Dr Rusi Taleyarkhan

WASHINGTON: An Indian-born scientist and his team may have won a place in the sun by achieving nuclear fusion in a table-top experiment, leading to expectations that the world is on the cusp of a bounteous energy source.

The scientific world is describing Dr Rusi Taleyarkhan’s breakthrough, now revalidated after some initial skepticism, as "making the sun in a jar."

What he has essentially done is to slam together hydrogen atoms so fast and so forcefully that it produces temperatures of millions of degrees, and emits a flash of light and energy, in the same way as it happens with the sun and stars.

The process is known as nuclear fusion, and because it uses readily available elements like hydrogen – as opposed to nuclear fission which uses rare, complex, expensive, and dangerous matter such as uranium and plutonium – scientists have looked at it as a holy grail for cheap, limitless energy.

For years, scientists have conducted fusion experiments using expensive labs, reactors and equipment, and millions of dollars in funding, but team Taleyarekhan has reduced it to the desktop experiment called Sonofusion.

It costs less than $1 million and it uses the power of sound to create energy comparable to the inside of stars. In a phenomenon known as sonoluminiscence, a burst of ultrasound causes a bubble in a liquid to collapse and emit a flash of light. It is thought that the gases trapped in the collapsing bubbles could be heated to temperatures hot enough for fusion to occur.

Taleyarekhan and his team are reported to have achieved this to a degree that has gained credibility and impressed peers, many of who scoffed when the breakthrough was published in science magazine two years back.


This time, the results and the believability has improved a billion times,” Dr Taleyarekhan told this correspondent from his home in Tennessee, where he is a distinguished scientist at the Oakridge National Laboratory and a professor emeritus at Purdue University. He is also an alumnus of IIT Chennai.


The breakthrough was the toast of the scientific community on Tuesday after it appeared in the peer journal Physical Review E, and was announced by Purdue University.

More than 50 researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory validated the claim before it was released, Dr Taleyarekhan said, adding that no other manuscript in the history of Oakridge had been through such review.

Son of a prominent Parsi clan of Mumbai, Dr Taleyarkhan’s larger family includes luminaries such as the late Bobby Talyarekhan, the famous radio broadcaster, and Homi Taleyarkhan, a former diplomat.

Nuclear fusion is not his only passion. As a group leader and programme manager in the Engineering and Technology Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of his more remarkable inventions is a rifle that can be adjusted so its user fires bullets at varying speeds.

The US government has shown great interest in the project because such a non-lethal weapon can be used effectively for peace-keeping, riot-control, and school security.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
ani