Report of Groundbreaking 2012 LENR Colloquium at CERN
CERN Invites 2012 LENR Colloquium
June 2, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –
Last year, a LENR colloquium took place at one of the most prestigious nuclear physics institutions in the world, CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research.
On Feb. 8, 2012, New Energy Times reported that CERN had scheduled an invited colloquium, “Overview of Theoretical and Experimental Progress in Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)”; it took place on March 22 in CERN’s council chamber.
Ignatios Antoniadis, a member of the theoretical physics division of CERN, invited two speakers. Francesco Celani, a physicist with the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Frascati, Italy, spoke about experiments, and Yogendra Srivastava, a physicist with the University of Perugia, Italy, spoke about theory. Srivastava is a co-author of LENR theoretical work, along with Alan Widom and Lewis Larsen, developers of the Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs.
A paper that Larsen published on Slideshare on Dec. 7, 2011, may have had triggered the colloquium. Larsen’s paper discusses a possible relationship between low-energy nuclear reactions and unexplained observations with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
New Energy Times did not write a report after the colloquium. However, interest in LENR has grown recently in Europe, and this is a good time to take a quick look back.
CERN holds a distinct place in cold fusion history, because it was the home of physicist Douglas R.O. Morrison, who published weekly newsletters, distributed worldwide, that depicted the entire field as pathological science.
Back in 1989, the co-discoverer of “cold fusion,” Martin Fleischmann, spoke in the main auditorium at CERN a week after he and his colleague Stanley Pons announced that they had achieved a “sustained nuclear fusion reaction” in a test tube. The 2012 Srivastava and Celani talks may have been the only ones on the topic at CERN since 1989.
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Perhaps the most significant response to the 2012 colloquium at CERN is that there was no response: no protests against pathological science, no ridicule, no mockery. Of course, neither of the speakers attempted to sell the CERN audience on “cold fusion” or to glorify Fleischmann or Pons.
The other group that was silent about the 2012 CERN colloquium was the broader group of LENR researchers, particularly those who still believe in cold fusion. The CERN colloquium was an historic accomplishment for the field.
[June 2, 2200, minor edits for clarity]
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