Chairman Robert Duncan

July 17, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –

The 18th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science takes place next week at the University of Missouri. The conference is organized by Robert Duncan, vice chancellor for research, and his wife, Annette Sobel, assistant to the provost for strategic opportunities.

Duncan’s offer to host ICCF-18 fills a large void in the field. According to the tradition of rotating continents among ICCF conferences, last year’s ICCF-17 should have been in North America.

But during the discussion at ICCF-16 conference in Chennai, India, no North American researcher was in a position to offer to host the next international cold fusion conference. Nobody had the financial resources or access to sponsors. Instead, the conference took place in Korea.

Funding and recognition has been difficult for these researchers. A significant reason is that many of them give the field the appearance of pseudoscience. There is no scientific evidence for LENR as “cold fusion,” yet many longtime researchers in the field remain wedded to the belief that deuterium nuclei can overcome the Coulomb barrier at appreciable rates at room temperature.

Nevertheless, two significant scientific events have occurred in the last two years with LENR researchers who are independent of the “cold fusion” researchers.

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 March 22, 2012, CERN hosted an invited colloquium, “Overview of Theoretical and Experimental Progress in Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR),” which took place in CERN’s council chamber.

On Nov. 14, 2012, for the first time in a decade, the American Nuclear Society hosted a low-energy nuclear reaction session. It took place at the ANS Winter meeting in San Diego, Calif. The session was requested by the interim executive director of the ANS.

[DAP errMsgTemplate=”” isLoggedIn=”N”]

Login or Subscribe to remove this notice

Professional Journalism – LENR Facts

Original online content only at New Energy Times

[/DAP]

Continue reading »

John O’Mara Bockris

John O’Mara Bockris died July 7 of a heart attack after a 20-year battle with cancer. He was 90. Bockris was a giant in low-energy nuclear reaction research and even more so in the general field of electrochemistry.

The tritium discovered by the Bockris group, along with tritium discovered at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in India, was the first nuclear evidence that established LENR as a de facto nuclear process.

His friend and longtime assistant Trish Schulz wrote to New Energy Times on July 7.

"Dr. B. has had an impact on all of our lives, and he will be missed by many," Schulz wrote. "He was loved and cared for greatly by my family, and we shall miss him."

A memorial service is tentatively planned for September. Schulz updated the Wikipedia page for Bockris on July 8, and it is an excellent reference for him and his life’s work. New Energy Times has preserved a PDF copy of that page; it is accessible from our own Bockris Web page.

New Energy Times also has a detailed collection of reference material that chronicles Bockris’ courageous stance and fight for academic freedom at this Web page.

July 10, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –

Ken Shoulders died June 7 from a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a complication of metastatic prostate cancer. He was 86.

Shoulders is survived by his wife, Claire, daughters Diane Meade and Lee Shoulders, son Steven Shoulders and granddaughters Madeline and Hannah. New Energy Times spoke with his daughter, Diane Meade, on July 9 and confirmed the death. She provided the following statement:

“Ken’s brilliance will be missed in the scientific community as a visionary in the field of new-energy exotic vacuum objects (EVOs). He was a leader in this new frontier but perhaps best-known to the scientific community as the father of vacuum microelectronics.

“Ken was also greatly admired for his earlier work for SRI International, resulting in many patents. Other inventions that were based on Ken’s designs were the first commercially available quadrupole mass spectrometers he built, which were developed by Finnigan Instruments. Ken built the first quadrupole mass spectrometers in 1958 while working at SRI.

“Other areas of devotion to science included vertical flight technology, which remained an unfinished passion at his death. Ken will be greatly missed, but his ground-breaking work in new energy will be built on and come to pass when the rest of the world catches up to his vision. Memorial services will be held privately.”

Continue reading »