Questions Regarding Nuclear Emissions in Cavitation Experiments

Taleyarkhan et al. (1) claimed evidence for D-D (deuterium-deuterium) fusion in cavitation experiments with deuterated acetone. A number of inconsistencies in that study, however—in-volving data on neutron yield, the reported re-sponse of the detector used, and coincidences between sonoluminescence (SL) and scintilla-tor pulses—cast doubt on that claim. As pointed out by Taleyarkhan et al. (1), if the tritium observed were due to D-D fusion, it would need to be accompanied by a similar neutron yield. However, the reported neutron yield (4 104 to 7 104 neutron/s) was a factor of 10 to 20 lower than the reported tritium yield (7 105 atoms/s) (1), a discrepancy that contra