U.S. Navy Researcher David Kidwell

May 12, 2016 – By Steven B. Krivit –

On May 6, 2016, David Kidwell, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, released his latest attack criticizing the work of Japanese LENR researchers. In an email to an invitation-only but public Google discussion group, Kidwell wrote, using his NRL e-mail account, “eventually, we will get to that the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries data is not real.”

Since 2008, Kidwell has criticized the heavy-element transmutation results reported by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in its long-standing low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research program.

Two days earlier, on May 4, 2016, as reported by New Energy Times, a U.S. congressional committee took the unprecedented step of requesting from the Department of Defense a national security briefing on the implications of LENRs.

The Naval Research Laboratory, along with the Office of Naval Research, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and possibly the Department of Energy’s national laboratories likely will be among the participants preparing the DOD briefing for Congress. Continue reading »

John Dash

Low-energy nuclear reactions pioneer John Dash died on April 13 at 82 from a variety of age-related causes, his son William Dash told New Energy Times.

Dash, who was born in 1933, earned his Ph.D. in metallurgy from Pennsylvania State University in 1966. He began teaching in the Physics Department at Portland State University, in Oregon.

In 1989, the head of the Physics Department asked him to look into the "cold fusion" claims of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, Dash told New Energy Times several years ago. Dash and his students performed their first experiment on April 24, 1989. The results were positive; Dash was hooked.

He told Eugene Mallove, the editor of Infinite Energy magazine, more about his first experiments.

"Before 1989," Dash said, "we had studied the electrolysis of water with an acidic electrolyte, so we used the same composition, except we substituted heavy water for light water in the electrolyte.

"Using a small (about 1 sq. cm), cold-rolled palladium foil cathode about 25μm thick, we observed macroscopic plastic deformation of the cathode soon after the start of electrolysis. I had never seen such behavior in my 30 years of research on electrolysis, so I was immediately intrigued."

From 1989 to 2014, Dash was a sort of Johnny Appleseed, spreading seeds of knowledge about LENRs to students around the world. From 1998 until 2015, he was professor emeritus and continued to mentor students. As of 2005, he had advised seven students who completed master’s theses and two who completed Ph.D. dissertations on the research. Some of them traveled internationally to study with him.

“Smoke Screen” by mbowe-wallpapers

April 6, 2016 – By Steven B. Krivit –

Andrea Rossi, a convicted white-collar criminal with a string of failed energy ventures, is suing Thomas Darden, JT Vaughn, and their affiliated companies Cherokee Investment Partners LLC, Industrial Heat LLC, and IPH International B.V. for fraud. Rossi is accusing them of stealing his intellectual property.

Judging by all available facts known to New Energy Times, although Rossi and his Leonardo Corp. may have some patents and patent applications, there is no evidence that he has any working system that can produce commercially relevant amounts of excess heat based on what is contained in Rossi’s published intellectual property.

According to the complaint, Industrial Heat had paid Rossi $11 million for a license to what he calls his Energy Catalyzer, or E-Cat, an assembly of copper pipes that he says can produce 1 megawatt of commercially useful excess heat from low-energy nuclear reactions (LENRs). Attorney John Annesser, with the Silver Law Group in Islamorada, Florida, is representing Rossi. Annesser has been licensed for four years. Before that, he worked as a general contractor.

Continue reading »