I’m watching with interest. A lot of people seem quick to view this as a scam, but it doesn’t feel like that to me. As far as I can tell, the guy is a researcher and he may have made a breakthrough. People are looking at it and one way or another we will know.
>> A lot of people seem quick to view this as a scam
You can put me in with that group if you like.
Here’s an interesting excerpt from worldmysteries.com:
‘...Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion
The announcement of cold fusion in March 1989 at the University of Utah was greeted with worldwide hysteria. Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons had claimed that an electrochemical cell with heavy water electrolyte and a palladium cathode put out so much excess energy that the mysterious phenomenon had to be nuclear, and was probably a process related to nuclear fusion. Newspapers and magazines said it might be a major scientific discovery with the potential to end the energy crisis and revolutionize society. For a few heady weeks the public took it seriously and waited anxiously for laboratories to replicate the results. Many scientists quickly took sides for or against cold fusion – mostly against. Then, by the end of the summer of 1989 the official word came, in an authoritative report written by a select panel of experts under the auspices of the Department of Energy: cold fusion was a bust. It did not exist. It was an experimental error. It could not be reproduced. Nearly every scientific journal, magazine and newspaper on earth reported this, and cold fusion abruptly dropped out of the headlines. The story, it seemed, was over. Actually, it had barely begun. Only a few thousand electrochemists in the world were qualified to do the experiments, and most of them were too busy or not interested in trying. In that autumn as public interest faded and the U.S. Department of Energy pronounced a death sentence, a small number of experienced scientists prepared serious, full-scale experiments. One of them was Tadahiko Mizuno, an assistant professor who had been doing similar electrochemical experiments for more than twenty years.
Mizuno wrote this short book about his work and personal experiences. It is the best informal account yet written about the daily life of a cold fusion researcher. It gives you a sense of what the job feels like. It is not intended to be technical. For technical details, the reader is invited to examine Mizuno’s numerous scientific papers, some of which are listed in the references.
One event described here which is not described in the technical literature is an extraordinary 10-day long heat-after-death incident that occurred in 1991. News of this appeared in the popular press, but a formal description was never published in a scientific paper. Mizuno says this is because he does not have carefully established calorimetric data to prove the event occurred, but I think he does not need it. The cell went out of control. Mizuno cooled it over 10 days by placing it in a large bucket of water. During this period, more than 37 liters of water evaporated from the bucket, which means the cell produced more than 84 megajoules of energy during this period alone, and 114 megajoules during the entire experiment. The only active material in the cell was 100 grams of palladium. It produced 27 times more energy than an equivalent mass of the best chemical fuel, gasoline, can produce. I think the 36 liters of evaporated water constitute better scientific evidence than the most carefully calibrated high precision instrument could produce. This is first-principle proof of heat. A bucket left by itself for 10 days in a university laboratory will not lose any measurable level of water to evaporation. First principle experiments are not fashionable. Many scientists nowadays will not look at a simple experiment in which 36 liters of water evaporate, but high tech instruments and computers are not used. They will dismiss this as “anecdotal evidence.”’
Rossi really isn’t acting like a scammer. In the “free energy” world you see some people asking for up-front investments, or payment for some kinds of plans. Rossi is asking for nothing and allowing reputable scientists to come and take a look at his tech. So far all those who have tested the e-cat seem impressed.
There are a whole lot of people who never want to see a “cheap, revolutionary new energy source”. Can you imagine if every home had a totally self-contained energy source in the basement or garage that provided all the power the home would ever need, cheap? Think about all the people and industries and government hacks whose livelihoods depend on things staying the way they are now.