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Physicist and LENR researcher Talbot Chubb died today. He was 88. Cause of death was related to a heart condition and other general health issues, according to one of his daughters, Carroll Chubb.

Chubb worked for 31 years at the Naval Research Laboratory, then later at University Space Research Associates, Bendix Field Engineering Corporation and Oakton International Corp.

Chubb also worked on the Manhattan project during World War II at the Tennessee Eastman Co. facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and had more than 80 refereed publications and 25 patents to his credit.

Chubb’s enthusiasm for cold fusion research, as evident in an e-mail he wrote in 2005, was as unmistakable as his smile.

“What excitement when Fleischmann and Pons announced the discovery of nuclear heat release during heavy water electrolysis onto a Pd cathode!,” Chubb wrote. “The fact that Fleischmann and Pons were respected hands-on electrochemists kept me from summarily dismissing their claims. When nephew Scott Chubb pointed out that many-body electron systems were modeled without an explicit Coulomb barrier, I had to take the cold fusion possibility seriously.

“When I learned that the 2 electrons in the ground-state helium atom had electron-electron wave function overlap, I became hooked. I bought into Scott’s idea that under some conditions deuterons in a metal can configure themselves into a wave-like geometry, like electrons in a metal. I have been exploring the Ion Band State picture ever since.”

Talbot Chubb – Photo by D. Nagel

On Dec. 3, the Columbia (MO) Tribune published a story about Rob Duncan, vice chancellor of research at the University of Missouri, and his efforts to pitch cold fusion to the federal government.

Today, the Tribune published a letter I submitted in response to that story.

Open Column: ‘Professor Rossi’ can’t back up his claims
Columbia Daily Tribune
Friday, December 9, 2011

I would like to comment on the Dec. 3 story “MU research chief wants ‘cold fusion’ puzzle solved.” I agree with Professor Robert Duncan on the importance of the scientific method and, furthermore, scientific protocol. Duncan’s suggestion that Andrea Rossi has “empirical results,” however, concerns me. Nobody has seen or tested any Rossi device outside of Rossi’s garage, let alone done so independently. No visiting scientists have been allowed to properly measure and inspect Rossi’s device.

I interviewed Andrea Rossi in Bologna, Italy, on June 15. I had to explain to him the term “control experiment.” Rossi is fluent in English. Once he understood, he said he used “many metals” for a control. Rossi and his colleague Sergio Focardi said they had submitted their paper to multiple scientific journals but that all had rejected the paper unfairly. In fact, they did not submit their paper to any journal, only to arXiv. Rossi published the paper on his blog instead. On camera, Rossi demonstrated to me how his machine worked, a video of which can be found online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-8QdVwY98E.

By all accounts, the visual evidence was grossly inconsistent with his claim. The list goes on. “Professor Rossi,” as Duncan calls him, has no affiliation with any university. He has a degree in philosophy and a degree in chemical engineering from what CBS calls a “diploma mill.” Anybody involved in the LENR field who condones or, worse, promotes Rossi’s unscientific behavior and claim does himself and the LENR field a tremendous disservice.

On Nov. 21, I received a phone call from Avra Michelson, an analyst with MITRE Corp. Michelson explained that MITRE Corp. is a federally funded research and development center that is sanctioned by Congress to work in the public interest exclusively with government. It helps government with some of its hardest systems engineering problems and with its work with the private sector.

Michelson told me that she was doing background research on LENR on behalf of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. She invited me to be interviewed as a subject-matter expert on LENR.

“We are asking questions about the field to eminent scientists and experts like yourself who have been active participants in the field,” Michelson said. “IARPA’s goal is to fund and help accelerate high-risk kinds of research for the intelligence community.”

The telephone interview took place on Dec. 1. Michelson’s colleague Chrissy Vu also participated in the call.

Click here to continue.

In the last few years, despite the fact that, or perhaps because, my 2008 American Chemical Society presentation (slides, audio) is clear and explicit about the distinction between “cold fusion” and low-energy nuclear reactions, many “cold fusion” proponents have spent an inordinate amount of time muddying the waters. Even though many of them are technically capable of following the scientific distinctions, they still behave as though the loss of the term “cold fusion” represents a loss of their dream and of recognition of their substantial participation in a potentially new energy paradigm. For unknown reasons, many of the people who have been fighting the “War Against Cold Fusion” appear to be locked into a siege mentality and have been unable to shift their thinking as better facts and understanding of the field have emerged.

It therefore seems worthwhile to offer an analogy to help nonspecialists see the distinction between “cold fusion” and LENR.

The concept of the unicorn comes from European folklore. In general, it closely resembles a horse. It looks like a horse, walks like a horse and, ahem, talks like a horse. But the unicorn has a single horn that is said to have magical powers. And one more thing: It is a mythical animal.

The concept of “cold fusion” developed out of the research of Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann and the community of researchers they inspired. But much like Columbus when he headed east from Spain and then thought he found a new way to India, Pons, Fleischmann and their followers were mistaken, but only partially.

The amount of heat generated from the Pons-Fleischmann discovery resembled a nuclear reaction. The tritium and helium produced were characteristic of a nuclear reaction. A research community developed as a result of the Pons-Fleischmann discovery. Central to this community is a utopian concept and hope for a world fueled by a new kind of clean nuclear reaction.

But there was a subtle but significant difference with the underlying physical mechanism: It was based primarily on weak interactions and neutron-capture processes, not fusion. Despite the growing body of experimental evidence that revealed this distinction, and despite all the attempts that Pons and Fleischmann’s followers made to try to make LENR look like fusion, no amount of varnish could change the fact: “Cold fusion” too, was a myth. But LENR, which does not presume or assert a fusion mechanism, is real.

Akito Takahashi, a retired professor of nuclear engineering from Osaka University, and now affiliated with Technova Inc., is shifting his thinking about low-energy nuclear reactions.

For two decades, Takahashi, a LENR experimentalist and theorist, has been exclusively proposing strong force reactions in which deuterons theoretically overcome the Coulomb barrier at room temperature.

In the abstracts for the forthcoming Japan CF Research Society conference, Takahashi discusses the weak interaction p +e –> n + v and the neutron capture process 3p + n –> 3He + p.

Two decades ago, LENR theorists initially considered weak interactions and neutron capture process to explain the experimental observations in LENRs.

But it wasn’t until 2005 when Allan Widom and Lewis Larsen published their
Ultra-Low-Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Theory of LENRs that the concept of weak interactions began to make sense.

LENR Researcher Talbot Chubb Dies

Duncan’s Promotion of Rossi: A Tremendous Disservice

Krivit Interviewed on LENR for Intelligence Agency

Unicorns Versus Horses; Cold Fusion Versus LENR

Takahashi Now Includes Weak Interactions in LENR Theory

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