Rossi Discovery – What to Say?

The buzz today is Andrea Rossi’s recent public demonstration in the Physics Department of the University of Bologna, Italy, of a nickel-hydrogen low-energy nuclear reaction device that purportedly produced excess heat.

The original nickel-hydrogen LENR research was developed by Francesco Piantelli, of Siena, Italy. Piantelli was not involved in the recent Rossi demonstration. I have visited Piantelli twice in his lab, and many of the images on the New Energy Times home page are photos I took there.

In July 2008, New Energy Times #29, I reported in great depth on the virtue of the Piantelli et al. nickel-hydrogen LENR research in two articles, Deuterium and Palladium Not Required, Piantelli-Focardi Publication and Replication Path.

I reported how the group’s papers had been published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and how they successfully responded to challenges by skeptics at CERN, the European center for high-energy physics research. I reported how this experimental design offered liberation from palladium and deuterium. Furthermore, this type of experiment had produced far more energy (heat), not merely power, than many other LENR experiments to date.

Many American LENR researchers were skeptical, I suspect because successful Ni-H LENR technology would make their palladium-deuterium research projects irrelevant. Ni-H also, of course, disproves the hypothesis of “cold fusion,” which is bad news for some LENR researchers.

Piantelli told me that he has known for many years that this type of experiment is inexplicable by the hypothesis “cold fusion.” He is well aware of the abundant heavy- element transmutations he and his colleagues have seen.

Eventually, a few Americans quietly began asking for my assistance to make contact with Piantelli, probably because he is a hard man to reach. I do not know whether they succeeded. American Michael Melich, affiliated with the Naval Postgraduate School and with the Naval Research Laboratory, is on Rossi’s team of advisers.

For the last year or so, Rossi has been pumping the Web and rumor mill with bold claims, distributing documents with serious ambiguities, and appearing to sell a questionable energy device. This is a shame because the underlying technology and potential energy is real and important.

I have examined in scientific papers and experimental data by Piantelli, the claims of excess heat, evidence of nuclear emissions and transmutations to my satisfaction.

What has occurred now? Has Rossi developed a functional understanding of this LENR system? I think he has.

But the time-honored question to ask in all situations like this is, What is the total energy balance? Anybody who gets excited about this public demonstration without such information is vulnerable to deception. The next questions to ask are, Exactly how has the energy been measured? And by whom?

A power measurement – without the total energy balance – is virtually meaningless. Without answers to these questions, this experiment and demonstration could easily be a scam. Sadly, I have been a first-hand witness to deceptions.

The red flags with Rossi have been up for months.

In October 2010, a New Energy Times reader in Italy sent the following to me:

“I imagine you are aware that Rossi’s patent [application] has been [partially] rejected in a preliminary report by the patent examiner. Piantelli also published a new WIPO patent [application] a few months ago too.

“I wish Rossi well in his endeavors although I also feel he’s claiming as an invention merely the scaling up of Piantelli’s pioneering work. Any working devices ought to be good news for mankind regardless [of] who discovered what first. If anything works, we will all get some share of the glory (and perhaps profits?).”

Today, another New Energy Times reader in Italy sent the following to me:

“Pay close attention to Andrea Rossi; he has a dirty past. Twenty years ago he was arrested for illegal importing of gold from the Swiss.

“Not only that, but in the 1980s he was involved in a scam with industrial waste. It is a complex thing to explain, but the scam cost the Lombardy region € 25 million. He honestly does not convince me as a person, and I am not convinced about the test done at Bologna today.

“Check this link: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroldragon

“In friendship, I suggest you be careful, I smell something burning.”

According to the link, in 1995, Rossi was jailed for conspiracy to engage in tax fraud for his involvement in a business that was trading precious materials between Switzerland and Italy.