2011 Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reaction/Cold Fusion Colloquium at MIT
Science and engineering of cold fusion, also known as LANR, LENR, and CMNS.
Where: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
When: Saturday and Sunday, June 11 and 12, 2011
I will have one more report to file on ICCF-16, but patience is requested. It will take a few days. I am now at SRM University. Workshop on LENR Biological Transmutation is tomorrow. Host professor tells me he expects 300-400 students!
[DRAFT REPORT]
Hi folks – just a quick informal note from Mamallapuram, India.
ICCF-16 ended without fanfare though Mahadeva Srinivasan pulled off a very pleasant and well-run conference. ICCF-16 presenters spent most of Friday morning’s program talking either directly or indirectly about the Rossi device – even though Rossi didn’t attend the ICCF-16 conference.
Someone stood in front of the group a few days ago and announced a rumor that Rossi had made some business deal in Greece for a ton of money. There were no cheers from the ICCF-16 audience. The presenters who spoke here either directly or indirectly about the Rossi device – all who have no business relationship with Rossi – appeared to suggest to the group that a) they were qualified to evaluate the device b) the device might be dangerous c) they had certain insights into Rossi’s integrity.
So now it seems that the most promising theory (see last paragraph) did not originate from the ICCF community, as well, the most promising device thus far was also “not invented here.”
The next ICCF would normally follow the intercontinental rotation and go to North America for ICCF-17. But surprisingly, no American came to the conference prepared with a proposal and commitment to lead ICCF-17. People who lead these conferences enjoy great latitude for choosing the program, selecting topics, themes and, on occasion, promoting specific ideologies within the low-energy nuclear reactions research field.
This is particularly surprising because David Nagel and Michael Melich ran ICCF-14, and according to someone who was at the private meeting of International Advisory Committee, the ad-hoc group which decides on each successive conference, neither of them put forward a bid. Michael McKubre suggested that he might volunteer to run ICCF-17 but he came with no proposal. The IAC was not eager to authorize McKubre to coordinate ICCF-17 without a formal proposal and gave him until March to come up with one.
On the other hand, Sunwon Park, a chemical engineering professor with the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology expressed a strong desire to host one of the next ICCF conferences and according to the person who attended the meeting, Park mentioned that he had financial support from the Korean government to help subside a future ICCF conference. There were about five Koreans who attended ICCF-16.
About 30 of us are in Mamallapuram attending a post-conference workshop on materials science issues related to LENR. A second post-conference workshop takes place Tuesday on LENR biological transmutations.
In other LENR news today, Lewis Larsen, the originator of the Widom-Larsen LENR theory announced today that on Feb. 22, he will be issued U.S. patent #7,893,414 for a novel, high performance gamma shielding device. The patent is titled, “Apparatus and Method for Absorption of Incident Gamma Radiation and its Conversion to Outgoing Radiation at Less Penetrating, Lower Energies and Frequencies.”
CHENNAI (India) — Japanese researcher Yasuhiro Iwamura, with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, reported more progress in his LENR transmutation research today. He also mentioned that Toyota Central Labs had successfully replicated his Cs -> Pr transmutation experiment.
The Naval Research Lab, Washington, D.C., continues to show an intriguing interest in LENR. Even more researchers from NRL have come here to present at ICCF this year. For the first time in a decade and a half, NRL researchers Dawn Dominguez and Ashraf Imam have reappeared in the conference series to give presentations. They have been trying to get excess heat in D/Pd electrolytic cells. No conclusive positive results, but they seem to be making a strong effort to get experience in the field.
The presentations by Dominguez and Imam were devoid of the cynicism that has been typical of NRL researcher David Kidwell in the past few years. Their experimental claims were very conservative and their efforts seemed sincere.
Italian researcher Andrea Petrucci gave a presentation on piezonuclear neutrons and transmutations. He and his colleagues had originally been working in a military laboratory but they lost access to the lab a few years ago. Petrucci told New Energy Times that the ENEA Casaccia laboratory has recently welcomed and hosted their research.
CHENNAI (India) – Two prominent American “cold fusion” authorities have excluded a proposed LENR theory from their public outreach presentation.
The Widom-Larsen Ultra-Low-Momentum Neutron-Catalyzed Theory of LENR received no mention by David Nagel, a research professor with George Washington University, and Michael Melich, a research professor with the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, when they spoke yesterday at the Indian Institute of Technology – Madras. A half-dozen professors and 100 students attended the program, called “A Colloquium on Cold Fusion.”
Nagel’s talk was “Cold Fusion: An Emerging Energy Technology?” and Melich moderated a discussion called “Cold Fusion: Future Prospects.” Nagel spoke extensively about fusion and compared thermonuclear fusion to what he called “cold fusion” research. When he discussed theory, he displayed a detailed slide showing more than a dozen theories that have attempted to explain low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR).
Absent from the list was the Widom-Larsen theory, which has been published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. The theory explains LENR not as fusion but as a combination of weak interactions and neutron capture and requires no “new physics.”
Its authors are Lewis Larsen and Allan Widom. The duo also performed further work with a third researcher, Indian-born scientist Yogendra Srivastava, who now works in Italy.
Nagel explained why he and Melich had excluded the Widom-Larsen theory from their class presentation.
“They did not come to our conference,” Nagel told New Energy Times. “That’s why they don’t appear on that slide.”
The Widom-Larsen theory has been excluded by cold fusion researchers in the past. At a Defense Intelligence Agency workshop on LENR in San Diego on Aug. 4-5, 2009, Pat McDaniel, a professor with the University of New Mexico, said, “The Widom-Larsen theory is currently considered by many [people] in the government bureaucracy to explain LENR.”
The Widom-Larsen theory was also excluded from the DIA report that resulted from that meeting.
The invited colloquium was organized by professor Duraikkannu Loganathan of the IITM Chemistry Department. At the end of the colloquium, Loganathan announced that Nagel and Melich each would be awarded the title of honorary visiting associate professor.
[New Energy Times thanks Professor Loganathan for permission to videotape this program and for his gratitude for our effort. In response to his request, we are providing him a copy of the full video. Anybody interested in the full program should contact him directly.]
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