THIS year, physics had more than its fair share of false alarms and embarrassments.
In March, a team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee claimed it had triggered nuclear fusion by popping bubbles in souped-up nail varnish remover. A process called sonoluminescence heated imploding bubbles to about 10 million °C, they said – hot enough to trigger fusion.
So was “bubble fusion” set to solve our energy crisis? Or would it be a one-hit wonder like cold fusion? Bubble fusion could at least claim a bit more respect: the results appeared in the esteemed journal Science. But a second team failed to see any fusion. Later, other scientists pointed out that the…
