Jul 092019
 

July 9, 2019 — By Steven B. Krivit —

Ninth in a Series on the Rutherford Nitrogen-to-Oxygen Transmutation Myth

Dr. Robin Marshall
Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester
Fellow of the U.K. Royal Society
Fellow of the U.K. Institute of Physics

Dear Dr. Marshall,

I am responding to the eight-page comment you posted on your Twitter account about a statement I published in my May 14, 2019, New Energy Times article “The World’s First Successful Alchemist (It Wasn’t Rutherford)“:

According to the myth, Rutherford bombarded nitrogen nuclei with energetic alpha particles and, in doing so, became the world’s first successful alchemist, changing the element nitrogen into the element oxygen.

Marshall-1: “Comments on the Paper by Steven B. Krivit” Continue reading »

Jul 082019
 

July 8, 2019 — By Steven B. Krivit —

Eighth in a Series on the Rutherford Nitrogen-to-Oxygen Transmutation Myth

When Robin Marshall, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Manchester, learned of my work to correct the historical record of an experiment performed a century ago by Ernest Rutherford, he didn’t take the news well.

Marshall insisted that there was no “justification to strip Rutherford of his transmutation discovery.” In the days preceding the June 8 “Centenary of Transmutation” meeting at the University of Manchester, Marshall took to Twitter to express himself. Here are some samples:

I absolutely love it when the intellectually vacuous try to take me on. They end up not only wishing they’d never been born, they end up wishing their mother and father had never been born.

Imagine a climate denier, flat Earth, 6,000yo Earth vaccine denier rolled into one. He is called Dr. K. and he has just scatter-gun blasted the whole Manchester Uni senior hierarchy; president, deans, and hangers-on like me. We must cancel the Centenary of Transmutation conference 08062019.

[I was] asked to give a sound bite to a reporter on the Yankee who denigrated Manchester’s transmutation centenary: “His utterances bear the same relation to physics as a barking dog does to the English language. Only the dog knows what it means.”

Continue reading »

Jul 072019
 

July 7, 2019 — By Steven B. Krivit —

Seventh in a Series on the Rutherford Nitrogen-to-Oxygen Transmutation Myth

On June 8, the University of Manchester held a one-day meeting titled “Centenary of Transmutation.” The meeting was to “celebrate the centenary of the first experiments to successfully transmute one element into another,” allegedly performed by Ernest Rutherford, at Manchester, and published 100 years ago in June 1919. In fact, there had been no such discovery. Instead, the historic discovery was made by Patrick Blackett; it took place at the University of Cambridge, and he published his results 94 years ago, in February 1925.

The key expert that spoke at the meeting was John Alexander Campbell, a well-known Rutherford expert. I had exchanged many e-mails with Campbell in 2014 when I was writing my book Lost History. Despite Campbell’s widespread claims that Rutherford had transmuted nitrogen to oxygen, Campbell did not know of any scientific paper in which Rutherford had published such findings. As I quickly learned, Rutherford never published such results.

Continue reading »

Jul 032019
 

July 3, 2019 — by Steven B. Krivit —

In a June 27, 2019, press release, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a private spin-off from MIT, said it had raised another $50 million from investors, bringing its total fusion reactor funding to $115 million.

MIT began operating its first experimental nuclear fusion reactor in 1972, funded by and under the auspices of the Department of Energy. The federal program ran until 2016 when the DOE and Congress, after four years of indecision, pulled the plug.

During that half-century, MIT had developed a reputation for being a leading plasma fusion research center and had trained many of the world’s plasma physicists. In the absence of public funding from U.S. taxpayers, MIT decided not to continue operating the reactor. Instead, it developed plans for a new reactor that would be funded by private investment.

A year ago, on March 9, 2018, MIT issued a press release announcing its plans for its next experimental fusion reactor:

SPARC is designed to produce about 100 MW of heat. While it will not turn that heat into electricity, it will produce, in pulses of about 10 seconds, as much power as is used by a small city. That output would be more than twice the power used to heat the plasma, achieving the ultimate technical milestone: positive net energy from fusion.

In the June 27, 2019, press release, Commonwealth said that SPARC is designed to generate 100 MW of fusion power. Commonwealth said that, in six years from now, in collaboration with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, SPARC will “demonstrate net energy gain from fusion for the first time in history.”

Top MIT executives have been involved in the well-coordinated publicity campaign. On the same day as last year’s press release, the Boston Globe published an op-ed article by MIT Vice President for Research Maria Zuber.

SPARC, Zuber said, is designed to “demonstrate, for the first time, control of a fusion plasma that produces more energy than it consumes.” Continue reading »

Jul 022019
 

July 2, 2019 — by Steven B. Krivit —

In a June 27, 2019, press release, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a private spin-off from MIT, said it had raised another $50 million from investors, bringing its total fusion reactor funding to $115 million.

MIT began operating its first experimental nuclear fusion reactor in 1972, funded by and under the auspices of the Department of Energy. The federal program ran until 2016 when the DOE and Congress, after four years of indecision, pulled the plug.

During that half-century, MIT had developed a reputation for being a leading plasma fusion research center and had trained many of the world’s plasma physicists. In the absence of public funding from U.S. taxpayers, MIT decided not to continue operating the reactor. Instead, it developed plans for a new reactor that would be funded by private investment.

A year ago, on March 9, 2018, MIT issued a press release announcing its plans for its next experimental fusion reactor:

SPARC is designed to produce about 100 MW of heat. While it will not turn that heat into electricity, it will produce, in pulses of about 10 seconds, as much power as is used by a small city. That output would be more than twice the power used to heat the plasma, achieving the ultimate technical milestone: positive net energy from fusion.

In the June 27, 2019, press release, Commonwealth said that SPARC is designed to generate 100 MW of fusion power. Commonwealth said that, in six years from now, in collaboration with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, SPARC will “demonstrate net energy gain from fusion for the first time in history.”

Top MIT executives have been involved in the well-coordinated publicity campaign. On the same day as last year’s press release, the Boston Globe published an op-ed article by MIT Vice President for Research Maria Zuber.

SPARC, Zuber said, is designed to “demonstrate, for the first time, control of a fusion plasma that produces more energy than it consumes.” Continue reading »

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