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NEW ENERGY TIMES ^TM March 10, 2005 -- Issue #9
The leader in cold fusion news and information.
Copyright 2005 New Energy Times (tm)


Table of Contents:
1.   From the Editor: A Conversation About Peak Oil With Colin Campbell
2.   To the Editor
3.   Notable Quotables
4.   Department of Energy Dumps Cold Fusion (Again)
5.   The DOE Lies Again - by Jed Rothwell and Ed Storms
6.   Ed Storms Continues Dialogue With U.S. Department of Energy Reviewers
7.   Open letter to U.S. Department of Energy and Its Team of 18 Scientists
8.   Great, Not-So-Great, and Realistic Expectations from Department of Energy Re-Review
9.   Cold Fusion Explosion and Accident Report
10. Mizuno Paper Published
11. ChangChun University, China, Takes up Cold Fusion
12. Italian Physical Society Publishes Cold Fusion Nano-Particle Paper
13. 6th International Workshop on Anomalies in Hydrogen / Deuterium Loaded Metals (Italy)
14. American Physical Society March Meeting
15. Why Is Everybody Waiting For America When It Comes to Research?
16. "Second Chance for Cold Fusion"
17. "Cold Fusion Acceptable For Scientists to Discuss, but Not Media"
18. Murder Investigation of Eugene Mallove
19. Department of Shameless Self-Promotion: Cold Fusion Book Review
20. ArchiveFreedom.org Founded to Fight Scientific Censorship
21. Cold Fusion in the News
22. Speakers Available - Experts on the Subject of Cold Fusion
23. Recent Updates to the New Energy Times (tm) Web Site
24. Support New Energy Times(tm)
25. Appreciation
26. Administrative

 

 
1. From the Editor: A Conversation About Peak Oil with Colin Campbell


Photo credit: www.peakoil.net

Geologist Colin Campbell has a simple way of explaining peak oil: "Understanding depletion is simple. Think of an Irish pub. The glass starts full and ends up empty. There are only so many more drinks to closing time. Its the same with oil."

After 40 years of working as an exploration geologist for Texaco and Amoco, Campbell is in a unique position to assess and analyze the precarious situation of a civilization built and powered by the assumption of perpetual cheap oil.
 
Campbell is the founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. ASPO is one of the leading international groups of researchers collecting and sharing data and views on the implications of the forthcoming depletion of oil and natural gas. The Web site is http://www.peakoil.net/. The organization is directed by Kjell Aleklett.

The two questions I posed to Campbell were, "What is your objective in bringing peak oil awareness to the public?" and "Why bother to host an international conference on oil and gas depletion? (http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2005/iwood2005.html.)" The evidence is clear. The eventuality is unavoidable. Peak Oil is something we have no control over.

Everyone in the civilized world needs to understand that tough times may be imminent as oil becomes less abundant. But I'm a practical guy; I like to know what the solutions are, and I want to get working on them. Right now, solar and wind don't seem to offer solutions that can replace fossil fuels on a large scale, and cold fusion research is moving at an excruciatingly slow pace. The type of nuclear power that everybody loves to hate, fission, seems to be the only tenable solution not only for global warming problems but also for the oil depletion problem. Acceptable, that is, if you don't worry about the hot waste. We can bury that - umm, somewhere. Hey, I even read some brilliant ways to continue using coal without contributing to global warming: Bury the carbon dioxide underground! 

An impressive number of largely unchallenged facts indicate that our favorite nonrenewable energy drink is soon to become backordered. I wanted to know, What's the point in telling people about Peak Oil when they can do nothing about it, and who would care?

Campbell reminded me that the topic is still largely unknown in most of the world. Here in the United States, I told him, it doesn't seem that the mainstream press has picked up on the story. One can go to overseas media, even in the oil-rich Middle East, and learn about Peak Oil. (Al Jazeerah article.) But one won't find much talk about it here in the United States.

Campbell talked about the historical relationship between major technological changes and their effects on society. The use of coal, for example, brought on the Industrial Revolution. The use of oil, starting in the 1850s brought on another wave of technological progress and prosperity. And all along, the financial foundation of modern societies was built on the premise and assumption of cheap energy. And this dependency on "dirt-cheap" energy is poised to be more destabilizing than the depletion of the energy itself, Campbell said.

I also spoke with Julian Darley, founder of the Post Carbon Institute (http://www.postcarbon.org,) to ask him what he proposed as a solution to Peak Oil.

Darley demonstrates an insightful and creative approach to urban planning, and advocates accepting the inevitability of high-priced energy. He suggests that people, city planners in particular, design ways around the problem. Reduce consumption - drastically. Reduce the need to drive. Sell the homes in the suburbs and rebuild and retrofit urban environments so they can be more self-sustaining. He certainly has a point. If no cheap alternatives to gasoline appear, what else is there to do? Darley was among 10 experts interviewed in a disturbing as well as entertaining Peak Oil awareness movie, "The End of Suburbia" (http://www.endofsuburbia.com/).

Not everybody agrees with Campbell, Darley and the Peak Oil crowd. Charles H. Featherstone, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist specializing in energy, wrote an article titled "The Myth of "Peak Oil" on Jan.12 (http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1717&id=76).

As the title implies, Featherstone expresses grave doubts that there is anything to worry about. He provides many facts about the price of oil, as well as facts about oil suppliers and producers. I waded through the article eager to see how he was going to argue against the data presented by geologists such as Hubbert and Campbell. But 5,800 words later, not a single challenge to the facts of oil and gas depletion had happened.

And why is Featherstone so smug? He states that the real question we should be asking is, How can we best use the petroleum we have until other economically viable alternatives present themselves? He has faith that "whatever ends up replacing petroleum will come in its own good time." I can't help but wonder what Featherstone has in mind. From what I hear, most governments are hoping to sway the public to build more nuclear fission plants. Beyond that, they are putting their best bets on hot fusion. Hot fusion concerns me. People used to joke that "hot fusion is 20 years away and always will be." Now, hot fusion seems to be 45 years away. Not a good sign. Perhaps Featherstone has his hopes on cold fusion. Perhaps he is a "true believer," like me.

Campbell's words have sent money managers and financial advisers scrambling for safety. "The second half of the Age of Oil now dawns, to be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it," he said. "This realization undermines the foundations of the current financial system, which assumes that tomorrow's expansion provides collateral for today's debt. If expansion cannot happen while the oil production which drives it declines, that it implies that equivalent amounts of 'capital' will have to be removed from the system. Sounds like the Second Great Depression."

 
9. Cold Fusion Explosion and Accident Report

Radial fracture pattern of the bottom of the flask after explosion.

On January 24, 2005, at around 4:00 p.m., an explosion rocked a cold fusion laboratory at Hokkaido University, Japan. The experimental design was the plasma electrolysis method, one of several methods used to perform cold fusion experiments. Physicist Tadahiko Mizuno, one of Japan's most experienced cold fusion scientists and a guest of his were in the laboratory at the time of the explosion.

Mizuno and the guest suffered wounds to the face, neck, arms and chest from shards of glass. A large piece of glass next to Mizuno's carotid artery was safely removed.

"I feel fortunate that neither of my eyes were seriously wounded and that neither I, nor my guest were seriously wounded," he said.

However, the explosion was so loud that it rendered both victims temporarily deaf. A week following the accident, their hearing recovered, though Mizuno said that the "singing in the ear continues strongly."

A definitive explanation is unknown, though Mizuno suspects that a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen in the headspace of the cell was ignited. Mizuno has performed these experiments hundreds of times, and this apparatus had been well-tested over the last five years.

Before the experiment, Mizuno had checked all of his equipment and had made sure that the exhaust tube was clear.

"The outlet tube leading to the mass spectrometer was definitely not blocked or impeded, so the gas in the headspace was at one atmosphere," he reported.

A high-pressure build-up of hydrogen and oxygen has been ruled out.

At the time of the explosion, a collector that would normally have aided in the collection and removal of the effluent gasses was removed, though this was not unique.

"The funnel around the cathode was taken off for the analysis of the generation gas during plasma electrolysis," Mizuno said. "I have performed such measurements 40 times in the past and confirmed the safety of this procedure many times."

Mizuno turned the experiment on when he arrived in the laboratory that afternoon. It had not been on long enough to develop the plasma, which usually takes about 20 minutes. About 5 seconds later, when he observed that electrolysis started, he increased the voltage to 20 volts and the current to 1.5 amps. About five or six seconds later, Mizuno reported seeing a bright white flash of light from the submerged portion of the cathode, where the plasma normally would develop.

The light "expanded, and at the same instant the cell exploded," Mizuno said. The safety doors to the incubator were blown open, and glass and electrolyte were blown up to 6 meters from the experiment platform.

Mizuno documented the event in his accident report (http://newenergytimes.com/news/2005MTExplosion/Report.pdf). He listed several possible causes, though he was tentative about any of the prosaic explanations.

Chemist Dieter Britz from the University of Aarhus was curious about how such a small amount (3cc) of hydrogen gas might have caused such a large explosion in the cell.

"It is also hard to imagine that there should have been enough for such a violent explosion," Britz said. "You have no doubt seen the school experiment, where a lighted taper is inserted into a tube with some hydrogen in it. You get a nice 'pop.' In an open cell, [such as this] after a short time of electrolysis, that is what I would expect. So this is very strange, and I have no guesses."

The explosion was perhaps similar to the one on Jan. 2, 1992, that killed SRI International researcher Andy Riley, though the SRI cell was closed and under high pressure. Mike McKubre, the director of the energy research center at SRI, who was wounded in the 1992 explosion, as well, cautioned that any exposed metal can cause a recombination explosion.

"I found it is impossible to impress on people just how explosive a stoichiometric mix of hydrogen and oxygen is, McKubre said. "Even a few cc's can be dangerous, even deadly.  You don't need to search for an ignition source. Any metal will do."

The only other well-known cold fusion explosion was that of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons in 1985, though a source who wishes to remain anonymous states that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had a Fleischmann-Pons-type explosion in 1989, as well.

Mike Carrell, a previous board member for Infinite Energy magazine, postulates a two-stage reaction in the Mizuno explosion.

"First there is a spark or flash, then an expanding glow, then an explosion," Carrell said. "When the disturbance reaches the surface, the stoichiometric H2-O2 mixture may well have ignited, contributing to the explosion."

Horace Heffner, a cold fusion enthusiast, offered this analysis. "It appears that the explosion may well have been ignited in the flask, but the main energy from the explosion came from the top interior of the Yamato 1L-6 incubator. It looks like the explosive force was primarily downward, and the overpressure on the conical cap on the flask blew the flask apart in radial directions, leaving the base cracked but in place. It looks like the base of the flask may be stuck (by prior heating) to the polypropylene insulation underneath it.

"Assuming the plastic door was not blown to pieces, the overpressure was clearly enough to blow open the plastic door before the glass shards went through the open door. This indicates the overpressure hit the door before the flask pieces. The source of the blast pressure that opened the plastic door was therefore not inside the flask but rather probably coming from the top of the 1L-6 downward."

Heffner speculated that hydrogen from the reaction flask is dumped into the interior of the 1L-6 where it can accumulate in various spaces and thus be exploded by an ignition event in the flask.

The big question on everyone's minds is whether this was a chemical explosion - or a nuclear explosion. A physicist who considered the amount of energy required to convey the 800cc of electrolyte a distance of up to 6 meters, was unconvinced that this was a chemical reaction.

Jed Rothwell, who translated Mizuno's book Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion to English, assisted with this story and reports that Mizuno is back at work starting the experiments again, despite the trauma.

"Mizuno has guts," Rothwell said. "All cold fusion researchers have guts. They are an ornery bunch, but you have to admire them."

Photographs taken by Mizuno and others are here: http://newenergytimes.com/news/2005MTExplosion/Explosion.shtml

11. ChangChun University, China, Takes Up Cold Fusion 

With the assistance of professor Xing Zhong Li of Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and professor John Dash of Portland State University, a new cold fusion research effort has begun at ChangChun University, ChangChun City, China.

Dr. Jian Tian, dean of the school of biological sciences, directs the effort and oversees the work of eight undergraduate students working on cold fusion research. Tian has a background in material science.

Tian invited Dash to ChangChun University in October of 2004 for a week to train students in his cold fusion recipe. Dash had recently trained high-school students at the Leonardo da Vinci scientific high school in Milan, Italy, on his simple but effective cold fusion demonstration.

By the end of the week, the students had performed two successful cold fusion experiments.

"The students stayed up all night preparing their graphs, and on Friday morning I walked into a packed lecture hall with a banner welcoming me," Dash said.

The president and vice president of ChangChun University attended and were enthusiastic about the work, Dash reported. They asked him to suggest a reasonable amount of funds which would support professor Tian's group of cold fusion researchers. Xing Zhong Li later reported that Dash's suggestion had been approved: "The Vice-President in charge of research and foreign affairs promised the equivalent of US$100,000."
 

 
19. Department of Shameless Self-Promotion: Cold Fusion Book Review

Review of The Rebirth of Cold Fusion: Real Science, Real Hope, Real Energy
Reviewed by Scott R. Chubb
Infinite Energy Magazine, Issue 59 (http://www.infinite-energy.com/)

The Rebirth of Cold Fusion: Real Science, Real Hope, and Real Energy, by Steven B. Krivit and Nadine Winocur, should be required reading for anyone interested in cold fusion and LENR. Not only is this book technically sound, but it is so well-written that experts, novices, and newcomers to the field all will enjoy reading it. Remarkably, the book not only covers virtually all of the most important technical details of LENR but also includes an important record of the politics and history of the field and the potential impact of the associated discoveries on world development.

The book is also remarkably timely: To their credit, because Krivit and Winocur published their book immediately after ICCF11 and just before the much-anticipated re-evaluation of cold fusion by the Department of Energy, they are providing accurate information about an evolving, new, important area of science that has been seriously misrepresented, at a time when candor is absolutely necessary. For this reason, the book itself might help to foster the Rebirth of Cold Fusionby advancing the process of disseminating accurate information about the field. Thus, the book could be remembered not only because it is well-written and accurate but also because its publication could alter the history of the associated debate.

All books, of course, reflect particular biases and trends that are in vogue at the time that they are published. An important difference between The Rebirth of Cold Fusion and the earlier books that have presented a positively biasedaccount of cold fusion is associated with developments in the field. In particular, as opposed to the apparent confusion in the field that prompted Gene Mallove to use the phrase Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furoras a subtitle to his 1991 book Fire from Ice, or the decision by Charles Beaudette to identify a single effect (Excess Heat) in the title of his book (in 2000) as the key phenomenon in cold fusion research, Krivit and Winocur have written their book at a later time, when the relevant science is now known to be real. As a consequence, their book documents the birth of a new field as opposed to depicting fragments of the relevant story.

An additional important difference is that Krivit and Winocur became involved with cold fusion more than a decade after the initial debate began. Thus, their book resonates with optimism and hope, and their perspective, both figuratively and in fact, reflects an idealism that has been lost by many of us who have been involved with the controversy since the beginning.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I give it my highest recommendation. In writing it, Krivit and Winocur have done a tremendous service not only to the cold fusion field, but also to science as a whole.
 

20. ArchiveFreedom.org Founded to Fight Scientific Censorship

ArchiveFreedom ( http://www.archivefreedom.org/ ) was founded in 2004 by a group of physicists and mathematicians protesting the discriminatory practices of ArXiv.org, an online repository of research paper preprints administered by Cornell University.

ArXiv.org is an electronic preprint archive. It was founded in 1991 at Los Alamos National Laboratories and was later moved over to Cornell University. Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, it was formed as a way for scientists to disseminate new discoveries and theoretical developments rapidly to the worldwide scientific community. The intent was to create an open forum for papers written by credentialed physicists; that is, those who consistently had papers approved for publication in peer-refereed journals. Over time, the criteria for approval of submitted papers to the archive became more complicated and restrictive.

One founding member of the Archive Freedom group, Paul LaViolette, had been constantly blocked from uploading one of his papers to the archive even after he had followed its posted rules for endorsement. The paper has now been accepted for journal publication, but the ArXiv.org administration had rejected endorsements for its posting three times, including an endorsement from astrophysicist and Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe. They gave no reason for the rejection, though LaViolette suspected he had been the victim of discrimination. He had previously published papers which challenged the orthodox theories cherished by the administrators of ArXiv.org.

LaViolette sensed injustice and took action. Through his contacts with the National Science Foundation, he learned that others had also suffered similar censorship.

"Through a Freedom of Information Act request, I got the names of a few others, such as Tony Smith, who had filed suit against ArXiv.org over this issue," he said.

LaViolette made contact with Smith and another physicist, Carlos Castro, who had also been censored from ArXiv.org. He suggested that they work as a group to fight this.

"Carlos has been very helpful with the ArchiveFreedom.org Web site and has also been instrumental in expanding the size of our group to over a dozen people who have been blacklisted by ArXiv.org," LaViolette said. "The group also includes others who are not blacklisted but who sympathize with our cause. Our ranks continue to grow as members of the physics community who have been discriminated against learn about us."

"The ArXiv.org administrators appear to maintain a list of physicists whom they have blacklisted or ostracized so that any paper those individuals attempt to submit is systematically rejected regardless of its scientific content," LaViolette said.

Usually, these blocked papers have already been accepted for publication in reputable peer-refereed science journals or are under review.

Carlos Castro was inexplicably blocked from uploading his papers to the high-energy physics theory section of the archive since early 2000. Since 2003, he has been blocked from all archive sections, even though most of his papers have been published in refereed journals.

Evidence that the archive had a vendetta against him comes from an e-mail which its director, Paul Ginsparg, sent to Castro's former institute supervisor. Ginsparg's e-mail libeled Castro's integrity and threatened to bar the university from access to the archive if they continued to support Castro's complaints about ArXiv.org's suppression of his work.

One other founder of Archive Freedom, physics Nobel laureate Brian Josephson, also had difficulty with ArXiv.org after he attempted to assist retired Los Alamos physicist Edmund Storms upload a review paper on cold fusion. ArXiv.org had previously blocked Storms' attempts to post. Consequently, ArXiv.org retaliated by temporarily suspending Josephson's posting privileges. After Josephson brought the "oversight" to the attention of ArXiv.org administrators, his privileges were restored, but only partially. A paper he subsequently uploaded was punitively moved from its appropriate section by the moderators to the general physics section. Josephson's attempts to cross-post the paper to more appropriate sections barred.

Josephson brought these overbearing practices to the attention of the physics community in a letter published in the February 24, 2005 issue of Nature.

New Energy Times attempted to obtain Ginsparg's point of view. His office voice-mail offered the following greeting, "Hi, this is Paul Ginsparg. If you're calling to offer money or other resources, please leave a message. Otherwise, send an e-mail." Since we didn't have any spare cash at the moment, we resorted to sending the e-mail, but days later there was no reply.

The founders of ArchiveFreedom.org hope to bring about a change in this suppression by alerting other physicists and the public to this blatant discrimination. ArchiveFreedom.org also relates the case histories of those scientists who have been censored and/or blacklisted.

"This is a rebellion, and we feel we can win," LaViolette said on behalf of the group.

26. Administrative

 
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