we
Speaker 1: discovered it turns out it's not real.
Speaker 3: So in the earlier case, it's like it was a
Speaker 3: measurement error. They didn't measure something that they should have.
Speaker 3: But here it sounds like they are measuring something that
Speaker 3: didn't exist, like heat that nobody else is finding. But
Speaker 3: surely they must have expected that people were going to
Speaker 3: try this and then would also not find the heat.
Speaker 3: And so what happened? Did they like not account for
Speaker 3: the lighter that someone was holding underneath the device, Like,
Speaker 3: what is what's going on here?
Speaker 1: It's a good question. The answer comes down to, chemistry
Speaker 1: is really hard, and effectively, they didn't correctly calculate how
Speaker 1: much heat could be produced by non fusion chemistry effects,
Speaker 1: and it turns out there's more heat that can be
Speaker 1: produced by chemistry in this situation than they expected, and
Speaker 1: this led to them to underestimate the basically the chemistry
Speaker 1: contribution and to attribute the rest of this to fusion.
Speaker 2: Well, the answer is chemistry is really hard.
Speaker 3: Then they have my sympathy, So I'm all right, it's
Speaker 3: poor guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, on the other.
Speaker 3: Hand, check your work before you make a huge reason.
Speaker 3: Can you release a huge result?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know, they never saw like the
Speaker 1: smoking gun of fusion. They saw heat produced, but they
Speaker 1: also should have seen like neutrons produced, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: So it's not like they had a unique setup and
Speaker 1: it was doing cold fusion and nobody else could replicate
Speaker 1: it because of some detail of their experiment. It just
Speaker 1: didn't even coherently make sense. And digging into it later,
Speaker 1: people discovered that like the way they calibrated their device
Speaker 1: and the way they were calculating what they expected from
Speaker 1: non fusion sources was just wrong. And so that's too bad.
Speaker 1: But you know, there was still a lot of excitement
Speaker 1: about this, and though Ponds and Flashmen didn't have any
Speaker 1: more support in the United States, there was excitement around
Speaker 1: the world and these guys got like ten million dollars
Speaker 1: piles of money from the government in France or in
Speaker 1: Japan to go do their research and follow up, which
Speaker 1: I think is great. Like, you know, at the time,
Speaker 1: maybe there was some other way you could do it.
Speaker 1: Maybe they were on the right track, like this definitely
Speaker 1: is a prospect, but unfortunately they never achieved any results
Speaker 1: that were useful at all.
Speaker 3: Summer all right, But there are some people who still
Speaker 3: had the guts to push forward. Even though the field
Speaker 3: has sort of gotten a bad name at that.
Speaker 1: Points, there are still people working on this stuff. Google
Speaker 1: recently had a ten million dollar multi year project to
Speaker 1: test some of these things. They're like, let's do this rigorously,
Speaker 1: let's really calibrate our calorimeters, let's really understand the chemistry.
Speaker 1: And in twenty nineteen they published a paper in Nature
Speaker 1: saying there was no evidence of cold fusion, but they
Speaker 1: did improve their experimental techniques and they were able to
Speaker 1: understand how you would measure it if it was there,
Speaker 1: and so it showed that, like you can do careful
Speaker 1: science here. Although there's still a lot of challenges, there's
Speaker 1: still work happening in Japan and in Italy. There's private
Speaker 1: companies working on this kind of stuff, other people exploring,
Speaker 1: So there are definitely people working on this. And just
Speaker 1: last year I saw a call from DARPA four grand
Speaker 1: proposals about cold fusion. You know, like DARPA is famous
Speaker 1: for being out there and like funding crazy things. So
Speaker 1: there's definitely like active interest and people are working on it,
Speaker 1: and if you have a good idea, there's money for it.
Speaker 1: But there's also the dark side of cold fusion, you know,
Speaker 1: which is the conspiracy theories. There is some segment of
Speaker 1: folks out there pushing a story that Ponds and Flashman
Speaker 1: did achieve cold fusion, that it was real, and it
Speaker 1: was for some reasons that never made sense to me,
Speaker 1: covered up by the government. I think the story is like,
Speaker 1: the hot fusion folks were getting a lot of money
Speaker 1: and the cold fusion would threaten that, and so the
Speaker 1: hot fusion people had a conflict of interest and they
Speaker 1: were criticizing cold fusion because it challenged the mainstream narrative
Speaker 1: about hot fusion, et cetera, et cetera, and therefore it
Speaker 1: was pushed aside. And if you're working on cold fusion,
Speaker 1: nobody would take you seriously. And you know, the real
Speaker 1: story is like, no, there was money for cold fusion.
Speaker 1: There is money for cold fusion. If you have an idea,
Speaker 1: people are interested. There's private money, there's government money. That's
Speaker 1: definitely people looking into it. And Pons and Fleischmann's work
Speaker 1: was analyzed it. They tried to replicate it, they tried
Speaker 1: to understand it. It was given a fair shake, and yet
Speaker 1: there's still this you know, conspiracy that's like whold documentaries
Speaker 1: out there about like how the results were real and
Speaker 1: they were ignored by mainstream physics, and it's just this
Speaker 1: like extension of anti science conspiracy theory nonsense. But you
Speaker 1: know it's pushed by your usual set of grifters.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that's too bad.
Speaker 1: It's too bad. And so you know, mainstream science is
Speaker 1: skeptical about this, like nobody's ever done this in an
Speaker 1: effective way. But also people are skeptical about magnetic fusion
Speaker 1: and inertial confinement fusion, right, like neither of these have
Speaker 1: shown that they actually will produce energy in any realistic way.
Speaker 1: And there's money for both directions. There's definitely more money
Speaker 1: for hot fusion than there is for cold fusion because
Speaker 1: I think it's shown more promise and there's like at
Speaker 1: least a theory of how it would work. People are
Speaker 1: still struggling to understand on the cold fusion side, how
Speaker 1: in principle you even would make this work. Like it's
Speaker 1: more than just the engineering challenges. It's like, could you
Speaker 1: even produce enough energy in theory if you overcame all
Speaker 1: the engineering challenges, and so there's definitely some obstacles there
Speaker 1: for cold fusion, but I would say not impossible. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a dark horse, but it's still possible, and there
Speaker 1: are opportunities.
Speaker 3: There, and people are following up on them and they're
Speaker 3: getting money for us.
Speaker 2: So correct.
Speaker 1: And so if you want to make Canu Reeves look
Speaker 1: good and make the premise of that movie sound maybe
Speaker 1: more realistic, then hey, invest in cold fusion or make
Speaker 1: it work yourself. You could change the world.
Speaker 3: Daniel Keanu Reeves is doing a fine job looking good
Speaker 3: on his own.
Speaker 2: He doesn't need anyone's help.
Speaker 1: Because you know, the promise of cold fusion is amazing.
Speaker 1: If we could achieve cold fusion, then it might be
Speaker 1: possible to have really small, very safe reactors. You know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to have a bunch of lasers or
Speaker 1: a bunch of hot gas. You could miniaturize them. You
Speaker 1: could have like fusion inside your toaster, not just getting
Speaker 1: electricity from the grid from some massive power plant. You
Speaker 1: could have like tiny little fusion reactors and everything. Instead
Speaker 1: of batteries, you could have fusion reactors. That would be awesome.
Speaker 1: You know, your phone can have a fusion reactor in
Speaker 1: it and basically burn forever. That would be incredible, but
Speaker 1: we're still far from that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. This is a serious science show. Yes,
Speaker 3: that would be amazing. And I am excited that people
Speaker 3: are working on a lot of this stuff from a
Speaker 3: lot of different angles, because you never know what's going
Speaker 3: to end up being the angle that works, and so
Speaker 3: it's good to have a lot of different brains working
Speaker 3: in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And we benefit from a diversity of curiosity
Speaker 1: and a diversity of optimism. And so get out there,
Speaker 1: people solve this problem for us. Kelly needs her toast.
Speaker 3: I do, I do, and I'd like it to be
Speaker 3: made in a clean way.
Speaker 1: All right, Thanks everyone for coming along on this latest
Speaker 1: journey of curiosity.
Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: We really would. We want to know what questions you
Speaker 1: have about this Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 3: We want to know your thoughts on and shows, suggestions
Speaker 3: for future shows. If you contact us, we will get
Speaker 3: back to you.
Speaker 1: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us
Speaker 1: at questions at Danielandkelly.
Speaker 3: Dot org, or you can find us on social media,
Speaker 3: we have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky and on
Speaker 3: all of those platforms.
Speaker 2: You can find us at D and K universe.
Speaker 1: Don't be shy, write to us