Transcription
Sonoluminescence. The first time I saw sonoluminescence was in a darkened room. I was transfixed to look at this uh spherical flask of fluid, and you look into the center, and in the center see a uh a glowing blue purple light, uh which could be seen with the uned eye.
It looked like a star in the heavens. Seth pman called it the star in a jar, a tiny spot of bright light contained in a flask of liquid. This star in a jar is made when a soundwave is passed through a small bubble inside a flask of liquid, and this Soundwave makes the bubble do something remarkable. First, it expands, then it collapses, and this collapse happens so violently that vapor molecules trapped inside the bubble slam together and heat up so much that the bubble gives off an incredible burst of heat and light, several thousands times a second, giving the appearance of a star.
What made the phenomenon so exciting was the temperature of this star in a jar. On its surface alone, the light burns at tens of thousands of degrees. Butman now contemplated a tantalizing possibility: could the core of the collapsing bubble be even hotter? Hot enough for Fusion?
One of the mysteries of sonoluminescence is to determine exactly how hot the interior of the bubble gets. In the Sun, the interior can be millions of degrees, hot enough to uh cause Fusion. And the thought crossed my mind that perhaps inside the collapsing bubble, the interior of the bubble might also get hot enough to cause Fusion. If so, this would be something truly amazing. By simply bombarding tiny bubbles with sound waves, temperatures of over 10 million degrees would be created. A nuclear fusion, the same reaction that powers the sun, would be happening almost effortlessly here on Earth.