I doubt it. Not this year anyway. However, after a seemingly disappointing period of no significant news regarding the cold fusion saga, mid-December has found this story once again springing to life.
Last week Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney mentioned cold fusion in an interview with the conservative publication the Washington Examiner link. As Governor Romney stumbled and bumbled and actually showed a poor grasp of the matter, it was likely that he was briefed about the matter by one of his “handlers” and encouraged to mention it in the interview. It is also likely that his associates have spoken to Republican colleague, Massachusetts state senator Bruce Tarr, who invited Andrea Rossi to Massachusetts for exploratory talks a couple of weeks ago. The nature of his Governor Romney’s (ex of Massachusetts) indicate a “trial balloon,” a statement made to gauge public interest and reaction. Yet, given in the context of his statement, a run for the Republican nomination to be a presidential candidate, his mere mention of the term “cold fusion” I think is significant.
I also need to point out here that the only two American politicians to mention cold fusion to date have been conservative Republicans, Governor Romney and Senator Tarr. One would have reasonably expected the subject to have been broached first by more liberal political figures like the President or independent Senator Bernie Sanders, or even a libertarian like Ron Paul, but so far they have remained remarkably silent about the matter. Of course, as mentioned in the previous article here, the President has his hands full with the Solyndra solar scandal, so perhaps it is thought prudent that not make any mention of something as controversial as cold fusion. I do not know what the excuse for the others is, with the “others” including a vast liberal portion of the Democratic party who have adopted green energy as part of their political mantra.
One segment of the U.S. Government who have not been so silent about cold fusion/LENR is the US Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) . They have been working on this technology for nearly 20 years, with much of that research being led by Dr. Pamela Moiser-Boss. In a video from 2009 that has just surfaced in the blogosphere, members of this organization, including Dr. Boss, give a quite an extensive and informative presentation regarding their cold fusion/LENR work. That video is now available in the sidebar video player. In this video, members of SPAWAR explain this phenonomon AS A FACT. There is absolutely no equivocation with regards to their belief that this technology is real. Let me state that once again to reiterate…MEMBERS OF THE U.S. NAVY’S SPACE AND NAVAL WARFARE SYSTEMS COMMAND UNEQUIVOCALLY STATE THAT COLD FUSION/LENR IS A FACT!
Interestingly, at the outset of this presentation, given at the University of Missouri in 2009, a SPAWAR spokesman states: “We currently call it low-energy nuclear reactions. That may not be any more accurate than the term cold fusion…” I only bring this us because some in the blogosphere of late have gone to great lengths insisting that this is LENR not cold fusion. I find these efforts a complete waste of time in the context of the greater discussion. There are a host of mainstream scientists and journalists (a majority actually) who out of sheer ignorance continue to argue that this whole phenonomon is “junk” or “pathological science” and refuse to acknowledge data and evidence to the contrary. I strongly feel efforts should be directed at educating the ignorant with facts that refute mistaken notions instead of having largely pointless arguments about what terms to use to describe a very real technology.
Speaking of the aforementioned, and moving on to more important developments in the evolving cold fusion saga, the New Energy Times has recently posted an article entiled “Shell’s Interest Indicates Major Shift for LENR.” I think the title of the article speaks for itself. I would strongly encourage all to read this article. It is important because it not only indicates that large and powerful corporations are taking notice of this technology now but, according to the article, Shell did successful research into this field as far back as the 1990s.
While it is curious that NASA kept silent about successful cold fusion research dating back to 1989, it is not really surprising that a major oil company has. What is more surprising (or maybe not) is that Shell has decided to look into this again. I think it indicates a continuing undercurrent of interest of entities that extend far beyond the world of the narrow-mindness and ignorance of so many that claim to be in-the-know.
I would note that if you do plan to read the Shell article, I would do it sooner rather than later as a commenter has already requested that this article be taken down because apparently this information was confidential and its disclosure has been deemed “highly inappropriate.” The article also includes a new slide show (in PDF format) presentation that was part of NASA’s September 22 LENR workshop. This information documents in more detail NASA’s 1989 cold fusion experimentation.
As the grand finale to the new information that has emerged regarding cold fusion this Holiday Season, is a report of the Coherence 2011cold fusion conference held in Rome, Italy on December 14. This report was provided by Daniel Passerni of the 22Passi blog and may be found here. The report includes links to 10 presentations provided at the conference. Unfortunately for us Anglophones, this treasure trove of information is mostly in Italian. However, I have gone ahead and provided links to this information below for those who understand the language. These links can also be found at the link provided above to the 22Passi blog. The link has above is for the Google translated version of the page and it contains some important information in and of itself.
Perhaps of most interest are reports that Italian physicist Francesco Celani is now doing some very robust cold fusion work. He reports cells now operating in the 200% excess heat range for periods of weeks! He has been working with a variety of materials, including platinum and palladium, but seems to be getting the best results with…..nickel and hydrogen. Apparently he has worked very closely with Japanese researcher Yoshiaki Arata, whose public demonstration of his work in 2008 has served as the impetus, it is felt, for many other researchers including Andrea Rossi and Brian Ahern.
There is a lot of information buried in these reports and I would encourage all to take at them as much as possible. Admittedly they are hard to read because the Google translation is inexact. However, one tidbit that is of interest is a report that Ahern and Rossi worked together on a project for the U.S. Department of Defense since 2008! It is not clear how long this relationship latest or its extent. This is of course contrary to statements made by Rossi that he has never met Ahern and may provide a background for some of the contention between the two.
The whole Coherence Conference actually deserves an article of its owns but, unfortunately, time does not permit this right at the moment. The busy Holiday Season and personal matters prevent me from discussing it further at this time but I hope to have more to say about at a future date. I expect Tom Baccei to have some insights about it and to bring them to his articles in the coming days.
I just want to offer a public word of thanks to Tom Baccei for the content he has provided to this site in recent days. His contributions have been a great help to me personally and, by the look of the site page view counter and comment box, many of you are enjoying his contributions as well. I think he is bringing a refreshing take on this whole saga and I look forward to his continued contributions in the coming days.
Reference materials from Coherence 2011
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Slides presentate da Ubaldo Mastromatteo (STMicroelectronics) a COHERENCE 2011
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Slides presentate da Paolo Pasquinelli (Università di Pisa) a COHERENCE 2011
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Slides presentate da Francesco Celani (Infn Frascati) a COHERENCE 2011
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Slides presentate da Yogendra Srivastava (Università di Perugia) a COHERENCE 2011
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Slides presentate da Sergio Bartalucci (Infn Frascati) a COHERENCE 2011
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Report di Vincenzo Valenti (COHERENCE 2011)
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Ambiente e Dispositivi a Fusione Nucleare Fredda: componenti a doppio uso? di Giuseppe Quartieri e Piero Quercia (COHERENCE 2011)
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Ambiente e Dispositivi a Fusione Nucleare Fredda: componenti a doppio uso? Reazioni magneto-nano-biofisiche LENR in biologia – Si tratta di fusione Nucleare Fredda e trasmutazioni biologiche? di Giuseppe Quartieri e Piero Quercia (COHERENCE 2011)
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Neutroni virtuali e miniatomi in reazioni LENR (comunicazione di Lino Daddi a COHERENCE 2011)
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Produzione spontanea di Ca da parte di piante di avena cresciute in assenza ambientale di tale elemento,Università di Milano – Pirelli Labs S.p.A. – IDROCONS, s.r.l (2007)
The main point of interest here is the steadily increasing amount of data corroborating the LENR phenomena. Like most people I have been ignoring this matter since 1989, because some the top Physics professionals said it was bunk I put it on the back burner as wishful thinking. Then in 2009 I see the 60 minutes piece, that was real eye opener, when Rob Duncan vice chancellor of a Missouri Physics institution looked at current LENR work, he had an awakening and became an advocate of LENR research, that was interesting. Since then I have been waiting for possible confirmation from the larger experimental, physics community, and here we are approaching 2012 with this type of information trickling in from widespread, reliable sources and credibility is gaining steadily. Of course, we are not there yet, but LENR is gaining momentum as a viable energy solution, the final outcome is yet to be reached, but if Andrea Rossi actually sells functioning units to legitimate end users and they work as advertised, it’s game over for the entire Energy sector and humankind enters a new era.
200 percent? That is COP 2 right? I thougt we passed that level long time ago….
That is a good point Burt. The 200% is what I read but it may be a Google translation error or wrongly stated. However, Passerini’s article does state that Celani’s work is in it’s infancy so those numbers would be consistent with that. Although not impressive in and of itself, it does provide evidence of more people successfully working on this outside of the names commonly bantered about. It was Celani who so “kindly” offered to evaluate the e-Cat independently and who brought a spectrometer to January 14 test, which angered Rossi when he found out.