HOME ABOUT CONTACT NEWS SITE LENR News Index Search Site ----

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

New Energy Times(tm) gratefully acknowledges the generosity and support of

Anonymous
James Newburn

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

 
 
EDITORIALS AND OPINION
1.   From the Editor: Report on the 2006 Naval Science and Technology Partnership Conference
2.   To the Editor
NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
3.   The Communications Institute National Energy Symposiums
ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVES
4.   Bubble Fusion Discoverer Taleyarkhan Strikes Back
5.   Reasonable Doubt
6.   Amber's Answer To The Question Of Reproducibility
7.   On The Allegations of Fraud Against Fleischmann and Pons
8.   The Five Press Conferences Of Cold Fusion
PUBLICATIONS
9.   Cold Fusion Book Published by Kozima
10. Fourth Widom-Larsen LENR Theory Paper Released
SCIENCE AND ENERGY NEWS
11. The World's Second Most Expensive Science Experiment
12. Electric Power Research Institute Cold Fusion Videotape Released
13. Steorn Challenges The First Law Of Thermodynamics
14. Brigham Young University Professor Steven Jones Rebukes Cold Fusion, Again
15. BP: Beyond Propaganda
16. Walter Meyerhof, Stanford Cold Fusion Foe, Dies At 84
17. Gustave (Bob) Kohn: February 12, 1910 - August 20, 2006

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

EDITORIALS AND OPINION

1. From the Editor: Report on the 2006 Naval Science and Technology Partnership Conference 

Steven Krivit Photo: Daniel Bosler

During the last week in July and the first week in August, the National Defense Industrial Association and the Office of Naval Research hosted the 2006 Naval Science & Technology Partnership conference at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. On Aug. 2, Frank Gordon, head of the Navigation and Applied Sciences Department at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, Calif., gave a seven-minute presentation which provided a brief overview of the history of low energy nuclear reactions, historically known as "cold fusion."

LENR research was one of many other research areas and applications presented at the conference. They included inertial confinement fusion, fuel cells, biodiesel, coal, wind, and synthetic hydrocarbon liquids.

Later that day, professor David Nagel from The George Washington University presented a more detailed review of the worldwide LENR research.

Pamela Boss of the San Diego SPAWAR Systems Center presented a detailed overview of her group's 17 years of LENR research, which includes 15 papers published in peer-reviewed journals since 1990. The latest paper was published last year in the prestigious German science journal, Naturwissenschaften.

The recent SPAWAR work, which will be discussed in detail in a forthcoming New Energy Times issue was a hot topic. This is the first LENR experiment that is relatively simple, can be repeated on demand and shows hard evidence of nuclear reactions.

Sadly, only half the Navy LENR researchers, those from the SPAWAR lab in San Diego, presented their research at the conference. The other, "silent" researchers work at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

One of the Naval Research Laboratory researchers, Ashraf Imam, a metallurgist, invented and patented a palladium/boron alloy that demonstrated phenomenal results: It allowed Melvin Miles, an electrochemist at the Navy's China Lake laboratory, to achieve a 90 percent positive run rate in his LENR experiments which demonstrated excess heat.

I heard that these two gentlemen were subsequently directed to work in other areas and were not permitted to report their LENR findings in scientific conferences or journals in the last few years.

I do not know whether such directives came to these men because their supervisors failed to see the relevance of their work or because their supervisors feared political repercussions from working in controversial "fringe" science.

I met Imam at the National Defense Industrial Association conference, which he attended as a guest. He was friendly to me; however, he refused to speak with me on the record about these matters.

Another Naval Research Laboratory researcher, nuclear physicist Scott Chubb, was listed several years ago as an author in " Thermal and Nuclear Aspects of the Pd/D2O System - Vol. 1: A Decade of Research at Navy Laboratories." Apparently, his supervisors were displeased with his association with this subject matter, and it nearly cost him his job.

I spoke with a fourth researcher with the Naval Research Laboratory on Aug. 1 when I learned that his group would not be represented at the conference the next day. He is involved with two LENR experiments and has received funding from DARPA and the Naval Research Laboratory. He requested that New Energy Times not identify him and he declined to discuss details of these experiments on the record. He told me that he went up through several levels of management to get permission to discuss his LENR research at the conference; however, they denied his request.

I asked him specifically why they blocked his participation in the conference. He said that management was afraid that, if negative publicity came about because of the stigma of cold fusion, Congress would accuse them of working on "pathological science" and cut their budgets.

To be honest, such fear is understandable. Yet the underlying facts of today's research in LENR are not congruent with pathological science.

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

2. To the Editor
(Letters may be sent to "letters" at the New Energy Times domain name. Please include your name, city, and state or province.)
 
To the editor:

Clearly, cold fusion is disruptive science and, based on what we know, has potential to be disruptive technology. Because of the disruptiveness, we don't know how it will play out. But things won't stay the same.

The "holy grail" is small, inexpensive, and efficient energy appliances. With a compact available heat engine, the conversion into any other form of useful energy is just a matter of application of the appropriate converter.

I don't think that this will spell the demise of large power industry, especially if the technology turns out to be difficult to control and/or maintain.

One of the things that large industry does for people is relieve the burden of maintenance and upkeep and press that burden on true experts that can be efficient. It's why, even though small power plants are certainly available to anyone, there is no large distributed infrastructure of these small plants.

Everyone talks about energy independence, but it requires the availability of not only a ubiquitous energy source but also reliable and efficient technology to exploit that source.

A problem I think about is the thermal cycle efficiency of the converter. We need conversion efficiency to be high, so that we don't waste heat. Even if the fuel is essentially free, waste heat still has to be dealt with. Eventually, all of the energy we dissipate in the business of making energy radiates into outer space.

Meanwhile, it has to be dealt with locally; it heats up the things around us. There isn't any practical way to avoid this, even if greenhouse gasses were suddenly brought under control.

For high conversion efficiency, high temperatures and/or pressures are required, which makes the technology more dangerous and less suitable for small operation. Power plants are dangerous mainly because of the high energy densities involved.

That density is not reduced by making a device smaller; only the total quantity of available energy is smaller. It is important to note the technological reasons why the power industry became big business.

As a technical sort of guy, I don't think I would suffer much, no matter which way the technology goes. We will need operators, engineers, technicians and repairmen, no matter what.

But I don't want to see people invest in long-term projects that will become obsolete because of upstart technology. That also would seem to be a waste of energy. Nuclear power is absolutely a long-term investment. It takes years to design and build a plant, and it takes lots of expert work to keep it running correctly.

The only thing that makes it viable is that the fuel is abundant and cheap (yes, I know about the limited supplies of yellowcake, but more than 90 percent of the available energy is still in the nuclear fuel even after it has reached the end of useful life).

William Rostron
West Union, South Carolina  

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
 
3. The Communications Institute National Energy Symposiums

Sacramento, Calif., Oct. 12
The Communications Institute is taking the National Energy Symposiums show on the road. The inaugural National Energy Symposium took place on June 15, 2006, at the University of Southern California.

The second symposium is scheduled for Oct. 12 at the California state capitol in Sacramento. The title of the event is "Facing California’s Energy Future." This symposium is sponsored by University of Southern California, California Institute of Technology, UC Energy Institute, University of California Davis Energy Efficiency Center - Institute of Transportation Studies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, The Communications Institute, and the California State Senate Office of Research.

New York, N.Y., Oct. 31
On Oct. 31, the Communications Institute is co-producing "Covering the Energy Debate," a special seminar for the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. This symposium will take place at Bloomberg News headquarters in New York City.

Washington, D.C., Dec. 7
The Institute will be holding the third National Energy Symposium in Washington D.C., on Dec. 7th in the Cannon Caucus Room in the Cannon House Office Building. Preliminary sponsors are John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, University of Southern California, California Institute of Technology , Congressional Quarterly, and some of the National Energy laboratories. Please check here for updates.

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

4. Bubble Fusion Discoverer Taleyarkhan Strikes Back
by Steven Krivit

On May 8, 2006, science journalist Eugenie Samuel Reich published a series of four articles in Nature which came as close as possible to accusing Purdue physicist Rusi Taleyarkhan of committing fraud without actually saying so. Taleyarkhan's research -- nuclear reactions in a novel mechanism that could have immense technological potential -- apparently seemed too good and too profound to Reich and Nature. Reich's series of four stories in Nature was replete with innuendo and groundless speculation, building a house of cards on which to base the thesis that her journalistic investigation would lead to "the end of bubble fusion." The core of the Reich/Nature allegation was based on speculations made by physicist Seth Putterman and his associate Brian Naranjo at UCLA that an on-hand source of Californium-252 was responsible for the novel results claimed by Taleyarkhan. Months earlier, Putterman, after receiving $800,000 from the U.S. government, failed in his effort to replicate the Taleyarkhan experiment.

Rusi Taleyarkhan (Photo Steven Krivit)

Taleyarkhan's collaborator, Richard T. Lahey Jr., a professor of engineering and physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, told IEEE Spectrum that "Putterman was using a design 'that was doomed to failure' and that he told him so when visiting his laboratory at UCLA last year."

Putterman and Naranjo disagreed with Lahey and told IEEE Spectrum that the UCLA team performed the replication "according to blueprints provided by Taleyarkhan's group."

Naranjo, with the help of Putterman, a direct competitor of Taleyarkhan for research funds, speculated that the nuclear emissions from Taleyarkhan's experiment were the result of contamination. But there was little to suggest that this was just an innocent mistake, according to the way the story was reported by Reich in Nature.

Taleyarkhan is far too experienced a scientist to make such a careless mistake: allowing contamination from on-hand source of Californium-252 to interfere with the results. The very clear implication was that Taleyarkhan had spiked his experiment intentionally.

And thus, within a matter of hours after the Nature story broke, Taleyarkhan's name and reputation, as well as Purdue's, were being defamed around the world in print and electronic media.

Reich never mentioned the word fraud; she didn't have to. It was a well-executed assist, though Reich told New Energy Times that she failed to see New Energy Times' perspective that her story was "ugly journalism." Reuters introduced the word "fraud" in the story and used the word fraud in its suggested headline. Many newspapers picked up Reuters' story.

Two days later, on March 10, New Energy Times investigated the controversy and identified numerous questions about the manner in which the Reich/Nature story developed.

Since we completed our March 10 investigation, we have been following this story closely. There is much more to it. This article will not go into all of the details; however, New Energy Times has received important news this week, as well as a set of key facts that appear to vindicate Taleyarkhan.

Earlier this week, Physical Review Letters accepted for publication a paper by Brian Naranjo, who initiated this controversy by speculating that Taleyarkhan's bubble-fusion neutrons were the result of Californium-252 contamination.

However, Taleyarkhan has been a busy man in the last few months. In addition to hiring attorneys to help him defend his personal and professional rights, undergoing a University administrative examination, and enduring numerous personal challenges and disruptions, he decided to tackle Naranjo's charge head-on.

He and his colleagues, Robert Block and Richard Lahey Jr. of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Robert Nigmatulin, former president of the Ufa branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; and Yiban Xu, a postdoctoral research assistant at Purdue, tested Naranjo's speculation empirically. They performed experiments in which they intentionally exposed the test device to Californium-252.

According to their findings, a different spectrum results, refuting the Naranjo claim.

"Rather than argue about the merits or demerits of attempts at a computer code calculation for a ‘presumed experimental configuration and instrument settings-cum-performance,’ we directly obtained additional experimental data with our laboratory’s Californium-252 source with the same liquid scintillation and sodium iodide detectors and settings used before. We then show by direct one-on-one comparison that the reported spectra in our [earlier] paper for neutron and gamma photons are significantly different from corresponding spectra derived from a Californium-252 source."

This paper, too, was peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by Physical Review Letters earlier this week.

Yet another paper by Taleyarkhan is also on the way.

Andrei Lipson from the University of Illinois, an expert on the use of CR-39 track detectors, had submitted comments regarding the Taleyarkhan work to Physical Review Letters in the traditional manner. The Taleyarkhan group's rebuttal to Lipson has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication, as well.

Furthermore, Taleyarkhan reports to New Energy Times that there have been four successful public demonstrations of his bubble fusion phenomenon since March 2006.

Taleyarkhan told us that he and his colleagues invited outside visitors and experts into their laboratory to offer real-time demonstrations of bubble fusion. Taleyarkhan asserts that all four successful results have been acknowledged in written affidavits and documentation. He has provided us with three of these, which are summarized below. The fourth has been promised.

One independent group, a professor and two students from a university in Texas, obtained successful results in an audit of Taleyarkhan's experiment, confirming the key elements of the discovery with two independent detection methods. One used a liquid scintillation detector; the other used a passive CR-39 track detector. This group has submitted its results for peer review in the proceedings of a forthcoming international conference as well as a respected peer-reviewed journal.

Taleyarkhan has requested that the identity of this group be withheld pending review of its papers; however, New Energy Times has obtained a pre-print of the paper. The summary reads as follows:

"Neutron production during self-nucleated acoustic cavitation of a mixture of deuterated acetone and benzene has been verified with two independent neutron detectors. No neutron production is observed for the deuterated liquid when cavitation is not present, and neutrons are not produced with or without cavitation for the non-deuterated liquid. These observations support previous results showing deuteron-deuteron fusion during self-nucleated acoustic cavitation of a mixture of deuterated acetone and benzene."

William Bugg, a nuclear research professor at Stanford University with more than 50 years' experience, visited the Purdue laboratory on June 6-7 and provided a strong endorsement of Taleyarkhan’s use of CR-39 track detectors, generally considered to be an unambiguous diagnostic method for detection of nuclear emissions. Observers can see results from such detectors with their own eyes instead of depending on complicated electronic devices.

CR-39 track detectors permanently record neutron or charged particles emanating from a nuclear source by an etching procedure after exposure. They are used routinely by health physicists to measure exposure of individuals to neutrons, which, unlike charged particles, can present a serious health risk. The detectors provide a permanent record of the exposure and can be examined microscopically track by track at any time after the experiment.

Bugg's report says he found "statistically significant excess neutrons over the background in the two deuterated sample detectors located on the chamber and none in the undeuterated sample."

The third testimonial New Energy Times has obtained is that of Ross Tessien of Impulse Devices Inc.

Tessien wrote, "The experiment conducted yesterday revealed that the background sample tracks were in the range of about 15-16 tracks, whereas the chamber-mounted detectors experienced an increase to approximately 28 and 39 tracks, respectively."

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVES
 
5. Reasonable Doubt
By Bennett Daviss
Original published in New Scientist, Vol. 177 Issue 2388 - 29 March 2003, page 36

No sooner had cold fusion surfaced than it was written off, and the idea that you could extract virtually limitless free energy from water quickly became taboo. Yet a small band of researchers at the US Office of Naval Research have come up with some puzzling observations that no conventional theory can explain. Some of them started out as sceptical as the rest, but they now believe they have evidence that cold fusion is worth pursuing. Bennett Daviss takes up the story.

LAST YEAR, the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego released a two-volume report. Its soporific title, "Thermal and Nuclear Aspects of the Pd/D2O System: a Decade of Research at Navy Laboratories", belies its contents. The report lays out the navy's evidence that cold fusion is real, a verifiable nuclear event that liberates more energy than it consumes. If this claim were being made by almost anyone else, it probably would - and maybe should - be greeted with an embarrassed silence. But behind this research is the organisation that sponsored 50 Nobel prizes, produced radar, the laser, the Global Positioning System and thousands of other discoveries and products used every day around the world. After more than 200 experiments, conducted over 10 years at various navy laboratories, several of its researchers are willing to declare that these laboratories have played host to events that not only indicate that cold fusion is real, but that can't be explained in any other way. "I had a bit of unease about putting my name to this," admits Frank Gordon, director of the San Diego centre's navigation and applied sciences department, who wrote and signed the report's introduction. "But our data is what it is and we stand by it." Though the report has indeed been greeted by silence, the navy scientists are not embarrassed. They believe the experiments it describes could make a vital contribution to a hugely important scientific discipline. Indeed, Gordon is now calling for government agencies to begin funding cold fusion research again. It's a brave gesture. Mainstream scientific opinion has stood against cold fusion since shortly after 23 March 1989. That's when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, working at the University of Utah, announced that they had created fusion in cells composed of a palladium electrode immersed in a bath of "heavy water", in which oxygen is combined with the hydrogen isotope deuterium. In deuterium, each hydrogen atom, with its nucleus of a single proton, is replaced with the hydrogen isotope deuterium, which holds both a proton and a neutron at its core. Palladium readily absorbs deuterium atoms, but Pons and Fleischmann were claiming that deuterium nuclei were being packed into the palladium's molecular lattice in such a way that their nuclei were fusing together and releasing energy. However, overcoming the repulsion between two positively charged nuclei and bring them together requires an enormous amount of energy. It normally takes conditions of heat and pressure found in the Sun. Achieving fusion at room temperature, using a small piece of equipment sitting on a lab bench, was widely believed to be impossible. Within a few months, the Energy Research Advisory Board (ERAB), a panel of prestigious scientists appointed by the US Department of Energy to test the claim, pronounced to the contrary: Pons and Fleischmann were, to put it politely, mistaken. Since then, cold fusion has been as respectable in science as pornography in church. Except, perhaps, in the US navy. According to David Edwards, assistant to the executive director of the Office of Naval Research (ONR), navy researchers rule nothing out until all avenues have been explored. "If we thought the underbelly of a dung beetle would make a better radar reflector than the material we're using now, we wouldn't hesitate to investigate that possibility as thoroughly as we needed to in order to make a judgement," he says. “After about 30 minutes, the temperature of the cathode rose about 3°C above that of the surrounding liquid.” And so, if researchers have time not claimed by assigned projects, they pretty much do what they want, using discretionary funds controlled by their department chiefs. "In 1986, when superconductivity became a hot topic, managers asked if anybody in our labs was working on it," says materials engineer and former navy officer David Nagel, who has since retired as a head of the division of condensed matter and radiation sciences at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington DC, and is now a research professor at George Washington University. "About 40 hands went up. With cold fusion, the same thing happened. It was unstoppable." The prospect of cold fusion was irresistible to the navy. Calculations showed that a cubic kilometre of ordinary lake or ocean water contained enough deuterium to rival the combustion energy in all the world's known oil reserves. Then there were claims that some credible attempts to replicate Pons and Fleischmann's work had indeed seen something strange. The navy's researchers were also influenced by personal contact with Fleischmann. A world-renowned electrochemist and Fellow of the Royal Society, he had long been a contract researcher and consultant for the navy, and several of its scientists had published papers with him. Many navy researchers were unwilling to accept he had gone off the rails. "We knew his abilities," says Pamela Mosier-Boss, an electrochemist at the San Diego centre. "I had to believe that he had something real going on there." Boss's job, researching fuel cells and innovative propulsion systems, made it imperative for her to investigate the cold fusion claims if there was even the slightest chance they might hold up. So she and her colleague Stanislaw Szpak began to probe them. Both were well-established in the profession: Szpak had published more than four dozen papers in refereed journals, Boss more than two dozen. Both had made numerous presentations at professional meetings and had had their work included in volumes of proceedings. They felt confident that if anyone was well placed to make an objective assessment of cold fusion, they were. “Colleagues Miles respected were reporting tantalising amounts of extra energy popping up in their own tests.” Their first move was to make their own palladium electrode using a technique called co-deposition. They passed an electric current through a solution of palladium chloride in water that had been slightly enriched with deuterium. At the negative electrode, the cathode, which was made of copper in some experiments and silver in others, the current liberated palladium and deuterium gas, which were deposited together in spidery black filaments. In more than 100 such trials, Szpak and Boss saw something odd. After about 30 minutes, the temperature of the palladium-coated cathode rose about 3 °C above that of the surrounding liquid. This takes some explaining. The bath's electrical resistance is greater than the cathode's. Resistance to current creates heat, so if the only heat source was the current flowing into the cell from the external battery, the electrolyte should have been warmer than the palladium. Because the reverse was true, the unaccountable energy had to be coming from the cathode: the metal had to be liberating energy. Spzak and Boss appeared to be witnessing a net energy gain. While they were carrying out these experiments, Melvin Miles, an electrochemist long familiar with palladium-hydrogen interactions, was working not far away from them at the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake, California. A former college professor, Miles had been a NATO postdoctoral fellow in Munich and a visiting scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. By the time cold fusion came along, he had published 97 electrochemistry papers in professional journals and proceedings. Miles had also been part of the process that had originally confined cold fusion to the trash pile. On hearing Pons and Fleischmann's announcement he tried to replicate their work. He built two cells using cathodes cut from a millimetre-thick piece of palladium wire that he found in the lab, but after a week or so he saw no unusual amounts of energy and no signs of nuclear reactions. He dutifully published his findings, and they were cited as evidence in the ERAB panel's negative report to the energy department. But Miles wasn't satisfied by this, and continued his investigations. "I'm naturally sceptical of my own work, as any scientist should be," he says. Besides, colleagues he respected were reporting tantalising amounts of extra energy popping up in their own tests. So he ran a dozen experiments from March through to August 1989. Not one showed a glimmer of anything unusual. But that September, everything changed. He was working with a new and much thicker piece of palladium from a manufacturer that Fleischmann had recommended. Miles set up two experiments side by side, using the 6-millimetre-thick rod. After a week or so, both began to deliver a sustained yield of between 20 and 30 per cent more energy as heat than they consumed as electricity. The cells' range of error was 0.02 watts, or 1 per cent. The excess energy measured was as high as 0.52 watts. "Enough to be beyond that range," Miles notes. From September 1989 right through to July 1992, Miles ran eight separate experiments with the same cathodes made from the new palladium. "I didn't readily accept the finding of excess heat," he says. "I kept running the tests to see if the result was consistent." Each consistently delivered between 5 and 30 per cent excess energy. He also performed two other tests, using regular water in place of deuterium oxide, but using the same design, equipment and measuring devices. Those two experiments produced no excess heat. When he was convinced, he published the results in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry and Interfacial Electrochemistry. “The researchers had evidence of excess heat. They had also seen evidence of nuclear reactions. But it wasn't enough.” Then two things happened to give the navy's programme a boost. First, Michael Melich became intrigued by the work of colleague Wilford Hansen, a professor of physics and chemistry at Utah State University. Melich is a physicist, former branch head in the ONR, and now a research professor at the Naval Post-Graduate School. He came across a study in which Hansen had cross-checked Pons's and Fleischmann's raw data through a variety of mathematical analyses and found no flaws in their results. Sponsored by an agency of the US defence department, Melich began to dig deeper into the negative cold fusion results reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the UK Atomic Energy Authority labs at Harwell, and the California Institute of Technology that formed the basis for ERAB's conclusion. With five colleagues, he visited CalTech to review the data. The group found a hostile reception and was denied access to lab notebooks and other key data. MIT officials told Melich that they had thrown away all the data and notebooks and had nothing for him to review. Visiting Harwell, Melich found that the researchers had made an earnest attempt but hadn't realised the complexity of what they'd taken on. Faced with a looming publication deadline for Nature, "they stopped the experiments at about the time they were beginning to learn how to do them", Melich says. The second boost was that navy research officials decided to treat their scientists' cold fusion research a little more seriously. Up to this point the cold fusion work at the navy labs had been informal - experiments were carried out in researchers' "spare time", funded by their department chiefs' discretionary budgets. But after Miles, Szpak and Boss had been at their benches for three years, they had collected enough evidence to convince those higher up the ladder to formalise their efforts. Robert Nowak, an electrochemist and a programme manager in chemistry at the ONR, suggested to the executive director, Fred Saalfeld, that they give the programme a formal budget and coordinate the research. They decided that Boss and Szpak should pursue co-deposition and that Miles would test various forms of palladium electrodes made by Ashraf Imam, the NRL's metals wizard. From the beginning, the idea was to keep things modest. "We put less than $1 million a year into the programme," Nowak says. "Above that level, the red flags go up." Saalfeld and Nowak never gave the programme its own line in the ONR's budget, but allotted money to it from miscellaneous funds. "We were to keep working and we were allowed to publish our results, but we weren't supposed to say a lot about it," Miles recalls. "Some people were worried that word would get out and it would jeopardise the navy labs' funding from Congress for other research. We didn't even call it 'cold fusion'. We called it 'anomalous effects in deuterated systems'." That was still not enough to keep the sceptics off their backs. "Fairly prominent individuals within the physics community voiced threats," Nowak admits. "They said that they were aware that federal funds were going into cold fusion research and they were going to do what they could to stop it." Saalfeld also had to defend his decision to other scientists and managers at the ONR, and several of them remained unpersuaded by the data and drafts of papers that were circulated in-house. "I told them that there is a phenomenon here that we don't understand, it might have relevance to naval science, and we're going to explore it," he says. The fusion researchers didn't soft-pedal their colleagues' criticism of their experiments. "I'd like to think that we did a good job of internal checks and criticism," Nagel says. "In our lab, there was a wide range of opinion, from open-minded interest to certainty that this wasn't worth our time. All of those opinions were expressed." The initial results gave sceptics reason to doubt. In July 1992, Miles received Imam's first attempt at making a suitable electrode, a palladium-silver alloy. "It produced nothing," Miles recalls. "Energy in was equal to energy out." For almost two years, while Boss and Szpak logged success after success, Imam sent Miles a steady stream of palladium alloys, and even various forms of unalloyed palladium. None produced any excess heat at all. Until, that is, the summer of 1994. That's when Imam alloyed samples of pure palladium with boron proportioned at 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75 per cent. When Miles tried the new materials, eight out of nine tests yielded a 30 to 40 per cent energy gain. It seemed that the more boron, the more excess energy. But why didn't the ninth one work? When Imam examined the sample he found that unlike the others, which all had a flawless surface, this one had minute cracks that had appeared when it formed. A correlation between cracks and null results has been noted by many researchers, before and since.

Photos by Misha Gravenor The electrochemical cell used in cold fusion research looks deceptively simple. Explaining the Inexplicable           If cold fusion is real, how do the positively charged deuterium nuclei, or "deuterons", overcome their natural repulsion in order to join together? There is no consensus.           Many theorists are drawn to the notion of coherence. This is the idea that deuterons packed into a palladium lattice no longer behave as individuals but as parts of a whole, in the same way that coherent photons create a laser beam. Drawing on quantum field theory, they speculate that the interplay of the particles' wave functions somehow weakens the repulsive force separating the deuterons.           Others, such as nuclear engineer Akito Takahashi at Osaka University in Japan, have evolved elaborate mathematical models that support the idea of three, four or even eight deuterons fusing at geometric focal points within the palladium's lattice.           Then there are WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles supposedly left over from the big bang) that some think appear somehow in a palladium lattice stuffed with deuterium and catalyse fusion. Scientists at Moscow State Technical University, for instance, have concocted an elaborately detailed theory of the "erzion", which they envision as a giant glob with a negative charge equal to that of 46 electrons, which overpowers deuterons' mutual repulsion and slams them together.           "The bottom line is that all of these theories are either incorrect or incomplete," says David Nagel, a research professor at George Washington University in Washington DC. "Some violate the results of well-established work in other areas of physics. None has been able to make numerical predictions that have been verified by experiment. We have no solid idea yet about where the phenomenon comes from." Before his work on cold fusion, Melvin Miles had published 97 papers on electrochemistry. Frank Gordon released funds that allowed navy researchers to investigate cold fusion claims. Publish or be Damned           The cold fusion controversy doesn't stop with experimenters' data. Many researchers allege that the storm of claims and counterclaims prevented the scientific process from working at all.           The issue, says Scott Chubb of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, is not that science should by now have decided whether cold fusion is real. The real question is whether the scientific process worked in a way that would let scientists pursue the answer, whatever it may be.           Chubb served as a guest editor of the October 2000 issue of the journal Accountability in Research, which conducted a post-mortem on the way cold fusion has been handled. It was "a scientific debacle", says Chubb.           Pons and Fleischmann got the whole thing off to a bad start. Instead of testing their ideas informally at professional meetings, or announcing their findings in a peer-reviewed journal, they unveiled their ideas in a public press conference. The ensuing frenzy of competition, derision and hasty experiments led to some sloppy science. This poisoned the atmosphere surrounding the subject so thoroughly that by 1995 navy scientist Melvin Miles found most leading journals unwilling even to send his papers out for review. "I had published some of my cold fusion results in the Journal of Physical Chemistry - the top journal in physical chemistry," Miles notes. But when he submitted a paper reporting positive results from his early tests, the editor told him that they no longer wanted to accept papers in this field. Miles published this work in 2000 in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry and Interfacial Electrochemistry.           The consensus that cold fusion must be nonsense resulted in "a breakdown in the process of unbiased, objective reporting of scientific information", Chubb wrote in the introduction to the issue he edited. "This conclusion holds regardless of whether the associated claims are valid." The Office of Naval Research says it is "not embarrassed" by its investigations. Search for the Smoking Gun           Conventional wisdom expects the fusion reaction between two deuterium nuclei (each made up of a proton and a neutron) to yield either a tritium atom (a proton and two neutrons) plus a free proton, or an atom of helium-3 (two protons and a neutron) plus a free neutron. Finding such by-products would be crucial supporting evidence for cold fusion claims. So while the navy researchers examined their equipment for the unexplained sources of heat, they also looked for traces of nuclear radiation or "ash" - gamma rays, neutrons, tritium or helium isotopes.           Stanislaw Szpak and Pamela Manier-Boss at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, California, concentrated on hunting down tritium. The isotope is a common product of hot fusion, and is only created by nuclear reactions, so finding it would suggest that nuclear processes are going on.           From 1991 through to early 1994, they carried out more than a dozen tests to compare the amount of tritium coming from their cells with the amount present naturally in their environment.           Boss gave the data from five such experiments to a theoretical chemist, who determined that the cells' samples contained 14 per cent more tritium than their surroundings. Two of the tritium experiments were null - the matter present at the beginning and end balanced perfectly. "But in three there was evidence of excess material," Boss says. "The only way the chemist could account for the excess was to accept the idea that the cell had created tritium at the rate of 5,000 to 7,000 atoms per second."           Szpak and Boss published their results in Physics Letters A in 1994. Not only did no one challenge the results, but "the comments we got were quite favourable regarding the quality of our experiments", Szpak says.           Meanwhile, Melvin Miles at the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake was looking for helium-3 from his experiments. "There isn't much helium-3 in air," Miles says, "so it should have been easy to detect." He found none.           But he did find helium-4 in samples of gas from his experiments: an average of 7.93 parts per billion, with the highest registering 9.7, in those that yielded excess energy, compared with a maximum of 4.9 ppb and an average of only 4.5 ppb in cells that showed no unusual heat. Finding helium-3 would have been much more convincing because helium-4 is a much rarer by-product of fusion. Miles's reservations about the result caused him to look for explanations other than the idea that the cell was creating the isotope.           Miles gave samples from his cathode to Brian Oliver, a metallurgist with Rockwell International of Wisconsin, who specialises in measuring helium-4. Oliver calculated the amount of helium-4 impurity in the palladium was less than a thousandth of the amounts showing up in Miles's collected gas samples. Simple contamination from air was another possibility - helium-4 is normally present in air at 5.22 parts per million, and its molecules are so small that they slowly permeate most materials.           But Miles was careful to flush his cells with nitrogen to push out contaminants, and to use metal flasks and thick rubber tubing to ensure that no helium-4 from the atmosphere could have got in. Miles was further convinced by the way the quantity of helium related to the excess energy in the system. Conventional "hot" fusion theory says that each joule of energy produced in deuterium fusion delivers 2.6x1011 helium atoms. "From the amounts of helium-4 found in our samples, I could back-calculate the amount of excess energy the cells should be producing," Miles says, "and I found the measurements to be closely consistent."           He published his findings in 1997 in Proceedings of the 32nd Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference. Though retired, Stanislaw Spzak is still working on the experiments. Pamela Mosier-Boss remains convinced that cold fusion merits further research.

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

6. Amber's Answer To The Question Of Reproducibility
By Steven Krivit

In January, science editor Michael Lemonick wrote a story for Time magazine about the alleged fraud by a Korean scientist performing cloning research. He compared it to the alleged fraud of Fleischmann and Pons and their claim of cold fusion.

Lemonick received strong responses from cold fusion researchers; most letters were not fan mail, he said.

Lemonick and I struck up a polite conversation about the subject, and after a few exchanges, he invited me to speak with him and his science class at Princeton, where he is an adjunct professor.

"Clearly, cold fusion has been assigned to the 'crank' category by many scientists," Lemonick wrote. "But I'd love for my students to hear from someone like you, who has thoughtful arguments and evidence that this label may be very wrong."

I wasn't sure what to expect from the students. The only exposure that most 20-year-olds typically have to cold fusion is the move "The Saint," starring Val Klimer and Elizabeth Shue.

I asked the students to prepare for my lecture by reading the New York Times' May 3, 1989, story "Physicists Debunk Claim of a New Kind of Fusion." I chose this story because it reflected a general cross section of what most of the public knew about cold fusion.

I enjoyed the conversation with Lemonick and the class on April 3. The students were curious and inquisitive, and the planned lecture gradually shifted into a lively two-way discussion and, at times, debate.

I was able to answer most of the students' questions, but a few caught me off-guard. I had been immersed in the subject matter so deeply for six years that I hadn't been able to predict some of the questions which were obvious to these newcomers.

The most contentious subject was reproducibility or, more precisely, the lack of it. I explained that the experiments were difficult to reproduce and that only a handful of researchers claimed that they could repeat their experiments consistently.

Scott Chubb, a Princeton physics graduate now working for the Navy, was there as my guest, and he reminded us about the two Navy-developed methods which claimed very high levels of repeatability.

The first method was the palladium/boron alloy invented by Ashraf Imam at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and used by Melvin Miles, at the time with the Navy's China Lake laboratory in California.

The second method was the work pioneered by Stan Szpak and Pamela Boss at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, Calif.

But things didn't add up for Amber Hovey, at the time a freshman at Princeton. Something didn't make sense to her.

"The issue of reproducibility is the biggest argument about whether this is a real scientific effect," Hovey said. "And so if researchers can show that the cold fusion effects are highly reproducible, it would seem to be in their best interests. Since you say there are a couple of researchers who can repeat their experiments every time and get positive results, then why don't the rest of the 200 researchers in the field reproduce those experiments so they can finally prove this to the world?"

I was able to speculate on a few of the possible answers to Hovey's question, but I didn't want to stop there.

Several weeks later, I sent out a query to each of these 200 researchers and put the question to them, more or less as Hovey had asked it.

Apparently, it wasn't a question that many of the researchers were willing - or able - to answer. I received only a dozen replies. Of these, only half directly answered the question. Now, granted, there are significant cultural and language barriers that often get in the way with international surveys, so the low response was not entirely surprising. Also, the question would not be appropriate for the theorists or scientists working in managerial capacities on cold fusion projects.

The responses I did receive, however, were consistent, clear and illuminating. Three of the clearest answers appear below. Amber, I look forward to future questions from you or anyone else on this subject.

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

7. On The Allegations of Fraud Against Fleischmann and Pons
By Edmund Storms

[Editor's note: The primary claim of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons was that of excess heat, which they were expertly qualified to measure. They suspected that their chemistry experiment had yielded some form of nuclear reaction, an area of study, however, in which they were not highly skilled.

One of their sets of nuclear measurements was wrong, and critics jumped to the conclusion that this mistake was the rational explanation for the astounding claim of excess heat. Some critics alleged that it was not just a mistake but, of more sinister nature, intentional fraud.

A clear, concise and precise account of this history had been difficult to obtain directly from Fleischmann or Pons; they have been reluctant to discuss this history.

Edmund Storms, who performed research on materials used in nuclear power and propulsion reactors at Los Alamos National Laboratory, now retired after 34 years of service, explains this part of cold fusion history.

Fleischmann and Pons individually had visited the staff at Los Alamos on two occasions in the first few years after the discovery. Parts of this account are based on Storms' direct communication with Fleischmann and Pons, and other parts are based on well-known historical facts.]

Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons anticipated that the reaction that they expected would produce neutrons because they were anticipating a typical hot fusion reaction within their cell. So they looked for neutrons. They didn’t have the instrumentation to detect neutrons, but they did have the means to measure the gamma rays that would result from neutrons interacting with the water surrounding their cold fusion cell.

So they put a gamma counter on their cell. Not being nuclear physicists, they were not too knowledgeable about what the gamma spectrum should look like. When they got the spectrum, they said, "Oh, well, that’s close enough. Obviously, we’re getting neutrons."

Well, they published this in their preliminary note on April 10,1989, and somebody who was knowledgeable about these spectrums pointed it out to them and said, "Hey, wait a minute. This is wrong. This can’t be." So Fleischmann and Pons said, "Oh, OK, you’re probably right." So then they shifted their spectrum to correspond to what it should be.

And it was on that basis that they got nailed for lying, or whatever. I think it was an honest mistake, in the sense that they realized they had probably made an error the first time, and the spectrum should be shifted. The problem they brought upon themselves was not coming forth and saying what they did and being upfront about it.

The accusations of fraud were first made by Ronald R. Parker, the director of the MIT plasma fusion center, on April 28, 1989, in an interview with Nick Tate of the Boston Herald.

Another senior scientist at the MIT plasma fusion center, Richard Petrasso, was quoted two years later in the March 17, 1991, issue of The New York Times that MIT was mistaken to allege fraud. “I was convinced for a while it was absolute fraud," he said. "Now I’ve softened. They probably believed in what they were doing."

Part of the explanation for these mistakes by Pons and Fleischmann was that they were under such pressure from the skeptics. At the time, Pons and Fleischmann were absolutely inundated. They were getting hate mail, they were getting death threats, they were getting calls from people who wanted them to tell them what they had done so they could develop it and make millions and they were being called by physicists who said they didn’t know what they were talking about and that they should go back into their cave. I mean, in the middle of the night! They couldn’t get any sleep! It was just terrible. And so there was a tremendous amount of pressure on them. And I think being totally open under those conditions—it was very human, but it was very difficult to be totally open. So I don’t think it was fraud. I think it was just sloppiness on their part, probably to some extent from lack of sleep!

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

8. The Five Press Conferences Of Cold Fusion
By Steven Krivit

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

PUBLICATIONS
 
9. Cold Fusion Book Published by Kozima

Hideo Kozima, a nuclear physicist from Shizuoka, Japan, who has proposed his own model to explain the "cold fusion" phenomena, has published a second book on "cold fusion." According to the publisher, Elsevier, the book is targeted for physicists, energy researchers and mechanical engineers. ISBN: 0-08-045110-1 Pages: 208 Imprint: Elsevier Science Hardcover: $155 (Amazon)

Blurb from the back of the book:

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

10. Fourth Widom-Larsen LENR Theory Paper Released

[Editor's note: New Energy Times first reported theoretical developments from Allan Widom, a condensed matter physicist with Northeastern University, and Lewis Larsen, chief executive officer of Lattice Energy LLC in issue #13 on Nov. 10, 2005.

We also reported further developments of their theory in issue #15 on March 10, 2006.

New Energy Times does not peer-review papers, and thus, has no means by which to validate or assess the viability of the Widom-Larsen theory. The following text is provided by Lew Larsen for the interest of the reader, at the discretion of the reader. New Energy Times makes no endorsement.

We do, however, find an interesting apparent relationship between the theoretical discussion of applied electric fields and the application of electric fields in the Szpak at al. experimental work at the Navy's SPAWAR San Diego laboratory. We like seeing an apparent answer to the historical questions "Where are the neutrons?" and "Where's the dead graduate student?"]

Text provided by Lew Larsen and Alan Widom:
"Theoretical Standard Model Rates of Proton to Neutron Conversions Near Metallic Hydride Surfaces" by A. Widom and L. Larsen soon will be submitted to a refereed journal and is preceded by three related publications by us that are referenced and briefly summarized below.

This paper aims to answer an important question posed by many astute readers of our earlier publications on this subject. Assuming that one accepts the rest of our physics, can we show computations demonstrating that these claimed proton to ultra low momentum neutron conversions can take place at the substantial rates observed in the laboratory?

In the attached paper, we discuss how to compute low energy nuclear reaction rates for the process of radiation-induced electron capture by protons or deuterons producing new ultra low momentum neutrons and neutrinos.

For protons or deuterons in the neighborhoods of surfaces of condensed matter metallic hydride chemical cell cathodes, the radiation energy required for such nuclear reactions may be supplied by the applied voltage required to push a strong charged electric currents through certain chemical cells.

The rates of the resulting ultra low momentum neutron production are computed from the standard electroweak theory in satisfactory agreement with the available experimental data.

We think our theory can explain all of the major features exhibited in many seemingly anomalous experiments (historical and collectively known as cold fusion) that have been regarded by many nuclear physicists as theoretically inexplicable.

In contrast to other earlier theories, involving penetration of Coulomb barriers, our new theory of low energy nuclear reactions uses the well-accepted standard model of electroweak interaction physics. We think that the key process responsible for producing most of the experimentally observed anomalies is not a form of fusion.

On the contrary, we believe that the key processes driving the behavior of these systems are weak interactions. In that regard, our work extends well-accepted Standard Model physics to include collective effects in condensed matter. No new microscopic physics is assumed or is necessary to explain the data.

Prior Related Widom-Larsen Publications

Text provided by Lew Larsen:
1. "Ultra Low Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Nuclear Reactions on Metallic Hydride Surfaces," published in March 2006 in The European Physical Journal C - Particles and Fields.

The mass of electrons embedded in collectively oscillating surface plasma oscillations can be markedly increased (renormalized) by the extremely high electric fields (> 10*11 volt/meter) occurring in surface layers of protons or deuterons of loaded metallic hydrides. The resulting "heavy" electrons can react spontaneously with local protons or deuterons to produce neutrons and neutrinos.

Neutrons created collectively under these conditions have almost virtually zero momentum or equivalently very long quantum mechanical wavelengths which dramatically increase neutron absorption in the neighborhood of condensed matter surfaces. These ultra low momentum neutrons can catalyze local nuclear reaction networks. Examples of such reactions are provided.

2. "Nuclear Abundances in Metallic Hydride Electrodes of Electrolytic Chemical Cells" [Cornell arXiv physics preprint server - arXiv:cond-mat/0602472 v1 20 February 2006, also submitted to a peer-reviewed journal]

This preprint discusses a model for the anomalous patterns of nuclear abundances experimentally observed in metallic hydride cathodes of electrolytic chemical cells. These experimental transmuted nuclear abundances have been something of a scientific enigma since they were first published by George H. Miley. The data is interpreted as primarily the result of a neutron absorption spectrum.

Ultra low momentum neutrons are produced (along with virtually inert neutrinos) by the weak interaction annihilation of electrons and protons when the chemical cell is driven strongly out of equilibrium. Appreciable quantities of these neutrons are produced on the surface of a metal hydride cathode in an electrolytic cell. The ultra low momentum of these neutrons implies extremely large cross sections for absorption by various "seed" nuclei present on or near the surface of a cathode in a chemical cell, increasing their nuclear masses. The increasing masses eventually lead to instabilities relieved by beta decay processes, thereby increasing the nuclear charge. In this manner most of the periodic table of chemical elements may be produced, at least to some extent.

The experimentally observed pattern of distinctive peaks and valleys in the transmuted nuclear mass-spectrum reflects the neutron absorption resonance peaks as theoretically computed employing a simple and conventional neutron optical model potential well.

An intriguing possibility is briefly noted in the paper. The varieties of different elements and isotopes that we find in the world around us were thought to arise exclusively from nuclear reactions in stars and supernova explosions.

However, recent astrophysical calculations have indicated some weaknesses in the above picture regarding the strengths of the neutron flux created in a supernova.

Our paper says, "It appears entirely possible that ultra low momentum neutron absorption may have an important role to play in the nuclear abundances not only in chemical cells but also in our local solar system and galaxy."

3. "Absorption of Nuclear Gamma Radiation by Heavy Electrons on Metallic Hydride Surfaces," [Cornell arXiv physics preprint server - arXiv:cond-mat/0509269 v1 10 September 2005, also submitted to a peer-reviewed journal]

This preprint provides a theoretical explanation for effective suppression of gamma radiation and efficient absorption of ultra low momentum neutrons in LENR systems. It explains why neutron absorption by nearby nuclei in LENR systems do not result in the external release of large, easily observable fluxes of hard energetic gammas and X-rays. Specifically, we show that surface electrons bathed in already soft radiation can convert the hard gamma radiation into soft radiation. The number of gammas in the energetic region from 0.5 MeV to 10.0 MeV is strongly suppressed at the condensed matter surface, and the energy appears as softer (less energetic) heat radiation. The short mean free paths of both ultra low momentum neutrons and hard gamma radiation are computed in the neighborhood of condensed matter surfaces. In LENR systems, the gamma absorbing layer of surface electrons already bathed in soft radiation has the ability to stop a very dangerous ~5 MeV gamma ray in less than two nanometers -- two-billionths of a meter. With existing materials technologies, it would take ~10 cm of lead, ~25 cm of steel, or ~1 meter of very heavy concrete to accomplish the same degree of shielding.

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

SCIENCE AND ENERGY NEWS

11. The World's Second Most Expensive Science Experiment
By Steven Krivit

For the last several years, major progress in hot fusion research, also known as plasma physics, has stalled while representatives from seven nations have argued where to locate the experimental reactor. This research project is second in cost only to the International Space Station.

When the battle for the Cadarache, France, site of what may turn out to be the world's most expensive science experiment concluded earlier this year, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor public relations group made the best of this project's belated news.

ITER is the double-or-nothing bet for the future of hot fusion research. In 1951, the first U.S. program started with the hope of turning the material known as heavy water into a new source of potentially cheap, unlimited nuclear energy. Numerous experimental reactors have been built in the last few decades, but by all accounts from experts, no hope exists for any of them ever to be a practical source of energy. The previous reactors were not big enough, experts said.

According to Wikipedia, the ITER folks wanted to change the meaning of the acronym because they thought that "thermonuclear" would scare people. Thank you, George Orwell.

Not all plasma physicists were, or have been, sipping champagne and joyously celebrating. Researchers from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have been keeping a running clock on the numerous delays of this science and bureaucratic mammoth for several years.

In terms of superlatives, this science experiment also may turn out to be one of the world's longest-running experiments, exceeding 100 years before its full results are demonstrated. However, ITER proponents see the project not as workfare but as cathedral building, reminiscent of the multicentury projects from medieval times.

Is there any better alternative that I know of? No, but other, parallel research alternatives are being neglected and ignored. LENR anyone?

I don't expect New Energy Times to devote much more space to ITER in the coming years. After all, the next milestone we've been promised is not for another decade. So as a (perhaps) final word on ITER for this decade, I bring to you an anonymous quote from someone who wasn't afraid to call it like he saw it. Those of you in the field probably will be able to figure out the author. Please do not read the following quote if language offends you.

Listed below are a few of the most interesting articles I collected when this news surfaced earlier in the year. Click on any headline to read the entire article.

World's Most Expensive Science Experiment
By Sabra Lane
PM (a radio program of the Australian Broadcasting Corp.)
Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Fusion Reactor Work Gets Go-Ahead
BBC News
Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Where the Dream of Harnessing the Sun's Power Could Come True
By James Randerson, science correspondent
The Guardian
Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Hail the Artificial Suns
By James Morgan
The Herald (UK)
Tuesday, May 30, 2006

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

BITS AND PIECES
 
12. Electric Power Research Institute Cold Fusion Videotape Released

New Energy Times has obtained an unpublished videotape of an EPRI presentation on cold fusion from May 24,1989. Despite the fact that the subject was only two months old at the time, speaker Joe Santucci demonstrates a remarkably accurate and insightful review of the subject matter. According to Santucci, the CIA, among others, was involved in cold fusion research 17 years ago.

Click here to go to chapter list. Requires Windows Media Player

(In accordance with Title 17, Section 107, of the U.S. Code, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. New Energy Times has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of the original videotape; nor is New Energy Times endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

13. Steorn Challenges The First Law Of Thermodynamics
By Steven Krivit

As far as I know, there is no such thing as free energy, or magnetic motor energy. Science textbooks make it clear that such talk is nonsense, the equivalent of perpetual motion. And no inventor has come forward so far to physically demonstrate to the public that science has been incomplete in its understanding and explanation of the physical universe.

Last week, principles from Steorn, an Irish technology company posted a full-page ad in the Economist magazine challenging the world's physicists to a duel: Come test our machine, and prove us right or wrong.

"Our position on this is that we don't expect anybody in the general public to believe us at this point," McCarthy said. "We're just asking people to believe the process [of the audit.] We're saying that at the end of this process, the answer is going to be published whether we're right or wrong."

They are inviting a panel of scientists to audit their claims, with virtually no restrictions, except to publicly disclose their findings once the audit is complete.

Without a doubt, the manner in which Steorn has proceeded is unconventional. But then, so is its claim: energy with no apparent material source.

Naturally, it makes no sense for them to proceed in a conventional scientific manner. The peer review process is grossly incapable of handling unconventional claims and paradigm-challenging research.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak with Sean McCarthy, Chief Executive Officer of Steorn, and ask every question that I could think of. My conclusion at the end of our talk is that I have no idea what to make of all this. However, I can say that McCarthy was very direct and forthcoming with me.

Steorn has issued a bold challenge to the physics establishment, and this establishment will not acquiesce without a fight.

I predict that none of us will know whether this claim is valid for months, perhaps years.

If the company's panel of experts determines that the claim demonstrates new science, the remaining question is, Who will pay attention to it and who will ignore it?

If the panel of experts concludes that new science does not exist, well then, Steorn's claim to generate energy and get the respect of the scientific world will just be one more approach that doesn't work.

Introduction to the interview and two sound clips (2:47 minutes)
http://newenergytimes.com/audio/2006Steorn-McCarthyIntro-Aug24.mp3

Full interview, (51 minutes, includes introduction)
http://newenergytimes.com/audio/2006Steorn-McCarthyFull-Aug24.mp3

Related news story:
The Scientists Who Claim They Can Create Free Energy
Steve Boggan
Dublin (GUARDIAN NEWS SERVICE), published in The Hindu
Friday, August 25, 2006

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

14. Brigham Young University Professor Steven Jones Rebukes Cold Fusion, Again
by Steven Krivit

Facing the harsh spotlight for his outspoken views on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, physicist Steven Jones once again turned against "cold fusion" and its discoverers, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, this time when reporters brought up Jones' earlier controversial involvement with cold fusion.

According to Deseret Morning News, Jones has been placed on paid leave by his employer, Brigham Young University, in response to his high-profile involvement with conspiracy theories regarding the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

Jones was involved in a bitter conflict with Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons in the months preceding the March 23, 1989, University of Utah cold fusion press conference and with other cold fusion researchers in the following years.

However, as reported in New Energy Times issue #16, Jones conceded to a private online group of condensed matter nuclear science researchers on Feb. 13, 2006, that the Fleischmann-Pons claim of excess heat is real.

Although Jones remained relatively unscathed for his part in the early Fleischmann and Pons controversy 17 years ago, he has not been so fortunate in this controversy. A hundred news stories on Jones were published within the first two days after Brigham Young placed him on leave, and many of these mentioned his involvement with cold fusion. When asked about cold fusion by Deseret Morning News on Sept. 9, 2006, Jones once again took an adversarial position.

"In those days, it was pretty clear I refuted them," Jones said.

Jones’ statements regarding cold fusion are inconsistent, and he apparently is attempting again to distance himself from the cold fusion controversy.

Furthermore, Jones' statement is ludicrous. While there may be some similarities between his experiments and those of Fleischmann-Pons, the electrolyte used by Jones, which he called "Mother Earth Soup," was not suitable to replicate the Fleischmann-Pons effect.

Full article Sept.8, 2006
Full article Sept.9, 2006

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

15. BP: Beyond Propaganda

Advertising Executive Who Created British Petroleum's Ad Campaign Not Convinced It Has Moved Beyond Petroleum

Beyond Propaganda
By John Kenney
The New York Times
Aug. 14, 2006

"Why did all big oil company advertising look alike? The typical helicopter shot of a tanker at sea, sunlight reflecting off the logo as it dissolves to a towheaded urchin on the beach, frolicking in the pristine waters. A voice like Morgan Freeman’s saying, 'At Gigantico Petroleum, we’re on the move to keep the world on the move. And to fill this tanker with cash.'

So we thought, What if you stripped away the corporate-speak? What if you engaged in the debate that was happening with oil and energy and the environment?"

Full article

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

16. Walter Meyerhof, Stanford Cold Fusion Foe, Dies At 84

Stanford Report, June 7, 2006

In the late 1980s, Meyerhof criticized scientists at the University of Utah and Britain's University of Southampton who claimed to have achieved "cold fusion"—which if true could have solved the world's energy problems. When a respected engineering professor at Stanford, Robert Huggins, claimed to have confirmed one part of the cold fusion experiment, Meyerhof and others tried to reproduce it [sic] and failed. "Tens of millions of dollars are at stake, dear sister and brother, because one scientist put a thermometer in one place instead of the other," Meyerhof told an Associated Press reporter.

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

17. Gustave "Bob" Kohn: Feb. 12, 1910 - Aug. 20, 2006

_______________________________________________________________________________ 

Support New Energy Times(tm)
New Energy Times (tm) is a project of New Energy Institute, an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation which provides information and educational services to help bring about the clean-energy revolution.
 
New Energy Times (tm) offers research, reporting and analyses through its Web site, newsletter, private and public presentations and publications, including The Rebirth of Cold Fusion: Real Science, Real Hope, Real Energy by Steven B. Krivit and Nadine L. Winocur.
 
 

__________________________________________________________________________________ 

Administrative

 
Copyright 2006 New Energy Times (tm)
Publication, in print or electronically, is not permitted without express written permission.