Bubble fusion
Eventually, an investigation by Purdue University found that Taleyarkhan had engaged in falsification of independent verification, and had included a student as an author on a paper when he had not participated in the research.
In the March 8, 2002 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan and colleagues at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) reported that acoustic cavitation experiments conducted with deuterated acetone (C3D6O) showed measurements of tritium and neutron output consistent with the occurrence of fusion.
The neutron emission was also reported to be coincident with the sonoluminescence pulse, a key indicator that its source was fusion caused by the heat and pressure inside the collapsing bubbles.
[4] The results were so startling that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory asked two independent researchers, D. Shapira and M. J. Saltmarsh, to repeat the experiment using more sophisticated neutron detection equipment.
[7] As early as 2002, while experimental work was still in progress, Aaron Galonsky of Michigan State University, in a letter to the journal Science[8] expressed doubts about the claim made by the Taleyarkhan team.
In their response (published on the same page), the Taleyarkhan team provided detailed counter-arguments and concluded that the energy was "reasonably close" to that which was expected from a fusion reaction.
In February 2005 the documentary series Horizon commissioned two leading sonoluminescence researchers, Seth Putterman[9] and Kenneth S. Suslick, to reproduce Taleyarkhan's work.
[10][11] In 2004, new reports of bubble fusion were published by the Taleyarkhan group, claiming that the results of previous experiments had been replicated under more stringent experimental conditions.
[18] In January 2006, a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters by Taleyarkhan in collaboration with researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute reported statistically significant evidence of fusion.
Dr. Edward R. Forringer and undergraduates David Robbins and Jonathan Martin of LeTourneau University presented two papers at the American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting that reported replication of neutron emission.
[20][21][22][23] William M. Bugg, emeritus physics professor at the University of Tennessee also traveled to Taleyarkhan's lab to repeat the experiment with his equipment.
Taleyarkhan then insisted that the university's press release present his experiment as "peer-reviewed" and "independent", when the co-authors were working in his laboratory under his supervision, and his peers in the faculty were not allowed to review the data.
In a March 9, 2006 article entitled "Evidence for bubble fusion called into question", Nature interviewed several of Taleyarkhan's colleagues who suspected something was amiss.
"[29][30] In order to verify that the investigation was properly conducted, House Representative Brad Miller requested full copies of its documents and reports by March 30, 2007.
[32] In June 2008, a multi-institutional team including Taleyarkhan published a paper in Nuclear Engineering and Design to "clear up misconceptions generated by a webposting of UCLA which served as the basis for the Nature article of March 2006", according to a press release.
