Month: April 2011

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Kuhn, Helium “molecule”

I think that people do not understand Science, I know that I don’t and so I have been trying to rectify that matter by reading, amongst other things, Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Kuhn and his paradigms may not be hip anymore, but that is unfortunate for the hipsters, for he still deserves the attention of anyone wondering how science works, or in some cases, how it doesn’t work.

Kuhn gives an example of an investigator asking a physicist and a chemist whether helium was a molecule.  Both answer without hesitation, but with different answers.  The chemist says that it is a molecule “because it behaved like one with respect to the kinetic theory of gases.”  But, the physicist said that a helium atom was not a molecule because it displayed no molecular spectrum.”  Kuhn continues, saying:

 “Presumably both men were talking of the same particle, but they were viewing it through their own research training and practice.  Their experience in problem-solving told them what a molecule must be.  Undoubtedly their experiences had had much in common, but they did not, in this case, tell the specialists the same thing.” (Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., pp. 50-51; original investigator James K. Senior)  

So here we have, in appearances, the violation of the law of non-contradiction, that ‘X is both Y and not Y’ at the same time.  Of course, it only presents a problem if we do not recognize that each of these scientists has a specialization, and that their claims are due to their approach to the topic which stems from that same specialization.  There is no conflict because it is understood that they are approaching it from different ways of looking at the problem.  In their own realm of expertise, Helium is or is not a molecule.  Even though they both probably believe themselves ultimately right on the issue (because their way of looking at the phenomenon is for each of them more productive), there is no conflict because they would recognize that the other had also given a reasonable answer based on scientific theory. 

What is the comparison to cold fusion?  Well, there are two sets of scientists that deal with cold fusion.  There are those who are not specialists in the field of cold fusion because they deny that there is anything to specialize there.  In a field (physics) where all expertise is in the form of specialization, they are saying; ”trust me, I am a scientist.  I know about all things scientific.  I know what I am doing.”  Or what is just about as bad, “I am an expert in hot fusion and therefore an expert in cold fusion as well, which incidentally, does not exist.”  I mean, I am joking, but the same time there is something chilling;) about people who investigate something they believe does not exist.

And, there are those who specialize in cold fusion.  In a way I admire their bravery.  They do not seem to have a comprehensive theory of what is happening when the phenomenon commonly known as cold fusion is going on.  They have no laws to which they can appeal when conversing with other physicists, because they are on the cutting edge.  I understand that until recently, they could not even create the phenomenon at will.  They are just starting out in their specialization.  They are at the beginning of the exploration of the field of low energy physics.  They do, however, have a valid, if nascent area of specialization, even if it is unrecognized the naysayers. It would be nice if we let them play with their puzzles (as, indeed, all scientists do, nothing wrong with that) free from outside interference.  

In fact, it is not despite but rather because they admit that not everything is understood or under control, that I trust in the honesty of their reports and believe they should be supported in their endeavors.  From what understand, there is something going on there with the Deuterium/Palladium and the Hydrogen/Nickel set-ups and I hope that they can get to the point (sooner rather than later) where they can tell us what exactly is happening.  It’s great that cold fusion can produce energy, but I am just damn curious about what is going on at the subatomic level.

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Sterling Allan on Ca$h Flow: “It’s an act of revolution to support free energy”

“Cold fusion is no longer a maybe-possibly-probably not-junk- science. It is now real and it is emerging into the marketplace and we will see the first 1 MW power plant coming in mid-October of this year which will be producing 300,000 units per year. And that’s just starting. And so this is a great opportunity for people to get involved in a technology that can completely revolutionize the planet energy wise and get us off our dependence on fossil fuels.” –Sterling Allan

James Martinez Live had a surprise guest on last Tuesday, April 26 on his Cash-Flow show, when Sterling Allan swooped in for a visit. He is the man behind Pure Energy Systems, the yellow pages of new energy researchers. Allan has also formed the New Energy Congress, whose purpose is “to provide quorum review of leading technology claims, to assess viability and prioritize; then facilitate advancement”. His PESWiki allows for contribution by members of the new energy community.

Pure Energy Systems has a “Top Five Exotic Free Energy Technologies” listing of breakthrough technologies that got the attention of Gerald Celente, and made it into the Trends Journal 2011. Andrea A. Rossi’s Cold Fusion Generator is number one.

In the effort to move minds into action, and instigate the public to demand cold fusion, James Martinez began by stating flatly “It’s really up to you, the public to…vote for your children’s future … and liberate yourself.” This is aligned with Sterling Allan’s plea to “hound your representatives and tell them there are solutions. Stop saying they are not [any]!” Their hour-long conversation exposed what solutions to our energy crisis look like.

Listen to the full hour and download .mp3 on our Audio page.

A few highlights are transcribed below. In one exchange, James asked Sterling about the nature of implementing new technology into the current paradigm, and he lamented the bureaucracy that gets in the way of both scientists and students who want to study cold fusion. Sterling responded:

“It really is amazing to see how the role of politics in science can really stifle the development of science. Scientists, we would like to think, are really open-minded; something new comes along, they’re going to embrace it, they’re going to be excited about it, but in practice , the old Not-Invented-Here syndrome gets really really tight. If the scientist didn’t come up with it, if it wasn’t first published in some scientific journal, gone through the rigamaroll that they’d like it to go through, boy …. and that’s what we specialize in: when something makes the professor’s eyebrows raise, that’s when we start getting interested.”

He also recited a proverb posted on his website:

“He who is one-step ahead is a genius.
He who is two-steps ahead is a crackpot.”

When Sterling presented that to an audience in Estonia, somebody in the audience quipped, “He who is one-step behind, is the government.”

Then he added academia to the that same equation with “academia is so bureaucratic now, they are as bad as the government in stifling innovation.”

Listeners to the archive will enjoy the strange protracted silence, right before James comes back and relates his experience with a high school student who wanted to be a cold fusion scientist and James was setting up a cold fusion scientist to go and visit him at school. However, the young man’s school thwarted the effort. James then reminded us, “Learning institutions are supposed to be open-forums for discussion.”

Two years ago, prompted by the Navy’s research which was “basically saying cold fusion was real”, Sterling started a collection of positive reports on cold fusion that were printed in mainstream news and scientific journals around the world, “all basically announcing that cold fusion should be taken seriously.” [See this bit of presentation here on Youtube.]

“You think that would mark the turning point in the scientific world, that now we would start taking cold fusion seriously. But no, that wasn’t the case.

To this day, even with this Rossi cold fusion happening, if you go to academia and you say cold fusion with a straight face, you’ll be laughed at as a crackpot; it’s still junk science, because of politics, not science.”

James responded with some practical advice for young people in these lean financial times. “Forget the schools. Learn it yourself.”

The conversation inevitably touched on the lack of funding in cold fusion research. Sterling Allan responded:

“I learned a long time ago to not even glance at the government for any kind of leadership when it comes to this stuff. I go to the private sector. It’s the private sector that you get the receptive ears and you get the people that are excited. You get a phone call from somebody from NASA every once in a while that’s interested. You’ll get a cloaked email from somebody from some academic institution that’s kind of contacting you on the side, or on the sly so to speak.

But there are a lot of people that are supportive of these technologies and they are moving forward. The momentum is on our side.

We are moving into a state where we will lose our dependence on a central authority and we will gain our independence energy-wise, so that each house will have its own power device, each vehicle will have it’s own power generator so you won’t have to stop for fuel, it’s pulling energy from the inexhaustible sources all around us.”

James remarked that this technology of the gentle green giant nuclear power from water will “liberate humanity from the dependency on these oil companies and BP spilling hundreds of millions of gallons and getting away with…it’s an end to that.”

Later, Sterling echoed the responsibility of the current energy corporations in the current lack of vision in our energy technology:

“We need to shame the energy industry in the United States, and probably elsewhere in the world, not as bad in Europe as it is in the United States. The United States is almost the worst case scenario when it comes to energy. They are supporting the wrong horse and suppressing the right horses.

If you look at industry in general, the amount of money industry spends from their budget on research and development is 3.1%.

On the other hand, industries like communications, they spend 26% on research and development, software spends 15%, pharmaceuticals is like 14%.”

He then turned the tables and asked James if he knew what percentage of their budget the energy industry spends on research and development. A tiny 0.3% was the answer!

The entire energy industry in the US spends 0.3% of their budget on research and development — a shockingly low number.

“An order of magnitude lower than the industry average! Energy is so important…..we have to start spending our research and development money on new ideas. There are plenty of places to put that money, I promise you that,” Sterling said.

At the start of the second half of the show, James announced he had spoken with Andrea Rossi earlier in the day about an interview, but Mr. Rossi declined at this time, and all the way through October. He’s too busy working on his Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat) with his company Defkalion Green Technologies.

“They will be building 300 smaller, officially-rated 2.5 Kw reactors”. The reactor chamber is 50 cubic centimeters — 3.2 cubic inches. Then he characterized Andrea Rossi’s discovery as finding the catalyst to the nickel-hydrogen reaction, or the additive to the nickel powder. (In subsequent correspondence, Sterling (via his associate Hank Mills) added that: Andrea Rossi replaced the nickel rods or wires used in other Ni-H Cold Fusion experiments with nano-nickel powder, which greatly enhanced the surface area of the nickel. More surface area resulted in more sites at which the hydrogen could react. By combining this nano-nickel powder with two undisclosed elements (which he calls the catalyst) the fusion reaction was further enhanced.)

Addressing the cost issue for the average home user, Sterling noted that “a 2.5 Kw solar system would cover both roofs”. And Rossi’s device might cost “somewhere in the low thousands.”

“But an easier number people can relate to is cents per kilowatt-hour. Where I live [in Utah, US] we probably have the cheapest at 4 cents a Kwh wholesale”, he said. “Rossi cold fusion will deliver for 1 cent per Kw, one-quarter of the price“. He did add that the first applications would be in creating heating systems, and a turbine added to make the electricity would initially add to the cost.

He reminded listeners that though cold fusion is a nuclear process, there is no radioactive materials used, and there is no radioactive waste to get rid of. Mr. Sterling continued the good news throughout the interview.

“The coming year is going to be phenomenal in terms of the emergence of breakthrough energy technologies, clean energy technologies, affordable, portable…there’s a lot of stuff breaking out, this is one of them. This (cold fusion) is number one in our top five on our homepage of http://freeenergynews.com. This is our top one, but it is not the only one that’s to emerge this year. Some are expected to emerge even before this one.

This technology, from what I understand, is really quite simple to implement. It is something that could be licensed by a large number of manufacturers around the world and deployed very rapidly to create jobs and infrastructure that goes along with those jobs and all the various iterations of this. There’s going to be a lot of research and development that will need to go into making this stable for transportation, for example.

When we talk about nuclear, we think of Fukushima and we think of disaster, and we think ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t want that in my yard, let alone my garage’, but this is very different even though this is a nuclear reaction, if this was suddenly … a catastrophe happened, let’s say you were hit by a meteorite in your garage, and it smashed right into your cold fusion reactor, nothing would happen.

You don’t have radioactive elements leaking into the environment, you don’t have some big explosion taking place, it doesn’t runaway, it just stops. That’s all…

…Alternative energy can be our savior economically if we get on this fast enough, and the sooner we get on this, the more of a remedy it will be … and Gerald Celente actually predicted in his 2011 Trends Journal in January that 2011 would see the emergence, and he specifically mentioned Rossi’s cold fusion technology, that there’s going to be a breakthrough energy technology to come along that will be as big as the invention of the wheel or the discovery of fire in terms of its transformation capability for the human race.

Think of it this way. When people are able to do what they’re good at and what they want to do, they are 7 times more productive than when they’re working for somebody else doing something they hate, especially if they are slaves to a system, and they’re on fluoride, and they’re not thinking straight. When they become independent and they think for themselves and they’re doing something they love, they are 7 times more productive.

So when people are given power, a device that can power their house in the garage, and they’re no longer dependent on a central authority, and they’re able to pursue their dreams, we’re going to see prosperity like never before. We will see an end to war. We will see an end to poverty. We will see an end to so many of the problems that plague this planet. And that’s why these bastards don’t want to see free energy emerge because it empowers the individual. It’s power to the people…

….It’s an act of revolution to support free energy, and today’s generation that does so will be the heroes of the coming generation.”

Supporting Links:

Sterling Allan Pure Energy Systems

Top Five Exotic Energy Technologies

Free Energy News

Intentional community project: www.safehavenvillages.org

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James Martinez on Coast to Coast AM – Tonite!

An Earth Day Special Alert! Live on Coast to Coast AM with George Knapp Cold Fusion Now’s own James Martinez. Listen live at 1AM Eastern, 10PM Pacific at the Coast to Coast AM show website. Almost now!

Open lines – phone in your questions and comments LIVE.

Listen to James NOW here.
Find a station in the US, Canada, and Virgin Islands here.

James has conducted interviews with scientists involved in cold fusion research on his Cash-flow show, which you can download and listen to on the Cold Fusion Now audio page.

In the latest interview, James hosted Dr. Edmund Storms, just back from a conference held by the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, where they discussed the latest findings in low-energy nuclear reactions, a two-decade old science that is just about to emerge as a technology.

In this Earth Day exclusive, James will talk with host George Knapp about a newly emerging energy technology that will change the way we exist on this planet: cold fusion, a nuclear power generated by water.

That’s right – water. Converting the hydrogen in water into energy, an ultra-clean nuclear power is generated, with no radioactive materials, and no radioactive waste.

Our Earth is precious, and the life that exists on it fragile.

Make your commitment to work for the good of humankind and all life that exists on this planet, to strive to better ourselves, and honor the wildlife, the oceans, the sky, and all who call this unique world home.

James’ interview with Jan Marwan :

“Start talking wherever you are, in your family, at work, when you’re in governmental institutions, start talking. The more you talk about this topic, the more you raise it, the more you involve other people, …you know… it spread’s like a virus!”

Cold Fusion Now!

The Water Cycle — NASA Earth Observatory

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A letter to Ed Markey

After the biggest oil disaster in US history, there was one man who relentlessly barked at both US and BP spokestrons. He is by no means a perfect politician (who is?), but Congressional Representative Ed Markey gave some comfort to those of us who watched in horror as our ocean and wildlife was assaulted, again, by reckless drilling practices. He relentlessly pursued BP to release the video showing the leak gusher at the bottom of the sea, and was seemingly The Lone Ranger in Washington, DC as he pushed for accountability from one of the largest corporations in the world.

Recently, he was at the forefront of an effort to require gas companies to disclose the chemicals they use during the practice of “fracking”. This report reveals dangerous carcinogens that are being injected into aquifers that supply drinking water to millions. (See our recent post: “What the Frack is Going On?” and read the Hydraulic Fracturing Report)

He also led a panel looking a nuclear safety in the US after the tragedy in Japan, which is still ongoing, and is a trauma that our friends in that island nation will have years, if not decades, to work through. (See our recent post: Dangers of Nuclear Fission Plants..)

But this sometime maverick, outspoken more than most about energy and the environment, has never spoken of the solution staring us right in the face – cold fusion and LENR technologies. Surely he must know. So why not speak out on this issue?

We can only speculate. But as we have learned in the past year of our existence, all the answers are complicated.

In the last year, we have written many letters to our elected officials in the US urging them to lend their support to low-energy nuclear reactions research, and find funding to fast-track the development of ultra-clean nuclear power from hydrogen.

Since we began our energy advocacy in the wake of the BP oil catastrophe, which is still not over, despite the lack of media coverage (See Project Gulf Impact and BP Oilslick), we have assimilated so much information on this topic of clean nuclear power.

And as we have learned more, we wonder now at the worth of sending letters to politicians. Does it really make a difference? Deep water permits for oil drilling in the Gulf, temporarily suspended, have been continued, and there is no evidence at all that multi-national corporations such as BP have developed any tools capable of responding to a similar disaster, which makes it only a matter of time before another one occurs. As the largest consumer of fossil fuels, the US has done little to create a clean energy policy.

Is it be better to throw our efforts at wealthy private individuals, angels, and venture capital firms, and direct that money towards the blossoming number of private companies who might rather stay under the radar of meddling politicians? Perhaps US officials get involved, they will ruin the opportunities that exist today for young scientists and start-up companies to create a new world?

We are conflicted.

In any case, though our letter writing has diminished in recent months (due to the demands of daily classroom activities), we have not stopped the activism.

We have spoken with colleagues who work at colleges and universities, educating them about the recent advances in LENR, most of whom knew nothing about it. We have spoken to our students, and showed them the papers and videos of these emerging technologies.

I have personally done math problems in algebra class adapted from this science. Yes, that’s right, energy out/in ratios, mass-to-energy equations, and many more LENR topics that I can simplify to basic algebra. And students loved it.

Today, we send Representative Ed Markey a letter thanking him for his accomplishments in holding Big Fossil accountable and pursuing justice for the environment. We also sent Representative Henry Waxman and House Energy and Environment Committee Chairman a letter as well. Each letter asks for support for LENR research and includes a Cold Fusion Now sticker.

As we mailed these few letters today, not knowing if it is helpful, or possibly hurtful, we continue to keep talking, and keep typing. (See archived post: Jan Marwan: “Start talking.”) And if your so inclined, and you feel it helps, copy and paste portions of this letter in a message to send to your Representative.

Worldwide, we must hold our leaders accountable, demanding action when they do wrong, and rewarding them when they do right. The fragile life that exists on this planet deserves no less from us.

Cold Fusion Now!

April 20, 2011

Representative Ed Markey
2108 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-2836

Dear Representative Markey,

Thank you for continuing the fight to hold oil and gas companies accountable for the environmental damage done by reckless drilling practices. Your work on the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, including the recent hearings exposing, again, the dangers of radiation contamination, ranks you as one of the most respected supporters for our natural environment, admired around the country.

Now I ask you to put your powerful voice towards a truly clean energy, low-energy nuclear reactions, also called cold fusion, a type of ultra-clean nuclear power generated by hydrogen. If you have dismissed this research in the past, please do not miss this opportunity to get ahead of this two-decades-old science, just about to emerge as a technology. Research and engineering has been limping along with virtually zero federal support, other than military, yet the successes are increasing. It may be as soon as the end of this year that we will see a working device, manufactured in Florida, to be installed in a factory – in Greece.

Already there are numerous small businesses involved in LENR-related research and development around the country, several in your own state, each employing a handful of people. These companies need funding to hire more young scientists and increase productivity. Private investment has been inhibited by the United States Patent Office’s refusal to accept patents relating to this technology, a practice that should be reversed immediately.

LENR technology will create a renaissance of new businesses, jobs for young scientists, and more importantly, a clean energy to build a future on. We should make every effort to explore all avenues of clean energy quickly as possible to mitigate the effects of declining fossil fuels and aging nuclear fission power plants.

This technology will emerge eventually, with or without federal support, but public support means public ownership. Please sir, consider hearings on the state of the science and technology with the goal of funding research and development in this truly sustainable area of green nuclear power.

Thank you, and best wishes for continued success in the area of clean energy and the environment.

Yours,

Your Name Here!

Letters and stickers also went to Rep. Waxman and Chairman Upton.
If you’re in their district, see if they sport em anywhere!

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Andrea Rossi on E-Cat Validation

A recent post up from the Cold Fusion “Andrea Rossi” Method Facebook page – “Does E-Cat need a “validation”? – Rossi responds to the everyday requests which he receives for independent validation and fears of industrial espionage:
“Here is the inventor Andrea Rossi answering to Mr Frank on the Journal of Nuclear phisics about a request of “validation” of the E-Cat:

Dear Mr Frank:

I receive every day requests from all the world of Universities, Associations, Laboratories from any Country, of any kind which want to make an “independent” test to offer us the only possible real validation of the technology. Should I accept, 24 hours per day, 365days per year would not be enough to be so much validated. I respect all the wannavalidate of the Planet, but I want to remember that:

1- In October we will start deliver to our Customers our plants, so that the validation will be made by the Customers: they will use our plants 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. That is the sole real validation that counts for us, also because if the plants work, Customers will pay us, if not, they will not pay us. The plants have to respect precise guarantees we gave about their efficiency and their safety. We are not searching any validation. We never did. We just wanted to make a good product.We have already made our public presentations, no more of them will be made. With the University of Bologna we will continue the R&D program, but not to “validate”: the validation must arrive from the market. The aim of the R&D program with the University of Bologna, financed by us, and therefore made with our money, is to develop our future, not to “validate”. Not to mention the fact that the real target of the wannabe validators, in 99 cases out of 100, is to get information and make industrial espionage, as already occurred to me with another “validator” with whom we severed any collaboration after getting evidence of the fact that data obtained from us have been utilized for a competition.

2- I thank anyway Prof. Peter Hagelstein for his attention. If the MIT is interested to our product, they can buy a plant, and make all the validations they want, for themselves, and get from it good heating too, during the hard Bostonian winters ( I lived there for some year, mamma mia, che freddo!)

Warm regards,

The Cold Fusion Andrea Rossi Method Facebook page can be found at http://www.facebook.com/EnergyCatalyzer

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cold fusion as a gift

Ironically, I suspect that some people reject cold fusion because it does not seem to have a down side.  Fossil fuels have pollution problems, including greenhouse gases.  Nuclear power (fission) has the nightmare chance of a nuclear accident and the looming problem of how to dispose of nuclear waste.  Hydroelectric dams block salmon runs and affect river ecosystems.  Wind turbines kill off migrating birds and bats.  Everything seems to have an ecological cost, a down side, except cold fusion which promises cheap, clean energy.  I suspect that some people reject the possibility of cold fusion, not because technical difficulties nor because of the problems it presents, but because it does not seem to present any problems at all.

Cold fusion seems too good to be true.  Please note that I am not saying that cold fusion is too good to be true, I am just saying that people are emotionally wired to believe that our lives have a kind of balance or symmetry to them.  Something good is followed by something bad, every benefit has a cost.  This is the idea of fairness or justice and as a general view of the world, it serves humanity well.  

In this instance though, our imagination because of adherence to this idea is failing to see what cold fusion might become.  That does not present us with a failure of the idea of cold fusion; that shows us a failure of imagination and of the idea of fairness.  The idea of cold fusion does not seem to have that balance or zero sum game restricting it.  Of course, it probably does, but to dig it out requires much more imagination than we have now. Cold fusion seems to be only positive in its implications, and therefore, less real.  Because of that I suspect that people will sometimes dismiss cold fusion, not on scientific grounds, but because their emotional wiring and their lack of imagination makes it sound too good to be true.

This emotional wiring says, for example, that, “everyone will get their just desserts,” and because we know that evil bastards sometimes live long lives and die a peaceful death, we add, “in the next life if not in this one.”  It tells us, “do good things, good things happen, do bad things, bad things happen” as Earl says, following his karma.  We teach our kids that hard work is rewarded, that taking the easy way out will cost more in the end.  We teach that everything has a cost, and that you can’t get something for nothing.  These are good lessons to learn in that they keep us to consider others as well as ourselves, they moderate our behavior. 

These lessons, however, channel the imagination, restricting it to maintain the system already in place, not creating new options or a new system.  They limit progress to that within the current closed system, not allowing for new revolutions.  They lead to a belief that if I cannot “see” it, then there must be nothing there.  These various sayings express a great emotional truth that keeps society chugging along, but that emotional truth is not always factually correct.  Sometimes we need to get out of that pattern of business as usual; sometimes we need to change direction.  Cold fusion does not present an opportunity of business as usual, but is a game changer in so many different ways.  We cannot really imagine a world with cold fusion; it is too big for us, too many ramifications.  We are just going to have to make this world so that we can see it for ourselves.

While we cannot really imagine a world with cold fusion, we do know that we need a game changer, and as much as we like believing in fairness, we do not want what we deserve.  “Fairness” is something that really we only want for the other guy; mercy is what we prefer for ourselves.  There would be a kind of poetic justice if we were trapped in a world of our own creation; a world of declining resources, increasing populations, desertification and increasingly extreme weather.  It takes no imagination to get what we deserve; it just takes business as usual. 

But maybe, with a little boldness we can get another world, a world that reflects mercy for us in addition to justice.  In this world of mercy, where we do not get what deserve, but also get a hand helping us up with what we need, maybe we get to have cold fusion.  But maybe cold fusion is a gift.  Not everything has to be a trade-off between goods and evils as fairness and balance suggest.  Instead of believing that cold fusion is too good to be true, perhaps we can imagine cold fusion as something special, which it is, for it is a gift that by nature is appropriate and needed for where we are today.  We shouldn’t worry too much about why it happens, just how it happens  Our attitude is that we should be thankful for it and look for the opportunity to put it to good use.