LENR "Cold Fusion" Pons and Fleischman got it right sort of say NASA MIT Stanford etc

Hi all

What I am about to write has been taboo in science for 20 years, even to the point of being censored in Wikipedia, and in fact that censorship was the reason one of Wikipedia's chief editors left Wikipedia, but that is just a side story.

So I am going to stick my head above the parapet, as many scientists are also doing now:

Straight up the Pons and Fleischmann effect is real.

And Scientists at NASA as well as many other research centers around the world have now verified it.

Just as a taster, to keep you hooked and because there is a lot of technical stuff here to wade through I am going to start with a video from NASA:

42hrCRx1JJY

Source: NASA Future Innovation at Langley:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NASAinnovation

History

What is the Pons and Fleischmann effect?

Basicly excess heat observed in reactions beyond what is explainable by chemistry.

At the time Pons and Fleischmann wrote "Fusion?" as a possible explanation for the anomalous heat being observed. In the process of the paper being edited for publication in a peer reviewed publication someone removed the question mark and the press added "Cold Fusion!"

Which upset the physics community as they new the coulomb barrier meant the two Deuterium atoms could not be smashed together, in this way, without a lot more force, as the strong nuclear force of their positive charge would keep them apart.

Pons and Fleischman where chemists, and anyway did not say this, they just put out the question to the physicists:

What is this? Its not chemical so is it fusion?

The second major problem was this was cutting edge chemistry and the physicists who attempted to repeat the experiment were not chemists.

The main problem was the quality of the Palladium Lattice electrode. This meant that back in 1989 MIT and the other researchers were never able to repeat the experiment and Pons and Fleischmann had problems themselves when they got palladium lattice from a different source to their original.

It is now understood that the Lattice needs to be pumped to ensure maximum saturation of Deuterium and to keep the reaction going. So frequency of the electrical circuit is important.

The second problem was the lack of a theory to explain the effect.

That was because there was a third problem, new physics or rather failure by physicists to investigate fully a piece of nuclear physics that was considered unimportant, the weak nuclear force discovered by Fermi but hardly investigated since due to some oversight by a physics community mesmerised by the strong Nuclear force reactions.

So now I have to present the evidence:

Evidence

First up there are now several different methods of creating the effect the earliest was of course the Pons and Fleischmann method as described back in 1989:

Since then the process has been refined both by Pons and Fleischmann and other researchers particularly at MIT and Stanford.

Since then several other methods of creating the effect have been discovered, including the use Nickel in a powdered form with Deuterium gas.

Here is a simplified video explanation of the Palladium lattice loading process that caused so many problems for Scientists trying to repeat the Pons and Fleischmann experiment ignore the source it is just pretty video to make concept easy to understand:

PSVTg_yfwgg

Well that is a pretty video but where is the theory that explains how it creates energy?

Theory

So what is happening?

There are several competing hypotheses for the theory. They have been gathered here:

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/Theories/TheoryIndex.shtml

The one that is currently in vogue is the The Widom-Larsen Ultra-Low-Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Theory of LENRs or

Widom Larsen Theory.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml

Others key theoretical explanations include:

The CECR Quantum Reaction Hypothesis put forward by Brillouin

http://effedix.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/brillouinenergyhypothesis2.pdf

Here is a video of the presentation for it:

B63_I616khU

Talbot A Chubb's theory of three Deuterium DD fusion types

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ChubbTAthreetypes.pdf

And of course the Kim, Zubarev; Quantum Plasma Theory of Cold Fusion which has been well recieved throughout the scientific community.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/Theories/KimTheory.shtml

Which theory will win out is still a matter of contention.

Ok all good and well but that is just some websites where is the peer reviewed papers, I want the Science from reputable sources.

Published papers and conferences

Well things started to really roll with a conference hosted by Cafe Science in Silicon Valley, doesn't it always nowadays?

Then early this year several papers were presented at CERN as was mentioned in another thread, they have now all been put together at CERN:

http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=177379

This is the CERN video page

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1433865/

Additional videos here:

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/search?ln=en&cc=Video+Lectures&sc=1&p=lenr&f=&action_search=Search

And just this month a whole bunch of new papers were presented.

Here is a video of the conference:

iS4qNbMCBL0

You can get the Abstracts papers and Notes for the conference here:

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2012/ICCF17/ICCF-17.shtml

Those are both experimental studies and pure theory papers and presentations there is a lot to wade through. (I will high light some of them in latter posts)

Who believes this?

Scientists at Universities such as MIT, Stanford, Bologna, Perdu, Missouri, as well as investment groups and companies from National Instruments to Boeing, Toyota and Mitsubishi and researchers for the US military should all point to the dawning realization that this is real.

In fact MIT has had an LENR running at the University since January and Stanford has been at the fore front of getting LENR to run reliably by working on the theory side and refining the engineering.

The fact that Scientists at NASA all the way up to the Chief Scientist at Langley are willing to put their name to it and that that same Chief NASA scientist then Briefed the US President's Science Advisor who in turn recently briefed President Obama should all point to the monumental importance of what this means.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/LENR_at_GRC_2011.pdf

These papers were then obtained through a Freedom of information request

This is first is linked to the video at the top of this thread and is an overview of the state of play at that time, bare in mind it took a while to pry this out of their hands:

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government/NASA/20110922NASA-Zawodny-GRC-LENR-Workshop.pdf

This second is a report on Andrea Rossi who everyone is holding at arms length because he is so secretive, which does not engender trust, but if he cannot patent his product because of government restrictions it is perhaps understandable, jury is still out but with his products now selling to customers we will know in a month or so.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government/NASA/20110922NASA-Nelson-GRC-LENR-Workshop.pdf

This what the Chief of Science at NASA Langley has presented:

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government/NASA/20110922NASA-Bushnell-GRC-LENR-Workshop.pdf

There are several other Freedom of Information requests about NASA with regard to this but they have been redacted or refused, so more is to come.

The DOE opinion has changed as result here is what Albert L. Opdenaker, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences; U.S. Department of Energy:

http://iccf9.global.tsinghua.edu.cn/1news/13doe/2011/DOE2011.pdf

This is what the US President was told. Holding this back until verified

So what are they doing?

Mosly just research with one or two exceptions:

A character mentioned in all this is Andrea Rossi, some say he is a fake whether he is or not, the Anomalous heat effect exists and scientists across the world have repeated the experiment but you cannot mention this subject without mentioning him he is either a Maverick or a Hoaxer I would not say he is a fraud as he has paid for all this out of his own money so the only person he has defrauded is himself.

Rossi’s canny attitude may be because of the old hangover of the ban on Cold Fusion patents in the US from the 1989 debacle, as a result he has been taking the Edisonian approach of Build it and get it to market, prove it works sell, swamp the market to keep out competitors and upgrade it then claim patent with a vast anount of lawyers funded off a successful product. In fact he got a military license for the product after it was tested by them. It is claimed, by numerous scientists from various countries who have bet their career on it, to work and it has been heating a building at Bologna University for the past 9 months. Rossi just sold a 1 Mw device reportedly to the US military and is said to have orders for 12 more this week. The Jury is still out on Rossi for a month though.

Others like Brillouin are also in the race to market.

http://e-catsite.com/2012/08/30/sri-to-sign-contract-with-brillouin-energy/

So why is the Media not writing about this?

Actually they are, it started over the last year or so with articles like this:

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-04-29/peak-oil-crisis-quantum-fusion-hypothesis

CNBC went public today probably because of rumours about major announcements and public demonstrations due around the world in September and October.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48615362

But is not just the science or the products by the likes of Rossi and others, it is not just that the EEC announced research funding, that MIT and a host of other University's have working versions, that the theory now has weight, and the US President was briefed on it by his Science advisor, after the head of NASA came out and said it works and let's start building, it is not that countries round the world now have programs, it is not that the media have stopped treating it with derision, it is not that the scientific papers are being published and peer reviewed, it is not that the patents are now being granted, NASA just took one out, it is not just that the wind farm sites have put it on their front pages.

It is that the oil business market pages are warning that it works.

The sad thing is that one of the two co-discoverers died when the goal of cheap power for the whole world was in sight. :(

Martin Fleischmann (29 March 1927 – 3 August 2012)

Kind Regards walker

Post script will be adding to this post as it took a bit of writing I had to draw together things I had been following for half a decade! And I need to add in links to things I skipped over because I know them but I am not explaining them adequately, please bare with me

NASA patent is here:

http://www.google.com/patents/US20110255645

It's not really for a working machine, more for a proposed method of realising the Widom and Larsen theory.

Unfortunately this field of science attracts much quackery and the NASA scientist himself has complained on his blog about the embellishment of the facts, he has not commented since:

There have been many attempts to twist the release of this video into NASA’s support for LENR or as proof that Rossi’s e-cat really works. Many extraordinary claims have been made in 2010. In my scientific opinion, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I find a distinct absence of the latter. So let me be very clear here. While I personally find sufficient demonstration that LENR effects warrant further investigation, I remain skeptical. Furthermore, I am unaware of any clear and convincing demonstrations of any viable commercial device producing useful amounts of net energy.

Joe Zawodny 14/01/2012

http://joe.zawodny.com/

Do the guy a favour, let him work in peace, if they come up with something I'm sure they will let us know. They are simply investigating the effect and attempting to explain it at this stage. This subject involves a 'holy grail' - cheap energy. It therefore tends to attract the usual set of wierdos who gather together and get that strange look in their eye as if they are having a religious experience. I would treat all info as suspect unless it can be verified. If they succeed no one will be happier than me, but for now I'm going to wait for proof from a credible, official source.

Weak nuclear force unimportant? Deary me, that was quite a hiccup on their behalf!

Weak nuclear force unimportant? Deary me, that was quite a hiccup on their behalf!

Lol - the only unimportant fundamantal interaction in this case would be gravity.

Bollocks. The Y.E. Kim guy has a fully blown 4 citations on the springer science page where his paper was published. Of those, one was himself citing in another paper of his. As far as science goes, nobody cares about conferences, youtube videos and the opinions of news agencies. Science has nothing to do with opinion, only with facts. Cold fusion, so far, has proven a complete dud.

There is obviously interest in this, which is why prestigious organizations such as CERN and NASA are having people look into it. However, generally, no extraordinary support for this radical concept has been found. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, as the scientist said, quoted by Pelham.

And the suggestion of a conspiracy by the sciences and the media against this theory, which will "completely revolutionise" everything, and the fact that they have their own outlets focusing only on their respective material, and no publications in other major scientific journals raises a red flag with me. Everybody can run a "scientific journal". That doesn´t validate anything. The only validation for a scientific theory is a sound explanation of why something might work as observed, and how new observations in regard to the theory change the perspective of it. Then, if a paper has proven valid, it will rack up citations. Cold fusion should be a massive field if there were really any evidence going toward its validity, aside from fringe groups, pseudoscientists and focus groups. That, or I haven´t found it.

For comparison: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/312/5778/1334.short "Near-Infrared Spectral Results of Asteroid Itokawa from the Hayabusa Spacecraft" 8 Citations, about a dustball in space, as a result of what was essentially a near-failed space mission (Hayabusa failed to retrieve the expected amounts of asteroid-surface material, in fact it almost failed entirely to bring back any.).

That said, there are tons of articles out there mentioning cold fusion, and it´s hard to assess the validity of any of those without some deep reading. But, until at least multiple major universities can reproduce any experiment, I will remain skeptical. But, while I´m at it, another red flag here:

"The main problem was the quality of the Palladium Lattice electrode. This meant that back in 1989 MIT and the other researchers were never able to repeat the experiment and Pons and Fleischmann had problems themselves when they got palladium lattice from a different source to their original. " Excuse me, what? If their first result was that the electrodes worked once, and that they then couldn´t repeat the experiment with a different electrode, and -nobody else- could reproduce the experiment with THEIR electrodes, I´d go out on a whim and say that the first electrodes actually were faulty, and not the other way round.

People are making conclusions first and then working backwards to prove them. That´s not how science works.

My two cents so far. I might look at some of the articles that can be accessed later to evaluate if any of them are actually talking about cold fusion proper, or are just theoretical musings.

People are making conclusions first and then working backwards to prove them. That´s not how science works.

Positing a theory and then proving the theory is exactly how science works. But I can take the point about conclusions :)

But in any case, this is just another scientists-doing-their-thing story, either it will come to something or nothing :)

Isn't this the 1000th conspiracy topic by the OP ?

Positing a theory and then proving the theory is exactly how science works. But I can take the point about conclusions :)

But in any case, this is just another scientists-doing-their-thing story, either it will come to something or nothing :)

You can´t "prove" anything in science. A good scientific theory is the one that can potentially be falsified. The problem I mainly have with these fringe theories is that they make an assumption, and then cherry-pick their evidence. However, the stuff I mostly read about is over-unity free energy, homeopathy, paranormal events and ufos, so those are -really- fringe topics where people really go overboard with their imagination.

It´s cool that there seems to be some evidence for something indeed happening with this, however, I am afraid that the nature of the field will attract lots of seriously noisy pseudoscientific groups that will drown out any actual findings. Nature, sometimes, turns out to be either pretty boring, prohibitive or downright mean. My favourite proof of that is the sheer, mindboggling difficulty of interplanetary and interstellar space travel, which is so prohibitively difficult that I seriously doubt we´ll ever go further than Jupiter with a manned mission. And by that time, humans will probably not be humans as we know them anymore to begin with. :P

But that´s a different topic.

I for one will be waiting to see if any mainstream scientific journals and reviews will make mention of this. The newenergytimes.com site isn´t convincing me.

Isn't this the 1000th conspiracy topic by the OP ?

Hi all

Recorded for posterity.

Kind Regards walker

---------- Post added at 12:12 ---------- Previous post was at 11:14 ----------

Hi all

So some additions:

First up I said in my OP that the Oil industries realisation of the threat to the industry posed by LENR was one of my primary reasons for sticking my head above the Parapet there were several articles but the article from the Journal of Petroleum Technology warning the oil businesses the threat is real is the most readily understood.

http://www.mydigitalpublication.com//display_article.php?id=1104768

Here is another article warning Oil industry investors:

http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Is-Cold-Fusion-Finally-Being-Accepted-by-the-Scientific-Community.html

In fact many of the major oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC have been aware of the threat for a couple of years are allready developing their plans and some have started to enact them.

I posted above in the OP about some of the major companies now getting involved which include Boeing, Pireli, Mitsubish, Honda, Royal Dutch shell and many others; one of the biggest supporters is the worlds largest testing and scientific instrument manufaturer National Instruments of the USA.

In fact this year National Instruments CEO Dr. James Truchard, chose LENR as part of his keynote speech for NI Week their biggest public show of the year. More practicaly there was a public demonstration of a working LENR with exess heat being generated, in the conference by Francesco Celani of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Frascati, Italy, I point this out because it is considered to be significant evidense of any experiment to present the your experiment in public like this.

Xe5rcEvsek0

Additionaly another anomalous effect is noted in the video, that is steadily reducing resistance in the wire used!

Very odd this seems to be at odds with my understanding of electrical circuits, the resistance would normaly increase with higher temperature. Damn odd indeed.

Surely worth investigation on its own, how can the wire's resistance be reducing?

An aside Temperature Coefficient of Resistance for pure Nickel is 0.005866 For pure Copper it is 0.004041. I wonder?

US News have posted an article about LENR

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/at-the-edge/2012/08/08/new-burst-of-energy-could-bring-cold-fusion-to-front-burner

Here is the European Commision Report I mentioned in the OP that recomends investment in LENR research

http://ec.europa.eu/research/industrial_technologies/pdf/emerging-materials-report_en.pdf

I mentioned that the US Military were investigating LENR that came from several sources one of which was the SPAWAR research that was being done but was shut down because of political pressures, despite it having made major breakthroughs that if continued would have given the US a head start in the field, thankfully rumour has it the research was just moved to a site less ammenable to the pressure of the inimical parties.

I was also aware of US military interest because of the Unclassified Defense Analysis Report on LENR which is available from FAS.

http://www.fas.org/irp/dia/lenr.pdf

Kind Regards walker

Actually, nevermind. I can´t see how LENR, or any other proposed Cold Fusion (the designations appear to be mere buzzwords, in the vein of Intelligent Design) is physically possible, no matter how much treknobabble and diagrams these people come up with. Consider how much force is needed to sustain fusion inside the sun. The pressures and material densities are massive, so massive that for the photons from the inside of the sun to escape, it takes tens of thousands of years, and billions upon billions of interactions where photons literally bounce off the tightly packed atoms, loosing energy in the process (this is why the sunrays are not mostly high energy ionizing radiation.).

Fusion cannot be sustained without these massive pressures and energy inputs to start it off (this is one of the problems the hot fusion projects have to contend with, for example the new tokomak ITER reactor in france, which is an actually exciting project, contrary to these hollow fringe theories that defy known laws of science and are largely built on weasel words or even outright fraud.), and without maintaining these pressures, fusion will stop (which is what makes it -much- safer than nuclear fission reactors.). Cold fusion seems to assume that under certain conditions, atoms will start to behave in ways that have hitherto not been observed on a macro-scale, at least not to my knowledge in mainstream science, and that meaningful amounts of energy are produced by these reactions from out of nowhere.

There are a variety of problems, not just with the Idea itself, but with the "science" proponents of these Ideas have been doing. There are theoretical papers, lots of math, but without any meaningful experimental data to back those Ideas up. With a bit of number botching, you can prove that 1 = 2, and with the right PR, you can make people believe it too. There is money involved in this, but contrary to actual science, there are no checks and balances. The people who do this science run their own journals, and "peer review" their science among themselves. What valid science is leaking into the mainstream from their efforts seems to be either unrelated to these Ideas, or at best loosely connected.

There are probably legitimate scientists working on this, trying to test the veracity of these Ideas, but this whole thing looks disturbingly similar to the whole over-unity free energy farce. It wouldn´t surprise me if sooner or later, somebody would turn up and say magnets were the solution to producing a working cold fusion setup.

Interestingly, toroidal machines designed to function as hot fusion reactors use strong electromagnetic fields in an attempt to contain the fused matter in the reactor, and sustain the reaction to the point of actual energy production. Which, again, is much more exciting than pseudoscience.

We´re trying to basically create a miniature sun inside a huge magnetic shell. And we know that it is actually possible to do, because contrary to cold fusion, we observe hot fusion -every single day- in the sky. There are no known natural phenomena, on the other hand, that can be explained with any of the Ideas put forward to try and make cold fusion work.

So, I remain skeptical. I am ready to be disproven, as a clean, easy access and heavy-duty energy source would solve a lot of mankinds problems, however, given the evidence (or rather, the lack of it) I find that right now, it is a waste of precious time and resources, and until some actual evidence turns up people would fare better to actually try and make things work that we are sure are actually working.

My two and a half cents.

@walker Please read it carefully:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/01/16/cold-fusion-nasa-says-nothing-useful/

and then this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_(entrepreneur)#Petroldragon

Andrea Rossi is nothing more then a blender (he was even in jail 10 years) and NASAs LENR failed every single public demonstration.

So the bottom line is: Cold fusion isn't possible.

Greetings

CriminalMinds

Hi all

NASA has made some other anouncements about LENR

https://www.facebook.com/TechnologyGateway#!/pages/NASA-Future-Innovation/120398978038436

Here are the papers from US NAvy SPAWAR research labs.

http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/publications/pubs/tr/1862/tr1862-vol1.pdf

http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/publications/pubs/tr/1862/tr1862-vol2.pdf

Kind Regards walker

Thanks for the info. I think people need to understand that cold fusion and LENR are two different things. Cold Fusion isn't possible but there is something odd about LENR and it requires investigation. As yet there is nothing concrete about LENR and it's possibly too early to get wildly excited.

Walkers 1st link:

Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, the Realism and the Outlook

by Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center

The Strong Force Particle physicists have evidently been correct all along. "Cold Fusion" is not possible. However, via collective effects/ condensed matter quantum nuclear physics, LENR is allowable without any "miracles." The theory states that once some energy is added to surfaces loaded with hydrogen/protons, if the surface morphology enables high localized voltage gradients, then heavy electrons leading to ultra low energy neutrons will form-- neutrons that never leave the surface. The neutrons set up isotope cascades which result in beta decay, heat and transmutations with the heavy electrons converting the beta decay gamma into heat.

The above requires experimental validation, that has not yet occurred. NASA is required to give press releases detailing work that may have manufacturing / public benefits. It does not mean they have anything promising to offer yet! Hence the statement on the blog of the project head I posted on the previous page, he says he is highly sceptical.

Hi all

The Controversial figure in LENR Andre Rossi gave a conference over the weekend. It included a report by an independent verification team. The papers from that test have convinced several sceptics, while another test caused a potential investor to pull out, so the controversy continues.

I say potential investor as Rossi is not permitting anyone to buy into his E-Cat, meaning he has no investors to please. Instead he has invested his own money. The product is then licensed with companies buying the right to make the product under license within a geographical market, if and when a commerial product passes certification. This means he is not suceptable to a competitor buying in and taking over only to pull the plug, a common method used by entrenched businesses to prevent disruptive products and competing products reaching the market. Another method is the enforced partnership where the product must be sold through a partner, who then never advertises it, and overpricese it or services connected to it, in order to make it none competetive.

The story has reached the main stream media:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/14/cold-fusion

Meanwhile Brillion the US company created by Scientists out of MIT and Stanford and making a competing LENR product has just recieved an international patent from China. There are currently 6 companies in the race to produce commercial LENR products, including Defkalion Rossi's former partner company. Several major global companies are now trying to get involved, but it may be a case of too late to the party.

The theory behind the Fleishman/Pons effect is now starting to become understood and discussed more widely.

http://theenergycollective.com/cleantech-blog-neal-dikeman-and-richard-stuebi-et-al/112566/weak-force-key-lenr

The fact that so many top scientists became mesmerised by the strong Nuclear force and failed to continue Fermi's work of investigating the weak nuclear force is one of the biggest blunders in almost a century.

Kind Regards walker

The fact that so many top scientists became mesmerised by the strong Nuclear force and failed to continue Fermi's work of investigating the weak nuclear force is one of the biggest blunders in almost a century.

Kind Regards walker

No. The weak nuclear force plays a big role in nuclear fusion, and its understanding has helped us in turn to understand how the process of nuclear fusion in stars progresses. The reason why the whole processes involved in what´s now called LENR (which is NOT cold fusion) have not been as thoroughly studied is simple economy. Hard nuclear reactions, such as fission based power production and in the future, nuclear fusion in powerplants such as the Tokamak prototype being built in France, produce vast amounts of energy, by a comparatively simple, well studied and understood, and reliably repeatable process.

No system using any type of LENR or cold fusion so far has been proven to produce any meaningful amounts of energy. And until there´s a theoretic framework independently review in -major- publications in the field, it should be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism. Trying to destroy an Idea is how science works. You take a theory, drive it into a wall, examine the pieces... and if the pieces turn out to be that of the wall, the theory is sound. Again, so far in cold fusion/LENR research, the pieces have almost always belonged to the theory, and not the wall.

People trying to sell something before it´s proven also should raise a red flag. You don´t do science by doing business, going to the mainstream media, or doing publicity work. You do it by submitting formal, well designed experiments in the shape of a paper to a respected and well established peer review journal, and then wait until somebody else confirms your results. Then you may be on to something.

A good example would be the "faster than light neutrinos" that were "discovered" by CERN last year. Read up on those, it´s an interesting story of discovery.

Hi all

The Controversial figure in LENR Andre Rossi gave a conference over the weekend. It included a report by an independent verification team. The papers from that test have convinced several sceptics, while another test caused a potential investor to pull out, so the controversy continues.

I say potential investor as Rossi is not permitting anyone to buy into his E-Cat, meaning he has no investors to please. Instead he has invested his own money. The product is then licensed with companies buying the right to make the product under license within a geographical market, if and when a commerial product passes certification. This means he is not suceptable to a competitor buying in and taking over only to pull the plug, a common method used by entrenched businesses to prevent disruptive products and competing products reaching the market. Another method is the enforced partnership where the product must be sold through a partner, who then never advertises it, and overpricese it or services connected to it, in order to make it none competetive.

The story has reached the main stream media:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/14/cold-fusion

Did you read all that and follow the links to the so called evidence? If you did you would realise there is nothing new here and wired is hardly mainstream media. Isn't that where you got the story about that flying dutchman / human powered flight thing?

Rossi has nothing but a tube with a CE stamp on it (conforms to the Machinery Safety Directive, 'it's safe to use') and another long winded report stating that his latest 'element' gets hot when he puts current through it. If it was a serious investigation I would have expected some direct thermal measurement. Pointing a thermal camera at the outer casing is wildly inaccurate. InstaGoat is correct, this requires peer review and reliable reproduction of the results. That has not happened yet.

Measuring energy input / output is very difficult and cannot be done with a thermal camera, the LENR effect was not demonstrated at all. Also where is the 'Hydrogen tablet' and nickel charge device? It's stated that they are part of the device but are not photographed and it states that their weight is unknown. Were they even included or was it just a test of the heating element? It's very fishy. I would love to get a look at this hydrogen tablet he proposes using - if it's the type that uses hydrogen stored as ammonia in a solid tablet .........!!!

This kettle has a CE certification and gets hot when you run current through it, next time you use yours I expect you to be suitably amazed.

Hi all

Here is the original video sourced from NASA

http://technologygateway.nasa.gov/media/CC/lenr/lenr.html

Another Patent for LENR has been approved in the USA.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=WhIgAgAAEBAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=%22Low+Energy+Nuclear+Reaction%22&source=bl&ots=Xuf1yRH2vB&sig=142QFcoB_2WmhjeCiLVn9AuUGlU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qEROUKH4JsjSrQHKmIGoBw&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBQ&goback=.gde_4132340_member_161859049#v=onepage&q&f=false

This one is from George H. Miley emeritus professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow of the American Nuclear Society, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He was senior NATO Fellow from from 1994 to 1995, received the Edward Teller Award IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Science Award in Fusion Technology in 2003 and the Radiation Science and Technology Award in 2004.

As to Rossi I have made clear from the get go that he is a controversial figure, Rossi keeps everything a trade secret rather than patent, which makes it impossible to verify he has something real but the plane fact is that he is not defrauding anyone. He has only invested his own money and refuses to allow others to invest in it. So the only possible person who he can be defrauding by it is himself. That said those who have signed NDA's for permission to make the product under license once a commercial version is produced have seen it in action and seem convinced; as are many scientists who have seen it in action.

There are of course two publicly shown working examples of LENR research machines in action the MIT one, that is the one that has been running since January 2012 and the one being taken on a tour of conferences by Francesco Celini including NI Week there is a report of its demonstration here:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/08/celani-demonstrates-excess-power-at.html#more

I also posted a video of the Celini research device, in action at NI Week, in an earlier post.

The fact that Francesco Celini's research device can be made to work publicly on demand shows this is a viable technology.

Though the fact that the head Scientist for NASA, says it is real and so do increasing numbers of other professors and scientists, should hold some sway.

That both the US NAVY and NASA scientists researched, investigated and tested it, and found the Fleischman-Pons effect is real, should also dent the scepticism.

As to a working commercial product, there are at last count Nine companies working on it. The budgets for these LENR start-ups range from self financed with a few hundred thousand, to tens of millions and now Multi National companies like National Instruments and Siemens are getting involved.

The most advanced commericial product seems to be Rossi's, probably because he has taken the Edisonian approach, he ain't interested in research, or peer review, his attitude is build it, sell it cheap, so that competitors cannot enter the market and then use lawyers paid off the profits, to get a patent on a working design. It worked for Edison, most of the time.

Rossi's Certification process is part of that commercialization process:

1. That it is not a radiation risk
   
2. That it is electrically safe
   
3. What the heat output is
   

This is the testing that confirms it is a safe product before you are alowed to sell it.

What level of heat it outputs is assesed so that it can be put on the certification!

The observation that it produced more heat than any know chemical process could produce for an object of a similar size, in the case of the certification test about 45 times more than petroleum of a similar volume would, is just that an observation by the surprised certification test team.

That heat out put is after all the fundamental effect that Fleischman and Pons observed over 3 decades ago, and made them say it cannot possibly be chemical so fusion? And because of false Whoo Harr of it being declared COLD FUSION! it was never investigated.

For me though the major thing is that the theory seems to hold water particularly the Widom Larsen Theory describing the Fleischman-Pons effect was published in a Peer Reviewed Publication as "Ultra Low Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Nuclear Reactions on Metallic Hydride Surfaces" in The European Physical Journal C.

http://www.epj.org/guidelines_epjc.html

http://www.springerlink.com/content?k="european+physical+journal+C"+AND+"Ultra+Low+Momentum+Neutron+Catalyzed+Nuclear+Reactions+on+Metallic+Hydride+Surfaces"&sortorder=asc

http://www.springerlink.com/content/77127077754p1788/?MUD=MP

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/1880555_Ultra_Low_Momentum_Neutron_Catalyzed_Nuclear_Reactions_on_Metallic_Hydride_Surfaces http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Widom-Larsen.php

http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0505026

The predictions it made where what was observed at NASA and the US Navy SPAWAR institutes and those papers were published in peer reviewed publications.

The plane fact is this becoming more and more mainstream in the scientific community.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ayNYEqxsi_YC&pg=PT807&lpg=PT807&dq=Widom+Larsen+Theory+peer+review&source=bl&ots=Y17c5xJ0-X&sig=ppU8WHbwQh-BTJAdzkfbojGjI6w&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Widom%20Larsen%20Theory%20peer%20review&f=false

Kind Regards walker

Wether or not something has reached mainstream media is completely irrelevant to the truth value. Where something is being researched is completely irrelevant to the truth value. Large universities around the world have departements researching homeopathy and UFOs. Just because somebody is wasting time and money on something doesn´t make it any more valid.

Pons and Fleischmann have been -thoroughly- torn apart in the literature and by their peers. The attempts at salvaging their Idea is neat, but ultimately fruitless: -major- established laws of physics are being bent or outright broken by many core aspects of the LENR Idea, and nobody is talking about that.

NONE of this documentation mentions -any- weak points. Good scientific papers will contain a part describing potential problems with the experiment or why the results may be skewed/incorrect, or where the Idea currently is bending or breaking the rules. Instead, these people are deceiving the public by omitting any of the information pertaining to the problems. And once the media picks up on a hype, truth goes out of the window anyway because nowadays it´s perfectly normal for the news to feature completely unproven, unscientific or downright paranormal claims with uncritical acceptance or even support. Good examples of this are Bill Maher and Oprah Winfrey, neither of whom are doing society any services with the bullshit they promote.

None of the documentation I´ve seen about this mentioned any possible sources of error. When other scientists coming from the relevant fields point out some more obvious things, they get ignored or brushed aside. Misinterpretation of data, bad controls, bad documentation, lack of expected reaction products, as well as the problem with repulsion forces between the atoms. Fusion elsewhere only works because of -massive- heat and pressure.

Without heat and pressure, the atoms never even begin to touch each other. The lattice-structure reactors are not very well researched, to the point where even producing a working setup is so hit and miss that even the original researchers COULD NOT REPRODUCE THEIR OWN RESULTS. If anything, people are trying to do one step too far: in the end, this results in frauds peddling energy hope to gullible politicians, organizations and people and laughing all the way to the bank. There is no easy solution to the energy question, and LENR, even if we had it at a point where we could produce meaningful amounts of energy, on a large scale, would have massive drawbacks, like -any- other form of energy.

This has to be a question of practicality: we KNOW how hot fusion works, it is a well researched field, we have working prototype -power plants- (not lab setups, but fully blown, working Fusion test plants) the largest and newest of which will begin to develop technology to produce energy in a sustained fashion in the 2020 timeframe. These successes are constantly ignored, in favour of fringe claims that are supported not because of their scientific validity, but because of Ideological reasons. The whole new age stick is ripe with this, focusing on cold fusion, over-unity free energy, body-life-force energy fields, magnetic perpetual motion machines, etc.

LENR is -barely- out of that edge of pseudoscience, and seeing the muddled past of this field, as well as the problems and pitfalls of the theories proposed, I fail to see what is so exciting about this Idea.

I find the actual production of cheap, safe energy much more exciting than promises based on a disproven Idea.

Though you're right with many of your points (especially the missing sources of error) - you are on the other side of the extreme. As long as those people invest their own money into some crazy science, I don't see a problem. Actually we NEED this science, because our well known physics won't allow dramatic advances of technology anymore.

And if there is the slightest possibility of some unknown physical process causing cold fusion (or whatever) I think its worth researching, considering the huge potential outcome. :)

(I'd rather cut costs on many other stupid projects, but thats another story...)

As to Rossi I have made clear from the get go that he is a controversial figure, Rossi keeps everything a trade secret rather than patent, which makes it impossible to verify he has something real but the plane fact is that he is not defrauding anyone. He has only invested his own money and refuses to allow others to invest in it. So the only possible person who he can be defrauding by it is himself. That said those who have signed NDA's for permission to make the product under license once a commercial version is produced have seen it in action and seem convinced; as are many scientists who have seen it in action.

That isn't true is it? He has many investors and his company is now owned by them - his own words....... He is also selling licenses to people for manufacture and distribution. His representative asked an entrepreneur for $200,000 for the rights in Australia.

LEONARDO CORPORATION NOW PROPERTY OF A TRUST OF INVESTORS

Rossi: I AM THE CEO OF LEONARDO CORPORATION AND RECENTLY LEONARDO CORPORATION BECAME PROPERTY OF A TRUST OF INVESTORS TO WHOSE ATTORNEYS I HAVE TO ANSWER.

http://ecatnews.com/?p=2038

If I were you I would be careful of including Rossi in your LENR debates. LENR is worth investigating and that is why the work is being done, I would wait for the reputable scientists to give their verdict rather than put your faith in a mysterious 'kettle' which no one is allowed to examine, doesn't produce the quantities of steam it's supposed to and could be nothing more than a carefully constructed hoax. Rossi's device is always covered in insulation, his own calculations suggest it would work well without it and it's not necessary for the demonstration.

One other thing you should be aware of is that Rossi left Italy to set up an E-cat factory in Florida. He is sitting in an apartment which is the registered address of Leonardo Corporation not doing very much. The US regulatory authorities recently visited the apartment to ascertain if anything illegal was going on. If it worked as Rossi claimed he would have been arrested or fined due to the gamma radiation produced during operation. The production facility and the machine would also need to be licensed. There is no license/certification/registration, factory or employees.

http://pesn.com/2012/03/11/9602054_Rossi_Tells_Florida_Bureau_He_Has_No_Factory_No_Nuclear_Reactions/

Hi all

In reply to Pelham:

First up I do not like having to defend Rossi like everyone else I am suspicious of him because of his history and because he hides everything, however as I have pointed out I see as plausable the Trade Secret argument for this, since patents on LENR technology were banned until recently when the NASA patent was granted and since this is disruptive technology, the edisonian trade secret approach is reasonable and a common business practice, that many others have practised, that is after all the reason for trade secrets and NDAs. You may well have signed a few of those your self, I know I have.

What this http://pesn.com/2012/03/11/9602054_Rossi_Tells_Florida_Bureau_He_Has_No_Factory_No_Nuclear_Reactions/ report says is:

...An inspector from the Florida Bureau of Radiation Control said that Rossi told him "No nuclear reactions occur during the process;" and "There are no radiation readings above background when the device is in operation;" and "Currently all production, distribution and use of these devices is overseas." ...

Rossi already gave this information in the certification report so nothing new there, and it was confirmed in the report from the Swiss certification team, that was after all one of the reasons for the certification.

Do I think that Rossi was trying to skip dotting the 'i's and crossing the 't's on certification back in March? It would not have been outside what he is known for BUT the story is quite old and his formation of Leonardo Corp with his partners may well be forcing him to play by the rules. Hence he has been going through the certification route, that is after all what the September Zurich presentation was about, external certification.

I do think his competitors are trying to stop him getting to market. Which is what I think Gary Wright of Las Vegas was encouraged to do. Rossi is trying to follow the edisonian trade secret aproach so a competitor could gain valuable information by setting the authorities on him to investigate him.

Rossi has made himself quite a few enemys both within the LENR field by dropping partners who wanted in and by not playing the science game but far more important are all those from outside LENR who do not want it to work. Not least of his and indeed LENR's enemies and I do mean enemies, are those who would prefer LENR as a whole never got to market. Remember LENR is a potential game changer and like any disruptive technology the existing players are set on preventing the new guy destroying their business. A working LENR would literaly bankrupt billionairs and multi nationals round the globe, they will be busy trying to foist their old business off on unsuspecting pension schemes and market nubes right now, they will do all in their power to slow down awareness and adoption until they can offload their deflating and antiquated stock, whether it be a petrol car parts business or oil tankers or coal mines. This is after all common sense to such people. This is what disruptive technology does.

As to the gamma radiation question, if you read the Widom Larsen description of the theory on how the Fleischman-Pons Effect works you will see there no HOT FUSION so there is no massive amounts of fast moving Gama radiation outside the aparatus. No one is bashing hydrogen atoms together with a hammer and anvil, instead they are fitting the components of the isotopes together like lego bricks and harvesting decay heat.

The physics is to some extent already known and the additions fit the maths as well as the experimental data from NASA and the US Navy and the many other institutions that now regularly repeat the experiments. As I pointed out the MIT's LENR has been running for months and Francesco Celini takes his experiment on the road and presents it in public at trade shows.

Here is a potted version Widom Larsen theory, though the original paper and several presentation papers I have linked describe the Widom Larsen theory of the Fleischman-Pons Effect more precisely

...Brief Description of Widom-Larsen Theory

Not everyone agrees that the Widom-Larsen Theory (“WLTâ€) accurately explains all, or even most, of the observed phenomenon in LENR experiments. But it is worth a brief look at what WLT proposes.

In the first step of WLT, a proton captures a charged lepton (an electron) and produces a neutron and a neutrino. No Coulomb barrier inhibits the reaction. In fact, a strong Coulomb attraction that can exist between an electron and a nucleus helps the nuclear transmutation proceed.

This process is well known to occur with muons, a type of lepton that can be thought of as very heavy electrons – the increased mass is what pulls the lepton into the nucleus. For this to occur with electrons in a condensed matter hydrogen system, local electromagnetic field fluctuations are induced to increase the mass of the electron. Thus, a “mass modified†hydrogen atom can decay into a neutron and a neutrino. These neutrons are born with ultra low momentum and, because of their long wavelength, get caught in the cavity formed by oscillating protons in the metal lattice.

These ultra low momentum neutrons, which do not escape the immediate vicinity of the cavity and are therefore difficult to detect, yield interesting reaction sequences. For example, helium-3 and helium-4 are produced often yielding large quantities of heat. WLT refers to these as neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions. As Dennis Bushnell explains: “the neutrons set up isotope cascades which result in beta decay, heat and transmutations.†Nuclear fusion does not occur and therefore there is no Coulomb barrier obstruction to the resulting neutron catalyzed nuclear reaction...

http://theenergycollective.com/cleantech-blog-neal-dikeman-and-richard-stuebi-et-al/112566/weak-force-key-lenr

As allways follow the link to the original article text in full

That is how LENR seems to work and why NASA the US Navy and everyone else are interested in it, this is not HOT FUSION there is no Coulomb Barrier to get over and so none of the HOT FISION or HOT FUSION problems.

Those words Nuclear and Fusion tend to make people think radiation that is why I prefer to call it Fleischman-Pons Effect so people stop thinking old physics and glow in the dark professors.

Kind Regards walker

Hi all

In reply to Pelham:

First up I do not like having to defend Rossi like everyone else I am suspicious of him because of his history and because he hides everything, however as I have pointed out I see as plausable the Trade Secret argument for this, since patents on LENR technology were banned until recently when the NASA patent was granted and since this is disruptive technology, the edisonian trade secret aproach is resonable and a common business practice, that many others have practiced, that is after all the reason for trade secrets and NDAs. You may well have signed a few of those your self, I know I have.

What this http://pesn.com/2012/03/11/9602054_Rossi_Tells_Florida_Bureau_He_Has_No_Factory_No_Nuclear_Reactions/ report says is:

Rossi already gave this information in the certification report so nothing new there, and it was confirmed in the report from the Swiss certification team, that was after all the reason for the certification.

Also if you read the Widom Larsen description of the theory on how the Fleischman-Pons Effect works you will see there no HOT FUSION so there is no massive amounts of fast moving Gama radiation outside the aparatus. No one is bashing hydrogen atoms together with a hammer and anvil, instead they are fitting the components of the isotopes together like lego bricks and harvesting decay heat.

;) You just fell into the same trap Rossi did when giving his response to this. Gary Wright filed 2 complaints, one directly with the Florida Bureau of Radiation Control for nuclear materials, and another with the Florida agency that regulates and controls X-ray machines and other devices that generate low level radiation. The US Gov't inspector couldn't find any evidence that gamma radiation was produced either externally or internally during operation. That contradicts how the E-Cat is supposed to work (Rossi's own explanation includes gamma radiation emissions, the E-Cat requires lead shielding) and is contrary to other LENR researchers findings. You can't transmute nickel to copper without gamma radiation production. Just what WTF do you think decay heat is?

Regarding the September 9th disclosure by Rossi that he has SGS safety certification (You called it "Swiss certification team") , that has also been revealed as a lie. SGS states that they have no record of Rossi or the E-Cat or any of his multiple front companies. Rossi responded on 13/09/12 that he will produce a "voluntary safety certificate, within hours", nothing has appeared yet. That is a self certification and you can't get a CE mark for the product with it as there is no independent testing so that was also another lie.

His response is rather bizarre, anyone else would simply produce the reference numbers on the certificate, instead it looks like he is beginning the process for a voluntary certificate?:

SGS emails here:

http://shutdownrossi.com/?page_id=1774

I see you don't dispute the fact that he is taking money from people yet there is no sign of a factory or any progress. Do you think an apartment in Miami Beach, Florida is a rather odd place to be setting up a factory? Florida is probably the most expensive place in the US you could conceive to do this. But I guess it's a nice place for a long holiday if you have suddenly acquired the funds to do so?

Prof. Ugo Bardi

Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra

Università di Firenze

So, the E-Cat has reached the end of the line. It still maintains some faithful supporters, but, most likely, it will soon fade away in the darkness of pathological science, where it belongs. There remains a question: how is it possible that so much time and energy has been lost in this incredibly story?

http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.it/2012/03/sinking-of-e-cat.html

Hi all

In Reply to Pelham. I think the use of the Shutdown Rossi site is probably not in the best interest of your argument.

Rossi has presented a Certificate from SGS

http://www.e-catworld.com/2012/09/andrea-rossi-makes-available-safety-certificate-from-sgs/

On the matter of money he is in a partnership with those who make and develop the ECAT that is what the Leonardo Corp trust is for. As far as licensing goes I understand you are talking about very small amounts sub million dollar deposits for rights to produce in a geographic market and I would submit they barely cover legal and administraiton fees for setting up the licensing and act as guarantees of sufficient captal and that they can provide the production and sales service the real payments they will be making is in the percentage they give back as royalties for per unit sales.

I also point out that in each case those licensees have signed an NDA and observed and tested the product them selves. Then like the Australian team have gone off to build their business.

I supose they and their lawyers could have been fooled but they are big boys.

All that said I do not dispute that Rossi could be faking his version of LENR, though I must point out many including those you quote say he has a working LENR.

Kind Regards walker

Yep shutdown should have updated that by now. Read the bottom of the certificate tho, as I said - it's voluntary which means Rossi self certified it, hence:

"This certificate does not constitute a "product certification" and cannot, in any way, be used for commercial purposes and / or advertising", he can't get a CE mark with that or use it for any commercial purposes anywhere in the world, I hope the investors understand that.

Any machinery that produces gamma radiation would have to be licenced somehow no matter where it is produced or sold, especially if it is to be used in houses. Rossi signing off his own testing isn't good enough. In the UK there would have to be a program of inspection to test the shielding periodically. I don't see any evidence that this is occuring so what business the lincence holders are building is beyond my understanding?

As for those I've quoted, you mean Sterling D. Allan, a previous supporter?:

I apologize to anyone that I've encouraged to try and do business with Andrea Rossi, and I retract my endorsement.

Regarding investors and money, you said this yesterday????

As to Rossi I have made clear from the get go that he is a controversial figure, Rossi keeps everything a trade secret rather than patent, which makes it impossible to verify he has something real but the plane fact is that he is not defrauding anyone. He has only invested his own money and refuses to allow others to invest in it. So the only possible person who he can be defrauding by it is himself. That said those who have signed NDA's for permission to make the product under license once a commercial version is produced have seen it in action and seem convinced; as are many scientists who have seen it in action.

Kind Regards walker

Though you're right with many of your points (especially the missing sources of error) - you are on the other side of the extreme. As long as those people invest their own money into some crazy science, I don't see a problem. Actually we NEED this science, because our well known physics won't allow dramatic advances of technology anymore.

And if there is the slightest possibility of some unknown physical process causing cold fusion (or whatever) I think its worth researching, considering the huge potential outcome. :)

(I'd rather cut costs on many other stupid projects, but thats another story...)

I agree that if there is something to it, it should be researched. However, the problem in my view is that this field attracts lots of people with dubious backgrounds, whose noisiness draws enough media attention to destroy any credibillity of the field before anything has even been remotely proven. That any problems pointed out with the theory are consistently either ignored or explained away (this is different than coming up with an actual explanation of -why- the proposed Idea CAN apparently violate established and well documented laws of physics. It is not like the concept of fusion, which this essentially is, is so thinly researched that there are holes big enough to fit this through.).

And again, the original researches couldn´t reproduce their own results. As with the faster than light neutrinos of CERN, their initial positive result is much more likely to have been a fluke of the test setup, a bad measuring device or a flaw in the statistical methods, rather than actual cold fusion. NO statistically relevant positive results by other researchers have occured. No significant advances outside of baby-steps (nothing bad about that in itself) by large research bodies have been made.

And that characters like Rossi are keeping their devices under the lid so much is also not helping. Science is not done by way of secrecy and patent peddling. Or do you see the original developers of the Tokamak design for hot fusion reactors keep their Idea under a lid?

If Rossi had any interest in advancing mankind, and had any faith in his own development, he would clearly lay out how it works, how it is designed, how it was made, what it does (and how it does that.) and why it works despite apparently defying currently known laws of atomic physics. None such thing is happening.