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This man claims to have made one of
the most remarkable breakthroughs

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in modern science.

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If he is right, then he has found a revolutionary new way

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to create a form of energy that could transform our world.

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It's called Nuclear Fusion.

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It would mean that you could take water

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to fuel your car

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That would ensure that 10 billion people over the next 10.000 years
would not have to worry about producing energy.

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But others accuse him of bad science.

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Threatens to bring back the ghost of one
of science's most notorious episodes.

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It has blown up into one of the biggest
scientific controverses of recent years.

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So, tonight, Horizon will try to sort out the matter, once and for all.

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If you can't reproduce it, it's not science.

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Unless somebody else can reproduce this data,
it will just sort of wither away.

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We have assembled a team of experts to conduct
a unique experiment to test out these claims.

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If the result is positive then this man
will be on the way to a Nobel Prize,

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and a dream of a shortcut to a world with
unlimited cheap energy could finally be within reach.

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But if it fails one of the great dreams of science will surely die.

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The small town of Oak Ridge in Tennessee has witnessed
some remarkable scientific discoveries.

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The first atom bombs were developed here.

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And since then the Oak Ridge National Laboratory

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has been home to some of the US Government's
most secret nuclear research projects.

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Now one of its scientists Rusi Taleyarkhan

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claims to have found something that could be
an even bigger breakthrough for mankind.

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It's something that could potentially liberate
millions of people trapped in poverty.

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Save us from global warming.

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And transform the entire global economy.

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It would raise the standard of living and have people be able to stand up

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and I guess be counted as human beings rather than be treated like dirt,

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the world would be a much better place, for everybody.

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That would be the crowning glory of my life if I can, if I can make it happen.

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But the claimed breakthrough has been condemned by many fellow scientists.

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And Rusi Taleyarkhan has faced a storm of criticism.

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We had to stand firm on what we believed to be right.

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We knew that whatever data was obtained was obtained
under the best of circumstances with the best of intentions,

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and with whatever resources we had.
And we believed the data.

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What Rusi Taleyarkhan claims to have found
is one of sciences holiest grails,

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Nuclear Fusion.

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Nuclear fusion is nature's atomic power.
At the core of stars like our sun,

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conditions are so hot and so extreme

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that atoms of hydrogen are forced together until they fuse.

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This natural nuclear reaction gives off
massive amounts of heat, light and energy.

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And many scientists are convinced that fusion
could provide cheap energy for mankind

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forever.

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Because here on earth exactly the right fuel
needed for fusion is locked inside water,

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the stuff that covers most of our planet.

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So every river, every lake, every ocean
is a potential source of energy.

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Enough for everyone on the entire planet for millions of years.

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And to cap it all, nuclear fusion is clean.

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So it would spell an end to global warming. And unlike
conventional nuclear power there would be no nuclear waste.

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Not surprisingly realising this dream has
been a goal of scientists for decades.

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Fusion is one of the great quests of science, it's one of the great

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things that we would like to be able to do like finding a cure for cancer.

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And we've known for fifty, sixty years that
there's this unbelievable amounts of energy

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that we could get if we could just figure out how to do it.

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The key to releasing that energy was heat.

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Temperatures in the core of the sun are
an unimaginable ten million degrees.

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And recreating those conditions here on earth has been
one of the most difficult scientific endeavours of all time.

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Nature does fusion, nature does fusion in the centre of the sun.

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But if you wanted to do it on earth you've
got to recreate some kind of condition

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like the centre of the sun, that's difficult.

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For over thirty years and at a cost of billions, mammoth
fusion machines were built to try and achieve this goal.

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But the experiments always used up more energy than they ever produced.

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Until in 1991 a team at this laboratory in Oxfordshire

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finally succeeded in producing enough energy to light up a few houses.

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But it lasted for just one second.

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A few years later the same team were back at it.

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This time they produced enough energy to light up a small town,

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for just four seconds.

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These bursts of energy were so short lived

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that fusion scientists had to admit that the practical
reality of a world with unlimited clean energy

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was still as far away as ever.

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But some scientists dreamt of an easier way
to achieve nuclear fusion, a short cut

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that would get mankind there quicker and cheaper.

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It was a dream that led to one of the most
infamous scientific episodes of all time.

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On the 23rd March 1989, Professor Martin Fleischmann
made the most extraordinary claim.

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That he and a colleague, Stanley Ponds, had
discovered a simple way of doing fusion

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that didn't seem to cost the earth,

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it was called cold fusion.

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Well the belief is that in order to
create fusion we have to slam

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two atoms together. Bang, we have to slam them together.

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And that has been the background to attempts to create hot fusion.

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And what we were saying is no, no, no, no, no, it may be
that you can achieve fusion under much milder conditions.

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What they had done seemed truly revolutionary.

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They had taken a test tube of the fuel for fusion,
a type of hydrogen called deuterium,

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passed a simple electric current through it

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and made the atoms fuse together.

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Nuclear fusion seemed to be happening almost effortlessly, in a test tube,

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and it caused a sensation.

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Two scientists are claiming a breakthrough
in the production of energy by nuclear fusion.

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The same process that powers the sun.

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It's been a dream of scientists for decades.

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Dr Ponds is an instant celebrity here….

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Ponds and Fleischmann became household names,
as the idea of a cheap solution

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to all of mankind's energy problems caught the world's imagination.

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The rest of the scientific community quickly
scrambled to catch up with Ponds and Fleischmann

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and repeat what they had done.

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Any scientific process ought to be able to be reproduced exactly.

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Like about you know a hundred or maybe
two hundred of the labs around the world,

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within a day Princeton had set up some cold fusion experiments
and everybody was trying to replicate the results.

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Several hundred research teams around the world
have been trying to prove the cold fusion theory.

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..rushing to replicate its test, the results of an
apparently successful nuclear fusion experiment…

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Could be a hundred million dollars worth
of research was done in a couple of weeks

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In terms of all the people's salaries that were paid for their time,

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all the people who were thinking about it,
all the people who were trying to reproduce it,

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all the people who were spending their time carefully
reading the paper and trying to understand.

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The world waited expectantly to see if the results could be reproduced.

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And to begin with it seemed to go well.

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Scientists of the University of Texas
say they've repeated the experiment

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which claims to create nuclear fusion at room temperature.

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One, zero, nine, ok.

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This morning's pictures from the Texas University
showed energy and maybe history in the making.

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The key was tiny particles called neutrons.

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When ever fusion happens neutrons are given off,
so in theory the presence of neutrons

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would prove that fusion had taken place.

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But there was a complication.

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On a small scale neutron detection is notoriously difficult,

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because just tiny amounts of neutrons are produced.

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And these can easily be confused with something else,

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naturally occurring background neutrons produced
by the sun and found all around us here on earth.

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And as neutron readings were double checked
the picture began to change.

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Britain's leading atomic scientists have poured
cold water on the idea of cold fusion.

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British scientists who have carried out extensive
tests say there's no evidence that it works.

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This would have been a very significant discovery and we're
very sad that we've put all this effort in and failed to find anything.

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Most groups across the globe eventually agreed
that all they could find were background neutrons.

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But it had taken several months and cost
millions of pounds to reach that conclusion.

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With no fusion neutrons whatever was
happening simply couldn't be fusion.

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And so what had started as the biggest scientific breakthrough in the world

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turned in to a scientific embarrassment of epic proportions.

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The two researchers who claimed to have made
the breakthrough have made no comment themselves.

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There was a conflict situation really, the newspapers,

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which escalated in the University,

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hmm, it was very bad, hmm.

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Now, even Professor Fleischmann
acknowledges he made a mistake.

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It isn't fusion, it's not fusion in the, in the narrow sense it's not fusion.

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Charlatans, frauds, yes, well they'll say whatever they want to say.

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Professor Fleischmann continued his work
for a few years, but ever since March 23rd 1989,

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he has found it hard to get papers published in scientific journals.

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So you're just squeezed out,

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excluded, scientifically excluded.

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Well, never mind.

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It seemed that the dream of a short cut to nuclear fusion was dead.

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But then something happened to resurrect the dream.

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It began when physicist Seth Putterman heard about
something that seemed more like magic than science.

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It was a way of turning sound in to light.

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Seth Putterman was so intrigued by this idea
that he set about trying to do it himself.

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It's a process called sonoluminescence.

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The first time I saw sonoluminescence was in a darkened room.

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I was transfixed to look at this spherical flask of fluid.

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And you'd look in to the centre and in the centre
see a glowing blue purple light,

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which could be seen with the unaided eye.

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It looked like a star in the headlights.

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Seth Putterman called it the star in a jar,
a tiny spot of bright light contained in a flask of liquid.

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This star in a jar is made when a sound wave is
passed through a small bubble inside a flask of liquid,

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and this sound wave makes the bubble do something remarkable.

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First it expands, then it collapses.
And this collapse happens so violently

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that vapour molecules trapped inside
the bubble slam together and heat up so much

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that the bubble gives off an incredible burst
of heat and light, several thousand times a second,

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giving the appearance of a star.

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What made the phenomenon so exciting
was the temperature of this star in a jar.

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On its surface alone the light burns at tens of thousands of degrees.

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And Seth Putterman now contemplated a tantalising possibility.

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Could the core of the collapsing bubble
be even hotter, hot enough for fusion?

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One of the mysteries of sonoluminescence is to
determine exactly how hot the interior of the bubble gets.

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In the sun, the interior can be millions of degrees, hot enough to cause fusion.

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And the thought crossed my mind that perhaps inside the collapsing bubble,

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the interior of the bubble might also get hot enough to cause fusion.

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If so this would be something truly amazing.

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By simply bombarding tiny bubbles with sound waves,
temperatures of over ten million degrees would be created.

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And nuclear fusion, the same reaction that powers
the sun would be happening almost effortlessly

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here on earth.

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One organisation realised just what was at stake, the US Government.

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They immediately started pouring money in to
research to investigate whether sonoluminescence

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could finally be the short cut to nuclear
fusion that scientists had been dreaming of.

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And across the USA several groups set to
work trying to achieve this remarkable goal.

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One of those groups based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
was led by Rusi Taleyarkhan.

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Mid January, 2001, mid afternoon.

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Trying to look for signals.

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Now started pressing the button on our high speed scope
and just kept our fingers crossed and said let's see what comes out.

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The very first time around it started clicking.
That was extremely exciting.

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The clicking was the sound of a detector recording neutrons,
a tell tale sign of nuclear fusion.

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At the first attempt it seemed that Rusi Taleyarkhan
had done what nobody else had been able to do.

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Make his star in a jar hot enough for nuclear fusion.

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The key to his triumph was a brilliant idea.

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In sonoluminescence vapour molecules
trapped inside the bubble smashed together,

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heat up and give off a flash of light.

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But Rusi Taleyarkhan realised that too many
molecules might actually cushion the bubbles collapse.

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And so the reaction wouldn't be violent enough for fusion.

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So he started with smaller bubbles that contained
fewer vapour molecules, which he thought

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would now be forced together with much
more energy when the bubble collapsed.

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Creating a much hotter core inside his star in a jar,

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a core that would finally be hot enough for fusion.

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And in January 2001, it worked,
and he detected neutrons.

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Elated is not the right world, ecstatic
may not be the right word either,

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it was difficult to sleep soundly at night that day onwards.

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Rusi Taleyarkhan knew that his breakthrough would be big news.

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But he also knew that cold fusion had been big news
before it was comprehensibly discredited.

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So over the next few months he checked his results,
and confirmed them with other tests.

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He measured the neutrons again and again.
But the results were always the same.

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And only then was he convinced about the scale of his discovery.

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Nuclear fusion is a major finding, some people
think that it may be worthy of a Nobel Prize.

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It would be nice if it were. But I don't, I don't keep
dreaming about it just now, if it happens so be it.

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And so the dream of a shortcut to nuclear fusion,
and the prospect of unlimited clean energy

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was alive again.

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But that was just the beginning of the story, for such
a huge breakthrough to be scientifically accepted

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the results first had to be published.

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Rusi Taleyarkhan aimed high,

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and sent his paper to one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world,

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Science magazine. Its editor Don Kennedy remembered
just what had happened with cold fusion.

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With the over hang of cold fusion one would naturally be a little hesitant

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about a fusion claim that looks improbable.

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But you shouldn't ignore something because it's scary.

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I think the experiments were very well done,
I found them convincing,

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and so although we recognised that this was going
to be controversial we really thought it was

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a very interesting finding.

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Science magazine sought out the opinions
of other experts in the field.

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And although their comments were not all favourable,
Don Kennedy decided that on balance

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this remarkable paper was good enough to print.

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We felt really comfortable about going on with
the paper, comfortable in the sense that

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it was solid work from a very good laboratory by good
people and it would have to then endure the test.

221
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So on the 8th March 2002, Rusi Taleyarkhan received the
endorsement of America's most prestigious scientific journal,

222
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and his fusion results were published in Science magazine.

223
00:25:47,249 --> 00:25:56,860
And immediately ran in to a storm of criticism,
that serious flaws had somehow been overlooked.

224
00:26:06,825 --> 00:26:12,690
Ultimately many scientists felt the paper
should never have been published at all.

225
00:26:16,162 --> 00:26:21,104
Fusion research is a heavily contested field,

226
00:26:21,398 --> 00:26:28,086
both because there are reputations to be made
and because the amount of federal dollars spin on it

227
00:26:28,087 --> 00:26:33,147
is quite large and people want their share of that research support.

228
00:26:33,637 --> 00:26:41,405
So don't ever expect this to be a peaceful
domain in science, it's not going to be.

229
00:26:42,621 --> 00:26:49,132
The criticism focussed on one crucial issue,
the same issue that cold fusion had founded on,

230
00:26:49,564 --> 00:26:51,486
neutron detection.

231
00:26:53,389 --> 00:26:57,625
The best way to check if fusion was happening was to detect neutrons,

232
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:02,117
the tiny particles that are given off when atoms fuse together.

233
00:27:04,294 --> 00:27:07,334
But there was one major complicating factor,

234
00:27:08,609 --> 00:27:13,081
Rusi Taleyarkhan was also using neutrons in his experiment.

235
00:27:14,533 --> 00:27:20,790
The small bubbles that led to his breakthrough were
created with a device called a pulse neutron generator,

236
00:27:21,103 --> 00:27:24,556
which fired out over a million neutrons a second.

237
00:27:26,247 --> 00:27:31,788
And sorting out these background neutrons
from any created by a small fusion experiment,

238
00:27:31,886 --> 00:27:36,299
although possible, was no easy task.

239
00:27:38,481 --> 00:27:46,106
Some scientists suspected that Rusi Taleyarkhan's fusion
neutrons could in fact be coming from his own neutron generator.

240
00:27:47,210 --> 00:27:53,633
Bouncing around the room,
and then entering the neutron detector,

241
00:27:53,952 --> 00:27:57,360
where they were mistaken for evidence of fusion.

242
00:28:02,558 --> 00:28:08,810
Rusi Taleyarkhan had an answer.
He had conducted several control experiments

243
00:28:08,811 --> 00:28:12,022
to rule out the influence of background neutrons.

244
00:28:25,066 --> 00:28:29,332
But even in Oak Ridge there was a conflict over his work.

245
00:28:30,483 --> 00:28:36,171
The management of the laboratory was sufficiently
concerned about Rusi Taleyarkhan's fusion claim

246
00:28:36,343 --> 00:28:39,089
to ask someone else to double check it.

247
00:28:40,364 --> 00:28:43,625
And now we'll count for another two minutes and see how many we've got.

248
00:28:44,140 --> 00:28:48,602
They called in Mike Saltmarsh, an expert neutron hunter,

249
00:28:48,725 --> 00:28:53,285
with over thirty years experience of neutron detection and fusion.

250
00:28:56,987 --> 00:29:01,155
Forty two thousand and forty three neutrons.

251
00:29:03,142 --> 00:29:07,531
The reason why I was asked to look
at it is actually I hate to sound immodest

252
00:29:07,532 --> 00:29:13,464
but I'm rather a good experimental physicist,
and I do bring a background in neutron detection.

253
00:29:15,278 --> 00:29:21,628
Mike Saltmarsh's task was to work out whether
the neutrons detected could indeed be from fusion

254
00:29:21,796 --> 00:29:25,547
or were simply background neutrons from the neutron generator.

255
00:29:27,532 --> 00:29:32,019
There is always a background,
some of it due to natural background radiation.

256
00:29:32,043 --> 00:29:38,148
In the case of this experiment there was an additional
enormous background from the neutron generator itself,

257
00:29:38,295 --> 00:29:41,728
which was producing a million neutrons
a second that were going all over the place.

258
00:29:42,758 --> 00:29:49,084
And consequently any neutron detector has to be
able to sort out whether the neutrons it's seeing

259
00:29:49,329 --> 00:29:52,393
are from that or from something else.

260
00:29:54,207 --> 00:29:59,945
The way to do it was to run the experiment
again in Rusi Taleyarkhan's laboratory,

261
00:30:00,361 --> 00:30:05,926
where Mike Saltmarsh could measure
the neutron background, take it in to account

262
00:30:06,638 --> 00:30:11,615
and then concentrate on finding fusion neutrons over and above that.

263
00:30:14,190 --> 00:30:20,392
So he took a neutron detector,
set it up, and after extensive testing

264
00:30:24,781 --> 00:30:27,944
he found no evidence of fusion.

265
00:30:29,489 --> 00:30:35,520
If there'd been fusion going on at the sort
of rate that Taleyarkhan's paper was claiming

266
00:30:35,691 --> 00:30:41,870
we should have seen an enormous
increase in the neutron detection, and we didn't.

267
00:30:46,503 --> 00:30:53,393
Instead Mike Saltmarsh thought that any fusion finding
could be explained by the background neutrons

268
00:30:53,394 --> 00:30:57,830
from the pulse neutron generator. So he wrote up his report.

269
00:30:57,831 --> 00:31:03,175
And a couple of months after Rusi Taleyarkhan's
paper this was also published,

270
00:31:05,038 --> 00:31:07,661
it was a damning conclusion.

271
00:31:20,949 --> 00:31:25,681
Rusi Taleyarkhan and his team disputed Mike Saltmarsh's conclusion,

272
00:31:26,294 --> 00:31:31,443
but for the next two years there was a steady stream of criticism.

273
00:31:33,551 --> 00:31:40,220
There has been many a day that I'd come home
dejected, desperate, but not until somebody really

274
00:31:40,415 --> 00:31:46,814
goes through trials and tribulations of that type,
being called all kinds of things, nasty things.

275
00:31:46,815 --> 00:31:53,532
You know it shakes your self-confidence and
your value as a human being sometimes.

276
00:31:55,616 --> 00:31:59,662
Eventually he decided to try again.

277
00:32:06,771 --> 00:32:11,748
So he designed a new experiment with better neutron detection.

278
00:32:12,116 --> 00:32:18,000
And after months of checking and confirming the results were ready.

279
00:32:18,834 --> 00:32:27,660
This time the neutron signal was even stronger,
and he was convinced it simply had to be from fusion.

280
00:32:28,691 --> 00:32:32,368
Now there is very, very, very little or absolutely no chance

281
00:32:32,565 --> 00:32:37,051
that these neutrons could be confused as having
come from the pulse neutron generator.

282
00:32:38,596 --> 00:32:44,333
So he sent these results to Physical Review E,

283
00:32:45,069 --> 00:32:47,570
a highly respected journal.

284
00:32:49,482 --> 00:32:56,911
And after an extraordinary thorough review
they were accepted for publication.

285
00:33:00,123 --> 00:33:03,653
With everything we've gone through, I mean all the trials and tribulations

286
00:33:03,776 --> 00:33:08,361
and the gut wrenching feelings that you could
be wrong and you might be making a fool of yourself

287
00:33:08,826 --> 00:33:14,441
on the world stage, you feel like I guess you've been, what's the right word?

288
00:33:17,334 --> 00:33:18,486
Vindicated.

289
00:33:19,835 --> 00:33:25,229
But despite this second publication many sceptics still weren't convinced.

290
00:33:25,597 --> 00:33:30,304
They believed that there was one vital
measurement that still hadn't been made.

291
00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:38,346
It was a measurement that could finally prove
once and for all whether Rusi Taleyarkhan's neutrons

292
00:33:38,517 --> 00:33:45,627
really were from fusion. It was all to do with timing.

293
00:33:50,187 --> 00:33:57,003
If fusion was taking place neutrons should be recorded
at the very moment the flash of light was given off.

294
00:34:00,044 --> 00:34:07,914
The flash of light would be recorded like this. And the neutron
would be recorded at exactly the same time like this.

295
00:34:12,572 --> 00:34:14,804
But there was a complication.

296
00:34:15,441 --> 00:34:26,572
Sonoluminescence light flashing are incredibly fast.
Each flash lasts just a nanosecond, one billionth of a second.

297
00:34:30,004 --> 00:34:38,120
And if fusion was happening then any fusion neutrons
should be produced at exactly the same billionth of a second.

298
00:34:41,700 --> 00:34:44,617
And should be recorded like this together.

299
00:34:48,639 --> 00:34:54,180
But Rusi Taleyarkhan's instruments could
not measure with nanosecond accuracy,

300
00:34:54,818 --> 00:34:57,981
they measured over a much longer time scale.

301
00:34:58,888 --> 00:35:04,208
Which meant that stray background neutrons
recorded some time after the flash of light

302
00:35:05,164 --> 00:35:14,334
here, or here, or here, could still
be mistaken for signs of fusion.

303
00:35:19,090 --> 00:35:22,743
So to convince the sceptics that fusion really was happening

304
00:35:23,135 --> 00:35:28,186
the burst of neutrons had to be recorded in the same billionth of a second,

305
00:35:28,641 --> 00:35:33,275
if not they wouldn't be convinced that it really was fusion.

306
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:41,929
Unfortunately this particular measurement
which is within the capability of modern technology

307
00:35:42,077 --> 00:35:51,148
has not been presented in either the first paper
which appeared in Science magazine or in a follow-up paper.

308
00:35:52,545 --> 00:35:58,650
Rusi Taleyarkhan believes that he has repeatedly
detected neutrons at the same time as flashes of light,

309
00:35:58,944 --> 00:36:02,671
and that he has already proven his claim beyond a doubt.

310
00:36:03,676 --> 00:36:09,217
My life has been audited, my instruments have been
audited and my books have been audited.

311
00:36:10,031 --> 00:36:16,332
The data speak for themselves, the data had to speak
for themselves and it's difficult, it's difficult to,

312
00:36:16,527 --> 00:36:22,828
you know how can I answer that I know absolutely
one hundred percent sure that it is, that it is what I think it is.

313
00:36:23,050 --> 00:36:30,209
I just have to look at the data and the data had been
looked at very carefully in the history of publications,

314
00:36:30,210 --> 00:36:38,790
I probably will not be able to find one that has gone
through this level of scrutiny, if you do let me know.

315
00:36:45,630 --> 00:36:50,362
If he's right a great discovery has already been made.

316
00:36:51,268 --> 00:36:55,681
But if he's wrong his reputation could be severely damaged.

317
00:36:58,011 --> 00:37:03,380
The dream of a shortcut to nuclear fusion hangs in the balance.

318
00:37:17,773 --> 00:37:25,374
So tonight, on Horizon, we've decided to try to
resolve this extraordinary dispute once and for all.

319
00:37:25,962 --> 00:37:33,366
We're going to try to make fusion ourselves,
the same way Rusi Taleyarkhan says he does it.

320
00:37:34,102 --> 00:37:41,580
It will be the first comprehensive and independent
attempt to repeat Rusi Taleyarkhan's fusion results.

321
00:37:42,316 --> 00:37:49,156
A sacred scientific principle is at steak.
The principle of reproducibility.

322
00:37:51,289 --> 00:37:58,767
Nothing is too wonderful to be true that it
can't be reproduced in another experiment.

323
00:38:01,146 --> 00:38:06,540
And this is what distinguishes science from religion.

324
00:38:07,336 --> 00:38:11,198
If Rusi Taleyarkhan's results can not be reproduced independently

325
00:38:11,474 --> 00:38:14,967
the claim could suffer the fate of cold fusion.

326
00:38:17,849 --> 00:38:28,667
Well professionally it would be, it would be,
it would be difficult to live with,

327
00:38:29,525 --> 00:38:34,704

but on a personal level I don't care.

328
00:38:39,792 --> 00:38:45,706
If we do get fusion, one of the holy grails
of science may finally come within reach,

329
00:38:45,829 --> 00:38:52,449
and the Nobel Prize would surely follow.
For Rusi Taleyarkhan if not for Horizon.

330
00:38:56,126 --> 00:38:59,896
So we've assembled the best experts to try and sort it out.

331
00:39:00,263 --> 00:39:08,017
Seth Putterman, the man who first realised the potential
of sonoluminescence will run the experiment.

332
00:39:08,874 --> 00:39:16,321
While back in the UK a team of leading experts will
scrutinise the experiment and analyse the results.

333
00:39:16,904 --> 00:39:23,616
Professor Tim Mason from Coventry University,
an expert in sonoluminescence.

334
00:39:24,873 --> 00:39:32,013
Dr Nigel Hawkes, a world renowned expert on neutron detectors
from the National Physical Laboratory.

335
00:39:33,454 --> 00:39:40,257
Dr Mike Loghlin from the UK Atomic Energy Authority,
an expert fusion neutron hunter

336
00:39:40,349 --> 00:39:49,788
brought in to check the neutron data. And Professor
Cathy Sykes, to help cut through the technical jargon.

337
00:39:50,554 --> 00:39:57,634
We even invited Rusi Taleyarkhan to come to the laboratory
and check Seth Putterman's equipment.

338
00:39:58,615 --> 00:40:05,142
But he declined our invitation on the basis that in
the small and competitive world of fusion science

339
00:40:05,479 --> 00:40:08,636
he did not feel comfortable with Seth Putterman's group.

340
00:40:09,697 --> 00:40:13,767
I would help out anybody who I feel, who I felt comfortable with.

341
00:40:16,709 --> 00:40:21,907
I would, I would, but I have to be comfortable with that particular group.

342
00:40:21,908 --> 00:40:24,579
Why, why is that, because is it not just science?

343
00:40:26,026 --> 00:40:28,502
I will not answer that question right now.

344
00:40:32,659 --> 00:40:36,116
So without Rusi Taleyarkhan's input to the experiment

345
00:40:36,361 --> 00:40:40,554
our team had to follow his recipe for fusion from the published papers.

346
00:40:45,653 --> 00:40:51,268
In early October 2004 Seth Putterman and his team went to work.

347
00:40:54,896 --> 00:40:57,863
First they set up the experiment.

348
00:41:06,274 --> 00:41:11,962
They started with a liquid in which the bubble
would be created, a liquid called acetone

349
00:41:11,963 --> 00:41:16,596
to which deuterium, the type of hydrogen needed for fusion, was added.

350
00:41:25,644 --> 00:41:31,185
It was treated to remove any excess gas that
might prevent the bubbles getting hot.

351
00:41:41,213 --> 00:41:43,763
Then came the neutron generator,

352
00:41:43,788 --> 00:41:47,735
the vital piece of equipment needed to make the bubbles.

353
00:41:48,966 --> 00:41:55,066
Rusi Taleyarkhan used two different types
of neutron generator and got fusion both times.

354
00:41:55,361 --> 00:41:59,264
So our team made sure their generator matched one of those.

355
00:42:04,834 --> 00:42:09,070
Then the flask in which the bubbles would be created was installed.

356
00:42:19,133 --> 00:42:26,919
Rusi Taleyarkhan said that the design of the flask was important,
it had to survive being bombarded with sound waves.

357
00:42:27,292 --> 00:42:31,587
So our team ensured that their flask was up to the same job.

358
00:42:32,117 --> 00:42:38,355
Finally, Seth Putterman made one major
improvement, and a neutron detection system

359
00:42:38,414 --> 00:42:43,318
much more accurate than that used by Rusi Taleyarkhan was installed.

360
00:42:45,534 --> 00:42:52,634
Using this, Seth Putterman would be able to
record any fusion neutrons at the exact moment,

361
00:42:52,910 --> 00:42:56,617
the very same nanosecond as the flash of light.

362
00:43:00,363 --> 00:43:03,384
If there were any there at all.

363
00:43:04,463 --> 00:43:07,719
So just to be clear that we can really compare the two experiments.

364
00:43:07,974 --> 00:43:13,152
Because of the specialised nature of the equipment
not everything could be identical.

365
00:43:13,347 --> 00:43:18,624
So we asked our UK experts to scrutinise
whether minor differences in equipment

366
00:43:18,780 --> 00:43:20,820
were likely to prevent fusion.

367
00:43:20,996 --> 00:43:23,644
There is one classic difference which is the source of the neutrons.

368
00:43:23,821 --> 00:43:29,156
The energies are different, the source produces lower energy neutrons.
Now would that matter?

369
00:43:29,351 --> 00:43:33,980
Not according to Taleyarkhan, because
in his first paper he said he got this effect.

370
00:43:34,236 --> 00:43:36,942
The neutron generator got a clean bill of health.

371
00:43:37,002 --> 00:43:40,297
Is the sound wave that he has applied just the same?

372
00:43:40,298 --> 00:43:41,650
Slightly different frequency?

373
00:43:41,689 --> 00:43:43,827
Minor, I don't think that would do it.

374
00:43:43,828 --> 00:43:45,279
You don't think that would matter?

375
00:43:45,391 --> 00:43:48,196
And so our experts were convinced

376
00:43:48,215 --> 00:43:52,236
that the recipe for fusion laid out in
Rusi Taleyarkhan's published papers

377
00:43:52,432 --> 00:43:55,139
had been followed as closely as possible.

378
00:43:58,415 --> 00:44:03,613
Confident that he could reproduce
Rusi Taleyarkhan's vital scientific conditions

379
00:44:03,809 --> 00:44:05,750
Seth Putterman went to work.

380
00:44:06,672 --> 00:44:09,438
So have we got the deuterated acetone in the cell?

381
00:44:11,478 --> 00:44:14,499
So we're cooling down now in order to get to zero degrees?

382
00:44:14,500 --> 00:44:18,285
Yeah we're getting there, we're at seven point five degrees.

383
00:44:18,286 --> 00:44:20,721
And Brian put the source in?

384
00:44:21,015 --> 00:44:22,506
Yeah.

385
00:44:23,349 --> 00:44:27,665
Yeah. Ready to roll, let's get the data
and let's see what we can find.

386
00:44:29,528 --> 00:44:36,276
On October 7th 2004, the test chamber was sealed,
the sound waves started,

387
00:44:36,664 --> 00:44:38,998
and the experiment was underway.

388
00:44:40,194 --> 00:44:46,902
In two six hour runs, spread over three days,
sound waves bombarded bubbles inside the flask.

389
00:44:50,530 --> 00:44:58,179
And the neutron detector did its work, searching
for neutrons in the same nanosecond as flashes of light.

390
00:45:02,083 --> 00:45:07,810
To give the experiment the best chance of success
data from four thousand bubbles

391
00:45:08,046 --> 00:45:10,282
was painstakingly recorded.

392
00:45:14,976 --> 00:45:17,204
It looks like a really good resonance.

393
00:45:23,837 --> 00:45:25,651
It's good. That's really good.

394
00:45:32,712 --> 00:45:39,430
And when the experiment finished, to ensure fair play,
all the data was sent off to the UK

395
00:45:39,479 --> 00:45:42,887
to be thoroughly checked and analysed.

396
00:45:47,153 --> 00:45:50,046
So let's try summarise the different results that we got from….

397
00:45:50,047 --> 00:45:54,312
A few weeks later our team came together to discuss the results.

398
00:45:54,313 --> 00:46:00,589
…expect them both to see were the bubbles. Are the bubbles
reasonably similar or can we say there are a few differences?

399
00:46:00,834 --> 00:46:02,894
They're the same.

400
00:46:02,895 --> 00:46:04,953
As far as we can tell.

401
00:46:05,198 --> 00:46:07,479
As far as we can tell, ok. And then we've got the sonoluminescence.

402
00:46:07,645 --> 00:46:13,235
So these are the flashes of light, we know that
Rusi saw them, how about Seth, did he get that too?

403
00:46:13,334 --> 00:46:14,393
Yes he saw it as well.

404
00:46:14,394 --> 00:46:17,159
So there's a load of energy being produced, we know that.

405
00:46:17,160 --> 00:46:22,925
It was clear that our experiment successfully
produced bubbles that gave off flashes of light.

406
00:46:23,142 --> 00:46:27,967
When you get the flash of light that's exactly the same
time that you expect the neutron to be produced.

407
00:46:28,202 --> 00:46:33,910
Yes, if the neutron is coming from fusion you'd expect
to see it at the same time as the flash of light.

408
00:46:34,891 --> 00:46:38,441
But then it came down to the biggest question of all.

409
00:46:39,461 --> 00:46:44,403
Just how many neutrons did Seth Putterman
record in his neutron detectors

410
00:46:44,639 --> 00:46:49,130
in the exact same billionth of a second as flashes of light?

411
00:46:50,954 --> 00:46:53,033
And how about Seth?

412
00:47:01,389 --> 00:47:03,037
None above the background.

413
00:47:03,429 --> 00:47:05,841
None.
None at all.

414
00:47:11,118 --> 00:47:15,237
Our experiment failed to find any evidence of fusion.

415
00:47:17,473 --> 00:47:20,494
We put this conclusion to Rusi Taleyarkhan.

416
00:47:21,455 --> 00:47:26,790
He said that it had taken him several years to perfect
the exact conditions necessary for fusion.

417
00:47:27,418 --> 00:47:32,027
And that because our experiment was not an identical copy of his

418
00:47:32,432 --> 00:47:36,590
any one of several differences might have affected the outcome.

419
00:47:37,861 --> 00:47:42,082
Never the less we followed his fusion recipe as closely as possible,

420
00:47:42,427 --> 00:47:48,201
on the principle that if the key scientific conditions
are reproduced the results would be too.

421
00:47:49,817 --> 00:47:52,045
But we found nothing.

422
00:47:52,359 --> 00:47:57,757
It is possible that other scientists may succeed
in reproducing Rusi Taleyarkhan's results,

423
00:47:58,384 --> 00:48:01,507
but for now, all we can say

424
00:48:01,867 --> 00:48:07,296
is that the dream of a shortcut to unlimited clean energy forever

425
00:48:07,814 --> 00:48:09,744
must remain just that,

426
00:48:10,246 --> 00:48:11,501
a dream.