Posted on 03/30/2013 5:08:15 PM PDT by Kevmo
There has been steady progress in the world of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), better known as Cold Fusion, in the last few months. The main commercial players have been quiet but the open-source Martin Fleishmann Memorial Project (MFMP) has made some big steps towards its goal of proving the reality of LENR to a skeptical world.
Bob Greenyeris one of the driving forces behind the MFMP. He's a successful entrepreneur, having run a diverse portfolio of businesses in the fields of pharmaceuticals, finance, advertising and education. But now he's in a business that costing him money rather than making it, and he loves it. Like the other MFMP team members, he has put in a lot of his own time and money because he believes in the cause.
MFMP has no interest in intellectual property, says Greenyer. It wants to share it with the world.
One of the MFMP's first aims is a cheap, simple apparatus that can be easily replicated and which shows that "new fire" (as MFMP terms the reaction) produces energy. It aims to do this as transparently as possible, in an exercise in crowd-sourced engineering. Greenyer calls it "science by the people for the people." He has seen the disruptive effects of big egos elsewhere in LENR research and wants to avoid the destructive patterns of rivalry and secrecy which can result.
"We will work with anyone, whether they are a barrow boy or a nuclear physicist," says Greenyer.
In contrast to normal practice where everything is behind closed doors until a paper is published, with the MFMP it's right out in the open. Experimental protocols and detailed results are published day by day on the Replicate section of its website . The only thing that does remain secret is the identity of some of their collaborators, as any association with cold fusion could damage the reputation of most scientists.
Greenyer says this open approach has been very successful because it has identified possible flaws in the experimental procedure and allows his team to identify potential criticisms of its setup. This means it should be able to come up with a "foolproof" demonstration by the end of the process.
The MFMP's experiments are based on the work of Italian physicist Francesco Celani, who has made the details of his research available to the group. Celani has given several successful demonstrations over the past year, and his work has beenreplicated by third parties.
The apparatus consists of a nanostructured nickel wire weighing 275 mg "loaded" with hydrogen. The wire produces roughly four watts extra of excess heat in addition to the fifteen watts supplied. This continues for many hours, showing that far more energy is produced than could be accounted for by a chemical reaction. The challenge is of course in the detail of the setup and ensuring that there is no possible source of error.
Four watts from a small length of wire represents a high energy density, But why not crank it up and produce more power to make it that much more obvious? Greenyer says that this would be possible, but the team needs to understand more before it can be done safely. There have been explosions and injuries in LENR labs before now, and a well-designed experiment should be able to provide proof of "new fire" at the power levels they have.
Greenyer notes that the MFMP is well behind where some of the competitors claim to be. But he believes that the advantage of its setup is that it cannot simply be bought out by hostile interests. In addition, its progress may force other researchers into the open if they want to be seen to be ahead.
"It doesn't matter if we prove it, or if we force others to," says Greenyer. "What's important is that this gets recognition."
The next few weeks will see some improved experimental approaches that will provide better figures and eradicate possible sources of error. An elaborate protocol will see live and inert wires tested side by side, with the same tests being carried out inmultiple laboratories.
The live and inert wires are the same except for the nanostructure in which the reaction occurs. While this may not be the final configuration, if the results continue as they have done it's getting pretty close to a setup that produces measurable amounts of excess heat reliably and repeatably -- what cold fusion researchers have been trying to achieve for 20 years.
The next stage for MFMP is to raise funds to demonstrate the technology to the world, using Kickstarter. Greenyer says that one experiment would cost around £50k, if it raises £150k it can set up three independent replications in different countries, £350k would be enough for ten replications worldwide. (Anyone donating £5k will get a working copy of the Celani reactor themselves). It is, as Greenyer points out, a tiny sum compared to the 16 billion euro cost of the ITER hot fusion reactor, itself a just demonstrator and only expected to achieve its first reaction in seven years' time. Most of the excitement now centres around third-party reports, the long-awaited independent validation of recent work which was first mentioned last October. The results of this were in some doubt when the un-named third party insisted on further tests, but on 25 March ... *THE TESTS OF THE THIRD INDIPENDENT PARTY HAVE BEEN COMPLETED YESTERDAY. * If positive results really are published by a reputable third party, you might be hearing a lot more about this in the mainstream media very soon. .
These two approaches represent the two poles of research, open and closed. While a secretive approach might make a person a billionaire (assuming he has what he says), it makes him vulnerable to negative reports. Greenyer is not going to make money out of the MFMP even if it works exactly as planned. But if it does pave the way to abundant, cheap, CO2-neutral power, it could make the rest of the world very rich indeed.
Same Shinola, different day.
Looks like he'll be working with a lot of barrow boys.
That's because there's nothing to report.
I didn’t buy the work of the Greek/Italian group that kept making promises but couldn’t deliver.
But this kind of work is the way science is done properly.
There are other angles to lenr work including but not limited to dense plasma fusion that imho are more promising.
But we’ll see.
Its notable that the number of players in the field has steadily expanded over the past 25 years. The amount of smoke has steadily increased. Even without seeing fire—that tells you something.
That's a better scam than what Rossi is running. And why would an experiment cost 45k more than the scam device, especially since the eccentric that founded National Instruments will give them software for free?
Send them £5k and you can get your own Celani reactor.
But wait, there's more.
Send them another £45k and you can fund one experiment.
They are going to fool around and find something yet and hopefully not blow the oceans up or something.
hopefully not blow the oceans up or something.
***Ballad of Serenity
lyrics and music by Joss Whedon
sung by Sonny Rhodes
take my love
take my land
take me where I cannot stand
I don’t care
I’m still free
you can’t take the sky from me
take me out
to the black tell ‘em I ain’t coming back
burn the land
and boil the sea
you can’t take the sky from me
have no place
I can be
since I found Serenity
but you can’t take the sky from me
When a LENR device is sufficiently developed so it real-world use, this is going to be as significant an advance for humanity as the steam engine was. I can hardly wait for how enviros are going to object to it because LENR promises to remove all their stated objections to energy production. But because their objections were more about stopping progress and reducing prosperity, they will have to quickly find something that allows them to block LENR energy generation.
Apart from that, LENR may perturb world power relationships particularly those involving oil producing countries.
If I’m going to pay a nice chunk of money for something I’d like some assurance that it will work reliably and predictably.
Otherwise I get a box of junk and the blame for it’s failure.
The following is a better value:
More so. The name "new fire" is showing up where LENR is discussed.
"I can hardly wait for how enviros are going to object to it because LENR promises to remove all their stated objections to energy production."
Waste heat. Which is also one of the arguments used against fission plants. Never mind the fact that the warm water around cooling tower drains causes fish and other life to thrive. The problem then is when that "warm" happens to need to be stopped during cold weather.
"New fire" still doesn't show up as often as "old fraud."
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