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.

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Cover of David Goodstein’s Book on Science Fraud

May 27, 2013 – By Alessio Guglielmi–

From: Dr. Alessio Guglielmi
To: Drs. Giuseppe Levi, Evelyn Foschi, Torbjörn Hartman, Bo Höistad, Roland Pettersson, Lars Tegnér, Hanno Essén

Dear Doctors Levi, Foschi, Hartman, Höistad, Pettersson, Tegnér and Essén,

I have read your recent manuscript `Indication of anomalous heat energy production in a reactor device containing hydrogen loaded nickel powder´ on arXiv and I am very perplexed.

You are aware that several alleged technical mistakes have been pointed out, such as omitting control on DC current input (which has been acknowledged by Prof. Essén in a recent interview) and the assumption that the output heat is released by a perfect black body (this assumption is contested by Prof. Gianni Comoretto, for example). The picture that emerges, and I am sorry if this sounds offensive, is that some crucial measures have not been taken seriously enough on a discovery that, if genuine, would alter the history of mankind.

However, I have an issue that appears to me even more important, because it concerns the very essence of your continued activities on Rossi’s device. Our job as researchers is to advance knowledge, and to do so, whatever we investigate must be reproducible by other researchers so that the knowledge we generate becomes established and we can move forward. This seems to be at odds with your behavior. You went to the workshop of a private individual who claims to be solving half of mankind’s problems, and performed measures on a device that you could not fully control and that is not available to other researchers. Therefore, your manuscript does not contain any reproducible experience. So, how does it advance knowledge? What do we learn?

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May 21, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –

On May 16, Hanno Essén, a theoretical physicist and lecturer at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, submitted a paper to arXiv, the physics pre-print server, and claimed that he and several co-authors performed an independent test of an E-Cat device that was built by Andrea Rossi. Essén submitted a revised version of the paper on May 20.

The authors of the paper did not perform an independent test; instead, they were participants in another Rossi demonstration and performed measurements on one of Rossi’s devices in his facility.

New Energy Times stopped counting the Rossi demonstrations after the 13th one on Feb. 12, 2012. (See Andrea Rossi Energy Catalyzer Master Timeline.)

The authors of the paper lack full knowledge of the type and preparation of the materials used in the reactor and the modulation of input power, which, according to the paper, were industrial trade secrets.

The authors didn’t perform any calorimetry and used a method to measure temperature to extrapolate output power that neither they nor anyone in the field of low-energy nuclear reaction research has ever used to analyze for heat power or energy.

In response to a question from New Energy Times about whether he had full knowledge of how to perform and operate the experiment, Essén effectively confirmed that he had not replicated the experiment.

“No, but I am sure that I could repeat it with some effort,” Essén wrote.

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