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Jan 242012
 

Andrea Rossi, an Italian man who claims to have invented a practical low-energy nuclear reaction device, will not have his device tested and evaluated by the University of Bologna.

Last summer, Rossi said he had started a research contract with the university to allow its researchers to study his “Energy Catalyzer.” But that didn’t happen.

Today, Dario Braga, director of scientific research at the university, told New Energy Times that the university waited long enough. It terminated the contract because Rossi did not fulfill his agreement to make the first progress payment, Braga said.

“The contract ended on January 15 and has been canceled by the university,” Braga said. “Therefore, there is no further relationship between the university and Rossi or his company.”

In October, Rossi claimed that he sold a device to an unidentified customer, but there is no factual evidence to support this. Rossi’s failure to make a payment to the university casts doubt on the sale.

Throughout 2011, Rossi devised secretive and increasingly elaborate “E-Cats” that he claimed were producing high levels – in fact commercially viable levels – of excess heat. He arranged several press conferences and paid for invited foreign professors to visit.

But the tests were never long enough, the data was always poor and the devices were always too complicated to allow a definitive conclusion in Rossi’s favor. Regardless, Rossi captured the hearts and goodwill of fans and believers worldwide.

Technology journalist Mats Lewan reported in Ny Teknik on March 10, 2011, that Rossi “is now paying 500,000 Euros to the Physics Department of Bologna University, following a new agreement.”

But Rossi apparently lied to his fans last March about the university contract. No contract was signed in March. Paolo Capiluppi, the head of the University of Bologna Physics Department, signed the contract at the end of May, and Rossi signed it on June 21, 2011.

Hanno Essén, a lecturer at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology who was paid by Rossi to come to Bologna to evaluate his device, told New Energy Times on July 15, 2011, how he thought Rossi was planning to pay for the university research.

“According to what I heard,” Essén said, “the University of Bologna contract will become active in late October, because then Rossi will get money from Athens, but this is only speculation. According to the schedule I heard, nothing will happen until October.”

But the Greek connection, Defkalion, fizzled long before October. Defkalion failed to make its first scheduled payment to Rossi on Aug. 1. The following week, Rossi made a connection with an American investor, John Preston of Quantum Energy Technologies, but that fizzled, too.

Rossi met with Preston Aug. 2-4 in Boston and drew up an agreement and defined test parameters. On Rossi’s invitation, Preston and his colleagues went to see and test Rossi’s device on Sept. 5 and 6. But it didn’t work, and they left.

On Oct. 7, a month after Preston walked away, Ny Teknik reported that Rossi canceled the agreement with Preston.

“We had a preliminary agreement with a very important party in the U.S.,” Rossi said, “but when we received the final draft, it included conditions that our lawyers said that we should not accept.”

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/img/20110900Preston-Visit-To-Rossi.jpg
September 2011 photo outside Rossi’s showroom. Left to right: unidentified, Andrea Rossi, Sergio Focardi, John Preston. Photo courtesy Jim Dunn.

Jan 172012
 

By Lewis G. Larsen

To the Editor:

Thank you for your efforts to help communicate the facts about the Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs on the New Energy Times Web site. I wish to remind your readers about a fascinating 1994 paper called “Possible Theories of Cold Fusion” by professors Martin Fleischmann, Stanley Pons, and Giuliano Preparata. I think that your readers will find this paper to be a fascinating and worthwhile article. It has stood the test of time in many ways.

It was published in Il Nuovo Cimento[1], a formerly well-known physics journal. The journal was a peer-reviewed publication of the Italian Physical Society and was subsequently absorbed into the European Physical Journal family when the European Union was formed.

Before May 2008, we had never encountered this paper in our many Internet searches for citable prior publications on low-energy nuclear reaction research theory. But in May 2008, it suddenly popped up on a search.

Since May 2005, when our preprint of “Ultra Low Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Nuclear Reactions on Metallic Hydride Surfaces” appeared on the Cornell physics arXiv, no one in the LENR field had ever mentioned this 1994 paper to us. Even Fleischmann, with whom I have met and spoken, neglected to mention this paper to me. When I found their paper, I contacted Pons through a third-party. I told him that we had followed the path they had advocated in their paper and Pons responded enthusiastically that we certainly did. On May 12, 2009, I also wrote about our discovery of this paper in an e-mail to the CMNS list.

On reflection, I realized why “cold fusion” promoters had never mentioned this paper and why it had been completely ignored. Fleischmann, Pons, and Preparata had advocated a unique approach to LENR theory. But it was not the simplistic two-body D+D –> 4He +heat “cold fusion” paradigm that still haunts the field.

Even though we had been unaware of this 1994 paper and the recommendations within it, their rough conceptual roadmap turned out to be the general route that we eventually followed. Although we were initially perceived as outsiders to the LENR field, we ultimately developed, with rigor, what Fleischmann, Pons, and Preparata had hazily sketched out 18 years earlier with their direct as well as indirect references to many-body collective quantum effects, implicit references to surface plasmons and explicit acknowledgement of high local electric fields.

Although Fleischmann, Pons, and Preparata did not manage to articulate any of the key underlying details behind the correct theoretical physics, their scientific instincts were conceptually on the right track. We ultimately developed a useful theoretical approach to help scientists understand LENRs. Preparata’s insistence of the importance of quantum electrodynamics was spot-on.

Fleischmann, Pons, and Preparata clearly recognized the crucial role that many-body collective effects, in whatever physics might eventually be used, play to successfully explain “cold fusion” phenomena. They reiterated that theme several times in their paper. They even wrote about the potential need to have very high local electric fields on cathode surfaces, a key feature of our theory that some cold fusion advocates have failed to grasp.

In 1994, most researchers in the field still thought that LENRs were a bulk phenomena. Had Fleischmann, Pons, and Preparata all realized it was definitely a surface effect, and if they had been able to continue, Preparata may well have beaten us. If fact, they describe surface plasmons without specifically calling them that. Preparata, a theoretical physicist, would have known about surface plasmons and he would have eventually connected the dots.

“The phenomenology of ‘cold fusion,’ must be based on models which take full account of the collective behavior of the proton (deuteron) and electron plasmas,” the authors wrote.

Without knowing it, the authors also described the Born-Oppenheimer breakdown which allows the coupling of surface proton or deuteron oscillations with those of nearby surface plasmon electrons, which in turn, allows the creation of nuclear-strength electric fields which lead to the creation of heavy electrons, which can react directly with electromagnetically coupled protons or deuterons to make neutrons.

“We note also that reactions at metal surfaces could well be described by the macroscopic wave functions which allow for the coupling of the reacting species to the collective modes of the electron plasmas,” the authors wrote.

Fleischmann, Pons, and Preparata were not thinking in terms of an e + p weak reaction, but they certainly had the other pieces right. In the last paragraph of their paper, the authors summarize their thinking.

“The particular mechanisms by which this may happen still await clarification,” the authors wrote. “However, here again, we say that possible explanations of such phenomena must involve collective processes both in the deuteron and d-electron plasmas as, otherwise, the Coulomb barriers would be quite prohibitive.”

That is precisely what we have done with the Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs.
Although their 1994 paper is not terribly specific in many ways, being mostly concerned with broad-brush prescriptions for what they consider to be correct theories of “cold fusion,” many parts of their thought processes were eerily prescient.

Peering into the future, they were able to discern faint, hazy outlines of viable theories that might ultimately emerge from the swirling fog encompassing the research at the time. Looking back, it is easy to see that the field was composed of a bewildering sea of disparate, sometimes conflicting and often inconclusive experimental data. One example is the excess heat observed in light water versus heavy water systems. Another example is the plethora of various nuclear transmutation products reported in light and heavy hydrogen experiments versus the selective reporting of only helium He-4 production in deuterated systems.

Of course, as readers of your work in the Wiley and Elsevier print encyclopedias already know, the history of LENRs did not begin with Pons and Fleischmann’s much maligned press conference at the University of Utah in 1989; the research goes back to at least 1905.

As I have shown, we have uncovered extensive evidence in published, peer-reviewed literature that, in certain types of experiments, scientific knowledge has been episodically observed, dutifully reported, periodically rediscovered, and then unintentionally — or perhaps intentionally — buried for a century. Some examples of this are work with high-current electric discharges in gases; anomalous amounts of nitrogen production in the manufacture of coke; and other heretofore unexplained LENR-related phenomena.

I can only wonder what knowledge may have been lost to science along the way.

Lewis Larsen
Lattice Energy LLC

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[1] Fleischmann, Martin, Pons, Stanley, Preparata, Giuliano, “Possible Theories of Cold Fusion,” Il Nuovo Cimento, Vol. 107A, Issue 1, p. 143-156 (Jan. 1994)

Jan 162012
 

One of the most conventional high-energy physics institutions in the world, CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, is interested in one of the most unconventional disciplines in science, low-energy nuclear reactions.

An interesting sequence of events has just occurred:

Dec. 7, 2011: Lewis Larsen publishes a paper on Slideshare discussing a possible relationship between low-energy nuclear reactions and unexplained observations with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Jan. 12, 2012: Francesco Celani gives a slide presentation at the World Sustainable Energy Conference 2012. Slides 2-13 are actually from David Nagel, who has presented these same slides for many years. Slides 14 and 15 are from NASA. Slides 16-22, however, a table of excess heat claims, appear to be an original compilation by Celani.

In his conclusion, Celani cites two theoretical models which rely on the “weak force;” Widom-Larsen and Takahashi.

Jan. 16, 2012: Celani reports in an e-mail to LENR researchers that he has received an invitation to speak at CERN about LENR.

“The key point is that CERN changed from [being] fully negative to [having] deep interest,” Celani wrote.

Jan 152012
 

[UPDATE: The list is composed of ONLY the major recognized theories in the field of LENR research that have been consistently presented in the related LENR conferences or published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals.]

I continue to receive mixed responses about the media attention I give to the Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs. Regardless, my confidence in that theory has not changed.

However, I have decided that it is both useful as well as fair to provide an opportunity to help present other LENR theories on the New Energy Times Web site.

Therefore, I have built portal pages for the following theories:

Bazhutov-Vereshkov Theory
Chubb (Scott) Theory
Chubb ( Talbot) Theory
De Ninno Theory
Fisher Theory
Gareev Theory
Hagelstein Theory
Hora-Miley Theory
Kim-Zubarev Theory
Kirkinskii-Novikov Theory
Kozima Theory
Li Theory
Sinha-Meulenberg Theory
Szpak Theory
Takahashi Theory

Readers will find a link to these pages on the left-hand menu of the New Energy Times Web site under “LENR Theory Index.”

If I am missing a theory in this index, please let me know. Note that I have omitted Randall Mills’ theory because he prefers not to associate his work with LENR.

I have notified (where possible) the authors of these theories. I have sent them e-mails and requested them to contribute with additional information so I may better inform the public about their theories.

But anyone can help out. Through the New Energy Times News Service, I have sent this message to nearly every LENR researcher in the world, to all the members of the CMNS e-mail list, as well as thousands of LENR fans worldwide.

I ask readers to have a look at each of the sections for each of theories. If you can help provide factual and useful information about any of these theories, please send it to me. Please note, the purpose of these pages are to help promote the work of each theorist. The pages are not to be used to criticize the work of competing theorists.

Thank you for your help.

Steven B. Krivit
Senior Editor, New Energy Times

Jan 132012
 

John O’Mara Bockris, regarded as one of the world’s pre-eminent electrochemists, recently advised me that he overcame objections by referees to a paper he submitted for publication by citing the Widom-Larsen Theory.

Bockris sent me a letter on Jan. 2 and discussed his progress.

“I have been absolutely intrigued by [Lewis] Larsen and have changed my mind about his stuff,” Bockris wrote. “I used one of his equations in a paper which was held up by referees and was able to defeat them by Larsen’s equation!”

Bockris has also been following my distinction between low-energy nuclear reactions and “cold fusion.”

“If I understand clearly what you say, you agree that some of the work that has been going on may involve nuclear reactions,” Bockris wrote, “but that it’s not fusion. Is that what you said? If it is, then I agree with it. Most of the condensed matter nuclear reactions do not involve fusion.”

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